Alice

III. Richard

Margaret phoned saying she needed cigarettes and water. Otherwise nothing, but she really did need the cigarettes and the water. It was urgent.

What kind of cigarettes?

Those long, slender ones, for women; Slims. And carbonated water.

Nothing else, really?

No, really, nothing else. Thanks.

I’ll be over in about an hour, Alice said. I’ll hurry.

It was an afternoon in early summer. A Saturday. Actually Alice had been intending to do something else, nothing specific, just something else. It was also Raymond’s day off. I have to go now, she said to Raymond, and Raymond who was lying on the bed, reading, only nodded absent-mindedly and didn’t ask any questions. She put on flat shoes and a light-coloured jacket. She didn’t really need the jacket, didn’t know when she’d be back, maybe late; it might be colder by then. She stood next to the bed, looking down at Raymond’s bare back, at the band of tattooing on his left arm, decorations and words in indigo blue on his always-pale skin. She said, Raymond — he turned round — I’m leaving now.

He nodded. Don’t come back too late. Give them my best wishes.

Alice put on her sunglasses before she stepped outside. She hadn’t been out of the house all day. The street was teeming with people; she held her breath. Lots of people, sitting at long rows of tables under awnings or sun umbrellas beneath the heavy green trees. Talking to one another, without let-up. Nodding, talking, gesticulating people. Loud laughter. The wooden ship in the middle of the park was occupied by a cluster of children. Crying, screaming, overheated children. A nimbus of mothers sitting on benches surrounding the ship. Alice walked by, her hands in the pockets of her too-warm jacket; there were coins in the pockets, her keys, the cellphone, an old movie ticket, sweet wrappers. The sound of basketballs hitting the fence of the basketball court, a sound that, now that it was summertime, could sometimes be heard as early as six in the morning — at six a.m. somebody was already on the court tossing a ball into the basket or against the fence, again and again. Sometimes it woke Alice up. Still tired but astonished at the morning light on the white walls of the room.

The way to Margaret’s, to Margaret and Richard’s, led past the flower stand in the Prenzlauer Allee station. The station hall was large, and there under its arched windows were flowers in plastic vases, an amphitheatre of flowers, in front of which, on a folding chair in the exact centre, sat the Vietnamese flower seller. Sitting there day in and day out. The hall was shadowy; the colours of the flowers were dark, the dark white of lilies, the dark pink of gerbera daisies, and dark iris purple. Chamomile. Snapdragons. Sunflowers. The Vietnamese flower seller was asleep. She slept the sleep of travellers; whenever her head would fall to one side, she would straighten up again with her eyes still closed. In her dreams, Alice thought, the trains come and go; it must be a constant vague noise. Alice stood there, undecided; waking up the flower seller was out of the question. Actually she didn’t want to bring any flowers today, only water and cigarettes, nothing else. There was nothing else she could bring them.

The last time she visited Richard and Margaret she’d bought peonies at this same stand, having first thought about it for a long time: Seven peonies, please, and don’t add anything. An uneven number, a superstition. Five were too few, and she didn’t have enough money for nine. Richard didn’t have a vase. Margaret, who was now staying with Richard all the time in his apartment and never far from his bed, had put the peonies into a milk bottle and pointed out to Richard how beautiful they were. Richard said peonies were his favourite flowers. Alice believed him; he wouldn’t have said it if she’d brought him narcissus or tulips. A coincidence. All three were pleased about it. How long ago was that? Two weeks. It was two weeks ago. Richard had got out of bed; they’d been able to sit in the living room together for an hour. At the oval table in front of a shelf full of books. Richard sat with his back to the books. He was wearing pyjamas and whenever Margaret asked him to, he drank from a glass of water. He was smoking slowly and carefully; too late to stop, it would have made no sense for him to give up smoking now. Alice sat facing him, Margaret between them. Margaret talked, crying and smiling through her tears. Richard didn’t take his eyes off her. As if that were what he still had to do — to look at Margaret.

