Private Life Read Free Page A

Oakland,
    where they were in the sunlight. San Francisco, so beautiful in the morning, was now
    gray and invisible. They sat in the line of cars, waiting for the ferry at Benicia. Have I
    told you that I'm moving to Vancouver?Pete, you've hardly told me anything. But
    Vancouver! Have you been interrogated, too? Her hand flew to her mouth, then she
    looked around, but no one, either on the wharf or in the other cars, was looking at
    them.Pete laughed his old laugh, the easy, brave laugh that she found so irresistible now,
    the very laugh she had once distrusted. As he drove onto the ferry, he said, Not yet, but
    sometimes I do have the sense I'm being watched or followed, though when I look around
    I never see an extraordinarily tall, mustachioed man. No, darling, it's much simpler than
    that. I'm busted again.The tall, mustachioed man would be Andrew.She tried to adopt a
    bit of Pete's teasing tone, but she was alarmed. You always said armaments were a sure
    thing!Not sure enough. Some innovations tempted me. I should have stuck to mere
    bullets. I don't know what I should have stuck to, perhaps. But I've found a position in
    Vancouver.As what?Now the ferry engine rumbled, and then they backed away from the
    wharf. The car shivered around them.As a butler. It might be nice, just keeping order. I
    think I'll enjoy it. Do you remember my friend Bibikova, from St. Petersburg? She

    married a man named Yerchikovsky. It's their grandson I'll work for. I'll be an old family
    retainer. Vassily, they think I am.He told her this as if she wouldn't care, as if nothing
    about it was of more than idle interest to her. The noise of the engine swelled again, and
    then the ferry docked with a bump, and they drove off it.It was not quite three when they
    got to her house. As soon as they opened the door, she saw the telegram on the floor,
    where it had landed when the delivery boy pushed it through the slot. She picked it up.
    Stella was barking in the backyard.Pete took one of her hands. Let's have a look at the
    pictures. I would like to see the ones Sei did for you. He meant Mr. Kimura. She took off
    her hat and set it on the hall table. The pictures were in the closet. She got them out, then
    went into the kitchen and turned on the gas under the kettle.When she came back, Pete
    was standing in front of the rabbit. The animal looked nearly vaporous today, a rabbit
    made of mist crouched down beside stalks of luminous green bamboo. The bamboo
    reminded her more vividly of Mr. Kimura than the rabbit did--she remembered the exact
    way that his fingers held the brush and seemed to press the leaves of the bamboo out of it,
    one by one. That was decades ago now. Mr. Kimura had been dead for two years. They
    were all so old. Pete set aside the rabbit, and there were the coots. The rabbit was a sketch
    that Mr. Kimura had given her, but the coots she had commissioned. He had painted it on
    the north end of the island, not far from where they got on the 37 that very morning,
    though she hadn't been there in years. Now she gazed at the curve of the far edge of the
    pond against the higher curve of the hillside. Far to the left, a solitary chick swam so fast
    that he made ripples. To the right, the other chicks clustered together, picking bits of
    things off the surface of the water. Their lives had been so brief that they never even lost
    their red heads, but Mr. Kimura had caught their friskiness perfectly. Then she could
    hardly see the painting for the tears in her eyes. Pete, don't go away!He put his arm
    around her, squeezed hard. He knew, of course, that she adored him, or admired him, or
    whatever it was. He was one of those sorts of men that women were wiser to stay away
    from, men who took an interest in women, and observed them, and knew what they were
    thinking.Darling, I should have been a different person. But I'm not.And Margaret felt
    herself almost say, Me, too. But she didn't know how to say it, because she hardly knew,
    even as old