Snopes: The Hamlet, The Town, The Mansion

“Yes,” she said. She clung, gripping my arm hard and strong in both hands again, we walking again and I thinking Why not, why shouldn’t it be so, why should there not be somewhere in the world at least one more Barton Kohl or at least a fair substitute, something to do, at least something a little better than grief when she said, “Now,” and stopped and turned us until we faced the moment’s pause before the final plunge of the sun, the tall and ragged palms and pines fixed by that already fading explosion until the night breeze would toss and thresh them. Then it passed. Now it was just sunset. “There,” she said. “It’s all right now. We were here. We saved it. Used it. I mean, for the earth to have come all this long way from the beginning of the earth, and the sun to have come all this long way from the beginning of time, for this one day and minute and second out of all the days and minutes and seconds, and nobody to use it, no two people who are finally together at last after all the difficulties and waiting, and now they are together at last and are desperate because of all the long waiting, they are even running along the beach toward where the place is, not far now, where they will finally be alone together at last and nobody in the world to know or care or interfere so that it’s like the world itself wasn’t except you so now the world that wasn’t even invented yet can begin.” And I thinking Maybe its the fidelity and the enduring which must be so at least once in your lifetime, no matter who sufifers. That you have heard of love and loss and grief and fidelity and enduring and you have seen love and loss and maybe you have even seen love and loss and grief but not all five of them—or four of them, since the fidelity and enduring I am speaking of were inextricable: one—this, even while she was saying, “I dont mean just—” and stopped herself before I could have raised the hand to clap to on her lips—if I had been going to, saying: “It’s all right, I haven’t forgotten; I’m not going to say that one any more.” She looked at me. “So maybe you already know what I’m going to ask you.”

“Yes,” I said; she could read that. I wrote marriage

“How did you know?”

What does it Matter I wrote Im glad

“I love you,” she said. “Let’s go eat. Then we will go home and I can tell you.”

I wrote Not home first To change

“No,” she said. “I wont need to change where we’re going.”

She didn’t. Among the other female customers, she could have worn anything beyond an ear trumpet and a G-string, and even then probably the ear trumpet would have drawn the attention. It was a joint. By midnight on Saturday (possibly any other night in such boom ship-building times) it would be bedlam, jumping as they say; with the radio going full blast, it already was to me. But then, I was not deaf. But the food—the flounder and shrimp—was first rate and the waitress produced glasses and ice to match the flask I had brought; and with all the other uproar her voice was not so noticeable. Because she used it, as if by premeditation, about things I would need only Yes and No for, babbling actually, about the shipyard, the work, the other people, soundng almost like a little girl home on her first holiday from school, eating rapidly too, not chewing it enough, until we had done and she said, “We can go now.”

She hadn’t told me yet where I was to stay, nor did I know where her place was either. So when we were in the car again I snapped on the dash light so she could see the tablet and wrote Where. “That way,” she said. It was back toward the center of town and I drove on until she said, “Turn here,” and I did; presently she said, “There it is,” so that I had to pull in to the curb to use the tablet

Which is

“The hotel,” she said. “Right yonder.” I wrote

We want to talk Havent you got a Sitting room your place Quiet & private

“We’re going to both stay there tonight. It’s all arranged. Our rooms are next door with just the wall between and I had both beds moved against it so after we talk and are in bed any time during the night I can knock on the wall and you can hear it and if I hold my hand against the wall I can feel you answer.—I know, I wont knock loud enough to disturb anybody, for anybody to hear it except you.”