27

David got into the car and Marita climbed in beside him and he put the car at a stretch of road where the sand drifted across from the beach and then throttled back and held it in, watching the papyrus grass ahead on his left and the empty beach and the sea on his right as he saw the black road ahead. He put the car at the road again until he saw the white painted bridge coming at him fast then held his speed as he calculated the distance, raised his foot from the throttle and pumped the brakes gently. She was steady and lost momentum at each pump with no deviation and no binding. He brought the car to a stop before the bridge, downshifted and then put her at the road again in a rising disciplined snarl along the N.6 to Cannes.

“She burned them all,” he said.

“Oh David,” Marita said and they drove on into Cannes where the lights were on now and David stopped the car under the trees in front of the cafe where they had first met.

“Wouldn’t you rather go somewhere else?” Marita asked.

“I don’t care,” David said. “It doesn’t make a hell of a lot of difference.”

“If you’d rather just drive,” Marita offered.

“No. I’d rather cool out,” David said. “I just wanted to see if the car was in shape for her to drive it.”

“She’s going?”

“She says so.”

They were sitting at the table on the terrace in the dappled shadow of the leaves of the trees. The waiter had brought Marita a Tio Pepe and David a whiskey and Perrier.

“Do you want me to go with her?” Marita said.

“You don’t really think anything will happen to her?”

“No, David. I think she’s done her damage for a while.”

“Could be,” David said. “She burned every fucking thing except the narrative. The stuff about her.”

“It’s a wonderful narrative,” Marita said.

“Don’t buck me up,” David said. “I wrote it and I wrote what she burned. Don’t give me the stuff they feed the troops.”

“You can write them again.”

“No,” David told her. “When it’s right you can’t remember. Every time you read it again it comes as a great and unbelievable surprise. You can’t believe you did it. When it’s once right you never can do it again. You only do it once for each thing. And you’re only allowed so many in your life.”

“So many what?”

“So many good ones.”

“But you can remember them. You must.”

“Not me and not you and not anybody. They’re gone. Once I get them right they’re gone.”

“She was wicked to you.”

“No,” David said.

“What then?”

“Hurried,” David said. “Everything today was because she was hurried really.”

“I hope you’ll be as kind to me.”

“You just stay around and help me not to kill her. You know what she’s going to do don’t you? She’s going to pay me for the stories so that I won’t lose anything.”

“No.”

“Yes she is. She’s going to have her lawyers have them appraised in some fantastic Rube Goldberg manner and then she’s going to pay me double the appraisal price.”

“Truly, David, she didn’t say that.”

“She said it and it’s infinitely sound. Only the details need working out and what’s more the doubling of the appraisal or whatever makes it generous and gives her pleasure.”

“You can’t let her drive alone, David.”

“I know it.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. But let’s sit here for a little while,” David said. “There isn’t any hurry now. I think she’s probably tired and gone to sleep. I’d like to go to sleep too, with you, and wake up and find the stuff all there and not gone and go to work again.”

“We will sleep and someday when you wake up you’ll work as wonderfully as you did this morning.”

“You’re awfully good,” David said. “But you certainly got into a fine lot of trouble when you came in here that night, didn’t you?”

“Don’t try to put me outside,” Marita said. “I know what I got into.”

“Sure,” said David. “We both know. Do you want another drink?”

“If you do,” Marita said and then, “I didn’t know it was a battle when I came.”

“Neither did I.”

“With you it’s really only you against time.”

“Not the time that’s Catherine’s.”

“Only because her time is different. She’s panicked by it. You said tonight that all of today was only hurry. That wasn’t true but it was perceptive. And you won so well over time for so long.”

Very much later he called for the waiter and paid for the drinks and left a good tip and he had started the car and put on the lights and was letting out the clutch when what had really happened came back to him again. It was back as clear and unblurred as when he had first looked into the trash burner and seen the ashes that had been stirred by the broomstick. He pushed his headlights carefully out through the quiet and empty evening of the town and followed them along the port onto the road. He felt Marita’s shoulder by him and heard her say, “I know, David. It hit me too.”

“Don’t let it.”

“I’m glad it did. There’s nothing to do but we’ll do it.”

“Good.”

“We’ll really do it.Toi et moi. ”