C ordelia has run away from home. This is not how she puts it. She’s tracked me down through my mother. I meet her for coffee, during my afternoon break, not at the Swiss Chalet. I could get the coffee free, but by now I want to be out of there as much as possible, away from the sickly back-room odor of raw poultry, the rows of naked chickens like dead babies, the mushed-up, lukewarm, dog dish debris of customers’ meals. So instead we are in Murray‘s, down the street in the Park Plaza Hotel. It’s medium clean, and although there’s no air-conditioning there are ceiling fans. At least here I don’t know what goes on in the kitchen. Cordelia is thinner now, almost gaunt. The cheekbones of her long face are visible, her gray-green eyes are big in her face. Around each one of them is drawn a green line. She is tanned, her lips an understated orangey-pink. Her arms are angular, her neck elegant; her hair is pulled back like a ballerina’s. She’s wearing black stockings although it’s summer, and sandals, although the sandals are not dainty women’s summer sandals, but thick-soled and artistic, with primitive peasant buckles. Also a scoop-neck short-sleeved black jersey top that shows off her breasts, a full cotton skirt of a dull blue-green with abstract black swirls and squares on it, a wide black belt. She has on two heavy rings, one with a turquoise, and chunky square earrings, and a silver bracelet: Mexican silver. You would not say beautiful about her, but you would stare, as I am, doing: for the first time in her life she looks distinguished. We greeted each other on sight with the outstretched hands, the demi-hugs, the cries of surprise and delight that women are supposed to make who haven’t seen each other for a while. Now I slump in Murray‘s, drinking wishy-washy coffee, while Cordelia talks and I wonder why I have agreed to this. I am at a disadvantage: I’m in my crumpled, gravy-spotted Swiss Chalet uniform, my armpits are sweaty, my feet hurt, my hair in this humidity is unruly and dank and curling like singed wool. There are dark circles under my eyes, because last night was one of Josef’s nights.
Cordelia on the other hand is showing herself off to me. She wants me to see what has become of her, since her days of sloth and overeating and failure. She has reinvented herself. She’s cool as a cucumber, and brimming with casual news.
What she is doing is working at the Stratford Shakespearean Festival. She is a bit-part player. “Very minor things,” she says, waving her bracelet and rings dismissively, which means less minor than she says.
“You know. Spear carrying, though of course I don’t carry spears.” She laughs, and lights a cigarette. I wonder if Cordelia has ever eaten snails, decide she is most likely on familiar terms with them; a depressing thought.
The Stratford Shakespearean Festival is quite famous by now. It was started several years ago in the town of Stratford, which has an Avon River running through it, and swans of both colors. I have read all this in magazines. People go there on the train, in buses, or in cars with picnic baskets; sometimes they stay all weekend and see three or four Shakespeare plays, one after the other. At first this festival was held in a big tent, like a circus. But now there is a real building, a strange, modern building, circular in shape. “So you have to project to three sides. It’s such a strain on the voice,” Cordelia says with a deprecating smile, as if she is projecting and straining her voice all in the line of work. She is like someone making herself up as she goes along. She’s improvising.
“What do your parents think?” I say. This has been on my own mind lately: what parents think. Her face closes down for a moment. “They’re pleased I’m doing something,” she says.
“What about Perdie and Mirrie?”
“You know Perdie,” she says tightly. “Always the little put-downs. But that’s enough about me. What do you think of me?” This is an old joke of hers, and I laugh. “Seriously, what are you up to these days?”
It’s the tone I remember: polite but not too interested. “Since the last time I saw you.”
I remember this last time with guilt. “Oh, nothing much,” I say. “Going to school. You know.” Right now it does look like nothing much. What have I really done all year? A smattering of art history, messing around with charcoal. There’s nothing to show. There’s Josef, but he’s not exactly an accomplishment and I decide not to mention him.
