Read Online The Last Lovely City by Alice Adams - Free Book Online Page B

said, “I married the first two times for sex. How dumb can you get?” Sometimes adding, “Tommy was dear, well, really they both were, Tommy and Jim. But Tommy drank so much, and besides, I really needed to get out of Boston.”
    She divorced poor, dear Tommy in Reno, and continued to San Francisco, where, with some money from a grandmother who providentially died around that time, she bought a small house in an alley on Telegraph Hill—with such a view! And she got a job on the
Examiner
.
    There then followed for Lucretia many happy years. Telegraph Hill and, indeed, the whole city were seemingly full of the relatively young and unmarried. There was great cheap Italian food and wine in North Beach restaurants, and great cheap Chinese along Grant Avenue, Chinatown, with wonderful jazz at the Blackhawk, the Jazz Workshop. And good bars all over the place. Not to mention the prettily romantic city itself, a perfect backdrop. Lucretia had quite a few very pleasant but not serious love affairs; to herself, she thought, Well, good, I’m beginning to take sex not quite so seriously; it’s just very good, very affectionate fun.
    Sometimes, though, she was assailed by much darker thoughts, one of which persistently was: I’m really too old for all this silliness; my friends are doing serious things like bringing up children. (In those days thirty-five was viewed as too old for almost anything, including love affairs and certainly children.) Also, the fact was that she still did take sex seriously. Her affairs were never so casual as she tried to make herself believe; she sometimes suffered extreme pangs of missing whoever was just gone. Pangs of longing to hear from someone who did not phone. (In those days women were not supposed to telephone men.)
    In those blacker moods Lucretia tended to forget her own considerable professional success. She was extremely good ather work; she had won citations and prizes, along with the occasional raise. And she liked it very much, especially the interviews, which she was more and more frequently assigned. She liked the work and mostly she liked her fellow reporters. But as she waited for her phone to ring, waited for
him
to call, she forgot all that.
    Jason was first described by Lucretia to her friends as “this terribly nice man who lives next door.” A tall, skinny young (her age) architect from Tennessee, Jason had a serious girlfriend, Sally, who was not around much. Jason and Lucretia went to movies at the Palace and to the New Pisa for long, half-drunken dinners together; when she broke up with whomever, Jason was always comforting. And she was nice to him, making homey meals and listening a lot when he broke up with Sally, although by then Lucretia was seeing someone else.
    By the time they fell in love and decided to marry, Jason and Lucretia had been friends for several years. So sometimes she wondered, Why didn’t I know all along how I felt about Jason? Why did we waste all that time?
    In both earlier marriages, to Jim and then to Tommy, sex had been the greatest bond. Especially with Tommy, a true sexual explorer, an inspired and tender lover—when sober. But then, he was so often drunk. With Jason, after the early raptures of mutual discovery, when in effect they both said, “You’ve been here all along, and I didn’t
know
?—after some months of that, the sexual energy between them seemed to taper off to a twice-a-week nice treat. Lucretia often felt that she was more enthusiastic than Jason was, that perhaps she was basically a sexier person, which she found a little embarrassing, although she still liked Jason better than anyone in the world. And for the three years of their marriage they were mostly happy, both busy with separate work, and enjoying vacation trips together.
    Then, cruelly, Jason, who was still a relatively young man, was diagnosed with colon cancer. Invasive. Inoperable. But hetook a long time dying, poor darling; near the end Lucretia moved him