Read Online Nothing That Meets the Eye by Patricia Highsmith - Free Book Online

overruled his fear that she knew it already, that it would bore her and kill whatever affection might have grown in her for him. But also, he reasoned, he wanted her to know. He smiled, captured by memory. “You see, my idea of life was to travel up and down one romantic river after another in Europe, just the two of us and a servant or so, until we got ready to come home.” He was making it short, beginning near the end. “We were both very young. I was only twenty-four, with an income from my father, so I saw no reason to work. I hate work anyway, actually. Only—she fell in love with someone a bit richer before we’d even left the States.” He laughed a little, sadly and tolerantly, like a gentleman who related sordid facts reluctantly, though they showed him to advantage.
    â€œBut you went on to Europe.”
    â€œYes, I did. Went though all the advances I could get on my trust fund and finally went through the principal. Then I came home and sobered up and found a pleasant spot in my father’s advertising firm. Which brings you practically up-to-date. Now I drift around, trying to put an edge on a hopelessly dull existence.”
    She was looking off again, toward the casements now, and suddenly he realized she knew he had said the same thing in the same words many times before. It had never mattered before that he had, but it mattered now because she was different. He looked at her and bit the end of his tongue and cursed himself.
    â€œNot by yourself all the time.”
    â€œOh, yes. Quite,” he replied, contritely. “It’s not often I meet anyone like you.” He puffed nervously on his cigarette. “I mean, I never have. Do you know how it is sometimes,” he began again, trying to turn her eyes to him, “when you are lonely for something, you want something and you can’t discover what it is? Not friends or lovers or any spot on earth. Something less graspable than any of those.” His hand closed with a grasping gesture on nothing. He had not said this to anyone before, and he was pleased with his articulateness and also with his honesty.
    â€œI know.”
    He nodded, believing she did know. He felt his eyes were stretched wide the way they were sometimes when he looked into bar mirrors and saw the ingenuous hope. But now he did not care. He wanted to go on, to tell her that at the times he wanted this mysterious thing, he sat in bars where he could heighten the sense of its absence and so possibly discover one day what it was he wanted. But remembering her phrase, the gentleman-at-the-bar, he dared not. He brought his face under control, leaned closer to her and said quietly, “I know it’s to meet you that I’ve wanted.”
    â€œI’m sorry,” she said, her slow words making it sound somehow final and irreparable, “that you’re so lonely!”
    â€œLonely? I’m never lonely!”
    She only smiled at him now, and he did not know what to make of the smile.
    â€œNo, I’m not lonely!” He laughed, feeling that such an admission would be a weakness, as though loneliness were a disease which even when cured left some unattractive trace.
    She said nothing. Now the smile was gone and only the corner of her mouth was drawn up a little, with what expression Hildebrandt could not see, for her head was bent over the table.
    â€œAt any rate, have you had dinner?”
    â€œYes, thanks.”
    â€œI wish I’d thought to ask you last night.”
    â€œBut I had an engagement.”
    â€œYou might have broken it.”
    â€œNo, a business engagement.”
    â€œBusiness?”
    â€œLegal business.”
    â€œOh?”
    â€œTell me what you do on Sundays.”
    Hildebrandt smiled, wanting to embrace her. “But I’m very curious about you.”
    She reached for a cigarette. “I’m here to settle some accounts—having just got a divorce.”
    â€œOh, I see,” he