there was only one attitude in that community.”
She had begun to scratch again. I could not concentrate on what she was saying as she scratched, even though I fastened my eyes on her face and not the swell and the acorn under the silk. Time to act. After all, how much different was a Socially Responsible Singles meeting from an ad in a magazine Personals column. She could have hung the Personal around her neck: “Classy, sensual DWF seeks gentle, intelligent, sensitive, thoughtful, imaginative, physically fit SWM (40–50) to share the joy of commitment.” Scratch commitment and I more or less qualified. Sudden thought about Personals: Why didn’t any SWM or DWM or SJM ever write, “So horny I’d fuck the crack of dawn.” I would like to see the response on that one. Especially from the Socially Responsible Single. “Would you like to get a real drink?” I said suddenly. No. No hard stuff. She was not the type. “A glass of Zinfandel.” Oh, God, I thought I was beyond using wine chat. “Chardonnay.” Christ. “I’m parched.”
“I’ll get my coat.”
She drove a silver four-door sedan, with a dashboard so full of climate- and audio-control buttons that it was as if you were not driving a car but commanding a spacecraft, like the
Challenger
that blew up over Canaveral, with the schoolteacher from New Hampshire, and the black and the Japanese-American astronauts, and the Jewish girl from Ohio, and the three crew-cut Protestants who made up the rest of the crew, so gender- and demographically balanced, it occurred to me as I sat next to this woman, that perhaps the
Challenger
had to blow up, it had enough constituencies to satisfy the needs of the gods. This was the kind of extraneous idea I contemplate more and more as I get older and find myself about to couple with someone with whom I do not wish to share a commitment, that terrible word from the Personals, topped only by
relationship
. Irrelevant thoughts passing as conversation. Noise. An aural blockade.
So: She drove a Cressida. Maybe that was why the automobile industry was in the crapper, even people in Detroit were buying Japanese. The women I had known in California had not drivenCressidas, nor any Toyota cars, for that matter, the Toyota was an extra car for the maid. The women I had known in California, the women Lizzie did not try to conceal her dislike for, drove BMWs in the 300 line, the bigger BMWs in the 700 class were a husband’s car. No Cressidas. Reason enough to leave L.A. right there.
There was a baby seat in the back, facing the rear as it was supposed to, the baby seat another surprise, a child not an element I had factored in when I winnowed through the list of singles’ mixers in the
Free Press
, and some pink and yellow hair bows suggesting that the child who used the baby seat was a girl. She was talking now, something about Humacao, on the Atlantic coast of Puerto Rico, had I ever been there, the swimming was dangerous on the Atlantic, then something about a Club Med somewhere, then something about Cozumel, resorts, she was a travel agent, that explained the resort chat, she was a part owner of a travel agency in one of the lesser Pointes. A less Grosse Pointe. Joke. Pointless-thought division. Not a particularly felicitous time to be in the travel business, I had volunteered, looking out the car window and wondering exactly where we were, and she had said why, and I said that from my limited exposure to the city, Detroit seemed to be in the grip of hard times, a fucking disaster area, I wanted to say, the South Bronx looks like Humacao compared with this, and she had said, I get by, things will get better, I have to believe that. A depressive, I thought. Just what I need. One to match me.
But a direct one at least. With no bullshit about what we were going to do when we reached our destination. We had already made a pit stop, at an all night minimall. The drugstore had decals of all the credit card companies in the window,
She had begun to scratch again. I could not concentrate on what she was saying as she scratched, even though I fastened my eyes on her face and not the swell and the acorn under the silk. Time to act. After all, how much different was a Socially Responsible Singles meeting from an ad in a magazine Personals column. She could have hung the Personal around her neck: “Classy, sensual DWF seeks gentle, intelligent, sensitive, thoughtful, imaginative, physically fit SWM (40–50) to share the joy of commitment.” Scratch commitment and I more or less qualified. Sudden thought about Personals: Why didn’t any SWM or DWM or SJM ever write, “So horny I’d fuck the crack of dawn.” I would like to see the response on that one. Especially from the Socially Responsible Single. “Would you like to get a real drink?” I said suddenly. No. No hard stuff. She was not the type. “A glass of Zinfandel.” Oh, God, I thought I was beyond using wine chat. “Chardonnay.” Christ. “I’m parched.”
“I’ll get my coat.”
She drove a silver four-door sedan, with a dashboard so full of climate- and audio-control buttons that it was as if you were not driving a car but commanding a spacecraft, like the
Challenger
that blew up over Canaveral, with the schoolteacher from New Hampshire, and the black and the Japanese-American astronauts, and the Jewish girl from Ohio, and the three crew-cut Protestants who made up the rest of the crew, so gender- and demographically balanced, it occurred to me as I sat next to this woman, that perhaps the
Challenger
had to blow up, it had enough constituencies to satisfy the needs of the gods. This was the kind of extraneous idea I contemplate more and more as I get older and find myself about to couple with someone with whom I do not wish to share a commitment, that terrible word from the Personals, topped only by
relationship
. Irrelevant thoughts passing as conversation. Noise. An aural blockade.
So: She drove a Cressida. Maybe that was why the automobile industry was in the crapper, even people in Detroit were buying Japanese. The women I had known in California had not drivenCressidas, nor any Toyota cars, for that matter, the Toyota was an extra car for the maid. The women I had known in California, the women Lizzie did not try to conceal her dislike for, drove BMWs in the 300 line, the bigger BMWs in the 700 class were a husband’s car. No Cressidas. Reason enough to leave L.A. right there.
There was a baby seat in the back, facing the rear as it was supposed to, the baby seat another surprise, a child not an element I had factored in when I winnowed through the list of singles’ mixers in the
Free Press
, and some pink and yellow hair bows suggesting that the child who used the baby seat was a girl. She was talking now, something about Humacao, on the Atlantic coast of Puerto Rico, had I ever been there, the swimming was dangerous on the Atlantic, then something about a Club Med somewhere, then something about Cozumel, resorts, she was a travel agent, that explained the resort chat, she was a part owner of a travel agency in one of the lesser Pointes. A less Grosse Pointe. Joke. Pointless-thought division. Not a particularly felicitous time to be in the travel business, I had volunteered, looking out the car window and wondering exactly where we were, and she had said why, and I said that from my limited exposure to the city, Detroit seemed to be in the grip of hard times, a fucking disaster area, I wanted to say, the South Bronx looks like Humacao compared with this, and she had said, I get by, things will get better, I have to believe that. A depressive, I thought. Just what I need. One to match me.
But a direct one at least. With no bullshit about what we were going to do when we reached our destination. We had already made a pit stop, at an all night minimall. The drugstore had decals of all the credit card companies in the window,
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