A Key to the Suite

Four

The suite was crowded and noisy by a few minutes after six. Hubbard stood by the open doors to the big terrace, nursing a tall drink and talking to Dave Daniels of the Chicago area and Stu Gallard of the Los Angeles district office about Cuba and Castro and foreign markets.

Gallard was saying, angrily, “Mitch brought back this half-horse motor he bought in Montevideo. Made in the USSR. The boys at Schenectady tore it down, and it was built damn good, I’m telling you. And for the price he paid for it, G.E. couldn’t even buy the materials. It’s a hit and run operation, and they figure on losing say a couple-hundred thousand to cripple a half-million dollar distribution system, and then they get the hell out. Just wait until they go to work on one of our...”

“Floyd! Floyd, boy,” Jesse Mulaney bellowed, moving through the crowd. He came up and pumped Hubbard’s hand and said, “Glad you could make it. Dave! Stu! How you boys? Both looking fine. Fine. Connie, honey? You know all three of these boys. Dave Daniels, Stu Gallard, Floyd Hubbard.”

“Of course I do. So nice to see you here, gentlemen.”

One of the road men came flurrying up with the Mulaneys’ order, and in handing the drinks to them, managed to step on Hubbard’s foot.

“I’m sorry,” he gasped. “Geez, Mr. Hubbard, I’m terrible sorry.”

“No harm done,” Hubbard said.

“If you boys will excuse Connie and me, we’ve got to go shake every hand we can find before we settle down to any serious dissipation.”

When Mulaney moved off, Hubbard noticed that neither Daniels nor Gallard made the slightest comment about him, and it was a significant departure from the normal routine, wherein somebody would say casually, “A great guy,” or “Jesse is looking fine.” How beautifully the grapevine works, Hubbard thought acidly. The CIA should check into how it’s done. A national organization, and it gossips more than the Podunk sewing circle. Fourteen members here of the big happy AGM family, and every single one of them, even to the road men, know I’m Hubbard the Hangman. Beware. Step easy or he may finger you too. And I’ve always wanted to be loved.

He made the small talk, and took the strategic sips of his drink, and was aware of trying to look and sound harmless and likable, and was ironically amused at himself.

About a half hour later, Charlie Gromer, one of the older road men, touched his elbow and said, “Excuse me. Mr. Mulaney wants to see you a minute in the next room.”

The direct approach? he thought. Can’t be. Not so soon.

He went into the bedroom Charlie indicated. Jesse was there, with Fred Frick of the local district and Cass Beatty of Advertising. An exceptionally lovely girl was talking to the three of them with considerable animation.

“There he is!” Jesse said. “Problems, Floyd. We figured maybe you could contribute a high-level policy point of view here. Miss Barlund, may I present Mr. Floyd Hubbard.”

“How do you do, Miss Barlund. Jesse, before you give the young lady the wrong slant on things, let me say I consort with the brass. Some of them even say good morning to me when it’s unavoidable.”

“Run through it again for Floyd, Miss Barlund,” Jesse suggested.

“It’s sort of an off-beat idea, Mr. Hubbard, but I did sell it to Mr. Stormlander. He publishes Tropical Life, and I’ve been doing little free-lance articles for him. Everybody knows about conventions, but nobody knows very much about them, really. There’s many misconceptions. And they’re really a terrific industry down here. My idea is to take a typical company group at a typical convention, and do a sort of... well, a human interest thing. American businessmen at a convention and how they really and truly act — what they do, and what they think of conventions.”

“Why us?” Hubbard asked. “Why AGM?”

“I guess I didn’t go at it very scientifically. The companies are listed in the back of the program and I just picked one. I couldn’t use the first one, because there’s only one man here from that company. And the second one was too big. And the third one turned out to be Canadian. This one seems just about right, actually.”

“Would you use actual names? And the name of the company?” Cass Beatty asked. “I didn’t get clear on that.”

“I’d like to,” she said. “It would make it more real.”

“It could get to be too real, couldn’t it?” Hubbard said. “I remember a book a woman did about how they made a movie of The Red Badge of Courage.”

She looked at him and the dark blue of her eyes seemed to change. He had the feeling she had noticed him for the first time and had found a reason for approval. He was surprised at how pleased he was.

