To See You Again Read Online Free PDF

for no reason I was clutching, and she said, “But you’ve got one ticket left.”
    And she explained what turned out to be one more system that I had not quite caught on to: the driver takes the whole first page, which is why, that first day, I thought he had taken two coupons. And the back page, although another color, pink, is a coupon, too. So my first ride on the wrong bus to Vallejo and Oakland was free; I had come out ahead, in that way.
    Then the girl asked, “Have you thought about a California Pass? They’re neat.” And she explained that with a California Pass, for just a few dollars more than a commuter ticket, you can go anywhere in California. You can’t travel on weekends, but who would want to, and you can go anywhereat all—Eureka, La Jolla, Santa Barbara, San Diego; you can spend the weekend there and come back on an early Monday bus. I was fascinated, enthralled by these possibilities. I bought a California Pass.
    The Sacramento express was almost empty, so I told the girl that I had some work to do, which was true enough. We sat down in our separate seats and concentrated on our briefcases. I was thinking, of course, in a practical way about moving out from Hortense’s. That had to be next—and more generally I was considering the possibilities of California, which just then seemed limitless, enormous.
    Actually, the Greyhound system of departure gates for buses to San Francisco is very simple; I had really been aware all along of how it worked. Gate 5 is the express, Gate 6 goes to Vallejo and Oakland before San Francisco and Gate 8 is the all-stop local, Davis, Dixon, everywhere. On my way home, I started to line up at Gate 6, my true favorite route, Vallejo and Oakland, when I realized that it was still very early, only just five, and also that I was extremely hungry. What I would really have liked was what we used to call a frappe in Binghamton, something cold and rich and thick and chocolate. Out here called a milkshake. And then I thought, Well, why not? Is there some law that says I can’t weigh more than one-ten?
    I went into the station restaurant, and at the counter I ordered a double-scoop milkshake. I took it to a booth, and then, as I was sitting there, savoring my delicious drink, something remarkable happened, which was: the handsome black man who so angrily displaced me on that first trip came up to me and greeted me with a friendly smile. “Say, how you, how’re you doing this evening?”
    I smiled back and said that I was fine, and he went onpast with his cup of coffee, leaving me a little out of breath. And as I continued to sip and swallow (it tasted marvelous) I wondered: Is it possible that he remembers me from that incident and this is his way of apologizing? Somehow that seemed very unlikely, but it seemed even more unlikely that he was just a friendly sort who went around greeting people. He was not at all like that, I was sure. Even smiling he had a proud, fierce look.
    Was it possible that something about me had struck him in just the right way, making him want to say hello?
    In any case, I had to read his greeting as a very good sign. Maybe the fat young woman would get on the bus at Vallejo again. Maybe the thin one in purple. And it further occurred to me that traveling all over California on the Greyhound I could meet anyone at all.

The Party-Givers
    At the end of a very long and, by normal standards, ghastly San Francisco party, its host, Josiah Dawes, an ex-alcoholic, ex-philosopher, sits on the floor with two women, Hope Dawes and Clover Baskerville, in an almost empty flat on Potrero Hill. The women are propped up on pillows on either side of Josiah, silhouetted against long black naked windows; they both face him and, indirectly, each other. In an idle, exhausted way they are discussing the party, among the inevitable debris, the dirty glasses and plates and ashes, in the still stale air. Josiah liked the party; he smiles to himself at each recounted