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Baudelaire and Verlaine. Only the things that had some bearing on her relationship with Bake held any meaning. Only the hours that pointed to their next meeting had promise.
    It was best when they met at the apartment. Once she got up the steps and inside the building she could fall into Bake's welcoming arms and forget all the emptiness since their last time together. But she gathered up crumbs of companionship toothe minutes they spent walking together, the after-class drink that had become a ritual.
    If it meant as much to Bake, she never said so. Gradually, as though testing Frances' ability to enter into her life, she began to include Frances in her plans. She arranged for her to meet other friends, and told her small thingstrivial in themselves but important because they helped to fill in the years they had spent apartabout her own life. Gradually, Frances came to see that another world lay all around her, whose existence she had never even suspected.

CHAPTER 7
    “Where do you think you're going?"
    Frances paused with her hand on the doorknob. "A girl I know is having a party. Any objections?"
    "You're certainly leading a social life these days," Bill said. He laid his morning paper, still folded, on the coffee table. His eyes rested on heraccusingly, or only questioningly? "How come?"
    She smoothed her hair back nervously. "After all, you're hardly ever home any more. You don't expect me to sit home alone evening after evening, do you?"
    "I go out on business. I'm beating my brains out to earn a living for you and Bob, and you damn well know it. There's nothing I'd like better than a chance to stay home with my family once in a while."
    "Is that why you play golf every Sunday?"
    He ignored that. "If I didn't know better, I'd think you were running around with some other guy."
    "Well, I'm not. I haven't got time to stand here and argue, either. I have a right to some friends of my own."
    "You might try being decent to my friends for a change. You were snooty to Jack Flanagan again last night."
    "I'm getting damn tired of having Jack Flanagan pinch me on the fanny every chance he gets," Frances said coldly. "I don't mind your eyes falling out of their sockets every time Betty leans over in those low-cut necklines of hers, but I don't care for that sort of thing myself." She pulled the front door open.
    "This isn't like you."
    "Maybe you don't know me very well. You're never home."
    She was rather proud of herself for keeping her voice so calm, considering the way her knees were shaking.
    There were six or seven people in Bake's small apartment when she got there. The air was soft with smoke and loud with hi-fi blues. Frances made her way through the familiar rooms, trying not to feel that the guests were intruders, not to wish that they would all go home and leave her alone with Bake. She took off her coat and added it to the pile on the bed, reddened her lips and smoothed her hair, pleased that she looked pretty. In the mirror she saw Bake come into the bedroom, closing the door tightly behind her.
    "Hi," she said, raising a hand in greeting.
    "Hi," Bake said, sounding amused. "It's turning out to be quite a brawl. Are you staying afterward?"
    "I can't. Bill made a fuss about my coming at all." She capped her lipstick and dropped it in her purse. "It's the first time he's ever said anything."
    "You shouldn't have told him you were going out."
    "Oh hell, he's all settled down for a quiet evening at home. I don't know what got into him."
    "He doesn't suspect anything, does he?"
    "I don't think so. He accused me of being interested in another man," Frances said, giggling suddenly, "but I don't think he meant it. He was just peeved and wanted to hurt my feelings."
    Bake lit a cigarette. She broke the match in two and flipped it at the corner wastebasket. "It's too bad you have to take him into consideration at alland Bob too. I haven't anything against Bob, I'm sure he's a nice kid, but no adolescent really needs a mother.