A sport and a pastime by Salter James

Author:Salter, James
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Americans, Sex customs
Publisher: Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday
Published: 1967-10-06T04:00:00+00:00

are sickened by their act. They sit on the curbstone and weep.

In the evenings he's home before midnight. He almost never spends the night with her. Her bed is very small, and then, I think he prefers to be able to leave. Besides, they have the weekends in every old hotel, shutters drawn, door bolted from the inside.

He is elated with his first pay from giving lessons, they go to Avallon. Napoleon has stayed in the hotel there. It breathes of his glory. In the hallways there are prints of the campaigns, Rivoli, Jena, the Mamelukes. The girl at the reception desk has a gold tooth which shines when she smiles.

They sit in the dining room quietly inspecting the menu, prices first. She has changed upstairs, and beneath her suit she has nothing on. Dean knows this. As he reads, his thoughts keep returning to it. Her body, portions of it, seem to become luminous in his mind. Everything he touches or looks at, the fork, the tablecloth, somehow, by their homeliness, their silence, seem to celebrate that flesh which only a single layer of cloth conceals, does not even conceal, proclaims. She eats a large meal. She even drinks a little wine. Dean gazes at her through his empty glass. A brilliant, irregular world appears. The chandeliers glitter like stars. Her face swims away, crowned in soft hair.

"We make movies tonight," she says.

In confusion he tries to think what that might mean. She sits across the table, smiling at him. Their napkins lie crumpled to the side.

Could she, I have often wondered over the empty plates in restaurants, in cafes where only the waiters remain, by any rearrangement of events, by any accident could she, I dream, have become mine? ... I look in the mirror. Thinning hair. A face marked by lines, cuts they are, al-

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