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you’re right.” Aunie flexed her fingers and knocked plaster dust from her arms and legs. She shook her head like a wet puppy and dust flew. Raking her fingers through her hair to hold it off her forehead, she peered up at Otis. “This has been fun. Thanks for broadening my horizons, Otis.”
    “My pleasure.”
    She laughed. “You’re a nice man.” Then, peering down the hall, she nodded to James, who had stopped sanding to watch her. “Mistah Rydah, you were certainly right. Sandin’ keeps you nice and warm.” She left them to their work.
    Aunie laughed at her dusty image in the bathroom mirror a few moments later. Wouldn’t Mama die if she could see her now? She took a quick shower anddressed in jeans, a cotton turtleneck, warm socks, and a warmer sweater. Pouring herself a glass of juice, she lined up her books and papers on the dining room table and sat down to study. It took her some time, though, before she could give it the concentration it deserved.
    Smoothing that plaster had been fun; it had made her feel a little less ineffectual than usual. It would be awhile, however, before she’d forget the look on James Ryder’s face when she had stupidly identified the sandpaper. He’d looked at her as though wondering how she’d ever managed to navigate the face of the earth as long as she had, when it should be quite obvious to anyone with eyes in their head that she didn’t possess the most basic knowledge.
    Gawd, that man made her uncomfortable, and instinctively she maintained a formal distance between them. It wasn’t because of James’s reaction on the day she had rented the apartment that she refused to call him by his first name; well, not entirely at least. Mainly it was because he looked at her as though she were inherently deficient when she was trying very hard to become a competent, independent adult. She’d admit she was starting later in life than most people did, but better late than never. She was making the attempt and she didn’t need him to undermine what was already a limited confidence in her ability to become useful and productive. She was also intimidated by all that he had accomplished when she had never accomplished a damned thing on her own.
    Not only did he own this apartment house, which she never would have guessed that first day, he was also J. T. Ryder. The J. T. Ryder, the inventor of “A Skewed View,” the hottest cartoon to grace the Sunday papers in years. And his cartoons weren’t justin the newspapers, either; there were Skewed View calendars and two collections of cartoons in paperback. Why, just the other week, at the bookstore at school, she had purchased a coffee mug with one of his cartoons on the side. She kept her pencils and pens in it. It was when she was showing her purchase to Lola, actually, laughing once again at the offbeat humor displayed on its side, that she had discovered it was James’s work. She was floored. He was its creator? She had been almost positive that he was a drug dealer.
    His apartment was down the hall from hers, and she couldn’t help seeing the steady procession of men who had come and gone at odd hours ever since the first day she’d moved in. Well, there hadn’t actually been that many of them, but they never seemed to stay for more than five minutes at a time and a couple of them had been so motley in appearance. Was she ever glad she hadn’t mentioned her suspicions to Lola; God above, she’d feel even more worthless than she already did.
    Both James and Otis had made something of their lives, and neither of them had had a tenth of her advantages. Lola had told her something of the neighborhood where they’d grown up, and Aunie cringed when she thought of everything she had ever been given. She had never had to earn a thing for herself; yet she’d still made a mess of her life in spite of her privileged beginning.
    What most shamed her was knowing that at the beginning of her marriage, she had been totally satisfied