“That was Picture by Lillian Ross,” she said. “Golly, it wouldn’t be that sort of thing. Tropical Life is more like... a sort of puff sheet. There’s no reason you people couldn’t approve the manuscript before I turn it in. You might even be able to use it in some of your company literature, if it turns out good enough. Really, all I want to do is just sort of mouse around, take a few pictures, ask people questions when they’re not too terribly busy. I won’t get in anybody’s way, I promise.”

“I don’t know,” Mulaney said. “I just don’t know.”

“Personally, I can’t see anything out of line in it,” Cass said. “It can’t hurt anything, and we might get something we can use, maybe tear sheets to put in our direct mail stuff.”

“How about credentials?” Frick asked.

“Tomorrow I could bring in a letter from Mr. Stormlander authorizing me to go ahead with it. I mean it wouldn’t be a commitment on his part to really use it, because I am doing it on spec. But it would show he’s interested.”

“Sounds good enough for me,” Frick said.

“Floyd? Cass? Any objections?”

“Hell, no!” Beatty said. Hubbard smiled and shook his head.

“You’re in business, Miss Barlund.”

“It’s Cory, Mr Mulaney.”

“Freddy, you go grab a ticket book for Cory so she can go to any of the events she feels like. Floyd, you go on back out there and tell Bobby Fayhouser to shoo our people in here about three at a time and we’ll brief them without busting up the party. Cory, we’ll tell our boys to level with you and leave it up to you what to put in and what to leave out.”

“Did many of the AGM men bring their wives, Mr. Mulaney?”

“You better call me Jesse. I brought Connie, and, Cass, you brought Sue. Anybody else?”

“That’s the works then.”

“I better get all the names down and the jobs,” Cory said.

“Bobby Fayhouser has a list. You can copy it off.”

Floyd found Bobby Fayhouser fixing drinks. He gave him the message.

“What?” Bobby said. “That girl is going to what?”

“Write a warm, heart-tugging story about how AGM goes to a convention.”

“To be cast in bronze. Oh hell, excuse me.”

“For what?”

“For the flip remark. They come out with no warning. I’m supposed to be eager and reverent.”

Hubbard realized Fayhouser was not the dull, earnest young man he had appeared to be. “Cheer up. I’ve learned to live with the same problem.”

“You, Mr. Hubbard! Doesn’t it make people... uneasy about you?”

“All the time. But the way to handle it, Bobby, once it’s said, don’t let it just hang there, stinking in the sunlight. Say something very sincere.”

“Something eager and reverent?”

“Then they’re sure they didn’t understand. Practice it.”

“And one day I too can have a little stock option all my own? Uh. I have utmost confidence in the fairness with which every AGM employee is treated. Like that?”

“It could be smoother, but you’ve got the basic idea.” They grinned at each other. Bobby trotted off with the drinks. Hubbard made himself a light one and carried it out onto the relative privacy of the terrace. The sea breeze was damp and had a salty smell. He heard the blur of voices behind him, a roar of surf, distant music, traffic sounds. The sun was gone and the sea was gray. He looked for a star and found one and said the old rhyme, but did not know exactly what to wish for. The words did not fit what he wanted. Less confusion, more pattern, more meaning.

Jesse spoke at his elbow, saying, “Somehow I wish I was on that damn thing, going wherever it’s going.”

“On what?”

“Freighter out there, heading south.”

“Oh. I see it. I was wishing too.”

“Now what have you got to wish for, Floyd?”

“I don’t know how to say it. Better answers to better questions, I guess. The way I was when I was twenty and knew everything.”

“What about the Barlund girl? You seemed a little dubious.”

“Not really, I guess. I just had the feeling she’s a little over-specified for the operation. As if that much girl should have something better to do. So I got the feeling maybe there’s a gimmick in it someplace. But I guess not.”

“Cass will check her out tomorrow.” Mulaney chuckled. “Freddy’s road men get short-winded when they get near her and their eyes bulge.”

“Had a few symptoms myself, Jesse.”

“Well, we’ll see what she can do with this bunch of scoundrels. Hope she knows a little judo, for when it gets damp around here. I understand you got in pretty early?”

“And sacked out. They’ve been pushing me pretty hard lately.”

Jesse clapped him on the shoulder. “Well, boy, there’s nobody here to load any work on you, so take this chance to unwind. It’ll do you a lot of good. Don’t think you have to show up for every damn thing. There’s nothing in the world duller than those clinics and morning workshops. You aren’t a regular member of NAPATAN, so you won’t get stuck on any committees.”

