Strangers When We Meet

14

She wore the topaz earrings for the first time in January.

The earrings had belonged to her grandmother, who’d died long before Margaret was born. Her grandfather had kept the earrings and given them to Margaret several weeks before his own death. She had never worn them before. Up until the time he’d died, she had taken them out of their box almost every day, standing before the mirror and holding them to her ears, a saucy gleam in her brown eyes, just waiting for the day when she’d be old enough to wear them.

And then, with his death, all joy seemed to go out of the teardrop-shaped earrings. She wrapped them carefully and put them away. They had been pressed into her hand by the man she called “Papa,” and now Papa was dead, and suddenly the earrings had gone lifeless and she’d had no desire to wear them ever.

She wore them in January.

She wore black slacks, and a black sweater, and a short red car coat, the collar high against her cheek. And she wore the topaz earrings, and she hustled Patrick out of the house twenty minutes before the bus was scheduled to arrive. The weekend had been a very long one, and she looked forward to seeing Larry this morning, and she wanted to look very pretty. She told herself she was behaving like a silly adolescent girl, but nonetheless she hurried to the bus stop, and she was annoyed because she could not see his house, from there.

“It’s cold, Mummy,” Patrick said.

“Yes,” she answered absently.

“Why’d we have to come so early?”

“The fresh air will do us good,” she said.

“Mum?”

“Yes?”

“Do you love me?”

Startled, she looked down at her son. “Why...” It had never occurred to her that he wondered such things. She stared at him in slow understanding. “I love you very much, sweetheart,” she said.

Patrick nodded. His hair was a pale wispy blond, the color of his mother’s, but lacking the rich texture of her hair. His eyes were wide and brown, his mother’s exactly, large now in a pale face as he stared up at her.

“Do you love Daddy?”

“Of course I love Daddy,” she said.

“Very much?”

“Yes.” She turned her eyes from his, embarrassed by their scrutiny. “Yes, very much.”

“Honest?” he said.

“Yes, of course. Why?”

“Does he think you’re pretty?”

“I suppose so.”

“Doesn’t he?”

“Why don’t you ask him, Patrick?”

“I did.”

His answer startled her. She looked at him again, feeling almost as if she were standing in the cold with a little stranger who asked personal questions and gave startling answers.

“What... what did Daddy say?” she asked.

“He said I was too young to be asking such things.”

“What things?”

“I don’t know,” Patrick said, puzzled.

“Well, he meant...” She paused, wondering what he had meant. Too young to ask what things? To ask if a man thought his wife pretty? What kind of nonsense...? “He meant... that... that a boy should always think his Mummy is pretty. That’s what he meant, Patrick.”

“But I do think you’re pretty.”

She hugged him to her and said, “I think you’re pretty too.”

“Pretty is for girls,” Patrick said. “I’m handsome. That’s what my honey tells me.”

“Your honey?” Margaret said.

“Sure, Lucy. Lucy Hager. She’s in my class. She’s my honey.”

“I didn’t know that,” Margaret said.

“Sure, everybody knows it. All the kids in the class. I chase her all around.”

“You do?” Margaret said, stifling a laugh.

“You should see the way I clobber her. She loves it. That’s ’cause she’s my honey.”

“I see.”

“She’s kind of pretty. But not so pretty as you,” he said quickly.

“What does she look like?”

“I don’t know. She’s got pigtails. Is that what you call them? Where the hair is... you know...” He indicated braids with his hands.

“Yes, pigtails.”

“That’s what she’s got. Her mother is pregnant.”

“How do you know?”

“She told me. Lucy, you know. She said her father gave her mother a seed. It’s in her mother’s belly now. You should see her mother. She’s fat as a horse.”

Margaret burst out laughing.

“Well, what’s so funny about that?” Patrick asked.

“Nothing, nothing. I—”

“There’s Chris!” Patrick shouted.

She felt her heart quicken instantly. Purposely, she did not turn because she didn’t want to seem too anxious to see him. She could hear Patrick shouting, could hear the answering shouts of Larry’s son as the boys ran to join each other. And then, slowly, she turned, wanting to see the expression on his face when he first saw her.

The woman had black hair.

The hair was caught at the nape of her neck with a bright blue ribbon, and even from this distance her eyes were lovely, a clear sky blue. As she came closer, Margaret saw that the woman had a good nose, and a full mouth, and that she walked with certainty, her head erect, her shoulders back. And even though she wore faded dungarees and a heavy sweatshirt with the words PRATT INSTITUTE on it, Margaret could see that the woman’s figure was trim and curved, and that her breasts beneath the shapeless garment were firm.

The woman was smiling. She walked directly to Margaret, extended her hand and said, “You couldn’t be anyone but Margaret Gault. How do you do? I’m Eve Cole.”

He held her to him, and he thought of the reality of her, amazed that he could be loved by her. In his eyes, she had miraculously become more than a woman, more than mere flesh and blood. He did not like to think of her as a symbol, but he was a symbol manipulator by trade — except during the exciting time when symbols became realities, when inked lines became walls, when pencil sketches became cypress panels and native stone — and in his mind she became Woman. Not this woman but every woman he had ever known or would want to know.

In the motel room, he clung to her, completely relaxed except for the urgent pressure of wanting her. He did not want her because she was close at last after a week of waiting; but he knew the ritual, knew he would have to release her to truly possess her, to undam the terrible urgent longing inside. She had kept him perched on the narrow edge of desire on the drive to the motel. She had caressed him and whispered to him gently, and then turned away from him to light a cigarette or change the station on the radio. And then she had returned to him, and her hands were gentle again and then fiercely demanding, and then again she left him, and his fingers trembled on the wheel.

Here at last, here alone at last, he released her gently. He helped her off with her coat, and she picked up her purse and then went into the bathroom, closing but not locking the door. He could hear the sink water running as he put the coin into the pay-radio and fiddled with the dial. He moved with complete familiarity in the small cabin. The room was furnished with absolute indifference to taste or lack of taste, concerning itself solely with essentials. The room was as basic as their need for each other. And in the room, the person who was Larry Cole did not think of interior decoration. The surroundings of the room, the furniture, the insipid paintings on the walls, were as meaningless as the furniture of life and of absolutely no importance to what he shared with Maggie.

How had he lived without her? he wondered. How had he possibly lived before this face had come to him, before this warm rich body had been delivered to him, before this wonderful creature, this marvelously live creature, had come to him to keen of love and life, had come to him with her promise of faraway places, had come to him with a gentle mouth and fierce hands to keen to him a song he once had known, a song that lingered half-remembered in the dim passages of his memory?

He took off his jacket and hung it in the closet, and then he pulled down his tie and placed the tie clasp on the dresser top together with his wallet, his car keys, his cigarettes and his loose change. Humming to the radio, he took off his shirt and his tee shirt, and then his shoes and socks. He walked about the cabin bare-chested and barefooted, pulling down the yellow chenille bedspread, pulling back the blankets, lighting a cigarette, which he would put out the moment she came to him.

When she emerged from the bathroom, the lipstick had been wiped from her mouth, her face was clean-scrubbed, the skin glowing, the brown eyes searchingly alert.

She still wore her dress and earrings, but he knew she had removed her stockings and undergarments, knew the back of her dress would be parted in a wide V where she had left the zipper lowered. There was a cool precision with which she approached the act of love each time, a methodical female skill to the way she torturously aroused him and then allowed him to possess her wildly and completely. She had, over the months, changed radically from the person he’d known that first night. He sometimes wondered about her reversal of seeming inexperience. Had her ignorance been only a pose, or had he truly released an untapped passion in this woman? He did not know. He knew only that each time they were together now, her eyes patiently refused to acknowledge her own overwhelming demands; cruelly womanlike, she seemed to savor his agony, scientifically manipulating touch and tongue, urging, beckoning, pressing assault, withdrawing only to counterattack — and then succumbing in warmly limp surrender, the absolute female again, sufferingly impaled, supple beneath a mercilessly battering rigidity, grasping at, locking in immensity, mounting in spasm after spasm of aching dissolution.

He watched her with tireless delight as she approached him now.

Anticipation arched in him like a suddenly drawn bow. His eyes coveted the fluid motion of her body, hip against thigh, the nuance of her hands, the veiled uncertainty of her face. Her dress, loosened by the lowered zipper, clung tenuously low to the high swell of her breasts. She sat beside him to remove her pumps, crossing her legs and pulling back the skirt of her dress so that it draped in carelessly loose concealment over the mound where her thighs joined.

He reached for her, but she smiled and playfully pulled away. She rose and walked to the dresser. He saw the expected V of white flesh against the black dress, swooping to the base of her spine. Casually unconcerned with his presence, she took a cigarette from the package and coolly lighted it. She shook out the match and put it in an ash tray. Then, barefooted, she padded back to the bed. She smiled gently, standing beside the bed, the cigarette in one hand.

“Tell me about Eve,” she said.

He was sure she was joking. He pulled her to him, his head cushioned against her breasts. But she caught his hair with her free hand and gently drew his face from her body. Then she sat beside him on the edge of the bed. Drawing on the cigarette, she said again, “Tell me about Eve.”

“Maggie...”

“I want to hear about her. I want to know how you met.”

“Later.”

“Now.”

“I’ve been waiting all week for—”

“So have I,” she said, and her eyes smoldered for just an instant and then turned strong with purpose. “Tell me about her.”

“Maggie, don’t—”

“How did you meet? Was it romantic?”

“How the hell do I know?” he said angrily, squashing out his cigarette in the ashtray beside the bed.

She handed him her cigarette. “Put this out, too,” she said, and then immediately said again, “How did you meet Eve?”

She knew he thought the question strange. But their own meeting had been unreal, and she sought to bring reality to it now by comparing it with one of supposed substance. It was important to her that she know about his wife and how he’d met her. She knew her thus far only as the attractive brunette who’d brought Chris to the bus stop. Mrs. Cole. She knew her as the woman whose eyes she had avoided. She had given nothing of herself to this woman, and she hoped this woman would in turn give nothing to her. She had taken enough from her already, and she did not want more.

But even while feeling a perverse compassion for Eve, she could not dismiss from her mind the idea that Larry went home to this other woman each time he left her, and the thought stabbed deep with jealousy. Whether she enjoyed it or not, a competition was upon her. The claims of previous and prior ownership were now invalid, and in her own mind she ceased being the intruder: Eve was the other woman.

Stubbing out the second cigarette, Larry said, “I met her in a subway car. Is that what you want to know? The B.M.T. I was going to school.”

“Pratt,” she said. It was not a question. “She wears your school sweatshirt. She was wearing it at the bus stop yesterday.”

“So that’s what this is all about. You ran into Eve.”

“With Pratt Institute across the front. Like a brand.” It angered her that their relationship went so far back, that Eve had known him when he was still a student, that Time had so conspired to cheat Margaret Gault. He looked at her curiously and again reached for her. Bu she drew away and said, “No. How long ago was this... this subway romance?”

“Nineteen forty-three,” he said.

“You remember the year very easily.”

“Don’t you remember when you first met Don?”

“Of course I remember. Tell me what happened.”

“She slapped me,” he said, grinning.

“You must have liked the slap,” she said, annoyed by his grin.

“Not particularly. It was very embarrassing.”

“She just slapped you? For no reason?”

“Oh, she had a reason, all right. She thought I was getting fresh with her.”

“Were you?”

“No, but it was a crowded car, and somebody was, and when she turned around I was the first guy she saw. So I got it.”

“Hard?”

“Damn hard. And shocking too. I didn’t even know she was there until she slapped me. I hate crowded subway cars and all I was thinking of was fresh air. No, that’s not true. I had an exam that day. I was also thinking about that.”

“How old were you?”

“In nineteen forty-three? I must have been about eighteen.”

“And Eve?”

“Just a kid.”

“How old?”

“No more than fifteen. But a very developed—”

“You molested a fifteen year-old girl?”

“Wait a minute! I never touched her! Who said I—?”

“You know her that long?” The idea was becoming more and more painful. She tried to twist away from its painfulness, but she could not. He looked at her face and again tried to take her into his arms, but she sat erect and unmoving. He lay back against the pillow and sighed heavily.

“Well, she slapped me,” he said, “and then she huffed out of the car and that was that.”

“When did you see her again?”

“In nineteen forty-six.”

“And you remembered her?” she asked, astonished.

“Sure. How often do you get slapped in the subway?”

“I suppose so,” she said dubiously. “Where was this?”

“At the Officers’ Club.”

“Did they have one in New York?”

“Not an official one; this was a thing sponsored by some women’s organization. I think the Morgans donated the place to the Army and Navy. It was on East Thirty-seventh or Thirty-eighth. I’m not sure which. Right near Park Avenue, though, in the Murray Hill section.”

“Isn’t New York your home? Didn’t you have anything better to do than go to the Officers’ Club?”

“I was getting discharged at the time,” Larry said. “Waiting at Dix. I came in for a weekend, and it occurred to me I’d never been down there. So I went. Just on impulse, that’s all.”

She smiled. “Do you do a lot of things on impulse?” she asked.

He took her hand and said, “I used to then. I was just a kid.”

“How old, Larry?”

He wagged his head. “Twenty-one. And all decked out with my battle ribbons and my lieutenant’s bar.” He kissed her fingers. “You have nice hands. Did I ever tell you?”

“Were you a lieutenant?”

“Yes.”

“That’s very exciting. Don was a private. Or a pfc, I think. Is there a difference?”

“Sure.”

“Don enlisted.” She moved closer to him, making herself comfortable, and he put his arm around her waist.

“I wanted to enlist,” he said. “My mother wouldn’t let me. I wanted to join the Air Corps.”

“Did you see any action?”

“Yes.”

“Did you kill anyone?”

“Yes. At least I think so. It’s hard to tell when everyone’s shooting at once.”

“Where were you?”

“The Pacific.”

“Don was in the Pacific too,” she said, surprised.

“Really? Where? Was he on Tarawa?”

“I don’t know.”

“In combat?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Then he’s killed his share, too.”

“I don’t know. He never talks about it.”

“Lots of men don’t.”

They fell silent. She felt quite content all at once. She had forgotten how the conversation had started. She knew only that they’d been talking in a friendly, easy, intimate way. She pictured him as a lieutenant in his Army uniform, shooting at the enemy. And then she moved away from him suddenly.

“Eve,” she said.

“What?”

“What happened at the Officers’ Club?”

“Are we back to that?”

“Yes, we’re back to that.” Unfortunately, I’m only a woman, she thought, and “Curiosity” is the password of our secret sorority, and so we are back to that. And perhaps we will always be back to wondering what it was about Eve besides the accidents of time and place that made you choose her.

“All right,” he said wearily. “I was there and she came in with an ensign. Her mother would have killed her if she’d known. Eve wasn’t allowed to date servicemen.”

“How sweet,” Margaret said, hearing the nasty tone of her voice, and marveling at it, and despising it.

“Were you?”

“I was a baby during the war. I was only twelve when it started and almost sixteen when it ended. I never knew any servicemen except cousins.”

“How old are you now?”

“Twenty-seven.”

She was about to be amused. After what they had shared together, he did not even know her age. She was about to smile when he said, “Two years younger than Eve. She’s twenty-nine,” and then she was no longer amused.

“How old are you?” she asked.

“I’ll be thirty-two in July.”

“Don’s thirty-two already.”

“Remember how old thirty used to seem when we were in our teens?”

“It still seems old to me. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever reach it.”

“Are you in a hurry?”

“Hell, no.”

He sat up and kissed her quickly and suddenly. “I like women who say hell,” he told her.

“Does Eve?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.”

“You mean she does say hell?”

“Yes.”

“That’s what I thought. It could have meant... you know... does she like women who say hell.”

“No.”

“No, I didn’t think you meant that.”

“No.”

They were silent again. She sat at the core of the silence, her lips pursed, smoldering. I won’t ask him another thing, she thought. Not another thing. I don’t care who they met or where or why. I don’t give a damn, and I won’t ask.

“What happened when she came in?” she asked.

“I recognized her, but she didn’t seem to remember me. Looked straight at me and then went off dancing with her ensign. Later on, I asked her to dance. She’s a good dancer, always was.”

“What else does she do well?”

“Lots of things.”

“Like what?”

“Look, you don’t want to hear this. You’re getting angry. I’d rather not tell it if you’re—”

“I want to hear it, Larry.”

“All right, I was dancing with her and I said, ‘You don’t remember me, do you?’ and she said, ‘Should I?’ and I said, ‘You slapped me on the B.M.T. in nineteen forty-three.’ And then she remembered.”

“What did she say?”

“She said, ‘I’m surprised the government allows degenerates to become officers.’” He laughed with the memory. “I explained to her that I hadn’t been the offender, though I certainly would have been if I’d known how pretty she was.”

“God, what a line!”

“It wasn’t a line.”

“Then you meant it?”

“Well... well, yes, I did.”

“You’re such a damn—” She stopped. “Did she swallow the hook?”

“She... oh, hell what’s the sense of this? I’m with you. Must we talk about Eve?”

“What happened?”

“Nothing happened. I asked her out, and that was the start of it. Let’s not talk about it.”

“You don’t seem to mind very much. You’ve been talking about it for the past fifteen minutes.”

“Look, you know she’s my wife, don’t you?”

“Of course I know it,” she said sharply.

“Then you know that people don’t get born married. They meet, and they go steady, and they get engaged, and things go through a natural progression, and then eventually they get married. So we went through the same natural progression and—” He grinned suddenly. “I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about.”

“You’re talking about your wife, Eve.”

“Let’s talk about Don, shall we?”

“You love her very much, don’t you?”

“Oh, for Pete’s—”

“Why is it so painful for you to talk about her?”

“It isn’t. I just can’t see why—”

“Is she good in bed?”

“Excellent!” he answered quickly, angrily. “The next question is ‘Is she better than me?’ Go ahead. Ask it.”

“I’d never ask that,” Margaret said.

“Why not?”

Her voice was very low. “I’m afraid of the answer.”

“Don’t ever be afraid of anything, Maggie,” he told her, and his voice was suddenly gentle. She looked at him a moment, rose suddenly, and walked away from the bed. She turned her back to him and stood by the dresser as if debating her next move. Then, without looking at him, she lowered the dress from both shoulders. It slid to her waist, catching at her hips. She pushed it over her hips, and then stepped out of it when it fell to the floor. Then she turned. He watched her as she walked to the bed.

“Do you know how much I love you?” she asked.

He did not answer.

“You’ll know,” she said. “Kiss me. Put your mouth on me.”

He sat up and pulled her to him. She stood close to the edge of the bed, her hands at her sides, accepting his mouth.

“Touch me,” she said. His hands moved over her body. She watched him with curiously calculating eyes. “We’re strangers until now, aren’t we?” she said. “Until this minute, we’re strangers.” And then she pushed him back onto the bed and her mouth descended fiercely, hungrily.

“Say it!” she said.

“I love you.”

“Again.”

“I love you.”

“Oh, you,” she said. “Again, you. Say it again, you, you!”

“I love you.”

“Don’t stop. Don’t stop saying it. Tell me you love me. Tell me I’m all that matters.”

“You’re all that matters.”

“Nothing else matters. Not her, not anything.”

“Nothing else matters.”

“No one, Larry. Nothing. Only me. Tell me you need me. Tell me you want me.”

“I want you.”

“Ohhh, yes. Yes. Yes. You, you, you, you. Tell me. Tell me. Tell me!”

15

Eve sat alone in the living room.

When the doorbell rang, she put down the socks she was darning and went to answer it. The clock in the kitchen read 10:45, and whereas she knew it was too early for him to be back, she hoped it might be Larry.

“Who’s there?” she said.

“Me. Mrs. Garandi.”

“Oh, Signora,” she said, disappointed. “Just a moment.”

She unlocked the door. Mrs. Garandi, holding open the storm door, a shawl thrown over her shoulders, said, “Eve, are you busy? Why don’t you and Larry come over for some coffee? Arthur brought home a beautiful cake, and the three of us will never finish it alone.”

“Larry’s out,” Eve said. “Why don’t you come in a minute?”

“All right, but just for a minute.” She closed the door behind her. Together they walked into the living room. The Signora looked curiously at the television screen and then sat opposite Eve.

“Come over anyway,” she said. “It’s right across the street. You’ll be able to check on the kids.”

“I’ve got darning to do,” Eve said.

Mrs. Garandi nodded. Silently, she studied Eve. “Did Larry go to a lecture again?” she asked.

“No, not tonight. He’s with a client. He delivered some sketches this week, and they’re going to discuss them tonight.”

“I see.” Mrs. Garandi was silent again. “These lectures he goes to. Does he go alone?”

“Yes.”

“Where are they?”

“At Pratt.”

“Why don’t you go with him?”

“They’re for a architects, and pretty technical from what Larry tells me. Besides, it’s good for a man to get away from his wife once in a while, don’t you think?”

“No. A man doesn’t need to get away.”

“Not even once in a while?”

“Not even ever. You should go with him.”

“Someone’s got to stay with the children.”

“Get a sitter. And if the lectures don’t interest you, meet him afterward. Go for a coffee together.”

“Oh, that’s silly,” Eve said. “I trust him completely.”

“Then why do you bring up the question of trust?”

“Well, you seemed to be imply—”

“Trust is only a word, Eve. Man-made. The things men conveniently make can just as conveniently be destroyed.”

“I think it’s a lot more than a word, Signora,” Eve said.

Mrs. Garandi shrugged. “If my husband were alive, I wouldn’t let him go wandering alone.”

“Larry doesn’t go wan—”

“I wouldn’t let him go wandering,” Mrs. Garandi said firmly.

Eve stared at her levelly. “Larry’s not that kind of man,” she said.

“He’s a man. And a woman is a woman. And there’s no such thing as that kind of man or that kind of woman. There are stronger things than the meaningless words we can invent, Eve. Are you so invulnerable?”

“Me?” Eve laughed. “I’ve never even looked at another man.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Oh, well, looked, yes. But I never once thought of—”

“Stop him from going to his lectures.”

“I can’t do that, Signora.”

“Why not?”

“Because I trust him,” Eve said simply. “If I stopped him going to Pratt, I’d have to stop him from going to the store for cigarettes. I’d have to begin distrusting him. And I don’t want that.”

“I would stop him.”

“No.” Eve shook her head. “Larry’s not a cheat.”

“Another word,” Mrs. Garandi said. “Who’s to say what and what isn’t? Who’s to say what’s cheating? A man is a man, and a woman is a woman. That’s life, and that’s living, and I wouldn’t let my man go off alone each week.”

“Larry is satisfied,” Eve said calmly.

“With everything? Or only with you?”

“I try to keep him happy.”

“Then keep him home. Keep him happier.”

“I do everything I know how to do. He is happy, Signora. Really he is. I don’t know why you think he isn’t.”

“Eve, carissima, I don’t think anything. I don’t know. But marriage is a funny thing in America, and the American wife has in many ways stopped being a woman.” Mrs. Garandi paused, and her eyes met Eve’s. “Forgive me,” she said. “I’m a foolish old woman. I only came to invite you for coffee.”

“That’s all right,” Eve said, smiling.

“Eve?”

“Yes?”

“Keep him home.”

And again Eve said, “I trust him,” and to this there was no answer.

“Will you come over later?”

“Maybe.”

“Not after eleven-thirty,” Mrs. Garandi said. “Arthur has to work tomorrow.”

“All right.”

“Do you think Larry will be home by then?”

“I don’t know. He’s with Roger Altar — his client. If he’s home, I’ll bring him over.”

“Please come.” Mrs. Garandi said, and she left the house. Eve closed the door behind her. She went back into the living room and picked up the sock she had been darning. A television comic was laughing at his own humour. The house felt very still and empty. In the bedroom, one of the children mumbled something in his sleep.

I trust him, Eve thought. I love him.

It was strange that she loved him so much now, she supposed, because she hadn’t even liked his looks that night so long ago at the Officers’ Club. She’d always preferred light-eyed boys. Even the ensign she’d been with was green-eyed. And then when Larry’d reminded her of their first encounter, she couldn’t look at him for the next five minutes without remembering again the shame she’d known that day on the subway. Even though she became convinced that she’d wrongly slapped him, he was nonetheless a reminder of what had been a terrible experience for her. She wanted to dislike him, and his looks supported her original premise. But she found herself succumbing to his warmth and honesty as they danced. Honesty. That, she supposed, was what had first appealed to her. He was honest. When he asked her out, she surprised herself by accepting. But she didn’t particularly care for his looks.

The Harder apartment, on the morning after their first date, was in the customary coma of its Sunday lethargy. The building was on the corner of Eighty-ninth Street and Fifth Avenue, opposite the park. The dining nook faced the side street, and the apartment was on the third floor, so that Sunday churchgoers could easily be seen from the window. Mr. Harder’s half of the table was covered with The New York Times. The twins had appropriated most of the remainder of the table for the Sunday comics. Cereal boxes, bowls, coffee, utensils, were somehow squeezed onto the table between the newspapers.

