James Salter - All That Is

“What do you like?” he said in Greek.

“Skorthalia,” she said. “Toasted kesari . Lamb and rice. Metrio afterwards.”

He responded with a smile. She was wearing a silk, apricot-colored shirt. Her teeth were white as calling cards. Later, the older brother came to the door of the kitchen to look.

“I’m very impressed,” Bowman said. “How long did it take you to learn Greek?”

“How long did it take me? One marriage,” she said.

The restaurant was crowded, almost every table was filled. A dwarf girl came in with her mother. She was barely four feet tall and had a stunted leg. She was wearing a kind of sweatshirt and her fingernails were painted blue. It was painful to see her twisting walk, but her face was serene.

“It’s like Greece,” Christine said. “Everyone comes, the whole town.”

There was a rather heavy woman, heavy but confident and definitely attractive in a flowered dress at a table near the door. Her name was Grace Clark. She was with another woman and a man, Gin Lane from the look of them. She had murdered her husband, Bowman said.

“Really?”

“I don’t know if she murdered him, but he was shot five times. She was in the city at the time, she claimed. She’d gone in to see the dentist but had gotten the day wrong. The police couldn’t shake her story. Her husband was a closet homosexual, he used to bring Puerto Rican boys to the house when she was gone. Very few people knew. She must have known. She had three witnesses to the fact that she didn’t kill him, she said. She was one, her husband was one, and God was the third.”

“She could prove she was in the city?”

“I don’t think so. That’s the point. No one was ever charged. The case has never been solved.”

They were drinking a second bottle of retsina.

“She was married two or three times before. I mean, what does it take to shoot your husband five times and claim you were away when it happened? I’ve met her, she’s actually an interesting woman.”

“I’ve never known a murderer, at least I don’t think I have. I do know some thieves.”

He was intensely aware of being there with her, the pleasure of it. He could see himself sitting across from her, the two of them. That was part of the pleasure.

The ocean that night could be heard from some way off. The sound of the waves was even and unending. They went to look. It was after eleven and the beach was completely empty, not even a light in any of the houses near it. The water was black, rising and then with a roar showing its teeth. They stood watching. He was a little drunk. Christine was hugging herself.

“Do you want to go for a swim?” he asked half-seriously.

“No. Not me.”

He felt a sudden desire, a wild recklessness, the image of the sea in Tahiti with the fervent sailors diving from their ships, the sea off Oahu or the California coast with a storm beginning to blow. Leander had swum the Hellespont.

“It would be wonderful,” he said. “Let’s go in.”

“Are you crazy?”

He was elated, also boasting. He had gone swimming at night though not in the breakers. The big waves were rhythmically swelling, peaking, and then crashing down. He stooped to take off his shoes.

“You’re not really going in?”

“Just for a minute.”

He was taking off his shirt and pants. She stood in disbelief.

“I’ll just see how cold it is.”

He was aware of the unreality of it, the bravado, but he was standing in his shorts, at night, at the sea’s edge. Turning back had become impossible.

“Philip,” she said. “Don’t.”

“It’s all right. I’ll be all right.”

“No!”

The first rush of water around his ankles was not as cold as he’d expected. As he moved forward, a surge swept in and the water rose up to his waist. Suddenly there was a wave rising before him and he dove into it, the steep black water, and came up in the face of another one about to break. He dove again, coming up this time farther out. The outer line of waves was rising here. It was deeper. The bottom was gone, his feet could no longer touch it. He fought against panic. He was rising and falling in the swells, the waves thundering. He tried to sense their rhythm. A swell lifted him and he looked towards shore. He couldn’t see her. The waves were coming in sets of five or six, he couldn’t tell. He had to wait until it was calmer, which he was afraid it would not be. Swimming he tried to control his breath. Suddenly his heart jumped. Something was there in the darkness! It was a swimmer’s head. Christine.

“What are you doing?” he cried.

He was frightened at seeing her. He was having enough difficulty himself.

“Can you touch bottom here?” she said.

“No,” he said. “Do you know how to get back?”

“No.”

“Stay with me! Watch out! Here’s one! Dive!”

They came up together. Her face looked white, fearful.

“When you’re lifted up, when it’s about to break, swim with it hard, stretch out, like a knife.”

They were rising steeply.

“Now!” he called.

They began swimming together but it broke past them. Then came another. They were too late, it collapsed beneath them. They both disappeared in the surf but came up in time to dive beneath a breaking wave. They were closer in.

“Now!” he cried again. “Go!”

She tried to run in the waist-high water but was pulled back and fell in the rush of a wave. She managed to get back on her feet and stumbled out. He followed her.

“Oh, my God,” she said.

She stood with her arms around herself, shaking.

“That was something,” he said.

“Yes.” It was hard for her to speak.

A surge of water came in around their feet. He took her in his arms. He could feel her chest heaving as she breathed. He admired her immensely.

“What made you do it?”

“I don’t know. Love madness.”

“You’ve never done it before?”

“Not in water like that.”

They went back to the house shaken but exultant. She sat with a robe pulled up around her.

“Are you cold?”

“A little.”

“Do you want something to drink?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. I’m getting warmer.”

“I couldn’t believe it when I saw you out there. Weren’t you afraid?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you do it?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I had to.”

He lay in bed while she showered. He had bought two extra pillows and was lying amid them as he waited. The feeling beforehand was like no other. He heard the shower being turned off and finally she came out, her hair hastily dried, and taking off the robe, slipped into bed beside him. No one was ever more desired. He pulled her to him to be able to hold her more fully. Her hand was between his legs.

“Oh, my,” she whispered.

“That’s right.”

He felt like a god. They were only beginning.

He woke in the early light. It was strangely quiet, the waves had stopped breaking. A long vein of green lay in the sea. On the window was a pale moth waiting for morning.

“Christine,” he said softly in her ear. “Don’t wake up. Can you do it while you’re sleeping?”

Afterward, they lay as if dismembered. One leg, clad in a white pajama, was up among the pillows near her head. She stroked the bare foot. The sheets, which had been of an incredible softness, were kicked out of place. Far down the beach, unseen, an American flag flew from a single tall pole like a signal of decency and goodness.

“This is the way you fall in love,” he said.

“Is this the way you did?”

“Oh, God no.”

He was silent then.

“I was stricken,” he said. “I was blinded by it. I didn’t know anything. Of course, neither did she. That was a long time ago. Then we got divorced. We were simply different kinds of people. She had the courage to say it. She wrote me a letter.”