AFTER THE READING, and after some discussion of the reading, I made my way to the bar, where I ordered a drink from Lou. When he handed it to me, I leaned across the bar and said, “We have to talk.”
“No, we don’t, Peter,” he said. “Go and talk to the people who want to talk about Dead Air. You don’t have to say anything to me.”
“But I feel that I owe you — ”
“Nothing,” he said. “You have no obligation to the person who gives you a gift. None. None at all.”
“Well, thank you, but — ”
“Enough.”
“But why — what are you — what are you up to?”
“I’m having a good time here, and you do not need to know the trick of it. This is making me happy. Don’t spoil it.”
“Okay,” I said, raising my glass to him, “I won’t.”
IN BED, I snuggled up to Albertine and said, “Things seem to be looking up, don’t you think?”
She turned toward me and ran her fingers over my face and said, “Oh, Peter, you’re such a dreamer.”
“I am? I mean, I am, but what does that — ?”
“We had a nice little crowd this evening, and Lou is having fun bringing his friends here and Alice is probably renovating another guest room right this minute, but that doesn’t mean that things are looking up.”
“It doesn’t?”
“It’s just a little blip in the graph.”
“Mm.”
“But despite the blip the trend is the same. Costs are rising. Income is falling. We have been making up the difference by borrowing. We cannot borrow any more. Our ship has not come in. We can’t borrow any more time to wait for it to come in.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I wish it were different. I wish it were the way you want it to be.”
“Yeah.”
“Go to sleep,” she said.
“And dream?”
“And dream.”
[to be continued]
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