Mr. Harder staunchly believed that everyone in a family should eat at the same time. The table, he maintained, was an exchange board for the activities of the day, the one place where a family could catch up with itself. He relaxed his dictum only on Sunday mornings when everyone in the house seemed to drift into the dining nook at different hours. He imagined this had started when Eve began having Saturday-night dates. In any case, he felt that any regulation was strengthened by periodic lapses, and he did not mind the Sunday-morning disorder.

Mrs. Harder, wearing a dressing-gown over her nightgown, looking as fresh as she always did in the morning, said, “That boy was very handsome, Eve.”

Eve was still half asleep. She sat at the table in pajamas, and a strand of black hair hung over one eye. “You don’t really think so, do you, Mama?” she said.

“I certainly do,” Mrs. Harder said.

Mr. Harder, who was used to discussions about male strangers at the Sunday-morning breakfast table, put aside the Times, moved his platter of pancakes into a position of attack, and then looked across at Eve. He wanted to say something about her being a big girl now and wearing a robe to the breakfast table, but instead he said, “Who’s this we’re discussing?”

“Oh, a boy,” Eve said disinterestedly.

“Larry,” Mrs. Harder said.

“A new one, huh?”

Lois, bright-eyed and almost seven, said, “He’s tall.”

“How do you know?” Eve asked. “You were asleep when he called for me.”

“I wasn’t asleep,” Lois said impishly. “I peeked.”

“I peeked, too,” Linda said. “He’s nice, Eve. Do you think you’ll marry him?”

“He hasn’t asked me yet,” Eve said breezily. “Is this coffee mine, Mama?”

“Evie has a boy friend,” Lois chanted. “Evie has a boy friend, Evie—”

“Oh, stop it!” Eve said.

“Evie has a boy—”

“Mama, will you please ask this child to shut up!”

“Shut up, Lois,” Linda said.

“Your sister is very sensitive about her gentlemen friends,” Mr. Harder said, smiling. “Especially when they’re attractive.”

“I don’t like you to say shut up, Linda,” Mrs. Harder said. “That’s a foul expression.” Linda pulled a face and went back to the comics. “Aren’t you going out with him again, Eve?” Mrs. Harder asked.

“I suppose so.”

“When?”

“Next Saturday.”

“He seemed like a very nice boy, Alex,” Mrs. Harder said. “He used to be a captain.”

“A lieutenant, Mama,” Eve corrected.

“Yes, that’s higher than a captain, isn’t it? He just got discharged, Alex.” She turned to her daughter. “That’s right, isn’t it?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“A nice boy, Alex.”

“They’re all nice boys,” Mr. Harder said without enthusiasm. “Is there any more syrup?”

“You should see him again, Eve,” Mrs. Harder said pleasantly.

“Stop marrying the girl,” Mr. Harder said. “Is there any more syrup?”

“Linda, get your father some syrup. In the cabinet.”

“Why can’t Lois ever get anything?” Linda asked. “Can I be a flower girl, Eve?”

“May I,” Mrs. Harder corrected.

“May I, Eve?”

“When I get married,” Eve said.

“Me, too?” Lois asked.

“You, too.”

“He’s very good looking,” Mrs. Harder said, and Eve grimaced. “He is, Eve. Stop making such ridiculous faces. He’s studying to be an architect, Alex.”

“Who went out with him?” Mr. Harder wanted to know. “You or Eve?”

“I can see nothing wrong with taking an interest in my daughter’s friends,” Mrs. Harder said with a touch of royal dignity.

“I’m delighted he’s so handsome and is going to be an architect, Patricia,” Mr. Harder said in an attempt at irony which was difficult for a Sunday morning, “but will somebody please get me the syrup?”

“I’ll get it,” Linda said, rising.

“And then you can leave the comics and begin practicing,” Mrs. Harder said.

“On Sunday?” Linda protested. “Gee whiz!”

“We spent eleven hundred dollars for that piano,” Mrs. Harder said, “and someone is going to learn to play it.”

“Well, why pick on me?” Linda asked. “Eve’s got bigger fingers.”

“You play very well, Lindy,” Eve said. “You really shouldn’t let your practicing go.”

Linda put the syrup down in front of Mr. Harder and climbed onto Eve’s lap. “Are you really going to marry him, Eve?” she asked.

“Oh, don’t be silly, Poo. I hardly know him.”

“Did you hear me play the ‘Minute Waltz’?”

“No.”

“It takes me more like an hour, but I’ll play it if you like.”

“I’d like to hear it,” Eve said.

Linda went into the living room.

“This stinks,” Lois said. “I hate it. When’s she going to learn Boogie-Woogie?”

“Quiet,” Mrs. Harder said.

Linda began playing. Mr. Harder started eating his pancakes, and then opened the Times again. “The new look,” he said. “It’s more like what you wore when I first met you, Patricia.”

“I like it,” Eve said.

“I’m against any style that hides a woman’s legs,” Mr. Harder said. “Incidentally, young lady, don’t you think you should start wearing a robe to the breakfast table?”

“Larry Cole,” Eve said, and again she grimaced. “I’ll probably never see him again after next Saturday.”

Mrs. Harder raised her eyebrows in something close to restrained displeasure, and from the living room Linda shouted, “Hey, are you listening?”

Inexplicably, she continued to see Larry. She still did not like the way he looked. Oh, he was all right, she supposed. In fact, when she invited him to her Freshman Tea at N.Y.U., some of the girls thought he was quite attractive and wanted to know if he’d pinned her yet. The idea was preposterous. Eve knew exactly what she expected her man to look like, and Larry Cole didn’t fit the mental image at all.

Besides, he was fresh.

Not obnoxiously fresh, and perhaps not fresh at all, but certainly fast. Larry Cole, it became clear, did not believe there were any intermediate steps between necking and petting.

“Never sit on a boy’s lap,” Mrs. Harder had said.

Well, despite Mrs. Harder’s mysterious proclamation, Eve had sat on a good many laps. She considered herself a knowledgeable young lady who was familiar with most of the approaches then in vogue. But Larry’s speed amazed her. And what amazed her more was the rapidity with which she adjusted to his pace. Swept along by him, she began to look at him in a different light.

He was, she discovered, a remarkable person to be with. Everything he said or did seemed calculated to please her and no one else. He performed this feat effortlessly, and she imagined it was standard procedure with every girl he dated, but she nonetheless enjoyed the exclusiveness of being with him. She found herself refusing other dates, gradually whittling down the list of boys who called her, surprised but somehow pleased when she realized she had no desire to go out with anyone but Larry. It was then that they officially began going steady.

She did not know whether or not she loved him.

She liked him enormously. She looked for good in him and, looking, she found it. Unsatisfied, she enlarged upon his virtues so that in her eyes he became impulsive without being childish, discriminating but not intolerant, dedicated but not fanatic, comical but not foolish, polite but not deferential, talkative but not garrulous, serious but not solemn, stylish but not foppish, romantic but not... well, the poems for example.

He was the only boy she’d ever known who wrote poetry to her. She was later to discover that many boys wrote poems for girls, but up to the time she received Larry’s first effort she’d thought it was something reserved for Byron or Shakespeare.

Mrs. Harder brought the letter up from the mailbox together with the rest of the afternoon mail. It was a Saturday, and Eve was going over notes for a French class. Her bedroom was to the left of the kitchen, facing on Eighty-ninth. The window was open, and the curtains rustled in a mild spring breeze. Linda was murdering Beethoven in the living room. Lois was destroying the kitchen in an attempt to bake a cake. Both girls miraculously appeared in Eve’s bedroom the moment Mrs. Harder handed her the letter.

“It’s from Larry,” her mother said.

“Larry?” and she felt an immediate sense of doom.

“What does he want?” Lois asked.

“Is he sick?” Linda asked.

“Mama, would you get them out of here, please?” Eve said.

“Come, girls,” Mrs. Harder said.

“But what’s in the letter?”

“Is it a love letter, Eve?”

“Evie got a love letter, Evie got a love letter...”

Mrs. Harder shooed the girls out and closed the bedroom door. In the living room, the piano started again. Eve opened the envelope. He had typed on graph paper. The back of the page was covered with a hasty floor plan, a rough elevation sketch, and penciled notes in Larry’s own undecipherable shorthand. She realized he’d probably torn the page from his notebook impulsively and then typed on it. She read the poem. Then she read it again. And then she read it a third time:

Quite suddenly, her eyes brimmed with tears.

She ran to the telephone to call him, and over Linda’s merciless pounding she told him she loved him and that he was foolish to write a poem but that she loved the poem and she loved him — but even then she didn’t know if she believed her own words.

Eventually, she went to bed with him. She waited until they were engaged because engagement seemed to condone intimacy, but actually it came naturally, the way everything in their relationship seemed to come naturally, unforced. Their marriage came the same way.

And on their wedding day, she sat alongside Larry on their way to Atlantic City, and she looked at him for the first time in a long time, really looked at him the way she might have looked at a stranger. They had bought at least a dozen magazines before boarding the train, and Larry began thumbing through them at once, surprisingly conversationless. She looked at him and realized with a start that she had married this man, that she was his wife, that she would live with him forever, that they had exchanged absurd vows, that they had entered an ironbound contract, and she didn’t even like his looks!

She nearly panicked.

She did not want to be going on a honeymoon. She did not want to wake up in the morning to find him beside her. She had been to bed with him spasmodically for perhaps six months, but she suddenly felt like a terrified virgin, suddenly felt she would be horrified by the sight of him in his pajamas brushing his teeth. Or did he sleep in his underwear? Good Lord, suppose he slept in his underwear?

She glanced down at the magazine in his hands. He was still reading a paragraph he’d begun a half hour ago, the lead to an article titled “Have You Chosen a Burial Plot?” She began chuckling silently, her fear evaporating. It would be all right. This was Larry, and he was just as frightened as she. It would be all right. She touched his sleeve, and he turned to her and smiled, and she returned the smile gently.

She did not really fall in love with Larry Cole until after Chris was born. She supposed she had loved him all this while, but now she fell hopelessly in love with her own husband. She felt somehow ridiculous. She was a wife and a mother now, and it was a little late to be getting foolishly romantic. But it was then that her love flowered, and then that her true relationship with him began.

Now, eight years after they had taken the marriage vows, five years after Chris had been born, she sat alone in the living room and thought of how empty the house seemed without him. She wanted him to be there. She wanted to neck with him, no sex, just necking, the way they’d exchanged kisses when she was still a college girl and he was a student at Pratt. Romance had a way of going out of living. And one day you probably woke up as an old old lady who thought back to the days when necking was fun, when a kiss was the most exciting thing in the world.

What had Mrs. Garandi been trying to say?

She knew, but she would not accept the thought. She suddenly wanted to call Larry, tell him to come home early so that she could neck with him. She went into the bedroom, looked up Altar’s number, and dialed it. Then, while the phone began ringing on the other end, she slammed down the receiver.

Why, he’ll think I’m checking on him! she thought.

But why should I be checking, what is there to check? I trust him, I trust him.

She began trembling. She did not want to be alone in the house. The house was too still and too empty. She put on her coat, and then went across the street to the Garandis, hoping Larry would come back from his visit with Altar early.

There was an eagle in the sketches. A wild, soaring eagle.

Altar studied them, and he felt the excitement of creation, and then he felt wild elation, and then a new surge of excitement as he shared vicariously in the creation. This was a house! This was really a house!

“Is it good?” the girl with him asked.

“Baby, go wash your face or something,” he told her.

“I only asked a question.”

“It’s magnificent!” he said, and he scooped up the sketches and went into his study and began dialing Larry’s home number.

He wanted to tell Larry that this was it. He wanted to tell him he appreciated this, shared it, that it made him feel like doing something, like running, like flying! He wanted to tell Larry he was a craftsman, and an artist, and a creator, and he wanted to tell him to hold onto whatever he had, hold onto it tight because it was a rare thing. He wished Larry were there so that he could clasp his hand and slam him on the back and buy him a drink and laugh with him and sing with him because he had it, by God he had it!

The phone kept ringing.

Altar waited impatiently. He let the phone ring for a long while, and then he hung up.

Eve, across the street at the Garandis, ate Arthur’s cake and drank Mary’s coffee, and listened to the Signora tell a story about the old country. Altar’s call woke up David, who sat in his wet pajamas in his crib and blinked at the darkness. But that was all it did.

And even David fell asleep again when the phone stopped ringing.

16

The builder’s name was Frank Di Labbia.

“I’m Italian,” he said, “and proud of it,” and Roger Altar instantly doubted his pride.

They sat in the rustic dining room of the rustic, exurban inn, the timbers exposed in the old ceiling, the stone fireplace crackling with a roaring fire, the Revolutionary War relics scattered about the room: the huge black kettles, the butter churns, the foot warmers, the pewter candlesticks. The planks in the floor were wide and hand-pegged, polished with Butcher’s wax so that they gleamed as they never had for General Washington. There was a gray wintry afternoon pushing at the leaded casements, and there were lighted candles on each table adding to the cherry glow of the fire. Carefully coifed, carefully windblown women in leather car coats sat over their luncheon salads and sipped vodka martinis. Outside the rustic inn, the foreign cars and the American cars mingled in allied camaraderie: the MG’s and the Corvettes and the Volkswagens and the station wagons with heavy-duty snow tires.

The builder was tall and dark and wide-shouldered and handsome in an outdoor, windburned way. Thick black hair rose wildly from a well-defined widow’s peak on his high forehead. He wore a bulky, expensive woolen sports shirt open at the throat, and a cashmere sports jacket with leather elbow patches, and dark gray flannel slacks imported from England and purchased on Madison Avenue. His face was a strong face, square with a black mustache on the upper lip.

His eyes were bright and brown, and his hands were thick builder’s hands curling with thick builder’s hair, but the fingernails were manicured. Altar studied him and wondered whom he was playing. He decided it was a young Clark Gable in an old movie. He even had Gable’s trick of quirking mouth and eyebrows simultaneously, as if he were secretly amused by a cosmic joke too rarefied for the rat pack to appreciate.

There was the pleasant hum of alcohol-stimulated luncheon chatter behind Di Labbia, the pleasant, pretty hum of pleasant, pretty women sitting in leather car coats sipping tasteless vodka martinis, their pretty, manicured fingers curled around frosted glasses in which lemon peel bow ties floated. Di Labbia’s voice, firmly assertive with a frank Connecticut twang, cut through the hum like an All-American fullback going for twenty yards against the freshman team.

“My brother changed his name,” Di Labbia said. “From honest Mike Di Labbia to meaningless Mike Libby. My name is still Di Labbia, and it’ll always be Di Labbia, and I’m proud of the fact that I’m a Wop.”

Then why do you derogatively call yourself a Wop, Altar wondered.

“When I first came into this area,” Di Labbia went on, “the people here had a stereotype of what Italians should be. A Wop was the man who came to clean out the overflowing septic tank. He had dirt under his fingernails, and all he did was eat starchy foods, propagate, and add a gratuitous vowel to the end of every word. I taught the people here a new kind of Wop. I gave them quality. Do you see what I’m driving at?”

“No, I don’t,” Larry said frankly.

He had been strangely quiet, and Altar watched him now, disturbed by his lack of enthusiasm. He had met with the same indifferent acceptance when he’d told Larry how much he liked the new sketches. He could not quite understand it. For if Di Labbia were laughing secretly at a vast comedy, Larry Cole seemed to be brooding secretly about a universal truth. Or was the preoccupation only feigned? Was the withdrawal phony, or did Larry really have something important and profound on his mind, something more pertinent than a silly house for a silly writer?

Altar didn’t know. He knew only that Larry, who had never shown very much of himself, was now presenting only a thin surface veneer, a falsely interested eye, a falsely attentive ear.

He should not have expected more from Larry. His ten per cent was buying an architect, not a friend, and he honestly didn’t know if he even wanted Larry for a friend. But the building of this house was an important thing to Altar, an achievement he could not have accurately described if he’d tried, and he hated his own enthusiasm to be dampened by an uninterested architect.

“I beg your pardon,” Di Labbia said.

“I said I don’t know what you’re driving at,” Larry answered.

There was not harshness in his voice; Altar could not claim that. But there was a cold indifference, a feeling that Di Labbia didn’t count at all to this young man who sat opposite him at the table. Sitting in the rustic inn, Larry Cole had become a hardheaded businessman intent on closing a deal and closing it fast. And Altar wondered which school of architecture had taught him to appraise a deal so ruthlessly.

“I’m only saying this,” Di Labbia said, quirking his eyebrows, smiling secretly. “Every house I build up here is my house. Mine.” He squinted his eyes heroically.

Larry didn’t seem frightened or even mildly impressed. Like a savage listening to the hellfire threats of a visiting missionary, Larry sat with calm calculation in his eyes.

“I give quality,” Di Labbia said. “When I build a house, it’s mine, and you get a dollar and two cents of value for every dollar you spend. That’s what makes it a Di Labbia house.”

“I should imagine you’d lose money that way,” Larry said dryly.

“I’m doing fine, thanks,” Di Labbia answered, suddenly defensive. “Don’t worry about me.”

“I’m not,” Larry assured him. “What did you mean when you said your house?”

“My house,” Di Labbia repeated. “How much simpler can I state it? I build it, it’s my house. Mr. Altar is moving into our community. A year from now, you’ve vanished into the woodwork. If the house is no good, does he come screaming to you? No, sir. It’s me he calls. So it’s my house. I stand behind it.”

The guarantee did not seem to impress Larry. “Your bid is very low, Mr. Di Labbia,” he said. “I think you’ll lose money on this house if you stick to your bid.”

“Let me worry about that.”

“Unfortunately, I have to worry about it, too. Understand me, Mr. Di Labbia. If you want to lose money, that’s your business. But I don’t want my client slapped with an ‘extra’ every time he blows his nose. If you plan on killing us with extras, I can take a higher bid from a competitive contractor and wind up cheaper in the long run.”

“I don’t plan on killing anybody with extras,” Di Labbia said. “My bid stands.”

“And I tell you honestly that it’s too low.”

“And I tell you that I’ll build it for what I bid.”

“You’ve seen the heating layout? And the electrical scheme? And the amount of Thermopane? And the special-order glass doors?”

“I’ve seen them.”

“Your bid still stands?”

“It does.”

“You know, of course, that I’ll be up here once a week to inspect the job. If I see something being done contrary to my plans or specs, you’ll have to rip it out and do it over again.”

“I’ve worked with architects before,” Di Labbia said.

“Then you must know,” Larry said flatly, “that an architect considers the house his, and not the builder’s.”

“You’ll be satisfied,” Di Labbia said.

“Not if you suddenly decide something in the plans doesn’t agree with your aesthetic taste. Not if you decide this house is yours.”

“I had the impression this was my house,” Altar said.

“That’s just my point,” Di Labbia said. “This is the man who’ll live in it. He’ll be satisfied.”

“Mr. Di Labbia,” Larry said, “an architect’s job is to protect his client against being satisfied too easily. It’s also to see that the house he designed is built as he designed it. I have every respect for your reputation and your honesty. But I consider you a bugler playing Taps, and that’s all. The materials you work with are your bugle, but I wrote Taps, and I want it played the way I wrote it. I don’t want you to ad lib your way through it.”

“I don’t need parables, Mr. Cole.”

“I’m stating a simple fact. In this act of creation we are about to commit, there’s room for only one creator. Me.”

“I understand. But there are bad buglers and good buglers.”

“Sure. And in this act of commerce we’re about to commit, I’m telling you now, flatly and honestly, that if you stick to your bid and build this house under my supervision according to my plans and specs, you’ll lose money.”

“I’ll take that chance.”

“Why?” Larry asked.

“I’m a Wop,” Di Labbia said. “I started by digging ditches. I don’t dig them any more. I build houses. I build damn fine houses, and I’m proud of each and every one of them. I’m not a successful writer or a creative architect, but I think I’m accomplishing something. I like this community and I’m helping to build it. I build houses and I build roads and I build stores, and that’s something to me. I’m a builder. Frank Di Labbia, Builder. That’s what it says on my stationery. Builder, not contractor. And maybe you think I’m only a bugler, Mr. Cole, but without the bugler you don’t get your goddamn song played, and that’s the God’s honest truth.”

“Okay,” Larry said.

“Okay. I’ll build this house the way you designed it, but it’ll still be my house because my hands are putting it up. And if you’ve got any kicks about how it’s being built, you just let me know. Maybe a contractor wouldn’t worry about it, but a builder does. And I’m a builder.”

“When you find out how much money you’re losing, don’t weep,” Larry said, grinning.

“I never weep except in church,” Di Labbia answered.

“I think you can build the house.”

“I know I can.”

“Then we’ve got a deal.”

“Good.”

“Provided Mr. Altar agrees.”

“I agree,” Altar said, somewhat bewildered.

“Good,” Di Labbia repeated. “Let’s drink to it, shall we?”

They ordered a round and consumed it. Then they put on their coats and all shook hands outside the rustic exurban inn where the foreign cars mingled with the American infidels. Di Labbia climbed into a Ford and shoved off. Larry and Altar got into the convertible.

“What do you think?” Altar asked.

“I think he’ll do a fine job.”

“Then why were you so rough on him?”

“Was I?”

“You know you were.” Altar started the car and let the engine idle. The exhaled breaths of the two men fogged the windshield and Altar reached over to mop it with a gloved hand.

“I wanted to know why his bid was so low,” Larry said. “I checked him with some architects up this way, so I knew he was honest. But why the low bid? If he bid so low out of stupidity, he’s not the man to build our house.”

“Do you think he’s stupid?”

“No. I think he really wants to build it.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s something different from the pap he’s been putting up. He wants the challenge, he likes it. Or maybe he just wants the distinction of having built Roger Altar’s house. How do I know? But he wants to build it. He’ll lose five grand, but he’ll still build it.”

Altar nodded and pulled the car out of the parking lot. He hesitated before entering the main road, executed his turn, and then stepped on the accelerator.

“Do you like this house, Larry?” he asked.

“Of course I do.”

“You don’t seem to. It doesn’t seem very important to you.”

“It is.”

“I don’t sense that.”

“It’s a good house, Altar, and I’m proud of it. Hell, are you excited about a book three weeks after it leaves the typewriter?”

“It left the typewriter last week, you know.”

“Which? The new book?”

“Yes. I’m rereading it tonight. And then I’ll forget about it until the day before publication. That’s when I’ll begin dying. Slowly.”

“What do you mean?”

“Waiting for those reviews.”

“Are they that important?”

“It depends on what you want, I suppose.”

“What do you want, Altar?”

“Nothing. Nothing.”

He fell silent. He drove with his eyes on the road, not looking at Larry.

“I die,” he said suddenly. “I’m like the kid on Christmas Eve. I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, I can’t even think. I’m just waiting for Christmas morning.” He laughed a short, sardonic laugh. “The trouble is I’ve opened all the presents already. I’ve had the big magazine sale, and the book club, and the movie deal all before publication. There’s only one present left to open. And that always turns out to be the coal you’re promised if you’re a bad little boy. Argh, the hell with it. I don’t even like to think about it. I get depressed thinking about it.”

“Your readers like you,” Larry said.

“Sure. They like Dick Tracy, too. But will your great-great-grandchildren be reading him?”

“You can’t expect immortality, Altar.”

“I don’t. Honestly. I’m not that egotistical. I don’t want much at all.”

“What do you want?”

“I want some good reviewer, just once, to say that I’m a writer, that’s all.” He paused. “I try, Larry. I really try like hell!”

“You succeed.”

“Oh, sure, I succeed. Jesus, do I succeed! But sometimes. I wonder about success. What good is it if you don’t feel you’re doing something important?” He shook his head. “Don’t you see? Who wants to be kept by a bitch like success? I want to be contributing something, giving. I can’t just take all the time.” He shook his head. “The hell with them. It’s just... well, you hang your clean wash on the line and they throw mud at it. It takes guts to hang up your underwear. When they... the hell with it. The hell with it. What do you want, Larry?”

“Me?” Larry grinned. “I don’t know.”

The heater had begun to throw its warmth into the car. Both men had unbuttoned their overcoats and lighted cigarettes. They both seemed completely relaxed, like two old friends driving home after a day’s hunting. Larry with his knees propped up against the dashboard, Altar slumped idly behind the wheel. Oddly, they were not old friends. Nor was either sure they were new friends. Yet, with the heater spreading its warmth around them, with the barren gray countryside blurring past outside, there was a mood of relaxed friendliness in the automobile. And each man recognized the mood and allowed it to claim him completely.

“Every man has to want something,” Altar said.

