Free Car Pool by Karin Kallmaker Page A

it.
    Given the fun they’d had flipping off the Volvo, maybe Anthea wasn’t as square as she seemed. She’d just found out yesterday that Anthea was 34. She looked 34, but Shay had thought she looked young for her age — lots of good makeup could do that — somewhere near 40 from the way she acted. No way did she think Anthea was only six years older than herself.
    If they weren’t in the car pool would Shay ever consider making a friend of Anthea? They spent a lot of time together and it was slow going getting to know her. It probably would have been too much of an effort if she’d met Anthea at the supermarket or the library. About once a week they would do
    something — like flipping that Volvo off — that was in complete harmony, as if they’d known each other for a long time. And sometimes they’d have conversations that touched on more than the weather, food and Star Trek — although Anthea’s conversations about food bordered on the deliciously obscene and orgiastic. Shay guessed she was a heck of a chef. But on just about any other topic Anthea had a wall around her that Shay respected. She understood wanting privacy.
    Traffic slowed to a sedate fifty as drivers spotted a CHP car on the shoulder up ahead. Shay gave up the complex thinking and concentrated on survival.
    During Memorial Day weekend, it came to Anthea that she was turning into a mushroom. Except for the necessities of shopping, she never went anywhere. She’d even turned her ballet tickets back to the box office as a donation so they could sell them again. Was she just sitting around waiting for something to happen? She refused to think that subconsciously she was waiting for Lois to come back. Maybe she was waiting for something else to fill up some of the hole Lois had left. Granted she looked forward to work more since she’d been able to hire another analyst, and to the car pool and talking to Shay. But wasn’t life supposed to be more than that? It had been nearly six months since she had broken up with Lois and those ties were still there, like Jacob Marley’s chains, weighing Anthea down until she could hardly move.
    On Saturday afternoon, she found herself
    considering reading Pride and Prejudice again. That or Anna Karenina — now that would certainly cheer her up. She had finally managed to wade through the Proust she’d told herself to read just about all her life. She clicked through all sixty-three cable channels, watched an episode of Perry Mason she’d seen before and ate a box of crackers, then enjoyed two of her remaining eight cigarettes for the day. She let herself sigh over Delia Street, whom she’d had a crush on since she was twelve or so. The fact that she was still smoking really depressed her. She thought she’d be able to drop off two cigarettes a month and by now, she’d have just about kicked the habit.
    As she shuffled back into the kitchen to forage for more junk food, she realized she felt cooped up and stifled. She never went anywhere anymore. What’s the matter, she asked herself. Afraid you’ll run into Lois? The least she could do was go to the library. She hadn’t been in weeks, and then it was just to toss the books into the return deposit. Well, it would be something to do and she could pick up a burger on the way home. As if, she told herself, she didn’t have time to cook.
    An hour later, after spending too much time deciding how one should dress for the library, Anthea strolled between aisles of fiction. She pulled books she had read from the shelves, put them back, and wondered what she might like to read that was new and exciting… anything to make Saturday nights shorter.
    As she turned the corner, a thin, tall trade paperback caught her eye. She casually read the title, then casually slid it off the shelf. She turned
    away from the rest of the aisle for maximum privacy and examined the back cover. Yes, it was a novel for lesbians. And she hadn’t read it.
    She glanced over at the checkout