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.”“Just this week—less than a week.I’ve done it before.”“But not every night.Please—it’s mad.”“Why don’t you pick a couple of nights for whatever you want me to do with you and leave the rest for me?”“Have some nights,” Kitty said.“I’m Queen of the Night and dispense them like peanuts.”“Don’t get sore.”“Why don’t you at least work in the house?”He said she knew why: everything was in the barn—his books and notes.Afterward Kitty quietly said she was sure she could find something to do with herself and Dubin thanked her.He felt more daring than he’d been in years.One had to be daring before it was too late.He was almost fifty-eight hurrying toward sixty.Every year was a cheat, piling up age, reducing vitality.Still, he felt youthful and was sorry Kitty did not.After Fanny and he had made love and had listened, as they lay warmly in bed, to music on her portable radio, or talked of their lives, she dressed and went through the woods to her car.Fanny said the woods scared her but she wouldn’t let Dubin accompany her to the road.“It’s easier to spot two people than one.”“Nobody can see us walking through the woods from the house,” Dubin said.“From the bedroom one can barely see the barn and not much of the woods.From Maud’s room and my study you can see more.”“Can she see me leave the barn?”“Not if you go out the study door.Certainly not in the dark.”“Let’s don’t take the chance,” Fanny said.After she had gone Dubin removed the bedsheet and reassembled the sofa.He looked for articles of dress or jewelry Fanny might have left behind, discovered her comb, hid it, and went back to the house.Before getting into bed with his wife he took a shower.Dubin lay up against Kitty’s warm body, his arm over her hip, her back to him.“What time is it?” she yawned.“Toward midnight.”“Are you smiling?”“No.”“I thought I could feel you smile on my shoulder.How did the work go?”“Fine.”“Why do you shower every night?”“It relaxes me.”“Do you want to make love?”“Do you?”“I will if you want to.”“No.”“You’re not depressed?”“No.”She fell asleep.In a few hours she would wake, counting the failures of her life.Holding her, Dubin slept.He felt her waken but slept on.Fanny had arrived on Monday.He did not see her Tuesday but they talked on the phone.On Wednesday night Kitty went with Marisa Ondyk to a high school chorale, and Dubin met Fanny at the motel.They had drinks and later went through the wood to the barn and set up the sofa bed.“Do you love me?” Fanny asked.“You know I do.”“Why don’t you say it?”“Because you know.”“I like you to say it,” Fanny said.Dubin promised he would.“Why do you love me?”“Because you’re a lovely lay.”“Is that all?”“Because I love you.”“Why?”“Because you’re Fanny, named out of Jane Austen.Because of your affectionate nature.Because you want to make something of your life.”“You make me want to, William.You make me take myself seriously.”He said that was good.“We are good together,” she sighed.“Don’t you think so?”He said he did.“But I’m not living my life to learn lessons,” Fanny said.“Most of all I want to enjoy it.”He wanted her to.“What are you thinking about?”“You.”“Doing what?”“Enjoying your life.”“Are you enjoying it with me?”“All the way.”It was snowing heavily and when Dubin saw it come down he was concerned about her driving in the snow at night.He asked her to sleep in his study and leave early in the morning.“You ought to leave before seven.I’ll drive around to the road and shovel you out if you’re blocked in by snow after the road’s been plowed.”“I can shovel myself out, I’m strong.”“Have you got a shovel?”Fanny laughed to herself.“I’ll bring one next time.”“I’ll shovel you out at seven if you’re blocked in.”Dubin slept badly.He worried about her but when he got up at six the next morning he saw through the bathroom window that the snow had stopped.Later he found Fanny’s path from the barn and ran in it to the edge of the wood, kicking up her tracks in the snow.On the road her car was gone.On Thursday it was snowing as they lay in the sofa bed.Lorenzo was with them.Dubin had him in the barn because some field mice had chewed up several of his note cards.Lorenzo lay on the bed, noisily licking himself.Fanny said she was leaving Saturday morning.He wasn’t sure he could see her on Friday night but they would meet in the city in two or three weeks.Their relationship had deepened.Each probed the other’s needs.What he desired she gave him; she got what she seemed to want.After they had made love Fanny got out of bed and went naked to the sink.She drank a glass of water and brought him one.“What for?”“To drink, lover.Aren’t you thirsty?”“‘Lover’ is an old-fashioned way of addressing a lover.”“In certain ways I am old-fashioned.Do you want the water?”Dubin drank it.Neither Kitty nor he brought each other water after sex; he got her a tissue.Kitty took a hot shower; Fanny drank a glass of water and used the wet corner of a towel to wash herself.In the dark he thought of her as his wife.They’d live in New York.He would work in their apartment while she attended school.She could prepare for serious work of some sort once she knew what interested her.Maybe she could do something part-time if they were married.She could have kids if she wanted; he imagined she would.She had said she would in one of her letters.It might be hectic but she was a young woman and he would help where he could.Dubin wouldn’t mind having young children again.He thought he’d be better with them than he’d been the first time.Children were strangers you loved because you could love.If they gave back love when they were grown you were ahead of the game.You had had them because you thought you could love.He felt Fanny would be happy with him, as happy as a second wife might be with a husband thirty-five years older than she.He would value her as she ought to value herself, perhaps help her unravel some of the distortions of her life.He imagined what she would look like at thirty, when he was sixty-five.Dubin liked what he imagined.Lives ought to begin again around fifty, he thought.Middle age can stand new enterprises, new beginnings.Some marriages go on too long.If they ended by mutual consent after twenty-five years, or when the kids left the house, that might be refreshing for both partners.Getting into the world again to find out what was going on might do them good.Maybe Kitty would worry less about herself if she had to work; would sleep better; think less of illness, the garbage of the past.She’d get the house, of course [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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