Ernest Hemingway - Complete Short Stories Of Ernest Hemingway, The

“You prefer either one?”

“People speak pretty highly of the Green Lantern.”

“I think I’ve heard of it,” the girl said. “Somewhere.”

“You might. Widow woman runs it.”

“I believe that’s the place,” the girl said.

“Sure you don’t want me to help you?”

“No. We’re fine,” Roger said.

“Just one thing I’d like to say,” the man said. “Mrs. Hutchins certainly is a fine looking woman.”

“Thank you,” Helena said. “I think that’s lovely of you. But I’m afraid it’s just that beautiful light.”

“No,” he said. “I mean it true. From the heart.”

“I think we’d better go in,” Helena said to Roger. “I don’t want you to lose me so early in the trip.”

Inside the cabin there was a double bed, a table covered with oilcloth, two chairs and a light bulb that hung down from the ceiling. There was a shower, a toilet and a washbowl with a mirror. Clean towels hung on a rack by the washbowl and there was a pole at one end of the room with some hangers.

Roger brought in the bags and Helena put the ice jug, the two cups, and the cardboard canon with the Scotch in it on the table with the paper bag full of White Rock bottles.

“Don’t look gloomy,” she said. “The bed is clean. The sheets anyway.”

Roger put his arm around her and kissed her.

“Put the light out please.”

Roger reached up to the light bulb and turned the switch. In the dark he kissed her, brushing his lips against hers, feeling them both fill without opening, feeling her trembling as he held her. Holding her tight against him, her head back now, he heard the sea on the beach and felt the wind cool through the window. He felt the silk of her hair over his arm and their bodies hard and taut and he dropped his hand on her breasts to feel them rise, quick-budding under his fingers.

“Oh Roger,” she said. “Please. Oh please.”

“Don’t talk.”

“Is that him? Oh he’s lovely.”

“Don’t talk.”

“He’ll be good to me. Won’t he. And I’ll try to be good to him. But isn’t he awfully big?”

“No.”

“Oh I love you so and I love him so. Do you think we should try now so we’ll know? I can’t stand it very much longer. Not knowing. I haven’t been able to stand it all afternoon.”

“We can try.”

“Oh let’s. Let’s try. Let’s try now.”

“Kiss me once more.”

In the dark he went into the strange country and it was very strange indeed, hard to enter, suddenly perilously difficult, then blindingly, happily, safely, encompassed; free of all doubts, all perils and all dreads, held unholdingly, to hold, to hold increasingly, unholdingly still to hold, taking away all things before, and all to come, bringing the beginning of bright happiness in darkness, closer, closer, closer now closer and ever closer, to go on past all belief, longer, finer, further, finer higher and higher to drive toward happiness suddenly, scaldingly achieved.

“Oh darling,” he said. “Oh darling.”

“Yes.”

“Thank you my dear blessed.”

“I’m dead,” she said. “Don’t thank me. I’m dead.”

“Do you want—”

“No please. I’m dead.”

“Let’s—”

“No. Please believe me. I don’t know how to say it another way.”

Then later she said, “Roger.”

“Yes, daughter.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, daughter.”

“And you’re not disappointed because of anything?”

“No, daughter.”

“Do you think you’ll get to love me?”

“I love you,” he lied. I love what we did he meant.

“Say it again.”

“I love you,” he lied again.

“Say it once more.”

“I love you,” he lied.

“That’s three times,” she said, in the dark. “I’ll try to make it come true.”

The wind blew cool on them and the noise the palm leaves made was almost like rain and after a while the girl said, “It will be lovely tonight but do you know what I am now?”

“Hungry.”

“Aren’t you a wonderful guesser?”

“I’m hungry too.”

They ate at the Green Lantern and the widow woman squirted Flit under the table and brought them fresh mullet roe browned crisp and fried with good bacon. They drank cold Regal beer and ate a steak each with mashed potatoes. The steak was thin from grass-fed beef and not very good but they were hungry and the girl kicked her shoes off under the table and put both her bare feet on Roger’s. She was beautiful and he loved to look at her and her feet felt very good on his.

“Does it do it to you?” she asked.

“Of course.”

“Can I feel?”

“If the widow woman isn’t looking.”

“It does it to me too,” she said. “Aren’t our bodies nice to each other?”

They ate pineapple pie for dessert and each had another cold bottle of Regal fresh from deep in the melting ice water of the cooler.

“I have Flit on my feet,” she said. “They’ll be nicer when they don’t have Flit on them.”

“They’re lovely with Flit. Push really hard with them.”

“I don’t want to push you out of the widow woman’s chair.”

“All right. That’s enough.”

“You never felt any better did you?”

“No,” Roger said truly.

“We don’t have to go to the movies do we?”

“Not unless you want to very much.”

“Let’s go back to our house and then start out terribly early in the morning.”

“That’s fine.”

They paid the widow woman and took a couple of bottles of the cold Regal in a paper sack and drove back to the cabins and put the car in the space between cabins.

“The car knows about us already,” she said as they came in the cabin.

“It’s nice that way.”

“I was sort of shy with him at the start but now I feel like he’s our partner.”

“He’s a good car.”

“Do you think the man was shocked?”

“No. Jealous.”

“Isn’t he awfully old to be jealous?”

“Maybe. Maybe he’s just pleased.”

“Let’s not think about him.”

“I haven’t thought about him.”

“The car will protect us. He’s our good friend already. Did you see how friendly he was coming back from the widow woman’s?”

“I saw the difference.”

“Let’s not even put the light on.”

“Good,” Roger said. “I’ll take a shower or do you want one first?”

“No. You.”

Then waiting in the bed he heard her in the bath splashing and then drying herself and then she came into the bed very fast and long and cool and wonderful feeling.

“My lovely,” he said. “My true lovely.”

“Are you glad to have me?”

“Yes, my darling.”

“And it’s really all right?”

“It’s wonderful.”

“We can do it all over the country and all over the world.”

“We’re here now.”

“All right. We’re here. Here. Where we are. Here. Oh the good, fine, lovely here in the dark. What a fine lovely wonderful here. So lovely in the dark. In the lovely dark. Please hear me here. Oh very gently here very gently please carefully Please Please very carefully Thank you carefully oh in the lovely dark.”

It was a strange country again but at the end he was not lonely and later, waking, it was still strange and no one spoke at all but it was their country now, not his nor hers, but theirs, truly, and they both knew it.

In the dark with the wind blowing cool through the cabin she said, “Now you’re happy and you love me.”

“Now I’m happy and I love you.”

“You don’t have to repeat it. It’s true now.”

“I know it. I was awfully slow wasn’t I.”

“You were a little slow.”