Strangers When We Meet

1

Monday morning.

Gray October, and an early-morning chill in the house and a sullen sky pressing against the windowpanes. The sound of the children in the kitchen, Chris haggling with David, hounding the younger boy over the fact that he’d wet his bed again the night before.

Another day.

There is a routine in this house, as prescribed as the steady cadence of minutes ticking off time on the face of the bedroom clock. There is a routine here, he thought, and it governs the people living here, and the routine is broken only on Saturdays and Sundays, and even then it is replaced only by another routine, as disciplined and relentless as the first.

“Better get up, Eve,” he said, and beside him, her head under the pillow, one arm tangled in the blanket, Eve mumbled something incoherently.

He looked across at the clock on the dresser, the drill-master, the sergeant who handled the Early Awakening Detail. 7:00 A.M. What a ridiculous hour to be facing the world! By 7:10, the sergeant would relinquish his duties, pass them on to the white-faced disciplinarian who scowled down from the kitchen wall. You could see him from the bathroom. You could poke your head around the door jamb while you were shaving and there he was, tocking off minutes in his rigid voice.

Time.

He rose and stretched. He was a tall, sinewy man with brown hair and dark-brown eyes, eyes which were almost black. He had high cheekbones, and a straight nose, and a full mouth which looked amused even when it was not. He raised muscular arms to the ceiling and opened his jaws wide in a great lion yawn, and then he unbuttoned his pajama top, took it off and threw it onto the chair alongside the bed.

“Eve,” he said, “let’s go.”

“Is it time?” she asked.

“It’s time,” he answered.

Time.

In the kitchen, Chris said, “You’re a big boy, and you shouldn’t wet the bed at night.”

“I di’n wet the bed,” David answered.

With perfect adult logic Chris said, “Then who did?”

“A fairy made it in my pants,” David said.

Abandoning the logic, Chris laughed hysterically. David joined him. Together they bellowed until they’d forgotten what was so funny, until the house reverberated with their delighted cackling.

“Quiet down in there,” Larry called. He reached behind him, touched Eve’s warm shoulder. “Hey,” he said. “Come on.”

“Are you up, Daddy?” Chris asked from the kitchen. “Will you make pancakes?”

“Pancakes are for Sunday. That was yesterday.”

“What’s today?”

“Monday.”

“Do I go to school today?”

“Yes.”

“Does David go to school?”

“No.” He paused. “Are you dressed yet? How about it?” He pulled on his trousers and then shook Eve vigorously. “Hey, honey,” he said, “get up and supervise Chris will you?”

Eve sat bolt upright. “What time is it?” she asked.

He looked at the clock. “Seven-ten.”

Eve rubbed her eyes. Her eyes were blue, and they always looked faded in the morning as if the color somehow drained out of them during the night. She had long black hair, and he knew her next gesture even before she made it. Yawningly, she put both hands to the back of her neck and then ran them up toward the top of her head, lifting the black hair, stretching the sleep from her body.

“Oh, God,” she said, “I had a horrible dream. I dreamt you left me.”

“I will if you don’t get out of that bed,” Larry said, tying his shoes.

“Seriously. You were a beast.”

“Are you getting up?”

“I was pregnant when you left.”

“Bite your tongue.”

“It was terrible,” Eve said. She shuddered slightly, and then swung her legs over the side of the bed. The shudder seemed to dispel all memory of the dream. She smiled sleepily and said, “Good morning, beast.” He kissed her gently, and she said, “Pwhhh, I haven’t brushed my teeth yet.”

“You’re not supposed to brush them until after your first meal.”

“That’s what dentists say. What do they know?”

His hand had settled on her knee. Effortlessly now, it glided onto the smooth flesh of her thigh, and his fingers settled in the pocket of warmth where the short nightgown ended.

Eve wriggled away from him, smiling. “Stop it,” she said. “I have to go to the bathroom.”

“You always have to go to the bathroom.”

“Doesn’t everybody?” she asked lightly. She winked at him and then started down the corridor to the bathroom at the end of the hall.

“Ma,” Chris said, intercepting her.

“Don’t call me ‘Ma.’”

“Mother...”

“That’s better.”

“Does David go to school?”

“No.”

Chris turned. He was five years old, with his mother’s black hair and blue eyes. “See, David?” he said. “You can’t go to school because you wet the bed.”

“Did you wet again, David?” Eve asked.

“Yes,” David answered in a small voice.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do with you.”

“A fairy made it in my pants, Eve,” David said, hoping his earlier joke would convulse his mother, knowing too that she thought it devilishly cute of him to call her by her first name.

“I’ll talk to you later,” Eve said, and she closed the bathroom door behind her.

“Are you dressed yet?” Larry asked, coming from the bedroom.

“No,” Chris answered. “What shall I wear?”

“Ask your mother.”

Chris banged on the bathroom door. “Ma, what shall I wear?”

“I’ll be out in a minute,” Eve answered. As an after-thought she said, “Larry, will you put up the coffee water?”

“Sure.” He walked into the kitchen. David followed him like a penitent shadow. David had brown hair and brown eyes, and he was three years old. His wet pajamas hung limply on his spare frame.

“Hi, Dad,” he said.

Larry filled the tea kettle and then tousled David’s hair. “Hi, son. Have a good sleep?”

“I wet the bed,” David said matter-of-factly.

“You’ve got to be careful,” Larry answered, taking the kettle to the stove.

“I know,” David solemnly agreed, “but it just happens without my knowing, Dad.”

“Well,” Larry said, “you’ve got to be careful.”

“Oh, sure,” David said.

The bathroom door opened. Eve disappeared down the corridor.

“Hurry it up, hon,” Larry said.

“What time is it?”

“Almost seven-twenty.”

He went into the bathroom and closed the door. He could hear the sounds of the house around him while he shaved, the oil burner thrumming in the basement below, the vents expanding as heat attacked the aluminium. Another day. Another day to gird on the armor and step into the arena. Lawrence Cole, knight in shining. Available for dragon slaying, honor salvation, and holy-grail searches.

“Hurry, Larry!”

Eve’s voice. Part of the routine. Somewhere during the early-morning rush on his city days, the clocks and Eve would join forces, combining in their efforts to shove slothful, lethargic, lackadaisical Lawrence Cole out of the warmth of Abode into the coldness of Arena. He rinsed his face and dried himself. He went quickly to the bedroom then, opened the second drawer of the dresser — top drawer belongs to Eve, invasion of privacy — and hurriedly unwrapped a white shirt, noticing at the same time that there was only one other shirt in the drawer.

When he came into the kitchen it was 7:35. His juice, cereal and coffee were waiting on the table. Miraculously, Chris was fully dressed and eating a soft-boiled egg. David sat morosely in his damp pajamas.

“How do I look, Daddy?” Chris asked.

“Fine, Chris.” He picked up his juice glass. “When’s the laundry man coming?”

“Today. Why?”

“I’m almost out of shirts.”

“Again? Why don’t you buy a few more? A man could get neurotic worrying over whether his shirts will last the week.”

“Maybe I’ll get some today, after I’m through with this character.”

“You say you will, but you won’t. Why do you hate to buy clothes?”

“I love to buy clothes,” Larry said. He grinned. “I just hate to spend money.” He drank his orange juice. “Good stuff.”

“They had a sale at Food Fair.”

“Good. Better than the stuff you had last week.”

“You look handsome, Dad,” David said.

“Thank you, eat your egg, son.”

“You’ll have to take Chris to the bus stop this morning,” Eve said. “I’m not dressed.”

“Are you going to the Governor’s Ball, or are you dropping your son off at the school bus?”

“I’m doing neither. You’re dropping him off.”

“A mother’s job...”

“Larry. I can’t go in my underwear! Now don’t—”

“Why not? That would set lovely Pinecrest Manor on its ear.”

“You’d like that.”

“So would all the other men in the development.”

“That’s all you ever think of,” Eve said.

“What’s all he ever thinks of?” Chris asked. He shoved his cup aside. “I finished my egg.”

“Go wash your face,” Eve said.

“Sure.” Chris pushed his chair back. “But what’s all he thinks of?”

“S-e-x,” Eve spelled.

“What’s that?”

“That’s corrupting the morals of a minor,” Larry said. “Go wash your face.

“Is s-e-x Santa Claus?” Chris asked.

“In a way,” Larry answered, smiling.

“I could tell,” Chris said triumphantly. “Because everytime you spell, it’s Santa Claus.”

“Is it almost Christmas?” David asked.

“Come on, come on,” Larry said, suddenly galvanized, reaching for his coffee cup. “Wash your face, Chris. Hurry.”

Chris vanished.

“You’re not having cereal?” Eve asked.

“I don’t want to stuff myself. I’m meeting this guy for breakfast.”

“You’ll never gain any weight the way you eat.”

“Who wants to? A hundred and ninety-two pounds is fine.”

“You’re six-one,” she said, studying him as if for the first time. “You can use a few pounds.”

Larry shoved back his chair. “Chris! Let’s go!”

Chris burst out of the bathroom. “Am I all right, Ma?” he asked.

“You’re fine. Put on a sweater.”

Chris ran to his room. Larry took Eve in his arms.

“Be good. Don’t make eyes at the laundry man.”

“He’s very handsome. He looks like Gregory Peck.”

“Did you brush your teeth?”

“Yes.”

“Do I get a kiss now?”

“Sure.”

They were kissing when Chris came back into the kitchen. The moment he saw them in embrace, he began singing, “Love and marriage, love and—”

“Shut up, runt,” Larry said. He broke away from Eve. “I’ll call you later.”

They went out of the house together. David and Eve stood in the doorway, watching. “When I get big next week, can I go with them?” David asked.

“First you’ve got to stop wetting the bed,” Eve said absently.

From the car Chris yelled, “Bye, Ma!”

Larry waved and backed the car out of the driveway, glancing at the line of his small development house and hating for the hundredth time the aesthetic of it. Pinecrest Manor, he thought. Lovely Pinecrest Manor. His wrist watch read 7:50. He waved again when they turned the corner. The bus stop was five blocks away on the main road which hemmed in the development. He pulled up at the intersection and opened the door for Chris. “Have fun,” he said.

“Yeah, yeah,” Chris said, and he went to join the knot of children and mothers who stood near the curb. Larry watched him, proud of his son, forgetting for the moment that he had to catch a train.

And then he saw the woman, her head in profile against the gray sky, pale-blonde hair and brown eyes, her head erect against the backdrop of gray. She held the hand of a blond boy, and Larry looked at the boy and then at the woman again. One of the other women in the group, one of Eve’s friends, caught his eye and waved at him. He waved back, hesitating before he set the car in motion. He looked at his watch. 7:55. He would have one hell of a race to the station. He turned the corner onto the main road, looking back once more at the pale blonde.

She did not return his glance.

The man’s name was Roger Altar.

“I’m a writer,” he said to Larry.

Larry sat opposite him at the restaurant table. There was something honest about meeting a man for late breakfast. Neither of the two had yet buckled on the armor of society. The visors had not yet been clanged shut, concealing the eyes. They sat across from each other, and there was the smell of coffee and fried bacon at the table, and Larry made up his mind that all business deals should be concluded at breakfast when men could be honest with each other.

“Go ahead, say it,” Altar said.

“Say what?”

“That you’ve always wanted to be a writer.”

“Why should I say that?”

“It’s what everyone says.” Altar shrugged massive shoulders. A waitress passed, and his eyes followed her progression across the room.

Larry poked his fork into the egg yolk, watching the bright yellow spread. “I’m sorry to disappoint you,” he said, “but I never entertained the thought. As a matter of fact, I always wanted to be exactly what I am.”

“And what’s that?”

“The best architect in the world.”

Altar chuckled as if he begrudged humor in another man. But at the same time, the chuckle was a delighted release from somewhere deep within his barrel chest. “I enjoy modesty,” he said. “I think I like you.” He picked up his coffee cup with two hands, the way Larry imagined medieval kings might have. “Do you like me?”

“I don’t know you yet.”

“How long does it take? I’m not asking you to marry me.”

“I’d have to refuse,” Larry said.

Altar exploded into real laughter this time. He was a big man wearing a bulky tweed jacket which emphasized his hugeness. He had shaggy black brows and hair, and his nose honestly advertized the fact that it had once been broken. His chin was cleft, a dishonest chin in that it was molded along perfect classical lines in an otherwise craggy, disorganized face. But there was nothing dishonest about Altar’s eyes. They were a sharp, penetrating brown, and they seemed to examine every object in the room while miraculously remaining fixed on the abundant buttocks of the waitress.

“It’s a pleasure to talk to a creator,” Altar said. “Are you really a good architect, or is the ego a big bluff?”

“Are you really a good writer, or is the ego a big bluff?” Larry asked.

“I try,” Altar said simply. “Somebody told me you were honest. He also said you were a good architect. That’s why I contacted you. I want someone who’ll design a house for me the way he wants to design it, without any of my half-assed opinions. If I could design it myself, I would. I can’t.”

“Suppose my ideas don’t jibe with yours?”

“Our ideas don’t have to jibe. Only our frame of reference. That’s why I wanted to meet you.”

“And you think a breakfast conversation is going to tell you what I’m like?”

“Probably not. Do you mind if I ask a few questions?” He snapped his fingers impatiently for the waitress. “I want more coffee.”

“Go ahead. Ask your questions.”

“You’d never heard of me before I called, had you?”

“Should I have?”

“Well,” Altar said wearily, “I’ve achieved a small degree of fame.”

The waitress came to the table. “Will there be anything else, sir?” she asked.

“Two more coffees,” Altar said.

“What have you written?” Larry asked.

“You must be abysmally ignorant,” Altar said, watching the waitress as she moved away from the table.

Larry shrugged. “If you’re shy, don’t tell me.”

“I wrote two books,” Altar said. “The first was called Star Reach. It was serialized in Good Housekeeping and was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection. We sold a hundred and fifty thousand copies in the hard cover and over a million in the paperback. Ray Milland starred in the movie. Perhaps you saw it last year?”

“No, I’m sorry. What was the second book?”

“The Debacle,” Altar said. “It was published last June.”

“That’s a dangerous title,” Larry said. “I can see a review starting with ‘This book is aptly titled.’”

“One started exactly that way,” Altar said, unsmiling.

“Was this one serialized?”

“Ladies’ Home Journal,” Altar said. “And Literary Guild, and Metro bought it from the galleys. They’re making the movie now.”

“I see. I guess you’re successful.”

“I’m King Midas.”

“Well, in any case, I haven’t read either of your books. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. We can’t expect to enlighten everyone with two brilliant thrusts.”

“Jesus, you’re almost insufferable,” Larry said, laughing. “Will you get me a copy of The Debacle? I’m assuming that’s the better of the two.”

“If it weren’t, I’d quit writing tomorrow.”

“Will you get it for me?”

“Go buy one,” Altar said. “I run a grocery store, and I don’t give away canned goods. It sells for three-ninety-five. If you’re cheap, wait until next June. It’ll be reprinted by then, and it’ll only cost you thirty-five cents.”

“I’ll buy one now. It may break me, but I’ll buy it. How much do you want to spend on this house of yours?”

“About seventy-five thousand.”

“I guess you are King Midas.”

“Making money isn’t the hard thing to do,” Altar said, suddenly serious.

“What kind of house do you want?”

“Something to live in.”

“I don’t design gingerbread or colonials or ranchonials or any other bastard forms. I’ll design a contemporary house, and that’s all.”

“What else would a contemporary architect design?”

“You’d be surprised.”

“Just show me pictures of what you’ve done,” Altar said. “After that it’s up to you. I don’t tell a plumber how to fix pipes, and I don’t like people telling me how to write books. I won’t tell you what to design.”

“You may not like the houses I show you. They were designed for other people.”

“So what? Each book an author writes is a separate entity, but they all bear the same man’s stamp. I like you, but your stamp may stink. I want to see it.”

“How old are you, Altar?”

“Thirty-two. You?”

“Thirty-one.”

“Good. I like young people.”

“Suppose we agree my houses are good, Altar?”

“We’ve got a deal. Don’t call me by my last name. That’s for the critics.”

“What’s the matter? Weren’t they kind to your books?”

“As a matter of fact, they weren’t.” Altar stopped and shook his head. “The hell with the critics. Will you design my house?”

“Maybe.”

“When will you know?”

“After I’ve read your book.”

“Why?”

Larry grinned. “I want to see your stamp,” he said.

There was, Larry discovered that night, a polish about the prose of Roger Altar which seemed in antipathy to the bluff, earthy exterior of the man, a contradiction which made the reading experience puzzling. Try as he might, he could not associate the book with Altar. The book simply did not seem to be the man.

He could not understand the disagreement. He knew with certainty that every house he designed revealed at least a part of himself. He had hoped similarly to find a clue to Altar’s identity within the pages of his book, but he was sorely disappointed. The book seemed to be nothing more than quick entertainment.

Altar wrote in a clear, crisp magazine style. A succession of slick polished words helped Altar to create a world within which flesh-and-blood characters lived. The trouble with the characters, Larry supposed, was that they approached all their problems in terms of half truths. The novel seemed to be a collection of tired household verities, and by the time Larry reached page fifty of The Debacle, he seriously wondered if he wanted to design a house for a man who was utterly lacking in integrity.

As he went deeper into the book, his feelings changed.

Altar was trying to speak, but something constantly intruded to prevent the naked statement. It was a fear, perhaps, a holding back, a refusal to commit completely to the printed page. The struggle was immense, entirely overshadowing the characters Altar had created. Page by page, the intricate plot development became meaningless when juxtaposed to Altar’s tortured personal combat. He could not have said why Altar struck a sympathetic chord within him. He knew only that he was rooting for the man, that he was mentally screaming, “Get it out! For God’s sake, please get it out!” The effort left him exhausted. More so because it ended in defeat; the half truths triumphed.

When Larry closed The Debacle it was four o’clock in the morning. He had started reading after dinner, and he hadn’t been aware of Eve in the house all night long. He realized now that she’d gone to bed long ago and that she’d probably given him a good-night peck, but he couldn’t remember when. He sat in the easy chair with the circle of light around him, the novel closed in his lap. He sat that way for ten minutes, and then he went into the bedroom and dialed a number.

“Hello?”

“Altar?”

“Yes?”

“This is Larry Cole.”

“Man, it’s the middle of the night. What—?”

“I just finished your book.”

“Oh.”

There was a long silence.

“I want to design your house.”

Altar laughed a curiously relieved laugh.

“Thanks,” he said.

2

She did not like autumn, would never like it.

Autumn was a time of dying, the death of her grandfather in November the biggest dying of all, but other dyings too, little dyings, death falling from the trees, rattling underfoot. The splendid deceptive coloration of death, a spreading fungus which lapped the bright green of summer with decaying reds and oranges and yellows. The sun, too, died in autumn. Bright and golden, it turned pale and sickly yellow, pasted against a lusterless sky, intimidated by the sharp bite of a new wind. October was a paradox, a frigid month which dressed itself in the hot-blooded colors of a streetwalker — but only to attend a funeral.

I’m too morbid, she thought. I must stop being morbid. It’s because winter is coming. Still, I must stop.

It was all a matter of routine, she supposed. The new routine of getting Patrick off to school every day, and then moving around in a house gone suddenly still. The Cape Cod seemed larger with him gone. In its silent immensity, there no longer seemed a need for the third bedroom they’d put upstairs. But Don had insisted on a guest room for his mother’s visits, and so of course the shift had taken place: master bedroom into the finished attic, Patrick into the old master bedroom, and the smallest bedroom saved for Mrs. Gault, always clean and waiting for her descent.

I might as well get started, she thought, and doggedly she went upstairs to the bedroom in the finished attic of the Pinecrest Manor house.

Don’s tee shirt and shorts lay on the floor in the center of the room, rumpled and white against the multicolored scatter rug. The canopied bed stood against the far wall of the room, the blankets trailing onto the floor; Distastefully, she picked up the underwear and took them to the hamper. There was something that annoyed her about his clothes. Not just his dirty clothes, but all of his clothes, even the clean white shirts lined up with precision in the cherrywood dresser, fresh from the laundry, the curlicued DG monogram over each breast pocket. Or his newly pressed suits and jackets in the closet, wide shoulders stretched taut over the hangers, trousers neatly folded over the wooden supporting bars. Unworn clothes were false and pathetic, but the fact was that she disliked Don’s clothes even when he was inside them.

With intuitive female logic, she understood there was something wrong with her attitude. She had seen other women wearing their husbands’ shirts or jackets with a curious sense of proprietorship. She had known from their expressions that they gained more from the experience than the simple female advantage of looking fragile and protected in the overlarge male garments.

But she could remember the boat ride, the dark inland waters of the Hudson, the timid assault of new stars on a deepening dusky sky, the chill wind blowing off the water, a cutting wind that penetrated to her bones. Sitting with the women, listening to talk of babies and toilet training, she had felt the wind. Don, the man among men, the only husband who had not drunk too much that afternoon at Bear Mountain, had left the male company of dirty-joke tellers and come to her, offering his sweater.

With the sweater around her, with the coarse wool against her flesh, she had begun trembling. Even the wind had not caused her to tremble so. There was the smell of her husband on the sweater, his hair tonic, his after-shave, his body. In the tight circle of bellowing male voices and simpering female echoes, she had felt suddenly nauseated. Quickly she had taken off the sweater and handed it back to him. And then she’d made her way aft, turning her face to the cold breeze that swept off the swirling waters of the Hudson.

She had hurt him badly that night. They had made the long drive home from the pier in silence, but his eyes told her all there was to say. Blue, flecked with white, they seemed to echo the stiff regularity about Don which first impressed you. It was not until later that you felt any warmth from him; it was not until later that you realized the blue eyes were gentle and easily penetrated by daggers of pain.

In the darkness of their attic bedroom, in the rectangular canopied vastness of their bed, with the modern air conditioner anachronistically humming beneath the ruffled curtain in the Cape Cod house, with the summer sounds of hushed automobile tires far away bruising the insect drone of the night, his hand had touched her shoulder tentatively. She had not turned. His hand had rested on her flesh lightly, unmoving. There were words in his hand, so many words, but lying stiffly naked beside him, she chose not to understand the gentle pressure, so that he was forced finally to speak.

“Should we make love?”

“No,” she said.

“Oh.”

A single word, and she was glad she could not see the blue eyes in that moment. He drew back his hand, and again the room was silent, and at last he sighed and said, “Good night, Margaret.”

He never mentioned the sweater to her. Nor did he ever wear it again.

She turned from the hamper now and walked to the bed. Downstairs the doorbell chimed. Unhurriedly she started down the steps. The dormer windows behind her threw a shuttered cold light onto the steps, limning her pale-blonde hair. She wore black tapered slacks and a white sweater, and she navigated the steps with unconscious, uncalculated femininity. Again, the doorbell chimed.

“I’m coming,” she called.

The attic steps terminated just inside the entrance doorway. She opened the door, backing instinctively away from the wind, telling herself that Don would have to be reminded again about putting in the storm-door glass.

Betty Anders stood on the front stoop, cocking a disciplinary eyebrow. Betty was a petite brunette with high cheekbones and wide blue eyes. She was twenty-five years old and usually attractive except when her hair was in curlers as it was this morning. The scarf around her head hid some of the intricate beautifying machinery, but not all. Betty didn’t seem to care very much. Betty always did pretty much as she pleased. She was the daughter of a Presbyterian minister and her tendency toward independent expression had caused a serious explosion when she married Felix, a devout Catholic. Her defiance eventually won out. Now, in direct defiance to the October briskness — and also because she had good legs — Betty wore shorts. She held her pose of petulant anger for a moment and then burst into the house like a hand-grenade explosion.

“Were you asleep?” she asked, her voice loud and booming.

“I was upstairs cleaning.”

“Give me a cup of coffee,” Betty said. “How do you manage to look so goddamn beautiful at ten o’clock in the morning?”

She was moving toward the kitchen with the easy familiarity of a person who is at home in any house. She had tossed her question over her shoulder, not expecting or wanting an answer, in a light tone which completely belied the fact that any display of beauty at ten in the morning disturbed her immensely. She further felt that no woman had the right to be so blatantly beautiful as this woman. And so, as a defense against the beauty, and as a salving to her own hair-in-curlers womanhood, she decided to let the world — and especially this woman — know that she too, in her own way, was also desirable.

“I’m a wreck,” she said. “All that man wants to do is make love.”

She underlined the last words as if she expected Margaret to wince. Margaret did not.

“If I don’t get some sleep soon, I’ll die,” Betty persisted.

“I’ll heat the coffee,” Margaret said.

She moved to the stove, and Betty watched her. She would have been lying to herself if she’d pretended that the sight of Margaret Gault did not delight her. When she looked at Margaret, she saw an ash-blonde whose brown eyes were fringed with thick lashes. She saw a well-shaped nose, and a full mouth with a wide lower lip. She saw an enviable bosom, a narrow waist, wide hips, good legs, an over-all picture of total femininity.

There was, she supposed, a certain flamboyancy to Margaret’s good looks. They bordered on the narrow edge of cheapness but only because of their plenitude; and generous endowment was not, to Betty, a saving grace. Had the hair been less blonde, the eyes less brown, the bust less emphatically pronounced, the legs turned not quite so splendidly, the woman could have been forgiven. Had the smile been less radiantly perfect... there, the smile. Even the smile. Margaret Gault carried a scar below her right cheek, the result of a childhood accident. The scar was in the shape of a small cross, almost invisible when her face was in repose. But when she smiled, the scar became a deep dimple in her cheek, enhancing the smile. The one-sided dimpling of her face, the sudden revealed whiteness of her teeth behind the red lips made her smile a startlingly radiant thing.

It was unfair. Her beauty remained consistent, and its consistency rankled. But, curiously, Margaret’s beauty was the only thing about her which Betty could find to dislike. And even that, paradoxically, delighted her traitor eye.

“I think he’s oversexed,” she said.

“Do you really?” Margaret asked.

“I think they all are, if you want to know the truth.”

Margaret shrugged.

Betty watched her shrewdly. Nothing would have pleased her more than the thought that something was amiss in the Gault relationship. Unfortunately, though, the signs as Betty read them did not point in that direction. Being an avid sign reader, but only of those which pertained to where she was going, she dropped the thought as quickly as she had picked it up.

“I wanted to watch Steve Allen,” she said. “I certainly don’t think that’s too much to ask after a day of running around after his monsters.”

“Do you take cream?” Margaret asked.

“And sugar. Six months she knows me, and she still asks.” She stirred her coffee and then sipped at it. “Steve Allen had Louis Jordan as his guest. I like him.”

“I do, too,” Margaret said, sitting down at the table opposite Betty.

“He sang this thing, ‘Beware, Brother, Beware.’ It’s a hot sketch. I was getting a kick out of it. That’s when Felix came in with his ideas. I can smell his ideas six miles away, even before he gets off the train. If it was up to Felix—”

“What else did he sing?”

“I don’t know. Felix turned off the set.” She leaned forward confidentially. “He carried me upstairs like a hero. Except that he had his hand under my skirt all the way. You don’t see that in the movies, Miss.” Betty chuckled in reminiscence. “I’ll tell you the truth, it wasn’t so enjoyable. I’ve got to be in the mood, and right then I was in the mood for Steve Allen.” Betty paused. “Do you ever feel that way?”

