Don't Save Anything: The Uncollected Writings of James Salter(78)
“You and who?” his wife said.
Many nights, apparently, there was poker, not the grown-up kind but congenial games, the value of hands sometimes written out for women who had never played or who had forgotten. “The Judge was losing and left early,” is an entry. He eventually left town as well, but the memory of him is vivid. He was squire-like and cordial, but could be abrupt and unyielding. In younger days he’d once jumped from a window to end it all, in love and rejected, but the window was only on the second floor.
On another evening advances of more chips from the bank were being written for convenience on the label of a bottle of wine. Tom Hubbard had been losing and several times he, as well as other players, had replenished their chips. Weary and having lost yet another pot, he inquired plaintively, “Is there any room left on the wine bottle?”
There is someone’s unattributed description of the sensuous life in Cuba before Fidel. Perhaps we were smoking cigars. “In Havana,” it reads, “the woman takes the cigar in her palms and warms it over a lamp. Then she dips it in a decanter of dark rum and rolls it again. Then she puts the end in the flame of the lamp. The man takes two puffs . . .” I try to imagine who was delivering this alluring account. Was it Abigail, Portia, Krista-all—names I cannot attach a person to—or the orchestra conductor or former lieutenant governor? Nor can I identify the minister on the evening when there was written only, “Man of God got drunk.” Irene was there that night. She was young and from the South, attractive to both sexes and with the most knowing smile imaginable. She’d been married once briefly, to a man named Thorndike. The reception, she liked to say, lasted longer than the marriage.
Did we ski the next day? There is no telling. In my memory it is more often after a day of skiing, filled with that matchless, almost lightheaded exhaustion, that we sat down to dinner. The talk was of runs and gear, of the snow on Powderhorn that was more perfect than it had ever been. The temperature was just right, cold, about twenty degrees, and no one had been down it; the tracks we made were a declaration of happiness.
I wonder why, unrelated to anything else, I find Joe Fox’s six rules for being the ideal weekend guest. Fox was a senior editor at Random House. He had been the editor for a book of mine but more notably had edited Truman Capote, Philip Roth, and Peter Matthiessen as well as others. A Philadelphian through many generations, he had certainly been to great houses. From that February evening, there are these unexplained but most likely unimpeachable rules: 1) Never arrive too early 2) Bring a gift the hostess will love 3) Stay to yourself for at least three hours a day 4) Play all their games 5) Don’t sleep in the wrong bed 6) Leave on time.
The days of winter and skiing are perfect days. If asked to explain why, I can only say, somewhat helplessly, because one loves them. The fire in the evening, the fatigue and ease, the lack of guilt at having spent the day in no more than pursuit of pleasure, and finally the warm, convivial dinner. Abbodanza. If leaders of enemy peoples could ski together, much hardship could be avoided.
One night just after Christmas someone brought a houseguest, a young Japanese. He was probably perplexed by the customs but being, as it turned out, the son of a former prime minister of Japan, he was both socially adept and polite. He sent a thank-you letter which still hangs, framed, on the wall in the kitchen. Somewhat faded, it reads, “It was very nice to know you. Thank you very much for inviting me for a great dinner. I enjoyed your cocking very much.” The slight misspelling which makes the letter a classic is the writer’s. Courtie Barnes, who read it a few weeks later, remarked admiringly, “Incredible we could have gone to war against such a charming people.”
In the beautiful winter, on snowy nights, the people are all like that.
Colorado Ski Country USA
1997–98
Notes from Another Aspen
Well, it all depends what you mean by the old days. For people like Tom Sardy and Judge Shaw, who were prominent figures in town when I came for the first time in 1959, the old days were when you could buy a house and lot in the West End for $25, including all the furnishings. Judge Shaw used to buy them for even less, for unpaid back taxes which were pennies. When I arrived houses were selling for $10,000 to $20,000. Now they’re probably even more.
Judge Shaw was a chain-smoker and breathed with a wheeze. He persisted in calling Tam Scott, who is now a judge, “Cam,” despite respectful correction, and lived with his wife in a large house at the east end of Triangle Park, which has since passed into more-renowned hands. Land Rovers, in fact, were not even invented when the judge was around. Sushi was unknown. My lasting image of the Shaw house was after his widow’s death. The mattresses were pushed out of the window and slit open in a search for gold coins thought to be in abundance, I suppose.
One of the early magnates of the present, or skiing, era was Ed Brennan, who paved the way for Gerald Hines and Mohamed What’s-his-name who built the Ritz. The Ritz back then, of course, was the Jerome. Except for the post office and a café or two it was the center of everything. The fire siren was mounted on the roof and I believe the hotel had the only switchboard in town. When the siren went off the firemen had to drive by the hotel and ask where the fire was. The Jerome bar was the bar. Everyone skied all the way down to it at the end of the day and not infrequently made arrangements for the evening. Later at night there might be an invitation to go upstairs, which was like going to a badly maintained fraternity house room, but drunk with love, who cared?