Dusk and Other Stories - James Salter [15]
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