Americana

This police-blotter description, meant to conceal the way she felt about him, had precisely the opposite effect; so precisely, in fact, that I wondered whether she had pla

"The dream, David. I just thought of something. Maybe the clue is that we were just sitting there."

"The way we're sitting here."

"Maybe that's it. Maybe I was repressing something."

"Maybe that's it," I said.

Then, right on cue, she went to the window like Olivia de Havilland, so gracefully ill.

"It's still snowing," she said.

Communication between us was extremely precise. For a moment I thought of all the old Burtian and Kirkesque characteristics, the clenched emphatic fist, majestic teeth, angry hand brushing the hair, the surprise of a colossal smile, a smile as rich and full as a field of sun-cut Kansas wheat, and then a touch of passionate sadness, low flame in the eyes. Kirk as Van Gogh. Burt as the Birdman of Alcatraz. It was a comfortable feeling to be back in the simpleminded past. I noticed two new prints on the wall. I couldn't identify the artists but their subject was the same, expressionistic Germany, thick black plague and guilt, and I felt almost sure she had become interested in German painting because of her photographer friend, the man's man of the great outdoors. I moved toward her and the moment my hand touched her hip, loose and soft and lazy inside the housedress, I thought of the girl I had said goodnight to only several hours before, and of the circle she would resume with her sisters or brotherly lovers, the circle I had been afraid to enter. Meredith nude by the window was a known quantity. I took off my shirt.

Minutes later we were in bed and there was the feeling of a strange conspiracy. There was gratitude between us then, communication, mutual willingness to honor our conspiracy. And at the end, the fevers of our breaths mingling, what I knew more than anything was the feeling of coming back to an old and affectionate house. It was the twenty-first time we had made love in the five years since our divorce.

I carried in the portable TV and we watched a movie for half an hour or so. It was one of those old English films in which people are always promising to meet at Victoria Station the moment the war is over. She fell alseep then, on her belly, one leg draped over my thigh, her all-American ass classic and twinkling, campus-worthy as ever. My head went to one side and I was just begi

I slipped out from under her leg and turned off the TV. I went naked down the stairs, carrying my shoes and clothing. I wanted to wake up alone; it was a characteristic of mine, which many women learned to despise down through the years. My apartment welcomed me, dim and silent, the red-wine flavor of paintings and rugs, the fireplace and oak paneling, the black leather upholstery, old and comfortably cracked, the dull copper mugs on the mantelpiece and the burnished ale tone of the desk lamp-all warm and familiar and needing no acknowledgment, all reminding me that solitude asks no pledges of anyone. I took a shower and went to bed.

4

Weede De