Quoth the Raven Read Online Free

passion of shame at the fact that she had been born worthy of belonging to none of the first-class categories offered for her inspection. She had figured out early that Women Didn’t Count, and that all the things women did—nursing, teaching, raising a family—were irretrievably second-rate. She had figured out even earlier that, among women, being pretty was not enough, unless you had something else to back it up. Katherine had always been pretty enough, but the other things—wit, maybe, or that school-skewed form of intelligence that is so important in grades K-6—eluded her. She was a fairly attractive, moderately bright, nondescriptly pleasant child of the early sixties. From the day she started kindergarten to the day she graduated from high school, she was destined to fade into the woodwork.
    At the moment, she looked like anything but part of the woodwork. Her red hair fell down over her back in a cascade of body-permed curls. Her bright orange sweater, chosen deliberately for shock and contrast, reached nearly to her knees, not quite hiding the black stretch pants she was wearing under it. Also under the sweater was a bright white, 100 percent cotton turtleneck, meant to save the skin of her chest from the scratch of ramie and wool. Ever since Katherine Branch had committed herself to wearing only natural fibers, she had had a great deal of trouble with chafing and rash.
    She caught sight of her reflection in the side of her toaster, made a face at it, and walked on past, to that small stretch of her cramped kitchen counter where she kept the instant coffee. Behind her, at the tiny round table, Vivi Wollman was sitting over a plate of Betty Crocker carrot cake and staring out the square kitchen window at the quad. Vivi Wollman was Katherine’s best friend at Independence College and the only other person who really hated the fuss that got made around her about Halloween. Vivi had even been an ally in Katherine’s one attempt to put a stop to it all, that year that Katherine had called the Pennsylvania EPA and reported the bonfire as a “pollution hazard.” Unfortunately, that foray into common sense and political correctness hadn’t turned out the way Katherine expected. The bonfire was so famous, people simply couldn’t think rationally about it. The Governor had issued a proclamation blocking the EPA’s attempt to shut the bonfire down, the state legislature had passed a special law to allow Independence College to go on making bonfires until the final blast of Gabriel’s trumpet, and someone had sneaked her name out of the EPA’s files and given it to the press. It was a good thing she’d already had tenure, because if she hadn’t she would never have gotten it. For the next year, with the exception of Vivi, not a single person spoke to her—except to call her a bitch.
    Katherine got the jar of instant coffee, took a couple of spoons out of the rack next to the sink, and headed back to the table. Because there was no way to avoid looking out the window at the quad, she was faced for a few seconds with a. sight that grated on her nerves: dozens of students, dressed up in ridiculous costumes, milling around among the greenery and playing seduction games. Katherine wondered if Alice Elkinson was out there, showing off her engagement ring, acting like a teenager instead of a woman old enough to know the score. Then she sat down.
    “Crap,” she said, to the air rather than to Vivi. “I’m so rattled I can’t think straight. Do you have a cigarette?”
    Vivi reached into her pocket and brought out a pack of Marlboro menthols. She was a small woman, dark and attractive enough except for the fact that she was oddly lumpy. A decade of weight-training and macrobiotic diets had twisted her out of shape. She got a blue Bic lighter from her other pocket and lit Catherine’s cigarette.
    “I think you’re jumping the gun,” she said. “I mean, I think you’re panicking before you have to. After all,