Read Into the Valley for Free Online

B. could not see his face, just the white hair under a hat and the drooped shoulders, and yet his presence agitated her, as if he could overhear her mind running.
    She closed her eyes and tried in the heat and soothing water to daydream. She had difficulty daydreaming. There seemed a list of things she should be daydreaming about, what she knew the other secretaries daydreamed of: men, marriage, babies, money. But what came to her mind were never these things. What came to her mind were cool blue-white landscapes, featureless planes of snow or sand with no people or time. Whenever she made herself daydream about the secretaries’ list, things like the developer and Sherry came up.
    It was at a barbecue, one of the secretaries had invited B. during her first season in the city, also in the nicest hill neighborhood. She would have gone to the park with a book, but she knew her mother would ask later in their weekly phone call whether B. had “mingled” over the weekend. It was a rare hot and fogless day when one could go into the evening without a sweater, which made the city feel like a white-washed Mediterranean ville and made B. hopeful that something unexpected, even unrecognizable, might happen. When she walked into the party, all the women looked to be the same age (mid-twenties), most blonde like B., nails manicured and hair set, orange and pink and yellow dresses; the men wore button-down shirts and Bermudas and looked ill at ease and shiny in the heat.
    One of the men approached B. right away, two vodka tonics in his hand, a sheen of sweat on his neck. “Thought I’d say hullo,” he said, handing her one of the drinks. “Official unofficial welcoming committee.” On first glance his face was handsome, smooth and symmetrical with gray placid eyes and clear skin. But as he spoke, B. noticed that his eyebrows were too thin or too faint, so that he resembled one of the anemic subjects of a medieval Dutch painting. He worked in real estate.
    â€œIt’s a boom time for us, you know, it’s all happening down 101—cineplexes, mini-malls. I’m Sherry’s.” He pointed to a woman across the deck who looked, except for her red hair, exactly like B. in her short bright sheath and matching headband. “We’re just engaged.”
    The back deck of the house was small and crowded and B. felt beads of sweat in the boning of her bra. As he went on, there seemed to her something disturbingly missing, some void of detection in the Dutch eyebrowless face, as if he were talking not to her but to her teeth.
    â€œReally, it’s simple, you work a couple of years and then you get out of the race, down the peninsula. The weather is perfect, fog always lifts. Have you been? I could drive you down.” He seemed unaware or unconcerned that he’d already told her about his fiancée. B. thought for a moment he might be drunk, but he seemed oddly sober, only growing too exuberant, almost jumpy, a twitch under his eye. “You really ought to see it. You’d like it better down there. Easy little yards and roads you can actually drive and mile-long grocery stores.” He leaned toward her and his perspiration smelled sour. “Don’t get me wrong, the city’s hip, the city’s stimulating, but it’s no place to raise children. The other day we were tossing around a few balls at the park—do you play? Sher and I lost one of our doubles—and these head-shaved loonies in their dresses lined the court, chanting that Oriental hokum. I thought to myself, let the freaks have the city, I’ll take Shangri-La.”
    When he tried unsuccessfully a few minutes later to kiss B., Sherry was suddenly at his side, locked into his arm as though nothing had happened. Without missing a beat, the developer explained how he and Sherry had met—“Goddamn right ‘golden state’ when the prettiest woman at the broker’s office is a good