Superior Women

by Alice Adams

  Megan involuntarily looks at Janet, whose face is a blank; then Adam looks at her too, and he kisses her neck, and he says, “You don’t mind?”

  She frowns, just a little. “No, of course not.”

  But she does mind; Megan has seen it on her face.

  Price has not liked this either, his new French girl off with Adam, now down there dancing with Adam to this crazy, manic music. Very carefully he does not watch them, but instead turns his attention to Megan.

  Danny, Megan has begun to realize, is fairly drunk, slouched silently in his chair.

  Price makes a curious speech to Megan, its curiousness including the circumstance of time and place. “I’ve been thinking a lot about you, Megan Greene,” says Price, above the noisy music and the shouts.

  “Oh?”

  He makes her wait, smiling down at her—superior, withholding. “In some ways you’re much more like a man, despite that body,” he at last tells Megan, with a further smile.

  “Oh, really?” Price has spoken as though he were giving her a compliment, but Megan has failed to understand. How, like a man?

  “About sex,” he explains. “You aren’t silly about it, the way most girls are. You don’t take it too seriously.”

  Is he referring to the fact that she was able to neck with him on the boat, coming over to Cherbourg, without falling in love with him? Of course, he must mean just that; and he is praising her good judgment, isn’t he? But Megan still feels somehow vaguely, quite subtly attacked. Why, she wonders, is it “like a man,” necessarily, to exhibit simple good sense? Or, can he possibly believe that only a woman who was “like a man” would not fall in love with him?

  Wanting to change the subject, then, and certainly to shift it from herself, from Price’s idea of her, Megan remarks that it is too bad poor Lucy got sick. “She’ll feel awful tomorrow,” Megan says.

  “Maybe just as well,” Price oddly answers, and then he laughs. “If she’d stayed sober I might have taken her home for an old-fashioned rape scene. And I must not do that to a nice girl like Lucy. In fact I really should stay away from that girl altogether.”

  “Why on earth? She’s so pretty, and probably rich.”

  “Exactly.” Price beams at Megan (again approving of her “male” intelligence?). “She’d be the perfect girl for me to marry, and I don’t need anything that serious. Not yet.”

  Price has said this so earnestly, so pompously, really, that Megan is tempted to tease him. “First you have to find that nice rich French girl to move in with?”

  “Oh Megan, you really know how to hit a guy below the belt.” But he laughs, appreciating her, or seeming to—for whatever reasons of his own.

  Price has succeeded in making her uncomfortable, though, Megan recognizes, despite the fact that on the face of it he has been talking to her as to a friend. As a male friend, in fact, which is perfectly all right with Megan; God knows she would not want to be courted, as a woman, by Price Christopher. But what is bothering her, she decides, is that she does not especially want to be his friend at all. On some important level she is deeply distrustful of Price.

  Later Adam dances with Janet, and everything between them is immediately all right, Megan feels (or hopes). Price dances with Odile, and Megan with small, thin Danny, who is really too drunk to dance. “You aire so beautiful,” he keeps crooning into Megan’s ear, as they jump about, not at all in time to the music.

  By the time they leave the Bal Nègre, the Métro has long since shut down, and so the six of them troupe home, through the shuttered, gray deserted streets; they say good night to Adam and Janet at the Luxembourg Gardens, to Price and to Odile a few blocks later on. Price lives on Rue Monsieur le Prince; it is not quite clear where Odile lives.

  At the entrance to her hotel, the Welcome, seeing that Danny is in a state of near collapse, Megan simply propels him inside the door and then she half-pulls, half-pushes him up her stairs—a relatively easy task, since, even drunk, Danny is light, nimble-footed.

  They fall into bed and both fall immediately asleep. They sleep until fairly late the following morning, when some harsh sunbeams bring them simultaneously awake. They regard each other, then, with a shared mixture of surprise and amusement. And then Danny begins to make love to her.

  Although all his motions are practiced—he is highly educated in ways of pleasing—Megan feels—something is wrong. He does not really want to do this, she thinks, and, ludicrously, he is just being polite.

