In the women’s lounge of the Olcottsville Inn, some hours later, Monica dropped coin into a pay telephone and dialed Sheila’s number. Urgently she listened to the ringing at the other end of the line—the ringing, ringing—in the emptiness of Sheila’s kitchen, in that long drafty living room—in the glassed-in porch piled high with books and old magazines—in the upstairs rooms (which Monica had never seen)—and in the studio: ringing and ringing, defiantly unanswered. (If Sheila were in her studio, and surely she was, the telephone would be disconnected. And no one, no one, could connect with her.)

Monica hung up, received her dime back, tried again. Perhaps she had dialed the wrong number out of nervousness.

Again, the ringing. A forlorn sound. Tinged just slightly with anger.

The women’s lounge of the Olcottsville Inn was in fact the Ladies Lounge, fleshy-pink like the inside of a candy box or a womb; ruffled organdy curtains, a deep-pile crimson carpet, the unromantic odor of disinfectant overlaid by a perfumy air spray, lily of the valley perhaps. Two mirrors framed in simulated antique gold reflected each other, and a brass chandelier, endlessly—“Dear God it’s the old Versailles effect,” Sheila had once said, snorting in amusement, “right here at home!”

Monica listened, listened.

And still the telephone rang. And no one was going to answer.

When she returned at last to Keith (her “date” for the “evening”: the vocabulary couldn’t be denied) he would greet her with an air of gentlemanly warmth and expectation, a pleasant smile, no doubt he would rise from his chair as she approached the table, he was a gentleman, very nice as Jill had promised, very civilized, and quite clearly lonely; not the sort of man to feel, or to express, annoyance, that his “date” had been away so long, making a telephone call.

Fortunately they were not—“Keith” and “Monica”—at the stage where Keith might say, Are you worried about something, Monica? distracted? What are you thinking of, Monica, if not of me? us?

4

To whom was Monica writing, Sheila had asked.

Not meaning of course to be rude: for Sheila never meant to be rude.

(Sheila was a very poor correspondent, she confessed. Perhaps it had something to do with her temperamental inability to believe in the existence, the ontological existence, of people who were not immediately present, in the flesh; not, in a manner of speaking, in the room with her. “Then you forget very easily, do you,” Monica had said lightly, and Sheila had replied, “Well—I try.”)

But Monica made the effort, Monica certainly tried.