Loon Lake by E. L. Doctorow Page A

holding her groin against him and looking into his eyes right there in the mountains of the Adirondacks.
    Well the kid’s impressed, Tommy said.
    She nodded while looking into his eyes. The tip of her tongue appeared in the corner of her mouth. He disengaged her arms and stood back from her.
    That’s how much you know, he said.
    I t’s who she is, thinks Warren, definitely, now dressed in flimsies and struggling with the torments of her class but it’s her, the same girl, returned to my life, changed in time, true, changed in place, changed let us be honest in character, but how can I doubt my feelings they are all I have I have spent my life studying them and of them all this is the indisputable constant, the feeling of recognition I have for her when she appears, the ease with which she comes to me regardless of the circumstances, for I have no particular appeal to women, only to this woman, and so the recognition must be mutual and it pushes us toward each other despite our differences, and our inability to understand each other’s language, and here it has happened again though I am indisputably older fatter and more ridiculous as a figure of love than I have been before. Always I am older. Always we do not understand each other. Always I lose her. Oh God who made this girl give her to me this time to hold let me sink into the complacencies of fulfilled love, let us lose our memories together, and let me die from the ordinary insubstantial results of having lived.
    W hat he intuits from the coolness of her conversation or the moods that come over her is that she did not expect to find herself in her present situation. She is not devious and did not plan this. She seems to take each day as it comes and is clearly forged in her being by the race of men she’s had to deal with. In short, they are equals. The realization sends him to the bottle with a shaking hand.
    Naturally she would think he was part of the old man’s retinue. It was a natural assumption. At drinks that evening they’re alone. Can I tell you a story? he says. Outside, the rain is heavy, the kind of rain that tamps down the wind. Smoke from the big fireplace drifts into the room like a wisp of cloud come in from the mountains.
    I’ve lived here for six years. I’m a poet and the Bennetts are my patrons. But I found this place on my own and when I came here it was to kill him.
    The old man?
    Yes.
    She has to this point only half listened but now he is rewarded by her direct gaze. She sips her Manhattan. She is wearing pleated linen slacks and a thin blouse half buttoned. She likes to show herself.
    I swear to the lordourgod I will make her see who I am.
    People I loved died because of the policies of one of his companies. He owns lots of companies.
    You know what he’s worth?
    Worth? What can it matter. I haven’t got a dime myself, he says conscientiously, as if he’d made it his life’s achievement. Millions, billions, the power over people. So I was going to kill him. I got through the dogs with just a tear or two and introduced myself out on that terrace there through the dining room one morning with my knife in my pocket.
    She turns and looks through the big bay windows. She turns back.
    But you didn’t, she says.
    O ne night when the dogs are in the neighborhood he takes two wineglasses and a bottle of his table red and closes his door and half walks half runs over to her cottage.
    I thought you might need some company, he says.
    He follows her inside. She wears a robe. She is barefoot. He realizes she answered the door without breaking stride. She is pacing the room. Her arms are folded across her breasts.
    The doors to her terrace are closed and locked. The curtain is pulled shut. The room smells of cigarettes. He pours the wine.
    Later they are sitting on the floor beside the bed. He has been telling her about his life. He has recited some of his work. She has listened and smoked and held out her glass for wine.
    Listen, he says