The Last Time They Met Read Free

at any minute be sprayed with sibilants.
    Another conversation she had only bits of. The third writer looked at her not at all, as if she were invisible. It would not be fair to say that he was gay. How odd, she thought, that men would talk of love, had been talking of love before she had even joined them, a topic it was supposed was of interest only to women.
    She answered without hesitation.
Experience. No one has ever accurately described a marriage.
    —
A novel can’t, can it?
This from the Australian, in broad antipodean accent.
A marriage doesn’t lend itself to art. Certainly not to satisfying structure or to dialogue worth reading.
    —
You write of love,
the man who could not be called gay said to Linda, rendering her suddenly visible; and she could not help but be pleased that someone knew her work.
    —
I do,
she said, not embarrassed to state her claim in this arena. —
I believe it to be the central drama of our lives.
Immediately, she qualified her bold pronouncement.
For most of us, that is.
    — Not death?
asked Seizek, a drunk looking for debate.
    — I count it as part of the entire story. All love is doomed, seen in the light of death.
    — I take it you don’t believe that love survives the grave,
the Australian offered.
    And she did not, though she had tried to. After Vincent.
    — Why central?
asked the third man, who had a name after all: William Wingate.
    — It contains all theatrical possibilities. Passion, jealousy, betrayal, risk. And is nearly universal. It’s something extraordinary that happens to ordinary people.
    — Not fashionable to write about love, though, is it.
This from Seizek, who spoke dismissively.
    — No. But in my experience, fashion doesn’t have a great deal to do with validity.
    — No, of course not,
Seizek said quickly, not wanting to be thought invalid.
    Linda drifted to the edges of the talk, assaulted by a sudden hunger. She hadn’t had a proper meal (if one didn’t count the small trapezoidal carton of nachos) since breakfast in her hotel room in a city seven hundred miles away. She asked the men if they wanted anything from the buffet table, she was just going to get a cracker, she was starved, she hadn’t eaten since breakfast. No, no, the men did not want, but of course she must get herself. The salsa was decent, they said, and they wouldn’t be eating for another hour anyway. And, by the way, did anyone know the restaurant? And she reflected, as she turned away from them, that just a year ago, or maybe two, one of the men would have peeled away, followed her to the buffet table, would have viewed the occasion as opportunity. Such were the ironies of age, she thought. When the attention had been ubiquitous, she had minded.
    Small bowl of colored food left the guest to guess at their identity: the green might be guacamole, the red was doubtless the decent salsa, and the pink possibly a shrimp or crab dip. But she was stumped as to the grayish-beige, not a good color for food under the best of circumstances. She reached for a small paper plate — the management had not provided for large appetites — and heard the hush before she understood it, a mild hush as if someone had lowered the volume a notch or two. From the corner, she heard a whispered name. It couldn’t be, she thought, even as she understood it could. She turned to see the cause of the reverential quiet.
    He stood in the doorway, as if momentarily blinded by the unfamiliar. As if having been injured, he was having to relearn certain obvious cues to reality: pods of men and women with drinks in hand, a room attempting to be something it was not, faces that might or might not be familiar. His hair was silver now, the shock of that, badly cut, atrociously cut really, too long at the sides and at the back. How he would be hating this, she thought, already taking his side. His face was ravaged in the folds, but you could not say he was unhandsome. The navy eyes were soft and blinking, as if he had