Marry Me by John Updike

dislike her, it’s a fact. I wish I did. It might make it easier.’
    Her straw sucked air from the bottom of the carton. ‘Shouldn’t we be going out to catch this four-fifteen?’
    ‘Don’t shut me up quite yet. Please. Listen. I see it so clearly. What we have, sweet Sally, is an ideal love. It’s ideal because it can’t be realized. As far as the world goes, we don’t exist. We’ve never made love, we haven’t been in Washington together; we’re nothing. And any attempt to start existing, to move out of this pain, will kill us. Oh, we could make a mess and get married and patch up a life together – it’s done in the papers every day – but what we have now we’d lose. Of course, the sad thing is we’re going to lose it anyway. This is just too much of a strain for you. You’re going to start hating me.’ He seemed pleased at this perfect conclusion.
    ‘Or you me,’ she said, rising. She didn’t like this place. Some children squabbling at another table made her miss her own. Their mother, though no older than Sally, looked exhausted forever.
    As they left the stage-shaped bar, Jerry laughed to himself so theatrically that heads turned around. He seized her arm and said, ‘You know what we’re like? It just came to me. We’re like the Lord’s Prayer written on the edge of a knife. Remember, as a kid, how in Ripley’s “Believe It or Not!” there were always things like that? Done by an old Cherokee engraver in Stillwater, Oklahoma?’
    They walked down the poster-lined corridor, painted blue along one wall and cream along the other, to the departure gates. Sally felt weak under his torrent – disarmed, somehow, and ridiculed. ‘Jerry our marriage would be like other marriages, it wouldn’t be wonderful every minute, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be good.’
    ‘Oh, don’t,’ he moaned, his eyes colourless, flicking away. ‘Don’t make me grieve. Of course it would be good. My God. Of course you’d be a better wife for me than Ruth. Just on your animal merits alone.’
    Animal – the word stung, but why? She had looked into the mirrors in Paris and seen the truth of it; people were animals, white animals twisting towards the light. At Gate 27 the animals were wearing suits, but they had packed themselves like cattle in a chute, and they smelled of panic. For the first time, Sally felt the blindness of the situation. Dozens had arrived ahead of them. The illusion of order maintained by the curt young ticket-sellers in the ample waiting room disintegrated out here among the strident posters for Bermuda and for New York musicals with long fey titles. No airline employee was in sight. The steel door of Gate 27 wasshut tight, like a gas chamber. The concrete floor tipped, as if to drain blood. Jerry set down his suitcase near the corrugated wall and motioned her to sit on it, then left her to go and talk to the men at the head of the crush. He came back to say, ‘Gee, two of those guys have been waiting since noon.’
    ‘Do you have those numbered passes?’ she asked.
    He rummaged, distraught and limp, through all his pockets twice before finding them; then snapped them into view like a magician. An invisible loudspeaker barked. A Negro in big blue sunglasses and a pilot’s cap opened the steel door from the other side. A pale little narrow-faced purser huddled close to him. The loudspeaker announced the boarding at Gate 27 of the four-fifteen flight to LaGuardia, and a serene parade, displaying lightweight suitcases, well-dressed children, and flowered hats, came down the corridor. These were the people with reservations. The rest of them, the standbys, were herded to the other side of the pipe railing. One by one, the reservations were checked through at the desk and disappeared. A crescendo of complaint from the jam of standbys threatened the Negro in blue sunglasses; he looked up from tearing tickets and flashed an exhilarating grin, a great smile dazzling in the depth of its