The Last Time They Met

by Anita Shreve

  —Mr. Thomas, she said. You are looking very handsome tonight.

  Power had made her flirtatious. No more handsome than you, he said as expected.

  —I was hoping I would meet your wife.

  —She’s here somewhere, Thomas said, making an effort to search the gathering, growing like a culture in a petri dish, crowding other cells. I’ll find her in a minute and bring her over.

  —I have thanked you already for arranging this, she said. But may I be permitted to thank you again?

  —It’s not necessary, Thomas said, waving his hand. Actually, I had very little to do with it.

  —Mr. Kennedy did not come.

  —No. I’m surprised.

  —It is no matter.

  And Thomas thought, no, it wasn’t. That now Mary Ndegwa was the personage without peer, though there were supposed to be one or two MPs at the party as well. The guest list had been composed largely of people the embassy wished to reward with attendance at a party at which Kennedy would be (and now wasn’t) present.

  —And how is Ndegwa? Thomas asked.

  —I fear for him, she said, though Thomas noted she did not look distraught.

  —Your book is doing well, he said.

  —Yes. Very well. It, too, will be repressed one day.

  —You seem certain.

  —Oh, but I am, she said, amused that he should doubt this perfectly obvious truth.

  —I’m sorry to hear that.

  —Mr. Thomas, you must not desert us, she said, touching him on the shoulder.

  He was slightly taken aback by the imperative. He hadn’t been thinking of deserting, though, truthfully, he hadn’t been thinking of Ndegwa at all. He sought a suitable reply, but already Mary Ndegwa had lost interest in him, was looking over his shoulder at a woman Thomas vaguely recognized as an Italian journalist. It was an abrupt and total dismissal, not intended to dismiss so much as to discard and move along.

  He wandered to the edges of the gathering, trying to get outside of the building so that he could have a cigarette, though the rooms were filled with smoke already and he needn’t have bothered. He wanted to watch for Linda, anxious now lest she not come at all. And then what would happen? Would he have to go to the Norfolk tomorrow only to tell her his wife was pregnant? It was inconceivable, like the earth shifting in its orbit.

  He leaned upon a wall at the top of the steps and smoked. There were stragglers and fashionably late arrivals. It was nearly eight o’clock and soon, he thought, people would begin to leave to go to their dinners. Marines stood at attention at the bottom of the steps and made a kind of honor guard through which the guests, in uncomfortable shoes, paraded. He saw her before she had even crossed the street, her companion looking to his right for traffic, his hand at her back, nudging her forward when he thought it was safe. She wore a shawl around her shoulders, holding it closed with her hands just above her waist, and it was such a precise repetition of the image of her walking toward him at Petley’s that his breath caught. For a moment, before she saw him, he endured the sweet mix of pleasure and pain that observing her cross the street caused, running a step at the end (a rude driver) and then lifting the skirt of her dress, white linen, as she stepped onto the curb (she had worn her best dress in Lamu to meet him, he realized now). And watching her, he understood why she was late: she’d been drinking already. How did he know this? It was in the slight loss of balance as she stepped up onto the sidewalk, the ready hand of the man she was with, as if he knew her condition. Peter, it had to be, though the man looked older than in the photograph.

  She negotiated the stairs with her head bowed, studying her feet, so that she passed by without noticing him. Or if she’d seen him, it was an expert performance. He had to step from the shadows and call her name. Her very common name.

  —Linda.

  No, she hadn’t known he was there. He could see that at once — her emotions, less carefully guarded now, twitching across her face. The shock. The joy. Then remembering her circumstances. She took a step toward him. Not unsteadily. Perhaps he had been wrong about the drinking. It was all he could do not to touch her arms, which seemed to beg to be touched.

  The man with her, momentarily disconcerted, turned as well.

  —Thomas, she said. And then repeated herself. Thomas.

  It was he who had to put out his hand and introduce himself to the man with her. Who was Peter after all. Perhaps it was simply that she hadn’t been able to say the word husband.

  —Peter, she said, recovering. Thomas and I knew each other in high school.