“I don’t know the first damn thing about selling anyway, Jesse.”

“Aren’t you supposed to know everything about everything?”

“What I actually know, and what they think I know, Jesse, is a pair of different shaped horses.”

In the suite, Frick was giving Cory Barlund her book of tickets. He explained the mechanics of it to her, and then said in a lower tone, “You did great!”

“How delicious of you to tell me!”

“Don’t needle me, huh? Is it a deal?”

“In the first three seconds, Frick, it was a capital Y Yes, and then it damned near turned into a no, but for a reason you couldn’t hope to understand.”

“I’m very stupid. Is it yes?”

“It’s yes. And a very foolish yes, possibly. But yes.”

“You think it’ll be easy?”

“All you have to know is I’ll give it a try.”

At a little after eight they went down to the Arabian Room where the larger banquets were staged. AGM had two adjoining tables, each set up for eight. Because Jesse Mulaney had to be at the speaker’s table, the addition of Cory Barlund created no problem. The table where she was seated also contained Cass and Sue Beatty, Connie Mulaney, Floyd Hubbard, Fred Frick, Dave Daniels and Stu Gallard. It was a round table near the platform. She sat directly across from Floyd. She was between Stu and Dave. Floyd was between Connie and Sue Beatty.

“That,” whispered Sue, caught between indignation and admiration, “is one hell of a doll indeed.”

“Yes indeed.”

“Makes me feel the way I did when I was a fat child with braces on my teeth.”

“You look fine, Sue.”

“I wasn’t fishing. You know, that girl comes on slow. She builds. The more you look, the more you see. Floyd, only a woman could know what kind of a total effort that takes, all the time and thought and care.”

Sue Beatty clucked and shook her head. Sue was a hearty dominant woman in her middle thirties, heavy in hip and bust, solid but not fat, fond of bright colors, spiced foods, sweet drinks and lusty laughter.

There was so much noise in the room and so much conversation on the other side of the table they could talk with relative privacy.

“How old is she, Floyd? What would you say?”

“Twenty-two? Twenty-three?”

“How she would love you for that! Look at the backs of her hands, dear man. And the base of her throat. Twenty-eight if a day. But doing very very well at looking twenty-two. Don’t look at me like that. I know whereof I speak.”

Floyd looked across at Cory in animated conversation with Stu Gallard. It was curiously disconcerting to think of Cory as being the same age as Jan. And his astonishment seemed a kind of disloyalty. It wasn’t fair to Jan, of course. This Barlund girl apparently had nothing to do except keep herself as attractive as possible, and play around at little projects like this magazine thing. She had the sound and look and manner of money. Give Jan the same opportunity, and she could...

“Dave Daniels is moving in for the kill,” Sue whispered. “Watch him.”

Daniels, Floyd knew, had done more than his share of drinking before they left the suite. He was a big man, with all the simple devices of total vanity. Jan had met him once, after a series of meetings in Houston, and had placidly remarked that Dave Daniels was what you might get if you could cross Marshal Dillon with a horse.

Dave had broken up the Barlund-Gallard dialogue, and he was leaning close to Cory, talking in a low, intent, private voice, a half smile on his hard mouth, his eyes half closed. She listened without expression. He leaned closer and said a few words directly into her ear, laying his fingertips on her forearm as he did so.

Cory did not move her arm. He moved his fingertips back and forth in a tentative caress. She turned to face him more directly, smiled, and spoke to him for perhaps fifteen seconds. His mouth sagged open. He snatched his hand away. Cory turned back to Stu Gallard. Dave Daniels turned dark red, and the color faded to a curious sickly white. He pushed the food around on his plate for a few moments and then left the table abruptly.

Hubbard felt a warm delight. She glanced across at him, and he thought he saw one dusky eyelid shield one dark blue eye for a microsecond, but it happened so quickly he could not be certain he had not imagined it.

“Something tells me,” Sue said, “that was a brush-off that’ll have some kind of permanent effect. I guess she’s had some practice.”

“I wouldn’t have thought it could be done,” Hubbard said.

“Oh, it can be done,” Sue said. “Even to the likes of Dave. You decide what a man holds most dear, about himself. Some little illusion. And then you stomp it.”

Hubbard turned to Connie Mulaney on his right and said, “If friends don’t stop this table-hopping to come and talk to you, Mrs. Mulaney, I’ll never get the chance.”

