He felt better as soon as he got away from his apartment and was alone outside in the city. He walked carefully, concerned that he was fragile, but nothing hurt. He felt well enough to go as far as Columbus Circle before hailing a cab to Grand Central.
Carla looked beautiful. She had nothing of the pale despair of her grief. The profound black of her thick hair framed her long face. Her chocolate eyes shined out of their deep setting. Her lips were a bold red against the glowing white of her skin. She was a beautiful animal and she didn’t know it. She moved with energetic grace but its flow was unconscious. And this healthy Carla had a clarity to her that was also beautiful. There was no guard at attention ready to stop the expression of her true feelings. She asked him whether he was crazy, and nodded at his answer as if that were all the reassurance she needed. She told him about making up with Manny, and yet when she added that she didn’t want to sleep in the same room with him anymore she made no attempt to justify her aloofness from her husband, despite his apologies and contrition. She said, I don’t like him enough to sleep next to him every night. She was honest in the only way it’s possible to be honest — by not knowing there was any other way to be. Max realized that when he was a young man he would have thought her dumb. She was a prize.
“Do you think I ought to work?” she asked while she enjoyed the Oyster Bar’s ridiculously sweet and slightly stale chocolate cake.
“When I worked I loved it more than anything,” he told her.
“I don’t think I could feel that way about a job,” she said. “And I don’t mean I should get a job for money. I mean I should do something good, you know? Maybe I could volunteer at the Foundling Hospital. I asked Monsignor O’Boyle if he could ask them.”
Max smiled to himself at the thought that no one would pay for her to do good in the world. Of course she was right.
“I wish I could teach,” she said. “I don’t know anything to teach. But I wish I could spend time with kids. Not only sick kids. Healthy kids deserve attention too, right?”
“You want to have another child,” Max said.
“Yeah,” she nodded. “But I’m a coward. I can’t carry a baby and think about losing it all the time. I couldn’t take that.”
“You wouldn’t lose a baby.”
“No?” She smiled broadly. Her teeth were big and bright. He hadn’t noticed them before.
“No.” Max was positive.
“That’s good to know,” Carla smiled again. Her mouth opened wide with a laugh and he saw all those teeth again. Why hadn’t he noticed them before?
Because she hadn’t been smiling or laughing, he realized, and felt dumb. He was so tired from his walk and the big meal that he forgot to ask Carla if she would come with him to the Plaza before heading off to it. When she didn’t object to his instruction to the cabdriver he asked her to come with him on his flight from New York. She didn’t answer.
The desk clerk smirked when Max told him his bags would be arriving later. Max had forgotten he would need clothes whether he was going to Rome or Oklahoma. Maybe I’m not serious about leaving, he doubted himself.
The view was great. All of Central Park was spread below, the details of its paths, footbridges, hills, buildings, and lake exposed by the fuzzy brown leafless trees. Their room was high enough so that the rectangular borders of tall buildings on all sides could be seen, although the northern end was small. But the height proved the awesome truth that the park was made by man: nature re-created where it had been killed.
This city is what I’ve loved all my life, Max thought, appalled. A place.
“Lie down, Max,” Carla said. He turned and couldn’t find her. She had gone into the bedroom. He was surprised by this forwardness. He walked from the huge sitting room into a narrow bedroom. They must have created this suite from a larger one, Max decided. The bedroom seemed to be for a servant. Carla had drawn the drapes. Only a faint glow of the day’s gray light illuminated her. She had drawn the bedspread down but left the blanket and pillows untouched. Her shoes were off, tumbled onto to the floor at the foot of the bed. She had lain down on her side, fully dressed, facing the door.
“Come here and get some rest,” she said. Her hand touched the empty place near her.
He yawned. It was hot in the room. He pushed his shoes off and stumbled to her. The pillow was cool; its fabric smooth, but hard. He faced Carla. His hands folded into each other and lay beside her beautiful face. Her eyes were shut. She moved closer. Her hair spilled down over her shoulder and dripped black curls onto his hands. He smelled the sweetly dank fragrance of her hair and he smelled the lunch’s shellfish on both their mouths.
“I love—” he began.
“Shh,” she said. She touched his temple. His eyes shut as if she had pressed a button to close them. “You’ve helped a lot of people, Max,” she said. “You deserve to rest.” He felt a soft kiss on his forehead. He smiled and slept.
Carla woke to find Max’s hand under her cheek. He was asleep in the deep rest of a baby — eyelids smooth, brow untroubled, jaw slack.
The early sunset of winter had completely darkened the room. Through the open door to the sitting room there was a sickly amber light from the street.
She eased herself off the bed hoping not to wake him. He moaned faintly as she departed; but he stayed asleep. She went into the sitting room. It was a quarter after five. Manny was either home or soon would be. He might be patient about her absence for an hour. Then he would explode. She had to call him soon.
She turned on a lamp. Its switch made a loud noise. She listened for Max. There was no movement. The room — for a place in New York City — was very quiet. Only the occasional faint sound of a car horn or a siren could be heard. Sometimes a dim flow of water from one floor to another in the walls. Otherwise there was only a stillness that left her nothing to hear but the blood rushing in her ears.
She had to make a choice. Delay was no longer possible. Max needed her. He was lost. Although he was the same smart handsome man who had saved her sanity, he was troubled and distracted. But he was not crazy — except maybe about Brillstein and his wife. She could believe the lawyer might want to put Max away, although she had reason to think he was trying to settle the cases; besides she had told Brillstein she was going to tell the truth about what she did in the plane and the lawyer hadn’t threatened her. Nevertheless he was capable of putting Max in a funny farm if he could get more money. But she didn’t believe for a minute that Max’s wife would go along. The woman she met wasn’t capable of such a bad thing. Take Manny as an example. He wasn’t an especially good man and he loved money so much he could kill for it; still, he wouldn’t put Carla away to get more. She couldn’t believe Max had married someone more untrustworthy than she had. No. Max wants to run away, she told herself. She understood that much; she understood that Max couldn’t abandon his family unless he believed he was forced to and so he had made it up. To her there was nothing crazy about such a delusion — it was desperate common sense, a way of surviving.
She knew how to stop him from running. She knew what he needed. She didn’t even like to think about what she understood because it made so little sense to her outside of knowing Max and it was a mortal sin, against everything she had been taught and believed herself.