V

HE MUST HAVE BEEN inside her when sleep descended. Was it possible that they had slept through the night? He looked at his alarm clock. Seven-fifteen. Morning or evening? It wouldn’t matter to him, but what about Alice, if it were the next day? Would Madame Laure have sounded the alarm when she found that Alice hadn’t slept in her bed? But no, there was nothing to worry about. The sliver of sky that showed through the bedroom window was pigeon gray and pink. An evening sky. He lay on his back, every muscle relaxed, Alice’s head on his shoulder, her arm draped over his chest. Her legs held his legs prisoner. Her moist nether lips pressed against his thigh. There was no reason to wake her. From time to time she mumbled and sighed, and her embrace tightened. Once she giggled softly. Smiling, he stroked her hair and her arm and drifted off into sleep.

That was so nice, darling, I feel good all over, thank you, she whispered. Did the whispered words waken him or the feather with which she tickled his nose? Where could she have gotten the feather? Of course: occasionally they protruded from the coverlet; she had pulled one of them out.

She was sitting up, having thrown off the covers, and turned on the lamp on her side of the bed, and for the first time—he did not think that frenzy in which he had undressed her counted—he saw her entirely naked. Lustrously white skin, creamy and soft to touch, breasts so small that neither nursing nor time had deformed them, long and perfectly formed legs ending in feet direly in need of a pedicure. The triangle of hair: that was the one part of her he felt he had explored. Its aroma clung to his hands and face. He sat up too, facing her, ran his hands over her torso and back and returned to her breasts. Silently, she put her arms around him and offered her mouth, her right hand busy at his crotch, ascertaining his response. Unexpected good fortune! Afterward, while they lay side by side, exhausted and holding hands, she told him she thought she was hungry.

Are you going to take me to dinner in the nice restaurant downstairs. Or do you think I’m not dressed up enough.

At this moment you aren’t, he answered, but when you put your clothes on you will be the best-dressed woman there. Alice, how did this miracle happen?

Because you got me tipsy.

His happiness turned brusquely into fear.

Is that what happened? Has this old goat taken advantage of you?

You’re not an old goat, she replied. You’re very nice, and I like you. But I was very tipsy. It wouldn’t have happened if I had been sober. That’s what makes it so wrong. I wish none of this had happened, I wish you hadn’t come to see me.

He didn’t point out that they had just made love again, after the effect of the cognac she had liked so much had surely worn off. Instead, barely able to speak, he called the restaurant and asked for a table and then waited while behind the closed door she took care of her toilette, and afterward while she dressed in the bedroom.

When she had finished she asked whether he was going to put on his clothes. The tone of her voice, he noted, was strangely neutral, just a degree or two above cold. Yes, he said, I will get dressed right away. My shower can wait. When he came out of the bathroom, having urinated and washed his face and hands with cold water, he found her in the living room, leafing through a New Yorker he had bought the day before at WHSmith’s. Shall we go, he asked, his own voice hoarse. He took a sip of water from one of the glasses the waiter had disposed on the coffee table, trying to return to a manner of speaking as near as possible to what it had been when they met not so many hours ago—pleasant and courtly—and realizing that his success was far from complete.

Will you be angry with me? was her answer. It’s so pleasant here and so quiet. Would it be possible to have dinner here? Something that’s easy to serve and won’t take long. I really hadn’t intended any of this.

Certainly, he told her. To preserve his composure, he put a CD of Beethoven piano sonatas on the hotel record player, called the restaurant and canceled his reservation, and called room service and ordered a cold dinner with a bottle of a good Burgundy marked up by the hotel to a level that seemed to him unreasonable. Annoyance—with her and himself—that was what he felt. Why had she chosen to tell him Verplanck’s appalling story in such grisly detail? Indeed, why tell him the ghastly truth at all? She could have turned him off with white lies, something along the line of a long fight against a cancer that first made him feel unable to go on working and then killed him. Lots of people didn’t want it to be known that they had cancer of this or that. That sort of story would have been consistent with Tim’s wishes: hadn’t she said at some point that he specifically didn’t want anyone to know that he had AIDS? And afterward, why had she led him on? She was French, and old enough to know how much cognac she could drink, not some dodo from Dubuque! The more fool he, of course, not to have turned off that stream of true confessions, to have let her drink his brandy, and to have swallowed her bait. He too was old enough to know better and not to be faced with the annoyance, really reproaches, of a woman who had led him on, rather than vice versa. In fact, the last time he’d made a fool of himself this way was as a newly hatched partner interviewing law students out on the coast, when he let an applicant draw him into smoking pot and wrestled with her half naked on a futon! But for God’s sake, that was more than twenty-five years ago, and the woman wasn’t the widow of one of his junior partners!

