Read The Women for Free Online

gloved hand, her purse in the other. She noticed him, though, her gaze roving over the crowd from the place she’d chosen in the corner—both wanting to be seen and at the same time striving for anonymity, unescorted at a matinee, unattached and at odds with her husband, a devotee of the dance and of what Karsavina had once been, a single woman out on a rainy afternoon. Olgivanna saw the same hats, shoulders, furs and jabbering faces he’d seen, a cotillion, a pecking order, society at large, and then all at once he was there and her eyes seized on him.
     
    Her first sensation was the thrill of recognizing a celebrated face in public, a jolt of the nervous system that carried with it a hint of self-congratulation, as if she’d come up with the solution to a puzzle in a flash of inspiration. The second thing she felt was that she absolutely must talk to him—a compulsion so strong she very nearly bolted through the crowd to him, though here she was an utter stranger and unescorted and unintroduced, but she suppressed the impulse out of shyness and a vertiginousness verging on panic: What could she possibly say to him? How would she break the ice? Get him to look at her even? And the third thing, a thought clamoring atop the other two and cloaked in a rush of hormonal flapping, was that he would know her on some deep unfathomable level, as if it were fated, as if they were reincarnated lovers out of the Mahabharata or Rice Burroughs—and more: that he would take her to himself, master her in a fierce blend of power and submission. 4
     
    Frank 5 was oblivious. He was the center of attention, preening and performing for the little group that had gathered round him, old friends and fellows-well-met, joking, laughing, carting out one story after another and making his deadpan observations about this couple or that—and let them look, let them—when the start of the program was announced and Albert took him by the arm and they made their way to a box in front. As it happened, Albert slid in first, taking the seat adjoining a vacant one, and Frank settled in on his right. The lights dimmed. The conductor rose from the pit, his arms elevated over the score. And then, at the last minute, Olgivanna drifted gracefully down the center aisle, a moving shadow against the backdrop of the stage. The usher stood aside, the curtain rising now, the audience stirring, and here was her seat, and she barely had time to register the unremarkable figure beside her before the music began and the dancers appeared and she realized with a jolt that he was there, right there, one seat over from her.
     
    For his part, Frank had glanced up as she slipped into her seat—a reflex of the human organism: there’s a movement, the eye goes to it—just as he would have glanced up at anyone, the cows from the lobby or the stuffed shirts they were with or even one of his sworn enemies. A glance, that was all, but he liked what he saw. She was hatless, with minimal makeup, her hair parted in the middle and drawn up in a chignon, a lace shawl clinging to her shoulders. He registered that—the simplicity of her dress and style, a kind of purity and faith in her own beauty that stood all the rest of the puffed-up, powdered and behatted matrons on their heads, and the way she’d moved, a tall young woman in her twenties, sliding into a seat at the ballet with a balletic grace all her own. He stole another glance. And then another.
     
    There was movement on the stage now, a burst of applause as Karsavina appeared—her legs good still, her face less so—and its dying fall. He was conscious of silent effort, of women and men twirling and wobbling like bowling pins that won’t go down, and he understood immediately that this would be a mediocre performance by an artist in decline. A bore. A wasted afternoon. He bent forward to look past Albert. The young woman—she was a girl, really—sat quietly with her hands folded in her lap, her gaze fixed on the