James Salter - All That Is

She came to the city as often as she could and stayed with Nadine, her French friend, and listened to stories of Nadine’s misfortunes in love. Robert Motherwell had wanted her to be his mistress, but she insisted it had to be marriage and so nothing happened. She had a husband at the time but was getting divorced.

“That was the mistake of my life, de tout ma vie ,” she said with her slight accent. “If I had done it, would I be any worse off than now? And I would at least have the memories of love, the souvenirs . This way I don’t have a husband or the memories.”

She was fifty-two but acted younger.

“I was so innocent as a young woman,” she said. “You would not believe it. I was nineteen when I got married. I knew nothing in those days, absolutely nothing.”

When her husband was not prepared to make love, she said, she couldn’t understand why.

“As a young girl I imagined it was hard all the time.” She laughed at her own naïveté. “But there was one thing I learned that’s the most important thing.”

“Yes!” Katherine said. “What is it?”

“Do you really want to know?”

“Yes. Tell me.”

“Never give men your best,” Nadine said. “They come to expect it.”

“Yes, that’s exactly my mistake.”

“You can never relax,” Nadine said. “Of course, sometimes you can’t help it, but it’s never a good thing.”

All of this, Katherine told to Bowman as they ate oysters and drank. She confided in him. She loved talking to him.

“Have you ever wanted to write?” she said.

“No. As an editor you have to do the opposite. You have to open yourself to the writing of others. It’s not the same thing. I can write. Originally I wanted to be a journalist. I can write flap copy but not anything with real luster. To do that you have to be able to shut out the writing of others.”

“Do you have favorite writers?”

“What do you mean?”

“That you’ve worked with.”

After a moment he said,

“Yes.”

“Who?”

“Well, the writer I value the most lives in France. She’s lived there for years. I see her only very occasionally, but it’s always such a pleasure. As they like to say, she’s the real thing.”

“She must be wonderful,” Katherine managed to say.

“Yes. Dedicated and wonderful.”

“Who is it?”

“Raymonde Garris.”

Katherine knew the name. She was crushed by it. It seemed the name of an indescribably fascinating woman. It would be marvelous to know her, to know any of them. Then one night at dinner there was Harold Brodkey, who had written the long story about orgasms. Harold Brodkey! She could hardly wait to tell Claire.

Or tell about going to the Frick.

She was wearing a pair of new red shoes that were too tight for her. She had to take them off in the ladies’ room to rest.

“Did you like it?” he asked as they were preparing to leave.

“Yes. It was absolutely beautiful,” she said. “And you can learn so many things.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. You can learn what to wear when you have your portrait painted. You can learn how to hold a dog.”

He looked at her disapprovingly.

“You know I don’t know anything about art,” she said. “I only know what you tell me.”

She was not being ironic. She liked male authority, especially his.

“Nadine is going to be very impressed that we went to the Frick. She imagines me as only going to bars and sitting with my skirt pulled up.”

Together they stepped out into the early evening. She was holding his arm. The sky was a deep, rain blue, almost no light remaining but the clouds were still lustrous. Windows were lit in every building on the avenue and across the end of the park.

Later in the fall she met him on a Friday evening in the bar of the Algonquin, where he liked to go. It was a small room, more like a club, behind the front desk and often crowded at that hour. It was as if there was a great party being held in the hotel, spilling from the elevators and rooms and the bar was a kind of refuge from it, calmer though filled. There were many men in suits and ties. She had just read Marguerite Duras, The Lover , for the first time and was going on about it.

“Oh, God, didn’t that image of the girl just kill you? On the ferry in a sepia-colored silk dress. It was her, Marguerite Dura.”

“Duras,” Bowman said.

“Duras? Is that how you say it?”

“Yes.”

“I thought you didn’t pronounce the final s in French,” she said plaintively.

He could not help being touched by her.

“Bowman?” he heard someone behind them call. “Is that you?”

It was followed by a cackle.

“For God’s sake,” Bowman exclaimed.

“Excuse me, sir, aren’t you Phil Bowman?”

Lanky, grinning, older, with a pot belly, it was Kimmel. Bowman felt an inexplicable warmth rise within him.

“See, I told you,” Kimmel said to the blond woman with him.

“What are you doing here?” Bowman said.

Cackling again, with his elbows loose, Kimmel doubled over laughing.

“Kimmel, what the hell are you doing here?” Bowman said again. “I can’t believe it.”

“Who is this?” Kimmel said, ignoring him. “Is this your daughter? Your father and I were shipmates.” He turned to the blond woman. “Donna, I want you to meet an old pal, Phil Bowman, and his daughter—I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name,” he said smiling with charm.

“Katherine. I’m not his daughter.”

“I didn’t think so,” Kimmel said.

“My name’s Donna,” the woman said, introducing herself.

She had an appealing face and seemed a bit too big for her legs.

“What are you doing in New York? Where are you living?” Bowman asked.

“We’re on a little business trip,” Kimmel said. “We’re living in Ft. Lauderdale. We were in Tampa, but we moved.”

“My ex-husband is in Tampa,” Donna said.

“Tell them who you were married to,” Kimmel said.

“Oh, they don’t want to hear about that.”

“Yes, they do. She was married to a count.”

“I was twenty-eight, you know?” she said to Katherine. “I’d never been married, and I met this tall guy in Boca Raton who had a Porsche. He was German and had tons of money. We sort of started up and I thought, why not? My father practically disowned me. I was over there trying to kill them, he said, and here you’re going to marry one. It turned out after we were married that he didn’t have any money—his mother did. She only spoke German to me. I tried to learn German, you know, but it was hopeless. He was a nice guy, but it lasted about two years.”

“And then you two met?” Bowman said.

“No, not right away.”

“Donna was very close to the governor for a while,” Kimmel said.

“Hey,” she said.

“Whatever happened to Vicky?” Bowman asked.

“Vicky?”

“In San Diego.”

“You know, I saw her after that,” Kimmel said. “I could see it wouldn’t work. She was too bourgeois for me.”

“Bourgeois?”

“And her father was a killer.”

He turned to Katherine,

“Your dad, I don’t know if he’s told you about his swashbuckling days in the Pacific during the war. We were getting ready to invade Okinawa. Everybody was writing farewell letters except the mail was cut off. Everybody was desperate. The exec said, Mr. Bowman! The ship is depending on you. Bring back the mail! That was it. Like the message to Garcia.”

“The message to who?” Donna said.

Kimmel cackled,

“Ask him.”

Then he became serious,

“Tell me, Phil, what are you doing these days?”