"Okay, well make it another time."

She hung up and turned to Erika. "I don't have to date him, do I? Because he got me a job?"

Erika said with maddening calm, "You don't have to go with anybody, but it's all right if you want to. I trust you."

"Oh—you make me mad."

"Come here. I'll make you madder."

She forgot to worry as Erika's lips touched her cheek, her throat, and moved downward. Nothing mattered but this.

* * *

Getting the job, the next morning, was almost an anticlimax. Ken said she could stay and start work right away if she wanted to, and to her own astonishment she decided she did. Here I was all set to be a martyr, she thought. I only came because Erika was worrying about money and I didn't know how to brush off that Martin character. You never can tell.

She smiled cordially at the little file girl who was showing her where to find supplies.

There was no tension, no agonized pushing of the clock hands toward five. The other women were friendly and incurious. Coming out into the cold air at the end of the day, she felt happy for the first time in—how long? She walked across the street to the bus stop, humming a nameless tune. Now I have a home, she thought. Somebody to love. That's what really matters—and she loves me back.

She felt warm and secure as she unlocked the front door. She looked in the mailbox—empty—and ran up three flights of carpeted stairs, getting a whiff of browning meat here and the hum of a vacuum cleaner there. A change from Mrs. Brownlee's, a change for the better. Maybe two can't live as cheap as one, she thought, but they can live cheaper than two. She pushed the apartment door open and went in.

Erika was sitting in the torn chair grading papers. She held her face up to be kissed. Kate said, "You know what I was thinking about all the way home?"

"That we're having hamburger again."

"I was thinking you're my family."

"You're just finding that out?"

"It never hit me so hard before."

"You never told me anything about your own family, darling, so how can I tell if this is bad or good?"

"Oh, if I were thinking about my own family it would be the meanest thing I could say to you." Kate hesitated, feeling the cold touch of the dark misery. Erika waited, pencil in hand, the question trapped her lips. Kate said, "I don't think about it very often. Besides, it's nothing compared to—"

"Tell me."

She was silent, trying to find words that wouldn't sound self-pitying or melodramatic. After all, compared with what Erika had gone through her story was trite. "My father was a drunk and a bully," she said at last. "A big strong man who might have been a good farmer if he'd stayed away from the bottle. Seems sort of funny I turned out to be a lush too, doesn't it? He used to come home stoned and beat the hell out of us kids just for the fun of it. Just because he happened to be feeling mean."