“Let’s not talk about it, Anthony, what might have been . . .” She placed her hands on the table in front of her, like someone laying down cards. “I . . . just can’t.”
They sat opposite each other, the immaculately dressed woman and the tense man. The thought, brief and darkly humorous, occurred to him that to onlookers they appeared miserable enough to be married.
“Tell me something,” he said. “Why are you so loyal to him? Why have you stayed with someone who so clearly cannot make you happy?”
She lifted her eyes to his. “Because I was so disloyal, I suppose.”
“Do you think he’d be loyal to you?”
She held his gaze for a moment, then glanced at her watch. “I need to leave.”
He winced. “I’m sorry. I won’t say another thing. I just need to know—”
“It’s not you. Really. I do need to be somewhere.”
He caught himself. “Of course. I’m sorry. I’m the one who was late. I’m sorry to have wasted your time.” He couldn’t help the anger in his voice. He cursed his editor for losing him that precious half hour, cursed himself for what he already knew were wasted opportunities—and for allowing himself to come close to something that still had the power to burn him.
She stood up to leave, and a waiter appeared to help her with her coat. There would always be someone to help her, he thought absently. She was that kind of woman. He was immobilized, stuck at the table.
Had he misread her? Had he misremembered the intensity of their brief time together? He was saddened by the idea that this was it. Was it worse to have the memory of something perfect sullied, replaced by something inexplicable and disappointing?
The waiter held her coat by the shoulders. She put her arms into the sleeves, one at a time, her head dipped.
“That’s it?”
“I’m sorry, Anthony. I really do have to go.”
He stood up. “We’re not going to talk about anything? After all this? Did you even think of me?”
Before he could say more, she had turned on her heel and walked out.
Jennifer splashed her reddened, blotchy eyes with cold water for the fifteenth time. In the bathroom mirror her reflection showed a woman defeated by life. A woman so far removed from the “tai-tai” of five years ago that they might have been different species, let alone different people. She let her fingers trace the shadows under her eyes, the new lines of strain on her brow, and wondered what he had seen when he looked at her.
He’ll squash you, extinguish the things that make you you.
She opened the medicine cabinet and gazed at the neat row of brown bottles. She couldn’t tell him that she had been so afraid before she met him that she had taken twice the recommended dose of Valium. She couldn’t tell him that she had heard him as if through a fog, had been so dissociated from what she was doing that she could barely hold the teapot. She couldn’t tell him that to have him so close that she could see every line on his hands and breathe the scent of his cologne had paralyzed her.
Jennifer turned on the hot tap and the water rushed down the plughole, splashing off the porcelain and leaving dark spots on her pale trousers. She took the Valium from the top shelf and unscrewed the lid.
You are the strong one, the one who can endure living with the possibility of a love like this, and the fact that we will never be allowed it.
Not as astute as you thought, Boot.
She heard Mrs. Cordoza’s voice downstairs and locked the bathroom door. She placed both hands on the side of the washbasin. Can I do this?
She lifted the bottle and tipped its contents down the plughole, watching the water carry away the little white pills. She unscrewed the next, barely pausing to check its contents. Her “little helpers.” Everyone took them, Yvonne had said blithely, the first time Jennifer had sat in her kitchen and found she couldn’t stop crying. Doctors were only too happy to supply them. They would even her out a little. I’m so evened out that nothing’s left, she thought, and reached for the next bottle.
Then they were all gone, the shelf empty. She stared at herself in the mirror as, with a gurgle, the last of the pills was washed out of sight.
There was trouble in Stanleyville. A note had arrived from the foreign desk at the Nation informing Anthony that the Congolese rebels, the self-styled Simba Army, had begun to herd more white hostages into the Victoria Hotel in retaliation against the Congolese government forces and their white mercenaries. “Have bags ready. Moving story,” it said. “Editor has given special approval you go. With request that do not get yourself killed/captured.”
For the first time, Anthony did not rush to the office to check the late newswires. He did not telephone his contacts at the UN or the army. He lay on his hotel bed, thinking of a woman who had loved him enough to leave her husband and then, in the space of four years, had disappeared.
He was startled by a knock on his door. The maid seemed to want to clean every half hour. She had an annoying way of whistling as she worked so he could never quite ignore her presence. “Come back later,” he called, and shifted onto his side.
Had it simply been the shock of finding him alive that had caused her literally to vibrate in front of him? Had she realized today that the feelings she had once held for him had evaporated? Had she just gone through the motions, entertaining him as anyone would an old friend? Her manners had always been immaculate.
Another knock, tentative. It was almost more irritating than if the girl had just opened the door and walked in. At least then he could have yelled at her. He got up and went to the door. “I’d really rather—”
Jennifer stood in front of him, her belt tied tightly around her waist, her eyes bright. “Every day,” she said.
“What?”
“Every month. Every day. Every hour.” She paused, then added, “For four years. I tried not to, but . . . you were always there.”
The corridor was silent around them.
“I thought you were dead, Anthony. I grieved for you. I grieved for the life I hoped I might have with you. I read and reread your letters until they fell apart. When I believed I might have been responsible for your death, I loathed myself so much I could barely get through each day. If it hadn’t been . . .”
She corrected herself: “And then, at a drinks party I hadn’t even wanted to go to, I saw you. You. And you ask me why I wanted to see you?” She took a deep breath, as if to steady herself.
There were footsteps at the other end of the corridor. He held out a hand. “Come inside,” he said.