I resume, Sandy's point of view it should be said that, her letters and gifts, phone calls, all were fresh air for me, and she was kind of in a love spell, or so it seemed at the time: all these forms of communicational procedures to get messages to me was appreciated by me; and looked closely by my mother: not sure what was going on with a woman who had just met me, god forbid, should we marry, surely after a recent divorce, I suppose she was worried about me getting hurt again, and we were about to start a move to another house in several months, hence, she was unaccustomed to change, she had lived on Lexington Ave for fifteen and a half year. It was a big decision for her to agree to move into my triplex. While I had this two and a half month separation, I had time to think about her personal qualities, to look at them, they were in a way extraordinary, as lovers we sure were in that category (or had been), yet I knew she had failures, and that would either break or make the our longer term, involvement pertaining to this relationship. "What beautiful gifts you've sent me," I told Sandy over the phone on Christmas Day; She wouldn't let it alone, she wanted me to express my appreciation or every item she sent, perhaps fifteen little ones. "When are you come up here?" she asked with exhilaration "Any week now, or month should I say; I expect the first week of February. (There was some holiday coming up, and that would give me a four-day weekend, and perhaps I could add a day of vacation into that I figured, extending my time. "I'm going to give you a tour of the city when you come, and every one at the 'Red Lion Inn," want to see you, she commented. In comparison to our Beijing Affair, she seemed faintly gross, faintly ill-bred over the phone; during many conversations, memorable things would come up of our trip in China, she lit up the phone with these moments; but nonetheless, there was something unusual about her expression, an over bearing perhaps, an obvious defense. Sandy was a romantic and her life, career and youth had not provided many satisfactory opportunities on that score. And her teaching career would not tolerate any such spurious excitations, or ones against the rules of a well reserved community, if available at all, such behavior would have to take place unnoticed. Hence, she was in fact starving for appreciation. She was now free to have lovers, the real thing was available, she even told me young men were chasing her at the pool hall, a bar nearby, and although not interested, she liked the attention (so she said); I was not that foolish to believe she did not savor the moment she could test her powers out beyond me. She explained all this one-day in January on the phone to me, as we got closer to my plans to go see her. Of which many of her expressions she possessed, one saying, "I fell for you the first time I saw you," I pretended not to have heard, the compliant, it was to me purely informal. The last day in January 1997, I had bought the ticket to New York City, and made reservations at an old Inn, in Nantucket. I was almost on my way. |
