Page 429 - tender-is-the-night

gotten her too—almost in the second of his flesh breaking
from hers she had a foretaste that things were going to be
different than she had expected. She felt the nameless fear
which precedes all emotions, joyous or sorrowful, inevita-
ble as a hum of thunder precedes a storm.
Tommy peered cautiously from the balcony and report-
ed.
‘All I can see is two women on the balcony below this.
They’re talking about weather and tipping back and forth in
American rocking-chairs.’
‘Making all that noise?’
‘The noise is coming from somewhere below them. Lis-
ten.’

“Oh, way down South in the land of cotton
Hotels bum and business rotten
Look away—‘

‘It’s Americans.’
Nicole flung her arms wide on the bed and stared at the
ceiling; the powder had dampened on her to make a milky
surface. She liked the bareness of the room, the sound of the
single fly navigating overhead. Tommy brought the chair
over to the bed and swept the clothes off it to sit down; she
liked the economy of the weightless dress and espadrilles
that mingled with his ducks upon the floor.
He inspected the oblong white torso joined abruptly to
the brown limbs and head, and said, laughing gravely:
‘You are all new like a baby.’

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