“Just when I get Freddy’s shy little road men to start calling me Connie, you revert to formality, Floyd. Am I so darn imposing?”

“No. And I’m sorry. It’s a sort of reversion to type, I guess. Protocol in the academic world. I hung around Cal Tech too long. If you are an instructor, and Smith is an assistant professor, and if you are twenty-two and he is twenty-three, by God, his wife is Mrs. Smith.”

“I didn’t know you’d taught, Floyd.”

“I hated the teaching part, loved the chance to check out some of my wild ideas in those fine labs. Three years of it, then five years with an independent lab — research and testing with a commercial slant. Then over to GAE. Result, I feel like an imposter.”

She tilted her head slightly, frowning, and said, “I guess everybody does, to a certain degree. There’s some exceptions. Freddy, Dave Daniels... but the rest of us feel slightly displaced.”

He realized once again that every time he was with this handsome and very human and very perceptive woman, he would marvel at her apparent love for and loyalty to a man like Jesse, who was such a big, loud, crude, mumbling extrovert. A lot of other people seemed to give Jesse love and loyalty, but so far Hubbard had been unable to discern any valid reason for it.

“I’ll keep it to Connie from now on,” he promised.

“Good.”

“You certainly seem to know a sizable chunk of this group. How many would you say are here? Seven hundred?”

“At least. But Jesse and I don’t know so many actually. We know the NAPATAN people better than the members of COLUDA. And, you know, there’s been a lot of conventions in our lives. Jesse never forgets a name or a face, but a lot of the time I have to just smile sort of blankly and mumble. When the kids were small I was housebound, but now I get taken here and there.”

“What will you do while this thing is going on?”

“Oh, shop and get some sun, and go to the more important things, and keep Jesse from getting too exhausted. Wifely work, Floyd.”

The toastmaster huffed into the microphone, and there was a stirring and shuffling as the conventioneers and their ladies hitched their chairs around to face the platform. There was a traditional welcome to all delegates, and a thanking of the joint chairmen of the arrangements committee for their splendid work in setting the convention up so that it would run smoothly and effectively. There was an exhortation to all delegates to attend the workshops and panel discussions. The industry had had a successful year, all things considered. Of course there was dissension, but without irritation, oysters would never produce pearls. The exhibits this year were the finest ever. The program was the most exciting ever devised. And now there would be two addresses, one by Jerry Kipp, president of COLUDA, and the other by Jesse Mulaney, president of NAPATAN.

Kipp, a small, nervous, bespectacled man gave, with a total absence of humor, a speech apparently intended to create a great, selfless dedication and devotion to the industry, and its place in the great onward march of America.

Mulaney was introduced next. He stood at the lectern and after the applause had died down he let the silence grow. He looked out at the multitude with a slow owlish grin.

“I knew I’d have to do this. And I knew they’d fix me good. They put Bill and Jerry on first. By the time Bill was through, I’d crossed out half my speech. Jerry gave you the other half of my speech. So here I am standing up here like a nut.

“As you know, I’m the out-going president of NAPATAN, after the usual two years in this high office, where, according to honored precedent, I got the other fellows to do all the work.

“As I stand here, I see other ex-presidents out there. Fletch, Harry Mallory, Dix Weaver. They’re honorary directors of NAPATAN now, same as I’ll be. If there’s anybody does less work than the president, it’s an honorary director.

“During this convention, NAPATAN will elect a new president. Like the other officers and the members of the board, I have to go around pretending I don’t know who it will be. That, too, is part of our tradition.

“Sixteen years ago I was elected to the board. Twelve years ago I was made recording secretary in spite of everything I did to wiggle out of it. Eight years ago I was made treasurer. Four years ago I became vice president. Two years ago, at the convention in Atlanta, I made my speech of acceptance as president, and that night I told my wife Connie that finally I could relax and start taking the bows for all the work the other fellows were going to do.

“I suppose that right here is the place where I should point with pride. I don’t know. I’ve never had much trust in long lists of accomplishments. Oh, sure, we’ve got such a list. But to me, NAPATAN has been the way we can stand face to face... without agitating the anti-trust boys. And it has been these inter-company contacts which, over the twenty-four years since NAPATAN was founded, that have turned this industry from a cut-throat jungle into... into a respectable place to spend your life.

