Excerpt from a favorite short story by Kurt Vonnegut
"Miss Temptation"
Her hips were like a lyre, and her bosom made men dream of peace and plenty forever and ever.
She wore barbaric golden hoops on her ears, and around her ankles were chains with little bells on them.
She went barefoot and slept until noon every day…
At noon, Miss Temptation would appear on the porch outside her room. She would stretch languidly, pour a bowl of milk for her black cat, kiss the cat, fluff her hair, put on her earrings, lock her door, and hide the key in her bosom. And then, barefoot, she would begin her stately, undulating, titillating, tinkling walk—down the outside stairway, past the liquor store, the insurance agency, the real-estate office, the diner, the American Legion post, and the church, to the crowded drugstore.
There she would get the New York papers. She seemed to nod to all the world in a dim, queenly way. But the only person she spoke to during her daily walk was Bearse Hinkley, the seventy-two-year-old pharmacist. The old man always had her papers ready for her.“Thank you, Mr. Hinkley. You’re an angel,” she would say... Then she would take the papers and return to her nest over the firehouse. She would pause on the porch outside her room, dip her hand into her bosom, bring out the key, unlock the door, pick up the black cat, kiss it again, and disappear inside...
The wraith of a Puritan ancestor, stiff-necked, dressed in black, took possession of Fuller’s tongue. Fuller spoke with a voice that came across the centuries, the voice of a witch hanger, a voice redolent with frustration, self-righteousness, and doom. “Temptation… You come in here with bells on your ankles, so’s I’ll have to look at your ankles and your pretty feet,” said Fuller. “You kiss the cat, so’s I’ll have to think about how it’d be to be that cat,” said Fuller. “You call an old man an angel, so’s I’ll have to think about what it’d be like to be called an angel by you,” said Fuller. “You hide your key in front of everybody, so’s I’ll have to think about where that key is,” said Fuller.
He stood. “Miss,” he said, his voice full of pain, “you do everything you can to give lonely, ordinary people like me indigestion and the heeby-jeebies, and you wouldn’t even hold hands with me to keep me from falling off a cliff.” “It isn’t fair,” said Fuller. “There ought to be a law against girls acting and dressing like you do. It makes more people unhappy than it does happy. You know what I say to you, for going around making everybody want to kiss you?…The hell with you...”
She burst into tears and said, “What is the matter with you?” Fuller looked down at the floor. “Never had a chance with a girl like you—that’s all,” he said. “That hurts.” Miss Temptation looked at him wonderingly. “You don’t know what a chance is,” she said. “A chance is a late-model convertible, a new suit, and twenty bucks,” said Fuller. Miss Temptation turned her back to him... “A chance is a girl,” she said. “You smile at her, you be friendly, you be glad she’s a girl.” She turned and opened her arms again. “I’m a girl. Girls are shaped this way,” she said. “If men are nice to me and make me happy, I kiss them sometimes. Is that all right with you?”