“You looked so clean, there was something—it’s an old-fashioned
adjective, but I used to think of you as _dewy_, Patricia.”
He stood with his hands in his pockets staring at me; not angrily, not
as if he hated me, and certainly not as if he loved me; just puzzled,
and as if he were a little tired too.
“Pat, would you mind telling me . . . was I a very inadequate lover? Was
that why you slept around?”
I felt as I imagine a man feels when he has been knocked out, and is
just coming back to consciousness. What had I done to Peter?
“Peter, my dearest, no!—Could I try to explain just what happened,
really?”
I would tell about Rickey—Rickey could go to hell, if it would wipe
that look, that _tired_ look, off Pete’s face.
He smiled a one-sided smile.
“No, honestly, Pat, I’d rather not hear a new version. I wouldn’t
believe it. You’ve presented several, in the last eight or nine months;
do you remember?”
“But this is the truth.”
“They all were at the moment.”
He would not believe me, anymore. What was the use?
“Peter, would you please kiss me at once?”
He came over instantly. We kissed. I felt at last as if the last year
just had not happened.
Then he picked me up; put me on the new, decorative daybed; walked
across the room; scrutinized a print he had seen before,—scrutinized
his life and mine, and our generation that everyone had been yelling
about since we had grown up, and before; scrutinized his opinions of
immortality, for all I know. His expression was sufficiently remote.
He turned. He looked completely unhappy. He said, “Christ, once I
thought you were a sort of miracle evolved for my special benefit.” He
stood staring at me.