Foreign Affairs - Alison Lurie [7]
Though she has no wish to eavesdrop, she cannot avoid hearing them complain in loud drawling guffawing Western voices about their delayed departure, the lack of movies on this flight, and the real bum steer given to them in this matter by their travel agent. As this phrase is repeated, Vinnie visualizes the Real Bum Steer as a passenger on the plane. Scrawny, swaybacked, probably lamed, it stands on three legs in the aisle with a SUN TOURS label glued on its scruffy brown haunch.
Unable to concentrate on her novel while the conversation continues, Vinnie gets up and walks toward the rear. She finds a washroom that looks reasonably clean and wipes the seat, first with a wet, then with a dry paper towel. Before leaving, she removes the plastic containers of Blue Grass cologne, skin freshener, and moisturizer from their rack and places them in her handbag, as is her custom. As is her custom, she tells herself that British Airways and Elizabeth Arden expect, perhaps even hope, that some passenger will appropriate these products; that they are offered to the public as a form of advertising.
This kind of confiscation—borrowing, some might call it, though nothing of course is ever returned—is habitual with Professor Miner. Stores are out of bounds—she is no common shoplifter, after all—and the possessions of her acquaintances are usually safe, though you must be careful when lending her your pen, particularly if it has an extra-fine point; she is apt to return it absent-mindedly to her own purse. But planes, restaurants, hotels, and offices are fair game. As a result, Vinnie has a rather nice collection of guest towels, and a very large revolving supply of coasters, matches, paper napkins, coat hangers, pencils, pens, chalk, and expensive magazines of the sort found in expensive doctors’ and dentists’ waiting rooms. She owns quantities of Corinth and University College (London) stationery and a quaint little pewter cream pitcher from a lobster house in Maine, about which her only regret is that she hadn’t taken the matching sugar bowl too. Well, perhaps one day . . .
It should not be imagined that these confiscations are of common occurrence. Weeks or months may pass without Vinnie feeling any need to add to her hoard of unpurchased objects. But when things are not going well she begins to look round, and annexations take place. Each one causes a tiny ascent in her spints, as if she sat on one of a pair of scales so delicately hung that even the weight of a free box of paper clips on the opposite pan would make hers rise in the air.
Now and then, instead of appropriating something she likes that doesn’t belong to her, Vinnie improves her world by getting rid of something she dislikes. During her short marriage, she caused several of her husband’s ties and a camp souvenir ashtray in the shape of a bathtub to vanish completely. Twice she has removed from the women’s faculty washroom in her building at Corinth an offensive sign reading WASH HANDS BEFORE LEAVING: YOUR HEALTH DEPENDS ON IT.
None of Vinnie’s acquaintances are aware of these habits of hers, which might best be explained as the consequence of a vague but recurrent belief that life owes her a little something. It is not miserliness: she pays her bills promptly, is generous with her possessions (both bought and borrowed), and scrupulous about splitting the check at lunch. As she sometimes says on these occasions, her salary is perfectly adequate for one person with no dependents.
Her superego does sometimes complain to Vinnie about this do-it-yourself justice, most often when her morale is so low that nothing can raise it. Now, for instance, as she stands in the narrow toilet cubicle surrounded by multilingual scolding and warning signs, a shrill and penetrating interior voice sounds above the roar of the plane. “Petty thief,” it whines. “Neurotic kleptomaniac. Author of a research proposal nobody needs.”
With effort Vinnie pulls her clothes together and returns to her seat. The red-faced man