Stranger On Lesbos Read Free Page A

for The Rainbow .

CHAPTER 3
    “I thought you weren't coming."
    "I had lunch with a client. God, I thought I'd never break away." Bake undid the top button of her jacket and puffed out a deep breath, indicating how she had hurried. "I wanted to see you even if I didn't make it to class. Did I miss anything?"
    "Snap quiz." Frances caught the waiter's eye. He gave her a token smile and came over. "You can easily make it up."
    "Sometimes I wonder if it's worth the trouble. I've been doing this for years and years, all to get two little letters after my name."
    "No classes Friday."
    "Of course not; Thanksgiving week end."
    "I'll miss seeing you."
    "I suppose you'll have a big family dinner, with turkey and so on?"
    "I'm afraid so." . Frances remembered, with a nostalgic pang, the first Thanksgiving after she and Bill were married. There wasn't any money for turkey; they were saving every nickel to pay for the baby. Bill came home from work with a sparrow feather, which he stuck solemnly on top of the meat loaf. She sighed.
    "What's the matter?"
    "Nothing really. I was just thinking how conventional people get as they grow older."
    "Age has nothing to do with it. Most people are born conventional."
    "I'll miss going to the University on Friday," Frances said. The waiter set their drinks down. She took hers absent-mindedly. "Bill will be out of town all day, and Bob's never home any more. If it isn't ham radio it's basketball."
    "It's going to be a good day to get out into the country, if the weather holds." Bake glanced out into the street, where a few late leaves rattled dryly along the sidewalk. The sky was blue, the sun bright. "Of course we could have a blizzard, but this is certainly unusual weather for November." She studied Frances above the rim of her glass. "Why don't we both take the day off and go for a drive? We could bring some sandwiches."
    Frances would have been willing to spend the day on a rock pile with a pickax if Bake had suggested it. Anything was better than wandering around an empty house, dusting furniture that was already clean and wondering what Bill was doing and when he would get home.
    "That sounds like fun."
    "Good. The woods out around Elgin ought to be gorgeous by now. I'll call you Thursday night and we can settle the details."
    They separated, Bake to keep an appointment with a client, Frances to sit at the table a while longer, in a haze of well-being that came partly from gin and partly from being with Bake. A whole day together, away from other people and their demandsa day without assignments or obligations. It was more than she could accept. She was afraid to believe in it.
    She thought back over the scattered hours she and Bake had spent together in the last few weeks. Sitting side by side in the lecture room, their faces solemnly turned to the instructor, but aware of each other; facing each other across this little table three times a week, over the ritual after-class Martini; walking briskly down cracked and cluttered sidewalks among groups of playing Negro children. Brief as the encounters were, impersonal as their talks had been, they gave depth and color to the day. When Bake missed a class, as happened now and then, Frances felt flat and let down.
    Now, turning the empty glass in her fingers, she tried prudently to brace herself against disappointment. She'll change her mind, she thought. Or it will snow or something. Don't count on going.
    But she was smiling as she paid the cashier and went out into the crisp autumnal sunshine, warning herself: she won't call. Frances knew better.
    Bake called at eleven the next morning, just three hours after the Flanagans "dropped in for a minute" and while they were having one last drink, which was likely to stretch into three or four. Frances said, "Excuse me," and lifted the phone from its cradle, wishing desperately that she had succumbed to the telephone company's urging and had an extension installed in the kitchen. Betty Flanagan let her