Across from her Louise, the receptionist, said suddenly, "Say, Annie. I hope you don't mind my asking. What do you do?"
"Do?" It wasn't the kind of question she was used to.
"Well, I mean…most of us here are…well, like, into something. I mean, Mary Alice's thing is this place, si monumentum requiris circumspice, you know, heh. And most of the teachers are, like, really wrapped up in their thing. Me, I'm writing a novel nights. Mary Alice lets me use the typewriter when I'm done here, and I get in a couple of hours every night. I…I was just wondering."
"Gee," Nan said. "I…well, I'm sort of just beginning to find out. I've been a housewife for a number of years. But my husband died a couple of years ago, and my daughter's in boarding school. I guess you'd say I'm kind of at loose ends."
"Well, you've come to the right place. If you're connected with the place you get to take classes free if you want them. I'm still shopping around for something. I'm not the dance-class type, but I could get something out of painting maybe."
"I think I might just look around, at that," Nan said, smiling. "I guess, when you come right down to it, I must have a lot in common with the girls who take classes here. I mean, the first part of the marriage life either failed or over for some reason, and nothing to do. You can grow old fast that way if you don't keep busy."
"Right," the girl said, her fingers beginning to fly over the keyboard again. "Anyhow, that's what we're here for."
Nan thought about it on the way down to the store on foot. It would be kind of fun to get involved with something, even if you weren't much good at it She'd had a fair hand with clay as a girl-it may simply have had something to do with the fact that she'd had a schoolgirl crush on the guy who taught ceramics and sculpture-and maybe she'd wind up throwing pots in Avram's little studio for a while or doing figure statuettes with Max. She imagined she could have a lot of fun with either discipline. It didn't hurt either, that she knew (she now admitted to herself privately) that she was strongly attracted to both.
But she thought about that too, as she bustled about the store filling her market basket While she was here it would be the right thing, of course, to stay with Mary Alice. She had no intention of making her friend unhappy-despite her claims of non-involvement she knew Mary Alice would be jealous if she even looked at another person that way-and…
Thinking about it brought her up sharply, and she found herself halting the market basket's progress so suddenly that another woman's cart rammed her from behind. "Pardon me," she said, and pulled the cart to one side.
Goodness! She was…she'd drifted-as casually as that-into a real, live, lesbian affair. And what was more surprising, she felt no guilt about it whatsoever. It somehow didn't seem at all strange, or "queer," or reprehensible. They were just two lonely girls who needed friendship and consolation, and the sex part of it was just a natural extension of that It didn't feel bad at all. On the contrary, it felt good. No. It felt wonderful. She felt like a human being again, tike a whole woman for the first time in years.
Wasn't that it itself something wrong? Shouldn't she be feeling some sort of shame? She asked herself this, and was again surprised to hear herself say no, not at all. "Ii it feels good, do it," the saying went among her daughter Mickey's friends. She'd put that saying down in the past Now she wasn't so sure about this or anything else. Now Mickey's little rule of thumb, which sounded so dangerous when teen-agers said it sounded like good sense.
She asked about cabs; there weren't any, they told her, so she packed her stuffed bags in a shopping cart and, in full defiance of the law cited on the wall of the store, proceeded to roll the cart down the street heading for the school
And, with her progress slowed by the necessity of worrying the heavy cart up and down the curbs at street corners, she let her mind run in other directions.
What (her mind said to her) if she did make friends with the enigmatic Max, the sculptress? What if she did decide to go to bed with her? What if…? There'd been something just incredibly sexy about the scene this morning. It hadn't been the way things had been in life class, back in school. There the model's nakedness had been impersonal, and their own participation in the class so dehumanized a thing it'd been impossible to think of the nude girl on the stand as being anything but a series of planes and curves to try to render in charcoal or pastels. The model had been bored and sullen and totally somewhere else, as far as her own participation in things was concerned. And Nan-who had had troubles with line, with getting her facility up in drawing-had been so busy trying to get something, anything, done, in a three-minute pose, that she hadn't had time to think of anything.
It certainly hadn't been that in Max's class. She'd never seen a teacher touch the model before. And it hadn't been a cold, impersonal sort of touch at that-despite the abruptness of her words. Nan had the strong feeling that only real passion of some kind would get any other kind of tone out of Max, who seemed to have matter-of-factness built into her voice.
But not into her eyes, and certainly not into her strong and capable hands. And, cool voice or no, she had a way of letting you know what was on her mind, all right Nan felt her face flushing as she thought of the interview this morning. Perhaps it would be the best thing to think of this as being a short visit-maybe a week or ten days, no more-and then go back to her life in the East But then, she thought on the other hand it was a cute place, and the people are nice, and maybe it would be fun to do a little craftsy dabbling now…
Back at the place she stowed the groceries in die icebox and pantry and settled down to giving the place a nice sweep up. For this she shucked her pretty sports clothes; Nan liked to clean house naked. This had been a habit ever since the days when she'd locked the door to keep even her girl friends out to keep them from seeing her. It was, she'd thought at the time, something of a necessity for a poor girl in school; yon didn't get your all-too-expensive clothes dirty that way, and yon didn't fatten your already prohibitively high cleaning bin. When yon were done you were dirty all over, perhaps, but then it was the matter of a moment's work to pop into a nice hot shower and get deliriously clean again.
She really leaned into the broom now, getting up the dust and when she was done she gave die place a thorough mopping. As she mopped the kitchen it was the natural thing to do to put on a pot of coffee, and when it was done she poured herself a cup even before heading for the bathroom to run the hot water.
As she did she heard a soft step behind her. "Mary!" said a familiar voice. Then it said, "Oh."
Nan whirled. "Oh, Myra." She put down her coffee and reached for something to put on; then she remembered she'd left everything in the bedroom.
"Oh, don't mind me," the girl said with a friendly smile. "I like to clean house that way too. My, though," she said, with an appreciative glance down Nan's front "I certainly was right You'd make a lovely model. I certainly came to the right place."
"Oh?" said Nan, blushing. She picked up a dish-towel and held it over her body, feeling awkward. "I…I'll be back in a minute when I've something on." She started for the door, but Myra stopped her with a gentle hand.
"No, no, sweetheart, don't put anything on for me. Not unless it makes you feel bad. I like it You're very pretty. I…well it's a funny thing. Life is full of silly coincidences."