don’t dance very well.”
“Do your best.”
“I always have.”
“No.”
“Don’t you believe it was my best?”
“Of course I don’t believe that.”
Her hot hand was limp, but her body, as he tried to contain and steer it, seemed faintly resistant, as perhaps any idea does when it is embodied. He did not feel that she was rigid deliberately, as a rebuke to him, but that they both, once again, were encountering certain basic factors of gravity and inertia. She did not resist when, trying to solve their bad fit—trying to devise, as it were, an interface—he hugged her closer to his chest. Nor, however, did he feel her infuse this submission with conscious willingness, as lovers do when they transmute their bodies into pure sensitivity and volition. She held mute. While he sought for words to fill their grappling silence, she sniffed.
He said, “You have a cold.”
She nodded.
He asked, “A fever?”
Again she nodded, more tersely, with a touch of the automatic, a touch he remembered as intrinsic to her manner of consent.
Surer of himself, he glided them across waxed squares of vinyl and heard his voice emerge enriched by a paternal, protective echo. “You shouldn’t have come if you’re sick.”
“I wanted to.”
“Why?” He knew the answer: because of him. He feared he was holding her so close she had felt his heart thump; he might injure her with his heart. He relaxed his right arm, andshe accepted the inch of freedom as she had surrendered it, without spirit—a merely metric adjustment. And her voice, when she used it, swooped at the start and scratched, like an old record.
“Oh, Tom,” Maggie said, “you know me. I can’t say no. If I’m invited to a party, I come.” And she must have felt, as did he, that her shrug insufficiently broke the hold his silence would have clinched, for she snapped her head and said with angry emphasis, “Anyway, I
had
to come and say good
bye
to the Bridesons.”
His silence had become a helpless holding on.
“Who have been so
kind
,” Maggie finished. The music stopped. She tried to back out of his arms, but he held her until, in the little hi-fi cabinet with its sleepless incubatory glow, another record flopped from the stack. Softly fighting to be free, Maggie felt to him, with her great sleeves, like a sumptuous heavy bird that has evolved into innocence on an island, and can be seized by any passing sailor, and will shortly become extinct. Facing downward to avoid her beating wings, he saw her thighs, fat in net tights, and had to laugh, not so much at this befuddled struggle as at the comedy of the female body, that good kind clown, all greasepaint and bounce. To have seized her again, to feel her contending, was simply jolly.
“Tom, let go of me.”
“I can’t.”
Music released them from struggle. An antique record carried them back to wartime radio they had listened to as children, children a thousand miles apart. Maggie smoothed her fluffed cloth and formally permitted herself to be danced with. Her voice had become, with its faint bronchial rasp, a weapon cutting across the involuntary tendency of her bodyto melt, to glide. She held her face averted and downcast, so that her shoulders were not quite square with his; if he could adjust this nagging misalignment, perhaps by bringing her feverish hand closer to his shoulder, the fit would be again perfect, after a gap of years. He timidly tugged her hand, and she said harshly, “What do you want me to say?”
“Nothing. Something inoffensive.”
“There’s nothing to say, Tommy.”
“O.K.”
“You said it all, five years ago.”
“Was it five?”
“Five.”
“It doesn’t seem that long.”
“It does if you live it, minute after minute.”
“I lived it too.”
“No.”
“O.K. Listen—”
“No. You promised we’d just dance.”
But only a few bars of music, blurred saxophones and a ruminating clarinet, passed before she said, in a dangerously small and
“Do your best.”
“I always have.”
“No.”
“Don’t you believe it was my best?”
“Of course I don’t believe that.”
Her hot hand was limp, but her body, as he tried to contain and steer it, seemed faintly resistant, as perhaps any idea does when it is embodied. He did not feel that she was rigid deliberately, as a rebuke to him, but that they both, once again, were encountering certain basic factors of gravity and inertia. She did not resist when, trying to solve their bad fit—trying to devise, as it were, an interface—he hugged her closer to his chest. Nor, however, did he feel her infuse this submission with conscious willingness, as lovers do when they transmute their bodies into pure sensitivity and volition. She held mute. While he sought for words to fill their grappling silence, she sniffed.
He said, “You have a cold.”
She nodded.
He asked, “A fever?”
Again she nodded, more tersely, with a touch of the automatic, a touch he remembered as intrinsic to her manner of consent.
Surer of himself, he glided them across waxed squares of vinyl and heard his voice emerge enriched by a paternal, protective echo. “You shouldn’t have come if you’re sick.”
“I wanted to.”
“Why?” He knew the answer: because of him. He feared he was holding her so close she had felt his heart thump; he might injure her with his heart. He relaxed his right arm, andshe accepted the inch of freedom as she had surrendered it, without spirit—a merely metric adjustment. And her voice, when she used it, swooped at the start and scratched, like an old record.
“Oh, Tom,” Maggie said, “you know me. I can’t say no. If I’m invited to a party, I come.” And she must have felt, as did he, that her shrug insufficiently broke the hold his silence would have clinched, for she snapped her head and said with angry emphasis, “Anyway, I
had
to come and say good
bye
to the Bridesons.”
His silence had become a helpless holding on.
“Who have been so
kind
,” Maggie finished. The music stopped. She tried to back out of his arms, but he held her until, in the little hi-fi cabinet with its sleepless incubatory glow, another record flopped from the stack. Softly fighting to be free, Maggie felt to him, with her great sleeves, like a sumptuous heavy bird that has evolved into innocence on an island, and can be seized by any passing sailor, and will shortly become extinct. Facing downward to avoid her beating wings, he saw her thighs, fat in net tights, and had to laugh, not so much at this befuddled struggle as at the comedy of the female body, that good kind clown, all greasepaint and bounce. To have seized her again, to feel her contending, was simply jolly.
“Tom, let go of me.”
“I can’t.”
Music released them from struggle. An antique record carried them back to wartime radio they had listened to as children, children a thousand miles apart. Maggie smoothed her fluffed cloth and formally permitted herself to be danced with. Her voice had become, with its faint bronchial rasp, a weapon cutting across the involuntary tendency of her bodyto melt, to glide. She held her face averted and downcast, so that her shoulders were not quite square with his; if he could adjust this nagging misalignment, perhaps by bringing her feverish hand closer to his shoulder, the fit would be again perfect, after a gap of years. He timidly tugged her hand, and she said harshly, “What do you want me to say?”
“Nothing. Something inoffensive.”
“There’s nothing to say, Tommy.”
“O.K.”
“You said it all, five years ago.”
“Was it five?”
“Five.”
“It doesn’t seem that long.”
“It does if you live it, minute after minute.”
“I lived it too.”
“No.”
“O.K. Listen—”
“No. You promised we’d just dance.”
But only a few bars of music, blurred saxophones and a ruminating clarinet, passed before she said, in a dangerously small and
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