Free Thirty Girls by Susan Minot

minor expense account from the magazine, she said, actually, hardly believing it herself, since she had no real credentials as a journalist.
    It’s better if you don’t hire me, Harry said. If I’m hired I usually get sacked.
    The guest room where Jane was staying had been painted by Lana, salmon and green. Its lantern threw half-moons of light on the stucco wall. Harry got in with her under the pink mosquito net.
    He had been with her now three nights and each night in a different bed in a different place. She was in that early lull of physical happiness when going over it was a pleasure, with no real qualms yet. She felt a sinking deeper. And now he was coming with them on her trip. It’ll be what it is, she said to herself, as proof she was without illusion, but having no more idea what
It’ll be what it is
meant other than a hope against the sinking.
    Again departure was postponed so Lana threw another dinner party.
    She went into action, arranging what needed to be done, talking to the cook, unruffled and focused. Her energy spread outward and Jane helped her push three tables together and move brass elephants. Lana shook out a long white tablecloth stamped with silver and blue paisley which landed like a sail.
    From Jaipur, she said. Lana’s things each had a story—linen napkinswere from Porta Portese in Rome, gold-dotted plates passed down from her grandmother in Paris, the striped red and green Venetian glasses from the lover trying to woo her back. That worked, she said, for a while.
    The cottage had four small rooms packed like a treasure chest. In her thirty-six years Lana had covered a lot of ground. There were the small business ventures: lanterns from Morocco, the alabaster Indian lamps, the belts with Maasai beading. She’d worked as a set designer and fund raiser, started schools for the Rendille in the bush. Her tastes were both extravagant and rustic. A chandelier hung from a water buffalo horn on the terrace. She was generous whether flush or broke. For all the pleasure she found in things, she did not have the hoarding instinct of the materialist. You liked her bracelet? Here. She would unclasp it from her wrist and snap it onto yours.
    She held up a conch shell filled with salt. Sweet, she said. She had dressed for dinner in a short satin slip, boots laced to her knees and dark lipstick. Now, she said, most important, the lighting. They lit lanterns and candles which had been placed in abundance around the cottage on stands and floors and tables crowded with silver cups.
    How old is Harry? Jane said.
    What do you think?
    Twenty-six? Jane said tremulously. Five?
    More like twenty-three, darling.
    You’re kidding.
    Or twenty-two. What, you care? Age doesn’t matter.
    It doesn’t?
    For dinner there was a platter of grill-marked chicken sprinkled with singed herbs, roast pork beside peeled potatoes, stewed eggplant in tomato sauce, green beans shiny with butter and garlic, curried lentils, ribs, shredded cabbage, sliced avocado. Lana’s housekeeper and another woman carried dishes in and out of the kitchen, taking orders from Lana in Swahili, without seeming to hear them.
    By the time the cook’s specialty, coconut flan, was brought out, no one at the table seemed to notice, deep in conversation or having left altogether. Many were out on the concrete terrace, dancing to the turned-up music. By the end of the night however there was no pudding left in the dish. The servants slipped in and out, clearing the plates, leaving glassesand candles and flowers, and a spotlessly washed-up kitchen. The music pounded.
    Jane, feeling dazed from drink, from Harry, looked around the room at the people she didn’t know, at ones she barely did, in this place where people returned from war zones, from managing famines, from living in tents among the elephants, or being gored by buffalo, a place where everyone seemed matter-of-factly to lead a life of extremity and daring. Harry was with his parents tonight.