Free The Winds of Marble Arch and Other Stories by Connie Willis Page B

saw the positiveside of things.”
    “Sara,” I said, “are there any hospitals near Holborn?”
    “The Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children. That’s the one James Barrie left all the money to,” she said. “Why?”
    The Great Ormond Street Hospital. That had to be it. They had used it as a temporary morgue, and the air—
    “It’s so
obvious,”
Elliott said, still on the subject of infidelity. “The excuses Hayley Mills’scharacter makes for where she’s been—”
    “She lookswonderful, doesn’t she?” Cath said. “How old do you suppose she is? She looks so young!”
    The end-of-intermission bell chimed.
    “Let’s go,” Cath said, setting her wine down. “I don’t want to have to crawl over all those people again.”
    Sara swallowed her wine at one gulp, and we went back down the aisle. We were too late. The people on the endhad to stand up and let us past.
    “But don’t you agree,” Elliott said, sitting down, “that any normal person—?”
    “Shhh,” Cath said, leaning all the way across Sara and me to shut him up. “The lights are going down.”
    They did, and I felt an odd sense of relief, as if we’d just avoided something terrible. The curtain began to go up.
    “I still say,” Elliott said in a stage whisper, “that nobodycould have that many clues thrown at him and not realize his wife’s having an affair.”
    “Why not?” Sara said, “You didn’t,” and Hayley Mills came onstage.
    Beside me, in the dark, Elliott was applauding like everyone else, and I thought, it’s as if nothing happened. Elliott will think he didn’t really hear it, like the wind in the tube, over so fast you wonder if it was really real, and he’lldecide it wasn’t, he’ll lean across me and say, “What do you mean? You’re not having an affair, are you?” and Sara will whisper, “Of course not, you idiot. I just meant you never notice anything,” and it won’t all have blown up, it won’t all—
    “Who is it?” Elliott said.
    His voice echoed in the space between two of Hayley Mills and her husband’s lines, and a man in front of us turned around andglared.
    “Who is it?” Elliott said again, louder. “Who are you having an affair with?”
    Cath said, in a strangled voice, “Don’t—”
    “No, you’re right,” Elliott said, standing up. “What the hell difference does it make?” and pushed his way out over the people on the aisle.
    Sara sat an endless minute, and then she plunged past us too, tripping over my foot and nearly falling as she did.
    I lookedover at Cath,wondering if I should go after Sara. I had the ticket for her coat and scarf in my pocket. Cath was staring stiffly up at the stage, her coat clutched tightly around her.
    “This can’t go on,” Hayley Mills said, looking now fully as old as she was, but still going gamely on with her lines, “I want a divorce,” and Cath stood up and pushed past me, me following clumsily after her, muttering,“Sorry, sorry,” over and over to the people on the aisle.
    “It’s
over,”
Hayley said from the stage. “Can’t you
see
that?”
    I didn’t catch up to Cath till she was halfway through the lobby.
    “Wait,” I said, reaching for her arm. “Cath.”
    Her face was white and set. She pushed unseeingly through the glass doors and out onto the pavement, and then stood there, looking bewildered.
    “I’ll get a taxi,”I said, thinking, At least we don’t have to compete with the end-of-the-play crowd.
    Wrong. People were streaming out of the Apollo, and farther down the street,
Miss Saigon
, and God knew what else. There were swarms of people on the curb and at the corner, shouting and whistling for taxis.
    “Wait here,” I said, pushing Cath back under the Lyric’s marquee, and plunged out into the melee, my armthrust out. A taxi pulled toward the curb, but it was only avoiding a clot of people, newspapers over their heads, ducking across the street. The driver put his arm out and gestured toward the