  Which is not quite a sufficient reason for making love, or so she believes.

  As she half-responds, politely, Megan longs for an instant improvement in her French. “This is not necessary” sounds crude in any language, as does, “You don’t have to make love to me.” And, under these circumstances, does one use the familiar form?

  Sensitive Danny, though, has understood without any words. From her breast he reaches to stroke her face, as, smiling, he asks her, “Ah, you do not feel at this moment ‘in the mood?’ ”

  “Well, no.”

  Megan too is smiling, and next they both begin to laugh, having perfectly understood each other, with remarkable clarity. Having begun to be friends.

  Danny seems to have no home. “I generally stay with some friend,” he says to Megan, early on. And, “I paint in the studio of a friend.” Also, he has no money. Or rather, he has just enough money, always, for the two Métro tickets, which he invariably, chivalrously pays for. He wears tattered pants that have the look of some army or other, and clean white shirts, never ironed. Blondish curly hair, light eyes, a delicately graceful body. A street child. Megan likes Danny very much, from the start, and she worries about him, although he does not seem to worry about himself, any more than a sparrow would.

  That first day they go out to lunch, at Benoit, just down from the Flore. “I have no money,” he has already said to her. “You don’t mind to pay?”

  “No, of course not. I have plenty.”

  “If I had—” He smiles at her, charmingly, and shrugs.

  It is not important to Megan which one of them pays; since she is the one who has money, it seems natural that she should pay.

  They are friends. He is an amusing companion, a gentle friend.

  In quite another way, Adam is also a good friend to Megan, that year. The friendship between the two of them has grown, somehow, whereas the connection binding Janet and Megan is just slightly diminished. The two young women never spend time alone; they do not go out for lunch, for example, and Megan finds it hard to imagine what they would talk about if they did: how much Janet loves Adam, how happy she is with him? Because it is true that Adam takes up the whole of Janet’s life; he surrounds and encompasses her. While Adam and Megan are violently talking, arguing, or while Adam argues with some other friend (ferociously, often, with Price Christopher), Janet will simply watch and smile. In love and loved.

  Megan and Adam have two major arguments, which they repeat, with minor variations, with varying degrees of heat, over that whole long winter. The first is political; it has to do with the strong possibility of war between the United States and Russia: should the war come, which side should win? Which victory would, finally, improve the world? Adam is far more certain than Megan is that such a war will in fact occur, and he is certain too that a Russian victory would be preferable. Preferable, not wonderful; he is not an absolutely committed Stalinist, being already prone to deviationist tendencies. But Russia’s winning would be just a little better, Adam says.

  Much less certain than Adam that such a war will occur at all, partly because it is too catastrophic for her to contemplate, Megan believes that if such a war does happen it will not matter much who wins. She also thinks, and she says, that very likely she does not know what she is talking about—a view with which Adam is only too ready to agree.

  Their other argument has to do with chess, strangely enough. Adam considers chess an admirable intellectual exercise. Megan calls it a waste of time. “Honestly, Adam, it’s just
a game.”

  “You don’t approve of it because it’s a discipline you probably could not master, even if you weren’t too lazy even to try. Most women can’t play chess.”

  “We have better sense than to waste our time like that.”

  “You do not. You have almost no sense at all, you dumb cunt.”

  “Stupid prick.”

  They go on like that, in a friendly rage, while Janet silently, smilingly sides with Adam.

  Good friends, the three of them.

  14

  None of them goes to the popular Flore, or the Deux Magots, where everyone else goes, that year. Not Janet and Adam, nor Megan, with or without Danny. “Rich assholes, on the prowl for gen-u-ine existentialists,” is how Adam characterizes the students who do go to those cafés, which from the look of things seems accurate enough. And the Montana Bar, around the corner from the Flore, is even worse: “Cunts from Bennington and Princeton pricks,” says Adam Marr.

  But one bright December morning, after weeks of dark and cold, Megan finds herself drawn to an empty table at one corner of the terrace of the Flore—the corner nearest that lovely small stone church, St. Germain-des-Prés. She sits down and orders coffee.

