she'd go and ask if Mr. Brush had heard anything. Or she would have received a letter and use it as an excuse to relay news to Mr. Brush in case he hadn't heard.
"Pooh," Lucy was saying to Mr. Larson or was it Mr. Henkel, "I can do any of those easy steps" and, lifting her skirt to her knees, did a breakdown in The Starlings' manner while he whistled and clapped time.
"Lucy," Clem said abruptly, "you left some things upstairs. You'd better come and see what you want to take."
She was glad to stop, it hurt when she moved so fast.
"Now Semy," she admonished, "don't let anyone eat my sandwich while I get my ballet slippers."
In the studio, Clem held her for a long moment.
"Listen to me," he ordered. "Promise you'll let me know if you need me. I'll come." He pressed her fingers around a grey suede oblong. There was something in it she was not to look at until she got home.
He tried to hold her again but she eluded him.
"We'd better go downstairs or they'll wonder what we're doing up here."
Now he had lost her, as he always lost what he tried for so hard in his paintings of her. All his painting. He started so well and then the image eluded him. Everything he wanted from life escaped him and he did not know why because he tried so hard and meant so well.
And so, wearing Clem's pearl necklace, his hundred-dollar check in her purse, Vida's graduation pin in the ruffles of her blouse, wearing home-dyed light-tan silk stockings and a mushroom hat, Lucy blew interminable kisses to faces fading in the distance. Exhausted she leaned back on the prickly green-plush Pullman seat, prepared to meet the island that was the Prince who would fit the glass slipper to her foot.