“Now don’t get the idea everybody has given up sharp-shooting, and this has turned into a great big Bible school. Every company in this industry is still rough and tough and eager, because they have to be to survive. But NAPATAN has at least given us an arena where the rules are posted and nobody hits you after the bell.

“I don’t know just how to say what I want to say to you people. To me... and I guess you know I’m a sentimental man... the breath of life itself is the strong, warm, honest contact between human beings.”

He was silent for many seconds, and when he spoke again his voice was husky and uncertain. “Even if NAPATAN had failed at all the ambitious things it tried to do, I would still treasure my long association with it. Because... through this organization... I have been privileged to become a friend of... of some of the finest men our society has ever produced.”

The applause was long and loud. People here and there began to stand, applauding, and soon the multitude was on its feet. Floyd had the uneasy feeling that perhaps too many people had underestimated Jesse Mulaney.

As the applause began to die he heard a man at the table directly behind him. “Dix Weaver’s speech. The same old crap, and it always works.”

The man’s neighbor said, “It was sixteen years he did nothing. Not two. You should hear Harry Mallory on that subject, Ed.”

“How can a guy like Mulaney fake his way so far for so long? I heard that with the new team at AGM, they’re finally catching up to that...”

“Ssshh!”

“Huh? Why’re you... Oh.”

Hubbard, as everyone began to sit down again, looked sidelong at Connie, hoping she hadn’t overheard. But he knew at once that she had. She was staring down at the table, her lips compressed, her face pink, a tear in the corner of her eye.

“That was just what they wanted to hear, Connie,” he said.

She looked at him and knuckled the tear away. She looked angry. “Certainly. That’s Jesse’s special talent, you know. Telling everybody exactly what they want to hear. That’s the secret of salesmanship.”

He made a forlorn attempt to turn it into a joke. “Not only salesmanship. Love and politics.”

She seemed to study him. “It’s a lot tougher, I imagine, to tell people the things they don’t want to hear. But some people enjoy it. A certain special type of person.”

“Connie, I... I don’t think we ought to...”

She touched his hand. “Of course. I’m sorry.”

The toastmaster made some closing announcements and adjourned the banquet meeting. Dave Daniels had returned for the speeches, but he left the moment it was over. It was ten thirty.

After the slow herd movement into the lobby, Floyd found himself with Cass and Sue Beatty. “What happens now?” he asked.

“Suite-hopping,” Cass said. “A test of endurance. Everybody visits everybody else’s suite. By my count there are twenty-three hospitality suites. One drink in each would be a masterful accomplishment. But many will try. Our little men are up there, bracing themselves for chaos. Miss Barlund shouldn’t miss this sturdy tradition. She’s over there with Stu. Sue, trot over and nab her and we’ll make a group effort.”

After an hour and a half of smoke, handshakings, short elevator rides, incompleted sentences and inadvertent animal contact, Hubbard worked his way across a fourth floor suite to where Cory was hemmed in by two admiring bald men.

“Miss Barlund,” he said briskly. “They want you down at the main desk immediately. Come with me please.”

He walked her briskly out of the suite, taking her glass from her and putting it on a table near the door. Fifty feet down the corridor they slowed their pace.

“Did it show that much, Floyd Hubbard?” she asked.

“Not too much. Your eyes kept rolling up out of sight and you kept dropping to your knees. But you got up every time.”

“Where is this rescue party headed?”

They had arrived at the elevators. “It’s midnight and your option, Cory. Want to try yet another suite?”

“Lord, no! You’ve seen one and you’ve seen them all.” She looked at herself in the wall mirror in the elevator alcove. “I even look as if I smell like cigars. I want a dark little corner to sit in, with a place to rest my head, and a vodka stinger to drink slowly, and somebody who will talk to me and finish every sentence, and require very few answers.”

“We take care of our journalists.”

He found them a banquette corner in one of the smaller quieter bars in the hotel. It was called the Suez Lounge. A lean woman in silk harem pajamas played a listless, noodling piano. Cory took a sip of her drink and sighed and said, “And they’re still up there, milling around. It’s a scene I won’t have to make twice. Do you think anybody is enjoying it, really?”

“Some of the drunker ones, maybe. But everybody thinks everybody else is enjoying it. But don’t put that in your story.”

“Sir, it is not my purpose to tear down honorable American institutions. I have a simple theme. Conventions are lovely.”

“Is that what you want to write?”

“Not especially.”

“So why don’t you write about something where you can say what you want to say?”

