I checked myself in the bathroom mirror after switching on the light. There was a stubble of beard on my cheeks. I looked at Robinson’s shaving mug and brush on the sink. No time. I wanted to get out of there, concentrate on details, not stare at myself in a mirror. I had to avoid that all-consuming thought. I wasn’t ready to confront it yet.
Quickly, I splashed cold water on my face and dried it, then attempted, with little success, to comb my hair with my fingers. I had to buy myself a comb and razor, mug and shaving cup, shirt, especially—the thought embarrassed me—some socks and underwear.
I left the room as quietly as I could, trusting Robinson’s oblivion to keep him from hearing the thump of the door when I shut it; as I did, I saw the number 472 on the plaque. Turning to my left, I moved to the end of the short side corridor, turned left again, saw that I was headed in the wrong direction, and reversed course.
As I descended the staircase, I was conscious of how still it was in the hotel. No automobile noises reached my ears, no roar of landing aircraft. Except for the constant boom of surf in the distance, the silence was complete, my footsteps thudding distinctly on each step.
On the second floor I moved along the corridor toward the outside stairs in order to avoid the Rotunda. As I neared the outside door I remembered that, at nine eighteen, I would sign the register and be given Room 350.
Déjà vu, I thought as I stepped onto the balcony and looked across the Open Court. Although its appearance was very different—there had not been such a growth of tropical plants: figs, limes, oranges, bananas, guava, pomegranates, and the like—the sensation I experienced was like the one I had the first morning I’d been at the hotel. Except, of course, by logic, it couldn’t be described as déjà vu since that means “I have been here before” and, in point of fact, I will not be here for seventy-five years.
The perplexity made me uncomfortable so I pushed it from my mind as I went down the outside steps and started across the rain-soaked Court, walking past flower beds and white chairs, beneath arches cut through thick, tall hedges, past the gushing fountain, in its center the figure of a nude woman holding a jar on her head. I started as a yellow canary flashed by me and disappeared into a bush. As I passed an olive tree, I looked up as a movement caught my eye and saw, to my surprise, that a brightly plumaged parrot was sitting on a lower branch, preening itself. I smiled at it, then at this new world as a rush of joy enveloped me. I had slept, there was no headache, and I was on my way to see Elise!
I entered the gloomy, silent sitting room in a state most ungloomy, with an urge to break the silence with cheery whistling. It was not until I’d reached her door that uncertainty reasserted itself. Was it still too early? Would she be disturbed, angered even, if I knocked on her door now? I didn’t want to wake her. Still, thinking it over as methodically as possible, I realized that I could hardly leave and hope to see her later. If I waited until everyone was awake, her mother and Robinson would block my path again. Bracing myself, I raised my clenched fist to the dark, paneled door, stared for several moments at the number plate on it, then knocked.
Too timidly, I thought. She couldn’t have heard. Still, I didn’t dare to knock more loudly for fear I’d wake someone in the adjoining rooms and they would come to check on me. For all I knew, her mother was in the room next door; it seemed likely that she would be. Good God, I thought. What if Mrs. McKenna had insisted on spending the night in Elise’s room?
I was wondering these things when I heard Elise’s voice on the other side of the door, inquiring softly, “Yes?”
“It’s me,” I said. It never even crossed my mind that she might not know who “me” was.
She did know, though. I heard the sound of the door being unlocked, it was opened slowly, and she stood before me, wearing a robe even lovelier than the one I’d conjured in my fantasy: the color of pale red wine, its collar embroidered, two vertical rows of embroidery in a scroll design down the front. Her hair was down, hanging across her shoulders in gold-brown profusion, her gray-green eyes regarding me somberly.
“Good morning,” I said.
She looked at me in silence. Finally, she murmured, “Good morning.”
“May I come in?” I asked.
She hesitated but I sensed that it was not the hesitation of a lady doubting the propriety of admitting a man to her room under questionable circumstances. Rather, it was the hesitation of a woman who was not sure she cared to become more involved than she already was.
Her hesitation ended and, stepping back, she let me in. Closing the door, she turned to gaze at me. She looked so tired, I thought; so sad. What was I doing to her?
I was about to say something apologetic when she spoke before I had the chance. “Please sit down,” she said.
There is a literal sensation of the heart sinking. I can attest to it because I felt it then. Was this to be the ultimate scene, the carefully phrased farewell? I swallowed dryly as I moved to a chair and turned.
There were no lights on in the sitting room; it was filled with great shadows. I felt myself shudder with premonition as I waited for her to sit. When she settled on the edge of the sofa, I sank to the chair, feeling as though I were a pawn in some impending scene, knowing none of the dialogue, none of the plot.
She raised her eyes and looked at me.
“What is it?” I asked when she didn’t speak.
A heavy, tired sigh. She shook her head slowly. “I don’t know why I’m doing this,” she said. She sounded pained. “I’ve never done anything remotely like it in my life.”
I know, I thought. Thank God I didn’t voice the thought. But you expected me, I almost said. I decided against that too. Better to say nothing.