Now all that was left to them was to chew their fingernails waiting for room service. There was no telling when the order would appear. The amount of time it took one of those goddamn Arabs or Portuguese in the pantry to cut four—or would it be six?—slices of cold roast beef, put them on the plate, slap on some salad and cornichons, and extract the bottle of wine from the temperature-controlled closet was indecent. Or was wine kept down in the cellar? In that case, he had made a fatal mistake when he ordered a good wine! Add to that the time it would take the waiter to waddle from the pantry to his room. Rats! His annoyance was at the point of turning into cold fury. What business had she changing her mind about where they ate? There was gin and vermouth in the minibar, as well as splits of champagne. He offered her the choice, and heard her refuse both with the simpering grace of a senior from Miss Porter’s responding to an indecent proposal. Tant pis, tough luck, kiddo! He made himself a martini as solid as the Crillon, gave her the Perrier she’d asked for as an afterthought, put a jar of macadamia nuts on the coffee table between them, and lowered himself into the overstuffed armchair. Legs crossed, an expression that his darling daughter referred to as “Schmidt the Hun” on his face—my goodness, where would she have gotten that sweet idea, could it have been from her adorable mother-in-law?—he applied himself to the martini and the nuts.

His reverie was interrupted by a knock on the door followed by the waiter wheeling in the table. At last they could eat. He tasted the wine. It was overpriced but better than he remembered. With grim satisfaction he noted that Alice hadn’t stopped the waiter from filling her glass. Thank you, he told the waiter, you needn’t wait. We will help ourselves, and I will call when it’s time to remove the table. Turning to Alice, his spirits revived by the martini and the wine, he said, Alone at last!

I’m glad you’re feeling better, she replied.

I’m not. I’m confused and angry at myself, he told her. I don’t like to think that I took advantage of you. The truth is that you’ve overwhelmed me. I was totally sincere when I told you I was falling in love. In fact, I did fall in love. Senile puppy love! You can call me stupid, hotheaded, unrealistic, and anything else you like, but that’s what happened. I listened to your story, which is sadder than anything I might have been able to imagine. Was I wrong to want to hear it? I did let you drink my cognac—emphasis on I “let you,” I certainly didn’t ply you with it—and I have offered you my affection and admiration at a moment when you are vulnerable. Was that unfair? What am I to do now? For my part, I can’t say that I wish that what happened had never taken place. Making love to you was a miracle. It put me at the pinnacle of happiness.

I liked it too, she said. Very much.

Then don’t make me feel I’ve wronged you. Don’t say again the things you’ve said just minutes ago. I can’t help taking them very hard. They hurt! You may have a thousand reasons against allowing me to love you. My age is surely at the top of the list, but I am in very good health, and if, by another miracle, you had wanted me to, I would have done everything within a man’s power to give you a good life.

Schmidtie, she said, your age doesn’t scare me, and I think I would have gone to bed with you even if I had been sober, although probably not quite so fast. But don’t talk about marriage, permanence, the future. Not now, not yet. That’s plain silly. Let’s take things as they come, one by one.

There must be something seriously the matter with me, Schmidt said to himself. In substance, this could have been his beautiful twenty-one-year-old Carrie telling him to cool it after one of his repeated offers of marriage. There, of course, the difference in age was huge: more than forty years and, even more important to Carrie, he was convinced, was the difference of class. That child of the American dream could not get over the barrier between a Puerto Rican waitress and an elderly WASP millionaire. Carrie, with her astonishing sense of caste, the beauty of a swan, innate exquisite manners, and sensitivity of a princess! But by the time he had made those speeches, Carrie and he were living together. Alice and he hardly knew each other!

Guide me, Alice, he said. Take as a given that I’ve fallen in love with you. Tell me how I can become yours and make you mine.

One way, she answered, is not to protest if I go home after I finish my coffee, and no, she added, you needn’t take me home. The hall porter will get me a taxi. Or perhaps I’ll walk—to cool my head.

And tomorrow? he asked. Can we have lunch or dinner or both? I’m not sure I’ve told you that I must go to New York the next day. Mr. Mansour calls. I must attend a meeting of the foundation’s board of directors.

Schmidtie, she laughed, I too have a job, didn’t you know? I have to be at the office tomorrow.

He hadn’t known.

There is no reason that you should know.

The business lunch, she told him, was with a German author. She was an editor at a French publishing house, Alice explained quickly, her specialty being the German contemporary novel. Going to school in Bonn had made her completely comfortable in that language and in general had given her a leg up in French publishing. There was a great interest in German novelists and few editors with equal knowledge of German and bilingual in French and English. Perhaps there were none at all. But she could have dinner with him, at her place.

Then she stood up and, smiling gaily, offered him her mouth. À demain, she said—at eight!