“I’ll tell you my horrid secret, Floyd. I’m strictly no talent. And I’m a horrible ham. I’ll do anything to see my name in print. So I write little things people will buy. And once in a great while they actually do. Don’t tell anybody, but this is my first crack at it in a couple of years.” Her smile faded. She shrugged. “Call it busy-work. Restless female. Bored, I guess. Bored to the teeth.”

“Because you don’t have to earn the money?”

“Possibly.”

“It wouldn’t be alimony?”

She sipped her drink and put the glass down and turned toward him. In the shadowy corner he could see the gleam of her eyes and her teeth and a highlight of moisture on her lip.

“Rather than have you labor away at the personal history bit, Hubbard, suppose I just shovel it all out in one hideous chunk and then we can forget the whole thing forever. Okay?”

“If you want to. But I was only...”

“I’m a spoiled brat from way back. I went to a good school. I made a very bad marriage, and worked like a damn dog to keep it going, but it fell down dead. I have one child, defective, institutionalized. I have money coming in from a couple of places. I live well, and live alone, and try to like it. It helps to get all involved with idiot projects, like the one I’m on now. I am not the least bit sorry for myself. Now you can stop prying.”

He sat for a full minute of silence. “I suppose two can play. I went to a good school, and I made a very good marriage, and we both work like dogs to keep it going, and it seems as if we will. I have two kids and one salary. I don’t live as well as I would like to, except when I’m on the expense account, like now. I keep getting all involved in idiot projects, like the one I’m on now, but somebody else thinks them up for me. I very often feel terribly sorry for myself, without any good specific reason. Now you don’t even have to start prying.”

He could tell that he had startled her, topped her and amused her. “How about spoiled?” she asked.

“I would have liked to have been, but I was the third of six kids. The first and the last got spoiled.”

“Floyd, darn you, I like you!”

“Right friendly of you, ma’m.” They made a small ceremony of shaking hands. “But you weren’t so friendly to Dave Daniels.”

“Him! Ha! God, how I despise that type! But later I thought that maybe I should have... pulled the punch a little bit. You see, Floyd, when I decided to do this, I knew very well that somebody was going to make the first pass. Somebody always does. I don’t say that arrogantly. It’s a fact of life I live with. And probably like. So I was braced to give the first one such a brush-off, the others would get the message. I didn’t expect... that kind of a pass, exactly.”

“From where I sat, it seemed sudden.”

“It was.”

“What was Dave’s approach?”

“Do you really want to know? There are a certain percentage of men around, a very small percentage, who try the shock approach. It must work, or they wouldn’t use it. I won’t tell you exactly what he said. He started by saying we were going to take the first chance to sneak away from the rest of the group. He said conventions could be fun. Then he leaned closer and he... went anatomical, and told me the... kind of dimensions I could expect and how long he could make it last. I think I’m blushing.”

“Good Lord! No matter how drunk I was, I couldn’t ever...”

“I know you couldn’t, dear. According to his script, I guess I was supposed to go all weak and dizzy and eager. So I just turned toward him and kept my voice down and said if that sort of thing attracted me, I’d have long since bought a Shetland pony. The conversation would be more attractive, and ponies seldom get pig drunk. Then I asked him why he was wasting his time at a convention when he could be cleaning up in the dirty movie business. I used my landed gentry voice. Ah, I can be a wicked bitch. I meant to shatter him, and I guess I did.”

“He’ll recover. He’ll take an old-fashioned country remedy, and be just fine.”

“What kind of a remedy?”

“A woman.”

“Yes. Yes, of course. But I fear we shall never be friends.”

“The kind of passes I make, Cory, they’re so subtle nobody ever knows I’ve made one. The system has a lot of advantages. I get a little feeling of guilt, and nobody ever says no. But of course, nothing ever happens either.”

“You mean you’ve made a pass at me?”

“It would spoil it if I told you. You see, you have to stay alert, and detect one when it comes along.”

“And if I happen to detect one?”

“If you do, for heaven’s sake, don’t let on to me that you have. If I knew you knew, I’d run like a damned rabbit. I’m one of those married cowards, Cory.”

“I’m glad you are, Floyd. It makes all this... sort of restful. We can kid around, and I don’t have to stay on guard. It’s rare and it’s nice.”

“Don’t overdo it, now. Hell, let me feel a little bit dangerous, woman.”

“But your wife does understand you?”

“With an eerie frequency.”

