All That Is by James Salter Read Free Book Online Page A

perfect etiquette, one time halting the field when they’d done something wrong and giving them a ferocious dressing down until someone spoke out,
    “Look, I didn’t get up at six o’clock to listen to a lecture.”
    “Dismount!” Stump cried. “Dismount at once and return to the stables!”
    Later he apologized.
    Judge Stump was a friend of Vivian’s father, George Amussen, who had manners and was always polite but also particular regarding those he might call a friend. The judge was his lawyer and Anna Wayne, the judge’s first wife, who was narrow-chested but a very fine rider, had for a time before her marriage gone with Amussen, and it was generally believed that she accepted the judge when she was convinced that Amussen would not marry her.
    Judge Stump pursued women, but George Amussen did not—they pursued him. He was elegant and reserved and also much admired for having done well buying and selling property in Washington and in the country. Even-tempered and patient, he had seen, earlier than others, how Washington was changing and over the years had bought, sometimes in partnerships, apartment buildings in the northwest part of the city and an office building on Wisconsin Avenue. He was discreet about what he owned and refrained from talking about it. He drove an ordinary car and dressed casually, without ostentation, usually in a sport jacket and well-made pants, and a suit when it was called for.
    He had fair hair into which the gray blended and an easy walk that seemed to embody strength and even a kind of principle, to stand for things as they should be. A gentleman and a figure of country clubs, he knew all the black waiters by name and they knew him. At Christmas every year he gave them a double tip.
    Washington was a southern city, lethargic and not really that big. It had atrocious weather, damp and cold in the winter and in the summers fiercely hot, the heat of the Delta. It had its institutions apart from the government, the old, favored hotels including the Wardman, familiarly called the riding academy because of the many mistresses who were kept there; the Riggs Bank, which was the bank of choice; the established downtown department stores. Howard Breen, who was the owner of the insurance agency where George Amussen in principle worked, one day would inherit the many properties his father had amassed, including the finest apartment building in town, where the old man, in a fedora andwith a spittoon near his foot, often sat in the lobby watching things with lizard eyes. Only the right sort of people were allowed as tenants and even they were treated with indifference. If, as was not often the case, he nodded slightly to one of them as they came or went, that was considered cordial. The apartments, however, were large with handsome fireplaces and high ceilings, and the employees, taking their cue from the owner, were mute to the point of insolence.
    The war changed it all. The hordes of military and naval personnel, government employees, young women who were drawn to the city by the demand for secretaries—in two or three years the sleepy, provincial town was gone. In some respects it clung to its ways, but the old days were vanishing. Vivian had come of age during that time. Though she appeared at the club in shorts that were in her father’s opinion a little too brief and wore high heels too soon, her notions were really all from the world she had been a girl in.
    Bowman wrote to her and almost to his disbelief she wrote back. Her letters were friendly and open. She came to New York several times that spring and early summer, staying with Louise and even sharing the bed with her, laughing, in pajamas. She had not yet told her father about her boyfriend. The ones she had in Washington worked at State or in the trust department at Riggs and were in many ways replicas of their parents. She did not think of herself as a replica. She was daring, in fact, taking the train up to see a man she had met