NOTES ON FITZGERALD'S "THREE HOURS BETWEEN PLANES"

The "rewarding himself", the "wild chance", and the "mounting excitement" all serve to raise expectations about Donald's adventures. The reader is led along this stream all the while attentive to Fitzgerald's qualifications. "Maybe" delivers the progression to the emotional intensity while retaining an authorial distance.

It was a wild chance but Donald was in the mood, healthy and bored, with a sense of tiresome duty done. He was now rewarding himself. Maybe.

When the plane landed he stepped out into a midwestern summer night and headed for the isolated pueblo airport, conventionalized as an old red "railway depot." He did not know whether she was alive, or living in this town, or whether that was her present name. With mounting excitement he looked through the phone book for her father who might be dead too, somewhere in these twenty years.

A woman's amused voice answered his inquiry for Miss Nancy Holmes.

"Nancy is Mrs. Walter Gifford now. Who is this?"

But Donald hung up without answering. He had found out what he wanted to know and he had only three hours. He did not remember any Walter Gifford and there was another suspended moment while he scanned the phone book. She might have married out of town.

No. Walter Gifford-Hillside 1191. Blood flowed back into his fingertips.

"Hello?"

"Hello. Is Mrs. Gifford there-this is an old friend of hers."

"This is Mrs. Gifford."

His hesitancy offers the complement by a core of doubt on her part. Under the conditions of the description, there could be no doubt possible on her part. The review exhausts her emotional depth. But the author makes her the foil for Donald's uncertainty. He provides her with a history that contradicts Donald's vision.

He remembered, or thought that he remembered the funny magic in the voice.

"This is Donald Plant. I haven't seen you since I was twelve years old.

"Oh-h-h!" The note was utterly surprised, very polite, but he could distinguish in it neither joy nor certain recognition.

"-Donald!" added the voice. This time there was something more in it than struggling memory.

". . . when did you come back to town?" Then cordially, "Where are you?"

Anticipation is marked by Nancy's growing recognition. These stages capture her emotional involvement. The ironic identification moves swiftly to the familiar invitation. The history is planted in her experience through her memory. If there is a memory, there must be an actual experience, a past, that grounds the memory.

"I'm out at the airport-for just a few hours."

"Well, come up and see me."

"Sure, you're not just going to bed."

"Heavens, no !" she exclaimed. "I was sitting here-having a highball by myself. Just tell your taxi man . . ."

Donald's analysis of the conversation provides an internal literary criticism of the text. The invitation counterposes his "few hours" with her protracted boredom and isolation "having a highball by myself". Donald does not appear to give in to the apparent "dangers" of the situation: "an unattractive woman without friends". His uncertainty makes him seem doubtful as he conspires to create a scene. Since he associates the highball with her youth, he appears to pass over the medium of the seduction. She is married, but the husband is not in the scene. His invisibility adds to seductive quality of the scene.

On his way he analyzed the conversation. His words "at the airport" established that he had retained his position in the upper bourgeoisie. Her aloneness might indicate that she had matured into an unattractive woman without friends. 'Her husband might either be away or in bed. And-because she was always ten years old in his dreams-the highball shocked him. But he adjusted himself with a smile. She was almost close to thirty.

Donald's arrival realizes his misgivings. If he already judged her as "mature" and "unattractive", then the "dark-haired little beauty" is entirely a creation of Donald. The "materialization" reinforces the ideal. Since she gratifies his curiosity, the situation is escalated. She is graced by the light and the glass is still in her hand. The characterization envelops her. Whatever follows can only confirm the dominance of this initial portrait.

At the end of a curved drive he saw a dark-haired little beauty standing against the lighted door, a glass in her hand. Startled by her materialization, Donald got out of the cab, saying:

"Mrs. Gifford?"

She turned on the porch light and stared at him wide-eyed and tentative. A smile broke through the puzzled expression.

"Donald, it is you. We all change so. Oh, this is remarkable!"

The text retains its knowing tease. Donald is not being himself. And he is not the corresponding vision for her. At least, this makes its seem that Donald's vision does not dominate the scene. He is immersed in the seduction while all the while consolidating the terms of it identification. This is Donald's story through and through.

