Superior Women Read Online Free PDF Page B

love—”
    “You’re so sweet, but not going home isn’t the point. I want to be here, by myself. And I won’t be lonely at all, I like being alone.”
    Megan has been listening rather breathlessly to this exchange. She too is going to stay at college between terms; her parents have said that coming back to California for such a short vacation is out of the question (although Florence has written enthusiastically about her new job, the great tips; mother the carhop, Megan can hardly bear to think of her). Megan’s imagination races ahead: she sees herself and Lavinia taking long walks, all over Cambridge, and going into Boston on the subway, going to museums. But then she wonders: will Lavinia want to do something expensive, like a matinee, or even dinner out? That thought scares her deeply for a moment, but her excitement is even stronger; she and Lavinia will talk, talk for hours. Tell each other things. Become real friends.
    Some instinct for caution, however, prevents her from mentioning this coincidence of plans to Lavinia. Not now. She does not say, Oh great, I’ll be here too.
    •     •     •
    But that is how she feels; she leaves Barnard Hall in a state of elation that afternoon, going back to Bertram. She will move to Barnard in the fall, she thinks, as she sits at her desk in her single corner room, trying to read a few pages of Chaucer before the dinner bell. She and Lavinia will have ten days, or a couple of weeks, of walking, conversation.
    Outside her windows, the golden Cambridge air is soft and gentle. Yellow leaves fall slowly, singly, to the drying grass; the sound of evening bells is distant, indistinct. Pale stars have just appeared in a paler sky; it is the faded-out end of a lively brilliant day. Barely thinking at all, Megan lets herself be filled with that view, with the evening air. It is another moment of great happiness for her; she is again aware of wonderful possibilities, golden chances.
    Just then the hall buzzer shrills out, a phone call for someone. In a minute a voice can be heard answering, “Third floor,” and then, more loudly, “Greene! Call on Line One!”
    It could only be George, Megan thinks, as she rushes toward the phone booth, takes up the receiver, and pushes down the button. And it is, George saying, “Well, I’ve really been hitting the books, but how about tonight? Could you possibly? Are you free?”
    Five minutes later, as she pins up her hair in bobbypins, hurrying—it is almost dinnertime—it strikes Megan that her visit to Barnard Hall has functioned as a good omen in her life: from now on she and Lavinia will be true friends, and her life will take on Lavinia-like qualities—she will lose weight, be thin, wear better clothes, and George will fall seriously in love with her.
    At the sound of the dinner bell she wraps her hair in a scarf, which is acceptable practice at meals; also, everyone knows that a person thus gotten up has an important date that night.
    Which leads to another small piece of luck for Megan, that day, enough to make her think that her fate has indeed taken a new direction: a girl from Chicago, a senior, known to be as rich as she is lazy, indolent, who has never bothered speaking to Megan before, addresses her from across the table: “Greene—” in herarrogant, idle nasal voice, “Greene, since you’re going out tonight, how would you like to be the proud recipient of a new white sweater that an aunt of mine just sent me? She means well but she’s a little dim about my size.” Betty, from Chicago, is tall, exceptionally thin, scrawny, actually. “Perfect for you, though, I think,” drawls Betty.
    Megan flounders, “Oh well, I’d really like to see it, but how—I mean, could I—” She is unable to say, Couldn’t I pay you for it.
    Betty’s laugh is harsh. “You could write to the aunt for me,” she suggests.
    “Oh, I’d be glad to.”
    “I’m kidding. Come by and try it on after coffee.”
    “You look,