“I guess I want too much.”

“What’s that, Larry?”

“I want to be happy.”

“Ahhh,” Altar said.

“Don’t you?”

“Sure.”

“So. That’s all. Just to be happy.”

“How do you just ‘be happy’?”

“I’m not sure I know.”

They fell silent. The automobile hummed through the countryside. A boy rode past on a bicycle and waved at the car. Altar waved back.

“Have... have you ever—” Larry cut himself off.

“Ever what?”

“Ever been in love?” he said, turning to face Altar.

“It depends on what you mean by love.”

“You know what I mean by love.”

“If you mean have I ever known a woman who was beautiful and passionate, yes.”

“Well, more than that. I meant...”

“If you mean have I ever known a woman who was knowledgeable but ignorant, yielding but obstinate, sensible but illogical...”

“Yes, something like that.”

“If you mean have I wanted her despite her shortcomings, or because of them; if you mean, Larry, has a woman ever made me forget myself and yet become myself...”

“Yes,” Larry said, “yes.”

“Then, no. I’ve never been in love.” He paused. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t building to a climactic letdown. I’d like to feel that way about some woman, but I don’t. Do you?” He touched Larry’s arm quickly. “Never mind, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”

Larry hesitated. Then he said, “Jesus, Altar, I’m all mixed up. I feel like a dozen phony people. Do you ever feel that way?”

“Sometimes.”

“I’ve got a closetful of manufacturer’s labels. Architect, Husband, Father, Son, Striver, Brooder, Man! I sew the labels into my clothes, but the suits never fit me. Underneath all the crap, there’s me! And I’m never really me, never the Larry Cole I want to be until I’m with—” He cut himself off, suddenly wary.

“Sure,” Altar said, “and then you fly, don’t you? Then you’re bigger and stronger and handsomer and wittier, aren’t you? Then you can ride your goddamn white charger against the black knight! Then you can storm the enemy bastions!”

“Are you playing with me, Altar?”

“I never kid a man who’s serious,” Altar said. “I thought you knew me better than that.”

“I guess it’s... I don’t know what’s real or true any more. What happens when values shift, Altar? What happens when all your life you’ve believed in honor and trust and decency and all at once they’ve become labels, too? How can you tell right from wrong if wrong suddenly seems right? What do you do, Altar?”

“I don’t know,” Altar said. He paused. “Is this why the house seems unimportant to you now?”

Larry did not answer.

“Whatever you do, don’t lose your head,” Altar advised. “You didn’t invent infidelity.”

Again Larry did not answer.

Altar sighed and turned on the radio.

In his apartment that night, he took the box containing the manuscript from his desk.

The title pleased him. He had typed it, together with his byline, on a small slip of paper which he’d then Scotch-taped to the lid of the box. Fondly, he lifted the lid now. Then he sat down with the manuscript in his lap. A bottle of Scotch and a box of cigars were on the coffee table before the couch. He propped up his feet on the table and began reading the book from the beginning.

He liked to read his own work. He was, he supposed, his own favorite author. When reading himself, there was always total communication. The perfect author’s foil, he wept when he was supposed to weep, reacted indignantly when he was supposed to, laughed at funny lines, reeled back in shock at surprise chapter endings. It was wonderful to be so understood and so understanding. He made several corrections as he went along, but these were mostly the corrections of typos. He considered himself a craftsman, and he would not have typed “The End” onto the last page had his major revisions not already been completed. The corrections he made now lessened in no degree the pleasure he experienced as he read.

When he finished the book at eleven-thirty that night, he tenderly placed it back into the empty typewriter-paper box and then put the lid on it again. He felt intense relief and immense gratification, but he also felt a little empty. Tomorrow he would deliver the novel to his agent. Tonight he felt a little empty. He would continue to feel that way until the approval came: approval from his agent, and then his publisher, and then the others, all the others.

He sat in the quiet apartment for perhaps ten minutes. He sipped at his Scotch, and he puffed at his cigar, and he wondered what to do next.

Then he went to the telephone and called a girl.

17

The next name on Eve’s list was Betty Anders.

She didn’t know Felix Anders very well, and her conversational acquaintance with Betty was hardly the stuff of which lifelong friendships are made. But she figured that every good party needed an extrovert, an uninhibited male or female who would supply the spark of revelry, and Betty Anders was perhaps the most uninhibited female she knew. Or, at any rate, the loudest.

Of course, Felix had once asked Larry to work out a landscape plan for him — a task Larry had never even started — and she wondered if Felix’s presence would make him uncomfortable. She decided it would not, and dialed Betty’s number.

“Hello?” the booming voice asked.

“Betty?”

“Yes, who’s this?”

“Eve Cole.”

“Hello. Just a second, Eve.”

Eve heard the telephone clatter to a hard surface, and then she heard Betty shouting something, and then shouting something else, and then she heard someone crying and then the phone was picked up again.

“That little bastard,” Betty said. “He can’t let his sister play in peace. How are you, Eve?”

“Fine. And you?”

“Exhausted. With Felix after me at night, and his monsters after me all day long, I think I’ll wind up in a nut house.”

Eve laughed in delighted phoniness and said, “Why don’t you come over to our place next Saturday night and let your hair down? We’re having a little party.”

“I can use a party,” Betty said. “February depresses the hell out of me. I can use a good stiff drunk.”

“We’ll have a lot of good stiff drunks here,” Eve said.

“You’re a bigger slob than I am,” Betty answered, chuckling.

“What?” Eve said, puzzled for a moment. “Oh. Oh, I didn’t—”

“Let me look at the calendar, Eve. Which Saturday is that?”

“The ninth. Next week.”

“I’ll ask Felix. He doesn’t like to leave the kids with a sitter. If his mother’ll come out, we’ll be there. Can I call you tomorrow?”

“Sure. If I’m not here, just give the message to Larry.”

“Fine. How can you stand living with a man who’s home all the time?”

“Well, you get used to it.”

“If Felix were home, I’d be flat on my back all day long. That man—”

“I hope you can make it, Betty,” Eve interrupted.

“I’ll try my damnedest. I wasn’t kidding about getting fried.”

“You’ll have all the ingredients.”

“It only takes three and I’m flying.”

“All right, call me, will you?”

“First thing tomorrow. I’d better hang up. That bastard is after her again.” There was a sudden click on the line. Eve hung up, smiling to herself.

Actually, she was very pleased with the way the party was taking shape. The idea had come to her impulsively. With Larry in the city for the afternoon, she had made out her list and then begun her calls, more and more excited by the idea. There was, after all, nothing more depressing than a winter in Pinecrest Manor and a party would do a lot toward dispelling the gloom.

Never did the development seem more like a giant apartment house than in the winter time. Then, the individual homes became cubicles in a brick and concrete structure, cubicles separated by thirty feet of browning grass. Wrapped in seeming seclusion, they defied sameness, turned in upon themselves while belching smoke from their identical chimneys. We are alone, the houses seemed to say. We are a brave family unit facing the winter, and we like it this way. But spring gave the lie to the declaration. In the spring, Pinecrest Manor anxiously burst outdoors, where it pursued the favorite sport of all developments: invasion of privacy.

The winter gloom, then, provided Eve with the good reason for her party. The real reason was another thing again.

She would not admit the real reason even to herself. She knew only that Larry was behaving strangely, that something was crumbling the solidity of their marriage. And so, intuitively, she was utilizing the magnetic pull of a man’s home, planning a party with the man and his home as its nucleus. She honestly did not know what the party would accomplish. She hoped only to surround Larry with people he liked in a setting which was familiar and comfortable. She hoped only to remind her husband of what they shared together.

And so she went down her list and made her plans.

There was only one other couple’s name on the list. She had debated adding them because she hardly knew the girl at all, and she didn’t even know the husband to talk to. But the girl, no matter what one’s personal taste preferred, did have a vibrant sort of beauty, and Eve figured it wouldn’t hurt to have someone decorative around. It would keep the women on their toes, make the men more gallant, and the living room more attractive.

She put a small check next to Betty Anders’ name, and then thumbed through the telephone directory looking for Gault, Donald.

When the telephone rang, she felt a faint stab of panic because she thought it might be he again, would he never stop calling, would it go on and on forever, would the voice say “Margaret?” and would she say “You!” and would the interminable argument begin again, the pleading, the begging, would it never never end?

And then she remembered that Larry had gone into the city to deliver his Puerto Rican recommendations to Baxter, and she smiled because she was suddenly certain it was Larry calling. She rushed downstairs excitedly and snatched the receiver from the cradle.

“Hello?” she said.

“Margaret?” the woman’s voice asked.

“Oh,” she said.

“Is this Margaret Gault?”

“Yes. I’m sorry. I was expecting someone else.”

“You sound disappointed,” the woman said.

Margaret’s eyes glowed secretly. “I am.”

“Then perhaps I should do the apologizing,” the woman said. “This is Eve Cole.”

She knew instant pulverizing shock. She froze and then backed against the counter, aware that the receiver was shaking in her fist. She could only think, She knows, she knows, and then wonder in horror why Larry had not phoned to warn her.

“Wh... what is it?” she asked. She could barely speak. The phone continued to shake in her fist. She was afraid it would slam into her teeth, afraid she would faint. What could she say to this woman? What, oh, God, what could she say when Eve Cole accused her?

“Are you all right?” Eve asked. “Is something the—”

“I’m all right. What is it?”

She was covered with sweat now, a cold sweat that seeped from every pore. She could feel her knees going weak. Uncontrollably, she continued trembling. Say it, she thought. Get it over with!

“We’re having a party at our house next Saturday night,” Eve said. “We thought you and Don might like to come.”

“A party?” she asked incredulously.

“Yes, a party. Margaret... are you... are you sure nothing’s the matter?”

She wanted to laugh hysterically. Intense relief flooded her, and the overwhelming gladness.

“What... what night did you say?”

“Saturday. The ninth.”

“I’ll have to ask him,” she said absently. “If it’s all right for us to come.”

“Don?”

“Yes,” she said quickly. “Yes, Don.”

“Will you let me know? We’d love to have you.”

“I’d love to come,” Margaret said. “I’d love to see your house.”

She was regaining her composure, and with it her sense of immediate danger. Eve had undoubtedly extended this invitation without consulting Larry. She was tempted to accept, but she knew Larry would be displeased. It would, certainly, be the stupidest sort of risk. But still, the idea appealed to her, and she restrained herself from accepting, remembering that her behavior of a few moments before must have seemed very odd to Eve.

“I must have sounded idiotic when I answered the phone,” she said carefully. “I was sleeping and you woke me.”

“Oh, then I am sorry,” Eve said. “Forgive me for waking you.”

“I had to get up anyway,” Margaret said. “To answer the phone.”

Eve laughed. “That’s one of Larry’s favorite gags.”

There was a slight pause. “Larry?” Margaret asked.

“My husband.”

“Oh, yes.”

“You two met,” Eve said. “At the bus stop or the delicatessen, or somewhere. He was crowing like a rooster when he came home. You’d think he’d never spoken to a woman in his life.”

Margaret laughed a forced, light laugh. “Mine is the same,” she said. “They’re all such little boys.”

“I think you’re the only reason he keeps taking Chris to the bus stop,” Eve said, laughing genuinely.

“Really?” Margaret asked, feigning surprise and innocence, hating the game she’d been forced to play, not wanting to talk to Eve, not wanting anything from this woman. Don’t give me anything, please, please, don’t. “Oh, you’re joking. You make me feel terribly embarrassed.”

“I’m joking, of course,” Eve said. “Margaret, do try to come to the party, won’t you? We’d like to meet your husband, and there’ll be a nice crowd. It’ll be fun.”

“I’ll try,” Margaret said. “I’ll call you.”

“Do you have the number?”

She almost said yes, she almost trapped herself into saying yes. She knew the number by heart, could reel it off a hundred years from now if Satan asked for it, but to this other woman she said, “No. Would you let me have it, please?” and she wrote it down as if she’d never heard it before, never known it. And then she promised she’d call tomorrow and then she said goodbye.

She sat down, and for the first time since the thing had started she felt like a bitch, a dirty little bitch.

We’re all bitches, she thought. We have to be bitches to get the things we want and need. I need him. I need him very much, and if I have to be a bitch to keep him, then I’ll be one. I didn’t call her, she called me. I’m a bitch, but I didn’t ask to be one. I have to be one. I couldn’t stop being this way unless I died, and I’d die if I lost him. I’m not a bitch for taking what I need. I’m not a bitch for wanting him. I’m not a bitch.

I’m a bitch, she thought. I’m a dirty little bitch.

“No!” Hank shouted. “Be careful! You’re crossing your... watch your poles! Pull them back! Get your...”

Arms flailing, poles wildly gyrating, knees together, toes turned in, skis crossing, Linda Harder came swiftly down the slope, a wehrmacht in ski pants and bright red sweater. Bending from the waist, powerless to stop her descent as the crossed skis carried her, she pulled up the poles, twin pikes ready to pierce the enemy’s breast.

“Linda, you’re...”

Hank gritted his teeth. Helplessly, he stood at the bottom of the slope, trusting to God that...

“Linda!”

Over she went, the tip of her left ski digging up a furrow of snow, pitching forward headfirst, the poles rotating like the arms of a windmill. She landed in a welter of arms and legs and wood and bright red confusion. Hank dug in his poles and herringboned to the tangle. Quickly, he knelt beside her.

“Are you all right?”

Linda nodded. Her sweater and face were covered with snow. Her black hair hung on her forehead, speckled with crystalline white.

“No legs broken?”

She nodded again.

“Let me help you up.” He rammed his poles into the snow, moved behind her and lifted. Unsteadily, Linda got to her feet, digging her poles into the fresh powder. “What did I do wrong?” she asked.

“Well,” Hank said judiciously, “that’s a little difficult to answer. Where do you want me to begin?”

“Was I that awful?”

“No, no, you were fine. Except, Linda, a snowplow was designed to stop you, see?”

“I wanted it to stop me. It just didn’t.”

“You didn’t edge your skis in. That’s why they crossed. Also, watch your poles. They’re dangerous weapons the way you use them.”

“I love this,” Linda said suddenly.

She threw her head back and sucked in air. It was a sparkling cold day at Bear Mountain. There had been fresh snow the night before, and the powder was crisp when the skis bit into the slope. The sky was a flawless blue, the snow a blinding white. Hank, a thin boy in street clothes, looked magnificent in his bulky ski garments.

“Want to try it again?” Hank asked.

“Yes. But when can I use the tow?”

“After you’ve learned to come down.”

“I have to climb up again?” Linda asked plaintively.

“Yep.”

“What do you call the thing?”

“The herringbone.”

“Okay.” She sighed. “Let’s go.” She started up the slope, Hank behind her.

“Edge in,” he said. “Otherwise the same thing’ll happen backwards. Linda, edge in! Linda, you’re...”

The poles came up again. Slowly, Linda began to slide backward, on a collision course toward Hank. He braced himself.

“Hank!” she shouted. “I can’t stop!”

“You will,” he said, and she struck him, and they tumbled into the snow together. Her left ski came up, narrowly missing his head. Hank’s right boot, released by the awkward pressure, snapped out of the safety binding.

“I fell again,” Linda said, and Hank began laughing. “Well, you idiot, it isn’t funny,” she said. She blew snow from her lips. “If you taught me properly—”

“You know something?” he interrupted.

“What?”

“I love you.”

She blinked. “You do?”

“Yes.”

She sat with her knees up, her skis awkwardly akimbo, the poles dangling from their straps at her wrists.

“Well,” she said. “I love you, too.”

He pushed her down onto the snow. He was kissing her when her skis slid out from under her. “Hank!” she screamed, and he captured her and pinned her and kissed her again, and a skier flashing down the slope shouted, “Hey! Cut it out!”

18

Felix Anders was man who thought he was well dressed because he wore a carnation in the buttonhole of a Robert Hall suit.

Every morning, as Felix Anders waited for the train with his copy of the Daily News tucked under his arm, he surveyed the platform with a faintly bored air. There was something demeaning about having to wait for a train, and Felix Anders allowed his displeasure to show in his stance and in the set of his Lincolnesque face.

He was a tall man with straight brown hair and green eyes. The green eyes added to his expression of untouchable aloofness. He had a massive craggy nose and a lean lantern jaw, and he looked around him as if he had just delivered the Emancipation Proclamation to a horde of ignorant slaves who didn’t understand English.

Felix Anders was a butcher.

He owned a small market on Sixty-third Street and Lexington Avenue, and he cut meat for the major part of his waking day. But even in his blood-stained apron, Felix managed to look disinterested and bored. In his mind’s eye, standing outside of his body and slightly to the left of it, Felix did not look like a butcher in his butcher’s apron. He looked, instead, like a noted brain surgeon who had just performed a delicate operation. And when Felix discussed veal cutlets with female customers, he exuded the distant charm of the brain surgeon pulling off his rubber gloves after passing on the job of suturing to an assistant.

Felix was, he knew, poised, charming, bored, aloof, secretive, superior and intelligently cunning.

On Tuesday morning, as Felix waited to board the train, he noticed Larry Cole standing on the platform. He knew that he had been invited to a party at Cole’s house for this Saturday night, but he also remembered that he’d once asked Cole to work out a landscape plan, and Cole had said, “Sure, as soon as I get a chance,” and then never delivered it. Felix Anders did not take such treatment lightly.

He would, on Saturday night, go to Cole’s house and drink his liquor and eat his food, but that didn’t mean he had to say hello to him on a station platform. He busied himself with watching the tracks for the approaching 8:07. A slim redheaded girl with an overnight bag stood alongside Felix, staring down the length of track. Munificently, Felix glanced at her, and then turned away to tug at his glove. When the train pulled into the station, Felix allowed the redhead to mount the steps before him, glancing magnanimously at her legs when the skirt rode up over her nylons as she climbed the steps. He then politely shouldered a fellow commuter aside and, Daily News tucked securely under left arm, went into the car and found himself a seat near the rear. He was lighting a Parliament when Larry Cole came into the car, looked around for a moment, and then walked back to sit beside him.

Felix very rarely said hello to anyone first. He waited.

“Hi,” Larry said. “Haven’t seen you in a long time.”

“Well, you know,” Felix answered. “Busy, busy.”

“Oh, sure. I understand you’re coming over to our place this Saturday night.”

“Is that right?” Felix asked.

“Didn’t Betty tell you?”

“Must have slipped her mind.”

“Well, you are,” Larry said.

“My pleasure,” Felix answered. “Cigarette?” He extended the package to Larry.

“Thanks, I’ll have one of my own.”

“These cost a few cents more,” Felix said, even before he saw Larry’s cigarettes, “but they’re worth it.”

“I guess you get into the habit of smoking one brand, and that’s it,” Larry said, shaking a cigarette free and lighting it.

“Oh, indubitably,” Felix said, and then translated it for Larry. “Without doubt, without doubt.”

“Not too crowded this morning,” Larry said.

“It hasn’t been too bad lately,” Felix said. “They’ve added several cars. Of course, you don’t have to do this very often, anyway. I imagine it’s immaterial to you.”

“Well, I like a seat no matter how few times I go in.”

They were silent for a few moments.

“Something important?” Felix asked. “In the city?”

“The firm that sent me to Puerto Rico,” Larry said. “I told you about that, didn’t I? On the train, in fact, I think it was.”

“Yes, I seem to recall,” Felix said, remembering instantly.

“They want to see me again.”

“What about?”

“I don’t know. Probably the recommendations I made. They’re probably ready to start work on the scheme.”

“Must be interesting work,” Felix said. “Designing the buildings, and the grounds, and the... landscaping.”

“Oh, yes, it certainly is. I love it.”

Felix cleared his throat. “I hear you’re designing a house for Roger Altar.”

“Designed already,” Larry said. “We’ll be pouring the foundation as soon as the snow is gone.”

“Why would you want to design a house for him?”

“What?” Larry said. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I heard you corr—”

Clearly and emphatically, Felix said, “Why would you want to design a house for him?”

“Yes, that’s what I thought you...” Larry paused. “Well, why not?”

“I’m only a butcher, you understand,” Felix said, making it sound as if he were saying, “I’m only a noted brain surgeon, you understand.” He raised his eyebrows. “But do you think Altar is a good writer?”

“Yes,” Larry said.

“Well, I’m only a butcher.”

Both men fell silent again.

“But,” Felix went on at last, “I think he stinks, if you’ll excuse the plain English.”

“Every man’s entitled to his opinion,” Larry said, shrugging.

“Certainly. I prefer the purists myself.”

“Like who?”

“Like James Jones,” Felix said. He paused. “Will you be seeing Altar again soon?”

“I imagine so.”

“Tell him I don’t like his books, would you? Tell him for me. Tell him Felix Anders thinks he stinks. Do me that favor.”

“I’ll introduce you. I’m sure you’d rather tell him yourself.”

“No need to do that,” Felix said. “Just pass my message on.” He paused. “How much does he get for each of those books?” Felix asked.

“I don’t know.”

“A good chunk, I’ll bet.”

“Oh, indubitably,” Larry said. “Without doubt, without doubt.”

“Stealing,” Felix said, and then let the matter drop. “This party Saturday night?”

“Yes?”

“A lot of people?”

“Thirteen, I think.”

“Anyone I know?”

“All from the development,” Larry said. “I’m sure you’ll know some of them.”

Felix seemed to be debating whether or not it was worth while continuing the conversation. At last, he made up his mind, opened the Daily News, and said to Larry, “Do you want a part of this paper?”

“Thanks,” Larry said. “I’ll just sit and smoke.”

Felix shrugged his shoulders and turned to Dick Tracy.

There was a tray of pencils on Harry Baxter’s desk. Not all of the pencils in the tray were sharpened, the way an idle executive’s pencils are always sharpened in readiness for the next master stroke. Some of the pencils were stubs. All of them had been chewed so that their yellow stems were ragged and splintery. Larry glanced at them and knew at once that Baxter was a working-man.

A ludicrous figure in pencil-striped trousers and white shirt, Baxter rose the moment Larry entered the office. His tie was pulled down, the shirt sleeves rolled up to reveal thick arms. He crossed the room with his hand extended, and he took Larry’s fingers in a firm grip.

“Did you drive in?” he asked.

“No, I took the train, Mr. Baxter.”

“Call me Harry. Please.” Baxter smiled. “I was just going to have some coffee. Will you join me?”

“I’d love some.”

“Cream? Sugar?”

“A little cream, and two sugars.”

Baxter went to the intercom on his desk and flipped a toggle. “Nancy, some coffee, please,” he said. “Make mine the usual, and another with two sugars and a little cream.”

“Yes, Mr. Baxter,” a pert female voice answered.

“Do you want anything to eat, Larry?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Have something. Nancy?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Some English muffins, too.”

“Yes, sir.”

He flicked off the toggle and walked back to Larry. “How’s the Altar house going?”

“We’ve got a builder,” Larry said. “A fellow named Di Labbia. Do you know him?”

“Yes. He’s honest. He’ll build you a tight house.”

“That’s what I figured.”

“Have you broken ground yet?”

“This week, I hope. As soon as we get rid of this snow.”

“I take it Altar is pleased with the design.”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t expect otherwise.” Baxter paused a moment, thinking. “This Di Labbia’s good. We used him on a bank in Westport. He’s fast, and he’s proud of his work. You don’t find many craftsmen nowadays who are. I admire men who take pride in their work, Larry. This is your product, and if it’s good, you’ve every reason to crow about it. Do you follow me?”

“Yes.”

“All right. Di Labbia’s fast. If he pours sometime this month, you should have your house by the fall. Ready for occupancy.”

“I was figuring on December.”

“Not with Di Labbia, believe me. Unless you’ve got a lot of special-order stuff.”

“Some big sheets of Thermopane, but I’ve been promised four months delivery on that. And some sliding glass doors from California. I’m not so sure on those.”

“Slipwell?”

“Yes.”

“A good outfit. You should have six months delivery at the outside. I suggest you get Di Labbia to order them right away.” Baxter began ticking off months on his fingers. “March, April, May, June, July, August... There, you’ll have your doors by August if you order now. I can help you on that, if you like. We’ve used Slipwell before. On really big orders. I might be able to pressure them.”

“I’d appreciate it,” Larry said.

Baxter jotted a reminder onto his memo pad. “Will there be an enclosure problem without those doors?”

“I don’t think so. We won’t have to worry about heat because they’ll be working during the summer. And tar paper should keep out the elements.”

“Your house’ll be ready in September. I guarantee it.”

Larry laughed.

“Don’t laugh,” Baxter said. “You don’t know Di Labbia. The man’s a demon on the job. Perhaps you met him over a cocktail where he looks like something out of The Barretts of Wimpole Street, but have you ever seen him with a hammer in his hands? He works like ten men, and he demands the same performance from his crew. This is a real builder. You don’t find them like him any more.”

