Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You

hours later, in the Alhambra, she was doubled up, desperate.
    “That’s what Nancy always remembers about Spain. Here we are in this incredibly beautiful place we’ve seen all the pictures of, and it was one of the places Nancy had most looked forward to seeing, and we can only think of one thing—where is the ladies’ john?”
    “Ah, one’s baser needs,” said Jeanette, mock-solemnly. “One’s baser needs are so inconvenient. They get to be so important. I remember my first stoopers. On the boat to Greece.”
    Is that the way men and women talk to each other nowadays? Dorothy could tell Viola was thinking. And further: No wonder she isn’t married .
    “And for Nancy, of course. Nancy is dignified. You haven’t met her. She isn’t anything you would call a snob, but she is—well, I used to think of her as the sorority-girl type.”
    “Ah,” said Jeanette, combining flattery and a delicate sort of contempt in a way that Blair King was probably not even aware of, going on talking about his wife. What was Jeanette up to? Was this flirtation, some new style of it? In spite of all her talking and animation there was something quite still about Jeanette, something not playful, but acquiescent, almost forlorn.
    They had progressed from talking about doctors to talking about places where people would rob you blind, and other places where you could leave an unlocked, loaded car for days parked safely on the street. “In North Africa I had everything stolen,” said Jeanette. “I had everything stolen even though the camper was locked. I was alone by that time, my friend and I had separated and I felt badly about that too—” So it was a man , thought Dorothy, but immediately had to correct herself and think, unless it was a girl, and they were —Sometimes she wished she had not kept up with the world as she had done, reading.
    “It was in Marrakesh,” Jeanette said. “I had everything, everything, stolen, lovely things—Moroccan dresses, cloth I had bought for friends, jewelry—as well as my camera naturally and all the stuff I had come with. I just sat there all alone in my camper and I cried. And then two young Arab boys—well, not boys really, young Arab men —but they were very slender and at first I took them for younger than they were—they came by and saw me and stopped and tried to talk to me. One spoke English quite well. At first I wouldn’t even talk to them, I hated all Arabs, hated all Moroccans, I blamed them personally for my stuff being stolen. I wouldn’t even tell them what had happened but they kept on at me—or the one that talked did—until I finally quite rudely explained, and they said, you must go to the police. Ha, I said, the police were probably watching them do it. But they finally persuaded me to go. They got in and directed. It did cross my mind that they were probably not taking me to the police at all and that I was being totally stupid, but I really didn’t care much. And do you know what? I was inclined to trust the one talking to me, because he had blue eyes . What abysmal prejudice; Nazis had blue eyes. But his eyes made me feel more comfortable somehow and I went along even when we had to leave the camper and walk through all those twisty turny smelly streets in the Arab quarter, and by the time I knew for sure we weren’t going to the police I couldn’t have found my way back anyhow. You’re not taking me to the police, are you, I said, and they said no. Not right away, the blue-eyed one said. I’m going to take you home and introduce you to my mother!”
    “Well that was very nice of him. After all,” said Viola encouragingly.
    But Blair King laughed.
    “I know . Introduce me to his mother. And his sister, he said. Eventually we did come to a house or rather a door, that was all I noticed because you know how the walls all run together. And we were in a little bare room with a couch and a bright bulb. Wait a minute, he said, and he went through another door. His friend stayed behind. I didn’t like the friend at all. He had a sullen face. He didn’t talk. I sat on the couch and after a long time No. I came back and said he was sorry, his mother and sister had gone to bed. Then he said he was going out to get some food. I said could he take me back and he said later. So he left me again with this friend and no sooner was he gone than peculiar things started to happen. The friend came over and sat on the couch and started stroking my hands and