20) Gail Monday

Neil walked with me to Gail's car after work. He wanted to meet Gail, I think. As we approached the passenger door its window rolled down. A light, powdery, flowery scent issued, and Gail's face appeared over the empty seat.

"Hi!" she said, much happier sounding than the last two weeks, perhaps ever, to my ears.

"Hello," I answered, but it was buried under Neil's much louder, "Hi!" I climbed through the window, and Neil leaned in.

"You must be Gail!"

Gail looked at me. "Neil?"

I said, "Yes."

She looked at Neil and smiled, and I felt squeezed. The smell was much stronger. The color on Gail's face was pale and uniform and her eyes framed with a black line. Her eyes--where were her glasses? Their faces seemed to pinch mine. I squirmed. My arm and Gail's touched, and I stiffened with a tingle, my each hair like a finger on her smooth skin. From her chest her sleeveless blouse billowed. A delicately filligreed cup cradled a breast I thought might as perfectly fit in my hand.

"I'm not pleased," Gail said, "that you got Book Monkey that bike."

Neil, his forearms crossed on the lowered window, dropped his head. "Well..." his head rose "...I thought he could use a little more freedom."

"He can already do as he pleases."

"In theory, maybe, but where's he going to go?"

"He can take a bus--as he does now."

"Not any time he wants."

"I don't want him out 'any time he wants'."

Across and back, their darting, meanly silken words wove a web across the space between them, over me, closing against my face until, flailing, I rent it.

"I like my bike," I announced, looking at neither of them but ahead, through the windshield, at the soft, rusty light of sunset on the library. "I will ride it safely." I turned to Gail, then to Neil. Each met my eyes, then each other's. "We should go." I do not know to whom I was speaking, but I was feeling a hollow hurt in my stomach that made me want Neil to go away. He did, abashed, after parting pleasantries. I rolled up my window.

Gail said, "He seems nice."

I said, "He is in love with May, too."

"I know. I've read."

"Right."

"That's so sweet."

"What?"

"You're jealous."

So I take possession of another mean human emotion while still possessed of this mean, puny, hairy body.

Gail pecked the top of my head. Her skirt showed much of her long legs.