Free In Her Day by Rita Mae Brown Page B

miracle of the flesh.
    “We’ve got to stop meeting this way.” Ilse kissed her.
    “You’ve been watching too many old movies,” Carole said, glad to see her.
    “No, I’m imitating you.”
    “Your dance is a huge success.”
    “It always is. We do it every other week. This was my turn to take it on; you know, rotation.”
    “Do you have to stay through the whole thing?”
    “No, I made all the preparations and womaned the door for a couple hours. Jean O’Leary will take care of the tail end.”
    “Will she be able to shoo them out?”
    “So many of these women have a crush on her they’ll hang around. Maybe I should go home and bring back my recorder so I can pipe them out. Do you want to go right away or can we dance a bit?”
    “Let’s go.”
    “Okay. I’ve spent too much time here the last few weeks as it is.”
    Louisa May Allcat zoomed down the stairs and leisurely trotted back up again, satisfied with her routine of escape.
    “Louisa, don’t be slow about it. In the house.”
    Naturally, Carole’s urging produced the opposite effect and the animal sat down on the third step from the top, content in her ability to irritate.
    “Ilse, hold the door a second. Louisa May’s getting grand again. The later I come home the longer she sits out there.”
    Carole scooped up the rotund beast and put her down by her dish. Louisa May revelled in the attention and at the sound of a food dish rattling, a sleepy Pussblossom emerged from under the sofa. Ilse patted her vertical tail and looked around the apartment. As many times as she’d come here, Ilse couldn’t get used to it. The place was too thought out, too lush. Although far more imaginative than her parents’ home in Brookline, Massachusetts, there was something in the completeness of the apartment thatbothered her. The front room looked out on 73rd Street, the windows had shutters on them from the original time of the building’s construction, which must have been around 1890. An oriental rug warmed the floor. A beige nineteen-thirties sofa with huge curling arms was flanked on either side by two beige Barcelona chairs. A glass and chrome coffee table positioned between the sofa and chairs had on it one pink chambered nautilus cut in half to reveal the flawless, pearly chambers. An upturned, polished tortoise shell served as an ashtray. The subtle color scheme drew her eyes to the wall, where color blazed. A magnificent feathered flag from Peru hung on one wall, the deep green and teal blue throbbing. Adele, who had one herself, had given it to Carole to remind her that the Incas were more civilized in the Middle Ages than the barbarous Westerners. Carole pointed out to Ilse the first time she visited the apartment that, of course, it was not an original. If it were its price would be a handful of rubies, she laughed. This breathtaking work rested between two medieval manuscript pages, the gold glittering and the Latin crisp even now after all these centuries. On the opposite wall hung three paintings by new artists Carole had discovered this year: Betsy Damon, Judy Chicago, and Byrd Swift. The works, startling in conception and execution, harmonized with her flag and manuscript pages.
    Ilse couldn’t figure how Carole put things together but clearly the older woman possessed an unusual visual imagination. Perhaps it was the naked sensuousness of the room that jarred Ilse.
    The apartment had a strange layout. You walked into a tiny hallway and faced an equally tiny kitchen. The front room was to the right and to the left was a wide workroom with a marble fireplace and off thatwas a small bedroom that also shared space with the bathroom. Ilse loved Carole’s workroom. Whenever she came into it she thought she could sit down and write shatterproof position papers for the movement. The fireplace was in the middle of the room and over it hung a huge carnival wheel of chance. The cats loved sitting on top of the fireplace spinning the wheel and