Book Critics -- Beginner\'s Greek by James Collins

Attracted by the author's writing style.

I once took an English writing class in China, all my teacher had talked about in that class is forgotton, but one thing: the using of small words! I have limited vocabulary even in my mother tongue, Chinese. However, by simply remembering and applying this "using of small words" principle, my writing in Chinese is liked by many people. (Don't take the last sentence seriously. I am good at boasting, and an evidence is needed here to support my point.)

A dozen years later, I still clearly remember the example my teacher gave in supporting of her point. She asked us the meaning of the word "eye", and then she wrote down "she eyed him sadly" on the black board. How vividly the picture is, at this moment, right infront of my eyes! It brings close to me the picture Xin Yue poet Dai Wang-Shu drew, in his poem "Raining Alley". The fairy-tale-like girl in the poem must have "eyed" the poet the similar way!

The main character's long distance trip in the novel also caught my curiosity. I once again realized how people are so different when they are in different situations! I used to fly coast to coast about once a month for a couple of years. I was such a dull woman at that time! How come I never wished an attracting gentleman sitting next to me? To save time and $$, most of the times, I took red-eye -- the overnight flights. All I wished, when I boarded the plane each time, was that a skinny person to sit next to me, or even better, nobody sit in the middle seat. Oh, as lucky as I have been, for quite a few times, I was able to occupy all the three seats in a row which made a pretty comfortalbe "night"-bed! What a luxury!

赞原文轻巧洗练的文笔，感谢紫君推荐！

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Appendix   The Original Writing Recommended by 紫君:


英语小说：Beginner's Greek（一）ZT

========================================================

This week's book:
BEGINNER'S GREEK
by James Collins

小说简介:

Sometimes in love, lightning strikes.

Peter Russell is one of those deeply romantic men who
still believe in fate. He has always believed--or maybe
confidently "imagined"--that he would meet the love of his
life like "that," in an instant. That he'd be sitting
buckled into an airplane seat, rummaging around for
something in his carry-on, when he'd feel a light tap on
his shoulder and there she would be. So it's only with the
shock of recognition and assured providence that he opens
his eyes on a business trip from New York to Los Angeles
and sees her. Her name is Holly. She has strawberry blond
hair and a gorgeous swanlike neck, and she's reading
Thomas Mann's "The Magic Mountain" for pleasure. And,
impressively, she's pretty far into it. As in the very
best romantic movies, Peter and Holly fall madly in love--
or as madly as possible on a five-and-a-half-hour flight.
When they part, Holly gives him her phone number on the
title page of her book. Peter can't believe his luck. But
later in his hotel room, when Peter reaches into his
jacket pocket to remind himself of the incredible hand he
has been dealt, he finds to his absolute horror that the
page is inexplicably, impossibly, tragically...gone.

A thousand complications ensue in this delicious novel of
missed opportunities, second chances, and lost love. Both
incredibly incisive and wonderfully wry, "Beginner's
Greek" is like a glorious meeting of Tom Wolfe and Laurie
Colwin--a brilliantly understated comedy of manners
complete with the evil boss, the desirable temptress,
miscommunications, misrepresentations, and letters gone
astray. It's a novel that will make you believe, like
Peter Russell himself, that true love really does exist.

=====TODAY'S BOOK=====================

Today We Begin a New Book

BEGINNER'S GREEK
by James Collins (fiction)

Published by Little, Brown and Company
ISBN: 9780316021555
Copyright (c) 2008 by James Collins
GREEK (Part 1 of 5)
======================================

PROLOGUE

When Peter Russell boarded an airplane, he always wondered whether
he would sit next to a beautiful young woman during the flight, and,
if so, whether he and she would fall in love. This time was no
different, except for his conviction that--this time--it really
would happen. Of course, he always believed more than ever that this
time it really would happen. But he knew. He knew. He was working
his way down the aisle of a plane bound for Los Angeles from New
York, and he figured, realistically, that the occurrence he
envisioned would more likely take place on a long trip. He was
pleased to discover that on his side of the plane the rows had only
two seats, an arrangement that would promote intimacy, and arriving
at his assigned place he found that his row mate had not yet
appeared, which would allow his mind to savor the possibilities for
at least a few more minutes. He stowed his suit jacket, briefcase,
and laptop, and settled into his seat by the window. He opened his
paper and then looked to his right, regarding the pregnant emptiness
beside him. The clasp and buckle of the seat belt lay there
impassively, indifferent to whom they would soon embrace. He looked
at the scratchy gray and red upholstery, with its abstract design
that vaguely recalled clouds at sunset.

