The Best of Everything by Rona Jaffe Page B

worked in Port Blair. There was Stan Rogers, hung over, leaning against one of the station pillars, his eyes heavy lidded, his face pink and shiny with razor scrape. He had been a year ahead of Caroline at the high school, which made him Eddie Harris' age, and he had married a Port Blair girl right after graduation. They now had four children, the oldest of whom was three and a half. His shoes were so worn and scuffed she could notice it from here, and she recognized his jalopy parked in the station lot as the same one that had so impressed the girls his senior year at the high. And there were the Litchfield sisters, one fat and one thin, who always dressed identically, as if they thought they were twins, or seven years old instead of thirty, and who worked as comptometer operators in an insurance company. She nodded at them and began to stroll in the other direction.
    There was someone she didn't expect to see on a commuter train-Mrs. Nature, a friend of her mother's and wife of the local dry-cleaning king. "Clothes Cleaned the Natube Way," their signs read, and people who saw them thought it was some new mysterious and healthful process. Actually, the owner of the shops (there were four) was named Francis P. Nature. He was now one of the wealthiest men in town.
    "Caroline! Yoo-hoo!" Mrs. Nature was waving at her. Caroline walked over to her.
    "I'm so glad to see you, Caroline. I was going to call you up tonight, but now I won't have to. I took the Hberty of telling a young man to call you up."
    "Oh?"
    "He used to go out with Francine; oh, not seriously, but just once in a while. She thought he was quite nice." Since Mrs. Nature had married off her only daughter she had mellowed to the extent of sending all her daughter's old beaux to the other single girls in her group. Caroline had never cared much for Francine, an extremely loud and nervous girl, and she was not particularly delighted at the prospect of one of Francine's castoffs.
    "His name is Alvin Wiggs," Mrs. Nature went on. "Now, you may hate each other—I don't know, and I never make promises. I always say to the girls: It's only one evening out of your life, and I'm not

    sending you a husband. Of course, if it works out, and you do find you're just crazy about each other, Fd be dehghted."
    Alvin Wiggs! Caroline thought. Mrs. Alvin Wiggs. God help us.
    "Is he attractive?" she asked.
    'Tou may think so. Francine thought he was very attractive. I ahvays say looks are the same as anything else, it's a matter of taste. He's going to call you at your office. He might even call you up today, because I gave him your number last night. As I say, I never make promises, and you may hate each other. But I think he's a lovely boy."
    "Well, it was very nice of you to think of me," Caroline said politely. It would have been nicer, she was thinking, if Mrs. Nature had asked her first if she wanted anyone to call her up. "What does he do?"
    "He's in his family's business," Mrs. Nature said. "He works for his father. They're in the mannequin business."
    There was the eight oh five, roaring into the station. As usual, it stopped too far ahead of the station platform and everyone had to run to board it. Caroline and Mrs. Nature ran alongside each other, not really together, not really apart. "Oh, I just hate this train," Mrs. Nature panted. "But I have to go into New York to send some wedding gifts. I can't put it off any longer. So many of my friends' daughters have gotten married."
    "I'm going to sit in the smoking car," Caroline said,
    "Oh . . . well, I'll see you, then. I can't stand the smoker. Call me up and tell me how you like Alvin."
    They parted, waving, and Caroline crept into the last seat in the car, next to the window. She looked out through the dusty, smeared glass, and watched as the station and then the outskirts of Port Blair slipped past. Blind dates . . . She could not decide which was worse, the anticipation or the final actuahty. A year ago, six months ago, she