by Alice Adams
He tapped on the glass. “Turn around, I want to go back.”
With a quick screech the driver did just that—Jesus, lucky they both weren’t killed right here.
He would call his brother Durham, the stockbroker, first thing when he got back to the hotel. With that thought Raleigh thought too, for the thousandth time, what a total jerk their mother had been. Raleigh and Durham, good Christ! What a really dumb broad. Belle.
Back in his room, Sandy ordered a martini, which he did not really want but he thought that if he could at least get it down he might feel better. More like himself.
Waiting there, looking out the room’s long narrow window, he observed the scruffy palm trees, ragged, tattered fronds that rattled in the ominous November wind, which also swung the large black creaking hotel sign: SUNDAY CHAMPAGNE BRUNCH, ALL YOU CAN EAT. $18.95.
And he thought, as Molly Bonner had before him, This is the worst place I’ve ever been. This is hell.
A Note About the Author
Alice Adams was born in Virginia and graduated from Radcliffe College. She was the recipient of an Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. She lived in San Francisco until her death in 1999.
Books by Alice Adams
Careless Love
Families and Survivors
Listening to Billie
Beautiful Girl (stories)
Rich Rewards
To See You Again (stories)
Superior Women
Return Trips (stories)
After You’ve Gone (stories)
Caroline’s Daughters
Mexico: Some Travels and Travelers There
Almost Perfect
A Southern Exposure
Medicine Men
The Last Lovely City (stories)
After the War
The Stories of Alice Adams