As they walked inside, their voices jingled the words "all these years," and Donald felt a sinking in his stomach."This derived in part from their last meeting-when she rode past him on a bicycle, cutting him dead-and from the fear that lest they have nothing to say. It was like a college reunion-but there the failure to find the past was disguised by the hurried boisterous occasion. Aghast, he realized that this might be a long and empty hour. He plunged in desperately.

Fitzgerald offers critical detail which reinforces the role of the concealed narration. He appears to have ordained the impossibility of a favorable resolution for Donald. In fact, this counter story is an entire fiction so masterfully strung together like a trap. His phrasing pins Donald to the wall in a delightful mix of preteen shenanigans and adult hijinks. The reminiscing is entirely bound up with the author's fabrication: "cutting him dead." Under the circumstances, it appears in their discomfort that she can again cut him dead. But it is Donald's creation that dominates the exposition.

"You were always a lovely person. But I'm a little shocked to find you as beautiful as you are."

It worked. The immediate recognition of their changed state, the bold complement, made them interesting strangers instead of fumbling childhood friends.

For author, reader, and characters, they cannot give in to the simultaneous quality of the seduction. The reference to past events is essential. This means that the seduction unfolds in the real time of the reading. At the same time, it does not appear to be a forgone conclusion. The principles are carried along by the scene and give in to the uncontrollable urges. "The fumbling childhood" friends is pure fiction. Their past exists only to sustain this adult fantasy. The progression restrains the initial "boldness"-"interesting" to "fumbling". With this softening, the complement assumes complete reality.

"Have a highball?" she asked. "No? Please don't think I've become a secret drinker, but tonight was a blue night. I expected my husband but he wired that he'd be two days longer. He's very nice, Donald and very attractive. Rather your type and coloring." She hesitated, "-and I think he's interested in someone in New York-and I don't know."

Her confession only invites further offenses. The condemnation is already too easy. She alternates between being mature and unattractive and the "dark-haired beauty". In this fluctuation, her reality is attained by the summit. No longer secret, as she invites Donald to play the game as well, she is including him in the forbidden pursuit. The unavailable husband adds to the dilemma. She cannot press him to immediately return. But Donald serves as the suitable substitute. Morever, she offers the standard argument for her dallying-his interest in someone else. It is better to do her own bidding than to have her heart cast along the wayside.

Donald is locked in this struggle with jealousy. Nancy is portrayed in a more transparent manner. The narration is entirely hers. But Fitzgerald withdraws her resolution as she must submit to his characterization of her past.

"After seeing you it sounds impossible," he assured her. "I was married for six years, and there was a time I tortured myself that way. Then one day I put jealousy out of my life forever. After my wife died, I was very glad of that. It left a very rich memory-nothing marred or spoiled or hard to think over."

She looked at him attentively, then sympathetically as he spoke.

His story strives for a nobility. He seeks to transform his emotions into something of permanence. This is the fate that Nancy awaits, to be memorialized in his freeze. The seduction feeds on this eloquence. Even if she cannot attain "the very rich memory", the reader holds her to this standard. It might appear that Donald is selling short his actual experience. But the experience is only part and parcel with his vision, the complement to the seduction. Where she can only be judged by the scene, he can separate himself from the set and find solace in his commentary.

"I'm very sorry," she said. And after a proper moment, "You've changed a lot. Turn you head. I remember father saying, 'That boy has a brain.'"

"You probably argued against it."

"I was impressed. Up to then I thought that everybody had a brain. That's why it sticks in my mind."

Dispelling her initial doubts, she now casts Donald for a replay of her past. The present needs to follow from the former destiny. Donald recognizes the strict determination. She is more married to the terms of the seduction. Her denial only adds to the development. Once denied, they will negotiate the terms of negation and "compromise" on the next stage.

"What else sticks in your mind," he asked smiling.

Suddenly Nancy got up and walked quickly a little away.

"Aw, now," she reproached him. "That isn't fair. I suppose I was a naughty girl."

Her naughtiness extends from her father's moral observation. How naughty could she have been? Entirely naughty since her father's morality frame the terms of the seduction, the dowry. So the naughtiness extends to the present offer of he drink that has remained open all this time.

