Part 12 (2/2)

- Then how much is this e.e. c.u.mmings? she said. I'll buy it and you can take a few minutes off.

- It's already sold, he said.

- Still has the price in it.

He shrugged a little.

- Answer me about Venice, she said.

- I remember the hotel. Now let's say good-bye.

- I'm going to Bangkok with a friend.

He felt a phantom skip of the heart, however slight.

- Good, he said.

- Molly. You'd like her.

- Molly.

- We're traveling together. You know Daddy died.

- I didn't know that.

- Yes, a year ago. He died. So my worries are over. It's a nice feeling.

- I suppose. I liked your father.

He'd been a man in the oil business, sociable, with certain freely admitted prejudices. He wore expensive suits and had been divorced twice but managed to avoid loneliness.

- We're going to stay in Bangkok for a couple of months, perhaps come back through Europe, Carol said. Molly has a lot of style. She was a dancer. What was Pam, wasn't she a teacher or something? Well, you love Pam, you'd love Molly. You don't know her, but you would. She paused. Why don't you come with us? she said.

Hollis smiled slightly.

- Shareable, is she? he said.

- You wouldn't have to share.

It was meant to torment him, he knew.

- Leave my family and business, just like that?

- Gauguin did it.

- I'm a little more responsible than that. Maybe it's something you would do.

- If it were a choice, she said. Between life and . . .

- What?

- Life and a kind of pretend life. Don't act as if you didn't understand. There's n.o.body that understands better than you.

He felt an unwanted resentment. That the hunt be over, he thought. That it be ended. He heard her continue.

- Travel. The Orient. The air of a different world. Bathe, drink, read . . .

- You and me.

- And Molly. As a gift.

- Well, I don't know. What does she look like?

- She's good-looking, what would you expect? I'll undress her for you.

- I'll tell you something funny, Hollis said, something I heard. They say that everything in the universe, the planets, all the galaxies, everything-the entire universe-came originally from something the size of a grain of rice that exploded and formed what we have now, the sun, stars, earth, seas, everything there is, including what I felt for you. That morning on Hudson Street, sitting there in the sunlight, feet up, fulfilled and knowing it, talking, in love with one another-I knew I had everything life would ever offer.

- You felt that?

- Of course. Anyone would. I remember it all, but I can't feel it now. It's pa.s.sed.

- That's sad.

- I have something more than that now. I have a wife I love and a kid.

- It's such a cliche, isn't it? A wife I love.

- It's just the truth.

- And you're looking forward to the years together, the ecstasy.

- It's not ecstasy.

- You're right.

- You can't have ecstasy daily.

- No, but you can have something as good, she said. You can have the antic.i.p.ation of it.

- Good. Go ahead and have it. You and Molly.

- I'll think of you, Chris, in the house we'll have on the river in Bangkok.

- Oh, don't bother.

- I'll think of you lying in bed at night, bored to death with it all.

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