The Truth About Lorin Jones [antikvár]

POLLY ALTER used to like men, but she didn't trust them any more, or have very much to do with them. Last month, on her thirty-ninth birthday, it suddenly hit her that - though she hadn't planned it that way - almost all her dealings now were with women. Her doctor, her dentist, her accountant, her therapist, her bank manager, and all her close friends were female. She shopped at stores run and staffed by women, and when she had a prescription she walked six blocks out of her way to have it filled by the woman pharmacist at Broadway and 87th. For days at a time she never spoke to an adult male. When her husband left eighteen months ago, Polly hadn't expected her life to tum out like this. Miserable and angry though she was, she had looked forward to the adventure of being single again. But, as her friends and the media had already wamed her, there weren't any good men over thirty in New York, only husbands and creeps. She'd refused to go out with the husbands, and her other encounters had been such disasters that it made her laugh now to remember them, though at the time she had sometimes cried with disappointment and rage. After about six months she had realised she'd much rather stay home and watch television with her twelve-year-old son Stevie, or go places with her women friends. Of course, until recently, Polly had spoken to men at work. But now she had a half-year's leave from the Museum and needn't go there except to use the library. Three months ago she had lucked out she'd been awarded a grant and given a publisher's advance for a book on the American painter Lorin (i)