When she came back from this visit, Alice had asked Raymond, Would you rather die before me or after me? After you, I think, Raymond had said. It had taken a while before he could answer; he seemed to consider the question itself impossible. Why? He asked. He wasn’t quite sure. And you?

She’d shaken her head and put her hand over his mouth. She couldn’t answer him.

Alice crossed the intersection, obeying the signals; there were days when she felt she had to be careful, to be more cautious than usual. She couldn’t say where that came from. Raymond, too, had days like that. Both of them did.

Take care of yourself.

And you take care too.

She waited for the light to turn green; then she walked on. On her left the tram. Overhead the elevated train, rumbling downward, underground. Cars stopped in choreographed rows, seemingly meaningful, following a synchronised set of rules. Beautiful light signals. Above it all, the pale sky. Alice took off her sunglasses and used her elbow to push open the door to the newsagent’s. Barricades of plastic boxes full of sweets. Vampire teeth, white mice, liquorice snails, and behind them the shop’s fat proprietor, feeble movements, breathing and rustling, a heavy animal in its cave. Drums containing lottery tickets. Boxes of chocolate bars, bags of sweets, chocolate surprise eggs. Information, advice, little blinking bulbs, announcements. You could put all this on exhibition, Raymond would say when he stood inside shops like this. Just as it is, transport it to a museum. Alice put some paper money on the little tray in the middle of everything and said, Two packs of Slims, please. It had been years since she last bought cigarettes, and her hands trembled. Two bottles of water? The fat newsagent pointed wordlessly to a shelf next to the counter, and Alice picked out two bottles of Spree Spring Water from among the seven varieties. Did Margaret want the water for herself or for Richard? And did it matter? She wasn’t sure. It could all be very important or not important at all.

The bottles were plastic. Tinted blue. Spring water.

A bag?

Yes, please.

He pushed an orange-coloured bag across the counter, counted out the clinking change into the little tray, and withdrew behind the plastic boxes.

Even as she was standing there facing him she couldn’t say any more what he actually looked like. Broken fingernails. The hem of his sweater frayed. The shop smelling of potting soil and wet paper. She said, Have a good day, said it just to hear how he would answer. He said, The same to you. Said it in an absolutely flat voice. Alice pulled open the door and, with the bag containing the two bottles and cigarette packs pressed to her chest, she turned left and walked down the street.

Along Rheinsberger Strasse. Rheinsberger was a quiet street, in contrast to the street where Alice lived. A simple, quiet, beautiful street, no more, no less. Old acacia trees on both sides, cobblestone pavement, A patchwork quilt of asphalt — light-coloured asphalt, dark-coloured asphalt, seams of tar. On Rheinsberger you could walk along the middle of the traffic lane. Alice walked down the middle with her orange bag, the spring water and cigarettes. A gentle wind moved through the acacias shaking the leaves; light flickered through them onto the asphalt. From the open windows, the sound of televisions, the ringing of telephones, the smell of food, popular songs from radios. A street on a Saturday afternoon in June. Alice thought the street had a Sunday air to it, something about it reminded her of childhood Sundays, of the long drawn-out summer Sundays pulsing with something — as if it were that time just before the onset of a thunderstorm. Waiting for it to come. Waiting for the thunderstorm.

The house where Richard lived was on the right-hand side of the street. The right-hand side was in the shade. Alice looked up at Richard’s closed windows and thought: In a room in that apartment in this house on this street a man I know is dying. Everyone else is doing something else. Thinking this was a little like reciting a poem, someone else’s words, not anything you could comprehend. She stopped under the arch of the main entrance and listened to a faraway child’s recorder: Cuckoo, cuckoo, half a scale, two trills, and it was finished. Alice pressed the bell. Leaning against the door, she pressed the copper bell button with her index finger. The buzzer buzzed, and the door opened.

