The Secret Lovers (41 page)

“Where is he?”

“Gone. I don’t know where.”

The girl, a stranger to Christopher, shrank against the door. He realized that he had lost control of his face and he tried to smile at her. She saw the effort he was making, and spoke.

“There’s a man Franco sees, a Russian,” she said. “He went to see him afterward, and he came back terrified. Franco just packed a bag and left in the car. He’d had
a lot of dope and he was talking to himself. He kept saying your name. He was sobbing from fear. I don’t know what the Russian told him about you.”

Christopher knew.

6

At the airport, they stood together by the glass wall above the tarmac and looked down at Cathy’s plane. She had made no effort to cover her injuries. Her face was still
swollen and her eyes were distorted by the pull of the discolored flesh. She was still bandaged from the surgery to remove her spleen and she moved apprehensively. She told Christopher she had no
more pain. “But I know it’s still in my body somewhere,” Cathy said, “waiting to come out again.”

Her mother would meet her in New York. Cathy had spoken to her on the phone about an automobile accident. She had said nothing, for the time being, about the divorce.

“I have this for you,” Christopher said.

He gave her the poem. She leaned against the wall in the thin light—it was a morning in early winter and it was raining—and read the handwritten sheets. As she read, grace came back
into her body, and she stood for a while in her old dancer’s attitude. She did not cry.

“That’s the only copy,” Christopher said.

“I won’t lose it.”

Her flight was called. Christopher carried her handbags down the ramp for her. Their ears were filled with the shriek of taxiing jets. They stood under an umbrella at the foot of the gangway
with other people crowding by. Christopher put his arms around her to shield her from their jostling. Cathy’s lips could not bear the pressure of a kiss. Their faces were very close
together.

“There’s this, Paul,” Cathy said. “We’ve loved each other as no one will ever love either of us again.”

Her eyes were dry. Christopher wept.

“How much is that in real money?” he asked.