Classic Love: 7 Vintage Romances Read Free

gone.”
    “We had good times there.”
    “So many places have dropped out of sight. Don’t tell me this isn’t a Depression.”
    “It’s because of night business, it’s fallen off so. People are afraid to go out to dinner in the evening. How can you expect a decent restaurant to operate on lunches only?”
    “It’s so discouraging.”
    “The times they are a-changing.”
    “You can say that again.”
    “The times they are — ”
    “Ah, shut up, Clover. How’s the agency?”
    “Same as ever, business as usual in spite of the shaky dollar.”
    “Speaking of restaurants going out of business, I was just remembering one Ralph and I were fond of,” Meryl said. “At one time we went there almost every Friday evening. “Italian … would you believe I can’t recall the name? Anyway, it was in Murray Hill, somewhere near Park … yes, between Madison and Park, and on one of the worst winter nights of the year, with a wind like a cyclone, absolutely dreadful. We had scheduled to meet some friends there, as a matter of fact a cousin of mine and her husband. Helen and Ted. We gave them directions, they were to go in and get a table if they were there first and vice versa. Well, they were there first, standing in the gale cowering, need I say that Marconi’s was shut up tighter than a drum. Marconi’s! Of course, Patsy Marconi! And it was so out of the way, near Altman’s. You know how there’s absolutely nothing going on in that part of town at night. Naturally, not a taxi in sight. But we did love that place, they had the most fantastic zabaglione.”
    “And now it’s kaput, yes, it’s a shame. I’m still wild about them tearing down those two marvelous Italianate mansions across from the Metropolitan Museum.”
    “There won’t be anything left soon.”
    “You get used to it after a while. You have to.”
    “No,” Helene said. “I don’t. I’m a mossback. I can’t stand to see the devastation.”
    “You should live in the South Bronx.”
    “God, isn’t that a crime?”
    “Whither are we drifting?”
    “What about Italy? The kidnappings …”
    “What about everywhere. Oy, let’s quit this gloom and doom. Chris, you know what I was thinking about the other day?”
    “No, what?”
    “The time you and Carl were pfft for a while. When he twisted your arm about getting married and you wanted to wait. Money and all that he was earning that teeny-weeny intern’s pay and you told him it wasn’t possible. You were like a zombie at the office, it was when we were still at Elliman’s, you and Meryl and I. We dragged you off to lunch, and you — ”
    “And I cried the whole time. God, Helene. It was Reidy’s. Yeah, sure, of course I remember that, all too well. My
crise de coeur
. That’s that, Carl told me, when I said no, finding it impossible to think of setting up housekeeping just then, and I just couldn’t believe he meant it, that he’d throw me to the wolves. Then I saw he did mean it, he didn’t call me and he wouldn’t answer
my
calls. Finished! No more busing down to the Village, the San Remo and Minetta’s and that gloomy cavernous coffee house on MacDougal. No more Waverly Inn, that garden with the big old trees, where a bird messed up my salad once, plopped his shit into it.”
    She laughed. “I started crying there in Reidy’s and Meryl said, ‘Gee,’ and then I spilled my drink trying to get up and leave.”
    “We didn’t go to Reidy’s for a while after that.”
    “It was a disgrace.”
    “Well, you got back together again and you have two kids to show for it.”
    “We all took our lumps in one way or another.”
    “We had a lot of fun, though.”
    Yes, they did, Christine thought with a certain wistfulness. It was light years ago and yet it seemed, in some ways, more real than what had happened just yesterday. Now they were all married, except for Clover, who was a successful travel agent with a prestigious firm on Fifth Avenue, Rockefeller Center. Clover was