Love In The Air

He stopped, out of breath and in a state of panic. How could he have kept babbling on nonsensically like this? During his speech, he had been addressing the back of the seat in front of him. Now, fearfully, he looked over at the young woman, and—her expression was not so discouraging! She seemed to have been listening intently. Her eyes were wide and her lips were apart. She almost seemed transported by what he had said. Encouraged, he gave her a smile indicating his appreciation of her receptiveness. She lowered her eyes for a moment and then looked up at Peter and said, “That is the most beautiful, the most inspiring thing I have ever heard in my life.” Then she began to laugh. She raised one long-fingered hand to cover her mouth and turned away.

To his surprise, Peter noticed that this response had not caused him to blush hotly; rather, something in the young woman’s tone and manner emboldened him.

“Okay,” he said, “since it worked out so well for me, maybe you can explain why you are going to Los Angeles.”

The young woman didn’t answer right away. She ran her finger down the lock on her tray table. Looking at the lozenge of her nail, Peter thought about the soft pad on the other side. The pause grew longer. Peter waited. She turned to him with a dimmed smile, as when the edge of a cloud passes over the sun.

“I’m going to visit my sister,” she said. “She just had a baby, a girl named Clementine.” She laughed. “It’s going to be a little strange being Aunt Holly.”

Holly.

“My sister’s living with my father at his house. It’s in the hills behind Malibu. My sister and I lived in L.A. when we were little, but then my parents got divorced when I was three and my sister was five, and my mother took us back to Chicago, where she was from. My father was a director. Once in a while, he still rolls down the hills and goes into town to let some old producer pal buy him lunch. Mostly, though, he spends his time drinking schnapps and reading detective stories.” She paused. “He made some okay pictures,” she said. She paused again, before continuing. “We’re a little cross with my sister. She naturally didn’t think it was really necessary to have a husband to go along with the baby. The father is living with somebody else in Hawaii. He’s all excited about the kid and was in the room for the delivery. The only thing that surprises me is that he didn’t insist on his girlfriend’s being there, too.” She sighed, then looked at Peter. “Hey, here I am telling you all my family problems and I haven’t known you for five minutes.”

She smiled and studied him. She was looking at his eyes and he looked back at hers. Then their focus shifted, and they were looking into the other’s eyes, rather than just at the surfaces. For that instant, Peter felt that the whole universe simply stopped, as if its entire purpose had been to whip out its material until it had reached this perfect point of equilibrium. They both forced their eyes to dart away, and matter and time took up where they had left off.

Holly insisted that Peter tell her something about his family and his childhood, despite his protests that it was all very dull. He had grown up in New Jersey and had two older sisters, and he was the son of a business executive and a mother who was passionate about three things (aside from her husband): her children, her charities, and her garden. Holly succeeded in forcing Peter to talk about corporate finance and she actually managed to seem interested in it. He even showed her a tombstone ad in the paper announcing a deal he had worked on. Holly, meanwhile, was not really sure about her career; right now she was teaching high school math in the Dominican Republic, and this was inspiring on some days and incredibly depressing on others. She got to New York fairly often because her aunt lived there. They talked about a lot of things. And for periods they were quiet. She read and he looked at spreadsheets. Then one of them would say something, speaking the words aloud as naturally as he or she had thought them. They would talk for a time and then once again fall into a friendly, active silence. As in a painting, the negative space counted.

“Well,” Holly said after a long period of quiet, “that’s enough of Hans for a while.” She turned to Peter. “Have you ever read this?”

“Yes,” Peter said. “It’s a Bildungsroman.”

“Correct.”

“Do you like it?” Peter asked.

Holly thought for a moment. “Do I like it? I don’t know. It’s not exactly one of those books you ‘like’ or ‘dislike.’ Reading it, I feel as if I’m attending a very, very long religious ceremony, which sometimes seems ridiculous and at other times is tremendously absorbing and disorienting. But ‘liking,’ as in ‘enjoying,’ doesn’t really come into it.