“What way?”

“As if you just don’t feel like it?”

“Yes.”

“Felix always feels like it. But always! There must be a difference between men and women. Don’t you find Don that way?”

“What way?” Margaret asked again.

“Always ready.”

“Oh. Yes. Yes.”

“Sometimes I don’t even feel like looking at him, let alone going to bed with him. Sometimes he bores me stiff.” Again Betty paused. “Does Don bore you?”

“No,” Margaret said quickly.

“Never?”

“No, he’s always very interesting.”

“Well, a girl like you...” Betty started, and then let the sentence trail.

Margaret stared through the kitchen window, past the chintz curtains, and she wondered why the women she knew eventually confided to her the intimate details of their married lives. She was not unaware of her good looks and she suspected that most women, as well as men, unconsciously equated beauty with sexuality. Their automatic assumptions annoyed her. In female company she invariably started the game at a disadvantage, putting women on the defensive the moment she stepped into a room. And even if she’d sat in a corner all night mentally reciting the Lord’s Prayer, no woman present could look at her without imagining that the most sensual thoughts lay concealed behind her pretty face.

Having reached the primitive conclusion that where there’s smoke there’s fire, they then progressed to the next level of their dubious reasoning. Margaret Gault automatically received attention from men, and the women assumed she provoked it by cold premeditation. They all wanted to know what Margaret had that they didn’t have — even though the answer smacked them squarely between the eyes. And so they engaged her in conversation, and the talk was a curiously preordained thing. Having decided that a face so beautiful, a body so provocative, were made for nothing but sin, they then proceeded to impute to Margaret a sexual wisdom which, in the beginning, she truly did not possess. At the same time, they treated her like the classic and decorative dumb blonde who was good for one thing alone, so that it was almost impossible for her to venture into any other fields of conversation without being laughed off as an ambitious nitwit.

“... when it was all over. So what can you say to a man like that?” Betty stopped abruptly. “Are you listening to me?”

“What? Oh, yes, of course.”

“Where were you?” Betty wanted to know.

“I was just thinking... It’ll be winter soon.”

“You’re too cheerful for me, Miss,” Betty said. “I’m going home.”

“Have another cup of coffee.”

“No. Thanks.”

She was already out of the kitchen and walking through the living room. In the entrance hallway she paused. She seemed about to say something, then abruptly changed her mind, opened the door, and left. Margaret stood at the door, watching her cross the street. The leaves whipped about her small figure like a horde of multicolored birds in frenzied flight.

The telephone rang.

For a terrified moment Margaret stood frozen at the door. The piercing clamor of the phone shrieked through the silent house.

“I’ll let it ring,” she said aloud, and then she began counting the rings — three, four, five...

“I’ll let it ring,” she said again, hearing her own words in the stillness of the hallway, hearing the phone shrilling in the kitchen — eight, nine, ten...

She closed the door and walked through the living room, and then to the phone, where it rested on the counter top near the sink. She stared at it, biting her lip, not wanting to pick it up. And then her hand reached out, and she took the receiver from the cradle and held the phone to her ear, not speaking for a moment, waiting, not knowing for what she was waiting.

When she spoke, her voice was very low.

“Hello?” she said.

“Margaret?” the voice asked.

“You,” she said.

3

“People sing songs about Indian summer,” Altar said, “but they very rarely recognize it when it’s all around them.”

“Like the Lucky Pierre joke,” the blonde said. “Everybody knows the punch line, but nobody remembers the story.”

“That’s not exactly what I meant, doll,” Altar said. He glanced at Larry and added, “She’s stupid, but she’s a doll.”

Coming from Altar, the Broadway cliché sounded like an accurate description. The blonde was a doll, a round doll’s face and round blue doll’s eyes and a doll’s Cupid’s-bow mouth. There was nothing doll-like about her body, though, or about the way she managed to cross her legs with expert abandon on the front seat of the convertible. She was, Larry realized, one of the few single women with whom he’d come into contact socially for a good many years, and he found her realistic approach to the basic necessities of life bewildering but refreshing.

The first thing Altar had said to him when he stepped into the car was “This is Agnes. You want to lay her?”

Agnes had not batted an eyelash. Agnes had smiled doll-like and said, “Not now, Mr. Cole. I just had breakfast.”

The presence of the blonde, the light banter between her and Altar, the way she consciously appreciated Larry as a male, gave the Saturday excursion an unbusinesslike aspect which left Larry feeling somewhat guilty. This was, after all, a business trip to the site of Altar’s proposed house. Eve had strenuously objected to business on Saturday, “the one day you can devote fully to the kids.” Larry had pointed out that Sunday could be as equally devoted, and he had further elaborated on the “business is business” concept which he’d trained Eve to accept as one of the cruel facts of life. Now, though, with the day unfolding in such splendor, with the crossed legs of the blonde beside him in the open car, he guiltily felt the day might have been well spent with his family.

“I’m an autumn guy,” Altar said. “There are different kinds of people, you know.” He drove the way he ate, his eyes traveling everywhere, to Larry’s face, to the blonde’s legs, to the road, the trees, the sky. “I think it has something to do with when you were born. When were you born, Larry?”

“July,” Larry said.

“What’s your favorite month?”

“October.”

“You only said that to blast my theory.”

“No, seriously. It’s October.”

“When were you born, Agnes?” Altar asked, undefeated.

Agnes considered the question for a moment. “December,” she said. “I came for Christmas.”

“What’s your favorite month?”

“I like them all.”

“You’ve got to have a favorite,” Altar said. “What pleases you most? A nice nip in the air, or a hot sunny day?”

“I like them both.”

Altar seemed to be losing his patience. “You’ve got to like one more than the other.”

“Why? How could I appreciate hot days if there were never any cold ones?”

Larry smiled and said, “She’s got a point.”

“On the top of her head,” Altar said. “Why do I always go for dumb girls?”

“He can’t stand to lose an argument,” Agnes said, giggling. “It makes him furious.”

“She’s known me for two weeks, and she’s already psychoanalyzing me,” Altar said. “I’ve got some advice for you, Larry. Never live with a woman for more than five days.”

“Your advice comes late,” Larry said. “I’ve been living with a woman for eight years.”

“Your wife, you mean? Who’s talking about wives? Wives are a different thing again.”

“He knows all about wives,” Agnes said, winking. “He chases more wives than any man...”

“You’ll note that once the fifth day has been passed,” Altar said dryly, “a certain attitude of possessiveness sets in. You’d think women would realize that possessiveness, even though they invented it, is their downfall.” And then, without pausing for breath, he added, “We’re almost there.”

“Do you know what your trouble is, Altar?” Larry asked.

“Yes,” Altar said.

“What?”

“I speak the truth.”

“No. You speak banalities as if they were profundities.”

He had not intended to injure Altar. He had delivered his words in the same light tones which had prevailed since they’d started the drive. But he realized in an instant that he had touched too close to the quick. He saw the momentary pain flicker on Altar’s face, and he was immediately sorry.

And then Altar grinned. “I’ll let you in on a secret,” he said lightly. “The truth always sounds banal. Clichés are nothing to be ashamed of. They’re the folk legend of truth.”

“I don’t understand him at all,” Agnes said.

“Oh, go to hell,” Altar said playfully. “It’s down this road.”

“Hell?”

“No, the property, doll.”

He made a sharp left turn and began climbing a steep hill. The hill leveled into a gently rolling landscape patched with the faded green of autumn lawns.

“I don’t see any contemporary houses,” Larry said.

“No? What do you call these?”

“Eyesores.”

“You’d call the Taj Mahal an eyesore.”

“I would if it were set here,” Larry said.

“‘Time is always time,’” Altar said, “‘and place is always and only place.’”

“What’s that?”

“Eliot. ‘And what is actual is actual only for one time and only for one place.’”

“He an architect?” Larry asked.

“You’re joking!” Altar said, appalled.

“I’m joking.”

“You’re not! By God, I can tell you’re not!”

“‘Because I do not hope to turn again, because I do not hope,’” Larry quoted. “‘Because I do not hope to turn, desiring, this man’s gift and that man’s scope...’”

“If you know the goddamn poem, why’d you ask what it was?”

“I only remember the first few lines,” Larry said. “It makes me sound intelligent.”

“Who’s Eliot?” Agnes asked. “I don’t know him.”

“T. S.,” Altar said.

“You don’t have to get nasty,” she answered, and Altar snorted in delight and turned the car onto a sharply sloping dirt road.

“It’s right at the bottom of this road,” he said. “What do you think of it?”

“I haven’t seen it yet, Altar.”

“Why don’t you stop calling me Altar?”

“Because Roger sounds as if I’m acknowledging flight instructions.”

“Well, I’m sorry all to hell, believe me. I didn’t know you were a temperamental ex-pilot.”

“I’m neither. I was in the Infantry.”

“Officer?”

“Yes.”

“I was a Seaman First Class,” Altar said somewhat proudly. They were at the foot of the hill now. He pulled up the hand brake and said, “How do you like the view?”

“Beautiful,” Larry said. “Is there one for the enlisted men?”

Altar broke up, remembering the Mauldin cartoon. “You’re a son of a bitch,” he said. “I can’t understand why I like you. Come on, let’s look at the land.”

Larry got out of the car and extended his hand to Agnes. She took his hand and stepped out, showing complete unconcern for her skirts, her long legs flashing at him. For a moment, the pressure of her hand increased. Altar slammed the door on his side. Agnes smiled briefly and dropped Larry’s hand.

“Well, what do you think of it?” Altar asked.

“It slopes,” Larry said.

“Is that bad?”

“No, I’m just thinking out loud. The house design’ll have to take that into consideration. How many acres are there?”

“Six.” Altar looked out over the land. “How are the trees?”

“They look fine. Come on, let’s walk through it.”

“In there?” Agnes asked, her eyes taking in the fallen branches and the brambles and the thick overgrown weeds. “I’m wearing heels.”

“If you like, you can stay in the car,” Altar said.

“No. I want to see how an architect works,” she said, and she looked at Larry archly. For a moment Larry thought he’d imagined the look. He had not been looked at in quite that way for eight years. There was open invitation in the blue eyes, baldly stated, and all he had to do was pick up the dropped cue. He chose to let it lie where it was.

Together, they started into the woods. Autumn lost some of its splendor when viewed leaf by leaf. Like the pointillism of a Seurat painting, the tiny areas of pigment lost their force unless viewed at a distance as an overwhelming whole. Piece by piece, autumn built her jigsaw puzzle around them. The woods were curiously still. There were no bird sounds, no animal sounds. There was only the rattling crush of leaves underfoot, and a sense of time unchanging, unmoving so that Larry felt almost suspended, disoriented as he walked with a man he didn’t yet know and a blonde who wanted to know him better.

He could not put her invitation out of his mind. Nor could he dismiss her physical presence. She was there by his side, her hand touching his arm whenever they navigated a difficult stretch of ground. He felt, oddly, as if he were being unfair to Altar, and he did not like the feeling. But he could not rid himself of the appealing idea that this girl had found him attractive, and he cursed his own ego for responding as it had.

In an attempt to get his mind back to the task of studying the land, he asked, “Have you got a survey, Altar?”

“Yes, in the car. Want me to get it?”

“It would help.”

“Okay,” Altar said, and he turned abruptly and started up toward the convertible.

Agnes sat on a large boulder, crossed her legs and examined her nylons for runs. Larry watched her. The stillness of the woods seemed intense.

She looked up suddenly and said, “Why don’t you call me?”

“What for?”

“Don’t you want to?”

“I don’t know,” he said honestly.

“Rhinelander 4-4598,” she said. “Think it over.”

“I already have.”

“Good,” she said, as if convinced he would call.

“I’m married, you know.”

“I know.”

“Well...”

“I’m not,” Agnes said flatly. “Rhinelander 4-4598.”

Altar came thrashing through the woods.

“Here are the surveys,” he said, handing the photostated copies to Larry. “Are you going to lay her?”

And Larry burst out laughing.

The day with Altar and Agnes had been something of a narcotic.

There was about Altar the glamour of the unattached, irresponsible stud living in Bohemian abandon. This week’s blonde was Agnes, and when she was gone there would be another blonde, or a redhead, or a brunette. Altar owed allegiance to no woman; the idea was sinfully stimulating. And on the heels of such a heady concept had come the girl’s invitation, awakening in Larry a male ego which he thought had died in his teens.

That he responded, that he felt flattered at first, and then puzzled, and then terribly masculine, had disturbed him. He did not mention the incident to Eve, and his conscious concealment of something on his mind produced a feeling of guilt out of all proportion to what had actually happened.

By 5:30 the next afternoon, the feeling of guilt — inert to begin with — was totally immobilized by the dissipating power of two martinis.

“You are pretty,” he said to Eve. He recognized a certain fuzziness about his speech, and he wondered why a drink so subtly beautiful should possess such hidden muscularity.

He reached for the shaker, and Eve sitting opposite him in a straight black skirt and a pale-blue sweater, said, “Don’t get drunk.”

“Why not?”

“Because you get idiotic.”

“I get amorous.”

“You get incapable.”

“Well, you look pretty.” He nodded in agreement with himself.

“Those are the martinis talking, and I’m not flattered.”

“You should be flattered,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because,” he started, and he almost added, “a girl gave me her phone number,” but he clipped the word off so that it sounded like a simple childish declaration.

“I’m going to get dinner,” Eve said, rising.

“Let’s finish the drinks first.”

“No. You’re going to get romantic, and I’m hungry.” She paused. “Besides, the kids are still up.”

“We’ll invite them in.”

“Oh, Larry, for God’s sake.”

“What’s the matter?”

“There’s a time and a place,” Eve said. “I hate to see you silly.”

“What’s so silly about drinking a few martinis?”

“Nothing.”

“Are you sore or something?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

“Nothing. We need bread. Will you go up to the store?”

“The stores are closed. This is Sunday.”

“The delicatessen is open. You can get bread there.”

“Man does not live by bread alone,” he said, grinning.

“Listen, don’t...” Eve paused. “Larry, there’s always later. Will you go for the bread?”

“Sure. Will you be waiting for me when I come back?”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know what you meant.”

“Well?”

Eve smiled. The smile to Larry was a thing of a mystery and promise. “I told you,” she said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“That means no.”

“Does it?” she said, and still she smiled.

“Do you want me to go to the delicatessen?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” He rose and started unsteadily for the front door.

“Be careful driving.”

“I’m always careful driving. I’m too talented to die in an automobile accident.”

“A loaf of white bread.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You’re drunk already, aren’t you?”

“No, ma’am.”

“If you had any idea how absurd you look with that silly grin on your mouth...”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Don’t get killed.” She studied him concernedly. “Maybe I ought to go for the bread.”

“I’ll go for the bread,” he said emphatically, and walked out of the house.

There was a cruel bite on the air, but he was just drunk enough to appreciate it. He liked this idea of sunny days and cool evenings — that was good weather provided by a most provident providence — what did we poor humans do to deserve it? He walked to the car, a ’52 Dodge, part of the prize money, he thought, did I once win a prize, did I really win a prize, where’s that money now, where’s the promise of the shining young star, why am I designing harems for the crazy-bastard writers, what’s the matter with you, Cole, what the hell is the matter with you?

He twisted the key in the ignition and started the car, looking at his house, the brick and shingle, the ridiculously outsized gable, the goddam shabby architectural pretense of lovely Pinecrest Manor, the affront, the insult, the padded cell of an eagle. I live there, he thought. Dammit, I live there!

“Gracious Living,” she had called it. Not the house, never such a sin for an architect’s wife, certainly not Eve, whose eye was true, who recognized the falseness of Pinecrest Manor, who could dissect the development with the cold logic of an Aesthetics professor. But the drinks. Eve’s idea, and Eve’s title. The first time he’d come out of the small third bedroom which served as his office to find hot hors d’oeuvres and a private cocktail hour. Had they ever been that naïve? Had “Gracious Living” been capitalized in quotes even then, or had they really discovered the before-dinner drink and then later given the title sarcastic overtones in defense of their earlier naïvete?

He backed out of the driveway and executed a screeching left turn.

He could remember the night they’d fed the children and then settled down to a most ungracious hour of getting completely plastered, forgetting their own dinner. God, how long ago was that? Are people ever really that young? Gracious Living. Boy, do we live graciously!

He gripped the wheel tightly and said aloud “Pinecrest Manor, I hate your guts!”

The center’s parking lot was almost empty, the way it always was on a Sunday. The delicatessen and the drugstore were the only open shops. He pulled up alongside a pale-blue Chevy, slammed on the brakes and snapped open the door almost in one continuous motion. There was a man with a crew cut sitting at the wheel of the Chevy.

Go ahead, say something, Larry thought.

The man said nothing.

Larry sauntered toward the delicatessen, feeling somewhat proud of himself. He pushed open the glass door, spotted the bread shelf immediately and was walking toward it when he saw the woman. The pale-blonde. The woman from the bus stop He walked past the loaves of bread. He stopped a foot away from her and said, “Hi.”

Margaret Gault turned.

An uncertain smile formed on her mouth, and he watched the spreading cushion of her lips and the revealed brilliance of her smile, the deep dimple in her right cheek and he thought, She’s beautiful.

“The bus stop,” he said. “I’m Chris’s father.”

“Oh.” The smile widened. “Yes.”

They stood opposite each other, silent for a moment. She seemed reluctant to leave, and yet he sensed an eagerness to leave, and he suddenly had the idea that she was afraid of him, and he thought, Am I that drunk?

And then for no reason that he could understand — it was not what he was thinking; it was the furthest thing from what he was thinking — he said, “You’re not so pretty.”

The smile faded from her mouth. There was, he noticed, a minuscule scar on her cheek. She seemed flustered for a moment, and then she picked up her package from the counter and said, “I must go. My husband’s waiting,” and she left the store.

When he got outside, the blue Chevy was gone. He drove home, pulled into the driveway, went into the house, and threw the bread onto the kitchen table.

“I just talked to a gorgeous blonde,” he said.

“Really?” Eve asked.

“Yeah.”

“What’s her name?”

“I don’t know.”

“You couldn’t have talked very long,” Eve said. “She from the neighbourhood?”

“I think so. I saw her at the bus stop once.”

“Oh.” Eve nodded knowingly. “Margaret Gault,” she said. “Go wash your hands. Dinner’s ready. Chris! David! Dinner!”

4

Don Gault walked into the house with his hands in his pockets.

It was Monday evening, and he had put in a long, hard day at the plant. He had pulled down his tie and unbuttoned his collar the moment he’d stepped out of the automobile. Then, hooking his jacket over his arm, he had put both hands into his pockets, removing one briefly to open the front door, returning it to his pocket as he entered the house.

He wore a slender gold chain around his neck. A small locket containing a picture of his mother was cradled in the hollow of his throat, exaggerating the muscularity of his neck. He looked for Patrick in the living room, then crossed to the windows, walking past the cobbler’s-bench coffee table, and glanced out at the back yard. His son was nowhere in sight.

“Margaret!” he called.

“Don?” Her voice came from the upstairs bedroom.

“Hiya.”

“I’ll be down in a minute, honey.”

“Where’s the mail?”

“Kitchen table.”

“Okay.”

He threw his jacket over one of the chairs and went into the kitchen. The mail had already been opened, and Margaret had neatly stacked the slit envelopes in a little pile near the sugar bowl. He sat at the large round pine-top table and picked up the stack, thumbing through it quickly. Bills. Naturally, there’d be bills. There were always bills. He sat in the deepening darkness of the kitchen, the envelopes in his square, compact hands, his face vaguely troubled.

The face of Don Gault was curious in that it was absolutely clean. He wore his blond hair in a skull-tight crew cut which completed the immaculate square of his face. There was a geometric regularity to his features, an unblinking monotony about the straight blond eyebrows, the clean sweep of the nose, the hard unbroken line of the mouth. Only the eyes softened the face. Bright and blue, scattered with random flecks of white, they seemed at first as cold and clean as the rest of the face. But there was warmth there, and gentleness.

He was five feet nine inches tall, some four inches taller than Margaret in her stockinged feet, but inches did not matter with Don Gault. He was one of those perfectly proportioned men whose bodies have the flat, obdurate gleam of polished stone surfaces. The eyes were the only contradiction in the unbending geometry of Don Gault. And perhaps the eyes were the man.

It did not disturb him that Margaret had opened all the letters, including some addressed to him. He believed that marriage was an absolute partnership and the thought simply would never have entered his mind that there was anything in his mail which Margaret should not see.

Troubled, he thought only of the bills and of how difficult it was to earn money and hang onto it. For perhaps the fiftieth time he told himself he should have gone to college on the G.I. Bill after the war. He shouldn’t have let that opportunity go by. He always felt slightly inadequate in the presence of college men. He couldn’t exactly pin-point what it was about them that made him feel awkward. A certain slick façade, perhaps, or the arrogant knowledge that they were better equipped to lick, to defeat, life than he was.

In his heart he knew he would have been an absolute flop at school. He’d never had any patience with books or reading or sitting still and listening to another man talk. He was good with his hands, had always been. He could still remember the jewelry box he had made for his mother in a junior-high-school woodworking class.

“Did you make this, Donald?” she asked. “For me?” And he had nodded wordlessly, basking in her open admiration. “With your own hands? With your own hands?”

With his own hands, with these hands.

He held them out in front of him. They were good hands. They had been good to him.

I killed a man with these hands, he thought.

He immediately shoved the thought out of his mind. But like a nail driven too far into a narrow plank, the sharp tip of the thought protruded, catching at the fabric of his mind.

“Margaret!” he shouted, suddenly angry.

He put his hands into his pockets and walked into the living-room and then to the foot of the steps leading upstairs.

“Margaret!”

“Yes,” she said. “I’m coming.”

He waited, annoyed, and not knowing why, blaming it on the fact that he was hungry and there were no cooking smells in the house. She appeared at the top of the steps. She wore a tight black sweater and a flaring white skirt and exceptionally high heels.

“What are you supposed to be?” he said.

“What’s the matter?” She was smiling. She stood with one hand on the wooden railing, the other on her hip.

“Why do you always have to look like—” He bit off the sentence.

“Like what?” The smile was brilliant. Her hair, always wild, looked now as if she had purposely disarranged it before coming out of the bedroom.

“Like I don’t know,” he said harshly. “What are you always getting dressed up around the house for?”

“Don’t you want me to look pretty?”

“I don’t want you to look like a—”

“Like a what?” she asked quickly.

Her smile was beginning to infuriate him. “Never mind,” he said.

“I haven’t got anything on underneath,” she said.

“Margaret! For the love of...!

She came down the steps slowly, her hand gliding along the railing, burlesquing a movie siren, slithering down the steps, undulating her body, moistening her lips, the smile never leaving her mouth. In a sultry, sexy voice, she said, “Come on, big boy.”

“Where’s Patrick?” he asked.

“I sent him over to Betty’s.”

“Got this all planned out, huh?”

“Um-huh.”

She was a step above him now, so that her eyes were almost level with his. Her eyes were impishly bright, and the smile was fixed on her mouth, and he wanted to kiss her, pull her to him and cover her mouth with kisses. Her hand touched his shoulder, rested there a moment, and then slid over his chest, down, trailing fire behind it. She touched him, and he ached with the touch, and he felt himself come instantly awake, and her smile widened, widened until there was nothing in the room but her smile and her hand on him, and he thought, This is evil, this is evil.

“Come upstairs,” she said.

“What... what’s today?”

“It’s all right.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes” she said.

“I don’t want any accidents. I don’t want—”

“I’m sure.”

“When will Patrick be back?”

“I told her I’d call.”

“Does she know what—?”

“Come upstairs.”

“Margaret...”

“Come upstairs.”

“It’s still light.”

“It’ll be dark soon.”

“Margaret...”

“Come with me, Don. Come upstairs with me.”

“What about dinner? Have you—?”

“Don’t you want me, Don?”

“I...”

“Don’t you want to be inside me?”

“Don’t talk like that!”

“How do you want me to talk?”

“You’re a mother, for God’s—”

“Don, Don...”

Her fingers tightened, and there was no smile any more, only her hand, and his entire life clutched in the warm full palm of her hand, and then she released him suddenly and turned and started up the steps. She walked swiftly, the skirt swirling around her legs, the sharp heels leaving tiny rounded squares in the pile of the rug. Dusk had invaded the living room, spreading into the corners, spreading darkness into the silent house. In the basement, the oil burner started with a sudden click.

He brushed his hand across his eyes, and then he started up after her. She was naked when he entered the bedroom. He could see the line of her body against the deep blue of the blanket, softened by dusk. She stirred when he came into the room, twisting the familiar golden head on the white pillow.

He went into the bathroom. He did not turn on the light. He stood looking into the sink for a long time, the darkness growing around him. He took off his clothes then and folded them neatly over the edge of the tub. Then he washed his hands and went out to her.

The room was very dark. He found his way to the bed, and he sat, and her hand went to him instantly, and he climbed onto the bed feeling immense and clumsy, and then he lay beside her on his back, and whispered, “Make love to me.”

“Do you think I’m pretty?”

“Yes.”

“Do you love me?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think of me when you’re working?”

“Yes.”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you think of going to bed with me?”

“Don’t talk like that.”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don...”

“Make love to me.”

“What do you want to do to me? What do you think of doing to me?”

“Nothing. I don’t think anything like that. You know I don’t.”

“What do you think then?”

“I think of you.”

“What?”

“You.”

“What about me?”

“I just think of you.”

“How?”

“I don’t know.”

“In bed?”

“No.”

“Naked?”

“No.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. Are you ready?”

“I’ve been ready all day.”

“Help me.”

“Why?”

“I want you to.”

“Don’t you know where it is?”

“Don’t make fun of me.”

“I’m not.”

“Then help me, Margaret.”

“Why?”

“Because.”

“If you really wanted me...”

“I do, I do.”

“Say it.”

“Help me, Margaret.”

“No.”

“Margaret...”

“Tell me you want me.”

“Margaret...”

“Tell me what you want to do to me.”

“Oh, Margaret, Margaret...”

“Why won’t you touch me?”

“Honey, can’t we...?”

“Kiss me.”

He kissed her, and her hand tightened, and he pulled his mouth from hers.

“Touch my breasts. Don’t you like my breasts?”

“I love them.”

“They’re good. They’re big and soft, and the nipples—”

“Don’t talk like that!”

“Why don’t you ever touch them?”

“I do. You know I do. There. There.”

“Do you like the way they feel?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me.”

“I like them.”

“Tell me why.”

“Because I do.”

“Tell me. Talk to me, Don. Tell me!”

“Honey, honey, help me!”

“No! Do it yourself.”

“Honey, I can’t. I don’t want to.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t...”

He stopped. The room was very silent. When her voice came, it came as a slow, sepulchral command.

“Touch me!”

“No.”

“Touch me.”

“No.”

“Don, why? Why? Why?”

“I don’t... I don’t want to get you dirty,” he said.

He heard her heavy sigh, and he held his breath for a moment, and then he felt the weight of her body on him, her hands guiding him, and he closed his eyes tightly and said again, “Make love to me.”

