Dusk and Other Stories - James Salter [9]
She had given the famous dinner for him, unforgettable night. The clouds had been blowing off the top of Sopris all day, then came the snow. They talked in front of the fire. There were wine bottles crowded on the mantel and everyone in good clothes. Outside the snow poured down. She was wearing silk pants and her hair was loose. In the end she stood with him near the doorway to the kitchen. She was filled with warmth and a little drunk, was he?
He was watching her finger on the edge of his jacket lapel. Her heart thudded. “You’re not going to make me spend the night alone?” she asked.
He had blond hair and small ears close to his head. “Oh …” he began.
“What?”
“Don’t you know? I’m the other way.”
Which way, she insisted. It was such a waste. The roads were almost closed, the house lost in snow. She began to plead—she couldn’t help it—and then became angry. The silk pants, the furniture, she hated it all.
In the morning his car was outside. She found him in the kitchen making breakfast. He’d slept on the couch, combed his longish hair with his fingers. On his cheeks was a blond stubble. “Sleep well, darling?” he asked.
Sometimes it was the other way around—in Saratoga in the bar where the idol was the tall Englishman who had made so much money at the sales. Did she live there? he asked. When you were close his eyes looked watery but in that English voice which was so pure, “It’s marvelous to come to a place and see someone like you,” he said.
She hadn’t really decided whether to stay or leave and she had a drink with him. He smoked a cigarette.
“You haven’t heard about those?” she said.
“No, what about them?”
“They’ll give thee cancer.”
“Thee?”
“It’s what the Quakers say.”
“Are you really a Quaker?”
“Oh, back a ways.”
He had her by the elbow. “Do you know what I’d like? I’d like to fuck thee,” he said.
She bent her arm to remove it.
“I mean it,” he said. “Tonight.”
“Some other time,” she told him.
“I don’t have another time. My wife’s coming tomorrow, I only have tonight.”
“That’s too bad. I have every night.”
She hadn’t forgotten him, though she’d forgotten his name. His shirt had elegant blue stripes. “Oh, damn you,” she suddenly cried. It was the horse. He hadn’t gone. He was over by the fence. She began to call him, “Here, boy. Come here,” she begged. He wouldn’t move.
She didn’t know what to do. Five minutes had passed, perhaps longer. Oh, God, she said, oh, Lord, oh God our Father. She could see the long stretch of road that came up from the highway, the unpaved surface very pale. Someone would come up that road and not turn off. The disastrous road. She had been driving it that day with her husband. There was something he had been meaning to tell her, Henry said, his head tilted back at a funny angle. He was making a change in his life. Her heart took a skip. He was breaking off with Mara, he said.
There was a silence.
Finally she said, “With who?”
He realized his mistake. “The girl who … in the architect’s office. She’s the draftsman.”
“What do you mean, breaking it off?” It was hard for her to speak. She was looking at him as one would look at a fugitive.
“You knew about that, didn’t you? I was sure you knew. Anyway it’s over. I wanted to tell you. I wanted to put it all behind us.”
“Stop the car,” she said. “Don’t say any more, stop here.”
He drove alongside her trying to explain but she was picking up the biggest stones she could find and throwing them at the car. Then she cut unsteadily across the fields, the sage bushes scratching her legs.
When she heard him drive up after midnight she jumped from bed and shouted from the window, “No, no! Go away!”
“What I never understood is why no one told me,” she used to say. “They were supposed to be my friends.”
Some failed, some divorced, some got shot in trailers like Doug Portis who had the excavation business and was