Part 9 (1/2)

Her body rippled under the water, loose and white. Good-bye, Marilyn and Sophia (G.o.d, those photographs from earlier!). h.e.l.lo, Pillsbury Doughboy.

But it was okay. This was what people looked like at her age. Denis, if he were here, would be old too.

She got out of the bath and dried herself and got dressed, in a pair of black silk pants and a beige cashmere tunic that had once belonged to Marjorie. Marjorie had invited her for dinner tonight, and she found she was looking forward to it, although she also knew she would have been just fine alone.

She walked through the house and found Arch by himself in the library off the entry hall. Marjorie was home, he said, but not down yet. ”What can I get you, Alice? Gibson? Sidecar? Sazerac sling?”

”Ha, ha,” Alice said gamely. She a.s.sumed this gameness automatically, having learned over the years that it was the only way to deal with Arch. ”A little cranberry juice and soda, thanks.”

He handed it to her and went back to his wing chair. ”So Marge tells me you've had the press in today. You granted them an audience, your public? The paparazzi too?”

”No, just a very nice young writer and his wife. He's working on a biography of Denis and the others.”

”And we can expect a movie?” Arch went on. ”We should be holding our breath for a major motion picture?”

”Well, Arch, one of these days you just might be surprised,” Alice said, still in that plucky chirp she used with him.

In fact, Charlie had told her he was working on a movie treatment as well as his book, and was planning to show it around to people in Hollywood.

Alice, watching Arch sip his whiskey and soda, thought suddenly that if there ever was a movie, there'd be a scene set in El Morocco, and an actress would sit on an actor's knee and laugh and then he'd kiss her. There would be a lot of takes; at the end of the day the actress would go home thinking how tired she was of laughing and being kissed.

Arch seemed suddenly aware that she was watching his gla.s.s. His eyes narrowed. ”So, how's your higher power today, Alice?”

”Just fine, Arch,” she said evenly.

So: after all there were things about her life that she'd never told anyone. Here, right now, were two things she knew that no one else did. The way Arch talked to her, and the fact that, like almost everything else, it never seemed to get to her.

The News from Spain.

Voi che sapete che cosa e amor ...

(You who know what love is ...).

CHERUBINO TO ROSINA,.

Le Nozze di Figaro, MOZART AND DA PONTE.

Voi sapete quel che fa.

(You know what he always does.).

LEPORELLO TO ELVIRA,.

Don Giovanni, MOZART AND DA PONTE.

1.

Years later, long after what most people thought of as the real action was over, Rosina and Elvira met and became friends. They had exiled themselves from their old lives. Rosina was divorced, and Elvira hadn't seen Johnny in years. They met in a cooking cla.s.s, which both had signed up for distractedly, thinking it might be good for them.

One week it was raining on the night the cla.s.s met. The windows steamed up, the room smelled delicious, and no one could tell what was happening outside. Rain slapped blindly on the gla.s.s. By the time they all loaded the dishwashers, wiped the counters, and went outside just after ten, the storm had strengthened. Rosina and Elvira stepped out of the building together. The wind was blowing the rain in stinging sideways gusts, and the dark trees in the square were tossing their limbs and creaking.

”Come home with me,” Rosina said.

Elvira was startled. Over the weeks they had smiled at each other, chopped together, talked a little bit in the ladies' room. It was one of those incipient friends.h.i.+ps that might or might not develop: the thing that made it possible-a recognition of and respect for the other's reserve-was the same thing that would probably prevent it from happening.

”I'll be all right,” Elvira told Rosina as they stood on the doorstep. Driving out to the country, she meant. She said it automatically, but looking at the wildly rocking trees, she wasn't sure it was true. She was surprised and touched that Rosina had remembered, from some polite little conversation weeks ago, that she didn't live in town.

”Come on,” Rosina said, already beginning to run.

Even the drive across the city was frightening-sheets of rain on the winds.h.i.+eld; floods in the streets; the old plane trees along the river shuddering and luminous, with paler patches where branches were shearing off; the river rocking and spitting in its banks. ”You were right,” Elvira said at the end of it. ”I couldn't have driven home in this.”

