Free Caroline's Daughters by Alice Adams Page B

in her stomach, and visible, as if in the transparent stomach of a baby bird. (A baby bird is what Caroline thinks and says that Jill looks like, these days, with her very fine hair and long thin neck, and her wide, wide eyes. Jim McAndrew’s pale-gray eyes, all the girls have them.)
    Just now, having consumed three-fourths of a cornmeal breadstick, and several strawberries, a slice of orange and some tea, at Campton Place, Jill feels unpleasantly stuffed. She also has a heavier-than-usual Dalmane hangover. She is finding it hard to listen.
    Her breakfast person is very young, her own age, probably, a red-haired lawyer from Memphis; this seems odd, Jill has never heard of anyone coming from Memphis. But he has no Southern accent: is he really from Memphis, what is this? Jill dislikes his hands, the red-brown freckles and reddish hairs. Dislikes his small blue eyes, and his voice, especially his voice, which is high andnasal. “Very vulnerable,” he is saying, seeming to sum up what he has been saying all along. They are talking very hostile takeover. Some small company in Portland, Oregon.
    Quite inadvertently, then, and very likely because she was thinking of the Game the night before, as she lay awake after all that talk with Noel, the Game comes back into Jill’s wandering mind, and she thinks, Oh God, suppose Bucks had fixed her up with this guy, this red-and-pink-skinned twerp who doesn’t even seem to be from where he says he is. Well, obviously that would have been the night to say no, just get up and leave, bow out, as she has always half imagined herself doing. Another tiny voice within Jill, though, is imagining how it would be if she did not leave, did not leave this particular guy. She is seeing herself in bed with him, this very young (too young!) man, knowing precisely what would excite him.
    He asks her, “Are you okay?” She must have turned pale.
    â€œI’m fine. It’s just that breakfast always makes me sort of tired.”
    â€œMe too, as a matter of fact. I guess we’re getting old.”
    â€œI guess,” and they both laugh at the sheer unlikeliness of this.
    â€œYou don’t sound like you’re from Memphis,” Jill tells him. “It’s in the South, isn’t it?”
    â€œI’m from Detroit, originally.”
    As they are leaving, walking out through the pretty, perfectly appointed tables, linen and flowers, silver, crystal, porcelain, as they almost reach the doorway, Jill experiences a shock: there, sitting alone at a window table and absorbed in the
Wall Street Journal
(thank God), is Buck Fister. Bucks, looking much younger than whenever she saw him last, a couple of years ago—which was when she finally said, “I really don’t want to do this Game any more, old Bucks. Frankly, with this plague around it’s just too dangerous. Besides, I make plenty of money.” And now there is Buck, looking terrific (for him), leaner and tight-skinned. Tan. Prosperous. Jill hurries past, not wanting any more contact with Buck, not now.
    It is strange, though, that she should see him today, when she was thinking of the Game and of him last night (usually she manages to think of that small area of her past not at all, or hardly at all). But that sort of thing happens more and more as you go on in life, Jill has concluded. As though some sort of reliable radar signalledanother person’s proximity: she thought of Bucks because she was going to see him today.
    In the lobby, standing beside the giant arrangement of dry desert flowers, Jill and the red-haired man shake hands. His name is already gone from her head, but not from her notes. Back in her office she will be perfectly prepared to deal with their meeting, to give it her appraisal.
    He says, “You know, that’s the greatest-looking dress I’ve seen in San Francisco.” He seems to be speaking through his nose.
    â€œThanks. Actually I got it a couple of