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Show Motherlunge a novel 45 Pavia nodded. "I can't imagine him in this waiting room, for some reason." "Me neither, even though he was," Pavia said. Paging past the beaming moms and infants, my sister's unconscious copycat smile was vulgar even to me. "He really, really wanted that one." She looked up at me then, her borrowed smile still hanging on her features. "Hah hah hah," she laughed-ironically, I'll allow-but I was disconcerted all the same. More and more, I thought with a slow and lacerating dismay, Pavia was becoming a person going through a divorce or worse. "Let's not go home," I said as we came out of the building an hour later. "Let's walk and shop and drink coffee." "All right," Pavia surprised me by saying. "Where to?" We went to the neighborhood around the world famous university, where the narrow streets teemed with young people lit from within by their own bright futures. They had such gleaming faces and knowing laughter, such seeming ease-personal and interpersonal-that I felt the climate shifting as we walked among them, their self-senses moisturizing the air, reducing the appearance of fine lines and improving the clarity and evenness of their already-fine complexions. It was an atmosphere that Pavia, at least ought to feel comfortable in. I followed her as she slid her way into a cafe and stood at the cashiers, waiting to order. |