A Sport and a Pastime

“All right,” he says. “Remember, I told you.”

“Yes, darling,” she says.

Outside I can see the black river, battered like foil, and the Wheatlands’ tan Mercedes abandoned under the streetlights, nosed in, not exactly parallel with the curb. Cristina’s a painter, or more exactly would have been a painter if it weren’t for her first marriage. She laid it all aside for that. With Billy it’s been different. She’s attending classes again, but…she sighs.

“No,” he assures her, “the paintings you’re doing now are the best you’ve ever done. You’ve even said that yourself.”

“I don’t know, they’ve gotten too intellectual,” she says. “All the life has suddenly gone out of them.”

“No, it hasn’t.”

“You’re not a painter,” she says. Then to me, “Lend me your handkerchief.”

For a moment I’m afraid she’s going to cry, but she merely blows her nose. She looks directly at me. Her smiles are always mysterious.

“Tell him who’s in your class, now,” Billy says.

Isabel. She arrives with her poodle and ties the leash to one leg of the easel. She’s very serious about her work, she won’t joke about it.

“Is she a good painter?” I ask.

“You don’t know how funny you are,” Cristina says. Her flesh is lambent against the black of her dress, and she seems full of those rebellious acts that come to her so naturally when she drinks. She has large, lovely eyes and pale lashes. “There’s no one in that whole class who can paint. Well, just one. Alix could be a good painter, but she won’t work. You have to be willing to give up everything.”

“Of course.”

“I mean it,” she tells me. “Do you know Alix?”

“I don’t think so.”

“She’s divine,” Cristina says. “You’d like her.”

The owners sit down with us, Michelle first, approaching with a lovely smile. She’s not young, but rather in the midst of that last and most confident beauty, like the mother of a schoolmate. You see her emerging from a car, the flash of an elegant calf, and you are tumbled into unbearable love.

Michelle has a surprise: she and Charles have been married! Amid the congratulations and sincere embraces, Charles enters sheepishly, and this sets off another wave of salutes. They open more champagne and even bring out the reserve Calvados. Afterwards, they sing a little duet together. It’s quite touching. Through the many years she spent as his mistress, they were perfectly open about their relationship, but marriage causes them to blush and tell jokes. Michelle’s son, who is fifteen or so, comes upstairs with a friend. Everybody sits around and talks with the exception of the friend and me. We are strangers to the past that unites them. The friend smokes cigarettes, and I drink the Calvados.

When we leave, there’s an argument, the second of the night. The first was when Cristina wouldn’t go down to the garage with him to get the car. Now he wants to go dancing.

“Oh, God,” she says.

“God, what?” He always becomes sullen.

“Nobody goes dancing,” she says.

Instead we go to a cave. Billy is angry and bored the whole time. There’s a negress who sings in beautiful French, her sequin dress glittering with the brilliance of crystal scales. She is like a naiad in a skin of silver. Her teeth are hypnotic. Her smile crushes one’s hope. Billy is watching her impassively. Cristina leans on my shoulder and reveals I’m the only friend of his, the only one, she likes.

“You ought to be a painter,” she tells me, “you know?”

“You think so?”

“Yes. I mean, we’re doing the same thing, aren’t we? You and I.”

“Not exactly. I don’t change anything.”

“Of course you do!” she says fiercely.

“No, I don’t think so. Anyway, it doesn’t matter that much, I couldn’t be a painter. You ought to be a painter.”

She smiles strangely. I am afraid to explain.

“You’re so right,” she finally says. She notices Billy. “Baby,” she says, “what’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he replies coldly.

She laughs.

“Let’s go dancing,” she says.

We drive along Boulevard Raspail. There’s a club somewhere, hidden among the ordinary storefronts. They can’t agree where it is until suddenly we are going past it. Billy stops with a jerk. He backs into a parking place with ferocious skill. Cristina gets out and takes my arm. This is a place the Greek shipping millionaires come to, she tells me. The band never stops.

Cristina refuses to dance, of course. We watch the others instead, a sleek Japanese girl who’s been sitting at the bar and a man of sixty, fat as a pastry cook. They part in rhythm and face the side. Then they dance back to back. He’s absurd, but very graceful. His feet are nimble as mice. Finally they begin playing something Cristina likes. We dance with her in turn.

“Onassis sits at that table over there,” she tells me out on the floor.

“Which?”

“In the corner.”

“Oh.” I stare at it. “What does he look like?”

“You’ve seen pictures of him, haven’t you?” she says.

“Yes, but I mean close up…”

“He looks very rich,” she says.

“Does he wear those tinted glasses?”

“You mean sunglasses? All of them do. You never know what they’re thinking.”

“About you, I imagine.”

“Me?” she says.

“I’m sure he has an appreciative eye.”

“I’d like to catch it sometime.”

“Would you really marry a rich man?”

“Next time,” she says. “Oh, it wouldn’t last, but he’d be very happy.”

“Would he?”

“Oh, yes,” she promises.

She has her moments. Still, it’s dangerous to believe in what she seems to be. One often has the impression there is another, desperate woman underneath, but this is the extent of her power, this intimation of sexual wealth. Billy always talks about how beautiful she is. It’s almost as if he’s protesting: but she is beautiful. And she is. Their life is arranged to exhibit this beauty. They treat it like the possession of a fine house.

A tall, enraptured dancer, dark as a gypsy, comes onto the floor. He’s in a business suit. His hair is long, and his shoes have high, leather heels. There’s the glitter of madness about him as he dances alone, the friends at his table watching with smiles. The Japanese girl can see him. The fat man can hear his feet. The music continually quickens. A regular contest has begun. It’s like the start of a crime of passion, they are already winding the shroud around the poor, fat bourgeois, hot glances meeting as they writhe on either side. But he will not die. He dances like a man possessed, his face flushed and shining with sweat, his mouth in a dead man’s smile. Now it drops open. Everything in the club has stopped. Everybody is watching. Any second I expect to see him crumple like an old coat. The music alone can kill him. They are dancing in a frenzy. The musicians have gone wild.

On the way home we get lost. Even though they’ve lived in the city for five years, Billy doesn’t know where we are. There’s no one to ask. We slow down at the corners to try and read the plaques and then, tires scorching, take off. The streets are empty except for an occasional car. Even the big intersections. We race around for an hour. Cristina’s head lies limply on my shoulder. She’s sleeping. After a while—we are going by certain stores for the third time—she begins to sing. Her eyes are still closed. Slurred, faintly poetic phrases come from her mouth. Billy