Dusk and Other Stories - James Salter [42]
Now as she returned to her house from the market, there were great, leaden clouds marbled with light, moving above the trees. The wind was gusting. There was a car in the driveway as she turned in. For just a moment she was alarmed and then she recognized it. A figure came toward her.
“Hi, Bill,” she said.
“I’ll give you a hand.” He took the biggest bag of groceries from the car and followed her into the kitchen.
“Just put it down on the table,” she said. “That’s it. Thanks. How’ve you been?”
He was wearing a white shirt and a sport coat, expensive at one time. The kitchen seemed cold. Far off was the faint pop of guns.
“Come in,” she said. “It’s chilly out here.”
“I just came by to see if you had anything that needed to be taken care of before the cold weather set in.”
“Oh, I see. Well,” she said, “there’s the upstairs bathroom. Is that going to be trouble again?”
“The pipes?”
“They’re not going to break again this year?”
“Didn’t we stuff some insulation in there?” he said. There was a slight, elegant slur in his speech, back along the edge of his tongue. He had always had it. “It’s on the north side, is the trouble.”
“Yes,” she said. She was searching vaguely for a cigarette. “Why do you suppose they put it there?”
“Well, that’s where it’s always been,” he said.
He was forty but looked younger. There was something hard and hopeless about him, something that was preserving his youth. All summer on the golf course, sometimes into December. Even there he seemed indifferent, dark hair blowing—even among companions, as if he were killing time. There were a lot of stories about him. He was a fallen idol. His father had a real estate agency in a cottage on the highway. Lots, farms, acreage. They were an old family in these parts. There was a lane named after them.
“There’s a bad faucet. Do you want to take a look at that?”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“It drips,” she said. “I’ll show you.”
She led the way upstairs. “There,” she said, pointing toward the bathroom. “You can hear it.”
He casually turned the water on and off a few times and felt under the tap. He was doing it at arm’s length with a slight, careless movement of the wrist. She could see him from the bedroom. He seemed to be examining other things on the counter.
She turned on a light and sat down. It was nearly dusk and the room immediately became cozy. The walls were papered in a blue pattern and the rug was a soft white. The polished stone of the hearth gave a sense of order. Outside, the fields were disappearing. It was a serene hour, one she shrank from. Sometimes, looking toward the ocean, she thought of her son, although that had happened in the sound and long ago. She no longer found she returned to it every day. They said it got better after a time but that it never really went away. As with so many other things, they were right. He had been the youngest and very spirited though a little frail. She prayed for him every Sunday in church. She prayed just a simple thing: O Lord, don’t overlook him, he’s very small. … Only a little boy, she would sometimes add. The sight of anything dead, a bird scattered in the road, the stiff legs of a rabbit, even a dead snake, upset her.
“I think it’s a washer,” he said. “I’ll try and bring one over sometime.”
“Good,” she said. “Will it be another month?”
“You know Marian and I are back together again. Did you know that?”
“Oh, I see.” She gave a slight, involuntary sigh. She felt strange. “I, uh …” What weakness, she thought later. “When did it happen?”
“A few weeks ago.”
After a bit she stood up. “Shall we go downstairs?”
She could see their reflections passing the stairway window. She could see her apricot-colored shirt go by. The wind was still blowing. A bare branch was scraping the side of the house. She often heard that at night.
“Do you have time for a drink?” she asked.
“I’d better not.”
She poured some Scotch and went into the kitchen to get some ice from the refrigerator and add a little water. “I suppose I won’t see you for a while.”
It hadn’t been that much. Some dinners at the Lanai,