“Still Such” - James Salter, New York 1992
Down Fifth with the tail-lights, dark, the wet street gleaming, city where I always lived, school and the rest: curly-haired friend confiding what he’d done with Faith in her parents’ apartment on 83rd, innocent she was, so were others. Thinking of first times, many near here, first duck at Ethel Reiner’s in her dining room on the third floor, first fight outside the Egyptian Wing with two scrawny brothers, first failed course French, first sex in the Piccadilly shrewdly she married another, girl from the New Yorker coming for a drink in Longchamps, smooth air washing in her windows like a cabin on a ship, cool, dawn near, whole city for your happiness, thick newspapers each morning, hasty lunches, night roamings, new people, films, embracing like drunkards in the Metropolitan, rose torsos, all slowly giving way to structure, love beautiful and calm, clinging dress she wore at the reception and then more firsts, apartment near Gracie Square, clever dog, first real money a fifteen thousand dollar check, first child a girl, Sunday mornings, winter city silver and grey, silent windows, along Madison, colors of Sonia Delaunay, rich friends in the sixties dressing for the evening, cufflinks dense gold, wives deep in sofas, laughter, lunch at Brittany, lunch in Summer heat, brilliant images of afternoon high in the St. Regis, the nakedness, fall, gin’s icy bite, leaving with turned-up collar, scarf, “That’s the way they wear it, darling, label out, like that,” first country life, first European, first clap, buildings coming down in rubble, thieves, divorce, in the leaden days that follow comes the fortieth year, first lines in brow, first failing, at the bar an ash blonde, perfect voice Cole Porter evenings, dusk falling, clean clothes, freshly bathed, try it all once more, at Gallagher’s the broad unmarked champion, “Go over and talk to him,” whispering, “ What will I say?” the gorgeous face and glasses, “Tell him he looks familiar, anything,” watching from the back as she walks.
Waves of the new then, arrogant chic, leather beret, cognac brown jacket, beside him the stunning she, slick red jersey, paratroop cap, and earring in one nostril fine as gold thread. Doors that have closed, first friends down, Populous and Smoky city, first weariness, first scorn of praise, streets renamed, vows forgotten, small justice shown and still less pity...
Cars swim down the avenue, it’s late, young faces glimpsed on a corner, other nights, other years in the rain, watching them vanish, dark at the bow, crossed in the meridian at last, all over now, all beginning.