Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage

bangles on her arms. She was setting teacups on a tray. I was dizzy for a moment, coming out of the sunlight, and every inch of my skin bloomed with sweat.
    “Shh,” Queenie said, because I’d closed the door with a crash.
    “They’re in there listening to records. It’s him and his friend Leslie.”
    Just as she said this the music came to an abrupt halt and there was a burst of excited talk.
    “One of them plays a record and the other has to guess what it is just from a little bit of it,” Queenie said. “They play these little bits and then stop, over and over. It drives you crazy.” She started cutting slices off a delicatessen chicken and putting them on buttered slices of bread. “Did you get a job?” she said.
    “Yes, but it wasn’t permanent.”
    “Oh, well.” She didn’t seem very interested. But as the music started again she looked up and smiled and said, “Did you go to the—” And she saw the letter I was carrying in my hand.
    She dropped the knife and came to me in a hurry, saying softly, “You walked right in with it in your hand. I should have told you, put it in your purse. My private letter.” She grabbed it from my hand and right at that moment the kettle on the stove began to shriek.
    “Oh, get the kettle. Chrissy, quick, quick! Get the kettle or he’ll be out here, he can’t stand the sound.”
    She had turned her back and was tearing open the envelope.
    I took the kettle off the burner, and she said, “Make the tea, please—” in the soft, preoccupied voice of somebody reading an urgent message. “Just pour the water on, it’s measured.”
    She laughed as if she’d read a private joke. I poured the water on the tea leaves and she said, “Thanks. Oh, thanks, Chrissy; thanks.” She turned around and looked at me. Her face was rosy and all the bangles on her arms jingled with a delicate agitation. She folded up the letter and pulled up her skirt and tucked it under the elastic waistband of her underpants.
    She said, “Sometimes he goes through my purse.”
    I said, “Is the tea for them?”
    “Yes. And I have to get back to work. Oh, what am I doing? I have to cut the sandwiches. Where’s the knife?”
    I picked up the knife and cut the sandwiches and put them on a plate.
    “Don’t you want to know who my letter’s from?” she said.
    I couldn’t think.
    I said, “Bet?”
    Because I had a hope that a private forgiveness from Bet could be the thing that had made Queenie burst into flower.
    I had not even looked at the writing on the envelope.
    Queenie’s face changed—for a moment she looked as if she didn’t know who that was. Then she recovered her happiness. She came and put her arms around me and spoke into my ear, in a voice that was shivering and shy and triumphant.
    “It’s from Andrew. Can you take the tray in to them? I can’t. I can’t right now. Oh, thank you.”

    Before Queenie went off to work she came into the living room and kissed both Mr. Vorguilla and his friend. She kissed both of them on their foreheads. She gave me a butterfly wave. “Bye bye.”
    When I had brought the tray in I saw the annoyance on Mr. Vorguilla’s face, that I wasn’t Queenie. But he spoke to me in a surprisingly tolerant way and introduced me to Leslie. Leslie was a stout bald man who at first looked to me almost as old as Mr. Vorguilla. But when you got used to him and took his baldness into account he seemed much younger. He was not the sort of friend I would have expected Mr. Vorguilla to have. He was not brusque or know-it-all but comfortable and full of encouragement. For example, when I told about my employment at the lunch counter he said, “Well you know that’s something. Getting hired the first place you tried. It shows you know how to make a good impression.”
    I had not found the experience hard to talk about. The presence of Leslie made everything easier and seemed to soften the behavior of Mr. Vorguilla. As if he had to show me a decent courtesy in the presence of his friend. It could also have been that he sensed a change in me. People do sense the difference when you are not afraid of them anymore. He would not be sure of this difference and he would have no idea how it came about, but it would puzzle him and make him more careful. He agreed with Leslie when Leslie said I was well out of that job, and he even went on to say that the woman sounded like the sort of hard-bitten chiseler you sometimes found in that kind of hole-in-corner