All That Is by James Salter

remarked.
    “I know. And my father’s going to call here, probably, and want me to be getting home.”
    “I guess you’ll have to do that.”
    “I wish Peter’s father would call him.”
    Amussen looked at her, the riding pants, her calm face.
    “Where are you in school, now?” he said.
    “I’ve quit school,” she said.
    He nodded a little, as if agreeing.
    “You knew that.”
    “No, I didn’t,” he answered.
    “Daddy’s after me to go back, but I don’t think so. It’s a waste of time, don’t you think?”
    “I didn’t get that much out of school, I guess. Want a refill?” he asked.
    “Are you trying to get me drunk?”
    “I wouldn’t do that,” Amussen said.
    “Why not?”
    Her boyfriend, Peter, who had red lips and crinkled blond hair came into the room just as she spoke, and smiled as a kind of admission of interrupting. He was a student at Lafayette and headed for law. He could sense that Dare was somehow annoyed. He knew little enough about her except for the difficulties she presented.
    “Uh, I’m Peter Connors, sir,” he said, introducing himself.
    “Nice to meet you, Peter. I’m George Amussen.”
    “Yes, sir, I know.”
    He spoke to Dare,
    “Hi,” he said, and confidently sat down beside her. “It looks like it’s snowing.”
    It was snowing, harder now, blowing along the fence rows, and the light was beginning to fade.
    In the master bedroom with its oversized bed, medicines and jewelry on the night table, and clothes draped over the backs of chairs, Liz was talking to her brother, Eddie. The radio was playing and all the lights including the bathroom lights were on. Written in pencil on the wallpaper above the night table were various names with telephone numbers, first names for the most part, but also doctors and Clark Gable. Eddie lived in Florida, it was the first time she’d seen him since her marriage to Travis. He was her older brother, three years older, and had the handsome face of someone who had never done much. He had bought and sold cars.
    “You’re getting gray,” she said.
    “Thanks for the news.”
    “It looks good.”
    He glanced at her and didn’t reply. She reached over and rumpled his hair affectionately. There was no reponse.
    “Oh, you’re still beautiful. You’re as good-looking as when you got all dressed up in your tuxedo for the DeVores’ party, remember that? You were there on the steps smoking a cigarette and hiding it in case Daddy was looking. You were hot stuff. That big car.”
    “George Stuver in his daddy’s LaSalle.”
    “I was so jealous.”
    “The Stuvers’ LaSalle. I was with Lee Donaldson in the backseat that night.”
    “Whatever happened to her?”
    “She had a hysterectomy.”
    “Oh, Christ. I hate doctors.”
    “You can’t tell the difference from the outside. You have anything to drink up here?”
    “No, I try not to have it around. I don’t want it to become a problem.”
    “Speaking of that, where’s the fly-boy? And how’d you get involved with him?”
    “Sweetheart, don’t start on that.”
    “He’s a prize. Where’d you meet him?”
    Eddie had liked Ted Bohannon, who he felt was his kind of man.
    “We met in Buenos Aires,” she said. “In the embassy. He was the attaché. It just happened that he came along. I was lonely, you know I don’t like living alone. I was down there for three months.”
    “Buenos Aires.”
    “I got so sick of South America,” she said. “Nothing is clean there, no matter where you go. They’re so lazy, those people. It just burns me up to see the money we’re throwing away down there. They have enough money of their own, my God, they have money. You should see the ranches, they have a thousand people working for them. You have to see it with your own eyes. They told us that Perón made off with over sixty million. And then they ask us for money.”
    She was silent for a moment.
    “The man I really wanted to marry was Aly Khan,” she said, “but I never got