“He underbid by about five thousand,” Larry said.

“Perhaps not. He’s thorough, but fast. He doesn’t get into those costly months of men piddling around doing nothing. When his men are on the job, there’s work to be done. He sees to it that they do it, and then gets them out quick. Larry, he’s a businessman. He knows the mortgage holding company will give him a quarter of his money at roofing and rough enclosure, and another quarter when his brown plastering is done. He gets his next payment when he’s fully plastered and has his heating unit completed. His final payment doesn’t come until C. of O. So why should he fool around? He wants to build and get out. If he bid five thousand lower than the next closest bid, it’s because he can damn well do it for five thousand lower. He’s organized and smart. I tell you Altar will move into that house in September. I know Di Labbia.”

“Okay,” Larry said, smiling. “I’ll take your word for it.”

“I’m not just making talk about Di Labbia,” Baxter said. “I’m a businessman myself. You may remember my telling you that.”

“I remember.”

“I’m lucky because I’m in a business I like, and also because I feel it’s a worth-while one. Suppose, for example, that I made ten million dollars a year manufacturing plastic practical jokes? I’d feel like a pimp.”

Larry burst out laughing.

“He laughs,” Baxter said. “There are men who do that for a living, Larry. When they die, they’ve left a plastic practical-joke empire built on Japanese labor. Maybe some Japanese factory town will erect a statue to the beloved departed benefactor. I doubt it. We’re dealing in essentials, you and I, basics. Architecture is a noble profession, and I’m proud to be a part of it. But at the same time, it’s my livelihood, and I’m forced to look at it cold-bloodedly every now and then. Which is why I’m concerned with when Di Labbia finishes that house. I’m not at all interested in Di Labbia, and even less interested in Roger Altar. I’m interested in you.”

“Me? I don’t understand.”

“Your direction, your goals. Are you happy doing private residential work? Because if you are, I’ve no right to interfere. But the job you turned in on the Puerto Rican development was superb. Building will begin as soon as we’ve completed the scheme. I was going to ask you to do that for us, but something else has come along. Larry, I’d be interested in knowing—”

There was a discreet knock on the door.

“Come in,” Baxter said.

The door opened, and a tall brunette came into the room carrying a tray upon which were the coffee cups and the English muffins.

“Ah, Nancy,” Baxter said. “Just put it down anywhere on my desk.”

Nancy moved aside some papers, slid some tile samples to the corner of the desk, and then put down the tray.

“Mr. Fandella called about five minutes ago,” she said. “I told him you were in conference. He asked that you call him sometime this afternoon.”

“Thank you.”

“You still don’t want to take any calls?”

“Not until Mr. Cole leaves.”

Nancy smiled at Larry and then walked out of the room. She was a very attractive girl who walked with certain knowledge of her quiet good looks.

When she was gone, Baxter said, “I like to surround myself with pretty people. It’s absurd, I know, but I have to look at my staff for from eight to sixteen hours a day. Take your coffee.” He handed Larry a cup and then picked up his own cup of black coffee. “Toasted English? There’s some jam here.”

“Thanks,” Larry said. He walked to the desk, picked up one of the muffins and spread it with jam.

“Eloise objected at first. She didn’t see why every secretary or receptionist I hired had to be pretty. I explained to her that it was all her fault.”

“How so?”

“She’d set such a high aesthetic standard at home that she’d spoiled me!” Baxter began chuckling. “She’s an angel, that woman. I love her.” He chuckled again. “She’s used to pretty girls around the office now. In fact, I think it pleases her. It’s completely unfair to plain people, I know, and I’m certainly no paragon of beauty. But I like what it does for the office. It’s American to be beautiful. Does that make any sense? I think of America as strong bodies and straight legs and good teeth and suntans and quiet beauty. Not the Hollywood junk. So I feel more like a working American in an office which employs pretty girls as file clerks. My weakness,” Baxter said, smiling and shrugging. “Quiet beauty.”

Larry nodded and said nothing, but he thought of Maggie’s shrieking loveliness.

“About you,” Baxter said, spreading jam on one of the muffin halves. “What were your impressions of Hebbery?”

“He seemed like a nice person and a competent architect.”

“Are you reluctant to talk about him?”

Larry smiled. “To his employer? Yes.”

“He’s a good man within his own sphere,” Baxter said. “He’s in no danger of losing his job with us no matter what you say. Now, what did you think of him?”

“I imagine he was an honor student in a Connecticut high school,” Larry said. “He probably went on to Harvard, where he became a member of the chess team in his freshman year.” He thought for a moment. “He made Junior Phi Beta Kappa, and graduated cum laude.” Again he stopped, thinking, and then he nodded, his impression complete, and the words flowed from his mouth. “He doesn’t wear his Phi Bete key because he doesn’t like to show off, except at school functions where he feels it’s important. Actually, he always feels it’s important and will look back upon having made Phi Bete in his Junior year as one of the real achievements in his life. He copped a straight A average in every theory course he ever took, and excelled in draftsmanship. His planning problems were always turned in a week before the instructor’s deadline, spotlessly submitted, with no erasures. He should have gotten A’s but he didn’t because his spotless, exquisitely executed drawings somehow lacked imagination.”

“Go on,” Baxter said.

“He talks too much about how much he likes Puerto Rico. I think he really hates it. His wife certainly hates it. In early November, she was asking about Christmas in New York. But he filled me in beautifully on the problems I was to study, and he had the decency and good sense to know I’d work them out my own way in my own time. He was a cordial and gracious guide and host to us, but I wish his Spanish didn’t rely so heavily upon the single word bueno. That’s all I think about Frank Hebbery.”

Baxter nodded thoughtfully. Silently, he worded his next question, and then said, “What do you consider the architectural dangers of an unplanned but expanding community?”

“In brief? I’d say deterioration and obsolescence.”

“Have you ever done any city planning, Larry?”

“I began a job for a Long Island town but had to quit when they couldn’t appropriate the necessary funds.”

“Then you know what it entails?”

“Yes. I assume we’re discussing modern city planning and not the outmoded concept of the city beautiful?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, it’s a two-part project. The first part, and easily the most important, would be the study of sociological and economic data.”

“Such as what?”

“Population growth, industrial potential, natural resources, transportation facilities...”

Baxter nodded.

“And then, of course,” Larry said, “would come the actual physical planning of the environment.”

“By which you mean?”

“The physical structure. Details like how far a building will be set back from a road.”

“How long do you suppose it would take to work out a master plan for a place the size of Puerto Rico?”

“For the entire island, do you mean?”

“Yes.”

Larry was silently thoughtful. After a long while, he said, “Five years.”

“Oh, surely it could be done in much less time than that,” Baxter said.

“Not if it’s to be done well,” Larry answered. “Generic planning can’t be done overnight. An island-wide project would entail a study of each of your major cities with a view toward urban renewal or redevelopment. You’d have to plan new cities wherever the need is indicated, find ideal locations for residential growth and recreational spaces, industrial parks. You’d have to study your existing roads and then consult with highway engineers as part of the overall scheme of relating new transportation patterns with natural resources. And in addition to your master plan, you’d need a detailed study of at least one area. I don’t see how all that can be accomplished in less than five years.”

“Neither do I,” Baxter said promptly, and Larry realized he’d passed through a trap unharmed. “Do you think Hebbery is the man to handle such a development project?”

“No,” Larry answered without hesitation. “Why?”

“Because Baxter and Baxter has been asked to do the job.”

“Planning the island?”

“Planning all of it,” Baxter said, his eyes glowing. “You know what Sert’s done on a limited scale in Cuba and South America. Well, we’ve got an entire island to change from dirt and filth and disorganized growth to beauty and cleanliness and directed expansion! My God, where’s the challenge of planning Great Neck when you compare it to this? Can you visualize that island fifty years from now? Can you visualize what five years of intense planning can do for it?”

“It can make it a dream island,” Larry said.

“A reality, Larry.” He paused. “Will you be my assistant?”

All he could register for a moment was complete shock. Speechless, he stared at Baxter.

“Not an errand boy and bottle washer,” Baxter said. “A real assistant to work with me on every phase of the study and plan. What do you say?”

“I haven’t caught my breath yet!”

“Then catch it. I’m going down in September to enlarge the field office. I’m taking some of the New York staff with me. I’d like you and your family to come along.”

Sudden doubt crossed Larry’s face.

“What’s the trouble?” Baxter asked.

“Nothing. I’m... I’m flattered and... and overwhelmed. I...”

“You shouldn’t be. I think you’re talented and imaginative and blessed with foresight. You should have won first prize in 1952, and I’m offering you first prize now. The opportunity to accept an architectural challenge of scope and magnitude. Or would you prefer the obscurity of residential design for the rest of your life?”

“No, but...” Larry paused. “I’ll have to think about it.”

Baxter looked at him curiously. “I didn’t imagine I’d meet with any difficulty,” he said. “I honestly thought you’d leap at the opportunity. Must I convince you?”

“It’s not that. I...”

“Larry, this will be just about the most highly publicized architectural venture of the century. Succeed with this, and your name goes into the architectural primers, I can guarantee that. And if you’re thinking in terms of money, the job is worth a small fortune to us. You’ll be paid regally.”

“But it would mean leaving New York for five years.”

“Certainly. But your wife and family would go with you.”

“Yes, but...”

“Five years is a short time to invest in a sure future, Larry.”

“I’ll have to think about it,” Larry said.

Baxter seemed more puzzled. He stared at Larry uncomprehendingly. “I want you along,” Baxter said. “If I can’t have you, I’ll handle it myself with whatever help my staff can give me. Do you know what I’m saying?”

“I’m not sure.”

“I’m saying that as far as I’m concerned, the job is open until the day I get on that plane in September.”

“I appreciate that,” Larry said.

“But I hope you’ll call me tomorrow to say you’re coming along.”

“I wish I could say it right now,” Larry said. “But I’ll have to think about it. September, you said?”

“September. Talk it over with Eve. Make sure it’s what you want.”

“It sounds like everything I ever wanted,” Larry said.

There was a curious sadness in his voice. For a moment he seemed terribly troubled and unsure, so much so that Baxter almost reached out to lay a reassuring hand on his shoulder.

“Think about it,” Baxter said gently. “Talk it over with Eve.”

He did not talk it over with Eve.

He did not even mention the proposal to her. He knew exactly what her reaction would be. Grab it, she would say. Take it, fly with it, soar with it! This was the golden chance, the dream offer, the jackpot tied with a bright silver ribbon!

He could visualize himself in Puerto Rico, a different Puerto Rico this time; not a tourist’s island, but a place to live and work.

In Puerto Rico, he was the handsome Americano. He was the respected architect who had come with a solution to the people’s problems. He was the hero who had come to liberate the land from filth. He would wear white ducks and he would get deeply tanned, and his eyes would be very dark, and there would be understanding intelligence in those dark eyes. They would have a house, he and Eve and the kids, and perhaps there would be a banana tree in the back yard, and wild orchids growing, and he could set up the drawing board there after a day of conferences and doodle with ideas as the afternoon lengthened into purple dusk.

He would come inside then, his white shirt open at the throat, the sleeves rolled up onto his forearms against his deep tan. He and Eve would sit on the screened terrace and sip their rum drinks or their gin drinks; there would be bird sounds in the garden and perhaps, in the distance, the steady thrum of guitars. They would have a quiet dinner served to them by native help, and then they might go for a walk under crisp Puerto Rican starlight, say hello to people in Spanish, or chat a bit about the rainy season.

Or perhaps they would drive out into the country and stop for roast pork, watching the pig turning on the spit, a glistening burnished brown, the fats dripping onto the charcoal fire, the fire spitting angrily as the meat rotated. They would eat their pork and drink wine, and when they went home they would make love. They would make love the way they used to. In Puerto Rico, everything would be all right between them again.

And during the day, there would be the challenge.

The study, the steady compilation of facts and figures, the tentative stabs at solving the problem, the firmer thrusts, the solidified ideas, the problem slowly succumbing to creative onslaught, and finally the plan. He could almost see the plan on paper. He could visualize the island years from now, when the plan had left paper and become reality. Fifty years, a hundred years, a thing of form and beauty on an azure sea. He could see himself walking through the streets and thinking, I helped create this.

The dream was within reach. All he had to do was grab it.

But there was Maggie.

He had told Altar that all he wanted was to be happy. He did not think he was lying to himself at the time. But now, with everything he desired being offered to him, he began to wonder seriously about his own goals.

Sitting behind his drawing board in the third bedroom of his development house in Pinecrest Manor, he asked himself, What the hell do I want out of life?

I want to be happy, of course, but that’s pure rubbish. Everyone wants to be happy. You can probably be happy dead as well as alive. Life is not a prerequisite for happiness. The dead sleep exceedingly well, with no problems whatever, and they are no doubt deliriously happy. But they are also dead, and I’m concerned with what I want out of life.

All right then, I want to be famous.

That’s reasonable, an attempt to dissect this thing called happiness. Everybody wants fame, or at least recognition. And, like all human beings, I want to feel I’m different, unique. I want identity. I want to know I’m unique and loved for my very uniqueness. I want to know that I’m a very complex, very individualized, very important person. I want to be me. This is my fame, and this is what I want. But I also want fortune.

I want to be rich.

Maybe everyone doesn’t want to be rich, but I do. I need money. I like money. It’s good. Not because it’s crisp and green, but only because it buys things. And buying things helps me to realize myself. A look down the price column of a menu destroys a little of my ego, and am I not a cipher, a less-than-cipher, a zero when I have lost that?

I want money, he thought, lots of it; and I want respect.

Respect as a man, as an architect, as a human being with dignity. And this too, like fame and fortune, isolates me as an individual. Being alive is simply being myself, and being myself is happiness.

I want Maggie, he thought.

I want her because when I’m with her I’m completely and indisputably me.

But how much do I want her? If I could have Maggie alone, would I be willing to ignore fame, fortune and respect — all of which are being offered to me — and be content with what she is and with what she brings to me? Am I willing to sacrifice one identity on the altar of a second identity? And which is the true image?

Are there two Larry Coles, and which one do I want to be? How can I possibly think of refusing Baxter’s proposal? Four months ago, five months ago, before I knew her, I would have accepted it instantly. And now a casual exercise — was it ever a casual exercise — has become an indestructible bond. I cannot leave her. I cannot go to Puerto Rico and be away from her for five years. I cannot.

I’ve found myself, he thought, but the person I found is lost.

19

Eve could not have asked for a more beautiful party night.

The temperature had hovered in the low forties all day long, dipping to thirty-three degrees along about seven o’clock when she and Larry were dressing the children for bed. It was bitingly cold outside, but stars had appeared in a cloudless black sky and a brilliant moon tinted the snow-banked streets and the plants and the houses with silver. The sharp tang of the cold was a thing to savor, but the warm glow of the houses beckoned one indoors again. It was a wonderful night for a party, and when Eve left Larry with the children to read them their story, she was humming contentedly.

He joined her ten minutes later as she was pulling on her nylons. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she looked over her shoulder when he came into the room.

“Are they in?”

“Yep.”

“Good.”

“Do you want a drink before the horde arrives?”

“Let’s dress first,” Eve said. “I think this is going to be a good party, don’t you?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Don’t you have to shave?”

“I did. Before dinner.”

“That’s right. Let me feel.” He went to her, and she rubbed her palm over his cheek. “Oh, a nice smooth one tonight.”

“Is it really? I couldn’t tell with that damn fluorescent bulb on the blink again.”

She fastened her stockings to her black garter belt and then rose, slipped off her robe, and walked around the room humming, busily collecting the clothes she would wear. Larry went to the dresser, and she was aware of his eyes upon her.

“I’m putting on a little weight,” she said.

“You look fine to me.”

“Men,” she said vaguely. She went to the closet, took a black cocktail dress from a hanger and put it carefully on the bed. “Do you love me?” she asked suddenly.

“Of course I love you,” he said.

“Has something been on your mind?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“You seem... I don’t know... distant. I’m not used to your being this way.”

“I’m sorry. I guess I’m concerned about the Altar house.”

“But you’re not anticipating trouble, are you?”

“No. I’m just anxious for construction to begin.”

“Well, it will soon,” Eve said. She paused and then added, “You haven’t been very sexy lately.”

“I know.”

“Okay,” she said.

She took her good bra from her dresser drawer, changed into it, and then went to the bed. Picking up the low-cut dress, she slipped it over her head and then smoothed it past her hips. She turned her head to examine her stocking seams. “Just haven’t felt like it? Or what?”

“Just haven’t thought much about it,” Larry said.

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

“No, nothing at all. I’m sorry I’ve been withdrawn, Eve, but I always get that way when I’m working.”

“Never like this,” Eve said.

“Well, I’m sorry.”

His voice had grown suddenly sharp. She looked at him and said, “I don’t want to start an argument.”

“Neither do I.”

“Good. Let’s not. I’m only trying to find out why you’ve... you’ve cut yourself off from me. What is it, Larry? Where have you been for the past four months?”

“What do you mean?”

“Where have you been? Where are you? You’re not here, that’s for sure. Where are you?”

He went to her suddenly and lifted her chin. “Hey, come on,” he said, “don’t be silly. You look as if you’re ready to cry. We’re having a party, remember?”

She nodded and then put her arms around his waist and buried her head in his shoulder. “I bought mascara,” she said.

“What for?”

She shrugged. “And pancake, too.”

“You don’t need that crap.”

“Do you think I’m pretty?”

“Yes. You’re very pretty.”

“Do you love me?”

“Of course I love you.”

“Larry?”

“Yes?”

“Will you make love to me later? When everybody goes home?”

“Yes.”

“Kiss me now before I put on my lipstick.”

He kissed her and she clung to him, and he said gently, “You’d better hurry. They’ll be here soon.”

“All right,” she answered, smiling.

She kissed him again and then walked down the corridor to the bathroom.

The Ramsays were the first to arrive. Larry greeted them at the front door.

“Hi,” he said. “Beautiful night, isn’t it?”

“Better bring in the brass monkeys,” Ramsey said.

Larry laughed. Closing the door, he said, “Let me have your coats.” He took Ramsey’s and then his wife’s. Doris was wearing a blue woolen dress, her hair clipped short. She was an unattractive woman except for her mouth, a loose-lipped, sensually inviting mouth in an otherwise plain face. Ramsey, on the other hand, had no physical saving grace. He was possibly the ugliest man Larry had ever known. They’d met at a Pinecrest Manor beer party, and it had taken an effort on Larry’s part to prevent a snap judgment of character based on Ramsey’s looks.

“What are you drinking?” he asked.

“Scotch and water,” Ramsey said.

“The same for me,” Doris added, and Larry hoped there would not be too many Scotch drinkers tonight. He had bought more rye on the assumption that most of his guests would prefer that. They followed him to the makeshift bar in the kitchen.

“Nice wallpaper in here,” Doris said. “I’ll bet it was well over the allowance.”

“Ten cents over, I think,” Larry said.

“If that’s mine,” Ramsey said, “just put a drop of water in it.” The doorbell rang. “Finish the drinks,” he said. “I’ll answer it.” He walked to the door, opened it, grinned at Felix Anders and said, “My, my, they let all sorts of people into these parties, don’t they?”

“Hello, Paul,” Felix said, and the men shook hands. Larry came to the door, handed Ramsey his drink and then said, “Hi, Felix, Betty. Here, let me take your coats.”

“You’ll never get them in that hall closet,” Ramsey said. “You’d better start using the bed.”

“Come on, Larry,” Betty said, winking. “Let’s use the bed.”

Eve came into the living room. “Hi, everybody!” she said. “Come on in. Sit down.” They moved out of the entrance corridor and into the living room, sitting with the stiffness of early arrivers, waiting for the ice to break.

“I’ll have gin and ginger ale, Larry,” Betty said.

“Gin and ginger ale?” Ramsey asked. “What the hell kind of a drink is that?”

“It’s called a Gin Buck,” Betty said. “It’s perfectly legitimate.”

“Then it must be dull as hell,” Ramsey said.

“Can I help you with the drinks, Larry?” Felix asked, following him into the kitchen.

“Eve, honey,” Ramsey said, “if your husband wasn’t in the house I’d tell you exactly how much I like that low-cut dress.”

“Tell her anyway,” Betty said. “There’s nothing a woman likes more.”

“You look lovely, too, doll.”

“Second fiddle,” Betty said. “Larry, is that juice coming?”

“In a minute,” Larry called from the kitchen.

The doorbell rang again. Eve went to answer it. “Mary, Arthur,” she said. Turning to the living room and her other guests, she said, “It’s the Garandis. Hello, Signora,” she added warmly. “Come in.”

In her best prehistoric mother turtle manner, Mary Garandi, the Signora’s daughter-in-law, said, “Looked like there was a party here, so we decided to come over.”

“Good evening, Eve,” Arthur Garandi said stiffly, palely, blondly.

“Coats in the bedroom, please,” Eve said. “Give me your orders and I’ll have drinks ready when you return.”

“Do you have any Scotch?” the Signora asked.

“Yes.”

“Scotch and soda, Eve.”

“Fine. You know where the bedroom is, don’t you? I’ll introduce you when you get back. What are you drinking, Arthur and Mary?”

“Anything,” they chimed together as they walked to the bedroom.

There was a knock at the kitchen door.

“Who the hell...?” Larry said, and went to open it.

“Good morning,” Max Levy said, popping his red head around the door jamb, bugging his blue eyes. “I represent Collections, Incorporated. About that delinquent payment on your automo—”

“Come in, idiot,” Larry said, grinning. “Where’s Fran?”

“Here I am,” Fran Levy said. She was a tiny girl with brown hair and brown eyes. She came into the kitchen after Max, wagging her head. “He insisted we make a grand entrance through the side door. He threatened to divorce me if I didn’t come with him.”

“Throw your coats in the bedroom,” Larry said, “and I’ll mix you some sauce. What’ll it be?”

“Scotch,” Max said. “A water glass full. And I won’t bother you for the rest of the night.”

“Fran?”

“Rye and water.”

“I love you,” he said. “Do you two know Felix Anders? Felix, this is Fran and Max Levy.”

“How do you do?” Felix said, taking Max’s hand. He nodded at Fran. Felix never shook hands with women.

“Fran, Max,” Eve said, coming into the kitchen. “How’d you get in?”

“Hiya, honey,” Max said, kissing Eve on the cheek. “Down the chimney. How else does Santa arrive?”

“Put your coats away. Watch out for the traffic,” Eve said. “Larry, is Betty’s drink ready?”

“Oh, God, did I forget to bring it to her?”

“Which is it?” Felix asked. “I’ll take it out.”

“Your husband loves me, Eve,” Fran said. “He just said so.”

“Yeah? How come?” Eve asked.

“She drinks rye,” Larry said. Fran laughed and followed Max to the bedroom. Felix took his wife’s drink into the living room. Alone in the kitchen with Larry, Eve said, “You love me, too?”

“Sure.”

“How much?”

“The world.”

“Baloney. The Signora wants Scotch and soda. Mary and Arthur want anything.”

“We’ll give them rye. The Scotch is getting too big a play.”

“Okay. Remember your promise?”

“Sure, I do.”

“I’m pretty shameless, huh?” Eve said.

“It’s attractive,” Larry said. “You should get that way more often.”

“You sound like yourself. I’m beginning to like you again. Do I get a drink, or doesn’t the hostess count?”

In the bedroom, Max Levy said, “They look like a bunch of stiffs.”

“Larry and Eve aren’t,” Fran whispered.

“No, but the rest seem to be. I’ll bet we’ll be talking about crab grass within ten minutes.”

Fran burst out laughing. Together, they went into the living room.

“The only way to beat crab grass,” Arthur Garandi was saying, “is to pull it out by the roots. That’s the only way.”

“There are some effective chemicals on the market,” Felix said.

“By the roots,” Arthur insisted. “It’s like cockroaches. The only way to kill them is to step on them. Well, it’s the same way with crab grass.”

“Stop talking about cockroaches,” Mary Garandi said. “Everybody’ll think we got them.”

“Who’s got cockroaches?” Max asked, coming from the bedroom with an imaginary spray gun and a hunter’s gleam in his eyes.

“Oh, my God, you see!” Mary said.

“You got cockroaches, little lady?” Max asked.

“No, no!”

“I’m Max Levy, Cockroach Killer. This is my assistant, Fran.”

“Hi,” Fran said.

“My wife Betty,” Felix said, handling the introductions. “Paul and Doris Ramsey. Arthur and Mary Garandi, and Mrs. Garandi.”

“You have two wives, Arthur?” Max asked.

“No, she’s my mother,” Arthur said.

“Your mother indeed! This young lady? Preposterous!”

“Him I like,” the Signora said.

“You I like,” Max said, bowing. “Let’s get crocked together.”

