Girls In 3-B, The by Valerie Taylor

doing nothing as usual. She didn't know why he was hanging around at that hour of the night, but she gave him a dirty look and went on up. A good-looking fellow if you like the bold, fresh type, but she was peeved at all men, since Alan was out of her reach. I'll get even with him, she promised herself. If he ever calls me for another date I'll turn him down so fast.
    The thought that he might not call chilled her to the bone.
    But he called, and they went to the ballet. Dutch. Alan said there was no reason why a man should pay a woman's way any place in this day and age; women earned as much as men. There was no reason why a man should support a woman unless she was gestating, and maybe not then. It was a racket women had been working for hundreds of years, and he was against it. He would go so far as to pick up the check if he invited a girl to eat with him, and that was a sop to bourgeois morality that he was ashamed of. On the other hand, he said, he hardly ever asked a girl out, and if he did it was to some cheap joint -- a drugstore or the Four Arts Grill. If it was her idea in the first place, she could damn well pay her own way.
    "If a fellow and a girl go out together, she ought to enjoy the evening as much as he does. Why should he pay for it?"
    "Well, but -- "
    All the way home from the theater -- not as far as she would have liked, but far enough for him to develop any ideas he might have -- she sat well away from him, wondering miserably if he was angry with her and why; and if he was angry, why had he asked her to go out? She suspected it was a kind of cruelty, or at best curiosity; he was the kind of boy who torments a frog to see it jump, or pulls the wings off a butterfly and watches it flop. At the door, she moved tentatively closer. He ignored the movement. He said, "Good night," leaving her to open the car door, get out and walk to the house by herself. She supposed that was a matter of principle too. Why wait on a healthy able-bodied woman?
    She lay awake far into the night, angry at him and hungry for the touch of his hands on her body and the pressure of his mouth against hers, determined to win him back. Back from where? He's a stranger, she thought in her mother's cool rational way. And then, hot with longing, oh, no, you don't go as far as we did that night unless you like each other.
    Or do you?
    Are there people who take excitement any way they can get it, whether the other person means anything to them or not ?
    This morning he had called at seven o'clock, while she was drowsily making coffee. Penny Williams was having a party, and how about it? Bring somebody if she wanted. "I’ll bring a boy from school," she said to show that she was independent, didn't need him. "Fine. We can all eat together."
    He could at least have been jealous!
    She called Pat at noon, thinking that a foursome would at least look like a date, and Pat hesitantly agreed to go. She was glad. Pat was no competition in this kind of crowd, where exotic ugliness rated higher than cornfed prettiness. It was hard to believe that she had ever been envious of Pat's freedom of her romance with Johnny.
    Jack put his hand on her shoulder; she turned, startled, and then smiled at him. "Hi. We'll have to eat downtown after all. Pat's going."
    "How come?"
    "I thought she'd like to. She doesn't have much fun."
    "The idea is I make like Pat's boy friend, so you can come home with Lover Boy."
    Damn him, he was too bright. That had been in the back of her head from the beginning, although she wasn't admitting it even to herself. She looked away. "We can all go together, can't we? Do we always have to be in twos like Noah's Ark or something?"
    "Oh hell, Annie, let's have a nickel's worth of honesty for a change."
    "And don't call me Annie."
    He grinned, taking her hand kindergarten style. "What's the matter you're so mean ? Don't you feel good ? "
    "None of your damned business."
    It was a bad start for an evening, and from there it went on and