Passion and Affect by Laurie Colwin Page A

I mean, were you in love with someone else? I mean, did I have anything to do with this?”
    â€œI worried about you,” said Holly.
    â€œSo did I,” Guido said grimly. They were silent for a while and then Holly turned over with the little sigh that indicated she was asleep.
    Thus, their reconciliation. Holly was back, but even with her sleeping next to him, Guido turned over and over again during the night to make sure she was actually there. She always was, her hair nestled against the pillows and one elegant foot on top of the blanket. She was sleeping the sleep of the just and innocent. Her clothes were neatly folded over the armchair that had held nothing for the past six months but copies of The New York Times . While Holly slept beautifully away, Guido slept fitfully, dreaming of lizards and relief maps of Brazil.
    The next morning, she was up before him. He found her drinking coffee and wearing his old camel hair robe. What she called her “essential clothing” was still in the country. Her dark, thick hair was only slightly disarranged by sleep and her eyes were bright with unfocused alertness. She was reading the society page. At his place was a covered plate of eggs and bacon. She read to him from the paper, as if they had never been parted.
    â€œDo you know Phillip Lamaze?” she said.
    â€œNo. Should I?”
    â€œIt says here that he was in your class at college and that he’s just been named curator of the Rope Collection.”
    â€œWhat’s that? Photos of hangings?”
    â€œA gift of Mrs. Henry Rope. It’s Chinese porcelain.” She poured herself another cup of coffee, and Guido, who was generally teetotal, found himself wanting a drink. He had the feeling he would see Holly and die, so he barricaded himself in back of the sports page.
    â€œI’m going to look for an apartment today,” Holly said. “I’ve done the real estate page, and I made a whole bunch of calls before you got up.” With that, she dismissed him. He kissed the top of her head, the only part of her accessible to him since she was deeply engaged in the movie review.
    â€œI’ll call you at lunchtime,” she said.
    Guido put on his tie and left. Walking down the stairs, he felt as if his knees were a pair of smashed artifacts from the Rope Collection and reflected that in matters of the heart, Holly was very businesslike.
    It was a bright, strident autumn morning, of the sort Guido hated. The weather was not in correspondence with his mood: the sun shone through fat, white clouds, wind blew the leaves off the trees, and the sky was an intense, cheery gray. Guido was ripe for blizzard, or torrential rain. He walked to his office feeling dazed and weak-headed. His office housed the literary end of a foundation called The Magna Carta Trust, which he had inherited and which gave money to worthy artists with noble plans for large-scale cultural events. From his office, Guido dispensed money to colleges and poets, and novelists from Guam and Uganda. He also produced and edited the foundation’s literary magazine, Runnymede . It was a sensible and elegant production, and in the seven years of Guido’s editorship, had begun to turn over quite a tidy profit, a fact that caused considerable astonishment to the trustees.
    Since he could not bear to think of Holly, whose return was more like a collision than an event, he thought about his secretarial problems. The girl who had worked for him, Betty Helen Carnhoops, had quit to go to Oklahoma with her husband. She was a dull, efficient, and unattractive girl, as bland as cream of rice and probably as stable.
    At the door to his office, he was greeted by a young man wearing his hair in the manner of John Donne, a three-piece suit, and cowboy boots.
    â€œCan I help you?” Guido said.
    â€œYeah. I’m looking for Guido Morris.”
    â€œI’m Guido Morris.”
    â€œWell, I’m Stanley Berkowitz and