photograph, this picture in the file of Elliott. I mean this has nothing to do with the movie, you understand, but when I saw it something snapped in my head.' 'Keep talking.' 'You know, I've always concurred that women aren't visually stimulated the way men are. You know, that old argument, but when I saw this picture. Just this picture ...'
Chapter Thirty-One
31 -- Lisa
'Death of a Travelling Salesman'
It was getting dusk. And we were still talking. We had drifted from one little place to the next, having a drink here, a cup of coffee there. And now we were walking back through the streets to the hotel, and the whole city was glowing in the waning sun, the way only New Orleans can. Maybe in Italy the light is this colour, I didn't know at this exact moment. Why think of Venice when you are in New Orleans? But it was too beautiful now, the soft variegated walls of the old building, the chalky green paint on the long shutters, the purple flagstones with their tracery of green moss. And I was still spilling out all the things that had gone on, the things that Elliott had said, every stupid detail. The way we danced, those long, long talks. And the lovemaking. About the house he had said we would buy, the programs we watched on TV, and the cornball things that happened. Martin had his arm around me, his raincoat and his jacket and sweater over the other arm, all the dark San Francisco layers having come off one by one in the balmy heat, though he had never complained about it. He had listened and listened, stopping only now and then to ask the oddest questions. Like, 'At the Marriott, what were the songs they played?' And 'Which Warriors game was it?' How the hell would I know which Warriors game it was.
And 'What part of the book did he read to you by the pool?' And 'How did it make you feel when he smiled like that?' Whenever I got upset he'd wait and then coax gently. But I was winding down now, and it had been exhausting, frightening, reliving it. We came to the hotel and went into the long dark ground floor bar. We ordered our drinks, his usual white wine, my usual Bombay gin with ice and we went out into the little courtyard and sat down at one of the little wrought iron tables. The yard was empty. 'I just don't know how I could have done it,' I was saying. 'I know the reason for the rules better than anybody else knows it. I made the rules. I invented the whole thing. But that isn't the worst part. The worst part is that if I went back there, if he was all right -- reoriented, integrated, whatever the hell terminology we have to adopt for this situation -- I think I'd go crazy the minute I saw him. I don't think I could stand any of it again, not a single solitary aspect of it. And that is what I just can't understand. That's why I can't go back, patch it up, go back and talk as Richard and Scott keep telling me to do, work it out. I know I'll go mad if I see Elliott, if I see that place. I'll go stark raving mad. No question about it.'
I looked at him, the way that he sat with his right hand curled just under his lip, his eyes narrow and accepting as before, his long, lanky body so relaxed in the wrought iron garden chair as if he was perfectly at home and could go on listening forever. 'You know, it was the damnedest thing about him,' I said. 'It was as if he could do anything. He was so damned sensual. I mean plain sensual. You wouldn't believe the way he ate, for instance. He didn't just eat. It was like he was inhaling the food, making love to it. It was the same way when we danced. Oh, you wouldn't have believed that. People were stepping back just to watch us. I didn't know what we were doing. I didn't care. I'd never danced like that. And the sex, it was like he could play any way that he wanted. It had been heavy S&M and then it could be on the natch and it was so hot, it was like when you get a shock from static