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Their parting, when it came, was far too abrupt. An announcement sounded over the tannoy: "Now boarding for flight 117." Pamela started, which of course caused her hair to begin to tumble down again. She fumbled frantically with it, pulling a couple of spare hairpins from her handbag and adding them to what must be a vast collection hidden within that elegant updo. With her hair once again secure to her satisfaction, she adjusted her hat and seized her bags.
"Let me get those for you," Jack offered.
"Oh, thank you, but I think I'll be all right," Pamela said. "Your flight is sure to be boarding soon and I couldn't forgive myself if I caused you to miss it." She offered him her hand, and he squeezed it in a firm handshake—but not too firm, because she was a lady. "Thank you for a lovely evening, Jack," Pamela said, and then she was gone.
Jack stood and watched her disappear across the terminal. The feather on her hat bobbed with every step, but her hair looked perfect from this distance; the hairpins must be holding. She looked terribly elegant and virtually perfect. Jack realized suddenly that he ought to have asked her for her phone number, or at least asked if he would ever see her again. As things stood, seeing her again seemed highly unlikely, and Jack felt bereft.
As Pamela had predicted, his flight was announced only a few minutes later. The sun was shining as if to belie all the storms that had raged that night, and he had an exciting week of work ahead of him. He ought to be happy, looking forward to tomorrow. But all he could think of was shining eyes and a tiny mouth that had uttered phrases like "Chablis '59" and "I spent last summer in Bordeaux and Paris. Have you ever been to the Louvre?" with perfect diction. "Shab-lee fifty-nine," he mumbled to himself, but it just didn't have the same ring to it. Nothing could.
For the next few months after he got back, whenever Jack's employer wanted him to travel, Jack begged him to send somebody else. He pleaded illness, a packed schedule, a recently discovered fear of flying—but after a while, the excuses ran out and his boss insisted that he was the only person who could negotiate their contract in Wisconsin.
The departure from Memphis wasn't as bad as he'd expected. He'd nearly been late for his flight, and he'd scarcely had a moment to breathe, much less to think about Pamela. He convinced the company to sign the new contract and flew home, and that was when it hit him. He walked back into the terminal, and all he could think about was Pamela. The softness of happy memories of her mingled with the pain that came from knowing he'd never see her again. She'd been the most beautiful thing in this airport on the day he'd met her, and there was nothing here today that was one quarter as beautiful. He kicked at the luggage return with a gleaming boot. No reason to linger in this godforsaken airport longer than he had to, today; as soon as his suitcase came round the carousel, he was going to blow this joint and go somewhere where he could get properly drunk. There was no need to drive all the way home tonight; he could find a hotel room somewhere, if they weren't all full up for the weekend.
He loaded his luggage into his truck and drove around for a bit, looking for a bar that fit his mood. They were all too bright and loud, full of too much cheer and too little tranquility. He wondered whether any of them would have fit Pamela's personality. Of course they wouldn't have served her sort of drinks, but she might have fit in well enough for all that.
Maybe she'd driven this same street once. She'd told him it hadn't been her first time in Memphis, that she come here a couple times to take care of her elderly aunt. She'd told him that right after she'd finished regaling him with that long story about the opera she'd gone to with her aunt, about some woman who killed the chief of police and then committed suicide by jumping from a tower when he turned out to have betrayed her from the grave, or something, and how one time when it had been staged the actress ended up jumping onto a trampoline instead of the mattress she'd expected. You didn't get that in a movie theater.
She'd made operas sound more exciting than Jack had ever dreamed they could possibly be. He wondered, if he went to one, if he would see half the things she'd described so passionately. Jerking the steering wheel to the left, he made a sudden decision. There were more things to do in town on a Friday evening than get drunk, and he was pretty sure the opera house was only a couple blocks east of here. If he was going to lose himself in memories of Pamela, he might as well do it properly and wholeheartedly.
The opera they were showing was called Peter Grimes. It was about fishing; Jack hadn't known they made operas about fishing. He'd thought they were all about fat ladies committing suicide (except for the Valkyries; he was pretty sure they were more about the riding and less about they dying). But he didn't care what the opera was about, not really. He accepted a program from an usher and tromped down the aisle to his seat halfway back. He settled in, listened to the chatter of people around him and the sounds of the orchestra warming up, and tried to remember that special sparkle in Pamela's eyes.
After ten minutes of listening to the opera, his eyes certainly weren't sparkling, and he found it hard to believe that Pamela's would have been either. The music was all over the place. Every time he thought he'd figured out what the melody was, it went somewhere he hadn't predicted. And for people who were supposedly singing in English, he could scarcely make out a quarter of what they were saying. Why were they singing in English, anyway? He'd thought operas were supposed to be in Italian or French or one of those fancy languages.
He stomped out of the auditorium at the first intermission. He'd seen a bar of sorts in the lobby, and he was going to need a glass of something to make it through the rest of this show.
"Jack?"
He jumped and spun around. "Pamela?"
It was really her. "I thought you didn't go to the opera," she said with a smile.
"This is my first time," he said.
"Maybe not the best opera for your first experience," she said. "Britten is a lot to get used to if you don't know what to expect. What do you think of it so far?"
"I think you're right," Jack said. He was glad she wasn't expecting him to love it; he didn't want to disappoint her, but then he'd rather not lie to her, either.
"Oh!" she exclaimed. "Let me introduce you!" She turned to a couple of elderly women standing next to her. "Aunt Violet, Mrs. Brown, may I present my friend, Mr. Jack Jones. You remember, I told you about meeting him a couple months ago."
"I certainly do," her aunt said. "You don't have to stay for the entire opera if you don't want to, dear. I know contemporary music isn't your favorite. Lizzie and I can get a cab home." She turned to Jack and held out her hand for him to shake. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Jones."
Jack wondered what Pamela had told her about him. It couldn't be very bad, with a greeting like that.
"Shall we?" Pamela said, turning to him with a smile.
Definitely not anything bad at all. Jack offered her his arm, and she led him outside the theater.
"I thought we might get a drink somewhere," she said. "It's so good to see you again!"
"I'm glad to see you, too," he said. She looked just like he remembered. Even her hair was still trying to escape from her hairpins, just like it had been a few months ago.
All those bright and cheerful bars suddenly seemed much more acceptable to Jack than they had a few hours before. He let Pamela pick; he didn't care which bar he went to as long as it had her in it.
The bar they ended up in was a bit more Jack's style than Pamela's, but after a lengthy discussion with the bartender, she ordered a wine she seemed happy with—something from 1963 that Jack had never heard of. Jack sat down next to her and stared at her perfect hands, her shapely arms, her...everything. "I've missed this," he said softly. "You, me...that was the best time I've ever had in an airport by a long shot."
"Me too," Pamela said. "I was wishing we'd been able to spend more time together that day. I'm glad we get another day together, even if I never guessed it would start at the opera."
"You know," Jack said, "last time, I didn't think to ask you for your number."
Pamela smiled again, and her cheeks got very pink. "Well, we'll just have to fix that, won't we?" She snapped her handbag open and took out an enameled fountain pen. She pulled over one of the bar napkins to write on. The ink bled horribly as it soaked into the absorbent napkin, but when she handed him the napkin, he could still distinguish every one of the ten digits she'd written there. "Don't be a stranger," she said.
"I don't plan to," Jack said. "May I buy you another drink?"