Listening to Billie Read Online Free PDF Page B

poem, small and beautiful, complete.
    She got up abruptly from the desk; she hurried to get ready for bed.
    Although tired, she was wakeful; her mind raced about, back and forth across her life, those almost thirty years of it. Behind her closed eyelids her past was vividly present: she could see Evan (with diminishing pain, she noted, at last), could see chunky Catherine, as a baby, laughing, Daria, a dark and skimpy little girl, near this house, crying over a kitten that had been scratched by a squirrel—this house that she could see steadily, never changing, over all the years of her life.
    Close to sleep now, she all at once sees Billie again, long-awaited and vividly beautiful. Billie enters the club, with her straining gray dog ahead of her: Billie holds the leash up high, she holds her head high, her lovely face, and after Billie and the dog comes the slouch-hatted man with his bandaged hand.
    Of course that was how they entered, in that order.

4 / In Paris
    In Paris, Daria and Smith go to dinner at Maxim’s; a great treat, a celebration. The two of them, married one whole week. Married!
    But is that possible, only one week since the minister began it all, “Dearly beloved—” in the orchard, in the familiar smells of apple and grass? Eliza looking sad, and Josephine scowling (why?), and little Catherine happy as a kitten. One week: is it possible that they are now at Maxim’s, on an elegant French evening?
    Everything there, at Maxim’s, pleases Smith greatly; he is almost swollen with pleasure: their table, a good one; the waiters; and the smooth bare well-tended, well-braceleted arms of the women in the room, all in silk or chiffon, expensive fabrics; and the portentous but well-tanned men in black ties. The mirrors, returning all that, in their Art Nouveau frames. Smoke, perfume.
    Smith whispers, “Do you know some of the richest people in the world are in this room tonight?”
    “Really? Sounds like a good place for a bomb.” Daria did not mean to say this; it “slips out,” and then she giggles, and then coughs, and sips champagne. And tries to taste her dessert, a peach with ice cream. Pěche Melba.
    Smith frowns, and then smiles too quickly, too reassuringly.
    Daria closes her eyes against everything, and then for an instant she has a quick apocalyptic vision: Maxim’s
is
bombed; blood and money and champagne and food pour out into the Rue Royale, diamonds and gold spouting out from windows like fireworks. And a crowd of poor people gathers to sift through the spoils, to wash off the jewels and cash. She opens her eyes; the opulent room is still there, quite safe. Of course it is.
    They are staying—or, rather, they were staying at the Ritz. Now, because Daria kept getting lost there (silly, really, but there were so many corridors, so lined with such dazzling displays, such diamonds and gold, such crystal), now they are staying at a smaller, more comprehensible hotel, the Montalembert. Except that Daria is afraid of the elevator: a small slow glass cage, with bronze fittings. She does not tell Smith of this fear; he was so nice (sweet, really) about leaving the Ritz. In fact, she senses that he likes his indulgent-husband role: “Darling, you really don’t like it here, do you? Well, easiest thing, we’ll move.” But she senses too that his indulgence will only go so far; she does not want to make him nervous, to be worrisome, an interference with his larger plans.
    After the dinner at Maxim’s the elevator makes her terribly dizzy; when they get to the room, she is sick in the bathroom. Too much rich food, Smith thinks smilingly.
    Strangely, the bed at the Montalembert feels exactly like the bed at the Ritz: large and soft and terrifying. Hot, smelling of failure and of slime—odors available only to Daria; Smith doesn’t notice.
    And a new word has entered Daria’s mind: Fuck. That is what they do, what Smith does to her, repeatedly. Before marrying they kissed a lot, he gently touched