Read To See You Again for Free Online

Clover look at each other and burst into near-hysterics. Clover’s laugh is deep, a sexy laugh; Josiah’s is almost silent, but his whole body shakes with it, his face is convulsed. Hope watches both of them seriously as she thinks, My God, it’s like watching them make love, in fact more intimate, really; their laughing is unique.
    “Yes,” Josiah says, in his calm, still-professorial voice. “A ‘shave and a shower’ would have an entirely different meaning for poor Nicholas.”
    Clover laughs again, and then she says, “Oh Lord, I’m so tired. I’m getting old.”
    “We all are,” says Josiah. “Except for Hope, who will always look about ten years old. My pocket-sized wife. Any day I expect to get picked up for child-molesting.”
    Hope giggles, as she imagines he expects her to, but she wonders: Is that a compliment? Does he like having such a small wife, or does he long to be with big dark Clover again? All he said to her, by way of describing Clover before they met, was “You two certainly don’t look much alike. No one can accuse me of being partial to a type,” with his ambiguous laugh.
    Now Clover, in her loose dark flowered silk, pulls herself to her feet. Hope and Josiah get up too. They all say good night to each other, without touching; somehow either kissing or shaking hands would be all wrong.
    And Clover goes home, by herself.
    Since Clover and Josiah drank so much when they were in love, when he was an alcoholic and a philosopher, teaching at Berkeley, it is hard for Clover to remember, really, what it was like, what Josiah was like, back then. She just remembers a lot of drinking, with vague intervals of sleep and love, against a backdrop of Berkeley Hills, San Francisco restaurants and bars.
    But almost everything that happened between Clover and Josiah is vividly clear to Hope; what Josiah left out her avid imagination readily supplies. On her way to sleep, in the giant bed where she feels a little cold, and lost (Josiah is huddled on the other side), after their party, what Hope seesis: Clover and Josiah propped up in a warm plain double bed, a turmoil of white sheets, the two of them drinking California champagne, and laughing their heads off. Clover: dark and young, even more beautiful than now. And Josiah: beardless, dark hair just graying, his face flushed (not gray) with drink and love and so much laughing, all the time. Or, she sees them on the old ferry, crossing to Oakland; they are standing on the prow, salt wind blowing their hair. They are drinking from a pint bottle of bourbon, they are feeding the sea gulls some peanuts which they have soaked in booze. They are getting the sea gulls drunk—they are laughing, laughing, laughing.
    These days Josiah doesn’t drink at all, and thanks to Hope’s money he doesn’t have to work.
    How she wishes that he still drank!
    It is easy to imagine Clover naked—a Maillol, a Henry Moore.
    It is often very hard for Hope to sleep.
    Clover supports herself as she always has, in a borderline way, with commercial art. Just now she has a better job than usual, with a gallery, doing promotional brochures, with a more than generous budget and an employer who seems quite civilized, for a welcome change, although he is bald and fat. Gregory Rovensky, a dark Russian-Israeli, an ebullient, enthusiastic type; he sometimes reminds Clover of a balloon, or several balloons, bouncing about in a room. A kindly person, he even tells her that she undercharges, and he ups her fee. “Money is not something for you to be foolishly genteel about,” he says. “In a commercial society it’s a mistake to undervalue yourself.”
    This seems sensible advice—and how good it would be if she could earn enough money not to worry! Clover hasalways lived rather well, and dressed well, on the whole, but the cost in anxiety has been tremendous.
    In a grateful way she confides in Gregory some of her unease about her friends, Josiah and Hope. “Sometimes I think I’m