Dusk and Other Stories Read Free

said, why didn’t you call? I don’t know, he said—I could tell he was asleep—what time is it? Five o’clock, I said. Are you angry with me? A little, he said. Good, because I am angry with you. Bang, I hung up.”
    Nico is closing the doors to the terrace and bringing the cage inside.
    “It’s warm,” Malcolm says, “leave him there. He needs the sunlight.”
    She looks in at the bird.
    “I don’t think he’s well,” she says.
    “He’s all right.”
    “The other one died last week,” she explains to Inge. “Suddenly. He wasn’t even sick.”
    She closes one door and leaves the other open. The bird sits in the now brilliant sunshine, feathered, serene.
    “I don’t think they can live alone,” she says.
    “He’s fine,” Malcolm assures her. “Look at him.”
    The sun makes his colors very bright. He sits on the uppermost perch. His eyes have perfect, round lids. He blinks.
    The elevator is still at their floor. Inge enters first. Malcolm pulls the narrow doors to. It’s like shutting a small cabinet. Faces close togetherthey start down. Malcolm is looking at Inge. She has her own thoughts.
    They stop for another coffee at the little bar downstairs. He holds the door open for them to go in. No one is there—a single man reading the newspaper.
    “I think I’m going to call him again,” Inge says.
    “Ask him why he woke you up at five in the morning,” Malcolm says.
    She laughs.
    “Yes,” she says. “That’s marvelous. That’s what I’m going to do.”
    The telephone is at the far end of the marble counter, but Nico is talking to him and he cannot hear.
    “Aren’t you interested?” he asks.
    “No,” she says.
    Inge’s car is a blue Volkswagen, the blue of certain airmail envelopes. One fender is dented in.
    “You haven’t seen my car,” she says. “What do you think? Did I get a good bargain? I don’t know anything about cars. This is my first. I bought it from someone I know, a painter, but it was in an accident. The motor is scorched.
    “I know how to drive,” she says. “It’s better if someone sits next to me, though. Can you drive?”
    “Of course,” he says.
    He gets behind the wheel and starts the engine. Nico is sitting in the back.
    “How does it feel to you?” Inge says.
    “I’ll tell you in a minute.”
    Although it’s only a year old, the car has a certain shabbiness. The material on the ceiling is faded. Even the steering wheel seems abused. After they have driven a few blocks, Malcolm says, “It seems all right.”
    “Yes?”
    “The brakes are a little weak.”
    “They are?”
    “I think they need new linings.”
    “I just had it greased,” she says.
    Malcolm looks at her. She is quite serious.
    “Turn left here,” she says.
    She directs him through the city. There is a little traffic now but he seldom stops. Many intersections in Barcelona are widened out in the shape of an octagon. There are only a few red lights. They drive through vast neighborhoods of old apartments, past factories, the first vacant fields at the edge of town. Inge turns in her seat to look back to Nico.
    “I’m sick of this place,” she says. “I want to go to Rome.”
    They are passing the airport. The road to the sea is crowded. All the scattered traffic of the city has funneled onto it, buses, trucks, innumerable small cars.
    “They don’t even know how to drive,” Inge says. “What are they doing? Can’t you pass?
    “Oh, come on,” she says. She reaches across him to blow the horn.
    “No use doing that,” Malcolm says.
    Inge blows it again.
    “They can’t move.”
    “Oh, they make me furious,” she cries.
    Two children in the car ahead have turned around. Their faces are pale and reflective in the small rear window.
    “Have you been to Sitges?” Inge says.
    “Cadaques.”
    “Ah,” she says. “Yes. Beautiful. There you have to know someone with a villa.”
    The sun is white. The land lies beneath it the color of straw. The road runs parallel to the