Love's Long Leap

Paris and Helen took off together in a glorified canoe. Mark Antony and his Egyptian lady friend floated around in a perfumed barge. Louis XIV used a carriage, and Edward VII a train. Leander swam -- and drowned. Today's expense-account philanderers pursue their sinful pleasures more securely via jet.

The jet has speeded up the art of assignation in a way that would have dazzled the oldtime long-distance lovers; in the time an older generation took to get to Atlantic City or Brighton, their descendants are making it to Athens or Addis Ababa. In fact, a man and his mistress no longer need live in the same city, when they can arrange their meetings a few thousand miles away from either of them.

Separate Planes. Getting there is nowhere half the fun. Many couples follow the prudent practice of flying under separate names -- it looks better in case of an accident or some other untoward breach of security (though airlines have painfully learned never, never to drop an executive's wife a friendly follow-up note asking how she enjoyed her trip). Others avoid any possibility of embarrassment by taking separate planes. For expense-accountsmen it is, of course, cheaper to take the same plane. "It's almost becoming standard practice," explains a U.S. travel agent in Paris, "for American businessmen to reserve two tourist-class seats and charge their companies for one first-class--making up the difference out of their own pocket. And it's not their wives they're taking along on those trips to Italy and Spain."

Those trips to Italy and Spain, as well as to most other European countries, present something of a hotel problem, in that police regulations usually re quire the desk clerk to collect the passport of each guest. This may be handled by taking separate rooms or by relying on the continental savoir faire of the clerk, who checks the man's passport only and waves the lady through.

Love's long leap can be confusing, too. One playboy is said to have phoned a young friend in Rio to invite her over for a weekend, neglecting to say where he was calling from. She blew into his Paris apartment half a day later, only to find that her host was in Rome. No matter. She hopped another jet, was in Rome in two hours.

Lost Hideaways. Given the time and the girl--how about the place? For West Coasters, Mexico is the most popular foreign country, but obviously Acapulco is not the best spot to avoid running into Uncle Max. This has given a certain vogue to a number of fishing villages in Baja California. But for the cognoscenti, this year's top country is Guatemala, where the most In resort is Chichicastenango ("Chichi" to the real swingers).

For East Coast Americans, Paris is still the most popular place--but it is no hideaway. Indeed, it is growing increasingly difficult to find anywhere that is. Most travel agents have a few special suggestions for couples on what is euphemistically called "a second honeymoon."

Says one agent: "For long weekends, I sometimes recommend Agistri--a tiny island not far from Athens. One has to fly to Athens, take a boat to the island of Aegina, then charter another boat to Agistri. The advantage is that it's all very near Athens, so from New York or northern Europe it doesn't take too long. There's another island called Anafi, about halfway between Athens and Rhodes. But even in places like that you can't be sure these days that you won't run into somebody from your wife's garden club."

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