"You were not," he said stoutly. "And I will have a drink now."

If she returned to the world of Walter Gifford, she could avoid the seduction. But her father has only condemned her to that world. After all, what kind of brain could Walter have under such conditions. He hands Nancy the ammunition to propel the scene.

As she poured it, her face still turned from him, he continued:

"Do you think you were the only little girl who was ever kissed?"

"Do you like the subject?" she demanded. Her momentary irritation melted and she said: "What the hell! We did have fun. Like in the song."

Where the kiss previously highlighted the excitement of the past, it now delineates the lines of the present disposition. The apparent resistance of her "irritation" gives way to uninhibited "what the hell". The past reference "did" now becomes only a more extreme case of the present. It locks the development on its singular course.

"On the sleigh ride."

"Yes -and somebody's picnic-Trudy James'. And at Frontenac that-those summers."

Here is the detail that does not seem to fit "Frontenac" For the seduction to appear effortless, its inevitable flow cannot be perturbed by too deep an impediment. That is the author's out. He does not appear to manipulate the scene; he just captures its varied turns.

It was the sleigh ride he remembered the most and kissing her cool cheeks in the straw in one corner while she laughed up at the cold white stars. The couple next to them had their backs turned and he kissed her little neck and her ears and never her lips.

The lips abjured in recollection are now the lips most cherished in sight. Fitzgerald effortlessly moves from her experience to his as if to make them equivalent. It can be nothing but this.

"And the Macks' party where they played post office and I couldn't go because I had the mumps," he said.

"Funny, I don't remember. Maybe I wanted to forget."

Why can't she remember? She had not been offered the same ability to construct her destiny. She has been made the pawn for her father's expectations and later for the delivery of that same destiny to Donald. Under the circumstances, why would she want to forget. Donald cherishes the moment with such intensity because this is critical to this present. But he is already overshooting the present. He grips her in this deviation, whilke the reality might appear to absolve her.

"But why?" he asked in amusement. "We were two perfectly innocent kids. Nancy, whenever I talked to my wife about the past, I told her you were the girl I loved almost as much as I loved her. Bit I think I loved you just as much. When we moved out of town I carried you like a cannonball in my insides."

There can be no innocence from this point on. This is not a youth of innocent curiosity. It is an academy for the inculcation of demeaning put downs. The "cutting dead" is now felt as the "cannonball in [his] insides"

"Were you that much stirred up?"

Not quite as much as he feels "stirred up" at this moment. If he is so stirred does she follow.

"My God, yes! I-" He suddenly realized that they were standing just two feet from each other, and he was talking as if he loved her in the present, that she was looking up at him with her lips half-parted and a clouded look in her eyes.

The half-parting of the lips is a brutal invitation. Under the circumstances the "as if" is no qualification. The characters are swept up in the passion. Fitzgerald needs to savor this moment to make the seduction all the more intense.

"Go on," she said, "I'm ashamed to say-I like it. I didn't know you were upset then. I thought that it was me who was upset."

He is asking her for restitution. And she is so willing for a quid pro quo. The terms for the recompense are entirely those of the recollection: the "throwing over" and the "tongue stuck out".

"You!" he exclaimed. "Don't you remember throwing me over at the drugstore." He laughed. "Your stuck your tongue out at me."

She reverses the resolution

"I don't remember at all. It seemed to me you did the throwing over." Her hand fell slightly, almost consolingly on his arm..

As transpired, the reversal only serves a further stage in the overall progression. She is willing to give in. From the implied kiss to the consoling, the intimacy is only more extreme. But Fitzgerald coyly arrests the commentary from digesting the full impact of their closeness. He unveils only for desire not for understanding.

What has she not remembered. How can her "present reality" correct this immersion in nostalgia.

"I've got a photograph book upstairs I haven't looked at for years. I'll dig it out."

Can the photograph offer a reality that will not yield to the seamless unfolding of their emotions.

Donald sat for five minutes with two thoughts-first the hopeless impossibility of reconciling what differ people remembered about the same event-and secondly that in a frightening way Nancy moved him a as woman as she had moved him as a child. Half an hour had developed an emotion that he had not known since the death of his wife-that he had never hoped to know again.

