“Yes. It’s one of those birds that never stays in one place.”

He is on the road first and reaches down to help me. I struggle on the loose sand. He catches my hand and pulls me up.

“Can you make it?”

“Yes.”

When we’re on the road, I hold his hand a bit more firmly and then let go.

When we return, Catherine is awake and sitting in the living room in a peacock chair. It is almost dusk outside. I don’t know why, but I start explaining.

“We were down to the beach. I—like a fool—fell asleep. Ernest didn’t wake me.”

She says nothing. She stares at me.

“I’ve overstayed,” says Ernest. “I’ll see you two in the morning.”

He stands in front of her as if he’s about to kiss her. But she looks as if she doesn’t know the difference between a bite and a kiss. He touches her knee instead. “See you.” He goes.

“We only meant to stay for a little while,” I say. “It’s my fault.”

“I’m thinking of going back,” she says.

“He doesn’t want to put you back,” I say.

“I don’t mean there.” She rubs her forehead. “I mean back to the States. I’m thinking of going home.”

In the dark, I’m sure I’ve turned purple. I stare away from her, then sit down in the other peacock chair.

“Do you think he’ll want to go back?” she asks.

“Ask him.”

“He thinks it’s paradise here, but no place is paradise for me.”

I stay silent.

“I’m the worm in the apple,” she says.

“Oh, Catherine,” I mutter, kicking my shoes off and leaning against the flared back of the chair—the peacock’s lovely tail. “Don’t think of yourself that way.”

She turns on the table light. I stare at two eyes watching me, one’s a comet and one’s a moon. Her books on the shatterproof glass end table: Art Now and The Last Magic.

“I’m the worm, he’s the apple, and what are you?” she asks.

What else could I be? I stand up and go onto the terrace where the television is, and a videotape of the World Series is playing. “Coke is it!” is displayed prominently above the batter’s head.

59

Whenever Ernest touches Catherine, no matter with what degree of tenderness, she shrinks from him. Now he is touching the side of her face, and she is the shrinking woman.

Catherine’s dress is canary yellow. Her sandals are high-heeled and also canary yellow.

The three of us are on a narrow street standing against the tall, white-washed wall of the cathedral fortress. I try to remember what is the difference between pure gothic and flamboyant gothic. Is it that in one the stones seem heavy, in the other, light? As Catherine walks, she runs her fingers along the white wall. I imagine her, some medieval sculptress, hanging from ropes, chiseling stone.

Ernest walks in the middle. He just touched the side of her face to remove a spot of dust from it (it was really makeup applied too thickly) and she has shrunk from him. Now she is running her fingernails along the wall.