James Salter - All That Is

She agreed to come to dinner, but she was late and after twenty minutes of feeling more and more conspicuous at the bar, he realized she would not appear. It was perhaps her husband or a change of mind but in any case it excluded him. He was aware of his insignificance, even triviality, and then suddenly it changed as she came in.

“Sorry to be late,” she said. “Forgive me. Have you been waiting?”

“No, it’s nothing.”

The minutes of his unhappiness had instantly disappeared.

“I was on the telephone with my husband, having an argument as usual,” she said.

“What were you arguing about?”

“Oh, money, everything.”

She was wearing a suit and a black silk shirt. She looked as if difficulty of any kind was a remote thing. When they sat she was on a banquette against the wall and he was opposite, able to look at her all he liked and aware of the glamour she was bestowing on the two of them.

During dinner, he said,

“Have you ever fallen in love?”

“Fallen in love? Been in love, you mean. Yes, of course.”

“I mean fallen. You never forget it.”

“Funny you should say that.”

She had fallen in love as a young girl, she said.

“How old were you?”

“Eighteen.”

It had been the most extraordinary experience of her life. She’d had a spell cast over her, she said. It was in Siena, she was a student, part of a group of a dozen boys and girls and she was not really aware of the intensity of… There was a Ferris wheel and you went up and up and sometimes stayed there, and that night, high above everything, the boy beside her began saying the most thrilling, impossible things, whispering madly in her ear. And she fell in love. There had never been anything like that night, she said.

Never anything like it. Bowman felt disheartened. Why had she said that?

“You know how it is,” she said, “how incredible.”

It was the past she was talking about, but not only the past—he could not be sure. Her presence was fresh, unspoiled.

“Incredible, yes, I know.”

She had hardly closed the door to her flat before he embraced and kissed her fervently, saying something she did not make out against her cheek.

“What?”

But he did not repeat it. He was opening the catch at the neck of her shirt, she did not stop his hands. In the bedroom she stepped from her skirt. She stood for a moment hugging herself and then slipped off the rest. The glory of her. England stood before him, naked in the darkness. She had been, in fact, lonely, she was ready to be loved. He was never more sure of his knowledge. He kissed her bare shoulders, then her hands and long fingers.

She lay beneath him. He was holding himself back but she showed he need not. They didn’t speak, he was afraid to speak. He touched the tip of his cock to her and almost effortlessly it went in, the head only, the rest held back. He was in possession of his life. He gathered and went in slowly, sinking like a ship, a little cry escaping her, the cry of a hare, as it went to the hilt.

Afterwards they lay until she slid from beneath him.

“My God.”

“What?”

“I’m drenched.”

She reached for something on the night table and lit a cigarette.

“You smoke.”

“Now and again.”

His eyes were now accustomed to the darkness. He knelt on the bed to drink her in. It was no longer preliminary to anything. He was not exhausted. He watched her smoke. After a while they made love again. He pulled her over him by her wrists, like a torn sheet. At the last she began to give a slight cry, and again he came too soon but she collapsed. The sheet was wet and they moved to one side and slept, he lay beside her like a child, in full contentment. It was different than marriage, unsanctioned, but marriage had permitted it. Her husband was off in Scotland. The consent had been without a word.

In the morning she was still sleeping, her lips slightly parted, like a girl in summer with cropped blond hair and a bare neck. He wondered if he should wake her with a touch or caress, but she was awake, perhaps from his gaze, and straightened her legs beneath the sheet. He turned her onto her stomach as if she were a possession, as if they had agreed.

He sat in the tub in the bathroom, a chalky tub of a grand size found in beach resorts, as the water thundered in. His eye fell on a slight pair of white underclothes hung to dry on the towel rack. On the shelves and windowsill were jars and small bottles, her lotions and creams. He gazed at them, his mind adrift, as the warm water rose. He slid further down as it reached his shoulders, in a kind of nirvana not based on freedom from desires but on attainment. He was at the center of the city, of London, it would always be his.

She poured tea in a pale robe that came only to the knee, holding the top of it closed with one hand. It was still early. He was buttoning his shirt.

“I feel like Stanley Ketchel.”

“Who is that?”

“He was a fighter. There was a famous newspaper story about him. Stanley Ketchel, the middleweight champion, was shot and killed yesterday morning by the husband of the woman he was cooking breakfast for.”

“That’s clever. Did you write that?”

“No, it’s just a famous opening. I like openings, they can be important. Ours was. Not easily forgotten. I thought… I’m not sure what I thought but part of it was, impossible.”

“I think that’s been disproven.”

“Yes.”

They sat silent for a moment.

“The thing is, I have to leave tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” she said. “When will you be back?”

“I don’t know. I can’t be sure. It’s presumably a question of work.”

He added, “I hope you won’t forget me.”

“You can be sure.”

Those were the words he pocketed and ran his fingers over many times, along with images of her that were as distinct as photographs. He wanted a photograph but prevented himself from asking for it. He would take one himself the next time and keep it between the pages of a book in the office with nothing written on it, no name or date. He could imagine someone accidentally coming across it and asking, who is this? He would without a word simply take it from their hand.

Caroline Amussen was living, as she had for years, on Dupont Circle in an apartment the furnishings of which, not particularly fashionable to begin with, hadn’t changed in all the time she’d been there, the same long sofa, the same easy chairs and lamps, the same white enameled table in the kitchen where she sat smoking and drinking coffee in the mornings and, having finished the paper, listening to the radio and her favorite host, whose witticisms she repeated to her friends in a voice that had become slightly hoarse, a voice of experience and drink. Various women, divorced and married, were her friends including Eve Lambert, whom she’d known since they were little girls and who had married into the Lambert family and loads of money—she was still invited pretty regularly to the Lamberts’ and occasionally went sailing with them although Brice Lambert, broad-faced and sporting, didn’t often go sailing with his wife but with another party, it was said, a young reporter who wrote for the social column. The boat afforded absolute privacy and the rumor was that Brice had his girlfriend spend the day of sailing naked. So it was said. But how would anyone know? Caroline thought.

With her friends, she had lunch and often, in the afternoon or evening, played cards. She was still the best looking of them and except for Eve had made the best marriage, the others had married, in her opinion, either lower-class or uninteresting men, salesmen and assistant managers. Washington could be dull. At five every afternoon the thousands of government offices would empty and the government workers would go home having spent the whole day wasting George Amussen’s hard-earned money, as he always complained. The government should be abolished, he said, the whole damned thing. We’d be better off without it.