Joan Didion: Run River

She smiled distantly at a man who had smiled at her. Apparently Italian, about her age, the man wore a suit of such deliberately obscure cut and color that it appeared to be a parody on a Brooks Brothers suit. The suit was complemented by — and such would be the phrase — a narrow black string tie with a heavy gold tie clasp, an absurdly small hat, and a candy-striped shirt with French cuffs, which he shot several times as he repeatedly opened and closed the attaché case in which he had for some reason secured his ticket. It was not until after he had settled himself next to her on the plane that she noticed the cuff links, which were representations of two of the Caesars, and it was not until he accidently brushed his hand against her knee and then drew it away that she noticed the ring, which was large, diamond, and on his little finger.

It was about then that she noticed, as well, that he had been and was still drinking. You’re skinny but you’re good-looking , he announced thickly, his first words to her. Although she was taken back she smiled, lowered her head and looked up at him and smiled. She always smiled that way at men she did not know, unable to think of anything else to do and wanting them to want her, recognize her as the princess in the tower. In this particular case, however, she smiled also because the stewardess had looked with disapproval upon the man, who was making little effort to conceal his intention to stay drunk for the next three thousand miles. The disapproval of the stewardess suggested a kind of pact between Lily and her seat mate, and she sealed it by accepting a swallow of what seemed to be very good Scotch, although she did not like Scotch, from his flask.

Perhaps ten minutes after they had left Idlewild, when the lights had been turned off and the engines had settled to a low roar, the incredible thing happened, only it did not seem incredible until later, on the ground, in the light: the man began a low, loving, brutally obscene monologue. Did she know what he wanted to do to her. Did she know what he was going to do to her as soon as they reached San Francisco. How would she like that. He guessed she’d like that all right. Be quiet , she whispered from time to time, lulled almost unconscious by the dark, the moan of the engines, the slight vibration of the cold window next to her cheek, the void beyond the window; don’t talk that way . There was, however, something about being at 25,000 feet in the dark that drained her voice of urgency. Occasionally she would even drop into sleep, waking each time to the quiet, unthinkable monotone; he never touched her and stopped talking only once, for about an hour, between the lights of Denver and the lights of Salt Lake, when he fell into deep sleep. She rather missed the sound of his voice. He woke not only with his imaginative powers still intact but with, for the first time, a definite program: You’re going to love it, baby, you’re just going to give me three hours and you’re going to love it and then you’ll walk out that door and never see me again . He saw this tryst as taking place in the airport hotel in San Francisco. It seemed he did not have to be into town until two o’clock in the afternoon. Just three hours, baby. I can’t , she heard herself saying again and again, and when he demanded to know why not she heard herself, absurdly, making up reasons: she had to be here, there, her time was committed. Three hours wouldn’t matter, he declared, if she wanted it: Do you want it or don’t you. I don’t want it , she said finally, almost inaudibly, trying to cover herself entirely with the blanket the stewardess had given her.

You want it all right baby, you want it. Three hours of it .

She said nothing. What held her in trance was his total lack of interest in anything else about her, his promise of being what she had looked for over and over: the point beyond which she could not go, the unambiguous undiluted article, the place where the battle would be on her terms. There could be no question of whether he liked her or disliked her, no question of approval or disapproval, no rôles at all: three hours he said and three hours he meant.

And if he had not passed out shortly before the plane landed in San Francisco, and if Everett had not driven down unexpectedly to meet her (given the second, she could thank God for the first), three hours it would probably, she knew with a blend of distaste and interest, have been. A few days later the incident had seemed so improbable as to be of obsessive interest, and she mentioned, tentatively, that she had sat next to a drunk on the plane. She had, Everett supposed, moved. Yes, she said. Of course I moved. She could not see then why she had not, and was moved, a few weeks later, to describe the flight in relentless detail to Ryder. Clearly impatient with her unresponsiveness to the details of a venture he had recently conceived (a chain of espresso shops, see Lily, it’s a natural) , Ryder said only that it could have happened to anyone. (“I’m not sure a chain of espresso shops would go, Ryder”: that was all she said, but it occurred to her that Ryder found her as tiresome as she sometimes found him, and she reflected admiringly upon people in movies — and it was not only people in movies — who when they could not talk to each other said goodbye, had renunciations, made decisions: started fresh, apparently lobotomized. If there was one thing that she and Everett and Ryder all had in common, it was that none of their decisions ever came to much; they seemed afflicted with memory.)

Lily knew that she should not have been in town at all. Let alone sitting in the bar at the Capitol Tamale for two hours. Sarah and her new husband had arrived the day before on their way to the Islands; Knight had called up a San Francisco boy who would be in his class at Princeton and invited him up for dinner; China Mary had declared it unseasonably hot for June and gone to bed. Lily should be home. She had told Ryder half an hour ago that she was leaving; now she repeated it.

“Just finish your drink,” Ryder said. “I want to talk to you.”

“What about.”

“For Christ’s sake I haven’t seen you in six weeks.”

“That’s not my fault,” Lily said automatically. She had not particularly wanted to see Ryder anyway, but it had not in fact been her doing: he had spent all of May and part of June in Phoenix, trying to raise money for a project she did not entirely understand. After a while all of Ryder’s projects tended to look alike, and whenever she had not seen him for a period of weeks or months she was struck, when she did see him, not only by that but by his appearance: his features seemed constantly heavier, his eyes less focused. Looking directly into his eyes this afternoon, she had felt that she was looking right through them: You depress me, Ryder , she had said, you’re acting like everything you do is reflex . But then he had ordered another drink and she had taken a Miltown and they had both laughed. So you think I’m a shadow of my former self , he had said, making fun of her, and she had kissed her finger and pressed it against his cheek.

“Anyway,” she said now, looking at her watch and trying to finish a story she had begun before. “There Knight was, shouting that his grandmother reminded him more every day of something out of The Cherry Orchard . ‘By Anton Chekhov,’ he said. ‘If anybody on this ranch has even heard of Anton Chekhov.’ Which he supposed was asking too much . And there I was, trying to point out that Mother’s passion for turning her particular orchard into Paradise Valley All-Electric Homes was not exactly what I would call Chekhovian. And so Knight said, straight-faced — I swear, Ryder, he meant it — why didn’t she tear down the big house and move into one? It would save on electricity.”