"Almost any time. I'm going to have three. You take what you want. But take them slow."
"I'll see how I do. I don't know anything about it yet except that it's like medicine. Roger?"
"Yes, daughter."
He was feeling the warmth of the alchemist's furnace starting at the pit of his stomach.
"Roger, don't you think I really could be good for you the way I was in the story I made up?"
"I think we could be good to each other and for each other. But I don't like it to be on a basis of stories. I think the story business is bad."
"But you see that's the way I am. I'm a story-maker-upper and I'm romantic I know. But that's how I am. If I was practical I'd never have come to Bimini."
I don't know, Roger thought to himself. If that was what you wanted to do that was quite practical. You didn't just make up a story about it. And the other part of him thought: You must be slipping you bastard if the absinthe can bring the heel in you out that quickly. But what he said was, "I don't know, daughter. I think the story business is dangerous. First you could make up stories about something innocuous, like me, and then there could be all sorts of other stories. There might be bad ones."
"You're not so innocuous."
"Oh yes I am. Or the stories are anyway. Saving me is fairly innocuous. But first you might be saving me and then next you might be saving the world. Then you might start saving yourself."
"I'd like to save the world. I always wished I could. That's awfully big to make a story about. But I want to save you first."
"I'm getting scared," Roger said.
He drank some more of the absinthe and he felt better but he was worried.
"Have you always made up the stories?"
"Since I can remember. I've made them up about you for twelve years. I didn't tell you all the ones. There are hundreds of them."
"Why don't you write instead of making up the stories?"
"I do write. But it's not as much fun as making up the stories and it's much harder. Then they're not nearly as good. The ones I make up are wonderful."
"But you're always the heroine in the stories you write?"
"No. It's not that simple."
"Well let's not worry about it now." He took another sip of the absinthe and rolled it under his tongue.
"I never worried about it at all," the girl said. "What I wanted, always, was you and now I'm with you. Now I want you to be a great writer."
"Maybe we'd better not even stop for dinner," he said. He was still very worried and the absinthe warmth had moved up to his head now and he did not trust it there. He said to himself. What did you think could happen that would not have consequences? What woman in the world did you think could be as sound as a good secondhand Buick car? You've only known two sound women in your life and you lost them both. What will she want after that? And the other part of his brain said, Hail heel. The absinthe certainly brought you out early tonight.
So he said, "Daughter, for now, let's just try to be good to each other and love each other" (he got the word out though the absinthe made it a difficult word for him to articulate) "and as soon as we get out where we are going I will work just as hard and as well as I can."
"That's lovely," she said. "And you don't mind my telling you I made up stories?"
"No," he lied. "They were very nice stories." Which was true.
"Can I have another?" she asked.
"Sure." He wished now they had never taken it although it was the drink he loved best of almost any in the world. But almost everything bad that had ever happened to him had happened when he was drinking absinthe; those bad things which were his own fault. He could tell that she knew something was wrong and he pulled hard against himself so that there would be nothing wrong.
"I didn't say something I shouldn't did I?"
"No, daughter. Here's to you."
"Here's to us."
The second one always tastes better than the first because certain taste buds are numbed against the bitterness of the wormwood so that without becoming sweet, or even sweeter, it becomes less bitter and there are parts of the tongue that enjoy it more.
"It is strange and wonderful. But all it does so far is just bring us to the edge of misunderstanding," the girl said.
"I know," he said. "Let's stick together through it."
"Was it that you thought I was ambitious?"
"It's all right about the stories."
"No. It's not all right with you. I couldn't love you as much as I do and not know when you're upset."
"I'm not upset," he lied. "And I'm not going to be upset," he resolved. "Let's talk about something else."
"It will be wonderful when we're out there and you can work."
She is a little obtuse, he thought. Or maybe does it affect her that way? But he said, "It will be. But you won't be bored?"
"Of course not."
"I work awfully hard when I work."
"I'll work too."
"That will be fun," he said. "Like Mr. and Mrs. Browning. I never saw the play."
"Roger, do you have to make fun of it?"