A man wearing a beige shirt and jacket stopped at Peter's row. He
was short and Eastern European-looking and had a small mustache. He
looked at the stub of his boarding pass and at the row number and
back again and moved on. Peter was relieved. But who knew? Anyone
who sat with him might transform his life in ways he would never
expect. The man coming down the aisle, the one with the bulldog face
and gold tie clasp, might be the owner of a smelting concern in
Buffalo, and he might take a shine to Peter and ask him to become a
vice president, and Peter might say yes, and move to Buffalo, where
he would find the people more complicated than he expected and
where, in an appealing way, the grime would climb like ivy up the
walls of the old brick buildings. He would marry someone nice who
had worked in New York for a couple of years but preferred Buffalo
and being near her companionable, well-off parents, and he and she
would live in a spacious Victorian house, with several old trees
whose leaves in summer were as big as dinner plates. Or what about
the ancient, bent-over gentleman in the three-piece suit? Couldn't
he be a great-uncle who had disappeared in Burma decades ago and
about whom Peter had never heard but whose identity would be
revealed when Peter noticed that his ring bore the same distinctive
device as one owned by Peter's grandfather? He would leave Peter his
fortune.

The tie-clasp man walked past Peter; the ancient one sat before
reaching him. Most passengers seemed to have boarded by now. Yet
Peter felt a tingle. Something, he knew, was about to happen. Yes--
definitely--a young woman was going sit down next to him, and not
just a young woman, "the" young woman: a really pretty, really kind
young woman, and they would get to talking, and they would become
enclosed, in their pair of seats, in a kind of pod within a pod,
suspended far above the earth, and by the time they landed it all
would be settled and clear. More happy, happy love! Naturally, he
had given this individual a lot of thought. He would add and
subtract her attributes. She would be pretty and kind. Then pretty
and kind and smart. Then pretty and kind and smart and funny, and,
in a general way, perfect. Was that too much to hope? He very well
knew that it was. He knew that real people with whom one really
shared a real life in the real world had flaws. Aren't the slubs and
natural variations what give a fabric its special character? Yes,
but he didn't want to fall in love with a fabric. He wanted to fall
in love with a young woman, a young woman who was pretty and kind
and smart and funny and--well, pretty and kind would do, if only she
would also fall in love with him.

Peter stared out the window: a truck was pumping fuel into the
plane's belly through a thick, umbilical hose. Peter was a happy
fellow, basically. He was in his early twenties and he was good-
looking, with an open face and light brown eyes and fine brown hair
that flopped over his forehead; he stood a shade under six feet and
had a strong, medium-sized frame. He liked his job, basically, and
he was doing well; he had friends; he was a decent athlete; he had
had a relatively happy childhood. But this love business--so far, it
had not been very satisfying. He had been involved with girls he
liked; he had been involved with girls he didn't like. In neither
case had he ever really felt...whatever it was that he imagined he
was supposed to feel. He was shy, so that even though he showed
determination at work, and playing hockey he positively enjoyed
giving an opponent a hard check, he shrank before a girl who
attracted him, and this made the search for someone who would make
him feel whatever it was he was supposed to feel particularly
difficult.

(continued on Tuesday)



英语小说：Beginner's Greek（二）ZT

=====TODAY'S BOOK=====================

BEGINNER'S GREEK
by James Collins (fiction)

Published by Little, Brown and Company
ISBN: 9780316021555
Copyright (c) 2008 by James Collins
GREEK (Part 2 of 5)
======================================

(continued from Monday)

Peter watched a crewman begin to uncouple the fuel hose. Then he
felt a Presence. It was a female, he sensed. Could this be the very
one, could this be She? He turned his head and did see a woman. A
woman who was perhaps seventy years old wearing a black wig. In
place of eyebrows she had two arched pencil lines, and she had
applied a large clown's oval of red lipstick to her mouth. Peter's
eyes met hers. Her false eyelashes reminded him of tarantula legs.
My darling!