The critical reading needs to invert this assertion; the text reconciles the incompatible memories. But to underline this shared experience is to admit to the seduction. Moreover, it lock Donald in the scene in which he is only a part-time player. Without this convenient outside, he could never attain certainty of judgement. What photograph awaits but the incriminating photograph of these events themselves.

Side by side on the couch they opened the book between them. Nancy looked at him, smiling and very happy.

"Oh this is such fun, she said. Such fun that you're so nice, that you remember me so-beautifully. Let me tell you-I wish I'd known it then! After you'd gone I hated you."

The past fun is replaced by present zeal. Again, the recollections qualify the flow. The excitement builds through a sequential order. They are "side by side" and this reinforces an intimacy. By "opening the book", they further their participation in the seduction. The book mediates the experience by grounding the speculative looks. At the same time, their reactions intensify the progression. Just as tangible as the photo album is his presence: "Nancy looked at him [...]" Her extremes of feeling ("very happy") are affirmed in this association from the album to him. Its intensity is extended by the reference to the past. More than ever, the past is validated only as a highlighting of the present narrative. The focus shifts from the activity to him and then back to her. She names her involvement and measures its effect; "this is such fun." She is being carried along by the experience. But her observation, the "such", accelerates the effect of the passion. Again, the orientation shifts back to Donald. This is all the more ironic due to his initial trepidation: "such fun that you're so nice [...]" She offers him the chance to engage the fever that absorbs her: "that you remember me so-beautifully". If she cherishes the memory so much, then he can easily acknowledge her comment and, in turn, complement her as the source of this pleasure. Image and nostalgia are thus connected-the more engaging the memory, the more appealing the image. And memory is only a development of their creative license.

The narrative of the seduction requires a continued escalation. But the terms of the story only permit so many variations on the actual events. The only way to exaggerate this past reference is to contradict its intent. Nancy again confronts the past as burden. "Let me tell you-I wish I'd known it then!" She appears helpless in this particular of the tale. Present "knowing" implies the consistency of a past omniscience. Nancy's assertion sketches the features of a view of substance that holds together the described past and present in a single temporal space. From the aspects of experience made available to her, she implies an integral understanding that derives from the consistency of temporal reality. If she could just tap into this flow, then she could have certainty about her perspective. Nevertheless, her reference offers the foundation for the reader's speculation; it suggests a certainty on the author's part. Fitzgerald stitches together these two orientations even if the synthesis threatens her overall situation. So he restricts her access: "After you'd gone I hated you." All the while naming this juncture, she notes her exclusion. All the while, Donald listens to her plea and can easily grant her a hoped-for absolution.

"What a pity," he said gently.

He forgives her so that she may indulge in a more grievous offense.

"But not now," she reassured him, and then impulsively, "Kiss and make up-"

The abjured kiss from the past story is now emblazoned with all its present glory. Nancy playfully suggests that the kiss does not have the same currency in present drama. But she redeems its value. She admits that this is a sordid little tale, a dirty story.

". . . that isn't being a good wife," she said after a minute. "I really don't think I've kissed two men since I was married."

In continuing to demonstrate the conditions of temporal continuity, she fills in for the time between her marriage and the present. This time period requires this characterization in order to serve the seduction; it both avoids and beckons the resolution. Her "innocence" stands in contrast with the sharp edges of this assignation. Even if the description is not accurate, it achieves it infallibility by its style: "I don't think [...]"

He was excited-but most of all confused. Had he kissed Nancy? Or a memory? Or this lovely trembly stranger who looked away from him quickly and turned a page of the book?

The report affirms the kiss, but we have no actual detail of it. "Had he kissed [...] a memory." Of course, but in the terms of story telling, the memory is real. the only experience worth dealing with. At the same time, Fitzgerald does not want to give in to the idealism. That would upset the basis of his moral commentary.

"Wait!" he said. I don't think I could see for a few seconds."