“I guess I do like being plunged into this totally serious—even if it does have its ironic bits—profound, ultraprofound consideration of all the big things. Life, love, death, art, freedom, authority. It’s like being transported to a different planet. And then, when you think about what eventually really did happen to Europe, it’s hard to complain that it’s portentous.”

“I totally agree,” Peter said. “But I have to admit that the thing that struck me most, even though I knew that I was supposed to be thinking about all that big stuff, the thing that struck me most was—”

“Second breakfast,” Holly interposed.

“That’s right!” said Peter. “That’s right! How did you know?”

“Well, come on,” Holly said. “Who reads that they have a meal at the sanatorium called ‘second breakfast’ and doesn’t think that, tuberculosis or not, it sounds like paradise? With a mild case like Hans’s? It would definitely be worth it.”

Two minds with but one thought! Peter felt faint, but he carried on.

“Where are you now?”

“I just finished the snowstorm.”

“My favorite part.”

“A little gruesome. The dream about the old ladies dismembering a child …”

“Yes,” said Peter. “But, you know, despite that sort of thing and the incredible thick soup of philosophizing, I was surprised that the book does have moments that are romantic, actually. When Hans is thinking about Clavdia’s wrists. And even though she is a complete drag, you can see how she gets under his skin. The love thing, it manages to sprout a few blades through the cement.”

Holly turned toward him and tilted her head. “So you’re a romantic?” she asked.

Peter blushed. He couldn’t answer or look at her. Eventually, clenching his hands together and staring in front of him, he managed to say. “I guess. Kind of”

He could see Holly out of the corner of his eye, still looking at his profile.

“Sorry,” she said. “It’s not a fair question to ask a male. Sorry. But anyway … me, too.”

Peter turned to her. “Could I see the book for a second?” he asked. She handed it to him, and he flipped through the section she was reading.

“Here it is,” he said. “Here’s the line I remember, a couple of pages back. Since it’s italicized, it’s easy to find.” He swallowed and then read. “‘For the sake of goodness and love, man shall grant death no dominion over his thoughts’”

“Yes, that’s the one,” Holly said.

They were silent for a time. Holly’s hands were resting in her lap, with the back of one in the palm of the other. Slightly bent and turned upward, her fingers looked like fronds. Eventually, to Peter’s relief, for he feared that he had put a permanent stop to the conversation, she asked him what book he was reading now (David Copperfield, which he explained that he had never gotten around to as a boy), and after talking about that they ranged over a number of topics: hockey, why famines occur less frequently under a democratic system of government, more about her family, the schools they had attended, the music they liked (a striking conformity of taste in that crucial area), the differences between Third and Second avenues, books, TV shows of their childhood, economic growth rates in Scandinavia and the Netherlands …

So while the plane cruised over the flat, unchanging Midwest, the prairies and the desert, Peter was in a state of serenity and bliss. The spark had flashed, but there was no explosion. Rather, all had undergone an invisible change of state like magnetization. As soon as they had begun talking, all the momentousness of the occasion had melted away and he had felt unconsciously happy. He looked out the window and saw the mighty and forbidding Rocky Mountains. Mighty and forbidding? Maybe to Lewis and Clark. He was soaring thirty thousand feet above them.

How did he feel? It was interesting. He felt sort of the way he did when he floated on his back in cold ocean water on a clear hot day and aligned his body with the sun. The cold wavelets lapped up against him; the sun warmed his face, and he felt deliciously stimulated and calm. They had not talked about anything particularly intimate. They had not fused their identities with the force of smashed atoms. They had come together as simply as two flowers intertwining. How happy he felt. And then, once again, that wet-blanket voice piped up in the back of his head, telling him that it was absurd to feel “happy” under these circumstances. He didn’t know this young woman at all. In relations with another person, “happiness” is not the by-product of superficial impressions. Rather, “happiness,” so-called, in a committed relationship was the result of grueling, arduous, unrelenting effort. Maintaining a committed relationship is hard. It requires courage, forbearance, stamina, sacrifice. A useful comparison would be working in a leper colony. The notion that you could meet a beautiful and sympathetic young woman on an airplane and chat with her about the subtle differences between Third and Second avenues and that this could produce “happiness” that was any more meaningful than the happiness produced by licking an ice cream cone, this notion was, frankly, rather childish. And in any event, if he thought that his life could be “fixed” by another person, rather than by dedication to his own growth, then he was sadly mistaken. Peter knew this argument. He knew it very well. And he knew that he was in love with the beautiful, sympathetic young woman beside him and that his life would be changed forever.

