“You can figure that out,” murmured Indira. “At some times we will take on the form of men, and also children, and perhaps different sorts of both, all three sexes, what is it called? Gay? In such guises we will wander around often, seeing how things work. But for now, we will be women and foreigners.”
“You want to elicit knee-jerk reactions, don’t you?” Benita asked. “You want to know how people treat women or foreigners, habitually?”
Indira nodded. Lara merely smiled. Benita didn’t think it was a real smile.
“When you smile, your eyes need to crinkle up a little,” she said, showing her. “Otherwise it looks insincere.”
“What if it is insincere?” Lara asked. “What if I am not at all amused?”
“Well, if you smile so it looks sincere, it will keep others from knowing how you feel. If you smile in a way that looks insincere, they will know exactly how you feel, which maybe is what you want. If you do not smile at all, people will think you are cold.”
“You do not smile when you are chilled?”
“Cold means uncaring. We feel warm or cold about people. Warm about our friends and loved ones. You might care very much, but it doesn’t count as caring unless you do something, often something quite trivial and useless. Like smiling, or patting someone’s arm, or murmuring conventional phrases, or bustling around in an attempt to help while you get in everyone’s way.”
“So if I care greatly, but merely sit quiet, staying out of persons’ way, I will be thought cold.”
“Exactly,” Benita confirmed. “I used to go to dinner at my grandmother’s house, my father’s mother. She never shut up from the time you walked in the door until you left. She cared so much that whenever you got comfortable, she made you change where you were sitting in order to sit somewhere better. She passed you food so many times you had no time to eat. She never listened to anything anyone said, and if you tried to help her, she told you how to do it, over and over. Whenever Papa took me there, I’d find a chair in a corner and sit very quietly . . .”
“While she told your mother you were cold,” finished Lara.
“Exactly,” Benita replied, ruefully. “Caring, grieving, rejoicing, we are expected to share them all intimately and vociferously.”
“So we will share,” said Indira. “Tell us, please, what you have been doing here in this city. We detect a newness about you!”
“I suspect you may have planned this all along. I have a new job and a new place to live.”
“Ah.” The smile again, with crinkles. “We did not plan so, but we were hopeful. Describe this place you will live?”
Benita did so, ignoring her doubts and concerns and dwelling at length upon its convenient location, about which Indira asked a great many questions.
“And you are pleased with these changes?” asked Lara, when she had finished. “We prefer that people we … bother … are pleased.”
“Yes, I think … I am pleased,” Benita confessed. “Change is … it’s hard to get it into my head, but I’m sure you weren’t a bother.”
“Ladies,” boomed General Wallace. “What are you drinking?”
“I am not,” murmured Lara.
“He means, what would you like as a drink,” Benita whispered. “Drinks and small tasty things are customary as a prelude to festive evening meals.”
“Fruit juice,” Lara said to the general, smiling, with her eyes crinkled up. “I have never tasted anything so lovely as your fruit juice.”
“For me, also,” cried Indira, crinkling her eyes until they radiated with wrinkles. “Apple, or grape, or what is that other one, Lara?”
“Maaango,” cried Lara, with a marvelous giggle.
“Julia Roberts did the giggle,” murmured Indira in Benita’s ear. “On TV. Has Lara got it right?”
“Perfect,” Benita said, accepting the glass the general put in her hand. It was also fruit juice. It was quite possible no one was drinking anything alcoholic, and that might make sense. When she looked up, Lara and Indira had crossed the room to speak to the First Lady and had been replaced by the Secretary of State.