She rolled onto her back. Her voice was soft. "We're going to make it. We'll get to the car. There's enough money here. It isn't worth the risk of going back after my things. We'll drive through the night, Tal. We'll drive all night. We'll take turns. I'm a good driver. I know just how it's going to be. We'll go to New Orleans. We can be there late tomorrow. I know a man there. He'll help us. We'll sell the car there. We'll catch our plane there. We'll have everything new. All new clothes. Mexico City first, I think. Then over to Havana. I was in Havana once. With—a friend. No, not Havana. Where will we go from there, Tal?"
"Rio, Buenos Aires. Then Paris."
"Paris, of course. It's funny. I've always been looking. Like that game where you come into the room and they've named something but you don't know what it is and you have to find out. I've been looking for something I don't know the name of. Ever feel like that?"
"Yes."
"You don't know what it is, but you want it. You look in a lot of places for it. You try a lot of things, but they aren't it. This time I know I'm going to find it."
We were quiet for a long time. She turned toward me again. I put my hand on the curve of her waist, let it rest there, and felt the quickening tempo of her breathing.
I do not try to excuse it. Until then she had had no special appeal to me. I can try to explain it. It is an urgency that comes at times of danger. It is something deep in the blood, that urgency. It is a message from the blood. You may die. Live this once more, this last time. Or it may be more complicated. There may be defiance in it. Your answer to the blackness that wants to swallow you. To leave this one thing behind you. To perform this act which may leave a life behind you, the only possible guarantee of immortality in any form.
When catastrophe strikes cities, people learn of this basal urge. Men and women in war know it. It is present in great intensity in many kinds of sickness. Men and women are triggered by danger, and they lie together in a hungry quickness in the cellars of bombed houses, behind the brush of mountain trails, in lifeboats, on forgotten beaches, on the grounds of sanitariums.
By the time it happened I knew that I was hopelessly in love with Ruth Stamm. And I knew this woman in the cave with me was hard as stone. But she was there. I took from her the stubborn slacks and the bulky sweat shirt and the satin white bra. Her flesh gleamed dusky in the cave light. We did not speak. It was very complete for us.
It was enough that she was woman. But with her first words she turned back into Antoinette Rasi, and destroyed any possible emotional overtones. "Well, aren't we the ones," she said, her voice a bit nasal.