He walked rapidly, despite his heavy briefcase. As he overtook the girl, the anonymous and interesting blondness changed; in profile she had a rather ordinary face. What was all the excitement about? He knew, of course. Elizabeth had brought a sense of spring and sexuality back into his life. Now he found himself looking at women as women, not in the fraudulent manner of ogling and whistling—the male way of pretending maleness to other men—but looking at individual women he had never seen before, as if each was someone one might indeed go to bed with. He gave each credit to start with, then took the credit away if he found them unattractive in voice or walk or manner or holding onto some other man in a declarative way. The surprise to him was how many kept the credit, including older women who, he noticed, were likely to have a quick sense of their own sexuality, or the frisky younger ones whose youthful assertiveness was more stimulating than their overkempt bodies, or even women he knew but had never before thought of as possible bedmates.
