The Stories of John Cheever

Joan’s dress was black. Her voice was low and serene. She sat in a chair beside his bed as if she had been coming there every day to nurse him. Her features had coarsened, he thought, but there were still very few lines in her face. She was heavier. She was nearly fat. She was wearing black cotton gloves. She got two glasses and poured Scotch into them. He drank his whiskey greedily. “I didn’t get to bed until three last night,” she said. Her voice had once before reminded him of a gentle and despairing song, but now, perhaps because he was sick, her mildness, the mourning she wore, her stealthy grace, made him uneasy. “It was one of those nights,” she said. “We went to the theatre. Afterward, someone asked us up to his place. I don’t know who he was. It was one of those places. They’re so strange. There were some meat-eating plants and a collection of Chinese snuff bottles. Why do people collect Chinese snuff bottles? We all autographed a lampshade, as I remember, but I can’t remember much.”

Jack tried to sit up in bed, as if there were some need to defend himself, and then fell back again, against the pillows. “How did you find me, Joan?” he asked.

“It was simple,” she said. “I called that hotel. The one you were staying in. They gave me this address. My secretary got the telephone number. Have another little drink.”

“You know, you’ve never come to a place of mine before—never,” he said. “Why did you come now?”

“Why did I come, darling?” she asked. “What a question! I’ve known you for thirty years. You’re the oldest friend I have in New York. Remember that night in the Village when it snowed and we stayed up until morning and drank whiskey sours for breakfast? That doesn’t seem like twelve years ago. And that night—”

“I don’t like to have you see me in a place like this,” he said earnestly. He touched his face and felt his beard.