“What’s her name? What’s she like?”

“Janice. Jan to almost everybody, including me. She’s got a twenty-ninth birthday coming up, and we’ve been seven years married. The boy is four and the girl less than a year. Jan has gold-blonde hair and green eyes and a round face. She’s bigger and heavier than you are. How tall are you?”

“Five-five.”

“You look much taller than that!”

“It’s because I’m a wraith. A hundred and five pounds. I’ll even tell you the forlorn dimensions. Reading from the top they’re thirty-one, nineteen, thirty-one. Symmetrical, no?”

“Not exactly. Thirty-one, thirty-one, thirty-one would be truly symmetrical. Putting that crazy nineteen in the middle is what saves it. Anyhow, Jan has a hell of a good figure, said he with husbandly pride. She’s generally a placid gal, which works out fine because I’m inclined to blow up. Lately she hasn’t been so placid. That’s because I’ve had to leave her alone too much, and she has the idea I could get out of all this traveling. I could, but at the moment it doesn’t seem to be the smart thing to do. You didn’t ask for my problems. You asked about Jan. She is my nifty girl.”

“It makes me feel like an urchin outside a candy store.”

“You never feel sorry for yourself. Remember?”

“Any time I start to, all I have to do is remember the delights of my marriage. And suddenly you’d be surprised at how contented I get.”

“You should try again.”

“Uh uh! I rode my little barrel over the falls, thank you. I survived, but not by much of a margin. Floyd, dear man, thank you for the drink and the talk. You can plant me in a cab, please. Tomorrow I’ll be the earnest quester, and nail you down about what you really think about conventions.”

Halfway through the lower lobby she stopped suddenly and turned, smiling, and said, “If you have time, and if it’s possible to get anywhere near the ocean, ten minutes of sea breeze would blow the cigar smell out of this mop.”

“I have time and there’s an ocean around here somewhere. I swear I’ve seen one.”

They walked across the pool area and found an outside stairway that led up to the low flat roof of the furthest rank of cabanas. With most of the hotel lights behind them, they could see the phosphorescence in the waves. They stood side by side, looking over a low wall.

“One day,” she said, “it ought to reach up with one hell of a big wave and yank all this gunky luxury right back out and drown it.”

“Nature girl?”

“By instinct, but not habit.” Suddenly she took her shoes off, put them on the wide railing and stood close to him, smiling up at him. “See? Five five. Not even that, actually. I lie a little. Five four and a little over a half inch.”

“And you actually weigh seventy-two pounds, and the measurements are really nineteen, nineteen, nineteen.”

“The hell you say, Hubbard.” She came up on tip-toe, put her arms around his neck and sagged her weight on him. “A hunnert ’n five pounds of dreary broad.”

She kissed him lightly, mockingly, and suddenly he was kissing her with a strength and fury he could not have anticipated. She fitted her slimness to him, strained to him, left her mouth soft for the breaking. The kiss ended and he was holding her close, whispering, “Cory, Cory, Cory, Cory.” Her hands moved on his face and his throat, and she covered all the parts of his face she could reach with a hundred light quick kisses, making an audible, murmurous sound of contentment as she did so, until her mouth came back onto his, into a little more violence than before.

“You’re not running,” she muttered. “You’re not running like a rabbit.”

“Cory, Cory. God, you feel so sweet and good.”

She thrust him away, snatched up her bag and shoes. “I better do the running, my darling. Right now it’s the only thing that makes any kind of sense.”

She fled more quickly than he would have guessed possible. He called to her, but she did not stop or answer. By the time he reached the bottom of the steps she was more than halfway across the pool area, moving fleetly through a confusion of colored spotlights and floodlights, between the tropical plantings, angling toward the flank of the tall pale hotel.

He slowed his pace and sat on a chaise near the pool and smoked a cigarette. He wiped her lipstick from his mouth. He looked at the sky, and went on up to his room.

He was wearily and dutifully brushing his teeth when the room phone rang. He hurried to the phone, half expecting long distance, half expecting some kind of family disaster.

“Floyd?” she said in a small wary voice.

“In that good school, were you by any chance on the track team?” He stretched out on the bed.

“Tennis, swimming, field hockey. No track team. I just got home. Just this minute.”

“Did you ever get to put your shoes on?”

“Darling, I know you’re keeping it all very light and gay so that this won’t be an awkward sort of conversation, and I do treasure you for it. But I feel wretched, and I want you to please let me go on feeling wretched. And guilty.”

