Free The Wonder Spot by Melissa Bank Page A

turned the light back on, and we made her bed. I had only one pillow but two cases, and I offered to stuff the spare with socks.
    Her voice was smaller than it had been and apologetic when she said, “Do you mind if I sleep with your husband?”
    I stared at her. It took me a minute to realize that she meant my reading pillow—it was corduroy with arms—and as I handed it to her, I said, “Did you make that up?”
    She said, “That’s what it’s called.”
    It would be another year before I told her that at that moment I’d thought she was a split-personalitied nymphomaniac. After that, out of nowhere, she’d sometimes put on a twisted, sexed-up voice and say, “Do you mind if I sleep with your husband?”
    I turned off the light again, and we said good night, but then she was saying my name—not addressing me, but musing. “Sophie. It’s a pretty name,” she said.
    â€œI was named after my great-grandmother,” I said.
    She said, “It’s old-fashioned,” which was what I hated about my name. “You don’t hear it too often.”
    â€œWhat about yours?” I said, though I wasn’t sure what I meant.
    She said, “I was named for the place of my conception,” and it sounded like she was claiming that the city had been named for her.
    But then she said, “I’m lucky they didn’t name me Gondola. Or Canal,” and I went all the way from hating to liking her, and the distance made me feel like I loved her.
    . . . . .
    Those first weeks, Venice caused a big stir. I’d go to parties with her—we traveled in packs of at least five or six to fraternities—and once we got there she was always surrounded.
    But there were nights when she’d say, “Let’s not go,” and she’d act like we were cutting a class.
    Usually we stayed in to watch a movie on television, a movie she said I absolutely needed to see— 12 Angry Men , The Shop Around the Corner , The Best Years of Our Lives . We’d go down to the basement TV lounge and turn off all the lights. It would be dark except for the TV and the red of the soda machine and its everlasting NO CHANGE light.
    I loved all of the movies she did, and The Heiress so much that I forgot all about Venice until the commercials, when she’d repeat the lines she liked best.
    Her favorite came at the end of the movie: Years after standing Catherine up on the night they’re supposed to elope, Morris comes back, and he’s knocking and then pounding on her door, and she says to her servant, “Bar the door, Maria.”
    â€œÂ â€˜Bar the door, Maria,’ ” Venice said. “The rallying cry of jilted women everywhere.”
    . . . . .
    In her closet, Venice kept a bottle of Shooting Sherry, just a regular medium-dry sherry, but its name made me think of hounds and horses, plaid blankets, and roaring fires. Some nights after studying we’d drink it out of glasses she’d taken from the dining hall. We’d lie on our beds and talk. I’d smoke cigarettes.
    She’d talk to me about a book she’d read for a class—she kept up with her reading, as I never could—or she’d mention an article from the New York Times , which she read every day, as no one else did. Or she’d read aloud from a novel she was crazy about; that fall it was Lolita , and in the winter Anna Karenina .
    . . . . .
    Venice didn’t confide in me for a long time, and even when she did, it sounded less like a confidence than just a story she wanted to tell because it was interesting.
    The first one she told me was about Georges. Their families had rented the villa together in Antibes; he’d come for the last week. As she spoke, I realized it was Georges she’d been thinking of that first night in the Pines when her voice got dreamy and she’d said, “This morning I