  The Left Bank at that time has a leisurely, small-town quality. Faces once seen tend to reappear, to become familiar, even; there are a great many people whom one almost knows, or so Megan felt, after almost three months in Paris. Still, it is surprising, even startling, that morning, to see the very familiar face of Adam Marr, in his usual battered army fatigues, and more surprising still to see that with him is the less familiar, strikingly pretty dark face of Odile. Walking past the terrace, they are smiling and talking in an animated way, entirely engaged in their conversation. However, Adam’s sharp glance is still able to take in Megan, there in the sunshine, waiting for her coffee. Adam salutes her with one raised hand, an eyebrow cocked in her direction—and very likely all this is accomplished without disturbing the rhythm of his sentence. And then they are gone, Adam and Odile, down the boulevard, in the direction of the Sorbonne. Probably.

  Digesting that tiny encounter, along with her just-arrived hot coffee (like all the coffee in Paris, that year, it tastes very strongly of chicory), Megan tries to turn her attention toward the church across the street, its darkly shaded, dark green churchyard, the blackened stones, the high black iron spiked fence. And she thinks how very odd it is that in months of exploring the farthest corners of Paris (an expert guide, Danny has taken her everywhere) she has never once entered this church, the oldest in Paris—and so near at hand. She will have one more cup of coffee, she then decides, and go into the church. At last.

  She is imagining the dark cool interior, sunlight filtered through ancient stained glass, when suddenly there is Adam, at her side, seemingly having appeared from nowhere. He is flushed and sweating a little, as though he had run back to her, from wherever he was. He is smiling, saying, “Did I make it in time for coffee? Never mind what you’re doing in this jack-off place.”

  “I was just going to order some more,” Megan tells him; she is aware of a nervous flutter in her throat, as she wonders why. Why should the prospect of coffee with Adam make her nervous? They have had dozens of coffees together, with or without Janet.

  “This seems to be coincidence day,” Adam remarks. “First I run into Odile, then you.”

  “She’s awfully pretty,” Megan offers, blandly.

  “You think so? I guess. No tits though. That’s a French girl for you.” And Adam looks glum, as though Odile’s small breasts and the breasts of all French women were a genuine deprivation to him.

  “I think Price really has the hots for her.” Megan hears this strange sentence from herself, and she thinks, But that isn’t how I talk. Am I trying to imitate Adam, instead of talking to him?

  “Actually,” Adam says—and in those few syllables Megan notes that he has shifted from belligerent Brooklyn to purest Harvard Square, the Yard—“Actually,” he says, “it’s all like a rather bad play. Poor Lucy loves Price, and Price has the hots, as you put it, for pretty Odile.”

  Unthinkingly Megan carries his idea along; like a stooge she asks, “Does Odile love anyone, do you think?”

  “She loves me, or she thinks she does.” Adam looks fully at Megan, saying this, giving her the full, powerful effect of his eyes, so hotly blue, so intense in their regard. And, at this moment, they contain a certain despair (“an existential despair,” Adam himself would probably call it; of course he is reading Sartre).

  In a then more normal voice Adam begins to talk. He tells Megan considerably more than she would have chosen to hear, had she been given a choice. “I never meant to cheat on Janet,” he starts right out by saying. “I knew I’d be tempted sometimes but I thought I could make it.” He laughs, presumably at the presumption of his suppositions. And he goes on. “Maybe the worst of it is that sometimes I’ve used you for an excuse. It’s funny, but that’s what I really feel crummiest about. Telling Janet I was taking a book or something over to you, when I really was meeting Odile. She lives near you, that made it easy. Or saying I’d run into you somewhere, to Janet.” He laughs again, without amusement. “And now I have—I really did run into you.”

  Megan sees that by now this confession has cheered him; he has managed to shift some of his guilt onto Megan, or rather, he believes that he has.

  Something in her face, some judgment, then, must have prompted him to ask, “Is that all right? You understand, silly Megan? You don’t really mind?”

