Two Much!

2

Candy, her eyes blazing and her voice an angry half-whisper, said, “Did you have to use our bed?”

A very ambivalent pronoun. “I was so used to it,” I said. I spoke in a normal tone of voice. We were both in the kitchen, me making drinks and Candy making hamburgers. The kids were out someplace beneath the setting sun, and Ralph had taken Newsweek into the bathroom.

Candy was so enraged already she paid no attention to what I’d said. “What if Ralph notices something?” she demanded.

“That’s not the kind of Ralph-noticing you have to worry about,” I told her. “You keep making faces at me in front of him, even Ralph is going to tip wise.”

“I could smell her on my pillow last night, I couldn’t sleep.”

“I slept like a top,” I said. “Until seven-thirty, of course, when the kids came in and did their reenactment of the Battle of Blenheim.”

She suddenly dissolved into cunning little tears. “Why are you so mean? It isn’t my fault Ralph is here. Don’t you see how jealous I am? I wanted that to be me in bed with you.” She waved the spatula in distraction.

“I know, Candy,” I said gently. She was after all my hostess, and I had after all sublet my apartment. I rested my hand on her shoulder; the flesh was warm from either sun or passion. “This is hard on both of us,” I said.

She put the spatula down and folded herself in against me. Her bathing suit top and cut-down blue jean shorts left a lot of skin available to my soothing hands. I kissed the side of her neck, and found it less interesting. She kissed my mouth, hungrily, and whispered, “Maybe later tonight, when Ralph starts on his paper work, we’ll say we’re going to Hommel’s for a drink.”

“And screw in the poison ivy?”

“Well find a place!” she whispered shrilly, and the phone rang. She gave it a look of fury, then glanced with sudden caution over toward the doorway leading to the bathroom. Backing away from me, she whispered more calmly, “We’ve found places before, Art, and we can do it again.” Then she hurried around the end of the counter and picked up the phone on the second ring. “Hello?” Her face became angry again; she seemed about to hang up, or say something loud, but then she took a deep breath and said, “Yes, he is.” She extended the phone toward me, saying coldly, “It’s her.”

“Her?” Surprised and intrigued, I walked around and picked up the phone, saying to Candy, “Make my drink for me, will you? My usual.”

She went back to the kitchen area, but then she stood there and watched me and listened. I put the phone to my face and said hello, and Liz’s well-remembered voice said, “Who was that?”

“My hostess,” I said, with a sweet smile toward Candy.

“She sounds like a bitch.”

“Interesting analysis.”

“I’m calling to invite you to a little party,” she said.

“Oh?” Looking at Candy, I knew I didn’t dare ask for a rain check on tonight’s philander. “When?” I said.

“Tomorrow, around eight.”

“That’s fine,” I said. “I’d like that.” Candy glowered.

There were pencil and a note pad on the telephone table, and I took down the directions to Liz Kerner’s house. There was no fence on the beach itself, so I should walk along there and turn inland only after I’d breached the Point O’ Woods border. “I’ll be there,” I said.

“Don’t overdress,” she said, and we both hung up.

Candy suddenly started making my drink. “She sounded like a bitch,” she said.

“That’s funny,” I said. “She remarked how sweet your voice was.”

“Oh, I’m sure. Now look what you did, I’m burning the hamburgers.”

Mend your fences while you still have some left. “After dinner,” I said, “you and I, we’ll go to Hommel’s.”

She flashed me a quick, lasciviously grateful smile, and went back to turning hamburgers.