5

In the second act of The Pajama Game, Eddie Foy, Jr., had trouble with his trousers, and Larry almost fell out of his seat laughing. His laughter was both surprising and encouraging to Eve. She had known Larry for ten years, been married to him for eight, and still could not understand what made him laugh.

She knew he had a good sense of humor. The things he said were truly funny, and he was the first to laugh at a good joke. But he would sit at a play or a movie when a comic line came along, and the house would collapse into waves of uncontrolled hilarity while Larry remained steadfastly deadpan. And then one of the actors would say or do something which no one else considered comical, and Larry would erupt into secret laughter which continued long after the line was broken or the gesture made.

Having resigned herself to this peculiarity after years of puzzlement, she was pleased on Friday night to see Larry laughing along with the rest of the house on the trousers routine. His response added to the surprise-party atmosphere surrounding the entire evening.

He had come home Wednesday evening after a day in the city and announced “We’re being wined and dined this Friday.”

“By whom?” she asked.

“Baxter and Baxter.”

“And who are Baxter and Baxter?”

“Just about the biggest architectural and planning firm in New York,” Larry said smugly.

“My! What’s the occasion?”

“They have a proposal to make.”

“I thought you liked working at home. You don’t want to join any firm do you?”

“No, but this isn’t that kind of proposal. They want my advice on something.”

“Really? Larry, that’s wonderful. Aren’t you flattered?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” he said, as if first coming to the realization.

“I’ll have to get a sitter,” Eve said, and she started for the phone. Larry followed her into the bedroom.

“Make it early, Eve. We’re meeting them for dinner, and they’re taking us to a show.”

“I’m thrilled,” Eve said, her eyes glowing as she dialled. “Will Baxter and Baxter be there?”

“No, just Harry Baxter and his wife.”

“What’s she like?”

“Never met her.”

“Do you think...?” She paused. “Hello?” she said into the phone, and then began the intricate womanly business of exchanging cordialities with a seventeen-year-old sitter.

Eloise Baxter had turned out to be a mild-mannered woman in her middle forties. She was a native New Yorker, but there was about her the aura of an out-of-towner who is bewildered by the clutter and noise of a big city. At dinner, Eve confessed to her that this was the first time she’d been in Sardi’s. With simple honesty, Eloise answered, “The food is good and they get you to the show on time. Besides, the waiters know Harry. When they call him ‘Mr. Baxter,’ he feels like a celebrity.”

Harry Baxter was a short man of fifty-four with a craggy face, an unkempt mustache, and a deep rumbling voice. He seemed stuffy and insensitive until you noticed his eyes and his hands. And then, all at once, you got the feeling that this unattractive little man could design wonderful buildings. He and Larry hit it off instantly, and by the time dessert was being served they were talking familiarly of Gropius, Le Corbusier, and Mies.

“Well,” Baxter said at the end of the discussion, “our Puerto Rican project will undoubtedly be prefab. That’s why I brought up Gropius to begin with.”

“I understand,” Larry said.

“How does it strike you?”

“It sounds good, so far.”

“That’s encouraging,” Baxter said. “Think about it.” He glanced at his watch. “Say, if we’re going to see that show, I’d better call for a check.”

Eve had heard the reference to Puerto Rico, and it aroused her curiosity without satisfying it. Nor did the topic come up again until they were sitting in Lindy’s after the show, and then Eve, who was reading her menu, almost missed Baxter’s second mention of the project.

“... and, of course, it would necessitate going to Puerto Rico.”

“Naturally,” Larry said.

“I imagine a week’s time would be sufficient,” Baxter said. “That is, of course, if the proposal appeals to you.”

“Well, I’m really pleased you thought of me,” Larry said, and Eve turned her complete attention to the conversation at the table.

“But you’re not interested, is that it?”

“I’m interested, but I’m working on another job right now.”

“Oh, what kind?”

“A house.”

“How far along are you?”

“Well, to be truthful we’ve barely started.”

“Then postpone it awhile.”

“No, I couldn’t do that. The client is anxious to begin, and I’d like to present some ideas to him.”

“I understand. When will you show your rough sketches?”

“I’m meeting with him on the twenty-ninth.”

“And after that?”

“I’d want him to study the drawings for a while.”

“Then you could conceivably leave by the first of the month?”

“Yes. If I took the job.”

“What job?” Eve asked. “Leave for where?”

“Puerto Rico,” Larry said.

“My firm is designing a factory for the island,” Baxter explained. “A lot of new industry is being seduced to the island by the lenient taxes. Actually, it’s a wonderful thing for the economy, and it doesn’t hurt the manufacturers one bit. Our factory is to have its own housing development for the employees.” He paused, waiting for Eve to grasp his meaning.

“Oh, I see,” she said, nodding.

“Naturally, since your husband won a prize back in 1952 for—”

“Oh, did he?” Eloise Baxter interrupted. “I didn’t know that.”

“Yes, El,” Baxter said. “In an international competition. Larry designed a housing development for a typewriter factory in Milan. Six hundred families. His scheme won second prize. Seventy-five hundred dollars, wasn’t it, Larry?”

“Yes.” He paused. “Actually a little less after the lire exchange.”

“I’m not attempting flattery when I say you should have got first prize. I studied both schemes when they were published, and yours was superior by far.”

“Well, thank you.”

“I always thought so, too,” Eve said.

“You’re prejudiced,” Larry answered.

“I’m not,” Baxter said, “but the devil with prize-awarding committees. The important thing is that I saw your scheme and liked the thinking in it. I can use that level of thinking on this project. Please don’t misunderstand me. I have a staff inferior to none, and I think our factory design is excellent. Nor do I doubt we’ll turn in a competent job on the development, too. But if I can bring flair to it, if I can bring the sort of sweeping imagination you showed in your Milan scheme, I’ll be achieving something more than the merely adequate. Do you follow me?”

“Yes,” Larry said.

Baxter turned to Eve. “That’s why I’ve asked your husband to work with us in an advisory capacity. I want him to go to Puerto Rico to get the feel of the site. It’s as easy to plan well as to plan badly, and I’d like to begin the right way.”

Eve nodded. She could feel pride for her husband swelling into her throat.

“I can pay you fifteen hundred dollars, Larry. Plus all expenses, of course. I’d want an imaginative site layout, recommendations for the kind of buildings you’d want on the site, and a schematic of one of the buildings.”

“That’s worth a lot more than fifteen hundred dollars,” Larry said, and Eve felt a slight pang at his audacity.

“How much more?”

“I’d want three thousand. Plus expenses. If you want to save the expenses, I can work from photographs of the site.”

“No, I think the feel is important. Would you settle for twenty-five hundred?”

Eve looked to Larry nervously. “That sounds fair,” Larry said.

“What’s the trouble, Mrs. Cole?” Baxter asked.

“Why, none. It’s entirely up to my husband.”

Baxter smiled. “Have you ever been separated before?”

“No.”

“I see.”

“Oh, don’t be silly,” Eve said. “Really, it isn’t that at all. I’d like Larry to go. It’s entirely up to him.”

“Larry,” Baxter said, “would you be more inclined to say yes if your wife could go along?”

“Well, I...”

“Take her with you.”

“Well, that’s very kind of you. But...”

“It’s not kind at all. Architecture is an art, but it’s also a business. And I’ve never yet met a successful businessman who doesn’t speculate. If this design is superior, other projects will come to my firm. The housing development is an integral part of the factory. I want your ideas. I’ll pay for them now because I’ll profit from them later.”

Baxter paused. The table was suddenly silent.

“Can you and Eve leave by November first?”

Larry looked at Eve. Eve nodded.

“All right,” Larry said.

“Good,” Baxter answered. “Then we’ve got a deal.” He extended his hand and Larry took it. Then he grinned broadly and said, “Ah, here comes the coffee.”

They were both silent until they approached the bridge.

The radio was on in the car, and Larry was listening to it in seeming contentment. Eve had learned not to push conversation upon him, especially after a new idea was presented. She knew that the idea needed time to jell and that once the excitement of it — or the disappointment, in some cases — had caught up with him, there was no stopping his torrent of words.

So she would not have brought up Puerto Rico, even though she was bubbling with the excitement of it, had the disk jockey not begun playing a mambo. And then, because she normally associated mambos with Spanish-speaking peoples, and because she was thinking of lush tropical growth and sunny skies to begin with, she automatically said, “I’ll have to get some new bathing suits.”

He realized she was only thinking aloud, and there was certainly nothing in her words to precipitate an argument. Yet he felt an awakening of anger, even though he answered her mildly.

“He seems like a pretty decent fellow,” he said. “Baxter, I mean.”

“Yes, he does.”

“I hope we’re not taking advantage of him.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you know.”

“No,” Eve said innocently.

“Taking you along,” Larry said. There still was no anger in his voice. But he felt himself frowning, and he wondered why.

Eve thought for a moment and then said, “Well it was his suggestion.”

“More or less,” Larry answered.

“More or less?”

“You did sort of cue him.”

“Cue him?”

“Yes.” Gently, although he was aware of his own increasing irritation, he added, “Honey, you don’t have to repeat every word I say.”

“But I didn’t cue him. I didn’t do anything.”

“Well, you smiled sort of wistfully. You know what I mean.”

“Wistfully?” Eve repeated.

“Sort of like a newlywed, you know, who couldn’t bear to be separated from her husband.”

“Oh, Larry, please, I didn’t,” Eve said, laughing somewhat embarrassedly.

Her laugh annoyed him. “It seemed that way to me,” he said. “I hope he doesn’t think you’re... well, pushy.”

“Pushy? Me?” Now Eve frowned.

“Yes, yes.”

“Pushy? Are you talking about me?”

“Eve, you’re raising your—”

“Well, I simply don’t like to be called pushy.”

“Nobody called you pushy,” he said, his own voice rising. “I just hope Baxter didn’t get the wrong idea and think you were pushy.”

“I don’t see how he could have got that impression,” Eve said loftily.

“Well, you did... you did sort of... well, dammit, you looked pretty upset when you thought I was going down there alone!”

He felt anger full upon him now, and he thought, We’re going to have a fight, but he was helpless to stop the anger or the argument which he was certain would erupt around them. He didn’t even know why he was angry, and his inability to pinpoint the cause of his irritation made him angrier still.

“In fact,” he said, “it was pretty embarrassing.”

“What was embarrassing?” Eve asked.

“Business is business,” he said flatly. “I thought you knew that.”

“How did I do anything to—?”

“You could have kicked this right out of the window,” he said, gathering steam, “right out of the window! We were lucky, that’s all. Baxter’s reaction could have been the complete opposite.”

“Baxter’s reaction to what, damnit!” Eve said.

“To your wanting to come along, damnit?” Larry said.

“But it was his suggestion!”

“Come on!” Larry snapped.

“It—”

“You could have killed this opportunity. The first real chance since that rotten prize. Do you think I enjoy designing — designing unimportant things? Don’t you think I want something bigger for myself? You could have—”

“Me?” Eve asked.

“Yes, you! You! Who the hell do you think?”

“What did I do, would you mind telling me?”

“Why’d you have to insist on making the trip with me?”

“Insist?”

“Yes, insist, insist! And stop repeating every damn word I say!”

“I didn’t insist on anything. Baxter made the suggestion.”

“Sure, he made the suggestion. And you sat there like a wilted flower with an apologetic smile. Oh, no, really,” he mimicked, “really, Mr. Baxter, it’s entirely up to Larry, really it is.”

“Well, it was. And I didn’t sit there like a wilted flower or anything. The decision was yours.”

“Sure, provided you could go along. I’m going there to work, you know, not to—”

“Who’s stopping you from working? I was perfectly content to have you go alone. Baxter said—”

“Baxter said, Baxter said—”

“Well, he did! Now cut it out, Larry! You’re getting me angry!”

“Oh, am I? Well, isn’t that too damn bad!”

“You can go to Puerto Rico alone if you like. You can go to China, for all I care. You can go and stay, for that matter.”

“Sure, sure. Now I’m the one who’s anxious to get away from you. I’m the one who’s dying to flop into some Spanish brothel and—”

“Maybe that’s exactly what you want!” Eve snapped.

The car went dead silent.

He sat with his hands on the wheel and his foot on the accelerator and he looked out at the road ahead, his anger dissipating, to be replaced by a deep puzzlement.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I didn’t want to argue.”

“This could have been fun, you know,” Eve said, thoroughly infuriated now. “You didn’t have to spoil it.”

“I’m sorry,” Larry said again.

They drove home in utter silence. The baby sitter greeted them at the door with the assurance that neither of the children had awoken. Larry paid her and drove her home. When he got back to the house, Eve was asleep. He undressed quietly and then climbed into bed beside her. It grew cold sometime in the middle of the night, and Eve curled up against him, and his arms unconsciously circled her, and his hands found her breasts, and in her sleep she murmured, “You stinker,” but she did not move away from the warmth of his body.

6

Monday morning.

He felt logy and puffed with sleep, and he vowed to turn down the thermostat at night so that the house would be cool and right for sleeping, but how could you do that with children in the house, David still wetting the bed; the boy would catch pneumonia.

He was sullen and uncommunicative at the breakfast table. He planned an extended session at the drawing board that morning, and he hadn’t bothered shaving. He sensed Eve’s disapproval, and he told himself he would shave right after lunch. They had patched up the argument over the weekend, had in fact discussed the coming Puerto Rico trip with great enthusiasm, and he did not want to risk a fresh breach over something as ridiculous as a beard.

“I’ll walk you to the bus stop,” he told Chris. “I need some fresh air this morning.”

“Can I come, Dad?” David asked.

“I don’t think there’s time to get you all bundled up, David.”

“Is there, Eve?” David asked.

“I don’t think so, son.”

“I never go anyplace,” David said unfairly. “Only Chris goes.”

“That’s because I’m five,” Chris said.

“I’m five, too.”

“You’re not.”

“I’m five,” David said firmly.

“Is he, Daddy?”

“No. But you’ll be five soon, David. You stay here and help your mommy.”

They put on their coats and left the house. The air was sharp and crisp. It attacked his cheeks and his teeth like a cold needlepoint spray.

“I saw a squirrel yesterday,” Chris said.

“Yeah?”

“He was burying nuts.”

“That’s good,” Larry said.

“That’s so he’ll have something to eat this winter.”

“I know.”

“Sure. I know, too.”

He was coming awake. He could feel his mind returning to his body, as if it had been away for a long time and was now tentatively trying out the furniture. It was a cold day, but there was beauty in the cloudless blue of the sky, the barren streets rushing off to a vanishing point on the horizon.

“I’ll have to put in antifreeze,” he said aloud.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“He holds the nuts in his hands,” Chris said. “Just like a person.”

“His paws.”

“Sure, his paws.”

He saw Margaret Gault when he was a block away from the bus stop. Unconsciously he quickened his step so that Chris had to trot to keep up with him. She was standing alone with her son, and the boy had his arms wrapped around her, his head buried in the protective folds of her skirt.

“There’s Patrick,” Chris said, and he ran off to join the other boy. Larry slowed his pace, assuming an air of nonchalant ease. When he was close enough to her, he smiled and said, “Good morning.”

“Good morning,” she answered, returning the smile, her right cheek magically dimpling.

“Got cold all of a sudden, didn’t it?”

“Yes,” she said, and she shuddered a little at the thought, and then pulled her son closer.

“Think the frost’ll hurt the rhubarb?” Larry asked.

“What?” she said.

“The fr—” He smiled. “Forget it. It’s a bad joke.”

“I just didn’t hear you,” she explained.

“It’s still a bad joke.”

They were silent for a moment. He watched her. She seemed embarrassed in his presence. For a fleeting instant he wondered how the scene appeared to their neighbors, the two standing alone on a windswept street.

“You’re all dressed up today,” he said.

“I’m just going shopping.”

“New York?”

“No. Just the center.”

“You look nice.”

She smiled. The smile was uncertain, as if she didn’t know whether or not to accept his compliment. “Are you on vacation?” she asked.

“Me? Vaca— Oh. Oh, no. I work at home most of the time.”

“I was wondering.”

“Yes, I work at home.”

She paused, and he could see her thinking, and then she smiled and said “A cousin of mine is a bookie, too.”

He burst out laughing, surprised by her humor, surprised that she had taken the trouble to want to make him laugh. He had the feeling that she was stupid, and the further feeling that he was stepping into a timeworn cliché, falling for the stereotyped idea that all beautiful women are stupid. In a vague way, too, it annoyed him that he had so readily accepted the fact of her beauty or so warmly responded to her little joke.

Her son snuggled closer to her, his head tight against her thighs.

“He’s the lucky one,” Larry said.

Again she seemed embarrassed. She glanced down quickly, seemed undecided whether to push the boy away from her body or pull him closer. Her lashes fluttered and Larry couldn’t tell whether she had consciously maneuvered them or whether she was truly as bewildered as she appeared.

He suddenly wondered if she had suspected any double entendre in his words, and he quickly explained, “He’s nice and warm,” and then just as suddenly realized he had fully intended a double meaning.

Mothers were appearing in the streets now. Storm doors clicked shut behind them, and they stepped into the well-ordered streets of the development, wearily leading their charges off to another day of school. They descended on the bus stop, and Margaret began talking with them, and he noticed an instant change in her attitude, a lighter tone in her voice, a smile that was forced and not so genuine as her earlier smile had been. And then the big yellow school bus rumbled around the corner and ground to a stop, and the doors snapped open, and the little boys fought for first place in the line, and one of the little girls squeaked, “Ladies first, ladies first!” and Chris ran to him and planted a cold, moist kiss on his cheek and then scrambled aboard the bus, and he was aware all at once of the fact that he had not shaved. The women began to disperse almost before the bus got under way. He waved at Chris and then turned.

“Well,” he said to Margaret, “so long.”

She nodded briefly, smiling, and he turned and walked back to the house.

In two days’ time, the walls of his office were covered with sketches.

The room was a small one, the smallest in the house, a perfect eleven-by-eleven square. The wall opposite the door carried a bank of windows which rose from shoulder level to the ceiling. A good northern light came through the windows even though the blank side of a split-level was visible not fifteen feet away.

The room was devoid of all furniture save his drawing board, a stool, a filing cabinet for blueprints, and a filing cabinet for correspondence. A fluorescent lamp on a swinging arm hung over the drawing board for use on days when the natural light was insufficient.

The drawing board was large, a three-by-four-foot rectangle set up against the window wall. Thick tan detail paper had been stapled to its wooden surface. He liked to work in an orderly fashion, and so the board was uncluttered except for the tools he considered essential to his trade. These were a box of mechanical pencils, a second box containing leads of different hardness (H and 2H were the ones he used most frequently), a T square hanging on a cup hook at the right of the board, a scale, a ruby eraser and the item he considered indispensable: an erasing shield. Rolls of tracing paper in various widths — twelve inch, twenty-four inch, and thirty inch — lay on top of the flat green surface of the blueprint cabinet together with his typewriter, a portable machine which had seen better days.

He had used the typewriter when he’d first begun the Altar job listing an outline of requirements for each room. He had not concerned himself with general requirements. These he retained in his memory and there was no need for a typewritten reminder. At the same time, the notes — while being detailed — did not consider such specifics as furniture sizes, which he knew by heart and which automatically came to mind when he was considering the size of any room.

The notes then, detailed but not specific, looked like this:

The notes went on in similar fashion for each room in the house. There was a time when Larry, fresh out of Pratt Institute and beginning practice, would have made a flow diagram of the proposed house. The diagram would have been a simple series of circles, each representing an area, and its purpose would have been to define the relationship between the areas. He still used a mental flow diagram, but he no longer found it necessary to commit such elementary planning to paper. Unless, of course, he were working on something with as many elements as a hospital. A house rarely contained more than ten or twelve elements, and these he safely juggled in his mind.

With most houses, Larry found it best to begin his thinking with an over-all theme which came from the client. These, capitalized in his mind, were necessities or concepts like Ideal Orientation, Maximum Economy, Soar Heavenward, Cloistered Silence and the like. Roger Altar wanted to spend seventy-five thousand dollars on his house, and he had given Larry a virtual carte blanche. Unstrapped economically, unlimited architecturally, he had only to concern himself with expression, and so his early thoughts about the house did not consider the economical placing of toilets back to back but only the type of statement he wanted in the house: Powerful? Dramatic? Natural? In short, he asked himself what kind of an experience the house would be and, thinking in this manner, he began by drawing perspectives first rather than floor plans.

Would Altar accept all spaces in one space?

Or would he prefer a different experience for the living spaces as opposed to the bedroom spaces?

Or should the house be a tower rather than a low horizontal?

Would Altar prefer something more serene, a scheme of sunken courts?

Using the yellow tracing paper, he allowed his mind to roam, creating the doodles of free expression. Would Altar consider a cube on stilts? The land sloped sharply. Should he take advantage of the slope the way Wright would do; or should he fight it, present the house as a statement against the terrain, like Corbusier?

He did not discard any of his sketches. By Wednesday morning, they were all Scotch-taped to the walls of his office and, like a connoisseur at a gallery exhibit, he stood in the center of the small room and studied them carefully. He would not show Altar all of the sketches. He would eliminate those he disliked and then work over the remainder into ⅛″ scale drawings. These exploratory sketches would be presented to Altar for thought and comment. Once they had decided on an approach, he would then attack his preliminary drawings, using white paper rather than the rough tracing paper.

The weeding-out was not a simple job. He worked all through the morning and then went into the kitchen for lunch. He felt the need for a short break after lunch and so he drove up to the shopping center to buy the afternoon newspaper. He did not expect to see Margaret Gault, nor was he looking for her.

Mrs. Garandi the widowed old lady who lived with her son and daughter-in-law in the house across the street, was coming out of the super market with a shopping bag. Larry tucked his newspaper under his arm and then walked quickly to her.

“Can I help you with that, Signora?” he asked.

Mrs. Garandi looked up, surprised. She was a hardy woman with white hair and the compact body of a tree stump. She had been born in Basilico, and despite the fact that she spoke English without a trace of accent, everyone in the neighborhood called her Signora. There was no attempt at sarcasm in their affectionate title. She was a lady through and through.

Larry’s fancy, in fact, maintained that the Signora had been high-born in Italy and had learned English from a governess at the same time she’d learned to ride and serve tea. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Mrs. Garandi had been born in poverty, married in poverty, and had come to America with her husband to seek a new life. She knew she couldn’t start with a language handicap and so she’d instantly enrolled at night school, where she’d learned her flawless English.

“Oh, Larry,” she said, “don’t bother. It’s not heavy.”

“It’s no bother. Where’s the car?”

“I walked.”

“Well, come on, I’ll drive you home.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I am a little tired.”

He took the shopping bag from her and together they walked to the car. He closed the door behind her and then went around to the driver’s side. When he was seated, he said, “Whoo! Cold!”

“Terrible, terrible. Do you really think it’ll snow?”

“Is it supposed to?”

“The radio said so.”

“Today?”

“Supposed to come this afternoon.”

“I don’t believe it,” he said. “The sky is clear.”

He started the car and backed out of his space. He was slowing down at the exit when he saw Margaret.

She walked with her head bent against the wind, one hand in her coat pocket. Her right hand held her lifted coat collar, and her cheek was turned into the collar. He tooted the horn, and she looked up instantly, recognized him, and waved. He waved back. Margaret walked closer to the car. She was saying something but he couldn’t hear her because the window was closed.

He rolled it down and said, “What?”

“I said, ‘Do you go around picking up all the women in the neighborhood?’”

Larry laughed. “No,” he answered. “Just the pretty ones.”

“Oh,” she said, and she laughed with him, waved, and then continued walking toward the shops. Larry rolled up the window.

“É bella,” Mrs. Garandi said, using Italian for the first time since he’d known her. “É bellissima.”

The girl who admitted him to Roger Altar’s apartment on the twenty-ninth was not Agnes.

He didn’t know whether or not he expected Agnes, but he was nonetheless disappointed to find a stranger. The girl was a tall, relaxed brunette with a bored expression on her face. She wore no make-up, and a pair of brass hoop earrings decorated her ears. She was dressed entirely in black — a black sweater, black slacks, black belt, black Capezio slippers. Larry wondered if she had just come from someone’s funeral.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Larry Cole.”

“Oh, sure. Come in. The Genius is working.”

He stepped into the apartment. The place was a masterpiece of disorderly living. A pair of trousers was hung over the blue couch in the center of the room facing the bar unit. The bar itself was covered with empty bottles and unwashed glasses. A table rested near a long window wall and was covered with dirty breakfast dishes even though it was three in the afternoon. The sink was piled with last night’s dinner dishes.

For no apparent reason, a half-empty bottle of milk was under the easy chair to the left of the bar unit. Phonograph records were piled in a haphazard heap in the center of the room. A man’s shoe was on the table, and its mate was in the far corner of the room. A pair of red socks had been hung on the open door of the hi-fi setup.

“You’re the architect, huh?” the girl said.

“Yes.”

“Another genius. I’ve had geniuses up to here.” She studied Larry. “You’re not even a good-looking genius.”

“I’m not even a genius,” he answered.

“The modest ones are the worst kind,” the girl said. “My name’s Marcia.”

“How do you do?”

“Fine. Want a drink?”

“No, thank you.”

“Too early for you?”

“No.”

“What then?”

“I just don’t feel like one.”

“Mind if I have one?”

“Go right ahead.”

“Thanks.” The girl walked to the bar and poured a water glass half full of bourbon. “Choke,” she said, and she drained the glass. From somewhere in the apartment, Larry heard the sound of a typewriter. Marcia looked up, pulled a face, and said, “The Genius.”

“Want to tell him I’m here?”

“Me? If I stick my head in that room, he’ll bite it off. Not me, thanks.”

“What’s he doing?”

“That’s a stupid question, all right. Don’t you hear the typewriter?”

“I don’t know you well enough to insult you,” Larry said, “but I wish you’d cut it out.”

“Cut what out?”

“The aggression.”

“I didn’t realize you were so sensitive.”

“I’m not. Go put on some lipstick. It’ll make you feel better.”

“I feel fine the way I am, thanks.”

“How long has he been working?”

“He got out of bed at two in the morning. He’s been going ever since.”

Larry looked at the dishes on the table. “He stopped for breakfast, didn’t he?”

The girl followed Larry’s glance. “Those are yesterday’s.” She paused. “Are you his friend?”

“I don’t know,” Larry said.

“I think he’s nuts.”

“Maybe he is.”

“You think he’s a good writer?”

“I don’t know.”

“I thought Star Reach stank. As a matter of fact, I didn’t like The Debacle, either. I should have listened to the reviewers.”

“Maybe you should have.”

“Damn right I should have. When I spend money for a book, the author makes a contract to entertain me.”

“And he didn’t?”

“He let me down. I think he’s a lousy writer. The critics think so, too. I read all the reviews, every single one. In the New York area, anyway. They think he stinks. I agree with them.” She paused. “I also think he’s nuts. Or did I already say that?”

“You did.”

“That makes it doubly true.”

A door opened at the back of the apartment, and Roger Altar stepped out. “Hey, Larry,” he said, “I thought I heard you.” He came toward him, his hand extended. “When did you get here?”

