Her exhausted legs fell on Mary Alice's back. And only then did her friend's eager-eyed, excited face rise from her bunting lap and look with love and devotion into her eyes.
"Annie…" Mary Alice said in a husky voice. Her eyes were out of focus. As she raised a hand to her own forehead Nan could see it trembling. She put both hands on the desk; she needed the support, obviously-her head must be reeling with the effort
Nan sat up. She wasn't sure where she got the strength. And she took Mary Alice's tired head between her two hands, gently, ever so gently, and kissed her first on the brow, then on each cheek, then on the mouth-still hot and wet from her own juices (why in heaven's name did she find that so sexy?).
And, getting down, pulling the other leg out of her pants and standing in sandals and braless top before her friend, she said, "Come." And she led Mary Alice gently over to the bed.
"No, honey," Mary Alice said weakly, "no, I've got to go, baby. I've got work to do…"
'Toothing's that important" Nan said. "Everything, will keep."
"But baby…I've got to get the bank deposit to the bank…I've got the power and light check, and the gas company check and the telephone company check to cover, and I've got to get to the tax lawyer and make sure we're going to have enough to cover the franchise tax for the period, and then I've gotta make the note on the house and the place here. You can't understand. It's all coming due right now, and I don't really have the money, sugar. I'm having to kite checks all over the place and hope to God nobody catches me at it"
"Sweetheart… "
"Oh, baby, you just don't know. You just don't know. I love this place so much, and I've worked so hard on it and even after, like, all these years of it, I'm still just barely ahead of the cops and the tax man." She sat down, heavily, on the bed, her face disconsolate, her eyes on Nan's. "Just when I thought I was gonna get ahead for a change, somebody called for an audit last year. Then the city condemned a couple of buildings. And I had to hock my shirt to get the variance, and an extension, and pay off a couple of guys to keep the city off my back, and there I was back in debt again right up to my eyes."
She looked up at Nan, a wistful expression on her face, her eyes briefly sweeping down to take in Nan's naked legs and crotch; this brought a brief little smile. "Gee, you look sweet You look so sexy. You always did. I swear to God, honey, I don't blame Max and all the girls for takin' a shine to you. Even if I didn't know you I'd want to make a pass at you. And sugar, Tm not jealous. I saw you give Max a look back there. Right?… "
"I…" Nan didn't know what to say. Had she?
"Anyhow, if you want to, I mean, honey, feel free. Max is a nice girl. If she wants to eat your box, I mean, gosh, go ahead, honey, she's kind of nice. We used to be real close friends once, back before I got so busy. Maybe I'm not her type, I mean, for something extended."
Mary Alice reached up and took her hand now. "Jeez, honey. If I looked like you, I'd be putting out for people I can't get close to right now. I'd have that big beautiful Avram, the pottery teacher, down on his back so fast. God, honey, you look so lovely, I mean like that, there, with your bare fanny hanging out and the little beads of juice gleaming on your pussy hair in the morning sunshine. You're so pretty. If I looked like that…Bah," she said. "If I looked like that I known damn well what I'd be doing. I'd be kicking my legs in the air for some rich shtarker in Universal City and putting the toughest price on my fanny I could manage so I'd be able to raise the bread for this place. It's become like an obsession with me. It was just fun, at first. But now…damn it, Annie, I believe in the place. I think ifs something that, you know, ought to be here. People ought to have something like this to come to. All those lonely doctors' wives and all, up there on Pill Hill. I mean, gee, they love me. They love the joint I know it doesn't look like much."
"It looks great sweetheart," Nan said. She stooped to pick up her pants, slipped one foot into a pants leg. "It's a sweet place." She stepped into the other leg and pulled her pants up, shivering (with a little grin at Mary Alice) when the crotch of the pants touched her still-tingling genitals.
"Well…it will, anyhow. Soon. One of these years. Tm going to slap some paint on it, inside and out, when the break between summer and fall terms comes. Jf I can keep afloat till then, I mean."
She looked up as Nan sat down next to her. "Oh, gee," she said. "Here I am, telling you all my damn troubles. I didn't mean to do that, honey. Gee, I hope I didn't bring you down. But I…I just don't have much of anyone to talk to these days, you know. Is that silly? When I have all these dear friends around? And I can't find anybody to talk to in spite of all that? Sounds stupid, but it's true. How can I tell them my troubles-about this joint, I mean? They've got their lives invested in it, just as I have mine. Can I go telling them we've been on the verge of closing for a year now? And shaking them up? When the one thing I gotta provide for them-I mean really, not just the roof over their heads-is the sure knowledge that the joint's gonna be here next term and they'll be able to eat regular? I mean, it's not like they're starving. Max has commissions. Zora can always go back on the stage. And Avram had a nice little business of his own until his wife divorced him and the courts busted up his business to give her half the assets. He could get it together again. But these guys count on me. They trust me."
"Sure they do, sweetheart," Nan said. And she was thinking, I've got to do something nice for Mary Alice tonight when she comes home from work. like fix her a nice dinner, and get a nice bottle of some really good wine. And give her a really wonderful loving to help her sleep…
It didn't occur to her once to reflect that she was thinking the way she'd think if she were hving with a man. Or that the "little surprise" was the kind she had once planned for Ed, back when they were young and full of the kid joy of playing house. He'd be the big papa, and she'd be the little mama, and he'd come home tired after work and she'd make it nice for him. Or that her mind, without a moment's question, had cast Mary Alice in the role of husband and herself in the role of wife.
Perhaps it was this strange confusion of roles that kept her from coming to the other, more instantly obvious, realization that she could, right this moment, solve every one of Mary Alice's problems of the moment with an idle stroke of her pen…
Chapter 8
Mary Alice's "business" for the afternoon, however, was to take her on a big round of errands from Glen-dale, in the Eastern part of the Valley, to the farthest corner, a dusty town called Chatsworth, with a detour well to the north, outside the. Valley in the Grapevine foothills, to pick up some building materials in Newhall. She asked if Nan wouldn't like to go-but Nan, her "surprise" firmly in mind by now, begged off. She'd stay behind and fool around the place.
So Mary Alice drove off just as the afternoon was getting warm and smoggy-goodness, the sky did get gray and overcast with the stuff, even on a hottish day, only with no loss of heat in the process!-and Nan sat down at an empty desk in the office out front, scribbling a shopping list, organizing her afternoon. She'd have to get a car-rent it, lease it, buy it, it didn't matter-before long. For now, it appeared, there was a supermarket not far off, and she'd shop for a really nice meal that evening. Then she'd come back and put their hving quarters in apple-pie order and have the place spotlessly clean when Mary Alice got back that evening. It'd be a nice day, with a particularly nice evening at the end of it She found she was humming a happy little song as she wrote; and, to tell the truth, she hadn't been so happy-felt so fulfilled, really-since she and Ed were young lovers, with a newborn baby and a happy little love nest. (Little! It had been the size of a railroad station, and she had never, ever, felt at home in it) She felt healthy, eager, full of vigor and bonhomie. What a happy visit this was going to be!