"I don't know." Now pull yourself together, he said to himself. Now is the time to pull yourself together. Be good now. "I make fun of everything,' he said "I think it will be fine. And it's much better for you to be working when 'm writing."
"Will you mind reading mine sometimes?"
"No. I'll love to."
'Really?"
"No. Of course. I'll be really happy to. Really."
'When you drink this it makes you feel as though you could do anything," the girl said. "I'm awfully glad I never drank it before. Do you mind if we talk about writing, Roger?"
"Hell no."
"Why did you say 'Hell no'?"
'I don't know," he said. "Let's talk about writing. Really I mean it. What about writing?"
"Now you've made me feel like a fool. You don't have to take me in as an equal or a partner. I only meant I'd like to talk about it if you'd like to."
"Let's talk about it. What about it?"
The girl began to cry, sitting straight up and looking at him. She did not sob nor turn her head away. She just looked at him and tears came down her cheeks and her mouth grew fuller but it did not twist nor break.
"Please, daughter," he said. "Please. Let's talk about it or anything else and I'll be friendly."
She bit her lip and then said, "I suppose I wanted to be partners even though I said I didn't."
I guess that was part of the dream and why the hell shouldn't it be? Roger thought. What do you have to hurt her for you bastard? Be good now fast before you hurt her.
"You see I'd like to have you not just like me in bed but like me in the head and like to talk about things that interest us both."
"We will," he said. "We will now. Bratchen daughter, what about writing, my dear beauty?"
"What I wanted to tell you was that drinking this made me feel the way I feel when I am going to write. That I could do anything and that I can write wonderfully. Then I write and it's just dull. The truer I try to make it the duller it is. And when it isn't true it's silly."
"Give me a kiss."
"Here?"
"Yes."
He leaned over the table and kissed her. "You're awfully beautiful when you cry."
"I'm awfully sorry I cried," she said. "You don't really mind if we talk about it do you?"
"Of course not."
"You see that was one of the parts of it I'd looked forward to."
Yes, I guess it was, he thought. Well why shouldn't it be? And we'll do it. Maybe I will get to like it.
"What was it about writing?" he said. "Besides how it seems it's going to be wonderful and then it turns out dull?"
"Wasn't it that way with you when you started?"
"No. When I started I'd feel as though I could do anything and while I was doing it I would feel like I was making the whole world and when I would read it I would think this is so good I couldn't have written it. I must have read it somewhere. Probably in the Saturday Evening Post."
"Weren't you ever discouraged?"
'Not when I started. I thought I was writing the greatest stories ever written and that people just didn't have sense enough to know it."
"Were you really that conceited?"
"Worse probably. Only I didn't think I was conceited. I was just confident."
"If those were your first stories, the ones I read, you had a right to be confident."
"They weren't," he said. "All those first confident stories were lost. The ones you read were when I wasn't confident at all."
"How were they lost, Roger?"
"It's an awful story. I'll tell it to you sometime "Wouldn't you tell it to me now?"
"I hate to because it's happened to other people and to better writers than I am and that makes it sound as though it were made up. There's no reason for it ever happening and yet it's happened many times and it still hurts like a bastard. No it doesn't really. It has a scar over it now. A good thick scar."
"Please tell me about it. If it's a scar and not a scab it won't hurt to will it?"
"No, daughter. Well I was very methodical in those days and I kept original manuscripts in one cardboard folder and typed originals in another and carbons in another. I guess it wasn't so cockeyed methodical. I don't know how else you'd do it. Oh the hell with this story."
"No tell me."
"Well I was working at the Lausanne Conference and it was the holidays coming up and Andrew's mother who was a lovely girl and very beautiful and kind-"
"I was never jealous of her," the girl said. "I was jealous of David's and Tom's mother."
"You shouldn't be jealous of either of them. They were both wonderful."
"I was jealous of Dave's and Tom's mother," Helena said. "I'm not now."
"That's awfully white of you," Roger said. "Maybe we ought to send her a cable."
"Go on with the story, please, and don't be bad."
