Dusk and Other Stories by James Salter Read Free Book Online

explained. “We’re just unwinding.”
    “We have a dining room upstairs,” the manager said. Behind him was an iron staircase winding past framed drawings of dogs—borzois they looked like. “We serve from six to eleven every night.”
    “I bet you do,” Frank said. “Look, your bartender doesn’t know me.”
    “He made a mistake,” the manager said.
    “He doesn’t know me and he never will.”
    “It’s nothing, it’s nothing,” Alan said, waving his hands.
    They sat at a table by the window. “I can’t stand these out-of-work actors who think they’re everybody’s friend,” Frank commented.
    At dinner they talked about Nan Christie. Alan thought of her silk dresses, her devotion. The trouble, he said after a while, was that he never seemed to meet that kind of woman, the ones who sometimes walked by outside Jack’s. The women he met were too human, he complained. Ever since his separation he’d been trying to find the right one.
    “You shouldn’t have any trouble,” Frank said. “They’re all looking for someone like you.”
    “They’re looking for you.”
    “They think they are.”
    Frank paid the check without looking at it. “Once you’ve been married,” Alan was explaining, “you want to be married again.”
    “I don’t trust anyone enough to marry them,” Frank said.
    “What do you want then?”
    “This is all right,” Frank said.
    Something was missing in him and women had always done anything to find out what it was. They always would. Perhaps it was simpler, Alan thought. Perhaps nothing was missing.
    The car, which was a big Renault, a tourer, slowed down and pulled off the autostrada with Brenda asleep in back, her mouth a bit open and the daylight gleaming off her cheekbones. It was near Como, they had just crossed, the border police had glanced in at her.
    “Come on, Bren, wake up,” they said, “we’re stopping for coffee.”
    She came back from the ladies’ room with her hair combed and fresh lipstick on. The boy in the white jacket behind the counter was rinsing spoons.
    “Hey, Brenda, I forget. Is it espresso or expresso?” Frank asked her.
    “Espresso,” she said.
    “How do you know?”
    “I’m from New York,” she said.
    “That’s right,” he remembered. “The Italians don’t have an x , do they?”
    “They don’t have a j either,” Alan said.
    “Why is that?”
    “They’re such careless people,” Brenda said. “They just lost them.”
    It was like old times. She was divorced from Doop or Boos or whoever. Her two little girls were with her mother. She had that quirky smile.
    In Paris Frank had taken them to the Crazy Horse. In blackness like velvet the music struck up and six girls in unison kicked their legs in the brilliant light. They wore high heels and a little strapping. The nudity that is immortal. He was leaning on one elbow in the darkness. He glanced at Brenda. “Still studying, eh?” she said.
    They were over for three weeks. Frank wasn’t sure, maybe they would stay longer, take a house in the south of France or something. Their clients would have to struggle along without them. There comes a time, he said, when you have to get away for a while.
    They had breakfast together in hotels with the sound of workmen chipping at the stone of the fountain outside. They listened to the angry woman shouting in the kitchen, drove to little towns, and drank every night. They had separate rooms, like staterooms, like passengers on a fading boat.
    At noon the light shifted along the curve of buildings and people were walking far off. A wave of pigeons rose before a trotting dog. The man at the table in front of them had a pair of binoculars and was looking here and there. Two Swedish girls strolled past.
    “Now they’re turning dark,” the man said.
    “What is?” said his wife.
    “The pigeons.”
    “Alan,” Frank confided.
    “What?”
    “The pigeons are turning dark.”
    “That’s too bad.”
    There was silence for a