Strangers When We Meet

27

The one thing Eve Cole would not admit to herself was that Larry was having an affair.

All summer long the idea spread like a plaster crack in the ceiling of her mind. With each new marital door slam, the crack widened, sending out tendrils which threatened the walls themselves. She kept her eyes away from the ceiling, unwilling to believe that so small a fissure had become so wide a chasm.

At the same time she kept waiting for the ceiling to crash down around her in a sudden implosion of plaster dust and lath. As frequently as the idea of infidelity entered her mind, it was rejected. Skirting the thought, rushing blindly around its boundaries, refusing to accept it, she found confusion rising unchallenged in her mind. Something had come into her life and her marriage, wedged itself between her and her husband with granite immobility. For perhaps the first time in her life, she felt uncertainty that summer, a terrifying, unsolvable doubt which began to upset the everyday machinery of her home.

“Can I go over to Bobby’s, Ma?” Chris would ask.

“May I,” she would correct automatically.

“Well, may I?” and Eve would think for a moment, trying to remember who Bobby was, where he lived, whether there were dangerous streets to cross.

“I don’t know,” she would say hesitantly.

Chris would look at her in puzzlement and ask, “Well, yes or no?”

“Yes,” she would answer. “No. All right. But be careful.”

By June the planning of meals became something she detested. Coping with her private problem, struggling with what she was sure was the dissolution of her marriage, she found food and eating insignificant. The last time she’d abhorred food was while she was carrying David, but she was then in the overshadowing midst of steady, slow creation. Her resentment now was a different reaction. The dinner table, which had always been a meaningful part of the family experience, became shallow and empty when the family experience itself was threatened with destruction. More and more, the planning of meals became a tasteless, unappreciated chore.

One night, as she placed a platter of lamb chops in the center of the table, David wailed, “Oh, no, not again!”

“What?”

“We had those last night,” Chris informed her complainingly.

She stared at the meat for a moment, and then snapped, “Your father likes lamb chops. Now start eating or you’ll both go to your room.”

At the market she found herself taking the same shopping list item from the shelves twice and then discovering the duplicate at the checkout counter. While driving, she failed to notice lights when they changed to green, was constantly being snapped out of her thoughts of Larry by the sharp honk of horns behind her. At the bank she failed to make a covering deposit in the checking account, with the result that two checks came back marked INSUFFICENT FUNDS.

In July she bought herself a pair of knee-length hose because they were on sale and because she liked the color. When she got home, she realized she hadn’t even looked at the size before snatching them from the counter. The socks were three sizes too small for her. She found herself forgetting to leave notes for the milkman, forgetting social appointments, forgetting to return overdue books to the library. And all the while, the one thing she wanted to forget remained immovable in a dark corner of her mind.

When her mother asked her to come out to the beach at Easthampton for a few days in the beginning of August, she leaped at the opportunity. As was usually the case, Mrs. Harder’s invitation had certain limitations and conditions. The beach house was thronged with her own friends on weekends, so any weekend was out of the question. The twins had invited some girl friends for Wednesday and Thursday on condition that they’d leave early Friday morning. In any, case, those two days were struck off the calendar.

“So when would you like to come, darling?” Mrs. Harder asked.

“Friday,” Eve said.

“Eve, I just told you I’ll be having other guests. It’ll have to be next week sometime, I guess. Perhaps Monday or...”

“Do you have a single bed somewhere?”

“What do you mean?”

“A bed I can sleep in.”

“Well, of course, I have a bed you can sleep in. But you’re four people counting Larry and the children. I can’t put you all in one—”

“I want to come out alone, Mama,” Eve said.

“Alone?”

There was a long silence on the line.

Then Mrs. Harder said, “Is anything wrong?”

“No. I just feel like getting away by myself for a few days.”

There was another silence.

Mrs. Harder said, “Darling, if something’s wrong...”

“No, Mama. Do you have a bed for me?”

“Come whenever you like, Eve,” Mrs. Harder said. “Come today if you like.”

“I’ll be there Friday afternoon.”

“All right.” Mrs. Harder paused. “Eve...” she said.

“Yes?”

“You’re not pregnant again, are you?”

“No, Mama.”

“All right, then, I’ll see you Friday. Bring some heavy sweaters. It gets cool at night.”

When she presented the idea to Larry, he accepted it readily, agreeing a few days’ rest was just what she needed. Perhaps she was hoping for an objection from him — but none came.

On Thursday night he helped her pack. And at eight o’clock on a Friday morning in the first week of August, Eve drove away from the house in Pinecrest Manor. It was the first time she’d been separated from her husband in the eight years of their marriage.

There was, not far from the development, a children’s amusement area called Joyland.

Joylessly built on two acres of back-topped ground, Joyland boasted its own parking lot and restaurant, and rides ranging from the carousel to a miniature roller coaster. On Saturday, her housework finished, Don busy in the back yard planting shrubs around the new patio, Maggie drove her son to the small-scale amusement park. Patrick had been to Joyland perhaps fifty times since they’d moved into the development, but he never tired of the place. Vicariously, she shared in his childish joy, grinning at him as the carousel whirled by, putting her hand to her mouth when he shrieked on the Whip.

She persuaded him to take a breather by buying him an ice-cream cone in the Joyland restaurant. They were walking outdoors again when she spotted Larry. At first she couldn’t believe her eyes. Her mouth opened in a small surprised “Oh.” She smiled, her cheek dimpling, took Patrick’s free hand and fairly dragged him to where Larry was standing with his sons.

He turned to her in astonishment. “Maggie! What—”

“Hi,” she said. “Oh, hi, hi!”

“What are you doing here?”

“Hello, Chris,” Patrick said.

“Hello, Patrick.”

“What are you doing here?” Maggie asked.

“I just thought I’d take the kids—” He shrugged, grinning happily.

“This’s my little brother,” Chris said. “His name’s David.”

“Hi,” David said. He looked at Patrick cautiously.

“Hi,” Patrick answered.

“He’s three,” Chris said.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, I’m three,” David said.

“So I’m five.”

“So I’m three,” David said, “Chris is five.”

“I don’t have any brothers,” Patrick said.

“Well, I got a brother,” David said, “and anyway, I’m almost four.”

“So what?” Patrick said. “Do you go to school?”

“He’s too small for school,” Chris said.

“I’m gonna go to nursery school maybe,” David said, frowning.

“That ain’t real school,” Patrick said. “I went on the Whip and everything,” he added, dismissing David and turning to Chris.

“Hey, Dad, can we go on the rides?” Chris asked excitedly.

“Sure, sure,” Larry said.

He bought tickets, and they put all three children on a ride with miniature tanks and noisy machine guns.

“You look beautiful, Mag,” he said. “If I’d known you could get away...”

“Don was busy out back. I didn’t even tell him I was leaving.” She paused. “Have you been managing all right?”

“Yes, fine.”

“When’s she coming back?”

“Monday night.”

They were leaning on the grilled railing which fenced in the tank ride. He covered her hand with his, and she glanced hastily over her shoulder and then turned back to him.

“Did you put up a struggle when she asked to go?”

“No.”

“Do you think she might return the courtesy?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you think you might be able to get away for a few days?”

He was silent for a moment. “Maybe.”

“I might be able to.”

“When?”

She shrugged. “You name it.”

“Would he let you go?”

“You let Eve go, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“He’ll let me go.”

“It’ll have to be after the Altar house is finished.”

“Whenever you say,” she said.

“The ride’s over. Here they come.”

The children emerged from their tanks like troops come to liberate France. David, in the presence of the older boys, walked with a particularly cocky swagger. In an aside to Chris, he whispered, “Don’t tell him I wet the bed.” They swarmed about Larry and Maggie, and then ran off in three separate directions, heading for the rides of their choice. Larry and Maggie rounded them up and deposited them together on a ride which featured motorboats in water. David complained because he got the back seat of a boat Patrick was steering.

“Where would we go?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Upstate someplace?”

“Let’s go somewhere new,” she said. “Where neither of us has ever been.”

“All right.”

“We can pretend we’re married for a few days,” she said lightly.

And very seriously he answered. “Yes, we can pretend we’re married.”

They watched the children in silence. David sat morosely at the back of the boat, his arms folded stoically across his chest. Patrick handled the wheel with a yachtsman’s elegance, little realizing the boat would move in its prescribed circle no matter what steering feats he performed. Monotonously, the boats moved around and around. The children tugged at the wheels, wrenched at them, yanked at them, spun them, twisted them, but the metal bars connecting the boats to the center hub kept them moving in a regular, unbending circle, around and around.

He felt rather sad all at once. There was an artificiality to the revolving boats, a directed falseness which mocked reality. Watching the children and the boats, he felt a part of the fake, felt the sham spreading until it included him and Maggie. Wasn’t the course of their affair as predetermined as the course of the boats? What promise was there for them but a narrow orbit around a hub of deceit? Their universe was restricted by the four walls of a motel and now, expanding — this giant, expanding universe! — it would include a secret weekend perhaps, and then back again to the exile of the motel sign blinking vacancy, emptiness.

The boats moved around and around monotonously.

He had to believe there was more for them, but he could not build such faith on the meanderings of his own mind. There were things he had to know which only she could tell him. Was this all there would ever be for them, the world of the neon motels beckoning vacancy, VACANCY, vacancy, the quick, pretended weekends — was this to be the sum total of all they’d ever known together, would they remember this only as the spaced regularity of vacancy, VACANCY, vacancy?

He had to know where they were going.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said sharply. “Do you have the car with you?”

“Yes,” she said, surprised by the harshness in his voice.

“All right, let’s give them a few more rides and then clear out. What time do you have to be back?”

“I have to prepare dinner. Four-thirty? Five?”

“Good.”

The children protested but were led off to the car anyway, and Maggie drove out on the parkway to one of the county picnic areas. He watched her while she drove. Occasionally, she took one hand from the wheel to touch his hand where it rested on the seat. The three boys sat in the back. David wanted to sit by the window, but Patrick said it was his car and wouldn’t let him.

“Do you feel suburban?” she asked him. “With your wife driving and your three children on the back seat?”

“Yes,” he said, “I feel suburban as hell.”

“What’s wrong, Larry?”

“Nothing.”

The picnic grounds were swarming with city dwellers. He took one look at the crowd and said, “Maybe this isn’t so wise.”

“Mary Garandi again?” she asked. “It doesn’t matter. We’ve got three wonderful alibis with us.”

They allowed the children to run free. Idly, they walked side by side behind them.

“I met Don on a picnic, you know.”

“I didn’t know,” he said absently. He was thinking there were only two types of memories they shared: those concerned with the lying necessary to protect their meetings; and those concerned with the passion they knew when they were together. Passion and Deceit, he thought. I’ll give it to Roger Altar. It’ll make a good title for a collection of short stories about jungle animals. That’s funny, all right. That’s hilarious. When did mankind stop crying and begin joking about the things that really mattered most?

“I was only sixteen,” Maggie said. “Eleven years ago — what a long time to know a person. I wish I’d met you instead, Larry. I wish you’d come eleven years ago.”

“Sure,” he said, “but I didn’t,” and there was the same curious harshness in his voice.

She turned to him. “Don’t you want to hold my hand?” she asked. He glanced at the crowd. “Oh, who gives a damn about them?” she said, tossing her pony tail in a defiant gesture which included the entire world.

He took her hand.

“Are you frightened?” she asked.

“Not of people.”

“They’re the only things to fear,” Maggie said. She paused. “Don took my hand on that picnic. He was very shy, but he took my hand. We were at Pelham Bay Park, and they were ready to start a three-legged race and I needed a partner. So I asked Don. He’d already graduated, you know. In fact, he’d just got out of the Army. He’d been a big wheel at the school, one of the girls said. Captain of the swimming team. We were city champs the year he was captain.”

“Is that why you asked him to be your partner?”

“Oh, no, don’t be silly.”

“Then why?” he said.

“He simply seemed nice. So I went over and said, ‘Will you race with me?’ And he looked at me for a few minutes without saying anything, and then he got up from where he was lying and just said, ‘Sure.’ I held out my hand, and he took it. We lost the race. But when it was over, he said, ‘My name’s Don Gault. What’s yours?’ I said, ‘Margaret Wagner,’ and he said, ‘Why don’t we take a walk? So we did. And that was the start of it. It’s funny the way people start, isn’t it?”

“Oh, yes, it’s sidesplitting,” he said.

“Larry, what’s the matter with you? Is something wrong?”

“Was he your first boy friend?”

“Yes.”

“Did you go to bed with him?”

“No, oh no. He always treated me like a... a saint.” She looked puzzled for a moment. “Sometimes I think he’s afraid of me, afraid of my being a woman.” She shook her head. “This is silly. Let’s talk about something else.”

“Why’d you marry him, Maggie?”

“I don’t know. He was pleasant and good looking and... and considerate, I guess.”

“Did you love him?”

“Who knows what love is at that age? I was only eighteen when we got married.”

“But you married him. You must have had a reason.”

“I felt safe with him. I guess I needed someone to make me feel that way again.”

“Do you feel safe with me?”

“No.”

“No?” he said, surprised.

“Because I don’t really have you, Larry. I only borrow you.”

“And only when you need me.”

“I need you all the time. You know that.”

“Maybe you need us both,” he said slowly. “Maybe I’m no good without him there, too,” and there he was face to face with the unasked question. The conversation, it seemed, had followed the course of every talk they’d ever had since the very beginning. Without conscious will or direction from either of them, it had moved the issue to the point where the asking of the ultimate question was inescapable. And now, poised for interrogation, he wondered if the question should be voiced, and knew that he would voice it no matter what reasonable arguments his mind presented against it. And he felt, too, that nothing would be changed by her answer. Whatever she answered, the unretreating boundaries of their isolated universe would remain ever and always the same. There really was no sense in asking at all. And yet, he put the question.

“Suppose I wanted you to leave him, Maggie?”

“Don’t,” she said flatly.

“Why not?”

She hesitated a long time, and then she said, “I want it to stay the way it is.”

And that was her answer. Not the desired answer, perhaps not really an answer at all. Perhaps just another pretense, another mockery, another shallow attempt to preserve the walls which hemmed them in. And faced with it, he thought, That isn’t all, that can’t be all!

“Nothing stays the way it is!” he said fiercely. “Everything changes.”

“We’ll never change,” she said.

“That’s romantic as hell, but it isn’t true. You change or you die, Maggie! Haven’t you changed since this started? Jesus Christ, I can’t even recognize myself any more!”

She laughed lightly and said, “How’d this get so serious all of a sudden?”

“I want it to get serious, Maggie! For once, just for once, let’s take a good look at ourselves. All right? Where the hell are we going, Maggie? What the hell is there for us? Where’s our place in this world? Am I supposed to be a perennial lover? I’m a man, Maggie. Goddamnit, there’s more to life than just... just...”

“Just love?” she said quietly.

“No, but there’s more than just love-making! Otherwise we’re only animals. We’re substituting...”

“Don’t you like to make love to me?”

“Maggie, for Christ’s sake, don’t be dense,” he said fiercely. “I’m trying to tell you it’s no good this way.”

“Do you want to end it?” she asked calmly.

“No!”

“Then what do you want?” she asked.

“I want to begin it. I have to know where you stand and what you expect. I have to be able to pick up the pieces of my life and put them together into a reasonable—”

“I told you what I want,” she said calmly.

“What do you want?”

“I want it to stay the way it is,” she said calmly.

“It can’t stay the way it is!”

“But it has to,” she said calmly. “That’s the only way I can have you, Larry, and I do want you.”

“All of me? Or just the happy swordsman? Do you want the guy who’s frustrated and frightened and confused? Do you want the guy who cries alone at night sometimes? Do you want all of me, Maggie, or just the goddamn stranger who makes love to you once a week?”

“That isn’t kind, Larry,” she said calmly.

“Neither is survival! It’s cruel and realistic, and I’m trying to survive! I have to know where I’m going,” he said. “I have to know, or I’ll love my—”

“I don’t want to know,” she said calmly. “Let it happen. Let whatever’s going to happen happen.” She squeezed his hand. “Isn’t it enough that we’ll be going away together for a few days?”

“No,” he said. “It isn’t enough.”

“It’s enough for me,” she said. “When will the Altar house be finished?”

“The end of the month.”

“This month? August?”

“Yes.”

“Could we go away the last week in August? That would be a nice time, Larry.”

“If the house is finished,” he said. “Look, Maggie, can we just get back to this for a minute? I don’t think you realize how important it is to me, or you wouldn’t brush it off like... like... Do you know Baxter and Baxter? The firm that sent me to Puerto Rico? Well, they’ve asked—”

“I don’t care!” Patrick suddenly roared. “I don’t like you, either.”

“Oh-oh,” Maggie said, and she broke into a run. Emptily, Larry watched her, the blue skirt flapping about the firm calves, the ankles strong and slender, the skirt flattening against rounded thighs. He sighed and slowly walked to where she stood with the children in a bristling knot.

“He’s smaller than you!” Chris yelled.

“So what? He started it!” Patrick said.

“I did not!” David bellowed.

“You did so!”

“Boys,” Maggie said.

“I did not!”

“You did so!”

“Boys, boys,” Maggie said more firmly.

“Now let’s just calm down,” Larry said.

“He hit David,” Chris said, “so I slugged him.”

“Why’d you do that?” Larry asked.

“I just told you. He hit David.”

“Why’d you hit David?” Maggie asked her son.

“He started it.”

“I did not!” David shouted. “You’re a bully.”

“Now stop that, David,” Larry said.

“Well, he is. I’m only three, and he picked on me.”

“You’re almost four,” Patrick said.

“You want me to slug you again?” Chris asked.

“I don’t like that word, Chris,” Larry said.

“Is it a dirty word?” Chris asked.

“No, but I don’t like it.”

Patrick suddenly began crying. Maggie took him into her arms. “They ganged up on me,” he sobbed. “Both of them.”

“Well, they’re brothers, sweetheart,” Maggie said. “That’s what brothers are for.”

“Why don’t you get me a brother?” Patrick sobbed.

“Now stop crying. Come on.”

“They ganged up on me. They surrounded me.”

“Tell Patrick you’re sorry, Chris,” Larry said.

“What for? He hit David.”

“I know, but tell him you’re sorry.”

“But I’m not sorry. You told me if anybody hurt David, I should slug him. So why should I be—?”

“Chris, I said I don’t like that word.”

“Which word?”

“Slug.”

“Okay, but didn’t you say I should protect David? He’s my brother, and Patrick’s a stranger, and you said family is family and strangers...”

“It’s all right, Larry,” Maggie said. “You know how children are.”

Patrick had stopped crying. He looked at Chris surlily now, embarrassed by his earlier tears.

“You want to be friends?” Chris asked, holding out his hand.

“No.”

“Okay, so don’t.”

“He hit me,” David said, seemingly proud that he’d caused the altercation.

“Come on,” Larry said, “shake hands and make up.”

