By The Sea, Book Two: Amanda by Antoinette Stockenberg

at least
another week.
    The next day he strolled down to Thames
Street into a stationer's and bought a small index file with
alphabetical dividers. Under the name of each new debutante he met
during the next week, he sketched a brief physical description and
a profile of genealogy, expectations, education, likes, dislikes,
spoken and written languages, and favorite sports and foods. He
cross-referenced family connections, business associations, and
club memberships. It began as a game, a way to while away his quiet
hours and a basis for amusing his mother when he got back home, but
it ended as a scientific pursuit.
    Gloria, for example. On an index card Gloria
looked impressive: good education (Concord Academy, Pembroke); good
skills (watercolorist, floral themes—Newport Art Association); good
athlete (equestrienne, Polo Club); good voice (choir, Trinity
Church); good family holdings (real estate, Florida, New York,
Rhode Island); good family memberships (Bailey's Beach, Reading
Room, Newport Country Club); good languages (French, smattering of
Italian); good personality (likes children, pets, Debussy,
Elizabeth B. Browning); good disposition (dislikes nothing, but
allergic to shellfish). And her stock was good for grafting: she
was tallish, with straight teeth, clear skin, slender hands, and
narrow feet. A son's mother's dream.
    All he had to do was to stand in line, which
he had no intention of doing.
    After a week he bid Gloria a more pensive
farewell than he felt, held her look a little longer than was
strictly necessary, and high-tailed it back to New York. He'd been
up to his ears in American gentility; he needed a breather.
Besides, he had promised Sir Tom he'd be aboard the Victoria with him, cheering his beloved Shamrock.
    Geoff headed back two days before the first
race, driving Matt Stevenson's superb new Brewster town car, which
he agreed to take back to his Manhattan townhouse for him. The
Brewster was everything that Amanda's flashy Daniels Speedster was
not: quietly elegant, comfortable, meticulously appointed, a
pleasure to drive. If Geoff had the money, he'd consider one for
himself.
    He decided to take the long way back, just
to draw out the driving experience. Up along the bay and eventually
through Fall River he cruised, past dozens and dozens of mighty
mills—America at its most industrious. He'd not seen anything like
it. Huge buildings with many hundreds of windows to let in passive
light, virtually all of them built of granite, enough of them to
rival anything in the mill towns in the north of England, were
crammed cheek by jowl. Knitting mills, cotton mills, hat mills,
leather mills; mills that produced fabric for curtains and drapes
and clothing for both sexes and their children in every class of
society: it was an incredible concentration of manpower and
economic muscle.
    One, newer than all the rest, caught his eye
because its signage was more prominent than most: Moran Mills. He
drove past at least three other large mills boldly blazoned with
the name "Moran" and a fourth older and smaller one, whose more
modest sign said simply "Moran Millinery". Wouldn't it be ironic if
the mills were owned by Matt's Irish laundress? Geoff resolved to
get her name the next time he saw his friend. In any event, whoever
this Moran was, the person was clearly raking it in.
    But then, this is America. It's what they
do.
    Geoff drove on, impressed anew by the sheer
pulsing can-do spirit of the country and oddly dissatisfied with
the slower, more traditional pace of his own. When he came to an
open stretch of smooth road, he even found himself wishing he were
behind the wheel of Amanda's souped-up, eight-cylinder Submarine
Speedster instead of the more sedate but reassuring four-cylinder
vehicle he had agreed to deliver for Matt.
    My God, what's happening to me? I'm turning
into a thrill-seeker.
    As if he hadn't had thrills enough during
the war.
    He pushed viciously against thoughts of the
war the way he'd taught