Looking for Mr. Goodbar by Judith Rossner Page B

was a big soft chair. Then there was a studio bed covered with an elegant embroidered spread and dozens of pillows. On the floor was an Oriental rug. The walls were covered with Chinese prints and wooden carvings, most of which also looked Oriental to her.
    He put the tray down on the big table-desk.
    “Sit where you’ll be most comfortable, Theresa.”
    She sat down on the edge of the studio bed because she was closest to that and now she was self-conscious about his seeing her walk. He sat down and put his arm around her; she grew rigid.
    “I am not attempting to seduce you,” he said. “I am attempting to comfort you because I see that I’ve hurt you.”
    But of course that was why she’d gone rigid. With an enormous effort of will she turned to him and with a voice as steady as possible said, “But I’d rather be seduced than comforted.”
    He laughed and stood up. “That’s marvelous,” he said. “I think I’ll have it embroidered and made into a wall hanging—no, a pillow cover.”
    She watched him steadily. She felt in some way that she’d gotten her own back. He gave her coffee, settled with his own in the swivel desk chair, facing her. One of the reasons she loved him was that she’d understood since she first heard him talk that all those sly or hostile or outrageous thoughts that had cropped up in her mind for years and remained unsaid because they would shock or upset or alienate the people she knew would be perfectly all right with him. If she could ever get herself to say them. He finished his coffee and poured another cup without offering her more. She wanted to get more but she wasn’t yet sure that was all right.
    “This is where we’ll work,” he said. “You may sit wherever you like, at the desk, wherever. I’m going to give you the papers before I look at them myself. You will scan them carefully and red-ink every grammatical or spelling error. Hopefully I will then be less distracted by their illiteracy and will be able to simply read them quickly and make some appropriate comment. Very quickly, Ishould say.” He smiled. “At a glance. I have too much work of my own this year to be bothered with this nonsense.”
    “Poetry?” she asked, shy again.
    “And a scholarly work that I’m doing, not out of any interest at all in my subject but in the interest of getting a promotion.”
    She smiled.
    “You are amused.”
    “It sounds funny. Like going from seventh grade to eighth grade.”
    “Quite so.”
    He was friendly but businesslike. There would be four sets of papers a week because he had four required courses. Later on, if he were feeling really self-indulgent, he might get her to do the same for his elective papers, which shouldn’t need that sort of thing but usually did. It would probably be best if no one in her class understood that it was she making the red marks; God’s words always carried more weight than those of the apostles, even if they were the same words. She nodded; she never would have dreamed of telling anyone.
    “What would you consider a reasonable rate of pay for this work?” he asked.
    She stared at him. It had never entered her mind that he would pay her; she was working for the privilege of working for him.
    She shrugged.
    “You must have thought about it.”
    She shook her head. She didn’t want him to pay her because it made the work seem less personal.
    “Have you ever worked?”
    “Just baby-sitting.”
    “And how much do you make as a baby-sitter?”
    “A dollar an hour.”
    “All right,” he said. “We’ll start you at a dollar an hour. Slave wages. And if you are really good and fast we’ll raise it from there. Unless you prefer to remain my slave.”
    I prefer to remain your slave. I prefer you not to pay me but to love me.
    She was arrested by the sound of a baby crying someplace.
    He smiled. “My wife’s office is on the other side of that wall.”
    The wall the studio bed was against. His wife.
    She stood up.
    “Do you want