The War Between the Tates: A Novel by Alison Lurie Page A

previous occupants. For a while he tried hanging his raincoat over it, but this only made it even more obtrusive. It looked like someone tall and thin and round-shouldered, probably Wm. M. Sayle, crouching in the corner with his head down. Brian would have liked to throw the chair out, but that was not feasible, for it had become a Tradition in a university which valued Tradition.
    On the morning of December 12, there was a knock at Brian’s door.
    “Yes?”
    “Hi.” Wendy Gahaghan, in her fringed leather costume, entered the office.
    “Well hello, stranger!” Brian forgot that Wendy had been avoiding him for her own good—his voice expressed only pleasure, and slightly injured surprise.
    “I had the Asian flu,” Wendy panted, out of breath from running up two flights of stairs. “I was in the infirmary, I couldn’t even call you.”
    “I’m sorry to hear that.” Under her long, untidy, damp-streaked hair (there was a cold rain outside) Wendy was paler than usual. “You look tired.”
    “Yeah, I just got out this morning.” She smiled weakly.
    “Well, sit down then, rest yourself—No, not there!” he cried, as Wendy sank into the Sayle Chair. Too late: there was a sharp crack; the seat split, the left front leg collapsed, and Wendy collapsed with it. Her legs sprawled out, her books skidded across the gray vinyl floor.
    “Ow, ooh!” she shrieked as she landed hard on her back and the chair fell forward on top of her.
    “God damn.” In what seemed to him slow motion, Brian got around his desk and crossed the room. He lifted the chair. “Are you all right?”
    “I guess so.” Wendy flexed her arms and legs. Her fringed cowhide miniskirt had been pushed up to the waist, below which she was now covered only in a transparent pale nylon membrane, faintly shiny, like the sections of an orange or pink grapefruit. “Yeh, I’m okay. Hey.” She smiled weakly; but made no move to adjust her skirt or get up. “I broke your chair.”
    “It was cracked already,” Brian said. “I told you before not to sit there.” He set the chair down; it sagged lamely against the bookcase.
    “Oh, wow.” Wendy began to laugh. From where he stood above her, the effect was strange. Her transparent eyes rolled back; her mouth opened, showing wet pink depths; her full hips shook inside the nylon membrane. Brian felt a strong mixed emotion which he chose to interpret as impatience.
    “Here, get up,” he said firmly, almost angrily, holding out his hand.
    Responsive to his mood, Wendy stopped laughing at once. She scrambled up off the floor, looking frightened; her hand in his felt cold and small. Brian removed the Times and some books from another chair and pushed it forward. Wendy sat down.
    “Hey, listen, why I was laughing. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—See, I didn’t know your chair was broken. I thought you just didn’t want me to sit in it all this time because I wasn’t worthy of it” She grinned timidly. “I thought you were saving it for, like, important people.”
    “That’s ridiculous.”
    “I know it. Oh, I’m always so stupid, stupid, stupid.” She hit her freckled face with her small freckled fists, half humorously, half melodramatically. “You probably must hate me now,” she added.
    “Of course not.”
    “But I ruined your famous chair.”
    Both Brian and Wendy looked at the Sayle Chair, which was down on one knee in the corner; its right arm hung broken at its side. It could be thrown out now, he realized. It would be thrown out.
    “Looks like it,” he agreed, smiling.
    “I guess you’ll never forgive me.”
    “I’ll forgive you,” Brian said generously. “As long as you don’t break anything else.”
    No reference was made that day to Wendy’s infatuation; nevertheless the situation had changed, in some way Brian did not understand. In the days that followed, instead of being aware of her desire only for brief moments while she was in the office, he felt it continually. The waves