Chapter 3

And by the way, though I took the trouble to tell you this, dear friend in your enchanted isle, I may be your means of transportation but I'm not yet your concierge.

Love and kisses,

Jeanne

That's like Jeanne: to use a French term for what never existed in America, was Althea's second thought as she stood reading Jeanne's letter on the sidewalk outside the post office. The joyous burst of a hitherto denied possibility had curved her lips in a secret smile. Paul was alone in New York. Would she act on an expectation impossibly entwined with conjecture and seize the opportunity to invite Paul to visit while Bryce was away? Then, at the thought of such a stringent test of Paul's attraction to her, she felt a terrible trepidation. What if he were to come only for her to wish him gone, to find in the uncluttered seashore air that what she had dreamt of was a mistake and she was stuck there with it? There was also the question of all of her time. To put it succinctly, would she paint with Paul there?

The day was picture-perfect, the noon light was blue without being blinding, and so nearly was the air cleared of wind that the planted border of geraniums in front of the post office bent but faintly. Cabbage whites and monarch butterflies dipped to the grass in narrowing spirals. How would she communicate with him? Althea, who didn't want to wait, received more letters than she wrote, yet she hesitated to put it to him over the phone. A terse telegram was her alternative: "Received message via J. If you're free for a short visit, I'm here till Sept. 1. Althea." A phone number followed.

That was the wire delivered into Paul's outstretched palm later that very afternoon in New York by a messenger in bleached blue jeans and a Shakespeare festival tee-shirt with an encircled portrait of the Bard on its wearer's left breast. The messenger was antsy because Paul hadn't answered the entrance buzzer, and he had had to wait in the lobby until the porter--there was no doorman--let him in after a long look at his outfit and a couple of sharp questions. Paul had been dancing in his studio and hadn't heard the buzzer. But the second buzzer outside the private door that led to the roof was much louder. Ringing in the penthouse, it broke into the dance music like an alarm. In the midst of a leap, Paul was startled, and he came down hard on his ankle. He was swearing under his breath when he limped across the roof to open the private door on the building's top landing.

Almost injured, he was imptient before he opened the door and astonished afterwards. He thought that telegrams were obsolete, but there was his name, Paul Carmichael, computer-typed on white paper under the envelope's transparent window. He offered a tip and dismissed the messenger. After today's date, August 22, 1980, he read the message, but didn't at once identify the sender. Then, looking at the letters of her name, he pictured the honey-colored hair of Althea sifted with light on a New York street. It was true he was due for a change of scene, but where was her "here"? Was it like this woman he didn't know well, but had, admittedly, imagined touching, to neglect such pertinent information?

He remembered when he had first met Althea in the spring. In his mind he watched her again as she turned a corner, embattled head down, into the March wind, her hands stuck in her trenchcoat pockets. What would she be like, sunburnt in August? Right there, illuminated by a shaft of afternoon sunlight, he read the telegram twice and called her back.

Althea had spent a long time on the beach and then gone shopping, stowing her bag of groceries in a plastic milk crate which she'd strapped to the rack above the rear wheel of her bike. Valiantly, she pedalled back. Just as she rode in a low-gear track across the lawn, she heard from inside the house the island phone exchange's rasping buzz. The screen door banged shut behind her, and she picked up the receiver on the sixth ring.

"I called to say I got your telegram and that you forgot to say from where you sent it," Paul said in Manhattan. But when Althea told him, it appeared he didn't know where Block Island was. Breathless from her bike ride, she elaborated and he listened. It was settled that he would arrive by train and little prop plane on Tuesday (a whole four days, she privately reckoned, before Jeanne came on Saturday).

After Paul hung up the phone, he basked in a sense of pleasure and possibility. Just when he'd been feeling sorry for himself for having been abandoned by Bryce, an attractive woman had offered him a seashore vacation. It stunned him--how eagerly he had accepted Althea's generous invitation, and how easily they had made plans. He was welcome to stay all week if he liked, Althea had said.

He hadn't paused a second to wonder whether or not he ought to visit her, and, once he had decided to do it, he didn't mar his decision with regret. It wasn't hard for him to convince himself that he deserved a change of scene. If Bryce objected, Paul thought, it was his fault for having left me to my own devices in the first place.

