“Desirable for whom? For you, no. For me, not really. For the people in it? Well, yes and no. They will not question their estate but they will suffer from a collective boredom which ... but my lips are sealed. Your tea was delicious though the bread was not quite fresh; but then bachelors never keep house properly. I’ve gone on much too long; do forget everything I’ve said. I’m indiscreet. I can’t help it.” She rose, a cloud of gray suspended above the porch. I walked her across the lawn to the driveway where her car was parked. The breeze had, for the moment, died and the heat prickled me unpleasantly; my temples itched as the sweat started.
“Go on with it,” she said as she got into her car. “You may as well be on the side of the future as against it. Not that it much matters anyway. When your adorable President Jefferson was in Paris he said....” But the noise of the car starting drowned the body of her anecdote. I caught only the end: “That harmony was preferable. We were all amused; I was the only one who realized that he was serious.” Dust swirled and Clarissa was gone down the drive at a great speed, keeping, I noticed, to the wrong side of the road. I hoped this was an omen.
5
I got through an unusually sultry July without much interference from either Cave or the world. Paul paid me a quick visit to get the manuscript of the dialogues and I was reminded of those accounts of the progresses made by monarchs in other days, or rather of great ministers, for his party occupied four large cars which gleamed side by side in my driveway like glossy beasts while their contents, Paul and fourteen assistants, all strange to me save Stokharin, wandered disconsolately about the lawn until their departure.
Paul, though brisk, was cordial. “Trouble all over the map but b-i-g t-r-o-u-b-l-e,” he spelled it out with relish, size was important, I knew, to a publicist, even to one turned evangelist.
“Is Cave disturbed by it?”
“Doesn’t pay any attention. Haven’t seen him but Iris keeps me posted. By the way, we’re hiring a plane the first week in August to go see him, Stokharin and me. Want to come along?”
I didn’t but I said I would. I had no intention of being left out of anything: there was my work still to do.
“I’ll let you know details. This is hot stuff?” He waved the sheaf of papers I’d given him.
“Real hot,” I said but my irony was too pale, only primary colors caught Paul’s eye.