MEN ARE SO MASCULINE A SHORT STORY by Joan Allred HER theme came back red-pencilled "A tres bien fait", in the sharp, backslanting script of Monsieur Dupre. Cynthia sat at her desk and thought how French he looked. Like Abelard, sort of. The thin, stern face of an ascetic. Yes, an ascetic, she said to herself, pleased, putting the world in italics. Beneath his somewhat sparse hair, Monsieur Dupre's temples were aristocratically blue-veined, and he had nervous immaculate hands that would have been at home below languid cuffs of Renaissance lace. Cynthia thought with delicate repulsion of all the men she knew whose hands were fat and hammy. Darling Monsieur Dupre, to have such beautiful hands. That's what I like best about men, she decided. The hands. It isn't often you see someone with hands like that fine but masculine. There's something about him sometimes I have a feeling he'd almost understand me. She had a vague momentary vision of herself sitting on a stone bench with Monsieur Dupre. They were under a tree that might have been grow ing in some garden with a famous French name. Ballet music in the distance and a silver-spangled backdrop. "Mademoiselle," he was saying in his rich, barely perceptible accent, "You are not only lovely you have a soul of fire and snow" or maybe, "Fire and crystal." Yes, that was it. "You have a soul of fire and crystal." She would laugh at that, a cool, light laugh, but her eyes would take pity on him. The classroom was quiet; everyone was studying. Cynthia lowered her eyes to her book, but the page of verbs was only a pale blur in the blue lake of her thoughts. The warm air was heavy with the smell of lilacs outside the open window. Cynthia sighed and leaned her small pointed chin on one hand. The new boy three rows away was watching her with that lost, obvious male look she found at once complimentary and irritating. It was the boy Kathryn thought so marvelous. Poor Kathryn. She smiled a little, conscious that her hair in the sunlight was a bright rain of gold on her shoulders. WINTER, 1943 What a shame that Kathryn's hair was so uncom-promisingly brown. I should wear green more often, she thought, cool grey'green because of my skin. Kathryn was waiting for her outside like a faith' ful spaniel. She had chubby knees and uncomplicated emotions and a wistful little pink nose. "Cynthia," she said, "You look beautiful today." "Thank you, hon. You do, too." Why would 6he insist on wearing that bald shade of yellow? But, after all, what color could you possibly wear with a complexion like that? She squeezed Kathryn's arm affectionately. "If you ask me, the school ought to take up a collection to buy Helen Bishop a girdle. The way she goes around simply bulging is a public disgrace," Kathryn remarked with relish as they went down the hall. "Why, Katy, child, how you talk!" Cynthia said in a tone of sweet horror, laughing. "Helen isn't what you'd call actually fat; it's just the impression she gives by the way she walks, and not being very bright, and all but," hastily, "She's quite a nice girl, really." A nice girl. A nice, obedient girl with fat ankles and no neck. If you had to be like that, you might just as well be dead. She smiled an especially sweet smile at Helen as they passed. "You're so generous to everybody it's simply nausating. I don't see how you do it." "No, I'm not generous." Cynthia laughed and wrinkled her nose in ridicule of the preposterous idea. "It's just that well you'll think I'm awfully silly, but there's so much unkindness going on in the world, I think we ought to see all the good points we can in each other, sort of." She let a becoming little shadow of seriousness pass over her face. She was late for Creative Writing. Davy Conner, captain of the baseball team, came springing self-consciously up the stairs after her and caught up with her at the drinking fountain. "Wait," he said, "I want to see you a minute." She saw a nervous swallow go down his throat. He moved his shoulders uneasily in his white sweatshirt and put one big hand in his pocket with what tried to be a casual gesture. How obvious men were. And yet how rather appealing, when like this one, they smelled of soap and leather and other unidentifiable clean masculine smells. She decided to save him. She held out her hand with a disarming, little girl smile. Why, Davy! I haven't seen you for weeks it seems like!" She was cooler than an iced limeade. She felt powerful from her hair-roots to each separate toenail. Davy rallied noticeably. He grinned. "I know that. And it's about time we did something about it. Are you going to the Senior Prom?" "I don't know not yet." "Well how about letting me take you?" "Oh, Davy, I'd adore it! But it's not for a long time yet." "That's why I'm asking you to make sure." He surprised himself with the easy manner in which he was carrying the thing off. He extracted a chew-ed-looking package from his pocket and gave her a lemon drop to occupy her in class. She slipped quietly into a back seat. Joyce Gardner was just finishing reading one of her extremely forthright essays to the class. It was called something like "The Case For Inter-American Coordination of Interests", and was very brisk and appallingly informative. Cynthia sat listening with her chin in her hand feeling more and more depressed. How sad, really, that so few people in the world understood beauty people like Joyce with neat card-catalogue minds people who played star games of soccer and wore sensible shoes people who would die eventually without ever having known the sharp anguish of poetry. Mr. Grover wanted her to say something in comment. Cynthia put her head thoughtfully to one side. "I think it's very, very good. Joyce knows so much about, well, everything. I thought maybe it might have been a little more dramatic if she condensed the statistics just the slightest bit but of course, I'm not at all bright about important things like that." Across the room someone breathed audibly, "Isn't Cynthia beautiful today?" But Cynthia, if she heard, gave no sign of it. She was looking through her notebook for a copy of her newest poem. It was written in her delicate flowing hand on a sheet of blue stationery, and it exhaled a scent of white violets when she unfolded it, hesitatingly. "It's terrible, really," she said, "And I want everybody to be very critical and tell me what's wrong." She read in a low, sweet voice, conscious that her lashes lay curled on her cheeks like exquisite shadows of petals. (Continued on page 34)