“He don’t want to,” Chris said. He stuck out his hand again. “You want to or not, Patrick?”

Reluctantly, Patrick took the offered hand and gave it a jerky shake. The boys began walking back to the car, vaguely communicative, friendly in a hostile way. Larry and Maggie walked behind them silently.

At last she said, “Family is family, and strangers are strangers.”

“He meant...”

“Yes,” she said, as if finally presenting him with the irrefutable answer to his question.

Mr. Harder was very proud of his grown-up married daughter.

“This is the girl who made me a grandfather,” he told his friends at the cottage, and his eyes glowed with parental pleasure. Mrs. Harder told him to stop fussing over the poor girl, and then took Eve aside.

“You don’t have to be nice or even polite, Eve,” she said. “You came for a rest, and you’ll get one.”

“Thank you, Mama,” Eve said.

Mrs. Harder took her daughter into her arms and said, “If there’s anything you want to tell me...”

“No, Mama.”

“All right. Then change and go down to the beach. Get some sun. There isn’t a woman in the world who doesn’t feel better with an attractive suntan.”

On the beach, her problems seemed to vanish.

Swimming in the surf, lying on the sand afterward in her brief wet swim suit, she shut out the world and indulged in an orgy of the senses. The sun baked her, and the mild ocean wind cooled her naked limbs. There was the smell of salt in the air, the lulling whisper of the ocean in her ears. Occasionally a boat would appear on the far horizon, and she would sit up to look at it, feeling detached and irresponsible, suspended in a timeless coma. She took long walks along the lonely shore, searching the trackless dunes for seashells, stopping in complete freedom to study a sudden cloud formation. Pinecrest Manor seemed a million miles away. Here, on the edge of eternity, she felt at peace with nature and herself. As evening pressed on, as the sun vanished and purple dusk stained the sky, she would pick up her canvas bag, the wind whipping her hair over her shoulders, and alone she would walk back to the cottage feeling as wistfully fulfilled as a sixteen-year-old girl.

Her parents’ friends contributed to this, feeling of youthfulness she experienced. Sitting on the screened porch of the cottage, listening to the drone of their voices, sipping cocktails with them as stars invaded the sky, their advanced years contrasted sharply with the youth she felt surging through her body.

And late at night, lying alone in her narrow bed, looking through the screened window at the gleaming wheel of night, she felt a deep contentment she had not known since the summer began. She felt again like a young and desirable woman.

28

On the Monday after Eve returned from Easthampton, Felix Anders committed a series of blunders which might have been forgivable in a lesser man.

But Felix was not a lesser man. In his own estimation, he was possessed of keen observational powers, an excellent sense of timing, and a shrewd ability to judge character. He had learned through the development grapevine that Eve had gone out to the beach alone the week before. Silently, he wondered why Eve had felt the need to get away for a few days and, triumphantly, he concluded that a woman who left home was a restless woman. This was not too difficult to understand. With young Lawrence playing the field, was it not entirely plausible that Eve was being neglected? Felix did not like the idea of someone as attractive as Eve being shunted aside. This was extreme wastefulness which he could never condone.

Besides, he was firmly convinced that she was ripe.

He had seen her on the day after her return from Easthampton. She had acquired a beautiful tan, and her eyes were a shocking blue against her oval face. There was something patrician about this girl’s features, Felix thought, something untouchable, something almost rarefied. He would like to hold her face in his hands and watch those cool blue eyes explode in ecstasy. He would like that. She had been wearing a halter and shorts that Wednesday. The halter was very brief, and her breasts crowded it, and he could see the milk-white inch of flesh above the slender halter where the skin had been protected by her bathing suit, where the sun had not touched her. She worked barefooted in the back yard, her legs long and clean, stemming in firm three dimensionality from the turned-up cuffs of her shorts. He had walked past the house and nodded to her briefly. She had smiled back at him, her teeth dazzling white against the tanned skin.

Cool, Felix thought.

And, patiently, he waited.

His calculations on the following Monday seemed true and sharp, but of course he did not have the benefit of either Larry’s or Maggie’s counsel. He judged the events as they happened and formed what seemed to him logical conclusions. He was relaxing on the front steps of his house at eight o’clock that night, reading the Daily News. Dick Tracy was bound to a cake of ice, floating down a river. It looked like the end for Dick Tracy. Felix sighed, and then glanced up when he saw the front door of the Gault house opening.

Margaret Gault came out of the Cape Cod, hesitated a moment, and then rushed down the steps. Felix watched her. There was a smell on this one and Felix reluctantly admired Larry for having recognized it. There was, too, a sure femaleness to her walk, the tread of a jungle cat padding familiar paths. She turned left on the slate which ran past the big maple on the front lawn, and then walked to the garage at the back of her house. Felix watched her. She was wearing a green silk dress and high-heeled pumps. All decked out, he thought, and instantly assumed she was going to meet Larry. He watched the dress move up over her knees as she slid onto the seat of the Chevy. He waited while she started the car, and then watched as she backed it into the street. She seemed in a terrible rush. She didn’t even wave to him as she drove away.

Felix busied himself with his newspaper, and waited.

No matter how he read it, it still looked like the end for Dick Tracy.

In ten minutes Larry Cole drove past his house. He honked the horn at Felix and waved. Felix waved back. Hurry up, lover, he thought. She’s got a ten-minute start on you.

He folded his newspaper and walked into the house.

“Betty,” he said, “I’m going over to Larry’s. See if he wants a glass of beer.”

“Do you ever think of helping around here?” Betty asked.

“Do you ever think of going into the city every day to cut meat?” he asked “I may be late. I’ve got a big thirst.”

“You’re getting to be a drunkard,” Betty said, and she plunked another dish into the soapy water.

Felix went to the bathroom, combed his hair, and left the house. He assumed his calculations so far had been correct. The lovers had left to meet each other. It was close to eight-thirty, which meant that Eve would be through with the after-dinner mess, the children in bed. And even the weather seemed to be with him. Black clouds were piling up in the sky. That meant rain, and rain would drive everyone indoors. Not that it really mattered. There was certainly nothing suspicious about a visit from a friend and neighbor. Still, the rain wouldn’t hurt. He glanced skyward, and even as he did, the first drops started to fall in a slow, steady drizzle. He grinned and began walking faster, convinced that all of his observations were as true as the forecast of rain.

He didn’t know this was the only safe conclusion he’d drawn, or that he was yet to commit his biggest blunder.

To begin with, the haste with which Margaret Gault had left her house was occasioned by a dental appointment for eight o’clock in Dr. Bennuti’s office, an appointment for which she was already late. She was not hurrying to meet Larry. Her rendezvous was with a drill.

Nor had Larry driven past on his way to meet her. Larry was simply driving into town to pick up some art supplies, and he would not be gone all night as Felix had surmised. He was, in fact, not more than two miles away buying pencils and erasers when Felix knocked on his front door.

Nor had Eve, ripe or not, completely finished with the after-dinner duties. True, the children were in bed and the dishes done, but a shower was still on her schedule. She had gone to the bathroom, undressed, tied her hair back with a ribbon, and was adjusting the water preparatory to stepping into the tub when she heard the knocking at the door.

“Who is it?” she called.

The bathroom door was closed, so she could not be certain, but it sounded to her as if someone had entered the house without waiting for the customary “Come in.” Even in gregarious Pinecrest Manor, this was a little odd. She put on her robe, opened the bathroom door, and peeked out.

“Who is it?” she asked again.

“Me. Felix.”

“Oh,” she said. “Larry isn’t home, Felix.”

“I know.”

“I’m about to take a shower. Is it anything important?”

“It’ll just take a minute, Eve.”

“Well, all right,” she said. “Sit down.”

“I’m sitting already,” he answered.

She closed the bathroom door and debated getting fully dressed again. She decided against it. He’d said he’d only take a minute, and she meant to keep him to that promise. She belted the robe tightly around her waist, turned up the collar to her throat, and then inspected herself in the mirror. The robe was a bulky terry cloth, unrevealing, thick, impenetrable. Satisfied, she put on her mules and went into the living room. Felix stood up when she came in.

“I hope I’m not bothering you,” he said.

“Not at all,” she answered, smiling politely. “What is it?” He seemed embarrassed to find her in a robe. The thought amused her slightly. She was completely and formidably covered, but nonetheless he avoided looking at her.

“I wanted to find out what you did with those azaleas,” he said.

“Azaleas?” She went to the coffee table, took a cigarette from the box there, and lighted it.

“Yes. Out front.”

“I don’t understand. I didn’t do anything with them.”

“You handle the gardening around here, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Eve said. She sat in one of the easy chairs, tucking the robe around her. Outside, the falling drizzle washed the development streets.

“Well, they’re coming along beautifully. Betty and I want to buy some, but we want to know first...” He paused. “You’ve got your hair back, haven’t you?”

“What?” Eve said.

“Your hair.”

Her hand went to the back of her neck. “Oh, yes.”

“It looks prettier loose.”

“Well, I don’t like shower caps,” she said. “It gets wet this way, but at least it’s manageable.”

“Why don’t you loosen it, Eve?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why don’t you take off the ribbon?”

“Because I’m going into the shower as soon as you leave.”

“But it looks prettier loose.”

“Well, I’ll wear it loose later.”

“Let it fall free, Eve,” he said. “Let it fall around your face.”

Eve did not answer him. She looked at him, puzzled.

“You have a very pretty face, Eve.”

“Thank you,” she said quickly. “About the azaleas, all I did was dig a hole and spread peat moss into the bottom of it. And I kept them watered. That’s all I did.” She rose. Felix kept sitting.

“When did you plant them?” he asked.

“In the spring.”

“Do you think I ought to wait for the spring?”

“I don’t know.” She shrugged.

“Yes, but what do you think? Should I wait until the spring, or should I plant now?”

“I really don’t know, Felix. I don’t think August is very good for putting plants in, but it’s up to you. The nursery might not guaran—”

“Take off the ribbon, Eve,” Felix said.

“Felix, let’s not be foolish,” she said. “I have to take a shower.”

Felix stood up. She watched him as he walked toward her. For the first time since he had entered the house, she felt somewhat frightened. She did not move when he reached out to loosen the ribbon, and yet she felt she was succumbing, powerless to his will. She felt that if she allowed him to take off that silly piece of cloth, it would be the same as if he... as if he... but she did not move. She felt his fingers plucking at the silk. The ribbon fell. Her hair tumbled about her face. Felix moved back from her, the ribbon in his hands. The room was gray with the drizzle that oozed along the big picture window facing the street.

“There,” he said, “that’s better.” He grinned. “You’ve got a very pretty face, and very lovely eyes.”

Eve smiled nervously. “Well, I’m not going to argue with you about a ribbon,” she said, the words spilling from her mouth. “I doubt that the nursery will guarantee anything you plant in...”

“Eve....”

“... in August. You should consider that if...”

They saw the lightning streak simultaneously. It flashed across the sky with sudden, startling brilliance, a jagged, luminescent yellow-white. And then, after the space of a heart beat, the thunder followed, and the heavier rain was unleashed all at once, lashing across the development streets in unchallenged fury.

“It’s really beginning to come down,” Felix said.

“I’d better turn on the lights.”

“What for?”

“It’s... it’s getting dark in here.”

“Don’t you like to watch a storm?”

“Yes,” she said quietly.

“Then leave the lights out.”

Across the street she saw Arthur Garandi run toward his car with a newspaper over his head. He rolled up the windows and then ran back to the house.

“I like storms,” Felix said.

Eve said nothing. Their eyes met and held.

“Was it very painful?” Felix asked. “Taking off the ribbon.”

In a whisper, she said, “No.”

“Was it?” he demanded.

She raised her eyes to meet his. “No,” she said, slightly louder.

“Now take off the robe,” Felix said.

Lightning flashed into the sky, illuminating the room with its sudden electric glow. Thunder bellowed on the horizon.

“Take it off, Eve,” Felix said gently.

She did not answer. She kept staring at him. She could feel her loosened hair against her cheeks.

“Take it off, Eve,” Felix said. “You want to, and I know it.”

He took a slow step forward. She saw his hands reaching out, but she could not move to stop him. He grasped the lapels of her robe and with a swift motion pulled it open down the front. She felt cold air attack her nipples as her breasts spilled free. Felix backed away from her and studied her appraisingly. She made no motion to close the robe. She stood facing him, staring at him.

“Beautiful,” he said, and then he moved toward her again.

She brought her arm back and released it in a roundhouse swing, her open palm colliding with Felix’s cheek. The slap resounded in the dim silence of the room. Felix blinked.

“Get out,” she whispered.

Rubbing his face, Felix grinned and said, “Let’s not kid each other, Eve. I know what you want.”

“Get out,” she repeated, her voice a deadly whisper.

Felix kept grinning. “Sure, sure. But what we both know is that in about two minutes we’ll be in that other room.”

“Take your filthy eyes off me,” she said, and she pulled the robe shut. She belted the terry cloth and stood facing him, her eyes slitted, her voice going on in its controlled, furious whisper. “Get out of here before I call the police.”

“Now look, Eve,” Felix said, still grinning.

“Get out!”

“Come on, come on,” he said, stepping toward her.

“Oh, you filthy rotten bastard,” she said, and tears welled into her eyes, and in a moment of sudden recognition, Felix realized he’d miscalculated. He realized he’d committed a serious blunder. “Get out! Get out!” she said, and this time she hurled the words, and he could see she was beginning to tremble, and he was afraid she would scream in the next minute. He turned and went to the door. He did not say goodbye. Silently, he walked out into the rain.

Eve stood in the center of the room trembling. She did not want to cry, but she could not stop the tears. She cried into her open hand, and she said to no one, “Oh, the rotten filthy bastard,” crying uncontrollably while the lightning flashed across the sky outside.

It was still raining when Larry got home not ten minutes later. The living room was dark. Eve, in her robe, was still sobbing on the couch.

“What is it?” he said, rushing to her. “Eve, what’s the matter?”

She told him what had happened. He held her in his arms, trying to still her trembling, a wild, unreasoning anger mounting inside him.

“I’ll be back,” he said, and he went out into the rain to look for Felix.

The rain was hard and driving.

He wore no hat. He walked into the rain, and he could feel the water on his face and in his eyes, could feel his clothes going limp and sodden. He thought, I asked for this. I brought this to Eve. His feet were wet, his shoes squishing water as he walked toward Felix’s house, his fists clenched. The rain was cold, and he could feel the beginning of a chill. He went directly to the front door and rang the bell. Betty answered it.

“Larry!” she said, her eyes sweeping his body. “What is it?”

“Where’s your husband?”

“Up at the bar. He came back for the car a minute ago. He stopped by for you but you weren’t—”

“Thanks,” Larry said. He turned and walked down the steps. He glanced only briefly at the Gault house across the street. He thought of what he was about to do, and he thought, Felix can destroy me. I never should have trusted him, but he knew he had to find Felix and let him know that Eve was his wife, Mrs. Lawrence Cole, and that nobody went into his home and molested his wife. He did not see anything ironic or comic about the situation. He kept walking toward the center, and thoughts fitted through his mind, to be immediately rejected. The only thought which seemed to stick was the thought of Felix attacking Eve.

He saw the Oldsmobile parked outside the bar, the lone car in the rain-swept lot. He opened the door of the bar, walked in, and stood dripping just inside the entrance. The bartender looked up at him. There was a cautious uneasiness to the bartender’s casual glance, as if he were steeling himself for a holdup. A glass of beer rested on the bar at the far end of the room. A telephone booth was pasted against the rear wall, alongside the men’s room. Larry began walking toward the booth.

“You want something, Mac?” the bartender asked.

Larry didn’t answer. He pushed open the door of the booth.

“... well, you’ve got to realize it’s not as easy as...” Felix was saying. He stopped talking when the door opened. He turned and looked up at Larry. “Just a second,” he said into the mouthpiece, and then covered it with his palm. “I’m on the phone, Larry.”

“Hang up.”

“What for?”

“Eve told me what happened,” Larry said tightly.

“Forget it,” Felix said. “I misjudged her. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry isn’t enough, Felix.”

“No?” Felix grinned. “I’d hate to have to tell Don Gault all about you and his—”

Larry reached into the booth, seizing the front of Felix’s shirt. He brought back his fist and then threw it at Felix’s mouth. Felix dropped the receiver. A thin line of blood trickled from the corner of his lips. Larry reached for him again, hitting him with his right fist, releasing his shirt and hitting him with his left fist, and then the right again, and then battering his face and his body with methodical precision, administering a coldly objective beating as Felix scrambled to escape the driving punches.

At last Larry shoved him into the booth, and Felix slumped against the rear wall, blinking, his lip bleeding, his right cheek streaming blood.

“Keep away from Eve,” Larry said.

He turned and started out of the bar. The bartender asked, “That guy do something?”

“Yes,” Larry answered, and the bartender nodded knowingly.

29

There were, by the next day, six people who knew that Felix had received a punitive beating.

Of the six who knew, the bartender was least concerned. A beating had been administered in his place of business. So what the hell? It was a quieter fight than most which took place in his bar. It could hardly be termed a fight at all, for that matter. He had led Felix to the men’s room, where he’d washed the blood from his face, and then Felix had gone home. By the next day the bartender had forgotten the fight completely.

It was not as easy for Felix to forget the beating.

To begin with, whereas the cut inside his mouth did not show, he had to explain the gashed cheek when he got home to Betty that night. He told her that some crazy bastard had hurled a beer bottle across the room and that the bottle had accidentally hit him. The man was obviously drunk and had been suddenly possessed of an urge to fling the bottle, not aiming at Felix and certainly not intending to hit him. As a matter of fact, Felix added tolerantly, the man had apologized profusely, when the incident was over, and had offered to take Felix to a doctor, which medical aid Felix had heroically refused.

Betty was properly sympathetic and properly indignant. She could not understand why a man drank in a bar — wasn’t his home a good enough place for drinking? But if he had to go to a bar, why did he choose a place where drunks threw around beer bottles? Fussily maternal, she had made him a purifying ice-cream soda with vanilla ice cream and Coca-Cola, and then they’d gone to bed. Felix lay awake half the night, thinking. By morning he had formulated an attitude and a course of action.

He admitted reluctantly that he had been wrong about Eve. It wasn’t that she couldn’t be had; there wasn’t a woman alive who couldn’t be had. It was simply that she couldn’t be had right now. His timing had been off, that was all. Nonetheless, he put Eve Cole out of his mind as a possible acquisition. He had violated one of his own tenets — “Never spit where you eat!” — when he’d approached her. The experience had been unsatisfactory and served to strengthen his own sound judgment regarding neighborhood philandering. Eve Cole, as far as Felix was concerned, was finished business.

On the other hand, Larry Cole stuck in his craw.

