Test Pattern by Marjorie Klein Read Free Book Online

heel of her hand, leans conspiratorially across the tipsy table. “Y’know, if it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have the guts to do this.”
    “Hey,” Delia says with a salute of her refilled glass, “you’re the one with the talent.”
    “Sure,” Lorena agrees, “but talent just takes you so far. You need inspiration, someone who believes in you. You’re the very very best friend anybody ever ever had.” She dabs at her brimming eyes with a crumpled cocktail napkin.
    “Here’s to best friends,” Delia says, and downs the rest of her martini.
    “Yup.” Lorena fishes out her olive, pops it into her mouth. “By the way,” she asks, “what do you think of my routine?”
    “What routine?”
    “My ‘Chattanooga Choo Choo’ routine.”
    “That’s
your routine?”
    “Well,” Lorena huffs, “I have to perfect it.”
    Delia examines the toothpick-impaled olive she’s been nibbling. “Well… I think, maybe it needs a little … work.”
    Lorena’s eyebrows clash momentarily above her long green eyes, then spring up in revelation. “Tellya what,” she says, tottering to her feet as Delia rescues the glasses that wobble dangerously on the tippy table, “you tell me where it needs improvement. Now be honest,” she adds. “Best friends can always be honest.”
    And she’s off, woo woo. Arms swinging in great circles, feet tapping, in a sharp staccato that echoes from the terrazzo floor of the cocktail lounge, she accompanies herself, gasping the words to the timeless tap-dance song as she accelerates to warp speed. The bartender gazes in mild distraction as he wipes glasses, then politely patters applause at her finale.
    Delia is weeping, pounding on the table, her eyes streaming tears of laughter. “Oh, Lorena,” she moans, “you just tickle me so.”
    “What’s so funny?” Lorena asks, panting as she catches her breath.
    “Uh,” says Delia. She wipes her eyes, puts on a serious expression. “Nothing.”
    “You were laughing at me.”
    Delia looks bewildered. “Wasn’t I supposed to?”
    Lorena slumps down in her chair. “It needs a lot of work, doesn’t it?”
    Delia reaches over and pats her arm. “Just practice, sugar pie. Just practice.”
    “Honest?”
    “Honest.”

5
CASSIE
    M OLLY’S FATHER HAS a beard. He must have the only beard in Newport News. He talks what Mom calls New York Loud out of lips so red it looks like he’s wearing lipstick. He’s big. His shirt spreads a little bit around the buttons, and curly chest hairs peek out. He’s jolly and nice, and when he smiles his eyes smile, too, soft mushy eyes, brown like Molly’s, with black eyelashes all around.
    Over the couch in Molly’s house is a huge painting of her mother naked. Molly doesn’t seem to care that it’s there, that it covers the whole wall. I try not to look at it when I go over there but I can’t help it. I stare at it when Molly’s not looking. I don’t know anybody else whose father painted their mother with no clothes on.
    Mr. Finkelstein is an artist. They used to live in New York, but they moved here when he got a job with the shipyard drawing plans. I guess it must be boring for them after living in glamorous
    New York, but this is where they live and where he paints, at a crooked wooden easel in their dining room. There are lots of his paintings all over the house, crowded together, signed in big loopy letters “Max Finkelstein.”
    Molly pulls me over to one painting he finished last month and she tells me not to touch it, it’s still wet. He didn’t even use a brush on this one, she says. It’s his new style, all the colors squished right on the canvas out of the tube. I can’t tell what it is, it’s just big blobs of juicy colors, red and blue and orange sitting there like toothpaste. Molly says nobody else paints like this, squishing blobs right on the canvas. She says that someday her father will be famous for it.
    When Molly isn’t looking I stick my finger in the paint to