“I’m coming to that in a minute.”
“Why not tell me now?”
“No. You’ll have to get the rest of the picture first.”
“Was this man Ringold?”
“Good Lord, no!”
“All right.”
“I wouldn’t answer his letters because I knew he was married, but I liked getting them. They were love letters — I told you that — but they were full of reminiscences about our trip. Some things were so lovely... We sailed into Tahiti late one night... you’d have to see that to realize it... the native dancers waiting around little fires. We could see the red points of light dotting the shore. Then, as the ship came in, we could see the forms of the dancers around the fires. We could hear the drums beating, that peculiar Tap-tap-TAP! Tap-tap-TAP! Tap-tap-TAP! Then they threw more fuel on the fires. Someone turned floodlights down on the quay, and there were these dancers, with nothing on but grass skirts, stamping their bare feet in the rhythm of a dance, then pairing off and facing each other in a sort of hula which became more and more violent. Then, at a signal, they’d all start a running kind of dance around the fires... He reminded me of that... and other things. They were wonderful letters. I saved them and read them over whenever I felt blue. They were so vivid...”
I said, “Sounds like things a magazine would pay money for, but I don’t see why you should pay thirty thousand dollars for letters you didn’t answer.”
She said, “Brace yourself, because I’m going to give you a shock.”
I said, “You mean that the letters did something to you that he himself hadn’t been able to do? That you—?”