One Coffee With

11

FROM infancy Sigrid had known puzzled looks from her mother's friends. Sooner or later would be murmured the inevitable, "She certainly doesn't take after you or Leif, does she?" The comparisons didn't hurt less for being voiced in soft southern accents as Sigrid discovered the Christmas Anne was delayed by an assignment in the Philippines. Grandmother Lattimore had come up from North Carolina to keep Sigrid company when she came home from boarding school, thirteen years old and at her very gawkiest.

Mrs. Lattimore had raised three feminine belles, and she was at a loss with this Yankee granddaughter. She had bought Sigrid a Christmas dress of red velvet and white lace, but even she immediately saw how inappropriate such a dress would be on a child all arms and legs. Sigrid was already two inches taller than her grandmother. Her hair was dark like Anne's, but its absolute straightness came from Leif, and it was so silky fine that it frizzed when Mrs. Lattimore tried to curl it.

"You've got a lot of things about you like your mama and daddy, honey," the woman had sighed, "only you just went and put them together differently. Well, I guess it doesn't really matter. They say you're going to be real intelligent. That's nice." Her voice had been dubious; then more briskly she'd added, "You're still not grown up yet, and if you cultivate a pleasant personality, why you'll do just fine! Look at your Cousin Lunette-plain as an old board fence, and she was the most popular girl of her year. Eight marriage proposals before she was twenty, and she had those squinchy little eyes from the Howard side of her family. At least yours are nice and wide, honey. All you need do is learn to use them."

Anne had always talked about the 'marvelous planes' of her face; but after Grandmother Lattimore's blunt assessment Sigrid had gone into the bathroom, locked the door and studied herself feature by feature, angrily brushing away the tears that welled up in her clear gray eyes.

Coldly she noted that her face wasn't actually repulsive, and that grandmother was right. Her eyes probably were her best feature. They would have to suffice.

Since then Sigrid had stopped looking in mirrors except to be sure everything hung together decently. Once and for all on that thirteenth Christmas she had decided-and accepted the fact-that she was homely and ungraceful, and it had never occurred to her that she might have changed. Or that there were standards of beauty other than her grandmother's stereotype.

She had no idea how stunning she could look when alone in the evenings, her dark hair loose, and robed in one of the exotic djellabas or caftans that Anne kept sending from all over the world. Tonight's was a deep wine red with sleeves and hem widely banded by rich embroidery interspersed with crystal beads and tiny mirrors no larger than a thumbnail.

When it arrived last Christmas Sigrid had sighed at her mother's frivolous taste, and she'd scowled at her reflection upon trying it on-peacock feathers on a crow, she'd thought-but by now habit and familiarity had made it as unremarkable as gray flannel. Only gray flannel didn't complement her skin as did the robe. She was a barbaric splash of color as she curled up on her white linen couch to read the old Life article, and the lamp-light did interesting things to the hollows of her cheeks and eyes as she concentrated on the magazine.

The article on modern American artists had been her mother's first important assignment with a major magazine, and her success with it had led to other plums. Perhaps anyone could have photographed the artworks as cleanly, but the Anne Harald touch lay in the way her camera caught each artist's personality and philosophy more openly than usual as the subjects responded to the woman behind the lens.

Seven lesser luminaries shared one double spread, but Oscar Nauman had been one of five artists who had double pages to themselves. There he was in what Sigrid now recognized as a characteristic pose: his lean frame carelessly sprawled in a chair, but both hands gesturing in an inward curve as he strove to make his point. One could almost feel the energy and intensity contained in that gesture.

The straightforward captions beneath each picture served mainly to identify the subject; but in the accompanying four-page essay Riley Quinn's prose was lucid and his positions were well-argued. Sigrid had never been able to get past what she regarded as the paradoxes and put-ons of modern art, but Quinn's style was vivid and easy to follow. Although aggressively opinionated, he had made his points confidently and logically and had marshaled excellent concrete examples to back up his statements.

One would need a strong ego and an even stronger grounding in modernism to refute him or beat him in his own area, and Sigrid began to understand how an artist might fear for his reputation if Riley Quinn turned thumbs down on his work.

As Quinn had planned to do to Piers Leyden? With relish, if one could believe all accounts.

One small dose of innocent-looking orange crystals, and Leyden could subvert Quinn's book and take possession of Quinn's beautiful wife.

Nauman had made it sound as if the affair with Leyden were of no importance, yet even drunk and passed out, Doris Quinn had been stunning. Or wasn't Oscar Nauman impressed by bosomy blondes?

Sigrid turned back to his photograph and idly wondered what type of woman he did prefer. Silver hair notwithstanding, she rather doubted if there had been a lessening of his vitality in that particular area any more than in his art. Those hands, for instance… sturdy, square-shaped workman's hands, powerful enough to shape and mold yet capable of delicacy and precision. Of gentle, lyrical touch…

Sigrid sat bolt upright and slammed the folder shut, her cheeks suddenly stained by a blush more crimson than her exotic robe. Oscar Nauman was old enough to be her father!

Dismayed at herself, she went into the kitchen to make a cup of hot chocolate; and while the milk heated, she spilled the little squares of red paper onto her white counter top and began sorting the tones. The milk boiled over, was turned off and grew cold as she struggled with the problem of arranging the squares in nine equal steps. The girl student had been right: twelve steps were rather easy. But nine evaded her.

She poured the curdled milk down the drain and washed the pan, then switched off all the lights and went to bed.

And found herself right back at square one, wondering if Oscar Nauman slept alone tonight.

What the devil had got into her?

She buried her head under a pillow, blocked out every undisciplined thought and put herself firmly to sleep by a concentrated listing of all fifty states in alphabetical order.