The peonies in the milk bottle were wilted but still standing on the windowsill. A white-edged blue tablecloth covered the table, on it a bottle of water, an ashtray, an open address book with the telephone on top, a stationery pad, pens, matches, a pair of reading glasses. Margaret fetched two glasses from the kitchen, emptied the ashtray. She sat down where Richard had sat two weeks ago, on the chair in front of the books, in the shelter of the books, their spines, their consolingly familiar titles. Who would read these thousand books once Richard no longer needed them? These were the very questions Alice was ashamed of, but which she kept thinking anyway. Margaret poured Alice a glass of water, then one for herself. She opened a pack of cigarettes. Alice could still remember just what that was like, each detail — tugging gently on the little strip of cellophane, then the rustling foil, prying out the first cigarette. Virginia and orient tobaccos — one world. Margaret lit a cigarette, blew out the match, getting rid of the sulphur smell with a wave of her hand. Her face was tanned by the June sun. There was something radiant, strong, very much alive about her. She smoked cheerfully. It’s nice that you came, Alice, she said. And suddenly Alice also thought that it was nice to be allowed to sit here again so unexpectedly, in this room, whose permanence would end at the exact moment Richard stopped breathing, but no one knew just when that would happen, and as long as he was still breathing, it was all here: the table, the books, the flowers, the reading glasses, the glasses of water, his name on the door, and his brown jacket hanging over the back of the desk chair.

Margaret, Alice said.

Margaret nodded, said, Well, as far as possible we’ve worked it all out. We’ve arranged everything. The musicians, the cemetery chapel, the gravesite. We’ve set a date for the funeral. In three weeks.

And what if Richard hasn’t died by then, Alice asked.

Oh, by then he’ll have managed that, Margaret said.

They’d discussed the subject two weeks ago; Margaret and Richard had talked about it in front of Alice. Alice had listened. At first she thought it was indecent, unseemly, to be talking with Richard about his own funeral, but instead it turned out to be the natural thing to do. Not unseemly. Richard had said he wanted his friends to carry his coffin, not the gravediggers. No sermon by a minister, no quotations. If the weather’s good, that would please him. Margaret had taken notes on the stationery pad: Whom to call, who should be there, no one should stay away. The food: sandwiches with plum jam, meatballs, and beer.

She had said, That’s what we’ll do. We’ll do it just like that, Richard; it’ll be a very nice funeral, and Richard had said, Yes it will be, and he had looked at Margaret, a look that Alice tried to describe to Raymond later, but had to give up on because it was impossible to describe.

That’s how it is, Margaret said. I haven’t slept for a whole week. I’ve distanced myself; I’m standing above it all. When it’s over I’ll collapse. I realise that. Hardly anyone has come to see us since your visit two weeks ago. Things went downhill fast after that. Hard to believe how fast they can go downhill. You can see it happening. You can actually see it.

She stopped talking and listened. Now he’s asleep, she said. He’s not in pain. What time is it? Let’s see — almost five. That means the nurse will be here soon, in half an hour; he’s got a suitcase full of morphine that he carries around with him through half the city. Will you stay a while longer?

Yes, Alice said. I’ll stay. She looked across the hall to the other room that faced the courtyard. Richard’s bed was next to the wall on the right. The window was open, the curtains drawn. Richard was lying there with his head near the door, his closed eyes turned towards the window. Alice could see his head, the grey hair.

Margaret said, The curtains are from when I was a girl.

Muslin, Alice said.

Yes, muslin. Margaret nodded. If I had known as a girl — fifty years ago — that one day I’d be hanging them in Richard’s death chamber. Or …

The white curtains swayed gently in the breeze. Almost imperceptibly, back and forth. Causing a slight change in the light. Hints of embroidery, trimmings. Tiny flowers circled by wreaths, various shades of white.

