“I won’t go up with you,” he said. “Will you be all right?”
“Yes. Perfectly.”
“I’ll call you to let you know just when we will leave. It will be soon. Within two or three days, if possible. If I were you, I would stay in the hotel.”
“I’ll not leave.”
“Well — good night, then.”
“Good night.”
He turned abruptly and walked away through the lobby, and she went up in the elevator and down to her room with the bellhop, and after the bellhop was gone, she sat down and lit one of the cigarettes and began to think again about going back in her mind to a certain time and place, the point of deviance, and though it was probably impossible to isolate it so neatly from all other times and places, since everything is a growth and a result of many causes, there was, nevertheless, the apparent time, the time of understanding, and so she reached it and began to think naturally of Alison.
Section 2
Hardly ever, when she remembered, did she go beyond Alison in time, even though Alison was comparatively recent, and this was because Alison was the first beauty and the first trauma and was therefore the beginning of everything that counted later. Even the name had contributed to the sum of factors assuring a certain growth, for the name of Alison was to Lisa altogether beautiful, the kind of name she would have chosen for herself if the choosing had been hers. But she was glad, of course, that the name was not hers after all, but really Alison’s, because it is a pleasure, a kind of mild masochism, to have all the beautiful things belong to someone you love and none to yourself.
The truth was, though Lisa had never realized it and still didn’t, that Alison was not exceptional at all. At the time she started attending Lisa’s school she was sixteen years old, one year older than Lisa herself, and she was a tall, slim girl with brown hair and eyes who was very good at games, especially tennis. Lisa also liked to play tennis, and it was at the courts behind the school that she and Alison met. Lisa was sitting on a bench in the sunlight beside a court, watching a pair of boys finish a set that had gone from deuce to advantage and back to deuce, and she was wishing for someone to come along looking for an opponent, and all of a sudden here was this very attractive girl she had only seen a few times around the school recently, and she was saying hello in the most ordinary sort of way, just exactly as if it were something perfectly routine and not an end and a beginning and something that could never be forgotten.
“My name is Alison Hall,” the girl said. “Are you waiting for a game?”
Lisa stood up and smiled and said that she was.
“I’m Lisa Sheridan,” she said. “Would you like to play?”
“Are you very good?”
“No. I guess I’m pretty bad, really. I only started playing a few months ago.”
“That’s all right, then. I’m pretty bad myself.”
This was not true, as Lisa soon discovered; it was so great a deviation from the truth, as a matter of fact, that it couldn’t be explained or justified as simple modesty or honest self-deprecation. It was Alison’s practice to belittle her ability in anything competitive for the dual purpose of minimizing her opponent’s accomplishment if she lost and exaggerating her own if she won. This might have been considered a character fault by some, but Lisa would never acknowledge it or think about, it or listen to anyone who suggested it. Not then, that first day she was subjected to it, or ever afterward.
They sat down on the bench together, waiting for the boys to finish their set, and Alison stretched her legs out in front of her and flexed the muscles in them. It was still September, still very warm, and she was wearing white twill shorts that were very brief, like the shorts the boys wore rather than the longer kind worn by most of the girls, and her legs were long and deeply tanned and quite lovely. Lisa considered her own legs much too thin and was secretly rather ashamed of them. Moreover, her skin was very fair and did not tan properly. Now, her eyes following the lines of Alison’s flanks and calves, she thought they were the loveliest legs she had ever seen and wished that hers were even half so good. Lifting her eyes, she saw that Alison was watching her with a strange little smile on her lips, and she was certain, all at once, that the other girl was aware of her thoughts and was waiting for her to express them.
She did, though she had not intended to.
“You have lovely legs,” she said.
“You think so?”
“Yes. They’re very lovely.”
“Well, yours are nice too.”
“No. You’re just saying that. They’re much too thin.”
“I think they’re nice. And you shouldn’t be so modest. You’re really a pretty girl. I’ve noticed you before, and I don’t mind admitting I’ve been planning to meet you. Boys always like that pale kind of hair you’ve got. Almost silver. I’ll bet you have plenty of boy friends.”
“No, I haven’t. I don’t know many boys at all. Not well, I mean.”
“Why not?”
Actually, Lisa had simply never developed an interest in boys, but she only said, “I don’t know. I’ve never thought about it much.”
“Do you ever go out with them?”
“Hardly ever.”
“Do you like them?”
“Well, I guess I like them all right.”
“I don’t. I think boys are the most terrific bores.”
She sat on the bench and frowned at the two on the court as if they were the most terrific bores of all. Lisa could not understand her, and she could not understand how it had happened that they were sitting on this bench and talking the way they were, so sort of intimately, when they had only just met. She was not disturbed by it, however, nor in the slightest embarrassed. It was rather exciting, really, not exactly in itself but because it seemed to suggest in a strange way the possibility of excitements that would have to be discovered. What she was most keenly aware of was an intense desire, sudden and consuming, to make a favorable impression, and she regretted, having learned Alison’s feeling toward boys, that she had not been more critical herself. She was trying to think of a way to correct her mistake when Alison turned her head and looked at her.
“Girls are much more interesting,” Alison said.
“That’s right, come to think of it. They are.”
“I’d much rather have a girl friend than a boy friend. Wouldn’t you?”
Was this a subtle offer of friendship? Lisa’s sense of excitement increased even more, and it was extremely pleasant. She had never felt anything quite like it before. She wanted to tell Alison that she would rather have her for a friend than any old boy, but it was too soon, after all, and she wasn’t prepared to do it. Not yet.
“Girls are more interesting,” she said, repeating Alison’s dictum.
“Do you have a girl friend?”
“Oh, yes. Several.”
“I don’t mean like that. I mean a special girl friend. Someone you like to be with and to think about and to do all sorts of interesting things with.”
Lisa thought about it, and it seemed to her that maybe there were a couple of girls who qualified by Alison’s definition, but she had an idea that she thought so only because she did not quite grasp the full significance of Alison’s expression, and so she shook her head and replied that she guessed she didn’t have any friend exactly like that.
“Do you?” she said.
“Not right now. I’m new in town. Didn’t you know that?”
“I thought so. I’ve only seen you around school a few times.”