"I'm sort of retired," he explained, finding her very charming and
refreshing to talk to. "I had a modest income a while ago. I invested
wisely, or prudently at least, and the interest has built up into quite
a fortune by now."
"Really," she said.
They walked down the beach, hand in hand.
<tb>
Five nights later he got out of bed when she fell asleep. He dressed
and walked despondently down to the lobby. This was not it, not it at
all. God, but her conversation was absolutely impossible. He couldn't
stay with her another minute.
His problem was still unsolved. He wanted to get back to work, he
wanted company, he wanted <i>life</i> again. As he came into the lobby, the
woman of the first night passed by him again. She looked at him as she
came, and smiled as she passed.
That, he thought, is a lovely woman. He stared at her back. How old
would you say she is? Late twenties, not a day over thirty. Yet with a
serenity in the eyes, in the smile somehow, that gives the impression
of lifetimes of living. Yet not a day over thirty, surely no older than
that.
That, he thought, is what I need. A woman like that to sleep with and,
yes, to be with, even to talk with. She would not be like the one
upstairs. But, he thought, one does not buy a woman like that. One
marries her. Somehow, without knowing, he knew that.
And why not?
Why not, indeed?
He returned to his own room, stripped and consulted the mirror. Dye his
hair, that was really all he needed. He smiled into the mirror. Forty,
he thought, even thirty-five. Certainly, with this tan and slim body
and his hair dyed, thirty-five at the most.
He went to bed, happily making plans. A new life opened up for him.
He would take a new name; he would live again. There was nothing to
stop him.
That night, in the Sea Lion Hotel in Miami Beach, Henry Talbot died.
<tb>
Two months later Arnold Bottal, an experimental nuclear physicist of
perhaps thirty-five, and his charming wife--with exquisite, nearly
purple Eurasian eyes--joined the new country club in Lincoln Hills, New
York, where Bottal had newly joined the Applied Physics Division of the
Carbide Nuclear Company.
This Arnold Bottal was not a brilliant physicist, but he was certainly
competent in his job. The company was satisfied with him. He and his
wife bought a bubble home in the suburbs of Lincoln Hills and, together
with their cat Bucephalus, lived happily ever after.