James Salter - Dusk and Other Stories

“Across the park?”

“Yes.” She had an instant glimpse of herself in the next day’s paper. She paused at the door for a moment. “Good-bye,” she said coolly.

She wrote him a letter which he read several times. Of all the loves I have known, none has touched me so. Of all the men, no one has given me more . He showed it to Alan who did not comment.

“Let’s go out and have a drink,” Frank said.

They walked up Lexington. Frank looked carefree, the scarf around his neck, the open topcoat, the thinning hair. “Well, you know…” he managed to say.

They went into a place called Jack’s. Light was gleaming from the dark wood and the lines of glasses on narrow shelves. The young bartender stood with his hands on the edge of the bar. “How are you this evening?” he said with a smile. “Nice to see you again.”

“Do you know me?” Frank asked.

“You look familiar,” the bartender smiled.

“Do I? What’s the name of this place, anyway? Remind me not to come in here again.”

There were several other people at the bar. The nearest of them carefully looked away. After a while the manager came over. He had emerged from the brown-curtained back. “Anything wrong, sir?” he asked politely.

Frank looked at him. “No,” he said, “everything’s fine.”

“We’ve had a big day,” Alan explained. “We’re just unwinding.”

“We have a dining room upstairs,” the manager said. Behind him was an iron staircase winding past framed drawings of dogs—borzois they looked like. “We serve from six to eleven every night.”

“I bet you do,” Frank said. “Look, your bartender doesn’t know me.”

“He made a mistake,” the manager said.

“He doesn’t know me and he never will.”

“It’s nothing, it’s nothing,” Alan said, waving his hands.

They sat at a table by the window. “I can’t stand these out-of-work actors who think they’re everybody’s friend,” Frank commented.

At dinner they talked about Nan Christie. Alan thought of her silk dresses, her devotion. The trouble, he said after a while, was that he never seemed to meet that kind of woman, the ones who sometimes walked by outside Jack’s. The women he met were too human, he complained. Ever since his separation he’d been trying to find the right one.

“You shouldn’t have any trouble,” Frank said. “They’re all looking for someone like you.”

“They’re looking for you.”

“They think they are.”

Frank paid the check without looking at it. “Once you’ve been married,” Alan was explaining, “you want to be married again.”

“I don’t trust anyone enough to marry them,” Frank said.

“What do you want then?”

“This is all right,” Frank said.

Something was missing in him and women had always done anything to find out what it was. They always would. Perhaps it was simpler, Alan thought. Perhaps nothing was missing.

The car, which was a big Renault, a tourer, slowed down and pulled off the autostrada with Brenda asleep in back, her mouth a bit open and the daylight gleaming off her cheekbones. It was near Como, they had just crossed, the border police had glanced in at her.

“Come on, Bren, wake up,” they said, “we’re stopping for coffee.”

She came back from the ladies’ room with her hair combed and fresh lipstick on. The boy in the white jacket behind the counter was rinsing spoons.

“Hey, Brenda, I forget. Is it espresso or expresso?” Frank asked her.

“Espresso,” she said.

“How do you know?”

“I’m from New York,” she said.

“That’s right,” he remembered. “The Italians don’t have an x , do they?”

“They don’t have a j either,” Alan said.

“Why is that?”

“They’re such careless people,” Brenda said. “They just lost them.”

It was like old times. She was divorced from Doop or Boos or whoever. Her two little girls were with her mother. She had that quirky smile.

In Paris Frank had taken them to the Crazy Horse. In blackness like velvet the music struck up and six girls in unison kicked their legs in the brilliant light. They wore high heels and a little strapping. The nudity that is immortal. He was leaning on one elbow in the darkness. He glanced at Brenda. “Still studying, eh?” she said.

They were over for three weeks. Frank wasn’t sure, maybe they would stay longer, take a house in the south of France or something. Their clients would have to struggle along without them. There comes a time, he said, when you have to get away for a while.

They had breakfast together in hotels with the sound of workmen chipping at the stone of the fountain outside. They listened to the angry woman shouting in the kitchen, drove to little towns, and drank every night. They had separate rooms, like staterooms, like passengers on a fading boat.

At noon the light shifted along the curve of buildings and people were walking far off. A wave of pigeons rose before a trotting dog. The man at the table in front of them had a pair of binoculars and was looking here and there. Two Swedish girls strolled past.

“Now they’re turning dark,” the man said.

“What is?” said his wife.

“The pigeons.”

“Alan,” Frank confided.

“What?”

“The pigeons are turning dark.”

“That’s too bad.”

There was silence for a moment.

“Why don’t you just take a photograph?” the woman said.

“A photograph?”

“Of those women. You’re looking at them so much.”

He put down the binoculars.

“You know, the curve is so graceful,” she said. “It’s what makes this square so perfect.”

“Isn’t the weather glorious?” Frank said in the same tone of voice.

“And the pigeons,” Alan said.

“The pigeons, too.”

After a while the couple got up and left. The pigeons leapt up for a running child and hissed overhead. “I see you’re still playing games,” Brenda said. Frank smiled.

“We ought to get together in New York,” she said that evening. They were waiting for Alan to come down. She reached across the table to pick up a magazine. “You’ve never met my kids, have you?” she said.

“No.”

“They’re terrific kids.” She leafed through the pages not paying attention to them. Her forearms were tanned. She was not wearing a wedding band. The first act was over or rather the first five minutes. Now came the plot. “Do you remember those nights at Goldie’s?” she said.

“Things were different then, weren’t they?”

“Not so different.”

“What do you mean?”

She wiggled her bare third finger and glanced at him. Just then Alan appeared. He sat down and looked from one of them to the other. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “Did I interrupt something?”

When the time came for her to leave she wanted them to drive to Rome. They could spend a couple of days and she would catch the plane. They weren’t going that way, Frank said.

“It’s only a three-hour drive.”

“I know, but we’re going the other way,” he said.

“For God’s sake. Why won’t you drive me?”

“Let’s do it,” Alan said.

“Go ahead. I’ll stay here.”

“You should have gone into politics,” Brenda said. “You have a real gift.”

After she was gone the mood of things changed. They were by themselves. They drove through the sleepy country to the north. The green water slapped as darkness fell on Venice. The lights in some palazzos were on. On the curtained upper floors the legs of countesses uncoiled, slithering on the sheets like a serpent.

In Harry’s, Frank held up a dense, icy glass and murmured his father’s line, “Good night, nurse.” He talked to some people at the next table, a German who was manager of a hotel in Düsseldorf and his girlfriend. She’d been looking at him. “Want a taste?” he asked her. It was his second. She drank looking directly at him. “Looks like you finished it,” he said.