James Salter - All That Is

“I’m an editor.”

“I figured you’d end up commanding the fleet. You know, you haven’t changed a bit. Except for your appearance,” he said.

“Is it true,” Donna said, “that this one here was blown right off the ship?”

“Three of them,” Kimmel said. “It set a record.”

“You weren’t exactly blown off,” Bowman said.

“The whole damn ship was exploding.”

“Well, we managed to get it to port. Brownell and I.”

“Brownell!” Kimmel cried.

He looked at his watch.

“Hey, we’re going to have to get going. We have tickets to a show.”

“What are you seeing?” Katherine said.

“What are we seeing?” he asked Donna.

“Evita.”

“That’s it. It was great seeing you.”

They shook hands and near the door Kimmel waved one arm loosely in good-bye. Bye bye, waved Donna.

Like that, they were gone. All of it had come back so swiftly. The past seemed there at his feet, the neglected past. He felt oddly freshened.

“Who was that?” said Katherine.

“That was the Camel,” Bowman said.

He couldn’t help smiling.

“The camel?”

“That was Bruce Kimmel. He was my cabinmate on the ship. The crew all called him the Camel. He walked like one.”

“You were in the navy,” she said. “I didn’t know that. During the war.”

“Yes, both of us.”

“What was it like?”

“That’s hard to explain. I actually thought of staying in the navy.”

“I loved listening to you and the Camel. Did you know him a long time?”

“Quite a long time. Then he jumped overboard in the middle of the ocean during a big attack. That was the last time I saw him.”

“Until tonight? That’s so incredible.”

Nadine was looking forward to finally meeting Bowman. Katherine was coming into town to go to a party with him a few days before Christmas, she hoped it would be more than a party. The course of things seemed right for it. He was not seeing anyone else, she knew, and Christmas was like Mardi Gras, at parties anything might happen. The parties at Christmas were not like other parties, they were gayer and more warmhearted.

Snow was forecast for the day she was coming, which made it even more perfect. Perhaps she wouldn’t be able to get back to Nadine’s afterwards. She might be wearing his bathrobe in the morning and they would look out together on a city all covered with white.

With snow on the way everyone was let off work early. She hurried to her house. The snow had already begun falling. She never imagined that it would interfere. Deborah came in to report it was already two or three inches deep on the roads, the bus that was to leave at four was already delayed. An hour later Katherine had to call and say she was not going to be able to get to the city.

“Oh, God,” she cried, “this is so terrible.”

“It’s just a party,” Bowman said not knowing all that was intended. “It’s not that important.”

“Yes, it is,” she moaned.

She was heartbroken. Nothing could console her.

That evening in New York it was snowing heavily, the beginning of a huge storm. Guests were late to the party and some had decided not to come, but many were there. Coats and women’s boots were piled in the bedroom. A piano was playing. Bus service was suspended, someone was saying. The room was filled with people laughing and talking. Platters of food were being put out on a long counter that was open to the kitchen. A whole ham glazed a rich brown stood with slivers being cut off and eaten. On the television, two announcers, a man and a woman, were following the progress of the storm but could not be heard over the noise. There was a strange sense of unreality with the snow falling more and more heavily outside. It was almost impossible to see across the street. There were only the blurred lights of apartments in the shifting white shrouds.

Bowman stood by the window. He was under the spell of other Christmases. He was remembering the winter during the war, at sea, far from home and on the ship Armed Forces Radio playing carols, “Silent Night,” and everyone thinking back. With its deep nostalgia and hopeless longing it had been the most romantic Christmas of his life.

Someone was standing just behind him watching in silence, also. It was Ann Hennessy, who had been Baum’s assistant and was now working in publicity.

“Snow at Christmas,” Bowman remarked.

“That was a wonderful thing, wasn’t it?”

“When you were a child, you mean.”

“No, always.”

They were laughing in the kitchen. An English actor was just arriving in a fur-collared coat after his last performance. The host had come to greet him and to say good-bye to guests who were afraid of not being able to get home.

“I think I’m going to go myself, before it gets worse,” Bowman decided.

“Yes, I think so, too,” she said.

“How are you going? I’ll see if I can find a cab. I’ll drop you off.”

“No, that’s all right,” she said. “I’ll take the subway.”

“Oh, I don’t think you should take the subway tonight.”

“I always take it.”

“There could be delays.”

“I get off just a block away from my door,” she said as if to reassure him.

She went to say good night to the host and his wife. Bowman saw her get her coat. She drew a colored silk scarf from one of the sleeves and wound it expertly around her neck. She put on a knit hat and tucked her hair into it. He saw her turn up her collar as she went into the hall. He stood at the window to see her figure appear in the street, but she apparently stayed close to the building, making her way alone.

She was, in fact, not solitary. She had, for some years, been involved with a doctor who had given up his practice. He was brilliant—she would never have been attracted to an unintelligent man—but unstable, with wide changes of mood. He went into rages but then pleadingly begged her forgiveness. It had exhausted her emotionally. She was a Catholic girl from Queens, a bright student, shy in her youth but with the poise of someone who goes their own way indifferent to opinion. It was the strain of her relationship with the doctor that had made her give up her job as Baum’s assistant. She didn’t explain the reasons. She merely said it had turned out to be more than she felt capable of doing and Baum knew her well enough to accept it and the obvious fact that she had a somewhat troubling life of her own.

Bowman knew none of this. He merely felt some strange connection to her, probably because of the sentimentality of the occasion or a grace in her he had not seen before. It was better not to have seen her home or even to see her leaving the building. The snow was coming down, some people were calling to him.

In the summer of 1984, on a Sunday afternoon, Anet married Evan Anders, the son of a New York lawyer and his Venezuelan wife. Four years older than Anet, with the dark hair and brilliant smile of his mother, he had a degree in mathematics but had decided to fulfill a long-held ambition and become a writer. He was working meanwhile as a bartender, and it was during this adventurous period in his life that he and Anet decided to get married. They had been going together for more than a year.

The wedding was in Brooklyn in the garden of some friends. Anet was not religious and in any case not Greek Orthodox but as a gesture towards her father a few details of a Greek ceremony were included. They were going to wear the little crowns that Greek couples wore, and the wedding rings would be on the finger of the right hand rather than the left. There were fifteen or sixteen guests not including the parents of the bride and groom, the best man who was the groom’s younger brother, Tommy, and Sophie, who was maid of honor. The others were young couples and a few young women who had come singly. It was a very warm afternoon. A table with pitchers of iced tea and lemonade had been set up to one side. There would be drinks afterward at the reception. Several of the women were fanning themselves as they waited.