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Almost! the voice screamed, and Selena ran until the world blurred in front of her eyes and the sandy shoulder of the road came up to strike her face.

I
N
S
EPTEMBER
, Allison left Peyton Place for a week in New York before going on to Hollywood. It meant arriving at the studio two days later than they expected her, but she decided it was more important to have a week with Lewis, an uninterrupted week of being with him and loving him.

Distance does not lend enchantment, she thought, thinking of the weeks of separation, the two months when all she had of Lewis was his letters. Absence had not diminished her love for him, but, sometimes, she was not able to capture the image of his face. She knew that in the first few minutes of meeting him again there would be constraint and hesitation; it would be like meeting a stranger.

She looked out the train window at the familiar landscape. Summer had lingered into September; the blaze of autumn had not yet consumed or even touched the greenness. What a summer it had been! Allison thought. What had begun in beauty and fruitfulness had ended with Selena found wandering, dazed, lost and helpless by the side of a road. Mike had been fired. And Seth Buswell and Matt Swain had made enemies trying to help her.

Peyton Place had been a battlefield. Allison wondered whether she was fleeing in defeat or departing victorious. A little of both, she thought. Mike had a job and she, at least, had not surrendered to the pressures. Her career was in full flower, her success had gone far beyond even her wildest dream.

Allison had never thought of success in terms of money. To her, it had always been a vague, amorphous dream with success consisting, in equal parts, of fame and freedom. Money was the least important part of it. Often she said to herself, I am a rich woman. It was an attempt that always failed. She never believed it, she could not think of herself that way.

Only
old
women are rich, she told herself, trying to push away the thought of herself, Allison MacKenzie, as a rich woman. It was an image she was not willing to face and thought the reason for it was that it interfered with an image she preferred: herself as a writer; as Allison MacKenzie, Author.

She did not want to be a corporate entity, endlessly involved with the investment counselors and tax accountants that Brad had been recommending to her. One of the things she had to do while in New York was to see these people. She had decided that the only way to handle this was to find people she could trust, and turn it all over to them. She did not want to be bothered with it. To think of money matters took one's mind from the writing of books, and that was her real work.

Perhaps David was right. He may have been motivated by all the wrong reasons, but perhaps what he said was correct. The writer's only function is to write. From now on, she determined, that's the way it's going to be. No more interviews, no more salesmanship.

The conductor punched her ticket and made a few remarks about the kind of summer it had been. I've practically become a commuter, Allison thought, between Peyton Place and New York. She looked around her at the faded green plush seats, most of them empty. She felt almost proprietary about this train.

She had an imaginary conversation with Lewis in which she said, “We should all take more train rides, Lewis. It's one of the few places left where we can commune with ourselves and ask the deep questions and make judgments of ourselves and others. It's too dangerous to think of anything but the traffic when you're in a car; and planes are too fast.”

Allison put her head back on the seat and closed her eyes, gave herself up to delicious thoughts of her reunion with Lewis. Love's hungers, she thought, are as real as any other kind.

She smiled, thinking what Constance would say if she knew that Allison had become involved with a married man. Constance, remembering her own past history, would think it was a family curse, a seed she had transmitted to Allison, and she would feel guilty and responsible.

That is the difference between our generations, Allison thought. Her mother had felt guilty, had felt a sense of sin at being the mistress of a married man. Allison did not. She accepted it; it was an arrangement; it was the best thing that life had thus far offered her.

Allison sat up, startled by her thoughts.
Thus far?
Was she admitting to herself that what she had with Lewis was just a temporary thing, to be superseded by something better, more permanent? She pushed the thought aside, denied the possibility of it. I am not a gypsy, she told herself, not a wanderer. I have found what I want, Lewis is what I want, and I'm going to hold onto it.

At Boston she changed trains. Walking through the station, she smiled to herself. The world-weary traveler, that's what I am. Such a short time ago, this trip from Peyton Place to New York had been an exciting, new experience, a dream come true. But already it was something she could do with her eyes closed. Is that the way it's going to be with everything? she wondered. Is that what life is?

