The Collected Stories by Grace Paley

grouchy.”
    â€œWhat’s it to you?” she asked.
    I took her cigarette and killed it between forefinger and thumb. Then she looked at me and saw me for what I was, not an ordinary union brother but a perfectly comfortable way to spend five minutes.
    â€œWhat’s your name?” she asked.
    â€œCharles,” I said.
    â€œIs this your business? Are you the boss?”
    â€œI am,” I said.
    â€œListen, Charles, when you were in high school, did
you
know exactly what your interests were?”
    â€œYes,” I said. “Girls.”
    She turned over on her side so we could really talk this out head-on. I stooped to meet her. She smiled. “Charles, I’m almost finished with school and I can’t even decide what to take in college. I don’t really want to be anything. I don’t know what to do,” she said. “What do you think I should do?”
    I gave her a serious answer, a handful of wisdom. “In the first place, don’t let them shove. Who do they think they’re kidding? Most people wouldn’t know if they had a million years what they wanted to be. They just sort of become.”
    She raised a golden brow. “Do you think so, Charles? Are you sure? Listen, how old are
you
?”
    â€œThirty-two,” I said as quick as nighttime in the tropics. “Thirty-two,” I repeated to reassure myself, since I was subtracting three years wasted in the army as well as the first two years of my life, which I can’t remember a damn thing about anyway.
    â€œYou seem older.”
    â€œIsn’t thirty-two old enough? Is it too old?”
    â€œOh no, Charles, I don’t like kids. I mean they’re mostly boring. They don’t have a remark to make on anything worth listening to. They think they’re the greatest. They don’t even dance very well.”
    She fell back, her arms swinging on either side of the cot. She stared at the ceiling. “If you want to know something,” she said, “they don’t even know how to kiss.”
    Then lightly on the very tip of her nose, I, Charles C. Charley, kissed her once and, if it may be sworn, in jest.
    To this she replied, “Are you married, by any chance?”
    â€œNo,” I said, “are you?”
    â€œOh, Charles,” she said, “how could I be married? I haven’t even graduated yet.”
    â€œYou must be a junior,” I said, licking my lips.
    â€œOh, Charles,” she said, “that’s what I mean. If you were a kid like Mike or Sully or someone, you’d go crazy. Whenever they kiss me, you’d think their whole life was going to change. Honestly, Charles, they lose their breath, they sneeze—just when you’re getting in the mood. They stop in the middle to tell you a dirty joke.”
    â€œImagine that!” I said. “How about trying someone over sixteen?”
    â€œDon’t fish,” she said in a peaceful, happy way. “Anyway, talk very low. In fact, whisper. If my father comes home and hears me even mention kissing, he’ll kill us both.”
    I laughed. My little factories of admiration had started to hum and I missed her meaning.
    What I observed was the way everything about this Cindy was new and unused. Her parts, visible or wrapped, were tooled for display. All the exaggerated bones of childhood and old age were bedded down in a cozy consistency of girl.
    I offered her another cigarette. I stood up and, ducking the rafters, walked back and forth alongside the cot. She held her fresh cigarette aloft and crossed her eyes at it. Ashes fell, little fine feathers. I leaned forward until I was close enough for comfort. I blew them all away.
    I thought of praying for divine guidance in line with the great spiritual renaissance of our time. But I am all thumbs in that kind of deciduous conversation. I asked myself, did I, as God’s creature under the stars, have the right to evade an event, a