The Day After Tomorrow_ A Novel - Allan Folsom [18]
Now, as he heard her step into the shower, it came to him. Today was Saturday, October 1. Vera had to be in Calais on Monday, the third. That same day he was scheduled to fly out of London for L.A. What if today, instead of touring Switzerland, they flew to England? They could have tonight and all day Sunday and all of Sunday night in London or wherever in England Vera wanted to go. Monday morning he could put her on a train to Dover and from there she could take the ferry or Hoverspeed across the Channel directly to Calais.
The sense of it came in a rush, and without thinking more he reached for the telephone. It was only when he was talking to the female clerk at the front desk, and asking how to dial Air Europe, that he realized he was still naked. Not only that but he had an erection, which he seemed to have most of the time Vera was anywhere near. All at once he felt like a teenager on an illicit weekend. Except, as a teenager he’d never had an illicit weekend. Those things had happened to others, not him. Strong and handsome as he was—and had been, even then—he’d remained a virgin until he was nearly twenty-two and a student in medical school. Things other boys did, he’d never done. Though he boasted he had, just to keep from looking the fool. The villain was, as always, the same, the intense and uncontrollable fear that sex would lead to attachment, and attachment, love. And once committed to love, it was only a matter of time before he would find a way to destroy it.
At first Vera said no, England was too expensive, too impulsive. But then he’d taken her hand and pulled her to him and kissed her deeply. Nothing, he told her, was more expensive or impulsive than life. And nothing was more important to him than spending as many hours with her as possible, and they could do that best if they went to London today. He was serious. She could see it in his eyes when she pulled back to look at him, and feel it in his touch when he smiled and ran the back of his hand gently down the side of her face.
“Yes.” She smiled. “Yes, let’s go to England. But after that, no more, okay?” Her smile left, and for the first time since he’d known her, she became serious.
“You have a career, Paul. I have mine and I want it to continue the way it is.”
“Okay—” He grinned and leaned forward to kiss her, but she pulled back.
“No. First agree. After London we won’t see each other again.”
“Your work means that much to you?”
“What I have already done to get through medical college. What I have yet to do. Yes, it means that much. And I won’t apologize for saying it or meaning it.”
“Then . . .” He paused. “I agree.”
London had been a blur. Vera wanted to stay somewhere discreet, somewhere she would not run into a former classmate or professor—or “boyfriend?” Paul teased—and then be invited to dinner or tea or whatever and have to make excuses. Osborn checked them into the Connaught; one of the grandest, smallest, most guarded, and “English” of all the London hostelries.
They needn’t have bothered. Saturday evening was Ambassadors Theatre and a revival of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, followed by dinner at The Ivy across the street, a hand-in-hand stroll through the theater district, broken by several giggly champagne breaks at pubs along the Way, and finally a long, circuitous taxi ride back to the hotel during which they challenged each other, in sensuous and conspiratorial whispers, to make love without the driver’s knowledge. And did. Or thought they did. The rest of their thirty-six-hour stay in London was spent in bed. And it was neither because of sex or by choice. First Paul, and very shortly afterward, Vera, came down with either food poisoning or a violent attack of the flu. All they could hope for was that it was the twenty-four-hour kind. Which it turned out to be. And by the time Monday morning