The Bleeding Heart by Marilyn French Page B

smiling at her and she threw her arms around him and held him and he held her, and his body was heavy, he was leaning on her a little. She let him go and took his hand and led him upstairs and into the sitting room, and helped him with his coat and sat on the edge of the couch facing him as he lay there, and she stroked his face.
    “Oh, you look so tired!” she lamented.
    He reached up and pulled her down and kissed her and she lay against him. He stroked her back, and said, “oh, oh,” softly, in his throat. She sat up again and kissed him lightly, kissed his cheeks and his forehead and his eyes and the hollows of his throat. He put his hands on her face and caressed it, gazing at her.
    He revived, gradually, and pulled himself up against the couch arm. “I had meetings. All day. From nine in the morning until now. And all I thought about was you.”
    Despite herself, she gleamed. “What a lie!” she said. “You couldn’t do your job if all you thought about was me.”
    “Did you do yours?” he asked, caressing her face still.
    “Umm. Badly.”
    “Well, me too.”
    She smiled.
    “How about a drink?”
    “Oh. I don’t know. I’ll see.” She jumped up and fished around in the kitchen cupboard. She came up with a little gin, probably there from the time she had the Carriers for dinner. She looked at it: nearly empty. What can you do with gin and nothing else?
    Victor was standing in the kitchen doorway.
    She looked at him mournfully. (Oh, how she wanted to please him!) “I’ve some gin. But no mixer.” (But wouldn’t I want to please any guest, man or woman? Want to please a friend as much as I want to please him? Yes.)
    Victor held out a brown paper bag with a bottle in it. “Brought some, just in case.”
    “Do you carry little brown bags full of booze everywhere you go?”
    “Yup,” he said, and came in and got out the ice and reached for glasses, but there was only one. “Got another glass?”
    And then she remembered. Yes: two glasses, a cup, and a plate. Broken. She fished around in the dishwater in the sink, where her day’s dishes soaked, found a glass, rinsed it.
    He poured drinks. She said nothing. She was biting the inside of her lip. He put his arm around her and they walked back to the sitting room. He lay back on the couch and drew her beside him. Her body went, it sat beside him, it leaned towards him, it yearned.
    His eyes were milky with love. “I’m glad you let me come over. So glad.”
    She smiled unsteadily.
    “I know you’re tired.”
    “No, not really.”
    “You sounded tired. On the phone.”
    “Actually,” she looked down at her drink, “I was angry with you.” Never was anger conveyed in a milder voice.
    His head came up sharply. “Why?”
    “Well … it was the way you left here last night. It hurt me.”
    “Lorie,” he took her hand, “I really had to leave. I had early appointments, I was tired—I’d stayed up late the night before I came, looking over the papers I was bringing. And I had to see if there were messages.”
    “You could have gone to the hotel, checked in, checked for messages, and come back here.”
    “Yes, I thought of that. But if I’d come back … we’d have been up all night.”
    Her face softened, but she forced herself onward: “But that’s not what I’m complaining about, anyway. Not that you left, but the way you left.”
    “How in hell did I leave? I put on my coat and went out the door. How did you want me to leave?”
    “You left like a businessman. The way a man leaves home in the morning, kissing his wife’s cheek and reminding her to have his grey suit cleaned. You turned me off, you turned yourself off, you canceled me. I don’t like being canceled.”
    He groaned lightly, and lay there with his eyes shut.
    Canceling me again?
    “You’re sure I did that?” he asked, with open eyes.
    “Sure.”
    He closed his eyes again. And opened them again. “I’m not much good at this.”
    “At what?”
    “Whatever I’m