The Last Good Kiss (32 page)
murmured, "but since you didn't ask, I feel somehow
obligated to tell you."
173
"Old Chinese interrogation tactic," I said, and she
chuckled and slapped me on the belly.
"Be serious," she said, .still chuckling. "I'm about to
tell you the story of my life."
"Okay."
"We met during the war, you see," she said as she
leaned over to stub her cigarette out. "I was still a
child , only eighteen, but already widowed. My first
husband was one of those smart young men from
Carmel who stabled his polo ponies and dashed off to
join the RCAF, visions of the Lafayette Escadiille
dancing in his head. In the excitement of his departure,
he took my virginity, then with a burst of daylight
remorse he drove us up to Reno, where he made an
honest woman of me. Six months later, his Spitfire went
down into the Channel during Dunkirk. It was like
something out of a novel at the time, and I suppose it
still seems that way to me.
"Then I met Trahearne, and it seemed like the next
scene," she continued. "To the horror of everyone
concerned, I married him still wearing widow's weeds,
then sent him too off to the war."
"You're the woman on the bridge," I whispered.
"Oh, he told you that absurd story too," she said. "I
didn't know what it all meant to him, but something
inside me knew what to do."
"I wonder who the woman in the window was," I
said absently.
"His mother, of course," Catherine answered softly.
"Jesus Christ," I said , then sat up and fumbled for
another cigarette. "That's why I'm not curious," I said.
"I find out too many things I don't want to know as it is.
Jesus Christ."
"I don't suppose it was that terrible," she chided me.
"And it was such a long time ago. Trahearne only acts
as if it was so important because he's never been able to
write about it."
174
"Let's get back to the war," I said, "something I can
understand. "
"Four long years of wretched fidelity," she said,
"then another fifteen years while he worked out his
guilt because I could be faithful and he simply couldn't.
I don't think I minded his whoring, you know, not
nearly so much as I minded his guilty rages of which I
was the object of hatred. It wasn't an easy life at all. "
She took my cigarette from me. "One day two years
ago he called from Sun Valley to tell me that he was
divorcing me. I wasn't surprised; he had done that sort
of thing before. This time, though, he went through
with it, and let me tell you, he paid dearly for it. I
stripped him , as he said, like a grizzly strips a salmon,
left him wearing fish eyes and bones. That might have
been enough to bring him back, but he had already
remarried before he realized just how badly I had taken
him. Now he has a wife who is as recklessly unfaithful
as he is, so he doesn't have to feel guilty anymore, and
he hasn't written a word worth keeping in two years.
It's driving him quite mad, I suspect."
"And you're living with his mother," I said in
amazement.
"Edna was quite kind to me during all those years,"
Catherine said, "and it was the least I could do. She
was more like a mother than my own had been, a�d
living with her, I can keep an eye on Trahearne. I have
my freedom now, more money than I can possibly
spend before I die, and I also have my revenge. " She
paused and rolled over to hold me, saying, "Don't let
them tell you that revenge isn't sweet, either. "
"You still love the old fart," I said.
"Of course," she said as she straddled my hips, "but
I love this, too. You don't mind, do you?"
The complications and confusion worried me a bit,
but Catherine was a sweet and loving woman, her
passion fired by the years when she had kept it banked,
175
and during the night I didn't seem to mind at all. The
next morning, though, when she checked out of her
motel and moved her bags into my apartment, I had a
few doubts. We laid those to rest, though, for the next
three days. She cooked a better breakfast than Trahearne and she was easier to get along with, but I had to admit that I was relieved when she announced that
she had to fly back to Seattle, then home. It wasn't until
we were standing in the airport terminal that I realized
how much I was going to miss her.
"Somehow, this stopped being a weekend fling," I
said as we watched the passengers disembark from her
flight.
"I know, I know," she said, squeezing my hand
angrily. "It sounds so terribly trite, but I wish I had met
you twehty years ago. It's not only trite, it's a lie. Thirty
years ago would be closer to the mark, and you didn't
have your first pair of long pants yet."
"I was born an old man," I said, but she ignored me.
"You or somebody like you might have saved me
from this damned emotional martyrdom I seem to have
chosen," she said bitterly. Then it was time to go, and
she presented me with a tilted cheek for a matronly
goodbye kiss. "We'll pretend you were some anonymous lover I picked up in a cocktail lounge," she said.
"Whatever you say."
"This is goodbye," she said, then tilted her cheek
toward me again.
"To hell with that," I said as I grabbed her shoulders
and kissed her on the mouth so hard that it blurred the
careful lines of her lips, mussed her hair, and made her
drop her carry-on bag.
"You bastard," she muttered when she caught her
breath and picked up her bag. A blush rose up her
slender neck like a flame, touching her cheeks with
umber sweetly burnt. She reached up to wipe my
mouth, repeating, "You bastard. That was the last
176
one." Then she walked through the security check and
boarded the airplane without glancing back.
As she climbed the steps, I swallowed some dumb
pain and walked away too.
Nobody lives forever, nobody stays young long
enough. My past seemed like so much excess baggage,
my future a series of long goodbyes, my present an
empty flask, the last good drink already bitter on my
tongue. She still loved Trahearne, still maintained her
secret fidelity as if it were a miniature Japanese pine, as
tiny and perfect as a porcelain cup, lost in the dark and
tangled corner of a once-formal garden gone finally to
seed.
After she left, I wandered around in a dull haze for
days, telling myself what an idiot I was, trying to
swallow with measured amounts of whiskey the stone in
my chest. It was June in Montana, high enough up the
steps of the northern latitudes to pass for cruel April.
Blue skies ruled stupidly, green mountains shimmered
like mirages, and the sun rose each morning to stare
into my face with the blank but touching gaze of a
lovely retarded child. I drove down to Elko to try to
find a landscape to suit my mood, but the desert had
bloomed with a spring rain and the nights were cool and
ringing with stars. I put Rosie's eighty-seven dollars in a
dollar slot machine and hit a five-hundred-dollar jackpot. Then I fled to the most depressing place in the West, the Salt Lake City bus terminal, where I drank
Four Roses from a pint bottle wrapped in a paper bag. I
couldn't even get arrested, so I headed up to Pocatello
to guzzle Coors like a pig at a trough with a gang of jack
Mormons, thinking I could pick a fight, but I didn't
have the heart for it. Eventually, none the worse for
wear, I drifted north toward Meriwether like a saddle
tramp looking for a spring roundup.
177
1 � ••••
ONE OF THE ADVANTAGES OF MY BUSINESS WAS THAT IT
didn't leave me much inclined to mourn lost loves too
long. Back in town, I worked a couple of divorces and
repossessed a few televisions from households where
domestic strife was the commodity of exchange. It
worked like a charm. My cynicism restored itself, and
my bank account remained flush. Then Traheame
called one afternoon.
"Hey, I'm sorry I left the cabin in such a snit," he
said.
"Looked more like a funky blue huff," I said.
"Always with the jokes, Sughrue," he complained.
"When are you coming up to get your damned dog?"
"My dog?" I said. "You stole him, old man, you
bring him back."
"Not a chance. I'm at home for as long as I can
manage it," he said.
"How's Fireball?"
"Last time I saw him, he was the bull of the woods
around here."
"The last time?"
"Yeah, he took to Melinda like a long lost'brother,"
he said, "and they're off on a little trip. You know how
Fireball likes to travel."
178
