32

Lida yawned and stretched and switched the radio on. It was Purcell, The Fairy Queen. The part where the woman sings: “I will never, never, never never never …”

Lida thought about calling Diana, but then remembered hanging up on her last night. It was just as well. How could she explain the difference between this one-night stand and all the others?

And there was a difference. She hadn’t figured it out yet, but there was.

She sang along with the voice on the radio: “I will never, never, never never never …”

She knelt beside the bed and lifted the dust ruffle. She slid her hand about until she found the little barbells, five-pound weights that she used occasionally to postpone what she had termed the Lucille Felton jiggle.

Lida held the weights to either side of her body and made ever-widening circles. First one way, then the other. She thought of Duvivier, off in some New York hotel room, doing similar calisthenics. There was no mistaking the way his skin stretched over long hard muscle. He had worked at it.

Lida smiled, touching her toes and leaving the weights there on the floor. She would leave early, she decided, and jog around the park before all that Brady State garbage.

Duvivier stood in the oral-hygiene section of the drugstore, absentmindedly holding a plastic container of dental floss.

“You want that, Mac?” a clerk addressed him.

“Mmm? No. Just looking.” He replaced it on the shelf, turning to the row upon row of toothbrushes on display. There were green ones. Blue ones. Yellow ones. Red ones.

His own was opaque gray.

He thought, then, of Lida’s mouth, of its serpent-deep hollows. His hand shuddered along the column headings: Soft. Medium. Firm. Extra-firm.

“You want one of them brushes, Mac?” The clerk was still at his side. He had to ask the question a second time before Duvivier could answer.

“No,” he said.

When Lida got to the campus she discovered Mrs. Semple, the public-information officer, waiting for her. As far as Lida knew, the woman’s first name was Mrs. At least, that was how she signed her name: Mrs. Semple—in a careful backhand stroke. She was the sort of woman who would make eyes out of the O’s in “look” and think it clever. Her mission today was to interview Lida for the All-College Newsletter.

“What does your husband do?” Mrs. Semple asked.

“I’m not married.”

“Oh.” The woman flushed. “I’m, oh, I’m so sorry.”

“I’ll live.”

“I mean, most people are, and so I always ask, you know, ‘What does your husband do?’ or ‘What does your wife do?…’” She waved the ball-point pen about as if she were sinking and that gesture might help keep her afloat.

“It’s okay.”

“It’s a natural assumption. But, of course, don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong with being single. Sometimes I wish I were single myself.” She had a hollow laugh, just short of a whinny.

“Could we get on with this?” Lida said. “My lonely hearts club meets in an hour.”

Mrs. Semple cleared her throat. “What’s your pet peeve?” she asked.

Lida’s mind ran the course. Men who say “Little Boy’s Room.” Men who say “Head.” Men who say “Can.” Men who wash after sex. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said, “I’m pretty easygoing.”

“There must be some little thing.” She sang the word “little” as though speaking to a child.

“Oh, I guess people who get in the express line with more than ten items.”

Semple laid the pen down. “Yes!” she said with feeling. “Don’t you just hate that!”

“Yes, I do.”

Semple picked up the pen and, pressing very hard, wrote it down.

The interview with Mrs. Semple had taken longer than Lida had expected. That meant she might have to postpone her call to Seare and Jolly. Ah, well, she would still have time to search out the Wendolyn book.

She pushed open the library door and went to the little machines that served as a card catalog. She smiled at a sign someone had taped to one of them. “This machine is temporarily in working order.”

They had been Jerry’s idea. He was big on technology. She, as part of the Library Committee, had voted to adopt them. “Come on, Lida,” he had urged her. “The kids’ll love them. They’re just like pinball machines.”

Lida thought about the gadget that monitored his heartbeat. She should have known, damn it. She should have known.

She peered at the telescreen. God, they had it! She copied the call number and proceeded to the stacks.

There were voices on the other side of the column.

One was LaChelle’s. The other, Jame Jackson’s. Lida peeked across the top of a row of books.

LaChelle was putting it to him. “You don’t wanna love me, boy,” she drawled, “well, kiss mah ass.”

“That’s the spirit, LaChelle,” Lida called through the stacks.

“Say, what?” Jame said.

Lida tucked the Wendolyn book in her purse and walked past the desk without stopping at the checkout. “Well, kiss mah ass,” she chanted, going downstairs to the pay phone.

She fished out some coins and did a brief review. Vermouth. And lemon. And Carol Bradley. That was easy enough.

Duvivier was right. It was more fun this way.