Free The Receptionist by Janet Groth Page B

hand—it was the hand the Borgias used. Th ey’d open the hinged ring they wore on the third finger of that hand, then turn the poison it contained into the vessel as they poured.” She demonstrated neatly with a hinged ring of her own, and wound up, “So you must never pour left-handed.”
    I could easily imagine that had Maro Gorky been in the room at this moment, Muriel might have offered her a glass of champagne and poured it for her with her left hand.
    It was just as well that Maro Gorky was not reachable that night. Freddie had not got his facts right. Th ere was a nasty crack in Harper’s & Queen, and it did occur in an article about Maro Gorky’s rude luncheons and dinners for the English colony in the Chianti valley. But the author of the crack is described as a recently arrived man, a “high-pitched screamer” who was nowhere near as talented as Muriel, and the color of the wig was “orange.”
    At eleven the party broke up, all of us leaving together, Muriel and Penelope to see me home to Cortona, Freddie and Dario to repair to Freddie’s house in Florence.
    Th e traffic was heavy at first, then devolved to almost none when the driving became hazardous because of the fog. Both Penelope and Muriel insisted they didn’t mind the lateness of the hour or the more than ninety miles of driving involved in getting me home and themselves back. I was originally to have stayed over, but they’d thought better of this plan, saying it was the scarcity of done-up rooms that posed a problem of where to put me. Th is was confirmed by the tour I’d been given as I arrived. I’d seen a small, peach-colored room that was Muriel’s, and seen the studio couch/daybed in the library, where I was told Penelope slept. I’d even watched television in the one and dined in the other. But full of the aura of rather poisonous gossip Freddie had brought to the dinner table, and fed by a sense of disappointment, I allowed myself to wonder whether the real reason had been their reluctance to let me see that they shared a bed.
    I began to let my imagination ride along with me on the trip back to Cortona. I imagined as more truth than exaggeration Muriel’s humorous references to how Penny ordered her around, forcing her into slave labor in the olive grove attached to the church grounds each picking season. She also claimed she had been press-ganged into the work of redecorating the chapel, an area Penelope used as her studio. I found more evidence—of Penelope’s devotion if not of her dominatrix tendencies—in the portrait she’d done of Muriel and wouldn’t give her. On Muriel’s side, I considered her preference for female company dating back to Miss Kay’s class at James Gillespie’s High School in Edinburgh (the model for Miss Brodie and her “set”). Th en there were her difficulties with men: a husband who went off his rocker, and two lovers who delivered her literary stabs in the back. An Irish landlady of hers once observed, “You’re a bad picker,” and Muriel could only respond, “How true!” Add to this her predilection for women’s clubs (chiefly one called the Helena, renamed the May of Teck in Th e Girls of Slender Means ). And hadn’t she also had a female flatmate for years in Rhodesia?
    Unsurprisingly, there had been plenty of gossip about Muriel and Penelope’s relationship.
    Against these hints of full-blown passion between the two women were Muriel’s repeated denials in print. “We’re not lesbians, you know,” she’d said in answering some impertinent interviewer. On another occasion she had described the relationship between her and Penelope as “old-fashioned friendship.” Finally, I came to the conclusion that it was of no importance to anyone but them and none of my business. Snap out of it, I said to myself, and pay attention so you can help with the driving.
    Penelope was being very offhand about the fog, though as an expert driver she was clearly concerned about it. At this