The Last Time They Met_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [84]
At a table not far from his window, the elderly man in the seersucker suit gazed with rheumy eyes at the woman across from him. No one would doubt that he loved her. Thomas might have drawn the drapes, but he was reluctant to shut out the tableau of the older couple, who might be secret lovers themselves. They seemed reassuring, a good omen.
It would be easy to say how unfair it had all been. Yet it was he who hadn’t driven to Middlebury; she who hadn’t written to him that summer. Why hadn’t he broken down doors to get to her?
—I’m so sorry, Linda said behind him.
—Don’t, Thomas said, going to her.
She averted her face, unwilling to be kissed, even on the cheek. She sat on the bed. The British woman, who had helped her in, set open bottles of mineral water and Coca-Cola on the dressing table.
—Give her sips of the Coca-Cola, the woman said. It will help to settle her stomach. Though I’d be very surprised if she didn’t sleep now.
When she left, Thomas removed Linda’s sandals. Her feet were hard and dirty, lined at the heels. Her legs, the color of toast, contrasted sharply with the milk-white of her face; the legs and the face seemed to belong to two different people. Already, he could see, her lips had gone dry and were cracked and split at the center.
—You need water, he said. He brought her a glass of water and held her head, but she was almost too tired to swallow. Some trickled onto her neck, and he wiped it away with the sheet. He didn’t try to remove her dress, but laid her under the sheet. She drifted in and out of consciousness, seemed lucid when she came to, saying his name and I’m sorry, which he let her do. He propped pillows against the headboard and sat with his hand on her head — sometimes stroking her hair, sometimes just touching her. Whatever storm had blown through her earlier appeared to have passed, though Thomas knew it would come again, and it might be days before she could eat. He hoped it wasn’t shellfish poisoning. (And she must have had a cholera shot, he thought.) Despite the crisis, he felt content just to sit there with her, nearly as content as he’d felt at the museum house. And thinking of the house, he remembered Mr. Salim, who might worry when Thomas did not return for the night. He thought of calling, but then realized he knew neither the phone number nor the name of the owner of the house. Checking his watch, he saw that it was too late for any museum to be open.
The sickness woke her. She bolted up, as if startled, and then catapulted herself into the bathroom. Thomas didn’t follow, knowing she wouldn’t want him to, that she might mind the loss of her privacy the most. He hoped one day they would talk about this: (Remember that day on Lamu? When I got sick? It’s one of the five or six most important days of my life. The others being? Today, for one). Possibly they would even laugh about it. Though that implied a future. Each moment in time presupposing a future, just as it contained the past.
The proprietress brought him a meal (practiced innkeeper: she brought food that had no smell) which he left under a tea towel until Linda had fallen asleep again. He had a headache of his own, nothing more than a hangover. She woke sometime after midnight, while he himself was dozing. When he came alert, he could hear the water in the bathtub running. He would not go in, though he dearly wanted to see her. He’d never seen her in the bath, he reflected, and then he thought of all the other things they’d never done together as well — cooked a meal, gone to the theater, read the Sunday paper. Why this overwhelming desire to share the dull agenda of daily life?
She came out in a robe the hotel had given her and lay down beside him. Her face was gaunt and etched. He was embarrassed for his body, which was not clean. I need a bath, he said.
—Not