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 What s that?
 Oh, it s just something I practiced, to say after the first time I slept with
a man. I
always felt there should be something original to say, instead of all the
things I read in novels.
 I think it s a very clever phrase. Even now, he found it hard to touch her.
He lay with hands at his sides.
She changed the subject.  I was never able to get very far playing the piano.
I have absolutely no give between the thumb and first finger. And that s
essential, you know. You have to have a long reach, a good spread I think they
call it, to play Chopin. A tenth: that s two notes over an octave. A
full octave, a perfect octave, those are just technical terms.
Octave is good enough. I don t have that.  .
 I like piano playing, he said, realizing how silly and dull he must sound,
and frightened (very suddenly) that she would find him so, that she would
leave him. Then he remembered where they were and he smiled. Where could she
go? Where could he go?
 I always hated the fellows at parties who could play the piano... all the
girls clustered around those people. Except these days it s not so much piano,
not too many people have pianos in their homes any more. The kids grow up and
go away and nobody takes lessons and the kids don t buy pianos. They get those
electric guitars.
 Acoustical guitars.
 Yes, those. I don t think it would be much better for fellows like me who
don t play, even if it s acoustical guitars.
They got up and walked again.
Once they discussed how they had wasted their lives, how they had sat there
with hands folded as time filled space around them, swept through, was drained
off, and their own
 chronons (he had told her about the lunatic; she said it sounded like
Benjamin Franklin; he said the man hadn t looked like Benjamin Franklin, but
maybe, it might have been) had been leached of all potency.
Once they discussed the guillotine executions in the Paris of the Revolution,
because it was keeping pace with them. Once they chased the Devonian and
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almost caught it. Once they were privileged to enjoy themselves in the center
of an Arctic snowstorm that held around them for a measure of measureless
time. Once they saw nothing for an eternity but were truly chilled--unlike the
Arctic snowstorm that had had no effect on them--by the winds that blew past
them. And once he turned to her and said,  I love you, Catherine.
But when she looked at him with a gentle smile, he noticed for the first time
that her eyes seemed to be getting gray and pale.
Then, not too soon after, she said she loved him, too.
But she could see mist through the flesh of his hands when he reached out to
touch her face.
They walked with their arms around each other, having found each other. They
said many times, and agreed it was so, that they were in love, and being
together was the most important thing in that endless world of gray spaces,
even if they never found their way back.
And they began to use their time together, setting small goals for each  day
upon awakening. We will walk that far; we will play word games in which you
have to begin the name of a female movie star from the last letter of a male
movie star s name that have to
I
begin off the last letter of a female movie star; we will exchange shirt and
blouse and see how it feels for a while; we will sing every camp song we can
remember. They began to enjoy their time together. They began to live.
And sometimes his voice faded out and she could see him moving his lips but
there was no sound.
And sometimes when the mist cleared she was invisible from the ankles down and
her body moved as through thick soup.
And as they used their time, they became alien in that place where wasted time
had gone to rest.
And they began to fade. As the world had leached out for Ian Ross in Scotland,
and for Catherine Molnar in Wisconsin, they began to vanish from limbo. Matter
could neither be created nor destroyed, but it could be disassembled and sent
where it was needed for entropic balance.
He saw her pale skin become transparent.
She saw his hands as clear as glass.
And they thought:
too Late. It comes too Late. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]