LITMIR.BIZ

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of one in the palm of the other. Slightly bent and turned upward, her fingers looked like fronds. Eventually, to Peter’s relief, for he feared that he had put a permanent stop to the conversation, she asked him what book he was reading now (David Copperfield, which he explained that he had never gotten around to as a boy), and after talking about that they ranged over a number of topics: hockey, why famines occur less frequently under a democratic system of government, more about her family, the schools they had attended, the music they liked (a striking conformity of taste in that crucial area), the differences between Third and Second avenues, books, TV shows of their childhood, economic growth rates in Scandinavia and the Netherlands …

      So while the plane cruised over the flat, unchanging Midwest, the prairies and the desert, Peter was in a state of serenity and bliss. The spark had flashed, but there was no explosion. Rather, all had undergone an invisible change of state like magnetization. As soon as they had begun talking, all the momentousness of the occasion had melted away and he had felt unconsciously happy. He looked out the window and saw the mighty and forbidding Rocky Mountains. Mighty and forbidding? Maybe to Lewis and Clark. He was soaring thirty thousand feet above them.

      How did he feel? It was interesting. He felt sort of the way he did when he floated on his back in cold ocean water on a clear hot day and aligned his body with the sun. The cold wavelets lapped up against him; the sun warmed his face, and he felt deliciously stimulated and calm. They had not talked about anything particularly intimate. They had not fused their identities with the force of smashed atoms. They had come together as simply as two flowers intertwining. How happy he felt. And then, once again, that wet-blanket voice piped up in the back of his head, telling him that it was absurd to feel “happy” under these circumstances. He didn’t know this young woman at all. In relations with another person, “happiness” is not the by-product of superficial impressions. Rather, “happiness,” so-called, in a committed relationship was the result of grueling, arduous, unrelenting effort. Maintaining a committed relationship is hard. It requires courage, forbearance, stamina, sacrifice. A useful comparison would be working in a leper colony. The notion that you could meet a beautiful and sympathetic young woman on an airplane and chat with her about the subtle differences between Third and Second avenues and that this could produce “happiness” that was any more meaningful than the happiness produced by licking an ice cream cone, this notion was, frankly, rather childish. And in any event, if he thought that his life could be “fixed” by another person, rather than by dedication to his own growth, then he was sadly mistaken. Peter knew this argument. He knew it very well. And he knew that he was in love with the beautiful, sympathetic young woman beside him and that his life would be changed forever.

      Peter looked at her. She was explaining something to him about Mary Queen of Scots. “So,” she said, “she was visiting Darnley’s bedside and a couple of hours after she left, the house he was staying in blew up, and it was obviously Bothwell …” When Holly talked, she moved her hands, as if she were juggling, a trait that Peter found endearing.

      And did not the question of lust come into it? Yes. Usually, desire made him feel more tense than a sapper defusing a bomb. Curiously, in this case he felt different. He didn’t feel the incredible excitement mixed with terror that one succumbs to when anticipating the possibility of sleeping with a woman for the first time. Rather, he felt desirous, infatuated, stimulated but not agitated—as if he were anticipating sleeping with a woman for the second time. It all seemed so right, certain and pleasurable. He looked at her hands, now in her lap again, and the V-shaped creases made in her jeans by her crossed legs, and the curve of her hips, which was barely perceptible.

      “Hey! You’re not listening,” Holly said.

      “Uh … uh … yes, I was! Uh … Ridolfi … you know … Ridolfi—”

      “Well, you seemed to be thinking about something else.”

      The pressure in the cabin changed. The captain had made the announcement that they were beginning their descent. A general stirring rippled through the passengers, sounds of clasps opening and closing and papers being redistributed. The atmosphere had changed literally and figuratively. The shadows, figuratively, were getting longer and there was a little chill in the air and the sun was setting earlier—all announcing to Peter the end of the warm, fat, unchanging summer days that had been his for the past few hours. Their time was up.

      Accordingly, the moment had come to ask Holly her full name, her address, and her phone number, and to ask her if he could call her sometime. All that. Yet it seemed so contrived, and embarrassing and horrible and jarring, to introduce a “dating” note into their sweet communion: Can I call you? Yuck. They belonged together like the ocean and the shore. To present himself to her as a guy who wanted to buy her dinner at a Mexican restaurant would ruin the state of grace they had miraculously achieved. But there was no way around it, he would have to say something. He tried to put the words together in his mind and finally he settled on a formulation. He took a deep breath. He cleared his throat.

      “I guess we’re going to land soon,” he said. “I wonder if, when you’re back in the city sometime—”

      “No, look,” she said, “how long will you be here?”

      “Uh … I’m sorry?”

      “How long are you going to be in Los Angeles?”

      “Um, until the end of the week, actually.”

      “Do you think you’ll have any evenings free?” Holly asked.

      “I think so—”

      “Then would you like to come out to my father’s for dinner some night?”

      Peter detected vulnerability in Holly’s eyes. Her voice had the slightest quaver. His own nervousness was immediately replaced by a desire to reassure her.

      “That would be great!” he said. “I would love to do that!”

      “Great!” Holly said.

      “How should we—”

      “Why don’t you call me and tell me what night is good? I can promise you that whenever it is we won’t have any plans.”

      “Okay, sure,” said Peter. He made a searching movement with his hands and glanced around for a moment. “Oh, my book, it’s in my briefcase, up in the thing …”

      They both looked about them.

      “Here,” said Holly, “let me borrow your pencil.” Peter had been making notes with one of those plastic mechanical pencils, and he handed this to Holly. She opened her book and wrote something on the title page, which she then tore out. “Here you go,” she said. “There’s the number.”

      Peter looked at the page. Under the title she had written “Holly” and a phone number below it.

      “Good. Thanks,” Peter said. He folded the paper and put it in his shirt pocket.

      “You can call us basically anytime,” said Holly. “My father gets up at five, but Alex and I are night owls, and with the baby, who knows.”

      “Okay. I may have a dinner thing tomorrow,” Peter said, “but the next night? I don’t know how late I might have to work, but I’m pretty sure there isn’t anything—”

      “That sounds good,” said Holly.

      “Anyway, I’ll give you a call.”

      They exchanged a couple of eager, flirtatious glances.

      The plane landed and Peter and Holly collected their things and walked down the aisle together. Walking down the aisle together, he thought. Someday, he would mention this to her. They passed by the food courts and tie shops on the way to the baggage claim area, where they waited for the carousel to begin to turn. Finally, its great scales shuddered into motion, and Peter watched the passengers’ mostly rather sad-looking suitcases process before him. They were made of black and red synthetic fabric and had large silver plates with Frenchified brand names; they had wheels and plastic handles, and they were full, Peter was certain, of heartbreakingly banal possessions,

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