The visiting nurse came at six. He brought papaya, mango, and pineapple in a little plastic container, all cut into small pieces. And more water. The room was warm, summery. For a while, they sat there together. Eating the papaya, mango, pineapple. You’ve got to eat, Margaret, the nurse said, preparing the morphine and charging the syringe. Then he went into the bedroom. Alice picked up a piece of papaya, smooth and orange coloured. She heard the nurse speaking to Richard, calmly and matter-of-factly, not as if he were talking to a child. She glanced over briefly; he was bending over the bed, had put his hands on Richard’s head. It looked as though he were going to kiss him. Then he came back and, sitting at the table, tied the laces of his trainers. He was still fairly young. Shaved head, soft features, several earrings. To Margaret he said, So, I’ll have my cellphone with me; we’ll be on the roof today, grilling and stuff, I’ll probably have a beer. Or two. Nothing’s going to happen today. Maybe tomorrow. I think, tomorrow it will all be over. But call me if you need me.

He said, He notices when you’re sitting next to him, when you touch him. He notices everything. Maybe he was saying this to Alice. They said goodbye, formally, it didn’t matter that they didn’t know each other. Then he left.

At some point Alice left too. Margaret walked her to the door; they held each other in a brief, tight hug. I’ll let you know, Margaret said. When it happens. When it’s over, I mean. I’ll call you.

Alice went back along Rheinsberger Strasse, walking down the middle of the street, on the light-coloured, the dark-coloured asphalt. Dusk was falling, and lights were going on in the houses, people were watering their plants on the balconies, and the water dripped down on the shady pavements. The hum of evening. The dog days of summer. It hadn’t rained in a long time and dried linden blossoms rustled in the gutters. Very gradually the heat was letting up a bit. Cars at the traffic lights on the main street, the elevated train going in the opposite direction, and the tram with its green windowpanes and the blue sparks flying in the grid under the bridge. Alice passed the newsagent’s, its window pasted over with ads, the ugly newspaper racks, and the neon sign for Toto-Lotto now on, flickering. A loose connection. The fat man was standing in front of the door. He had come outside, just for a change. Hands in his trouser pockets, the frayed sweater, a friendly, tired face. He nodded at Alice, and Alice nodding back, thought, He knows where I’ve been. No, he can’t know. The water’s been drunk; the cigarettes will all have been smoked by tomorrow morning.

She stopped at the traffic lights and phoned Raymond. He answered after the seventh ring, and his voice sounded far away and strange.

Alice.

Would you please be sitting downstairs when I come home? Alice cleared her throat. She looked at the big intersection, and for a second she had the feeling that she had lost track of the meaning of everything. As though everything was dissolving and re-forming differently with a new meaning. Scribbles. Acoustic scrawls. She pressed her eyes closed with her left hand. The feeling went away. She said, I don’t know, am I interrupting something?

No, Raymond said. You’re not interrupting anything. Are you saying I should go down to the bar? In front of the house?

It would be nice, Alice said. What are you doing right now?

Reading, Raymond said. He laughed. Oh well. Actually I was sleeping. I’ll go downstairs. See you soon.

See you soon, Alice said.

The street was still full of people. Talking constantly. No end in sight, no final word. But now that it was getting dark, everything sounded more muted. Lanterns on the tables. Men and women sitting across from each other. Heavy green trees. Bicycles, locked together along the edge of the pavement, the moon above the park, the ship, empty now, an empty wooden ship with an openwork railing in a sea of sand. The benches all around it, deserted. Paper cups, newspapers, bottles. Bottle collectors emerging from the bushes, polite and quiet, picking up the bottles, letting others go first. Bats among the trees. Swifts, their angry, crazy screams. The ping-pong of table-tennis balls, cellphone tunes, symphonies. Alice walked along the edge of the park towards the house where she lived, where Raymond had been sleeping and reading that afternoon and early evening. On the first floor the light was on, also on the third floor, and there was a light in her window. Before going downstairs Raymond had turned on the little light near the window for Alice. She could see him now. He was sitting in front of the house, under the blue awning of the bar, at the last in a long row of tables, right next to the front door of their house. His back was to the wine-red house wall; he was drinking a small beer. His jacket was draped over the back of the chair next to him. Alice almost stopped walking. She tried an old game — to see him as if she didn’t know him. As if he were just anyone. As if she were seeing him for the first time. What would she think of him? What did he actually look like? It didn’t work. She gave up.

