612
PARTISAN REVIEW
On Sunday morning, coming back from Easter Mass, with an hour to
wait for Maisie's cook to serve us Sunday dinner, she forced the situa–
tion. "I want Harry to show me the island," she said to Hugh. "I'm sure
he knows the nooks and crannies." A lack of plausibility quivered in the
air. It would not require a guide to find nooks and crannies on our
small island.
Hugh nodded. He smiled. He held out his hand like a pistol, thumb
up, forefinger extended. Wordlessly, he fired a shot at me. "Keep those
nasal passages clean, Herrick," he said.
Kittredge and I walked in kelp and sea wrack on the pebbled shore.
Near us reared the unseen presence of Harlot, a stallion over the field of
our mood.
"He's awful," Kittredge said at last and took my hand. "I adore
him but he's awful. He's
raunchy.
Harry, do you love sex?"
"I would hate to think I didn't," I said.
"Well, I would hope you do. You are as good-looking as Mont–
gomery Clift, so you ought to. I know I like sex. It's all sex with Hugh
and me. We have so little else in common. That's why he's jealous. His
Omega is virtually void oflibido and his Alpha is overloaded."
I did not know as yet that she had been consorting with these two
principalities, Alpha and Omega, ever since the concept first came to her
four years ago. Now I heard of them for the first time. I would en–
counter those words again over the next thirty years.
"What makes it worse," she said, "is that I'm still a virgin. I think
he is too, although he won't offer a conclusive word about it."
I was twice shocked, once at these astonishing facts, and again that
she would tell me. She laughed, however. "I take a True Confession pill
every night," she said. "Are you a virgin, Harry?"
"Regrettably," I replied.
She laughed and laughed. "I don't want to be," she confided. "It's
absurd. It isn't as if Hugh and I don't know each other's bodies rather
well. In fact, we know them perfectly. We're very much naked together.
That kind of truth binds us. But he insists on waiting for marriage to
consummate the last part."
"Well, you'll be wed soon, I guess."
"In June," she said. "We were supposed to gather up a few final
plans this weekend, but Daddy and Hugh when put together are hope–
less. Worse than two relics in an old folks' home trying to make con–
versation with each other's dentures."
It was my turn to laugh. It went on for so long that in embarrass–
ment I sat down. She sat beside me. We perched on the southern head
of the island and looked down Blue Hill Bay to the cold Easter sun
shining over the remote Atlantic.
