The Theoretical Foot Read Free

turned up with anyone else, you know? Where’s Susan? Didn’t you tell me last night on the telephone that she’s with you? Is she not well?”
    â€œShe’ll be right along,” Joe said. “She said to tell you she’s terribly sorry to be late. But Sara, about Sue . . .?” And he’d begun then to ask her about what had been on his mind, then immediately thought better. “Well, you’re looking absolutely swell, you know?” Her dark hair, with its smooth precision, was twisted into a low knot at the back of her head, light streaks striping back from either temple. He stared at her thin peaked brows, her red mouth, so small and sensual.
    Sara smiled vaguely under his affectionate scrutiny.
    â€œTerribly busy lately,” she said, “but work agrees with me. But what was it you were just thinking, Joe?”
    â€œOh,” he said, “only that Sue’s afraid of you.”
    â€œIs that what’s made her more than an hour late?” Sara asked. “No, really, Joe, I got rather cross, not with Susan but with you, and not for the first time either.”
    Joe groaned audibly. “I know. God, I know. I’m terrible and you and Tim, too, are always so damned nice about it. But there was first one thing, then another, then we got sort of balled up and . . .?”
    He stopped, grinning faintly at his private joke. Or was it private? He glanced furtively at Sara; he never knew with her. Her face remained polite and aloof.
    â€œBut she’ll be along in a minute,” he finished lamely, feeling crude and collegiate.
    â€œThat’s good. It’s really nice to see you here again. Tim will be so glad to see you too. Now drink up, Joe.”
    Joe paused, the glass on its way to his open and thirsty mouth to say, “How is Tim?”
    â€œOh, fine as ever . . . a little pooped now and then. He gets upset, little things that he doesn’t like to talk about. It’s been a funny summer, what with this and that. But he’ll be really, really glad when you get there.”
    Joe felt once more the uncertainty he so often had with Sara Porter. Was she really cold, really pushing all the world from her in a thousand subtle ways, or was she the warm hospitable woman he believed he knew? He shook his head slightly. Why worry? Most of the time, except when he remembered how long he had known her, yet how little he knew her, he felt all right about her and that it might not really matter.
    They clinked glasses, and then sat for a minute without talking, watched the green light flicker over their table, listened to children playing lazily on the quay by the boat landing. Joe finished his glass and then poured half a second one solemnly into Sara’s before he drank from it.
    â€œGod, that’s good,” he said, wiping the foam from his full wide lips, then smiling. “You know the beer in Munich isn’t as good as it used to be, Sara. It tastes thin, somehow.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œI said the Munich beer tastes thin, different from the old days.”
    â€œYou know you speak more softly all the time, Joe. Whenever you blow into town I always go through a few hours of wondering if I’m becoming deaf.”
    â€œBlow in is right! Hell! And I promised you, last time, that I’d let you know in advance of my coming, didn’t I?”
    â€œOh, don’t brood. But yes, it is more convenient to know at least a few hours before, but I suppose you got all balled up again or something.”
    Joe peered at her suspiciously, but her eyes were as bland as the rest of her face and betrayed nothing.
    â€œWhat I’m afraid,” she went right on, “is that this time we can’t put you up.” She then stopped speaking to laugh at his pained and horror-struck face.
    â€œOh Christ, no,” Joe said in protest. “And after all I’ve told Sue about La Prairie and your cooking? And how we’ve