In the stream of his thoughts that followed, Paul blamed Bryce. During the year and a half that they had lived together, he had never known Bryce to go anywhere without him. No, he had been the one to go away--on obligatory visits to his family during the holidays, on tours with the companies he danced with--and he'd always felt secure in the knowledge that Bryce was at home waiting for him.

He realized that it was unfair of him to resent Bryce for having left this time, but he couldn't help it. He minded Bryce's secrecy about his trip as much as the trip itself. After all, he lived with Bryce and shared his moods, even the gloomy ones, which at first Bryce had felt obliged to conceal. He thought of how he had encouraged Bryce to open up. As a consequence, he had often been witness to Bryce's helpless anger at having to live with the incurable disease of multiple sclerosis, and he believed he had tried as well as he could to soothe Bryce and ease his intermittent bouts of despair. He recalled the countless nights when he had held Bryce in his arms and wished that he could give him some of his own health and strength.

Over the months, he had grown as familiar with Bryce's opinions as with his own. He remembered how Bryce had liked to say that he was born in a poisoned place. Yet now, after years of exile, he had returned to his native Meridian. Paul didn't know why Bryce had gone back to visit a family he'd claimed he tried to forget because he couldn't bear their disappointment in him and their pity of him. Bryce had not divulged the content of the letter he had received ten days ago, which had caused him to phone his parents, purchase an airplane ticket, and leave precipitously for Mississippi.

"It's a family matter," was all he'd say. "I may be gone a few weeks, perhaps a month." Paul had taken Bryce's reticence as a sign that Bryce distrusted him, and he was so stung that he didn't know what to say. All he could think of was to bring up the end-of-summer dinner party they'd been planning for the Saturday following Labor Day. They had a guest list of fourteen people. "Is the party still on?" Paul asked.

"I don't know, I can't tell you. Maybe you'd better go ahead and cancel it, because I can't make any promises."

Annoyed by Bryce's answer, Paul had grown stonily silent. But for the first time in Paul's memory, Bryce had seemed too preoccupied to notice him. What was going on? he wondered. Bryce's secrecy had infuriated him, but once refused, he was too proud to beg for information. Before Bryce left, Paul had withdrawn from him.

He expected Bryce would phone from Mississippi. After a few days went by without a call, Paul's resentment grew. If he was being unfair to Bryce, he told himself he no longer cared.

Yet as the days passed, his anger was infiltrated by tenderer feelings. Though it hurt him to admit it, he missed Bryce. He thought of calling him, but he didn't know what to say. Still, he didn't sit at home feeling sorry for himself.

Going around town, having to answer to no one, he realized that he had missed his freedom. He considered that perhaps he wasn't meant to live the rest of his life as one half of a couple.

The appeal of Althea's invitation was irresistible. At that moment his wish for revenge was stronger than his desire for a reconciliation with Bryce. He remembered the time last May when he'd introduced Althea to Bryce. He'd known Althea then for about two months--actually, he didn't really know her. He'd met her a few times casually walking along the tree-lined upper promenade of Riverside Park, and twice they'd had a long conversation. They'd learned that they lived on the same block, and that they were both artists, whose arts opposed and complemented one another, she being a painter--a plastic artist--and he being a dancer--a performer.

They'd already established this basis on that afternoon the previous May, when, on an impulse, he had invited her up for tea. He had wanted to show her the roof garden that he and Bryce had built. Actually, he had built it, and Bryce had paid for it, but he hadn't bothered to explain that to Althea. Althea had been graceful and sweet, he recalled. He had enjoyed showing her the garden. Afterwards, when they were having tea, he had thought that Bryce had been brusque with her. Though he couldn't remember what Bryce had said, he could still picture how Althea, sitting straight-backed on a wrought-iron bench with a design of vines and leaves, had responded to Bryce's look by glancing away.

Now, contemplating his revenge, it pleased Paul to suspect that Bryce was already a little jealous of Althea. When he left for Block Island, he deliberately didn't let Bryce know.