James Salter - Burning the Days

Apart from this misty and alluring nonsense there were the little farming communities, the military posts, the expensive homes out by Diamond Head and up in the hills, the outer islands, and the sea. The Navy and the Army still possessed some of their wartime prestige. The brass still mingled with society, which was beginning to fluff its feathers again after chaotic years.

Sometimes, when visiting Los Angeles, in the vast, mild nights, I feel the flavor of it again — dancing under the palms, drinks on the lanai, boxing matches, idleness, summer clothes.

—

It was in Honolulu that I fell hopelessly in love with another woman. She had a wide mouth and good-looking legs. She’d been a page at the Ak-Sar-Ben Ball when she was six years old, dressed in a white satin tunic, long white stockings, and a fez with ostrich plumes — there was a photograph of it, the costume oddly provocative, in her living room. She told me she’d been brought up by nursemaids, girls straight off the Nebraska farm who were addressed as “mademoiselle.”

We were attracted to one another instantly. We ridiculed one another and adored one another. She was high-spirited and careless. People always told her they liked the way she talked. She used words like “heavenly,” “intense,” “lechers,” and “god-awful.” Years later she would quit a job by smiling sweetly and saying to the boss, “I’ll bet I can make you say ‘shit,’ Mr. Conover.” She was a year older than I was, but at that age it made no difference. She was also married. Her husband was a captain in the Air Force. He was to be my best friend.

We had been in the same company at West Point, Leland and I — that wasn’t his name. He was a couple of classes ahead of me, which is to say worlds. Lighthearted and not very studious, he was slender with black hair and white skin. He’d been raised in the army — his father was a general — and they’d lived in Hawaii before the war. One of his sisters who had died just before her wedding was buried there, in fact. At the funeral they had played island songs— calling to the wanderer to return …

Like a minister’s son, Leland was somewhat indifferent to the gospel. Undistinguished at West Point, a mere cadet sergeant who didn’t bother to polish his shoes and joined formations with an occasional ballet leap, he had the insouciance of an heir. I knew little about him then, even in the manner that underlings know things, and nothing at all of his fiancée until the frantic June afternoon he graduated and left. On the floor of the basement, unintentionally abandoned, were strewn the intimate love letters she had written, now being read by everyone, passed from hand to hand.

He went into the Air Force, was assigned to attack bombers, A-20s, and was shot down somewhere over Europe and made a prisoner of war. By the time I saw him again he was a staff officer in a headquarters at Hickam Field, had a set of quarters, a son who had been born while he was in prison camp, and a beautiful wife. I had been at Hickam a few short months when I ran into Leland. Did I play golf? he wanted to know. I began to with him. He was a wonderful companion on the golf course, graceful and good-natured. Instead of a kind of reunion it was as if we were meeting for the first time and taking immediately to each other. I understood only later that he had more or less been looking for me, a friend to divert him from difficulties that beneath the surface existed at home.

Their house was just behind the headquarters where he worked — small, company grade, a bit of lawn, the bedrooms upstairs. I entered for the first time one Saturday morning and there she was, young, greenish gaze, slightly mocking air. There was a vague mention of breakfast. I asked if there were any eggs.

“Eggs?” she said as if the word were completely novel.

“Poached eggs?” I asked. Which was what they served at the club. From the first moment we were nipping at each other. She gave me a look almost of unexpected admiration. There were no eggs, she said. We ate cold cereal. Paula didn’t like to cook, Leland explained to me later. Nor did she like air bases — she loathed them. Going to the commissary was a horror. She looked down on military life, made fun of the army wives who didn’t have her sophistication or style—“they,” she called one in particular — and was too clever for bridge. In short, dangerous.

I loved her looks. I liked to talk to her, be in her presence. The situation was perfect. I didn’t have to be nervous about it — she was there. And from the beginning I felt she was attracted to me. I began to see them all the time. I don’t remember the first physical contact. It was probably at a dance. When we stood up she floated immediately into my arms and her body touched mine with complete familiarity. I finally screwed up my courage enough to tell her, at least discreetly, of my real feelings. If I had met her first I would have married her, I said.

“Funny,” she said, “because I’m a little in love with you, too. I was going to tell you tonight.”

Before long we were leaving movies early and going off to the warrant officers’ club, where no one knew us, to drink and talk. Leland was on duty in the headquarters. When we came out she stopped just past the door and said, “Will you do me a favor?”

“Yes. What?”

She raised her face. “Will you kiss me?”

Leland was too prosaic for her. I knew it and she told it to me. Suddenly I was painfully aware of the meaning of possession. The unseen privileges of the marriage bed, the intimacies of dressing and undressing, clothes in the same closet, a woman brushing her hair, putting on stockings — these were performances I tried not to think of. I had felt this once before but not so strongly. There had been one married couple among us in Salt Lake City when we lived for a month in a hotel there. She was blonde and unhurried and you could smell her perfume. After dinner in the hotel or a nearby restaurant she and her husband would go up to their room and in the morning, sometimes, come down for breakfast.

There was a poem of Scott Fitzgerald’s that we wallowed in:

In the fall of sixteen

In the cool of the afternoon

I met Helena

Under a white moon—

It was our poem, Paula’s and mine. We shared a taste for books and sentimental lines. Leland shrugged at it. He didn’t have that particular weakness. He was rather like an English aristocrat, a man of decency, little sensitivity, and certain prejudices. The things he knew he knew very well, and they were social things: on which side the guest of honor sat at dinner, how to carve a roast, tie a dress tie, which shoes were best, which clubs. When Paula and I fell in love he overlooked it, for her happiness and to keep her, I suppose, and probably because he was sure of me. He himself was not the sort of man to be unfaithful or to find distraction in affairs, and besides there was little opportunity — he didn’t have a job in which he traveled much, and post life was intimate; anything seen was quickly known, especially if repeated. He was completely uxorious — his marriage was his life just as his uniform was, his golf shoes, his good name. The overwhelming attraction between his wife and friend would eventually die down, he had to believe that. Meanwhile we lived as three, or nearly, the house charged with a force I did my best to appear unaware of, and more than once he carried her upstairs as she waved wistfully to me over his shoulder.

We had dinner, we went to places in town, to the club. It had to be obvious. At a party in Kahala she sat by me, talked to me, and smiled so tellingly at me I was sure that everyone knew what was happening. She pressed against me and, as if no one could see it, squeezed my hand.