Dusk and Other Stories - James Salter [46]
“I don’t remember. What’s this?” He took the bottle of sea-colored glass she carried. The label was slightly stained. “A Pauillac. I don’t remember this. Did I buy it?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so.” He smelled it. “Very good. Someone gave it to you,” he suggested.
She filled his glass.
“Do you want to go to a film?” he asked.
“I don’t think so.”
He looked at the wine.
“No?” he said.
She was silent. After a moment she said, “I can’t.”
He began to inspect titles in the bookcase near him, many he had never read.
“How’s your mother?” he asked. “I like your mother.” He opened one of the books. “Do you write to her?”
“Sometimes.”
“You know, Viking is interested in me,” he said abruptly. “They’re interested in my stories. They want me to expand Lovenights.”
“I’ve always liked that story,” she said.
“I’m already working. I’m getting up very early. They want me to have a photograph made.”
“Who did you see at Viking?”
“I forget his name. He’s, uh … dark hair, he’s about my size. I should know his name. Well, what’s the difference?”
She went into the bedroom to change her clothes. He started to follow her.
“Don’t,” she said.
He sat down again. He could hear occasional, ordinary sounds, drawers opening and being shut, periods of silence. It was as if she were packing.
“Where are you going?” he called, looking at the floor.
She was brushing her hair. He could hear the swift, rhythmic strokes. She was facing herself in the mirror, not even aware of him. He was like a letter lying on the table, the half-read Gogol, like the wine. When she emerged, he could not look at her. He sat slouched, like a passionate child.
“Jeanine,” he said, “I know I’ve disappointed you. But it’s true about Viking.”
“I know.”
“I’ll be very busy. … Do you have to go just now?”
“I’m a bit late.”
“No, you’re not,” he said. “Please.”
She could not answer.
“Anyway, I have to go home and work,” he said. “Where are you going?”
“I’ll be back by eleven,” she said. “Why don’t you call me?”
She tried to touch his hair.
“There’s more wine,” she said. She no longer believed in him. In things he might say, yes, but not in him. She had lost her faith.
“Jeanine …”
“Good-bye, Nile,” she said. It was the way she ended telephone calls.
She was going to the nineties, to dinner in an apartment she had not seen. Her arms were bare. Her face seemed very young.
When the door closed, panic seized him. He was suddenly desperate. His thoughts seemed to fly away, to scatter like birds. It was a deathlike hour. On television, the journalists were answering complex questions. The streets were still. He began to go through her things. First the closets. The drawers. He found her letters. He sat down to read them, letters from her brother, her lawyer, people he did not know. He began pulling forth everything, shirts, underclothes, long clinging weeds which were stockings. He kicked her shoes away, spilled open boxes. He broke her necklaces, pieces rained to the floor. The wildness, the release of a murderer filled him. As she sat there in the nineties, sometimes speaking a little, the men nearby uncertain, seeking to hold her glance, he whipped her like a yelping dog from room to room, pushing her into walls, tearing her clothes. She was stumbling, crying, he felt the horror of his acts. He had no right to them—why did this justify everything?
He was bathed in sweat, breathless, afraid to stay. He closed the door softly. There were old newspapers piled in the hall, the faint sounds from other apartments, children returning from errands to the store.
In the street he saw on every side, in darkening windows, in reflections, as if suddenly it were visible to him, a kind of chaos. It welcomed, it acclaimed him. The huge tires of buses roared past. It was the last hour of light. He felt the solitude of crime. He stopped, like an addict, in a phone booth. His legs were weak. No, beneath the weakness was something else. For a moment he saw unknown depths to himself, he glittered with images. It seemed he was attracting the glances of women who passed. They recognize