Aren’t you lucky! I had to come from Buffalo Center,” and without even pausing to think, Claire exclaimed, “Oh, you poor thing!” Ruth had a plan for every hour of every day. She was twenty now. She would dress perfectly, cultivating verve and style, until she was well out of the secretarial pool, and then she would cast about among the younger men in the lower reaches of management, and attain herself an ambitious husband exactly five years older than she was. By the time she was twenty-eight, she would have a house in West Des Moines, two children, a dog, and a charge account at Younkers. The ultimate goal was a membership in the Wakonda Country Club. If she and the future husband had to be transferred (sometimes that happened), Kansas City was preferable, St. Louis acceptable. The first step, getting a job, was easy as pie—they both ended up at Midwest Assurance. Ruth, Claire had to admit, was even plainer than she was, or, rather, she had begun with fewer evident assets, though she didn’t have to wear glasses.
