60

Gloomily Lida and Duvivier stood at the rail. The choppy surface of the Potomac washed against the concrete below. Slap. Slap. Slap. Across the river, a plane lifted, turned, and merged with the gray sky.

“Do you want to go inside somewhere?” he asked.

“No.”

“Aren’t you cold?”

“Yeah,” she said, “I am. But I’m afraid, I don’t know, that when we stop walking, it’ll be over.”

He said nothing, but watched her. A jogger came toward them, his suit fluorescent in the gloom. “Don’t jump,” the man huffed, and thumped away. Duvivier began to laugh. He’d been trying not to.

“It wasn’t that funny,” Lida said, looking at him. “Hey, what’s the matter?”

He was looking at her lips.

She remembered Danielle at Elizabeth Arden. “Oh, God,” she said, “am I getting a mustache?”

“You’re getting a cold sore,” he said.

“I am not. I’ve never had a cold sore.”

“You’re getting one now. Here …” He led her toward a parked car. “Look.”

They stooped, side by side. Lida turned her head this way and that, examining her reflection.

“See?” he said.

“God damn!” She poked at it with her finger. “It better be a cold sore.” Then she turned and leaned against the fender of the car. “Does this mean you won’t kiss me good-bye?”

He held her shoulders and kissed her, kissed her, kissed her, catching her lips with his, her tongue with his, sticky, inside-out kisses.

“This is a disgusting display,” she said when she could. “Let’s go back to your hotel.”

“I will,” he said, “but only for my suitcase. Beyond that, I don’t have a hotel, remember? I’ve checked out.” Kissing her eyelids, her cheeks, small wet kisses that made her skin blaze cold in the wind. “Lida,” he said, “I’ll confess.”

She pulled away and looked at him seriously.

“I’ve always hated cute noses,” he said, sucking at the tip of hers. “I’m so glad you don’t have one.” He cupped her face with his hands and blew a little stream of breath back and forth across her lips.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Don’t you know?”

“No.”

“I’m healing you,” he said, blowing softly.

Healed, she thought. That would mean walking away. The way that cats do. They lick at each other, rub a bit, and then they walk away.

“What are you thinking about now?” he asked.

“About one of those trick tests. You know. Pseudo-psychology?”

His eyes said he didn’t know. “My friend Diana,” she explained, “asked me once what I would be if I could transmute.”

“And you said?”

“A cat.”

“I would be one of my heroes,” he told her.

“That’s just it. It turned out that they had given this test to incoming freshmen. The A’s wanted to he people. You’re an A, you see.”

“And the B’s?”

“I don’t know about the B’s, but the C’s wanted to be animals. I’m a C, that’s all. Just a C.”

He laughed.

“It gets worse,” she said.

“How can it get worse?”

“I really wanted to be a Grecian urn. I didn’t say it because I thought it sounded corny.”

“Where would that put you?”

“In with the remedials. They wanted to be inanimate objects.”

Two taxis pulled to the curb beside them, as if on cue. She and Duvivier stopped walking.

“And what are you thinking?”

“About the Grecian urn,” he said.

They stood on the sidewalk, their collars upturned, their hands in their pockets.

“All this snappy patter,” Lida said, “it’s a habit.”

“Yes. It’s called persiflage. We’re awfully good at it, both of us.”

They both turned to look at the taxis. Like vultures, Lida thought, idling there.

“Right now,” she asked, “just like this?”

“Yes, I think so.” He walked toward the first cab.

Lida, catlike, moved toward the second.

Duvivier stopped, his hand resting on the door handle. “Lida,” he called, “you aren’t going to get in that thing and shout ‘Follow that cab!’ are you?”

Lida shook her head. “No.”

“Good.” He took his seat. She saw him lean forward to speak to the driver. Then he turned and looked at her through the back window. But only for a moment.

“What if she don’t?” the driver asked Duvivier.

“Then we’ll go back. Keep watching.”

“But you’ll pay me for the trip to the airport, right? No matter what?”

“Yes. Keep watching.”

She imagined him boarding the plane, a Margaux Hemingway stewardess beaming down at him, checking his name on the passenger list, putting a star beside it in the margin. And later she would slither up the aisle, thrust her bosom in his face, and simper, “Coffee? Tea? Or me?”

Lida saw him there in his seat, initially perplexed. His eyes would travel slowly up, up, up. He would look her in the eye, smile deliciously. He would lean back and give her his answer. “Coffee,” he would say.

Or would he?

“Hey, lady,” her taxi driver said, opening his door and getting out. “What is this? Are ya comin’ or what?”

Lida thought of her list. Of the seamy slot for her thirty-fourth lover. “Yeah,” she told the driver, easing inside. And then her voice came loud, far from a purr. “Yeah,” she said. “Just follow that cab.”