A Certain Age Read Online Free PDF Page A

okay, I don't mind—I could use the exercise." She shook her head adamantly. "Come on, it's not cold out. Walk a little farther. I want to hear all about what you've been up to."
    "I'm not up to anything!" she said.
    "Really? I was just over at the house having coffee with Natalie. She told me you were down here."
    "Oh?"
    "She also told me she's fixing you up with Charlie Twigall. She called him first thing this morning and invited him to her dinner party. You don't actually like him? He's an idiot. His mother's desperate to get him married off—to the right girl, of course. That means somebody rich, Florence! Rich, from the right background, who will do what she says just like Charlie! Have you ever met his mother? Believe me, you're in for a real treat there!" He was in despair. She had never known him to be jealous before; he couldn't possibly still think there was any hope of her having a relationship with him. "You don't think he's an idiot?"
    "He showed me his self-portrait on the bus. He was naked." She knew this would drive Darryl into a frenzy of contempt, particularly if she didn't sound disgusted.
    "Jeez! The guy carries around a naked self-portrait of himself to show to women? How pathetic!"
    "I think he just got it or something. He's very well-endowed."
    "What a jerk!" He kept looking up at her pleadingly, trying to
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    get her to agree. Again he started to cough, this time so strenuously he practically doubled over.
    "What's wrong with you? You should see a doctor."
    "Just some sand in my throat. Sorry."
    She sighed. "How's work?"
    "I have to tell you: This city, it really gets to me. You just see how easily it could happen. I had a family come in yesterday—you know, Fridays I do a clinic at St. Theresa's. This woman was a single mother, two kids. She worked for the phone company. Her husband—boyfriend—whatever—had been abusive. She finally escaped from him, but not before he almost emptied their bank account. So she was living in Flushing; the apartment building caught on fire, everything was a dead loss, and they couldn't live there anymore. For a while they stayed with friends, but that didn't work out. The last of her savings was spent in a few nights in a hotel. So she took the kids and went to a shelter. The first night she got stabbed. So they slept in the park. But she didn't have any place to leave the kids during the day. After a week she hadn't had a shower, she smelled, she didn't have anything to wear to work, nowhere to leave the kids—she got fired. Now she has no savings, no job, she's homeless. You see how easily it can happen, the whole bottom drops out. I mean, a lot of these people, they're not too bright. But others, they're just as smart as you or me. I mean, it could happen to either one of us, you know, if circumstances were slightly different."
    "That's awful. But I don't think it could happen to me. I mean, I'm too determined."
    "Yeah, I know. You think I'm crazy, you think, why am I working for nothing when I could be a big Wall Street lawyer, huh?"
    "I don't know." She shrugged. "I mean, at least I see that the disease of the twentieth century is wanting to be rich. Rich and powerful. You don't get real power as a woman—you still get it by being married to a powerful man. Before, as a woman, you didn't even have that option. You were supposed to be grateful just for
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    being married off before you got to be a spinster. And once you were married off, if your husband didn't beat you, if you didn't die in childbirth, you were supposed to be satisfied. At least I'm honest enough to see the world for what it is and know what it is I'm going after. Since the disease is here, and it's here to stay, why pretend that what I want is so dishonorable or distasteful?" Darryl looked sour. Once there had been a taboo against mentioning cancer, or menstrual cycles. "Why are you in a bad mood? You should be grateful that I'm being honest with you." She didn't add that she was being