Read Online Nowhere City by Alison Lurie - Free Book Online

dressed in beatnik clothes. “Come on, here’s a cart.”
    Paul followed Ceci as closely as he could so as not to lose her in the crowd. She was difficult to follow—unobtrusively quick, as at her job in the coffee shop—rounding a corner suddenly, sliding her shopping cart between two others, reaching out as she passed to take something off a shelf: a kind of dance.
    Luckily he was tall enough to see for some distance ahead, and Ceci was easy to spot: she was almost the only person here dressed entirely in black—tight black sleeveless jersey; full black cotton skirt. “Now I know what you are!” he had exclaimed as she got into his car. “You’re a beatnik.” Ceci had made no reply, but when they were on their way to the market she had said, “You have to have names for everything, don’t you? First you tell me I’m not a waitress, and now you tell me I’m a beatnik.”
    “Well, hell, you’re dressed like a beatnik,” he had replied agreeably. “And this A.M. I was dressed like a waitress.” Her voice was still flat. “Yeah, but; damn it—” Paul smiled, shrugged his shoulders and put out his hands in the gesture of a simple man bewildered. The car swerved to one side; but he caught it. They both laughed. “I don’t pick up on you yet,” Ceci said, smiling directly at him for the first time that day. “It takes a while,” Paul replied. Suddenly he felt better, even euphoric. The depression that had come over him during the brief, disappointing cultural discussion they had just had in a noisy restaurant—a shouting of conflicting reading lists, really—had lifted.
    He was standing still, and Ceci had disappeared again. People pushed against him and bumped him as they passed with their loaded shopping carts; being without a cart himself, he was particularly vulnerable. He started walking down the aisle past shelves of pet food, ranks of brilliant cans and boxes in front of which stood pet lovers selecting from among the full-color portraits of eager, affectionate dogs and sensuously cute kittens.
    He rounded the corner. There was Ceci over there, beside a pyramid of canned fruit. She saw him and waved. God, she was pretty enough to make one dizzy. But more than that; her manner towards him, at certain moments, seemed to promise a rather immediate intimacy. She looked at him right now, as she had in the car, as if she wanted and expected to get into bed.
    “It’s really great of you to bring me here,” she exclaimed as he came up. “Shopping without a car is such a drag. I only wish I had the bread today; I’d clean out the whole store.”
    “Don’t overdo it,” Paul said, smiling. “I’ll take you shopping again.”
    “You will? Big.” Ceci put her hand on Paul’s wrist and looked up at him with eyes circled in black like a kitten’s. “You really are a good guy, aren’t you?” she said.
    “I hope so,” Paul replied, covering his sudden sexual excitement. “I don’t know.”
    “I’m nearly through. I only want to grab some melon for our dessert. Come on.”
    Our dessert? Does she think I’m coming to dinner? But I can’t do that: I have to go home. Or has she got someone living with her?
    Ceci let go of his wrist. Released, but still caught, he followed her down another aisle and out into the fruit and vegetable department. Paper turkeys and pumpkins hung from the ceiling, in celebration of Thanksgiving; but the counters below were heaped with summer fruit: apricots, damp red plums, and melons cut apart and sweating lusciously under cellophane—cantaloupe, honeydew, watermelon. The time of year gave them a special glow, as of forbidden fruit, out of season. He looked directly at Ceci, and she looked back. Yes: it was going to happen.
    Paul had never thought of himself as slow; in fact he prided himself on his ability to seduce, or let’s say persuade. But he was used to girls who, however much they might like it later, had at first to be convinced. Katherine, for