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Show 99 learning the way that has always been characteristic of her, and it is only after a very long pause that he answers. When he does so, his voice is much more firm. "I understand, now." She lets the silence of it flood in around her, and she sees this man in perfect, fulfilled clarity: she sees love, and trust, and the trivial pain of suspicion here at the end, erased in the supreme simplicity of his words. "I love you, John," she says. "Annis,," he says then, but there is pleading now in his voice. "Come back." Sudden, so sudden is the change from serenity to fear, and she visualizes them both, cowering in the rear apartment of Rod's house, shipped out before long to the villa, or the nursing home, or worse. It is all in her power now, what she seeks, and if she slips here, she will not find it again. "No, John, I cannot," she says, "goodbye." With her finger she pulls down the telephone cradle to break the connection, and replaces the handset noiselessly upon it. She is crying. She opens the door of the telephone booth, steps out into the insolent sunshine, walks silently back towards the motel. She unlocks the door of her room, but does not go in; she tosses the empty pocketbook onto the bed, and walks down toward the beach. She finds a place where there is no one, and sits slowly on the sand, at the base of a large, sea-polished rock. The rock forms a little hollow, just the shape of her back, and she leans against it, feeling the triumphant warmth of the sun on her face. She watches the endless repetition of the surf, the little pools which form and vanish among the rocks, the cocky shorebirds which strut among the rocks. She sits there all afternoon among the rocks, while the tide moves in, advances |