Again, Donald turns the focus back to the pictures. This reinforces the link from pictures back to the original events. The event exist only in the terms of the story-telling. And Donald has shown a method whereby the ways of the seducer can be inculcated in his audience. But he aspires after a moral understanding. So he returns to his analysis of real experience. He cannot see the reference point for their experience. And her speed of page turning denies him the accompanying pleasure. This is somewhat the imperfection in the chain of associations. It seems to absolve both of them in the previously observed impossibility. Only the author has the access to the resolution. And he guarantees that story will deny them that reassurance.

"We won't do this again. I don't feel so very calm myself."

The amusement appears to move much faster than the ability of the principle to absorb it all.

Donald said one of those trivial things that cover so much ground. "Wouldn't it be awful if we fell in love again?"

For what it is, they have already fallen again. They seeks reassurance, but in their disquiet, they remain in their lapsed states. The silliness of the declaration acquires a nobility by their unsettled natures.

"Stop it!" She laughed, but very breathlessly, "It's all over. It was a moment. A moment I'll have to forget."

Under the immediacy of the passion, this exaggerated moment cannot be forgotten. They now draw their identities from the emotion. Donald's realization of the ecstasy is developed from a more complex argument about his anticipation. As such, the seduction has its resolution. They have already engaged the illicit. So the story must be sabotaged. Donald's understanding of his jealousy has many more layers than have been attributed to her absorption by this nostalgia.

"Don't tell your husband."

"Why not? Usually I tell him everything."

On the initial terms, this would be a further level of the seduction. But Fitzgerald needs to arrest its progress. Rather, than simply emphasize her deviousness, he now provides a understanding from which she is excluded.

"It'll hurt him. Don't ever tell a man such things."

"All right I won't."

In a sense, they agree to end the assignation. But this would contingent on no further motivation. The situation has already opened up such a path.

"Kiss me once more," he said inconsistently, but Nancy had turned a page and was pointing eagerly at a picture.

But Fitzgerald is moderating the effects while also extending them. The page turned is a "filing away" of the experience.

"Here's you," she cried. "Right away!"

He looked. It was a little boy in shorts standing on a pier with a sailboat in the background.

"I remember-" she laughed triumphantly, "-the very day it was taken. Kitty took it and I stole it from her."

The quality of the picture could offer dynamic for a nostalgic recollection. She remembers with clarity. But the sailboat stands mundanely in contrast with the impassioned memories of his kisses. Donald still cannot see himself as part of this experience. Since her observations do not add to the excitement, Fitzgerald is suggested some other thread to his story.

For a moment Donald failed to recognize himself in the photo-then, bending closer-he failed to utterly recognize himself.

"That's not me," he said.

Why can't he simply follow her suggestion. Here, the author seems to along with the implications of his described reality. He cannot recognize himself because he never was there. On the other hand, his very presence in the picture would lock both characters into the seduction. Fitzgerald has already withdrawn all the capital associated with the tale even as both characters seem held by the transpiring events.

"Oh yes. It was Frontenac-the summer we-we used to go to the cave."

Their initial nostalgia offers a more fascinating locale. But he cannot give himself to this appeal.

"What cave? I was only three days in Frontenac."

He does not have memory of the events. He cannot conjure up the locale. Finally, Fitzgerald totally shuts down the experience.

Again he strained his eyes at the slightly yellowed picture.

The pictures that were so vivid are now seen in their faded form. He is aghast at what he sees. The mischievous boy of this present is not even him. He has been losing his emotional distance.

"And that isn't me. That's Donald Bowers. We did look rather alike.

Of course, it is Donald Plant. The guilt by association is now reduced to simple mistaken identity. But the damning evidence has been so characteristically doctored by the prosecutor, the author.

Now she was staring at him-leaning back, seeming to lift away from him.

"But you're Donald Bowers!" she exclaimed; her voice rose a little. "No, you're not. "Your Donald Plant."

For him not to be "Donald Bowers", he loses the previous appeal and simply seems desperate. The fabric has completely unraveled.

"I told you on the phone."

She was on her feet-her face faintly horrified.

"Plant! Bowers! I must be crazy. Or it was that drink? I was mixed up a little when I first saw you. Look here! What have I told you?"

The author provides the incriminating evidence against her. But now she turns the tables. She had used the alcohol to make the adventure seems so inviting, but now she appears scandalized. Rather, than concentrate on a counter-condemnation of him she asks "What have I told you?" This confession seems more severe anything in her darling book. But in defense he hides behind the album.

