“You won’t think I’m being terribly rude, will you?” Blanche asked.
“Go o-on, stop the nervous apologies, child,” he said. “I’m really glad that you’ve found a kindred soul.”
He shook hands with the other two and walked away.
As Blanche and Starling went for their wraps, they ran into Oppendorf and Margaret, and Blanche introduced the two men, who vaguely remembered that they had met somewhere before. Oppendorf looked even sleepier and more distant than usual, while Margaret was in a giggling daze of contentment.
“He didn’t kiss more than two other girls to-night,” she said gayly. “I really think he must be beginning to care for me.”
“I didn’t count more than two in your case, but then we had our backs turned once in a while,” Oppendorf replied.
Blanche promised to visit Margaret’s studio at the end of the week, with another manuscript for Oppendorf’s appraisal, and the two couples separated.
During the taxicab ride to her home, Starling held her hand, but made no effort to embrace her, and although she wanted him to, she felt rather glad at his reserve. How tired she had become of men who desperately tried to rush her at the end of the first night. It almost seemed as though rarely desirable men were never instantly frantic about it—as though their unabashed quietness alone proved their rarity. Naturally, only starved or oversexed men were so immediately anxious for physical intimacies, although ... Starling might have kissed her at least.
As Blanche stood in the dirty, poorly lit hallway, she smiled for a moment as she remembered how often she had been in this same spot, permitting men to kiss and hug her, out of pity or as a small payment for the “good time” that they had shown her. And now she was parting with a man infinitely more cajoling than they had been, and merely clasping hands with him. Life was certainly “cuckoo” all right. She had arranged to see Starling at the end of the week and leave a night of rest in between. As she retired to her bed, the satiated remnants of the ecstasy-herald were shifting slowly, slowly in her breast. The dream had finally peered around the corner ... how nice, how sweet, how terrifying....
On the following day, as she worked at the Beauty Parlor, she was in a sulkily grimacing mood. Oh, this endless ha-air-curling, and face-massaging ... beautifying women and girls so that some male fool would spend his money on them, or offer to marry them, or try to caress them. Gold-diggers, and loose women too passionate to be very efficient gold-diggers, and lazy, decent housewives, and sly-faced wives with a man or two on the side, and kiss-me-’n’-fade-away flappers—take away their bodies and what would be left of them? Less than a grease-spot. Drat this empty, tiresome work. She’d have to get out of it pretty soon or go loony. She wanted to write, and describe people, and live in a decent place, and ... see Eric Starling.