’Evening, the waitress said.

’Evening, Raymond answered for Alice, inimitable, it sounded exactly right.

Tired?

Yes, I’m a little tired, Alice said. I’ll have a small beer too, please.

The waitress smiled, first at Raymond, then at Alice, then up at the sky. She stood there with them a little longer. Like Raymond, she had a tattoo, a Mexican sun on her back, in the exact centre between her shoulder blades. Sometimes when Alice ran into her in the hallway of the house, they would ask each other, How are you? Thanks, pretty good. Lots of work. Always a lot of work. Never enough time. No time. Time for what, actually? They agreed that they didn’t quite know what for.

The waitress was the same one who, every morning, wrote, Happy Hour on the blackboard next to the front door of the bar. Above that, she drew a smiling moon face. Day after day. She knocked lightly on the table with her knuckles, then she walked away. Alice and Raymond didn’t often sit at the bar in front of the house.

Alice took off her jacket and sat down next to Raymond. They sat there next to each other and watched the people walking to the left across the park, to the right down the street.

Are you hungry? Raymond asked. Would you like something to eat?

I’m not hungry, Alice said. I already had something to eat. Mango and papaya and pineapple. It sounded funny. She thought of the male nurse who was now sitting on some rooftop in a folding chair, grilling and stuff, with a view of the entire shining, glittering city, holding his third bottle of beer, his cellphone in his pocket. Margaret might call him. Margaret might call Alice, too. The nurse had had very dark eyes, somewhat distant, serious.

Alice said, He’s become inconceivably small. I mean Richard. He’s become as small as a child these past two weeks. His skin is yellow. It’s all over, but his heart is still beating; it simply keeps on beating.

He wasn’t conscious this time, Raymond said. Or was he?

No, Alice said. He isn’t conscious any more. But the nurse thinks he notices everything. Could be; I’m not sure. How would he know? I touched Richard. He sighed. Is that a reaction?

Yes, Raymond said, that’s a reaction.

Maybe, Alice said.

The waitress set the beer down in front of Alice. Golden, in a tall glass on a beer mat that Alice pushed away after the waitress had left. The beer was ice-cold and sweet. What was it you were reading? Alice asked.

Science fiction, Raymond said. He looked happy. Some great parts in it about rain.

He didn’t say anything more. Neither did Alice. It was quite all right this way. Most likely the nurse wouldn’t have said anything either. At least nothing about Richard, about other things, yes — football news, polar bears, weather forecasts, the presidential elections.

Margaret had said, After you leave I’ll put the folding cot next to Richard’s bed. And lie down next to him. I won’t sleep, I’ll just lie there. So she was now lying on the folding cot next to Richard’s bed in the room with the white muslin curtains of her girlhood, and so on and so forth. Until Richard was gone. One’s girlhood, What is all the rest, then. Alice wondered.

She thought of Margaret. Of the male nurse. Of Rheinsberger Strasse and about the Sundays of her own childhood … When a blind man with a hurdy-gurdy and a little monkey on a rusty chain had sung in the rear courtyard; she’d been allowed to throw coins wrapped in newspaper out of the kitchen window — when she told this to Raymond he hadn’t believed her. But why not? She also thought about Richard, but in a different way. She looked past Raymond and the dark park; far away, a late-night plane rose into the sky, and she remembered that Raymond, on one of the first nights they had sat together like this, had said the sound of a plane at night made him sad. Why? Alice had asked. Because it’s as if it were the last possible plane. For me, Raymond had said, and Alice had understood a part of it and a part of it she didn’t understand, and something of what he said had also caused her to feel hurt. She was reminded of all this whenever she saw a plane at night. Whether she wanted to or not, she remembered it every time. A sort of price to pay. But for what?

Will you be going there again? Raymond asked.

No, Alice said. I think today was the last time.

