James Salter - All That Is

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“My name? Eunice.”

He felt in his pocket for bills. He took one out and put it in her hand, a ten.

“No,” she said, “you don’t have to.”

“Take it, Eunice. It’s a down payment.”

“No.”

“I have to go,” he said and walked away.

For the twenty-fifth anniversary of the publishing house, Baum gave a party in a French restaurant. There was a large crowd, almost all of them people Bowman knew. On the far side of the room he caught sight of Gretchen, who had long since become an editor herself, at a paperback house. She was married and a mother. He made his way across to her to say hello.

“It’s so nice to see you,” he said.

She still had the quality that had allowed her to ignore the terrible blemishes although these were now gone. On her smooth forehead and cheeks were only some faint etched scars, barely noticeable.

“How have you been?” he asked.

“Very well,” she said. “And you?”

“The same. You look wonderful. It’s been a long time. What is it, six years?”

“More,” she said.

“It doesn’t seem it. We miss you. Neil left, I guess you know that. He went to work for Delovet. He went over to the enemy.”

“I know.”

“You were a great distraction to him,” Bowman said. “You had a boyfriend, though.”

“I didn’t have a boyfriend,” she said.

“I thought you did.”

“I was married.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Just briefly,” she said.

“You seemed so innocent.”

“I was innocent.”

She was still innocent. Also, he hadn’t noticed it before, slightly shy.

“I miss Neil,” he said. “I don’t see him very often these days.”

“He sent me some poems,” she said. “Back then, I mean.”

“I didn’t know that. He was smitten. There were some poems he didn’t send you.”

“Really?”

“Oh, nothing terrible.”

“I wasn’t sure if you liked me,” she said.

“Me? I’m surprised to hear you say that. I liked you very much.”

“Neil wasn’t the one I was interested in,” she said.

In the same undramatic way, she went on, “You were the one. I didn’t have the nerve though.”

He felt inept.

“I was married.”

“It didn’t matter,” she said.

“You shouldn’t be telling me now. I don’t know, it’s too disorienting.”

“Since I’m confessing it,” she said, “I might as well say nothing has changed.”

It was said quite simply.

“Why don’t you call me? I’d love to see you,” she said.

She was looking directly at him. He didn’t know what to say. Just then her husband, who had been getting drinks at the bar, came back. The three of them talked together for a few minutes. Bowman had the feeling that they all knew. That evening he didn’t talk to her again.

He saw her now, of course, in a different way. He was tempted to call her but felt it would not be right, from a moral viewpoint and something besides. They were not the people they had been. He admired her, however, the marred girl she had been, the poised woman she now was. She was the age when she could still be naked. He could be gone from the office for several hours in the afternoon, almost any afternoon, and so could she. It was not indiscretion, it was what was due her.

You’re a fool, he told himself. He saw himself in the mirror in the morning. His hair was thinner now but his face, it seemed, was the same. He had come to the point where he was certain of his abilities, how to make writers want to be published by him, among others. He knew that some of the best writers began as journalists and sometimes ended as journalists when the passion faded. He knew also that he had the ability to turn people against him. That came with the rest of it. He could talk about books and writers and literature blooming in one country and then another, not through one great writer but always through a group of them, almost as though you had to have enough wood for a real fire, one or two big sticks were not enough. He went on about Russian writing, talking too much about Gogol, perhaps, and about the French and English. They had their great periods, Paris, London. Now it was undoubtedly New York.

“Would the genius mind telling us his name?” a man across the table asked.

He was involved, though not that closely, with certain poets, not as their editor, if editor was the correct word, since poems were essentially inviolable. Poetry was largely left to McCann, who had been hired more or less to replace Eddins. He was an easterner who walked with a cane. He’d had polio, both he and his roommate at Groton, the two of them had helped the stricken football captain from chapel and had come down with it. At the time, in the 1930s, there was an epidemic every fall—parents lived in terror of it. McCann was married to an English journalist who wrote for the Guardian and was often away on assignment.

Poetry books sold few copies. Publishing them was a charitable act, Baum used to say, mainly to arouse McCann, although the books were an important ornament to the reputation of the house. Since few people read poetry after college, the struggle for prominence among poets was all the more fierce and the award of one of the important prizes or a secure academic position was often the result of intense self-promotion, flattery, and mutual agreements. There were perhaps poets in parochial cities living drab lives like Cavafy’s, but those Bowman knew were quite social and even urbane, well accustomed to the current in which they were swimming, brushing against one another as they went, a Yale Younger Poets to one, a Bollingen to the next, a Pulitzer.

He was never able to find a house to buy. He rented one instead on a narrow road just past Bridgehampton that ended with a yellow Dead End sign at the beach. The only close neighbor was a man about his own age named Wille, who was friendly enough and parked his car on the grass near his kitchen door.

Bowman came out on weekends beginning in late spring. There was an active life that began about then. He knew people and was invited to dinners. He bought several cases of good wine to be able to bring a couple of bottles to the hostess. The house was always unlocked. He liked to come on the train which had a bar car and seats that could be reserved. Sometimes he drove, not leaving the city after one in the afternoon in order to avoid the heaviest traffic or waiting until nine or ten o’clock when the road was emptier.

It was knocked together and temporary compared to the rest of his life, but it was carefree and gave him the chance to know the area better and to make it more his own. When the right house finally appeared, he would be confident in buying it. He parked his car on the sandy lawn as Wille did and felt very much at home.

Beatrice had been having difficulties. In appearance she was practically unchanged, she looked just as she had for years, but she had become forgetful. She couldn’t remember her own telephone number at times or the names of certain people she knew very well. She knew their name and it would come to her afterwards, but it was embarrassing not to be able to say it.

“I must be losing my mind,” she said. “Who was that, again?”

“Mr. DePetris.”

“Of course. What’s wrong with me?”

Nothing, really. She was past seventy and in every respect in good health. Her son came to visit every other week. Only rarely did she go into the city anymore, she had everything she needed there in Summit, she said. She’d gone to New York many, many times, to see shows, to shop, but not in a long while.

“It’s been years,” she said.