Our Souls at Night

37

After dark one night they walked over to the grade school playground and Louis pushed Addie on the big chain swing and she rode up and back in the cool fresh night air of late summer with the hem of her skirt fluttering over her knees. Afterward they went back to bed in her upstairs front room and lay beside each other naked in the summer air coming in from the open windows.

And once they stayed overnight in Denver as she had before at the great old beautiful Brown Palace Hotel with its open court and lobby and the piano player who played all afternoon and evening. Their room was on the third floor and they could look over the railing down to the open courtyard below and see the piano player and people sitting at tables taking tea and drinking cocktails and the waiters moving back and forth from the bar and as night approached the guests going into the bar or into the restaurant with its white tablecloths and gleaming glasses and silverware. They went down and ate in the restaurant and then came back upstairs and Addie put on one of the expensive dresses she’d bought years ago just to wear in Denver. Then they went out onto the sidewalk to the 16th Street Mall and rode the shuttle bus to Curtis Street and walked over to the Denver Center and throups and stomach