Sundays

They are still in bed, windows open to the morning coolness. Her face has no make-up, her skin no shine. She has a cheap look in the morning, young, without resources. I imagine they wake at the same instant, like actors, like the cat in the cafe which opened its eyes to find me staring through the flat glass. Her breath is bad. My images are repeating themselves—there's nothing I can do. They crowd in on me. They come again and again, I cannot struggle free. Besides, there is no place to go, they would follow me into dreams.

“Bonjour,” she says. She kisses his stiffened prick.

“He never smiles,” she says, looking it in the eye.

“Sometimes,” Dean murmurs. Her mouth feels warm. I try to find darkness, a void, but they are too luminous, the white sky behind them, their bodies open and fresh. They are too innocent. They're like my own children, and they illustrate an affection which has little reason to, which in fact does not exist except that she—at the very bottom it is her only real distinction—she knows how to make things come true. Her mouth moves in long, sweet reaches. Dean can feel himself beginning to tumble, to come apart, and I am like a saxophone player in a marching band—in love with a movie queen. Soft-eyed, lost, I am tramping wretchedly back and forth at halftime. My thoughts are flailing. The batons flash in mid-air. The whole stadium is filled. I am marching, turning, marking time while she slowly circles the field in a newconvertible. I am a clerk in her father's brokerage. I'm the young waiter who sends bouquets of flowers. I am a foreigner who answers the telephone wondering who can be calling, and it is the police. I cannot understand at first. They have to repeat it several times. There is an instant when my heart turns to lead: an accident. A motorcar...

“It's a Citroën,” Dean says. A motorbike is crushed beneath it. They pass slowly. Now they can see the feet of someone laid out near the trees. On the pavement are dark runs of blood.

“They're always in accidents,” he says. “I don't understand it.”

“They're very fast,” she tells him.

“Citroëns? They're not so fast.”

“Oh, yes.”

“How do you know? You don't even drive.”

“They always pass us,” she says.

I know this road well. It leads to les Settons, the lake where they go to swim. Anne-Marie stands in the shallow water. She has earrings on and a necklace. She bends her knees to immerse herself and then swims like a cat, her neck stiff, her head up. After a moment she stands up again.

“You must teach me,” she says to Dean.

He tries to show her the deadman's float. Breathe out through your mouth, he tells her. No. She doesn't like to wet her hair.

“You have to.”

“Why?”

“Come on,” he tells her. “You can't learn unless you do.”

She shrugs. A little puff of contempt—she doesn't care. Dean stands waist-deep in the water, waiting. She doesn't move. She is sullen as a young thief.

“Take your earrings off,” he says gently.

She removes them.

“Now do what I say. Don't be afraid. Put your face in the water.”

She doesn't move.

“Do you want to learn or don't you?”

“No,” she says.

by James Salter, Paris Review |  Read more:

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