Blow Hot, Blow Cold

1

From where she sat at her kitchen table in Shady Acres Addition, Nancy Howell could see through the open window and across the low hedge into the backyard of the next-door house, owned and occupied by Larry and Lila Connor. The Connors had a flagstone terrace behind their house, and Nancy kept waiting and watching for Lila Connor to come out in her modified bikini and start sunning herself on the terrace. This afternoon Lila hadn’t come out so far, and it didn’t look as if she was going to. The reason was probably that it was just too hot. It was over a hundred degrees in the sun, and you had to be pretty careful about getting burned even if you were already toasty brown all over, as Nancy and Lila both were.

What Nancy had in mind to do if Lila appeared was to get into a modified bikini of her own and go over to join Lila on the Connor terrace. Not that Nancy really wanted to lie in the sun on this particular afternoon. What she had in mind was to get herself invited into Lila’s house. It was much too hot to lie in the sun for more than fifteen minutes or so; Lila would surely go inside again, and she would just as surely invite Nancy to go with her.

The point was, Lila’s house was air-conditioned and Nancy’s was not. Well, that wasn’t quite true; actually, the upstairs bedroom that Nancy shared with David had a window unit. But that wasn’t the same as central air-conditioning, with breezes flowing deliciously through all the furnace ducts and pouring through the vents into every room. It gave you a kind of exciting — really sensual — feeling (especially if all you had on was a bikini) to move from room to room in all that wonderful coolness. It seemed like such a waste for Lila to be over there alone while Nancy steamed under the hot breath of a mere window fan and perspiration seeped from her brown skin and trickled between her alert breasts.

Nancy felt a twitch of guilt. Not for envying Lila her air-conditioning, but because the envy implied a criticism of David that she certainly did not intend. David was her pleasure and pride. Nancy understood perfectly well that central air-conditioning could rarely be afforded by schoolteachers, of whom David was one, while by successful accountants, of whom Larry Connor was one, it rarely couldn’t, so to speak. Her love and loyalty were fiercely David’s, no question about that; but at the same time Nancy was compelled to admit to herself that Larry Connor was a pretty attractive guy, too, and was quite capable of arousing ideas in the head of a girl who might have drunk a couple of Martinis on an empty stomach. Mae Walters, who lived in the split-level across the alley on the other side of the block, didn’t like Larry and Lila very much; but Nancy liked them both, and so did David, even though they did not seem to be particularly happy and often said cruel things to each other in front of other people.

Nancy looked at her wrist watch, which David had given her for Christmas three years ago, before they were married. It was exactly three o’clock. You couldn’t depend on its being exactly three o’clock just because the watch said so, but you could at least depend on its being somewhere near it; anyhow, it was becoming apparent that Lila wasn’t coming out on her terrace to sun herself.

Nancy sighed and gave up hope. What she would do, she decided, was fix herself a tall, cold gin-and-tonic and go upstairs to the bedroom with the window unit. Maybe she would lie down and take a nap. Then, before she knew it, it would be five o’clock, and David would be home from high school, where he was working all day even though it was Saturday. (David was teaching corrective English in the summer session because they needed the extra money, and this was quite a sacrifice for him to make, because according to David nobody took corrective English but blockheads. He was often quite cross when he came home, and it required the most careful application of gin and tenderness in the right proportions to get him in a good humor again.)

Having decided what to do, Nancy rose and automatically tugged at her shorts, which had stuck to her thighs. She dropped ice cubes into a tall glass and filled the glass with gin and quinine water. Then she went out into the little hall and upstairs to the bedroom.

It was cool in the room, a sharp change from the rest of the house, and she became aware really for the first time how clammy her blouse and shorts were. She would simply have to take a shower; so she set the glass on a table beside the bed, got out of her shorts and blouse, and pattered to the bathroom. She lingered under a warm shower, then took a quick cold one, wriggling with pleasure under the needle-spray.