“Together or alone,” the Signora said, “that is the general idea.”

“You’re Italian,” Max said.

“With a name like Garandi, how did you guess?”

“It’s not the name. I like Italians. I was in Italy during the war. They called me The Flying Jew.”

“Who did?”

“The Italians.”

“Why?”

“Because I was a flying Jew,” Max said, shrugging.

The doorbell rang, and Eve went to answer it.

“Excuse me, plizz,” Murray Porter said in a thick feigned dialect. “This is maybe Temple Emmanuel?”

The Porters had arrived. The party was ready to start.

The more they drank, it seemed to Larry, the more obnoxious they got. And the more obnoxious they got, the more they drank. And to blot them out, he drank with them.

He had lost count of how many drinks he’d had. There was music coming from the living room, but no one was dancing. In Pinecrest Manor no one danced at house parties; dancing was reserved for the yearly beer parties. There was the sound of loud laughter, oh how these sturdy goddamn rafters rang with laughter, and the sound of loud conversation, and a feeling of too many people in too small a house. He stood alone by the kitchen sink, holding a glass, and he thought, This is a rotten party. Maggie, this is a rotten party, and I should have let you come.

When the Signora walked into the kitchen, he looked up but he did not say hello. She studied him for a moment.

“Any more Scotch?” she asked.

“Sure,” Larry said. He picked up the bottle, held it up to the light, took her glass, and poured. “Water, soda? I forget.”

“Soda.”

He poured from the open bottle on the sink, and then handed her the glass. “Lousy party, ain’t it?” he said.

“It’s a good party.”

“If I wasn’t the host, I’d leave,” Larry said. “I may leave anyway.”

“Where would you go?” the Signora asked.

“There’s lots of places to go, Signora,” he told her. “Lots of places.”

“To a lecture?” she asked.

He looked up suddenly. As drunk as he was, his eyes narrowed and he studied her suspiciously. “Why would I want to go to a lecture?”

“You like lectures, don’t you?”

“Sure, I do.”

“I do, too. Maybe I’ll go with you some night.”

“They’re very technical,” Larry said. “Even Eve doesn’t come.”

“Of course,” the Signora said. “Besides, I’m very rarely free. I’ve been baby sitting. It passes the time, I get paid for it, and it’s right in the neighborhood.”

“That’s good, Signora. That’s very good.”

“I baby sit for Margaret Gault quite often,” the Signora said.

Larry looked up. Mrs. Garandi was studying him with expressionless brown eyes. He looked at the white-haired woman, the patrician face set incongruously upon the thick body. The eyes were blank, but the mouth was sad.

“She goes out a lot,” the Signora said, “and I sit for her.”

“That’s nice,” Larry said carefully.

“Do you think she goes to... lectures?”

“I don’t know where she goes,” Larry said, “and I don’t much care.” In his drunkenness, he wondered why Maggie had never mentioned that the Signora sat for her. Couldn’t she see the danger in that? Didn’t she realize the old lady lived right across the street, could observe his comings and goings and relate them to Maggie’s?

“She’s a beautiful woman,” the Signora said.

“Beauty’s only skin deep. You don’t have to be happy just ’cause you’ve got beauty. Didn’t you know that?”

“Is she happy?”

“How do I know?”

“Are you happy?”

“I’m very happy. Whisky makes the whole world happy. Have another drink, Signora.”

“Why don’t you get out, Larry?”

“Out where?”

“Out of Pinecrest Manor. This isn’t the place for you. This is no good for you.”

“I like it here.”

“Do you love Eve?”

“Sure, I love Eve.”

“Then get out.”

“I can’t go anyplace else.”

“Why not?”

“I can’t, that’s all.”

“Why not?”

“Signora,” Larry said drunkenly, “life is a pretty complicated thing, you know? It doesn’t work the way you figured it was gonna. It just goes along its own merry goddamn way and you call the plays as they come. That’s what, Signora.”

“Get out of Pinecrest Manor. Go someplace else.”

“Is it gonna be any different anyplace else?” Larry asked. “Where’s the pot of gold, Signora? Where the hell is the pot of gold? I can’t even find the goddamn rainbow!”

“Margaret Gault isn’t the pot of gold,” the Signora said, and he looked at her long and hard, and neither spoke for a long time.

Then he said, “Signora, I like you a hell of a lot. You’ve got it all over that creepy son of yours and his Minnie Mouse wife. Only one thing, Signora. Mind your own business.”

“I like you, Larry,” she said. “I always have. I’m trying to help you.”

“There isn’t nobody who’s going to help me but me myself,” he said.

“How?”

“I’ll figure it out. I’ll cross the bridges when I come to them. If there’s no bridges, I’ll design some. I’m an architect, ain’t I? Am I not?”

“You are.”

“Sure, I am. A big architect! You can tell just by looking at my house, can’t you? My magnificent palace! But then this is everybody’s palace, ain’t it, Signora? This nice lovely Pinecrest Manor with the fresh air for the kids and the patios where you drink gin and talk about lawns and clean living? The dream palace with the spotless lawn, no crab grass, Signora, it is absolutely essential that there be no crab grass. You know something?”

“What?”

“Who cares about crab grass?”

The Signora smiled.

“Who gives a damn if crab grass devours the whole lawn or the entire development or even the world? I don’t give a damn about it, and I don’t think anybody else really does either. But they’ve learned that their sixty-by-a-hundred coffin has to be a green coffin. If it isn’t, some son of a bitch up the street will report you to the Civic Association for spoiling the looks of the goddamn cemetery, pardon the language.”

“Larry, if you...”

“They don’t care, Signora. Here they are in the country, why should they care? Here’s the big dream. The corner plot, and the white house with the pink shutters, and the entrance hall, and that washing machine humming in the basement, and that one-year’s free service contract for that oil burner humming in the basement, and that slate patio in the back yard, and that new garage going up with its Building Permit tacked to the door. Here’s the big dream, who cares if we ate beans and bread crusts for the first fifteen years of our married lives?

“Signora, here are all these people in the idyllic little collections of crackerboxes with the pastoral-sounding names dreamed up by copywriters in Madison Avenue offices who live in the heart of the big, dirty, no-fresh-air city. Maplebrook Acres! Or Hillside Knolls! Or Four River Birches! Here they are ready to start living that big fat American dream! But when the hell does the living start?

“When is there time, after that crab grass has been picked, and that storm replaced by a screen, and that Boxer walked, and that newest shrub planted, and the fence put up, and the gable painted, and the patio built, and the lawn mowed and fertilized and limed and edged, and the slide-upon and the swing erected, and the rubber swimming pool inflated and filled, and the automatic sprinkler set on the lawn, and the forsythia cut back, and the asphalt tile put into the basement — when is there time to sit on that new patio and have that lousy gin-tonic you’re thirsting for? When is there time to live?”

“There’s time to live, Larry,” the Signora said.

“Oh, sure, there’s time. We have fun at our gleeful out-door barbecues, don’t we, where the flying sparks almost burn down the whole damn development, and where every scroungy hound in the neighborhood comes around to snatch some beef, and where the hamburgers are burned and where your identical neighbor who is just as old as you are and who has just as many kids as you have and who earns as much money as you do and who is at that very moment in his identical back yard having the same identical barbecue yells over, ‘Hi, there, neighbor! Having a little outdoor barbecue?’

“Sure, there’s time. Don’t we have fun at our indoor and outdoor ingrown versions of the cocktail party? Where every neighbor brings his own bottle, and where we’ve all chipped in for stale potato chips and the keg of beer upon which the matriarchs get so crocked they can’t walk? We have fun at those, don’t we? We laugh loud as hell, don’t we? Laugh, laugh, oh, how these sturdy rafters ring with the laughter of the identical people who live in the identical houses.

“JESUS, SIGNORA, THEY’RE DEAD!

“They’ve got their stupid dream, but the dream really has them! And one day all these silly sons of bitches will wake up and realize they’re living in a cemetery for young people, and that they all dropped dead the day they took title to their**!! All brick four bedroom entrance hall separate dining room wall ovens all G.E. appliances spacious plot walking distance church and shopping center bus to school and station fifty minutes New York City!!** coffins!

“They’ll realize their dreams are dead, too. They’re only young dead men living with old dead dreams. And do you know how they’ll solve it, Signora? Do you know how they’ll accomplish the resurrection?”

“How, Larry?”

“By moving into another development! A split-level development this time. A house that costs twenty thousand instead of fifteen-four-ninety on the same goddamn sixty-by-a-hundred plot with the identical neighbors all over again!”

“If you hate it so much, why don’t you get out?”

“Because I can’t, Signora. I’m trapped. God help me, I’m trapped. You know what I want? I want golden bridges, big golden bridges spanning sapphire waters! I want to gallop over them in ruby chariots, but I’m trapped, I’m trapped.”

He poured more rye into his glass.

“Go easy, Larry.”

“I’m all right.”

“Why don’t you go to Eve?”

“Why doesn’t Eve come to me?”

“Larry, Larry, you’re so unhappy.”

“I’m happy as hell. Don’t tell me I’m unhappy.”

“Do you want to come in the other room?”

“I want to stay here by the sink,” Larry said. “Leave me alone, Signora. I want to go down the drain.”

“Larry...”

“Leave me alone!”

In the living room, Felix Anders was talking to Phyllis Porter. Phyllis was a brunette with green eyes and a good figure. She had a pert Irish nose and an Irish sort of mouth, puckering, with good white teeth behind it. Her husband, Murray, was telling a garment-center joke to the Garandis and Eve and Fran.

“Of course,” Felix said, “a man has dreams, too. A man doesn’t always want to be a butcher.”

Phyllis, having consumed a good deal of alcohol, listening to Frank Sinatra singing his Wee Small Hours album, hearing the gentle hum of conversation all around her, feeling motherly and womanly and understanding to all mankind and to all men in particular, said, “What’s your dream, Felix?”

“It’s a big dream,” Felix said. “For a butcher, anyway.”

“Butchers can dream the same as candlestick makers,” Phyllis said philosophically. “What was Marty if not a butcher. Didn’t he dream? Of course he dreamed. What’s your big dream, Felix baby?”

“My dream is to make people happy,” Felix said. He paused dramatically. “Does that make sense to you, Phyllis?”

“Sure it does. Who you want to make happy, Felix?”

“Everybody,” Felix said. He was still holding the first drink that had been given to him that evening. He was not drunk and had no intention of getting drunk or even slightly high. “Everybody,” he repeated. “You.”

“Me?” Phyllis grinned lopsidedly. “How would you make me happy?”

“How do you think?”

“I d’know. You tell me.”

“What would you like?”

“Right now?”

“Right now.”

“I’d like to go to bed,” Phyllis said. “I mean, to sleep.”

“So would I.”

“You’ve got things on your mind,” Phyllis said slyly. “Little Felix the cat has things on his mind.”

“Nothing. Just to make people happy.”

“You can’t make me happy, Felix.” Phyllis shook her head solemnly. “I’m happy already.”

“You see?” Murray said, delivering his dialect punch line. “Everybody’s cutting corduroy, we had to cut voile?”

“I think I hear David,” Eve said. “Excuse me.”

Larry had taken off his shoes, and he leaned against the sink and looked into the bottom of his glass. It was almost one o’clock, and he wondered when Eve would serve coffee and cake, wondered when all these people would go back to their own houses. The Signora had gone into the bathroom, and he stood alone in the kitchen, holding up the sink and listening to the saddest music in the world and hearing the happiest, gayest voices in the world and hearing above those the ring of the telephone.

“Telephone,” he said.

No one answered. He put down his glass, shoved himself off the sink and went into the corridor leading to the bedroom. The light in the boys’ room was on, and he could see Eve leaning over David’s crib, talking to him soothingly. The telephone kept ringing.

“Nobody going to answer that?” Ramsey shouted from the living room.

“I’m getting it,” Larry said to Ramsey. “I’m coming, I’m coming,” he said to the telephone, and then he picked up the receiver.

“Hello,” he said.

“Hi.”

David was crying without reason, the way only a small child can cry when awakened by strange voices in the middle of the night, crying without fear, without sadness, simply crying uncontrollably.

Eve said, “Don’t cry, baby, Mommy is here. Now don’t cry, baby. Please don’t cry.”

David would not stop. She held him close to her breast, the way she had done when he was an infant, and he sobbed his misery against the naked flesh above the low-cut neckline.

“Please, darling. Come now, darling. Don’t cry. Mommy’s here,” she said soothingly, over and over again. “Don’t cry. Don’t cry, darling.”

He stood quite still by the telephone. He had not expected her voice. In the darkness of the bedroom, with the laughter coming from the next room, her voice sounded calm and warm and loving.

“Where are you?” he asked.

“Home.”

“Him?”

“Upstairs. Asleep. I had to call you. Can you talk?”

“No.”

“Are you drunk?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll talk. You listen. Do you love me?”

“Yes.”

“Why are you drunk?”

“Because I love you.”

“I miss you, Larry. I miss you so much. It’s torture to know that you’re there having a good time.”

“Please!”

“Is it bad?”

“Yes.”

“Very bad?”

“Yes.”

“I’m glad. I want you to be miserable without me. I want you to miss me as much as I miss you.”

“I do. Maggie, what are we going to do?”

“About what?”

“I don’t know.”

“About what, darling?”

“About the world,” he said.

“The world?” She began giggling. “Honey, you’re drunk! You sound adorable! Oh, I wish I could hug you.”

“Honey, what’re we gonna do about the world?” Larry asked again.

“We’ll let the world worry about itself,” she said. “Let’s just worry about each other.”

“All right. But what about Puerto Rico?”

“What about it?”

“I don’t know. What about it?”

“Larry, I don’t understand you.”

“It’s poor and dirty,” he said. “It could be clean. I can make it clean.”

“Yes, darling.” She giggled again. “Oh, God, are you drunk! Oh, I could kiss you.” He heard a smack against the mouthpiece. “Did you get that? I kissed you. Did you get it, darling?”

“Yes.”

“Will you get drunk with me sometime? I want you drunk.”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow morning. We’ll get drunk for breakfast.”

She giggled again, her voice close to his ear, her giggle very warm and very intimate.

“I love you,” he said.

“Again,” she whispered. “Again.”

“I love you.”

“Don’t cry, David. There are people here, honey. You don’t want them to think you’re a baby, do you?”

“Where’s Daddy?” David asked, sobbing.

“Outside. Do you want him?”

“Yes,” David said, nodding, sobbing.

Eve went to the door frame.

“Larry!” she called. “Will you come here a minute, please?”

“I’ll get him,” Ramsey shouted from the living room. “He’s on the phone.” Ramsey got to his feet and walked to the bedroom. Leaning in the doorway, he said, “Hey!”

Larry turned from the phone, saw Ramsey, and then turned back to the mouthpiece. “Who did you want?” he asked.

“I want you,” Maggie answered.

“I’m sorry,” Larry said. “I think you’ve got the wrong number.”

“I’ve got the right number, darling,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” Larry said, “there’s nobody here by that name.”

“Call me tomorrow,” she said.

“Yes.”

“I love you.”

“That’s quite all right, sir,” Larry said. “I feel the same way. Good night.”

“Good night, my darling.”

He hung up. He turned to Ramsey. “Wrong number,” he explained.

“Your wife wants you,” Ramsey said.

He walked past him and into the corridor, hearing Betty singing with Doris in the living room, seeing Felix off in the corner talking to Phyllis, hearing Murray telling a dialect joke to the Signora, watching Max using his hands to describe flight to the Garandis, seeing Fran stagger out of the living room toward the kitchen bar, her empty glass in hand. He walked past the living room and down the corridor to the boys’ room, and then into the room.

“You’d better talk to him,” Eve said frostily. “If you’re not too stinking drunk.”

“What’s the matter with him?” Larry asked.

“Nothing,” Eve said. “His father is a fool, that’s all.”

“What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing at all. I’m going to make some coffee. You can use a gallon or two.”

Larry walked to the crib. “What’s the matter, Chris?” he asked.

“I’m David.”

“Well, what’s the matter?”

“I di’n wet the bed.”

“Well, who said you did?”

“Nobody.”

“All right, so what’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” David said.

“I’ll make the coffee,” Eve said. She paused in the doorway. “Who was that on the phone?”

“Altar,” Larry said. Eve left the room.

“Mommy’s angry,” David said. “Why?”

“I don’t know. Women get angry.”

“She said you were drunk.”

“I am.”

“What’s drunk?”

“What’s sober?” Larry asked the wall. “Can’t you get back to sleep now?”

“Sure. I di’n wet the bed.”

“That’s a good boy.”

“I’m never going to wet the bed again. Then I can go to school with Chris.”

“Sure.”

“Can’t I?”

“Sure.”

“I’m going to be like Chris when I’m bigger.”

“That’s good,” Larry said. “Lie down, son. I’ll cover you.”

“And when I’m really big, I’ll be a daddy like you. You’re a good daddy. You’re the nicest daddy in New York.”

“Thank you, son,” Larry said. He kissed David on the cheek.

“Me,” David said. “I want to kiss you.”

He kissed Larry, and Larry suddenly clasped his son to him, holding him fiercely close.

“Good night, son,” he said. “Good night.”

“Good night, Dad.”

He flicked out the light and went out of the bedroom and past the bathroom and through the kitchen where Eve stood at the stove with the coffeepot and through the entrance hallway and then out the front door and onto the stoop. He walked down the front steps and down the path and he turned left at the sidewalk and then simply walked up the block, feeling the sudden cold, realizing all at once that he was in his stocking feet, not giving a damn, walking faster and faster and thinking only, I’ve got to get away, and not knowing from what he had to get away.

The development was closed for the night, the sidewalks pulled in, the eyes of the houses shut, the houses standing uniform and silent behind their lawn moats, the telephone poles stiff and unbending, the telephone wires zooming off into the distance, the sky a solid black slammed with stars and a storybook moon.

He walked alone on the silent streets, walked with a rushing, headlong pace, breathing hard, away, away, not thinking of where he was going and then suddenly knowing where he was going and stopping dead in his tracks. He was heading for Maggie’s house.

His arms fell to his sides. His head drooped, and he stood in the center of the sidewalk, limp within his body frame, shaking his head slowly and meaninglessly, thinking. What’s happening to me? What’s happening to my life?

He felt an enormous sadness. He knew he would not cry, but there were tears behind his eyes, silent tears that wept without moisture. The sadness was heavy, a burden that pressed on his shoulders and head, filling his chest and his eyes and his hands. He stood alone, unmoving, his stockinged feet against the pavement in the brilliant moonlight. There was no wind. The world was silent. He was alone in a silent world, alone and sad, and unable to think, able only to feel this enormous sadness.

The car pulled up alongside him. The front door opened.

“Get in,” a voice said.

He stood silent for another moment. With great effort, he turned and walked to the car. He climbed onto the front seat alongside the driver.

“Close the door,” the voice said.

He closed the door.

“Not that I much give a damn,” the voice said, “but are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” Larry answered.

The car was in motion now. The houses outside fell by in regular monotony.

“You’re not very smart,” the voice said. “Even a butcher knows that.”

“I’m smart as hell.”

“Why’d you walk out on your own party?”

“I wanted to. Who the hell are you?”

“Felix Anders.”

“Go to hell, Felix. Who asked you to come after me?”

“Eve did.”

“Hero. Big hero butcher who reads the Daily News.”

“We can’t all be smart architects who read the Times.” Felix paused. “We’re going to a little ride. To clear your head.”

“My head’s clear.”

“Your head’s all ass backwards.”

“My, my, the butcher curses. The butler-butcher curses. The neat superior—”

“I can’t stand amateurs,” Felix said. “If you’re going to play the game, play it right.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Walking out of your own party is a stupid kid stunt.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“What is she?” Felix asked. “A blonde or a brunette?”

“What is who?” Larry asked shrewdly.

“It’s too late to get smart,” Felix said. “You showed all the signs tonight. Don’t get smart when I’m trying to help you.”

“I don’t need your help.”

“Eve’s a shrewd cookie. You keep on—”

“I don’t like that,” Larry said. “Eve’s my wife—”

“And you love her,” Felix said dryly. “I know.”

“Damn right, I love her.”

“Love’s got nothing to do with it.”

“Love’s got everything to do with everything,” Larry said. “That’s how much you know, butcher.”

“I don’t know anything at all,” Felix said slyly. “I’m just a butcher. But if you’re going to play the game, play it right.”

“What game were you playing in the corner with Phyllis Porter? Footsie?”

“Someday I’ll explain life to you.”

“A game! What the hell do you know?”

“Nothing. I’m a butcher.”

“Stop telling everybody you’re a butcher. They’ll begin believing you.”

“Where were you headed just now?”

“No place.”

“I hope you’re not playing close to home,” Felix said. Larry did not answer. “There’s an old proverb: never spit where you eat. You might remember it.”

“Felix Anders, proverb maker,” Larry said.

“You ready to go back?”

“I was ready long before the lecture started.”

“In one ear and out the other,” Felix said. “I’ll talk to you sometime. When you’re sober. Let me handle this when we get back to the house.”

“What’s there to handle?”

“You don’t know how close to the brink you are,” Felix said. “I don’t even know why I’m bothering to help you.”

“Who needs your help? I don’t even think I like you.”

“I don’t like you, either. You think you’re superior because you’re an architect. I’m a butcher, and I know more about life than you’ll ever know.”

“Sure.”

“Sure. Every butcher does. Life is just a big piece of meat. There’s your house. Let me handle this.” He pulled the car to the curb. “Sit where you are,” he said. “I’ll come around and help you out of the car.”

“I can walk.”

“I know you can. Sit where you are.” He walked around to Larry’s side and opened the door. “Put your arm around my shoulders. Let me do all the talking. Just follow my lead.”

He seized Larry’s arm and swung it over his shoulder. Together, they swayed up the front walk. Eve was waiting at the door.

“Is he all right?” she asked.

“Just too much to drink,” Felix said. “He felt sick, had to get some air. I think we’re going to need the bathroom.”

Eve looked at her husband with mingled sympathy and disgust. Larry smiled blandly. He and Felix went into the house and past the coffee drinkers at the kitchen table. Eve followed them to the bathroom. As Felix closed the door, she said, “I’ll have coffee waiting for him.”

With the door locked, Felix said, “Make noises. I’ll get the water going.”

“This is a little foolish, isn’t it?” Larry asked.

“Protection. You’re in trouble, mister. I suggest you lay your wife the moment everyone leaves.”

“That’s none of your goddamned business,” Larry said heatedly.

“Isn’t it?” Felix smiled a knowing, superior smile. “Architect, you just joined an international fraternity.” He turned on the water tap. “Make sick noises,” he said. “Make a lot of sick noises.”

The house was very still.

The guests had all departed, and he and Eve lay side by side in the silent bed in the silent bedroom. She lay quietly tense, and he could feel anger coming from her like electricity before a summer storm.

“It was a lousy party,” he whispered.

“It was the most horrible party I’ve ever been to in my life,” Eve said tightly.

“Thirteen people. You should never give a party with thirteen people.”

Eve did not comment. He reached over for her.

“Don’t touch me!”

“What’s the matter?”

“Just keep your hands off me!”

“Is it my fault it was a lousy party?”

“It was lousy and boring and loud and horrible and nothing at all like what I thought it would be,” Eve said. “But I stayed.”

“Well...”

“And you walked out. And that’s the big difference, Larry. You walked out.”

There was a long silence in the bedroom.

“Good night,” Eve said at last.

20

He sought out Felix Anders for two reasons, one of which was realized, the other of which was totally unconscious.

Primarily, he wanted to hear more from Felix about this “international fraternity.” He wanted to assure himself that what he shared with Maggie was not a run-of-the-mill gutter alliance. He had always liked Van Gogh until mass-production techniques put a Van Gogh print into every lower-middle-class living room. He did not wish to believe a love like his was hanging in living rooms across the face of America. He wanted to know that he and Maggie were different. This was his prime reason and his good reason for seeking out Felix.

Unconsciously, he needed a confidant.

He could not discuss with Eve the conflict which was uppermost in his mind, nor could he very well confide in Maggie the doubts and uncertainties which plagued him. Felix had come along with a hint of vast knowledge. He did not know Felix very well. Indeed, the Felix who’d picked him up didn’t seem at all like the Felix he knew even slightly. And he didn’t particularly like either Felix. But he looked for him on the Sunday morning after the party; and perhaps he’d been looking long before he found him.

Felix was in his garage oiling a hand saw. Larry hesitated on the sidewalk a moment, and then walked up the concrete driveway strip.

“Morning,” he said.

Felix looked up. He did not smile. He wore an old Army Eisenhower jacket over a green sweater. His eyes looked very green and very clear.

“Good morning,” he said. He oiled the saw with meticulous care, rubbing the oil in, wiping away the red smear of rust.

