Second Chances by Alice Adams Read Free Book Online

Polly’s pale eyes flashed as she thought this out. Aroused, her eyes flashed like opals, Charles had thought, and had said to her: pale fire opals. But this did not seem the moment for repeating that remark.
    Instead he said, “But, my darling girl, it would be dangerous. I really couldn’t let you—”
    “I’ll be all right. I’m a terrific driver.” And she added—seriously, passionately—“I love you, Charles.”
    Along with the use of the friend’s apartment Polly had the use of a large American car, a sky-blue Nash Ambassador, with bulbously swollen sides. And an ample trunk. It was soon decided, though, that the trunk was dangerous: so obvious, in terms of search, as well as extremely uncomfortable for an already sick and miserable man. The three of them discussed all this: eager Polly; worried Charles (had he somehow outsmarted himself? Was the plan a little too good, tooadvantageous for himself?); and sad Juan, who was actually about the same age as Charles, in his late thirties, but looking and no doubt feeling at least ten years older.
    The experience of driving Juan—and then Paco, Enrique, Andrés, Carlos, until she began to forget the names—of being stopped and each time successfully passing herself off as an upper-class young American, an innocently lost tourist (asking questions in a certain panicked “female” way was a great ploy, Polly soon discovered), but being always so entirely frightened that she developed colitis, as well as mysterious joltings in the region of her heart—all that made Polly come to think of “love” in quite a new way. And sex: there too her views underwent radical change.
    She began to feel that the deep, intensifying multiple spasms that she experienced as she received Charles’s member, his hand or his tongue were simply not world-shaking, as previously she had seriously felt that they were: they were simply body-shaking. They had mostly to do with friction, healthy tissues rubbing against each other. Friction and her own romantic preconceptions. She began to recognize that in bed with Charles she did not have mystical experiences, just sexual ones.
    Which is not to say that Polly began to dislike either Charles or sex itself. She continued for some time to see Charles, and they continued to make love; and she continued for many, many years with what would surely be counted an active sexual life. However, driving down from San Sebastián (Spain) to Burgos, observing the beautiful changes from mountains to plains, with Juan huddled, blanket-wrapped, coughing, on the narrow back seat, she began to realize that she was more concerned with Juan (or Enrique, or Pablo, none of whom she ever made love to, ever, nor even thought of with “love,” in that sense) than she was with Charles. Whatever was meant by “in love,” and she suspected,
au fond
, very little, she was no longer in love with Charles. Nor did she ever after that in her life imagine herself “in love.”
    Some men quite liked this attitude in Polly, her enthusiastic acceptance of sex as a considerable pleasure, her lack of emotional concomitants. It was how they believed that they themselves reacted.More often, however, the men involved with Polly accused her of coldness: no matter what it was that they themselves felt, they wanted her to be—or felt that she should be—giddily, vulnerably, even demandingly “in love.”
    Handsome, fairly spoiled Charles was of course the first member of the latter group.
    “I think you don’t love me anymore,” he began to complain. Intending a light, ironic tone, he instead conveyed high seriousness, sincerity—no doubt because he was indeed quite serious, and troubled by this new Polly.
    This was a post-Paris conversation, in New York, at Polly’s new apartment, above a liquor store in the then unfashionable East Thirties. A turgidly, killingly hot July afternoon: Charles had not gone out to Long Island (Sag Harbor, before that became fashionable) with