“About five minutes ago,” Marcia said.

Altar blinked at the girl. “Are you still here?” he asked. “I thought you’d left.”

“I want to see how long your spurt lasts.”

“Bad way to write,” Altar said to Larry. “By inspiration, I mean. A pro sits down and bangs it out whether he’s inspired or not. Only way to make this crazy racket pay off.” He wiped a hand across his mouth. “This is the first time this has ever happened to me. I’m winding up the first draft of the new book. All of a sudden I had to get up in the middle of the night and get to the typewriter. How do you like that? Has that ever happened to you?”

“No.”

“It’s the goddamnedst feeling. I must have batted out sixty pages since last night, and I’m still going strong. It’s going to be a great book, great! Have you had breakfast yet?”

“And lunch,” Larry said.

“Yeah? What time is it, anyway?”

“It’s past three.”

“No kidding? How do you like that?” Altar rubbed his hand across his chin lazily. He looked very contented and very weary and almost out of touch. “I need a shave,” he said. “I’m also hungry.” He seemed to discover that he was wearing a pajama top with his trousers, and he began unbuttoning it. “Turn your back, honey,” he said to Marcia and then began chuckling. “A great book, Larry, best I’ve ever done. I can feel it right down in my bones, where it counts. Oh, Jesus, it’s going to be magnificent!”

“You look excited,” Larry said.

“I am excited. The words are running off me like sweat in August. I can’t believe I’m writing them, they’re so terrific. I’m not that good.”

“See?” Marcia said. “He admits it.”

Altar looked at her steadily, wearily, his eyes taking in the black costume. “Who’s she playing?” he asked Larry. “The Flowers-for-the-Dead Vendor in Streetcar?”

“He thinks he’s literate,” Marcia said. “He’s the most ignorant genius I ever met.”

“Oh, baby, go fly a kite,” Altar said gently, as if he didn’t have the energy to argue.

“He was lucky with two books, so he thinks he’s an important American writer.”

“I am an important American writer,” Altar said, as if the question didn’t even need discussion.

“The critics blasted both your books,” Marcia said. “I know. I read the reviews.”

“Critics,” Altar said, shrugging.

“They said you wrote commercial tripe.”

Altar shrugged and said nothing.

“They said you wrote for the Hollywood machine.”

Again Altar shrugged, but he no longer seemed to be shrugging from weariness. He seemed instead to be withering before the onslaught of Marcia’s quotations. Altar did not deny the accuracy of the quotations, and Larry instantly realized the girl was not inventing the reviews. But he had not expected Altar to shrink before them. He kept waiting for Altar to strike back at the girl, but he was seemingly quite defenseless in the face of her verbal barrage. He had taken off the pajama top, and he stood now like a shaggy giant dancing bear being whipped by an irate owner.

“One review said, ‘Roger Altar has set the wheels of his fiction factory turning to produce a new vehicle for Tab Hunter.’ Do you remember that one? I got a kick out of that one.”

“Well, critics,” Altar said, retreating still further.

Larry watched him. All of the man’s enthusiasm seemed to have vanished. He had come out of his office feeling confident and sure and excited and weary with honest sweat. The girl had punctured all that, and he stood deflated and unsure now, and he seemed to have completely forgotten that Larry was in the room.

“The one I love the best,” the girl said, as if she were telling a favorite joke, “is the one that started ‘The Debacle is aptly titled.’ That was priceless! A classic!”

“Critics don’t know,” Altar said quietly. “What do they know?” He shrugged aimlessly.

“They said you wrote with facile ease, but they don’t think you have anything to say. Not a thing to say.”

“I have things to say,” Altar said.

“They don’t think so.”

Altar kept staring at the girl. “I have things to say,” he said more firmly.

“Then why don’t you say them?” Marcia goaded. “Why do you write commercial tripe?”

“I don’t write commercial tripe,” Altar said, and he seemed at last to be getting angry. “The critics don’t know. If you believe them, you go nuts. I don’t listen to the critics.”

Fight her back, Larry thought. Come on. Altar, fight her.

“The critics know what they’re talking about,” Marcia said, grinning. “They’re trained to—”

“They don’t know anything!” Altar said angrily.

“You’re dying because the critics pan your books,” Marcia said. “It kills you. It’s destroying you!”

Altar pulled back his shoulders and thrust out his unshaven jaw. Give it to her, Larry thought. Tell her!

“I cried all the way to the bank!” Altar shouted.

Larry blinked at him, disappointed. And then he realized that Altar had picked up the only weapon available to him. Success was lying at his feet, and he had picked up Success and wielded it like a club. And having used it, he seemed embarrassed by the ineffectiveness of his ultimate weapon. He would not meet Larry’s eyes. He turned his back to Marcia and, with a great show of bravado, stamped barefooted to the refrigerator. He pulled out a package of sliced American cheese, tore off the cellophane wrapping, folded six slices of cheese in half, and stuffed them into his mouth.

“Critics,” he said. “I eat them like the pieces of cheese they are!”

The room was silent. Altar chewed his food. The girl went to the bar and poured herself another bourbon.

“I brought you some rough sketches,” Larry said.

“Oh, yeah.”

“We had an appointment for three, remember?”

“I’m sorry. I forgot.” Altar opened a bottle of milk, tilted it to his mouth, and began drinking. He wiped away the milk mustache with the back of his hand and then said, “I can’t talk sketches today. I’m too busy.”

“Okay,” Larry said. “Look them over and we’ll discuss them when I get back.”

“Back from where?” Altar asked, interested.

“My wife and I are going to Puerto Rico.”

“What the hell for? That’s the asshole of the Antilles.”

“Business,” Larry said. “I’m on my way now to pick up the plane tickets.”

“Okay, don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Altar turned to the girl. “Listen, Critic,” he said, “instead of guzzling my booze, why don’t you clean up the place a little? It looks like a pigsty.” He turned back to Larry. “She’s trying to make me live like her goddamn stereotype of a writer. She knows too many Greenwich Village phonies.”

“I’ll get around to cleaning it,” she said.

“Oh, forget it,” Altar said. “Pack a bag and go live with a reviewer, why don’t you?”

“I like it here.”

“You’re the most unimaginative, insulting bitch I’ve ever met in my life,” Altar said.

“I inspired your creative spurt,” Marcia said.

“Sure. There isn’t a woman alive who doesn’t believe her body is a deep soulful well from which a terribly stupid man grabs a handful of divine inspiration. Well, baby, I hate to disillusion you, but—”

“Don’t,” Marcia said.

“I’m going,” Larry interrupted. “I’ll call you when I get back.”

“Okay,” Altar said. He led Larry to the front door, and then added, “Give my regards.”

“To whom?” Larry asked.

And Altar, remembering the joke, suddenly kicked Larry in the seat of his pants and shouted. “Why, the governor!”

7

It was the day before Halloween, and there were pumpkins to buy.

Don would have to cut grinning faces into them — how Patrick loved to see the faces appear in the orange globes. And Indian corn, of course, to hang outside the house next to the mailbox. How quickly it was Halloween, how quickly summer had died.

She shuddered.

She did not like the word Halloween. The word to her meant terror, the boy chasing behind her, hitting her with the chalked stick, shouting, “Halloween! Halloween!” and then circling around in front of her, still shouting, the chalked stick pointed and sharp. She could remember it clearly, she had been twelve, two years after her grandfather’s death, could remember running, and then stumbling, and suddenly the sharp penetrating end of the stick hitting her cheek, and the blood, and the boy’s eyes going wide with sudden fright.

They had taken two stitches to close the curiously shaped miniature X on her right cheek. The cross I bear, she mused, but she did not smile. And even the more timid boys on other Halloweens had chased her with stockings full of flour, marking up her clothes. Halloween meant terror to her, huge bonfires in the Manhattan streets, the kids rushing to the leaping flames with their booty; old chairs, crates, bundles of newspapers, signs ripped from grocery stores; dancing around the fire like hobgoblins, their watch caps pulled over their eyes and their ears, or some of the boys wearing their leather pilot’s helmets, the goggles pulled down against the billowing smoke, glowing weirdly in the light of the fire. Terror. She did not like the word Halloween.

Pumpkins, she told herself, and Indian corn. And candy for the kids who come to the front door. And she’d better get some of those little trick-or-treat bags to put the candy in. God, there wasn’t a holiday now that didn’t cost a fortune.

She walked with her head bent, watching the pavement.

There was a wind, and her head was ducked partially in defense against it. But even if it were summertime, she’d have walked with her eyes cast downward. She had grown used to automobiles slowing and offering her rides, had grown used to the whistles from truck drivers, and so she walked now with her own thoughts, erecting the shell of a false indifference around her. She kept one hand in her coat pocket. The other held the flap of her collar against her scarred right cheek. She wore long dangling earrings, and a kerchief of bright blue, and her heels made hurried chatter with the pavement.

When she heard the automobile horn, she did not look up. The car pulled to the curb just as she was about to cross the street. It stopped, and then she heard the horn again. Slowly she raised her eyes.

She recognized the Dodge almost instantly, and she was surprised by the smile which appeared on her mouth. She realized abruptly that she didn’t even know this man’s name, except as “Chris’s father.” He was smiling, and his eyes in the sunlit interior of the car were almost black, and she found herself looking at his face for the first time and thinking it was not a handsome face, except for the eyes. The eyes were a deep, warm brown.

“Hi, Maggie,” he said, and the name stabbed deep within her because no one but her grandfather had ever called her Maggie.

“My name is Margaret,” she said, aware that her voice had trembled a little, unable to hide her resentment, and remembering that he had told her she wasn’t so pretty, allowing the memory to add to her resentment.

“Mine’s Larry,” he said. “Larry Cole. Pleased to meet you. Want to see something terrific?”

She wanted to say, “No, I don’t!” firmly and emphatically. But there was an eager boyishness on his face, shining in his eyes, and she got the feeling that this was very important to him, and she could not for the life of her burst his bubble.

“What is it?” she asked.

“For Allhallows’ Eve,” he told her. He held up a forefinger. “One moment, please,” he said, and then he ducked below the window of the car.

She waited, thinking, Allhallows’ Eve, and suddenly his face appeared at the window, but it wasn’t his face. He was wearing a grotesque rubber mask, an exaggerated Neanderthal man thing that caused her to reel back in shock for a moment. The mask had a massive nose, and thick livery lips, and matted black hair clinging to the forehead. He began laughing behind the mask, and she laughed too, and then he pulled the mask from his face, and his eyes sought hers for approval.

“Isn’t it great?”

“Where’d you get it?”

“Up at the center. I couldn’t resist it.” He was out of breath now. He glanced at the mask and said, “Go on, say it.”

“Say what?”

“Put on the mask again.”

She laughed. “No, don’t. It’s better this way.”

“You walking to the center?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“You’ll freeze. Come on, I’ll give you a lift.”

“No, I don’t mind walking.”

“Okay,” he said. He turned back to the wheel, seemed about to go, and then came to the window again. “I’m going where it’s warm.”

“Where’s that?”

“Puerto Rico.”

“Really?” she asked, her eyes wide.

“Day after tomorrow.” He paused. “Will you miss me?”

She didn’t answer. She felt very warm all at once, and she turned her head from the car.

“Maggie, will you miss me?”

“Don’t call me Maggie!” she snapped.

He smiled, and she detected nervousness in the smile, withdrawal. He sat in seeming indecision for a moment, and then he said, “I’ll talk to you when I get back.”

“What about?”

He grinned uneasily. “Oh, I don’t know. There must be lots of things to talk about.”

“Well, you think of some,” she said. “I’ve got shopping to do.”

She began walking away from the car, and behind her she heard him say, “So long, Maggie,” and then she heard the sound of the gunned engine, and the tires grasping the asphalt. She did not turn to look at the car. She ducked her head against the wind again and continued walking, and, oddly, she could think only, Maggie, Allhallows’ Eve.

“I don’t know why you have to fly,” Mrs. Cole said sweetly. “There are other ways of going places, Lawrence. It’s not necessary to fly.”

“It takes a little longer the other way,” Larry’s father said, “but what’s the big rush?” He puffed on his pipe and then said, “You’d better put the pants on the hanger first, don’t you think, son?”

“Yes, I guess so,” Larry mumbled. He cast an eye about the living room and wondered how in God’s name such a simple thing had been turned into a brawling farce. Eve had arranged to divide the children among their grandparents while they were gone, and that was fine; he had never known Eve to manage badly. Chris would stay with her folks, and David with Larry’s, and that too had been sound judgment since she’d apportioned the kids according to the grandparents they favored. But she’d asked only her dad to drive out to pick up the kids. Instead, both families had driven out en masse in two separate cars so that the living room was filled to brimming while they packed their bags.

“Did you pack your cuff links?” Eve asked.

“Yes.”

“You read about so many plane crashes,” Mrs. Cole said sweetly. “Why do you have to fly, Lawrence?”

“Mom, everybody flies,” Larry said patiently.

“Just catch me in a plane,” Mr. Cole said. He shook the dottle out of his pipe and turned to Mr. Harder. “You ever been in a plane, Alex?”

“They don’t scare me a bit,” Mr. Harder said.

“They don’t scare me, either,” Mr. Cole said. “But have you ever been in one?”

“Nope,” Mr. Harder replied, chuckling. “And never hope to, either, Phil.”

Larry could never understand how his father managed to leave the business whenever anything unimportant came along. Just ask him when it was a matter of life or death and then the shoe-store couldn’t possibly be left in the hands of inexperienced clerks. But take a thing like this, where he was about as necessary as a sixth finger, and there was good old Dad giving advice about airplane travel. Silently, he thanked God that his brother Pete was married and practicing law in Pennsylvania. Otherwise he was sure he’d have trotted along for the festivities, too.

Unfortunately, Eve’s twin sisters were not married. Unfortunately, they were both seventeen, entering their senior year at high school, and very proud of the fact that they at last had breasts, the lack of which up to six months before had caused Eve’s mother to seek the advice of a specialist at Murray Hill Hospital. As was characteristic with Mrs. Harder, she was now disturbed because her daughters wore sweaters which were three sizes too small.

“Eve never dressed that way,” she was fond of repeating. “Eve was sensible. Sensible.”

The twins, Lois and Linda, managed to show a total disregard for anyone’s wishes but their own in the matter. The sweaters they chose continued to be snug and emphatic. Mr. Harder, florid and puffy at fifty-two, was somewhat embarrassed by them. But he could remember the Sloppy Joes which Eve had worn to high school, and he wondered now which was the lesser of the two evils.

“When I get big, can I go to Puerto Rico?” David asked.

“Sure,” Larry said. “Mom, could you take the kids for a walk or something? We’re never going to be packed in time.”

“You should have packed last night,” Mrs. Harder said. “I don’t know why you two always leave things to the last minute.”

“Some neighbors came in last night,” Eve said.

“What time is your plane leaving?” Mrs. Cole asked.

“I’d love to be an airline hostess,” Linda said. “Come here, Chris. Let me blow your nose.”

“It isn’t running,” Chris said.

“What time, Lawrence?” Mrs. Cole asked again.

“Four-thirty,” Larry said, and his mother shook her head and clucked her tongue as if he had just announced the exact moment of his death.

“You’ve got plenty of time,” Mr. Cole said.

“We’re supposed to check in at three-thirty.”

“They always give you more time than you actually need,” Mr. Harder said.

“Don’t you like boats, Lawrence?”

“What, Mom?”

“Boats. Couldn’t you take a boat?”

“Mom, we’ve only got a week. We’re not going to Staten Island, you know. We’re going all the way to Puerto Rico.”

“Don’t get sarcastic,” Mrs. Cole said. “Boats go to Puerto Rico, too.”

“You can’t tell them anything, Louise,” Mrs. Harder said. “They know it all.”

“Well, really,” Eve interrupted, “there is a time element involved.”

“One week,” Larry repeated. “That’s all we’ve got.”

“Ike and Mike,” Mrs. Cole said. “They think alike.”

“Eve, did you take the alarm?”

“Do we need it?”

“I don’t trust hotel switchboard operators.”

“It’s in the bedroom. I’ll get it.”

Eve left the living room, and Lois followed her. She was unplugging the electric clock when Lois said, “Do you think this sweater is too tight, Sis?”

“Well,” Eve said judiciously, “it does make you look a little busty.”

“I am busty,” Lois said.

“Darling,” Eve said, “you’re leggy, too, but you don’t run around in your panties, do you?”

“I guess not,” Lois said dubiously. She studied Eve for a moment and then asked, “What’s it like? Being married, I mean?”

“It’s fun,” Eve said.

“Do you have to do whatever he asks you?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, in bed.”

“Lois!”

“A boy kissed me with his mouth open last Saturday night,” Lois said.

“What did you do?”

“I opened mine, too. It was better.”

“I think maybe you’d better have a long talk with Mama,” Eve said, sighing.

“Mama doesn’t know anything,” Lois said. “All she knows how to say is ‘Never, never, never sit on a boy’s lap.’ What’s so terrible about sitting on a boy’s lap?”

“She used to tell me that, too,” Eve said, laughing. “And I haven’t yet figured it out.”

“Did you ever?” Lois asked. “Before you got married, I mean?”

“Sit on a boy’s lap?”

“No. You know.”

“Lois...”

“I mean, with Larry.”

“That’s none of your business,” Eve said. “Listen, when I get back we’d better have a talk.” She wrapped the wire around the clock, sighed, and as she walked out of the bedroom, mumbled, “If it isn’t too late by then.” She handed Larry the clock.

“Take out insurance at the airport, Lawrence,” Mrs. Cole said. “Do you hear me?”

“Will that stop the plane from crashing, Mom?”

“Don’t get smart,” Mrs. Cole said. “I used to change your diapers.”

Mr. Cole laughed and said, “Leave him alone, Louise. He can take care of himself.”

“Certainly,” she said. “That’s why he’s flying in an airplane!”

“Airplanes aren’t really too bad, Louise,” Mrs. Harder said, and Linda turned to look up at her mother in surprise.

Of the two girls, even though they were identical twins, Linda was perhaps the prettier. It was difficult to realize this until you’d known the girls for some time. In the beginning, they seemed absolutely alike, and their sameness nearly drove you to distraction. Later on, you recognized the subtle differences in their faces. Lois’s face belonged to the first born and was more perfectly formed, as if it were the master mold from which both faces were cast. But there was about Linda a quality of serenity which Lois would never possess, a tranquillity which quietly contradicted her sister’s vivaciousness and actually made her prettier.

Combing Chris’s hair now, she said, “You’re very lucky, Eve. I wish I could go.”

Eve turned to her only briefly, but their eyes met in that moment, and they exchanged gentle, almost tender smiles.

“He always wanted to fly,” Mrs. Cole said. “When the war came, I thought he’d drive me crazy. He’d come home from school every day and stick that Air Corps application under my nose, begging me to sign it.”

“Did you?”

“I should say not!”

“I know a boy who’s in the Air Force,” Lois said, coming from the bedroom. “He’s a rear gunner.”

“I won’t let her date servicemen,” Mrs. Harder said.

“That’s very wise, Patricia,” Mrs. Cole said.

“I wouldn’t let Eve date them, either.”

“I was only thirteen when the war started!” Eve said.

“That’s old enough,” Mrs. Harder said. “You were very developed for your age.”

“She’s still developed,” Larry said from the suitcase. “What time is it, hon?”

“I just gave you the clock,” Eve said.

Larry started to look at the disconnected electric clock and then pulled a face. “Dad?” he asked, and both Mr. Harder and Mr. Cole looked at their watches simultaneously.

“It’s almost two,” Mr. Harder said.

The telephone in the bedroom rang. Larry turned and said, “Who’s that?” Impatiently, he strode out of the room.

“He gets very nervous,” Mrs. Cole said. “He was always like that. Peter is calm, but Lawrence is the nervous one.”

“Well, this is a big thing for him,” Mrs. Harder said.

“Do you remember when he won the prize?” Mrs. Cole asked. “I thought he would jump through the ceiling.”

“He’s a good architect,” Linda said to no one, and again Eve turned to her tenderly.

Larry came out of the bedroom, a disgusted look on his face.

“Who was it?” Eve asked.

“The airport,” Larry said. “Our flight’s been delayed. Check-in time is now four-fifteen.”

“Delayed?” Mrs. Cole asked quickly. “Why?”

“Some mechanical difficulties,” Larry said.

“Oh, my God! I knew it!”

“Now, Louise, Louise...”

“Mom,” Larry said, exasperated, “we’re flying and that’s that!” He turned to Eve. Gently, he said, “Honey, can you make some coffee or something?”

“I’ll do it,” Linda said, rising from her cross-legged position on the rug.

“Where’s my watch?” Larry asked.

“On the dresser. Your watch, wallet and keys are all laid out.”

“The traveler’s checks?”

“Those too.”

“And the checkbook?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll take a hundred in cash in my wallet, honey,” Larry said, “and I’ll pack the checkbook and traveler’s checks in the suitcase that locks. Okay?”

“Fine,” Eve said absently. “Linda, honey, the coffee is in the cabinet over the stove. The instant.”

“I see it, Eve,” Linda called from the kitchen.

“Is that what you’re wearing on the plane?” Lois asked, studying Eve’s simply tailored skirt and blouse.

“Yes. With the jacket to it. Why?”

“Nothing,” Lois said. She paused. “Haven’t you got anything dressier?”

“Darling,” Mrs. Harder said, “your sister doesn’t need any advice on how to dress.”

“I just thought for a plane ride, something dressier might—”

“Perhaps you’d like to lend her one of your shrunken sweaters.”

“Mama,” Lois said flatly, “have you ever seen yourself in that red cocktail dress?”

“What?”

“You’re half naked in it,” Lois said. “I’d be ashamed to—”

“Now that’s enough of that, young lady,” Mr. Harder said firmly.

“You’re lucky you never had girls, Louise,” Mrs. Harder said.

“Boys are no picnic,” Mrs. Cole said.

Eve very softly, said, “I’d like a little girl.”

Packing his suitcase beside her, Larry whispered, “I’ll see if that can be arranged,” and Eve chuckled quietly.

“Does everybody want coffee?” Linda asked from the kitchen.

“I don’t want you girls drinking coffee,” Mrs. Harder said. “Eve, darling, don’t you have any milk?”

“Of course we’ve got milk,” Eve said, annoyed by the negative assumption.

“Some milk for you and Lois, darling,” Mrs. Harder called to the kitchen.

“You’d better give the children something, too,” Mrs. Cole said. “God knows what time they’ll be eating tonight.”

Mrs. Harder took Eve aside and whispered, “Did you pack everything?”

“Yes, Mama.”

“I mean, did you pack everything, darling?”

“I packed everything.”

“Everything? Do you know what I mean?”

“Mama,” Eve said patiently, “everything.”

“All right,” Mrs. Harder said, nodding. And then, unwilling to let it go, she added, “You know what I mean, don’t you?”

“Yes, Mama. I packed the damn—”

“Coffee!” Linda shouted from the kitchen.

At the airport, David burst into tears when Eve kissed him, and Chris shouted, “I want to kiss Daddy, too. I want to kiss Daddy.” Larry pulled Eve through the loading gate as the uniformed attendant stretched out his arm to hold back the well-wishers waiting for the plane’s departure. He bent down and kissed his son under the man’s outstretched blue sleeve, and then he stood up and shouted “So long! We’ll see you in a week!” and together he and Eve ran across the field, the wash from the airplane’s propellers lashing at the coats they wore, up the ramp and into the plane where a smiling hostess greeted them. There was the sudden smell of human beings, the muted hum of the engines inside the ship, the long walk down the center aisle, squeezing into their seats past a little Puerto Rican man who held a guitar on his lap. There were the lighted signs at the front of the airplane, “No Smoking” and “Fasten Your Seat Belts,” and then there was the sudden angry roar of the engines, and Eve leaning over him to wave out of the curtained window, and then the plane taxiing across the field, gathering speed, the buildings rushing past in a blinding whitish-gray blur, the plane trembling with the power of its engines, and the little Puerto Rican man praying quietly in Spanish.

And then they were airborne.

8

He awoke. For a moment he didn’t know where he was. He sat up, blinked, and then remembered he was in Puerto Rico.

This was the Caribe Hilton. The unfamiliar hum in the room was the air conditioner, and the unfamiliar light was the tropical sun filtering through the drapes on the wall-length windows which faced the ocean.

Quietly, so that he would not awaken Eve in the other bed, he rose and went to the dresser. He lighted a cigarette and then tiptoed to the windows and peeked around one end of the drapes. The room was on the sixth floor of the hotel. There was a little balcony outside the window. He and Eve had sat on that balcony last night before going to bed.

The plane had put down at International Airport at 12:30 A.M., Puerto Rican time. They’d disembarked and waited for their luggage, only to discover it was coming down on a later plane, and then caught a cab to the hotel. By the time they’d registered and asked the desk clerk if they couldn’t get something to eat, it was close to 1:45. At 2:00 A.M. a bellhop knocked on their door. He explained that he had got them sandwiches and coffee from the gambling casino, the grill was closed, he hoped they would understand, he hoped it would be all right. Larry had tipped him extravagantly and then wheeled the tray onto the balcony. Ravenously, he and Eve devoured the food and drank the entire pot of coffee. Then, weary and satiated, they had sat back to smoke a last cigarette before turning in, the Puerto Rican sky peppered with stars above them.

Now, at eleven-fifteen in the morning, Larry looked through the window and felt wonderfully glad to be alive.

Far below him, the hotel’s amoeba-shaped pool gleamed a bright indigo in the sun. There were girls around the pool, and sailors in their summer whites, and gaily colored canvas chairs and luxuriant palms. Beyond the pool, directly opposite the vertical façade of the hotel, the white and sprawling beach encircled a calm blue lagoon in a huge overgrown C. Off to the right, where the sea wall blocked the lagoon, the ocean leaped against the boulders in splendid white and green fury.

“Eve,” he said.

“Mmmm?”

“Eve, come look at this.”

“What time is it?”

“Eleven-twenty.”

“Chris, up yet?”

“Wh—?” He grinned. “Yes, I’ve already taken him to the bus stop.”

“Good. Good. Put up the coffee?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

“Honey?”

“Mmmm?”

“Watch.”

He drew the drapes open quickly, and sunlight splashed into the room. She turned her head away and then blinked and then sat upright, and then rubbed her eyes, smiled foolishly, and said, “Oh. Puerto Rico.” Sleepily, stretching lithely, she put her hands to the back of her neck and then moved them upward, lifting the black hair, letting it fall again in a glittering ebony cascade.

“Come look,” Larry said.

“I haven’t got anything on. Did our suitcases arrive yet?”

“I haven’t checked. Come on.”

“Larry, I’m naked.”

“So what? I’m in my shorts.”

“Did you sleep in those?”

“My pajamas are in the suitcases someplace.”

“Give me your shirt,” she said.

“A lot that’s going to cover.”

“It’ll do. Give it to me.”

He handed her the shirt and then asked, “Do you want the cuff links?”

“Ha-ha,” she said. She buttoned the shirt and went to the window, pulling the drape over her waist so that it hid her legs where the shirt ended. “Oh, it’s beautiful,” she said. “Did you order breakfast?”

