Read Online To See You Again by Alice Adams - Free Book Online Page B

sounded silly (a grown man, shy?) and she stepped back a little, away from him.
    He could still have kissed her, easily (she later thought), but he did not. Instead, he reached into one of the pockets of his jeans, fishing about, as he said, “… for something I wanted you to have.”
    Had he brought her a present, some small valuable keepsake? Prepared to relent, Dylan then saw that he had not; what he was handing her was a cardboard square, a card, on which were printed his name and telephone number. He said, “I just got these. My mother sent them. She’s big on engraving.” He grimaced as Dylan thought, Oh, your mother really is an Iverson. “The number’s my new bachelor pad,” he told her. “It’s unlisted. Look, I really wish you’d callme. Any time. Collect. I’ll be there.” He looked away from her, for a moment out to sea, then down to the sand, where for the first time he seemed to notice her wet foot. “Oh Lord!” he exclaimed. “Will you have to change? I could run you home.…”
    Not liking the fuss, and not at all liking the attention paid to those particular shoes (cheap, flimsy), somewhat coldly Dylan said no; the guests had thinned out and she was going home anyway as soon as the tables had been set up.
    “Then I won’t see you?”
    She gave him her widest, most falsely shining smile, and turned and started up the path ahead of him. At the top she smiled again, and was about to turn away when Whitney grasped her wrist and said, with a startling, unfamiliar scowl, “
Call
me, you hear? I don’t want to lose you.”
    What Dylan had said about being able to leave after setting up the tables was true; she had been told that she could then go home, which she did. The only problem, of course, was that she would earn less money; it could be a very lean, cold winter. Thinking about money, and, less clearly, about Whitney Iverson, Dylan was not quite ready for the wild-eyed Flower, who greeted her at the door: “We’re celebrating. Congratulate me! I’ve dumped Zach.”
    But Dylan had heard this before, and she knew the shape of the evening that her mother’s announcement presaged: strong triumphant statements along with a festive dinner, more and more wine, then tears. Sinkingly she listened as her mother described that afternoon’s visit from Zach, how terrible he was and how firm she, Flower, had been, how final. “And we’re celebrating with a really great fish soup,” finished Flower, leading Dylan into the kitchen.
    The evening did go more or less as Dylan had fearedand imagined that it would. Ladling out the rich fish soup, Flower told Dylan how just plain fed up she was with men, and she repeated a line that she had recently heard and liked: “A woman without a man is like a mushroom without a bicycle.”
    Dylan did not find this as terrifically funny as Flower did, but she dutifully laughed.
    A little later, sopping French bread into the liquid, Flower said, “But maybe it’s just the guys I pick? I really seem to have some kind of instinct.”
    Flower had said that before, and Dylan always, if silently, agreed with her: it was too obvious to repeat. And then, maybe there really weren’t any nice men around anymore, at her mother’s age? Maybe they all got mean and terrible, the way a lot of women got fat? Dylan thought then of Whitney Iverson, who was only about ten years younger than Flower was; would he, too, eventually become impossible, cruel and unfaithful?
    In a way that would have seemed alarmingly telepathic if Dylan had not been used to having her thoughts read by her mother, Flower asked, “What ever happened to your new friend, Mr. Iverson? Was he really one of
them
?”
    “I don’t know. I guess so,” Dylan muttered, wishing that she had never mentioned Whitney to her mother.
    Over salad, Flower announced that she was going on a diet. “Tomorrow. First thing. Don’t worry, I’ll still have the stuff you like around for you, but from now on no more