You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down Read Online Free PDF Page B

on a chair by the fire. For although it was the middle of summer, a fire was needed against the chilly New England evenings.
    “Have you been waiting long?” he asked.
    And it suddenly occurred to her that indeed she had.
    “But of course,” she answered absently, noting the crooked smile that reminded her of a snarling, though not disagreeable, wolf—and turned back just as the old poet jealously reached out his hand to draw her attention to the, for him, hilarious ending of his story. She laughed and slapped her knee, a gesture of such fraudulent folksiness that she was soon laughing in earnest. Catching Ellis’s eye as she thus amused herself she noticed therein a particular gleam that she instantly recognized.
    “My lover,” she thought, noticing for the first time his head of blue-black curls, his eyes as brown as the Mississippi, his skin that was not as successfully tanned as it might have been but which would definitely do. He was thin and tall, with practically no hips in the beige twill jeans he wore.
    At dinner they sat together, looking out at the blue New England mountains in the distance, as the sun left tracings of orange and pink against the pale blue sky. He had heard she’d won some sort of prize—a prestigious one—for her “jazzed-up” poetry, and the way he said it made her glance critically at his long fingers wrapped around his wine glass. She wondered if they would be as sensitive on her skin as they looked. She had never heard of him, though she did not say so, probably because he had already said it for her. He talked a good deal—easily and early—about himself, and she was quite relaxed—even entertained—in her listener’s role.
    He wondered what, if anything, younger poets like herself had to say, since he was of the opinion that not much was learned about life until the middle years. He was in his forties. Of course he didn’t look it, but he was much older than she, he said, and the reason that he was not better known was because he could not find a publisher for his two novels (still, by the way, unpublished—in case she knew publishers) or for his poetry, which an acquaintance of his had compared to something or other by Montaigne.
    “You’re lovely,” he said into the brief silence.
    “And you seem bright,” she automatically replied.
    She had blocked him out since his mention of the two unpublished novels. By the time he began complaining about the preferential treatment publishers now gave minorities and women she was on the point of yawning or gazing idly about the room. But she did not do either for a very simple reason: when she had first seen him she had thought—after the wolf thing—“my lover,” and had liked, deep down inside, the illicit sound of it. She had never had a lover; he would be her first. Afterwards, she would be truly a woman of her time. She also responded to his curly hair and slim, almost nonexistent hips, in a surprisingly passionate way.
    She was a woman who, after many tribulations in her life, few of which she ever discussed even with close friends, had reached the point of being generally pleased with herself. This self-acceptance was expressed in her eyes, which were large, dark and clear and which, more often than not, seemed predisposed to smile. Though not tall, her carriage gave the illusion of height, as did her carefully selected tall sandals and her naturally tall hair, which stood in an elegant black afro with exactly seven strands of silver hair—of which she was very proud (she was just thirty-one)—shining across the top. She wore long richly colored skirts that—when she walked—parted without warning along the side, and exposed a flash of her creamy brown thigh, and legs that were curvaceous and strong. If she came late to the dining room and stood in the doorway a moment longer than necessary—looking about for a place to sit after she had her tray—for that moment the noise from the cutlery already in use was