Foreign Affairs - Alison Lurie [91]
“Really?” Vinnie sits forward. “And are you going to accept?”
“Yeh; I think so.” Chuck grins. “Hell, I got nothing better to do. And it’s nice down there in the country now. Wildflowers everywhere, and so green. Besides, I kinda dig the dig.” He laughs at his own pun. “And Mike and his crew, I like their attitude. They work damn hard, but they aren’t frantic about it. Mike, sometimes he’ll just take the afternoon off to think, go for a long walk. And the students too. Course they don’t have to worry about production quotas, or showing a profit. In business you can’t ever stand still that way. If you’re not getting ahead every goddamn minute you feel as if you’re sliding back.”
“Like the Red Queen.”
“Yeh?” Chuck blinks at her. “What queen was that?”
“In Through the Looking-Class.”
“Oh, yeh? I never read that. You think I should?”
“Well.” Vinnie has omitted Alice in Wonderland and its sequel from Chuck’s reading list, thinking that they would annoy and baffle him as they do many of her students. But if he is to spend the summer with an Oxford don, perhaps he should prepare himself. “Yes, probably you should.” She sighs, anticipating the explications that will be necessary if Chuck Mumpson is to read Alice properly: Victorian education, Victorian social history, Victorian poetry and parody, chess, developmental psychology, Darwinism—
“Okay, if you think so. Hey, Vinnie. How are you feeling?”
“Better, thanks.”
“That’s great. Y’know, I could go for a cup of coffee, if you have one around.”
“No, but I could make some,” Vinnie says, thinking that it is typical of men to believe that all women have a cup of coffee concealed about them somewhere.
“Great.” Chuck follows her into the narrow kitchen, getting in her way while she fills the electric kettle and makes coffee for him and rose-hip tea (high in Vitamin C) for herself.
“Thanks, that’s swell. You got any milk?”
“I’m not sure—I might.” Vinnie opens her miniature fridge, which rests on the counter and is of a size that in America would be thought fit only for a student dormitory room. At the moment it is almost totally filled by three quarts of avocado-and-watercress soup made by her from Posy Billings’ recipe in Harper’s/Queen and intended for a luncheon party tomorrow that she will have to cancel if she doesn’t feel any better.
In order to look for the milk, Vinnie lifts out the bowl of soup and turns to set it on the counter. At the same moment Chuck turns toward Vinnie. There is a collision: the stainless-steel bowl is knocked out of her hands and slides to the floor; she and Chuck are drenched with cold green soup and hot black coffee.
“Aw, fuck! Excuse me.”
“Oh, damn it!”
“I didn’t see—Jesus. Sorry. Here, lemme—” Chuck grabs a dishtowel and begins wiping coffee and soup off the front of Vinnie.
“That’s all right,” she says, swallowing with difficulty her irritation and the phrase You oaf. “My fault too.” Seizing a damp sponge, she starts to mop up Chuck. Luckily she is wearing a relatively soup-proof dress: an olive-green, densely flowered Laura Ashley cotton; Chuck’s synthetic yellow cowboy shirt and tan Western-cut slacks are much more vulnerable. Because he is so tall, most of the spill is on his pants. As Vinnie moves the sponge over them she suddenly becomes aware that they contain an unmistakable and even impressive bulge—and, simultaneously, that Chuck is to all intents and purposes stroking her breasts with a red checked linen dishtowel.
“Thanks, that’s enough,” she says, backing away from him as far as possible in the tiny kitchen.
“Vinnie—”
“Really, I think we’d better just try to soak the stains out, and the sooner the better. Why don’t you just go