Marry Me Read Online Free PDF Page B

eight.’
    ‘Is that what you want?’
    ‘No. You know I want you with me always.’
    And, for all the evidence to the contrary she felt this as true. She was his wife. This strange fact, unknown to the world but known to them, made whatever looked wrong right, whatever seemed foolish wise. She, Sally, was Jerry’s woman, and what had been precious in the first illicit trip was that in those two days she had felt this truth growing, had felt him relax. The first night, he had not slept. Several times she had been twitched awake by his body sliding from the bed, getting a drink of water, adjusting the air conditioner, rummaging in his suitcase.
    ‘What are you looking for?’
    ‘My pyjamas.’
    ‘Are you cold?’
    ‘A little. Go to sleep.’
    ‘I can’t. You’re unhappy.’
    ‘I’m very happy. I love you.’
    ‘But I don’t keep you warm.’
    ‘You are a little cooler than Ruth, somehow.’
    ‘Really?’
    Her voice must have shown that this unexpected comparison had hurt her, for he tried to retract. ‘No, I don’t know. Forget it. Please go to sleep.’
    ‘I’ll go back tomorrow. I won’t stay tomorrow night if I give you insomnia.’
    ‘Don’t be so touchy. You don’t give me insomnia. The Lord gives me insomnia.’
    ‘Because you’re sleeping with me.’
    ‘Listen. I love insomnia. It’s a proof that I’m alive.’
    ‘Please come back to bed, Jerry.’ She had held on to his body, trying to drag the kite down from the sky, and herself fell asleep suspended between the earth and the dawn growing in the brick airshaft beyond their blinds. The second night, though still twitchy he slept better, and on this, the third night, three months later, when spring had relaxed into summer, his breathing slowed and became mechanical while her heart was still lightly racing. She thought herself flattered by his trust. But early in the morning, having slept on a vague sense of loss, she awoke to a sharp deserted feeling. The room was different from the first one. The walls, though it was the same hotel, were yellow instead of white, and instead of the flowered prints there were two pallid Holbein portraits. It was brightening enough beyond the blinds to see the faces, so dim they seemed real presences – small-mouthed, fastidious. How many adulterous and drunken couplings had they been compelled to witness? A street-sweeper passed swishing on the avenue below. Their first room had given on an airshaft; this one overlooked, from five stories up, a square. Somewhere below them in the maze of the capital a collection truck whined and a trash can clattered. She thought of her milkman crossing her porch to set his bottles, clinking, inside an abandoned house. Jerry lay diagonally, the sheet bunched around his throat, his feet exposed. She nudged him awake and made him passionate. In the heart of intimacy, he drowsily called her ‘Ruth’. It took him a second to realize his mistake. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I don’t seem to know who you are.’
    ‘I’m Miss Sally Mathias, a crazy woman.’
    ‘Of course you are. And you’re very beautiful.’
    ‘But a little cool, comparatively.’
    ‘You’ve never forgotten that, have you?’
    ‘No.’ It fascinated her; at home, stepping into a bath, she would quickly lay fingers on her skin as if to surprise there the tepidity he had mentioned, and once, shaking Ruth’s hand goodbye after a dinner party, she had held on curiously, trying to grasp the subtle caloric advantage this cool-looking woman had over her. She had noticed how Jerry’s skinny body often seemed feverish. When they first began to make love, she had felt through his motions the habitual responses his wife must make; while locked in this strange man’s embrace she struggled jealously against the outline of the other woman. On her part she bore the impress of Richard’s sexual style, so that in the beginning four contending persons seemed involved on the sofa or in the sand, and a confused, half-Lesbian