Nancy’s Theory of Style Read Online Free PDF Page A

be
supportive.”
    “I’m paying for your assistant, aren’t
I? Can’t you compromise for once?”
    “Whatever, Todd,” she said, remembering
what Junie had said about Todd’s devotion. “I want my car back as soon as your behemoth
is fixed.”
    As she was about to get into the little
car, stuffed with her things, Todd said, “I’m going to miss you. You’re sure there’s
not…you’re not seeing someone else?”
    “I told you already. There’s no one else.
I should be worried about leaving you alone for long. Some slutty girl will set
her sights on you,” she joked. Nancy saw Todd anew for a second, in a strobe light flash, as a big, blonde,
successful manly man, and she realized she was taking a risk leaving him.
    “I don’t like slutty girls. I like you.”
He gave her a dry-lipped peck, his standard kiss when there wouldn’t be a
payoff of sex, and she got in the car.
    “Pull out front and I’ll hose the car
off,” Todd said.
    So on April Fools Day, after a year of entombment, Nancy backed
the Mini out of her prison and swung into the long pavered drive. While Todd hosed
off the car’s thick layer of grime, Nancy glared at the house, all 8270 square feet of gangrenous stucco, disproportionately
narrow columns, slapdash masonry, and shoddy workmanship.
    Nancy drove out of Villagio Tuscana, past the
sad mix of ostentatious houses, abandoned construction, and empty lots. Along a
sandstone wall bordering a foreclosed house, huge cats sunned themselves, the
biggest cats Nancy had ever seen, with beautiful spotted fur. She was already down the street when
she realized they were bobcats reclaiming their habitat.  
    She headed north, toward San Francisco , She had
tried all her life to do everything right, yet mediocrity had descended upon
her like the grit that settled on everything at the revolting house.
    She’d lost forever all those evenings waiting
for Todd to come home from work, his office, business meetings, and hanging out
with his friends. She tried to fill her time with the small parties she put
together, but she’d begun to avoid seeing her friends, because she thought her
smiles must have seemed as false to them as they felt to her.
    There was a turn on the freeway when the San Francisco skyline suddenly appeared before her, a sight that had exhilarated her ever
since she was a child. As the temperature dropped into a civilized coolness, Nancy relaxed.
    She drove to the classical gray apartment
building in Pacific Heights that the Carringtons
had owned since the 1930s. She loved the building’s garland and rosette
moldings in pure white and vistas of Alta Plaza Park on one side and the bay, glimmering pewter and green, on the other. Lavenders
and white alyssum filled the mossy stone planters out front.
    After parking in the street-level
garage, Nancy began unloading her suitcases. She usually took the stairs to her fourth-floor apartment,
but she had too much to carry. She made several trips in the small elevator,
balancing her bags on the narrow mahogany bench.
    She was on carrying the last of her bags
to the elevator when she ran into Miss Elizabeth “Binky” Winkles. The elderly
spinster came into the lobby, looking like a sack of flour wearing a blue knit
suit, a pillbox hat, white gloves and carrying a red patent leather handbag.
She saw Nancy and
said, “Look who’s here.”
    “Good afternoon, Miss Winkles. How
lovely you look today!”
    The woman shuffled in, her ankles
swollen above the low black pumps. Nancy couldn’t believe she was still walking the hills in heels.
    “Hold the elevator, Girl Carrington!” The
woman used the term for Nancy and all her female cousins.
    Nancy took a suitcase out of the elevator. “You
can go ahead and I’ll take it up later.”
    “Nonsense. You’re a puny thing. There’s
enough room for both of us.”
    Nancy stood taller. She wasn’t as tall as the
older woman, but she was by no means puny. Then she reluctantly got in