Peter looked at her. She was explaining something to him about Mary Queen of Scots. “So,” she said, “she was visiting Darnley’s bedside and a couple of hours after she left, the house he was staying in blew up, and it was obviously Bothwell …” When Holly talked, she moved her hands, as if she were juggling, a trait that Peter found endearing.

And did not the question of lust come into it? Yes. Usually, desire made him feel more tense than a sapper defusing a bomb. Curiously, in this case he felt different. He didn’t feel the incredible excitement mixed with terror that one succumbs to when anticipating the possibility of sleeping with a woman for the first time. Rather, he felt desirous, infatuated, stimulated but not agitated—as if he were anticipating sleeping with a woman for the second time. It all seemed so right, certain and pleasurable. He looked at her hands, now in her lap again, and the V-shaped creases made in her jeans by her crossed legs, and the curve of her hips, which was barely perceptible.

“Hey! You’re not listening,” Holly said.

“Uh … uh … yes, I was! Uh … Ridolfi … you know … Ridolfi—”

“Well, you seemed to be thinking about something else.”

The pressure in the cabin changed. The captain had made the announcement that they were beginning their descent. A general stirring rippled through the passengers, sounds of clasps opening and closing and papers being redistributed. The atmosphere had changed literally and figuratively. The shadows, figuratively, were getting longer and there was a little chill in the air and the sun was setting earlier—all announcing to Peter the end of the warm, fat, unchanging summer days that had been his for the past few hours. Their time was up.

Accordingly, the moment had come to ask Holly her full name, her address, and her phone number, and to ask her if he could call her sometime. All that. Yet it seemed so contrived, and embarrassing and horrible and jarring, to introduce a “dating” note into their sweet communion: Can I call you? Yuck. They belonged together like the ocean and the shore. To present himself to her as a guy who wanted to buy her dinner at a Mexican restaurant would ruin the state of grace they had miraculously achieved. But there was no way around it, he would have to say something. He tried to put the words together in his mind and finally he settled on a formulation. He took a deep breath. He cleared his throat.

“I guess we’re going to land soon,” he said. “I wonder if, when you’re back in the city sometime—”

“No, look,” she said, “how long will you be here?”

“Uh … I’m sorry?”

“How long are you going to be in Los Angeles?”

“Um, until the end of the week, actually.”

“Do you think you’ll have any evenings free?” Holly asked.

“I think so—”

“Then would you like to come out to my father’s for dinner some night?”

Peter detected vulnerability in Holly’s eyes. Her voice had the slightest quaver. His own nervousness was immediately replaced by a desire to reassure her.

“That would be great!” he said. “I would love to do that!”

“Great!” Holly said.

“How should we—”

“Why don’t you call me and tell me what night is good? I can promise you that whenever it is we won’t have any plans.”

“Okay, sure,” said Peter. He made a searching movement with his hands and glanced around for a moment. “Oh, my book, it’s in my briefcase, up in the thing …”

They both looked about them.

“Here,” said Holly, “let me borrow your pencil.” Peter had been making notes with one of those plastic mechanical pencils, and he handed this to Holly. She opened her book and wrote something on the title page, which she then tore out. “Here you go,” she said. “There’s the number.”

Peter looked at the page. Under the title she had written “Holly” and a phone number below it.

“Good. Thanks,” Peter said. He folded the paper and put it in his shirt pocket.

“You can call us basically anytime,” said Holly. “My father gets up at five, but Alex and I are night owls, and with the baby, who knows.”

