A Free Life

She beamed, batting her dark eyelashes. "One of my lightbulbs is dead-can you replace it for me?" "Sure, my pleasure."

It was a warm day, and she wore jeans and a pink wrap-over top that revealed her belly button, under which bulged a small fold of flab. Nan had never seen such a navel, an i

"Where's she coming from?"

" New Mexico."

The defective light was in the kitchen, where the north-facing window let in a flood of sunlight. The ceiling was so high that Nan had to place a stool on a tall chair, then climbed onto them.

"Be careful, dear. Don't fall," she crooned.

"I won't." Though he said that, his right leg was shaking a little.

The lightbulb was covered by a scalloped fixture, and he unscrewed the nut and handed the glass shade to Maria. The incandescent bulb was half black, burned out. "Can you turn zer switch off?" he asked.

She flicked it off and came over to hand him a new bulb. "Let me hold you, dear, so you won't fall," she said, smiling and showing her even teeth. She hugged his calves from behind and pressed her nose between them. "Hmm, you smell good. You have strong legs."

"And also strong arms." He was screwing on the shade. "Can you open zer light?" He caught himself using the wrong verb.

"What?" she asked.

"Turn on zer switch."

"Sure."

The light came on. Before she could sidle back to him, he jumped down with his right hand holding the top corner of the refrigerator.

As he landed on the ceramic tile, his dictionary fell out of his pocket and spread facedown at Maria's feet. She picked it up and flipped through some pages. "My goodness, you've marked the entire book!"

"Almost. I have to stahdy English whenever I can." His face was reddening.

She handed it back to him. "I used to read books, but I don't have the time anymore."

Without another word he put the stool and the chair back to their original places. She asked, "Can I give you a glass of wine?" She looked him in the face, her eyes intense and unblinking.

"No, sanks."

"Why are you always so polite, Nan?" "I'm supposed to be."

"C'mon, just have some wine and loosen up a bit. It's not busy out there." She poured half a glass of zinfandel and handed it to him.

"No, sanks. It will make my face red and Sandy can see it."

"You're such a serious guy. I'm sure you don't talk to your girlfriend like this. Are you afraid of me or something?"

He smiled, rather embarrassed. "I'm not afraid of anyone."

"Not even a woman?"

"I have a wife and a son. When I don't work, of coss I can relax at home."

"So you're trying to be professional here." She tittered, then kept on, "I don't mind if you have a family. Can't we be friends, just friends?" She sipped her glass of wine, probably to cover her edgi-ness, while her eyes held him as if pulling him toward her.

"Sure, but I must leave." He turned to the door. "Sorry, Tim needs me in zee office." In his confusion he forgot that Tim had just quit as a result of a lung problem, which Tim told others was pulmonary emphysema but Sandy suspected was cancer. Without enough hands, Sandy had to work in the front office these days.

"Thank you for the help, Nan," Maria said damply. "You're a sweet guy."

"It's my pleasure."

Though he didn't feel attracted to Maria, his heart was racing a little. But in her eagerness and affected ma

After that day, she continued to ask him to carry grocery bags for her and still wouldn't tip him. He was always polite, however cold she was to him.

Maria's calling him "a sweet guy" reminded Nan of his experience with another woman, Heather Burt, who had been a girlfriend of Maurice Fome, Nan 's fellow graduate student at Brandeis. Maurice, a slim black man often wearing a broad smile, was from Sudan and had attended the Sorbo

She came to see Maurice again in late July 1986, intending to stay two weeks and get engaged to him. But when she stepped into his apartment, Maurice was in a trance, sitting in a beanbag chair with foam at his mouth, murmuring something nobody could understand. He wouldn't talk to Heather or anyone and didn't even recognize her. His eyes were milky, the pupils almost invisible.

That evening, having nowhere to go, Heather stayed at Nan 's apartment, her eyes red and her face crumpled. Sitting at the table in the living room, she told Nan that Maurice's father, a tribal shaman, was calling to him from a mountain in Sudan. "He's not himself anymore and didn't understand what I said," she sighed, dragging at a cigarette.

"You mean he can communicate wiz his father in Africa?" For all his fondness for Maurice, Nan suspected he was shamming. "Yes, he can," she replied in earnest. "Do you believe zat?"

"I do."

She took a swallow of the green tea Nan had poured for her, then told him that her father, an auto mechanic, after opposing the idea of her being engaged to a black man, had finally given her his approval and blessing. But some of her friends still disliked the idea. "They asked me," she said, " ' You really don't mind having a black guy in your bed?' I told them, 'It makes no difference. He's good.' See now, I'm in the doghouse." Two whitish tears fell out of her eyes, and she blew her nose into a paper towel, then raised her hand to tuck a strip of ginger hair behind her ear.

"You mean you're cornered?" Nan had never heard that idiom.

"I mean I'm in serious trouble."

Several days in a row Maurice didn't recognize Heather, who continued to stay at Nan 's apartment, in his roommate Gary's room. Gary had gone back to Israel for the summer. During the day Nan went to work in the library and in the evenings cooked di

One night, the moment he turned in, Heather knocked on his door, which he hadn't locked. "Come in," he said.

She stepped in and, with a misshapen face, asked him, "Can I spend the night with you?"

"You-you don't know me zat well."

"Please!"

In spite of the surprise, Nan did feel a stirring rush and waved her to come over. For a whole year he hadn't touched a woman, and sometimes he was afraid he might have lost his potency, so he was eager to have her. She dropped her nightgown and got into his bed.

After caressing him for a while, she asked, "Do you have a rubber?" Her silk panties fell on the floor.

"You mean candy?" he guessed, thinking of chewing gum. His fingers kept fondling her breast.