Mrs. Pollifax on the China Station

buildings and the outline of low green hills.
    Mrs. Pollifax left her seat and walked down the aisle to join Iris. ”Not
taking pictures, I see.”
    Iris looked up, startled. ”Oh I’ll take a few later, just for me.” She
smiled. ”No matter what I do, though, they come out weird. Heads chopped off,
and that sort of thing.” With a gesture toward the window she said, ”I was just
thinking what my friend Suzie would say about all those huts and rice paddies
we passed. Suzie loves glamour; she’d say, ‘You’re spending all that money to
fly halfway around the world and see this?”
    Mrs. Pollifax smiled. ”I suppose if you chose one of the city tours— Shanghai especially—you’d
find nightlife and glamour. Were you tempted?”
    ”Cities are what I know best,” Iris said ruefully. ”But,” she added
firmly, ”I wanted something different.”
    Mrs. Pollifax nodded. ”I think you found it.”
    Iris grinned back at her. ”I think so, too.” She turned in her seat to
face her. ”Look, Mrs.—it’s Pollifax, isn’t it? This dress —it’s no good, is
it.”
    ”No,” said Mrs. Pollifax calmly.
    ”Damn,” Iris said without rancor, ”I knew I shouldn’t trust Suzie. She’s
a go-go dancer,” she explained, ”and the only person I know who’s traveled.
Once to the Caribbean and once to Bermuda , so
I let her choose for me.”
    ”I’ve never met a go-go dancer,” Mrs. Pollifax said thoughtfully.
    ”Really?” Iris bestowed her large radiant smile on her. ”I should keep
my mouth shut, but since you’ve never met one I’ll tell you that you’re talking
to one now. You wouldn’t believe it, would you, with me being so clumsy, but
when I dance I’m not. And how else would I know Suzie?” she asked candidly. ”I
did it full time for three years, and then when I started college I worked part
time until I finished college last month.”
    ”College last month,” repeated Mrs. Pollifax, and realized that her
instincts had been sound and that Iris was going to have ever-widening
dimensions.
    ”Began college at twenty-eight,” Iris said triumphantly. ”Took a
high-school-equivalency test and just started because I never did finish high
school. Maybe it’s a college nobody’s heard of, but it was just right for me.
And I happened to take a year’s course on China ,” she added, ”and was the
only person in the class to get an A. So I decided you could have Paris and London , I was
going to come to China .
Except I told Suzie
there’d be no cocktail parties or men, but she said, ‘What’s a trip without
cocktail parties and men?’ ”
    ”What indeed,” said Mrs. Pollifax, fascinated.
    ”So I reminded her men are what I don’t need, having been married often
enough, but Suzie—”
    ”Often enough?” echoed Mrs. Pollifax, regarding her with some awe.
    Iris nodded. ”At sixteen to a cowboy—that was Mike—and then to Stanley , who turned out
to be a crook, and then to Orris. He struck oil, which is when he decided he was too good for me. He was nice,
though, he gave me a really fair shake when he left, and I may be dumb about
clothes but not about money. That’s when I decided I’d had enough, though, and
it was time to change my life.”
    ”Yes,” said Mrs. Pollifax, and waited.
    ”I mean,” Iris went on eagerly, ”we let men define who we are, right?
That’s Women’s Lib. I went to some of the meetings at college and I could see
how it had been with me. For Mike I ate beans and franks all the time and was a
cocktail waitress. For Stanley I learned how to keep my mouth shut about his shady deals—’button up,’ he was
always growling. For Orris I lived in a trailer on the oil fields and was a
go-go dancer until he struck it rich. And you know what?” she added, leaning
forward and shoving back her mane of hair, ”I did it all to please them, not me.”
    ”I see exactly what you mean,” said Mrs. Pollifax, admiring the passion
of Iris’ discoveries.
    ”Except now I’ve let Suzie influence me,” she said, glancing ruefully
down at the huge polka dots and stiff white collar. ”What do I do? Will there
be clothes in Canton ,
do you think?”
    ”Chinese clothes.”
    Iris scowled. ”I’m too big, I’m nearly six feet tall.”
    ”Didn’t you bring anything to—well, relax in?”
    ”I stuck in a pair of old jeans at the last minute—something old and
something blue,” she said wryly. ”In case I had a chance to ride horseback or
something. And a