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Oh What a Paradise It Seems She was two or three ahead of him - a remarkably good-looking woman who was an inch or so shorter than he although she wore high heels. She was small enough to be held - a consideration that he had come to think of as practical. Her figure was splendid and endearing. He thought that perhaps it was nostalgia that made her countenance such a forceful experience for him. It could have been that he was growing old and feared the end of love. The possibility of such a loss was much on his mind. When in the movies he saw a man and a woman kiss ardently he would wonder if this was a country which tomorrow or the day after he would be expected to leave. When he saw a couple in the street embrace with deep tenderness or walk delightedly shoulder to shoulder, he would be reminded, for no more than a moment, of his approaching age. This could have contributed to the fact that he thought her presence stunning. Her looks aroused the mot forthright and robust memories: the flag being raised at the ballpark before the first pitch while a baritone sang the National Anthem. This was an exaggeration; but the memories her appearance summoned involved only brightness. Her hair was a modest yellow. Her eyes, when she took off her large dark glasses, would, he knew, be violet. In her rather small features he saw nothing at all like a mountain range and yet here was very definitely a declaration of paradise, either the mountainous or maritime, depending upon one's tastes. He might have been regarding some great beach on another day of the week, but today he seemed to see the mountains, seemed disposed to raise his eyes, his head and brace his shoulders as we do when, driving along some ghastly gambling-house strip, we see snow-covered mountains and feel how enduring is their challenge and their beauty. The components of his life seemed to present the need for a bridge and she and he seemed competent to build one that morning in the bank. She would, as a little girl and a young woman, have been thought very pretty and this was an element - a grain - in the presence. He could have been the winsome girl on the oleomargarine package or the Oriental dancer in his father's cigar box who used to stir his little prick when he was about nine. The music that filled the air of the bank at that hour was a Brandenburg Concerto, played as ragtime. He imagined the smoothness of her naked back its marked absence of declivity - so like a promised land. He wanted her as a lover, of course, and he felt that a profound and gratifying erotic consummation is a glimpse at another's immortal soul as one's own immortal soul is shown. Our lovers are always as tall as or taller than we. He stepped out of line, tapped her lightly on the shoulder and said: "I wonder if you can tell me what the music is that they're playing. You look to me as if you understood music." "You don't understand the first thing about women," she said. She laughed sweetly and dropped some papers she carried. Most of these he saw, when he picked them up, were real-estate advertisements, and when he passed them back to her he asked if she was in the real-estate business. She said yes and he said he was looking for an apartment. She gave him a card with the name Renee Herndon and they returned to their places in line. Believe it or not, I first heard about John Cheever's Oh What a Paradise It Seems at a TV show. It was a book one of the character's was carrying and thanks to my Tivo, I replayed that tiny scene several times until I could make out the name of the novel and then I put it on hold at the library. And I'm so glad I did. This story is all about the main character who is wonderful, sad and interesting. The people who come in and out of his life and what happens to them is such a pleasure to read about that I felt sad when this tiny book was over.

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