“I just got up.”

“All right, call down and order breakfast, and then find out if the airport sent over the bags.”

He snapped a salute at her and said, “Yes, sir, right away, sir!”

“If that sun is as hot as it looks, I’ll die in the skirt I wore down.”

“Why don’t you just go out on the balcony with my shirt?”

“I would, darling, believe me,” Eve said lightly, “but then what would you wear, sweetheart?”

He slapped her on the rump and went to the phone. He watched her while she dressed, talking first to Room Service and then to the Bell Captain. When he hung up, she said, “Well?”

“Breakfast’ll be up in a minute, Puerto Rican time.”

“The bags?”

“They haven’t arrived yet.”

“Well, for Pete’s sake!” she said, and then went into the bathroom. When the breakfast arrived, Larry asked the bellhop to wheel the tray onto the balcony. He signed the check, tipped him, and then went to join Eve, who was already sitting at the table.

“Do you want some coffee first?” she asked.

“Leave it in the pot until I’m ready for it.”

“What did you order?”

“A veritable feast.” He began poking around the tray, lifting napkins and covers. “Orange juice, corn flakes, ahhh, hot corn muffins, coffee.”

“No eggs?”

“I didn’t feel eggy.”

“How’s the juice?”

“Haven’t tasted it yet.”

They raised their glasses, and Larry clinked his against Eve’s. “Here’s to a wonderful stay on the Enchanted Island,” he toasted.

“Is that what they call it?”

“Yes.” He drank some of the juice.

“How is it?”

“Canned.”

“No! Are you joking?”

“I’m serious.”

“Oh, hell.” Eve thought for a moment. “Call down for a grapefruit, will you?”

“Oh, come on, Eve. Drink the juice.”

“Can’t you call down?”

“Sure I can.” He paused. “Do you really want me to?”

“Well, you know how I feel about canned juice.”

“Yeah, but...” He drank a little more of his own juice. “It’s not so terrible. It’s good and cold.”

“Here. You can have mine.”

“You want me to call down?”

“No, never mind.”

“I will if you want me to.”

“No, it’s all right.”

“It’s just that I can’t see getting a bellhop to come up here just to bring a grapefruit.” He paused. “I will if you want me to.”

“No.” She sliced a corn muffin and began buttering it.

“Aren’t you having any cereal?”

“No.”

“Shall I call down for the grapefruit?”

“No. We don’t want to overwork the bellhops.”

“If you’re going to get angry—”

“No, Larry, honestly. By the time he got here, the coffee’d be cold, anyway. Forget it. I’m not angry or even annoyed.” She paused. “But the longer I live with you, the more I think I don’t know you at all.”

Larry narrowed his eyes. In a low, sinister voice, he said, “You think I’m your husband, don’t you?”

“What?” Eve asked.

He laughed evilly and continued to watch her. “I inhabited your husband’s body a long time ago.”

“Oh, Larry...”

“The Martians are afoot,” he said. “And now that you know, you still can’t stop us.”

“I believe you,” she said, shaking her head. “This coffee is strong.”

“But good.”

“If you like it strong.”

“I like strong coffee and weak women.”

“I think I resent your use of the plural,” Eve said. She drank more coffee and then lighted a cigarette. “What’s on the agenda for today?”

“I have to make a half-dozen phone calls, people Baxter asked me to see. I don’t imagine I’ll get much else done today. I suppose we can just relax.”

“Oh, good. I was hoping you’d say that. Can we go into San Juan later?”

“If you like.”

“I guess I won’t trade you in after all,” Eve said, and she leaned over the table and kissed him quickly on the cheek.

At one o’clock a bellhop brought up their bags. As soon as he was gone, Larry unlocked the one lockable valise and began a frantic search for the traveler’s checks. When he found them, he sighed, held them up, and said, “I was getting a little worried.”

“What for?” Eve asked. “When you’re stranded in a strange land and can’t speak the language, who needs money?”

Larry laughed. “Want to take a swim?”

“Are all your calls made?”

“All but one, and I can make that later. I’ve got two appointments for tomorrow, and I also got us a dinner invite for tonight. Guy named Hebbery.”

“Good. Then let’s swim.”

They changed into their swim suits and took the service elevator down. Following the signs, they walked through the cool basement corridor and emerged in the hot Puerto Rican sunlight. They found chairs for themselves, dropped their towels, and went to the deep end of the pool. Larry dove in first. Eve followed with a clean dive, surfacing again and then breaking into a strong, fast crawl. She touched the tile lip at the shallow end, reversed her body and — as if she were in a high-school swimming match-started back toward the deep water. Larry watched her, pleased with the way she swam. He came up the steps, waited for her, and handed her a towel when she came dripping from the pool.

“Cigarette?” he said.

“Yes. That was good. I feel all tingly.”

She pulled off the cap, and her black hair tumbled to her shoulders. Larry put two cigarettes into his mouth, lighted them, and handed one to Eve.

“Mmm,” she said, inhaling. “Now let’s go back to the chairs and just toast for a while.”

They soaked up sun for a half hour. At the end of that time they both conceded it was a treacherous sun and moved into the shade of a palm. Eve’s lip was beaded with perspiration. She lay in the chair limply and said, “I feel as if I’d been flogged.”

“It’s hot,” he said. He was propped up on his elbows, looking toward the breakwater. “I wonder what that is.”

“What?”

“Over there. All the commotion.”

Eve rolled over. She squinted into the sun. “Looks as if they’re taking pictures.”

“Let’s walk over,” he said.

Leisurely, they strolled to the breakwater. A tripod was set up facing the ocean. Two young girls, a redhead and a blonde, smiled prettily at the man behind the camera.

“She’s a Vogue model,” Eve whispered. “I recognized her.”

“Which one?”

“The redhead.”

“She’s pretty.”

“She photographs beautifully,” Eve said, “but I’m a little disappointed. She’s very thin.”

“I don’t think so.”

A woman wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat went over to the girls and adjusted their dresses. She said something to the photographer then, and both girls smiled more broadly, holding their poses.

“The dresses are pinned in the back with clothes pins,” Eve said. “So that no wrinkles will show in the front.”

They watched in silence for a while. The photographer, the models, the woman in the straw hat, went blithely about their business.

“That sun is beginning to get me again,” Eve said. “Can we go back to the shade?”

“I want to watch a little,” Larry said. “It’s interesting.”

“The photography or the redhead?” Eve asked.

“Oh, come on.”

She looked at him curiously and said, “Well, I’ll be under the palm when you’ve had enough.”

“All right.”

She looked at him again, the same curious expression on her face, and then she turned and walked back to the beach chair.

Larry’s two Saturday appointments were with men who were willing to accommodate him even though they did not normally work on Saturdays. The first was at the Autoridad Sobre Hogares de Puerto Rico in Rio Piedras.

With a man named Fiente, Larry discussed the basic minimum housing needs as experienced in the island’s public housing program. He approached the problem of factory housing the way he would approach any architectural problem. He wanted to use space in a way that would be satisfactory both functionally and aesthetically to the people who would occupy that space. And whereas Baxter was footing the bill, Larry nonetheless considered the Puerto Rican factory worker his client.

Fiente was an intelligent, farsighted man struggling with perhaps the biggest problem on the island: slum clearance. He spoke enthusiastically of his own program and of the strides they’d made in eliminating the fanguitos. At the same time he showed grateful appreciation for incoming industries which considered housing a basic component of their factory operation.

Larry talked with him for almost three hours. He did not speak a word of Spanish, and he discovered that talking to a man who spoke only hesitant English was a trying task. The long pauses while the mind searched for a translation, the mispronunciations, the monosyllabic exchange of ideas, the limiting of oneself to a basic vocabulary in deference to the man struggling with one’s language made communication a grueling experience. He was fatigued when he left Fiente for his appointment at the Planning Board in San Juan. But he thanked him warmly for his time and stepped out of the office into a sudden Puerto Rican shower.

At the Planning Board, he spoke to a man named Miguel Dominguez. Again, in their discussion of materials which would be most satisfactory and most economical for the proposed development, the language complication stood between them like a solid stone wall. They talked of lumber and cement and doors and windows and crushed stone and pipe and floor tiles and interior and exterior paint and galvanized iron sheets and sand. And if simple conversation with Fiente had been difficult, the problem of translating “galvanized iron sheets” from the Spanish was almost insurmountable. Larry was anxious to get back to the Caribe and the simple, sweet, clean American English Eve spoke.

As he was leaving, Dominguez said, “I enjoy your visit, Señor Cole.”

“Thank you,” Larry said. “I enjoyed talking to you.”

“When you arrive, I think perhaps is Tyrone Power. My secretary come in an’ say, ‘There is han’some American wants to see you.’” Dominguez grinned. Left-handedly, he added, “They don’ see many mainlan’ visitors here.”

Larry was tired enough to have taken the remark as an insult. But Dominguez was smiling, and he sensed that no offense had been intended. The man, in his own confused English way, was offering a compliment. He took his hand, thanked him again for his time, and left.

When he got back to the hotel room, Eve had already showered and was lying on one of the beds resting. “How’d it go?” she asked, not opening her eyes.

“Pretty rough. Why didn’t I take Spanish in high school?”

“Did you get to see the site?”

“Not yet. We’ll discuss that with Hebbery tonight. Maybe he’ll take us out there tomorrow.”

“Out where?”

“Vega Alta. That’s the factory town.”

“Is it far from San Juan?”

“I don’t know. Hebbery’ll tell us all about it.”

Eve nodded. “I’m going to catch a nap,” she said. “Wake me when you’re almost ready, will you?”

“And then spend the next half hour waiting for you.”

“Oh, the hell with you,” Eve said, and she rolled over.

Grinning, he went into the bathroom to shower.

The room phone rang at 7:20 while Eve was still making up at the dressing table in her bra and half-slip. Larry, fully dressed, answered it.

“Cole?”

“Yes?”

“Frank Hebbery. We’re a little early.”

“Where are you?”

“Downstairs in the lobby. You dressed?”

“I am, but Eve isn’t.”

“Want to join the wife and I for a drink?”

“Just a minute.” He covered the mouthpiece. “Hebbery. Wants me to come down for a drink while you dress. Okay?”

“Sure.”

“Fine,” Larry said into the phone.

“We’ll be in the outdoor bar. Do you know it?”

“I’ll find it,” Larry said. “Give me a few minutes.”

Hebbery was a small, thin man with piercing brown eyes and lank brown hair. He wore a tan linen suit which was meticulously pressed, and he sported a neatly clipped mustache under his nose. He stood up the moment Larry entered the bar, and he walked toward him quickly.

“Cole?” he said.

“Hebbery?”

“Yes. Glad to know you. Come on over to the bar. How do you like Puerto Rico?”

“Fine, so far.”

“Bueno,” Hebbery said. “Come on, I’ll introduce you to the wife.”

They walked to the bar, an oval island in the center of the open patio. Easy chairs were pulled up to the bar, and the bar was of a height to permit comfortable drinking while seated in the low chairs. A plump brunette in a white dress sat at the bar toying with a Tom Collins. Hebbery walked directly to her and said, “Honey, this is Larry Cole. Mr. Cole, my wife Anne.”

“How do you do?” Anne said.

“Mrs. Hebbery,” Larry said.

“Oh, make it Anne.”

“Anne it is.”

“Bueno,” Hebbery said. “What are you drinking, Cole?”

“Make it Larry.”

“Bueno. And the drink?”

“Do martinis mix with the climate?”

“I wouldn’t.”

“Gin and tonic then.”

Larry pulled out one of the chairs and sat. Hebbery snapped his fingers at the bartender and said, “Mira, mira!”

“You must tell me all about New York,” Anne said. “I haven’t been there in ages.”

“How do you like Puerto Rico?” Hebbery asked. To the bartender he said, “Gin and tonic, por favor.”

“I like it fine,” Larry said. “I had a long talk today with—”

“You’ll love it,” Hebbery interrupted. “Once you’re here a while, you’ll love it. There’s no place on earth like it, believe me.”

“Well, we’ll only be staying a week.”

“That’s a shame. You hit a bad time, too. We’ve been having a little rain.”

“We’re always having a little rain,” Anne said.

Hebbery patted her knee. “Anne and I have been here for six years now. No place on earth like it.”

“Thank God,” Anne said.

“It seems very nice,” Larry said.

The bartender came over with a gin and tonic. He started to put it down before Hebbery, and Hebbery said, “No, no, alli,” and he pointed to Larry. The bartender put the drink down. “Muchas gracias,” Hebbery said, “a wonderful people here, Larry, wonderful, you can’t beat them. Poor, yes. But happy? Ah, you can’t beat them for happiness. Not anyplace on earth. How’s the drink?”

Larry tasted it. “Good,” he said.

“Bueno. You ready for another, Anne?”

“I’ll wait for Mrs. Cole. Larry, is New York—?”

“Bueno. Have you done any shopping, Larry?”

“Well, we went into San Juan yesterday.”

“Wonderful city, isn’t it? Old San Juan, I mean. Rio Piedras is another thing again. Beautiful, of course, but with none of San Juan’s charm. How did you like the old cobble-stoned streets?”

“They—”

“Built by the Spaniards, you know. Centuries ago. No automobiles then. Built for horses. Give the city an old-world flavor. Wouldn’t change it for all the tea in China. Can’t you just picture the conquistadores riding down those streets in full armor?”

“Well, I—”

“Have you been out to Morro?”

“No, we didn’t get—”

“You mustn’t miss El Morro,” Hebbery said. “A wonderful treat.”

“We’ll try not to—”

“Has Christmas shopping started in New York yet?” Anne asked.

“No, it’s a little early yet—”

“She talks as if we’re out in the middle of the Pacific someplace,” Hebbery said.

“No,” Anne replied, “we’re out in the middle of the Atlantic.”

“The Caribbean, honey,” Hebbery said. “The romantic Caribbean.”

“Yeah,” Anne said flatly.

“Here’s Eve now,” Larry said, rising and signaling to her.

She had come into the bar and paused, looking about her somewhat aloofly. He knew the manner was affected, but she nonetheless presented the portrait of a poised, self-sufficient, faintly bored young lady. She was wearing an ice-blue satin sheath, pearls at the throat.

“Excuse me,” he said, and he went to meet her. He took her hand and whispered, “Hi, beautiful.”

“Hi. Do I look all right?”

“You look very sweet.”

“That’s not what I want to hear.”

“No?”

“No. Tell me I look sexy.”

“Oh?”

“Mmm,” she said, and she smiled knowingly.

“Well! Well well.”

“Forewarned is forearmed,” Eve said. “How’s Hebbery?”

“Bueno,” he said.

“Huh?”

“Come on, we’ll join them.”

“It got nice and cool, didn’t it?” Eve said.

“Did it?” He grinned. “I thought it got warmer all at once.” He squeezed her hand and, both grinning, they walked to the bar.

9

Winter arrived on Sunday.

Like an old man coming home to die too early, it appeared grayly and suddenly on the horizon.

And while Eve and Larry Cole listened to an endless succession of “Buenos” from Frank Hebbery as he showed them through the Rain Forest in the Bosque National del Caribe, with the burning Puerto Rican sun shielded by the arch of trees; as they stood beside a cascading waterfall, the water leaping and rushing over a smooth sheer wall of rock; as they stood in the secret, shrouded silence of growth as old as time, confronted with the immensity of nature’s construction; as they stood in El Yunque on a tropical island, Margaret Gault sat in the kitchen of her Cape Cod development house 1,425 miles to the north and listened to her mother, and winter stared bleakly through the window-panes.

“I want to know what happened to you this summer,” Mrs. Wagner said.

They sat across from each other at the round pine-top kitchen table which Margaret had bought at an antique shop in New Jersey, the twenty-seven-year-old blonde, and the fifty-two-year-old blonde who was her mother.

The fifty-two-year-old blonde was a handsome woman with brown eyes that did not miss very much. She was somewhat plump, with the bosom of a matron, and there were age wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, and her chin was getting weak, and her neck was loosening in the dissolute pattern of age. But you could tell that Elizabeth Wagner had once been a beauty. You could know with certainty that she had danced the Charleston and the Bunny Hug, bound her breasts tightly in an era when boyishness was considered girlishness, so tightly that she’d almost damaged the supporting muscles but not quite, thankfully, so that they were still firm and rounded when girls got back to being girls.

Elizabeth Wagner no longer sported the natural ash-blonde hair which had been hers when she’d sampled gin from a bathtub at distillation parties, scooping it up in a teacup so that after the fourth cup the gin tasted mellowed and aged in the wood, even though it was the same horrible gut-rotting stuff which had been drunk hours before when the aging, mellowing process began. The hair now had expert care under the hands of a beautician and it combined with the brown eyes to lend a look of hardness to the woman.

She leaned across the table, her bosom on her folded arms, and hoped there was motherly concern in her eyes. But concern had gone out of those eyes a long time ago, and her daughter knew it, and so they sat, strangers who had once an eternity ago been attached with a cord through which the same rich blood has surged.

“What happened this summer?” Mrs. Wagner said, and Margaret watched her and thought, I would no more tell you what happened this summer than I would tell the milkman.

“Lots of things,” she said. “There were parties and barbecues. You know how it is in a small development.”

“You know what I mean, Margaret. You know exactly what I mean. Don’t start telling me about parties and barbecues. I’m not interested in them.”

“What are you interested in, Mother?”

She had stopped calling her “Mom” or “Ma” or “Mama” on the day her grandfather died. On that day her mother stopped being a blood relation and became only another woman named Elizabeth Wagner, a woman who had done something unspeakably horrible. She would have called her Elizabeth now except that it was not in her make-up to call this other woman by her first name. And so she had chosen the coldest word she knew within the limitations of the mother-daughter relationship she denied, and that word was “Mother.”

“I’m interested in you,” Mrs. Wagner said.

“You’re interested in me?” Margaret asked, and a small sardonic smile touched her mouth.

“You’re like me,” Mrs. Wagner said. “You’re my daughter. You look the way I looked when I was your age, and I can see in your eyes what was in mine. So I don’t have to hear what happened this summer. I know what happened.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

“Then don’t ask me.”

“But not the way it happened with me, Margaret, not that way at all. That’s in your eyes, too. Whatever happened wasn’t good.” Mrs. Wagner paused. “Margaret, I don’t care what you think of me, or what—”

“Mother—”

“Or what—”

“Mother, lower your voice.”

“They’re watching the football game in the parlor, the two hemen. Don’t worry about them. Listen to me, Margaret. When it happened to me, it was everything — and that’s the difference. And that’s what you’ll never be able to understand, that’s what you don’t want to understand.”

“I don’t—”

“Nothing else mattered, Margaret. Not your father, and not you, and not... not your grandfather, either. There was only—”

“I don’t want to hear it!”

“When will you want to hear it?”

“Never.”

“Don’t judge me, Margaret. I’m not to be judged by you. I’m still your mother, you know.”

“Are you?”

“Yes, damnit, I am. And I know a little more about life and living than you might imagine.”

“I imagine you know a great deal about life and living, Mother,” Margaret said.

Mrs. Wagner sighed heavily. “You’re a very cold person, Margaret,” she said. “You’re very cold.”

“I’m sorry if I—”

“Very cold. I would like to talk to you. I would really like to be able to talk to you. I used to wonder, when it happened, how I could explain it to you, how I would tell you when you were old enough to listen. That was what bothered me most, do you know? What will my daughter think, what will my daughter think? Oh, I know how you feel about what I did later, but that was a part of it too, all a part of it, and only because of what happened, only because I was so desperately—”

“Mother—”

“Margaret, I’m not a whore.”

“Mother—”

“Please understand that, Margaret. I’m not a whore. It’s important to me that you under—”

“Please, please,” Margaret said.

She looked across at her mother, and there were tears forming in Mrs. Wagner’s eyes, and for a moment she wanted to reach across the table and take her mother’s delicate hands, the wedding ring and engagement ring large on the third finger, take her mother’s hand in her own and say, “It’s all right. Please don’t cry, please.”

The moment hung suspended.

And then Margaret said, “I don’t want to hear it, Mother.”

“I hope your life is never threatened, Margaret. I hope your blood supply is never cut off.”

“I don’t want to hear it,” Margaret said, more firmly this time.

“Whatever happened to you is your business, but I can tell it meant nothing.” Mrs. Wagner studied her daughter, and her eyes were clear now. “Do you know what I wish?”

“What?”

“I wish you fall in love some day. I wish to God you really fall in love.”

“The way you did, Mother?” Margaret asked, vast sarcasm in her voice.

“Yes,” Mrs. Wagner said slowly, her eyes bright and hard, “the way I did.”

On Tuesday morning, in the town of Vega Alta, Larry saw the funeral.

The town was hot and dry and dusty. The shops lined the main street, and Larry stood on the sidewalk waiting for Hebbery, who had stepped into one of the shops to buy some “cigarillos” after showing Larry the site. There was a hush to the town, the silence of bare feet on dust-covered roads. There were few shoppers, and there was a feeling of almost complete inactivity, a laziness sponsored by the sun, washing the road and the sidewalk and the colorless, faded pastels of the shop fronts in a monotonous warm bath of sun yellow. The silence seemed suddenly to mushroom in upon itself. There had been silence before, but it deepened now as if before a sudden summer cloudburst so that Larry looked unconsciously skyward, expecting rain.

At the far end of the street, he saw the procession. It took him a moment to realize what it was, and then another moment to realize it had caused the deepening of silence.

The procession started with the little girls in white. He counted an even dozen of them, walking in pairs, each holding a bunch of flowers, walking in slow cadence, the dust rising around them on the painfully silent street. Six pairs of girls in white dresses, young girls with tan faces and brown faces, each clutching a bunch of blood-red flowers at her waist. And behind the little girls, the pallbearers marched with stiff solemnity, carrying the huge black coffin on their shoulders, the weight evenly distributed so that it appeared the coffin was not heavy at all, seemed as if they walked effortlessly beneath this huge black box which hovered magically on the air over their shoulders.

Behind the pallbearers, behind the coffin, the townspeople marched in mourning. They spread across the width of the small street, marching shoulder to shoulder with the slow, uneven beat of stragglers, their faces serious with the serious business of death.

The shoppers were lining the curbs now. Men removed their hats as the coffin passed. Storekeepers came out onto the sidewalk and closed the doors of their shops behind them. Up and down the street as the coffin passed, the wood louvered doors eased quietly shut, and the hats were lifted silently from heads, and the straggling mourners raised giant clouds of dust that sifted up silently on the bright, golden, sunlit air.

He felt like an outsider. He felt like a scientist watching bugs perform under a microscope, and he didn’t want to feel that way, didn’t want these people to think he was scientifically and coldly watching death go by, didn’t want them to think he was the proud, aloof Americano who watched dispassionately while they put a friend and neighbor to rest. He was suddenly involved in the funeral, very involved in it, suddenly feeling the pure white innocence of the flower girls, the burden the pallbearers carried, the sadness that showed on the faces of the mourners who walked in sloppy disorganization, the awkwardness of their hands hanging at their sides, knowing they did not know what to do with their hands.

And he felt suddenly on the thin edge of realizing something very important about life. Here in this dusty town, in this town gone awkwardly silent in the presence of death, here where he did not know why they were closing the doors of the shops, or who the man in the coffin was, here he felt something start in the pit of his stomach and burn there with ferocious intensity and then work its way into his blood stream like a narcotic, rushing for his brain. He tried to channel it, tried to organize it into something he could grasp, something that would have meaning. He knew there was profundity in what was happening, something very deep and very meaningful, something about values and goals, about the incompleteness and startling brevity of life, something about clinging, living, building, something about the finality of death, but he could not think, he could only feel, and his inability to make this feeling coherent, to lay it out like a floor plan, to put it into meaningful symbols and ciphers he could manipulate frustrated him so that he stood silent and thoughtful, wracked with agonizingly elusive thought as the coffin passed and the shop doors closed and the dust rose on the street washed with sunlight.

“They close the doors because a friend is passing,” Hebbery said at his elbow. “They won’t do business while a dead friend goes by. It’s respect.”

He nodded, but he was not listening to Hebbery, did not know how long Hebbery had been standing by his side. The procession had passed, and behind it was the cloud of dust. He could no longer see the little girls in white. There were only the backs of the mourners now, spread across the street like a solid wall of sorrow. He had the feeling that once they were gone, if he allowed them to go, he would never be able to understand what he’d almost grasped, what was still within reach of his grasp, if only he could organize it, hold it.

A bell was tolling somewhere in the distance. The procession was turning a corner at the end of the street, and Hebbery said, “They’re heading for the church. It’s a beautiful thing, isn’t it?”

He nodded. He wanted to say, Yes, yes, it’s a beautiful thing, but that isn’t it, help me, Hebbery, this is the whole meaning of life here if you’ll only help me put it into words.

The last of the mourners turned the corner, following the coffin. The dust settled, the shop doors opened again. The men replaced their hats. Slowly the street came back to lethargic life.

In the distance he could hear the steady, unrelenting toll of the church bell.

The plane left Isla Verde, the island’s international airport, two days later at dusk. They sat side by side, and they could see condensed moisture rising from the island’s greenery as evening set in with its cool sea winds.

Eve took his hand when the wheels left the ground, and she did not let go of it until the tension inside her relaxed an hour later, and then she fell asleep.

10

He walked with Chris rapidly.

He had shaved and put on his favorite woolen sports shirt. He wore it open at the throat, a sports jacket thrown over it, even though it was much too cold for such light attire. When he saw her, he smiled and then quickly pulled the smile from his face. He saw the recognition in her eyes, and he studied her face and then the ash-blonde hair and then the dangling earrings. Her eyes avoided his. Again she seemed embarrassed in his presence, and he wondered what caused the embarrassment.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi.”

They stood in silence. He was beginning to feel the cold. He should have worn a coat.

“You have a nice tan,” she said.

“Thanks.”

“It makes your eyes...” She stopped.

“Yes?”

“Brown. Browner.”

He didn’t know what to answer. He nodded, and they were silent again, and he began to anticipate the appearance of the other neighborhood women, and found himself consciously willing their late arrival.

“Did you have a nice time?” she asked,

“Yes, very nice.”

The silence closed in again. He had the feeling that the conversation was completely undirected, that neither knew where it was leading. But at the same time he felt it would run its course without conscious direction from either of them. He could not think of a single thing to say. He realized abruptly that Margaret Gault was only a passing stranger, and he wondered why he had come to the bus stop this morning.

And then he said, “Are you going shopping again?”

“No,” she said. “Why?”

“You looked dressed up.”

“No.”

The words sprang from his mouth. “When are you going again?”

He did not expect the suspicious narrowing of her eyes, or the sudden coldness in her voice. He felt instant panic and doubt when she said simply, “Why?”

“I don’t know,” he answered, backing down.

She would not allow him to retreat. The coldness was growing in her voice. Her eyes told him he was pinned to a slide, and she was going to dissect him dispassionately. “What’s so important about my going shopping?”

But he sensed, too, that the subject could have been closed by her instantly — and it had not been. The thought came to him full blown, giving him a sudden feeling of power.

“Will you be going tomorrow?” he asked.

“Maybe.” Her answer told him he had not been wrong. She did not want to close the subject. He grinned slightly, surprised by the feeling of power which was growing within him.

