Regiment of Women Read Online Free PDF

erected in the 1990’s on a ground of compacted garbage. The weight of the enormous tenements had caused this fill to settle over the years. Charlie’s building still survived, almost alone amid the cairns of rubble which commemorated the other houses in the original project, but the exterior walls were badly cracked and the structure stood at an angle. The elevators had been unusable for years, and because of the slant Cornell felt giddy climbing the stairs.
    The pollution alert had, unusually enough, been cancelled just after the evening rush hour, owing to a sudden, brisk west wind. Cornell was not wearing his mask, and he could smell liver frying on the fifth floor. On the sixth, the crack in the outside wall was wide enough to look through: Cornell saw a slatternly man in curlers reeling in a washline crowded with panties and bras.
    Charlie lived on the seventh floor, behind a dented door which Cornell now, after taking a moment to catch his breath, rapped upon with a fist gloved in beige suede.
    Charlie opened up. He wore an ancient, stained peignoir that looked like a souvenir from his days of whoring. It was trimmed in lank feathers, several of which moulted as he stepped aside to let Cornell in. He also wore infamous mules, the toes of which were open to display three yellow, unpainted nails on each large foot.
    Cornell identified the foul odor as that of boiled cabbage.
    â€œI hope you didn’t go to any trouble,” said he, searching for a place to deposit his purse. The doorside table was littered with unopened junk mail: samples of depilatories and mascara, etc., which Cornell recognized, having received them himself and having tried them all—but never having afterwards been able to find those brands in the shops he patronized.
    â€œHere,” said Charlie, taking the butter-soft plastic-calfskin handbag—a little birthday remembrance from Cornell to himself—and hanging it on the doorknob.
    Cornell had to move a discarded girdle from the sofa cushion he chose to sit on; the others, he remembered, had loose springs that hurt your heinie.
    Sooty satin shade on the endtable lamp, and the bulb was too bright. He didn’t relish the thought of having his twenty-nine-year-old lines highlighted for Charlie, even old Charlie, scarcely a competitor. Cornell was wearing especially light makeup, after witnessing the scene with Wallace Walton Walsh. He extinguished the lamp.
    â€œYou look like a billion dollars, as usual,” said Charlie, without a trace of jealousy. He really was a good sort. “But I should have warned you to be casual. You don’t want to ruin your good clothes in this dump.”
    It was true that Cornell had gone to some pains, even though he was going to dine with another man. But he was like that. Even on lonely weekends he shaved and did his eyes, splashed on cologne. He wouldn’t think of going to the hallway incinerator in curlers and housecoat. Today, after finishing up the contents of his In box, as ordered (much of the material therein he filed in the wastebasket: he had already been demoted to janitor; Ida did not understand the principle of incentive), he had slipped out of the office a bit early, gone home, and washed and set his hair. For two days his natural coiffure would outshine any wig, but then soot and humidity would cause it to go dull. But you couldn’t wash it too often, else the ends would turn brittle. He was also trying out a new shade of lipstick, pale tangerine, the perfect complement to his jersey sheath in beige, shoes in tobacco brown, matching bag, patterned hose, amber circlet at the wrist, and a little accent of gold at his bosom, a cunning little owl, souvenir of a past affair that had ended badly, as they usually did, but that could not be blamed on the miniature owl.
    Cornell assured Charlie that, on the contrary, his place was very—uh, comfortable.
    â€œWell,” said Charlie, clapping his thighs,