“Is fifty dollars all right?” he said, wishing he knew exactly what she wanted him to say. Catherine looked so shocked he was sure he had blundered.
“I know it isn’t nearly enough, Catherine,” he scrambled ahead. “I just don’t have a lot of cash—I never planned on this. But I’ll write you a check. Will you take a check? You can name it on a check.”
Her face changed, and changed again during his misguided try at decency. In the end she seemed to like him again, or feel sorry for him—whatever it had been before.
“Two thousand dollars,” she said. “We take Visa and MasterCard too.”
“Sure you do. Be realistic, Catherine.” He held his checkbook in his left hand, fountain pen in his right.
“Okay, I’ll be that. What do you do?”
“Pardon?”
“For work. For a living.”
“Oh. Sales. I sell sporting goods. Not here, though. Up in Little Rock—outside of Little Rock.”
“All right then, let’s make it for two hundred fifty, why don’t we.”
Dean never hesitated. He wrote the check and handed it to her, and they passed in through an earthen courtyard to a door which Catherine unlocked. Then four flights of spiralling ironwork to a balcony hung with blue and yellow flowers and another door. She let them into an airy studio room and pulled a string to light it. He liked the room immensely: a huge mattress under tall windows filled with dawn sky, bright posters, candle lanterns, paperback books, and clothing strewn over wooden furniture. This was her all right. His heart moved clean and quick, he felt incredibly happy, as though for the first time ever he was a person who could choose his own dreams and just live them.
“I better poke in and make sure my old man’s asleep,” she whispered, a stunner that really caught him but only a joke, she reassured him with a quick laughing touch. Then she began getting comfortable, settling in, disregarding him completely. She listened to messages, went through her mail. Dean watched her intently, as he had earlier, and though he recalled the glisten of her skin, the smooth hollow of her flanks, he was just as rapt at the sight of her clothed, and still. Her face was prettiest, he decided, when she smiled, but also when she frowned her doubt.
“I really do like you,” he said.
“I thought you loved me,” she casually reminded him, as she was yanking off one shoe.
“I really believe I do.”
“As well as you know me.”
“I believe you like me too. Bet you never took a check before.”
“I never did take one before.”
“Well the check is good, Catherine. Absolutely.”
She slid her pants off and draped them over the gray-green face of a TV set on the floor. Bending, she pulled two shirts off in one motion and flung them in a tangle across the room. She stood naked and laughing as she ripped his check in two. Was the deal on or off?
“So do you love a lot of girls?” she said.
“Absolutely not. Only you.”
“But you do have a wife.”
“I can’t lie to you, Catherine.”
“I don’t think you can, sugar cookie, and there is no need to either. But listen here, it’s sleep time for me and I guess you are welcome to do the same on one condition—snore once and you’re gone. Shake on it?”
Catherine looked sweet and drowsy under the skein of black curls. He could not imagine a minute of life without her; could not believe he would really be back in Galloway ten hours from now. But apart from the handshake she offered, he didn’t touch her. “I’ll cook you breakfast in the morning,” he said.
Dean slid in alongside her underneath the cool sheet, thinking, This could be a dream, an actual dream, how would I know? Even if Catherine, already deep in sleep, woke and came right to his arms, it could still prove out a dream. But she won’t, he thought: won’t wake, doesn’t want me, doesn’t even know I’m here.
Shaking hands he had noticed a bracelet, or rather a blue rubberband worn as a bracelet. So she had never been completely naked until now, when he slipped it off her wrist. At this point, with sunlight dimly seeping into the alleyway, it was darker inside than out. Across the room, the silhouette of two slices of toast peeked up from an old toaster, the kind with rounded corners. Dean, who couldn’t even try to sleep, stared at the toast and the blooming sky behind it.
A truck was cawing its backup warning below as he dressed. He wrote the words with a crushing sadness on his chest—I will always love you—knowing she would only be amused, not believe it, not care, but also knowing it was true. Then he came back, laid a five dollar bill on the note and added, This isn’t money, Catherine, it’s the breakfast I owe you. Love, Dean.
Doing that made everything better. He smiled going down the spiral stair, smiled through all the sunny cluttered streets to the hotel, and it was good to smile again. Now she had his name and could keep it, the same way he would keep the rubberband: as proof, innocent and ordinary, that fate and dreams were often less so, yet no less real.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
These are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1992 by Larry Duberstein
ISBN: 978-1-4532-9369-0
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