Alice Adams - To See You Again - Stories

Then Anna went off to meet her Hollywood friend’s plane, and David and I came back to my place, on Pixley Alley, where Barbara (ten, old enough to be left alone, I hope) was already asleep. And immediately, on my old brown corduroy sofa, we fell to kissing and touching, to falling in love.

Like Romeo, he left my house near dawn, a faint yellow light that seemed an enemy, so famished were we still for more of each other—although, by then, so utterly exhausted. But I am bringing up Barbara, or trying to, in a way that could be thought prim, old-fashioned; I do not force the fact of my lovers upon her attention; for the most part I keep them out of sight. And actually there haven’t been so many; my experience with my husband scared me off men for a while, and I was very busy then with Barbara. But I have had a couple of long-term involvements that ended badly, by being dumped; I don’t seem to know when to get out first.

In David’s case, however, being so much in love, I asked him for dinner with me and Barbara, the very next night.

He and Barbara got along well. I had made a spicy pot roast that is one of her favorites (and also, I remembered at some time during dinner, the favorite of the last lover in my life before David came along), and David liked it too, and we all ate and laughed a lot together. Obviously used to meals with kids, David did not ask about school or her plans for being a grown-up; instead he mentioned a couple of movies that he’d seen, and he said that when his kids were little he used to take them to the small beach in the Marina, very near us—Barbara and I used to go there too, which she remembered.

And, aside from a few furtive but uncontrollable embraces when she was doing something in another room, we waited for Barbara to go to bed, to fall asleep. And then we rushed together, wild and insatiable. And tender. In love.

Two weeks later, that was how we still were, still wildly in love, and astounded at our luck in meeting, although a few problems of a practical nature had made themselves apparent; namely, money and children. About money problems David was very direct, which I liked. When I asked him for dinner again, he said, “It’s really good of you to cook. I’m trying to stay out of restaurants until the next infusion of silver comes along,” and he laughed, making it okay, not grim; and he always brought along the wine. The child problem was harder to get around, though; his three spent weekends with him, and if they met me just then, he thought, they would tell their mother and she would be even angrier, more demanding when they got to court, and it would not be fair to tell them not to tell her, too burdensome. And so the second weekend of knowing each other we were apart for two whole days, early (very early) Saturday morning until late Sunday night. Barbara was less of a problem, having met and liked David; still, she was why we didn’t get to spend the night together.

But the weekend after that—it seemed a miracle—we got to go away together. His wife was taking the kids somewhere, to see her parents, I thought—and Anna offered to have Barbara stay with her; Barbara loves North Beach. And so—a weekend away. We were going to Las Vegas.

About Las Vegas, I was not entirely clear on why David thought that was such a good idea, other than his having had some good luck there, just before we met. But actually I didn’t care, and in my fantasies Las Vegas was so awful that it was almost great: supremely tacky, high camp.

We were even going to stay at Caesar’s Palace. I wondered about that—it sounded expensive—until David explained that at Caesar’s Palace he was “on comp”—which, he then further explained, meant that everything is complimentary, the room and the food and drink. “I’ll just have to roll a few dice,” he said, laughing. Actually I didn’t much care where we went, I was so reveling in the prospect of sleeping and waking together.

Picking me up to go to the airport, David seemed a little surprised by my suitcase, a striped canvas bag that I have always liked. He eyed it, said, “What a curious bag.”

“Well, it’s very practical; you don’t have to check it on planes,” I explained, and then overexplained, “You said not to bring too much; no one dresses up, you said.”

“Oh, baby, it’s a terrific bag, don’t fuss. It’s just that it looks sort of like a backpack.”

Feeling criticized, and fighting that feeling, I then began to think how surprised and pleased he would be to find that I had brought mainly wonderful nightclothes. In that way, with those thoughts, I succeeded in cheering up.

On the plane, drinking champagne (comp of the airline), we passed by the most glorious, fantastic clouds that I had ever seen: white and mountainous, almost imperceptibly shifting, like avalanches, and all that whiteness gilded with the sun, in the California and then Nevada mid-afternoon, in late spring. They must have been omens of some sort, those clouds, I thought; our weekend would be as glorious as clouds.

We landed at the Las Vegas Airport, nothing remarkable. Perfectly all right. Why then did I experience a moment of panicked craziness, in which I imagined myself actively going mad, running amok? I saw myself crazily hitting someone (David?) or flinging myself on the bright green carpeting, in a child’s tantrum. That passed quickly, however, a hallucination; I held David’s arm and we pressed together sexily, walking along toward the Avis desk.

There were slot machines all around; well, of course there were, and only that fact made that airport different from any other where I had been. Taking my arm from David’s for a moment, I reached into my bag for quarters; coming up with several, I told him that I would be right back.

But he restrained me. “No, don’t do that now.”

“Oh, why not?” I was really surprised, he looked so serious.

“Well, if you didn’t get a jackpot right away I’d think we were jinxed. The whole weekend shot.”

He laughed, but clearly he meant it; I guessed that he was superstitious over money. And then it was clear to me that he was serious, really serious about making money on that trip, and I thought, Oh, poor David, how foolish you are. (I was not in wonderful financial shape myself, at that time, having been demolished by the I.R.S., but I had seen no need to tell David about my money problems; why add to his.) I secretly planned to see that we spent most of our time in bed.

Falling in love with people you hardly know of course is in some ways a problem, it then occurred to me; you know the shape and taste of each tiny vein in their flesh, and all their secret smells, but maybe not how they feel about money, for example, or how they really like to spend their time when they are not making love.

By the time we got to the car, then, I was braced for heading straight for the tables, and hoping for the respite of a short siesta (I love siestas; the best time for love, I think) between gambling and our dinner. And so I was quite surprised when, in the rental air-conditioned Cougar, heading out of the airport, David said, “I really want you to see some of the land around here. The desert. We don’t have to go as far as Hoover Dam, Lake Mead, but I’ll head down in that direction. First.”

Another problem of not knowing a person well: when he’s making some sacrifice for you, you can’t tell him that you don’t really mind, it’s perfectly okay to go on into town and start shooting craps, or whatever, right away.

However, thigh to thigh, in the cool new Cougar, speeding out on the wide white highway, at first it seemed wonderful, interesting: strange rock formations in the distance and, nearer to hand, all that sand and brush, like a set for a cowboy movie.