Karen Fowler - Black Glass

The point you raise is an interesting one with its own peculiarly female aspects. The entire issue, women’s perceptions of their own bodies, is strange and complex and one of you might consider it as a possible term paper topic. Let’s collect a little more data and then discuss it further. We’ll pick up the Third Encounter a bit early to give you a chance to see the women together first. And let me just give you this bit of insight to ground your thinking on this subject. There are four women involved in this next Encounter, four relatively intelligent women, and yet all four share the same basic belief that anyone who looks at them closely will not love them. They feel that their energies in a relationship must go primarily to the task of preventing the male from ever seeing them clearly.

Are we ready? All right.

• • •

DINNER IS OVER, and the women of apartment 203 are still sitting around the table. They are holding a special financial meeting. Item one: Someone has made two phone calls to Redwood City and is refusing to acknowledge them. This is of interest only to Linda; the phone is in Linda’s name. Item two: Was the Sara Lee cake which Julie consumed unassisted a cake bought with apartment funds or a personal cake?

Julie’s position is completely untenable. She argues first that it was her own private cake and second that she most certainly did not eat it alone. It is the most flagrant case Linda can imagine of someone trying to have her cake and eat it, too, and Linda says so. Julie is a closet eater and has developed a number of techniques for consuming more than anyone realizes. She will open the ice cream container from the bottom and shovel away unnoticed until someone else tries to serve herself and the ice cream collapses under the spoon.

Julie can seldom decide if she is dieting or not. This ambivalence forces her to rely on an ancient method of weight control. If, after polishing off a chocolate cake, it turns out she is on a diet after all, she throws it up. Of course this step, once taken, is irrevocable. Julie thinks that she is fat, although the whole time Linda has known her she never has been.

“Self-induced vomiting is hard on the stomach lining,” says Gretchen. Gretchen is as short as Linda, but more muscular and athletic. She is a feminist and says so. “This is what finally destroyed Roman culture.”

“Lead in the pipes,” contends Linda.

“What?”

“They used lead in their water pipes. Eventually they were all brain-damaged.”

“The process was accelerated by self-induced vomiting.”

Julie is not listening. She is holding her red hair in her fingers, isolating single strands and splitting the ends. Julie does this routinely, although she spends extra money on special shampoos for damaged hair. Gretchen bites her fingernails. Lauren, who is black and so beautiful that strange men approach her on the street and say, “Hey, foxy lady,” to her, pulls out her eyelashes when she is nervous and has done such a thorough job she now wears false eyelashes even to class. Linda bites her lips. She was told once as a child that her eyes were her best feature; she ceased to have any interest in the rest of her face. And then later she read in Chekhov that an unattractive woman is always being told she has beautiful eyes or beautiful hair. Linda’s most recent compliment is that she has nice teeth. It is hard to get excited about this.

Someone knocks on the door. The women’s hands all drop to their laps. “Come in,” says Lauren.

It is Dave. Linda’s breath quickens slightly. He has brought a penciled sign which he claims to have found Scotch-taped to the doorknob of 201. Attention!! it says. Emergency!!! Clothes drier in basement refusing to fonction! Suzette.

“What do you make of this?” Dave asks. He is wearing a dark blue T-shirt which reads KAHOALUAH SUMMER CAMP — TURN YOUR LIFE AROUND. It looks good on him.

“Suzette lives directly above us,” Linda tells him. “Apartment Three-oh-three. Just a guess, but I’d say she’s got a load of wet laundry and she’d like you to fix the dryer. She’s a foreign exchange student from France,” she adds. “Which explains the exclamation marks.”

Gretchen shakes her head, moves her dark and heavy bangs off her forehead with the back of one wrist. She has to shampoo daily, and even so her hair is oily by evening. “It’s because you’re male, of course. She thinks mechanical abilities are linked to the Y chromosome.”

“It’s shaped like a little wrench,” Julie points out.

“Or maybe she read your aura.” Lauren’s smile is particularly innocent. She examines her fingernails. “I wonder what color an electrician’s aura would be?”

“Bright?” suggests Linda. Dave is looking at her. He is waiting for an explanation. “Suzette’s a little strange,” she tells him. “She communicates with Venusians. She writes herself notes from them; they guide her hand. It’s called automatic writing. I think. And she reads the magnetic field around people’s heads.” Linda swallows uncomfortably. “She’s very pretty.”

“If you like pretty,” says Gretchen. It is a trick question.

Dave dodges it. “I don’t know how to fix a dryer.”

“I’ll tell you what.” Lauren folds her hands and smiles up at him. “You go up there and explain that in person. I imagine she’ll forgive you. Apartment Three-oh-three. Just above this one. You can’t miss it.”

Dave takes his note and edges back out the door. Linda feels her aura dimming around her ears.

“I bet they thought living in an apartment building with nothing but women in it would be out of sight,” says Gretchen. Her tone suggests malicious satisfaction. “Serves them right if it’s just one broken dryer after another.”

“Is the dryer broken?” Julie asks. “I used it this afternoon, fading my jeans. It was working fine then.” She looks at Lauren and they both start to laugh. “Poor, poor Dave. He’ll never leave Suzette’s apartment alive. He’ll walk through that door and one thing will lead to another.”

One thing is always leading to another in Julie’s own romances. The phrase mystifies Linda, who feels that, logically, a gaping chasm must separate polite “Hello, I got your note” sorts of conversation from passionate sex. “What does that mean, Julie?” she asks, perhaps more vehemently than she might have wished. “‘One thing leads to another.’ That never ever happens to me. Can you describe that?”

Julie looks embarrassed, but more on Linda’s behalf than her own. “Oh, come on, Linda,” she says. “You know.”

Linda turns to Lauren. “Tell me about the first time one thing led to another when you were out with Bill.”

“Don’t be a voyeur,” says Lauren.

Julie laughs and Linda looks at her questioningly. “Sorry,” she offers. “It just struck me as funny that you should be accused of voyeurism. You’re the last of the prudes.”

“How the hell can you tell?” Linda demands. “Have I passed up a number of opportunities to be licentious? Alert me when the next one comes along.”

“She’s not a prude,” Gretchen objected. “Just naive. And very smart. It’s an unexpected combination, so nobody knows what to make of it. And, of course, men don’t care about smart anyway.”

Linda rises from the table with dignity. “I’m going to my room now,” she says, “because my presence seems to be having such a dampening effect on your desire to discuss me.” She starts down the hall, and it occurs to her that the route is absolutely identical to the one between the kitchen and the bedrooms in apartment 201. Or 303. She dredges up a parting shot. “There’s no way I’m going to pay for two phone calls to Redwood City I didn’t even make. I’ll take out the phone first. Try me.” She goes into her (and Gretchen’s) bedroom and closes the door. She lies across the bed she has very sensibly decided never to make. It would just have to be done again tomorrow. Every tomorrow. The blankets form comfortable little hills and valleys beneath her. And above her? Directly over her head, one thing is leading to another. She tries to imagine it.