James Salter - All That Is

“You remember Philip, darling.”

“Yes, of course,” she said a bit impatiently. “It’s nice to see you.”

The apartment was somehow a little gloomy. Their dog, a black Scottie, didn’t bother to sniff at him. They sat having a drink in the living room. Irene—it must have been unknowingly—asked Bowman about his house. It was near the ocean, wasn’t it?

“I don’t have that house now,” he said. “That was a while ago.”

“Oh, I see. I was going to say my ex-brother-in-law had a house down near the shore.”

“Yes, I like the ocean.”

“He liked to sail,” she said. “He had a boat. I remember it. I often went out on it, a number of times. The marina where he kept it was filled with boats. All kinds of them.”

She went on about her brother-in-law, Vince.

“Phil didn’t know him, darling.”

“Neither did you,” she said. “No need to say anything bad about him.”

He poured her a little more wine.

“All right,” she said. “Just a little. That’s enough.”

“Oh, it’s not very much. Let me at least fill your glass.”

“Not if you want dinner,” she said.

“It won’t hurt dinner.”

Irene said nothing.

“My daddy liked to drink,” Eddins said. “He used to say he was more interesting when he drank. My mother used to say, interesting to who?”

“Yes,” Irene said.

She went into the kitchen, leaving them to drink. Eddins was good company, rarely in a bad mood. When Irene came back in, she said that dinner would soon be ready if they were.

“Yes, we’re ready, darling. At home, you know, we used to call it supper. Dinner was midday or sometimes a little later.”

“Dinner or supper,” she said.

“No, it’s just a small distinction. Another distinction might be that you drink at supper.”

“We always called it dinner.”

“The Italians,” he said, “don’t call it dinner.”

“No?”

“They call it cena .”

“That’s not what we call it,” she said. “The main thing is, would you like to have it?”

“Yes, what are we having for dinner?”

“You’re calling it dinner now.”

“Only to please you. I’m actually calling it a draw.”

He smiled at her, as if in understanding. They went into the dining room where there was a table and four chairs and two rounded corner cabinets with plates displayed on their shelves. Irene brought in the soup. Eddins remarked,

“I read somewhere that in navy messes—I think this was on a carrier—they served sherry in the soup. Is that true? What savoir faire.”

“We didn’t have any sherry,” Bowman said.

“Do you ever think back to all that?”

“Oh, occasionally. It’s hard not to.”

“You were in the navy?” Irene said.

“Oh, long ago. During the war.”

“Darling, I thought you knew that,” Eddins said.

“No, how would I know that? My brother-in-law, the one who sails, was in the navy.”

“Vince,” Eddins said.

“What other brother-in-law do I have?”

“It’s just that he hasn’t come up for a while.”

Irene did not reply.

“Phil was also at Harvard,” Eddins said.

“Oh, come on, Neil,” Bowman said.

“He wrote the Hasty Pudding show.”

“No, no,” Bowman objected. “I didn’t write any pudding show.”

“I felt sure you had. That’s a disappointment. Have you ever heard of a writer named Edmund Berger?”

“I don’t think so. Did he write it?”

“He came in to see me. He’s written a couple of books, and he’s writing one now about the Kennedy assassination. Is anyone still interested in that, do you think?”

“Then why is he writing it?” Irene said.

“He has the real story. Kennedy was assassinated by three Cuban sharpshooters, one on the grassy knoll and two in the book depository. All witnesses agree on that. Cubans, I said? How do you know that? They have their names, he said. It was the CIA. How did Jack Ruby know when Oswald was going to be taken out of his cell? Jack Ruby! Who was he?”

“I don’t know. A police informant,” Bowman said.

“Perhaps, this fellow Berger says.”

“Why are we talking about this?” Irene said.

“Let’s assume for the moment that it’s as Berger says, and it wasn’t Oswald. Oswald repeatedly said he hadn’t shot Kennedy. Of course he’d deny it, but then why was it that the police interrogated him for six hours but there were no notes taken? That’s because the CIA destroyed them.”

“I think that all this has been pretty much gone over,” Bowman commented.

“Yes, but not all put together. The Reverend King.”

“What about the Reverend King?”

“There’s more there than meets the eye. Who shot him?” Eddins said—he was enjoying it. “They convicted someone, but who knows? The other day a shoeshine man on Lexington asked me if I really believed that the police weren’t behind it.”

“Why talk about this?” Irene said.

“I don’t know, but they seem to shoot all these people, Robert Kennedy, Huey Long.”

“Huey Long?”

“These are momentous acts. The dark curtain falls. All of life changes. When Huey Long was shot, I remember a shudder went through the entire south. Not a family that didn’t go to bed that night in fear. I remember that. The whole of the south.”

“Oh, Neil,” Irene cried.

“What, darling? Enough of that? I’m sorry.”

“All you do is talk, talk, talk.”

He pursed his lips slightly as if in consideration.

“You shrew,” he said.

She left the table. There was silence for a while. Eddins said,

“I’m going to have to walk the dog. Care to come with me?”

He was quiet in the elevator going down. On the street they didn’t walk far. They went into Farrell’s, a bar two blocks away, and stood having a drink near the door. The bartender knew Eddins.

“You know what I always imagined? Remember the Thin Man movies? I imagined sitting at the bar with my wife—not this kind of bar, something a little more on the swell side, there’s one further east—sitting and talking, nothing special, just about one thing or another, about someone who’s come in or where we might go later, the passing scene. She’s wearing nice clothes, a pretty dress. That’s another thing, isn’t it, how they dress. I like to dress up a little. Anyway we’re talking, kind of a pleasant hour. She has to go to the ladies’ room, and while she’s gone the bartender notices her empty glass and asks me if my wife would like another. Yes, I say. She comes back and doesn’t even notice it’s a new drink, just picks it up and takes a sip, anything happen while I was gone?”

Neil was good company still. He had a certain dying flair. He could look at his life as a story—the real part was something he’d left behind, much of it in his boyhood and with Dena. Of Irene, he would say,

“We each have our territory.”

Farrell’s was dark and the television was on. The bar ran back the length of the room. They stood there, each with a foot on the rail. The dog sat quietly, looking at nothing.

“How old is he?” Bowman said.

“Ramsey? Eight. He’s actually Irene’s dog, but he likes me. When she walks him she drags him along. She won’t wait. He likes to take his time. If she’s getting ready to take him out, he just lies there. She has to call him. With me, he jumps up and goes right to the door. She doesn’t like that, but it’s not up to her. She just isn’t the one he likes. Anyway he’s not that young.”

He was inclined to say neither was he, but he felt as if he’d already said enough. He had to take Ramsey on his walk. He and Bowman said good night. Ramsey was hard to see in the darkness. He was square, more or less, and absolutely black. They liked him at the Chinese laundry. Lambsey, they called him. The week before, Eddins had gone up to Piermont to visit Dena’s grave, hers and Leon’s. The cemetery seemed empty, the long silence of it. He stood at the grave. She had been his wife, and he had seen them off on the train. He hadn’t brought flowers. He left and drove to the florist and came back with some. There was no need to pray for anything. He put flowers on each grave and laid the remaining ones on others around. He read the names on some of them, but there were none he recognized. He thought of some things that were just known to himself and Dena. He began to cry.