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Show 66 -'Thinking,' and suddenly old weathered Hotels came and knocked? And asked: 'Would you paint us?' -No; I was thinking of . . . I don't know: America. Maybe Edward Hopper. --I see. --And that hotels . . . well, I was thinking we worship travel. -Then, today's a pilgrimage? To what we've built and abandoned? --Something like that. -And me? -Leah? --. . . Nothing. -No; partly I was remembering this hotel I stayed in once in The Berkshires. How it seemed alive. Lives exchanging, you know. Lives crossing! -'Crossing Lives' for you, then, is the nub? --Leah: don't. --The Center? --Don't do this. Goddamn him! Goddamn Hunt! He always made it crazy. Don't do this: suddenly _she was doing something unkind to him. But, of course, he would be apologizing. Well, she'd fed the birds in a storm, and that was something. Leah drew her water and took a bath. It made her skin come alive again. She read a Carroll Reed catalogue and heard the wind, sounding more and more palpable on the outside, more like something dangerously powered that might sheer the roof from her house. She listened for birds, thought she heard them. Singing. Feeding. Being relieved and very protected and grateful. She was not at all prepared, twenty minutes later, returning dressed to her kitchen |