  —Really, Peter said, unwittingly parroting Regina in similar circumstances.

  —We met each other in the market one day a few months ago, she said. We’ve already been amazed.

  It was an astonishing sentence. Perfectly acceptable in its context, even ordinary and without real interest, yet utterly true. They had been amazed by each other, by the chance meeting. So thoroughly amazed.

  —You’re still in Njia? Thomas asked, plucking dialogue from the air. Would being a playwright instead of a poet make one a better conversationalist?

  —Well, Peter’s in Nairobi, she said, explaining what had already been explained once before.

  —The pesticide scheme, Thomas said, as if he’d just remembered.

  The man had slightly thicker jowls than as photographed and was narrow-shouldered in the way that Englishmen often are. Still, he was undeniably handsome, and his gestures — brushing back a forelock, his hands draped casually half in and half out of his pockets — suggested he might be charming as well. But then Thomas saw the puzzlement on Peter’s face, as though the man had just perceived an odd, even alarming, sound. He’d be working out where he’d heard the voice before, Thomas thought, and he wondered how long it would be before Peter guessed. As if in anticipation of that discovery, Peter put his arm around Linda, cupping her bare shoulder.

  The tide abruptly went out again, beaching Thomas like a stranded seal.

  —And how is it you’re in Nairobi? Peter asked.

  —My wife has a grant with UNICEF, Thomas said. And thought, hopelessly, And is pregnant.

  He wanted to glance at Linda and yet was afraid to. It became a kind of adolescent struggle.

  —There’s champagne and food, he said, releasing husband and wife. He gestured to the door. Even as he was foundering inside. Flopping on a beach.

  She went — slight reluctance in her turn — with Peter, her Englishman. Thomas followed them in, not wanting to lose sight of her, so recently found. Peter seemed to know people. Thomas watched Linda take a glass of champagne from a tray (holding the shawl closed with one hand) and sip from it immediately, as if she were thirsty. Thomas observed Peter in conversation and hated the man for his charm, for the way he bent his head, face turned slightly away as he listened to a man who had just hailed him. Thomas followed at a barely decent distance, as close as he dared, yet altogether too far from her. She had wonderful posture, he realized, the back of her dress as low as he remembered (complicated bra, he recalled), and thought, She doesn’t know. She doesn’t know.

  Roland, who seemed to thread through the crowd like a python (no, that was unfair; Roland wasn’t that bad), was making his way, Thomas realized, toward him. He cast around for a plausible exit, saw none, and knew he ought to be pleasant to Regina’s boss, however much he found the man distasteful.

  —Who’s your friend? Roland asked, stupefying Thomas.

  —What friend? Thomas asked, pretending to be oblivious.

  —The woman you spoke to on the steps? The one you’ve been following and staring at.

  Thomas said nothing.

  —Pretty, said Roland, looking at Linda. She stood sideways to Thomas, and, shattering pretense altogether, glanced over at him and smiled. As one might smile at a friend. Nothing in it under normal circumstances; everything in it now.

  Roland, old sage, nodded to himself. So, he said, wanting a story.

  —She’s just someone I
went to school with, Thomas said. We just ran into each other one day. (The repetition of the word just giving him away, he thought.)

  —Indeed, Roland said, making it clear he didn’t believe a word of it. So you say.

  —Jane here? Thomas asked, needled, and wanting, foolishly, to needle back.

  Canny Roland smiled even as he narrowed his eyes.

  —Elaine? Thomas asked.

  —Of course, Roland said smoothly. Where’s Regina, by the way?

  Thomas saw his wife, a tall woman in heels, making her way toward Thomas from across the room. She’s just coming, Thomas said.

  —No Kennedy then? Roland asked.

  —Afraid not.

  —Not a bodge on your part, I hope.

  —Amazingly not, Thomas said, snagging another glass of champagne.

  —Ah, the beautiful Regina, Roland said. And what ought to have been pure compliment sounded oily on his tongue.

  Regina kissed Roland just off the mouth, as people who are something more than acquaintances will do. She looked at Thomas and beamed — shared secret, it would appear, still intact.

