The Last Time They Met Read Online Free PDF Page B

consoling others.
    — It’s such a surprise to see you,
she said.
I didn’t know. I hadn’t read the program.
    — Would you have come if you had known?
    The question was a tunnel with a dozen furtive compartments. — Curiosity might have made me bold.
    Thomas released her hand and took out a pack of cigarettes. In a series of gestures both ancient and familiar to Linda, he lit a cigarette, picked a piece of tobacco off his lip, and blew a thin stream of blue smoke that hung in the damp air, a bit of calligraphy dissipating. There would be, of course, no point in mentioning his health. Thomas would almost certainly say he’d lived too long already.
    — Would it surprise you to learn that I came here because of you?
he asked.
    Something more than surprise kept her silent.
    — Yes, it surprised me, too,
he said.
But there it is. I saw your name and thought . . . Well, I don’t know what I thought.
    Behind them, a ferry or tugboat blew its whistle.
    — I am hungry, actually,
Thomas said.
    — You have a reading in half an hour.
    — Payment exacted for all this fun.
    Linda looked at him and laughed.
    Thomas stood, the gentle man, and took her arm.
I think this means we owe ourselves a dinner afterwards.
    — At least that,
Linda said in kind.
    ----
    They took a taxi to the theater. At the door they parted — with customary good wishes on Linda’s part, the obligatory grimace on Thomas’s — and truly, he seemed to blanch slightly when Susan Sefton accosted him and impressed upon him the fact of the performance in ten minutes’ time.
    It was a steeply inclined room that might once have been a lecture hall, with seats that fanned out from a podium like spokes from a wheel. Linda took off her wet raincoat and let it crumple behind her back, the cloth giving off the scent of something vaguely synthetic. Alone now, anonymous, with two strangers seating themselves beside her, she allowed herself to think about Thomas’s assertion that he had come to the festival because of her. It wouldn’t be entirely true — there would have been a sense of reemerging into a world he’d left behind — but the part that might be true alarmed her. She didn’t, couldn’t, want such a costly overture.
    The trickle into the theater was modest, producing a pock-marked gallery that could be, Linda knew, dispiriting when viewed from a stage. She ached for Thomas to have a good audience. There were students with backpacks, a few couples on what appeared to be dates, some women like herself sitting in small, cheerful groups. The would-be poets came in singly, supplicants seeking words of inspiration or, at the very least, an agent. But then a side door, forgotten or locked until now, swung open to admit a steady stream of people; and Linda watched as row after row filled and spilled into the next, the gallery’s complexion clearing. Linda felt, oddly, a mother’s pride (or a wife’s, she supposed, though she’d had little practice; Vincent had been terrified at just the thought of public speaking). The respectable audience became a flood, the doors held open by bodies that could go no further into the theater. Thomas’s years in self-proclaimed and necessary exile had whetted appetites. History was being made, albeit history of a parochial and limited sort.
    Beside her, a younger couple speculated about the famous silence.
    — His daughter was killed on a boat.
    — Oh, God. Can you imagine?
    — Washed overboard. She was only five. Or six, maybe.
    — Jesus.
    — They say he had a breakdown after.
    — I might have read that.
    The lights dimmed, and an academic introduction was made. An exile, though not its cause, was alluded to. The introduction did not do justice to Thomas, though it suggested a singular achievement that one might honor even if there hadn’t been any work in years. The spotlight made unflattering shadows on the academic’s face. She herself would soon be standing there.
    When Thomas emerged from the wings, a