Five Women

As he drove one night, he thought of five women for whom, at one time, he felt some sort of attraction or affection, if not love.

A. was a cat in the worst way. She was one of those women who was protected by her parents from the time she was young. She spoke in a little girl's voice -- breathless but without the hint of sexual innocence that some women project. She was one of those women who would turn on a person in less than a second. She had long fingernails, and that didn't surprise him. You would expect them to become claws, best used for gouging out eyes.

B. was rich. It was good that her family had money because she wasn't smart enough to make a living on her own. Because of her high social and economic class, he thought she would meet and marry a man who would take her in like a pet, if she hadn't done so already.

D. spoke in italics. That would've been tolerable since those who did that wanted to make a point. But she spoke italicized words, like those in a J.D. Salinger story, and not sentences, as if she questioned the words said to her to see if they were correct. Because of that practice, he learned to despise her.

H. had a face that looked cruel and hard. But that was a defense. Someone some time in the past had hurt her and probably enjoyed her pain. But the flip side of the cruel and hard face was a look and a smile that would welcome you -- if she wanted to do that. Such a face, especially if it had large eyes, can be enchanting. as time goes on.

P. had seen a lot of shit in her life, especially when she was young. And when she was a teenager, she had decided that enough was enough. And she went beyond it without knowing what she did and why she did it. She had too much pain to tolerate in her life. Her wisecracks and cynicism masked a deeper hurt. It got so that you couldn't tell if the laughs would turn into either tears or screams of anger. He guessed that she would've killed herself by now, or had gone insane.