was wearing her hair in a simple braid again, with soft wisps of blond fluff framing her face, her makeup was simple and in good taste, but everything she wore, from her jewelry to her boots looked like something out of Vogue, and Vanessa couldn't imagine her that way, as she laughed and sat down. Vanessa could see that Jason was impressed too.
“We've been shopping an awful lot,” Anne's voice was as soft as it had always been, and she looked at Bill quickly with a shy glance, as he laughed. “He's been spoiling me too much.”
“I can see that.”
She ordered a Dubonnet, which was the only drink she liked, and Vanessa and Jason had already ordered scotch. Bill had a martini on the rocks, and Gail had white wine, and they all chatted amiably about nothing much. The young people reminisced about Lake Tahoe almost two years before, and Anne asked Jason about his job. He had timed it all perfectly. He received his Ph.D. weeks after he turned twenty-six. He had successfully evaded the draft for more than eight years, and now he had a job teaching literature at NYU. It didn't excite him very much, and he'd been doing it for the past year. He was still working on his play, but he was getting nowhere with it.
“I keep trying to get Vanessa to collaborate on it with me, and she won't.”
“I can hardly keep up with school,” she explained to Bill, whom she thought pleasant and fatherly. She still had another year to go at Barnard. It was all she could think of now. She wanted to finish and get a job herself. She seemed inclined to stay in New York, but Anne suspected it was because of him. They had been together for two and a half years, and she wondered if she'd ever marry him. Gail asked her the same thing after dinner that night and Anne shrugged pensively. She didn't quite understand the relationship they had, she had the feeling they were just moving along parallel tracks, pursuing their own lives. They had no desire for a permanent bond, more important than that, no need. And neither of them ever mentioned having kids. Ail they talked about was their work, their jobs, their writing, his play.
“Sounds pretty boring to me.” Gail shrugged, “at least he's cute.” He was that, but not in a way that appealed to Anne. She thought Bill the most handsome man in the world, and going home in a cab that night, Vanessa shook her head, as she talked to Jason about it.
“I don't understand that kid at all. She's practically a child, and there she is married to that old man, running around in diamonds and a mink coat.”
“Maybe those things are important to her.” Jason couldn't understand it either but he had always thought she was a nice girl. Not as intelligent or interesting as Van, but maybe that was hard to say. She was so young and so withdrawn it was hard to know what she was.
But Vanessa was shaking her head. “I don't think they are important to her. I don't think she gives a damn about any of that stuff. He just wants to give her all that, and she probably wears it to please him.” She was right on that score, she knew her sister that well, the only one in the family who would have loved the glitter and the furs was Val, and eventually Greg would have liked the good life, if he'd lived, the others had simpler tastes, and their parents did now too, contrary to their early life. But it had no importance for them anymore, hadn't for years, Van knew. “I just don't see what she sees in a man his age.”
“He's awfully good to her, Van, and not just materially. He can't do enough for her. If she's thirsty, she has a glass of water in her hand before she can speak up, if she's tired he takes her home, if she's bored, he takes her out to dance, to Europe, to see friends … you can't beat that.” He smiled at the girl he loved, suddenly wishing he did more for her. “A guy his age thinks of all that stuff, he's got nothing else to do,” he teased and she laughed.
“That's no excuse. You mean I don't get a diamond ring the size of an egg?”