Karen Fowler - Black Glass

Next to the woman on the couch is a man, and this is who Kenneth introduces her to. “Ben Bryant,” he says. “A writer. Ben, this is Linda Connors.” He looks pleased. “A reader,” he adds. “She reads everything. She even reads nonfiction.” He starts to introduce the woman, his hand is opened in her direction, but he never finishes. “And this is—” he says. “Margaret! You made it! Far out!” and he is gone, a little heat remaining where he had been standing. Linda moves into it.

A man behind her is talking above the music in a loud voice. “But Sergeant Pepper is the best album ever made. The Beatles have ennobled rock and roll.”

Another man, higher voice, responds. “Ennobled! They’ve sanitized it. It used to be black! It used to be dangerous!”

Linda smiles at Ben even though she is nervous and he is wearing a thin sweater vest with leather buttons, which she doesn’t think looks promising. “I don’t really read that much,” she says. “Kenneth is easily impressed.”

“Melanie and I,” says Ben, “were just discussing the difference between male and female writers. I was comparing Jane Austen to Joseph Conrad.”

“I like Austen,” says Linda warningly.

“So do I. What she does, she does well. But you must admit the scope of her work is rather limited.”

“Must I?” Linda’s uncomfortableness is disappearing.

“The difference between the two, as I was just telling Melanie, is the difference between insight and gossip.”

Linda looks at Melanie. Her face is impassive. “I’m not so sure a clear distinction can be made between the two. Who knows more about people than the gossip?”

“You’re playing devil’s advocate,” says Ben comfortably.

“I’m expressing my true opinion.”

Ben settles back in the couch, crossing his arms. “I don’t want you to think that I think the differences are biologically determined. No. This is a sociological limitation. Women’s writing is restricted because women’s lives have been restricted. They’re still capable of writing well-crafted little books.”

Linda opens her mouth and Gretchen’s voice comes out. “You’ve lived a pretty full life?” she asks.

“I’ve traveled. Extensively.”

“So have I. I was in Indonesia when Sukarno fell. Grown men circumcised themselves in the hope of passing as Muslims.” Linda sees Ben shift slightly in his seat. “Circumcised themselves. Someday I may want to write about the things I’ve seen.” She has won the argument, but she has cheated to do it. Linda has never even been to Santa Barbara. Dr. MacPherson was in Indonesia when Sukarno fell and has described it so vividly Linda knows she can carry it off if she is challenged. She isn’t. Ben is looking at his lap. Linda’s mood is black. She has been at the party maybe fifteen minutes and already she has betrayed her sex. Worse, she has betrayed Jane Austen. She isn’t fit to live. Linda punishes herself by taking a large sip of beer. And another. She holds her breath and swallows and decides she has paid enough. She abandons her glass by the couch and pointedly directs her words to Melanie. “Excuse me,” she says. “There’s someone I have to talk to.”

Linda shoves her way over to the stereo and Kenneth. “Don’t introduce me to any more writers,” she says.

“Didn’t you like Ben?” Kenneth asks. “Fred, let Linda pick out a record.” Fred Zukini is just about to put the Association on. It is a lucky thing Linda came along. She asks for Big Pink. She wants to hear “The Weight.”

Kenneth turns the music up. He has one arm draped around Margaret; he kisses her on the neck. He smiles at Linda, but it is definitely a get-lost kind of smile. Linda responds, spotting an empty chair in a corner and retreating to it.

She sees Dave again, sitting under the Rembrandt, talking with Dudley Petersen. She cannot quite hear their words, though the young man with the high voice who disliked the Beatles is still clearly audible. “No, no, no,” he is saying. “We’re talking about the complete failure of the dialectic.”

Suzette has found Dave again, too, and in the sudden silence between “Tears of Rage” and “To Kingdom Come,” Linda hears Suzette ask Dave if she can sit on his lap. Well! Linda can’t help feeling this is somehow lacking in subtlety. Her father told her, advice she has never needed, not once, that boys do not like to be chased and he was a boy himself and should know, but there Suzette is, settling herself in, laughing like Simone Signoret, and this appears to be just one more area in which Linda has been sadly misled. The situation is hopeless. Linda looks at her shoes and wonders how early she can go home. In fact, Linda likes Suzette for being so brazenly weird. Gretchen likes her, Julie likes her, Lauren likes her — add them together and it should have been enough to prevent such popularity.

Linda leans back and closes her eyes, listening to the conversations close to her. To her right, two women are laughing. “So he doesn’t have a condom,” one says. “‘I figured you’d be on the pill,’ he tells me and I say, ‘Listen, bucko, we have a saying among my people — the person who plans the party should bring the beer.’ ‘Your people?’ he asks and I say, ‘Yeah, my people. You know. Women.’” The second woman’s voice is soft and throaty. “Probably just never heard women called people before,” she offers.

Farther from her, Linda hears someone suggesting a party game. Everyone is to lie down with their heads on someone else’s stomach and then all laugh simultaneously. Score another one for Gretchen.

She hears Frank Zukini asking some woman what her major is. Penetrating question, Linda thinks. “Drama,” the woman answers. “I’m a thespian.” There is a long pause, and Frank’s voice when he responds betrays shock. “Whatever’s right,” he says, at last.

And then Suzette’s voice, close to Linda’s ear, indicates that Dave’s lap is unoccupied again. “I have a message for you,” Suzette tells her.

Linda sits up and opens her eyes. “For me?”

“Yes. From the Venusians. They’re very interested in you, Linda. They ask about you a lot.”

“How flattering,” says Linda. “Extraterrestrial attention. What’s the message?”

Suzette’s hair is the color of the knight’s helmet and surrounds her face like an aura. “They said not to do anything they wouldn’t do.”

“Suzette,” says Linda, smiling at her, “tell them to relax. I never do anything.”

Dudley Petersen passes. Linda knows he sees her, but he goes in another direction. Still brooding about his ferns. But Mrs. Kirk joins her, carrying her beer in a pewter mug with a hinged lid and a glass bottom. “Marvelous party,” says Mrs. Kirk. “No hippies. Just a lot of nice young people enjoying themselves.”

“I’m not enjoying myself,” Linda tells her. “I’m having a terrible time.”

“It’s because you’re not drinking. Kenny! Kenny!” Mrs. Kirk waves a plump hand and her bracelets ring out commandingly. “Linda needs a beer!”

Kenneth supplies one, giving her an empty glass wrapped in a paper towel at the same time. “The glass is a gift from Dave,” he informs her. “And Dave says not to handle it too much. Would you like to tell me what’s going on?”

Linda takes the glass and her spirits lift ridiculously. But briefly. “It’s evidence,” she says. She watches Kenneth weave his way back to Dave. Kenneth wants to invite the police department, any off-duty officers and anyone they are willing to let out of jail. He argues with Dave about it. Dave is holding the phone clamped tightly together and refusing to release it.

“Hey, Linda.” It’s Fred Zukini. “You still haven’t seen my car. You want to? I got a tape deck, now, and I put a lock on the gas cap and I put sheepskin on the seats.”