"What row is this?" the woman asked him. Peter told her. She looked
at her boarding pass and threw her hands up. "Ach," she said, "my
row doesn't exist. There is no such row. It's a row they tell you
about for a joke. They skipped it. I have the plane where they skip
rows. If my son would visit me, I would avoid this aggravation. But
no. The wife--the wife gets dehydrated on the plane. Dehydrated, you
know--water?" She looked hard at Peter. "Are you married?" she
asked. He shook his head. "Marry a nice girl." She paused a moment
to make sure this advice sank in and then turned around and headed
back toward the front of the plane.

Peter could see no other passengers in the aisle. A flight attendant
strode by closing luggage bins. Peter listened to the engines. Any
minute now the plane would begin to pull away from the gate and the
monitors drooping from the ceiling would begin to play the safety
video. Peter looked at the empty seat beside him. His earlier
agitation and euphoria had dissipated, replaced by a hangover of
irrational disappointment. He looked at the seat belt, two lifeless
arms embracing no one. Of course, all that could be inferred from
absence was absence. He now knew who would sit beside him: nobody.

Peter sighed and shrugged his shoulders. Then, like a depressive
pulling the covers over his head, he spread open his paper so that
it surrounded him and began to read a story with the headline
"Council Rebuffs Mayor on Wake-Zones Measure." It was quite
interesting, actually. There was an effort to slow watercraft to
prevent damage to shoreline structures. Like Venice. Peter had been
reading for a couple of minutes when he heard some rushed footsteps
coming toward him, the light, tripping footsteps, he noted, of a
young person, most likely a female young person. Then, when they had
seemed to reach his row, the footsteps stopped. Peter became aware
of a form hovering nearby. But because of his newspaper, he couldn't
see who it was. He nonchalantly folded the paper back, glanced to
his right, and saw that a young woman was hoisting a bag overhead.
As she lifted her arms, she revealed a tanned, well-modeled stripe
of abdomen. Peter's heart fluttered. He concentrated on his paper.
"In New South, Courthouse Towns See Change, Continuity."

The young woman sat down. As well as he could, while pretending to
idly look around the cabin, Peter studied her. She appeared to be
Peter's age, and she had long reddish blond hair that fell over her
shoulders. She wore a thin, white cardigan and blue jeans. What
Peter first noticed in her profile was the soft bow of her jaw and
how the line turned back at her rounded chin. It reminded Peter of
an ideal curve that might be displayed in an old painting manual.
His eye traveled back along the jaw, returning to the girl's ear. It
was a small ear, beige in color, that appeared almost edible, like a
biscuit. Her straight nose had a finely tooled knob at the end, and
her forehead rose like the side of an overturned bowl; her com-
plexion was as smooth and warm-toned as honey. As to her form, she
was lanky, with long legs and arms and thin wrists. Her long neck
held her head aloft.

Now the young woman turned in Peter's direction, looking for the
clasp on her seat belt. The trapezoid created by her shoulders and
her narrow waist, the roundness of her bosom, the working of her
fingers, so long they seemed like individual limbs, all moved him
deeply. Then she raised her head, looked at him, and smiled. The
effect was like seeing the sun over the ocean at midmorning, a
tremendous blast of light. It was as if the young woman had raised
some mythic golden shield whose brilliance would prostrate the
armies of the Hittites. She had an oval face, and her large eyes
were set wide apart; they were green, as green as a green flame!
Peter instructed the muscles at the corners of his mouth to retract
in a friendly way, with a hint of flirtatiousness. He imagined the
result was like the grimace of someone breathing mustard gas. The
girl nodded and looked away, buckling her seat belt and settling
herself in.

Before she sat down, Peter noticed, she had thrown a thick paperback
onto her seat. He hadn't been able to see the title. Now she opened
it and began to read. In her left hand she held back a thick wedge
of pages, about two thirds of the book. After a moment, Peter saw
out of the corner of his eye that she had let go with her left hand
and the book had fallen closed. She sat staring before her, lost in
thought. Peter saw the book's cover and was taken aback: "The Magic
Mountain," by Thomas Mann.

