Free The Cloud of Unknowing by Mimi Lipson Page A

would have to get someone else, that she wasn’t coming back after winter break, and packed up her trunk and her suitcase and a cardboard box of books. She didn’t even own the mattress she’d been sleeping on. After paying for the abortion and losing her security deposit, she was lucky to find something she could afford: the basement room in the house on the cul-de-sac, with its Astroturf and bad lighting and its damp chill that reminded her every day of hard-won self-sufficiency.
    After the break and the three weeks of torpor and Jack Benny reruns, Kitty came back to Portland ready to start again. She stayed away from the Student Union and anywhere else she was likely to run into Conrad, and went to work on her incompletes. She was downtown, browsing the table of Reed course books at Powell’s, when she saw Jim Frank for the second time. He seemed genuinely pleased to see her.
    â€œYou didn’t end up going to California?” she asked.
    â€œNo, not yet,” he said. “I think I will, though, sometime soon, but I just got a job at the 7-Eleven on 28th Street. I’m living on Hawthorne, in my own, my very own apartment. Listen, I’m going to Singles Going Steady now.”
    Singles Going Steady turned out to be a record store across the street. Inside, they paused for a moment. “You know, you look like a Shangri-La,” Jim said. “That is, you look like one of girls in the Shangri-Las. I’ll show you.”
    She followed him to the Oldies section and stood by whilehe flipped through a bin, frowning. He pulled a record. On the cover, three girls posed in matching outfits.
    â€œMary Weiss—the lead singer.” He pointed to the one in the middle. “It’s your hair, the way you have it parted. That and those kind of pants.”
    â€œPedal pushers.”
    He looked up at her with surprise. “That is such a good word! Pedal pushers! And your name, too: Kitty. ‘It’s Kitty’s turn to cry.’ No, wait—Judy. It’s Judy’s Turn to Cry.”
    â€œIs that one of their songs?”
    â€œNo, that’s Leslie Gore,” he said. “But, um, it’s a good name. Yeah, you remind me of Mary Weiss: sad and tough like that. A tough, sad teenager.”
    He led her to the listening station, where he put the record on and fitted the headphones over her ears. She recognized the first song—“Leader of the Pack”—as soon as it started, but Jim quickly picked the needle up and moved it to another track.
    This one began with a somber piano figure in a slow waltz time. Three girls, in hushed unison, spoke a single word: Past . Then a lone voice took up the recitation in an amplified whisper: tender, but burred with experience and studio reverb and a trace of a New York accent. Well now, let me tell you about the past. Past is filled with silent joys and broken toys. Jim watched while Kitty listened to that song and the next, then carefully lifted the headphones.
    â€œLet me buy this for you,” he said.
    â€œI don’t have a record player.”
    â€œI’m going to buy it anyhow, and we can play it at my place.”
    Jim’s building was not like the complexes on 28th Street. It was brick and old, with a wide, dusty hallway that reminded her of her grammar school. Following him into his apartment she peeked at the bedroom, to the left of the entryway. Therewas nothing inside but a typewriter, sitting on the floor in a sea of scattered pages.
    â€œIs that where you’re writing your novel?”
    â€œThat’s good, that you remembered that,” he said. “Yes, the novel.”
    Kitty wanted to go in and pick up a page and read it, but she stopped herself.
    â€œWhat’s it like, writing a book?”
    â€œI don’t really know how to answer that. It’s great, I guess.”
    There was no furniture in the living room either, except for a rug with a sleeping bag on it and