"All right. The aforesaid Andy's mother thought she would bring down my stuff so I could have it with me and be able to do some work while we had the holiday together. She was going to bring it to me as a surprise. She hadn't written anything about it and when I met her at Lausanne I didn't know anything about it. She was a day late and had wired about it. The only thing I knew was that she was crying when I met her and she cried and cried and when I would ask her what was the matter she told me it was too awful to tell me and then she would cry again. She cried as though her heart was broken. Do I have to tell this story?"
"Please tell me."
"All that morning she would not tell me and I thought of all the worst possible things that could have happened and asked her if they had happened. But she just shook her head. The worst thing I could think of was that she had tromper-ed me or fallen in love with someone else and when I asked her that she said, 'Oh how can you say that?' and cried some more. I felt relieved then and then, finally, she told me.
"She had packed all the manuscript folders in a suitcase and left the suitcase with her other bags in her first class compartment in the Paris-Lausanne-Milan Express in the Gare de Lyon while she went out on the quai to buy a London paper and a bottle of Evian water. You remember the Gare de Lyon and how they would have sort of push tables with papers and magazines and mineral water and small flasks of cognac and sandwiches with ham between sliced long pointed-end bread wrapped in paper and other push carts with pillows and blankets that you rented? Well when she got back into the compartment with her paper and her Evian water the suitcase was gone.
"She did everything there was to be done. You know the French police. The first thing she had to do was show her carte d'identite and try to prove she was not an international crook herself and that she did not suffer from hallucinations and that she was sure she actually had such a suitcase and were the papers of political importance and besides, madame, surely there exist copies. She had that all night and the next day when a detective came and searched the flat for the suitcase and found a shotgun of mine and demanded to know if I had a permis de chasse I think there was some doubt in the minds of the police whether she should be allowed to proceed to Lausanne and she said the detective had followed her to the train and appeared in the compartment just before the train pulled out and said, 'You are quite sure madame that all your baggage is intact now? That you have not lost anything else? No other important papers?'
"So I said, 'But it's all right really. You can't have brought the originals and the typed originals and the carbons.'
"'But I did,' she said. 'Roger, I know I did.' It was true too. I found out it was true when I went up to Paris to see. I remember walking up the stairs and opening the door to the flat, unlocking it and pulling back on the brass handle of the sliding lock and the odor of Eau de Tavel in the kitchen and the dust that had sifted in through the windows on the table in the dining room and going to the cupboard where I kept the stuff in the dining room and it was all gone. I was sure it would be there; that some of the manila folders would be there because I could see them there so clearly in my mind. But there was nothing there at all, not even my paper clips in a cardboard box nor my pencils and erasers nor my pencil sharpener that was shaped like a fish, nor my envelopes with the return address typed in the upper left-hand corner, nor my international postage coupons that you enclosed for them to send the manuscripts back with and that were kept in a small Persian lacquered box that had a pornographic painting inside of it. They were all gone. They had all been packed in the suitcase. Even the red stick of wax was gone that I had used to seal letters and packages. I stood there and looked at the painting inside the Persian box and noticed the curious over-proportion of the parts represented that always characterizes pornography and I remember thinking how much I disliked pornographic pictures and painting and writing and how after this box had been given to me by a friend on his return from Persia I had only looked at the painted interior once to please the friend and that after that I had only used the box as a convenience to keep coupons and stamps in and had never seen the pictures. I felt almost as though I could not breathe when I saw that there really were no folders with originals, nor folders with typed copies, nor folders with carbons and then I locked the door of the cupboard and went into the next room, which was the bedroom, and lay down on the bed and put a pillow between my legs and my arms around another pillow and lay there very quietly. I had never put a pillow between my legs before and I had never lain with my arms around a pillow but now I needed them very badly. I knew everything I had ever written and everything that I had great confidence in was gone. I had rewritten them so many times and gotten them just how I wanted them and I knew I could not write them again because once I had them right I forgot them completely and each time I ever read them I wondered at them and at how I had ever done them.
"So I lay there without moving with the pillows for friends and I was in despair. I had never had despair before, true despair, nor have I ever had it since. My forehead lay against the Persian shawl that covered the bed, which was only a mattress and springs set on the floor and the bed cover was dusty too and I smelt the dust and lay there with my despair and the pillows were my only comfort."
"What were they that were gone," the girl asked.