Free Last Night by James Salter Page A

don’t know.
    — It’s unarguable. I’m just curious, he said, how much do you weigh?
    — A hundred and sixteen.
    — That’s what I would have thought.
    — Really?
    — No, but anything you would have said.
    She had told them she had a doctor’s appointment and needed extra time for lunch. She told him that. As she entered the hotel elevator he could not help but notice her fine hips. Then, incredibly, they were in the room. His heart was uncontrollable and everything was prepared for them, the sleek furnishings, the chairs, the thick fresh towels in the bath. There had been four murders in Brooklyn the night before. The brokers were going wild on Wall Street. On Fourteenth, men stood in the cold beside tables of watches and socks. The madman on Fifty-seventh was singing arias at the top of his voice, buildings were being torn down, new towers rising. She rose to draw the drapes and for a moment stood in the space between them, in the light and looking down. The splendor and newness of her! He had known nothing like it.
    Her apartment was borrowed, from someone on assignment. Even at that, it was sparsely furnished. He wanted to give her something every time he saw her, a gift, something unexpected, a chrome and leather chair that he showed her in the window before he ordered it delivered, a ring, a rosewood box, but he was careful to keep nothing that came from her— note, e-mail, photograph—that might betray him. There was one exception, a picture he had taken as she half sat up in bed, from over her bare shoulder, breasts, smooth stomach, thighs, you would not know who it was. He kept it at work between the pages of a book. He liked to turn to it and remember.
    In those days of desire so deep that it left him empty-legged, he did not behave unnaturally at home—if anything he was more loving and devoted although Lily, especially, was beyond increased devotion. He came home filled with forbidden happiness, forbidden but unrivalled, and embraced his wife and played with or read to his children. The prohibited feeds the appetite for all the rest. He went from one to the other with a heart that was pure. On Park Avenue he stood on the island in the middle, waiting to cross. The traffic lights were turning red as far as he could see. The distant buildings stood majestic in the monied haze. Beside him were people in coats and hats, with packages, briefcases, none of them as fortunate as he. The city was a paradise. The glory of it was that it sheltered his singular life.
    — Am I your mistress? she asked one day.
    — Mistress? No, he thought, that was something older, even old-fashioned. He knew of no word to truly describe her other than probable downfall or perhaps fate.
    — What’s your wife like? she said.
    — My wife?
    — You’d rather not talk about her.
    — No, you’d like her.
    — That would be just my luck.
    — She doesn’t have quite your ideas of how to live.
    — I don’t know how to live.
    — Yes, you do.
    — I don’t think so.
    — You have something not a lot of people have.
    — What’s that?
    — Real nerve.
    When he came home that evening, his wife said,
    — Brian, there’s something I want to talk to you about, something I have to ask you.
    He felt his heart skip. His children were running toward him.
    — Daddy!
    — Daddy and I have to talk for a minute, Sally told them.
    She led him into the living room.
    — What’s up? he said as calmly as he could.
    Grace and Harry, it turned out, wanted to come with their children and share the gardener’s cottage during the two weeks in August that Lily would be off at sleepaway camp and some arrangement could be made for Ian so that Sally and Brian could have some time to themselves. Now that would be impossible.
    She went on talking, but Brian barely listened. He was still hearing her first words that had been so frightening. He was rehearsing replies to a far more serious question. He would tell her the truth, could he do that? The