“What time?” he asked.

“Why?”

“Why not?” he answered quickly. “I’ll buy you a cup of coffee.”

She started to nibble at her lower lip and then stopped. Falteringly she said, “I don’t know if I’ll be going shopping tomorrow.”

“In the morning?”

“I don’t know if I have any shopping to do.”

“The afternoon?”

“I don’t know.”

“When?” he asked, his eyes full on her face. Her eyes locked with his. They stood silent, staring at each other.

And then as if she were leaping a hurdle in slow motion, she very slowly and cautiously said, “Tomorrow’s Saturday. If I do any shopping, Don’ll be with me.” She kept staring at him steadily, as if struggling to keep his complete attention, as if trying to make certain he would not miss a word she was saying. “My husband.”

“Oh.” He paused. Somehow the hurdle had been leaped, and he felt an almost immediate relaxation of tension. “When will you go again?” he asked easily.

“I don’t know.” He thought he detected an archness in her voice, a coquettish quality which had not been there before. She smiled flirtatiously. “I hear you’re an architect.”

“Where’d you hear that?”

“One of the women. You won a prize.”

“That’s right.”

“You must be good.”

“I am,” he said. “How about Monday?”

“Monday’s a school holiday. My son is home.”

“Tuesday?”

“I don’t know. Are any of your houses in magazines or anything?”

“Yes. Is Tuesday—”

“Which magazines?”

“A lot of them. One was in September’s House and Garden.” He looked at her curiously. “Why?”

“I want to see what kind of houses you design,” she said, and he was suddenly reminded of his first meeting with Altar and the words “I want to see your stamp.” He looked at her, puzzled, wondering if the hurdle had indeed been leaped. Over her shoulder, he saw the other women beginning to appear, saw a little boy break into a trot for the bus stop.

Quite calmly, he said, “I’ll be at the center Tuesday afternoon at two o’clock. Will you be there?”

A frightened look came into her eyes. She hesitated a long time before replying, and then she said only, “Maybe.”

“I’d like you to,” he said. “I’d like—”

She interrupted, her words overlapping his. “I’ll see. Maybe. I wish I knew why—”

And one of the approaching women said, “Hello, Margaret,” and the mechanical smile appeared on her mouth as she turned away from him.

The hi-fi unit was going full blast when Larry knocked on Roger Altar’s door. He had heard the music the moment he entered the building listened to it get progressively louder as he climbed the steps to Altar’s flat. Now, standing just outside the door the sound was almost unbearable. He knocked again, harder this time, certain he could be heard by no one in the apartment.

“Come in!” Altar shouted. “It’s open.”

He pushed open the door. Altar was lying on the couch, smoking. He wore slacks and slipper socks and a dress shirt open at the throat. He did not rise when Larry entered the room, and this somehow annoyed Larry. Altar had called him the night before, while he’d been working on his recommendations for Baxter and Baxter, telling him he’d looked over the sketches and would like to discuss them. Larry had made the trip into the city this Monday morning and now that he was in Altar’s apartment he felt that Altar should at least extend the courtesy of greeting him when he arrived.

“That’s a little loud, isn’t it?” he said.

“What?” Altar answered.

“The music!” Larry shouted.

“Oh. Turn it down if you like.”

Larry walked to the hi-fi cabinet. He found the gain control and turned it all the way down. Altar still lay motionless on the couch.

“Don’t like music, huh?” he said.

“I like it fine,” Larry answered.

“But not loud.”

“I like it loud, too. But I didn’t come here for a concert.”

“What’s biting you?” Altar wanted to know.

“Nothing.”

“I hope not. I hope you’re in a good mood.”

Altar was smiling, but the smile was a crud-eating one, and Larry’s years in the service had taught him to recognize the crud-eating grin and to know what it usually preceded. He felt himself stiffening.

“Sit down,” Altar said. “Want a drink?”

“No.” Belatedly, he added, “Thanks.”

“Well, sit down anyway.”

“Sure.” Larry sat in the easy chair to the left of the bar unit, facing the blue couch upon which Altar still sprawled.

“I don’t like to do this,” Altar said. “I don’t like it when it’s done to me, and Christ knows it’s done often enough. But I think there’s a difference here, and if I’m wrong I’ll apologize. Can I talk to you like a man, Larry? Or do I have to give you the schmaltz?”

“What do you mean?”

Altar shrugged and blew out cigarette smoke. “A bad review is a bad review. No matter how you slice it, it adds up to rejection, and nobody likes being shoved away from the breast. I don’t like bad reviews, and I’ll probably never like them. But I prefer the ones that give it to me straight from the shoulder without the gingerbread.”

“Spit it out, Altar.”

“Your sketches stink.”

The room was silent except for the muted cello tones coming from the phonograph.

Altar started to say, “Maybe you’re the kind who needs the schm—” and Larry interrupted with, “This is your considered opinion, is it?”

“I’m not trying to hurt you, Larry,” Altar said. “I wouldn’t have opened my mouth if I thought you’d get sore.”

“I’m not getting sore.”

“You are, and I can tell it.”

“No, I’m not. Don’t try to tell me how I feel. It just strikes me as amusing, that’s all. You’re the guy who doesn’t tell plumbers how to fix pipes.”

“That’s right.”

“But you look at a set of rough sketches and deliver the exalted opinion that — What the hell makes you think you’re a competent judge?”

“What makes you think I’m not?”

“How can anyone who doesn’t know architecture from a—’

“Larry—”

“You’re an egomaniac, Altar! You look at a set of rough sketches and tell me they stink. What do you think you’re doing, browsing through a light-love story in one of your slick-paper magazines? You’re looking at plans and perspectives! Do you know how to read a plan?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Where the hell did you learn to—”

“I once worked with a construction gang. Larry—”

“You’re a pretty successful hero, aren’t you?” Larry said, his anger rising. “What else have you done? Climbed an active volcano? Wrestled aligat—”

“You’re not sore, huh?”

“I am sore, and the hell with you!”

“Sit down. We’ll start from scratch.”

“I’m going home. You can start from scratch. You can design your own damn house.”

“Sit down,” Altar said firmly. “For Christ’s sake, sit down and stop behaving like—”

“Don’t order me around, Altar!” Larry snapped. “I don’t give a damn if you’ve sold ten million copies of your books.”

“All right,” Altar said, grinning. “Please sit down. All right?”

Larry sat. Altar studied him. “The schmaltz,” he said, “begins this way—”

“Go to hell.”

“Dear Mr. Cole. Whereas your rough sketches for the Altar residence show technical knowledge—”

“All right,” Larry said.

“Do you want—”

“I said all right.” He sighed heavily. “I just don’t like being jumped on, Altar.”

“Who does? Once you commit something to paper, you’re open to attack. Want me to tell you why I don’t like the sketches?”

“I’d appreciate it. That is, if your omnipotent, omniscient—”

“You’re getting sore again.”

“Okay, okay, tell me. I’m listening.”

“We’re still in business?”

“It depends on what you have to say.”

“One: I don’t think you gave my house any more thought than you’d give a garbage-disposal unit.”

“I gave your house all my time for—”

“All your time, but none of your real thought, Larry. These sketches are routine, hack. I know what you can do. I’ve seen it.”

“Go on,” Larry said tightly.

“Two: I don’t think you designed this house for me. I think you simply culled a lot of clichéd crap that was left over in the basement of your mind from an Architecture One course.”

“Goddamnit, that’s not—”

“Three: I don’t think you want to design my house. I don’t know why. Maybe your mind is elsewhere. Maybe it isn’t a big enough challenge. But whatever—”

“This is all nonsense!”

“Is it? Look, Larry, you know me fairly well by now. You should have some inkling of the kind of house I’d want surrounding me. These sketches have nothing whatever to do with Roger Altar. He doesn’t enter into them at all.”

“They’re only exploratory. They’re supposed to—”

“What’s worse, you’re not in these sketches. There’s nothing of you here at all, and you’re the goddamn architect! Where’s your stamp? What are you trying to sell me?”

“I’m not trying to sell you any—”

“Are you trying to cheat me?”

“I’ve never cheated anyone in my life!” Larry said, beginning to rise again.

“Well, you’re cheating me here. And you’re cheating yourself, too!” He paused. “Don’t be a jerk. Sit down.”

“Why don’t you get yourself another architect?”

“I won’t need one unless you tell me flatly you’re finished.”

“You don’t like my sketches, you don’t like my—”

“Do you want to design my house, or don’t you?”

“I don’t know,” Larry said harshly.

“Why do you resent me?”

“I don’t resent you.”

“Because I’m a success?”

“What!”

“If that’s it, say so. Lots of men do. I don’t hold it against them any more.”

“Don’t be absurd. We’re not in competition.”

“Then why? Because I’m a bachelor?”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“How do I know? Why do you resent me?”

“I told you I don’t resent you. I think you’re marvelous. I think you’re the world’s greatest living author. I don’t know what literature would have done without you. I kiss your feet.”

Softly Altar said, “You’re just a kid, aren’t you?”

“Don’t start on me personally, Altar. Your ten per cent doesn’t buy my soul.”

“All I expect it to buy is your mind.”

“A part of it.”

“All of it where it concerns architecture.”

“I could design a house you’d be afraid of.”

“Try me.”

“I could design a house you wouldn’t understand.”

“My stories are too good for the pulps,” Altar said.

“What?”

“A local bromide. Forget it.”

“What do I owe you, Altar? I could use one tenth of my brain power and still design a better house for you than any hundred architects in the country.”

“When do you stop talking the good game, Larry?”

“When do you stop talking like an old friend of mine? For Christ’s sake, I barely know you!”

“I’ll go you one further. I don’t think you want to know me.”

“Why does every tinhorn writer in the world consider himself a psychiatrist?”

“How many other writers do you know?” Altar asked.

“None, thank God. Wise up, Altar. Do a little self-analysis. You’re not attacking me. You’re attacking yourself!”

“That’s not true, Larry!”

Altar squashed his cigarette angrily into the ash tray on the coffee table. He swung upright at the same moment, as if he were buckling on his armour to do battle. His eyes narrowed, and his shaggy brows descended.

“Isn’t it?” Larry asked. “You’re sick of the commercial hack—”

“That’s not true!” Altar snapped. “Maybe you think it’s the same but it isn’t. When I’m in that room, I’m working every damn minute, and I’m trying! I care deeply about what I’m doing. And you don’t!”

“Commercial tripe, the critics said. They hit it right on—”

“The critics don’t know how I bleed!” Altar shouted. “I open a vein on every page! I give everything I’ve got, my blood, my good red blood! What in God’s name do you give? What are you afraid of? That you’ll have to give something of yourself? Those sketches are the plotting of a guy who lives in a shell. Well, I don’t live in a shell. I take, I take a lot — but I try to give something back. If you want to work for me—”

“Work for you! Holy—”

“What’s the matter, is work a dirty word? Don’t architects work? What do you prefer? Do you want me to call myself your client? Will that improve our relationship? Okay, if you want me to be your client, you’ve got to give. Everything. I’m treating you like a thoroughbred, and all I’m asking is that you get out there and run for me. I don’t want excuses about a muddy track or a bowed tendon. All I want you to do is run. Do you know how to run, Larry? Can you go the distance?”

Larry was silent. Altar lighted another cigarette. He blew out a stream of smoke, and still the silence persisted. Slowly, Altar nodded and said, “Okay, forget it. It’s been swell. Send me a bill for the work you’ve—”

“I’ll design your house,” Larry said.

“Don’t do me any favors. If you don’t want to—”

“I want to. I’ll run. You don’t deserve it, but I’ll run for you.”

“Why don’t I deserve it? Does there have to be a prize attached before you turn on the steam?”

“That was below the belt, Altar. That damn prize didn’t mean a thing, and you know it.”

“Sure.” Altar paused. “Maybe none of the prizes mean anything, Larry. Maybe there’s only one prize that really counts.”

“Which one?”

“You tell me.”

“I’m not a big thinker.” Larry said. He rose. “I’ll bring you new sketches. I’ll give them everything I’ve got, and if you still don’t like them, that’s that. I can’t spend the rest of my life trying to please you.”

“Nor can you spend it trying to please yourself, either.”

“What does that mean?”

“How the hell do I know?” Altar said, grinning. “Another one of my profound banalities.”

“You son of a bitch,” Larry said, returning the grin. “You don’t forget anything anyone ever says, do you?”

“Never. I’m a big sponge. I’m a brain picker. I’m recording secretary for the world at large. Don’t ever tell me your life story. I’m liable to use it.”

“Not a chance,” Larry said. “It’s pretty dull.” He went to the door. “You can turn off the record player now,” he said, smiling. “We don’t need the string accompaniment any more.”

He heard Altar’s laugh erupt as he went in to the hall way.

11

At fifteen minutes to two on the Tuesday he was to meet Margaret Gault, Larry told the first of what was to be an endless succession of lies.

He did not particularly relish telling the lie, especially since Eve had been so understanding when he’d related the Altar incident the night before. Her earnest sympathy had carried over into the new day. While he worked out a tentative schematic for one of the housing-development buildings, she hovered over him constantly, bringing him coffee and toast, coming in every hour, trying to let him know that she, at least, thought he was a damned good architect.

He could not deny that Altar’s attack had hurt him. He would not admit to himself that its most penetrating aspect had been its utter truthfulness. But he had allowed the attack to fire an indignation and then fill him with a fervent desire to design a house that would knock Altar’s eyes out. He was grateful to Altar for having given his incentive a shove. But faced with the factory schematic, he did not appreciate the residential designing itch that tickled his unconscious. And faced with the kindnesses Eve showered upon him that morning, he did not appreciate the lie he was about to tell her.

He became conscious of the steadily advancing hands of the clock during lunch. He listened to Eve chatter, watched David pick listlessly at his food, and all the while he was thinking. This is Tuesday, she will be at the shopping center at two.

He was a little afraid of meeting her. He didn’t know what he would say to her, and wondered indeed if he actually wanted to meet her. The thing could be dropped now. Nothing had really been said or done. Pursuit, on the other hand, might lead anywhere. Margaret Gault was still a total mystery to him, and he could no more determine exactly what might happen than he could explain to himself the tentative commitment he’d already made with her. He knew that he’d debated meeting her a hundred times, and he knew that he would meet her and, oddly, he felt there was nothing he could do to prevent the meeting. The concept was a peculiarly fatalistic one, especially for a person who’d flatly rejected the Rubaiyat at seventeen. But he knew that he had to see Margaret Gault again, if only to tell her he was crazy ever to think, ever to think what? He did not know.

He would see her. He would explain to her. Explain what to her?

Again, he did not know.

So he sat during lunch and plotted the lie he would tell Eve, and he felt an enormous sense of shame when she turned to him and asked, “Are you listening to me?”

He sprang the lie at one-forty-five.

He left the drawing board, wiping his hands on the rough tweed of his trousers. “Eve!” he called.

“I’m in the basement, honey,” she answered.

He took the steps down, entering the dim concrete vault. The washing machine was making discordant music in one corner of the basement. Eve stood over her wash basket, sorting clothes. He did not want to see her face when he told the lie. From the steps he said, “I want to run into town a minute, Eve.”

“All right,” she said.

“I may be a while. Few things I have to get.”

“All right,” she said. “Will you be near the drugstore?”

“I can stop. Why?”

“Get some St. Joseph’s aspirin. I think David is coming down with something.”

“Okay,” he said. He turned quickly and went up the steps. His heart was pounding. She had accepted the lie, had almost abetted it, but his heart was pounding nonetheless, pounding so hard that he began trembling as he put on his overcoat. From the front door, he felt compelled to say something else to her.

“I won’t be too long, honey,” he shouted.

He waited for an answer, but the washing machine had probably drowned him out. He sighed, left the house, and walked to the car. Sitting in the kitchen across the street, clearly visible in the large picture window, was Mrs. Garandi. He smiled pleasantly and waved at her. He unlocked the car, got in, and looked at his watch. It was ten minutes to two.

His heart was still pounding. He realized that he was very frightened, and he wondered whether he had looked peculiar to the Signora, wondered suddenly whether Eve had detected the lie in his voice, wondered what he could bring back from town to make his trip look legitimate. The simple assignation was somehow assuming gigantic proportions. He backed the car out of the driveway, and then self-consciously nodded and waved to Mrs. Garandi again, thinking he saw suspicion on her face.

He half expected Eve to appear accusingly at the front door, but she did not. Sighing in what he supposed was relief, he turned the corner and headed for the shopping center. It did not occur to him until he was almost there that Margaret Gault hadn’t even said she’d definitely come. In a strange way he was beginning to hope she would not be there. But at the same time he wanted her to be there; and he knew that if she did not keep the date, he would seek her out again.

He felt suddenly trapped.

He wanted to turn the car, head back for the house, and he almost did. But his hands remained firm and steady on the wheel, and he pulled into the parking lot, stopped the car, and looked for her.

She was not there.

Nervously, he lighted a cigarette and began waiting.

Adrienne Gault was a widow.

She did not drive, and she found the train trip to her son’s house tedious, but she nonetheless made the trip every week. She usually arrived on Wednesday, slept overnight, and then left Thursday morning.

This week she arrived unexpectedly on Tuesday.

At 1:35, while Margaret stood in the bathroom combing her hair, Mrs. Gault stood in the doorway and said, “If you’re going shopping, I’d like to go with you.”

“I’d rather you didn’t,” Margaret said.

“Why?” Mrs. Gault asked, knowing very well why. This girl simply didn’t like her. In Donald’s home, in her own home, she was always treated like some sort of a visiting dignitary. She did not mind being made comfortable, but she did object to feeling tolerated. It certainly would not have killed Margaret to generate a little warmth. Well, that was the way it went. You raised your children and then you lost them.

“I want to get it done quickly and then come straight home,” Margaret said.

“I’ve been shopping since I was eleven years old,” Mrs. Gault said. “I’m certainly not a slow shopper.”

“Besides, I’ll be walking. Don took the car.”

The idea of walking did not appeal to Mrs. Gault, but she did not think badly of her son for having taken the car. Her son, as she saw him, was a warm and genuine person who happened to have married a cold fish. Actually, he was warmest when Margaret wasn’t around. It was then that they recaptured old times, when she told him of little things he’d done or said as a boy, told him of how terrible it had been after his father — God rest his soul — had died. They had been very close then, and talking alone they recaptured some of that closeness, a mother and son talking the way no two strangers could ever talk, flesh and blood, her flesh and blood. It was good to reaffirm the bond. It was good to talk to her son without Margaret around.

Margaret put down the comb and picked up her lipstick brush. Mrs. Gault watched while she traced the outline of her lips. She could feel indifference emanating from the well-built girl who stood before the mirror. What is it? she thought. Am I not a good mother? What does this girl want from me now that she has my son? And her thoughts almost always ended with the identical four words: The hell with her.

“What are you going to buy?” she asked.

“Oh, just some odds and ends.”

“Well, if you’re absolutely set against my going with you...”

“I’m not. I just don’t want to make this an expedition.”

“... will you buy me a newspaper?”

“Certainly.”

“The Journal-American. It should be out by now.”

Margaret blotted her lips, then touched her little finger to the lipstick and dabbed each cheek lightly, spreading the color.

“Shouldn’t it?”

“I’m sorry, Mom. Shouldn’t what?”

“Shouldn’t the paper be out by now? Where are you, anyway?”

“I just didn’t hear you, that’s all.”

“Maybe I’d better go with you. You’re in a fog. You’ll probably get killed by a car.”

“No,” Margaret said quickly.

Her mother-in-law stared at her.

“I... I want to go alone.”

“I wouldn’t force myself on you, believe me,” Mrs. Gault said, and she walked away from the open bathroom door and into the kitchen. The clock on the kitchen wall read 1:45. She sat at the pine-top table thinking how sad it was that her daughter-in-law didn’t love her. When Margaret came out of the bathroom, she studied her with a dispassionate eye. She honestly couldn’t see any resemblance whatever.

Adrienne Gault was a handsome woman with brown hair and blue eyes. Her bosom was large and firm, and she had the wide hips of a peasant woman, with the narrow waist of a young girl. But she certainly didn’t look like Margaret, and she resented anyone’s mistaking them for mother and daughter, as so often people did.

“Well, have a good time,” she said blandly.

“I’m only going shopping,” Margaret said. She glanced up at the clock. “I’d better go now.”

“Do you always dress that way to go shopping? You’d think you were going to a dance.”

“I like to be neat,” Margaret said.

“What time will Donald be home?”

“The same time as always.”

“He’ll be so surprised to see me,” Mrs. Gault said, and her eyes sparkled in anticipation.

“Yes,” Margaret said unenthusiastically. “I’ve got to go now. I’ll be back soon.”

The clock on the kitchen wall read 1:57.

He saw her instantly.

She was very easy to see, he realized. You looked, and you saw her at once. He stepped out of the car and said “Maggie” softly, so softly that he was sure she would not hear him. But she lifted her head as he spoke, and then she hurried toward the car. She wore a black tailored coat and black pumps, and there were dangling rhinestone earrings on her ears. She held the coat collar against one cheek as she walked with her head down, the ash-blonde hair catching the feeble wintry sunlight.

“Get in,” he said, smiling. He was very nervous. It amazed him that he could smile. What possible excuse could he offer to Eve should anyone witness this girl’s getting into his car?

“Why?” she asked.

“We’ll take a ride. I want to talk to you.”

“I don’t know what this is all about,” Margaret said. “I really don’t. I wish—”

“Let’s not argue here,” he said. “Won’t you get in?”

She looked at him for just an instant. Then she shrugged, went around to the other side of the car, and got in. He pulled out of the parking lot the moment she slammed the door behind her. She sat very stiffly, her hands folded in her lap. She had looked at him only once, and now she sat staring through the windshield, apprehension in her eyes.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“I don’t know.” His own fear was growing. He had expected some measure of composure from her, but she sat stiffly tense and alert and her panic was spreading to him. The whole matter was taking on the aspect of a foolhardy, impulsive risk with nothing whatever to gain. He found his eyes darting all over the road, searching for faces he knew, faces he wanted to avoid. He began making excuses in advance to explain away the beautiful blonde who sat beside him on the front seat of his car. When the shopping center fell away behind them, he knew instant relief. He could feel his hands loosening their knuckle-white grip on the wheel.

“Where are we going?” she asked again. “What do you want from me?”

“I don’t know.”

“Whatever it is, the answer is no.”

Her words shocked him. Coupled with the fear he already knew, came the horrifying presentment that he had made a grave mistake. He had approached this woman erroneously, and she would now spread the story through the whole development, and he could see himself trying to explain it all to Eve. He stepped on the accelerator.

“Well?” she said.

“Well what? For God’s sake, relax, can’t you?”

“I’m sorry. Where are you taking me?”

“I told you, I don’t know. I’m just driving. It’s broad daylight. You’re absolutely safe.”

“From what?” she asked. “Don’t think because—” She stopped. She seemed to be very annoyed. “Don’t jump to the obvious conclusion, that’s all.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m talking about my anatomy!” she said.

Coupled with his first fear and his later fear, there came a new and partially suspected terror. The girl was either stupid or incredibly direct, and both failings were dangerous. All he wanted now was to get away from her as quickly as possible in the hope she would keep silent once this was over.

Nervously, he said, “I only wanted to talk to you. Because you seemed so interesting. I wanted to find out more about you.” He looked at her hopefully. His words seemed to have had no effect on her. “Really,” he went on, “I wasn’t thinking... whatever... whatever you thought I was thinking.”

“I’ll bet.”

“I’ll turn back right now, if you say so.”

“Turn back,” she said.

“Sure,” he answered, relieved. He swung the car to the side of the road, waited for the car behind him to pass, and then executed a U turn.

“You do this often, don’t you?”

“No.”

She laughed derisively. “I’ll bet you don’t.” She seemed very angry with him, and he suddenly wondered what possible reason this complete stranger could have for being so damned annoyed. He hadn’t forced her into the car, and no one had pushed her to the shopping center.

“What are you doing in my car?” he asked impulsively.

“I... you said you wanted to take a ride.”

“And what did you think would happen on this ride?”

“I’m sure I don’t know.”

“Did you think I’d ask to see you again?”

“Yes. I guess so.”

“Suppose I did?”

“I don’t want to.”

“I’m not asking. I only said suppose.”

“I shouldn’t be here with you. You shouldn’t have asked me to meet you.”

“Why did you meet me?”

“I wanted to know what makes you tick.”

“And do you know now?”

“No. Look...” She was ready to say something, and then she shook her head.

“What is it?”

“Never mind.”

“Go ahead. We’ll never see each other again, so say it.”

“It’s not what you’re thinking.”

“I’m not thinking anything.”

“It’s... look, I was very lonely this summer. My husband was away and I...” She stopped. She turned away from him and stared through the windshield again. “I was very lonely.”

She did not say more than that, but it was enough to tell him he had not been wrong about her. He glanced into the rear-view mirror and then at the road ahead, slowed the car, and made another U turn.

“What...?”

“I don’t want to go back yet, do you?”

“I...” She wet her lips. “You’re driving.”

They drove in silence for several minutes. “You asked me what I want from you,” he said. “I know.”

“What?”

“I want to see you some night.”

“Oh, God, you’re so damned practiced. How often have you done this before?”

“Never,” he said flatly.

“You don’t even know me. You met me in the street! How do you know me?”

“I don’t. That’s why I want to see you. To—”

“I don’t want to know you,” she said.

“All right, then leave it at that. I’ll take you back.”

“Please.”

“Fine.”

He swung the car around a third time. He was beginning to feel a little foolish. The conversation so far had been completely ridiculous. But what had he expected? What do strangers talk about, anyway? The car was silent. He drove slowly. Now that he’d had his say and been refused, he was in no real hurry to get back. He felt only relief now and, curiously, a sense of peace.

“I saw your house,” she said suddenly. “The one in House and Garden.”

“Did you like it?”

“Yes, very much. It’s a... a strong house.”

“Thank you.” He paused. “Where did you find it? The September issue, I mean.”

“At the library.”

“You looked for it?”

“Yes.”

Again they were silent. He wondered what she was thinking, but he was almost afraid of knowing. He could feel her beauty beside him, a live presence that filled the automobile. His fear had evaporated, to be replaced by an extrasensitive awareness of her closeness. But she’s stupid, he thought, and then he wondered just how stupid she really was.

“What did you mean?” she asked.

“About what?”

“When you said I wasn’t so pretty.”

“Only that... sometimes you look pretty and sometimes you don’t,” he lied.

“How do I look now?”

“Lovely.” His eyes touched her face. “Look, do you want to see me or don’t you?”

“Will you be very hurt if I say no?”

“Hurt?” He felt completely confused all at once. Why should she care whether or not he was hurt? “I’ll be disappointed, yes,” he said. “Look, the hell with it. I’m married, you’re married, this is crazy. Let’s forget it.”

“When did you want to see me?”

“When can you get away?”

“You name it. You do it.”

“Tonight?”

“No.”

“Tomorrow night?”

“No.”

“Thursday night?”

“I think so.”

“You’ll see me?”

“Yes. But please don’t think I’m a pickup. Please don’t think that.”