  —It’s a shame about Kennedy, Regina said sympathetically to Thomas. Her flush had lowered itself to a place just above her bosom, hard not to stare at. Indeed, Thomas saw, Roland was staring.

  —Did you get something to eat? Regina, normally not solicitous, asked solicitously. She could well afford it now.

  —I’m fine, Thomas said. Outrageous lie. He was frantic. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see that, by some principle of crowd physics unknown to him, the throng between himself and Linda was thinning and that she and Peter were being inevitably nudged in Thomas’s direction. Linda, he saw, was now drinking a scotch. Neat, no ice. A half dozen reasons why Linda’s meeting Regina and Roland would be disastrous hurtled through his mind.

  —Let’s find Elaine, Thomas suggested, Regina and Roland looking at him oddly, as, indeed, the suggestion warranted. But it was already too late. Linda, detached from Peter, stood beside him.

  —Hello, Regina said, surprised. You’re Linda, right?

  —Yes. Hello. Linda’s bare arm not an inch from Thomas’s elbow.

  —Linda, this is Roland Bowles. Regina’s supervisor.

  Linda put out her hand. How do you do?

  —Thomas and Linda went to high school together, Regina said.

  Roland giving Linda the once-over and not bothering to hide it, either. Jesus, the man was insufferable.

  —In fact, Regina said, Thomas and Linda were once in a car accident together. Isn’t that right, Thomas?

  The mention of the accident stopping, for a moment, Thomas’s heart. He was certain it had done the same to Linda.

  —It’s how he got the scar, Regina said in a necessarily loud voice, shouting as everyone had to do.

  —I’d wondered about that, Roland said.

  —It must have been terrible, Regina added, examining first Thomas, and then Linda, her eyes darting from one to the other as they stood side by side. But then, remembering her good news, her slight scowl vanished. Her face lit with recollection — so much so that Thomas was sure she would say something.

  —I hardly remember it now, Linda said. The scotch nearly gone.

  And as if a kind of critical mass had been reached in the room, raising the temperature six or seven degrees, Thomas suddenly felt uncomfortable and began to sweat beneath his white shirt and gray suit. Linda, too, he could see, had sweat beads on her upper lip, a delicate moustache he wanted to lick off. And with the perceived rise in temperature, so also did his emotional temperature rise — seemingly making more of everything. So that, looking at Regina, he felt a sense of claustrophobia so profound he began to think he couldn’t breathe. And he wondered, as he had never wondered before, if he didn’t actually hate Regina, and if he didn’t hate smug Roland as well. Roland, who made pronouncements and who was now saying something about Kingsley Amis and did Thomas know him, he was a neighbor of a cousin, and so on. And Thomas wondered as well if he didn’t hate boyishly handsome Peter, too, for sleeping with the woman he loved, the woman he was meant to be with. And so foul was the air from this sudden temperature rise that he almost felt as though he hated Linda for having walked into his life too late, stirring up old emotions better left dormant. (Though, strictly speaking, he supposed he had walked into her life.)

  He spun away from the group and threaded a path through backless dresses and thickened necks, faintly aware of his name being called, ignoring the summons, walking past an Asian woman wrapped in silken saris and a slender Frenchman (he could only be French with that mouth), hearing as he walked — or did he only imagine it? — a voice raised in argument, a snarl from somewhere deep inside the crowd. It was the weather, he knew — parched and gritty and oppressive — that chafed skin and tightened jaws and loosed snarls where before snarls had been unthinkable. He reached a table and stood against it, not knowing where else to go, and smoked a cigarette, his back to the crowd, not wanting to see them.

  He heard his name and turned.

  —Keep moving, Linda said, putting a hand out to touch him.

  He walked, not blindly, for he was aware of searching for an empty corner, of moving at the edges of the party, of not being able to find the exit and so wandering into a hallway, into an anteroom and through a door into a darkened office. She was behind him, in full sight, he supposed, of anyone wishing to notice, but he was so glad she was there he thought his lungs would burst.

