Sheila was back at work; hard at work; and meant to be a recluse, until the paintings were finished.

But she telephoned Monica at least once a day, usually in the early evening, to inquire how things were going for Monica. (She had no news at all—nothing to report.)

So Monica was obliged to speak of committee meetings, lunches with colleagues, classes that went unusually well, or disappointed (“Now they’ve got it into their heads that Mark Twain was a racist”); an awkward hour-long conference with the parents of one of her poorer students. Matters that could not possibly be of interest to another person became, at such times, highly significant; even emblematic; for all that Monica did and said and thought seemed to represent, in Sheila’s imagination, the actions of a person of supreme though mysterious importance.

“Why are you asking me this—?” Monica broke off one evening, in embarrassment, and Sheila must have been so startled she couldn’t reply at first; then she said, “I suppose—because—if I don’t ask—you won’t tell.”

Nothing has changed, Monica thought—except my control.

For she meant, this time, to be in control.

She was already, was she not?—in control.

Yes: in control.

Control.

She quite liked the word, its classy air.

Control. Control.

“This time,” she said, “—mine.”

3

Then it was mentioned, as if casually, incidentally, that Sheila might postpone her show another time.

She couldn’t bear the pressure, she said.

She hated all she’d done. And there was no time to remedy it.

“I’m at an impasse,” she said, lightly mocking. (Monica having told her of Keith Renwick’s use of the word.) “I’m about to have a ‘crisis.’”

“Go back to work,” Monica might say, breezily, to disguise the concern she felt; or, variously, “Take off a few hours, for God’s sake—go for a ride on Parsifal—come over here for a drink.”

Sheila resumed the subject, not altogether enthusiastically, of Sherrill Ann and Mary Beth: their pals out at the Swedesboro Inn and Walt’s must be wondering where they are, right? and where are they?

Monica thought of herself in that filthy restroom, squatting over a stained toilet seat, urinating in hot shamed splashes while the bartender and “Sherrill Ann” stood guard a few feet away, on the other side of a door that wouldn’t lock. The tastes of draft beer, stale potato chips, pizza . . . the sound of country-and-western music blaring from the jukebox . . . the smell of cigarette smoke, hair oil. And there was Fitch’s face raw with hatred: an emotion Monica had well understood at the time.

“Was the name ‘Mary Beth’?” Monica asked suddenly. “Wasn’t it— ‘Marie Beth’?— ‘Merrill Beth’? I can’t remember.”

“God,” Sheila said, puzzled, “I don’t know. I thought it was ‘Mary Beth’—wasn’t it?”

“I remember your name, ‘Sherrill Ann,’ but I don’t remember my own,” Monica said.