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Show All the Variables & Other Love Stories 65 bisected face of a lemon, and sucked on it. She liked tart things, liked the pucker in her face, the vivisected taste-buds. She replaced the fruit bowl on the ground and scowled at a new thought, that she had always had lovely legs, she only had to move away from Afton before people would look with enough tolerance to appreciate them. No one in Salt Lake City had known her at first and therefore had no reason to harbor prejudice. That's what had changed her life, and nothing deeper. She felt revolted at the thought of people. She'd gone to the University of Utah a virgin and taken three lovers since. The first worked as a coffee-slinger not far from campus. She'd resisted him almost a year before giving in. They made love through the fall and spring. He took a summer job with the Forest Service in Alaska and swore he would return for her in the fall. But the affair lost its luster in remembrance and his heartsick letters went unanswered. If he ever returned he did not try to see her again. She felt gross inside for having told this man she'd loved him, a wasted confession that seemed foolish now and untrue. The second she'd taken too hastily; she barely knew him, twice her age, an adjunct faculty member. She chose him because he was older, more mature, distanced from the pettiness and arbitrary social codes of young people. The affair lasted six weeks before she could no longer bear her guilt and sent him back to his estranged wife and children. His last words to Cara were spent extracting a promise that no one must ever find out about them. A knocking roused her. She stood and slipped briskly into the complimentary disposable hotel slippers. It was a valet at the door, stooped like her father but much older, with a merry smile. He delivered a dozen anonymous red roses. They were long |