  She slid inside the door and turned the lock.

  He understood that she was drunk, but he couldn’t help himself. This might be the last time — would be the last time — they’d ever be together. The moment doubly stolen, like borrowing from an overdraft, the original capital depleted. And far from thinking it dishonest, he considered it a mercy she herself didn’t know. His own grief enough for both of them.

  In the darkness, he found her mouth and her hair, kissed the one, held the other, then kissed them both. He could barely see her face, the only light a streetlamp outside the window. She was wiry against him, more passionate than he had known her before — more expert — and it was her lust as much as his own that made them impatient to be undressed. They strained at fabric, stepped on it, had no time for buttons. She took her shoes off and suddenly was smaller, more fluid against him, and for a time they were up against a wall, then leaning on a leather chair. They slid or knelt to the carpet between the chair and a table, a corner of the table catching him in a kidney, and he thought there must be some anger of her own fueling her, for she was unlike herself — more abandoned in the way that anger can produce abandon, as, indeed, it had just done in him when he’d spun away from the grouping. He didn’t stop to ask himself longer than a second what Regina and Peter and Roland might be thinking, because they were not important now. Not right now. This would be all that mattered if it had to last a lifetime. And, fuck it, it would have to last a lifetime. And he said, or she said, I love you, as lovers will, though he knew the words — devalued (had he not said them to Regina? she to Peter?) — didn’t explain what it was they had, for which he knew only one word, a word both blank and precise, now repeating itself endlessly in his head: This, he thought. This.

  And then again, This.

  ______

  They lay in the squalid dark of the office. He was aware of bunched clothing at his head, the heel of a shoe poking into his thigh. Their naked hips wedged between a table leg and a chair. Maybe they would not be able to get out, would have to stay until they were found. She felt for his hand and laced her fingers through his, and there was something in that gesture, in the slow lacing of fingers and in the way she lowered their clasped hands to the floor, that told him that she knew. Knew it would be the last time. Nothing needed to be said, the gesture seemed to imply. Or perhaps it was just that he was too exhausted to summon words.

  She stood and gathered her clothes. He watched her put on her complicated bra, zip her much-wrinkled linen dress
, step into heels — the reverse of love, the reverse of expectation. And, in a moment he would remember for the rest of his life, she knelt and bent over his face, her hair hanging in sheets that gave them ultimate privacy and whispered into his mouth the unforgivable thing she had just done.

  It might have been Confession.

  ______

  Roland had his arm around Regina. In a corner, a baffled Peter was speaking to the back of Linda’s head. Guests were leaving — casually, normally, unaware of catastrophe — or if they were aware, giving it a sidelong glance, a quizzical stare. It would entertain, this story, become part of the pantheon of stories of illicit love in Kenya, a footnote to the Happy Valley days. Or not even that. Forgotten before the nightcap, the principal players not prominent enough to warrant sustained attention.

  He had missed the central drama.

  In the end — strangely, but perhaps to be expected — it came down to his soul. He who thought he did not have one. A concept he could not even name. It was elegantly simple: he couldn’t let Regina lose the child.

  Regina’s wail rose on the street; and in the car, she threw herself from side to side, battering herself against the door, asking, demanding to know: Did you sleep with her? And, How often? Screaming at the answers and the silences alike. Wanting dates and details, horrendous details he would not give her. In the cottage, she hurled herself against a wall. He tried to calm her, to touch her, but she was wild, having had, despite her news, her own goodly amount to drink. She vomited in the bathroom and wanted him to help her just as much as she wanted him to die. And all the time he was thinking: I cannot let her lose the baby.

  He shook his wife to stop the hysteria. Telling her, as one would tell a child, to go to bed. She whimpered and begged for him to hold her and he did, dozing for seconds only, waking to fresh wails. Waking to fury and accusations and threats. She would kill herself, she said, and he would have two lives on his conscience. She kept this up for hours, seemingly beyond endurance — his or hers — astounding him with the depth of her anger. Till finally she fell asleep, and for a time — blessed hours — there was silence.