Last Night - James Salter [25]
Her apartment was borrowed, from someone on assignment. Even at that, it was sparsely furnished. He wanted to give her something every time he saw her, a gift, something unexpected, a chrome and leather chair that he showed her in the window before he ordered it delivered, a ring, a rosewood box, but he was careful to keep nothing that came from her— note, e-mail, photograph—that might betray him. There was one exception, a picture he had taken as she half sat up in bed, from over her bare shoulder, breasts, smooth stomach, thighs, you would not know who it was. He kept it at work between the pages of a book. He liked to turn to it and remember.
In those days of desire so deep that it left him empty-legged, he did not behave unnaturally at home—if anything he was more loving and devoted although Lily, especially, was beyond increased devotion. He came home filled with forbidden happiness, forbidden but unrivalled, and embraced his wife and played with or read to his children. The prohibited feeds the appetite for all the rest. He went from one to the other with a heart that was pure. On Park Avenue he stood on the island in the middle, waiting to cross. The traffic lights were turning red as far as he could see. The distant buildings stood majestic in the monied haze. Beside him were people in coats and hats, with packages, briefcases, none of them as fortunate as he. The city was a paradise. The glory of it was that it sheltered his singular life.
— Am I your mistress? she asked one day.
— Mistress? No, he thought, that was something older, even old-fashioned. He knew of no word to truly describe her other than probable downfall or perhaps fate.
— What’s your wife like? she said.
— My wife?
— You’d rather not talk about her.
— No, you’d like her.
— That would be just my luck.
— She doesn’t have quite your ideas of how to live.
— I don’t know how to live.
— Yes, you do.
— I don’t think so.
— You have something not a lot of people have.
— What’s that?
— Real nerve.
When he came home that evening, his wife said,
— Brian, there’s something I want to talk to you about, something I have to ask you.
He felt his heart skip. His children were running toward him.
— Daddy!
— Daddy and I have to talk for a minute, Sally told them.
She led him into the living room.
— What’s up? he said as calmly as he could.
Grace and Harry, it turned out, wanted to come with their children and share the gardener’s cottage during the two weeks in August that Lily would be off at sleepaway camp and some arrangement could be made for Ian so that Sally and Brian could have some time to themselves. Now that would be impossible.
She went on talking, but Brian barely listened. He was still hearing her first words that had been so frightening. He was rehearsing replies to a far more serious question. He would tell her the truth, could he do that? The truth was essential, yet it was the thing least wanted.
— We should do this over a drink, he would say. We should do it when we’re calmer.
— I’m not going to be calmer.
He had to somehow put it off until she was the way she often was, clever and understanding. He would say something about perspective.
— Just speak in plain English.
— You can’t say it in plain English.
— Try, she said.
— You know these things happen. You’re a smart woman. You know something about the world.
— Yes, tell me about it.
Her mouth was turned down, a corner of it trembling.
— There’s been someone, but it’s not important. Can’t you see that it’s not important?
— Get out of here, she said, and don’t come back. Don’t try to see the children, I won’t let you. I’m going to change the locks.
— Sally,