“Okay. I may have a dinner thing tomorrow,” Peter said, “but the next night? I don’t know how late I might have to work, but I’m pretty sure there isn’t anything—”

“That sounds good,” said Holly.

“Anyway, I’ll give you a call.”

They exchanged a couple of eager, flirtatious glances.

The plane landed and Peter and Holly collected their things and walked down the aisle together. Walking down the aisle together, he thought. Someday, he would mention this to her. They passed by the food courts and tie shops on the way to the baggage claim area, where they waited for the carousel to begin to turn. Finally, its great scales shuddered into motion, and Peter watched the passengers’ mostly rather sad-looking suitcases process before him. They were made of black and red synthetic fabric and had large silver plates with Frenchified brand names; they had wheels and plastic handles, and they were full, Peter was certain, of heartbreakingly banal possessions, underpants with dead elastics. Then, curling into view, there came a boxy suitcase made of leather the color of butterscotch sauce. “Oh,” Holly said, “there’s mine.” Peter heaved the suitcase off the carousel for her.

“Do you see yours?” Holly asked. Peter looked and immediately saw his garment bag. His heart sank as he watched it approach, unstoppably. He knew that as soon as it reached him, Holly and he would part. “There it is,” he said, and picked up the bag. Now the two looked at each other once more. He knew it: as soon as she left his sight, the world would close up over her, the way a pond closes up over a pebble that’s thrown into it, and she would be lost. He would even begin to wonder if she had ever existed.

“I guess I better get my rental car,” he said.

“Dad ordered a car for me,” said Holly. “I guess it should be outside.”

They looked at each other. The carousel continued to turn. A couple of times, they both began and halted a movement to embrace. Then Holly lightly pressed the fingers of her right hand against the breast pocket of his suit jacket, which was right above the breast pocket of his shirt, which was right above his heart.

“Call me about dinner,” she said. “Dad can make his specialty. I hope you like goat.”

“I do! I mean, I’m sure I would, if I’d ever eaten it.”

Holly dropped her arm down and he caught her fingers in his left hand, held them for a second, and let them go.

So long, he said. Bye, she said. She picked up her suitcase and walked away, turned once after she had gone a few yards to smile back at him, continued on; and then Peter lost her in the crowd.

Peter took a deep breath. He closed his eyes for a moment and tried to fix a picture of Holly in his mind. Then he slipped two fingers into his shirt pocket and felt the page from the paperback; then he patted his jacket in that spot a couple of times. He stood still a moment. And now he had to begin to collect his thoughts. He checked that he had everything. His laptop, his briefcase, his garment bag. He slung the laptop case over his shoulder and picked up the other two, the regulation battle array for the traveling businessman. He started off, looking for the signs that would point him to the rental car agencies. The trail wasn’t well marked, and he got turned around a couple of times, and when he finally did find the right place he looked at his watch and realized he better call the Los Angeles office and his own office to check messages. So he put down all his stuff and got out his primitive cell phone. A meeting had been changed. Back in New York, somebody needed some numbers. Now he had to decide: it would actually be a waste of time to call the person in New York. But he would look efficient if he called from the airport. So he did, and he and his colleague had a pointless discussion that nevertheless made them both feel better about having “touched base.” Peter had, he thought, conveyed proper on-the-ballness. He made two other arguably unnecessary calls. Taking a small notebook out of his briefcase, he used the plastic mechanical pencil to scribble some reminders to himself and then clipped the pencil inside his shirt pocket. It didn’t occur to him that Holly had just held that pencil, for by now his mind was like a set that had been struck and entirely rebuilt for a new scene. He couldn’t think about Holly when he was thinking about all the expectations he had to meet over several different time horizons. Most immediately, there were the logistics of renting the car and driving to his hotel, a nontrivial challenge in this city. Then there was his schedule for the next couple of days. He had it all recorded in several places, but he could not help going over it again and again, re-solving the same problems of how he would get from one meeting to another on time, girding himself for the possibility that a client might actually ask him a question, refiguring some calculations. Lurking behind these thoughts were worries about a couple of matters that he knew he hadn’t attended to properly. Still further forward in time, he had to consider how the results of this trip would play in New York. And then there were the projects that were to come to fruition within the next few months. And, finally, while he stood there in line for his rental car, his thoughts leapt all the way ahead to the rest of his life and career.