Rosina lived in a tall old row house, the kind that had generally long since been divided into apartments. But this one hadn't been. It was calmly intact, and of a scale that made Elvira suddenly shy. There were plain, pale modern sofas, and dark carved chests, and old rugs; there were paintings that Elvira would have liked to stop and gape at; there was a Vuillard oil in the library, where a fire was already laid, waiting for Rosina to touch it with a match.

They sat there, having showered, wearing Rosina's nightgowns and robes, drinking cognac, with a plate of oranges and chocolate. What is all this? Elvira wanted to ask. She was dazzled, and a little disappointed in herself for being dazzled. She was habitually austere. She lived simply, because she chose to-her income as a painter was erratic, and she wanted to keep as much time as possible free for painting. She'd been around money before, had rich friends, hung around with rich people who bought her paintings. But this, Rosina's house, wasn't just money-it was something else, something unfathomable.

Rosina was asking her about her work-what kind of painting did she do?-and Elvira was giving tight little answers, as if she were on a job interview.

”I'm sorry,” Rosina said. ”I'm prying. I know a lot of artists don't like talking about their work.”

”No, no, it's fine,” Elvira said. Then they were both silent. She felt she was letting Rosina down, being a dull, graceless guest.

Finally Elvira asked about the pictures in the house-she was dying to, they were screaming at her, and it seemed pretentiously nonchalant to ignore them. They walked around and looked at everything, barefoot, carrying their drinks. Elvira, who hated it when people talked in museums, didn't say anything, just smiled at Rosina from time to time, and once laughed out loud, standing in front of a Goya that was hanging in the dining room, a toothy, inane-faced portrait of a woman with many jewels in her hair. Rosina laughed too. ”You always wonder how he got away with it,” she said.

When they sat down again in front of the fire, it was different. They were peaceful, the awkwardness was gone. The late hour, the storm still slas.h.i.+ng away outside and beating on the old window gla.s.s, the pictures, the brandy, the deep quiet of the house.

In a book they would have told each other their stories then. They would have been stranded together for a night, high above their ordinary lives: travelers at an inn, fleeing a city in which there was plague; or refugees from a s.h.i.+pwreck crowded into a lifeboat; or survivors of a war holed up in a villa. The threat of death would have hovered, recently and narrowly escaped, possibly still imminent. They would have told their stories without fear, with a reckless n.o.ble end-of-the-world candor.

But there was no plague, no s.h.i.+pwreck. The storm was dramatic but not deadly; it was just a late-winter rainstorm. Elvira and Rosina were both guarded, discreet, even secretive people; that wasn't going to change. They told each other a little bit that night; they made forays. Rosina talked about her grown son-she had moved to this city to be near him and his wife and their two small daughters; Elvira was here because she'd lucked into a small house in the country, with a barn she could use as a studio. But something bigger happened too, an alliance, an unspoken agreement that this would be a patient and safe friends.h.i.+p. They would come to know each other slowly, over time.

2.

It would have been nice, impressive, to write: The countess left Aguas Frescas, taking nothing. But on second thought, why? Who over the age of twenty would be impressed by such shortsighted renunciation? The lawyers had worked out a decent settlement. And Rosina had wanted a number of things. A few of the smaller paintings, her pearls (though none of the other jewelry), money. She sent word to her husband through the housekeeper that she would like to take some furniture from obscure corners of the house, nothing much, nothing that would leave any room looking plundered. Not even anything from her bedroom-those sad pieces of furniture, paced between, stared at, cried on, collapsed on: they were part of what she was leaving.

Her husband sent word back that she should take whatever she wanted. He was being fair, reasonable, as he almost always was, except when he wanted something that fairness and reason couldn't easily obtain. Even then, he could cloak his unreasonableness by pointing out hers. ”Look what you're doing to yourself,” he would say, when she had wept and stormed at him after learning of some new infidelity.

I can stand this, she had thought at first. Well, not at first. At first there had been nothing to stand. They were happy. They ran the estate, which included a large and very successful vineyard; they went riding and fis.h.i.+ng together; they spent time in the city and went to parties and concerts, bought clothes and books; they were ecstatic and abandoned in bed together. ”No,” she would murmur, ”no, don't,” and that was part of the game, for him to overcome her.