“I don’t.” He looked at her curiously. “Eight o’clock?”

“Don will be going out, too. I’ll have to get a sitter.”

“Is eight too early?”

“No, it’s all right. But please don’t think—”

“I’m not thinking anything.”

“It’s not that I don’t want—” She shook her head. “What will we do? Thursday night?”

“Anything you like.”

“No, no. You tell me.”

“I’ll surprise you. All right?”

“Yes.” She nodded, but she seemed troubled. “Are you sure you want to see me?”

“Yes. Aren’t you sure?”

“No,” she said. “I’m not sure at all.”

“Well,” he said, disappointed by her unexpected honesty. There didn’t seem much else to say. Everything was wrapped up, it seemed, somewhat confusedly but nonetheless securely. He did not feel at all excited. Now that it was over, he felt almost let down.

“Where shall I meet you?” she asked.

“Oh. Yeah.” He thought a moment. “The post office? Do you know where that is?”

“Certainly. Eight o’clock, you said?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll be there. You’re... you’re sure you want to?”

“Yes, I’m sure,” he said. “We’re almost to the center. I’d better leave you off somewhere here.”

“All right.”

They were both tensely alert again. He pulled to the curb and when she reached for the door handle, he said, “Wait!” She waited obediently, not questioning his command. The car Larry had seen in the rear-view mirror flashed by.

“Okay,” he said. “Thursday night, the post office, eight o’clock. Please don’t leave me waiting.”

“I’ll be there,” she said. She opened the door, and as she got out of the car, she whispered, “Larry.”

“What is it?” he asked.

She smiled. “Nothing. I just wanted to try your name.”

He drove into town, bought a soap eraser, a new typewriter ribbon, and a roll of tracing paper. He stopped at the drugstore to pick up the aspirin for David, and then he went home.

The huge wingless fuselages stood on the assembly line like giant hibernating insect slugs, the aluminium glistening under the glare of the overhead fluorescents. There was something eerie about the scene, Don thought, the welders with their masks pulled over their faces, the goggled eye pieces reflecting the blue flame of their torches; the staccato trip of the riveters, the resounding beat of hammered aluminium; the maze of wires trailing from the plane like intestines ripped from a soldier’s corpse; the people rushing over the factory floor, each with a job to do, yet each seeming like an undirected ant frantically scurrying over the orderly structure of an ant hill.

Just like the Army, he thought. Everybody running around with no place to go. Still, the Army hadn’t been bad. He’d been well liked in the Army. There, in the vast faceless morass of men, he had worn his pfc rating with humorous anonymity, and he’d been content. Until. Until, of course.

Everything ends, he supposed. All happiness ends. All contentment ends. We die.

Well, the hell with that. The Army was then, and this was now, and he was certainly well liked at the plant too. Nor was it the phony deference generated by fear which some men automatically gave to muscular men. Don was excellently built, and he was also foreman of his floor, a combination which easily could have led to a false display of friendship from the men with whom he worked. But he liked to think he was a nice guy with easygoing warmth and humor who never took the little problems of aircraft production too seriously, who was always ready to look at the brighter side of a factory snarl. That was why he got along with the men. He was simply part of their team.

It was something like being on an Army patrol, where the well-being of each man depended on every other man. He could still remember the night patrols, and the tight feeling of a small group pitched against a larger unseen group, the enemy. He could remember the misty black silence of the jungle, the sense of impending danger, the sorrow that no one but the men involved in the patrol were there to see such movie heroics.

He’d have liked Margaret to have seen him on patrol, his face and hands blackened, his hands covered with soot, covered. It was a shame she hadn’t seen him holding a BAR, the immense lethal length of the rifle, the hand grenades dangling from his waist, as he stalked the unseen enemy, the bodiless enemy, the enemy who was not one, not a live person who breathed and smiled and smoked cigarettes and talked, not that sonofabitching enemy.

The war is over, he thought.

He put his hands in his pockets and walked over to one of the welders. He stood watching him and the steady flame which spurted from the slender welding rod. The man cut the flame, lifted his mask, and grinned up at Don. Don stood spread-legged over him. He brought his hands behind his back and clasped them there.

“How’s it going, Pete?” he asked.

“So-so.” Pete grinned. He was a gnomish man with crooked black eyebrows and a bright smile. Black curling hair hung onto his forehead where the welding mask was pushed up like the visor of a helmet. Squatting beside Don, who stood muscular and fair, his blond crew-cut hair reflecting the fluorescent glow, his hands behind his back, Pete looked like a squire kneeling to fasten a knight’s leg armor.

“How you like to get bombed by this bastard?” he asked, grinning.

“I wouldn’t,” Don said. He liked Pete. He liked the smiling face and the glowing brown eyes. Pete was a nice guy, and also a good welder.

“Me neither. We keep buildin’ them bigger an’ bigger. Pretty soon we won’t be able to fit them in the factory. Why you think they gettin’ so big, Don?”

“To carry more bombs, I guess.”

“What for? An atomic bomb you could fit in a lady’s pocket-book.”

“We won’t use no atomic bombs,” Don said.

“We use them already, dint we?”

“Sure, but that was a necessity.”

“So they’ll be other necessities. War makes its own reasons. Some guy someday’ll just say, ‘It’s a big necessity we got to drop an atomic bomb.’ Boom! Up your mother’s poop!” Pete laughed.

Don did not laugh with him. “I don’t think we’ll use atomic bombs again,” he said.

“What then? Hydrogens? The same thing. Boom! Up your mother’s...”

“Nobody with sense is going to use nuclear weapons,” Don said quickly.

“Hey, there’s a real strength word,” Pete said. “Nuclear.”

“What’s a strength word?”

“I bought this book about strength words. Don’t you want strength, Don?”

“I got all the strength I’ll ever want,” Don said, smiling, thinking Pete was joking and figuring he’d ride along with the gag.

“Pithy,” Pete said.

“What?”

“Pithy. That’s a strength word.”

“What’s so strong about it?”

“You know what it means?”

“Pithy?”

“No, pithy. Pithy.”

“Sure. It means meaty.”

“That’s right,” Pete said, surprised. “Did you buy that book?”

“I don’t need a book to tell me what pithy means,” Don said. “Give me another strength word.”

“Fructify. That’s a really advanced strength word. That’s near the end of the book.”

“Fructify, huh?” Don thought for a moment. “I don’t think I know that one.”

“It means to bear fruit. It’s a dilly, ain’t it?”

“It’s a good word,” Don agreed. “I’ll have to tell it to Margaret. She likes new words. She’s got a pretty good vocabulary.”

“Fructify,” Pete repeated, rolling the word on his tongue. “It sounds dirty, don’t it?” He burst out laughing.

“Well,” Don said, displeased that Pete was beginning to joke. He was enjoying the strength words. It didn’t hurt a man to try improving himself.

“Tell it to Margaret,” Pete said. “Margaret’s so beautiful, she needs to be smart, too. It’s absolutely necessary, otherwise people won’t even look at her.” His laughter exploded merrily.

“Well,” Don said, putting his hands into his pockets.

“The kind of strength Margaret got,” Pete said, “is the kind of strength I like.”

“Well,” Don said.

“She’s the most passionate-lookin’ woman I ever seen, all due respect.”

“Well,” Don said, embarrassed.

“You ever get tired of her, you give me a buzz. I leave my wife and run away to China with Margaret. I abscond. That’s a strength word.”

“Well,” Don said, grinning.

“Is she as passionate as she looks?”

“Aw, come on.”

“Come on, is she? I only seen her once but—”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know? Is she or ain’t she?”

“Well, not so much. You know. Not so much. She’s just a woman. They all get their moods. You know.”

“Sure,” Pete said. He paused, laughed secretly, and then said, “Maybe you don’t fructify her enough.” He exploded hysterically. “Oh, brother, that word breaks me up!”

“Come on, come on,” Don said. “Go back to your welding. We ain’t building airplanes talking about women, that’s for sure.”

Pete’s laughter trailed off. He sighed, lowered his mask, and went back to work. Don walked away from him, his hands in his pockets.

“You were always getting into accidents,” Mrs. Gault said that night. “From when you were a little baby. Oh my, were you a handful!”

They sat in the living room — Don, his mother, and Margaret. The television was on, and Margaret was trying to watch an hour-long dramatic show, but Mrs. Gault kept telling stories of Don’s childhood. Margaret wondered how he managed to sit through the same stories over and over again with such a seemingly interested smile on his face. She had heard each story at least forty times since they were married, and God alone knew how many times Don had heard them before he and Margaret met.

“When you were only three,” Mrs. Gault said, “I can remember it as plain as if it was yesterday. Your father — God rest his soul — and I were getting dressed for a wedding. Your Aunt Marie. Well, you were running through the rooms with a bottle in your mouth, just chewing on the nipple, and you tripped over the door jamb between the rooms. You split your chin wide open.”

“I had to have three stitches, Margaret,” Don said.

“Uhm,” Margaret said.

“Oh, that was a time!” Mrs. Gault said. “The doctor rushing in. I never saw so much blood in my life, and us waiting to go to a wedding. Oh, my God, you were a terror!”

“Well, I lived through it,” Don said.

“Certainly, you lived through it! But the heartache! Do you remember the time in Spotswood, New Jersey? At your Aunt Gussie’s? That was another time.”

“I remember that one,” Don said.

“You were pumping water outside. Your aunt had one of these old-fashioned pumps. This was after your father died, poor soul. You were pushing the handle up and down, but you didn’t realize you were building pressure in the pump. Then you let go of the handle and it snapped up and hit you right in the mouth! I swear to the Lord above, it’s a miracle you didn’t knock every tooth out of your mouth. Oh, my God, it was terrible! I remember I was wearing a white sun dress, and I held your head against me, and your lip was bleeding. Oh, I hate to even think of it! Blood all down the front of my dress! It soaked right through to my brassière, Margaret!” She shook her head, vividly remembering the incident and its terror.

“I remember that,” Don said. “I was never so surprised as when that pump handle came up and hit me.” He smiled. “But I suppose it was funny, in a way.”

“Oh, that wasn’t the funny one,” Mrs. Gault said, leaning forward as if on cue. “The funny one was when we had that summer bungalow at the beach, you and I. Oh, that was the funny one.” She began laughing.

In a bantering voice, Don said, “I’m sure glad you think it was so funny, Ma.”

“Donald, you were so comical that day! I have to laugh just to think about it.”

Don looked at Margaret, grinning, anticipating the story.

“I was down at the beach,” Mrs. Gault said. “You were thirteen years old at the time, we had that nice little cottage at Rockaway, remember? And there was this bed, a cot actually. Oh, this is ridiculous!” She began laughing again, wiping the tears from her eyes.

“I’ll never forget that cot,” Don said.

“Anyway, I heard you yelling, and I couldn’t imagine what had happened to you. I came running up from the beach in my bathing suit, and there you were. You’d sat up too suddenly and got yourself caught on the cot.”

“I got caught on the cot, Margaret,” Don said, smiling.

“But you can’t imagine how, Margaret!” Mrs. Gault said. “He was just a boy, but it was so funny, the way he caught himself. Actually, I shouldn’t laugh. He could have been seriously hurt. Oh, but it was so funny. I couldn’t stop laughing when I saw him.”

“And I kept crying,” Don said.

“I think you were embarrassed,” Mrs. Gault said. “I think it hurt, too, but mostly you were embarrassed. I shouldn’t have laughed. But it was really comical, Donald. Even you began laughing after I’d got you loose. Oh, my, that was a day, all right. I can remember holding your head against me and both of us laughing to beat the band when it was all over. Do you remember?”

“Yes, I remember. Sure, I do. You smelled of suntan oil. You got very brown that summer.”

Mrs. Gault nodded, lost in reminiscence.

In the kitchen, the telephone rang. Margaret rose.

“We had some good times, didn’t we?” Mrs. Gault said. “Remember how our house was a meeting place for all your friends? That little apartment? I used to get a kick out of them. Since you got married, none of them come around any more. Not one of them. Wasn’t I good to them when you were a boy?”

“Oh, sure you were, Ma. But they were my friends. You know how it is.”

“Sammy... Was that his name? The short fat one?” Mrs. Gault burst out laughing. “But he was always eating, that one! Always!”

Margaret was certain, as she lifted the receiver from its cradle, that the caller would be Larry Cole and that he would break the date they had made for Thursday night. She’d been expecting him to back out ever since she’d left him, and the call now did not surprise her.

“Hello?” she said softly.

“Margaret?” the voice asked.

It was not Larry Cole. She was startled by the voice because she had not heard it for some time. And then, recognizing it, remembering it, she began trembling and was incapable of speech for a moment.

“Margaret?”

“You,” she said. “Wh... what do you want?”

“Don’t hang up. Please.”

“He’s home,” she said.

“Please. I only want to talk to you.”

Margaret glanced toward the living room. She could hear Mrs. Gault’s laughter through the closed door. “What about?” she asked.

“Margaret...”

She could feel his voice weakening, and his weakness brought a surge of strength. “Say what you have to say.”

“Can’t I see you?”

“No.”

“For just a few minutes?”

“No.”

“Please. Margaret, please. Say when, and I’ll come. I’ll meet you wherever you say.”

“I say no place, never.”

“Margaret...”

“Listen to me,” she said. “I’m going to hang up.”

“No! Please! Don’t!”

“I have nothing to say to you. Don’t call me again. If I hear your voice, I’ll hang up right away. Do you hear me?”

“I hear you, but—”

“I don’t want to see you, I don’t want to talk to you, I don’t want you to call me ever again. If you call again, I’ll tell him. I swear I’ll tell him everything, and he’ll kill you. You know he’ll kill you.”

“He doesn’t scare me.”

“He’ll kill you,” she said. “Now stop annoying me.”

“Margaret, I can’t stop thinking about you. I can’t help it. I think about you every minute. I can’t help it. I can’t help it.” He began weeping, and she heard his sobs, and her lashes fluttered, and a bewildered look came into her eyes. Her hand was sweating on the receiver.

“Stop it,” she said.

“I can’t help it.”

“Stop crying. I can’t stand it. Are you a man, or what are you?”

“Margaret, how can you forget what happened? How can you—?”

“I want to forget! Stop calling me!”

“Margaret, I have to call you. I have to hear your voice, just—”

“Stop it, stop it!”

She thought for a moment that she’d spoken too loudly. She whirled toward the living room, but Don and his mother were still talking together.

“I’m hanging up now,” she said coldly.

“No! Don’t! If you do, I’ll call you back. The minute you hang up, I’ll call again.”

“Are you crazy? What’s the matter with you? I told you he’s home.”

“I don’t care. When can I see you?”

“Never!” she said, and she hung up and then fell against the counter. She put her hand to her mouth, biting her knuckles, her eyes squeezed shut tightly. Nothing ever ends, she thought. You pay and you pay. In the other room, she could hear Mrs. Gault’s laughter, and the laughter infuriated her. She leaned against the counter and waited, her teeth clamped into the flesh on her hand. She expected the phone to ring, but when it did, it nonetheless startled her.

She debated answering. But if she didn’t, Don would surely come into the kitchen. Nothing ever ends, she thought, and she picked up the receiver.

“Hello?”

“Margaret—”

She slammed the phone down, kept her hand on it as if that added finality to the gesture. In the living room, she could hear the muffled sound of television voices and the accompanying infuriating laughter of her husband and his mother. She watched the clock. Five minutes passed. Her breathing was even now. She looked at her hand and saw the white marks where her teeth had pinched the flesh. She sighed heavily and then went back into the living room. Her mother-in-law was still talking about a boy named Sammy. Don, sitting at her feet, looked up when Margaret entered the room.

“Who was that, hon?” he asked.

“Betty Anders,” she said.

12

The radio pushed a rock-and-roll ballad into the girls’ bedroom, adding to the fever of preparation. For this Wednesday night alone, Mrs. Harder had broken her stringent rule forbidding anything but weekend dates. Apparently Lois’s engagement was an important one, and since Linda had found a beau for that night too, the law had been temporarily revoked.

Lois was an active, nervous dresser. She could not sit still or lie still for a moment. Even brushing her hair, as she did now, she stood before the mirror and her feet tapped a constant jig in time to the radio music. Linda sat at the dressing table applying lipstick to her mouth, watching her sister’s gyrations.

“Can I or can’t I?” Lois asked.

“If Mama heard that, she’d flip,” Linda said.

Lois put her hands on her hips and assumed an expression of extreme patience. Standing in her half-slip and bra, she looked full-breasted and narrow-waisted, quite womanly except for the childish petulance of her face.

“Mama would flip if she heard you say ‘flip,’ too.” Patiently, she corrected herself. “May I or may I not wear the tan belt?”

“You may,” Linda said. “Mama’s always flipping about something or other. Did you notice that?”

“It’s change of life,” Lois said knowingly.

“Do you think so?”

“Certainly. When you get as old as Mama, your organs get all mixed up, and everything bothers you.” She began stroking her hair viciously. “I’d like a cigarette,” she said. “Do you have any?”

“If you’re going to smoke, go to the john.”

“She knows, anyway,” Lois said. “Every time she goes in there, she damn near chokes on the smoke. You’d think she’d loosen up and say ‘Go ahead, kids, smoke.’ But not Mama.” Lois shook her head. “She’s silly about some things.”

“Eve wasn’t allowed to smoke until she was eighteen,” Linda said.

“Eve’s a different generation,” Lois answered. “Besides, I’ll bet she smoked, too.”

“Not in the house.”

Lois was searching through Linda’s bag. When she found the cigarettes she lighted one instantly, went to the window, opened it, and stood there puffing feverishly.

“I don’t know why you’re dating MacLean,” she said suddenly. “He’s a spook.”

“He doesn’t seem like one.”

“He is. I’ve dated him, and I know. He’s a spook.”

“Well,” Linda said, and she shrugged.

“Where’s he taking you?”

“To a movie.”

“That’s about his speed, all right. He’ll buy you an ice-cream soda later. He’s a big spender, MacLean. He hasn’t got Scotch blood for nothing. Whatever you do, don’t order anything expensive like a banana split or anything. He’ll die right on the spot.”

“He didn’t seem tight.”

“How do you know? You’ve never gone out with him.”

“Just talking to him, I mean.”

“I’ll bet you ten dollars he tells you about his father’s clan, and his kilt. If you want to see him blush, ask him what a Scotchman has under his kilt.”

“Did you?”

“No, but I wanted to. He’s a spook. He doesn’t even know how to kiss.”

“He seems nice,” Linda said.

“Are you going to let him?” She paused. “Kiss you, I mean?”

“Not on the first date. That’s what we decided, didn’t we?”

“Sure, but it seems sort of silly. I think we ought to change it. I think we left out a lot.”

“I think the rules are fine,” Linda said.

“I think we ought to include petting. All the girls do it, Lindy. Seriously. I get awfully tired of pulling hands away.”

“I don’t.”

“Besides, I wonder what it feels like.”

“Lois, Mama wouldn’t—”

“Oh, Mama, Mama! Daddy touches her, doesn’t he?”

“They’re married.”

“Am I saying we should go all the way? Am I saying that?”

“No, but...”

“Well, I think we ought to change the rules. Even if you don’t want to, I’m going to.”

“Do what you want to do,” Linda said.

“Well, what fun is it if you don’t do it, too?” Lois protested. She began pacing the room. “Why are you wearing that dress to a movie?” she asked. “It’s a little dressy, isn’t it?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“It’s pretty low, too. You’ll shock MacLean right out of his kilt in that dress, Lindy. You should see how it looks across your behind.”

“It looks fine,” Linda said. “I looked in the mirror.”

“It looks a little tight to me. If you don’t mind showing your backside to the world, I’m sure I—”

“It’s not tight at all. Mama already let out the seams.”

“I was thinking... Do you know my blue dress?”

“Yes?”

“I was going to wear it tonight. This is my first time out with Alan, you know.”

“Yes, I know.”

“He’s twenty-three, Linda, twenty-three. And this is a Phi Sig party, right at his fraternity house. All his brothers’ll be there.”

“So?”

“So I was going to wear the blue dress. You can’t just go in anything to a Phi Sig party.”

“Why don’t you?”

“I got gook on it. It’s still at the cleaners.” Lois was silent for a moment. “My beige is too severe. And the only other one I have is that green horror with the big bow that makes me look pregnant.”

Linda began laughing.

“Don’t laugh, Sis. Can I wear a sweater and skirt to a Phi Sig party? How can I do that?”

“Well, what else can you do?” Linda asked, still laughing.

“I could wear your dress. If you’d loan it to me.”

“Oh, what a sneak,” Linda said.

“Can I?”

“No.”

“It is too tight, you know. I wouldn’t lie about that.”

“No.”

“Linda, for hell’s sake, this is important!”

“So’s my date with Hank.”

“That spook? Linda, don’t be selfish.”

“I’m not being selfish. I’m all dressed, Lo. He’ll be here any minute.”

“How long would it take you to change?”

“No.”

“You can wear what I was going to wear. The black skirt and my tan cashmere.”

“No.”

“Linda, my cashmere, not just a junky orlon or something.”

“Lois—”

“Lindy, please. Have I asked you for anything recently?”

“No, but—”

“I wouldn’t ask now if this wasn’t such a big thing. Lindy?” She paused. “Lindy?” She paused again. “Please?”

“I’m all dressed.”

“Pretty please?”

“How can I—?”

“Pretty please with sugar on it?”

“Oh, go ahead,” Linda said. “I’ll... Oh, go ahead. Unzip me.”

“I’ll let you wear my pearls,” Lois said happily, unzipping the dress.

“I don’t want your pearls,” Linda said. “I have my own pearls.” She stepped out of the dress and handed it to Lois.

“You’ve got a run,” Lois told her.

“Dammit, that’s all I need.”

“I’ve got a pair of stockings for you,” Lois said generously. She went to the dresser. Over her shoulder, she said, “If Alan tries to pet, I’m going to let him.”

“Do what you want to do,” Linda said.

“Will you?”

“No.”

“With your dress on,” Lois said, “he’ll try it. I know he will.” She handed Linda the stockings. “Here.”

“Thanks.”

“It was too tight for you, you know,” Lois said. “It made you look like all ass.”

“Sometimes I think I am,” Linda said.

Disgustedly, she extended one leg and began putting on the stockings.

It seemed to her that everything, sooner or later, passed into the no man’s land of community property. She could count on the fingers of one hand the possessions which she could call exclusively, inviolately her own. The rest of the accouterments of everyday living were shared equally within the corporate structure of sisterhood and twinship. There were only three things she truly owned and these were jealously coveted in an old tin candy box at the back of the second dresser drawer.

The first of these was a pink shell as exquisitely turned as a water nymph’s ear.

She had found it one summer at Easthampton while walking alone on the shore, just before a storm. She was nine years old, and she watched the sky turn ominously black and the waves beating the sand in windswept anger. When she found the shell, she picked it up and held it cradled in the palm of her hand; it was a delicate thing, the pink luminescent against the gathering fury of the storm. The thunder clouds broke around her. Barefoot, her hair and her skirts flying, she had run back to the cottage across the suddenly wet sand, the shell clutched in her small fist.

The second possession was an autumn leaf, thin and fragile, carefully mounted with Scotch tape on a piece of stiff paper, losing its structure nonetheless, so that only the tracery of delicate veins remained in some spots.

She had been eleven when the leaf fell.

She had been sitting alone on a bench in the park across the street from her apartment building, her black hair pulled back into a pony tail, an open book in her lap, her wide blue eyes full with the lyrics of Edna St. Vincent Millay. It had been a quiet day, wood smoke still with the splendor of fall. She had sat alone with her book of verse and read:

The leaf fell.

It spiraled silently on the still air to settle on the open page of the book. Yellow and brown, it lay on the open page, rustled as if to flee, settled again when she covered it with her hand. For no reason, her eyes suddenly brimmed with tears. She had taken the leaf home and mounted it.

The third possession in the candy tin at the back of the second dresser drawer was an Adlai Stevenson campaign button.

These were her own.

Everything else she shared with Lois; even her face and her body. She did not resent the sharing as persistently as she had long ago, but just as strongly. All she wanted to be, she supposed, was Linda Harder. And the chance division of a cell had made that the most difficult aspiration in the world.

In the beginning, of course, she had not known.

There was Mama, and Daddy, and Eve, and Lois. Lois seemed to be just another person, as different from Linda and everyone else as she could possibly be. They were sisters. Just the way she and Eve were sisters.

After a while it became apparent that she and Lois were somehow special. She had never been able to understand why Mrs. Harder dressed them alike. Why didn’t she dress Lois and Eve alike? Eve was a sister in the family, too, wasn’t she? She began to wonder about it. And she began to hear an oft-repeated expression: “Oh, how cute! Are they twins?”

One day she went to Mrs. Harder and asked, “What’s twins?”

“You and Lois are twins, darling,” Mrs. Harder said.

“I know, but what’s twins?”

“That means you were born together. You look alike.”

“Were Eve and me born together?”

“No, darling.”

“Well, we look alike.”

“But not exactly alike. You and Lois are identical twins. That means you look exactly alike.”

Linda pondered this for a grave moment. Then she said, “I don’t want to look exactly like nobody but me.”

And even though Mrs. Harder had laughed and said something about both her girls being adorable little darlings, Linda was not pleased at all.

After that, whenever anyone mistakenly called her “Lois,” she would whirl angrily and say, “I’m Linda!”

She did not enjoy the confusion their sameness bred. She did not smile when her nursery-school teacher reported, “One of your girls was very naughty today, Mrs. Harder. I can’t remember which one. They’re so hard to tell apart.”

She did not appreciate other children referring to her and Lois as “Harder One” and “Harder Two.” To one of these children, she angrily replied, “I’m not a number. I’m Linda!”

Nor did she enjoy the constant comparison.

“Well, Linda doesn’t draw as well as Lois, but she likes to work with clay.”

“No, Lois is the one who tells the stories. Linda’s a little shy.”

“You can tell if you really look closely. Linda’s hair isn’t as glossy.”

“Now eat your cauliflower, Linda! See how nicely Lois is eating?”

It took her a long while to learn that there were compensations for loss of identity.

There was, to begin with, the protective coloration of the pack. Both girls, she discovered, could raise holy hell together and get away with it, simply because it was considered adorably cute in tandem. Both girls could utter completely stupid inanities which were considered terribly advanced and grown up, simply because they were spoken by twins. At any party, the Harder twins — dressed exactly alike, their black-banged hair sleekly brushed, their blue eyes sparkling beneath long black lashes, their petticoats stiffly rustling — stole the show from the moment they entered. There was sanctuary and notoriety in twinship.

But most important of all, there was companionship.

There was no such thing as a lonely rainy day indoors, no such thing as a long solitary bout with the whooping cough or the mumps. Lois was constantly by her side, an ally and a friend. It was not so bad being a twin at all.

Except sometimes, when you remembered sitting alone on a park bench, alone, Linda Harder.

When you remembered the fall of a solitary leaf.

At eight-twenty, when Linda came out of the bedroom, Hank MacLean was sitting in the living room talking to her parents. He was a tall boy with sandy brown hair and dark brown eyes. He wore a gray tweed suit and a blue tie, and he rose instantly when Linda entered the room.