Felix had taken the beating, but even while the fists were pummeling him into the booth he’d been thinking, You won’t get away with this! He had lain awake the night before plotting his revenge. By morning, he realized that revenge, for the time being anyway, was impossible. Not only impossible but unthinkable. It annoyed him that instant reprisal was to be denied him. Larry Cole had behaved like an absolute ass. A man who was playing around had no right to get offended when a pass was made at his wife. Didn’t Larry know the elementary rules of the game? Immediate revenge against this rebel would have been delightful — but for now revenge was impossible.

For if Felix went to Don Gault, as was his first impulse, Larry would instantly know who had betrayed him. He might then divulge the story of the beating to Betty. Was a petty revenge worth the sacrifice of a way of life? Certainly not. Felix enjoyed his extramarital excursions. Should Betty learn about the Eve Cole incident, she might divorce him. Or, worse thought, he might become a prisoner in his own home. It simply wasn’t worth it, especially for something which had not paid off.

He wondered if Larry knew what powerful cards he was holding. And then a new, rather painfully amusing thought came to him. It occurred to him that should Don Gault, in any way whatever, tip to the affair, Larry would automatically assume Felix had been the informer. And believing that, there was again the danger that he would go to Betty in retaliation. The situation was a precarious one. Not only was Felix being forced to forego what would have been a delicious revenge, he was also being forced into the role of protector. Don Gault could not be allowed to find out about his wife and Larry. If he did, the repercussions would shake the very foundations of Felix’s home.

Felix Anders surveyed his new role sourly and reached the conclusion that it stank.

Someday, perhaps, he could strike back at Larry with impunity. But for now he could only hope that his blunders — like Banquo’s ghost — would not come back to haunt him.

It seemed coincidental but significant to Larry that the only two fist fights he’d had since he was twelve years old had both taken place in or around a phone booth and had both been in defense of a woman’s honor. When he was a boy, his mother had drummed her own peculiar brand of chivalry into him with the oft-repeated advice: “Never get into a fight over a girl.”

He had, in the past several months, got into two fights over two separate girls. One of those girls had been his wife. The concept was somehow amusing. Trudging back through the rain on the night of the beating, he had wanted to laugh aloud with the thought. He’d felt primitively, fiercely, instinctively protective of Eve when he’d left the house twenty minutes earlier. Now with his knuckles aching, with his clothes soaked, with the rain beating on his head in cold frenzy, he wanted to laugh to the skies. What the hell was so strange about defending your own wife? Wasn’t that what husbands were for? And yet it was strange and puzzling and amusing. Wanting to laugh, he walked through the rain feeling very heroic and very content and very baffled.

When he got back to the house, Eve was waiting for him. He was going to spare her the details of the fight, but she saw his swollen hands and torn knuckles, and she began to cry instantly. She went to the bathroom for boric acid and hot water and then, gently bathing his hands, she listened to the story. When he was finished, she took his hands from the water and kissed them. Her eyes were glowing. They made love that night the way they had not made love in a very long while.

It was not until the next day that he began to think of the possible repercussions. Would Felix attempt reprisal? He considered the problem for a long time, and then decided he was safe. Felix would never reveal anything to Don because his own position was too vulnerable. Nonetheless, Maggie had to know of the incident if only to put her on guard should Felix behave unexpectedly. He called her that afternoon, and she became the fifth person to know about the beating.

As she put the phone back onto its cradle, she thought, He loves his wife.

The thought was not new to her, and so she could not understand why it was causing so much pain. Surely she should have been used to it by this time. Certainly she had gone to bed with the thought often enough, awakened with it just as often.

He loves his wife.

It was a very simple thought, a very simple concept. And yet it hurt, it ached, it hurt like hell. Wearily, she sat at the pine-topped kitchen table, looking out at the bright August sunshine.

Well, Margaret, where do we go from here?

That was the same question Larry had asked, and now she was asking it too, and her answer was still the same: I want it to stay the way it is. Even though he loves his wife. That’s all right. You knew he loved her all along. Maybe he didn’t know it, but you certainly did, so let’s not pretend this is a new thought. He beat up Felix, and Felix deserved it. He should have killed him. So be proud of him instead of getting foolish and jealous and depressed. You knew he loved his wife all along, so you’ve no reason to let it affect you this way.

Yes, he loves his wife.

Yes, well he does. Yes, but it hurts. I don’t want him to love anyone but me; it hurts like hell that he should rush out to defend her pure white virgin clean pure damn honor. I wish Felix had got her. I wish to hell he had.

STOP IT!

She sat with her hands clasped tightly on the kitchen table.

Stop it.

Please.

Stop it.

Yes.

Nothing has changed. Everything is still the way it was, the way it will always be. Just this way just the way I want it, and I don’t care if he loves his wife. Let him love her, but let him belong to me without belonging. I will never never never again be left alone! And you will never leave me, Larry, because I’ll give you what you want, not all, never that, never that again as long as I live, but enough, enough and you’ll never leave me no matter how much you love her, you’ll be mine always, I’ll never lose again, it will stay the way it is, it will stay the way it is, I don’t want it to be over!

She put her head on the table and began to weep.

Her grandfather had owned a shock of brilliant white hair. He was sixty-three years old, but he walked with his shoulders back and his head erect, and she always felt as if he were a very tall tall gentleman when she walked with him, even though he was only five-eight. Her grandfather had a mild German accent, and sometimes he used German words with her, words like “Liebchen” and “Maggie-lein.”

He told her the most marvelous stories about Germany and Austria and skiing in the Alps. Sometimes he yodeled for her, just to prove he’d been to Switzerland. He had brown hands. His hands were always brown, with big veins that puffed out. She would sometimes push at the soft cushion of his veins and he would say, “Gott, Maggie, you will cut off der blood!”

She had loved her grandfather very much. She would always tell him so. “Papa,” she would say, “I love you.” He was really the warmest man in the entire world. She loved to walk with him, or talk to him, or just sit on his lap and say nothing or maybe push at his fat hand veins. He was retired, and so he was always there when she needed him. Sometimes he read to her. There were a lot of words he pronounced wrong, and when she laughed at him he would become furious, but she loved him even when his face was all red with anger.

They played a lot of games together, and whenever they played he would laugh with this very loud, ringing laugh. Whenever he laughed she would remember the stories he told her about sitting in a brauhaus and drinking good black beer, and she could see him sitting with the big stein in his hands, laughing and laughing. She loved his laugh, and she loved her grandfather with a special unreserved love she gave to no one else in the world.

She called him “Papa” because that was what her mother called him. She supposed in a way, with her father being a salesman and on the road so much, that Papa was almost like another father to her. And, of course, she loved her father too but not the way she loved Papa, not in that special way. He was always there with his gentle brown hands and his booming laugh and his warm voice and eyes. He was always there when she wanted him.

And then, right after Papa gave her the topaz earrings, everything changed.

In the apartment where they lived in the city, her bedroom was right next door to her parents’, and she always slept with the door open because she was afraid of a completely dark room. She awoke in the middle of a weekend night, when her father was home. She heard loud voices, and she sleepily realized the voices were her mother’s and father’s, and she lay saucer-eyed in bed with the blankets pulled to her throat, a little frightened, not yet quite awake, listening to them.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” her father said. “This is the stupidest thing I ever heard.”

“It’s not stupid at all,” her mother answered. “You’re stupid! For the first time in two years I’m telling you the truth, and you’re too stupid to understand it.”

“What truth? Do you call this truth? Is this what I come home to hear?”

“I’m in love with another man!” her mother shouted. “Learn it! Understand it!”

“I’ll understand nothing of the sort.”

“I love him, and he loves me. I’ve been going to bed with him for two years. Does that penetrate? To bed! For two years! I love him, and I want to go away with him.”

“Stop it, Elizabeth. You’ll wake the child.”

“I don’t care about the child. I want to settle this with you.”

“You don’t care about Margaret?”

“I don’t care about anything but being with him.”

“You’re crazy, Elizabeth. Go to sleep. We’ll talk about this in the morning.”

“I want to settle it now.”

“Settle what? What do you want? A divorce?”

“Yes.”

“Have you told your father about this?”

“No.”

“It would kill him.”

“No.”

“It would kill the old man, and you know it. You can’t do this, Elizabeth. Don’t you care about him at all? Or about your own daughter? Have you nothing left? Are you all filth?”

“I love him,” she said flatly.

“Love is for the movies! What are you, a high-school girl? Don’t talk foolishly, Elizabeth!”

“Won’t you understand? My God, won’t you understand?”

“I understand only that there’s more involved here than your stupid little selfish affair! There’s your daughter... and your father...”

“I’m going to tell him tomorrow.”

“And you’ll kill him.”

“I won’t kill him, don’t worry. My father is a man. I wish I could say the same for you.”

“I’m a man, Elizabeth,” he said softly.

Margaret heard her mother laugh.

“I’m a man,” he repeated.

“You’re nothing,” her mother said. “Not a man, not anything. You don’t know what a man is!”

Margaret lay in the dark with the blankets pulled to her throat. She was very frightened. She had not understood all of what she’d heard, but she felt suddenly as if her parents were strangers, just a strange man and a strange woman who happened to be in the bedroom next to hers. And, trembling, lying with the darkness around her, she thought, I have Papa. Papa loves me. Papa will take care of me.

Her grandfather died the next week.

He died in his sleep, and everyone said it was a natural death for an old man. But Margaret knew what had really happened. Margaret knew that her mother had told him all those things. Margaret knew that her mother had killed Papa.

Her mother did not get the divorce she’d wanted; perhaps the death of the old man really affected her. In any case, she did not go away. She continued to stay in a household that was suddenly filled with strangers. And once, months after the old man had been buried, Margaret walked into the kitchen to find her mother weeping. Her mother turned to her and said, “I’ve lost him, I’ve lost him,” but Margaret knew she was not talking about Papa. She was talking about this other man someplace. And so she turned her back and left the room. After that there were new men. Margaret learned to sense when her mother was leaving the house to meet another man, but she didn’t care by that time.

Her mother had killed the one person Margaret really loved, and now there was no one left to kill, and so she didn’t care any more.

At ten years of age she had learned that you could never love anyone too deeply because you were always left alone.

Alone and afraid.

When Don came home from work that night, she told him about the beating even though she knew this presented a possible danger. The Coles were not truly friends of theirs, and he might wonder how she’d got access to the story. But she felt compelled to tell him, and he listened to the story gravely, and never once asked how she’d learned of the attack.

When it was over, he said, “I don’t believe it.”

“What don’t you believe?”

“That Felix would be stupid enough to do a thing like that.”

“Do you think Eve made up the story?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why should she make up a story like that?”

“I don’t know.” Don was pensive for a moment. Then he asked, “She’s got two kids, hasn’t she?”

“Yes.”

“So how could Felix do anything like that? I don’t believe it. Besides, she doesn’t seem like the kind of girl who’d get into such trouble.”

“But it happened.”

“If it happened, it was Felix’s fault. He must have a dirty mind.”

“Maybe she asked for it,” Maggie said.

“I’m sure she didn’t. She’s a married woman, the mother of two kids!”

Maggie looked at him unflinchingly. “Married women,” she said slowly, “have been known to go to bed with other men on occasion. The idea may come as a shock to you...”

“It doesn’t come as a shock to me, Margaret, but I’m glad I don’t know any women like that. And Eve Cole certainly isn’t that kind of a woman.”

“How do you know?”

“I just know, that’s all. You can tell by looking at her. She’s the mother of two kids, for God’s sake, and I can’t see her getting into a cheap stupid situation—”

“All right.”

“... where a fellow like Felix—”

“All right, Don.”

“... would take advantage of—”

“All right!” Maggie snapped. “You’ve successfully defended her honor!”

“Well, that’s the way I feel.”

“You missed your calling.”

“What do you mean?”

“You should have been a press agent for Mother’s Day.”

“I don’t think that’s funny.”

“I thought it was pretty funny,” Maggie said. She left him and went into the kitchen to do the dishes, wondering what he would do if he ever found out his own wife, a mother, for God’s sake, was one of those women he was glad he didn’t know.

Don sat in his easy chair, picked up the newspaper, and began reading it. After a while, he called, “Do you really think Felix got funny with her?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Poor kid,” Don answered. “I wonder how she feels.”

At first Eve felt nothing but pride.

Responding in a time-worn, timeless, female way, she knew only that her man had gone to her defense. The storm had intensified the protected feeling she’d known. Not only had Larry gone out to defy another man, but he’d casually defied the raging elements as well. The entire concept, she supposed, was completely medieval — the insult, the defense, the victorious return, the comforting, and then the reward. She had made love to him passionately that night. Her own ardor surprised her. Reaching for him, rediscovering him, she wanted to possess and be possessed. She knew pride and passion and ownership that night. That night he was her man.

In the morning everything seemed to have been forgotten.

The bedroom was still cool from the gratifying night breezes. Later in the day the August sun would attack the small ranch and render it insufferably hot. But now it was cool, and she opened her eyes and then sat up and stretched and ran her hands upward on the back of her neck, the long black hair tumbling through her fingers. She smiled contentedly, remembering.

Larry was already out of bed. She got up, went to the closet, and put on a blue peignoir. She hoped the children were already dressed and out of the house. Feeling quite saucy and daring, she went into the kitchen. Larry was standing at the counter spooning instant coffee into their cups. She went to him and stood behind him, her arms around his waist, her cheeks against his back. Then, without warning, she began caressing him.

“Hey!”

“Making coffee?” she cooed innocently.

“Come on, come on,” he said. He caught her hands gently and turned to face her.

“Where are the kids?” she asked.

“Outside already.”

“Did you give them breakfast?”

“Yes. David wouldn’t eat his egg.”

“Come into the bedroom with me,” she said. “I want to show you something.”

“What do you want to show me?”

“Me,” she said.

“Come on, sexy. Get dressed.”

“I’d rather get undressed.”

“I guess I ought to beat people up more often.”

“I guess you ought to.”

“I guess so.”

“I guess so.” They stood looking at each other. Eve winked. “Well?”

“The kids’ll be popping in and out.”

“We’ll lock the doors.”

“Later,” Larry said.

“Why not now?”

“I’ve got some work to do. A letter to Altar about a legitimate extra, and some other things.”

“Oh” Eve shrugged. “Okay.” She turned away from him. “Do you want toast?” she asked, and she hoped her disappointment did not show.

Several times that day she went into the small office and hovered about his board, but he did not give her much attention. And several times that day she found a persistent thought nagging her mind. Now that the episode with Felix was over, she began to wonder just what had provoked it. Unable to find within herself any reasons for Felix’s bald assumption, honestly believing she had never given him the slightest indication of unrest or dissatisfaction or willingness to submit to his advances, she began to wonder just what had given him the idea.

And it was then that she once again thought of infidelity.

And immediately put it out of her mind.

To find it returning again immediately.

She had thought the weekend at Easthampton had banished the idea completely, but here it was back again, seemingly stronger after its short exile. She tried to ignore it, tried to pretend it was not there, but Larry’s indifference strengthened the vague idea until it began taking firmer shape.

Was Larry being unfaithful to her? And had he confided this to Felix? And was this why Felix had assumed he could safely approach her?

The idea was fantastic, of course.

But possible.

Preposterous.

But plausible.

She allowed it to gnaw steadily at her mind.

Perhaps, if Larry had made love to her that day — or even that night — she’d have put the idea aside temporarily. But Larry did not make love to her.

Perhaps, too, if Harry Baxter had not called the next day, she’d have put the idea out of her mind permanently.

But Harry Baxter did call the next day.

30

Wednesday morning.

The television forecasters the night before had promised temperatures in the high nineties. By eight in the morning the house was already suffocatingly hot. There was a muggy oppressiveness on the air, a clinging, crawling, penetrating, sticky heat that invaded clothing and furniture and flesh. There was a stillness to Pinecrest Manor. The lawns and the sidewalks and the roof tops baked. In the stillness, you could hear telephones ringing halfway up the block. You could hear a dog barking occasionally. The smothering blanket of August hung in the sky, bright, yellow, glaring.

She awoke to the heat.

The first thing she did was take a cold shower. She sent the kids out in shorts, with no shirts. She hoped the heat would not reach her. She wore her briefest halter, her shortest shorts, but still the heat penetrated. And as the morning doggedly wore on, it became more and more evident that the forecasters had been right. She sought the shade outdoors, but even in the shade it was difficult to breathe.

“Larry,” she said, “please! Let’s pack up and go to the beach.”

He agreed instantly. She went into the house to make some sandwiches and then discovered they were out of cold cuts. She made out a list, sent Larry to the market with it, and then went outside to the shade again. Larry had put out the children’s plastic pool and they romped and splashed in the water noisily. She watched them with adult envy and then finally went over to sit on the pool’s rim with her feet in the water. Across the street, the Signora was sitting on her shaded front stoop fanning herself. The front screen door opened and clattered shut again. Mary Garandi came out of the house.

“Hot enough for you, Eve?” she called.

Eve nodded but made no comment.

“Why don’t you get in there with the kids?” Mary called.

“I wish I could.”

“Go ahead.”

Eve smiled weakly. She heard a telephone ringing. At first, because of the stillness of the street, because sound seemed to be magnified by the heat that day, she wasn’t sure it was her phone. She listened. Persistently, the phone rang. She swung her feet over the pool’s edge and walked across the grass to the front door. Standing there, she knew the ringing was unmistakably hers. She opened the screen door and ran through the house to the bedroom. The minor exertion exhausted her. When she lifted the receiver, she was wringing wet.

“Hello?” she said.

“Mr. Cole, please. Harry Baxter is calling.”

“He just stepped out for a few minutes,” Eve said. “This is Mrs. Cole. May I take a message?”

“Just a moment, please,” the girl said. Eve waited. The girl came back onto the line. “Mr. Baxter will speak with you,” she said. “One moment.” Again Eve waited.

“Hello, Eve?” Baxter said, his voice booming cheerily onto the line.

“Hello, Mr. Baxter,” Eve said warmly. “How are you?”

“Fine, thank you.”

“And Mrs. Baxter?”

“In the pink. It’s good to talk to you, Eve. Where have you been keeping yourself?”

Eve laughed, not knowing whether or not an answer was expected of her.

“Why don’t you come in with that man of yours sometime, and we’ll have dinner together, the four of us?”

“I’d love to,” Eve said.

“How about today?”

“We’re going to the beach. It’s insufferable here. How is it in the city?”

“Worse,” Baxter said, “but I’m sitting here with air conditioning all around me.”

“Oh, lucky lucky man.”

“Why not come in after the beach? We’ll have a late dinner.”

“That’s awfully nice,” Eve said, “but we’ll probably be exhausted. Couldn’t we make it some other night?”

“Certainly,” Baxter said. “I suppose I’m being a little overanxious.”

Eve smiled and said nothing, not knowing what he meant.

“But,” Baxter went on, “time’s getting a little short, you know.”

“Yes,” Eve said, and then wondered why she had agreed with him. Time was getting a little short for what?

“So forgive my impatience, will you?”

