Women in Deep Time Read Online Free PDF Page A

whistled with wonder. “You,” he said, “will make a really great old lady.”
     
    Rutger called her into his office abruptly a week later. She sat quietly before his desk. “You’ve joined the drama class after all,” he said. She nodded.
    “Any reason?”
    There was no simple way to express it. “Because of what you told me,” she said.
    “No friction?”
    “It’s going okay.”
    “Very good. They gave you another role to play?”
    “No. I’m the old lady. They’ll use makeup on me.”
    “You don’t object to that?”
    “I don’t think so.”
    Rutger seemed to want to find something wrong, but he couldn’t. With a faintly suspicious smile, he thanked her for her time. “Come back and see me whenever you want,” he said. “Tell me how it goes.”
    The group met each Friday, an hour later than her individual orchestra. Letitia made arrangements for home keyboard hookup and practice. After a reading and a half hour of questions, she obtained the permission of the drama group advisor, a spinsterish non-PPC seldom seen in the hallways, Miss Darcy. Miss Darcy seemed old-fashioned and addressed all of her students as either “Mister” or “Miss,” but she knew drama and stagecraft. She was the oldest of the six NG teachers in the school.
    Reena stayed with Letitia during the audition and made a strong case for her late admittance, saying that the casting of Rick Fayette as an older woman was not going well. Fayette was equally eager to be rid of the part; he had another nonconflicting role, and the thought of playing two characters in this production worried him.
    Fayette confessed his appreciation at their second Friday meeting. He introduced her to an elfishly handsome, largeeyed, slender group member, Frank Leroux. Leroux was much too shy to go on stage, Fayette said, but he would be doing their makeup. “He’s pretty amazing.”
    Letitia stood nervously while Leroux examined her. “You’ve really got a face,” he said softly. “May I touch you, to see where your contours are?”
    Letitia giggled and abruptly sobered, embarrassed. “Okay,” she said. “You’re going to draw lines and make shadows?”
    “Much more than that,” Leroux said.
    “He’ll take a video of your face in motion,” Fayette said. “Then he’ll digitize it and sculpt a laserfoam mold—much better than sitting for a life mask. He made a life mask of me last year to turn me into the Hunchback of Notre Dame. No fun at all.”
    “This way is much better,” Leroux said, touching her skin delicately, poking under her cheeks and chin, pulling back her hair to feel her temples. “I can make two or three sculptures showing what your face and neck are like when they’re in different positions. Then I can adjust the appliance molds for flex and give.”
    “When he’s done with you, you won’t know yourself,” Fayette said.
    “Reena says you have a picture of your great-grandmother. May I see it?” Leroux asked. She gave him the wallet and he looked at the picture with squint-eyed intensity. “What a wonderful face,” he said. “I never met my great-grandmother. My own grandmother looks about as old as my mother. They might be sisters.”
    “When he’s done with you,” Fayette said, his enthusiasm becoming a bit tiresome, “you and your great-grandmother will look like sisters!”
    When she went home that evening, taking a late pay metro from the school, she wondered just exactly what she was doing. Throughout her high school years, she had cut herself off from most of her fellow students; the closest she came to friendship had been occasional banter while sitting at the mods with John Lockwood, waiting for instructors to arrive. Now she actually liked Fayette, and strange Leroux, whose hands were thin and pale and strong and slightly cold. Leroux was a PPC, but obviously his parents had different tastes; was he a superwhiz? Nobody had said so; perhaps it was a matter of honor among PPCs that they pretended