"She?"
"Yes. Mrs. Fox. Step this way. It'll take just a minute." A limousine throbbed under bright streetlights a few yards from the station entrance. When the chauffeur opened the door, the head of a very pretty woman turned toward Seneca.
"Hello. I'm Norma. Norma Keene Fox. I'm looking for some help." She didn't hold out her hand, but her smile made Seneca want her to. "Can I talk to you about it?"
The white linen blouse she wore was sleeveless, cut low. Her beige skirt was long. When she uncrossed her legs, Seneca saw bright sandals, coral-painted toenails. Champagne-colored hair rushed back behind ears with no earrings.
"What kind of help?" Seneca asked.
"Come inside so I can explain. It's hard talking through an open car door."
Seneca hesitated.
Mrs. Fox's laugh was a warm tumble of bells. "It's okay, dear. You don't have to take the job if you don't want it."
"I didn't say I didn't."
"Well, then. Come. It's cooler in here."
The door click was soft but profound and Mrs. Fox's Bal a Versailles was irresistible.
Something confidential, she said. Nothing illegal, of course, just private. You type? A little? I want somebody not from around here. I hope five hundred is enough. I could go a little higher for a really intelligent girl. David will drive you back to the bus station, even if you decide not to take the job.
Only then did Seneca realize the limousine was no longer parked. The interior lights were still on. The air was cooled. The limousine floated.
This is a lovely part of the world, Norma continued. But narrowminded, if you know what I mean. Still, I wouldn't live anywhere else. My husband doesn't believe me, neither do my friends, because I'm from back East. When I go back there, they say Wichita? Like that. But I love it here. Where are you from? I thought so. They don't wear jeans like that around here. They should, though, if they've got the bottom, I mean. Like you do. Yes. My son's at Rice. Lots of people work for us, but it's only when Leon is away-that's my husband-that I can get anything accomplished. That's where you come in, if you agree, I mean. Married? Well, what I need done only an intelligent female can do. You don't wear lipstick, do you? Good. Your lips are lovely like that. I told David, find an intelligent girl, please. No farmgirls. No dairy queens. He's very good. He found you. Our place is out of town a ways. No, thank you. I can't digest peanuts. Oh dear, you must be starving. We'll have a very good supper and I'll explain what I want done. Really simple if you can follow directions. It's confidential work so I prefer to hire a stranger rather than someone local. Are those your own lashes? Gracious. David? Do you know if Mattie cooked a real supper tonight? No fish, I hope, or do you like fish? Trout's wonderful in Kansas. I think some chicken, fried, might do the trick. We have beautifully fed poultry here-they eat better than most people do. No, don't put them away. Give them to me. Who knows? They might come in handy.
Seneca spent the following three weeks in gorgeous rooms, with gorgeous Norma and food too pretty to eat. Norma called her many sweet things but not once asked what her name was. The front door was never locked and she could leave anytime she wanted to. She didn't have to stay there, moving from peacock feathers to abject humiliation; from coddling to playful abuse; from caviar tartlets to filth. But the pain framed the pleasure, gave it edge. The humiliation made surrender deep, tender. Long-lasting.
When Leon Fox telephoned his imminent return, Norma gave her the five hundred dollars and some clothes, including a cashmere serape. As promised, David drove her to the bus station, his buttons extra gleamy in the sunlight. They did not speak during the drive. Seneca wandered Wichita for hours, stopping in a coffee shop, resting in a city park. At a loss as to where to go or what to do. Get a job near the prison and stand by him? Meaning follow his instructions, apologize for not getting his mother's savings. Go back to Chicago? Pick up her life-before-Eddie? Instant friends. Catch-quick jobs. Temporary housing. Stolen food. Eddie Turtle had been settled life to her for six months, and now he was gone. Or should she just move on? The chauffeur had picked her up for Norma like a stray puppy. No, not even that. But like a pet you wanted to play with for a while-a little while-but not keep. Not love. Not name it. Just feed it, play with it, then return it to its own habitat. She had five hundred dollars, and other than Eddie, no one knew where she was. Maybe she ought to keep it that way.
Seneca hadn't decided much of anything when she saw the first place to hide-a flatbed loaded with cement sacks. When she was discovered the driver held her against a tire, splicing his questions, curses and threats with mild flirtations. Seneca said nothing at first, then suddenly begged permission to go to the bathroom. "I have to go. Bad," she said. The driver sighed and released her, shouting a final warning at her back. She hitched a few times after that but so disliked the necessary talk she accepted the risk of stowing away in trucks. She preferred traveling resolutely nowhere, closed off from society, hidden among quiet cargo-no one knowing she was there. When she found herself among crates in a brand-new '73 pickup, jumping out of it to follow a coatless woman was the first pointedly uninstructed thing she had ever done.
The sobbing-or was she giggling? — woman was gone now. The snow had stopped. Downstairs, someone was calling her name. "Seneca? Seneca? Come on, baby. We're waiting for you."
DIVINE
"Let me tell you about love, that silly word you believe is about whether you like somebody or whether somebody likes you or whether you can put up with somebody in order to get something or someplace you want or you believe it has to do with how your body responds to another body like robins or bison or maybe you believe love is how forces or nature or luck is benign to you in particular not maiming or killing you but if so doing it for your own good. "Love is none of that. There is nothing in nature like it. Not in robins or bison or in the banging tails of your hunting dogs and not in blossoms or suckling foal. Love is divine only and difficult always. If you think it is easy you are a fool. If you think it is natural you are blind. It is a learned application without reason or motive except that it is God.
"You do not deserve love regardless of the suffering you have endured. You do not deserve love because somebody did you wrong. You do not deserve love just because you want it. You can only earn-by practice and careful contemplation-the right to express it and you have to learn how to accept it. Which is to say you have to earn God. You have to practice God. You have to think God-carefully. And if you are a good and diligent student you may secure the right to show love. Love is not a gift. It is a diploma. A diploma conferring certain privileges: the privilege of expressing love and the privilege of receiving it.
"How do you know you have graduated? You don't. What you do know is that you are human and therefore educable, and therefore capable of learning how to learn, and therefore interesting to God, who is interested only in Himself which is to say He is interested only in love. Do you understand me? God is not interested in you. He is interested in love and the bliss it brings to those who understand and share that interest.
"Couples that enter the sacrament of marriage and are not prepared to go the distance or are not willing to get right with the real love of God cannot thrive. They may cleave together like robins or gulls or anything else that mates for life. But if they eschew this mighty course, at the moment when all are judged for the disposition of their eternal lives, their cleaving won't mean a thing. God bless the pure and holy. Amen."