There was challenge in her voice as she spoke again. “My mind tells me that you and I met for the first time on the beach last night,” she said, “that, until that moment, we were strangers. My mind tells me that there is no reason for me to have behaved toward you as I have. No reason at all.” Her voice drifted into silence and she looked at her hands. After what seemed a very long time, she added, without looking up, “And yet I do it.”
“Elise—” I began to rise.
“No, don’t move,” she said, looking up quickly. “I want there to be … distance between us. I want to not even see you clearly. The sight of your face—” She broke off, drawing in a ragged breath. “What I want to do is think,” she said.
I waited mutely for analysis, for comprehension and perspective. Nothing came and I realized that what she’d spoken of was more a hope than a plan.
After a long while, she raised her head and looked at me. “How on earth am I to do a play tonight?” she asked.
“You will,” I said. “You’ll be magnificent.”
She seemed to shake her head.
“You will,” I told her. “I’ll be watching.”
She made a mirthless sound. “Which will help not at all,” she said. She gazed at me in silence for a while, then reached to her right and pulled the chain switch on a table lamp. I blinked as the bulb went on.
She continued looking at me in the light, her emotion difficult to assess. Despite her grave expression, I hoped I sensed a beginning of acceptance in her. That is probably too strong a word; make it tolerance. At least I had regained that low plateau.
She declined her head. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m staring at you again. I don’t know why I keep doing that.” She sighed. “I do know, of course,” she said. “It’s your face.” She looked up at me. “There’s something there beyond its fair appearance. What is it, though?”
I wanted to speak or do something but I didn’t know what. I was afraid of blundering.
She was looking at her hands again. “I thought I knew what kind of world it was,” she said. “My world anyway. I thought I was adjusted to its every rhythm.” She shook her head. “Now this.”
I’d meant to do as she’d requested—keep my distance— but, before I was consciously aware of my intention, I fo
und myself standing and crossing toward her. She watched me as I neared her, not exactly with uneasiness, I saw, though hardly with pleased anticipation. Sitting beside her on the sofa, I smiled as gently as I could. “I’m sorry you haven’t slept,” I told her.
“Is it that obvious?” she asked, and I realized that I hadn’t really known until that moment.
“I didn’t sleep much either,” I said. “I’ve been—thinking most of the night.” I didn’t feel I should mention the writing.
“So have I,” she said. Her words seemed of a sharing nature but I still felt conscious of a barrier between us.
“And—?” I asked.
“And,” she answered, “it’s so complicated it defies my understanding.”
“No,” I said impulsively. “It isn’t complicated at all, Elise. It’s simple. We were destined to meet.”
“By what?” she asked, her tone and look demanding.
There was no explanation I could afford to give her. “You said you were expecting me,” I answered evasively. “That sounds, to me, like destiny.”
“Or incredible coincidence,” she said.
I felt actual pain in my chest. “You can’t believe that,” I said.
“I don’t know what to believe,” she answered.
“Why were you expecting me?” I asked.
“Will you tell me where you came from?” she countered.
“I did tell you.”
“Richard.” Her tone was mild but it was obvious that she was reproving me.
“I promise that I’ll tell you when the right time comes,” I said. “I just can’t tell you now because—” I struggled for the proper words “—it might disturb you.”
“Disturb me?” Her laugh was brief and tinged with bitterness. “How can I be more disturbed than I am?”
I waited, silent. It took so long for her to speak that I decided she wasn’t going to tell me. Then, at last, she broke the silence, asking, unexpectedly, “Will you laugh?”
“Is it funny?” I couldn’t check the response though I regretted it the moment it passed my lips.
Happily, she took it as intended, her face softening with a tired smile. “In a way,” she said. “Bizarre, at least.”
“Let me decide,” I asked her.
Another lengthy hesitation. Finally, stiffening her back as though to brace herself for the recountal, she began. “It comes in two parts,” she said. “Late in the eighties, I don’t remember the exact year, my mother and I performed in Virginia City.”
November 1887, the thought came unbidden.
“One night, after the performance,” she continued, “some people brought an old Indian woman to the hotel where we were staying. They told us she could predict the future, so, as a lark, I asked her to tell mine.”
I felt my heartbeat growing heavier.
“She said that, when I was twenty-nine years old, I would meet the—” she stopped “—a man,” she amended. “That he would come to me—” she drew in sudden breath “—under very strange circumstances.”
I looked at her lovely profile, waiting. When she said no more, I prompted, “Part two?”
She spoke immediately. “There is a wardrobe mistress in our company whose mother was a Gypsy. She claims to have—what shall I call it?—the power of divination?”
The beating of my heart was very heavy now. “And?” I murmured.
“Six months ago, she told me that—” She stopped uncomfortably.
“Please tell me,” I asked:
She hesitated, then began again. “That I would meet this … man in November.” I heard the sound of her swallowing. “On a beach,” she said.
I couldn’t speak, overwhelmed by what she’d told me. The miracle of what had taken place in my life now seemed balanced by the miracle of what had taken place in hers. Not that I believed I was the only man in the world for her; nothing like that. It was simply that I felt a sense of what can only be described as awe at the phenomenon of our coming together.
