Free After Claude by Iris Owens

his gang for dinner. In spite of knowing that the only thrill in Maxine’s life was to have a heart-to-heart chat that left her victim prostrate, gasping for breath, I had, out of courtesy, allowed her in, so now she could march straight down to Rhoda-Regina’s apartment and continue having a perfect afternoon. It felt as though I could press my ear against the floorboards and hear Maxine relieve R.-R.’s suffering by informing her of my impending rift with Claude. Why was Rhoda-Regina suffering? A good question, and the only answer I’ve ever arrived at is that she was suffering because she could not stop comparing herself with normal people. I had warned her.
    “Rhoda,” I said, “don’t torture yourself with comparisons. Five years in Europe have completely transformed me, while you, except for the addition of a few pounds, are exactly the same Boy Scout.”
    I always kidded Rhoda, because when we first met, at the tender age of six or seven, residing as we did in semidetached villas in Brooklyn, she wore only boy’s clothes. That came about because she had three older brothers and her father was a tailor. The rest was just plain Jewish common sense. What were they supposed to do with the pants when the youngest son outgrew them? Make stuffed derma? It’s true that in our childish ways, we all poked good-natured fun at Rhoda-Regina, but from the way she carried on with her ten uninterrupted years of analysis, you’d think if not for those outfits she would currently be the widow of Aristotle Onassis. That she had also inherited her father’s musculature never occurred to her as an obstacle to feminine perfection. And furthermore, if the ideal female automatically lived in a Zelda Fitzgerald paradise, why wasn’t my life one delirious fandango? However, she couldn’t spare one second from her incessant brooding to reflect on anyone else’s destiny. No matter how normal or relaxed she seemed, all you had to do was wink at her and say, “Clothes make the man,” and you had a volcanic eruption on your hands. Rhoda-Regina had been my oldest and best friend. I’d known her almost as long as I’d known myself. We’d gone through school together, except that she, being insecure as a female, had gone on to collecting degrees. We’d sailed to Europe together, me to stay for five crucial years, during which I’d grown out of my Brooklyn chrysalis into a creature of indeterminate origins, while Rhoda-Regina had barely lasted through the summer, rushing back to her beloved highway-robber analyst like Dracula making dawn tracks to his coffin.
    A word to the wise. If you happen to be an American citizen, born and bred, and you come upon hard times abroad, go directly to the Ethiopian Embassy. I kid you not. When I appealed to the American Consul for help, he hustled me on a plane to New York so fast I had no time to say goodbye to my great love, MacDonald. For all he knows, I’m still in the American Hospital recuperating from a bout of mononucleosis. The thugs were taking no chances with letting a free spirit slip through their black-leather gloves. They even kept my passport, which is no doubt currently in the possession of Mr. Martin Bormann.
    Once officialdom had finished with me, there was no one to turn to but Rhoda-Regina. My adoptive parents had moved their act to Los Angeles; Elizabeth and Richard were incommunicado on their yacht; Jackie and Ari were feuding again; Maxine hung up on me. Desperate, I dragged myself to R.-R.’s door and rang her bell. I tried to conceal how shocked I was at Rhoda-Regina’s enlarged appearance. R.-R. looked like a massive version of the Statue of Liberty after some vandals had knocked the torch out of her hand.
    “Surprise,” I said, “it’s me, Harriet.”
    “Harriet?” the sleepwalker mumbled. In a certain unselfish sense, I had arrived in the nick of time.
    “I would have written,” I explained, “but it turned out I could get here faster than a letter. Ha, ha.