Susan and Robert's secret date in Palm Springs is the moment Bret sees Susan Reynolds and Robert Mallory together and recognizes their relationship as romantic rather than merely friendly. After watching them leave Susan’s grandparents’ house, he follows them to Las Casuelas Terraza, where their intimacy confirms what he had suspected for weeks. The discovery answers one uncertainty but deepens another: Susan’s relationship with Thom Wright is already coming apart, and Robert has become the catalyst for its end.

Background and Stakes

Susan and Thom had been together for about two years, having started dating in the fall of 1979. They were among Buckley’s most popular students, and their relationship carried the appearance of an established high-school romance. Bret, Susan’s closest male friend, had long been in love with her; he was also closely attached to Thom, whose appeal and easygoing manner had sustained Bret’s unreturned feelings. By September 1981, however, Bret sensed a change in Susan. Their friendship remained close, but a general unease had crept in, and the couple’s former certainty no longer seemed secure.

Bret’s own relationship with Ryan Vaughn supplies a parallel to the secrecy surrounding Susan and Robert. Ryan and Bret had gradually recognized their mutual attraction, but Ryan was private and planned to leave Los Angeles after high school and begin again elsewhere. He had already asked Bret to keep their connection concealed, describing the need for subterfuge. In retrospect, Bret remembers a weekend with Ryan at the house on Mulholland as the last one untainted by what followed. That hidden relationship makes Bret especially alert to the difference between appearances and private attachment, even as he struggles to interpret Susan’s.

Bret Follows Them

In Palm Springs, Bret first sees Susan’s BMW and a white Cadillac outside her grandparents’ mid-century modern house on Silverado. The discovery briefly eases his concern that she might be elsewhere. Then he notices a black Porsche at the curb. He parks across the street, switches off the headlights, and waits in his car as the hours pass. His watchful pause reflects a fear he says has followed him since the beginning of September, though he does not know exactly what he expects to witness.

Susan and Robert eventually leave the house together. Robert opens the passenger door for Susan, then pauses to scan the neighborhood before getting into the Porsche. Bret follows them into town, circles the parking lot at La Plaza, and parks at the other end. He expects them to be heading to Las Casuelas Terraza, a familiar restaurant on North Palm Canyon Drive, and enters after approaching from the opposite side of the street. He takes a seat at the bar before moving into the cantina, where he can see them without sitting openly beside them.

The Date Revealed

Susan and Robert are seated together at a table for two overlooking Palm Canyon Drive. A candle and a single unopened menu sit between them; Susan has ordered a margarita, while Robert appears to have a Coke. The scene looks ordinary, but Bret recognizes that ordinary appearance as part of what makes the discovery decisive. Susan is relaxed, Robert is listening and laughing, and they seem absorbed in one another. To Bret, the intimacy makes clear that this is a date, not a casual meeting between friends.

The sight brings relief because it resolves a question that has been troubling Bret, but relief quickly gives way to sadness. Robert seems happier with Susan than Bret has seen him elsewhere, and Bret perceives no obvious performance in their ease together. Their mutual attention makes the surrounding restaurant feel irrelevant: they appear to notice only each other. The date gives Bret the evidence he had lacked, while making the consequence harder to avoid. Susan and Robert are not merely rumored to be close; they have formed a couple.

Consequences and Significance

Bret understands the meeting against the longer deterioration of Susan and Thom’s relationship. He recalls earlier clues: Susan pulling away, an unfinished kiss, an Icehouse song, and a moment involving a bikini in a supermarket. In his reading, these details had accumulated before Robert entered their lives. Robert did not create Susan’s distance from Thom; he gave it a direction and helped bring a break that had been developing for months into view. Bret’s sadness is tied in part to the pain he expects Thom to suffer, and to his conviction that Thom does not deserve the betrayal.

The scene changes Bret’s knowledge without restoring his sense of control. He has followed Susan and Robert to a public restaurant and watched them together, but what he learns is not a solution: it is confirmation that the relationships he cares about are shifting beyond his power to preserve. The novel’s later account of Thom’s distress at school underscores the approaching cost of the breakup. For Bret, the Palm Springs date thus stands at the intersection of secrecy, desire, and loss: one concealed relationship becomes visible to him just as another, once treated as secure, is nearing its end.