A Kind of Flying: Selected Stories Read Online Free PDF Page B

back in the nook by the aquarium. Across the zebra from the Bohemia was King Henry the Fourth, which was gay and way too small, but they had a little garden. All the men in velvet drinking John Courage, everybody’s hands above the table, moving. And then down the street, below the fish-market and the newsstand and the doner-kabob shop, was the simplest pub of all, the Rosslyn Arms, which was where we drank, where we met all the American teachers, and where Gordon would get drunk and finger each new necklace Judith wore—the smashed penny, the Parcheesi tokens—pulling her as close as people get while talking to each other. He was as big as a bear and would always get drunk and offer to “bite her bottom,” but he was harmless. He wasn’t a writer. It was in the Rosslyn Arms where I learned to play real darts, in fact, where behind the bar, in one of the three cigar boxes, my best darts sit right now.
    I order another bitter from the girl, and I notice she’s a pretty girl about twenty-six, and I tell myself again: I’ve got to begin noticing women, but by the time she returns with the pint, I’ve begun my catalogue again, going way to the top of the High Street, at the corner of the heath, and I’m starting with Jack Straw’s Castle. I’m trying to decide whether or not to include The Spaniards, where Judith and I walked only one day, but we were too late for lunch and the staff was all cranky. I feel a hand on my shoulder. Judith lifts my glass and drains the whole pint until I can see her eyes closed through the bottom of the glass.
    “Hello, Douglas,” she says. “Let’s eat later.” She leads me outside.
    If we were strangers, or acquaintances, or anything less than what we are, whatever that is, I would now ask What’s up? , but we don’t talk that way. There is going to be some theater first, I see, as Judith walks two steps ahead of me across the boulevard, through the park, and down the winding steps to the beach. She’s wearing a blue oxford shirt under the brown baggy cardigan I bought her in Hampstead. She always wears clothes from the old days when she meets me.
    There aren’t many people out, since it’s a gray day in February, but there is a brighter band of light on the horizon and a warm breeze comes off the sea. I walk behind Judith and kind of enjoy it; the air feels good and I’m full of beer. The light over the ocean makes it seem as if there is a lot of the day left. It’s sunny for brunch in Hawaii. I swing my legs, stepping in every other of her footprints. It feels wonderful to move this way; she can take her time. I don’t really want to hear about Reichert or the studio.
    Judith walks in a forced jaunt, bunched a little against the weather, her fingers in her sweater pockets.
    “You kind of walk like David Niven,” I say to her back. I’m suddenly thinking this doesn’t have to be a terrible interview; the beer has made me careless. She walks on. I let her go a little farther ahead, and then I follow doing crazy steps: five-foot leaps and then micro-steps, inches apart. Backward steps, duck steps, and then a few real long side steps. She’ll see this stuff on the way back.
    We approach a couple who have committed themselves to a full-scale beach picnic. They are both sitting on a real checked tablecloth and we hear the man say “Voila!” to the young woman as he pulls a bottle of red wine from a large basket. He is wearing a dark sweater which I see has a large crimson “H” on the front. I’ve seen him in the story department at Paramount.
    Judith stops. “Where are we going?”
    As she faces me, I see the new necklace, a silver doodah of some kind. When she first came out, she wore a half pence and a New York subway token. When she finally moved in with Reichert, she made a string with six of my cigarette filters, painted turquoise, to make it look like it was my fault. She wants to show me this new one and holds it out. Taking it in my hand, I am as close to her