Free For Love of Audrey Rose by Frank De Felitta Page B

and again about Bill, and his body, and his eagerness, and she thought it would drive her insane.
    She removed the aquarium from Ivy’s room. Outside, the rain lashed at New York, a peculiar blue rain that seemed to shed its darkness over the rooftops. If there were no children, she thought, Bill could use the room as a study. That aspect of it was still undecided in her mind. It still seemed a profanation to think of other children in Ivy’s room, and she closed the door quietly behind her as she left.
    The next day Elaine beckoned for Janice to follow her into the large office studded with Elaine’s designs, calendars, and sketches for future projects.
    “You don’t have the experience a lot of designers have,” Elaine said. “And maybe you’re a bit rusty on a few graphic techniques. But we get along awfully well, wouldn’t you agree?”
    “Yes,” Janice agreed, her heart beginning to race.
    “Then would you consider working here full time?”
    “Would I? Oh, I’d love nothing better.”
    “Now, I can’t pay you very much, but it would be a salary. You wouldn’t have to start worrying at the end of every project.”
    Janice drew herself up proudly.
    “Elaine,” she said, “there’s nothing in the world I’d rather do than work with you.”
    Elaine laughed delightedly. “Splendid.”
    At lunch, Elaine and Janice worked out the details of her job. Janice listened with a kind of rapture she had not known since the days when she first met Bill.
    “And your husband?” Elaine asked after a while.
    “What? What about my husband?”
    “Is he going to mind your working full time?”
    “No. He’ll be delighted.”
    Elaine smiled enigmatically.
    “You’ve never talked about your husband,” she said. “All I’m trying to do is to be fair about it. For some women, it becomes a problem.”
    “I really and truly appreciate what you’re saying, Elaine, but I’m sure Bill will be very, very pleased. And the money will help.”
    Elaine watched Janice growing slightly uncomfortable.
    “You’ve never mentioned what your husband does,” she said.
    “He worked for Simmons Advertising. He was the third vice-president. But he’s not been well. He suffered a nervous breakdown, and is hospitalized.”
    “I’m sorry,” Elaine said. “I didn’t mean to pry.”
    “That’s all right,” Janice assured her. “It’s been a long haul, but he’s much improved now.”
    Janice splurged recklessly and treated herself to a new raincoat, designed by Bill Blass, with a cape that extended out over her shoulders and left the arms free. The October chill was in the air, and the driving rain everywhere glimmered in the gloom, catching stray headlights beaming like lurid eyes out of the gutters.
    That night Bill telephoned.
    “Honey,” he said, “guess what? I’ve got a fever of a hundred and two degrees. Courtesy of that damned picnic.”
    “Oh, Bill, what a shame.”
    “The clinic doctor has been tapping on my chest and feeding me big yellow pills and I can’t stop throwing up.”
    “Oh, Bill!”
    Bill moved from the receiver to cough. It was a long, hacking cough that sounded painful.
    “To make a long story short,” he said, a bit out of breath, “I won’t be there on Friday unless I can shake this.”
    Janice sank down in her chair, the weight of disappointment nearly a physical sensation.
    “It’s probably because you’d exercised that day,” she said.
    “Yeah, you’re probably right. I loved seeing you again. And thanks for the books. I really mean that.”
    Janice, staring, brooding at the black windows, watched the long dribbles of gleaming water-drops, each trailing a splattered light out of the void.
    “Although, if you stop to think about it,” Bill continued, “it doesn’t all add up.”
    “What? What doesn’t?”
    “That stuff you read to me. From the
Bhagavad Gita,
wasn’t it?”
    “I don’t remember.”
    “Well, it doesn’t quite add up.”
    Janice licked her lips. She