Stranger On Lesbos Read Online Free Page A

thought. She said hesitantly, "I can't sleep."
    "Take a phenobarb. Some in the medicine chest."
    Her eyes widened. She sat irresolute, waiting. Bill's chair scraped across the floor. "Don't wait up for me. I'll be a little while."
    "Oh, to hell with it," Frances said aloud. She pulled the covers up under her chin and lay silent for a long time, staring at nothing.

CHAPTER 4
    Bake turned the handle that opened the car door. "You look a little shadowy. Company stay late?"
    "Late enough. They were just some people Bill knows." Frances took a deep breath, feeling better. "One of the salesmen and his wife."
    "What's your son doing?"
    "Spending the day with a friend."
    Bake stripped off her leather-palmed gloves and wadded them down behind the seat. "Damn it, I like to get my hands into things." She gave Frances a look at once sharp and concerned. "Relax, baby. We're going to get out of traffic and get a little fresh air."
    The highway was a long white ribbon unrolling before them, with a few cars scuttling like insects. "Not much traffic," Bake said. She lit a cigarette. "Sunday will be terrible, but everybody's hung over today."
    They rode as they always did, without talking.
    They cut over to Aurora, slowing for all the soft little suburban towns where commuters were digesting their Thanksgiving dinners, and took the river road north. The Fox River, studded with little green islands, wound alongside the highway, sometimes only a few feet from the pavement, sometimes lost from sight for a mile or two behind hills and trees. The water was bright blue, sequinned with sunshine. Here and there a group of three or four Negroes in bright holiday clothes were fishing, heedless of passing cars and the cold wind. North Aurora, Batavia, Geneva, Saint Charlesclean tree-shaded towns with identical business districts, brick schools, white frame houses.
    A few miles south of Elgin, Bake turned off the highway. They picked their way over a gravel road edged with drying brown weeds. Crows flew up, shrieking, at the car's approach. A woman hanging clothes on a backyard line looked after them curiously. Bake took the car to the end of the road, which dwindled out in a clump of trees. Beyond a sagging barbed wire fence was a thick stand of shagbark hickories, reaching as far as Frances could see in three directions. She turned an inquiring look upon Bake.
    "It's like this for miles, all along the riverbank. Virgin timber, the way it was when the Indians lived here."
    "It's quiet, isn't it?"
    They were still. Far away a dog barked. Single leaves fell slowly, turning in the breeze. "Hungry?" Bake asked.
    "Not so very."
    "I've got sandwiches and a thermos of coffee and some Scotch. Hal gave me the Scotchit ought to be good." She stretched luxuriously. "God, this is beautiful. I thought we might cook dinner at my place, if you want to. If we feel like going back and cooking, we will. If we don't, we can eat along the way. There's no hurry."
    "I'd like to see your apartment."
    "No hurry," Bake said again. "Let's see what it's like in the wilderness."
    Frances climbed through the barbed wire fence, wishing she had worn slacks. Bake stood beside her, neatly trousered and sweatered, the wind ruffling her short dark hair. They looked at each other. Then a red squirrel ran up a tree, jabbering and scolding, and Bake laughed.
    "Come on. I bet there's bittersweet in some of these old fence corners, and you hardly ever find it growing wild any more."
    The brown leaves crackled under their shoes.
    It was almost evening when they climbed through the fence again, holding the rusted strands apart for each other. Frances was tired, but exhilarated. She laid her armful of scarlet sumac, bittersweet and late maple leaves on the back seat while Bake turned the hickory nuts out of her jacket pockets. They sat down in the car, side by side, breathless and smiling. Frances was conscious for the first time that her shoes were wet and muddy, her hands stained with hickory