Back in the bedroom, Nancy inspected herself in the full-length mirror on the back of the closet door. She was pleased with what she saw. It was certainly not inferior to anything Lila Connor would have seen in the same circumstances... She thought, smiling, that the two lighter bands above and below looked positively obscene. It was a shame that there was nowhere to lie naked in the sun in privacy. It was a necessary concession to neighborhood opinion even to wear modified bikinis instead of extreme ones. Mae Walters, for example, did not approve of bikinis at all, especially when her Stanley was around; Mae had said more than once in the hearing of Nancy and Lila that she considered a clear white skin to be “much more attractive” than skin burned by the sun. Moreover, according to Mae, the sun dried out the natural oils and caused premature wrinkles. Nancy smiled again at her unwrinkled image.

Feeling cool and clean, she went over to the bed and sat on the edge and picked up her glass. She drank the gin-and-tonic slowly, thinking with anticipation of the evening ahead. Jack and Vera Richmond were having a backyard barbecue, to which the Howells and the Connors and the Walterses were invited, and that meant she would not have to fix dinner in a hot kitchen or painfully weigh assets against expenses with David to see if they could possibly afford dinner out. The Richmonds lived in a stone ranch-style to the other side of the Connors; Jack Richmond was a doctor, which was even more profitable than accountancy. But Jack and Vera were unpretentious and good mixers, at ease with everyone. They were perhaps ten years older than the Howells and the Walterses and the Connors, who had all voted nationally at least once but not more than twice.

The gin-and-tonic had moved by swallows from the tall glass to Nancy’s stomach, where it was beginning to glow. She deposited the glass on the bedside table and threw herself down on the bed.

She began to wish that David would come home. But he had said five o’clock, and it was now only about three-thirty. An hour and a half was a long time for a girl to lie on her back wishing for her husband, Nancy thought drowsily, and the next thing she knew her eyes flew open and there he was, on the edge of the bed, contemplating her navel. She sat up and put her arms around his neck and the situation immediately became fraught with possibilities.

“Darling,” Nancy breathed in David’s ear, “here you are at last.”

“Here, as a matter of fact,” he said, stroking her back, “we both are.”

“Have you had a good day?”

“No. My day has been hellishly hot. Also frustrating.”

“How frustrating? You don’t have classes on Saturday.”

“But I have papers to grade that are the work of classes. It’s absolutely fantastic how little can be learned by a conscientious blockhead if he really tries.”

“You mustn’t expect too much from students who are forced to take corrective English, darling. It isn’t reasonable.”

“True. Thank God for the curve,” David said, tracing one of Nancy’s with an absent finger. “It’s a wonderful device. By applying it, you can change an F to a C and a C to an A in the wink of an eye.”

“David, that tickles!” Nancy giggled, slapping his hand.

She leaned shamelessly back against the headboard and observed him with what might have seemed excessive enthusiasm. To be honest, David wasn’t exceptional to observe; Nancy’s overenthusiasm was the effect of some mysterious affinity she did not understand. She had felt it from the first instant of meeting. She still felt it, and she was ready and willing to feel it forever, even though his short hair was a color you could only call neutral, his hands and feet were a good deal larger than the rest of him called for, and his nose was almost as crooked as his smile. David was nothing, in short, that should be considered a threat to a girl’s chemistry or modesty; but here was hers in pleasant peril nonetheless. It was altogether a satisfactory state of affairs.

“Darling,” Nancy murmured, her eyes half-closed, “what time is it?”

“Five-thirty. Why?” asked David, reaching.

Nancy rolled swiftly over out of range.

“I am merely budgeting what is left of the day. At seven we’re expected in the Richmonds’ backyard for the barbecue. Meanwhile a great deal can be accomplished. Would you like to take a shower to begin with?”

“I’d rather not,” said David hungrily, “but I guess I’d better.”

“As a favor to me, darling, make it... quick?”

So David leaped for the bathroom, and Nancy waited until she heard the shower. Then she slipped off the bed and over to her dressing table and drew a brush through her fair short hair three or four times with an air of abstraction. Afterward she peered through the curtains at an angle up the macadam street. At the curb in front of the Richmonds’ stood the delivery truck of a local beer distributor. The driver was pushing a small hand-truck up the Richmond walk bearing a metal keg of beer with a spigot and pump attachment for drawing the beer under pressure, as at a bar.

Altogether, Nancy thought, what with David here and the keg there, the day was looking up. Then she had no time to think of anything but the immediate present, for David was coming at her, still toweling himself, with a leer of purest lust.

“Defend yourself, baby!”

“Who needs it?” murmured Nancy, opening her arms.