To See You Again Read Online Free PDF Page A

information about how they both were, their families, and then the woman said, “Well, the weekend’s coming up.” “Yep, jes one more day.” “Then you can rest.” “Say, you ever see a poor man rest?”
    Recently I read an interview with a distinguished lady of letters, in which she was asked why she wrote so obsessively about the very poor, the tiredest and saddest poorest people, and that lady, a Southerner, answered, “But I myself am poor people.”
    That touched me to the quick, somehow. I am too. Hortense is not, I think.
    Across the aisle from me I suddenly noticed the most beautiful young man I had ever seen, sound asleep. A golden boy: gold hair and tawny skin, large beautiful hands spread loosely on his knees, long careless legs in soft pale washed-out jeans. I hardly dared look at him; some intensity in my regard might have wakened him, and then on my face he would have seen—not lust, it wasn’t that, just a vast and objectless regard for his perfection, as though he were sculptured in bronze, or gold.
    I haven’t thought much about men, or noticed male beauty, actually, since my husband left, opted out of ourmarriage—and when I say that he left it sounds sudden, whereas it took a long and painful year.
    Looking back, I now see that it began with some tiny wistful remarks, made by him, when he would come across articles in the paper about swingers, swapping, singles bars. “Well, maybe we should try some of that stuff,” he would say, with a laugh intended to prove nonseriousness. “A pretty girl like you, you’d do okay,” he would add, by which he really meant that he thought he would do okay, as indeed he has—did, does. Then came some more serious remarks to the effect that if I wanted an occasional afternoon with someone else, well, I didn’t have to tell him about it, but if I did, well, he would understand. Which was a little silly, since when I was not at my office working I was either doing some household errand or I was at home, available only to him.
    The next phase included a lot of half-explained or occasionally overexplained latenesses, and a seemingly chronic at-home fatigue. By then even I had caught on, without thinking too specifically about what he must have been doing, which I could not have stood. Still, I was surprised, and worse than surprised, when he told me that he was “serious” about another woman. The beautiful Japanese nurse.
    The golden boy got off at Vallejo, without our exchanging any look. Someone else I won’t see again, but who will stay in my mind, probably.
    Hortense was furious, her poor fat face red, her voice almost out of control. “One hour—one hour I’ve been waiting here. Can you imagine my thoughts, in all that time?”
    Well, I pretty much could. I felt terrible. I put my hand on her arm in a gesture that I meant as calming, affectionate, but she thrust it off, violently.
    That was foolish, I thought, and I hoped no one hadseen her. I said, “Hortense, I’m really very sorry. But it’s getting obvious that I have a problem with buses. I mix them up, so maybe you shouldn’t come and meet me anymore.”
    I hadn’t known I was going to say that, but, once said, those words made sense, and I went on. “I’ll take a taxi. There’re always a couple out front.”
    And just then, as we passed hurriedly through the front doors, out onto the street, there were indeed four taxis stationed, a record number, as though to prove my point. Hortense made a strangled, snorting sound.
    We drove home in silence; silently, in her dining room, we ate another chef’s salad. It occurred to me to say that since our dinners were almost always cold my being late did not exactly spoil them, but I forbore. We were getting to be like some bad sitcom joke: Hortense and me, the odd couple.
    The next morning, as I got in line to buy a new commuter ticket, there was the New York State girl. We exchanged mild greetings, and then she looked at the old ticket which