Passion and Affect by Laurie Colwin Read Free Book Online Page A

was shocking—when she appeared at my door one afternoon. I had no idea what she wanted: Alden hadn’t sent her, she had no drafts or pages for me to correct. After a conversation about which I can remember nothing, she seduced me and left.
    She was middle-sized and blonde, and could have been anywhere between twenty and thirty. Her face showed nothing: she was vacant, but not passive. One of her eyes was green, and one was blue. This disparity gave her the facial profundity that statues with no eyes at all have. Looking at her, I remembered a white barn cat I once saw that had a blue eye and a green eye. It had the same sort of depth to its look that Lilly had to hers, but it was only one of nature’s tricks. It was impossible to tell if Lilly had any more depth to her than the cat. Her presence was almost neutral, her clothes were neutral. They fitted her like an extra skin, which is not to say that they were tight, but she wore them like a skin she lived in and paid no attention to. It was impossible to remember what she wore. Sitting in a chair, the chair diminished her; you noticed a chair containing a girl, not a girl sitting in a chair.
    She stood at the door to my apartment.
    â€œPhillip Hartman,” she said.
    â€œYes,” I said. “You’re Alden’s secretary.”
    â€œRight.”
    I gave her a questioning look, but since she said nothing and was carrying nothing, and since her look revealed nothing, I walked into my study, making way for her to follow.
    She sat in the chair by my desk smoking a cigarette while I smoked a cigar. She looked over the rows of books, the glass pictures, the photographs, the large French vases. She looked to the bed, partially obscured by a bookshelf at the far end of the room. It seemed to place her: when she found it—I was following her eyes—she stopped looking. We must have had some conversation, but as I said, I cannot remember what about. I went to the kitchen to make a pot of tea and when I brought it back on a tray, with cups and milk, I found her standing by the bed. She had turned back the covers. Her clothes were on the floor.
    We became lovers, if that term is appropriate, and she left without a word, leaving not a hair on the pillow, or cigarette stub (she had emptied the ashtray while I made the tea), not one smudge of herself. We did not have dinner, she did not offer to cook or ask to be taken out. She put on her clothes and left.
    â€œDon’t get up,” was all she said. The tea, untouched, was cold in its pot.
    It was an event so unadorned that it took me a week to realize that I was catching my breath. After she left, I spent several hours looking for a book I thought was on my desk, but it was on a shelf where it should not have been. I have my books by subject—one shelf is art history, one philosophy, and one literature. They are alphabetized by author on each shelf. I was looking for a volume of Winkelmann and found it wedged beside a copy of Ulysses , upside down.
    On Tuesdays I have lunch with Alden Marshall at the Faculty Club. On Thursdays I have dinner with him and Hattie at their apartment or we go to a restaurant. Tuesdays and Thursdays we work on his book, Mondays and Fridays I teach. The rest of the time is for my thesis and my own work.
    Lilly Gillette sat in Alden Marshall’s study opening his letters with an ivory knife. Her face was impassive as a board and did not change when I came in.
    Alden and I spent the morning working. Lilly brought him his mail and some typed pages. When I got back from lunch, she was at my door. I felt a lurch go through me, as if my bones quaked. She followed me down the hall to my study. This time we had no conversation at all. I looked down into her face for anger, or love or tenderness or confusion, but found only bland acceptance. Her departure then was a replica of the first. She said, “Don’t get up,” and left.
    Anwar Soole was out more than he