Authors: James Salter
Afterwards they were like victims, face up, unable to move.
“It’s like nothing else in the world. I simply can’t imagine anything on earth more … extreme,” he said.
“Heroin,” Christine murmured.
“Have you ever had heroin?”
“Four times as pleasurable as sex. Pleasure that can’t be compared with anything else. Believe me.”
“So you’ve taken it.”
“No, but I know.”
“I don’t want to be thought of as just a nice man.”
“You’re not a nice man. You’re a real man. You know you are,” she said. “That night in the taxi, I already knew.”
Everything he had wanted to be, she was offering him. She had been given to him as a blessing, a proof of God. He had never really been paid. He had never been paid in the one true coin. She had held him casually in her hand, he had known what she was thinking. They might have
lain like that and talked for days or been silent. The afternoon had been unforgettable.
“Why are we always so tired?” he asked. “It can’t be that much effort.”
“Yes, it can,” she said.
Eddins recovered slowly. He had finally accepted what had happened, but he was crippled by it. He was less committed to life and more passive. Unlike his former self, he could sit quietly listening. He sat listening to two women next to him in the theater before the curtain went up talking enthusiastically about a movie they had seen, what had happened in it and how it was so like life. They were in their forties, probably, and no different from women he might be more interested in if he knew them, but he had no interest in knowing them. Or, for that matter, the couple two rows in front of him, the woman. He had been struck by her beautiful, full hair and the fur collar on her coat. Her head was almost leaning against the man’s, and from time to time she would turn slightly to say something to him. She had Slavic cheekbones and a long nose that came down straight from her forehead, a Roman nose, a sign of authority. He could look at a woman’s face, he thought, and almost recite her character. Delovet’s girlfriend who was an actress or former actress, a little on the short side to be one in either case, Eddins marked at first sight as a drinker and probably nasty if not made love to. Delovet was finding it difficult to detach himself from her. He was bored by her, impatient, but at the same time he liked to show her off. Her name was Diane Ostrow, she was called Dee Dee. Eddins had never come across anyone who’d seen her on the stage. She had black hair and a voracious laugh. Also just enough shrewdness to keep from slipping any further down. She could be persuaded without much effort to name several stars she had slept with. She liked it when they stood on their head naked for her.
“A number of them did it?”
“Two,” she said casually. “So, what kind of things do you like to do?” she asked Eddins.
“Wrestle,” he said.
“Really?”
“I wrestled for the university,” he said. “I was a terror.”
“Which university?”
“All of them,” he said.
One day in a taxi heading south on Park, he saw a woman on the corner in expensive shoes and her coat tied at the waist with a cloth belt, a woman with the assumption of her class in every detail. She doubtless lived along the avenue and perhaps had ordinary concerns or cares, but the image of her impressed him with its poise or even, in its way, gallantry.
He began to pay some attention to his clothes and appearance. He bought some soft cotton shirts and a blue silk scarf. When the weather was good he walked to work.
It was around this time that he met a divorced woman named Irene Keating in the New York Public Library. It was after a lecture and people were standing along the hallway drinking wine. She was by herself, not completely comfortable but wearing a nice-looking dress. She lived in New Jersey, a few minutes away, she said.
“More than a few minutes,” he said.
“Do you live in the city?”
“I have a house in Piermont,” he said.
“Piermont?”
“At the foot of the Ngong Hills.”
“The what?”
“Not well-known,” he remarked.
She was not literary but he liked her face that showed a pleasant nature.
“I thought the lecture—what did you think of it?—I thought it was a little boring,” he said.
“I’m so glad you said that. I was falling asleep.”
“Not a bad feeling. At certain times, that is. Do you come in often?”
“Well, yes and no. I usually come in hopes of meeting someone interesting.”
“You’d do better in most bars.”
“Why aren’t you in one, then?” she said.
He took her to dinner a few days later and ended up telling her stories about Delovet, his yacht without a motor in Westport, and his former Romanian girlfriend, of whom he liked to say, “I could have her
deported,” about Robert Boyd, the ex-preacher that Eddins had never met but liked so much. Boyd’s father had died, and he was living alone in the country, in desperate need as always.
