After You've Gone Read Online Free Page B

small neglected meadow. And at the bottom of her garden (also neglected) early iris, wild and bright.
    She began to sleep better. Or if she should wake up she could read. One of the joys of singleness, she told herself; you don’t have to worry about the other person’s sleep, along with your own.
    June 22, 1941, was the day on which Hitler’s troops attacked Soviet Russia. No more Nazi-Soviet pact. The Russians were now our valiant allies. (It was also Lauren Whitfield’s last day in Madison. Back to Enid, Oklahoma.)
    Possibly more than anyone else in Madison, Caroline Coffin Gerhardt was moved to celebrate this clear beginning of the end of Hitler. She wanted a party, but from the beginning nothing worked out in terms of this festive impulse. No one even remotely appropriate was available. Vacations had begun, varieties of other plans. Even her children failed her: Amy was off dancing with her beau, and Julie was to have an early farewell supper with Lauren and her grandparents.
    Caroline’s happy day was further marred by news from Arne: a postcard (so typical) announcing his imminent arrival. “I’ve missed all my girls.” Well, I’ll bet he has, was Caroline’s sour reaction. Who else would put up with such a selfish bastard?
    We will have to work out a much more independent life from each other, Caroline thought, over the small steak that she had bought for her solitary celebration (
not
black market: her month’s ration), as she sipped from the split of Beaujolais, an even greater treat.
    I should not have Arne so continually in my mind, she toldherself. That’s what the children do, they think only of themselves and their impassioned sexual lives.
    The important fact is that the end of Hitler’s evil has now begun.
    Epilogue: San Diego, California. The middle eighties.
    The man at the next table at this almost empty semi-Polynesian restaurant is not even slightly interested in her, thinks Lauren Whitfield, now a tall, gray-blond, very well dressed woman, a psychologist, well known for several books.
    She is in fact on a tour for her latest book, having to do with alcoholic co-dependency. She reached San Diego a day early, hoping for a rest. On her way to her room, across a series of tropically planted lawns she observed an Olympic pool, and she thought, Oh, very good. And seated next to the pool, though fully dressed, she saw this same tall man, whom she had also seen at the reservation desk. Coming into the dining room just now, he smiled very politely, if coldly, acknowledging these small accidental encounters.
    Lauren is quite used to book tours, by now. Living alone in New York after the lengthy demise of her second marriage, she rather likes the adventure of trips, the novelty of unfamiliar scenery, new faces. She quite often falls into conversation with other single travelers, such encounters providing at the worst only a few bored hours. More frequently she has felt warm stirrings of interest, of possible friendship. On far rarer occasions, sex.
    But this tall, too thin, nearsighted, and not well dressed European intellectual keeps his large nose pushed clearly into his book. Lauren has observed him with some care, over all of their small encounters, and is quite sure that they could findareas of common interest, some shared opinions. Their political views, she would bet, would be similar.
    Sex is out; in a sexual way she is not drawn to him in the least. But so often men are slow to perceive that overtures of any sort are not necessarily sexual in nature. Lauren ponders this sad and trouble-causing human fact as she also thinks, Well, hell, I’d really like an hour or so of conversation. Coffee. Damn his book.
    And then, as she stares (he is so entirely unaware of her that she is able to stare with impunity), a small flash goes off within the deep recesses of her mind, so that she is able, with great confidence, and a smile that she knows is appealing,