“I guess I was pretty loaded last night,” Larry said.

“We all get high sometimes,” Felix answered.

“You didn’t.”

“I don’t need alcoholic stimulation to enjoy myself.”

The men were silent. Felix wiped oil from the saw.

“I wanted to thank you,” Larry said.

“Don’t mention it.”

“You were right about Eve’s being angry. She was.”

Felix gave the saw a last wipe, hung it on the garage wall, and took down a hand scythe. “Amazing the way rust collects,” he said.

“I’d like to talk to you sometime,” Larry said. “About some of the things you said last night.”

“I’ll give you a piece of gratuitous advice,” Felix said, squirting oil onto the scythe blade.

“Yes?”

“Never confide in strangers.”

“Are we strangers?”

“Yes,” Felix said, and he wiped rust from the blade.

It was Lincoln’s birthday, and Larry walked past Felix’s house hoping he’d be home from work. He found Felix washing his car. He walked over to him and said, “No work today?”

“We switch the holidays,” Felix said. “My partner and me. He’s got Washington’s birthday.”

“Washing the car?”

“Just about finished. Looks good for an old shebang, doesn’t it?”

“I thought you might like to take a walk up to the center.”

“What for?”

“Cup of coffee.”

“All right,” Felix said. “Let me check with Betty.”

He went into the house. When he came out, he was pulling his Eisenhower jacket over his sports shirt. “Let’s go,” he said.

They walked silently. The day was mild and blue, warm for February.

“What’s on your mind?” Felix asked.

“A cup of coffee.”

“You walked over here to get me to come for a cup of coffee, is that right?”

“That’s right.”

“Okay,” Felix said.

“You said you’d talk to me sometime. When I’m sober. I’m sober now.”

“What do you want to talk about?”

“You made the offer,” Larry said.

Felix nodded. “Are you playing around with some dame?”

“Maybe. Are you?”

“Definitely not,” Felix said.

“You are. I know you are.”

“You know nothing,” Felix said. “Why are you talking to me?”

“Because you’re the only person I can talk to,” Larry said honestly.

“The only person you should talk to is yourself. And your blonde.” Felix paused. “I use that figuratively. She may be a redhead.”

Larry said nothing.

“By your silence, I gather she’s a blonde.”

Larry still said nothing.

“It doesn’t matter what she is,” Felix said airily. “Have we finished talking?”

“What makes you think Eve is suspicious?”

“I only think she’s on the edge of suspicion. Unexplained behavior is always suspicious. Learn the secret. Consistent behavior at home, inconsistent behavior the moment you leave the house.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Never meet on the same street twice,” Felix said. “Don’t call from the same phone booth, don’t go to the same motel, the same restaurant, or the same anything. Be inconsistent. A habit pattern is likely to attract attention, and attention is dangerous.”

“I thought you weren’t—”

“I’m not,” Felix said. “I’m a student of human nature. I keep my eyes open.”

“Sure,” Larry said. “Listen, if we’re going to talk at all, let’s lay our cards on the table, shall we?”

“Why?”

“Because that’s the only way I can talk.”

“Then let’s not talk,” Felix said.

Sitting next to Felix on the train that Wednesday on his way to meet Altar, Larry wasn’t thinking of the bathroom fixtures the writer would select that day. He wasn’t thinking of the necessity for early selection and early ordering in these times of interminable waits for equipment. He was thinking of what Felix had said to him the day before.

“Your own behavior wasn’t exactly consistent,” he said.

“Wasn’t it?” Felix asked, opening the Daily News. “Do you want a part of this paper?”

“No, thanks. At the party, I mean.”

“How was I inconsistent?”

“Your play for Phyllis Porter.”

“How do you know I don’t do that at every party? How do you know I don’t single out one woman, make inexpert sex talk with her, and then go home to lay my wife silly? How do you know Betty isn’t conditioned to all this and considers it harmless?”

“I don’t.”

“Then don’t say my behavior is inconsistent. Your own behavior needs careful watching.”

“I don’t think Eve is suspicious. There’s really no danger.”

“Overconfidence is the biggest danger,” Felix said. “Does your blonde ever call you at home?”

“Sometimes.”

“That’s careless. Do you call her when her husband is home?”

“Sometimes.”

“She is married then?”

“Yes, she’s married.”

“You shouldn’t call when he’s home. Do you check the car after she gets out? No lipsticked butts, no earrings, no gloves, no stray blonde hair or blonde bobby pins? Eve’s got black hair, remember.”

“I’m very careful.”

“Because all that’s necessary is a shred of suspicion, and then the game’s up. Then you haven’t got a wife any more, you’ve got the New York branch of the F.B.I.”

“Well, I’ve been very careful,” Larry said. “Besides, she’s careful too.”

“Never mind how careful she is. You can’t trust her.”

“Why not?”

“Because you can’t trust any woman. The minute they enter an affair, they get emotionally involved. Once they start feeling, they stop thinking.” Felix paused, folded his newspaper, and turned his green eyes full on Larry, searchingly. “I hope you’re not emotionally involved.”

“I—” Larry stopped.

“I hope not,” Felix said. “A woman is a woman and they’re all exactly the same after the first few months. Never forget that. The hardest part of any affair is getting out of it when you’ve had enough.”

“I don’t believe all women are the same,” Larry said.

“Then you don’t know women.”

“I don’t claim to be an expert.”

“They’re all the same. If you’ve had her, somebody before you has had her. No matter what she says, you’re not the first. And if, by a holy miracle you happen to be, you’re certainly not going to be the last. You can bet your eyes on that.”

“I don’t believe she... well, I really don’t know. But it doesn’t matter, in any case.”

“It does matter,” Felix said. “I can see you getting angry just thinking of the possibility. You’re too involved with her. Pull out now.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Why not?”

He hesitated for a moment, finding it difficult to say the words to Felix. Then he said, “Because I love her.”

“Sure,” Felix said. “If you didn’t love her, what would be the sense?”

“I don’t follow you.”

“Love them all. One at a time, or all together. Love makes the world go round.”

“How can you love more than one person at the same time?”

“You love your wife, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“And don’t you love your blonde?”

“Yes.”

“So? There you are.”

“That’s different.”

“How?” Felix shrugged. “A woman is a woman.”

“Well, I look at it differently.”

“Only because you’ve still got the glow. Well, good. Without the glow, there’s nothing. But it’ll wear off, you’ll see. Your blonde’ll be just another wife then. That’s the time to get rid of her and start looking for a redhead.”

“I don’t think so.”

“And if you imagine you’ll have to look far, you’re crazy,” Felix said. “Do you know what America is?”

“What?”

“It’s a big soapy dishpan of boredom. That’s the truth. And no husband can understand that soapy dishpan. And a woman can’t explain it to another woman because they’ve all got their hands in that same soapy boredom. So all a man has to be is understanding. Yes, baby, I know, I know, you’ve got a miserable life, here’re some flowers, here’s some perfume, here’s ‘I love you,’ take off your pants. Bang!”

He watched Felix, fascinated. Felix was beginning to loosen up, and as his mind loosened, his body also relaxed so that he began shedding his stiff formality, becoming another person before Larry’s eyes.

“Do you think you’re an outstanding lover?” Felix asked. “You’re not a movie star, are you? Not Rock Hudson or Cary Grant?”

“No.”

“You’re just an ordinary guy, am I right?”

“I suppose so.”

“All right. What makes you think your blonde wouldn’t be fooling around with another ordinary guy if you hadn’t come along?”

“I don’t know.”

“Believe me, you’re not the first, and you won’t be the last. It’s a big procession, an American Marching Society. From bed to bed to bed, they march. March, march, march! And everybody looks the other way and pretends not to see the parade. Half the people in the world are out there keeping time to the music, and the other half are itching to march, too, but they haven’t got the guts. And do you know who’s leading the procession?”

“Who?”

“A woman.”

“You don’t think much of women, do you?”

“I love every last one of them. But I wouldn’t trust any of them as far as I can throw the Empire State Building. There isn’t a woman alive whose shoes can’t be placed under some man’s bed.”

“There are,” Larry said.

“Who? Your blonde, whatever her name is?” Felix paused “She is a blonde, isn’t she?”

“Yes.”

“Sure. Her?”

“I don’t know.”

“Your wife? Eve?”

“I don’t think Eve would,” Larry said firmly.

“Want me to try?”

“No.”

Felix smiled in a very superior way, and Larry wanted to hit him all at once. He wondered why he was talking to a schizophrenic jerk like Felix, especially when he didn’t like either of the man’s personalities: the butler-butcher who looked at the world with secret eyes, or the cynical boudoir philosopher who imparted vast sexual wisdom to a small chosen audience.

“They’re all the same,” Felix said. “They want romance. There’s nothing romantic about changing diapers. And there’s nothing romantic about the unshaved man they see in the bathroom in his pajamas. Once in a while this man will do something heroic. The rest of the time he’s just that tired old unromantic husband. He’s the comfortable living-room sofa. You, me, we’re furniture in our own homes. But if we go next door, ahhh! Next door, we’re heroes!”

“I think Eve loves me,” Larry said.

“Of course she loves you! Who said she didn’t? But you’re still that living-room sofa. If the right man-next-door comes along, she can fall as easily as any woman in the world. One night she’ll be ripe, and once she takes the first step in her own mind, she’s on the way to joining the Marching Society.”

“Not Eve.”

“Who then? Your blonde?”

“Not her, either.”

“All married women are the same. You said she was married, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Sure. Any kids?”

“One.”

“A boy or a girl?”

Larry grew suddenly cautious. It occurred to him that he had admitted far too much about himself while Felix spoke only in vague, philosophical abstracts. “What difference does it make?” he said.

“Then she does live in the neighborhood?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Why are you clamming up if she isn’t someone I might recognize?”

“I’m not clamming up. She’s got a little girl.”

“You said that too fast. She’s really got a little boy.”

“Draw your own conclusions.”

“Sure. You’ve got a married blonde in the neighborhood, and she’s got a son. How’d you meet?”

“None of your business.”

“You’re crazy if you’re playing close to home. Nobody with any sense plays close to home.”

“Then I’m safe,” Larry said, annoyed. “If nobody does it, it’s not expected and not looked for.”

“It’s always looked for,” Felix replied. “Every woman in the world is just itching to sink her teeth into some other woman’s juicy bit of homegrown gossip. It makes her own running around seem more pure. Look, count up the shopping trips, and the visits to the doctor, and the bridge-club meetings, and the sewing-club meetings, and the out-of-town girl-friends who have to be met in New York, and the dental appointments, and the dancing classes, and the adult-education routine — do you know where half of these women really are?”

“Where?”

“In bed. Any hour of the day. Morning, noon or night. With the husband, it has to be at night, it has to be dark on clean sheets, with candlesticks on the dresser and a bucket of iced champagne near the bed. With the man next door, it can be in broad daylight in a smelly barn on dirty straw, and it’s romantic.”

Larry smiled.

“Romance,” Felix said. “They’re all looking for romance because they’ve learned it from books and movies. And what can be more romantic than a man who’s willing to risk your husband’s shotgun to have you? Jesus, you must be the sexiest thing on wheels! This is romance. This is what Mrs. America wants. Do you know what she’s got?”

“What?”

“She’s got a stranger on top of her. And the only exciting thing about this guy is that he is a stranger. She’ll do anything for this stranger. Things she wouldn’t dream of doing with her husband, she’ll do with this stranger. Why? Because she doesn’t own him and he makes her twitch. She’s got to have him. Every other woman in the world is her enemy. She tells herself she’s in love, and she’s willing to risk her home, her happiness, her pride, everything, just to be with this stranger who fills her once a week. The romance seekers. They’re everywhere, ready to fall in love at the drop of a hat. Anyplace you’ve got a housewife, you’ve also got a potential mistress for a stranger.”

“Your wife, too?” Larry asked.

“Betty’d like nothing better than to roll in the hay with a stranger. She’d be good for him, too. And he’d be great for her. I wish she’d get herself somebody.”

“Why?” Larry asked. “To ease your own conscience?”

“Who me? My conscience is clear. I’m a respectable butcher.”

“But the rest of us are all animals, huh, Felix?”

“Aren’t we all?” Felix asked, smiling.

The walls were down, and now Felix would talk.

And now, beginning to know the man at last Larry suspected he’d wanted to unload his mind from the very beginning. They sat side by side in the bar at the shopping center. Darkness pressed at the plate-glass window, and they spoke in whispers, like two old friends discussing family trouble.

“Larry,” Felix said, “there’s nothing like it. I know just how you feel. You’re in love, and there’s nothing like it.”

“Have you ever been in love?”

“I’m always in love,” Felix said. “If I wasn’t in love, I’d be dead. Jesus, Larry, I’m a butcher!”

He looked at Felix, and he thought Felix is a butcher and he doesn’t like being a butcher or living in Pinecrest Manor with a wife who’s too loud no matter how cute she is. And so he plays around. This is the only excitement in the life of Felix Anders: the meeting, the discovery, the conquest, the retreat, the further conquests. There are no real worlds left for Felix Anders to conquer, no worlds left for the butchers of America; there are only women.

So this is the real profession of Felix Anders.

He is poised, charming, bored, aloof, secretive, superior and intelligently cunning. He is a discoverer and an explorer and a conqueror. There are worlds of lonely housewives, and Felix is a master at his profession, which is the conquest of these women.

Am I like Felix Anders?

“Love, Larry,” he said. “That look in their eyes, the look that’s for you alone. Sweet, sweet. Ahhhh, you become alive again, do you know? Women are so goddamn sweet. There’s this model I’m dropping now. Not cheesecake, fashion. Pretty as a picture. Long black hair, brown eyes, a high-class model’s walk. Do you know how models walk?”

“Yes.”

“She came into the shop one day with this sweet sweet smile on her face, and she asked for fourteen pounds of eye round. I explained to her that a rib roast would be better if she was planning on so big a party. We got to talking. I’m just a butcher. I start with meat, and from meat I go to other things. We got to talking about parties. She said she liked small parties better than big parties. I said I liked small parties, too. That was the beginning. And now, after three months, it’s almost the end.”

“Is she married?” Larry asked.

“Oh, certainly. Her husband is a salesman. He sells steel. He’s away two weeks out of every three. I was seeing more of her than I saw of Betty. She’s the sweetest thing alive, and she loves me, and I used to love her. But that’s all over now. I only want to get her off my back now.”

He talks differently, Larry thought, when he is Felix Anders, Conqueror.

He warned me not to confide, but he’s confiding in me, telling me everything, explaining Felix Anders, Conqueror. The other Felix is only the mask. The Felix Anders who stands coolly distant on a station platform is not this man in armor. He is only the mask donned for society. Betty and the children are part of that mask. But this Felix Anders is a hero. This Felix Anders was born two thousand years too late. He should be wearing a beard, and a plumed hat, and a sword. He should be laying his way across France, barmaid by barmaid.

“I never kid myself, Larry,” Felix said. “I always recognize that moment when it’s over. I always know when I’m falling out of love.”

“It seems to me you’re never really in love,” Larry said.

“What’s love?” Felix asked. “Do you know?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Then how can you say I’m never in love?”

“Love is mutual and equal pleasure, I suppose,” Larry said.

“But whose pleasure comes first?”

“It has to be equal,” Larry said. “In fact, the other person’s pleasure might even be more important to you than your own.”

“There’s the mistake,” Felix said. “My pleasure comes first. A woman is a woman, and I never forget that. When I start forgetting it, I always ask myself, ‘How would you like to be married to this girl? Do you think it’d be any different from being married to Betty?’ And I always get the same answer.”

“And what’s that?”

“No.”

“Well... I sometimes wonder what it would be like. Being married to her.”

“Get it out of your mind. You’re crazy.”

“Maybe I am, Felix. All I know is that this isn’t the kind of stuff you’ve been talking about. This isn’t just another streetcar. This is it.”

“It?” Felix laughed. “What’s it?”

“This. What I have. What she has. What we’ve got together. This is it.”

“It’ll pass,” Felix said. “This, too, shall pass.”

“I hope not.”

“You’re stupid. If you were smart, you’d pull out right this minute. You’d go to that phone and call her and say, ‘Goodbye, Blondie, it’s been swell.’ That’s what you’d do.”

“I can’t. I love her.”

“Everything about her?”

“No. Not everything.”

“What does she look like?”

“She’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever known.”

“Oh, brother!” Felix said.

“I’m talking objectively. Wherever we go, men look at her. You can’t miss her, Felix. It embarrasses me sometimes.”

“They smell it on her. They smell ripeness.”

“No, that’s not it. She’s beautiful.”

“All right, she’s beautiful. What don’t you like about her?”

“A lot of things.”

“Do they bother you? Would you like to change them?”

“Yes.”

“Brother, pull out now. Take my advice. You’re heading for a lot of trouble.”

“No,” Larry said. He shook his head. “I can’t.”

In the finished basement of Felix Anders’ house, they talked. It was the end of February, and they knew each other well enough to talk easily, but with no real friendship between them. Larry had told Eve he’d wanted a look at the finished basement about which he’d heard so much. He’d planned to walk up to the center with Felix, but Betty had gone to a movie with a neighbor, and so they sat downstairs and smoked and talked without friendship in a friendly manner.

“You know the old gag,” Felix said. “It’s the same as that.”

“Which gag?”

“This fellow comes home to his wife, and he’s undressing, and there’s a big lipstick imprint on his undershorts. A big red pair of lips! Well, his wife sees it, points to it, and shouts, ‘There’s lipstick on your undershorts!’ The fellow looks down at it. Then he looks up at his wife. Then, with a surprised look on his face, he says, ‘Hey, how ’bout that?’”

Larry burst out laughing, and Felix chuckled at his own joke.

“It’s just what I was telling you,” he said. “Bluff it through. There’s only one person in your house who knows the truth, and that’s you. Your wife is only guessing. Even if someone actually sees you with Blondie, your wife won’t want to believe it. If you know you’ve been seen, come home and beat her to the punch. Tell her first. Tell her you ran into an old high-school chum and bought her a drink, and she’s married now and has four kids and lives in Richmond Hills with her dentist husband. Lie your way out of it. The bigger the lie, the better. The only thing you can’t lie your way out of is actually being caught right in that bed. And that practically never happens.”

“I don’t like lying,” Larry said. “I’ll never enjoy that part of it.”

“It’s a necessity, part of the game. What can you do? You’ve got to lie. For example, suppose you come home some night smelling of perfume.”

“She doesn’t wear perfume any more.”

“Some night she’ll wear it, believe me. She’ll want to send you home stinking of her, just to make you squirm, just to show your wife that she owns you too. Believe me, Larry, she’ll do it. Especially if her husband’s not home. Then she can pour the stuff on without having to explain why she’s wearing Tabu to a civic association meeting. Does he work nights?”

“No.”

“What is he? A white-collar worker? No? A factory worker? It doesn’t matter. Some night he’ll be out, and she’ll climb into that car reeking of perfume. ‘I just didn’t think,’ she’ll say. Ha!”

“How can I lie my way out of perfume?”

“Oh, simple. On the way home, stop off at a drugstore and buy a bottle for Eve. Tell her the salesgirl, stupid idiot, offered you a sniff and then spilled it accidentally on your shirt front.”

“I see.”

“If you get lipstick on your handkerchief, throw it out.”

“She takes her lipstick off.”

“Some night she’ll smear it on as thick as warpaint. Especially if her husband isn’t home. He works nights, did you say?”

“No. No, he doesn’t.”

“But he’s a factory worker?”

“Yes.”

“Sure,” Felix answered. “She’ll get lipstick on you because she’ll be getting tired of hiding. Isn’t her love as real as Eve’s? Why should she have to hide it? She’s a woman, Larry, a woman! And they’re all the same. I try to carry a clean shirt in the trunk of my car. Sometimes it comes in handy. Has she marked you yet?”

“What?”

“Marked you? Bitten you? Sent you home bruised for your wife to see?”

“No.”

“She will. It’s another way of claiming you. If you want to keep her, Larry, you’ve got to be careful for both of you. For your own protection.”

“She isn’t like that,” Larry said.

“She will be. Look, you’ve got this beautiful blonde who lives right here in this development, right?”

“Well...”

“She’s married, and she’s got a young son. That’s what you said, wasn’t it?”

Larry shrugged.

“Her husband’s a factory worker! And you’re an architect, probably the best thing that ever happened to her. She wants you. She’s going to do everything in her power to get you. Watch out.”

“You’ve got it all wrong.”

“Have I? Women are women. And I know women.”

“Well, I think you’ve got this woman wrong.”

“Have I? I know this woman pretty well.”

“Sure, sure,” Larry said, smiling.

“I can even tell you her name,” Felix said.

The smile dropped from Larry’s face. He sat speechless; but Felix wasn’t waiting for an answer.

“Margaret Gault,” Felix said, grinning.

21

March came in like a daisy.

White with mild snow flurries that touched the pavement, lingered gently kissing, and then were gone. Yellow with unexpected, unseasonably bright sunshine that seemed anomalous without forsythias in bloom. Green with anxious bulbs pushing their way through frozen soil. In the city, people shed their overcoats and walked with a jaunty perkiness in their step. It had been a short winter and a mild one, and soon it would be spring.

When the telephone rang, Roger Altar was in the shower. He mumbled something about it never failing, wrapped a towel around his waist, and then went dripping into the room which served as his office. Viciously he snapped the receiver from its cradle, and viciously he said, “Hello?”

“Rog?”

“Who’s this?”

“Bert.”

“What the hell do you want, Bert?”

“Nice greeting.”

Bert Dannerdorf was Altar’s agent, a small man with bright brown eyes and a stable of successful writers. Altar was number-two horse in the stable, number-one horse being a mystery writer who outsold even Hemingway.

Dannerdorf was a good agent in that he spoke, ate, drank and slept with editors and publishers. He talked of his clients while he was eating and drinking and perhaps even when he was sleeping. There was a time when Bert had been a sideshow barker at the World’s Fair. He was no longer selling Tanya the Snake Girl but he was still giving his spiel. Broken down, his spiel said, “My writers are the best in the world,” and Bert never let you forget it.

He particularly reminded you of it when you were ready to purchase’ a property. When that moment came, Dannerdorf became the meanest, shrewdest, toughest son of a bitch in the United States. Even if his client were a run-down Western writer who lived in a Wyoming shack, when it came time to close that deal Bert acted as if the man were — at that very moment, in the dust-swept Wyoming shack — preparing his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize.

Roger Altar didn’t particularly care for business. Bert Dannerdorf thrived on it. Like Jack Spratt and his wife, they made a formidable pair.

“What the hell do you want, Bert?” Altar said. “I was in the shower.”

“Dry off, and I’ll call you back later.”

“Call me back, my ass. The floor’s soaking wet already.”

“It’s nothing important anyway,” Bert said.

“What is it?”

“That assignment of copyright.”

“What assignment of copyright?”

“You know. On ‘The Mouse Trap.’ That short-short you had in Esquire?”

“Well, what about it?” Altar asked impatiently, watching the spreading puddle at his feet.

“Nothing. We just got the assignment of copyright. In case we ever want to use it in a collection or something.”

“Great!” Altar said. “Call me sometime when I’m in bed with a girl and tell me I misplaced a comma. Do that, Bert.”

“Well, I’ll be talking to you,” Bert said, chuckling. He seemed ready to hang up. “Oh, yes, there was one other thing,” he said.

“What?” Altar asked wearily.

In a rush, unable to hold it back any longer, Bert said, “We just sold serial rights to The Fall of a Stone for fifty thousand dollars!”

“What!” Altar said.

“To Good House. A five-part serial. How does that sound? You glad I got you out of the shower?”

“Yeah, I’ll say.”

“Okay. Who’s the best literary agent in America?”

“William Morris,” Altar answered.

“Screw you,” Bert said. “They offered forty, and I jacked them up to fifty. That’s agenting.”

“Agenting is getting an assignment of copyright on ‘The Mouse Trap,’” Altar said. “That’s real agenting.”

“No gratitude,” Bert said jokingly. “Picked him up out of the gutter. Aw, no gratitude.”

“I love you,” Altar said. “Send the check.”

“It’s good news, isn’t it, Rog? Seriously.”

“It’s great news. Good work, Bert.”

“Any trouble on this check tax-wise? They’re paying it in two installments, but both’ll be this year.”

“So what can we do?”

“I can deposit part of it for you.”

“That’s illegal,” Altar said.

“You’re so legal?”

“I’m legal. I don’t want to be writing from Cell 21.”

“Okay. Go write another book. I want a new Cadillac.”

“How long a book?”

“Three hundred, four hundred pages.”

“When do you want it?”

“Tonight too early?” Bert asked.

“No, fine,” Altar said, “but first I want to finish my shower.”