Sunday, they drove into the country. With the Sunday paper, a tartan blanket, a Thermos of tea, three apples, and a bottle of water. Northward. On a secondary road. They parked at the edge of the forest, then walked into the forest on a sandy path until they reached the lake. Alice dawdled, walking quite a way behind Raymond; sometimes he was out of sight, then again there he would be in front of her on the path and in the middle of the light slanting down through the pine trees brightly illuminating something seemingly insubstantial. Fat bugs waddled along at the edge of the path, persistently and stubbornly. Somewhere a woodpecker was pecking. Raymond was far ahead of her. They walked around the lake, looking for a place to spread out their blanket. It was important to Alice, Raymond didn’t care. They couldn’t find a spot for the blanket, only bumpy, swampy grass, criss-crossed by tree roots. So they were left with no choice but to stay in the shade, close to the trees, Alice leaning her back against a tree trunk, her feet almost in the water. The water was green, muddy, and warm.

Raymond went swimming; Alice read the Sunday paper without understanding a single word, without wanting to understand. The rustling of the pages. Frogs in the wet sand. At a safe distance from the shore the unpleasantly small head of a water snake. Some birds Alice did not recognise flying above the lake. Kites? She’d always found the name intriguing, had never known what the bird itself looked like. Was she mistaken? Alice shrugged, yes, possibly. Raymond came back, breathing the way you breathe when you’re just coming out of the water; he dried himself, looked back at the distance he’d swum.

Was it nice?

Well, of course. Aren’t you going in?

I’ll see, Alice said.

Raymond drank some tea, ate an apple, opened the newspaper. Alice watched as a mosquito settled on his left shoulder, pushed its proboscis under his skin, and pumped with the hind part of its body, calmly and for a long time. She watched Raymond reading, his chin resting in his hand. He was elsewhere, in a parallel world; twice he smiled at something. Then he folded the paper, got up, and stretched until his bones cracked. Bent his head to the right and to the left, the neck vertebrae cracking. He said, I’ll take a turn around the lake, disappearing between the black yet simultaneously bright tree trunks. Blotches of light in the grass. Busy ants, wasps around the remains of his apple, the tea in the tin cup, cold. Alice fell asleep, in a second-long dream the male nurse put away all the things on the table in Richard’s room, then pulled off the blue tablecloth, doing it all with a distinctly chilly ‘that’s-how-things-stand’ expression. She was startled awake as her head fell to one side like the Vietnamese flower seller’s had in the hall of the Prenzlauer Allee train station. Raymond was standing with his feet in the water, looking out across the dark lake. He said, We have to leave, Alice. I’m on the night shift today. Clouds covered the sun. It had suddenly turned cool. Even as the nurse in the dream had been picking up Richard’s glasses.

Alice packed up. They shook out the blanket together, threw the remains of the apples into the reeds. Folded up the crumpled, messy newspaper. The paper seemed to have doubled in size. I’ll be right there, Alice said. That old disquiet on excursions, at the end always sentimental and wistful, as if it had been their last, as if it might have been their last. She hadn’t gone swimming. Should she have? She should have done everything differently, not just today, but always. Done everything differently. She walked behind Raymond on the path, then she walked beside him, took his hand; they held hands the rest of the way. He was carrying the basket; she, the blanket and the newspaper. They met no one.

What sort of arrangement did you make with Margaret? Raymond asked.

He had suddenly remembered again.

She’ll call me, Alice said. She’ll phone when it’s over.

Half an hour in a traffic jam on the motorway. Alice took off her shoes, put her feet up on the dashboard as she used to do fifteen years ago, fiddled with the radio and rolled down the window. At the side of the road a strip of shoulder, cornfields, windmills. At the far end of the twinkling chain of cars, the silhouette of the TV tower. Both of them looked at it. Raymond turned off the radio, then the engine. He looked at his watch and made an involuntary irritable sound. They had left in good time; he wouldn’t be late, yet in spite of that he was on edge. Alice wondered whether she ought to tell him about her dream. But she was afraid of its interpretation, not what it would say about Raymond, but about herself. She unbuckled her seat belt, took her feet off the dashboard. She said, You got sunburned. Raymond said, I know.

