looked at him as if she had just seen him for the first time in her life. She nodded and disappeared in the water closet.
He sat down on the bed, then laid back and stuck his hands behind his head. He turned and glanced at the clock. It wouldn't be long now. After all those nights of lying awake so he could listen to her above him. She was now his wife.
It seemed to him as if he had waited forever for her. He glanced at the clock again. He could wait a little longer. They had a whole lifetime. Patience. Just a little more patience.
One of the things those years of boxing had taught Conn was how to be calm and wait for the right moment. He'd learned the lesson well, which was why he never lost. Conn Donoughue was a patient man.
Eleanor brushed her teeth so long she used up half a can of Pepsident tooth powder. She mindlessly brushed her hair a hundred times. Twice. She put almond nut cream on her face and hands, braided her hair three times in three different kinds of braids and then took each one out. And brushed her hair again. She spent another ten minutes dabbing on French perfume and a little talcum under her arms.
Now she stood there, feeling lost and confused and nervous. She went over to her bag and dug around inside it for a moment. She pulled out a brown bottle of Dr. Hammond's Nerve and Brain Pills. She took four, then sat there for another twenty minutes waiting for them to go to work. Ten minutes after that she decided Dr. Hammond was a shyster.
She paced the small linoleum floor. Was she supposed to just waltz out there naked? She pressed her eye to the crack in the door. She was actually getting pretty good at this.
The lamps were on. She made a face. She just couldn't walk out there wearing nothing but skin. Forty year-old skin.
She looked down at her body. Her breasts pointed downward.
When did that happen? Moving in front of the cheval mirror, she squared her shoulders. Perhaps that helped a little. She turned sideways. She had a small waist, but her hips were too rounded and her stomach had a small pouch. She sucked in a breath. That just made her ribs stick out farther than her breasts.
She poked her finger into a thigh and watched her nail sink, before she turned and glanced over a shoulder in the mirror, then closed her eyes and groaned. She would have to spend her entire married life walking backwards. She propped her foot on the edge of the claw-foot tub. Her feet were fine. Of course compared to the iron claw feet on the bathtub a chicken foot would look passable.
She did have nice ankles. But she knew that. She raised one arm up in the air. Turned this way and that. How strange. She'd grown more skin. It also looked as if she had inherited her grandmother's arms. She straightened and moved her face close to the mirror. Her breath fogged it up so she inched back a bit. She parted her hair in a few places. She couldn't see any gray hair, so she supposed that was a good thing.
Her hair was long, really long and full. It covered her behind. She smiled, then tried to spread it out so it also covered her arms and her breasts. It wasn't that thick. No one's hair was that thick.
Finally she stepped back, stood directly in front of the mirror, hoping the whole would be better than the parts. She tried to picture how she would look to Conn.
Conn, who had a hard-muscled torso and powerful legs. A rippled stomach.
Conn. A man without an ounce of flab anywhere on him.
Conn, who was thirty-two.
Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God . . . She buried her face in her hands.
What had she done?
What the hell was she doing?
Conn stared at the water closet door. He knew she was in there. He'd heard the water run. And run. And run. He'd pressed his ear to the door after an hour and a half and heard her muttering something that sounded like a religious chant: Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God.
He didn't know that much about Methodists. He was Irish Catholic, though he hadn't been in a Catholic church in years. After giving it some thought, he figured what she was doing was penance, like Our Fathers