Bert chuckled, and Altar chuckled, both men captured in the glowing camaraderie of just having made fifty thousand simoleons. At last they said goodbye, and Altar hung up.

He stood looking at the cradled receiver for a few moments, and then he stood looking at the puddle of water on the floor. In an exciting instant of sudden awareness, he thought, It’s started!

And then he went into the bathroom to finish his shower.

With the weather changing around them, they felt the need for more time together, more time to share. They had known autumn, and then winter, and now spring was rushing up to greet them, and they wanted to hold it close.

He told Eve that Altar wanted a sudden change in the plans, a change which might prove difficult now that the foundation had been poured. Allegedly, he was to meet Altar in the city for dinner and then thrash out the problem until it was solved — even if it took all night. Maggie told Don she was going to a dinner-baby shower in Brooklyn, and that she would not be home until very late. He’d offered to drive her, but she saw no need to pay for a baby sitter, especially when all the girls were meeting at the house of a girl in the next development who would drive them all to Brooklyn.

They met at five-thirty.

It was one of those days. It was just one of those days. The air was mild and balmy, and you wanted to say hello to strangers. You wanted to find a place where you could pick wild flowers. You wanted to kiss the air. It was just one of those days.

They had called Pat, the motel owner, and asked him to save a cabin for them, and he’d promised he would. It was only five-thirty, and the evening and the night were ahead of them. He was wearing a dark-blue suit with no topcoat, it was that mild, and she wore a red dress with a scoop neckline and cap sleeves, simulated ruby earrings on her ears. She looked quite beautiful and he felt very handsome in his blue suit. They felt as if they were really going out. It was strange, but this Tuesday night had the air of an occasion.

They ate at a small place with a pond and swans. There was candlelight at the table, and he ordered martinis first, with olives please, and the waiter brought them martinis with lemon peels, please. When they repeated their request for olives, he brought them a soup bowl full of olives. They each put four into their drinks and then ordered steaks and a bottle of Burgundy.

She did not do justice to the meal. She confessed later that she’d had a bite with Don before leaving the house; it was bad enough she’d rushed out like that, the least she could do was have dinner waiting for him when he got home from work. But she watched Larry eating, and she sipped at the Burgundy, and the color of the wine caught the color of her mouth and the glowing red of the earrings so that he leaned over the table once and kissed her fleetingly. They talked about everything they’d done that week, like a husband and wife who’ve been separated and have hundreds of stories to relate.

They talked and drank and smoked, and they watched dusk fingering the pond, watched the swans’ white down turn blue-purple smoky as the late sun faded. When they finished their meal, they walked around the pond to the car. A piano was going in the cocktail lounge, and they listened to “I’ll Remember April.” Neither spoke. He walked with his arm around her; she with her head on his shoulder.

They did not see the yellow Buick which pulled out behind them when they left the restaurant.

On the way to the motel, she remembered that she’d promised to call Don when she got to Brooklyn. They drove until they spotted a small roadhouse with the round telephone plaque outside. The place was one of those which never seem to do any business. The dining room was off to the left, dim except for a small light burning over a separate entrance door at the far end. There were no diners in the room. The telephone booth was set against the wall near the swinging doors to the kitchen. Maggie squeezed his hand and walked toward the booth; Larry went into the bar to get a package of cigarettes from the machine there. The bar was empty, except for the bartender. When he got his cigarettes, he sat at the bar, his back to it. Through the windows, he saw a yellow Buick pull off the road and then cut in to park alongside the dining room.

He sat for a few moments, noticed the juke box, went over to it, and studied the selections. He wondered if he should play a record while Maggie was talking to Don. Well, she was supposed to be at a shower. Surely girls at a shower could play music. He made his selection and went back to the stool.

“Help you, sir?” the bartender asked.

“No, thanks,” he said.

He opened the package of cigarettes, lighted one, and blew out a great cloud of smoke. Sitting and smoking, he listened to the record. When it ended, he put another coin in the juke and made another selection. It did not occur to him until the second record had spun through that Maggie was taking an inordinately long time in the phone booth. His first thought was that Don was giving her static. Figuring she could use some moral support, he stubbed out his cigarette and started for the dining room.

The boy was no older than nineteen.

He wore khaki trousers and a sports shirt. The door to the phone booth was open, and the boy was leaning into the opening.

The boy said, “Margaret, all I want...”

Larry quickened his step.

Maggie was sitting in the booth motionless. Her purse was in her lap, and her hands were clasped over the purse. She was looking at the floor of the booth, not raising her eyes to meet the gaze of the muscular young man who stood hulking over her. Larry walked directly to the booth.

“Did you want something, Bud?” he asked.

The boy did not turn. Without looking at Larry, he said, “Shove off.”

He was as tall as Larry, heavier, with bright red hair, huge arms, and a barrel chest. He stood with his broad back to Larry, his arms widespread, a palm against each side of the booth as he leaned into the opening. Completely ignoring Larry, he said, “All I want you to tell me is—”

“The lady’s with me,” Larry said. “Get away from her.”

The boy turned. His eyes flicked Larry in a fast appraisal. “You can go to hell,” he said. “I’ve been waiting a long time to—” and Larry hit him.

He hit him quite suddenly, almost before he knew what he was doing. He brought up his left fist and threw it forward in a short sharp furious jab that caught the boy on the point of his chin and sent him staggering from the booth to collide with the wall.

The boy pushed himself from the wall, cocked his fists, took a step forward, and said, “Okay, mister. You asked for it.” And then he lunged at Larry.

He first blow caught Larry on the side of his face, and he felt shocking pain as he backed away. The second punch hit him in the gut, as painful as the first, but with a dangerous accompanying effect. The second punch brought instant rage to Larry’s throat and eyes. In the space of three seconds, all of his war training came back to him. He planted his feet solidly, balanced himself, and curled his fists into hard, tight, destructive weapons. He knew that if this boy threw another punch at him, he would kill him. He would strike at his Adam’s apple and kill him. His fists balled, he waited for the boy’s attack.

The boy hesitated in mid-stride.

“Come on,” Larry said. There was barely controlled fury in his voice. His body strained forward as he waited. His eyes were unblinking, cold with menace. Perhaps the boy saw what was in Larry’s eyes. The attack did not come. Instead, the boy lowered his hands.

“Come on!” Larry said.

The boy did not move. Fear mingled with shame on his face, and then his shoulders seemed to collapse in total defeat. “All right!” he said, seemingly on the verge of tears, but he did not move. “All right, it’s over. All right, all right, it’s over,” and still he did not move.

Larry waited. The boy’s embarrassment and defeat made him curiously sad. There seemed to be countless things the boy wanted to say, but he only kept repeating senselessly, “All right, it’s over; all right, it’s over,” and then he turned abruptly and ran for the door at the far end of the room. The door slammed shut behind him. The room was still. Larry turned to the booth where Maggie sat motionless.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

Maggie nodded, but she did not look at him. Outside, an automobile started. Tires grasped shriekingly at gravel.

“Come,” he said gently. He took her hand and led her out of the booth. The yellow Buick was gone when they got outside.

In the car, he asked, “What happened?”

She was sitting silently close to him while he drove, her hands clasped over her purse. “He came in the side door after I was talking a while,” she said. “He waited until I was finished, and then he wouldn’t let me out of the booth. Did he hurt you?”

“No. What did he want?”

“If you’re bruised, you’ll have to explain it to—”

“What did he want?”

“The same thing they all want,” Maggie said softly.

“All? How often does this kind of thing happen?”

“Often enough. Forget it, Larry, please. You were very sweet and foolish, and I appreciate it. But please forget it. I’m used to it.”

“Used to what?” He felt extremely naïve all at once, and yet the idea of other men approaching her had never occurred to him. “Men annoying you?”

“Yes. Men annoying me.”

“But why should—”

“Why do you think?” she asked. “Larry, can we please drop this? I’m sorry, but it’s very upsetting. Every time it happens, I get—”

“You sound as if you’re approached ten times a day!”

“I am.”

“By whom? Which men?”

“Any men. All men. Men, Larry. Men!” She paused and then said, “Oh, Larry, forget it, please. What difference does it make? I’m what I am. Sometimes I wish I were ugly. Sometimes I hate my face and my smile and my hips and my breasts, these damn—” She shook her head. “Forget it. I’m used to it by now. Men are men, and they want what they want.”

“Does that include me?” he asked.

“I love you,” she said simply.

“You didn’t always.”

“No. And you also saw what you wanted and asked for it, didn’t you?”

“And got it,” Larry said.

“The rest don’t.”

“How do I know that?”

“Oh, please don’t sound like a suspicious husband. You’re the only one, believe me. Everyone else looks and tries to touch, but you’re the only one who—”

“How’d that boy know your name?” Larry asked abruptly.

“He didn’t.”

“He did. He called you ‘Margaret.’ I heard him.”

“He probably heard me say ‘This is Margaret’ when I started speaking to Don.”

“You said he came in after you were talking a while. How could he have heard the beginning of the conversation?”

“No, he came in while I was dialing.”

“You know him, don’t you?” Larry said.

“No.”

“Who is he?”

“I never saw him before in my life.”

“Who is he, Maggie?”

“I don’t know.”

“You do know. Why are you lying to me?”

“Stop it, Larry. Please.”

“I want to know.”

“What gives you the right to know?”

“I thought you loved me.”

“I do,” she said.

“Then that’s my right.”

“And when you know? What then? Goodbye, Maggie?”

“Why? Is the truth so terrible?”

“The truth is always terrible. You’re upset because men make passes at me. What happens when you find out—”

“... that I’m not the only one? That the boy I hit has been—”

“He hasn’t!”

“Then what is it? What are you hiding?”

She moved away from him to the opposite side of the car. Her lashes fluttered, and she seemed nervous and confused all at once, and he wanted to take her into his arms and comfort her. She lighted a cigarette inexpertly, blew out a puff of smoke, and then pulled her legs up under her on the seat, her skirt pulling back slightly over a nylon-sleek knee. Desire came full upon him in that moment. In that moment he did not want to hear her, he only wanted to hold her. And seeing his eyes, she said, “Go ahead, touch me. See if I’m real.”

“Maggie...”

“If it annoys you, it annoys me more. I don’t like it, not one damn bit. But don’t blame other men for making the same assumption you made, and still make. And don’t blame me.”

“Tell me about the boy,” he said.

“Sure.” She sighed heavily. “In July...”

She was starting a story. She had said “In July” like “Once upon a time,” and he knew from the first two words that the story would be extremely painful to her. He kept his hands tight on the wheel and his eyes riveted to the road ahead.

“Don came home one day. He had a chance to become a foreman. The factory wanted to send him to school in Detroit.” She spoke as if by rote, as if she had gone over these words in her mind until they were bare of all emotion, all meaning. “He didn’t want to go unless I said it was all right. I let him go. A woman shouldn’t stand in her husband’s way. He left. Right after the Fourth. It was a very hot Fourth, Larry. Do you remember?”

He did not answer. He was hearing the pain in her voice, and he wanted to tell her to stop, but he could not.

“It was a very hot Fourth,” she repeated! “A hot summer, too. I can remember, just standing still I would sweat. I sweat very easily. I took a lot of baths. I like baths. I always...” She stopped and sighed again. “But that summer, in July...”

She had not really begun the story yet. She was back to the beginning again, back to the words “In July.” He glanced at the speedometer and had the strangest feeling that the sands were running out all at once, that this would be the last car ride, and the last words he ever heard from her.

“I was very lonely. I told you that the first time in your car. Before you asked me out, I told you that. After Don’d been gone only a week, I was lonely, Patrick was with my mother at Montauk Point. I was alone. Things hadn’t been going right with Don, there’d been a boat ride in June... and... and maybe they’ve never gone right between him and me, and maybe they never will. I don’t know, Larry, but I missed him. And... and it was a very hot summer. Larry, do I have to tell you this?”

“Not if you don’t want to.”

“I don’t want to.”

“All right.”

“But you have to know, don’t you? Men always have to know. You have to be certain the aroma isn’t on me.” A bitterness had crept into her voice. For a moment he had the odd feeling she was no longer addressing him but some unknown specter. “All right,” she said wearily. “I was sitting outside one day, on the front stoop.”

“You don’t have to tell me.”

“On the front stoop,” she said. “The streets were very quiet, even all the children seemed to have disappeared, and all the women. I don’t know. I had the feeling I was the last person alive on earth. I was wearing shorts and a halter, it was so hot, Larry, I wasn’t trying to show off my body or anything, honestly, I hate to wear a bathing suit, I detest hungry eyes on me, I abhor it! I wore shorts and a halter because it was so hot, that’s all, only because it was so hot. And I wouldn’t have been sitting on the front stoop if there’d been any shade in the back yard. Do you believe me?”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“I don’t want you to think I was asking for anything. I never do, and I wasn’t then. I was sitting on my own front stoop, that’s all. I had my arms wrapped around my knees, and I had my hair back with a little ribbon to keep it off my face because it was so hot. The streets were empty and hot. And then a truck came around the corner.”

She caught her breath sharply.

“I don’t know if I can explain it. It was like feeling there was another survivor after an atom-bomb attack, another human being, do you know what I mean?”

“Yes.”

“The truck slowed down when it passed the house. There was a young boy behind the wheel.”

“Him?”

“Yes. Him.” She paused. “He smiled at me... and I smiled back. That was all. I swear to God, there was no more than that. He smiled, and it was a hot summer day, and I was lonely, and so I smiled back. That’s all, Larry, nothing more. He looked at me, and at the house, and then the truck went down the street, and that was the end of it. For then.”

“What happened?”

“He came back.”

“When?”

“The next night. I was ironing in the living room, and there was a knock on the door. I went to the door and opened it, and he was standing there. He said, ‘Hello. Can I have a drink of water?’ She shrugged slightly as if once again faced with the simple inevitability of the boy’s request. “I got him a glass of water.”

“Go ahead.”

Her voice was very low now. He had to strain to hear it, a whisper in the tight silence of the automobile.

“His name was Buck. Buck what, I don’t know. I never asked. I never want to know. Ever. I wish I didn’t even know his first name. I wish I’d never seen him, never smiled at him, never let him into my house.”

She stopped talking, and again he waited, and at last she sighed and went on.

“He stayed a while. We sat in the living room. I ironed, and he talked to me. He was driving the truck for his father. They carted top soil for developers. They...”

“Get to it, Maggie!”

“He kissed me.”

She glanced at Larry quickly. His eyes were on the road.

“Before he left. We were standing at the door, and I was saying good night, and suddenly he grabbed me. He was trembling all over, like a baby. He... he kissed me.”

“Did you kiss him back?”

“No. I didn’t know how to kiss before I met you. You know that.” She paused. “I didn’t want him to kiss me, but I couldn’t stop him. Finally, he left.”

The car went silent. Larry felt instant relief. He turned to her and said, “Is that what was so terri—”

“There’s more.”

His hands tightened on the wheel. The long silence before she spoke again seemed interminable.

“I... I got ready for bed after he was gone. I was in bed when the phone rang. It was him. He said he was coming over. I told him I was in bed. He said he was coming over. I told him he was crazy, that I’d call the police. He said he was coming over. I didn’t know what to do. It was late by this time, midnight at least, maybe later. I couldn’t disturb any of my neighbors, I was all alone in the house, Don in Detroit, Patrick with his grandmother. I didn’t know what to do.”

“Why didn’t you call the police?”

“And let it become the talk of the development? How could I? I locked all the doors instead. Every single one. Then I took some sleeping pills and I—”

“Sleeping pills! When you knew he was on his way? For Christ’s sake, why’d you—”

“I wanted to sleep! I couldn’t think of anything else to do, I was so frightened. Larry, I couldn’t think of anything else. I... I took two pills. I keep them. My doctor says it’s all right. Sometimes I can’t sleep.”

“Go ahead,” he said tightly, frowning.

“I was almost asleep when I heard his car pull up. The yellow Buick. He got out and came to the front door and rang, but I didn’t get out of bed. I was half drugged, anyway. I couldn’t have got up if I’d wanted to. He tried the front door and then he rang the bell again, and then I thought he went away. I didn’t know he was walking around to the back on the grass. I didn’t realize that. Until I heard him try the kitchen door. And then I heard the door open!

“I couldn’t understand it! I thought I’d locked every door, but he had got into the house. He called ‘Margaret’ from downstairs, and I lay in bed unable to move, half drugged. I was naked, Larry, it was so hot in the room, there was something wrong with the air conditioner. I tried to fight sleep. I don’t remember him coming upstairs, I don’t remember him getting into bed with me. I only remember him grabbing me and kissing my closed eyes and my breasts and—”

“For Christ’s sake, stop it!”

“... kissing me everywhere, everywhere, and then I began to wake up, began to come out of it a little, and I tried to fight him but it was too late by then, too late.”

Caustically, Larry said, “How was it?”

“It was horrible, a horrible nightmare. It was a rape, Larry, don’t you understand that?”

“No, I don’t understand it. Why’d you take those pills?”

“To escape him!”

“How’d you forget to lock an entrance door?”

“I forgot!”

“Did he tell you he loved you?”

“Yes.”

“And did you tell him you loved him?”

“No! I’ve never told that to anyone but my grandfather and you!”

“You’re lying.”

“I’m not lying, I’m not, do you think I wanted to tell you this, you asked me to, do you think I enjoyed what he did to me, do you think I enjoyed getting raped, damnit, do you think it was fun?”

“Why’d you leave the door open?”

“I thought it was locked.”

“A goddamn door is either locked or it isn’t! You wanted him to get into that house!”

“No, no, I didn’t.”

“You wanted him to find you. That’s why you took the pills, so that you couldn’t fight him, couldn’t resist him!”

“No, no!”

“You went through all the motions—”

“Stop it, stop it!”

“... but you wanted him to take you. Goddamnit, Maggie, you wanted to be—”

“All right!” she screamed. “I wanted to be raped. I was a bitch in heat, all right? The stink of it was on me, all right? It went out to all men everywhere, it filled their nostrils, it suffocated them with the stink of my hunger, all right? I wanted him, I wanted him, I wanted him!”

“You’re a whore,” he said, and without taking his eyes from the road, he lashed out at her in a backhanded slap which caught her on the side of her face and sent her reeling back against the seat.

“You fool,” she said.

“Shut up!”

“You damn stupid fool, you damn idiot. Don’t you know you’re still the first man, no matter what happened? Don’t you know you’re the only man? Oh, you stupid, stupid...”

She began crying suddenly and fitfully. He had never seen her cry before, and the sight amazed him. Her misery was complete, the fullest misery he had ever seen on the face of a woman. It was as if, secure in the beauty of her face, she could allow it to crumble completely, allow it to dissolve without mercy, permit it to twist in uncontrollable sorrow.

“Cut it out,” he said.

“I’ve... lost... you.”

“Cut it out!”

“I’ve lost you! I’ve lost you!”

She moved suddenly toward him, a surprisingly swift motion, throwing herself into his arms so that he was forced to take one hand from the wheel to support the sudden weight of her body. The car swerved out of control for an instant, and then he recaptured the wheel, and her head was on his chest, and she was still weeping bitterly, gasping for breath.

“Tell me it doesn’t matter,” she said.

Doesn’t it matter? he asked himself. Doesn’t it matter that she’s been had, didn’t I suspect it in the beginning, be honest, wasn’t it this about her which attracted me to her in the first place, didn’t I know she could be had?

“Tell me you still love me,” she said.

Love you? he thought. Do I love you? I’m mad as hell, I could kill that son of a bitch if he was here, I could kill him, I’ve turned into a fine man, a fine upstanding citizen, I hit young kids and defenseless women, the hero, the great god Cole! But do I love you? Where’s the end of this, Maggie? Where the hell was the beginning? When do we ever start knowing each other, when do we ever progress beyond strangers in the straw, or should we, should we? I’m angry, and all right it’s juvenile! I’m angry, and maybe it’s a throwback to my first concept of womanhood, the mother’s tit, the pure symbol of lily-white virginal security, but I’m still angry, and where the hell does it all lead, where does it end? If the redheaded kid had you, and if I had you, how many others can have you and will have you, goddamnit Felix Anders is right, Felix Anders is the sage of the century!

“Tell me,” she said. “Please. Please.”

Or maybe I want out, he thought. Maybe I’ve never loved her, maybe it always was biology and always will be biology, is that all life amounts to, is that all love amounts to, am I in love with Maggie or am I a statistic in the Kinsey Report?

“Tell me,” she pleaded. “Tell me.”

Sure, he thought, I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you it’s over, Maggie, finished. It’s over because I can’t understand it any more, it’s too complicated, too involved, it’s strangling me, Maggie, I can’t breathe! I know you all these months, and I haven’t begun to know you, and I’m angry and I’m sad and I want to cry and I want to fight, and I love you, I don’t know how you can do these things to me, how you can rip me up with a dagger, cut out my guts, leave me bleeding and crying and still loving you, still knowing I can’t live without you, still wanting you and needing you, goddamnit why do I need you so much, Maggie, why do I need you, you slut, you bitch, you animal, I love you, I love you.

She sat up suddenly, as if by intuition, as if she had read his thoughts and knew his mind. She yanked the wheel sharply to the right, and the car bumped over the shallow concrete rim at the side of the road, and then rolled to a stop on the grass.

He began to shake his head, but she brought her mouth very close to his lips, and her eyes glowed in the darkness, and she said, “Love me, Larry. Now!”

And he seized her to him roughly.

22

Lawn talk was in the air. You could smell it. It was not yet April, but lawn talk was just ready to burst from everyone’s mouth.

Felix Anders sucked secretly at the late March air.

The forsythias, encouraged by the mild weather, were banked in yellow fury around the six-room ranch he called his home. The emaciated tree on the front lawn was beginning to bud. White billowy clouds hung in the fair blue sky. Felix Anders sucked at the air, looking very much like a man who’d just returned home after the twelve o’clock Mass. He had, in fact, just come back from church. Felix considered himself a devout Catholic even though he did not believe in confession or birth control. He had made his peace with his faith, and he never ate meat on Fridays, nor did he ever miss Sunday Mass.

On this Sunday in late March he secretly sucked the balmy air into his lungs.

The model was behind Felix now. The parting had truly been a sorrowful one, worthy of a major film by a major movie company, complete with that last long heart-rending sigh, oozing with the terrible bittersweet knowledge of star-crossed impossibility. He could see the final scene now, almost as if it were already in the can and waiting for national distribution. The limpid eyes meeting, the unspoken words I’ll Always Love You. Pause. Even Though This Can Never Be. Double pause.

The model steps sorrowfully out of the Oldsmobile Felix Anders owns. For a moment her thigh winks at him, and he remembers again the finite pleasures of her body, the infinite treasures of her mind, remembers for only a fleeting instant. She walks away from him then, out of his life. He watches her sadly. He waves. Music up and under.

Felix sets the Oldsmobile in motion. He drives down a Cinemascope road lined with tall poplars into a Technicolor sunset. The words THE END, written on the wind, superimpose themselves over the car as it moves into the distance, farther, farther, farther, and is gone.

It was over.

Felix, the suburban father still wearing his blue Sunday Mass suit walked the length of his property holding the hand of his three-year-old son Bruce. He scrutinized the length and breadth of his seventy-by-a-hundred corner plot with the uncompromising eye of a patroon. He could feel spring pulsing in the air, rushing through his blood, singing in his veins. Felix Anders was ready for love again. Patroon-like, he studied his real estate.

“Brucie,” he said quietly, “spring is coming.”

Brucie, who was walking at the moment with a full diaper, nodded and repeated, “Sp’ing.”

“Stop beating your sister, Brucie,” Felix said “Love her. Spring is coming.”

“Love,” Brucie repeated.

The development seemed alive again after the siege of winter. All around him Felix could see people putting in shrubs and plants, people liming, giving their lawns a pre-seasonal mowing, putting up screens, painting fences. With faint superiority, he looked about him. He glanced at the women only briefly. Everyone in the development knew that Felix Anders was a reticently cold gentleman who was devoted to his explosive wife. Nothing in Felix’s glance contradicted this supposition. God, they look sweet, he thought. No more winter coats now, only sweaters and slacks, nice round little backsides and nice rounded breasts. God, women are sweet!

Across the street, behind the Cape Cod, he could see Don Gault working with a shovel. Felix looked in both directions before he crossed the street, somewhat disdainfully, as if he knew no vehicle would have the audacity to run him down. He walked past the Gault garage and then onto the grass to where Don was digging outside the kitchen windows. He did not say hello. Felix very rarely said hello first.

“Hi, Felix,” Don said, wielding the shovel.

It amused Felix that Larry Cole was having an affair with Don’s wife. It amused him greatly that a Tarzan-muscled he-man like Don Gault had a wife who was running around. It was with remarkable restraint that Felix did not burst out laughing in Don’s face.

