Falconer Read Free Page A

thought.
    The light in the room was unkind, but she wasequal to its harshness. She had been an authenticated beauty. Several photographers had asked her to model, although her breasts, marvelous for nursing and love, were a little too big for that line of work. “I’m much too shy, much too lazy,” she had said. She had accepted the compliment; her beauty had been documented. “You know,” his son had said, “I can’t talk to Mummy when there’s a mirror in the room. She’s really balmy about her looks.” Narcissus was a man and he couldn’t make the switch, but she had, maybe twelve or fourteen times, stood in front of the full-length mirror in their bedroom and asked him, “Is there another woman of my age in this county who is as beautiful as I?” She had been naked, overwhelmingly so, and he had thought this an invitation, but when he touched her she said, “Stop fussing with my breasts. I’m beautiful.” She was, too. He knew that after she’d left, whoever had seen her—the turnkey, for instance—would say, “If that was your wife you’re lucky. Outside the movies I never seen anyone so beautiful.”
    If she was Narcissa did the rest of the Freudian doctrine follow? He had never, within his limited judgment, taken this very seriously. She had spent three weeks in Rome with her old roommate Maria Lippincott Hastings Guglielmi. Three marriages, a fat settlement for each, and a very unsavory sexual reputation. They then had no maid and he and Peter had cleaned the house, laid and lighted fires, and bought flowers to celebrate her return from Italy. He met her at Kennedy. The plane was late. It was after midnight. When he bent to kiss her she averted her face and pulled down the floppy brim of her new Roman hat. He gother bags, got the car and they started home. “You seem to have had a marvelous time,” he said. “I have never,” she said, “been so happy in my life.” He jumped to no conclusions. The fires would be burning, the flowers gleaming. In that part of the world the ground was covered with dirty snow. “Was there any snow in Rome?” he asked. “Not in the city,” she said. “There was a little snow on the Via Cassia. I didn’t see it. I read about it in the paper. Nothing so revolting as this.”
    He carried the bags into the living room. Peter was there in his pajamas. She embraced him and cried a little. The fires and the flowers missed her by a mile. He could try to kiss her again, but he knew that he might get a right to the jaw. “Can I get you a drink?” he asked, making the offer in a voice that rose. “I guess so,” she said, dropping an octave. “Campari,” she said. “
Limone?
” he asked. “Sì, sì,” she said, “un spritz.” He got the ice, the lemon peel, and handed her the drink. “Put it on the table,” she said. “Campari will remind me of my lost happiness.” She went into the kitchen, wet a sponge and began to wash the door of the refrigerator. “We cleaned the place,” he said with genuine sadness. “Peter and I cleaned the place. Peter mopped the kitchen floor.” “Well, you seem to have forgotten the refrigerator door,” she said. “If there are angels in heaven,” he said, “and if they are women, I expect they must put down their harps quite frequently to mop drainboards, refrigerator doors, any enameled surface. It seems to be a secondary female characteristic.” “Are you crazy?” she asked. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His cock, so recently ready for fun, retreated from Waterloo to Paris and from Paris to Elba.“Almost everyone I love has called me crazy,” he said. “What I’d like to talk about is love.” “Oh, is that it,” she said. “Well, here you go.” She put her thumbs into her ears, wagged her fingers, crossed her eyes and made a loud farting sound with her tongue. “I wish you wouldn’t make faces,” he said. “I wish you wouldn’t look like that,” she said. “Thank God you