At the counter now, he listened as the attendant in her tie and vest explained that there was a problem with his reservation. He accepted the offer to go bigger for the same amount and signed in all the appropriate places. Before moving on, he checked again: garment bag, laptop, briefcase. Wallet. Credit card back in wallet. Contract in inside jacket pocket. Map from the rental-car counter. The drive into Los Angeles was not too bad. Stuck in traffic, he remembered something else he needed to do and awkwardly jotted that down on his map. He got off at the right exit, although he suddenly had to cross several lanes of traffic to do so. He found the huge intersections nerve-wracking. Twice, coming from both directions, he overshot his hotel. But finally he arrived.

He checked in. The clerk handed Peter a large envelope that had been hand-delivered, documents and binders sent over from the Los Angeles office, and, following a well-practiced script, he described some of the hotel’s special services and its various breakfast offerings. “I very much hope you enjoy your stay with us,” the clerk said. In his room, Peter hung up his jacket. Sitting on the bed, he returned more calls. On one, he had to dance around a bit. Then he lowered his back on the bed. He took a deep breath. He squeezed his eyes shut. And then, as if there had been music playing all this time, particularly beautiful music, which he had been too distracted to notice, Holly came into his mind. Now he swelled with a simple, single feeling. All his worries melted away. A picture of Holly appeared. She was standing on a scrubby, dusty California hillside and the late afternoon sun caressed her face. She was smiling at him. Maybe … he wondered … would she have gotten home? … maybe he could call her right now?

Lying there on his back and staring at the ceiling, Peter became aware of the left side of his chest, the place under his shirt pocket. He felt the pressure of Holly’s fingers there. He wondered … he wondered if he could possibly feel the weight of a folded piece of paper in his shirt pocket? Of course not. He lay on his back looking at the ceiling and thinking about Holly, about the page from The Magic Mountain, the title page, on which she had written “Holly” and her father’s phone number. He lay on his back staring at the ceiling and thinking about these things. He was preparing to lift his right hand and retrieve the page. He paused before doing so. He paused a little longer.

Then he did lift his right hand and inserted the index and middle fingers into his shirt pocket. The starched oxford cloth felt surprisingly rough and sharp. He waggled his fingers inside the pocket; he didn’t feel a piece of paper. He waggled his fingers again, and then he put his hand down by his side. Still lying on his back and staring at the ceiling, he took a couple of deep breaths. All the blood seemed to drain from his body. The piece of paper was gone.

He knew that within seconds his heart would race and his nerves crackle; for the moment, though, he felt the odd, stunned serenity of a condemned man. Now, using both hands to keep the pocket open, he looked inside. He turned the pocket inside out. The piece of paper was lost, there was no doubt about that. Peter would surely conduct a frantic and thorough search. Like a drunk desperate to find enough change for a drink, he would turn out all the pockets of his clothes, where he would find all those little pieces of paper that he had accumulated during his trip. “Not valid for flight.” He would rifle through the documents in his briefcase and then, with steely patience, turn them over one by one. He would slide his hands around the various plastic sleeves of his laptop case, finding errant pens and business cards. He would retrace his steps to the front desk and then to his car, where he would unfold and refold and unfold his rental car contract and open the trunk. Then, returning to his room, he would in one last frenzy strip out every article of clothing in his garment bag and search through all the pockets and every pleat and cuff. He would even look in the pockets of the shirts that were still in the plastic bag from the cleaners. Magicians did things like that, didn’t they? The card you picked would appear inside another sealed deck, or an apple?

All of this would be completely useless, he knew, but he would do it. He stared at the ceiling. He closed his eyes. He could see the printed words on the page clearly. As for the handwriting, he could remember its general look and the space it took up, but he could not picture anything specific, except the name: “Holly.”