Three Women at the Water's Edge by Nancy Thayer

getting into the small enclosed space of the dark cab, where he could hear her slightest breath, made her feel self-conscious. It made her lose the easiness she had felt with him inside the warm, bright restaurant where other people walked and talked and ate; it made the lust she had held back all evening in that reasonable room come surging to the front of her thoughts and gestures. Hank got into the cab behind the steering wheel. His jacket was rough suede, his hand was large and hairy; she was aware of the solidity of his right thigh as he pushed on the accelerator. Her mouth went suddenly dry. The evening was almost over. She felt panicked. And he was saying nothing. She sat in silence, loosely hugging herself, leaning slightly against the door.
    “The heater will be warmed up in a minute,” Hank said.
    “It’s getting cold,” Dale replied.
    “Well, it’s late October. We’ll have some more warm days, but summer is definitely over.”
    Then they rode in silence. By the time they reached Dale’s apartment she was nearly in tears of desperation. Should she invite him up? It was after eleven; they both had to teach the next day. Should she invite him to dinner? Should she—what? What could she possibly do? The bold casual woman who had lived inside her skin for two years in France had deserted her now. She would truly die before she would say now, as she had said so often in the past two years to so many men: “Would you like to kiss me?” Or even, “Would you like to go to bed with me?” Now she remembered how smug she had been in Europe, how safe and invulnerable she had been, how
cowardly:
and all along she had thought of herself as a bold woman with daring sexual habits and strong sexual needs. In Europe she had been in love with no one, and so she had been vulnerable to no one. The men she had slept with had not touched her. They did not hurt her; they could not have hurt her. If they had turned down her proposal—and no one ever did, but if they had—she would have only shrugged. And when they made love to her, they had not touched her; she realized that now. And now here she was, nearly ill with despair because the evening was over and she did not know how to carry on from there, what to say, what to do. They were both adults, for heaven’s sake; surely she could say to him, “Wouldn’t you like to kiss me?” Or even, “Would you like to spend the night with me?” And he would not be appalled. But she was afraid he would refuse her. His face, when she glanced over at him, was stern and set. Was he already thinking of the next day, of a test he had to give? Suddenly she hated him. Why wasn’t he bristling out toward her as she was toward him? Didn’t he find her attractive?
    When they stopped in front of Dale’s apartment, she said, “Would you like to come up for some coffee?” It hurt her throat to speak.
    “I’d better not,” Hank said. “I’ve got some grading to do tonight. As a matter of fact, I’ve got some chores to do, too. I’ll walk you to the door,” he said.
    He got out of the truck, and Dale sat there blindly, hot with desire and pain, while Hank performed the courtly act of coming around the front of the truck to open her door and help her out; another thing the men she had known in Europe seldom did. He took her hand as she jumped down from the truck, but then he let go of it immediately. They walked in silence toward the large colonial house. The lights were on in the front room; Carol was either still up or had left them on for her. And there they were then, standing down by Dale’s front door in the dark.
    “It was a very good dinner,” Dale said. “Thank you again. I—I’d like to invite you to dinner at my apartment sometime. I—there are some things I can cook fairly well.”
    “That would be nice,” Hank said. He was staring down at her so seriously that for a moment Dale thought that he might be feeling the same panic she felt. But then he said, “I