Falconer+-+John+Cheever

Falconer 64
station in some country where English was not spoken. The light
was going, but going, as it so often does, with a fanfare. All I really
remember is a sense of your company and a sense of physical
contentment.
“I suppose I am dealing with romantic and erotic things, but I
think I am dealing with much more. What I remember, tonight in
this cell, is waiting in some living room for you to finish dressing. I
hear the sound from the bedroom of you closing a drawer. I hear
the sound of your heels—the floor, the carpet, the tile of the
bathroom—as you go there to flush the toilet. Then I hear the
sound of your heels again—a little swifter now—as you open and
close another drawer and then come toward the door of the room
where I wait, bringing with you the pleasures of the evening and
the night and the life we have together. And I can remember
wishing for dinner in an upstairs bedroom while you did the last
thing before putting dinner on the table, while I heard you touch a
china serving dish with a pot. That is what I remember.
“And I remember when we first met, and I am today and will be
forever astonished at the perspicacity with which a man can, in a
glimpse, judge the scope and beauty of a woman’s memory, her
tastes in color, food, climate and language, the precise clinical
dimensions of her visceral, cranial and reproductive tracts, the
condition of her teeth, hair, skin, toenails, eyesight and bronchial
tree, that he can, in a second, exalted by the diagnostics of love,
seize on the fact that she is meant for him or that they are meant
for one another. I am speaking of a glimpse and the image seems
to be transitory, although this is not so much romantic as it is
practical since I am thinking of a stranger, seen by a stranger.
There will be stairs, turnings, gangplanks, elevators, seaports,
airports, someplace between somewhere and somewhere else and
where I first saw you wearing blue and reaching for a passport or a
cigarette. Then I pursued you across the street, across the country
and around the world, absolutely and rightly informed of the fact
that we belonged in one another’s arms as we did.