Three Women

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Authors: Marge Piercy
Tags: Fiction, General
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interesting-looking, in which she entertained, on the occasions she had time and energy to do that. She had exercise gear. Almost everything was ordered out of catalogs, because she found shopping tedious. It was always too hot in department stores. It took hours to find anything, and then they would be out of size eight. Finally she dressed as if for class (rather than court): nice pants, a chenille top, and a silk blazer. Earrings and pendant. She avoided looking in the mirror and marched out of her bedroom.
    “Where are you going?” Elena asked suspiciously.
    “I might be back for supper, I might not.” She paused. “I almost certainly will be back. But I’m not sure.”
    “I’m going out with this guy, Roy, so I won’t be here for supper anyhow. But where are you going?”
    “To meet a friend.”
    “What kind of a friend? This is that guy who called from California, isn’t it, and you’re dressed up for him. Who is he?”
    Suzanne shrugged, a little flustered. “I hardly know him.” She yanked on her coat and ran for the door.
    “So who is he,” Elena called after her, stimulated into curiosity by Suzanne’s reticence. “How do you know him?”
    All right, all right, she would meet Jake and blow their silly thing out of the water and she would save ten minutes every morning. Get it over with.
    The two elevators in the atrium of the Inn were side by side. She was sitting, as she told him on the house phone, on a couch facing them. Two men got out, arguing. A woman and a child. Then the doors opened and a small man emerged, looking around. Of course he was not small compared to her, but still he struck her as small. She realized that both the fathers of her children had been a foot taller than she was. She had never thought about that. Did she have a preference for tall men? Had she had a preference for tall men when she was younger? In years, she had not exercised a preference for men of any sort. He was perhaps five feet seven and wiry, small boned. He had piercing brown eyes in a sharp face. His brows were arched in surprise (what had he expected?) and he was smiling tentatively. He stuck out his hand. “Suzanne, I presume?”
    “Jake?” They shook hands, rather shyly. She asked, “How was your trip?” Then forgot to listen to his answer. His handshake had been firm, his hand warm, almost hot.
    Afterward she could not remember anything they said on the way to the restaurant. When they sat down at a table, he said, “You shouldn’t be nervous with me. I haven’t bitten anyone in several years. And I have been tested for rabies.”
    That cut through her mental fog. She was beginning to feel desperate. They had not had a real conversation yet and she felt herself frozen into mechanical jabber. She was an experienced and competent litigator, seldom at a loss on her feet. She had pulled more than one case out of the fire with a brilliant closing, but here she was unable to make coherent contact. She had somehow expected him to be a vegetarian, but he said he ate just about anything. “Except ham and anchovies. I don’t know why. A childhood antipathy.”
    She pulled herself together. “Have you ever spent time in the Boston area?”
    “Is that like doing time? Sure, I went to Brandeis as an undergraduate. I was born on Long Island and then my family moved to Worcester. But it’s been close to twenty-five years.”
    “It’s a big leap from the Bay Area. Climate, culture, how people relate. Different ocean, different orientation. You face west, we face east.”
    “I thought if you had time, you might take me on a tour and let me look around. Not the tourist things. But neighborhoods. The kind of places I might live and shop and eat and hang out.”
    “I’m free,” she said, although she had planned to work on her brief. “We’ll improvise.”
    The food was good, and he had an appetite. As she began to relax, she began to eat. There was something about his voice, deep and resonant and

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