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ISLANDS IN THE STREAM

The drinks were made and they both sat up on the twin beds, the light coming through the blinds in bright, slanting parallel lines. The room smelled of her skin and of her perfume and it smelled of the morning and of the trade wind. The sun was hot outside the blinds. Thomas Hudson looked at her and her eyes were very bright and she had no color in her face and she looked very young and clean and her hair was tied back with a blue ribbon.

“Did you sleep at all?” she asked.

“A little,” he said. “Did you?”

“I don’t think so. But I rested. I feel wonderful now. I love the blinds and I love the smell of the room and I love the sea outside and I love you.”

“I love you too,” Thomas Hudson said.

“Thomas, I want us to go to Paris today. Not back to the States. Let’s go down to the dock and get on the ferry and go across to Le Havre and catch the train for Paris. I want to see the trees along the quais and I want to see the Luxembourg and I want to eat at the Tour d’Argent and I want to drink champagne and I want to walk in the Tuileries.”

“All right,” Thomas Hudson said.

“Are you going to be all right?” she asked, looking at him with her eyes very bright and her face still pale. “Can we go?”

“We can go anywhere,” he said.

“We can go to Paris and then we can go down to the Riviera and stay at the little hotel by the sea where we stayed that autumn. Do you remember the autumn?”

“Of course I remember it.”

“Let’s go there. Let’s go there from Paris.”

“We can go anywhere,” Thomas Hudson said. “Let’s drink our drinks.”

They drank their drinks and then they lay back on the twin beds and the trade wind came through the blinds and they could hear the surf on the reef outside the harbor.

“Thomas,” she said.

“Yes?”

“Are you sad?”

“No,” he said. “I’m not sad.”

“You look sad.”

“I’m just thinking about things.”

“What things?”

“Nothing important. Just things.”

“Let’s get up and go down to the harbor and see the boats and get the ferry.”

“All right,” Thomas Hudson said. “Let’s get up.”

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