“You look pretty,” he said.

“Thank you. Was Dad telling you how tough business is?”

“As a matter of fact,” Hank said, “I was telling him about fencing.”

“I didn’t know he was on the fencing team, Linda,” Mr. Harder said.

“The second team, Mr. Harder,” Hank corrected. “That means I only get to stab people every now and then.”

Mr. Harder chuckled. Mrs. Harder inspected her daughter and said, “You look very lovely, darling.”

“Thank you. Shall we go, Hank?”

“Sure. If you’re ready.”

Linda kissed her parents and then walked to the closet. “Is it cold out?” she asked. “Do I need something for my head?”

“It’s just brisk,” Hank said.

She took her coat from a hanger, and he helped her on with it. She felt rather strange. She always did when she was dating one of Lois’s cast-offs. She had the feeling that, having failed with his first choice, he was now dating a mildly reasonable facsimile of the original. Invariably, boys who expected a carbon copy of Lois were disappointed. She did not know Hank at all, except that he had dated Lois several times and then suddenly called Linda one day last week. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was second choice, second best, and she remembered him helping Lois into her coat just two short weeks ago, and the memory was painful.

“I didn’t know whether you and your sister would be dressing alike,” he said. She turned, puzzled, buttoning her coat. “Even though you’re not going out together, I think it’s nice for people to know you apart, don’t you?”

“What?” she said, thoroughly puzzled.

He lifted a box from the hall table. “This is for your buttonhole,” he said. “So I’ll know you when we meet at the out-of-town newspaper stand.”

She was too surprised to speak. She lifted the lid from the box, parted the green paper, and then picked up the corsage.

“I guess roses go with everything,” he said. “I hope.”

“This... this was very thoughtful, Hank,” she said. “Would you help me pin it?”

“I’m only on the second team!” he said, backing away from the pins.

Linda laughed. “Mom?” she said, and Mrs. Harder came to pin the corsage.

“There,” she said. “That’s a beautiful corsage. You look lovely, Linda.”

Hank nodded. He didn’t say anything. He simply nodded, and Linda saw the nod and the strange sort of pride in his eyes, and she looped her hand through his arm suddenly.

“Not too late, Hank, please,” Mrs. Harder said. “This is a weekday.”

“Okay,” he answered. “Good night, Mr. Harder.”

“G’night,” Mr. Harder said from the living room.

From the bedroom, Lois called, “Have fun, Lindy! Hi, Hank!”

“Hi,” Hank called back.

Gently, he loosened Linda’s hand from his sleeve and captured it with his own.

13

On Thursday night, in the darkness of the parked automobile, Larry sat and waited.

He was grateful for the darkness. He did not want to be seen in town when he was supposed to be in New York. In the light of the dash, his watch read 8:15 and he wondered for the fifteenth time since eight o’clock whether she would come. He had never liked waiting. She should have realized it would be painful for him. She certainly could have shown the consideration of being on time.

If, of course, she were coming at all.

What am I doing here, anyway? he asked himself. Am I crazy? Why did I lie to Eve? This girl means nothing to me. She’s stupid and cheap and she’s probably been had by a thousand men. What do I want from her?

He admitted to himself what he wanted from her.

Not sparkling conversation, not a charming dinner companion, not a twinkle-toed dancing partner. He knew exactly what he desired. Knowing it, admitting it, the lying had seemed essential.

But it disturbed him, and not because it hurt Eve, who had accepted the falsehood with faithful innocence. It was her very trust, instead, which had turned his deception into a barbed shaft that twisted in his chest. He had been untruthful before, but never with Eve. And those lies had never been outrageously false; they had been only the polite inaccuracies of society, small falsehoods that oiled the machinery of American culture, designed to promote harmony, almost merciful in character.

The untruth he told Eve was a bald-faced, monstrous lie invented for deception alone.

“I have to see Altar in the city tonight,” he’d said.

Delivered and accepted, deceit its avowed reason for existence, the lie assumed a life of its own; and it was then that he began working for it rather than it working for him.

With David in for his afternoon nap, Eve left the house to do some shopping. He watched her drive away, debating again in his mind the big question of whether or not he should keep the date with Margaret Gault. Then he thought of the lie.

And it occurred to him that, should the water tank develop a leak, or should Eve suddenly discover she was pregnant, or should any of ten or a hundred or a thousand things happen, Eve might try to contact him at Altar’s. Altar’s number was listed in their personal telephone directory, and he did not feel he knew Altar well enough to beg an alibi. The deception, nonetheless, had to be protected.

He went into the bedroom and found the black book next to the telephone. He looked up Altar’s number. The last digit of the number was a 5. Painstakingly, as diligently as a forger working on a check, he inked over the 5, changing it to a 6. The first part of protecting the falsehood was completed. If Eve called Altar, she would get a wrong number.

But she would then, logically, go to the Manhattan directory to check the number. Larry picked up the bulky phone book and leafed through the A’s, fully intending to rip out the page bearing Altar’s name and number. He discovered, to his relief, that Altar was not listed in the directory. But if Eve really wanted to reach him, she would carry the phoning to its ultimate conclusion, and so Larry could not leave it at that.

He dialed Information and asked for Roger Altar’s listing. The operator told him it was an unpublished number which she could not divulge. He told her it was an emergency, but she remained adamant. Satisfied that Eve could not expose him by calling Altar, he hung up. In a curious way, he was pleased that he was protecting Eve. At the same time, he could not elude the enormity of his deception or the knowledge that his mind was adjusting to it and elaborating upon it.

He felt, too, a tremendous waste of energy.

He had just spent twenty minutes of extreme concentration in an effort to protect his lie. He knew that more energy would be expended in concocting a fiction about what had transpired at Altar’s apartment. Eve would certainly want to know what Altar said and did. He would have to fabricate a conversation and then relate it as if it had actually taken place. He felt suddenly delighted that he had chosen Altar. He could now invent the most fantastic architectural philosophy and pretend that Altar had spouted it. From what Eve knew about the writer, she would accept the most absurd statements as originating in his mind. But again, though he was pleased with the precautions he seemed automatically to take, he felt guilty about the facility and rapidity of his mental adjustment to deceit.

When he drove away from the house that night, the guilt was still strong within him. In a way, it served as a reagent to the fear he might have felt. Tonight he was not frightened. He pulled out of the driveway with strange determination. And though his mind toyed with the idea of meeting her and saying, “Look, Maggie, let’s forget all this. There’s not much sense to it, and I feel guilty as hell,” the idea was rejected immediately upon invention.

Sitting in the parked automobile, he knew he had come this far and could not now retreat. There was a need deep inside him, and he told himself it was a need for the body of Margaret Gault, and for the time being that explanation satisfied him.

A car came up the street.

Its headlights illuminated the interior of the Dodge, and Larry automatically brought his left hand to his face, shielding it. As the car passed, he saw it was a pale-blue Chevy. He followed it in the rear-view mirror. The Chevy pulled up a little past the post office. The motor died. He counted the seconds. The front door opened and he saw her get out of the car and lock it. He instantly turned the key in the ignition and started the engine.

She waited until the light traffic permitted her to cross the street and then, without hesitation, walked directly to the Dodge. He had reasoned that the two most dangerous moments of tonight’s meeting would be those when she entered and left his automobile. For these were the moments of assignation and departure and each would — if observed — be almost impossible to explain. Nervously, he awaited her approach, hearing the clatter of her heels against the sidewalk.

She wore a kerchief, which hid the blonde hair, and he was grateful for her precaution. She paused for a moment before opening the door, as if uncertain this was the right car. Then she reached for the handle and the interior lights snapped on when she opened the door, and she seemed startled by the sudden illumination. She sat quickly, pulling the door shut behind her. The lights went out. There was darkness and silence.

“Hi,” he said.

She smiled uneasily. “Hi.”

He had already flicked on his headlights and pulled away from the curb. “I didn’t think you were coming,” he said.

“I said I would. Could we get away from town quickly, please?”

Her tone worried him. As with the last time she was in the car, there was a stiff nervousness about her, an anxiety around her mouth, an alert darting of her brown eyes. He fought to keep her panic from spreading to him. Someone had to keep a level head and obviously it wasn’t going to be she. “Did you have any trouble?” he asked.

“No. Don gave me the car, but I had to drop him off. Can’t you drive faster?”

“I’d hate to get a speeding ticket,” he said. “It might be a little difficult to explain.”

She nodded. “Where are we going?”

“I thought we’d head north.”

“All right.” She paused. “Suppose someone sees us?”

“Who’s going to see us?”

“I don’t know. One of the neighbors.”

“This is Thursday night, shopping night. They’re all up at the center.”

“Yes,” she said. “I feel terrible. I feel very guilty. Do you feel guilty?”

“Yes.”

“I’m so ashamed. Maybe you ought to take me home.”

“If you want me to.”

“He brought me flowers. Because he was going out tonight. He belongs to the Democratic Club. They’re having a meeting.”

“Where do they meet?”

“At the American Legion hall.”

“We won’t be going near there. What time do you have to be back?”

“Eleven.”

“So early?”

“Twelve? It doesn’t matter. He’ll get a lift home with one of the men. He thinks I’m going to a movie with a girl friend.”

“Which girl friend?”

“I didn’t say. He won’t ask. He never asks.”

“Won’t he want to know what the movie was about?”

“Maybe. It doesn’t matter. I’ll make up something.”

They were on the parkway now. Darkness surrounded them, and she seemed to relax with the darkness. She took off the kerchief and put it into her purse. Sighing, she said, “Larry, are you sure we’re doing the right thing?”

“I’m sure we’re doing the wrong thing,” he said honestly.

“We can still... I mean, there’s still time.”

“Do you want me to take you back?”

“No.”

“Good. I thought we might go through that whole U-turn routine again.” She laughed, a low throaty chuckle that surprised him. “You’ve got a sexy laugh,” he said.

“Don’t say that. It’s what everyone says.”

“I’m sorry. I’ll try to be more original.”

“I want to laugh, Larry. Don’t make me... don’t make me think when I laugh.” She paused. In search of common ground, she said, “I took your house out of the library yesterday. The magazine, I mean. I’d love to live in that house. I studied all of it — the floor plan, everything — last night before I went to bed. He thought I was crazy. He thought I wanted to move again. Do you know what I liked best about it?”

“What?”

“That big round fireplace jutting up in the center of the living room. What made you put it there?”

He shrugged. “The cave man huddling against the darkness, I guess. This way he can huddle on all sides.” She laughed. Encouraged, he added, “A very primitive school of architecture. Maintains that all a man needs is a roof over his head, a fire, and a hole to look out of.”

She laughed again. “It’s a strong fireplace. It sweeps you right up to the sky. I’d like to see that house sometime. Would you take me to see it?”

He had not, up to that second, thought past tonight. She had, in two sentences, added continuity to their relationship, and he did not yet know if he wanted continuity.

“Sure,” he said. “I’ll take you to see it sometime.”

“Good. Do you read a lot? I was reading all last night. First the magazine with your house in it, and then some poetry.”

“Which?”

“You wouldn’t know it.”

On impulse, he said, “This Is My Beloved?”

She turned on the seat in surprise. “Why... why, yes! How did you know?”

“A lucky guess. I used to work in the public library on Fifth Avenue when I was still a kid going to Pratt. I used to mark the books with the library’s seal as they came through. I remember that when it was still a pamphlet, before a hard-cover publisher did it. There was a lot more to it then. They cut out a lot.”

“I love it.”

“Why?”

“I just do. Do you still feel guilty?”

“No,” he lied. “Do you?”

“Yes.”

Her answer surprised him. She should have lied, she should have said no. Her honesty puzzled him, or was it stupidity? He still didn’t know.

“Well, look, Maggie,” he said, “we’re here, we’re together, it’s done. There isn’t much sense brooding about it.”

“Why do you call me Maggie?”

“Doesn’t everyone?”

“No, you’re the only one. Even he calls me Margaret.”

“Then I’ll call you Maggie. I’ll be the only one in the world who calls you Maggie.”

“But why?”

“Because it’s an ugly name. And you’re so beautiful that you make the name beautiful simply by wearing it. It’s a name like Kate or Bess. Those are ugly names, too.”

“What’s your favorite name?”

“Eve,” he said instantly.

“Oh.” He felt her stiffen beside him. He wanted to say, “I didn’t mean that. I meant...” and then he wondered why he felt he should apologize for liking his own wife’s name.

“I have a lot of favorite names,” he said in compromise.

“Do you?” she asked coldly.

“Yes. Gertie and Sadie and Myrtle and Brunhilde...”

She tried to stifle the laugh but couldn’t. “I have favorite boys’ names, too,” she said, laughing. “Percy, and Abercrombie, and Irwin...”

“Don’t forget Maximilian.”

“Yes, yes,” she said, and her laughter mounted.

“Do you know Fundgie?” he asked. “It’s really Fotheringay, but the British pronounce it Fundgie.”

“You’re joking.”

“I’m serious.” He paused. “Or Sinjin?”

“Like in Sinjin the Baptist?” she asked immediately.

Surprised by her quick response, he said, “You’re not so stupid.”

“Did you think I was?”

“No, no.” He hesitated. “Well, yes, I did.”

“I’m not so pretty, either. Remember?”

“You are.”

“But you said I wasn’t.”

“Only sometimes.”

“Which times? When you notice the scar?”

“Who ever sees that?” he said.

She smiled. “Am I stupid sometimes, though?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know,” he said, surprised.

“You’re very smart, aren’t you?” she said seriously. “You won a seventy-five-thousand-dollar prize. You must be very—”

“A what?”

“I know,” she said, pleased with her knowledge.

“It was only seventy-five hundred! My God, who told you that?”

“One of the neighbors.”

“Is that what they think? Wow!” He began laughing. “That would have been very nice indeed. You can buy a lot of beer with seventy-five thousand bucks.”

“Do you like beer?”

“I hate it. That was just an express—”

“I loathe it.”

“Good. We have something in common.”

“We have a lot in common,” she said, suddenly quite serious. He turned to look at her, and she smiled quickly, like a young child who had put on her mother’s heels and was waiting now for her father’s approval. He smiled back at her, suddenly wanting to touch her hand. He did not.

“Where are we going?” she asked. “You said you’d surprise me.”

“Well, I don’t know exactly. I thought we’d stop for a drink first.”

“Then what?”

“Then...” He hesitated. “Well, let’s have the drink first.”

“Will you teach me to drink?”

“Well, sure, I...” He paused, puzzled. “What do you mean, teach you? You mean what to order?”

“Yes. And how to hold the glass. I don’t know how to hold the glass.”

He knew she was lying. You held whisky the same way you held water. Facetiously, he said, “Sure, I’ll teach you to hold it.”

“After the drink, what will we do?”

“We’ll have another drink.”

“And then what?”

He made his decision in a split second. “We’ll go to a motel.”

A small sharp cry escaped her lips. She sat bolt upright, and all the nervousness, all the fear, all the tension, seemed to come back into her in a rush.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“I was right.”

“About what?”

“Anatomy!”

“What?”

“My breasts!” she said angrily.

“Oh, for Pete’s—”

“You’d better take me home.”

“All right,” he said. “We’ll get out at the next exit.”

“I want to have the drink first,” she said icily.

“All right.”

“You didn’t have to be so damn blunt!”

“I wasn’t blunt. I was honest.”

“That’s the same thing. You make me feel like a slut.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t intend that.”

“Would you have asked your wife that the first time you took her out?”

“You’re not my wife.”

“I know. I’m just the girl with big breasts you picked up on the street. Well, I don’t like being treated like a whore.”

“Maggie, we’ll—”

“Don’t call me Maggie!”

“Maggie, we’ll go dancing or to a movie. All right? However you want it.”

“I want you to make the decisions. You’re the man! I want you to decide.”

“But you don’t like my decisions,” he said bewildered.

“You’re the man,” she repeated emphatically.

“All right. A drink first and then a movie. Okay?”

“Yes.”

They drove in silence for a long while. When he turned off the parkway, they began looking for a roadhouse. “How about that one up ahead?” he said. “The Big Bear?”

“Have you ever been there?”

“No.”

“Then it’s a first.”

“You’re a first, too,” he said.

“Am I?” she answered. And then in the candid way that still surprised him, she said, “You’re not.”

He pulled into the gravel parking lot alongside the restaurant. A small sign outside read: CLOSED MONDAYS.

“We’re lucky,” he said, and he led her to the front door.

As they entered, his eyes hastily swept the room, first flicking to the left where the diners sat, and then to the cocktail lounge which was to the right of the entrance. He took her elbow, feeling strange taking anyone’s elbow but Eve’s, and walked with her to the lounge. There were four round tables across from the bar. He steered her to the table at the far end, helped her off with her coat, and then held out a chair for her.

She wore a black dress with a square neck, and he noticed for the first time that she was wearing dangling red earrings, and he wished she were not. The men sitting at the bar had turned to look at her. One man nudged another gently as she leaned over to sit. Larry felt suddenly embarrassed. He sat opposite her, looking at her dress and at the shaded dividing cleft between her breasts where the square low neck ended. Her beauty was a terrifying thing. He was amazed that he could be sitting with a woman so beautiful, but the open admiration of the other men in the bar annoyed him. He realized abruptly that this was not a girl you could take to a place where there was the slightest possibility of being observed by anyone you knew. Because this girl would definitely be observed. Again he thought, You see her. You see her instantly.

“What would you like to drink?” he asked.

“A martini,” she said quickly.

“Have you ever drunk one?”

“No,” she smiled.

“They’re slightly potent. Maybe you ought to have a whisky sour or something.”

“What are you going to have?”

“Whisky and soda,” he said.

“I’ll have that too.”

“If you prefer—”

“I prefer what you prefer,” she said.

He ordered the drinks. The waiter’s eyes lingered on Margaret as he placed them on the table. She lifted the glass without hesitation and put it to her lips.

“Wait,” Larry said.

“Am I doing something wrong?”

“Yes. You’re forgetting to toast.”

“Oh, good let’s toast.”

“Here’s...” He paused, holding the glass aloft. “Here’s to holding hands in the movies,” he said, and he hoped the sarcasm didn’t show too completely in his voice.

She laughed lightly. “I’ll drink to that,” she said, and she sipped at the whisky. Her eyes, he noticed, kept wandering to the bar and then dropping to the table top. It was as if she checked to see if she was being admired and then — having discovered that she was — was embarrassed either by the admiration or her necessity for checking it.

“How do you like it?” he asked.

“It tastes awful.”

“After the third one you’ll complain they left out the whisky.”

“I’m stopping after this one. I’m getting dizzy already.”

“You’ve only had a sip!”

“I didn’t eat dinner,” she said. “I was too excited about seeing you.”

“I’m flattered.”

She sipped at the drink. “It’s beginning to taste better,” she said, smiling. “You’re nice. I thought you were only going to be smart.”

“Thank you. You’re nice too.”

“I’m a bitch,” she said, surprising him.

She fell suddenly silent. Sipping at the drink, her eyes grew pensive. Her lashes fluttered. She did not look at him. Whenever she put the drink down, her fingers twisted the wedding band on her opposite hand, and all the while her eyes were seriously pensive and her lashes fluttered. And then, suddenly, she looked up and said, “All right. Whatever you say. Whatever you want to do. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

“I want to please you.”

“I want whatever you want.”

Their eyes locked. “Finish your drink,” he said steadily.

“Finish yours.”

“I already have,” he said, reaching for the glass and draining it. “Let me pay the check.”

The motel was no more than a half mile down the road from the Big Bear. He was delighted by its proximity and by the “Vacancy” neon which flashed out front. He turned the car into the driveway and then navigated the steep hill and pulled up before a small gray building marked “OFFICE.”

“This shouldn’t take long,” he said.

She nodded but did not answer. She sat huddled on her side of the car, a frightened look on her face. He got out and walked to the office. A screen door had not yet been replaced by a storm door. Somewhere inside, a dog was barking furiously. He rang the bell. A voice called, “Just a minute.” He listened to the footsteps and then the same voice shouting, “Hans! Keep quiet! Stop that, Hans!” The barking stopped momentarily and then started again when the man opened the door. He was a fat man in an undershirt. He had a round beaming face. The dog behind him was a German shepherd, jowls pulled back over sharp teeth, a deep, malicious rumble in his throat.

“Stop it, Hans!” the man said. “Can I help you, sir?”

“I’d like a cabin.”

“There’s just one left.”

“How much?”

“Seven dollars. Want to come in and sign for it?”

Larry looked at the dog.

“He won’t bother you,” the fat man said.

Cautiously, Larry opened the screen door. He didn’t like the man or his growling German shepherd. He didn’t like the ugly slate gray of the office building.

“Do you want to see the cabin first?” the man asked.

“No, that’s all right.”

The dog sniffed at Larry’s trouser leg and then went to lie under the table. The fat man opened a register.

“The missus with you?”

“Yes.”

“Just sign it right there.”

Larry looked at the page. Without hesitation, he wrote “Mr. and Mrs. Calder.” In the space calling for an address, he wrote simply “New York, New York.” The next and final space asked for his license-plate number. He began writing his own number, changed his mind, and twisted the digits around. He put down the pen, opened his wallet, and handed the fat man a five and two singles.

“It’s the first cabin as you come in,” the man said. “Towels and sheets was just changed in there. You need anything, just call me.”

“Thank you,” Larry said.

“Thank you,” the fat man answered.

He was silent when he got back to the car. He swung around and headed for the first cabin, a concrete square with a bright red door.

“Any trouble?” Margaret asked.

“No.”

“Who are we?”

“Mr. and Mrs. Calder.”

“How do you do, Mr. Calder?”

“How do you do, Mrs. Calder?” he said, but he was not smiling.

They got out of the car. From the office, the owner yelled, “The door’s open. Key’s inside on the dresser. Leave it open when you go, will you?”

Then he had not fooled the owner at all. The man had only wanted his seven dollars. There had been no need to register falsely, probably no need to register at all. A practiced man would simply have winked, and there would have been immediate understanding. Feeling foolishly naïve, he opened the cabin door, flicked on the light, and allowed Margaret to enter the room.

Then he closed and locked the door.

The room was not at all unpleasant. The walls were a painted concrete. There was a large double bed with a bright yellow cover on it. There was a dresser, and a writing table, and a door that led to a small bathroom. There was a coat closet with wire hangers in it, and three windows with venetian blinds. A gray pay-radio rested on a small table.

Margaret stood just inside the door and looked at the bed.

“I wish...”

“What?” he asked. He took her coat and draped it over one of the chairs, and then threw his own over it unceremoniously.

“I wish it wasn’t the first thing you saw,” she said, staring at the bed.

“We can still leave,” he said. “Or we can stay and just talk.”

“No. It’s all right.” She went to the bed and sat on the edge of it. There was a peculiar resignation in her eyes. She sighed and then reluctantly lay back. Pulling her legs up onto the bed, she closed her eyes and said, “This is what you want, isn’t it?”

“Doesn’t what you want count at all?” He sat down beside her. He did not touch her. He sat watching her. She opened her eyes and looked at him with mild surprise, as if first discovering him and the room they were in.

“Take off your lipstick,” he said.

She shook her head.

“Take it off.”

“No, if you want to kiss me, kiss me.”

He brought his face very close to hers. Her eyes remained open, wide and brown, never leaving his face. He could smell the scent of her hair, the faint trace of perfume. He kept watching the cushion of her mouth, but he did not kiss her.

“You’re very lovely,” he said.

“Are you going to kiss me?”

He kissed her, and his lips clung to hers, clung to the adhesive lipstick for just a moment. And then he moved back from her and looked at her mouth, puzzled. “You don’t know how to kiss,” he said.

She shook her head.

“But...”

“Teach me,” she said, and he wondered if this were the same gag she’d pulled with the drink and the holding of the glass. He kissed her again, lightly. She kept her lips firmly together, her mouth unmoving, accepting his kiss the way a mother or a sister would.

“Take off your lipstick” he said again.

“Why?”

“Because I’m going to kiss you hard, and I have to go home tonight.”

She did not move. She stared at him in silent defiance. He reached for her bag, opened it, took out two tissues, and said, “Shall I do it?”

“No.” She pulled the tissues from his hand and wiped her mouth. She rubbed the lipstick off most fiercely, and then she snapped her bag shut and lay back again.

“Now teach me,” she said.

He took her chin in his hand. He leaned over her, his mouth an inch from her lips. “Open your mouth,” he said.

She parted her lips. He kissed her and then said, “Suck in your breath. Give me something to kiss.”

“Like this?” she asked, and pulled his mouth to hers.

“That’s better.”

“Again,” she said. Her voice was very low. He kissed her again, and then drew away.

“You’re doing much—”

“Kiss me,” she said.

He kissed her again.

“Kiss me. Don’t stop kissing me.”

He pulled her to him, his mouth hard, his arms hard, feeling a sudden spasm of desire as her body moved in against his. She was incredibly soft and pliant, and she moved into the closeness of his arms as if she had been there many times before, as if she knew every angle of his body and moved now to adjust her own body so that the bones, the warm flesh, the willing muscles clicked, locked into place with his, fit into place like the last piece of a long, long puzzle.

“Larry,” she said.

“What?”

“You’re getting me hot.”

He had never heard a woman use that expression, and he felt something wildly alien stir within him. He seized her roughly, fiercely catching her mouth with his own. His hands found the zipper at the back of her dress and as the zipper lowered she said, “No,” and then “No” again, and then he slid the dress from her shoulders and she wriggled to help him as he lowered it to her waist saying, “No, no,” all the while. He unclasped her brassiere and the globes of her breasts were free, and she said, “No, please, no,” and he kissed her, and the flow of words stopped until his hands were on her breasts and then she said, “Oh, please, please, no, please, no,” under his fingers, and suddenly her back arched and she pulled his head to her breasts and her hand tightened at the back of his neck, and he kissed her nipples and her throat, his hands covering her body, her body arching to every quivering touch of his hands, and she kept saying, “No, no,” and then they were naked, their bodies still locked as if they had always been together, locked, and he was dizzy with the scent of her and the sight of her and the touch of her, and she said, “Do you have... I don’t want a baby,” and he said, “Yes, Maggie,” and she said, “Yes, yes, yes,” and then she sighed, “Oh, Larry.”

And for him there was nothing in the world but her, nothing but the warmth of her surrounding him, gently cradling him, nothing else but the woman beneath him moaning; he was senseless, bodiless, mindless, soulless, she was all, she was everything, and he took her, took her with both hands, took her with honey overflowing both hands.

And for her there was nothing in the world but him, nothing but the warm thrust of invasion, penetration, deep, deep, nothing else but the man above her moaning; she was senseless, bodiless, mindless, soulless, he was all, he was everything, and she accepted, surrendered, gave, gave, with all, captured at last, held at last, overflowing.

They did not put it into the formal words until they had seen each other for a total of four times. He called her often between meetings, but they did not exchange the formal words until a cold night in December.

And then, spent, lying side by side in the room, watching the coals of their cigarettes in the darkness, listening to the music from the pay-radio and the howl of the wind outside, he said simply, “I love you, Maggie.”

And she said, “I love you.”

And the words had been spoken, and now there was no return.