Sarah and Joy had met in the kitchenette, about four-thirty in the afternoon. Their encounters were always a matter of routine, and to-day they both happened to strike the same time to search for “afternoon tea.” Sarah had just come to light, and was yawning about in a wrinkled kimono, her hair done up in curlers, her face pettishly grey. There was something positively undressed about Sarah’s face at times like these. Joy had been uptown all day, first at Pa’s, then at her French and Italian lessons. Returning, she had been practicing a trill exercise, not aware that Sarah was arising a little later than usual.
“I’m sorry,” she said now, and chewed a cold English muffin—the kind one buys at the corner delicatessen. “I usually close the door when I practice, anyway. I didn’t think anyone was home.”
“It certainly is nerve-racking to live in the house with a singer,” Sarah complained. She had caught sight of her face in a mirror, which added to the drag of her voice. “Of course I know you have to practice and all that, Joy, but now that your voice has gotten so much bigger it carries everywhere—simply everywhere!”
“Glad to hear it, that’s what I’m after,” snapped Joy, and bit into another discouraged muffin. “It’s hard enough to work all the time without being picked on for it. To hear you talk, you’d think I sang all day.”
“Now you’re getting cross. I suppose singers have to be temperamental, though.” Receiving no response to this, Sarah twirled her infinitesimal braid and tried again: “It’s funny to see you try to be so earnest. No girl with the looks you know you have can stand the strain of the student’s life without weakening and breaking away once in a while. And you can’t tell me that you and that Jim Dalton go to concerts every time you leave here.”
“We never have gotten along well together, have we, Sarah? I think the best way for us to do is not to talk when we’re around each other, unless we can’t avoid it.”
Sarah stared at Joy, incredulous that the mist over the animosity of the two had at last blown away.
“I mean it,” said Joy, “I need every bit of my energy for my work. I can’t waste any of it on you. I’m sure you feel the same way about me. So, let’s not—waste any energy.”
Sarah, regarding her beneath incendiary brows, was just taking on energy. “It’s true we’ve never gotten on together. It started the first day you came and put Packy away in your reticule. You walked away with him, reticule and all. Packy was one of the best playmates I ever had—his hand and his pocket-book had well oiled connections. And now through you he’s queered himself, and will never blow around here again.”
“I always felt Packy was at the bottom of it. But I don’t care. I’ve done my next-best to get along with you, and you too have made somewhat of an effort, but we can’t get along—so let’s not waste any more energy.”