At the office the windows were open. Sunshine spilled over the floor and a breeze blew in to ruffle the papers on her desk. Most of the girls were younger than Kate, just out of high school or married and helping to pay for their homes. Some, those that had two or three children, were about her age. There were two or three responsible old girls, the kind who keep offices going, married to their jobs. She got along all right with everybody. They didn't matter.

The work itself was routine but easy. There was a sort of pleasure in the crisp touch of the keys under her fingers and the smooth rotation of the plastic tape. She liked to deliver a stack of letters for signing at the end of the afternoon and to tear a page off her desk calendar before she went home—as though she had accomplished something. She could see how people got hung up on office work, while the years of their life sifted away like sand through an hourglass. And she liked earning money, paying her share of the expenses, getting a new dress once in a while, taking Erika out for dinner on Friday when they were both tired from the week's work. There was never anything left over, but they were doing as well as most people.

She was eating well now, getting enough sleep, and she felt a new energy. It was good to walk the eight blocks to work, swinging along the wet sidewalk after a rain, smelling the damp ground and the new grass. It was fun to shop during her lunch hours. When it rained or blew and she had to take a bus, she didn't mind the crowding and the stale cigars. She felt untroubled. Maybe, she thought hopefully, it would last this time.

Not that everything was wonderful. She had cramps, headache, a hangnail that caught on things. Her new stockings snagged the first time she wore them. The cake she baked was soggy in the middle. But it didn't matter.

Because all day long, whether she was walking to work or jammed into a bus seat beside a sweaty stranger or typing endless versions of the same letter, there was Erika. Every tick of the clock brought her closer to the evening, when she and Erika would be together.

It was good to get home first and put on sneakers and an old pair of blue jeans and start supper, knowing Erika would be along soon. It was even better to get home and find Erika there, waiting for her. Their evenings were quiet. But at the end of the evening was bedtime and, there was the spark between them that grew into a blaze and consumed them both.

The touch of Erika's hands was all it took to wake her into desire, now. It puzzled Kate, when she was alone or in the satiated moments before she fell into a deep after-love sleep, that people could be so wrong about this kind of love. How could anything so wonderful be anything but good?