“Of course. I’ll always be awake. Will you call when you are awake?”
“Yes. But why do you always wake so early?”
“It is a business habit.”
“Oh, I wish you were not in that business, and that you were not going to die.”
“So do I,” said the Colonel. “But I’m getting out of the business.”
“Yes,” she said, sleepily and comfortably. “Then we go to Rome and get the clothes.”
“And live happily ever after.”
“Please don’t,” she said. “Please, please, don’t. You know I made the resolution not to cry.”
“You’re crying now,” the Colonel said. “What the hell have you got to lose on that resolution?”
“Take me home please.”
“That’s what I was doing in the first place,” the Colonel told her.
“Be kind once first.”
“I will,” the Colonel said.
After they, or the Colonel, rather, had paid the gondoliere who was unknowing, yet knowing all, solid, sound, respectful and trustworthy, they walked into the Piazzetta and then across the great, cold, wind-swept square that was hard and old under their feet. They walked holding close and hard in their sorrow and their happiness.
“This is the place where the German shot the pigeons,” the girl said.
“We probably killed him,” the Colonel said. “Or his
