James Salter - Last Night

The three of them were dancing to the hypnotic, rhythmic singing. It went on and on. Finally Jane sat down, her face moist, and watched. Women often danced together or even alone, at parties. Did Bunning dance? she wondered. No, he wasn’t the sort, nor was he embarrassed by it. He drank too much to dance, but really why did he drink? He didn’t seem to care about things, but he probably cared very much, beneath.

Leslie sat down beside her.

— I hate to think about moving, she said, her head lolled back carelessly. I’m going to have to find some other place. That’s the worst part.

She raised her head.

— In two years, Bunning’s not even going to remember me. Maybe he’ll say “my ex-wife” sometimes. I wanted to have a baby. He didn’t like the idea. I said to him, I’m ovulating, and he said, that’s wonderful. Well, that’s how it is. I’ll have one next time. If there is a next time. You have beautiful breasts, she said to Jane.

Jane was struck silent. She would never have had the courage to say something like that.

— Mine are saggy already, Leslie said.

— That’s all right, Jane replied foolishly.

— I suppose I could have something done if I had the money. You can fix anything if you have the money.

It was not true, but Jane said,

— I guess you’re right.

She had more than sixty thousand dollars she had saved or made from an oil company one of her colleagues had told her about. If she wanted to, she could buy a car, a Porsche Boxter came to mind. She wouldn’t even have to sell the oil stock, she could get a loan and pay it off over three or four years and on weekends drive out to the country, to Connecticut, the little coastal towns, Madison, Old Lyme, Niantic, stopping somewhere to have lunch in a place that, in her imagination, was painted white outside. Perhaps there would be a man there, by himself, or even with some other men. He wouldn’t have to fall off a boat. It wouldn’t be Bunning, of course, but someone like him, wry, a little shy, the man she had somehow failed to meet until then. They’d have dinner, talk. They’d go to Venice, a thing she’d always wanted to do, in the winter, when no one else was there. They’d have a room above the canal and his shirts and shoes, a half-full bottle of she didn’t bother to think of exactly what, some Italian wine, and perhaps some books. The sea air from the Adriatic would come in the window at night and she would wake early, before it was really light, to see him sleeping beside her, sleeping and breathing softly.

Beautiful breasts. That was like saying, I love you. She was warmed by it. She wanted to tell Leslie something but it wasn’t the time, or maybe it was. She hadn’t quite told herself yet.

Another number began and they were dancing again, coming together occasionally, arms flowing, exchanging smiles. Kathrin was like someone at one of the clubs, glamorous, uncaring. She had passion, daring. If you said something, she wouldn’t even hear you. She was a kind of cheap goddess and would go on like that for a long time, spending too much for something that caught her fancy, a silk dress or pants, black and clinging, that widened at the bottom, the kind Jane would have with her in Venice. She hadn’t had a love affair in college — she was the only one she knew who hadn’t. Now she was sorry, she wished she’d had. And gone to the room with only a window and a bed.

— I have to go, she said.

— What? Leslie said over the music.

— I have to go.

— This has been fun, Leslie said, coming over to her.

They embraced in the doorway, awkwardly, Leslie almost falling down.

— Talk to you in the morning, she said.

Outside, Jane caught a cab, a clean one as it happened, and gave the driver her address near Cornelia Street. They started off, moving fast through the traffic. In the rearview mirror the driver, who was young, saw that Jane, a nice-looking girl about his age, was crying. At a red light next to a drugstore where it was well lit, he could see the tears streaming down her face.

— Excuse me, is something wrong? he asked.

She shook her head. It seemed she nearly answered.

— What is it? he said.

— Nothing, she said, shaking her head. I’m dying.

— You’re sick?

— No, not sick. I’m dying of cancer, she said.

She had said it for the first time, listening to herself. There were four levels and she had the fourth, Stage Four.

— Ah, he said, are you sure?

The city was filled with so many strange people he could not tell if she was telling the truth or just imagining something.

— You want to go to the hospital? he asked.

— No, she said, unable to stop crying. I’m all right, she told him.

Her face was appealing though streaked with tears. He raised his head a little to see the rest of her. Appealing, too. But what if she is speaking the truth? he wondered. What if God, for whatever reason, has decided to end the life of someone like this? You cannot know. That much he understood.

IN THE MORNING — it was my wife’s birthday, her thirty-first — we slept a little late, and I was at the window looking down at Des in a bathrobe with his pale hair awry and a bamboo stick in his hand. He was deflecting and sometimes with a flourish making a lunge. Billy, who was six then, was hopping around in front of him. I could hear his shrieks of joy. Anna came up beside me.

— What are they doing now?

— I can’t tell. Billy is waving something over his head.

— I think it’s a flyswatter, she said, disbelieving.

She was just thirty-one, the age when women are past foolishness though not unfeeling.

— Look at him, she said. Don’t you just love him?

The grass was brown from summer and they were dancing around on it. Des was barefoot, I noticed. It was early for him to be up. He often slept until noon and then managed to slip gracefully into the rhythm of the household. That was his talent, to live as he liked, almost without concern, to live as if he would reach the desired end one way or another and not be bothered by whatever came between. It included being committed several times, once for wandering out on Moore Street naked. None of the psychiatrists had any idea who he was. None of them had ever read a damned thing, he said. Some of the patients had.

He was a poet, of course. He even looked like a poet, intelligent, lank. He’d won the Yale prize when he was twenty-five and went on from there. When you pictured him, it was wearing a gray herringbone jacket, khaki pants, and for some reason sandals. Doesn’t fit together, but a lot of things about him were like that. Born in Galveston, ROTC in college, and even married while an undergraduate, although what became of that wife he never clearly explained. His real life came after that, and he had lived it ever since, teaching sometimes in community classes, travelling to Greece and Morocco, living there for a period, having a breakdown, and through it all writing the poem that had made his name. I read the poem, a third of it anyway, standing stunned in a bookshop in the Village. I remember the afternoon, cloudy and quiet, and I remember, too, almost leaving myself, the person I was, the ordinary way I felt about things, my perception of — there’s no other word for it — the depth of life, and above all the thrill of successive lines. The poem was an aria, jagged and unending. Its tone was what set it apart— written as if from the shades. There lay the delta, there the burning arms. . was the way it began, and immediately I felt it was not about rivers uncoiling but about desire. It revealed itself only slowly, like some kind of dream, the light fluttering on the fronds, with names and nouns, Naples, worn benches, Luxor and the kings, Salonika, small waves falling on the stones. There was repetition, even refrain. Lines that seemed unconnected gradually became part of a confession that had at its center rooms in the burning heat of August where something has taken place, clearly sexual, but it is also the vacant streets of rural Texas, roads, forgotten friends, the slap of hands on rifle slings and forked pennants limp at parades. There are condoms, sun-faded cars, soiled menus with misspellings, a kind of pyre on which he had laid his life. That was why he seemed so pure — he had given all. Everyone lies about their lives, but he had not lied about his. He had made of it a noble lament, through it always running this thing you have had, that you will always have, but can never have. There stood Erechtheus, polished limbs and greaves. . come to me, Hellas, I long for your touch.