Last Night - James Salter [7]
— Hello, princess, he said gently.
With one of the small ivory spoons Teddy put some caviar on a piece of toast and ate it. She went into the kitchen for the chopped egg and brought it into the living room. She decided to have some vodka as well. There was a bottle of it in the freezer.
With the egg and a squeeze of lemon she served herself more caviar. There was far too much of it to even think of eating; she would bring it to the set the next day, she decided. There were only two more weeks of shooting. Perhaps she would take a short vacation afterward. She might go down to Baja where some friends were going. She had been to Baja when she was sixteen. You were able to drink in Mexico and do anything, although by that time they were often in separate beds. They had twin beds in the apartment on Venice Boulevard and also that summer in Malibu in a house rented from an actor who had gone on location for six weeks. There was a leafy passageway that led to the beach. She didn’t wear a bikini that summer, she was too embarrassed to, she remembered. She had a one-piece black bathing suit, the same one every day, and an abortion that fall.
THERE WAS A MOTH on the windshield as they headed back. They were going forty miles an hour; its wings were quivering in what must have been a titanic wind as it resisted being borne into the night. Still, stubbornly, it clung, like gray ash but thick and trembling.
— What are you doing? she said.
Keck had pulled over and stopped. He reached out and pushed the moth a little. Abruptly it flew into the darkness.
— Are you a Buddhist or something?
— No, he said. I didn’t know if it wanted to go where we’re going, that’s all.
At Jack’s they were quickly given a good table. She had come here all the time when she lived out here and was making movies, she said.
— I’ve seen all of them, Keck said.
— Well, you should have. They were good. But you were a little kid. How old are you?
— Forty-three.
— Forty-three. Not bad, she said.
— I won’t ask you.
— Don’t be crass, she warned.
— Whatever it is, you don’t look it. You look about thirty.
— Thank you.
— I mean, it’s astonishing.
— Don’t let it be too astonishing.
What was her accent, was it English or just languid upper-class? It was different in those days, she was saying. That was when there were geniuses, great directors, Huston, Billy Wilder, Hitch. You learned a lot from them.
— You know why? she said. Because they had actually lived, they just didn’t grow up on movies. They’d been in the war.
— Hitchcock?
— Huston, Ford.
— How did you and Nick meet? Keck asked.
— He saw a photo of me, she said.
— Is that the truth?
— In a white bathing suit. No, somebody made that up. They make up all kinds of things. We met at a party at the Bistro. I was eighteen. He asked me to dance. Somehow I lost an earring and was looking for it. He’d find it, he said, call him the next day. Well, you can imagine, he was one of the god kings, it was pretty heady stuff. Anyway, I called. He said to come to his house.
Keck could see it, eighteen and more or less innocent, everything still ahead of her. If she took off her clothes you would never forget it.
— So, you did.
— When I got there, she said, he had a bottle of champagne and the bed turned down.
— So that was it?
— Not quite, she said.
— What happened?
— I told him, thanks, just the earring, please.
— That’s the truth?
— Look, he was forty-five, I was eighteen. I mean, let’s see what’s going on. Let’s not raise the curtain so fast.
— The curtain?
— You know what I mean. He’d been quite the ladies’ man. I took care of that, she said.
She looked at him with knowing eyes.
— You men get all excited by young girls. You