* * * * *
“You said you’d be interested in knowing what happened after? Well, I’ve
been deserted at last.”
(He remembers me all right. His voice was very cheery and decidedly
non-professional.)
“That’s cause for celebration. May I come over and offer felicitations,
and take you dancing? . . . In half an hour? Splen-did!”
Gold brocade dress and rose slippers, rhinestone necklace and rhinestone
embroidered bag. Very bright lipstick. Rose velvet wrap. I half forget
what the doctor looks like.
If I do not stop aching I shall cry in public, and disgrace the man.
Hope he brings some Scotch. That will see me through—“to stand by you
in the days you have great sorrows.” Someone said that once, to someone
a lot younger than I.
All ready, and five minutes to spare.
There was a long old mirror between two windows. I regarded myself. Not
bad, not bad at all. Straight black bobbed hair that shone, grey eyes, a
straight nose, a red, red mouth, very soft and warm-looking, pointed
chin, lovely shoulders, slim waist, straight legs, small feet. It was no
good to me, no good any of it, with no Pete to make it come alive; but
all I had for the next forty years or so.
There might have been a baby—like Pete, like me. Never now. What of it?
The nights of forty years had to be got through. The door bell
ringing—this would fill the first of them. “So nice to see you, Doctor.
So you’re one of those men who turn out to look five years younger in a
dinner jacket, and so much less awe-inspiring. Do have my last
cigarette.”