She waited.
He was looking so intensely earnest all of a sudden that she leaned forward herself.
'Did what cross my mind?' she asked.
'The fact that you and I... that both of us... have a bit of unfinished business.'
She stared at him.
He looked back at her, his eyes as bright as two stars. 'Don't be shocked,' he said, 'please.'
'Shocked?'
'You look as though I'd just asked you to jump out of the window with me.'
The room was full of people now, and it was very noisy. It was like being at a cocktail party. You had to shout to be heard.
Conrad's eyes waited on her, impatient, eager.
'I'd like another martini,' she said.
'Must you?'
'Yes,' she said, 'I must.'
In her whole life, she had been made love to by only one man - her husband, Ed.
And it had always been wonderful.
Three thousand times?
She thought more. Probably a good deal more. Who counts?
Assuming, though, for the sake of argument, that the exact figure (for there has to be an exact figure) was three thousand, six hundred and eighty...
... and knowing that every single time it happened it was an act of pure, passionate, authentic love-making between the same man and the same woman...
... then how in heaven's name could an entirely new man, an unloved stranger, hope to come in suddenly on the three thousand, six hundred and eighty-first time and be even halfway acceptable?
He'd be a trespasser.
All the memories would come rushing back. She would be lying there suffocated by memories.
She had raised this very point with Dr Jacobs during one of her sessions a few months back, and old Jacobs had said, 'There will be no nonsense about memories, my dear Mrs Cooper. I wish you would forget that. Only the present will exist.'
'But how do I get there?' she had said. 'How can I summon up enough nerve suddenly to go upstairs to a bedroom and take off my clothes in front of a new man, a stranger, in cold blood?...'
'Cold blood!' he had cried. 'Good God, woman, it'll be boiling hot!' And later he had said, 'Do at any rate try to believe me, Mrs Cooper, when I tell you that any woman who has been deprived of sexual congress after more than twenty years of practice - of uncommonly frequent practice in your case, if I understand you correctly - any woman in those circumstances is going to suffer continually from severe psychological disturbances until the routine is re-established. You are feeling a lot better, I know that, but it is my duty to inform you that you are by no means back to normal...'
To Conrad, Anna said, 'This isn't by any chance a therapeutic suggestion, is it?'
'A what?'
'A therapeutic suggestion.'
'What in the world do you mean?'
'It sounds exactly like a plot hatched up by my Dr Jacobs.'