Classic Love: 7 Vintage Romances Read Free Page A

the one who had eluded the tender trap, with a chic little apartment on East Eight-third Street.
    She was extravagantly pretty, small, slight, honey-blonde, like a stylish waif, somehow. They used to call her “little Clover.” They had all worried about her because she was not “taken care of,” and no children to succor her in her old age, no grandchildren sitting on her knee. They didn’t worry about her anymore, though, but had come to feel faint twinges of envy. Sure, the rest of them had achieved what was reputed to be
the
goal of woman even if she realized other goals: the rest of them had the chatelaine’s keys firmly in their grasp.
    But they were chained, shackled, when it came right down to it. In a rut and wondering what came next. Not Clover, though. She was free as a sandpiper, with travel perks that enabled her to fly off to Paris for a weekend, or go to Vienna at Christmastime. There were always men in her life, perhaps lovers, perhaps simply escorts, friends. Sometimes for a long period, just as often a passing fancy, here today and gone tomorrow.
    Then, almost five years ago, she had mildly astonished them, with news of a liaison (her word) with a man much older than herself, and now she saw only this man. He was married, with a grown son himself married, and Viennese-born, a refugee of the Hitler era; he was a Jew. Clover said, “Some of his family went to the ovens, I don’t know which ones, he doesn’t enlarge on it. He’s a brilliant man, much too good for me. He was of considerable importance as a journalist in Europe — London, Paris — also a short story writer, but in this country he’s gotten short shrift in that regard, though he has a superlative P.R. job and has reconciled himself to being a writer
manqué
.”
    By this time Clover spoke,
en passant
, about Anton (Anton Ehrenberg) just the way the others made mention of their own spouses, and by this time it was accepted by the rest of them that Anton was the man Clover had been waiting for. Or if not waiting, at least hoping for, one imagined. She appeared enormously content with her “situation:” Ruth said that Clover had the best of both worlds, and it did indeed seem that nothing was lacking.
    Christine, over her second martini, studied her friends. They were case histories too. Anyone their ages was bound to be. Pattern set, the die cast. They had reached the point of no return. Maybe Clover was the exception: her destiny seemed unfixed as yet. Aside from that, they were prototypes, alive and well and living in New York, and they would never, alas, have lengthy obituaries in the
Times
.
    Ruth Alexander, like Christine, had had an uneventful passage from young womanhood to matron, the same “normal” progression from one stage to another. It was Ruth that Christine was closest to, not only because they were near neighbors but because their minds ran in similar directions. You didn’t know who lived next door to you in the Manhattan of today, so it was a joy to run into Ruth on the street, striding along in her Ferragamo shoes, or to bump into her in one of the aisles at d’Agostino, coming toward you behind her overflowing shopping cart. There was a coffee shop on Madison where she and Ruth had many a sandwich together, and they often walked, meeting by chance, down to Washington Square, maybe not even talking very much, but just being together. Ruth was your typical Jewish princess, with a vivid little face like an Irish colleen. You would have sworn she came from County Cork.
    Now Ruth was having migraines.
    Meryl was tall and thin and broad-shouldered, big-boned and flat-chested. Regular features, an oval face and not pretty except when she smiled, then a kind of radiance came over her face. She was the one with really tough times behind her. She had gone into computer programming, eased into a top-flight job at IBM and then, thrown over by a man she loved and had planned to marry, went into a tailspin. Funked out in