“I live on the next block. Feel like coming up for coffee?”

Megan’s building was much nicer than the one she lived in, cleaner and newer and with less of a transient air about it. Yet none of the Villagey charm was lost. The old-fashioned atmosphere of a brownstone was maintained, merely enhanced by the renovation. The hallway was thickly carpeted, the walls freshly painted, the air fresh-smelling. Inside, the apartment was a perfect reflection of Megan herself. It was done simply but elegantly in blues and greens. The furniture was modern without being garish. There were surrealistic paintings on the walls, a few bits of sculpture, a pastel of Megan.

Megan, she knew, was an interior decorator. She worked free-lance, taking an occasional job and earning a small living without working very hard at it. She seemed to be good at her work. Rhoda was impressed.

“Beautiful,” she said. “Everything is beautiful.”

There was a bedroom, small but adequate. There was a minute kitchen and a small bathroom. The living room was quite large, with a part of it set up as a sort of alcove with a round teak table and four chairs. They had coffee there. Megan made thick, strong coffee and they both drank it black and smoked cigarettes. Rhoda did most of the talking. She had not really talked to anyone in far too long. The wine had loosened her up, and the coffee had not yet sobered her, and Megan was easy to talk to. She found herself opening up, found the words spilling out.

She talked about her marriage, about two years with Tom Haskell, two years that had never worked out for her at all. Sex had been the main problem, but from it all sorts of other problems had quickly sprung into existence. With the realization that she could not enjoy sleeping with Tom came the realization that she should never have married him in the first place, that she did not want to be a wife at all. And from that step it was only a short leap to the knowledge that she did not love him, that she had never loved him.