'Last Night' — by James Salter

As I rule I don't much care for short stories but those of James Salter are the exception that prove the rule.

They are delicious: small, glittering jewels that cut your heart to ribbons ever so elegantly, such that you smile even as you wonder how language can be so precise and devastating as it pinpoints the almost imperceptible place when things start to go south in a relationship.

From the book:

She was just thirty–one, the age when women are past foolishness though not unfeeling.

It revealed itself only slowly, like some kind of dream, the light fluttering on the fronds, with names and nouns, Naples, worn benches, Luxor and the kings, Salonika, small waves falling on the stones.

Everyone lies about their lives, but he had not lied about his. He had made of it a noble lament, through it always running this thing you have had, that you will always have, but can never have.

It was easy to find things she would like. Our taste was the same, it had been from the first. It would be impossible to live with someone otherwise. I've always thought it was the most important single thing, though people may not realize it.

Taste is a thing no one is born with, it's learned, and at a certain point it can't be altered. We sometimes talked about that, what could and couldn't be altered. People were always saying something had completely changed them, some experience or book or man, but if you knew how they had been before, nothing much really had changed.

When you found someone who was tremendously appealing but not quite perfect, you might believe you could change them after marriage, not everything, just a few things, but in truth the most you could expect was to change perhaps one thing and even that would eventually go back to what it had been before.

The rest was a long novel so like your life; you were going through it without thinking and then one morning it ended.

She felt sadness but also a kind of confusion. She was trying to imagine all of it tomorrow, without her being here to see it. She could not imagine it. It was difficult to think the world would still be there.

There was not much more to her than met the eye, but that had always been enough.

You think you know someone, you think because you have dinner with them or play cards, but you really don't. It's always a surprise. You know nothing.