Eleven Kinds of Loneliness Read Online Free PDF Page B

kitchenette. “It’s all right,” she called back. “They’re edible.” And when she came out to serve dinner all her old composure was restored. “I’ll have to eat and run,” she said as they sat down. “My train leaves in forty minutes.”
    “I thought it was tomorrow you were going.”
    “Well, it was, actually,” Martha said, “but I decided to go tonight. Because you see, Grace, another thing—if you can stand one more apology—another thing I’m sorry for is that I’ve hardly ever given you and Ralph a chance to be alone here. So tonight I’m going to clear out.” She hesitated. “It’ll be a sort of wedding gift from me, okay?” And then she smiled, not shyly this time but in a way that was more in character—the eyes subtly averted after a flicker of special meaning. It was a smile that Grace—through stages of suspicion, bewilderment, awe, and practiced imitation—had long ago come to associate with the word “sophisticated.”
    “Well, that’s very sweet of you,” Grace said, but she didn’t really get the point just then. It wasn’t until long after the meal was over and the dishes washed, until Martha had left for her train in a whirl of cosmetics and luggage and quick goodbyes, that she began to understand.
    She took a deep, voluptuous bath and spent a long time drying herself, posing in the mirror, filled with a strange, slow excitement. In her bedroom, from the rustling tissues of an expensive white box, she drew the prizes of her trousseau—a sheer nightgown of white nylon and a matching negligee—put them on, and went to the mirror again. She had never worn anything like this before, or felt like this, and the thought of letting Ralph see her like this sent her into the kitchenette for a glass of the special dry sherry Martha kept for cocktail parties. Then she turned out all the lights but one and, carrying her glass, went to the sofa and arranged herself there to wait for him. After a while she got up and brought the sherry bottle over to the coffee table, where she set it on a tray with another glass.
    *
    When Ralph left the office he felt vaguely let down. Somehow, he’d expected more of the Friday before his wedding. The bonus check had been all right (though secretly he’d been counting on twice that amount), and the boys had bought him a drink at lunch and kidded around in the appropriate way (“Ah, don’t feel too bad, Ralph—worse things could happen”), but still, there ought to have been a real party. Not just the boys in the office, but Eddie, and all his friends. Instead there would only be meeting Eddie at the White Rose like every other night of the year, and riding home to borrow Eddie’s suitcase and to eat, and then having to ride all the way back to Manhattan just to see Gracie for an hour or two. Eddie wasn’t in the bar when he arrived, which sharpened the edge of his loneliness. Morosely he drank a beer, waiting.
    Eddie was his best friend, and an ideal best man because he’d been in on the courtship of Gracie from the start. It was in this very bar, in fact, that Ralph had told him about their first date last summer: “Ooh, Eddie—what a paira knockers!”
    And Eddie had grinned. “Yeah? So what’s the roommate like?”
    “Ah, you don’t want the roommate, Eddie. The roommate’s a dog. A snob too, I think. No, but this other one, this little Gracie —boy, I mean, she is stacked .”
    Half the fun of every date—even more than half—had been telling Eddie about it afterwards, exaggerating a little here and there, asking Eddie’s advice on tactics. But after today, like so many other pleasures, it would all be left behind. Gracie had promised him at least one night off a week to spend with the boys, after they were married, but even so it would never be the same. Girls never understood a thing like friendship.
    There was a ball game on the bar’s television screen and he watched it idly, his throat swelling in a sentimental pain