“All right,” she said, puzzled.

“How do you feel about it, Eve?”

“We’re happy to come in anytime,” she said. “Just give us a little notice so we can get a sitter.”

“What?” Baxter said.

“Didn’t you mean...?”

Baxter chuckled. “No, no, I was talking about Puerto Rico.” He paused. “Or are you just being a shrewd business-woman?”

“Oh, Puerto Rico,” Eve said laughing.

“Yes. How do you feel about it?”

“Well, I think it’s wonderful you liked Larry’s ideas. Has construction started yet?”

There was a long pause.

Baxter chuckled and then said, “Oh, Eve, Eve, I’m too old to play this sort of game.”

“What?”

“Can I count on Larry, or can’t I?”

“What?” she said again.

“The offer I made him,” Baxter said.

“The...” She stopped. Despite the heat, she felt suddenly cold. With terrifying intuition, she realized that Baxter knew something she did not know. The instant question that leaped into her mind was “What offer?” With remarkable restraint, she kept it off her tongue. Instead, she said, “Oh, yes, the offer.”

“What did you think of it?”

“Well, I... uh... I... I’d rather not say. Larry might... uh... want to tell you himself.”

“Uh-oh,” Baxter said. “That sounds bad.”

“No, no,” she said hastily. “It’s just I... I don’t like to meddle in business.”

“But doesn’t the idea of island planning excite you?”

“Island...” She felt weak all at once. She hoped she would not faint. She clung to the receiver as if it alone held her erect. “Yes, it... it excites me.”

“This is a wonderful opportunity for Larry, Eve. I wouldn’t try to fool you. There are a hundred architects in the country who’d cut off their arms to be my assistant on this project.”

“The... the island planning for... for Puerto Rico, you mean?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Your assistant,” she said blankly.

“Yes. Or didn’t you like Puerto Rico?”

“No, I liked it.”

“What is it then? It can’t be taking the kids out of school that’s bothering you. Your eldest is just going into the first grade, isn’t he?”

“Yes, he... he...”

“Wouldn’t you want to go down there with the family?”

“I... I don’t know. It isn’t that,” she said, the size of the offer finally overwhelming her, the importance of it, the enormity of it, and the fact that Larry had not even mentioned it to her. Why, why, why? “You’d better... you’d better talk to Larry. Shall I ask him to call you back?”

“Eve, convince him for me, will you?”

“Yes, yes, I...”

“If you haven’t already.”

“No. I’ll ask him to call you. He’ll call you, Mr. Baxter. I hear one of the children. I have to hang up.”

“Don’t let him miss out on this, Eve. He deserves the opportunity to show what he can really do.”

“Yes. Goodbye, Mr. Baxter. He’ll call you.”

She hung up abruptly, and then collapsed in the chair alongside the phone, feeling certain she would faint. She knew there would be an argument when Larry returned to the house. She did not want an argument, and she told herself, He must have a very good reason, he must, he must, he would not withhold something as important as this from me unless he has a terribly good and valid reason, but she knew there would be an argument. She knew because while she told herself there was a good reason behind Larry’s strange behavior, she simultaneously thought, He has another woman.

She wanted to blot out the thought, crush it, squash it, but, elusive as quicksilver, it raced through her mind over and over and over again. She sat sweating, feeling the oppressive heat inside the small house, hearing the sounds of the children splashing outside, feeling a black despair starting within her, combining with the heat to leave her limp. He has a reason, she thought. He must have a reason. And then the reason leaped into her mind again, the only reason, the only possible reason and she told herself, Don’t cry, goddamnit, don’t cry! Breathing heavily, sucking in great gulps of air from the still, hot moistness, she sat and waited.

She heard the screen door clatter shut when he returned to the house.

“Hon?” he called. “Where are you?”

“In the bedroom,” she said, and she thought it fitting that they should have this out in the bedroom, that this important thing in their life should be thrashed out in the only room in the house which was truly and privately theirs alone, the way this monstrous thing was theirs alone.

She could hear his footsteps coming through the house. He paused just outside the bedroom door.

“Hi,” he said. “I got the stuff.”

“Hi,” she answered.

“What are you doing in here? Cooler in here?”

“No.”

He looked at her, puzzled. “You left the kids outside all alone?”

“Yes.”

“In the pool? Honey, they can drown in an inch of—”

“Harry Baxter just phoned,” Eve said.

“Oh?”

“Yes.”

“What did he want?”

“What did he want, Larry?”

She wondered whether he would try to bluff his way out of this. She hoped he would not. Looking at him, holding his face in sharp, clear focus, she hoped he would not lie.

“Puerto Rico?” he said, and his shoulders slumped.

“Yes.”

“He told you?”

“I’m listening, Larry.”

“I didn’t expect...”

“I’m listening, Larry. Goddamnit, I’m listening!”

“What are you getting sore about?”

“Why didn’t you mention this to me?”

“I wanted to think about it.”

“Alone? I thought we were married? I thought we shared things? Since when did you—”

“Eve, for God’s sake, every window in the house is open.”

“I don’t care! Why didn’t you tell me about this? What right did you have to keep it from me?”

“I wasn’t going to keep it from you. I wanted to think about it for a while.”

“For how long?”

“Eve, please stop shouting.”

“I’ll do whatever I damn please! If you can keep something as important as this—”

“All right, it’s important! I wanted my own ideas to be clear before I broke it to you.”

“When did you start doing that?”

“I’ve always done that.”

“It was my impression we—”

“Well, your impression is wrong.”

“... we talked things over—”

“Well, you’re wrong!”

“... together! Stop telling me I’m wrong. You’re wrong this time! I had every right to know about this offer. Am I your wife, or what am I?”

“You’re my wife.”

“Then why? Goddamnit, why?”

“I told you. I’m not even going to talk to you if—”

“Don’t leave this room, Larry. If you leave, you don’t have to come back!”

“Then lower your voice.”

“When did he make the offer?”

“I don’t remember.”

“When?”

“Sometime in—”

“When, when?”

“It... it must have been February.”

“February! And this is August! You’ve had this inside you all this time? Larry, what’s the matter with you? What the hell is the matter with you?” and she began crying.

“Oh, here we go,” he said.

“Yes, here we go, here we go. I’ve done nothing but cry about you since... since... I don’t know how long. You rotten... thing! What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing’s the matter with me. I was simply thinking over the possibilities, that’s all.”

“Stop it. You’re lying. Don’t lie to me, Larry!”

“I’m not lying!”

“Aren’t you?” She sat in the chair and looked across the room at him. The room was suffocatingly hot — their bedroom — and they faced each other streaked with sweat. Their clothes hung limply to their bodies, as if the clothing too were exhausted after the bitterest argument they’d ever had. Up the street a telephone rang. Outside, Chris and David splashed in the pool. They could hear the drone of an airplane somewhere high above.

“Are you in love with another woman?” Eve asked.

He did not flinch, he did not move. His eyes held hers in what seemed to be utter honesty.

“No,” he answered. “And that’s the truth.”

31

Truth or not, they did not speak to each other for more than a week. He was, in a sense, glad for the respite. He knew that once they began talking again, the Puerto Rican offer would be the first topic of conversation. He did not know what Eve was thinking, and he began to wonder if he’d ever known what she thought. He’d suspected that one day the Puerto Rican offer would inadvertently come to light and that he would have to face the fact that he’d withheld it from her. But he had not expected her to forge any link between his concealment and the possibility of another woman’s existing. He had been totally unprepared for her baldly presented question and rather impressed by what he thought was his unblinking lie in answer to it.

He knew that once the silence broke, Baxter’s offer would again be dragged into the living room. And this time it would not be allowed to bleed unnoticed on the rug. This time it would be rolled over and scrutinized. Answers would be demanded decisions would be expected. He did not want to decide. He did not want to lose Maggie, nor — he realized with some surprise — did he want to lose Eve. What the hell do you want? he asked himself. A harem?

He dreaded the lifting of the silence because he had the uncertain sneaking dread that Eve would accomplish it by announcing she was leaving him. He did not want Eve to leave him. But he recognized the irrevocable error of having concealed Baxter’s proposal. What possible excuse could he find to justify such behavior?

And exactly how much had Baxter told her? Did she realize the full scope of the opportunity he’d presented? Was she aware that this could be a turning point in their lives, the possible answer to his professional dreams? And if she knew that, how could he excuse the fact that he had not discussed it with her? A sudden shocking thought came to him. Had she spoken to anyone else? Had Altar ever called on the nights he’d used him for an alibi?

Hastily, he went to the phone and dialed Altar’s home.

“Hello?”

“Altar?”

“Yes, who’s this?”

“Larry.”

“Oh, hello, Larry. What’s up?”

“Nothing much. I was planning on going up to the house this week. I thought you might like to come with me.”

“Oh, good. I was up last Saturday. Di Labbia’s really clipping along. All the outside painting is done, and they’d already started to paint inside. When do you think he’ll be finished?”

“The end of the month easily,” Larry said.

“I wanted to discuss colors with you,” Altar said. “I don’t know what color to paint the study.”

“Well, that’s up to you. I can make suggestions, but the final choice—”

“Maybe black would be appropriate,” Altar said.

“Black?”

“Well, Stone’ll be published soon. The reviews may be bad.”

“I doubt it,” Larry said.

“I’m on pins and needles. I’m stupid, I know. I shouldn’t feel this way. But I can’t help it.”

“Just relax,” Larry said. “They’ll probably be raves.”

“God, I hope so. It’s only seventeen days, you know.”

“What is?”

“To publication date. August thirtieth.”

“You mean you’re counting them?”

“I’m crossing them off on the calendar. August thirtieth. I get nervous even mentioning the date.”

“Take a Miltown.”

“I do. Regularly. They don’t help. I think I’ll get a woman tonight.”

“Good idea.”

“Aw, that won’t help either. I’m worthless until that damn book is published and I see the reviews.”

“Don’t curse it.”

“No, I shouldn’t curse it. It’s not a damn book, it’s a beautiful book, a lovely book. But I can’t wait for the damn thing to be published.

Larry laughed.

“Don’t laugh! Suppose I didn’t like the house you designed after it was all built?”

“It wouldn’t matter to me.”

“Sure, you’d get your damn ten per cent anyway. I’m surrounded by ten-per-centers. My agent, you...”

“The book’ll be all right. Don’t worry about it.”

“Don’t worry about it. That’s like telling a man with cancer not to have cancer. The Book-of-the-Month Club News arrived yesterday. They gave it a rousing shove.”

“What do you mean?”

“Stone. Didn’t I tell you it was Book-of-the-Month for September?”

“No.”

“Well, it is. They send out this thing announcing their selections. Marquand or one of the other people up there usually writes a sort of review on the selection. They sound as if they really like this one.”

“Well, that’s good.”

“Well, it’s not so good. They always like their selections. They’re certainly not going to give a bad review to their own selection.”

“Oh, I see.”

“But it’s pretty good because it sounds honestly enthusiastic. That’s one of the most difficult things to do nowadays. Sound honestly enthusiastic, I mean. Do you think people like to buy books in September?”

“Sure.”

“Well, I hope so.”

They were silent for a moment.

Then Larry said, “You haven’t called here recently, have you?”

“No. Why?”

“I thought you might have spoken to Eve.”

“I only talk to wives when I have plans for them.”

“All right.”

“So, now that I know why you really called, you can hang up.”

“Go to hell,” Larry said.

“Are you really going up to the house tomorrow or the next day?”

“Did I say tomorrow?”

“You said this week. You can’t go on Sunday. Not if you expect to see Di Labbia.”

“Is tomorrow Friday already?”

“All day,” Altar said, and then he chuckled. “My mother always says that. Ask her, ‘Is today Wednesday?’ and she’ll answer, ‘All day.’ She’s a character in Stone. Did I tell you?”

“No.”

“I’m worried about that damn book,” Altar said.

In his best family-relations-counselor voice, Larry said, “Mr. Altar, go, go to these people, beg their forgiveness, tell them your heart...”

“Aw, no sympathy in the world,” Altar said. “That’s the trouble. No sympathy.”

“I’ll leave you to your miseries,” Larry said.

“Everyone always does. Are we going up to the house or not?”

“Let it wait until next week.”

“I figured. Thanks for the call. If I turn on the gas or jump out the window, you’ll be sorry.”

“I will.”

“It’s too late to make amends,” Altar said, and he hung up.

Larry grinned. Perhaps, he thought solemnly, it is too late to make amends. He hung up, and then steeled himself for the eventual shattering of the silence.

The communication for the next week was handled in the classically comic tradition of transmission through the children.

“Ask your father to pass me the butter please, Chris.”

“Whyn’t you ask him yourself, Ma? He’s sitting right there.”

“Ask him, please.”

“Daddy, will you please pass Mommy the butter?”

“Here, Chris.”

“Thank you.”

“Thank your father, Chris.”

“I did.”

“For me.”

“Mommy says thanks, Dad.”

The silence persisted.

Maggie, unaware of the explosion in Larry’s home, busily made plans for the weekend they would share at the end of the month. She had already approached Don and he’d agreed to let her go provided his mother would come to stay with Patrick while she was away. He had not seemed at all surprised by her request, had asked relatively few questions about where she planned to go or what she planned to do. Breathlessly, on the telephone, she told Larry she could leave on Thursday night, August twenty-ninth. Would the house be finished by then? Could he get away by then? He could not tell her of the argument which had been caused by the Puerto Rican offer without revealing the offer to her. And so he said he would ask Eve as soon as the opportunity presented itself.

The opportunity came on Friday, August twenty-third, the night the silence shattered.

He had gone to bed at about twelve o’clock, leaving Eve in the living room watching television. When she came into the bedroom at one, he was still not asleep. She turned on the small lamp, went to the bed, and sat on the edge of it.

“Can we discuss this sensibly now?” she asked,

“Well, well, it speaks,” Larry said lightly.

“If you want to continue this, that’s up to you,” Eve said coolly. “I don’t want another argument.”

“Neither do I.”

“Then let’s not be flippant, either of us.”

“I’m sorry.”

“All right.”

There was a long silence.

Eve sucked in a deep breath. “I don’t want to discuss why you kept this thing a secret,” she said in what sounded like the beginning of a rehearsed speech. “I’m sure you have your own reasons, and apparently your reasons are privately and exclusively your own.”

“I thought we weren’t going to be flippant.”

“I’m sorry,” Eve said instantly. “I’d like you to tell me about the offer now. I’d like you to tell me as if it were just presented to you yesterday and not in February. I’d like you to tell me all of it, and then I’d like to make a decision. I’d like us to make a decision.”

“I don’t know if a decision is possible right now.”

“Tell me anyway.”

He told her of the proposal. He left nothing out. She sat silently on the edge of the bed, listening. There was no emotion on her face, and he realized, while he was talking, that he had robbed her of what could have been a truly joyous experience by not telling her of the offer when it was first made. It was too late now. The thing had somehow become a cold business proposition about which a high-level decision had to be made. Like the President of the Board, Eve sat listening intelligently, but there was no spark of emotion in her eyes or on her face. If she felt anything, she did not reveal it. If she felt anything, it was contained within her rigid body, bottled there secretly.

When he’d finished, she said only, “It sounds good.”

“Yes.”

They were silent for a long time.

Then she said, “I think we should take it. I think we should get out of Pinecrest Manor.”

“I don’t know,” Larry said cautiously. “It’s a big move.”

“Or do you have personal reasons for not wanting to leave the States?”

“Eve...”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. This is too important. I feel we should take it. I think this is the biggest thing that’s ever happened to you. I can’t understand your hesitation.”

“Well, I’ve always liked to work on my own. You know that.”

“This would be almost the same thing.”

“I suppose so. It needs thought.”

“It was my understanding you’d been thinking about it since February.”

“Yes.”

“But you haven’t reached a conclusion?”

“No. It’s not an easy decision to make.”

“It seems very simple to me. Baxter’s right. A hundred architects would cut off their arms for this job.”

“Well, it’s not that simple.”

“Apparently not.” Eve rose and went to the dresser for her nightgown. She came back to the bed and said, “I think we should take it, Larry.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“When will you know? If we’re going to Puerto Rico for five years, there’s a lot of planning to be done.”

“That’s true.”

“Well, when will you know?”

“Baxter’s not leaving until September sometime.”

“Will you know by then?”

“I thought...”

“Yes?”

“I thought I might go away by myself for a few days. To... to really think it over.”

“Will that help?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“When?”

“The end of next week, I thought. I thought I’d leave on Thursday night. The twenty-ninth. For the weekend.”

“And on this weekend... will you make up your mind?”

“Yes.”

“Fully?”

“Yes.”

“I hope you make the right decision,” she said, and he had the feeling she was not talking about anything as simple as Baxter’s offer.

The telephone rang.

It shrilled into the silence of the sleeping house, and they both turned to look at it in surprise. The clock read 1:30 A.M. The phone kept ringing.

For a moment it seemed to Larry an evil instrument of torture. He made no move to answer it. Despair had come over Eve’s face. She put her gown down on the edge of the bed and then walked to the telephone. She lifted the receiver.

“Hello?”

“Eve?” The voice was cracklingly brisk.

“Yes?”

“This is Mama. Can you and Larry get over here first thing in the morning?”

“What’s wrong?” Eve asked quickly.

“Your darling sister has eloped, that’s all,” Mrs. Harder said.

32

The meeting on that Saturday morning, August twenty-fourth, was a grim and purposeful one. It would have seemed frivolous to have held it at the Easthampton cottage. Sensing this with the instinct of a natural actress, Mrs. Harder gathered the clan in the New York apartment.

When Larry and Eve arrived with the children, the Harders had already finished breakfast and were sitting in the living room overlooking Fifth Avenue and the park. The drapes were drawn back, and the hot, flat glare of the sun filled the room. Lois sat demurely on the piano bench. She was wearing a black sweater which somehow seemed to match the solemnity of the occasion and which, for a welcome change, was neither form-fitting nor too snug. The piano, together with the other furniture in the room, was covered for the summer. The Harders had not expected to be in the city again until after Labor Day and would not have been in the apartment had something dire not drawn them there.

One look at Mrs. Harder’s face would have informed the most casual observer that something dire indeed had happened. Her face and her body had been browned by the Easthampton sun. Her arms where the short-sleeved cotton dress ended were muscularly lithe from ocean swimming. She looked oddly out of place in the living room where the furniture was covered, ghostly white against her tan. Her face, though, in contrast to her holiday coloration, was grim and set unyielding.

The first thing she said to Eve was “You didn’t have to bring the children.”

“There was no place to leave them, Mama,” Eve said, and then instantly asked, “Is Linda all right?”

“How do I know?” Mrs. Harder said. “I don’t even know where she is. A telegram! A girl gets married, and she sends her mother a telegram!”

“I’m sure she’s all right,” Mr. Harder said. “Hank is an intelligent, capable boy.”

Sitting on the window seat overlooking the park, Mr. Harder did not seem terribly disturbed. He seemed concerned, but not disturbed.

