[That's a fair question, there is nothing she registers as flirtatious about it. What brings her all the way out here, miles from home? She has traveled numerous places in the past few years (a single, bitter failed attempt to visit New York aside): from Louisville as the blushing bride, to sunny beaches where she spent her first days as a wife, and then she was swept off to France, to be dazzled by the city of lights. Only recently did she and her husband settle down in Chicago, and even then, now they are off vacationing once again.
What brings her here could be anything: her husband once again acquiring a taste for exotic women, exasperation with the constant exchange of houses, and her mounting disenchantment with each of the promises Tom makes her, only to break every single one of them.
But the most simple answer of all is:]
My husband brought me.
[She replies, as if he hadn't seen the diamond wedding band around her finger. But there is nothing joyful in her tone, and even the rich warmth to her voice sounds slightly harder: this is, after all, just yet another repeated display of exuberance expense, which passes for affection in her passionless marriage. She wishes she could say—not to him, but just for the sake of saying it—that Tom used to make slow, languid love to her for hours on end between breakfast and supper, but that had never been. Even their honeymoon was punctuated by trips to the gambling table, too many glasses of wine, and a wedding night that had her in tears by the end of it.
But, all of that is far too dark talk to bring to the table.]
I don't know where he went off to.
[She says plainly, as if to explain his blatant absence.]
no subject
What brings her here could be anything: her husband once again acquiring a taste for exotic women, exasperation with the constant exchange of houses, and her mounting disenchantment with each of the promises Tom makes her, only to break every single one of them.
But the most simple answer of all is:]
My husband brought me.
[She replies, as if he hadn't seen the diamond wedding band around her finger. But there is nothing joyful in her tone, and even the rich warmth to her voice sounds slightly harder: this is, after all, just yet another repeated display of exuberance expense, which passes for affection in her passionless marriage. She wishes she could say—not to him, but just for the sake of saying it—that Tom used to make slow, languid love to her for hours on end between breakfast and supper, but that had never been. Even their honeymoon was punctuated by trips to the gambling table, too many glasses of wine, and a wedding night that had her in tears by the end of it.
But, all of that is far too dark talk to bring to the table.]
I don't know where he went off to.
[She says plainly, as if to explain his blatant absence.]