If you want to continue this sort of thing then there is nothing anyone can do but give you your freedom. I know who the woman is Morrie. I know who you bought those diamond earrings for, we both know who she is, and that you can have her and her husband in our house to have dinner and play cards is shameful. I do not know how she can be doing this to my home, I do not understand. I am so embarrassed all the time. You are making me ill Morrie. So please I beg of you please answer this and tell me what it is you want. If you want to stay here with me and our son then it must be without any more of the lying and cheating that is killing me. But if your answer is that you want to go, then there is nothing I can do.
She did not sign the final page. He looked over the letter again. There were three pages in all, each headed with a Roman numeral. I, II, III. He folded the letter. He felt his eyes misting with tears. He put the letter back into the envelope. His mother’s constant sniping at his father. She’d known he’d never stopped lying and cheating, and had decided to live with it. No wonder it was a heart attack that finally killed her.
He carried the letter back to the closet and put it in his jacket pocket again. He was starting back toward where he’d left his drink when the telephone rang.
He’s dead, he thought.
It always comes on the telephone, he thought.
He picked up the receiver.
“Hello?” he said.
“David? Hi, it’s Hillary.”
“Hello,” he said.
“I’ve been trying to reach you.”
“I was at the hospital.”
“How is he?”
“Well, not so hot.”
“I’m sorry.”
He said nothing. There was a long silence on the line.
“You’d had quite a bit to drink last night, hadn’t you?” she said.
“A little.”
“I suspected as much.” She paused. “Do you remember phoning me?”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember what you asked?”
“Vaguely.” He remembered completely.
“Why’d you want to know what I was wearing?”
“I really don’t know,” he said.
“Did you want to have sex?” she asked. “On the phone?”
“I suppose,” he said. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Might have been interesting,” she said. She paused again. “I’m here at the pool,” she said. “It’s like a mausoleum. Why don’t you come join me for a drink and some sun?”
“I have to be back at the hospital at four.”
“That gives us at least an hour.”
“Well...”
“Do come,” she said, and hung up.
He went to the window. He looked down at the pool. He could see her walking from the telephone to one of the lounge chairs. She was wearing a white string bikini and high-heeled sandals. She had become very tan in the past several days. She took off the sandals, smoothed the towel on the lounge, and stretched out on her belly. He saw her reaching behind her to untie the strap of the bikini top.
He looked at his watch, and then went into the bathroom, where his swimming trunks were draped over the shower-curtain rod. He thought suddenly of the enema bag in his father’s apartment. How long had he been struggling alone with what he’d called his “blockage?” How many secret enemas had he taken in that overflowing apartment? He’s a man dying because he couldn’t shit, David thought. He filled his apartment with shit, he lived his life wallowing in shit, and now he’s dying because he couldn’t shit. He looked at his watch again. He did not want to go back to that hospital at four o’clock. He did not want to continue this senseless vigil. Die already, he thought. For Christ’s sake, die!
He looked into the mirror.
“Die,” he said aloud, and then he put on his trunks and went downstairs to join Hillary.
“I lied to you,” she said.
No more lies, he thought. Molly’s words last summer. But the lies persisted.
“You told me,” he said. “You’re not really twenty-nine.”
“That, yes,” she said. “But about being divorced as well.”
They were stretched out on lounges side by side. They were drinking gin-tonics. Gin and quinine, she called them. He was on his back, his eyes squinted against the strong glare of the sun. She was on her belly, the bikini strap untied, her blond hair loose. Her arms were dangling over the end of the lounge. The drink was on the tiles before her. She kept toying with the straw. She smelled of coconut oil.
“Matter of fact,” she said, “I’ve never been married.”
A cloud passed over the sun, bringing temporary relief.
“It was easier to lie,” she said.
No more lies, he thought. Please.
The cloud passed, the sun blinked on again. He squinted his eyes against it. In England, he remembered, a person with a “squint” was cross-eyed. Language barrier, he thought. He waited.
“You see, I’ve just ended a rather long-term relationship,” she said. “With a man, of course. These days, one feels compelled to clarify. I’m not that way, though on occasion I’ve been sorely tempted.”
She turned her face to him and smiled. Her eyes were intensely green in the sun. She looked away and began toying with the straw again.
“We were supposed to have gone to Marbella together,” she said. “Actually, I lied about that, too. My firm didn’t really have to sack anyone down here, I volunteered to come. So I wouldn’t have to go on holiday with him. I’m quite good at lying, I’ve had a great deal of practice over the years. He’s married, you see.”
She reached behind her to tie the bra strap. She rolled over and then sat up cross-legged, Indian fashion. Remembering her drink, she reached behind her for the plastic cup. Her breasts threatened the skimpy string top. She sipped at the drink and then began toying with the straw again.
“He’s quite a bit older than I am,” she said. “Older than you, actually. Twice my own age. Sixty.”
“Uh-huh,” David said. English mostly, one of the Dolly Sisters had said. The sex fiends.
“I met him when I was nineteen. I was still living in London, working for a small lingerie shop in Mayfair. Nineteen years old and still a virgin, can you believe it?”
What’s left to believe? David thought. Lies?
“He came in looking for a pair of panties. Knickers, do you prefer? Panties, actually. He bought a rather nice pair, very sexy, pale blue and lace-edged. Cost him six pounds. He asked me if I’d care to model them for him one night. I was utterly shocked! I thought he was a dirty old man, and I told him so. Actually, he was only forty-nine at the time — this was, after all, eleven years ago. Just your age, come to think of it. That’s odd, don’t you think?”
“So what happened? Did you model them for him?”
“Oh, of course I did. The very next night, in fact. His wife was away in Sussex, it was one of those dreary November weekends, rainy and gray, we spent the entire time in bed. Well, not the entire time. We did pause to eat, and we went to two movies, but mostly we made love. Which is what we’ve been doing — mostly — for the past eleven years, I suppose. Nineteen when I met him, can you imagine?” She shook her head again. “Until, finally — three weeks ago, actually — I decided I’d had enough. Quite enough, thanks. I plan on seeing a psychiatrist when I get back to Oxford, the university has hordes of them, you know. See if I can’t get my head together somehow. Eleven years! When I think of it!”