From Grand Central Station she went directly to the residential hotel where she had reserved an apartment. Driving up Park Avenue, her luggage all around her, she tried to keep from her face the smug smile that tugged at her lips. Oh, give in to it, she told herself. Relax that tight New England conscience of yours. After all, no one gave you this, it wasn't handed to you on a silver platter. You earned it with your own two hands. Now enjoy it.

Her apartment was on the twentieth floor. Following the boy who carried the luggage, bowed in by the manager, she entered a grand living room all white and gold. The manager bustled after her, opened the long windows that led to the terrace, showed her the bedroom which was only a little smaller than the living room, and led her to the butler's pantry where she could, if she wished, do her own cooking.

When she was alone, she looked at herself in the long mirror, as if to assure herself that it was really she, Allison MacKenzie, in this place. Then she went to the phone and called Lewis.

“I am here,” she said. “Come to dinner.”

“Must I wait till then?” he asked. “I could sneak out the back door. I think it still opens, though I haven't used it since 1936 when the bill collectors used to sit and wait for me in the reception room.”

“Oh, how I wish I had been around then, darling.”

“I wish it too. You would have charmed them right out of the place, the bills forgotten in their hands. Listen, darling, I know I'm being terribly undisciplined and all my authors are going to start writing me angry letters, but I'm leaving right now and I'll be there in fifteen minutes.”

“Oh yes, darling, come at once,” she said. And hung up before she could add, “We have no time to waste.” The thought had come unbidden, from nowhere.

She undressed quickly. She wanted to shower and dress and be ready for him. She planned on ordering dinner and having it served on the terrace, with candles on the table and a bucket of champagne, able to see all of New York yet remaining unseen. That their life together was secret made it all the more delicious, she thought.

But when he knocked on the door she was not ready and had to pull on a terrycloth robe, the ends of her hair wet, her face washed clean of make-up.

“Don't look at me, Lewis. I'm not ready to be seen.”

He laughed. “That's like telling a thirsty man to stay away from the water.”

He put his hand on her arm and drew her toward him. When they kissed, Allison went limp in his arms and cried, “Oh, Lewis, how I've missed you!”

“If it was anything like the way I missed you, then I understand full well what you've gone through.”

Allison drew away from him and said, “Oh, Lewis, I wanted to be dressed when you arrived, and made up, and looking my best. And now look at me.”

“I am,” Lewis said.

“I wanted to order dinner and have the table on the terrace, with crystal and candles and champagne.”

“We'll have it later,” Lewis said, smiling his quiet smile.

When he kissed her again, his hand was inside her robe, cupping her breast; and then, arms around each other, hurrying, they moved toward the bedroom. Allison's knees felt weak and her thighs trembled.

“Oh, hold me, darling,” she cried. “Don't ever let me go.”

“Never,” he said, and the word echoed in his head.

Never, she thought, repeating the word to herself. Lovers are mad, they use crazy, impossible words. What's worse, they believe them.

She buried her face in Lewis' breast in order to shut out the sight of him, of his gray hairs that were the sign of age. She could feel his heart beating against her mouth.
Never
will last only as long as that, she thought, and began to cry.

“What is it, love? What is it?” Lewis asked. “Why are you crying?” He stroked her hair and her back, calming her as a father does a child.

“It's nothing, Lewis. It's nothing.” And she took his head between her hands and consumed him with kisses, as if she wanted to make up for all the years that she had not known him, all the years she had not even been born, by the intensity of her love.

Allison was assailed by the thought that there was no time to lose; and that because of the disparity in ages, she must cram into a short space all the love and experience that the years had denied them. She caressed him with her hands and her mouth, and under her hands felt the quiver of his pleasure. She assaulted him with love, with a passionate fury; and when he was ready for her, he turned on her savagely and threw her down, covered her with his hard body, and held her arms pinned to the bed so that she could not move. Like a sea's retaining wall she lay and allowed herself to be buffeted, and felt the tidal pull that, at the end, seemed to draw her soul out of her body. Only then did he let go of her and she drew his throbbing body down to hers.

