“I remember, you told me.”
“But, it’s crazy,” she went on. “It’s all right to talk about it, but actually doing it… why, it’s crazy! I can’t speak the language. They’ll know I’m a phoney.”
“You leave it to Doc. He’s got it all worked out,” I said. “Why should you worry?”
She fumbled in her bag and took out a deck of cards. “There’s something about you,” she said, flipping the cards through her fingers so that they looked like an arc of a rainbow. “I wonder what it is?”
“When I was very young,” I returned, lolling back on my elbow, “my mother used to rub me in bear fat. It built up my personality.”
She leaned forward and took four aces out of my breast pocket. “Would you say I’m a serious young woman?”
I watched the cards flutter through her slim fingers. “Yeah,” I said, feeling my throat thicken suddenly. “More than that. I’d say you were a remarkable young woman.”
She looked at me with quick interest, “Really?”
“Hmm, I guess so. We’re going to know each other an awful lot better before we wave good-bye. Do you know that?”
She reached over to take the King of Spades from my cuff. I could smell the scent in her hair. It reminded me of a summer spent in England in an old country garden full of lilac trees. “Are we?” she said.