On the other side of the motorway, an occasional car drove by, heading north. We should have taken the secondary road. Probably wouldn’t have been any better. The windmills turned slowly, casting strange rotating shadows in the dry fields. Raymond started the engine again. They were both tired. Then the traffic jam dissolved.

The apartment was as quiet as if they’d been away a long time. The kitchen window facing the courtyard was wide open; Alice watered the flowers on the windowsill. Flowers with blue leaves whose name she didn’t know. Raymond didn’t either. Thirteen blue leaves and a little flower head on each one. Alice had counted them. Tiny spiders had woven their webs between the stems. The mercury in the thermometer on the house wall above the flower box stood at 27 °C. A pale half moon was already visible in the sky. Signs of a thunderstorm above the rooftops, absolutely no wind now.

And what else are you doing today. Tonight.

Raymond was standing in the doorway to the kitchen; he’d taken a shower and put on another T-shirt; his skin was slightly reddened, and there were faint rings under his eyes. The T-shirt covered the tattoo on his left arm: ‘The last shall be the first.’ Alice was as afraid of the meaning of this tattoo as of the meaning of her dreams. Years ago she had asked Raymond not to tell her why he had had this sentence tattooed in calligraphy on his arm, and Raymond had promised not to. He had kept his promise.

I’m not doing anything, she said.

She was standing by the kitchen window holding the bottle of water for the flowers; she looked at Raymond; there would be nothing he could say, but for one moment she did look at him the way she felt — helpless and close to tears.

What should I do? I’ll wait for Margaret’s phone call. I keep thinking about it. I’m thinking about it now. At the lake I didn’t think so much about it. It’s not bad; don’t worry about me. I’ll just stay home.

She shook her head. Set the water bottle down on the windowsill. There seemed to be something about her that kept Raymond from touching her, from putting his arms around her — how do you say it — she couldn’t think of the word embrace; she wished he would go now.

Till tomorrow morning, Raymond said. He gave her a searching look.

Yes, till tomorrow morning.

Call me if Margaret phones.

I will, Alice said.

Promise.

Sure. She walked him to the door. Then went across the hall to the bedroom. Pulled up the blinds, opened the window, and leaned out. It took a while. Sometimes it took so long that Alice thought he would never come out. And what then?

Raymond stepped out of the house. His jacket slung over his shoulder. He disappeared from sight under the awning, emerged again at the corner of the street, crossed at the intersection. He went over to the other side of the street and walked along the edge of the park. Just as Alice had yesterday on her way to Margaret and Richard’s. Had Raymond watched her yesterday?

She hadn’t turned round. Now, she could see Raymond walking — among all those people on the street, in the park, in the cafés, at the tables in the shade of the trees, he was the one she knew and knew about yet didn’t understand. He turned round, looked up at their apartment, raised his hand, and waved. Alice waved back. Then he was gone. She kept looking out of the window for a while longer. The last of the children left the park; the street lights went on. In the basketball court, hidden by the leaves of the trees, someone was still throwing a ball into the basket, again and again. Open windows, profusely planted balconies, and the water from the flowers dripping down on the pavement. A ring of fiery clouds around the sun hanging low in the sky. Tomorrow was Monday. Alice closed the window. She lowered the blind, searched for the phone, and found it on the floor beside the bed, next to Raymond’s open book. The street lamps buckled weakly, newsstands and advertising columns dissolved into the air, everything everywhere crackled, hissed, and rustled, became porous and transparent, turned into little piles of dust, and disappeared. In the distance the outlines of the Town Hall tower became blurry and blended with the blue sky. For a while the old tower clock, detached from everything else, still hung suspended in the sky until it too vanished. Alice took the book and the phone and went back to the kitchen. Pulling a chair over to the table, she sat down, placed the phone next to the book, and continued reading.