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just like that. Because Miss Toklas, I know, rarely has to say more than "Lovey" to triumph.
    GertrudeStein, accustomed by now to her comfy throne, would have called out again, "Please, Pussy, please. There is someone at the studio door."
    "But, Lovey,
you
are right there!" Miss Toklas, from her position at the kitchen sink, would have stated the obvious, knowing all the while that it was of no use. GertrudeStein will not answer her own door today or any other day. GertrudeStein has in recent years begun to conclude that those who deliberately seek her out are god-awful nuisances, unless they were willing, of course, to recognize her genius. She, it must be acknowledged, is the brightest star in the Western sky. Though in truth, I think GertrudeStein is more of a constellation. She is about the same height as Miss Toklas, but she has a sturdy build, storing most of her weight in her bosom and hips. GertrudeStein is a great beauty, both Miss Toklas and I believe. No, for me, not at first. Only Miss Toklas could claim such immediate clarity. GertrudeStein's features are broad, unmistakable, a bit coarse. Her nose and ears appear to be disproportionately larger than the rest of her face. She, though, carries herself as if she is an object of desire. She carries herself as if she is her own object of desire. Such self-induced lust is addictive in its effect. Prolonged exposure makes those around them weak and helpless.
    I have seen scattered around the apartment photographs of a GertrudeStein who wears her hair in a massive topknot, loose, blowzy, somewhat in disarray. The total effect, however, is heroic. The GertrudeStein I know has less hair on her head than I do. The story of her transformation began, I would imagine, around noon, as she is rarely awake until then:
    GertrudeStein looks at her reflection floating on the surface of a silver teapot and concludes that the pile of hair on top of her head is unacceptable. It is, she thinks, disrupting the continuity of her face. Shearing it, she tells Miss Toklas, will be an important act. Pointless overdecoration, GertrudeStein explains, thinking of the commas and periods that she has plucked from the pages of her writings. Such interferences, she insists, are nothing more than toads flattened on a country road, careless and unsightly. The modern world is without limits, she tells Miss Toklas, so the modern story must accommodate the possibilities—a road where she can get lost if she so chooses or go slow and touch each blade of grass. GertrudeStein should know.
She is an excellent driver. She lapses, however, when she has to go in reverse. She would rather keep on driving until she can turn the automobile around, a 360-degree arc of obstinacy. That way, she is technically always going forward.
    Miss Toklas likes the wind in her face.
    It takes Miss Toklas nearly two days, interrupted only by their mutual desire to eat, to cut off GertrudeStein's hair. As each lock is slipped between the blades of her scissors, Miss Toklas smiles, and says, "Oh, this is so Spanish!" That is her highest compliment for any situation. Spain, Miss Toklas thinks, is where her soul first emerged, fully formed. Spain is where she first experienced Passion, without GertrudeStein. Every town has at least one house, marked by the sign of a cross, in which she could meet Her. Her flirtation, her lover, her Virgin. On their first visit to Àvila, she begs GertrudeStein to stay, to linger in the shadows of the city's cloistered walls. GertrudeStein suspects that on Spanish soil, Miss Toklas would become another's devotee. GertrudeStein could not bear such disgraceful competition. Paris, she knows, has its share of seductions, but those are at least corporeal in form. Miss Toklas is moved by the sight of GertrudeStein's shoulders as they are being eased into a shawl of newly clipped hair, lacelike, covering and revealing all at once. Miss Toklas keeps on cutting, remembering the monks who wound through