Nell Read Online Free PDF Page A

to know such a golden, happy, busy pair could exist in the world. They were proof that good fortune could happen. And they were wonderfully funny and always knew the best jokes.
    The Shells would also be coming. Nell had met Ilona through the shop: Nell sold the clothes, and the beautiful, elegant, willowy Ilona bought and wore them. Over time Nell and Ilona had become aware that they had similar taste in clothes and men and music and a similarly offbeat, slightly bizarre sense of humor. They had become good friends.
    They had become such good friends, in fact, that at first Nell had been baffled; she could not figure out why a woman as wealthy and sophisticated as Ilona would want to spend her time and friendship on a woman who lived a life as relatively poor and disorderly as Nell’s. Then she met, at a party at the Shells’, the polite and nearly embalmed social set that was part of Ilona’s life, and she met Ilona’s husband, Phillip.
    Phillip was an insurance executive who was apparently doing his best to live his life out of some handbook on appropriate executive behavior. He was handsome and well dressed, and Nell didn’t think he was stupid, but how would she ever know? For Phillip was cold, aloof, secretive, a real tight-ass, a stiff, brittle stick of a man. At one dinner party in which all the people gathered around the table were parents or parents-to-be, the subject had been circumcision—whether or not to circumcise baby boys. Phillip had said, in his. I-am-making-a-pronouncement voice: “Circumcision is just another way for doctors to make money. Personally, I’ve always thought it was a rip-off.” And he never did understand why the rest of the table went into waves of groans and laughter.
    Well, Nell couldn’t have Ilona to her party without Phillip, so he would be coming too, the old bore.
    Stellios would not be coming. Stellios was Nell’s lover now, but he was younger than Nell and less educated, and he worked for the city road crew. He had told her that he would not feel comfortable with this group. Nell often wondered, on days like this, or nights when she was alone at a party without an escort, what on earth she was doing going with a man like Stellios. He was really not her type. Then she’d spend a night with him and remember quite clearly and intensely just why it was she was going with him.
    People knew she was going with Stellios, and they asked about him when they saw her and she always said he was fine, and they moved on to another topic. Some of her friends had met Stellios—Katy Anderson had. Katy had dropped in one evening when Nell and Stellios were drinking beer and watching a football game on TV. Katy had joined them for a while. When she had to leave, Nell had walked Katy to the door, and they had stood in the back hall laughing in whispers like schoolgirls.
    “Hubba-hubba,” Katy had said. “Boy, do I envy you.”
    “Well, he is cute,” Nell had said. “But, Katy, I envy you .”
    She did envy Katy Anderson, very much. She envied Katy especially for her husband, who loved her completely and who paid the mortgage and the bills without blinking an eye. More than anything else in the world, Nell wanted for herself the plain old traditional joys: a loving husband, a solvent bank account, a peaceful life.
    But she didn’t have that, and couldn’t. So she went back up the stairs and changed out of her old gray robe and into grubby jeans and an old flannel shirt. She went to the bathroom; her diuretic was working, thank heavens. She had Hannah send the four little kids back to their own homes and she told Hannah to change into jeans. As the little kids went out the front door, Jeremy came in. Nell marshaled Hannah and Jeremy into the kitchen. She would give them lunch, then force them to help her clean the basement. Her desires, she knew, would quickly diminish once they all went down into the damp, dim underworld of their house; she would wish not for a husband or wealth, but