The Two Hotel Francforts: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

than comfortably, Julia and I. Never once in the course of our marriage did I have to deny her anything she wanted. But we weren’t rich. Almost everything I earned, we spent. What savings we had were in francs, which in the wake of the German takeover had lost most of their value. Indeed, had it not been for the three hundred-dollar bills (a gift from my brother Harry) that, in a moment of cautionary foresight, I had stowed away in my sock drawer, I don’t know how we would have survived in Lisbon. Probably Julia would have had to sell her jewelry.
    Eventually she sat down again at the vanity. She reshuffled her cards.
    “He asked if we’d like to have dinner with them tonight,” I said after a moment. “Edward, I mean.”
    “Oh? And what did you tell him?”
    “That it would depend on you. On whether you felt up to it.” I took a breath, let a few seconds pass. “What do you think?”
    “Why not? One has to eat.”
    “You mean you’ll go?”
    “Why do you sound surprised? Whatever else you might say about them, they’re not bores. And what’s the alternative? Another dreary dinner here at the hotel? No, thanks.”
    “All right, I’ll call them to let them know we’re on. Or better yet, I’ll drop by their hotel and leave a note. Yes, it might be better to leave a note.”
    “What do you think I should wear?”
    “Why not go out and buy yourself a new dress?”
    “In Lisbon? Please.” But I could tell from her tone that she was entertaining the possibility.
    “Well, I’m off,” I said. “I’ll be back in half an hour or so. Also”—Iwas now standing in the doorway—“do bear in mind, darling, that England’s not a safe bet. After all, there’s rationing. Any day, bombs could start dropping.”
    “And any day U-boats could land off Long Island,” Julia said.
    “You’re right,” I said. “Any day U-boats could land off Long Island.”

Chapter 4
    Had you met Julia that summer, the summer of 1940, you would probably have thought her a sedate woman, elegant and underfed and austere. She was forty-three but looked thirty-five, with taut pale skin and bobbed brown hair and huge eyes like those of a nocturnal marsupial. She dressed conservatively. Lanvin or Chanel, not Schiaparelli. Tweed or cotton or black silk, not sea-foam green chiffon. Nothing about her appearance suggested eroticism or pique or vulnerability. But she was full of surprises.
    We had met … but here is the thing: I can’t for the life of me remember exactly where we met, only that the occasion was a reception following some sort of public lecture or recital or poetry reading. For in New York, in the twenties, public lectures and recitals and poetry readings were largely the province of the restless and the lost—both unions of which I was a card-carrying member. I was then twenty-five and working at an Oldsmobile dealership on Broadway, a job I had acquired through my brother Harry, who, though two years my junior, was already rising through the ranksat General Motors. Like many youngest children, Harry considered it his duty to take care of his elder siblings, both of whom he regarded as wastrels. Well, our brother George—he really was a wastrel. He still is. I was merely aimless. Following my graduation from Wabash, I had moved back in with our parents, whose marriage was on the skids. My father had another woman, and my mother knew it. Most nights she drank herself into a stupor at the kitchen table. One afternoon my father summoned me into his study and said, “It doesn’t matter if you hate me so long as you take care of your mother.” As if that wasn’t guaranteed to drive me out of the house! So I wrote to Harry, who arranged the job for me in New York. I think he understood that it would do me a world of good to get out of Indianapolis and start earning my own money. As for our mother, well, he took on that duty, too. Youngest children are like that. It was a sacrifice for which, in later years, he would