“Why be guilty?”

“Because it was all so damn contrived, dear. When we started out, I didn’t want to be put in a cab all of a sudden. I wanted to be kissed, and I meant to be kissed, and, damn it, I lied and fiddled around until I made sure that I did get kissed. You were like they say, a helpless pawn.”

“We pawns make out pretty good.”

“Floyd?”

“Yes?”

“It turned out to be more of a much than I’d planned on.”

“I know.”

“My mouth is bruised, and I keep getting these stupid trembling feelings like waves, and they go from my scalp right down to my toes and back up again.”

“Best of luck.”

“Tell me I did right to run.”

“You did exactly right, Cory honey.”

“And we have to leave it right there, don’t we?”

“At the moment that seems like a cheerless prospect.”

“Oh, I know. I know. But this hit a little too hard to... seem safe.”

“Yes indeed.”

“Somebody has to do the running.”

“And you did it. You’re a good sensible girl.”

“Yes, damn me. Floyd?”

“Yes, dear?”

“I messed myself up. I don’t want to mess you up too.”

“Could you?”

“Help me, darn it! Tell me to stay the hell away from you.”

“Sure. Stay away from me.”

“Do you think it’s going to be easy?”

“Certainly not. Now do me the same favor.”

“Okay. Floyd, stay away from me.”

“I’ll give it a try.”

“Did anything ever happen to anybody so sudden?”

“They say it does sometimes.”

“Never to me.”

“Or to me, before.”

“Floyd, darling, we’re just going to have to be terribly rational about it. Avoiding each other is just going to be tantalizing. The best thing we can possibly do is get together tomorrow, by the cruel light of day and talk it to death. What do you think?”

“Talking should do it. I’m still a coward.”

“What were you doing when the phone rang?”

“Well, I didn’t catch this girl’s name, it all happened so suddenly, and it looks now as if she’s given up and gone to sleep, but...”

“Floyd!”

“Actually, I was burnishing my fangs and thinking of you.”

“What were you thinking about me?”

“Actually, I was trying to decide what to think about you. I was trying to establish an attitude, I guess. But I was, and still am, a little too dazed to make very much headway with it. You see, Cory, this doesn’t happen to Floyd Hubbard. It’s out of character. One of the most beautiful women he’s ever seen just doesn’t fall into his arms. So Hubbard isn’t ready. Right now he feels like a gay blade. Inside he’s doing some swashing and a little buckling. He’s got an imaginary waxed mustache. Hell, honey, he’s flattered all to pieces, and half convinced they drugged you in that bar, and pretty certain that by tomorrow you’ll laugh yourself sick.”

“No, Floyd. No. Don’t ever think that.”

“The very first time I fell in love I was eleven, and she was a saucy little redhead named Ruthie. A very advanced ten. Sophisticated. I saved a buck thirty-nine and bought one hell of a big valentine heart full of candy and went shivering to her door that Sunday morning. She came to the door and I held it out and said, ‘Duh... uh... duh...’ She snatched it away, and her eyes lighted up and she gave me the most electrical smile in all the world and she squealed, ‘Tommy sent it! Tommy made you bring it to me!’ I hadn’t put any card in it, so all I could do was walk slowly away.”

“I could kill her! I could kill her!”

“The rest of the average story of my life goes like this. It obligated me to mend my wounds by bashing Tommy about. So I found a chance to pick a fight with him, and he beat the hell out of me. So you can see, Miss Cory, that when a beautiful woman swoons into my arms, my history makes me skeptical.”

“I’m not beautiful. I’m a dreary, scrawny broad.”

“And I am a dreary little husband, girl.”

“Keep using that word tomorrow, Floyd. Husband. I despise poachers.”

“Go to bed, Cory. Rest up for the battle. When are you coming over?”

“Midmorning, I guess. Sleep well, my darling.”

“You too.” He heard the sound of a sigh, a kiss, a clack of hanging up.

After the light was out he thought, Hubbard isn’t ready, but she is. The thief said, “I was just walking down the street minding my own business and this here wallet bounced right into my hand.”

But it would be so damned unfair. Jan has so little chance to compete in Cory’s league....

Yet he had a vivid textural memory of Cory’s lips, of the sleekness and warmth of her back, of the small hardnesses of her breasts against his chest.

Who would have to know? Who could be hurt?