“That’s just my point!” Mrs. Harder said, whirling on her husband. “He’s a boy, just a boy.”

“We were all boys once,” Mr. Harder said.

“Alex, you were twenty-three years old when we got married, and I do not consider that a boy. But Hank MacLean happens to be twenty-one, and that is a boy. A boy!” she repeated in emphasis.

“I don’t see what difference two years makes,” Mr. Harder said.

“There’s a lot of difference!” Mrs. Harder snapped.

“Chris, don’t go near the windows!” Eve shouted. Mrs. Harder turned sharply. Apologetically, Eve said, “I’m always scared to death they’ll fall out.”

“They won’t fall out the windows,” Mrs. Harder said. “This isn’t the first time they’ve been here, and they haven’t fallen out yet. I raised three children in this apartment and none of them ever fell out the window.”

“I know, but...”

“You shouldn’t have brought them anyway. This is no place for children. Not when we’re discussing—”

“Mama, there was nowhere I could—”

“May we see the telegram?” Larry interrupted.

“Where’s the telegram, Alex?” Mrs. Harder said.

“On the table, I think.”

“Lois, get the telegram.”

Lois rose from the piano bench and walked silently into the hall. It was difficult to tell from her face exactly how she felt about her twin sister’s rather impulsive action. Instinctively, she knew that a double wedding would have been more acceptable to the family, and she somehow wished Linda had taken her into her confidence. But at the same time, she realized this would not be treated as another cute twinnish prank, and so, cautiously, she watched and waited. Picking up the telegram, she brought it back into the living room and offered it to her mother.

“Give it to Larry,” Mrs. Harder said, waving the telegram aside impatiently, as if it were crawling with vermin.

Larry took the telegram and read it:

Larry handed the wire to Eve.

“Deliriously happy,” Mrs. Harder said, as if that sentence of all the others had particularly annoyed her.

“The telegram was sent from New York,” Larry said.

“Yes. That doesn’t mean a thing. It was sent at nine P.M. They could have been married anyplace.”

Eve looked up, puzzled. “What difference does it make where they were married?”

“Linda’s only seventeen,” Mrs. Harder said. “In New York State, you’ve got to be eighteen. That’s the law. That much I know. I don’t know what it is in other states. But if she got married in New York, we can have it—”

“Why don’t we talk to the girl first, for Pete’s sake!” Mr. Harder said. “You’re already getting the thing annulled, and we haven’t even—”

“She’s only seventeen!” Mrs. Harder said, and she began to weep.

“She’s almost eighteen, Patricia,” Mr. Harder said.

Mrs. Harder did not answer. She sat in her chair weeping into a small lace handkerchief.

“Do Hank’s parents know about this?” Larry asked.

“They received an identical telegram,” Mr. Harder said. “I spoke to Mr. MacLean last night. He seemed like a sensible man.”

“What does he care?” Mrs. Harder said. “Is it his daughter? His son hasn’t even been in the Army yet. Suppose he gets drafted? What does Linda do then? Become a camp follower? She’s just a baby.” She turned to Eve suddenly. “Eve, she’s just your baby sister.”

Eve nodded. Watching her mother, looking beyond her mother to Lois, she felt like weeping herself. Everything suddenly seemed so confused and puzzling, and she did not want to be a part of it. And yet Linda was her sister and had always been her favorite. But sitting opposite Mrs. Harder, Eve told herself, I don’t want to get involved. I mustn’t. And she felt like weeping.

“Did you call Sam?” Mrs. Harder asked.

“I called Sam,” Mr. Harder said.

“Well, where is he?”

“This is Saturday. Even lawyers take a day off every now and then.”

“Is he coming?”

“He said he would.”

“When?”

“As soon as possible.”

“Will he know the state laws?”

“He’s a lawyer. I imagine he will know the law.”

“How could she do this to me?” Mrs. Harder asked. “How could she do a thing like this?”

The way Linda Harder could do a thing like this was relatively simple.

In a sense, though Mrs. Harder was the staunchest objector to the marriage, she had been in no small part responsible for it. She had raised Eve to believe that a girl should enter her nuptial bed a virgin. Eve had chosen to ignore her mother’s advice, but Mrs. Harder remained blithely ignorant of this fact. In her eyes, she had done an excellent job with Eve and so she turned to the twins with the same vigor and the same admonitions never to sit on a boy’s lap. If the warnings were wasted on Lois, they were not wasted on Linda. Mrs. Harder had successfully drummed into her the concept that a good girl waits until she is married. And so, watching her rising passion with Hank, Linda was faced with the dilemma of either becoming a bad girl or becoming married.

Her dilemma was enforced by Hank MacLean’s attitudes on the subject. He was in many respects much like Mrs. Harder — a comparison he would not have particularly relished. In his mind there were good girls and bad girls and you didn’t marry the bad girls. He had no desire to transform Linda Harder, the girl he loved, into a bad girl. Cautiously, both he and Linda had sounded out their parents on the topic of marriage. In both families, the response had been identical.

“Wait. You’re still kids. Linda isn’t even out of high school yet. Hank may be drafted. Wait.”

Well, they couldn’t wait. It was as simple as that.

On Wednesday morning, August twenty-first, Linda Harder left the cottage at Easthampton. She had told her mother she would be spending the next few days with a high-school chum named Sissie Carlisle in the city. Mrs. Harder had not objected. Girls visiting girls was a commonplace she had come to accept as the mother of two teenagers. She knew that Linda was a good girl who could be counted on to keep out of trouble. She kissed her daughter warmly, and, suitcase in hand, Linda left. Mrs. Harder didn’t know it but the next time she saw her daughter it would be on almost equal terms of womanhood. Indeed, even when she left the cottage that day, Linda looked more womanly than she ever had. Full-breasted, ample-hipped, wearing a tailored suit, with brown calf pumps, her hair back off her face, she seemed far older than seventeen.

She met Hank in New York and together they started the trip to Elkton, Maryland.

Hank had wondered whether a loose interpretation of the Mann Act could make it seem he’d transported her over a state line for immoral purposes. They seriously decided between them that marriage could never be considered an immoral purpose, and then the conversation swung around to the bottleneck again — and the bottleneck was Linda’s age. Marriage in New York had been out of the question. The state was a stickler for observing the letter of the law, and they were certain Linda would be asked for a birth certificate. As the train sped southward, they weren’t even sure that Linda wouldn’t be questioned in Elkton.

“How old do I look?” she asked him seriously.

“Eighteen, at least.”

“Nineteen?”

“Maybe.”

“Twenty?”

“I guess.”

“If I say I’m eighteen, they’re sure to ask me for proof. But if I say I’m twenty, maybe they won’t think I’m lying. Who would lie by three years?”

“I guess you’re right,” Hank said.

“Well, it’s really only two years and two months.” She paused. “We could wait the two months, if you like. Then there wouldn’t be any trouble. I’d really be eighteen. Do you want to wait?”

“No. Do you?”

“No. I want to marry you.”

They discussed the Maryland state law as it had been transmitted to them piecemeal by people they knew who’d eloped and been married there. As they understood it, they had to be twenty-one and the girl eighteen. If they were not they needed written and notarized permission from their parents before a marriage license would be issued. The state required no blood test but would not perform a ceremony before a forty-eight hour period of residence had been established. The ceremony, by state law, had to be a religious one. Sitting side by side on the train, their suitcases on the rack overhead, they talked in whispers, plotting the perjury Linda would commit.

Elkton was not a big town, and it did not boast of a large railroad station. When they arrived, they discovered that only one car serviced the station, and they had to walk the length of the train to disembark. As they moved up the aisle with their battered suitcases, they were aware of heads turning, of the whispered words, “They’re eloping.”

When they got off the train, Hank took her hand and squeezed it. “You all right?” he said.

“I’m fine.” She grinned. “There’s nothing wrong with getting married, is there?”

“There certainly isn’t,” Hank said. “Let’s get the license.”

In the taxi, they rehearsed.

“How old are you?”

“Twenty.”

“When were you born?”

Over and over again, they repeated the data in whispers, lest the cabbie should overhear them and spoil the plot by informing to an official. In truth, the cabbie didn’t seem very much like an informer. He was a round little man who said as they got out of the cab. “Look me up when you’re ready. Joe that’s my name. I’ll take you where you can get a nice ceremony.”

In the clerk’s office, Hank whispered, “Think you ought to light a cigarette?”

“No,” Linda whispered back.

They filled out the license application and handed it to the clerk.

“You’re twenty-one?” he asked Hank.

“Yes, sir,” Hank said.

“Any proof of age? Birth certificate? Baptism papers?”

“Yes, I have it in my bag,” Hank said. He stooped and began unfastening his suitcase.

“Never mind,” the clerk said. He looked at Linda. “You’re twenty, little lady?”

“Yes,” she said. She smiled easily.

“Mmmm,” the clerk said, still studying her. It seemed ridiculous to Linda in that moment that this hawk-eyed clerk could, by completely arbitrary will, either ask or not ask her for proof of age, in which case she would either be or not be married.

The clerk was reaching for stamp and stamp pad, still studying Linda.

His face slightly bored, he stamped the application.

“Forty-eight-hour wait before you can get married,” he said. “No civil ceremonies allowed. Would you see the cashier, please, young man?”

As they left the office, Linda became aware of the other people in the room for the first time. All of the girls, it seemed to her, looked much younger than she. In the corridor, she looped her arm through Hank’s.

“What time is it?” she whispered.

He looked at his watch. “Two-twenty,” he said.

“By this time Friday we’ll be married.” She paused. “Do you really have a birth certificate with you?”

“Sure. I am twenty-one, you know.”

Linda giggled and pressed herself to his arm.

They spent two nights in adjoining rooms at a motel on the outskirts of town. On the first night Hank leaped out of bed when he thought he heard Linda calling him. He stood by the door between their rooms for a long time, listening. Then he opened the door and looked into the room. Linda was sleeping peacefully. He closed the door and went back to bed.

On Friday, August twenty-third, at 2:30 P.M., they were married by a Protestant minister in the back of an antique shop. They thought they might spend the night in Baltimore but decided instead to come back to New York. They had dinner in the city and then sent off wires to their parents. When they checked into the Waldorf-Astoria, they were surprised no one asked them for a marriage certificate. At 9:30 P.M., in their room on the sixth floor, they consummated their marriage. They were very happy.

It looked as if the siege in the New York apartment was going to be a long one, and so the covers were taken off the furniture.

Larry was not looking forward to a long siege. The weekend had somehow come and gone, and it was Monday already and the honey-mooners had still not been located. On Thursday night he and Maggie were supposed to leave for their trip. Nervously, he watched time rushing by as Sam Gottleib, the Harder’s attorney, tried to find Linda and Hank.

Working on the assumption that the honeymooners were in hiding, Gottleib avoided calling the better hotels. He checked the motels in New Jersey and on Long Island, the second-rate hotels nestled in New York’s West Forties, and then the hotels in the out-lying suburbs of Westchester. It was not until Tuesday morning that he reluctantly began calling the first-class New York hotels. By this time Larry’s impatience had reached the breaking point. Trapped in the Harder apartment, he had not been able to reach a telephone. Maggie still did not know that his own plans for the weekend had materialized. She didn’t even know they were meeting, no less where or when.

The first hotel Gottleib called on Tuesday morning was the Waldorf.

In two minutes, after three days of fruitless search, he was connected with Hank MacLean. As calmly as he could over the screeches of Mrs. Harder in the background, he demanded that the couple return at once to the arms of their parents. Mrs. Harder insisted on speaking to Linda, but Gottleib wisely restrained her. He did not want her to frighten the girl into real hiding.

By twelve noon on Tuesday, both families were gathered to greet the fugitives. The gathering had all the outward appearances of a wedding party, with none of the inner warmth or happiness. Mrs. Harder served sandwiches. Her brother Fred, who had been divorced twice and knew about such things as these, opened a bottle of bourbon without being invited to do so and poured himself a before-lunch drink. Not wishing to seem rude, Mrs. Harder asked the rest of those present if they would care for a drink. Sam Gottleib and Joshua MacLean, Hank’s older brother who was a med student at Cornell, accepted. The other men declined. David kept asking Eve if someone had died.

At twelve-thirty the front doorbell sounded. Mrs. Harder began weeping. Mr. MacLean, Hank’s father said, “There, there.” Mr. Harder went to open the door. Linda, wearing an orchid pinned to her suit, smiled and went into her father’s arms. Mr. Harder took Hank’s hand and whispered, “Congratulations. Take care of her, do you hear?” and then they went into the living room.

The sight of her despoiled daughter sent Mrs. Harder into a fresh wave of hysteria. Mr. MacLean, a thin man of sixty, with white hair and pale blue eyes, kept saying over and over again, “There, there. There, there.” His wife Martha, was a red faced woman who seemed rather annoyed by all the fuss. She could see nothing whatever wrong with her son. Any girl’s mother, it seemed to her, should have been delighted to have him as a son-in-law.

Linda went directly to Eve.

Eve rose, and the sisters embraced, and Eve was surprised to find herself holding Linda so tightly. Again she warned herself not to become too involved, but still she held her sister close and wished her happiness and silently wished, too, that the marriage were not starting on the bitter note Mrs. Harder had introduced. There was so much yet that Linda had to learn, to experience, and it should have started happily, the way her own marriage to Larry had started. And thinking back to the start and the joy she had known, she felt a new rush of sadness, and over Linda’s shoulder she saw Larry and wondered again if she could have been so wrong about the man she loved.

“Where were you married?” Gottleib asked suddenly.

Linda turned. The lawyer was a heavy-set man in his middle fifties. A Phi Beta Kappa key hung on a gold chain across his vest. He wore a brown pin-stripe suit and a silk rep tie. He wore spectacles which had slipped halfway down his nose. He carried his head cocked to one side in a perpetual expression of mild skepticism.

“We were married in Maryland,” Hank said.

“Then you were married illegally,” Gottleib said triumphantly. “The Maryland state law requires that the girl—”

“We know the state law,” Hank said firmly.

“Then you must know that your wife committed perjury when she falsely represented—”

“We’re married now,” Hank said.

“I want it annulled,” Mrs. Harder said quietly.

Linda turned to her mother. “Why?” she asked.

“Because you’re both children. We’ll have no trouble annulling the marriage. You’re underage. Once we point this out to—”

“I’m not a child, Mama,” Linda said with calm dignity.

“Just because you spent a few nights in a hotel room—” Mrs. Harder started, and Mr. Harder sharply said, “Patricia! Stop it!”

“I want it annulled,” Mrs. Harder repeated.

“And we don’t,” Linda said.

“It doesn’t matter very much what you want, young lady,” Gottleib pointed out.

“Now, now,” Henry MacLean said, “I think the kids should decide for—”

“Mr. MacLean,” Mrs. Harder said, “Let’s not complicate the issue. My daughter is underage. That’s quite enough for me, and quite enough for Mr. Gottleib, and quite enough for the state of Maryland. There’s no reason to—”

“Patricia, you are talking like a fool,” Mr. Harder said.

“Alex—”

“Now just keep quiet for a minute, can’t you?” He frowned at his wife, and she looked up at him with her own frown. “The kids got married. All right, let’s not jump off the deep end screaming annulment, annulment.” He turned to Hank. “How do you expect to support her, Hank?”

“I’ve already got a part-time job, Mr. Harder,” Hank said. “And I’ll be graduating next semester.”

“I’ll work too,” Linda said. “Until Hank graduates.”

“For that matter,” Mr. MacLean said, “I’ll help Hank until he gets on his feet. I think Linda’s a fine girl, and I wouldn’t want—”

“She’s not even out of high school,” Mrs. Harder said. “Suppose she has a baby?”

“So she’ll have a baby,” Mr. Harder said. “Is there anything wrong with married people having babies?”

“I’ll be a grandmother who never even attended her own daughter’s wedding. How could you do this to me, Linda? Am I a bad mother? Have I ever—”

“Mama, Mama.”

“Eve didn’t do this. Why did you have to do this?”

“Mama, I love him,” Linda said.

“Oh, don’t talk to me about love,” Mrs. Harder said.

“What’s wrong with their being in love?” Mrs. MacLean wanted to know.

“They’re children! What do they know about—”

“But they’re old enough to have babies, huh?” Mrs. MacLean asked, raising her eyebrows, her face getting redder.

“This isn’t getting us anywhere,” Mr. Harder said. “I refuse to treat my own daughter like a criminal.”

“I want it annulled,” Mrs. Harder said.

“Even if we can decide among us,” Gottleib said, “that the marriage might work?”

“There are only two people who should decide that,” Mrs. MacLean said.

Mr. Harder smiled at her. “Right! My daughter and your son. The rest of us are just excess baggage. I suggest we break out the whisky and drink to the bride and groom.”

“Alex!” Mrs. Harder said sharply. “This thing is not settled!”

“What do you want to do? Call in the district attorney? Send Linda to jail? For God’s sake, look at her, Patricia. She’s a woman, your married daughter. Kiss her, hold her, Patricia. Love her.”

“I want it annulled,” Mrs. Harder said firmly.

“Could I... could I talk to Eve, please?” Linda asked.

Eve looked up. She was beginning to shake her head, but Linda took her hand and led her from the room. They went directly to the bedroom that had been Eve’s when she lived with the family. The room was now a second television room, but some of Eve’s old decorations were still on the wall — a pennant Larry had bought her at a Randall’s Island football game, a Lexington Avenue Express sign which she and Larry had stolen on a scavenger hunt, a framed photograph of her and Larry taken at Palisades. Amusement Park, a program from the Junior prom Larry had escorted her to at the Astor. Linda closed the door.

There was something of the past attached to the room, something of the innocent teen-ager lingering about the transformed room, something of the memory of Linda coming in to talk to her when she’d been a little girl, to talk to Eve before a date or sometimes when she returned home late at night. And suddenly, in the room that used to be hers, she could remember a Saturday in spring, the window open and the curtains rustling in a mild breeze. She could remember French notes spread open on her desk by the window, could remember the sound of Beethoven in the living room. And she thought...

Linda came to her.

“Eve?” she said.

She embraced her sister with sudden ferocity. “Oh, my baby,” she said. “Are you happy, Linda? Are you happy darling?”

“Yes, Eve. Eve, I love him so much. What’s wrong with Mama? Doesn’t she know we’re in love? Can’t you talk to her, Eve? Can’t you make her see?”

“Darling, darling...” Linda sat on the floor at her feet now, and Eve stroked the long black hair and then lifted Linda’s chin and looked into her eyes. “Does he love you very much, Linda?” she asked.

“Yes, Eve.”

“Are you sure, Linda? Be sure. I feel so old. I feel so goddamn old.”

Linda looked at her, puzzled. She took Eve’s hand and said, “Is something wrong?”

“No. I’m very glad you’re married. It’ll be nice having a married sister. It’ll be nice being an aunt someday.”