He tried for a monkish calm as he turned a page of the book.

From this point on, there is no turning pages. The images no longer exist in the book.

"Nothing at all," he said. Pictures that did not include him formed and reformed before his eyes-Frontenac-a cave-Donald Bowers-"You threw me over!"

And so the descent into the cave becomes his sole refuge-this is his hell. He is cast out of her circle.

Nancy spoke from the other side of the room.

"You'll never tell this story," she said.. "Stories have a way of getting around."

"There isn't any story," he hesitated. But he thought: so she was a bad little girl.

Only the absent picture from the photo album gets Nancy "off the hook". The evidence has been destroyed by the author to maintain his social order. Donald can escape the depths of Frontenac. He does not travel around damaging the reputations of the local women. On the other hand, she faces all the wrath of a final judgement.

Even though Donald is given to the attendant jealousy of the scene, he had in essence overcome the "throwing over". It has nothing to do with her rejection and is entirely a product to her fallen nature that she cannot escape.

And now he was full of wild raging jealousy of Donald Bowers-he who had banished jealousy from his life forever. And in the five steps he took across the room he crushed out twenty years of Walter Gifford with his stride.

Donald obliterates her reality and underlines the qualities of his fantasy. She is the "naughty" one, but he is the one who wants to advance the risk.

"Kiss me again, Nancy," he said, sinking to one knee beside her chair, putting his head on her shoulder. But Nancy strained away.

"You said you had to catch a plane."

"It's nothing. I can miss it. It's of no importance."

"Please go," she said in a cool voice. "And please try to imagine how I feel."

He cannot imagine how she feels because her feeling have been entirely subsumed to his judgement. His response is unbearably shrill.

"But you act as if you don't remember me," he cried, "-as if you don't remember Donald Plant!"

"I do. I remember you too ... But it was all so long ago." Her voice grew hard again. The taxi number is Crestwood 8484."

But he is simply emphasizing the desperation of her situation. He has cut a path across her domestic tranquility.

On his way to the airport Donald shook his head from side to side. He was completely himself now but he could not digest the experience.

Under the circumstances, his escape seems somewhat unbelievable. His intoxication with his own nostalgia and her melancholy seemed the perfect combination for a night of disaster. But the authorial intrusion offers the needed extrication from the certain muddle. Nancy is offered no further insight into her environment.

Only as the plane roared up into the dark sky and its passengers became a different entity from the corporate world below did he draw a parallel from the fact of its flight. For five blinking minutes he had lived like a madman in two worlds at once. He had been a boy of twelve and a man of thirty-two, indissolubly and hopelessly commingled.

Donald has acted out his desire but can separate himself from its more deleterious after-effects. His modern world is an acceptance of this madness. When he desires, he is somewhat unconscious. The vain, desiring boy yields to the moral conscience.

Donald had lost a great deal in those hours between planes-but since the second half of life is a long process of getting rid of things, that part of experience probably didn't matter.

Fitzgerald's image of the "emptying out" of the self to offer validity for the Frontenac experience. In review, Donald can cast out the demon. But it is a demon that arose from his very creativity. The creativity becomes real by its separation. It is part of Donald's social standing. He serves the role of author. Nancy needs the verification of the picture book. she does what the images tell her to. A moral image incites a moral girl. Donald creates his naughtiness to entertain himself. Then he can distance himself from the entertainment by his serious message. Nancy cannot create alternative identities for herself. She tries but gets caught counterfeiting. By his way, Donald is both a plant and bowers. He can root, and then uproot himself on discovery. He needs to be exposed; he expects. This gives us the chance to see intimately into Nancy without being seen

All along Fitzgerald appears to underline the impossibility of the seduction. Nancy is married. Donald is so overly to attached to his memory to ever engage her. And he is immersed in the details of his own rejection. These are the very terms of his success. Nancy wants to confess her boredom and through confession, she hopes for liberation from this confinement. She does concoct a story. And she finds a willing listener. In turn, he has caught her attention. She concentrates on his enthusiasm even if she appears to ignore some of the details of his responses.