Free Strange Women, The by Miriam Gardner Page B

woman, and you need loving—as who should know better than I?"
    "That's a caddish thing to say," said Nora, coloring.
    "So I'm a cad. I'm also a doctor, and a friend. The life you're living simply isn't normal."
    Nora slammed the table impatiently, shoving back her chair. "Christ! If I can't even eat dinner in peace—"
    Vic caught her wrist. "Sit still. See?" he said, without heat, "you can't live this way, your nerves won't take it."
    Why should I be angry with Vic, she wondered . He's only saying what I've been thinking. But she was angry.
    "What is this, Vic? Offering to sleep with me as a favor to a nervous wreck? Dr. Demorino's old reliable prescription for frazzled females? Vic, if I were a man I'd smash your teeth down your throat."
    He chortled. "If you were a man and I made you that kind of proposition, I'd expect you to!"
    Her anger dissolved and she laughed. "Thanks, Vic. But—no thanks."
    "Now look. Suppose the shoe were on the other foot. Suppose you were in the hospital a year, and your husband going through all that—"
    "It's not the same and you know it. For God's sake, you make me feel as if I were going around like a bitch in heat!"
    "Oh, come—" but the drone of the paging system cut him off. "Sister Amy, wanted in Ward Fi-yuv. Doc-tor De-morino, wan-ted in Delivery Room. Sis-ter Amy—"
    He scowled, dumping his cigarette. "Well, here we go again. I'd hoped Pizzetti would take another hour—"
    "Let Quentin handle it. That's what she's for."
    Vic shook his head wearily. "Can't. I don't think the Pizzetti kid speaks more than twenty words of English, and it's her first baby. I kind of promised I'd show up and hold her hand." He put his own hand momentarily on Nora's shoulder. "See you later, girl."
    She sat watching him, poking idly at her congealed lunch. For the first time she was brought smash against a new fact; after sixteen years of total freedom, the habits and attitudes of a married woman are not acquired overnight.
    She could still feel, like a speck of heat, Vic's firm hand on her shoulder; it brought back, with a physical vividness that made her gasp, the memory of his hot mouth; the feel of his thick-set hairy body against hers. She cursed, humiliated, under her breath, but the memory went on; an inexorable playback on some mental recorder whose cutoff switch was out of order. That first, perfect time in her apartment, in broad daylight...
    * * *
    She had come to Albany four years ago, at the end of her residency in a large Chicago hospital. Vic sent all his patients to St. Margaret's; he and Nora ran across each other frequently. It seemed natural to date him—the snatched, time-pressed casual dates of overworked people who can't call their lives their own; coffee in the lounge, spaghetti in an Italian restaurant owned by an uncle of Vic's, who gave them special food and wine and a flow of talk not too subtly aimed at urging Vic to settle down. But he was still a colleague, a casual friend.
    Things had changed suddenly. One cool spring day he had suggested a game of tennis and driven her to the park. Nora, who had only changed her shoes for canvas-soled sneakers, was startled to see him in shorts and an armless singlet. Dressed, he simply looked thick-set; stripped, he was strong and smoothly tanned, with the muscles of an acrobat, legs like shafts of bronze covered with fine, soft reddish down.
    Nora, on her mettle with his first serve, played her best, but his every move had an almost professional grace. When he had won two sets out of three, she took him back to the apartment for a drink—already half knowing what would happen. Dressed again in slacks and shirt, he looked like the man she knew—grave and stern, with kind eyes and good hands—but behind the mask Nora still saw the muscular athlete's body, the boyish grace with which he ran and dodged across the court.
    Confused under his eyes, she put up her hands to her still-disheveled hair; but Vic moved swiftly to her side, put