Mike shook his head. “You don't know what you're asking.”
The little man said softly, “You ever see Carol in the sunlight? You ever eat any of her Mexican cooking?”
I said, “We can't do this to a good guy, Mike. We'll deliver the body to her old beach bums at Topango Beach. The nights will roar again, and pity the poor grunion-fishing.”
The little man smiled for the first time, and we shook hands on it. Mike was very still all the way back.
We didn't see Carol for two days. We got our money and space on the boat and as we hadn't heard from the little man. we went below. Our cabin looked like a war-hoarder's delight. Sides of ham, a whole suckling pig in aspic, a keg of island rum, and more fruit than the Lord could ever afford in Eden. And a note. It read:
“She's in Cabin B2. Good luck, and don't let her swim back. I'm marrying my native cook … Max.”
I didn't see Carol at dinner so I went below and found her cabin. I knocked and was told to come in. Carol was seated at a dressing table arranging a daring evening gown on what was left of her once famous figure.
“We'll have dinner in a moment.”
“Dinner is over, Carol.”
“Odd. I must have slept through it. Well, let's go up on deck and show the passengers a treat.”
We sat in deck chairs, and I waited for Carol to explode. But she only said. “Nothing like your own kind. Max was a nice little man, but I'm going to marry Mike. He's big and dumb; reminds me of my father. It's time I changed my type. Remember the old days, Stevie? We were younger then, maybe, and felt things … the beach at dusk and the lights going on in the cottages and (hose long drives in the hills. We had it then, didn't we? Talent and beauty and a hope for all the good things of life.”
“Care for a drink, Carol?”
“I'm not drunk. I'm just remembering what you once told me about Proust. ‘You haven't lived anything you can't remember.’”
She sat there, the darkness hiding the tearing and warping of time, the twilight at sea keeping the inner madness, the soft center of her half-gone mind, from spoiling the picture of her there. For a minute almost she was again beautiful and young, and all the mistakes of her life had never been made; she had not done the foolish and dreadful things; she was Carol Tinning as the town had known her years ago. The sea dipped and dimpled in the moonlight, and we moved— all the millions of pounds of steel and passengers, business and love. food and water, hope and despair— across the sea.
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