He reached out for her. “Don’t touch me!” she said. “I feel sick.”
The dream hung around for days afterward.
“What can I do?” Mr. Big said. “I can’t compete with a dream.” They were sitting on the edge of the pool with their feet in the water. The light from the sun was almost white.
“Do you think we talk enough?” Carrie asked.
“No,” Mr. Big said. “No, we probably don’t.”
They drove around and went to the beach and to lunch and talked about how beautiful it was and how relaxed they were. They exclaimed over a hen crossing the road with two newly hatched chicks, over a tiny eel caught in a tidal pool, over the dead rats that lay squished on the sides of the roads.
“Are we friends?” Carrie asked.
“There was a time when we really were friends. When I felt like you understood my soul,” Mr. Big said. They were driving on the narrow, curving, cement roads.
“A person can only make so much effort until they get tired or lose interest,” Carrie said.
They didn’t say anything for a while, then Carrie said: “How come you never say ‘I love you’?”
“Because I’m afraid,” Mr. Big said. “I’m afraid that if I say ‘I love you,’ you’re going to think that we’re going to get married.” Mr. Big slowed the car down. They went over a speed bump and passed a cemetery filled with brightly colored plastic flowers. A group of bare-chested young men were standing on the side of the road, smoking. “I don’t know,” Mr. Big said. “What’s wrong with the way things are right now?”
Later, when they were packing to go home, Mr. Big said, “Have you seen my shoes? Can you be sure to pack my shampoo?”
“No, and of course, darling,” Carrie said lightly. She went into the bathroom. In the mirror, she looked good. Tan and slim and blond. She began packing up her cosmetics. Toothbrush. Face cream. His shampoo was still in the shower, and she decided to ignore it. “What if I got pregnant?” she thought. She wouldn’t tell him and she’d secretly have an abortion and never talk to him again. Or she would tell him and have the abortion anyway and never talk to him again. Or she would have the kid and raise it up on her own, but that could be tricky. What if she hated him so much for not wanting to be with her that she ended up hating the kid?
She went into the bedroom and put on her high heels and straw hat. It was custom made and it cost over five hundred dollars. “Oh darling . . .,” she said.
“Yes?” he asked. His back was turned. He was putting things in his suitcase.
She wanted to say, “That’s it, dear. It’s over. We’ve had a great time together. But I always feel it’s better to end things on a high note. You do understand . . . ?”
Mr. Big looked up. “What?” he said. “Did you want something, baby?”
“Oh, nothing,” Carrie said. “I just forgot your shampoo, that’s all.”
“HE’S JUST A CREEP”
Carrie drank five bloody mary’s on the plane, and they fought all the way home. In the airport. In the limo. Carrie didn’t shut up until he said, “Do you want me to drop you off at your place? Is that what you want?” When they got to his apartment, she called her parents. “We got into a big fight,” she said. “He’s just a creep. Like all men.”
“Are you all right?” her father asked.
“Oh, I’m great,” she said.
Then Mr. Big was nice. He made her get into pyjamas and sat with her on the couch. “When I first met you, I liked you,” he said. “Then I liked you a lot. Now I . . . I’ve grown to love you.”
“Don’t make me vomit,” Carrie said.
“Why me, baby?” he asked. “With all the guys you’ve gone out with, why do you want to pick me?”
“Who said I did?”
“What is this, a pattern?” Mr. Big said. “Now that I’m more involved, you want to bail. You want to run away. Well, I can’t do anything about that.”
“Yes, you can,” Carrie said. “That’s the whole point.”
“I don’t get it,” Mr. Big said. “How is our relationship different from all the others you’ve had?”
“It’s not. It’s just the same,” Carrie said. “So far, it’s just sufficient.”