Free Pretty Leslie by R. V. Cassill Page B

ought to be like a box trap for bunnies, bait and deadfall, sweetness and geometric enclosure. In Leslie there was no detectable constancy of intent. Stunning frankness would be followed by “How could anyone think that of me?” The mechanism was all confused with the bait.
    So Leslie confused people who should only have been confused for a reason . There was little Dolly Sellers, for instance, ready to adore in awe. Dolly could hardly have been more impressed. Leslie was a doctor’s wife . She’d not only been to three colleges; she’d worked for that magazine (which Dolly didn’t read but her father did), she was beautiful (poor Dolly knew herself to be only cute and not even that for long), and she was kind (everyone knew that about Leslie). Dolly had an instant crush. But every day that went by slackened her readiness to adore, diluted it with instinctive contempt. Given Leslie’s advantages (even one of them, O God!) Dolly would not have bothered to spit on Don Patch (though, the economy of providence being what it was, Dolly had done considerably more than spit). If she had even Leslie’s gift of wisecracking, she’d whipsaw Patch until he didn’t know whether he was coming or going. But Leslie … well, whether she thought so or not, Leslie wasn’t keeping loudmouth Patch in his place. He said things to her that she thought were jokes, which Dolly, poor Dolly, knew were the sly, creeping, vulgar insinuations of male authority over all womankind.
    Dolores understood where Leslie fell short. And she was too old to rejoice in finding the core weakness in a woman with so many gifts. She wanted to help, wanted to warn if she could—but how did you warn a woman who sets up all her major defenses precisely to prevent a warning?
    That was it—or was close to the heart of the Leslie problem, at any rate. Leslie didn’t want to be warned. Nothing would have shamed her more than to be shown that she needed a warning—so she careened along like a bicyclist with blinders, daring the traffic to hit such a clever rider if it could.
    Not that Dolores specialized in the caution game. It was God’s business to take care of blindfold bicycle riders—male or female—in His own inscrutable way. She had seen too many ironic reversals of promise to believe she knew when to say “Stop” or had any right to say it. Only with Leslie … well, with Leslie … the damn girl had so much that was good, you wanted her to get away with her games intact.
    The small experiment of cautioning Leslie had come up in connection with Don Patch. Dolores had said, offhandedly, “Watch that kid. He’ll turn nasty on you. He doesn’t talk the same language as you.”
    And Leslie’s reply? She had answered with gasps and chokes of laughter. “Dolores, he eats out of my hand. If I told him to bark or roll over, don’t you think he would?”
    â€œI think he’d do that .”
    O.K., O.K. Maybe Leslie was right, and even if she wasn’t, Don Patch was too inconsequential to worry over. At most, if he turned nasty, he might spread unpleasant stories about Leslie—which Dolly might believe against her better inclinations, because she had to, but which no one else at the shop would want very much to hear. Or he might make a disgusting pass at her in the freight elevator or the storeroom. He didn’t have the guts for an attacker. If Leslie was playing with fire in this case, the fire was an easily snuffed match flame. But someday someone else might notice Leslie’s blinders and make real trouble.
    And what for? A woman might, from sheer restlessness and excess of energy, like to play the man-and-woman game at all opportunities. Unless Dolores was much mistaken, Leslie lacked the real competitor’s taste and appetite. Leslie was only doing what she had to, alas.
    Unsatisfied at home? Yah, yah, yah, sure. Obviously. But how and