To sit next to a beautiful young woman on a flight from New York to
Los Angeles is one thing. To sit next to a beautiful young woman on
a flight from New York to Los Angeles who is on page five hundred of
"The Magic Mountain" is quite another. If you look over to see what
the beautiful young woman next to you is reading, and it turns out
to be a book about angels, then you can with perfect justification
refuse her entry into your life. What could you possibly have to say
to each other? The same logic applies even if the book is more
respectable, but basically dumb--a harrowing but ultimately life-
affirming memoir. And if the book is utterly respectable but still
basically dumb, say the new book by a fashionable, overrated English
novelist, then the young woman is especially dismissible, since the
worst alternative possible is talking to someone who thinks she is
clever but isn't. At the same time, if she were reading something
that showed that she really was extremely smart--a computer-science
journal--then there would be no point in talking to her either: she
would be far too intimidating. In sum, an argument could be derived
from virtually any reading matter that would allow a young man--
scared out of his wits--to persuade himself that it was perfectly
sensible, rather than the height of cowardice, to ignore the
beautiful young woman who would be sitting next to him for the
following five hours. Any reading matter, that is, except "The Magic
Mountain" by Thomas Mann. A beautiful young woman reading "The Magic
Mountain"--how could he weasel out of this challenge? It was a
serious book, but not one suited to a preening intellectual, who
would prefer one that was more difficult and less stodgy. A young
woman reading "The Magic Mountain" had to be intelligent and patient
and interested in a range of different ideas, many of them quite
old-fashioned. She would also happen to be reading the only long
German novel that Peter Russell himself had ever read.

(continued on Wednesday)

===========ABOUT THE AUTHOR===========

James Collins was formerly an editor at "Time" and has contributed
to "The New Yorker" and other magazines. He grew up in New York City
and now lives in Virginia with his family. This is his first novel.


========================================================

 

 

 

回答: 英语小说：Beginner's Greek（五） 由 紫君 于 2008-11-29 09:49:46

=====TODAY'S BOOK=====================

BEGINNER'S GREEK
by James Collins (fiction)

Published by Little, Brown and Company
ISBN: 9780316021555
GREEK (Part 4 of 5)
======================================

(continued from Wednesday)

"Do you like Los Angeles?" Another impossible question! He knew that
the accepted thing was to hold "L.A." in contempt. Still, you
couldn't act too proud of yourself for bashing the place, since that
was so conventional.


He watched the aperture of the young woman's lovely face close ever
so slightly and felt a pang in his heart. Two nearly monosyllabic
responses did not exactly encourage further conversation. He was
losing her. So he said, "I guess I really don't know it very well. I
guess you do a lot of driving." This was brilliant stuff! He
continued: "I know there's a whole world of young movie stars living
in old movie stars' houses and spending millions on thirties French
furniture, but that's not what I ever see. From what I see, Los
Angeles is like any other city where they have lots of highways and
air-conditioning. The tables in the conference rooms where I spend
my time have the same executive walnut veneer. Otherwise, I'm in my
rented car or at the hotel. I guess there are palm trees. I guess
there is this tremendous myth of Los Angeles: you're with your girl
by her pool at her huge place, built by a silent-screen star; you
are both as beautiful as a youth and maiden in a heroic painting;
the beads of water on your skin are glittering in the sun. There's
that sealed-in, airless feeling you get that makes you think you're
isolated even though millions of people surround you. It's a bright,
still Wednesday afternoon, and naturally you don't have anything
else to do on a Wednesday afternoon but look great with water beads
glittering on you. But the Los Angeles I see, it's like a city in
the Midwest in summer, just with palm trees and longer distances to
drive.

"I do remember once going to a bar with some people after a dinner
meeting. Hi ho, let's have some fun. One of the people who lived out
there took us to a place, and some young movie stars were there
playing pool. They were all so good-looking that just looking at
them was completely engrossing.

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, fear-
fully, 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 trans-
ported 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?"


(continued on Friday)



=====TODAY'S BOOK=====================

BEGINNER'S GREEK
by James Collins (fiction)

Published by Little, Brown and Company
ISBN: 9780316021555
GREEK (Part 5 of 5)
======================================

(continued from Thursday)

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.

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, 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, "happi-
ness" 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.

"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?"


Hardcover - Today's read ends on page 21.