Lapham Rising Read Online Free PDF Page B

logically.
    “That’s true—the planes are small. But so are the ones to Buffalo.”
    “You mean you don’t fly jets to Buffalo?” I distinctly remember that on previous visits, I flew up on big jets that did not crash.
    “I don’t like flying,” says Hector, sticking his black nose into the conversation.
    “Then it’s fortunate that you’re unable to do it,” I tell him.
    “We used to use jets,” says the lady. “But you know how things are.”
    “No, I don’t. How are they?”
    “Nothing ever changes for the better.” Her voice carries the warm breeze of the British West Indies.
    I often find that I prefer speaking with disembodied intelligences to having face-to-face encounters. For many years, before I stopped writing, I worked with a book editor with whom I never conversed except on the phone. She dealt with me by phone and I with her, and we spoke only when necessary. Over those years we developed a close and trusting relationship based solely on the ways our minds corresponded and diverged. If ever we had happened to be standing inches from each other in an elevator in an office building, or on a subway platform, and not spoken, we neither of us would have had the merest clue as to who the other person was, norprobably would have shown any interest in finding out. And had we been looking at each other when we were discussing my manuscripts, we undoubtedly would have forfeited effectiveness and exactitude for the sake of courtesy or kindness or some other gesture of social compromise. But without visual distractions, we got along swimmingly, and my work was the better for it.
    “Yes,” I agree with the USAir lady. “Most change is for the worse. But exactly how much worse are the planes to Buffalo?” Hector shudders and begins to pray aloud.
    “The Jamestown flights originate in Pittsburgh,” she says, “so you’d have to go there first. And the planes are very small, only a little larger than puddle-jumpers. Eight passengers plus the pilot.”
    “I’m glad the pilot goes along.” She chuckles politely. “And the Buffalo planes?”
    “Turboprops.” She quickly adds, “They’re quite safe. The flight time is a bit longer than with a jet, but I’m told that the planes themselves are very comfortable.”
    “But perhaps you’re all full up?” A small plane plummets in my head (the engine sputters, the propeller freezes, we sit knees-to-chest as the fuselage scrapes the topmost branches of the cedars). I tried, Chautauquans, but I could not book transportation. I tried for weeks. There must be something big going on in Buffalo. The annual Beef-on-Wek Festival,the “How Many Inches of Snow Did We Have Last Winter?” conference.
    “Do you know that you have a peculiar way of speaking to people?” she asks unnecessarily. Her tone is not accusatory. She sounds more like a nurse. I picture her delicately maneuvering through a hospital ward in World War I, wearing a crisp white cap with a red cross in the center, and stopping to read letters to mutilated, homesick doughboys.
    “I’ve always been peculiar. It’s nothing personal. To you, I mean.” The reason I speak to people the way I do is that I tend to take everything I hear literally, and I pay what turns out to be a destructive measure of attention to the spoken word.
    “You’re not married.” She is sure of her conclusion. “I hope you won’t mind my asking.”
    “You didn’t ask,” I remind her helpfully.
    “I don’t mean to be rude.”
    “You don’t know what rude is. But why do you surmise that I am not married?”
    “I wonder,” says Hector.
    She hesitates. “You seem too…independent.” I appreciate the ellipses.
    “I used to be married,” I tell her. Then I plunge into that song from The King and I : “I had a love of my own like yours, / I had a love of my own!” I nail the latter line and hold the note. There follows a long pause. “Yes,” I go on at last. “I wasmarried. To prove it, I have a