Fun With Problems Read Free Page B

nothing. Yet, on a certain level, he thought, she acted like someone who wanted to play.
    "I liked your standing up to Sister Sophia," Matthews told her when he had his second drink in hand.
    She did not seem entirely pleased by his compliment. For a few seconds, she only looked at him without speaking.
    "I felt kind of sorry afterward. I shouldn't have called her a snitch."
    "I wouldn't worry about it. She's a bully." He watched her fidget unhappily on her big wooden chair. To make any progress it would be necessary to cheer her up. Win her over. "And she really is a snitch."
    "Oh, God," said Amy. "That makes it worse."
    "Yes, it does," Matthews said. He laughed at her in spite of himself. "Sorry."
    "So," she said, "I was being stupid."
    "No, no. I admired what you did." He felt a little ashamed of the contrived flattery. He had underestimated her.
    "I was being pompous pious."
    "You were fine," he said. "I don't think you did anything inappropriate."
    "Inappropriate" had become such a useful word, he thought, so redolent of the spirit of the times. Everyone had dumb, disastrous moments and behaved inappropriately. Inappropriate anger led to attacks of bad judgment. Misplaced idealism was also inappropriate. And almost everyone had a little no matter how clean they were.
    "Really?" she asked.

    "Really," he told her. "Have a drink." Somehow the suggestion turned her around this time. Her state of agitated regret seemed to visibly depart. The look he saw in her pale eyes was suddenly challenging and flirtatious.
    "No, I don't think so," she said firmly. The firmness had a pretended note.
    The mournful fráulein desired them to stop fiddle-fucking, order dinner or go away. Matthews set her pouting with another drinks order.
Apfel-schorle
for the little lady, another Scotch for himself. Amy went to the Ladies.
    When the drinks came, Matthews was reminded of the celebrations at a wedding he had attended the previous weekend. Someone had proposed the toast "
l'chaim
"—"to life." There and then Matthews had decided it was a toast he would never, ever, willingly drink again. Not, of course, that he would make a scene about it. Returned, Amy thoughtfully considered her glass of juice.
    "I've quit drinking for a while," she announced. Matthews thought she might be getting admirable again. In fact, he realized, she was offering him a wedge. How much might he pry?
    "I think you should make an exception this evening. Really," he said. "You've been fighting the good fight." The words were ill chosen, he knew that. It was hard to stop making fun of her. The devil drove him. He labored to recoup. "I mean, you want to forget all that, right?"
    "Well," she said, in the manner of one about to explain thoroughly, "see, I've been doing a play."
    "A play?"
    Amy told him about her second career. "I went to New York for a year," she said. "I did some off-off-Broadway. I almost got Shakespeare in the Park."

    "No kidding?"
    "No kidding. It would have been fun."
    "Shakespeare in the Park? Sounds like fun."
    "But it was almost, right? No cigar."
    A different Amy. Animation. Still, though, tinged with regret. "Anyway," Amy said, "I did some great stuff. Odets. Do you know Clifford Odets?"
    "Sure.
Waiting for Lefty.
"
    "We didn't do that. We did two minor short plays. And we did a dramatic reading of
John Brown's Body
"
    "Really? Who were you?"
    "Don't tease me," she said. "Don't tease me about my year in New York."
    "I wouldn't," Matthews said, because he had not been. "I think it's great."
    "Well, not so great," she said, "because it's over and I have to make a living. And clinical psych is what I do."
    "You do it very effectively."
    "Yeah, sure," she said. It turned out she was not drinking because she thought alcohol interfered with remembering her lines. "I blank. I go up. You know, forget the cue and the line."
    "I see."
    "Drinking gives you these glitches," she said. For a moment, she put the tip of her tongue to her upper lip and looked