Annie told her about the young painter who’d been to the party State School with her. One night he asked if he could drive her home to Oxford Street. He took her out on a country road. A few miles along he stopped the car and put his arm around her. “You remind me of the paints in unopened tubes, crimson and alizarin and vermilion.” Then he kissed her once, grinned toothily, and drove her home with not another word. Later, at some party meeting, someone had pointed out the painter’s wife. One of her legs was drastically shorter than the other so she seemed to topple forward at each step. She was a hairy woman who looked ten years older than her handsome young husband. “I think,” Annie said, “that I am full of cruelty. I had to go out to the street to laugh.”

“Only admit it,” Theda said dreamily. “Perhaps you’ll be saved.”

“I’ve told such awful lies.”

“Have a drink.”

“No. I’m going home. I have to wash out some things.”

“How is the job?”

“Dumb. A dumb job. Nothing’s happening there. I go through the gates every morning with my badge pinned to my blouse. The place is like some sullen social club where half the members are drunk all the time and the other half wishes it were. Max says things will change once there’s plenty of work to go around. Meanwhile, I have some money. I’ve not had money before. Neither have most of the people there, I guess.”

“I saw the Shores the other night.”

Annie stood up, ready to leave. She didn’t want to hear about the Shores, only about Max. She sighed, felt the tangle of her recently permanented hair and thought of Miranda.

“I’ll tell you something,” Theda went on. “I think Max is killing Eva. She’s like some helpless thing breathing in poisoned gas. She watches him all the time. He’s so nice to her. Something deadly is happening between them. He’s so ruthless in his insistence on being…good.”

“He’s been my best friend, except for you and Cletus,” Annie said. “I thought if I grew up, I could become good too.”

“You’ll drive me to drink,” muttered Theda.

———

Annie’s haunt pursued her into daylight. She thought people looked at her in a different way. One morning she knocked over the screen with the three yellow butterflies, frightened to see that behind it was what she had known all along was there, the little clean cooking place which she hardly ever used. She brooded constantly on that other life of hers that had been nearly blotted out by the last six months.