Free Nowhere City by Alison Lurie Page A

your salary.” Katherine would have understood why he worried, but since Katherine already despised Nutting, he hadn’t told her. Which as it now turned out was just as well.
    Only he would be crazy to get mixed up with a girl like Ceci. She was unbalanced; must be. A nymphomaniac, a kleptomaniac; a psychopathic personality. She was very pretty; beautiful. Her hair, breasts. Probably she slept with everybody she knew. She might even have something catching. It would be crazy to go back there on Friday.
    Paul started down the other side of the hill into Mar Vista, and the sun set behind him; the rosy flush on the stucco dimmed, the smog among the palm trees in the middle distance turned from blue to gray. On his street, the outlines of the houses were beginning to blur, and the colors of the flowers shone softly: great white roses, yellow chrysanthemums, and many more that he could not name, fantastic in shape and color.
    He had suggested to Katherine that she might find out something about these flowers. She had always liked that sort of thing: when they visited in the country in New England, she would come in from a solitary walk on the coldest, wettest day with a handful of damp leaves or twigs in bud, crying out their names with joy. Why shouldn’t she take an interest in the local vegetation? There must be hundreds of new plants here. So he had thought and said, but to no use.
    Their lawn was as green now as the neighbors’, Paul thought as he pulled into the driveway. Green, lush, long—in fact, it needed to be mowed again. And it was getting into the flowerbeds, he noticed as he crossed the yard. Long runners of grass had leapt the trench between lawn and garden and were spreading spiderlike towards the house. What was more, as if in reprisal the flowers were getting into the grass: white flecks of alyssum spotted the lawn, and some heliconia had sprouted near the front door, breaking the ground like moles. He should cut and weed at once; it was too late tonight, but he would have plenty of time over the weekend, if he didn’t go to Venice.
    The house was dark. “Katherine?” he called, and walked through to the kitchen, turning on lights as he went. Katherine’s kitchen was as clean and tidy as an office, unadorned except for an engagement calendar and a shelf of herbs. The pots and pans that should have held his supper hung on the wall, their copper bottoms shining.
    Paul went into the bedroom. The blinds were drawn down, and his wife was lying in bed in the dark.
    “Hello!” he said.
    His wife groaned, or sighed.
    “It’s late. Don’t you want to get up?”
    Katherine heaved herself up in bed, a white shape lit vaguely from the hall. She was wearing a cotton flannel nightgown with flannel ruffles. Paul raised the Venetian blind. It clattered up over a view of Los Angeles evening: a smoky dark blue mist decorated with blurred lights—red, white, green. The branches and leaves of the peach tree outside the window were close and black. Above, hazy blades of searchlights crossed and recrossed the sky. It was spectacularly fine, Paul thought, and was going to say so, when Katherine remarked flatly:
    “Hell. That’s what it looks like: hell.” She sat up, the sheets twisted round her shoulders. Paul looked at her, and found her not attractive. Maybe his standards of comparison had changed—the good-looking girls here were all deeply sun-tanned, outdoor types, glowing with light and life. Or maybe she had changed. But anyhow, it was as if the pale flame that had burned so steadily in the gray, damp New England air had become invisible—extinguished in a blaze of sun.
    “I suppose you want something to eat,” Katherine added.
    “Well, I was thinking of it,” Paul said. “Aren’t you hungry?”
    “No.”
    “Do you have sinus again?”
    “Yes.”
    A moment of nothing to say followed. Paul looked at Katherine; Katherine looked at the floor.
    “I’m sorry, I simply don’t feel up to cooking,” she