Free Beauty Queen by Patricia Nell Warren Page B

morning, around eight, Jeannie and her husband were bustling around the bedroom and bathroom, getting in each other's way as they dressed. Sidney was standing in front of the bathroom mirror, blow-drying his hair. His shirt and tie lay ready on the bed. Jeannie stepped into a favorite dress, a white silk shirtwaist with navy polka dots. The high shirt collar and cuffed long sleeves gave it a virginal look.
    Then she strode into the bathroom, holding the back of her dress together.
    "Zip me up, darling?" She pivoted to present her back to him.
    A twitch of impatience crossed Sidney's face. "I'm late already," he said. But he put the drier down without turning it off and zipped up the zipper with a short brusque motion.
    Jeannie fixed her eyes on his longish dark hair. "Darling, your hair is hardly long enough to bother with blow-drying."
    Sidney picked up the blow-drier, and looked her right back in the eyes. "Do you have an objection to my blow-drying my hair? I mean, do you feel I'm adding to the energy crisis or something?" His voice was mild, yet there was an edge in it.
    "Well," she said, "it's so modernist to do that."
    Sidney laughed. "But you blow-dry your hair, darling."
    "That's different" she said. "I'm supposed to have long hair."
    "Long hair is God's glory, right?" he said, smiling and turning back to the mirror.
    "That's right," she said. "Ephesians, chapter three, verses eight through ten."
    Sidney turned and played the blast of hot air over his hair. "Well, then, we'll just have twice the glory, won't we?"
    Jeannie strode out of the bathroom, trying to stifle the impulse to be impatient. It was too good a day to get impatient with anyone. If her mother had heard the conversation, she would have said that it served Jeannie right to have married an unsaved man.
    Years ago Sidney had seemed like just the right man to a young bright-eyed actress bent on the most clean and decent kind of career possible in acting. He smoked but he didn't drink—not because he was moral, of course, but just because liquor made him sick A quirk of his biochemistry, he said. He was a blithe and sunny person, one of those people who almost made you believe the heresy that human beings are good by nature. But her conversion, a year ago, had changed all that. There was no way that Sidney Colter, sunny and good though he was, was going to church or adult Sunday school with her. He told her that the guys in the newsroom would die laughing if he went to Sunday School.
    Jeannie stood in front of the bedroom vanity mirror, fastening on her earrings. "Of course," she thought, "I couldn't have married a saved man then, because I wasn't saved myself—was I?"
    Sidney shut off the blow-drier, came out of the bathroom, and pulled on his shirt. Despite his love of gourmet food and his encyclopedic knowledge of every good restaurant in New York State, Sidney at thirty-nine still had the lean torso and good shoulders of a college boy. For a moment, Jeannie felt very strongly attracted by him. How wonderful that God blessed loving sex between a man and a woman. During the past year, their sex life had suffered because of her breakdown.
    Looking at him, she suddenly wanted to make love. But there was no time for love this morning. So she just went over to Sidney, with a whisk of silk, and kissed him gently on the cheek.
    "I'm sorry," she said. "I sounded like I was starting a fight."
    Sidney, buttoning his shirt, was also reluctant to discuss modernism further. "You're very brisk this morning," he said.
    "Oh, I am," she said. "We both came home so late last night that there was no time to tell you yet. But—anyway, I've made up my mind. I'm going back into politics."
    As Sidney stood silently before the vanity mirror, knotting his tie, she briefly outlined her plans to him.
    "You'll certainly get a lot of publicity," he said, "if you campaign against Intro Two. The faggots in this town are very loud, and very well-organized."
    "Well," she said crisply,