The End of My Life by Vance Bourjaily

Author:Vance Bourjaily
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504009713
Publisher: Open Road Media

Only once, in three weeks, did things go really wrong between them.

It happened on an afternoon which was like any other afternoon in the beginning. They had lunch; they smoked; they played records. Then Cindy said,

“Darling, you worry me.”

“Right,” said Skinner. “Pretty bothersome fellow.”

She hadn’t meant it lightly, for she went on: “When you’re away, I’ll be afraid for you.”

“The chances aren’t so bad, honey. The percentages are all with me.”

“It isn’t the war,” she told him. “Every girl has to live with the percentages; if the others can take it, I can. You’ll be as safe as the percentages can make you from the guns, Skinner. I worry whether you’ll be safe from yourself.”

“Don’t worry, honey. That part of it isn’t your fight.”

“Oh, but it is, darling. Anything that concerns you is my fight, now.”

“You’re worried that I might knock myself off? Or get careless, and let myself get knocked off because I didn’t care?”

“Yes, if it’s got to be put into words.”

“There’s nothing you can do about it, Cindy. Everything is okay right now. I’m in love, and I like it. And I’m not going to get depressed and hurt myself. Do you believe me?”

“Yes, darling.”

He was unconvinced. Suddenly he had an impulse to test it, to test her belief in the meaning of their love to him, and he said: “Look, Cindy, We’ll prove it. I’ll walk over to the window, and climb up on the sill. You’ll know I’m not going to jump. If you really know it, you ought to get a laugh out of my pretending.”

“That’s not necessary,” she said quickly.

He got up.

“Don’t Skinner.”

He walked over to the window. It was about five feet high, and hinged at the sides, the two halves swinging together and clasping in the middle. He undid the clasp, and swung the halves open. He stepped out onto the sill, grasped the edge of the frame with one hand, and looked down at the brick courtyard, four stories below. I should be far enough up, he thought, smiling down at a fading deck chair someone had left in the court. He wondered how it would feel; marvelous, he thought, the two seconds you were in the air. The feeling, for two seconds, that you had, at last, of your own volition, achieved a kind of perfection for once.

He imagined how it would be, falling. He hung one foot out to see if he could get part of the sensation that way, at the same time letting go of the frame with his left hand and grabbing the other side with his right as he started to go; he was pleased with the shiver that ran …

Suddenly he realized that, behind him in the room, someone was crying.

He turned. He had never seen anyone so pale.

He jumped down from the window sill, and ran across the room to where she was sitting, in the big chair. She didn’t move her eyes away from the window, kept staring at it as

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