Her voice returned before mine did. She gestured with her right hand; a gesture of confusion. “At the time,” she said, “I hadn’t the slightest notion we’d be bringing Minister here for a tryout. The invitation came months later. And I never associated Coronado with what Marie had told me.”
She seemed to stare into her memory. “It wasn’t until we arrived at the hotel that it all came back to me,” she went on. “I was looking through that window over there on Tuesday afternoon when, suddenly, the sight of the beach made me remember what Marie had said—then what the Indian woman had said.”
Turning her head, she looked at me accusingly, though, God knows, it was gentle accusation. “I’ve been behaving very strangely since that moment,” she told me. “I was absolutely dreadful at rehearsal yesterday.” I remembered what Robinson had said last night. “I forgot lines by the peck, lost hold of blocking—everything. And I never do that. Never.” She shook her head. “But I did; I could do nothing right. All I could do was think that it was November and I was near a beach and I’d been told, not once but twice, that I would meet a man at this time, in a place like this. I didn’t want to meet a man. I mean—”
She broke off and I felt her agitation at having revealed more than she intended. She made a gesture with her hands as though repelling her disclosure. “At any rate,” she said, “that’s why I asked ‘Is it you?’—something I would never do otherwise.” Again, she shook her head, this time with a rueful sound. “When you said ‘Yes,’ I almost fainted.”
“I almost fainted when you said, ‘Is it you?’”
She looked at me quickly. “You didn’t know I was expecting you?”
I hoped I hadn’t made a terrible mistake but knew I couldn’t backtrack now. “No,” I said.
“Why did you say ‘Yes’ then?” she asked.
“So you’d accept me,” I said. “I do believe we were destined to meet. I just didn’t know you were waiting.”
She gazed at me intently, drawing at me with her eyes. “Where did you come from, Richard?” she asked.
I almost told her. At the time, it seemed so natural that it almost came out. Only at the last second did some inner caution prevail, making me realize that it is one thing to have the future foretold by an Indian woman and a Gypsy-born wardrobe mistress, and another to have that future brought into shocking relief by someone who has traveled backward to it.
When I failed to speak, she made a sound so despairing that it agonized me. “There it is again,” she said. “This cloud you hold above me. This mystery.”
“I don’t mean to hold it over you,” I said. “I only mean to protect you.”
“From what?”
Again there was no answer I could give which would make sense to her. “I don’t know,” I said. As she drew away from me, I added quickly, “I only sense that it would harm you and I can’t do that.” I reached for her hand. “I love you, Elise.”
She stood before I could touch her, moving away from the sofa with short, agitated strides. “Don’t be unfair,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” I told her. “It’s just that—”What could I say? “—I’ve committed myself so totally that it’s difficult—”
“I cannot commit myself to anything,” she interrupted.
I sat in numbed, defeated silence, looking at her. She was standing by the window, arms crossed, looking toward the ocean. I sensed a terrible tension in her, something she kept deep within only with the greatest effort of will. Something I could not hope to reach, not even knowing what it was. I knew only that the feeling of affinity I’d had so strongly moments earlier was, now, completely dissipated.
I think she must have felt my sense of loss; felt, at least, that she had put me down too harshly, for her posture softened and she said, “Please don’t be hurt. It isn’t you. It isn’t that I’m not … attracted; obviously I am.”
She groaned softly, turning to me. “If you knew how I have lived,” she told me. “If you knew to what degree my
behavior toward you is a total reversal of everything I have ever done before—”
I do know, I thought. It didn’t help to know.
“You saw how my mother reacted to your presence here last night,” she said. “To my inviting you to dine with us. You saw how my manager reacted. They were flabbergasted; it is the only possible word.” She made a sound of pained amusement. “Yet no more flabbergasted than I.”
I did not respond. There was nothing more I could say, I felt. I’d made my statement, presented my case. All I could do now was back off and give her time. Time, I thought; always time. Time which had brought me to her. Time which, now, must help me win her.
“You … flatter me with your commitment,” she said, the phrase sounding too formal to reassure me. “Even though I scarcely know you, there is something in your manner I have never seen in a man. I know you intend me no harm, I even … trust you.” Her admission was bemused, revealing clearly what her attitude toward men had been for many years. “But commitment? No.”
I must have made a forlorn-looking figure, for the sight of me appeared to move her and she came back, sitting down beside me. She smiled and I was able to return it—barely.
“Do you realize—?” she started. “No, you couldn’t, but believe me when I tell you that it is so—that it is nothing short of incredible for a man to be sitting next to me in my hotel room? Me wearing nightclothes? With not another soul around? It’s … supernatural, Richard.” Her smile attempted to convey to me just how supernatural it was. But, of course, I knew already and could take no cheer from it.
She made a sound of bafflement. “You cannot remain here,” she said. “If my mother came and found you, at this hour, me in my gown and robe, she’d just … explode.”
The vision of her mother exploding seemed to hit us simultaneously for we both laughed at the same time.