Dusk and Other Stories - James Salter [3]
He is happy here. He likes the wide, tree-cool avenues, the restaurants, the long evenings. He is deep in the currents of a slow, connubial life.
Nico comes onto the terrace wearing a wheat-colored sweater.
“Would you like a coffee?” she says. “Do you want me to go down for one?”
He thinks for a moment.
“Yes,” he says.
“How do you like it?”
“Solo,” he says.
“Black.”
She likes to do this. The building has a small elevator which rises slowly. When it arrives she steps in and closes the doors carefully behind her. Then, just as slowly, she descends, floor after floor, as if they were decades. She thinks about Malcolm. She thinks about her father and his second wife. She is probably more intelligent than Malcolm, she decides. She is certainly stronger-willed. He, however, is better-looking in a strange way. She has a wide, senseless mouth. He is generous. She knows she is a little dry. She passes the second floor. She looks at herself in the mirror. Of course, one doesn’t discover these things right away. It’s like a play, it unfolds slowly, scene by scene, the reality of another person changes. Anyway, pure intelligence is not that important. It’s an abstract quality. It does not include that cruel, intuitive knowledge of how the new life, a life her father would never understand, should be lived. Malcolm has that.
At ten-thirty, the phone rings. She answers and talks in German, lying on the couch. After it is finished Malcolm calls to her, “Who was that?”
“Do you want to go to the beach?”
“Yes.”
“Inge is coming in about an hour,” Nico says.
He has heard about her and is curious. Besides, she has a car. The morning, obedient to his desires, has begun to change. There is some early traffic on the avenue beneath. The sun breaks through for a moment, disappears, breaks through again. Far off, beyond his thoughts, the four spires are passing between shadow and glory. In intervals of sunlight the letters on high reveal themselves: Hosanna.
Smiling, at noon, Inge arrives. She is in a camel skirt and a blouse with the top buttons undone. She’s a bit heavy for the skirt which is very short. Nico introduces them.
“Why didn’t you call last night?” Inge asks.
“We were going to call but it got so late. We didn’t have dinner till eleven,” Nico explains. “I was sure you’d be out.”
No. She was waiting at home all night for her boyfriend to call, Inge says. She is fanning herself with a postcard from Madrid. Nico has gone into the bedroom.
“They’re such bastards,” Inge says. Her voice is raised to carry. “He was supposed to call at eight. He didn’t call me until ten. He didn’t have time to talk. He was going to call back in a little while. Well, he never called. I finally fell asleep.”
Nico puts on a pale gray skirt with many small pleats and a lemon pullover. She looks at the back of herself in the mirror. Her arms are bare. Inge is talking from the front room.
“They don’t know how to behave, that’s the trouble. They don’t have any idea. They go to the Polo Club, that’s the only thing they know.”
She begins to talk to Malcolm.
“When you go to bed with someone it should be nice afterwards, you should treat each other decently. Not here. They have no respect for a woman.”
She has green eyes and white, even teeth. He is thinking of what it would be like to have such a mouth. Her father is supposed to be a surgeon. In Hamburg. Nico says it isn’t true.
“They are children here,” Inge says. “In Germany, now, you have a little respect. A man doesn’t treat you like that, he knows what to do.”
“Nico,” he calls.
She comes in brushing her hair.
“I am frightening him,” Inge explains. “Do you know what I finally did? I called at five in the morning. I said, why didn’t you call? I don’t know, he said—I could tell he was asleep—what time is it? Five o’clock, I said. Are you angry with me? A little, he said. Good, because I am angry with you. Bang, I hung up.