The Company She Keeps by Mary McCarthy Page A

icing that she used to receive on her birthday from her colored maid.
    Her own neighbor must finally have noticed a certain displacement of attention, for she got up announcing that she was going in to lunch, and her tone was stiff with reproof and disappointment so that she seemed, for a moment, this rococo suffragette, like a nun who discovers that her favorite novice lacks the vocation. As she tugged open the door to go out, a blast of hot Nebraska air rushed into the club car, where the air-cooling system had already broken down.
    The girl in the seat had an impulse to follow her. It would surely be cooler in the diner, where there was not so much glass. If she stayed and let the man pick her up, it would be a question of eating lunch together, and there would be a little quarrel about the check, and if she let him win she would have him on her hands all the way to Sacramento. And he was certain to be tiresome. That emblem in Gothic script spelled out the self-made man. She could foresee the political pronouncements, the pictures of the wife and children, the hand squeezed under the table. Nothing worse than that, fortunately, for the conductors on those trains were always very strict. Still, the whole thing would be so vulgar; one would expose oneself so to the derision of the other passengers. It was true, she was always wanting something exciting and romantic to happen; but it was not really romantic to be the-girl-who-sits-in-the-club-car-and-picks-up-men. She closed her eyes with a slight shudder: some predatory view of herself had been disclosed for an instant. She heard her aunt’s voice saying, “I don’t know why you make yourself so cheap,” and “It doesn’t pay to let men think you’re easy.” Then she was able to open her eyes again, and smile a little, patronizingly, for of course it hadn’t worked out that way. The object of her trip was, precisely, to tell her aunt in Portland that she was going to be married again.
    She settled down in her seat to wait and began to read an advance copy of a new novel. When the man would ask her what-that-book-is-you’re-so-interested-in (she had heard the question before), she would be able to reply in a tone so simple and friendly that it could not give offense, “Why, you probably haven’t heard of it. It’s not out yet.” (Yet, she thought, she had not brought the book along for purposes of ostentation: it had been given her by a publisher’s assistant who saw her off at the train, and now she had nothing else to read. So, really, she could not be accused of insincerity. Unless it could be that her whole way of life had been assumed for purposes of ostentation, and the book, which looked accidental, was actually part of that larger and truly deliberate scheme. If it had not been this book, it would have been something else, which would have served equally well to impress a pink middle-aged stranger.)
    The approach, when it came, was more unorthodox than she had expected. The man got up from his seat and said, “Can I talk to you?” Her retort, “What have you got to say?” rang off-key in her own ears. It was as if Broadway had answered Indiana. For a moment the man appeared to be taken aback, but then he laughed. “Why, I don’t know; nothing special. We can talk about that book, I guess.”
    She liked him, and with her right hand made a gesture that meant, “All right, go on.” The man examined the cover. “I haven’t heard about this. It must be new.”
    “Yes.” Her reply had more simplicity in it than she would have thought she could achieve. “It isn’t out yet. This is an advance copy.”
    “I’ve read something else by this fellow. He’s good.”
    “You have?” cried the girl in a sharp, suspicious voice. It was incredible that this well-barbered citizen should not only be familiar with but have a taste for the work of an obscure revolutionary novelist. On the other hand, it was incredible that he should be lying. The artless