This is the only truth there is, she thought, this expression of love. The rest is acting out a part.

Her body ached with the knowledge of him. They lay side by side, resting, and Allison watched day slowly dimming and the room receding into darkness. The days were shorter now. Summer was ending graciously, with days of sweet, soft winds, but winter's advance was making itself tentatively felt. Remembering that soon she would leave for California, Allison thought, I am going to follow summer west; I'll have a few extra weeks of it.

At the thought of leaving, she turned to Lewis and kissed him. “How are you feeling, darling?” she asked.

“There's a possibility I may recover,” he said. “I believe there are some grounds for hope. If I take good care of myself, I might be able to walk out of here under my own power—sometime around ten-thirty tomorrow morning.”

Allison laughed. “You'd better summon up all your strength right now, Lewis, because I suspect my reputation will suffer if the waiter walks in and finds you like this.”

Lewis sat up. “What waiter?”

“The waiter who is going to bring our dinner.” She reached for the phone. “I am about to order dinner, Lewis. Have you any special requests?”

“Yes, I have,” Lewis said, jumping out of bed and running to the bathroom. “Wait till I'm dressed.”

An hour later, when the manager, headwaiter and waiter arrived—the waiter pushing a cart containing their dinner under covered dishes—Allison and Lewis were sitting, all prim and proper, on the terrace's white wrought-iron chairs.

The headwaiter opened the champagne, the waiter served their food without rattling a single dish and the manager stood anxiously by; he was the kind of man, Allison thought, who seemed always to be fearing the worst. After the waiter had placed before them the bowls of cold vichyssoise, set in larger crystal bowls filled with cracked ice, Allison said, “I will serve the rest myself.”

The waiter and the headwaiter bowed themselves off the terrace; the manager took one last worried look, as if he half expected the terrace to fall off the side of the building. Assuring himself it would last a few days more, he wished them
bon appetit
and followed his waiters from the room.

Allison said, “He gives me the feeling that he's terribly sorry New England doesn't have a king and a flag. I think he'd like to fly the flag to announce that I am here.”

Lewis was still smiling at the sight of the three men backing out of the room. “New York is full of apparitions,” he said. “It's become the final resting place of the ghosts of half of Europe. Those three men, for example, died in Budapest in 1935. New York is the Paradise their souls migrated to.”

“The chef 's ghost has done well by us tonight,” Allison said.

After the cold soup, there was filet mignon with sauce Béarnaise, artichokes vinaigrette and a small salad pungent with herbs. They finished the champagne with tiny wild strawberries that tasted of sun and summer fields.

Standing at the parapet with their coffee cups, they looked at New York, winking and flashing around them. That is what it's all for, Allison thought, not knowing quite what the words meant. Moments like this make the agony of success worth while. But immediately she asked herself, Is it true? Does this make up for the lies and the estrangement of friends?

She thought of David. It pained her to think of him, in his lonely room, only a few minutes away, bent over his work. Perhaps she had misjudged him. Perhaps his integrity was real and his anger with her was genuine, not envy of her success but outrage that success was what she wanted. He believed in her talent. She decided she would phone him, invite him and Stephanie to dinner the next night.

Below, Central Park looked wilted and tired after its three months' struggle for survival against the city summer.

Lewis said, “We should ask the Parks Commissioner to send Central Park away for the summer. It's too old and careworn to spend any more summers in the city.”

“I'll draw up a petition in the morning,” Allison said. “We'll call it the Fund for Sending Central Park to the Catskills. School children will send in nickels and dimes. Our slogan will be: Central Park Needs Fresh Air.”

Lewis put his coffee cup on the top of the parapet and, leaning forward, kissed her mouth gently.