Ernest Mittle lay supine, his head on Zoe's lap, eyes closed. She stroked his hair absently, looking about and feeling they were alone on earth. The last. The only.
"I wish we could stay here forever," she murmured. "Like this."
He opened his eyes to look up at her.
"Never go home," he said softly. "Never go to work again. No more subways and buses and traffic. No more noise and dirt. No violence and crime and cruelty. We'll just stay here forever and ever."
"Yes," she said wonderingly. "Just the two of us together."
He sat up, took her hand, kissed her fingertips.
"Wouldn't that be fine?" he said. "Wouldn't that be grand? Zoe, I've never felt so good. Never been so happy. Why can't it last?"
"It can't," she said.
"No," he said, "I suppose not. But you're happy, aren't you? I mean right this minute?"
"Oh yes," she said. "Happier than I've ever been in my life."
He lay back again; she resumed smoothing the webby hair back from his temples.
"Did you have a lot of boyfriends, Zoe?" he asked quietly. "I mean when you were growing up."
"No, Ernie," she said, just as dreamily. "Not many."
On a lawn, beneath a tree, blue shadows mottling, they were in the world but not of it. Locked in lovers' isolation. Away from the caged and uncaged animals, and somehow protected from them by their twoness.
"My mother was strict," she said in a memory-dulled voice. "So strict. The boy had to call for me and come inside for inspection. I had to be home by eleven. Midnight on weekends, but eleven during the week."
He made a sound of sympathy. Neither moved now, fearing to move. It was a moment of fragile balance. They knew they were risking revealment. Opening up-a sweet pain. They inched cautiously to intimacy, recognizing the dangers.
"Once I went out with a boy," she said. "A nice boy. His car broke down so I couldn't get home in time. My mother called the police. Can you imagine that? It was awful."
"It's for your own good, my dear," he said in a high-pitched feminine voice.
"Yes. That's what she said. It was for my own good. But after that, I wasn't very popular."
They were silent then, and content with their closeness. It seemed to them that what they were doing, unfolding, could be done slowly. It might even cost a lifetime. All the safer for that. Knowing was a process, not a flash, and it might never end.
"I was never popular," he said, a voice between rue and hurt. "I was small. Not an athlete or anything like that. And I never had enough money to take a girl to the movies. I didn't have any real girlfriends. I never went steady."
It was so new to them-this tender confession. They were daunted by the strange world. Shells were cracking; the naked babes peered out in fear and want. They understood there was a price to be paid for these first fumblings. Involvement presaged a future they could not see.
"I never went steady either," she said, determined not to stop. "Very few boys ever asked me out a second time."
"What a waste," he said, sighing. "For both of us. I didn't think any girl could be interested in me. I was afraid to ask. And you…"
"I was afraid, too. Of being alone with a boy. Mother again. Don't do this. Don't do that. Don't let a boy-you know… get personal."
"We were robbed," he said. "Both of us. All those years."
"Yes. Robbed."
Silence again. A comfortable quiet. The wind was freshening, cooling. She looked down at him, cupped his pale face in her palms. Their eyes searched.
"But you married," he said.
"Yes. I did."
She bent, he craned up. Their soft lips met, pressed, lingered. They kissed. They kissed.
"Oh," he breathed. "Oh, oh."
She traced his face, smiling sadly. She felt his brow, cheeks, nose, lips. He closed his eyes, and lightly, lightly, she touched the velvet eyelids, made gentle circles. Then she leaned again to press her lips softly.
She straightened up. She shivered with a sudden chill.
His eyes opened, he looked at her with concern.
"Cold?"
"A little," she said. "Ernie, maybe we should think about leaving."
"Sure," he said, scrambling to his feet.
He helped her up, picked twigs from her skirt, brushed bits of bark from the back of her tweed jacket.
"What should we do with the balloon?" he asked.
"Let's turn it loose," she said. "Let it fly away."
"Right," he said, and untied the string from her purse.
He handed it to her and let her release it. The red balloon rose slowly. Then, caught by the strengthening wind, it went soaring away. They watched it fly up, pulled this way and that, but sailing higher and higher, getting smaller and smaller until it was lost in the sky.
They wandered slowly back to the paved walkway.
"Something I've wanted to ask you, Zoe," he said, looking at the ground. "Is Kohler your married name or your maiden name?"
"My married name. It was on all my legal papers and driver's license and so forth. It just seemed too much trouble to change everything. My maiden name is Spencer."
"Zoe Spencer," he said. "That's nice. Zoe is a very unusual name."
"I think it's Greek," she said. "It means ' life.' It was my mother's idea."
"What's her name?" he asked.
"Irene," she said.
Dr. Oscar Stark's receptionist had Zoe's home and office telephone numbers in her file. On the afternoon of May 13th, the doctor called Zoe at the Hotel Granger and asked how she was feeling.
She told him she felt better since her period had ended, but sometimes she felt torpid and without energy. She reported nothing about her nausea, the continued loss of weight, the increasing incidents of syncope.
He asked if she was taking the doubled cortisone dosage and the salt tablets. She said she was and, in answer to his questions, told him she suffered no stomach upset from intake of the steroid hormone and experienced no craving for additional salt.
He then said that he had received the results of her latest blood and urine tests. They seemed to indicate a slight cortisol deficiency. Dr. Stark said it was nothing to be concerned about, but nothing to disregard either. He instructed her to take her medication faithfully, and he would reevaluate the situation after her office visit on June 3rd.
Meanwhile, he wanted Zoe to stop by and pick up a new prescription. It would be left with his receptionist, so Zoe would not have to wait.
The prescription would be for two items. The first was an identification bracelet that Stark wanted Zoe to wear at all times. It would give her name and Stark's name and telephone number. It would also state that Zoe Kohler suffered from an adrenal insufficiency, and in case of an emergency such as injury or fainting she was to be injected with hydrocortisone.
The hydrocortisone would be in a small labeled kit that Zoe was to carry in her purse at all times. The solution was contained in a packaged sterile syringe, ready for use.
Dr. Stark repeated all this and asked if Zoe understood. She said she did. He assured her the bracelet and kit were merely a precautionary measure and he doubted if they'd ever be used. He was having them made up at a medical supply house down on Third Avenue. Zoe would have to pay for them, but a check would be acceptable.
She copied the name and address he gave her.
On the following day, during her lunch hour, she picked up the prescription at Dr. Stark's office, then cabbed down to the medical supply house and purchased the bracelet and kit. When she returned to the Hotel Granger, she put them in the back of the bottom drawer of her desk. She never looked at them again. On the night of May 16th, Zoe was alone at home. She had just showered and was wearing her old flannel robe and frayed mules. She was curled on the couch, filing her nails, wondering about the slight discoloration in the folds of her knuckles, and watching Rebecca on TV.