James Salter - All That Is

On the street in Piermont he happened to run into the old waitress from Sbordone’s. She was walking along with something in a brown paper bag in one hand, a narrow bag. Eddins stopped her.

“Veronica?” he said.

“Yes.”

“How’ve you been?”

“I’m sorry?”

“You remember me, don’t you? I used to come to Sbordone’s, my wife and I. Do you remember?”

“Yes, now I do.”

“She died. I finally moved away.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, but I remember.”

“Too bad the bar’s not open. I’d buy you a drink.”

“Well, I stopped drinking except at funerals.”

She touched the paper bag.

“This is just to have around in case somebody dies suddenly.”

“You know, you haven’t changed,” he said. “Do you mind my asking, are you married?”

“No,” she said. “I used to wish I was.”

“The same with me,” he said.

There was also Joanna, the fat girl, enormously fat with a wonderful personality who was a teller at the bank. She was good-natured, forthcoming, with a beautiful voice, but unmarried. No one would think of marrying her. She could speak French. She’d spent a year and a half in Quebec, studying. She impulsively joined a choir there the first week and he, this man, was in it. His name was Georges. He was older and had a girlfriend, but before long he dropped the girlfriend and took up with Joanna. She came back to the States, but he was a teacher and a Canadian, he couldn’t leave. He would come to New York on the weekend, two or three times a month. It went on for nine years. She was terribly happy and knew it would end, but she wanted it to last as long as it could and didn’t say anything. In the tenth year they got married. Someone told Eddins she was going to have a child.

She came into the restaurant alone and stood for a time at the bar continually searching for something in her bag. At last she found it, a cigarette. She put it between her lips. The slowness of her acts was somehow frightening. No one watched openly. To a man sitting there she said, “Pardon. May I have a light?”

She waited with some poise until he produced one and then walked forward to be seated. The restaurant was full but the headwaiter was able to put her at a small table near the front. There she ordered a bottle of wine. While waiting she carefully tapped the ash from her cigarette onto her plate.

The restaurant was called Carcassonne. It also could be called fashionable, the name was on the window in discreet gold lettering. It was across from the large wholesale meat market, somewhat like the old restaurant in Paris across from Les Halles, but the market was closed at that hour and the square was empty and quiet.

She ordered dinner but was not attentive to it, eating only a little of the food and allowing the rest to be taken away. She drank all the wine, however, spilling some of the last glass, hardly noticing.

“Waiter,” she said, “I’d like another bottle of wine.”

He went off and after a while came back.

“I’m sorry, madam,” he said. “I can’t give you another bottle.”

“What?”

“I’m very sorry,” he said. “I can’t.”

She said,

“What do you mean, you can’t? Where’s the headwaiter?”

“Madam,” he began.

“I want the headwaiter,” she said.

She was oblivious to everyone. She turned and looked around for him as if alone in the room.

The headwaiter came. He was in a dinner jacket.

“I’ve ordered a bottle of wine,” she told him. “I would like a bottle of wine.”

She was an upper-class woman unjustly tried.

“I’m sorry, madam. I think the waiter has told you. We can’t give you another bottle.”

She seemed at a loss as to what to do.

“Let me have a glass of wine, then,” she said.

He didn’t answer.

“One glass.”

He walked off to occupy himself at his stand. She turned in her chair.

“Excuse me,” she said to the people behind her. “Do you know a place near here called Hartley’s?”

“Yes. It’s just a few steps.”

“Thank you. I’ll have the bill,” she announced to the waiter.

She looked at it when it was brought.

“This can’t be the bill,” she said.

“This is the bill, madam.”

She was searching in her bag. She couldn’t find something.

“I’ve lost a hundred pounds!” she said.

The headwaiter had come.

“Just while I’ve been here!”

“Can you pay the bill, madam?” he said.

“I’ve lost a hundred pounds,” she insisted and began looking around her feet.

“Are you certain?”

“Quite certain,” she said clearly.

“You have to settle this bill, madam,” he said.

“But I’ve lost the money,” she said. “Haven’t you heard me?”

“I’m afraid you have to pay this.”

He knew there was no lost money. She shouldn’t have been given a table. That was completely wrong. She was rummaging in her bag again.

“Ah,” the waiter said standing up.

He had found two folded fifty-pound notes under her chair.

“Now may I have a bottle of wine?” she said.

“Yes, madam,” the headwaiter said. “But you cannot open it here.”

“Then what good is it?” she asked.

“You cannot open it here,” he said.

When the waiter came back with the bottle, she refused to take it.

“I don’t want it,” she decided. “Do you have some paper to put it in?”

“I’m sorry, madam.”

“Well, I can’t walk in the street with it.”

She stood looking at him. Then she handed him money, but he didn’t take it. The waiter did. She stuffed the remaining bills into her bag carelessly. They brought her the wrapped bottle, and she asked the man at the next table which way was it to Hartley’s?

“To the left,” he said.

“The left.”

“Yes.”

She said good night to the headwaiter. He nodded.

“Good night.”

Outside she turned to the right and a minute or so later passed by the window going in the other direction. She was seen in Hartley’s sitting, composed, smoking a cigarette. The wine was in a cooler beside the table.

Wiberg was now Sir Bernard Wiberg though he looked like an Arab king—a thousand camels would be tethered at his grave. He’d been to Stockholm twice for the awarding of the Nobel Prize and had the distinction of having published the winners. He had, in fact, been a factor in their winning. He’d made sure their names were often mentioned, not too often and not too boldly for it was possible to upset the flow of opinion especially as it had to make its way through the panel of Swedish judges, but Wiberg could help make a writer distinguished—he had an instinct for these matters just as he did for publicity and promotion. Certain books could attract attention, certain writers at a particular time. Even excellence, he knew, had to be presold.

Unlike other rich men he did not ask himself if he was truly that much better than a down-at-the-heels man he passed on the street. He had perhaps a deeply buried fear of losing all his money, but it was nothing like the fear a woman has. He smoked Cohiba cigars and sometimes got a box of them to Baum in New York. He watched his weight. His wife was there to remind him not to eat a number of things he was fondest of. She would sometimes say, when he pleaded, oh, all right, but just a very small piece. At a large dinner, catching sight of him about to eat something forbidden, she would merely wag her finger discreetly. She was in charge of all domestic matters. Any of her husband’s desires, he communicated through her. The house in the country was something she had encouraged him to buy although he didn’t care for the country. She wanted a small house near Deauville, but he didn’t like France. He liked Claridge’s, being among his equals, talking to young women from time to time. He liked sitting in the study across from the Bacon, which, as it happened, his wife disliked.