Free The Women's Room by Marilyn French

cigarette.
    She was tamping it out when Biff and Tommy came in through the back door and saw her. They came to the table, asked where Lanny was, stood around talking. Tommy went up to the bar and came backin a few minutes with a pitcher of beer, and he and Biff sat down with her. She talked with them, but she was stiff and the corners of her mouth were trembling. After the pitcher was nearly empty, Lanny suddenly appeared, carrying one glass – her Canadian Club. He stared coldly at his friends, then at her, plunked the glass down in front of her, and stalked stiffly back to the bar. Biff and Tommy looked at each other and at her: all three shrugged questioningly. They went on talking.
    Mira’s innards were quivering. She was angry with Lanny, but much more she was confused, uneasy, and even frightened. Why had he called her in the first place? Had he intended to take her out and ignore her all night? She remembered, miserably, many nights when he had done that, but there had always been a group of friends with them. She felt, above all, humiliated, and that gave her strength. The hell with him. She would act as if she didn’t care. She would act as if she were having fun. She would have fun. She grew very animated, and her friends responded with high spirits.
    Other people joined them. Biff got another pitcher of beer, and brought her a Canadian. She was touched. Biff was so poor. She smiled at him and he glowed at her. Biff always treated her as if she were fragile and innocent; he hovered, protecting her, but never tried to make a claim on her. His haggard cheeks, his tattered jacket cuffs hurt her. She wanted to give him something. She knew he would never approach her sexually. Because of his limp, probably: he was in college by virtue of a scholarship given to poor children with disabilities. Biff had had polio. So, bright as he was, attractive as he could have been if he’d had enough to eat, he never made the first move with women. And because she felt safe with him, she could afford to love him. She smiled her love at him and he smiled love back. Tommy was gleaming at her too, and Dan. They were all singing together now, over a third or fourth pitcher, she had lost count, being on her third Canadian.
    She no longer had to act: she was having fun. She was having more fun than she did when Lanny was around. He always made her feel as if she didn’t belong, as if she should not be joining in, but should be sitting in a chair against the dining room wall, faintly smiling, watching the men around the table eat and drink. It was sex, she thought, that caused the problem. With these friends, that didn’t come up, so they could be just friends, could have fun together. They were her comrades, her brothers, she loved them all. They had crisscrossed arms and were holding hands around the table, singing ‘The Whiffenpoof Song.’
    Lanny did not return. People were playing the jukebox, and Tommyasked her to dance. She agreed: they were playing an old Glenn Miller record that she liked. They kept playing. They put on ‘Sentimental Journey,’ ‘String of Pearls,’ and ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside.’ She kept dancing. They kept buying pitchers of beer, and a fourth Canadian sat melting and sweating on the table. Other people arrived, people she didn’t know well but who were in her class and knew her name. They were playing Stan Kenton now; the music, like her head, seemed louder, wilder. She noticed while she was dancing that there was no other girl in the back, that she was the only one dancing, that the guys were standing around almost as if they were lined up, waiting. But it seemed all right, because, she reasoned, there was only one guy dancing at a time, too.
    The lindy is a man’s dance. The male gets to hurl and whirl his partner all around the floor and he can just stand there. It must have been invented for men who didn’t know how to dance. Mira was dizzy from all the swinging around, but she was loving it.