The End of the Rainbow (Hudson 4)

"Oh. I play the clarinet and the piano."

"I have enough trouble with one. This is my first time here," she added.

"I know. I've been coming here for four years and I've never seen you."

"Four years! You must be like Kenny G by now."

"No," I said laughing. "Hardly."

She shrugged.

"My coming here was my mother's idea. She wants me to absorb more culture,'" she declared with the back of her hand over her forehead and speaking in an exaggeratedly proper tone of voice. "Since her divorce, she's very concerned that no one gets the opportunity to say she's not doing a good job bringing me up."

"Oh," I said, just learning her parents were divorced. "I'm Sorry."

"It's all right. It's one of those civilized divorces. My father comes around and gives her advice on the cafe from time to time. He works for a food distributor and my mother's cafe is actually one of his biggest accounts."

"Why did they divorce?"

"No one reason in particular," she replied with a shrug. "One day, they decided they had made a big mistake when they had said. 'til death do us part.' We all sat in the living room and had a sensible conversation and concluded that leaving it up to death was losing control of your life."

"My parents have always included me in their decisions. They believe that a family should be the best example of a democracy, especially since every decision affects me as well as it does them. That's been going on since I was about three."

"Three? How could you help them decide anything at three?"

She shrugged.

"They believe in instinct. I guess, and paid attention to my moans, groans and smiles."

She unlocked her suitcase. Everything in it had simply been thrown in with very little organization: her toiletries were packed right alongside her undergarments, her blouses, skirts and socks, shoes and sneakers. None of those clothes were folded, but she had carefully packed her jeans.

"Do you realize you're wearing only one earring?" I asked. She slapped her hand over her ears and grimaced in pain.

"Oh no. It must have fallen off when I went down to baggage. I'm sure I had it on the plane. Oh well, as my mother says whenever she makes a mistake. maybe I'll start a new fad: one earring only." To illustrate she meant it, she didn't take the remaining earring off.

I watched her unpack and put her things in the drawers just as sloppily as she had put them in the suitcase.

"How old are you?" I asked.

"Fifteen. What about you?"

"I'm just sixteen."

"What are the boys like here?" she followed without looking at me.

"Most of them are very nice." I said.

"How nice?" She turned and looked at me. I wasn't sure what that meant. "Are they too nice? I hate boys who are too nice; they make you work harder at getting something going."

"Something going?"

"A romance or something very hot. Didn't you ever go with anyone here?"

"No," I said. "To dances, but nothing very serious developed."

"Oh boy," she said shaking her head and finishing her unpacking. "Just as I feared."

"What?" I asked.