“Do you like him, Eve?”

“Do you like him, baby? That’s what counts.”

“Yes, yes. Oh, yes.”

“And you love him? You’re sure? You’re absolutely certain?”

“Yes.”

“Linda...”

She wanted to tell her sister about marriage. There were so many things Linda should know about marriage, the wonderful things and the horrible things, the security and the uncertainty, the tenderness and the cruelty, the excitement and the boredom, the ease and the difficulty. She wanted to tell her sister whom she loved very much in that instant, who seemed to her clean and untouched, young and innocent, about this wonderful and terrible thing called marriage. And when she tried to tell her, there was nothing she could say.

She could remember events in her own marriage, remember them as if they were happening right then, but they didn’t seem important enough to transmit; they seemed only highly personal incidents which were a part of her and Larry but which could not possibly apply to anyone else’s life. And again she was confused because an impersonal note had been introduced into the life she shared with Larry, a secretive note which, intruded upon the highly personal and private thing which was marriage. She felt almost complete soaring joy for her sister, and only despondent sadness for herself and her own baffling marriage. She wanted to laugh and she wanted to cry, and she did neither. She sat in undecided stunned silence, not knowing what to say or what to do. Her sister was starting upon a cycle the very cycle she herself had entered eight years before. What could she tell her? How could she prepare her?

Could she say, “Baby, baby, life isn’t just a bowl of cherries?”

Could she say, “There’ll be ups and downs, Linda. Ride with them.”

Could she call upon all the old clichés, all the banalities, all the tommyrot that was passed from generation to generation, from mother to daughter, from elder sister to younger sister? How could she tell anyone else the proper way to enter the most private and personal arrangement ever devised by human beings for human beings?

Wanting to laugh, wanting to cry, Eve said only, “We’ll talk to Mama. You’ll be happy, darling.”

And she hoped Linda would.

33

He called Maggie as soon as he got out of the Harder apartment on Wednesday morning.

“My God, Larry, where have you been?” she asked.

He told her about Linda’s elopement, and she told him how frantic she’d been, waiting for him to call. She’d walked past his house yesterday only to find it locked tighter than a vault. She couldn’t imagine what had happened.

“Are we going tomorrow?” she asked. “I haven’t known what to say to Don.”

“Yes, we’re going,” he said.

“But how will you get away?”

“I’ll just leave. Settled or not. They don’t need me here to settle it.”

“What about this thing from Puerto Rico?” she asked.

For a stunned moment he was completely speechless. Then all he could say was “What?”

“Felicia.”

“Who? What are you talking about, Maggie?”

“The hurricane. Felicia. Haven’t you been listening to the radio?”

“No.”

“It’s supposed to be headed this way,” she said. “It passed a hundred miles north of Puerto Rico, and they think it’s coming toward the coast. The radio said it might hit us tomorrow.”

“What’s that got to do with us?”

“I thought you might not like to drive in—”

“I’ve driven in bad weather before. Where are we going to meet, Maggie? What time?”

“The post office?”

“No, not for this. It’s too risky.” He thought for a moment. “There’s a luncheonette on the edge of town. It’s called the Paradise or something. Right next to the bowling alley. Do you know it?”

“I’ll find it. What time?”

“Eight o’clock?”

“No,” she said, “it’ll have to be much later than that. Don’s mother isn’t coming out until ten. She’s having dinner with some friends and then they’re driving her here.”

“What time then?”

“Eleven?”

“Fine. Maggie, I’ve got to make this short. I’m on my way up to the Altar house.”

“Is it finished?”

“I hope so. This is a final inspection.”

“I wish I could go with you.”

“We’ll be together all weekend,” he said. “I’ll see you tomorrow night. Eleven at the luncheonette, right?”

“I’ll be there. Be careful, Larry.”

“I will. So long, Maggie.”

He hung up, and then remembered he hadn’t told her he loved her.

Summer was dying.

It was the end of August, and the leaves were beginning to turn already on some of the giant trees surrounding the house he had designed. There was a silence to the land. Regally, the house sat atop the slope, commanding the land and the sky. He inspected the exterior and then found six identical keys hanging on a nail in the garage. He took one from the bunch and opened the front door. The smell of fresh paint was still in the house, and another exciting familiar smell, the smell of newness. He closed the door behind him and stood silently in the entrance hall.

He was glad he was alone.

Here, surrounded by something he had created, something which had been born in his mind, something which had come from his hands to take visible form, like static electricity bursting in yellow spurts from the fingertips, here he was glad he was alone.

He walked through the house, into the enormous glass-enclosed living room, into the small, intimate room of stone and wood, upstairs to the study with the world at its feet, and then downstairs again to the kitchen and the dining room and back into the magnificent living room of glass where the wilderness stretched beyond to the edge of the sky.

And then he walked through the house again, a small black note-book in his hands this time, jotting down small corrections to be made. When he finished his formal inspection tour, he sat in the stone-and-wood room on the first floor, sat with his back to the stone wall, and there was a smile on his face and a peculiarly tender wistfulness in his eyes.

He sat alone for a long time.

Then he went out of the house and walked back to the car, and hesitated with his hand on the door handle, looking down the road to where the house reached for the sky, seemed ready to soar upward into the clouds if only it could break free of the foundation. He started the car and drove back to the city. He called Altar from a phone booth and told him he’d just inspected the house. It was a good house and a beautiful one, even though there were some minor changes and corrections Di Labbia would have to make. But as soon as the certificate of occupancy was issued, Altar could move in. He suggested that three hundred dollars be withheld from the final payment until Di Labbia had made the changes. He wasn’t at all sure that Altar heard a word he said.

This was August twenty-eighth and The Fall of a Stone would be published on the thirtieth.

When he returned to the apartment that afternoon, Mr. Harder opened the door for him.

“Welcome back,” he said. “We’ve landed!”

In the living room, Mrs. Harder was crying and hugging Linda close to her breast. “But why didn’t you tell me, darling?” she said. “A mother should know. Her own daughter’s wedding, her baby daughter.”

Larry took Eve aside and whispered, “What happened?”

“Daddy kept giving it to her,” Eve said. “She finally gave in.”

“What are you drinking, Larry?” Mr. Harder said, beaming. “I’ve got another son in the fold and that’s an occasion for real celebration. I’m a man who’s been surrounded by jabbering females all his life!”

They drank together, the three men. As Larry tilted his glass, he heard Lois whisper, “How was it, Lindy? Did he make you take off all your clothes?” and he almost choked on his whisky.

The family had a late dinner together. In the television room, where Chris and David sat watching the screen after their earlier meal, the forecasters said that the hurricane Felicia had hit the North Carolina coast, passing inland near Morehead City and Beaufort, leaving floods and great destruction everywhere behind her. Felicia was moving northward. If she kept on course, she would pass through Chesapeake Bay and then strike the New York area sometime the next day, Thursday.

David said to Chris, “Ain’t Disneyland on yet?”

Thursday came.

In the afternoon they left the children with Mrs. Harder and went out for a walk. The city was gray and silent. The people in the streets felt the coming storm. Unconsciously, they all looked skyward.

For Eve, the city had always been a magic place. The moment she arrived in New York, her step quickened, and her shoulders pulled back, and she held her head more erect. It was a city full of busy people rushing to get someplace. You could feel the quickened tempo the moment you stepped off the train. You could feel it surging along the pavements, echoing raucously in the beep of the taxicab horns, singing in the neon, rushing skyward with the buildings. The city was a treasure box of energy, and you wanted to laugh over your wealth, pick up the jewels of the city and let them trickle through your fingers while your laugh bellowed to the concrete and steel pulsing with life.

The city was there on that Thursday too, but it seemed dull and lifeless and sad to Eve. Walking along Fifth Avenue with Larry, she thought, This is the most beautiful street in the world, but the thought was shallow because she could muster no real enthusiasm for it.

“Mama wants to give the kids a reception on Saturday,” she said. “At the apartment. Can we stay until then?”

“You can stay,” Larry said.

“What about you?”

“I’m leaving tonight,” he told her.

“Leav—? Oh, yes. I’d forgotten.”

They walked silently. A wind was rising. It seemed as if it would begin raining any moment.

“Where will you go, Larry?” she asked.

“I’m not sure yet.”

“What time are you leaving tonight?”

“About nine.”

“So late?”

“I like to drive at night.”

“There’s a hurricane coming,” Eve said. “Couldn’t you wait until—”

“It may by-pass us completely.”

“And it may not. Doesn’t Linda’s wedding mean anything to you?”

“Of course it does.”

“Then you can stay for the reception? It’ll only be family and some friends. It’ll seem very strange if you’re not there.”

“You can tell them I had some important business to attend to. Upstate.” He shrugged. “I’ve been called away before.”

“Yes,” she said. “But Larry, there is a storm coming. Is it so important that you leave tonight?”

“I want to get away,” he said.

“I’m not trying to stop you, but you can leave Sunday or Monday, can’t you? Why tonight?”

“I’m leaving tonight,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter what I say any more, does it?” she said, and he didn’t answer.

They sat at the fountain outside the Plaza. Eve clenched her hands in her lap, and she stared straight ahead of her into the grayness of a city waiting for a storm. She sat with a growing sadness inside her. She sat feeling empty and drained and dead.

She had tried on Tuesday to explain things to Linda, and she could not. Now sitting at the fountain, she tried to explain things to herself and she was faced with the same impenetrable haze, the same inability to reason or think clearly. If only she could think. If only she could lay things out simply — this and this are so, that and that are not — if only she could think.

But the only sure thought she had was that uncertainty was certain. She had put complete trust in a man she thought existed, and the trust had been broken. For some reason this man had chosen to walk alone, ignoring her by his side. Alone. And you could not talk to someone who was alone, you could not reach that person, you could not touch him. He could not hold you close and comfort you, he could not say the things you longed to hear, he could not say, “It’s all right, I’m here with you. I’ll always be with you.” Speechless, faceless, mindless, the man who sat beside her was a stranger.

Facing his aloneness, her own solitude seemed overwhelming. She was suddenly frightened. The world seemed like a gigantic place to her all at once, a strange and forbidding place where she wandered alone and unwanted. There was danger in this place, hidden behind every tortured outcropping of rock, every twisted tree. In the wilderness, she wandered alone, her eyes wide with terror in a world alive with menace. In all this lonely wilderness, there was no one to whom she could turn — no firm hand or smiling face — only a forest of clutching trees and tearing brambles.

Whom can I trust? she thought. To whom can I go? Who wants me? Who loves me? What shall I do! How will I live, how will I survive, what can I do, where shall I turn, whom shall I love, what does one do alone, why am I alone, why am I afraid, I don’t want to be alone, I need someone, I’m scared, I can’t alone, I’m scared, I can’t, I don’t know, I want, alone, no, I can’t, yes trust please, love please, me please, take, take, please, I can’t, I’m afraid, I’m afraid, please, I’m afraid, please, please, please, PLEASE.

And the tears burst from her eyes like explosions of her soul.

She had cried before. She had certainly cried before. But this time the tears were tears of utter bewilderment, of sorrow wrenched from the depths of her being, sorrow that rose in her throat and burned there, scaldingly hot, to erupt in great wracking sobs, claiming her completely because she did not know why she was crying and so the crying became a final act in itself, with no reason for being and no reason for ceasing.

Larry turned to her, alarmed. “Eve, what is it?” he asked. His eyes darted from her face to the passers-by, and then back to her face again.

“I don’t know,” she said. She moaned the words. The words were the tortured cry of a wounded animal hiding in the darkness. “I DON’T KNOW!”

He seized her shoulders and shook her, and she stopped for a moment, gasping for breath. And then the crying came again in a series of short machine-gun bursts, her breath uh-uh-uhing as she tried to hold back the giant sobs. Her entire body trembled with the effort to hold back the sobs. The tears ran, but her sorrow did not need tears, needed only the twisted, tortured face, the wildly moving fingers in her lap, the gasps for breath as if she were suffocating, desperately trying to suck air into her lungs.

He shook her violently. “Stop it!” he said. “Eve, stop it!”

She nodded, but she could not stop crying. Foolishly, all she could say was “The people, the people...”

“The hell with the people!” He put his arm around her and tried to pull her to him, but she would not move. Her chest and shoulders heaving she sat like a stone and would not respond to his touch. “What is it?” he asked desperately.

“Are you happy?” she asked. Her voice was very small. It barely escaped her lips, thinly wedged itself between the sobs.

“No,” he said.

She nodded her head, and then she shook her head. The crying was beginning to taper off. Nodding, she said, “I want you to be happy.”

“All right, but stop crying, Eve. Please...”

“Can’t you be happy?”

“Yes. Yes, I can. It’s...”

“Is it me?”

“Eve, please, try to stop crying. Please don’t cry like this.”

“I can’t help it. Is it me?”

“No.”

“Is it? Am I making you unhappy?”

“No.”

“Because if it’s me...” A new wave of anguish tore through her. She turned her head from him, sobbing, gasping for breath.

“Eve, Eve...”

“If it’s me, say so. Tell me, Larry, and I’ll let you go.”

“Eve, this isn’t the time to...”

“When? When you come back? Will you come back, Larry? Will Larry come back, the person I used to know? Where are we, Larry? Who are we? Larry, don’t you know how much I need you?” she said, hurling the words on a sob, and then turning on the seat to fling herself into his arms. “Please don’t cut me off, please don’t kill me. I have to know I’m yours. Please, Larry, please!”

He held her close, and he comforted her and soothed her. The passers-by looked at them strangely, and then glanced skyward again, anticipating the arrival of Felicia.

In a little while it began raining.

He hailed a cab and took her back to the apartment.

34

Maggie did not begin dressing until nine o’clock that night.

The rain that had swept the development that afternoon seemed to have abated suddenly, leaving an anticlimactic stillness. The forecasters warned that this was the eye of the storm, the lull preceding the real onslaught of Felicia, but it seemed to Maggie the storm was over, it seemed to her it had passed. Larry had called again that afternoon to say he’d be leaving the city at nine that night, giving himself plenty of time in case the traveling was bad. She was grateful for the lull. He would be starting just about now, and she did not want him to be driving in the rain.

She was in her slip when Don came into the bedroom

“Where’s Patrick?” she asked.

“Downstairs. Watching television.” Don sat on the edge of the canopied bed, his hands behind him. “You really going, Margaret?” he asked.

“Yes, Don.”

“In spite of the storm?”

“The storm is over.”

“That’s not what they said on television.”

“Well, I’m going anyway.”

He watched her silently for a while. Then he said, “You’ve got wide hips, you know?”

“Mmm.”

“Real childbirth hips.”

“Thank you.”

“I wasn’t trying to be nasty,” he said apologetically. “I meant it as a...” He stopped and shrugged, and then fell silent again. At last he said, “You’re really looking forward to this trip, aren’t you?”

“I’m anxious to get away,” she said. “The house can get a person down.”

“Oh, sure, I know. Don’t misunderstand me, Margaret. I don’t mind.”

She felt a spark of anger in his words. She rose suddenly as if to hurl a retort, walked swiftly to the closet instead, and took a dress from one of the hangers. She pulled it over her head and smoothed it over her hips and all the while her hands worked she thought angrily, Why doesn’t he mind? She went to him and said, “Would you zip me up please?”

Don pulled up the zipper at the back of her dress, and then put his hands behind him on the bed again.

“You don’t seem very concerned about my going,” she said, a sharp edge to her voice.

“I just wish you’d wait for the storm to be over, that’s all.”

“I didn’t mean that.”

“What did you mean?”

“My going. Not the storm. Just my going.” With each word he spoke, she was becoming increasingly more angry. She could not understand the anger, but she knew it was spreading through her unchecked. As she walked to the dressing table, she could feel a frown claiming her face.

“Why should I be worried?” Don shrugged. “Everybody deserves a rest every now and then.”

“Not many men let their wives go alone,” she said. She sat and picked up her lipstick tube. In tense short movements, she jabbed at it with her brush.

Don shrugged again. “Who cares what other men do? You’re my wife, not theirs.”

“A lot of men would feel—”

“I can’t see anything wrong with your going away for a little rest.”

“Most men,” she said, “wouldn’t trust their wives that far.”

“Well, I trust you, Margaret.”

“Well, maybe you shouldn’t,” she said, amazed when the words sprang from her mouth.

“What do you mean?”

“Just that!” she said, and she begged herself to stop, knowing the conversation had come too far already, and yet perversely and doggedly continuing as her anger mounted. “I might be running off to meet another man, for all you know.”

“Oh, sure,” Don said.

“Why not? Is it so damn impossible?”

“Well, I just don’t think...”

“Suppose I was meeting another man, Don?”

“I don’t like this kind of talk, Margaret.”

“Would you be jealous, Don?”

“Well, I...”

“Would you be infuriated, Don? Could you picture him kissing me, Don, and touching me and—”

“Now stop it. You know I don’t—”

“How would you like that, Don? Another man making love to me?”

“I wouldn’t like it at all. Now stop that kind of talk. The way you talk, sometimes I think—”

“What?” she said, whirling from the mirror to face him.

“Nothing. But it’s not becoming, Margaret. I mean it. You talk like a... a...”

“A what, Don?” she said, her eyes flashing.

“I don’t know what, but it’s not right for a woman to talk that way. Suppose Patrick heard you? His mother. Talking like that.”

“I think I’ll pick up a man tonight,” she said brazenly, angrily.

“Now come on, stop it.”

“I’ll find one in the storm and—”

“You won’t find anything. Now cut it out. You’ll go away just the way you’re supposed to, and you’ll come back to me just the way you’re supposed to.”

“Suppose I don’t come back?”

“You will.”

“You’re pretty damn sure, aren’t you?” she said, and there was so much vehemence in her voice that he opened his eyes wide and stared at her for several moments before speaking again.

Then he said, “Yes. I’m sure.”

“Well, don’t count on it!” she snapped.

“Margaret, what—”

“Stop taking me for granted! I’m a woman! And one of these days I’m liable to walk out of here and never come back!

Don gently said, “Now Margaret, you know that isn’t true. You’ll always come back to me.”

She turned away from him and viciously picked up the lipstick brush again, her fingers trembling. In the mirror, she could see her eyes flashing with rage. Damn stupid fool, she thought. I’ll always come back to him. Damn smug satisfied stupid fool!

But he’s right, she thought. You always come back to him. He’s right about that. Didn’t you know that?

No, I didn’t know that. I damn well...

Didn’t you know you’d never leave him? she thought.

No! I can leave him any time I want to. I can...

Oh, Margaret, don’t. Please. Look at the truth, Margaret. You can have Larry and a hundred men after him if you like, but you’ll always go back to Don. Don’t you know why, Margaret? It’s because you were made for each other.

Made for...!

Yes, yes, oh surely you know that. You couldn’t leave him if you wanted to. And you don’t want to. Didn’t you say you liked things the way they are? You want everything to stay the way it is, don’t you? Don’t you?

