Then she dips her hand into the bucket, comes out with a squirming fish, slaps it on the paper, and opens its belly from its anus to its throat. Her small thumb slips inside to push out the little lump of guts. Then she chops off its head just behind its pectoral fins, and she hands the body to Claudio. The tiny downturned mouth is still gasping as she tosses it, trailing intestines, into the paper bag.
Claudio sets to work on the headless fish without asking Cynthia any questions, without even seeming to think, and soon the newspaper is showered with silver flecks. Cynthia has the head off another fish and is starting on a third. The one she just finished twitches a little on the paper. Her knife reminds Stanley of one he had for a while back home: he taped the handle of his, wore it on his calf. Then he used it and had to get rid of it. He begins to feel lightheaded from watching her work. He stands up, crosses the backyard to where a rambling rose pushes through the fence, and breathes deeply over its waxy white blossoms.
Soon a ragged calico cat is walking toward him across the toprail, sniffing the air; a second cat meows from somewhere below. Back on the porch, Claudio has fired up his customary jag, talking about movies, movie stars. The chick has no problem keeping up: she chimes in with her own material—foreign-sounding names that Stanley’s never heard in his life, strung together with obscure hepcat jive that he can’t make heads or tails of—as she slaughters her way through the twin buckets. Looking past them to the house, Stanley sees Synn?ve in the kitchen, home from the bakery. He figures he probably ought to go in and talk to her about art or something, but he doesn’t. Instead he just moves back and forth along the fence, stopping sometimes to scratch the stray cats on their matted necks, sometimes to catch them as they make beelines for the bag of heads and plop them back over the fence. Just once, he thinks, just one goddamn time, he’d like something to work out like he expects it to. That might be nice for a switch.
After a while the girl takes the cleaned fish into the kitchen, and Claudio crosses the yard. Stanley? he says. Are you okay?
Stanley keeps his eyes on the cats. Don’t come near me with that shit on your hands, he says.
In a moment I will wash them. Are you feeling sick? You seem strange.
I’m doing great, Stanley says. I just got a lot on my mind.
Claudio’s quiet for a second. He’s doing that nervous thing he does with his fingers: Stanley can hear soft smacks as their tips stick and un-stick from his slimy thumb. Cynthia is my friend, Claudio says. I like to make friends. I believe it is a natural thing to do. You left me in the café alone. You did not say you were going. Stanley, you don’t think—
The screen door slams: the girl is back. She does a ballet move off the porch, then pounces on Claudio, mussing his hair. Watching Stanley the whole time.
Stanley, Claudio says, Cynthia and I are going to see a film tonight after dinner. Will you come along with us?
Stanley gives them both a frosty look. Sorry, he says. I gotta have a word with your pops tonight, sweetheart. Man to man. But thanks for the ask-along.
A funny expression crosses the girl’s face—irritated and embarrassed, a little panicked too, like Stanley just interrupted her graduation speech to tell her her slip is showing—but then that’s whisked aside by a wiseacre grin. Wow, she says. It’s a little early to be asking for my hand, don’t you think? We haven’t even had our first date.
Yeah, Stanley says. Well, I move pretty quick. Hope that trousseau’s coming along okay.
She throws her head back with a showy, throaty laugh. Then she smacks Claudio on the side of his head. Go inside and rinse your dukes, you savages, she says. We’ll see if Mommy needs any help with the chow.
They start toward the porch. So, Stanley asks, what’s the movie?
Bonjour Tristesse, Claudio says.
Buh-huh buh what?
Bonjour Tristesse. The new film of Otto Preminger, starring David Niven, and the young actress Jean Seberg. In Saint Joan she was not so good, I think. But maybe for her this role will be better.
Is this some kinda frog flick?
Ribbet-ribbet, Cynthia says.
The door swings open, and Adrian Welles is standing in the kitchen, resting an affectionate hand on Synn?ve’s back. He turns to them with an impish grin.
He’s an inch or two shorter than his wife. Not quite as thick around the middle as Stanley had thought: broad, sure, but more brawny than soft. He must’ve been wearing a bunch of layers the other night. The snuffling dog is with him; it charges the open door, yapping its monstrous little head off. Cynthia catches it by the collar and hauls it inside, its white-rimmed popeyes rolling.
The air in the kitchen is thick with the smells of hot oil and celery and garlic and fish. Welles’s powder-blue eyes have taken on a bright sheen beneath his spectacles, like pebbles of quartz washed by unaccustomed rain. He calls to Stanley and Claudio over the skillet’s hiss. Greetings, my young friends! he says. Such unexpected pleasure you have brought us!
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