"Phil, what would you think of me now if I were your wife?"
It was quite a one. It was the second really tough one she'd put to me.
"What would you ask God if He came in?" was the other.
"I hope," I said, "that I'd cherish you more than ever."
"But you might not?"
"I leave room for the possibility. I don't know, after all."
"Why would you cherish me?"
"For at last being honest with yourself about yourself."
"Easy answer. Why might you not?"
"I dunno. You might have found yourself--by that honesty--to be
somebody who wouldn't like me. Ergo--how could I go on insisting--?"
"Only that?"
"Only that. It's a lot."
"You sure, Phil? Certain?"
"My-God-yes! A great, great many of the people I know, and am fond of,
and admire, would look at your sin as just a sort of timid, dainty
experiment. I suppose you're fishing around for rebuke. You'll never
get much. Most women learn by doing--some men, by just thinking. What
are you doing tonight, for instance?"
"I--I don't know yet." She flushed peach-pink. "I haven't--decided."
"Unh!"
"You sound like Rol. Like Rol--after-- Before I left. Dainty--he talked
like that."
"They bring us up--in a desert," I said. "Because that's where they
grew up." I thought of Needles and the metallic sunlight and the Moslem
prince. "Still--there are other things in life besides sex."
"Not if sex isn't right, there aren't. Not any other things worth
living for."
"Back to Freud and the Western neurosis. Yvonne--I have to scram in a
moment. Work. And a nephew. Maybe you'd care to meet him?"
"You'll forget to call me."
"Then you call me--later on."
"Probably I will."
I scraped up the last of the salmon and tipped the ice cubes in my
coffee glass against my upper lip.
Yvonne reached over and took my left hand. She ran the backs of her
fingers slowly through it and shivered with a small ecstasy. "Phil! I'm
all new!"
"You certainly let your hair down."
She leaned toward me. "I let down--!" She smiled and shook her head.
"Am I so wicked?"
"Nope. If you tried, you might make it. Right now--"