I won’t listen! she thought.

You’ll listen, she thought, because you know it’s true. You know you’re caught in a personal Hell. You’re stuck with Don until the day you die, and then maybe you’ll really go to Hell, but...

I’m not listening! I don’t have to...

... in the meantime, this is fine, this is Hell enough. No matter how much you want to break away from him, no matter who’s waiting out in that storm now or forever, you’ll never do it.

Stop it, she thought. Stop it. I’m not listening!

You’ll never do it because Don is safe! He’s the safest goddamn man you could find, and that’s why you married him.

No!

Admit it, admit it! Look into your own eyes and admit it. Larry may fill you for a while but you’ll always go back to Don because he doesn’t want as much. He doesn’t want your heart.

No, she thought. Stop it. Please.

Yes, yes, she thought, get used to Hell. Get used to staying here and to coming back here and to living with a man who’ll never know and never care. But things will stay the way they are. Always. Forever. You’ll have company, but you’ll be alone for the rest of your goddamn life!

Not She shook her head. No, that isn’t true. No, it—

The front doorbell chimed. The sound startled her. She dropped the lipstick brush and then looked up into the mirror at a pale white face she had never seen before.

From the bed, Don said, “Is that my mother? So early?”

She did not answer him. She kept staring into the mirror at the terrified white face, shaking her head over and over again. Don left the room. The doorbell chimed again. She could hear him as he rushed downstairs to open the door.

“Mom!” he said happily. “Mom!”

When Larry left the Harder apartment at nine o’clock that night, the city was as silent as a tomb. The rain had stopped, and there was a strange glow in the sky, a sense of foreboding in the streets. He started for the garage where his car was parked, and then stopped at a newsstand on the way to pick up the early edition of the morning paper. Hastily, he thumbed through it to the book page. The slug at the top of the review read:

He felt intense sudden pride. He folded back the page and, standing under a street lamp, began reading the column:

Larry could not finish the review. He had not been so excited or honestly happy for another person in as long as he could remember. He was shaking with vicarious joy. He had to see Altar at once. He had to share the writer’s triumph with him, if only for a few minutes. Quickly, he got his car from the garage and drove downtown. He made it to Altar’s apartment in ten minutes. He raced up the steps with the newspaper in his hand, wondering if Altar had seen it yet, hoping he would be the one to bring the good news. He rang the doorbell impatiently, and then knocked on the door. It opened wide. Altar stood there with a drunken grin on his face. He had already seen the review.

“Hot damn!” he shouted ecstatically.

Larry grabbed his hand and slapped him on the back with the newspaper. “Congratulations, you bastard!” he said, and Altar pulled him into the apartment, apparently not at all surprised to see him in New York.

“Hot damn!” he roared ecstatically. “Hot damn! You want a drink?”

“A short one.”

“Did you see it?”

“Did I see it!”

“Hot day-am!” Altar shouted. He reeled to the liquor cabinet and feverishly poured a drink, the whisky sloshing over the brim of the glass. He staggered back to Larry hurriedly, thrusting the drink into his hand. “Drink up!” he said. “Did you read it? A work of art! Crisp sharp dialogue and true characterization! Penetrating! That’s what the man said! A work of art!” he shouted joyously, tensely ecstatic.

Larry grinned at him stupidly.

“This is it, Larry,” Altar said excitedly. “This is it, man! What’s left after this? Man, this is the peak, the top, the gateway to heaven!” He poured whisky down his throat ferociously. “I did it, Larry!”

“Yes!”

“I really did it this time!”

“Yes!”

“I knocked them on their asses,” he said, his eyes bright and glowing hotly, his head nodding nervously. “I did it, I wrote a work of art, I got a...” and suddenly his voice trailed off and the room went silent.

Altar shook his head.

“Who the hell am I kidding?” he asked the wall.

“What?”

“I’ve been sitting up here ever since I read that review and drinking myself silly and trying to get a boot out of it! I’ve been trying to make believe that damn review is the be-all and the end-all, and the plain damn honest truth is that it doesn’t matter at all, it doesn’t matter one goddamn little bit!” He turned to Larry despairingly. “It isn’t enough, Larry!”

“But the review said—”

“Yes, and it isn’t enough! What’s wrong with me? What the hell do I want? Why shouldn’t I be deliriously happy right now? What do I do if I win the Nobel Prize someday? Put a bullet in my head? What’s enough for me? Larry, Larry, I don’t know what I want any more!”

“Hey!” Larry said. “Hey, don’t be—”

“Oh, what a crock!” Altar said. “Oh, what an empty crock success is! Oh, what a phony, what a two-bit phony. Drink. Drink, y’ bastard.” He refilled his own glass. “The two American carrots,” he said. “The man-carrot is Success, and the woman-carrot is beauty. Those are the carrots they dangle. You wanna know something? Carrots are for rabbits, and they stink! We’re people. Don’t you know that?”

“Yes, I know it,” Larry said. “But a man has to strive for success. You can’t—”

“You know what a man has to strive for?” Altar asked. “A man has to strive to be a man, that’s all. What the hell does success mean? I got success and what good is it? I’m riding on top of the world! A work of art, the man said! So where am I? I wish I was a guy who cleaned gook out of the sewers. I wish I could go home to a dumpy wife and eat scrambled eggs and tell her what a goddamn hard day I had down in the sewer. That’s for me! The sewer and the gook!”

“You don’t mean that, Altar.”

“I mean every word I say. Success? Bunk. Bunk! A canard! Tell them! Tell all the white-collar workers and the junior executives in the Brooks Brothers suits. Tell them success is a farce! Tell them you’re never a success until you’re a man—” Altar burst out laughing — “and the stupid bastards’ll answer, ‘You’re never a man until you’re a success!’”

Larry sipped at his drink quietly.

“Here’s to the big successful bachelor house in the exurbs,” Altar toasted. “Long may it serve as a monument to the blood we spilled and the tears we shed and the prizes we brought home from the sewer. You know something?”

“What?”

“I never won a prize.”

“I did.”

“How does it feel?”

“It’s not so hot.”

“Why not?”

“Well, once you’ve got the prize, what’re you going to do with it?”

“Pickle it,” Altar said. “Exactly my point. There are no real prizes left in this goddamn world of ours. If there were real prizes, who’d care what some reviewer thinks about what you do?”

Larry looked at his watch. “I have to leave soon,” he said.

“What time?”

“Before ten.”

“Relax, there’s time.” He paused. “Or is there? Time’s running out, isn’t it, Larry?”

“Time’s running out,” Larry repeated.

“We’re getting old, Larry. We better grab a big handful of life before there’s nothing left to grab. Listen, don’t go.”

“I have to,” Larry said.

“What’s the matter? Don’t you like me?”

“I like you.”

“I like you too, Larry.”

“Good.”

“It’s very good. I like you. I love you, y’ bastard. You’re a good guy. And that’s the whole secret, Larry. Love. Not success and not beauty and not the gook in the sewer. Love. You know something?”

“What?”

“I’m gonna get married someday. I’m gonna kick all the tarts out of my apartment, and I’m gonna get a wife. A sweet little wife who doesn’t give a damn what the reviewers say, and who’ll cook me scrambled eggs.”

“You like scrambled eggs?”

“I hate scrambled eggs,” Altar said. “Let’s go down the Village and find some girls.”

“I’ve got to go,” Larry said.

“Sure, excuse me. Forgive me. Home to your wife. I know. You worked it out, didn’t you?”

“Altar...”

“Sure, I can see you worked it out. I told you, didn’t I? Don’t lose your head, just don’t lose it. Love, that’s the secret. Home to the wife, home to the woman. That’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna take a woman to bed tonight.”

“That’s not love, Altar,” Larry said.

“I know, I know, that’s only the success carrot of love. You got love. What you got with your wife is love. I told you it’d work out, didn’t I? Sure. Jesus, I wish I could love some girl. Listen, I love your wife. What’s her name? Eve? I love her. I love Eve. The mother of all men, Eve, I love her. Listen, you go home to her, hear me?”

“I...”

“Hurry up, ’cause this bitchin’ storm’s gonna catch her all alone with the hurricane lamps. Hurry up, Larry. Go to her and love her, love that wonderful goddamn Eve! And keep designing those magnificent houses, man, let them pour out of you. And love your wife and bring forth men children only and love your wife! Fill the earth, Larry! Fill it with your houses and your kids and you’re on the road to eternity! Go home to Eve, man, and thank God your life doesn’t rise and fall on what a review says about a goddamn cloth binding stuffed with paper!”

Larry looked at his watch. “I’ve really...”

“Sure, sure. Wait for me. I’ll get my coat and then I’ll come down with you. I’m gonna get my coat and drive with the top down and let the damn storm crash all around me! And I’m gonna get me a woman and come back here and let the storm call the music!”

He got his coat and they walked downstairs and they stood together on the sidewalk. The storm was ready to break. The wind furiously hurled newspapers across the sidewalk. There was a sullen roar in the streets. The skies were swollen and ready to burst in fury.

“So the house is finished,” Altar said.

“Yes.”

“And now what?”

“I don’t know.”

“The age of uncertainty,” Altar said. He nodded bleakly, the wind whipping at his hair. “Only one thing’s sure, Larry.”

“What’s that?”

“People come and go. You meet as strangers... and most of the time you part as strangers. And if you ever really get to know another human being, it’s a miracle.” He took Larry’s hand in a firm grip. “I get the feeling I won’t be seeing much of you now that the house is finished. I get that feeling. Take care of yourself, y’ bastard.”

“I will. You too.”

Altar dropped his hand. Larry felt there was no more he should say, and he sought words, and then the moment was gone. Altar turned abruptly and started down the street toward his convertible, walking quickly for a big man, his broad shoulders pushing against the wind which swept sullenly through the narrow concrete canyon. Larry watched him as he climbed into the car. He heard the engine start, and then the top of the car came down slowly, slowly.

Larry went back to his own car and began driving toward the bridge.

35

He felt rather good when the storm broke around him.

It broke suddenly. There was a stillness one moment and then instant and absolute raging fury which shook the car. He was still miles from the bridge when the rain burst from the sky. He could feel the sudden lurch of the automobile as a stronger wind captured it. He clung tightly to the wheel, picking up the challenge of the storm like a dropped gauntlet, grinning into the suddenly flooded windshield. Rain swept across the glass in successive sheets, impervious to the sniping of the windshield wipers. The glass became a blurred dissolving pane of pinpoint lights through which he squinted to see the road. He did not slow the car. With the wind shrieking around him, shrilling at the windows, screaming over the roof, combining with the incessant rain which smeared red, green and white lights across the windshield, he felt he was locked in a safe metal chamber which hurtled straight and true into an indistinct tunnel of howling furies.

The night did not frighten him at all. As he drove into the rain, smiling and squinting through the blurred windshield, he felt in complete control of the vehicle. He felt as if he were starting a great adventure, a lively and interesting journey, at the end of which he would be rewarded for his courage and tenacity. Courageously, tenaciously, he tried to see the road, his foot on the accelerator, pushing the Dodge through the storm. He thought of how childishly naïve Altar’s concept of marriage was, wondered how fast the winds outside were, wondered if Maggie had left the house yet. And beneath all his idle thoughts, like a tingling undercurrent of anticipation, he had a sense of something about to happen. The windshield was dissolving before his eyes and he could barely see the road. He could feel the buffeting wind and water wrenching at each straining joint of the automobile, but he felt safely encased in a strong metal cocoon.

He supposed it was only the storm and the egotistical idea of puny man pitting himself against mighty nature; just that coupled with the feeling of aloneness as he pushed through the night, and yet he couldn’t shake the persistent feeling that he was on the verge of a magnificent realization. He drove hunched over the wheel, fully expecting a sudden illuminating light to burst into the automobile, exploding in incandescent brilliance around him, a roman candle of truth and revelation. He wondered about sudden truth, rejecting it as a stylized concept for the practitioners of Altar’s art. There was no such thing as sudden truth. Verity simply piled upon verity to form one day a shining edifice which only seemed to have materialized suddenly out of thin air. And yet, even rejecting it, he felt as if he were about to touch sudden truth, felt as if he would soon be able to see clearly through the raging storm, see through it into the core of life, and beyond that to death, and into eternity, and into the very soul itself.

He felt the way he’d felt in Puerto Rico, watching the funeral procession.

And suddenly he began to tremble.

His mind seemed crystal clear, brimming with thoughts, flooding with solutions. His mind grabbed for the scattered glittering pieces, clicking them into place until he thought he would burst with the sheer thrill of near-revelation. With luminous clarity, he could remember the first time he saw Maggie and everything that had followed afterward, the meeting of two strangers, the clasping of alien hands. With persistent logic, he wondered why they had reached for each other? What in him had not been satisfied? What in him and the thousands of others who broke the marriage contract caused the unrest? Was it the struggle for Altar’s prize, for success, for beauty in a world grown suddenly too complex for a simple animal?

Hadn’t his yielding to desire been a simple rebellion, a basic retrogression to something clearly understood in a world of incomprehensible things and ideas? Hadn’t the sex been a sure thing in a world of uncertainties? An accomplishment in a world of unrealized dreams and frustrated goals? Wasn’t that why he’d sought Maggie and found her?

He laughed aloud at the storm, feeling free all at once, hurtling free and unfettered into the raging teeth of the shrieking monster outside, routing the beast, pointing the nose of the car into the blackness and the rain and the howling winds as the windshield melted in pinpoint oozing blobs of red and green and yellow and white.

Then was there no such thing as love? Was love just another label? Was the whole world and everything in it a giant fabrication, a push-button front, a fakery for fakes? His mind veered from the thought because he was seeing now with penetrating logic, and he would not accept the pessimistic glibness of the idea, would not allow himself to fall into the facile trap of false acceptance, not when truth was piled in glittering heaps of golden coins at his feet. Not when he could pick up truth and let it spill through his fingers in cascades of dazzling revealed splendor. Of course there was love! Maybe romance was a fake, but love was as real as breathing, and what he knew with Maggie was love.

Again his mind backed away, refusing to accept any pat statement in the shining revelation of truth, asking the question: Or is it romance? and then rushing headlong with the question, allowing it to produce the next inescapable query: Isn’t this the same romance I knew with Eve? Hadn’t it been this way for us when we were still kids discovering each other? Yes! Yes! But I do love Maggie, I know I love Maggie; still the admission had to be made, and it followed unchecked: his love for Maggie was a thing sheltered and protected by the adolescent concept of romance. He had turned back to a juvenile belief, clutching for the glamour and the excitement — and he knew why. As the car hurtled through the night, he knew why. He’d grabbed for the glitter and the tinsel because the reality was too damned painful and too damned complex. But what had he found, and why was he still looking?

In the tunnel of wind and rain he wondered if you ever stopped looking, if you ever really discovered yourself in all the noise and all the confusion and all the speed, or did you keep looking for the rest of your life? And another truth rolled down upon him in overwhelming certainty, and he knew you didn’t find yourself by going back to seventeen. Maybe you looked until you were dead and buried, but there was no going back.

He realized now the fallacy of his reaction to the funeral procession in Vega Alta. He had been watching the drama of life and death that day. He had placed himself in the supported coffin and watched it going down the street, knowing it would be out of sight soon, knowing that his own life was moving forward unrealized, unfound, and that someday he would be buried. Soon, soon! And facing the utter finality of death, he had wanted to reach out for life, to hold it close in an embrace, stop the steady advance of life which was rushing him unfulfilled to the grave. He had wanted to turn back time, stop the insidious clocks, find himself before it was too late.

He had found Maggie Gault instead.

And the Signora had said it at a party in February, when he’d been too drunk to understand her. The Signora had said, “Margaret Gault isn’t the pot of gold.”

Now, as the lights of the bridge appeared blurringly in the distance, as the hurricane Felicia grasped at the car with undiminished fury, he thought, No, Maggie isn’t the pot of gold. I love her but she isn’t the pot of gold and maybe there isn’t any pot of gold at all. Maybe you never find it, or maybe you always keep looking for it, but one thing’s certain. You’ll never find it if you go back over ground you’ve already searched. I know for sure I’ll never find it this way. I love you, Maggie, he thought, but I know for sure.

That was the sparkling, shimmering moment of golden truth, and he nodded his head and thought, I’m going home to Eve.

The approach to the bridge was ahead. Through the blurred windshield, he could see the approach on his left and the curving ramp ascending in a high sweep above the storm. And straight ahead was the road which led back to Eve, the road to Manhattan’s cross streets. The white sign appeared suddenly in the storm, its black lettering swept relentlessly by the wind and rain: LAST EXIT BEFORE BRIDGE.

I’m going home to Eve, he thought.

And he pressed his foot to the accelerator with new determination, and he nodded again because truth had come to him at last.

“I’m going home to Eve!” he said aloud in the stillness of the car.

Last exit, the sign read. Pained, he saw the sign fall away on his right. Powerless to stop himself, he swung the car to the left, onto the ramp leading to the bridge and Maggie. The decision arrived at in pain, discarded now with pain, he drove onto the ramp decisionless, unable to stop, captured in the car as it mounted the wide, ascending curve of concrete. Last exit, the sign had read, but seeing the exit he had ignored it, had instead succumbed, powerless to something within him which was incapable of committing the final act of severance. He could not cut Maggie out of his life, could not leave a part of him bleeding and raw on the pavement. He knew then that truth could descend in lightning bolts, shower purging sparks upon him, and he would still be helpless to break whatever held him to her.

And, realizing this, he began crying.

The windshield, dissolved already in the incessant wash of the rain, became a muddy, shifting, protoplasmic mass as he blinked to keep back the blinding tears. He wept from the very roots of his being, the tears welling into his eyes and streaming down his face as he sped into the storm and onto the high span of the bridge. He could no longer see ahead of him. The road seemed to be one he’d traveled before and often, the repetitious, monotonous, ungratifying landscape of an alien land in which he was a familiar stranger. Decided but decisionless, committed but lacking real commitment, he wept bitterly. The rain cascaded against the roof; wind tore at the windows. Helplessly, he clung to the wheel, weeping. Blindly, he followed whatever crude instinct propelled him through the night, rushing to reach her side, rushing to Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, Maggie.

Perhaps the car went into its skid only because it was suddenly sideswiped by a fresh fierce gust which blew in over the open water to the span of the bridge, causing the tires to relinquish for an instant their tenuous grip on the slick pavement. Perhaps he remembered for a split second his earlier decision and impulsively pushed his foot onto the brake pedal in an attempt to follow the demands of reason by executing a now-unreasonable, all-impossible turn. Or perhaps — perhaps the familiar road was suddenly recognized as a road without an end; perhaps, confronted with a bewildering despair he had never known before, he turned the car deliberately toward the edge of the bridge.

