"What a thing to say! Aren't you going to miss me?" She cocked her head provocatively. He certainly was leaving everything to her.
"Not at all. I'm going right out and get another model one minute after you leave."
"Oh, you devil you, don't you dare, or I'll pose for the first artist I meet."
"Don't you dare."
They laughed: this was more like old times before the picnic.
She'll think it queer if I don't give her a letter to someone, and after all—"I'm going to give you a letter to a friend, Raymond Figente. He's a sculptor and lives on East Tenth Street."
She hardly could see him beyond the patch of light from the street. His voice was pitched lower than usual and had an owning quality that was exciting. She heard his wrist watch marking time.
All ready, get set, go. Was he going to speak or was it to be up to her again? She ought to wait and give him his chance.
He leaned over and put his lips to her forehead.
Of all places, she thought.
"Come, darling, it's time I took you home."
She could tell he didn't want to go. Why was he pretending? As far back as she could remember boys and men couldn't keep their hands off her. Politeness must at last give in, or what was the point of it all? There was always that excitement of men. Clem too in spite of his holding back. She wanted to feel that excitement too, and it would be silly to stop now without knowing once and for all. Not the act, for she had known what that was a long long time. Always, it seemed. By inference, hints, drawings by boys on billboards, scratched words on girls' toilet walls—the same words that night at the Crofter Hotel. Why should Clem be so afraid when he was her best friend?
She took his head in her hands and, marveling at its weight, pulled his lips to hers to prove that she at least wasn't scared. Kissing him, she even forgot the objective in her effort to help him in his indecision. Then, without warning, he became a madman, someone she didn't know, obsessed only in his own passion as he fumbled crazily to find her.
Was this sharp pain love? If so, why didn't she faint from joy as she had dreamed? Or feel the rapture the poems Vida read said? Maybe only men feel rapture. Clem didn't seem to realize she was there, as though he was alone in her. As if through her he was trying
