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Show refrigerator and looks in the oven, goes upstairs and peers into every room. Everything is exactly as he expected it to be, a mess, a home from which a woman has been absent. Outside, he walks around the house. The grass needs mowing. Against a shed rests an aluminum ladder, and inside the shed he sees ten gallons of white Dutch Boy paint. He walks around the house again and decides that it will take five days to do, a day for each side and one for good measure. It is Monday. Then he gets in his car and drives back to the last town he went through, not at all surprised that it should be called Centerville, to buy the first case of beer. He has already heard about the girl Anne so when they first meet he is not surprised by her attractiveness. He is surprised, however, by her unaffected smile and the clearly genuine interest with which she leans forward as they talk. From what Dave said, he had expected her to be sultry and theatrical. He had expected her to be phoney. The two of them sit at the cluttered table in the farmhouse kitchen. It is late Tuesday morning and he is covered with the first half day's paint; she is wearing Levis which fit perfectly and a very plain pink blouse, the top two buttons of which are undone. A gold chain disappears between her small breasts. They talk for half an hour and he learns that she is twenty-one, and that she too thinks of herself as unsettled, in between things. |