“You’d like him. His letters have such dignity.”
She listened rapt. She asked if he would come to dinner at her house.
“I’ll cook something good,” she said.
He agreed to come that Friday. Then, on the train there in the evening crowd he found himself regretting it. They were all going home to their families. Their life was familiar to them.
She met him at the station and they drove to her house five or six blocks away. It was an attached house with brick steps and an iron railing. Inside, however, it was less forbidding. She wanted to hang up his coat, but he said, no, just leave it on the chair. She poured champagne and had him come into the kitchen, where she had put on an apron over her dress and continued cooking as they talked. She seemed younger and excited.
“Is the champagne any good?” she asked. “I just go by the price.”
“Very good.”
“I’m glad you could come,” she said.
“Have you lived here long?”
“Taste this,” she said, holding a spoonful of what looked like consommé out to him.
It was delicious.
“I made it myself. From scratch.”
The table was set for two. She lit the candles and after they had sat down seemed to relax a little. The light in the room had a soft hue, perhaps it was colored by the champagne. She filled their glasses again. Suddenly she stood up—she had forgotten to take off her apron, which she stripped away, mussing her hair. She sat down and then stood again, leaning deliberately across the table to kiss him. They had never kissed before. The consommé was in front of them; she raised her glass slightly.
“To the night of nights,” she said.
They ate roast squab, the birds succulent and brown on their beds of buttered rice. He didn’t remember how it proceeded from there. The bed was wide, and she seemed nervous as a cat. She tried to get away from him as much as she drew him towards her, she hadn’t made up her mind or she kept changing it. She kicked and turned away, he felt he was trying
to catch her. Afterwards she apologized and said it was the first time she had made love in three years, since her divorce, but she loved it. She kissed his hands as if he were a priest.
In the morning she had no makeup. For some reason—the purity of her bare features—she looked like a Swede. She talked about her marriage. Her ex-husband had been a businessman, a sales manager. In the daylight the house seemed drab. There were no bookshelves. The magical dining room, he noticed, had some kind of striped wallpaper. It had been there when they moved in, she said.
It was all still asleep, untouched by the wand. Along the road there were farmhouses, some with their land, and one, old and white, that was a boardinghouse. You could rent a room by the week or for the season and look out at the flat, unbroken fields and walk meditatively or ride a crippled bicycle to the beach about a mile away. Further along was a cemetery that the road split around like a wrecked ship and still further a drab, unpainted house beneath the trees that was rented to young people who sometimes had parties outside at the end of the day and into the evening, cars parked around haphazardly and pitchers of cheap wine.
In earlier years the painters had all come because it was cheap and because of the light, clear, transcendent light that seemed to come for miles in the long afternoon. Life was casual. There were large houses behind the hedges and others on flag lots, some from the earliest days. The flood of discovery had not yet swept in. Simple cottages, some belonging to the farmers, stood on the dunes.
The country suited Christine, she said this herself. It was beautiful and open. The light was such as you had never seen, the air and the wind from the sea. She avoided going back to the city and Bowman came on the long weekends. Her feeling of happiness greeted him. Her glorious smile. At the roadside stand with its flatbeds of produce, fresh corn,
tomatoes, strawberries right from the field, they recognized her. Normally hardened to customers, when she stood at the counter with her arms filled, they relented and smiled.
She had decided to renew her broker’s license, and she went to see Evelyn Hinds, whose name she’d seen on For Sale signs. Mrs. Hinds’ office was in her house just off New Town Lane, white with a white picket fence and a neatly lettered sign.
Evelyn Hinds was a dumpling of a woman with bright eyes that took things in immediately and a ready laugh. She was at ease with people. Her first husband had crashed at sea—it was thought he crashed, no one ever saw him again—but she’d been married two times after that and was on good terms with both her former husbands. Christine came to see her in dark slacks and a short linen jacket.
“Chris, can I call you that?” Mrs. Hinds said. “How old are you, do you mind my asking?”
