finally manages to disengage and is free to scan the thinning crowd, Pam is gone.
She herself stays until the ice melts around the cans of pop, and the buffet runs out of everything but a scattering of carrot sticks, and the students have diminished to a self-sustaining group of perhaps a dozen, chatting in small clumps. Still, even though three-quarters of an hour has elapsed, she is not really surprised when she comes out the front door of the Student Union, to find Pam sitting on the ledge to the side of the stairs. Her shirt is soaked through in places, stuck to her skin at the collarbone, deeply stained at her armpits.
“First,” she says, “let’s not say anything about the heat.”
“Okay,” Nora says, idling in neutral. “What’s second?”
“Oh man, I didn’t have a second thing.” Pam runs a hand over her damp, bristly hair.
Nora feels a drop land on her cheek. She loses track of what Pam is saying. It’s not important. The hair is what’s important, its dampness. Nora pushes an internal PAUSE button, freezing the little scene that pops up when she puts a picture of Pam together with the concept “damp”: they’re in the bathroom of the railroad motel and Nora is pulling a shower curtain aside, handing Pam a towel, then playfully reneging.
In the real world, on the steps of the Union, hoping she has missed only half a beat of real time, Nora tries to find a conversational analogue of throat-clearing, tie-straightening, cuff-tugging. “Well, then. I hope you enjoy your class. Have some fun.”
“I’ll make you an ashtray,” Pam says, not joining in the straightening up. She’s still in the motel room, lazy between the sheets.
“I quit smoking,” Nora says.
“You might start again, though.”
Night is falling. Nora pulls her car out of the lot behind the Administration Building. She hears on the radio that large patches of the North Side have had their power knocked out—payback for having sucked up all the available electricity with a few million air conditioners running on high. Everything looks normal and regular for a few blocks, then lapses into darkness. It’s a little scary, also fascinating, to sail along a daily route made eerily unfamiliar by minor catastrophe. Nothing is quite itself. Block after unlit block, here and there a candle or flashlight visible in a window, on the street a sweep of headlights. Amateur anarchists splash in the water gushing from uncapped fire hydrants. Ancient beaters ghost by, heading toward the lake with their windows rolled down and mattresses strapped to their roofs. On the radio, she hears that the parks and beaches are filling up with a temporarily transient population looking for a cool spot to spend the night.
Sailing through all this, it occurs to Nora that if anything were to happen between her and this woman, they would already have this little piece of history in place, something to refer back to, a meteorological marker of their beginning.
Turbo Cooler
FERN LIES ACROSS HER BED waiting for her next call. The heat wave has forced her to work from home. Harold’s power is still out. She called and found him in a rare downcast mood. He had to cancel the canasta club and had two trays of Crab Rangoon appetizers spoiling in a dead refrigerator.
‘I’ll just hang over here, then,” Fern told him. With any luck, her mother and Jeanne will be late getting home. Even though she has all the windows on the sun porch open, and has stripped down to gym shorts and a tank top, the heat presses on her with dead weight. For Lucky, she has been running a tea towel under cold water, wringing it out, then draping it over his back. He moves
very
carefully, to keep his tea towel in place; he understands that the towel is crucial.
They don’t have air-conditioning. All three of them hate its artificial feel and the sealed-in quality, and, really, on all but a few days of summer, they’re perfectly fine with the ceiling fans. When an unbearable
She herself stays until the ice melts around the cans of pop, and the buffet runs out of everything but a scattering of carrot sticks, and the students have diminished to a self-sustaining group of perhaps a dozen, chatting in small clumps. Still, even though three-quarters of an hour has elapsed, she is not really surprised when she comes out the front door of the Student Union, to find Pam sitting on the ledge to the side of the stairs. Her shirt is soaked through in places, stuck to her skin at the collarbone, deeply stained at her armpits.
“First,” she says, “let’s not say anything about the heat.”
“Okay,” Nora says, idling in neutral. “What’s second?”
“Oh man, I didn’t have a second thing.” Pam runs a hand over her damp, bristly hair.
Nora feels a drop land on her cheek. She loses track of what Pam is saying. It’s not important. The hair is what’s important, its dampness. Nora pushes an internal PAUSE button, freezing the little scene that pops up when she puts a picture of Pam together with the concept “damp”: they’re in the bathroom of the railroad motel and Nora is pulling a shower curtain aside, handing Pam a towel, then playfully reneging.
In the real world, on the steps of the Union, hoping she has missed only half a beat of real time, Nora tries to find a conversational analogue of throat-clearing, tie-straightening, cuff-tugging. “Well, then. I hope you enjoy your class. Have some fun.”
“I’ll make you an ashtray,” Pam says, not joining in the straightening up. She’s still in the motel room, lazy between the sheets.
“I quit smoking,” Nora says.
“You might start again, though.”
Night is falling. Nora pulls her car out of the lot behind the Administration Building. She hears on the radio that large patches of the North Side have had their power knocked out—payback for having sucked up all the available electricity with a few million air conditioners running on high. Everything looks normal and regular for a few blocks, then lapses into darkness. It’s a little scary, also fascinating, to sail along a daily route made eerily unfamiliar by minor catastrophe. Nothing is quite itself. Block after unlit block, here and there a candle or flashlight visible in a window, on the street a sweep of headlights. Amateur anarchists splash in the water gushing from uncapped fire hydrants. Ancient beaters ghost by, heading toward the lake with their windows rolled down and mattresses strapped to their roofs. On the radio, she hears that the parks and beaches are filling up with a temporarily transient population looking for a cool spot to spend the night.
Sailing through all this, it occurs to Nora that if anything were to happen between her and this woman, they would already have this little piece of history in place, something to refer back to, a meteorological marker of their beginning.
Turbo Cooler
FERN LIES ACROSS HER BED waiting for her next call. The heat wave has forced her to work from home. Harold’s power is still out. She called and found him in a rare downcast mood. He had to cancel the canasta club and had two trays of Crab Rangoon appetizers spoiling in a dead refrigerator.
‘I’ll just hang over here, then,” Fern told him. With any luck, her mother and Jeanne will be late getting home. Even though she has all the windows on the sun porch open, and has stripped down to gym shorts and a tank top, the heat presses on her with dead weight. For Lucky, she has been running a tea towel under cold water, wringing it out, then draping it over his back. He moves
very
carefully, to keep his tea towel in place; he understands that the towel is crucial.
They don’t have air-conditioning. All three of them hate its artificial feel and the sealed-in quality, and, really, on all but a few days of summer, they’re perfectly fine with the ceiling fans. When an unbearable
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