“Don’t speak, François. Tomorrow …”
Because the sun would rise tomorrow and they’d enter a new life together forever.
Tomorrow they would no longer be alone. They would never be alone again. She shivered, and at almost the same time he sensed an old, nearly forgotten worry rise in his throat. Both had understood that even though they didn’t want to, they had to look back at the loneliness they were leaving behind.
And they wondered how they’d survived.
“Tomorrow …” she said again.
They would no longer have or even need a room in Manhattan. They could go wherever they wanted, whenever. There was no need to listen to a record in a little bar.
The lightbulb hanging from its cord went on in the tailor’s shop across the way, and she smiled, at once tender and teasing.
He squeezed her hand to ask her why, not needing words now.
She stroked his forehead and said, “You thought you’d gone further than I had, didn’t you? You thought you were far, far ahead of me, and all the while it was you, poor darling, who was behind.”
Tomorrow would be a new day. Now it was dawn, and far off, you could hear the city coming to life.
Why hurry? The day was theirs, and the days that would follow. The city no longer frightened them, not this one and not any other.
In a few hours, this room would vanish. There would be luggage in the middle of the floor. The chair they were in would become just another shabby piece of furniture.
They could look back without fear. Even the trace of June’s head on the pillow had lost its horror.
The future was for Kay to decide. If she wanted, they could go back to France together, and with her at his side he’d pick up where he’d left off. Or they could go to Hollywood and start from scratch.
It was all the same to him. Weren’t they starting from scratch anyway?
“Now I understand why you couldn’t wait for me,” she said.
He wanted to hold her in his arms. He tried to, but she slipped away. In the early-morning light he saw her kneeling on the rug before him, kissing his hands, whispering, “Thank you.”
They could get up, pull the curtains on the cold gray day outside, and look around at the room, so poor and naked.
It was a new day. Calmly, without fear or suspicion, and only a little awkwardly, because it was all so new, they began to live again.
They stood in front of each other, a few feet apart, smiling, in the middle of the room.
He said, as if this was the only way to translate all the happiness inside him, “Good morning, Kay.”
And her lips shook as she replied, “Good morning, François.” And after a long silence: “Good-bye, little tailor …”
They locked the door behind them when they left.
This is a New York Review Book
Published by The New York Review of Books
435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014
www.nyrb.com
Trois Chambres à Manhattan © 1946 by Georges Simenon Limited, a Chorion company
Translation by Marc Romano and Lawrence G. Blochman entitled
Three Bedrooms in Manhattan © 2003 by Georges Simenon Limited, a Chorion company
Introduction copyright © 2003 by Joyce Carol Oates
All rights reserved.
Cover photograph: Erwin Blumenfeld, Times Square, 1951 Courtesy of Yorick Blumenfeld
Cover design: Katy Homans
The Library of Congress has cataloged the earlier printing as follows:
Simenon, Georges, 1903–
[Trois chambres à Manhattan. English]
Three bedrooms in Manhattan / by Georges Simenon ; translated by Marc Romano ; introduction by Joyce Carol Oates.
p. cm.— (New York Review Books classics)
ISBN 1-59017-044-X (pbk. : alk. paper)
I. Romano, Marc. II. Title. III. Series.
PQ2637.I53T7713 2003
843'.912—dc21
2003013772
eISBN tk
v1.0
For a complete list of books in the NYRB Classics series, visit www.nyrb.com or write to:
Catalog Requests, NYRB, 435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014
Three Bedrooms in Manhattan Page 16
