Free Small Changes by Marge Piercy

staggering disorder. From the central light socket a web of heavy extension cords wound among and under the furniture. Bright green jagged nudes on canvases were stacked against one wall and more leaned against the wall of the corridor beyond. Bookcases up to the ceiling. Records without jackets, cups with dregs of coffee, plates serving as ashtrays. Off a narrow corridor, one bedroom was relatively neat. “That’s my room,” Tom said over his shoulder. “The one that doesn’t stink.” Then a second room with a mattress on the floor and all other space taken up with canvases. Then three steps led down to the kitchen. The kitten chased after them, attacking her feet.
    “You will notice that Dorine washed the dishes this afternoon,” Jackson said, running water into a pot.
    “Is that good for them?” Tom walked past the sink, shaking his head. “Won’t they wear out?”
    “By the by, Laverne called.”
    Tom stopped abruptly. “When?”
    “About five-fifteen.”
    “Why didn’t you tell me?”
    “I just did.”
    “Sit you down, Beth my girl. Watch the master chef perform. I have to make a business call, just a quickie.”
    As Beth sat at the round oak kitchen table, the kitten climbed her leg and rolled over in her lap. Jackson was cooking and paying her no attention. She felt awkward, parked there in a strange kitchen. Only the kitten perceived her,seizing her hand in four dusty gray paws and beginning to gnaw. She finally thought of something she could say. “What do you call this kitten?”
    He did answer her, although he did not turn around. “That depends, that depends. Named Orpheus because we fished him from a sewer.”
    “What was he doing in a sewer?”
    “Drowning.” Jackson paused with spoon lifted high, scratching himself slowly over his bare chest. “How he stank. Incredible for something so small.”
    Still he faced the stove and said nothing more. Minutes crept over her. Something to say, something! “You’re a graduate student?”
    “At B.U. I was out of school for years. I wouldn’t like you to think my hair was turning white in the struggle.”
    “Why did you go back?”
    “A friend talked me into it.” He stirred the pot round and round and said nothing else for five minutes. Then he mumbled, “I was out of my mind. So was she. So was she.”
    At least if she kept asking questions he answered something. “What are you studying?”
    He did turn then and suddenly tousled her hair with his hand. “You’re out of Alice in Wonderland , all those questions. Political science—which is not science and neither holy, Roman, nor an empire.”
    With his gesture and his way of talking mainly for himself he made her feel ridiculously young—as if she had looked out through his sandy eyes and saw herself on a par with the kitten. She held the kitten on her lap and gave up trying to talk to him. Finally Tom Ryan came back muttering to himself, and the third roommate, who was called Lennie, arrived behind a bag of groceries. Lennie was thin and bony, with a dark kinky beard, heavy glasses, and large sad nose, though his hands were well formed. Dorine stuck close to him. Jackson took out shrimp and carried them to the stove. By luck she would be able to eat everything. That was like a blessing on her excursion. It was a new and curious world. The men talked to each other as a kind of playing. Instead of slapping each other and poking and punching the way Jim and Frankie and Dan did, these men poked and tickled and slapped each other with words. Mainly she and Dorine sat on the sidelines and watched the words go by.
    At supper everyone ate buffet style in the middle room. Apparently the first room at the entrance was Jackson’s, and the cot with the Mexican blanket was his bed. “But how can he have any privacy?” she asked Tom quietly.
    “Aw, but now Jackson sleeps alone.” Tom smiled at something.
    But that wasn’t what she meant. Privacy was precious to her. Never until Marie married