The Cost of Lunch, Etc. by Marge Piercy

Author:Marge Piercy
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: PM Press
Published: 2014-07-20T16:00:00+00:00

Ring around the Kleinbottle

The matter began simply enough, when Cam and Vicki lost their roommate Janice. Janice moved out when she broke off her engagement to Allen Miner, a clever fellow who works in market research. Janice took an extended vacation and then set up in a studio by herself. I knew Janice from our mutual gym and a couple of coffees together, but I’d never met her roommates. Winning back my freedom in court recently had cost me so much I answered their ad and was glad to move into the spacious apartment in a 1920s-era brick apartment house. The living room was light, with a worn parquet floor and we each had our room. Vicki paid a little less than Cam and I since she had the ex-maid’s room off the kitchen. Being three years older than Cam and seven years older than Vicki, I was determined not to play mama to them. Not my style.

A few weeks after I moved in, I saw Cam climbing out of Allen’s Miata out front. So the next evening as we puttered around the kitchen, I said, “Guess it’s lucky Janice moved out. Might be a bit awkward otherwise.”

“What do you mean?” Cam is naturally defensive. She dresses to underplay her figure. Her face is gentle and sprinkled with freckles, her hair a natural light redhead—almost orange. Naturally soft-spoken, she has a stiff protective manner.

“With you seeing Allen. He got over Janice fast.”

“You’re misinterpreting.” Her voice was husky with rebuke. “He’s upset and he needs to talk with someone. He wants to patch things up with her, but Janice won’t take his calls.”

“So you’re consoling him.”

“Eve, I’m listening, that’s all. While he was seeing Janice, I barely knew him, but I’m learning he’s one of the good ones. Janice really hurt him.”

Cam works for a pharmaceutical company torturing rats and bunnies. She’d be much happier as a social worker or a counselor. We lunched together last week—I’m the personnel director in a computer hosting and repair company with offices not that far from where Cam works. When I went to fetch her, she was all white-coated with her face bolted shut pretending to be a scientist. She’s an oversensitive type who likes to act detached, even stolid, but I’m not fooled. In her veins runs butterscotch syrup. So I wasn’t surprised when consoling Allen settled in to a full-time job. She told me she’d been engaged to a specialist in the army but when his deployment in Afghanistan ended, he broke things off with her almost without explanation. She said he had changed completely. She was convinced she had somehow failed him. Yet she seemed to be the wounded one.

Finally readjusting Allen needed all night. Vicki came bursting into my room Sunday morning—Vicki always explodes through doors. She’s long-legged and thin only because she jumps around too much for the fat to settle, because she eats more than Cam and I put together. She’s a year out of community college, working as a secretary.

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