Wedding of the Two-Headed Woman by Alice Mattison

Daphne.”
    â€œPekko, you’re obviously wary of Daphne. And she’s doing community service. Doesn’t that mean she committed a crime?” I stood up and turned on the light.
    â€œI don’t know anything about it. We’re old friends,” said Pekko. “I ought to fire those druggies and hire her to paint that staircase.”
    â€œDid you sleep with her when she worked for you?” I said.
    â€œI didn’t even know you then.”
    â€œI don’t care. ” But now he picked up the newspaper. So I went back to reading the catalog I’d glanced at before, and time passed, and the mood changed. I for one was too hungry to think about what my mother and Daphne did, or even what Daphne and Pekko did.
    I was too hungry to think and too hungry to cook, too tired even to take on the minor responsibility of suggesting dinner out. I knew Pekko wanted me to take charge, and I thought he might know I wanted him to. So we continued to sit. This sort of impasse led to bad times in our dating days. We’d finally eat at ten o’clock and be so hungry we’d quarrel. Now, Arthur pressed his head onto my lap and under my hands, making me stroke his hard, narrow skull. Then he thrust his nose into the crotch of my pants. I rose to feed him and broke the tension in the room. Pekko stood too, slapped his thighs, and watched me feed the dog. “Basement Thai,” he said. The Thai restaurant we like best, where there’s usually room for us, is in a basement on Chapel Street.
    â€œIt’s Tuesday, so I have time,” I said.
    â€œNo radio.”
    â€œRadio’s finished. No play.” Both were on Wednesdays.
    But that made me think about the radio series, and I wanted to ask, “Was Daphne ever a prostitute?” Of course I wouldn’t get an actual answer.
    â€œSo what you’re saying,” said Pekko, “is that if you had something to do, you’d skip dinner with me and do it.”
    â€œI’m hungry,” I said.
    Â 
    W hy the fascination with prostitutes?” Gordon Skeetling asked a few days later, as we walked down Temple Street, where the sycamores weren’t green yet. He’d proposed lunch so he could explain what he wanted of me. “Not that you can’t develop your own ideas.” He had a way of whooshing aside objections that hadn’t yet been made, by claiming not to disagree with them. The objections were bold, so within a sentence or two he might make fair conversational progress on my behalf. Now he added, after “fascination with prostitutes,” “Not that there’s anything illegitimate about the subject of prostitution.”
    â€œThat’s right, there isn’t!” I said, instead of claiming I wasn’t fascinated.
    We crossed a parking lot and entered Clark’s Pizza—which is Greek despite its name—through the back door. It’s an old-fashioned lunch place with red upholstered booths and a menu including gyros and moussaka. Gordon had a light, tenor voice—the voice of a younger man—and as we sat down in a booth near the windows, I looked around to see if anyone was listening.
    â€œProstitutes are just one sort of needy person,” I continued. “They’re usually poor. They may be homeless. They may have AIDS.”
    I ordered a Greek salad, and he asked for spanakopita. I didn’t feel rushed with Gordon Skeetling, so after my outburst I tried to answer his question truthfully. Of course I didn’t know why I’d wanted to do a series about prostitution, only that I did. “I’m not a prostitute,” I began again, in a different tone.
    â€œWere you ever offered money for sex?” he said. “It never happened to me. I guess I’m not attractive enough.”
    â€œTwice,” I said and told him the stories I couldn’t get Pekko to listen to—the man outside the bakery, the man outside the dress