So he was immediately drawn to her in the laundry room. The day? — sunny and dry. And her hair up or down? — now he’s not sure. Up, he thinks. Down, he thinks. Either way, she looked great. Through their entire relationship she had bangs, so she had bangs that day, but wore the rest of her hair many different ways. And she seemed vulnerable in the room, also protective of her son, more so with both those at the same time than he thinks he ever saw since, for a while clutching Bronson’s shoulders from behind, using him as a shield or device of some kind — well, literally to hold on to and hide behind — because she felt so discomposed or shy, and saying “shield” and her placing Bronson between them or keeping him there would make her less protective of him than he just said, and she also seemed interested, even attracted to Gould. Of course, the vulnerability and shyness, which he noticed when she first met other men she was attracted to, but it was probably mostly an act. And was it shorts she had on or long pants? Jeans, tight . not jeans but these thin summerweight cotton pants, he just remembers, red, and tight to her skin, and he now thinks a yellow tank top. But long solid legs on the small short body, but perfect legs, it seemed, and if the pants were long — they were long — then he could see the outlines of her skin through the cloth. “So-and-so” (she mentioned a well-known West Coast writer a little younger than Gould) “once said my legs were the most amazing and dazzling — lots of z’s — on earth. ‘Naturally,’ he said, ‘I haven’t eyed out every woman’s legs, but there are just so many kinds and I doubt any pair could be better than yours.’ Am I sounding too conceited and slight?” and he said “It’s okay, what else did the big brain say?” and she said “That I ought to model them. Or have a fashion photog take black and white shots of me only from the top of the thighs down and to blow up the best one to poster size, stencil the word ‘legs’ below the photo and to make a half-million copies of it and have someone market them to poster stores. That men would want to marry me just for my legs or pay five dollars for a thirty-second peep at them in some sideshow or porno place where just my legs were visible. Then he got really gross about my legs, where he’d like them in regard to him — he was pig rich from his novel by then and had big strong arms and a wrestler’s neck and chest and beautiful bushy blond hair but an ugly face on the largest head I’ve seen on someone who wasn’t a sad idiot and decrepit breath could that be the right word?” and he said “If you mean ‘stinky,’ no, but I get the point.” “And would I mind if he told his best pal about me — the Playboy of the Potato World, he called him: a fat cat from Idaho, you see, or son of one, and all from tubers — since he thinks I’ll fall for him madly and he wants to know someone who’s seen my legs with nothing above or on them in bed. ‘Tell whoever you want,’ I said jokingly, and his pal — Brons Sr., though without the S just yet — shows up at my place a day later, says who he is and that he’s selling eros but not from door to door, just to mine, and swore he never used that line before,” and he said “Why, did he think it a good one?” “And I tell you we flashed on each other right there and were on the floor in five minutes with not even the front door closed — that must be a record — with him lapping my legs up and down and around till they were greasy from his spit, and in a month we were married and with kid. Really, I don’t know what the big fuss is with men over legs. What are they, at their very best, but shapely sticks to walk on and cross. You guys get gunned up by everything. Even some with my poor chest: they must think of it as a pubescent girl’s and that turns up the heat. Or they see me as a boy or something in between, the creeps, where they then get both. But I’m being too egocentric again, aren’t I?” and he said “No, I swear, I love your stories.”