The car turned sharply and then entered a sideswinging skid, its speed undiminished. He remembered something about always turning into a skid, but if he knew how to correct the sudden slipping motion, he made no attempt to do so. And then the moment for action was gone, and he recognized with a small shock that he had lost all control of the automobile. The shock passed almost at once. He sat in nearly expectant resignation as the car swung sideward in what seemed to be an endlessly long arc, swinging, swinging, swinging, and then striking.

He felt the impact as the car hit the guard railing, heard the splintering sound of glass and the crunching tear of metal above the noise of the wind. Held low by the weight of the engine, the nose of the car clung to the dark pocket where concrete met steel. The rear end buckled and leaped into the air of its own momentum and then was captured by the wild rush of the wind at hurricane force, lifting, lifting the back wheels and then flipping the car over like a toy. His chest rammed hard against the steering wheel, and he felt sharp, unbearable pain as the car completed a somersault which sent it spinning over the steel railing. He clutched for the roof of the car, and then the seat, felt the automobile lurch clear of the steel rail, upright again for just an instant, and then hurtling free, unhampered, loose on the wild night air, dropping for the river below.

Pinned behind the wheel, he thought. This is it.

Helpless in the spinning automobile, he thought, I’m going to die, for God’s sake, I’m going to die.

The thought surprised him and amused him. It was such a damn funny, shocking thought, he was going to die like this, what a goddamn corny, ridiculous, stupid way to die! He was amazed by it, and yet he felt somehow that his reaction was rather thin, the false shock at the entrance door to a suspected surprise party. He sat with pain knifing his chest as the world revolved around him and the wind screamed in his ears, and he thought, This is the way it happens, you sweat and you worry and you work and you wonder and then you die for nothing, no cause, where are all the prizes, if you never really lived, how can you learn to die so soon?

I wonder if Chris will go to college, he thought.

Eve, he thought. Eve.

I must call Baxter. We’ll do Puerto Rico. We’ll make it, don’t worry, we’ll make it.

With the unbearable pain in his chest, and the car spinning forever to the swirling black waters below, falling like a stone, he thought, Poor David still wets the bed. Oh, Jesus, my poor

36

The music for Pinecrest Manor’s Third Annual Beer Party was live.

The leader of the band was a man who sold insurance in the development. He played trumpet rather forlornly and was followed sadly by four musicians who had come all the way from Queens and who looked upon these suburban shenanigans somewhat dimly. In Queens, people knew how to live.

The musicians read their sheets but they didn’t play with any particular gumption because October was a sad month and besides this wasn’t even a union-scale job. Not that there was any danger of a union representative asking them for their cards at this obscure American Legion hall. But scale should have been $22.00 per man, with double for leader, and the band was getting only $22.00 per man, with the leader — because of his civic attachments — forsaking the double salary. And so, though the music was alive, it wasn’t very lively.

The musicians had arrived at 8:00 P.M. and were set up and tuned by eight-fifteen even though the party wasn’t scheduled to start until eight-thirty. A few early birds arrived on the dot. There were always, the musicians mused, a few early birds who arrived everywhere on the dot, as if unwilling to miss even a moment of the forthcoming festivities. The real exodus from Pinecrest Manor to the American Legion hall, however, did not begin until nine. By that time, all the baby sitters and mothers-in-law had received their detailed instructions.

There were, to be sure, some last-minute hassles with children in some of the development homes. But the children were being raised to understand that the night was a mysterious time of adult pleasures. Hadn’t Mummy and Daddy spent the whole day trying to make the kids happy, hadn’t they gone on all the rides at Joyland and eaten hot dogs and popcorn and had heaps of fun? So go to sleep, you little bastards. We don’t come to your parties, do we?

At nine o’clock, as if by prearranged signal, the front aluminum storm doors of the development ranches, Cape Cods, and split-levels opened. The women emerged smiling in their finery, and the men followed them to the cars. The sprinklers were going on the front lawns even though it was October already. The right to sprinkle was a God-given one which only reluctantly retreated before the approach of winter.

The sedans and the station wagons — of which many were in evidence — and the convertibles backed out on the concrete driveway strips and headed for town. There was a deep peace in the air over the development, an almost tangible feeling of heavy contentment. The street lights glowed warmly in the orderly streets. The lawns which had received their addict’s fix of 10-6-4 sparkled greenly under the glistening saturation of the sprinklers. There were warmth and beauty and bliss in Pinecrest Manor. On the front seats of the automobiles, the bottles of booze were wrapped in brown paper bags, the couples’ surnames inked onto the labels. There would be setups available at the American Legion hall. This was going to be a damn fine affair!

There was a lot of milling around in the entrance hallway, the couples who’d arrived alone trying to decide where they would sit and with whom. There was, too, the usual cloakroom bottleneck, but this was straightened out in time and it didn’t take long for friends to find friends. Chairs were pulled up to the long wooden tables, and everyone sat down in the cheerless wooden box which was the American Legion hall, and each neighbor looked at his neighbor with a patient, bored, anticipative expression which seemed to say, “Well, I’m here. Entertain me.” The men went for setups and then opened the whisky bottles. The band began playing. Drinks were poured. Chairs were shifted. Laughter resounded throughout the hall.

“Looks like a nice crowd,” Betty Anders said. The trumpet wailed into the room mournfully.

“It’s awfully hot in here, isn’t it?” Doris Ramsey asked.

A man rushing back to his table dropped a bottle of ginger ale. It hit the floor and shattered. Wild applause and cheering congratulated his clumsiness.

Fran Levy said, “I think they ought to have these things more often.”

“That’s a good idea,” Betty said. “We ought to suggest it to the Civic Association.”

“We need more ice,” Felix said, and he rose and left the table.

“I think this is going to be a big bore,” Doris said suddenly. She smiled. “Present company excluded, of course.”

“What the hell,” Max Levy said. “We’ll make our own fun.”

“We’ll have to,” Doris said.

“Everything is what you make it” Max said judiciously.

“We passed by a new development yesterday,” Arthur Garandi said. “Oakdale Acres. Mostly split-levels. They’ve got it laid out nice. Winding roads. Nice.”

“How much is the house?” Paul Ramsey asked.

“I think it’s sixteen nine-nine,” Arthur said. “I’m not sure. We didn’t stop.”

“That’s a lot of money,” Doris said.

“It always kills me when they say nine-nine,” Ramsey said. “What they really mean is seventeen thousand. Why don’t they say so?”

“It sounds cheaper the other way,” Mary Garandi said.

Felix came back to the table with a bucket of ice.

“Do you know what a lot of people are doing?” Max said. “They’re buying those big estates on the shore. Getting them for a song.”

“What’s a song?” Betty asked.

“Forty thousand. Something like that.”

“That’s a song, huh? Sing to me a little.”

“Those are white elephants,” Mary said. “Cost a fortune to heat.”

“Yes,” Felix said, entering the conversation, “but you get an awful lot of land and a really big house. Nineteen, twenty rooms.”

“Who needs so many rooms?” Mary asked. “Besides, why is everybody talking about other houses? Is anybody moving?”

“I guess it’s on everybody’s mind,” Felix said. “Now that Eve’s put up the house for sale.”

“That’s different,” Mary said. “What do you expect her to do? Stay here with the two kids? Without a man?”

“Let’s not talk about it,” Betty said. “It gives me the shivers.”

“Do you think she’ll be able to sell the house?” Max asked.

“No question,” Felix said. “These houses have a very good resale value. She’ll probably make a little money on the deal.”

“It’s a shame,” Mary said. “That poor woman. You never know when something like that is going to happen, do you? That poor woman.”

“Let’s not talk about it,” Betty said.

Ramsey cleared his throat. “I’ve heard a little talk about Larry,” he said. “Not that I want to spread any rumors.”

“What kind of talk?” Max asked.

“Oh, just about what he was doing out in that storm,” Ramsey said.

“What do you mean?” Fran asked.

“Well, just talk,” Ramsey said, “and I don’t want to spread any rumors. But there was some mention of another woman.”

“You’re crazy,” Felix said immediately.

“I’m only saying what I heard.”

“Well, what you heard is wrong. I think I knew Larry better than any of you. Isn’t that right, Betty?”

“They spent a lot of time together,” Betty confirmed.

“And a straighter guy never existed,” Felix said. “I’d like to know who told you a thing like that, Paul.”

“What difference does it make? I just heard it around.”

“If I knew who told you that, I’d go over and tell that guy a thing or two, you can bet on that.”

“Forget it,” Ramsey said. “I just heard it around.”

“This was a real sweet man,” Felix said, “I’m not kidding you. I’ve met a lot of people in my life, but Larry Cole was one of the genuine real sweet men. I’d have done anything for that guy. All he had to do was ask. I’m not kidding. I mean it.”

“I didn’t know you were such close friends,” Max said.

“Well, who talks about friendship? It’s either there or it isn’t. But it burns me up how people can change a legitimate business trip — he was out in that damn storm on his way to see a client — into something with... with... hints of another woman! It just burns me up! Boy, sometimes I wonder where everybody’s mind is!”

“Well, forget it,” Ramsey said. “It was only something I heard.”

“You know how hard that guy worked? Do you think it’s easy to sit there on your own, without that steady salary coming in every week? He had to hustle for every cent he ever made. That’s what he was doing in that damn hurricane! Lining up another client so he could feed his family. You should have heard him when he talked about Eve and the kids. You should have seen his face! This guy was devoted! One of the real sweet people, believe me.”

“I always liked him,” Max said.

“It’s a shame,” Mary said. “A thing like that. Such a young man.”

“Listen, it makes no difference to me one way or the other,” Ramsey said. “I mean whether he was fooling around or not. Everybody else is doing it, anyway.”

“Oh, shut up, Paul,” Doris said.

“Well, he’s not exactly wrong, Doris,” Max said.

“Sex is here to stay.” Ramsey said, shrugging. “Let’s admit it.”

“That’s the right idea.” Max agreed, trying to raise the party out of the mud of morbidity.

“The right idea,” Fran scoffed. “My husband. The sex machine.”

“Who?” Max said, pretending to be offended.

“The sex machine with the missing part.”

“Who’s got a missing part?”

“Well, maybe not missing. But hard to find.”

Everyone laughed, and the laughter seemed to dispel any remaining remnants of the previous talk.

“Those people in Massachusetts who had those key parties knew what they were doing,” Ramsey said.

“How about it, Felix?” Doris said, winking. “You want my key?”

“Sure, sure,” Felix said.

“Take her up on it, Felix,” Betty said, grinning.

“Sure, sure.”

“Listen, I’m available,” Max said.

“Ask him, Doris,” Fran said. “He’ll run a mile.”

“Go ahead try me,” Max said.

“Nope. Either Felix or nobody,” Doris said, winking at Betty this time.

“Look out there on the floor,” Ramsey said. “Everybody dancing with everybody else’s wife. That’s the only reason they come to these affairs.”

“Speak for yourself, John,” Felix said.

“I’m only making an observation,” Ramsey said. “Look at them. Cheek to cheek. Who’s more honest? Those sneak thieves on the dance floor out there or the ones in Massachusetts who swapped keys?”

“The ones in good old Mass,” Max agreed instantly.

“Certainly.”

“I don’t think so,” Felix said.

“Felix is very moral,” Betty said solemnly. “Really. He is.”

“It’s not that I’m a prude, but I’ve got old-fashioned ideas about marriage. Adultery is dishonest. And immoral. And illegal.”

“I’ll bet you,” Ramsey said slowly, “that half those guys out there who are dancing with another man’s wife would like to take her to bed.”

“Now watch it, Paul,” Felix said seriously. “That’s no kind of talk to—”

“I’m only trying to make a point.”

“Then make it, and let’s talk about something else.”

“All I want to know is this. What’s more honest? A flirtation? Or an affair?”

“He’s got a good point,” Max said.

“I fail to see it,” Felix answered bluntly.

“Look out there on the dance floor,” Ramsey said. “You see that tall guy with the glasses? That girl he’s dancing with isn’t his wife. Look at where his hand is.”

Everyone looked.

“All right, all right,” Felix said.

“Who’s more honest?” Ramsey asked. “Them or the ones who go to bed? Who’s crazy?”

“Is that your point?” Felix asked.

“That’s my point.”

“Okay, you made it. Now let’s talk about the weather or something.”

Ramsey chuckled. “I always distrust the ones who don’t want to discuss it,” he said.

“Sure,” Felix answered, smiling.

“Doesn’t anybody want to dance?” Arthur asked.

“Come on, honey,” Felix said and lovingly he took Betty into his arms.

The Picasso print of the boy leading the horse had been his favorite and now the moving man lifted it gingerly from the wall and carried it past Eve to the front door. She could remember when they’d bought the print. It had been a bitter cold day in January and they’d stopped at the museum only to escape the frigid streets. She watched as the man put the framed print into the truck, and then another man carried out the Saarinen chair which had cost them something like three hundred dollars, their one extravagance when they were first married and furnishing the three-room apartment they had in the Bronx.

She watched the chair move out of the house, and she marveled at how quickly the place she had called her home could become nothing but a bare shell stripped of whatever personality its owners had given it. Standing in the living room as the moving men rushed past her like a silent demolition crew, she felt lonelier than she had at any time since the accident. She tried to put the horror of that night out of her mind now, the phone call from the harbor police, and then the wild rush to the hospital in the hope they’d been wrong, please, please let them have been wrong, and the terrible pallid stillness of the mortuary, the somber, embarrassed attendant and the swift, clean pain of looking into the dead face of what had been her husband and knowing it was over.

I must not think about it now, she thought. Life goes on. I must not think about it.

Alone, she stood in the living room as the furniture which had surrounded her life was moved into a truck backed to the curb. How easily they take apart a home, she thought. How easily they pack a life into the back of a truck. This afternoon she would move into the apartment on Fifth Avenue with her parents. Her furniture would go into storage, and she would become a guest in the apartment which had once been her home. If she ever thought back to Pinecrest Manor again, it would only be with pain. Her loneliness was a completely engulfing thing. She did not know what was ahead for her. A job, she supposed. She could not, after all, ask her father to assume the responsibility of her and her two children, nor did she want to. A job then, and perhaps her own apartment eventually and a nursery-school arrangement for David, and a woman to help with the house. A new life alone. She had always believed her life was set, its course charted. And now...

The living room was empty.

Leadenly, Eve looked at the blank walls.

She wondered again about that night in August, and again she told herself that he really truly was going on a trip alone, and that he was coming back to her at the end of that trip. And this she believed, and this she would always believe until the day she died.

One of the moving men came to her. He wiped his forehead and said, “That looks like it, lady. Is there anything else?”

Eve shook her head and said, “No, there’s nothing else.”

And then she walked out of the house and did not even try to look back at it.

The girl with Roger Altar was a honey blonde with bright blue eyes. She unbuttoned her blouse and said, “This is a great house. I’ve never been in a pad like this one. I really dig it.”

“Good,” Altar said. “I had it built just so you could dig it.”

Outside the bedroom windows, the woods were a riot of fall color. The girl threw her blouse over a chair and walked to the windows. “It’s the end,” she said. “Who ever thought nature was so crazy? Did you design this house?”

“No,” Altar said.

“Who designed it?”

“A man named Larry Cole,” Altar said.

“A friend of yours?”

Altar hesitated. “Yes,” he said at last. “A friend.”

“We can really have a ball in this house,” the girl said. “This is the absolute most. Crazy!”

“Yeah,” Altar said.

For a moment his mind had gone back to the night of the hurricane and the last time he’d seen Larry. And for a moment he was possessed of an impulse he’d had ever since that night, a desire to rush to the telephone and call the widow of his architect and say, “Eve, I want you to know how sorry I am. Eve, I want you to know how much I thought of your husband. I just want you to know.”

He had never made the call. And once, sitting down to write a letter to Eve Cole, he had discovered that he — a professional writer — could not put what he felt into words.

The girl went to the big bed and rolled on it luxuriantly.

“Sunlight and love,” she said. “What a wild mixture!”

“Would you like a drink?” Altar asked. “I can use one.”

“Sure,” she said. “I’m game for anything. I dig this pad.”

Altar mixed the drinks silently. The girl stretched her arms to the ceiling, ecstatically digging the pad all over again. He handed her one of the drinks.

“Where do you get ideas for books?” she asked him.

“Oh, you just get them,” he said.

Someday he would make that call. Someday, he promised himself, I will call Eve Cole and pay my respects. Someday before it’s all forgotten.

“Let’s ball,” the girl said.

The pavement was covered with fallen leaves of red and yellow and orange and russet and gold. She walked with her head bent, and the wind grasped at the leaves and sent them rasping along the pavement, parting in whispers before her high-heeled stride. Her blonde hair blew free in the wind. With one hand, she held her collar pressed to her cheek, covering the small scar. High in the naked treetops, the wind sang a wild, keening song.

There was a wind on the night he died.

She could remember it rattling the front door of the small luncheonette. She could remember the young boy who sat at the end of the counter with a cup of coffee. She could remember the storm flailing the streets, and she could remember clenching and unclenching her hands in her lap as the clock steadily advanced past eleven. At twelve o’clock, the proprietor told her he was closing and asked her if she wanted a lift home. She had refused with an ever-mounting sense of dread, and then had stood in the doorway of the closed luncheonette and watched the storm gradually subsiding. By one o’clock she knew that he was not coming to her, and she went home. She learned of the accident from Betty Anders the next day. She almost screamed aloud, and then with carefully disguised anguish, she listened to the details. The news was all over Pinecrest Manor. She heard the story a hundred times that day, and that night she wept in the darkness of the bedroom and Don made no move to console her. When she awoke the next day, the Cape Cod seemed empty. She kept waiting for the telephone to ring, but it did not. She kept waiting for his voice and his expected “Hi,” but it never came. She cried again. She could not seem to stop drying. In the middle of a simple household chore, the tears would suddenly spring to her eyes. She cried for a week, and then there were no tears left to shed. Then she felt only the terrible emptiness of being alone again.

Now, walking with her head bent, with the leaves scattering before her on the pavement, she wondered if things did really end after all, if everything always came to a suddenly terrifying halt. She wondered about her own life, about the long empty years ahead, alone. And she shuddered, hunching her shoulders against the wind.

A car pulled up alongside the curb. She did not turn to look at it. Slowly, the car cruised next to the sidewalk, rolling slowly with her pace. The horn honked. She did not look up. The horn honked again. She paused and then turned to look at the car and the driver, squinting into the afternoon sun.

“Hello, Margaret,” the driver said.

She recognized him and smiled nervously. “Hello,” she said, her voice very low.

“Want a lift?”

She hesitated. In the sun-washed interior of the Oldsmobile, Felix Anders was smiling, his eyes very green, his teeth very white.

“Come on,” he said.

She hesitated another moment. Her lashes began to flutter. She pressed her coat collar into her cheek with her right hand. Then she moved swiftly to the car door and opened it. She leaned over stiffly. In a very cold voice, she said, “I’m only going as far as the center.”

Felix Anders smiled.

“Sure,” he said. “Get in, stranger.”