Last Night - James Salter [30]
— I’m divorced, she said. How about you?
— Me? The same, he said.
The street below was filled with hurrying people, cars. The sound of it was faint.
— Really? she said.
It had been years since he had talked to her. There was a time they had been inseparable. They were at Goldie’s every night or at Clarke’s, where he also went regularly. They always gave him a good table, in the middle section with the side door or in back with the crowd and the unchanging menu written neatly in chalk. Sometimes they stood in front at the long, scarred bar with the sign that said under no circumstances would women be served there. The manager, the bar-tenders, waiters, everybody knew him. Clarke’s was his real home; he merely went elsewhere to sleep. He drank very little despite his appearance, but he always paid for drinks and stayed at the bar for hours, occasionally taking a few steps to the men’s room, a pavilion of its own, long and old-fashioned, where you urinated like a grand duke on blocks of ice. To Clarke’s came advertising men, models, men like himself, and off-duty cops late at night. He showed Noreen how to recognize them, black shoes and white socks. Noreen loved it. She was a favorite there, with her looks and wonderful laugh. The waiters called her by her first name.
Noreen was dark blond, though her mother was Greek, she said. There were a lot of blonds in the north of Greece where her family came from. The ranks of the Roman legions had become filled with Germanic tribesmen as time passed, and when Rome fell some of the scattered legions settled in the mountains of Greece; at least that was the way she had heard it.
— So I’m Greek but I’m German, too, she told Arthur.
— God, I hope not, he said. I couldn’t go with a German.
— What do you mean?
— Be seen with.
— Arthur, she explained, you have to accept the way things are, what I am and what you are and why it’s so good.
There were things she wanted to tell him but didn’t, things he wouldn’t like to hear, or so she felt. About being a young girl and the night at the St. George Hotel when she was nineteen and went upstairs with a guy she thought was really nice. They went to his boss’s suite. The boss was away and they were drinking his twelve-year-old scotch, and the next thing she knew she was lying facedown on the bed with her hands tied behind her. That was in a different world than Arthur’s. His was decent, forgiving, warm.
They went together for nearly three years, the best years. They saw one another almost every night. She knew all about his work. He could make it seem so interesting, the avid individuals, the partners, Buddy Frackman, Warren Sender. And Morris; she had actually seen Morris once on the elevator.
— You’re looking very well, she told him nervily.
— You, too, he said, smiling.
He didn’t know who she was, but a few moments later he leaned toward her and silently formed the words,
— Eighty-seven.
— Really?
— Yes, he said proudly.
— I’d never guess.
She knew how, one day coming back from lunch, Arthur and Buddy had seen Morris lying in the street, his white shirt covered with blood. He had accidentally fallen, and there were two or three people trying to help him up.
— Don’t look. Keep going, Arthur had said.
— He’s lucky, having friends like you, Noreen said.
She worked at Grey Advertising, which made it so convenient to meet. Seeing her always filled him with pleasure, even when it became completely familiar. She was twenty-five and filled with life. That summer he saw her in a bathing suit, a bikini. She was stunning, with a kind of glow to her skin. She