Songs without Words Read Free Page B

artists, with awe and a touch of envy.
    “Can I help you find something, Mary?” she asked.
    Mary turned to her with a startled expression. Her expressive gray eyes focused. “Oh, Harper, thank God! Why did you have to remove the card catalogue? Couldn’t it have peacefully coexisted with the computer database? I’m lost without those cards.”
    Harper smiled. “Too difficult to maintain both systems.”
    “What a bother! By the way, what are you doing here? You have summers off, don’t you?”
    “Yes. I just stopped by to pick up some sheet music.”
    “That reminds me,” Mary said, “I heard that you’ve joined the symphony orchestra. Is that right?”
    Harper nodded. “I’m very excited about it.”
    “Well, congratulations. I didn’t realize you were a musician. What do you play?”
    “Cello.”
    “Oh, I love the cello!” Mary exclaimed. “I’ll be there, you know. I’ve subscribed to the symphony for ages. It’s one of the few things that I always look forward to. Modern life fragments a person so. For those couple of hours a month, I’m doing nothing but listening to music. So relaxing.”
    “Then I guess I’ll see you there this fall.” Harper glanced at the computer screen. “So what are you looking for anyway?”
    “Elsa Gidlow’s autobiography,” Mary answered. “I want to recommend it to a student. So I was checking to see if there’s a copy here in our library. This computer thinks I want to check the entire universe. Why would I care to do that? Why would anyone care to do that? If there’s a copy on Neptune, how is that of any value to me?”
    Mary had an air of melodrama about her, a sort of childlike petulance that Harper found entertaining. Although she was scowling, she also seemed amused. One of Mary’s most common expressions, in fact, was a peculiar frown-smile. It was only in her eyes that you could discern which reaction was relevant to the situation. Harper had learned, however, that they both were often appropriate because, even when Mary was unhappy with the situation around her, most of the time she was also highly entertained by her own response to it.
    “We do have a copy,” Harper said. “Two, actually. I keep one in my office.”
    “Well, then,” Mary said, rising from the little plastic chair, “that’s okay, then. What a coincidence.”
    What did it mean, if anything, Harper wondered, that Mary was recommending the autobiography of a pioneering lesbian poet to a student? Mary was a lesbian herself, she was fairly certain, though they had never spoken about their personal lives. There were occasional, malicious stories about Mary and this or that female student. Such stories were inevitable, Harper thought, in the case of a woman who had achieved success without the help of a man. She had no way of knowing if any of the rumors were true.
    Mary looked purposefully into Harper’s eyes for a moment. “Is Gidlow of some particular interest to you?” she asked.
    “I’m always interested in revolutionary female artists,” Harper said.
    “Yes, so I’ve noticed.”
    “She was a remarkable poet, don’t you think?”
    “Yes, of course. A fearless bushwhacker.” Mary hooted as she recognized her own unintended pun. Harper got the joke a second later and laughed as well.
    “My favorite,” Harper said, recalling one of Gidlow’s poems, “is that one about the garden. ”
    Mary’s eyes sparkled with recognition. “You mean, ‘For the Goddess Too Well Known.’ Yes, that’s one of my favorites too.” Mary eyed Harper with one raised eyebrow.
    Harper felt herself flush with embarrassment as she realized that the poem in question was about two women making love.
    Shit , she thought, I’m discussing a poem about lesbian sex with a lesbian!
    “Now, that,” Mary said, with an exaggerated sigh, “is a poem! If any of my students ever write a poem like that, I will count myself among the immortals.”
    “Your student, the one you want the book for,