A Beauty Read Online Free PDF Page A

on her arm. He opened his mouth to take charge, and then – as if nothing in the world had meaning – the stranger cut in, cut in and took her, just like that, out from under him, swepther away and danced her off to the middle of the room. And Elena didn’t look back.
    “You haven’t asked my name,” he said.
    She said, “Nor have you asked mine.”
    He took her coolness for the light form of mockery he recognized as a prelude to flirtation. He dipped her and twirled her. He pulled her in close and murmured in her ear, “Can I take you home tonight?” He expected something arch in return, as arch as her previous response had seemed to him. But she stopped dancing and turned, wordless, towards the open door. She actually left him behind and he had to quicken his step to catch up to her. He hadn’t meant they should leave at that very moment. The night was still early. But what the hell. Country girls, he thought; their naïveté was refreshing.
    In a corner at the back of the hall, lolling with some other kids on a heap of sweaters and light coats – because an August evening can get chilly – Ingrid Gustafson sighed. At that masculine arm at that slender waist. At those wide, manly shoulders and beside them that wavy, honey-coloured hair. And at the sky past the door, that glassy, cobalt blue. One of the girls said, “I want hair just like that when I grow up.” Ingrid ignored her. She bent her head and held her hands up close to her face with the thumbnails facing towards her. She whispered the things they would say to one another. Slowly she turned both thumbs so they faced each other, touching all the way down. Peter went looking for some boys he could tell his story to.
    The band went on playing, but no one was dancing. The men were leaving, following Nils. The married women flocked toMaria Gustafson and told her they’d always considered Elena Huhtala a modest girl, becomingly willing to hide her physical attributes. The girls who’d gathered around her earlier followed Lillian to the open door to see Nils stalk across the yard and down the road towards the fancy gold convertible. Lillian said she pitied the guy when Nils caught up to them, but nothing came of it. The stranger opened the door and Elena sat herself inside and they drove away before Nils reached them. Everyone stood watching their dust boil up and trail behind them. It was that clear navy-blue time of evening you’d like to bottle up and keep, it’s so beautiful, and the dust looked white against it – like a wedding veil, Aggie thought, but she didn’t mention it to anyone.
    At least the girls still had Lillian to gather around. They still had Nils’s broken heart to discuss, and after a while they dredged up a few practical suggestions for how it could be mended. Doris Knutson volunteered to take Elena’s place that very night, but Lillian thought it could wait. They tutted over Elena a bit, too, but not much more than they usually did. Hadn’t they always figured she was headed for disaster?
    Lillian had once said that if only Elena Huhtala could be seen in black and white, her face sculpted by shadows as Garbo’s was on the screen, they would all have to hold their breath in her presence. Until that Saturday night, Lillian had always said kind things about Elena. She was plain, herself, with a nose she considered to belong on a bigger person, and therefore she was in no danger of disgracing herself the way Elena had begun to do, and when she’d talked about the likeness, she’d meant the Garbo they liked best, not so much the one who’d shown that rangy body and rough side in
Anna Christie
, although they all knew even beautiful women could have their off days, times when they got tired of their beauty and sneered at it and looked as if they’d toss it in a trash can if they could.
    Aggie didn’t know exactly what Elena Huhtala was up to, but she knew she had it in her to do something the rest of them wouldn’t. Doris