“Thirty-four,” Christine said.
“Thirty-four. Really? You don’t look it.”
“Well, it’s worse than that. I sometimes claim to be a bit younger.”
“And you live out here?”
“Yes, I’m living here now. I have a sixteen-year-old daughter. I was a broker in the city for seven years.”
It was not quite that long but Mrs. Hinds didn’t question it.
“Who were you with?” she said.
“A small firm in the village, Walter Bruno.”
“Did you do sales or rentals?”
“I did mostly sales.”
“I love to put customers together with houses.”
“I like that, too.”
“It’s like marrying them off. Are you married?”
“No, I’m separated,” Christine said. “I’m not looking for a husband.”
“Thank goodness.”
“What do you mean?”
“No one else would have a chance,” Mrs. Hinds said.
She liked Christine and took her on.
It was a small agency, just four of them. She told Bowman she was going to like it.
“I’ve seen her name,” he said. “What’s she like?”
“Very straightforward, but there’s one other important thing. Now that I’m doing it again,” she said, “I’ll find you a house.”
Anet, who had come home from school, was waiting at the station with her mother, and Bowman met her for the first time when he got off the train. She had a fresh, young face and hung behind Christine a bit. Car doors were slamming and families calling out to one another.
“These have been the most beautiful days,” Christine told him as they walked to the car. “They say it’s going to be like this all through the weekend.”
“When did you get here?” he asked Anet.
He wanted it to be easy between them.
“When did I get here?” she turned to Christine.
“On Wednesday.”
“It’s great to have you here,” he said.
They worked their way out of the traffic around the station and went along in the early evening, the headlights bright and flowing ahead like an invitation to a wondrous night.
“Where should we go?” he said to Christine. “Did you make dinner?”
“I have some things at home,” she said.
“Should we go to Billy’s? Let’s go there. Have you been to any of these places yet?” he asked Anet somewhat foolishly.
“No,” she said.
“I’d rather go to that first place, the two brothers,” Christine said.
“You’re right. That’s a better idea.”
As they went up the steps and then in, Bowman felt a full-bodied happiness, the two women and the aura they gave. Anet talked during the meal but only to her mother. Bowman enjoyed it, however. It seemed comfortable. They drove home through a deep, luxurious blue, past houses with their reassuring lights.
Anet was not shy but she kept her distance from him. She belonged to her mother and, certainly, to her father. She was loyal to them both. It was hard to win her acceptance. He also sensed her unhappiness that he was her mother’s lover, a word he never used—there was a jealousy born in the blood. She expressed it by excluding him although they sometimes sat together, the three of them, in a natural way listening to music or watching TV. He noticed the womanly gestures that were like
her mother’s. He was always, despite himself, aware of her presence in the house, sometimes terrifically aware. His thoughts went back to Jackie Ettinger, the girl long ago in Summit, the almost mythic girl. He never knew Jackie. It seemed he would not know Anet either.
When he was away from her—during the week—he was able to think about it more calmly, the figure he wanted to be, the longtime consort—that was not the word—the man her mother loved, probably not in any way more sexually than Anet’s father although that was clearly not so, given the intensity of Bowman’s feelings, an emotional intensity that was almost constantly present.
On a Sunday morning when the heat of the day had not yet begun but the light was dazzling all along the beach, the surf in a line almost violent in its brightness, they sat near the dunes with sections of the paper, reading in contemplation, feeling the sun. The water was cold, there were only a few other people. It was like Mexico, he felt, though he had never been there. The simplicity. It was June and summer had arrived. People were there but not yet the crowds. It was a kind of exile. They were reading what had happened in the world. When the sun was above their shoulders they would go home for lunch.
The Murphys in Antibes must have had such a life. They’d had a house, themselves, further east. Gerald Murphy liked to swim and swam for a mile in the ocean every day. Bowman had mentioned this but to no one’s interest. Other people, three or four of them, were swimming he noticed. He got up and went down to the water. He was surprised to find it warmer than he expected. It came in around his ankles almost temptingly. He went in up to his knees.