“I decided that it was wrong to restrict myself to one fellow. Once I got past the second, the rest were easy. I had my needs—I mean it; I needed sex. I never felt a fall from grace. I was different from the other girls in other ways, too. I was shy—believe that?—and I had my complexion problem, but none of the fellows ever abused me. Oh, they swapped stories, but they did that over all the girls. They knew that I had a mind, because in that lousy school I had almost the highest marks in the class. Even the biggest, ugliest characters—I didn’t have anything else to do with them—” She stopped, smiling. “Yes, I did, one or two of them—even they would ask me about World History and say, ‘Gee, thanks, None.’ Now that embarrasses me. I wanted to be called Norie then.” She took a drink of water.

“I didn’t have mean trouble because I liked men and enjoyed making love. One of them told me that what he liked was that I just didn’t lie there and moan. I was horrified—my own friends! I felt good after hearing that; I felt like a woman because I thought I screwed like a woman, which was a stupid conclusion to come to. There’s your wife.”

She had said it without a breath or change of inflection and he turned toward the entrance as naturally as she had told him that it was time to do it. But it was like getting up from the floor. Norma MacIver had completely disarmed him. The sensation of having lost track stayed with him, so that Karen saw him before he could wave to her, and then when he did wave the action felt so needless and strange that he was sure that she would notice something wrong. He stopped, swallowed suddenly, and waited. He felt blood coming to his face. It was a cheap trick on himself. He had been caught paying attention to another woman.

Karen said something to her guest, a plump woman in her forties, then she spoke to the headwaiter. The woman and the head-waiter went straight down the aisle as Karen came toward Leland and Mrs. MacIver. Leland got up. Karen’s smile was directed at him, mock-weary and mischievous. She wrinkled her nose at him. Out of the corner of his eye Leland caught Mrs. MacIver’s reaction: she had expected something else. There was another thing—the same trick: she knew, too, how much she had had his attention. She looked away—she didn’t want Leland to look at her. Karen moved her purse under her other arm and brushed at her short, light brown hair.

“Hi. If this is a surprise for me, you know me too well.”

“How do you feel?”