  She bursts out, “Of course I mind, and I don’t know what you mean, ‘understand.’ Christ, Adam, why me? If you had to lie like that you could have used someone else. Price, even. Christ, I really hate it.”

  Adam leans back in his chair, regarding her from a greater distance thus, and with almost pure irritation. “Boy,” he says, “you women sure stick together, don’t you. Shit, Megan, you were just the most plausible person. Can’t you see that?”

  “Of course I see it, you stupid prick. It just shows how little imagination you really have.”

  Adam looks stung; he is ready with a cruel answer, Megan can see that—but then he seems to decide to shift his approach. His eyes go sad, and his voice deepens; his accent is very Cantabridgian. “You’re right,” he says. “I’ve been rotten. I’ve felt rotten about what I was doing. And really bad toward you, Megan. I respect your attitude in this.”

  It is the winter solstice; there in the cold Paris sunshine, Megan and Adam stare at each other. Both are silent, having said enough, and possibly too much. Until Adam, for whatever reason, is compelled to add, in his more ordinary voice, “And you know what? The fucking wasn’t even all that great. We were like two well-trained athletes going through our paces. You know what was missing? Love. I love Janet. Maybe I had to find out the hard way.” This has been said with great earnestness.

  “Oh, shit, Adam. Today you’re absolutely full of it.”

  Adam grins, quite suddenly all pleased with himself again (his mother’s darling bad boy). “Aaaah—” He makes his most Brooklyn sound. “You dumb cunt. What do you think you know, about anything?”

  He summons a waiter—“Eh, garçon!”—and insists on paying for their coffee. He and Megan get up, they say a few words in parting and go off in their separate directions, Adam toward Janet, Megan heading for the Hotel Welcome.

  Alone and upset, for no reason walking very fast, Megan forgets that she had meant to go into the church.

  During the next few weeks Megan is aware of serious distress, over Janet and Adam. Irrationally, perhaps, she feels that Adam’s defection has somehow undermined their three-way friendship, so that for a while she barely sees either of them. And, as trouble will, that problem seems to bring along other worries in its wake: Megan begins to worry about everything in her life.

  For instance, whatever will she do the following year? Once back from Paris, where will she go? Her parents expect her to be in California—in San Francisco, at leas
t, if not with them in Palo Alto. Megan would like to live in New York, she thinks, but how?

  And what will become of Danny? How will he feed himself, once she is gone? He has told her that the winter before he was sick, “from the malnutrition”; suppose he should be sick again? Another calmer part of her mind tells her that Danny will of course meet someone else, another American girl or boy, or man, or older woman: she understands that the nature, or gender, of his friends is not important to Danny any more than whether or not they make love is important. Danny is a true street child, a little cat, or a sparrow. Still, she does worry about him.

  Also, and more pressingly, Megan wonders if she can make what money she has left last until June; she counts and calculates, and she comes up with a variety of answers, the variety having at least a little to do with the fluctuating franc, which no one can calculate.

  That year all the young Americans in France exchange their dollars on the black market, except perhaps for the very rich, the totally innocent, or the incredibly high-minded. The legal rate is ridiculously low, it seems to them, these “poor” Americans; they cannot afford to use it. They have convinced themselves that trading on the black market is not immoral; it does not seem so, nor is it much discussed in moral terms. The fact that most of the money dealers are concentration camp survivors, with crude numbers tattooed on their wrists, makes the question of morality almost irrelevant. The logic being, if logic could be said to exist in this situation, that those men are now entitled to make their own laws. Having suffered such extremes of horror, whatever they want to do now has its own sanction.

  And so, in certain parts of Paris, near the Opéra, especially, and American Express, on Rue Scribe, the Americans are continually accosted by shabby, thin dark men. In an intense undertone these accosters ask, “Got anything to sell? You got dollars? Good rate today.”

  (How can they always tell that you are an American, Megan has wondered. It cannot be a matter of clothes; hers are all old and shapeless, and the cheap walking shoes that she wears she has bought over here. There must be some total effect, some radar to which these men are particularly attuned.)