The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway - Ernest Hemingway [328]
“Oh Roger,” she said. “Please. Oh please.”
“Don’t talk.”
“Is that him? Oh he’s lovely.”
“Don’t talk.”
“He’ll be good to me. Won’t he. And I’ll try to be good to him. But isn’t he awfully big?”
“No.”
“Oh I love you so and I love him so. Do you think we should try now so we’ll know? I can’t stand it very much longer. Not knowing. I haven’t been able to stand it all afternoon.”
“We can try.”
“Oh let’s. Let’s try. Let’s try now.”
“Kiss me once more.”
In the dark he went into the strange country and it was very strange indeed, hard to enter, suddenly perilously difficult, then blindingly, happily, safely, encompassed; free of all doubts, all perils and all dreads, held unholdingly, to hold, to hold increasingly, unholdingly still to hold, taking away all things before, and all to come, bringing the beginning of bright happiness in darkness, closer, closer, closer now closer and ever closer, to go on past all belief, longer, finer, further, finer higher and higher to drive toward happiness suddenly, scaldingly achieved.
“Oh darling,” he said. “Oh darling.”
“Yes.”
“Thank you my dear blessed.”
“I’m dead,” she said. “Don’t thank me. I’m dead.”
“Do you want—”
“No please. I’m dead.”
“Let’s—”
“No. Please believe me. I don’t know how to say it another way.”
Then later she said, “Roger.”
“Yes, daughter.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, daughter.”
“And you’re not disappointed because of anything?”
“No, daughter.”
“Do you think you’ll get to love me?”
“I love you,” he lied. I love what we did he meant.
“Say it again.”
“I love you,” he lied again.
“Say it once more.”
“I love you,” he lied.
“That’s three times,” she said, in the dark. “I’ll try to make it come true.”
The wind blew cool on them and the noise the palm leaves made was almost like rain and after a while the girl said, “It will be lovely tonight but do you know what I am now?”
“Hungry.”
“Aren’t you a wonderful guesser?”
“I’m hungry too.”
They ate at the Green Lantern and the widow woman squirted Flit under the table and brought them fresh mullet roe browned crisp and fried with good bacon. They drank cold Regal beer and ate a steak each with mashed potatoes. The steak was thin from grass-fed beef and not very good but they were hungry and the girl kicked her shoes off under the table and put both her bare feet on Roger’s. She was beautiful and he loved to look at her and her feet felt very good on his.
“Does it do it to you?” she asked.
“Of course.”
“Can I feel?”
“If the widow woman isn’t looking.”
“It does it to me too,” she said. “Aren’t our bodies nice to each other?”
They ate pineapple pie for dessert and each had another cold bottle of Regal fresh from deep in the melting ice water of the cooler.
“I have Flit on my feet,” she said. “They’ll be nicer when they don’t have Flit on them.”
“They’re lovely with Flit. Push really hard with them.”
“I don’t want to push you out of the widow woman’s chair.”
“All right. That’s enough.”
“You never felt any better did you?”
“No,” Roger said truly.
“We don’t have to go to the movies do we?”
“Not unless you want to very much.”
“Let’s go back to our house and then start out terribly early in the morning.”
“That’s fine.”
They paid the widow woman and took a couple of bottles of the cold Regal in a paper sack and drove back to the cabins and put the car in the space between cabins.
“The car knows about us already,” she said as they came in the cabin.
“It’s nice that way.”
“I was sort of shy with him at the start but now I feel like he’s our partner.”
“He’s a good car.”
“Do you think the man was shocked?”
“No. Jealous.”
“Isn’t he awfully old