Half of Paradise

“Good night. I love you.”

“You’re very pretty.”

“Come over as soon as you get off from work,” she said.

“Will you keep your promise?”

“Yes. Kiss me good night.”

“Pretty lady.”

“Good night,” she said.

“Good night.”

He met her at the apartment the next evening, and they had dinner at a small French restaurant on Burgundy Street that had red-checkered cloths on the tables, and they sat at the bar and ate oysters on the half shell and drank beer, and the Negro waiter opened the oysters with a knife and squeezed a lemon on the muscle and if it didn’t twitch he threw it away and opened another. They bought a bottle of Liebfraumilch from a package store and they stayed in a hotel outside the Vieux Carré and she was there beside him whenever he wanted her. They finally went to sleep after midnight, and he awoke later and felt it grow in him again. Her body was cool from the breeze through the window and her legs were long and white. They lay undressed on top of the sheets with the green wine bottle in an ice bucket by the side of the bed, and when the sky turned dark blue just before morning he didn’t want to see the sun come up and the night to end.

The following afternoon he had to check in with the parole board, and afterwards they went to the beach and rented a cabana under some palm trees. They watched the waves roll up on the sand and the crimson sun going down beyond the water’s edge and a single sailboat with a red sail tacking in the wind. They brought their bathing suits and dressed inside the canvas cabana, and after dark they went swimming in the surf. The moon reflected off the water and the palm trees hissed in the breeze. In the distance they could see the glow of the city. She ran through the breakers and swam out quite far from shore and then swam back and knelt in the shallows, sitting on her heels, laughing and panting for breath, with the small waves breaking around her waist. They went back to the cabana and lay down in the sand. He kissed her on the mouth and smelled the salt in her hair. The moonlight came through the open flap of the cabana and shone on her ankles, and he wanted to do it right there but there were other people farther down the beach.

“As soon as we get home,” she said.

“What will we do with your roommate?”

“We’ll send her out.”

“You’re getting cruel also,?

? he said.

“She won’t mind. She’s quite nice.”

“I don’t like her.”

“You don’t know her.”

“I don’t like her, anyway. She stays home too much. Tell her to have an affair with someone,” he said.

“Wasn’t it nice in the hotel? Let’s go there again.”

“I don’t get paid until Saturday.”

“I have money.”

“You always have money,” he said.

“Daddy spoiled me. I want you to spoil me too.”

“I’ll spoil you in a particular way. Will you really ask your roommate to go?”

“Yes, darling.”

“I’ll spoil you the rest of the night.”

“I wish we could always be in bed and do good things to each other,” she said.

“We could close the flap now.”

“Those people might come by.”