“Hello there, Gault,” he said. “Digging a garden?”

“No,” Don said. “I’m putting in a patio.” He rested the shovel against his hip, and then wiped sweat from his forehead. “It sure is hot for March, isn’t it?” he said.

“Very unseasonable weather,” Felix agreed. “A concrete patio?”

“No, bricks. I’m going to lay a bed of sand, and then set the bricks in it.”

“I see,” Felix said.

The situation was rather hilarious. Felix hummed with the secret hilarity of it. He could not think of a more enjoyable situation than discussing patios with Don Gault when he knew Margaret Gault was running around with Larry. The entire concept was almost too comical to contain.

Don put the shovel down and reached into his pants pocket. Pulling out a package of cigarettes, he said, “Smoke?”

“Thank you,” Felix said. “I’m trying to cut down.”

“Live it up a little,” Don said. “Go ahead, have one.”

“No, thank you,” Felix repeated. “It’s my only weakness, and I’m really trying to cut down.”

“It takes a lot of will power,” Don said. “The temptation is always there. Does your wife smoke?”

“Yes.”

“Mine does, too. Not a lot, but there are always cigarettes in the house. It’s a great temptation.”

“Yes, I know what you mean,” Felix said. He thought about temptation, and he thought about Don Gault’s wife, and he had trouble keeping a straight face. He felt somewhat like God. The thought gave him no religious qualms. Today, on this day so close to spring, with his secret knowledge humming within him, talking to Don Gault, he felt somewhat like God.

“How is Margaret?” he asked kindly.

“Oh, just fine,” Don said. “Same as ever.”

“And Patrick?”

“Fine,” Don said. “You don’t mind if I smoke, do you?”

“No, no,” Felix answered, “go right ahead.”

Don lighted the cigarette and returned the package to his pocket. “You ought to learn to relax, Felix,” he said. He did not say it unkindly, but immediately afterward he added, “Don’t take offense.”

“No offense,” Felix said, smiling benignly.

“You always seem so... tense.”

“I’m not tense at all.”

“Well, dignified then. That’s what I mean.”

Felix smiled. “I don’t see anything wrong with maintaining a little dignity, Don.”

“I didn’t mean that,” Don said. He picked up the shovel. “You should live it up more. Get to know people. You’re a hard guy to get to know.”

“Really?” Felix asked. He smiled pleasantly. “Well, my life’s an open book, Don. I’m a butcher. I work in Manhattan. I live right here in Pinecrest Manor with the most wonderful woman in the world, and three adorable kids. I’m a happy man.” He paused. “Maybe I am a little quiet and introspective sometimes. Perhaps I think about things too much. But I’m sorry I give the impression of being difficult to know.”

“Well, maybe I was mistaken.”

“I guess a man like me becomes so involved with his own family that he forgets about his neighbors. I’m certainly sorry if I gave you the wrong impression.”

“No, no, forget it,” Don said. “Please, forget it.” He drew in on his cigarette. “How’s Betty?”

“Fine, thank you.”

“The kids?” Don asked, looking down at Brucie and tousling his hair.

“All in fine shape,” Felix said.

“Good, good.”

Both men were silent for a while. Don smoked his cigarette, and Felix hummed secretly with his silent knowledge. Don didn’t seem too anxious to get back to work.

“Where’s Margaret now?” Felix asked.

“Inside. Napping.” Don shrugged. “Lazy Sunday.”

“Sleeps a lot, does she?”

“Catches a nap every now and then. You know how women are.”

“Certainly.” Felix smiled. “Tired, is she?”

“Not tired, just... you know. A little sleepy, I guess. You know.”

“Sure.”

They stood silently for another few moments. At last Felix said, “Well, I guess I’ll be strolling along. Let you get back to digging up that grass.”

“I’ll see you,” Don said. He stepped on his cigarette and then pushed the point of his shovel into the earth.

“Shobel digger,” Brucie said.

“Yes,” Felix answered. “Shobel digger.” Turn the earth, Don, he thought as he walked away. Don’t let any grass grow under your feet. Your sweet wife sure as hell isn’t letting any grow under hers.

He almost burst out laughing.

God, it was good to be alive. God, it was wonderful!

“Do you know why she sleeps so much, Brucie?” he asked his son.

“S’eep?” Brucie said.

“Yes, seep. Do you know why?”

“Why?” Brucie asked, annoyed by the diaper, not having the faintest idea what his father was talking about, but humoring him anyway.

“Because when she sleeps, my son, she escapes. She flies to the arms of her lover. That’s why. Love. Be a lover, son. When you grow up, love them all.”

“Okay,” Brucie said, nodding, still not understanding a word his father was saying.

Felix Anders was ready.

He walked the streets of Pinecrest Manor, and he nodded politely to all the busy busy men, and he glanced only briefly at the sweet women in their sweet slacks and sweaters, so rounded, so sweet. He was ready.

When he saw the dark-haired girl, he didn’t recognize her at first. She was wearing tapered black slacks, and she was bent over digging into the earth at the front of the house, the black hair hanging girlishly over one eye. She looked very feminine and inexpert and Felix thought, How goddamned sweet women are.

She tossed her hair back then, lifting her head in a youthful, impatient movement, whipping the long black hair back over her shoulder. She was wearing a sweater, and her breasts were gently cradled by the wool, sweet, sweet.

“Oh, hi, Felix,” she said. “Taking a little stroll?”

He walked over to her, holding his son’s hand. “Out for my constitutional,” he said. “What are you doing, Eve?”

“Oh, trying to get something to grow,” Eve said. “I’ve never seen earth as stubborn as Pinecrest Manor’s, have you?”

“No,” Felix said. He kept watching Eve. There was a faintly bored smile on his mouth, a flicker of awakening intelligence in his green eyes. “You have to work it,” he said. He kept watching her. “If you work it, it’ll yield.”

Smiling, he watched her.

The sweat rolled down Don’s muscular arms, staining the handle of the shovel. He worked in old Army fatigue trousers and a khaki undershirt. The sun, so strong for March, beat down on his wide muscular back as he dug into the earth with his spade. There was an oppressively rich aroma to the freshly turned soil.

The memory did not come to him in an instant flash. He supposed later that the memory had been creeping up on him all the while he worked, and that the bird call had simply been the final triggering element to a long line of preceding elements — the Army costume, the hot sun, the smell of earth. He was using the spade with muscular force, pushing the point into the grass sod, shoving at it with the arch of his foot, digging deep, turning the shovel with a powerful wrist motion, getting under the sod and lifting it. He did not want to destroy good grass. He could use the sod to fill in patches on the front lawn. He could feel perspiration on his back and in his armpits and across his forehead, but it felt good to be out working with his hands. Foot by foot, he had measured out the proposed patio, indicated its boundaries with string, and then had begun digging. And all the while he dug, the memory of the island grew stronger and stronger, the rich fetid smell of the earth, the hot sun, the sweat; and then the bird call triggered it.

The leaves had been wet that day, despite the heat of the sun. It was impossible to move through the jungle without getting soaked to the skin. It was hard to breathe in the jungle. The air was dense and still, crowded with the exhalation of growing things, crowded in a tight, hot, timeless green prison. He moved through the jungle alone. He knew the rest of the men in his company were spread out in a wide arc working its way across the face of the island in a mopping-up operation. But if a man moved five feet away from you into the foliage, you could no longer see him. And so, though he knew he was part of a team, he felt alone.

He did not want to use his machete. If he ran across any Japs, he wanted his rifle in his hands where he could fire it instantly. He did not want to be caught swinging a machete by any goddamned Gook. He wanted to be ready. And so he moved cautiously, the machete speared through his belt to the right of the grenades. He wore no pack. He wore jungle issue gear and a netted helmet, and the sweat ran down the sides of his square face, trickled from his strong jaw onto his neck. The stock and barrel of the Browning automatic were moist with jungle sweat. He kept his finger inside the trigger guard, ready to fire. He did not want to be ambushed.

When he came upon the Jap, he was quite surprised.

He would have fired instantly if the Jap had burst from the jungle swinging a sword or leveling a rifle. But he had stumbled upon the enemy completely unaware; perhaps he should have fired the moment he saw him anyway, but he did not.

The Jap was an officer.

He knew that the moment he saw the Samurai sword in his belt and the insignia of his rank on the lapels of his blouse. He could not read the rank, but he knew that no enlisted Japanese soldier wore such insignia. The man was sitting against the trunk of a tree smoking. He carried no rifle. There was a pistol hanging in a holster on his belt. That, and the long Samurai sword. Nothing else.

He had not heard Don. He sat smoking leisurely under the tree, as if the island had not been exposed to bombing and shelling for the past four days, as if a Marine assault wave had not stormed the underwater barbed wire and the concrete pillboxes on the slopes facing the sea, as if the Army had not swarmed ashore and driven the enemy back across the island, as if the simplest mopping-up exercise were not now in operation.

He sat smoking casually. He might have been sitting on an outdoor terrace somewhere in Fukuoko, listening to a woman play a Japanese stringed instrument, watching the sun sink, watching the mountains of his homeland turn purple with dusk. He seemed completely unconcerned with the war, with the island, with the uniform he was wearing. For an instant suspended in time, Don had the strangest urge to walk to the man, sit down beside him, and share a smoke with him. And then the absurdity of the whim struck him. He felt the hackles at the back of his neck rising, felt his scalp begin to prickle beneath the netted helmet.

The Japanese officer looked up.

His eyes locked with Don’s. He made no move for either the pistol or the sword. He sat beneath the tree with the thin cigarette curling smoke up past his face. The face was bearded and browned. The cheekbones were high, and the nose was flat, the eyebrows thick and black over hooded Oriental eyes. The man smiled. A gold tooth flashed in the corner of his mouth.

“Ah,” he said in English. “At last.”

His use of English startled Don. He knew the man was an officer, but he had not expected him to use English, and his knowledge of the language made him seem less the enemy.

“Don’t move,” Don said.

The man was still smiling. “I won’t,” he answered. “I’ve been waiting for you.” His English was very good. He had probably been educated in the States, Don thought, and this too lessened the concept of enemy.

“Get up,” Don said.

The officer rose. He was very small. He didn’t seem more than a boy. It was difficult to judge his age. Don knew an officer couldn’t be too young, but the man nonetheless had the stature of a boy, and would have seemed adolescent were it not for the thick black beard and the Oriental eyes — somehow aged, somehow ancient.

“Drop your belt,” Don said. “Quick.”

The officer continued smiling. He unclasped his belt. The holster, pistol, sword and scabbard fell soundlessly to the jungle floor, cushioned by the lush green mat.

“And now?” the officer asked.

“Hands up,” Don said, and immediately wondered if he’d made a mistake, wondered if the Jap were holding primed grenades under his arms, tucked pinless into his armpits.

“You’re not going to take a prisoner, are you?”

“Hands up!” Don shouted, still worried about the grenades, but more afraid that the Jap would leap at him. He was sweating heavily now. The sweat was cold. He could feel his fingers trembling inside the trigger guard of the piece.

The officer raised his hands. “Didn’t they tell you about taking prisoners?” he asked.

“Shut up,” Don said.

The man continued smiling. “I was waiting for you,” he said, “because I want to die.”

“You shut up,” Don said. “Come on, we gotta... we gotta move back.”

“I want you to shoot me,” the officer said.

“Never mind what you want. Come on.” He jerked up the BAR. “Come on.”

“No,” the officer answered, still smiling.

They were separated by five feet of jungle vegetation. They stood opposite each other, and Don swallowed the tight dryness in his throat, and then the bird began shrieking somewhere in the trees, a crazy discordant shriek, CAW-CAW-EEEEEE! EEEEE-CAW! EEEEE-CAW! The jungle reverberated with the terrible music of the bird.

“Come on,” Don said.

“Shoot me,” the officer said, smiling.

“I ain’t gonna—”

“Shoot me, you Yank bastard,” the Jap said.

“Look. Look, I gotta take you back to—”

“Shoot me, Yank warmongering bastard. Shoot me!”

The bird continued to shriek. EEE-CAW! EEE-CAW! Except for the bird, the jungle was still. The officer continued smiling. He continued watching Don and talking to him, and smiling while the bird shrieked and shrieked. The BAR was getting heavy. Don’s hand was wet on the barrel.

“Come, Yankee son of a bitch, shoot me. Shoot me, you dirty Yank bastard!”

Don swallowed again. He could feel the cords on his neck standing out, could feel his heart drumming in his chest. He was drenched now, soaked, standing with a lethal BAR in his hands, listening to the insane scream of the bird, listening to the rising voice of the officer, the smiling officer who calmly stood waiting to be killed. The string of epithets flowed from the officer’s mouth in rising fury, endlessly spewing. All the while, he smiled. All the while, the bird screamed.

Don did not want to squeeze the trigger.

He did not want to kill this man who had sat complacently and smoked his cigarette, who was a real man with a real face, a man with a boy-body and ancient eyes, who spoke English, who did not at all seem like a murderous enemy, he did not want to kill this man, he did not want to kill.

But the officer continued to hurl blasphemy at Don, smiling all the while, eventually striking a combination of words, whichever combination it was, a combination hurled from his smiling mouth unwittingly as he sought profanity after profanity, a combination which did the trick.

“Shoot, Yank bastard. Shoot son of a bitch. Shoot bastard. Shoot rotten rich American warmonger. Shoot big-shot Yank prick bastard. Shoot Yank jerkoff! Shoot rotten bastard mother-raper Yank! Shoot—”

He fired.

His finger jerked spasmodically on the trigger and then held it captured, and the automatic weapon bucked in his hands, and he could see the slugs as they ripped into the Jap’s tunic, tore into the Jap’s face, exploded the ancient eyes in pain. The officer fell to the jungle mat silently. The bird shrieked EEEE-CAW! CAW-CAW-EEEEEEE! and then was silent. Don began crying.

Sobbing, the tears streaming down his face and mingling with the sweat, he stood with the rifle dangling foolishly, and he said, “You shouldn’t have said that, you shouldn’t have said that,” crying fitfully all the while.

Now a decade and more later, in the back yard of a development house in Pinecrest Manor, he dropped his spade because he could no longer hold it in his trembling fingers.

“Margaret!” he shouted. “Margaret, where the hell are you?”

Angrily, he strode to the house.

23

They were almost discovered on a Tuesday in April.

“Overconfidence is the biggest danger,” Felix Anders had said as far back as February, but Larry had not paid much attention to him at the time. They were, after all, exceptionally careful; they no longer met and talked at the bus stop; they continually changed the place of their weekly assignation; they tried to alternate between day and night meetings; Maggie no longer used the Signora as a sitter; and Larry no longer used Felix Anders as a confidant. They had become expert at the dangerous game they played and, as experts, perhaps they became overconfident without realizing it.

Their overconfidence on that late Tuesday afternoon took them to a diner not a mile from Pinecrest Manor. It was, in all fairness, a place not frequented too often by residents of the development. There were closer and better diners. But it was only a mile away and they should not have stopped there for coffee on the way back from the motel.

They left the diner at about four-thirty. It was a bright sunlit day, and they walked hand in hand toward the Dodge. The car was parked at one end of the lot, alongside a high curbing. As they approached the car, they noticed that a dual-control automobile from a driving school was attempting to park behind it.

“There goes one of my fenders,” Larry said, laughing, still holding Maggie’s hand.

“That’s pretty sensible,” Maggie said, looking at the back of the woman driver’s head. “He’s teaching her to park off the street. She can’t get into any trouble that way.”

“Very sensible,” Larry said. “All she can do is smash up my car.”

The driving-school car was alongside the Dodge now. The woman driver turned the wheel and then cut back sharply. Larry and Maggie stood by holding hands, waiting for the woman to clear them.

“Do you know the one about the dual-control car that smacks into a truck?” Larry asked, and suddenly Maggie shook his hand free.

“Mary Garandi,” she whispered.

For a moment he didn’t understand her. “What?” he said.

“The driver,” she whispered, and her meaning became suddenly and shockingly clear.

Mary turned toward the instructor at that moment, saw Larry and Maggie, and blinked in slow recognition. Then she smiled and waved.

“Bluff it,” Larry whispered. “I just met you here. Smile. Wave at her. Quick, Mag, wave!”

Maggie smiled in false exuberance. She lifted her hand limply and waved. Mary Garandi said something to the instructor and then opened the door on her side of the car.

“Oh, Jesus,” Larry said, “she’s coming over.”

“Larry, what are we—”

“Shhhh!”

Mary was grinning like a toothpaste commercial. “Hey, how’d you like that parking?” she asked. She was wearing Arthur’s Navy pea jacket over a flowered housedress. She always looked as if she had just come from swabbing a deck somewhere anyway, but Larry couldn’t understand why she felt the need for a heavy coat on a day like this. She was beaming from ear to ear, apparently concerned only with her mother-turtle accomplishment of having parked the car some four feet from the curb. It had not yet occurred to her that the woman with Larry Cole was not his wife, or that the man with Margaret Gault was not her husband.

Anticipating the coming of the dawn, his heart pounding, Larry said, “This is like old home week, isn’t it? First I run into Mrs. Gault in the diner, and now we run into you. Would you like a cup of coffee, Mary?”

“No, thank you. How are you, Margaret?”

“Fine,” Maggie said. “Isn’t this the funniest thing, though? You can walk all over the development without meeting a soul you know, and here the three of us meet miles away from the place.” She grinned feebly, wondering if she were driving the point home too hard. She had almost, despite her fear, burst out laughing when Larry called her Mrs. Gault. She was concerned now only with the task of impressing upon Mary that this was purely a chance meeting. Mary, however, seemed to have more important things than infidelity on her mind.

“Did you see me park?” she asked excitedly.

“You did very well,” Larry said, trying to be nonchalant but thinking. This idiot will explode the bubble. This idiot will destroy us! “How long have you been driving?”

“Just two weeks. Listen, this is costing me five dollars an hour. I have to get back. Listen, what are you doing here anyway?”

“I was shopping for a dress,” Maggie said. “You know the little shop, don’t you?” She knew full well that Mary Garandi did not know the little shop; she herself did not know whether there was a little shop or a big shop or any kind of a shop anywhere near by.

“Sure,” Mary said. She was still smiling, but she looked at Larry inquisitively and he felt the first seed of suspicion as it took root in her mind and then spread slowly onto her face.

“I was in the city all day,” he said. “Stopped off for a cup of coffee, and who do I meet? Mrs. Gault.” He smiled. He was trying to make this thing a nice neighborhood type outing full of good spirit and brimming with the curiosities of fate and chance. “Do you have your car with you, Mrs. Gault?” he asked.

“No, I took a cab,” Maggie said.

“Well, can I drop you off?” he asked. “I’m going home, anyway.”

“That’s awfully nice of you,” Maggie said.

For some reason, the stiff formality of Larry’s offer and the polite acceptance of it by Maggie seemed to dispel whatever suspicions Mary Garandi had. “I’ve got to get back,” she said. “Give my regards, will you?” She gave the pea jacket a slap and walked back to the dual-control car. Larry and Maggie watched, speechless. She backed out of her space, waved to them, executed a wild turn, and then cut into the street without signaling and without looking to see if there was any oncoming traffic.

When the car was out of sight, Larry said, “Whew.”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know.”

“She seemed suspicious.”

“Yes.”

“What shall we do?”

“Let’s get in the car first.”

They walked to the car. When they were seated, Larry said, “We can’t talk this over too long. She may be home before us, Maggie. She lives right across the street from me!”

“I know.”

“Do you think she—”

“I don’t know,” Maggie said. “I thought so for a while, but then she seemed all right.” She paused. “Shall we tell them?”

“I think so. I’ll drop you off right at your door. We’ll make it a friendly kind of thing. I’ll tell Eve I ran into you at the diner. It’s the only thing we can do. Mary may open her mouth.”

“All right, I’ll tell Don, too. This was stupid, Larry.”

“Yes, but it’s done.”

“Are you frightened?”

“A little.”

“I am, too.”

“All right, let’s get it over with.”

“Call me as soon as you can,” Maggie said. “I’ll be dying.”

“I’ll call you.”

“All right. Let’s go, Larry. Please. I’m very nervous about this. Let me know. Please call me tonight.”

He dropped her off in front of her house. They hid nothing. When he stopped the car, he got out, went around to her side, and opened the door for her. Don was not yet home, and he was grateful for that. Some of Maggie’s neighbors watched her as she got out of the car, but none of them seemed particularly interested or excited by what was happening. He said goodbye in a friendly way and, in perhaps a louder voice than was necessary, she said, “Thank you so much. Give my regards to Eve, won’t you?” and then she went into the house.

When he got home, he told Eve about his supposed day in the city and then said, “Oh, a funny thing happened.”

“What was that?” Eve asked.

“I stopped for a cup of coffee on the way home. The diner up on the turnpike. I ran into both Margaret Gault and Mary Garandi. It’s a small world, all right.”

“What happened?”

“Oh, the usual,” Larry said. “We talked for a few minutes, and then I asked them if I could drive them home. I dropped Margaret off.”

“What’d you talk about?” Eve asked.

“With whom?”

“Margaret.”

“Who remembers? I don’t think she’s very bright, do you?”

“What makes you say that?”

“Just the impression I got,” he said. “What’s for dinner, hon?”

The episode, in his home at least, was over.

It remained for him to find out how things had gone in Maggie’s house. He planned to go up to the center to call her immediately after dinner. But the Porters dropped in just as he and Eve were finishing the dishes. Trapped in the house, he fidgeted nervously all night long, hoping Phyllis and Murray would leave early so that he could get out on the pretext of needing some air. They did not leave until two in the morning. He could not risk awakening Don at that hour.

He went to sleep, tossing fitfully all night.

The telephone is our burglar’s tool, he thought.

Sitting in the phone booth the next morning, he found it impossible to conceive of anyone ever having had an affair before the telephone was invented. This was the assurance and the reassurance which kept them together during the week-long separation. This was the advance scout which checked and double-checked on possible danger, warned of it, prepared for it. This was the single grappling hook which connected two separately revolving worlds from which two people had somehow been stolen and thrown together. The telephone was an absolute necessity.

And so was the loose change, he thought, reaching into his pocket. Hastily, he deposited his dime and dialed.

Because the phone calls were stolen, they had to be speedily inserted into the normal routine of two separate lives. There was no time to cash a dollar bill or a fifty-cent piece, no time to linger at the cash register where a curious neighbor might engage you in conversation and then surmise you cashed your bill to make a phone call. He could think of only two conceivable reasons for using a local public phone booth if you had a phone at home. Either you were calling your wife to decipher an item on the shopping list or you were calling another woman. He could understand a curious neighbor buying the undecipherable item the first time around. He could not picture that neighbor buying the same story twice. So it was essential that he have ready change in his pockets, change that would take him quickly into a store or a filling station or a restaurant and then quickly to the phone booth. Once inside the booth, he could turn his back to the glass doors and make his call anonymously.

Now, as the phone rang on the other end, as he wondered why Maggie did not answer it, he realized he had learned to hoard small change like a miser.

Nickels and dimes, quarters, he collected faithfully, cached them in his jewelry box with his cuff links. He never left the house without an assortment of change in his pockets. He assumed it was the same for any man involved with another woman, and he wondered what would happen on that fictitious day in the future of America when suspicious housewives across the face of the nation decided to hold an unannounced inspection of their husbands’ pockets.

“Hello?” the voice said.

“Hi,” he answered. The voice sounded almost like Maggie’s, but the shading was slightly off. He almost said “Maggie?” and then something stopped him, something warned him of danger, and he said instead, “Who’s this?”

“Who’s this?” the voice asked.

He was sure now that the woman was not Maggie. He said, “This is Fred Purley of Purley Real Estate. May I speak to Mrs. Gallanzi, please?”

“I think you have the wrong number,” the voice said.

“Isn’t Isabel Gallanzi there?”

“No,” she said, “you have the wrong number.”

“Oh, excuse me. I’m sorry,” he said, and he hung up.

He called back later that day.

“Hello?” the same voice said.

He recognized the voice at once this time. Abruptly, bringing his voice down an octave, he said, “Lemmee talk to Joe.”

“Who?”

“Joe. Joey. Lemmee talk to him.”

“There’s no Joey here,” the woman said. “You have the wrong number.”

“Argh, goddamnit,” Larry said, and he hung up.

He was unable to reach her for three days, and now when that same infuriating voice came onto the line, the voice that was so close to Maggie’s without being hers, he was ready to scream at it.

“Hello?” the voice said.

“Honey, this is Sam,” he answered instantly. “You said you wanted ice cream, but you didn’t—”

“You must have the wrong number,” the woman said.

“Alice?”

“No. You have the wrong number.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, and he hung up.

He called four more times that day, and each time he got the same woman who was not Maggie. The last time, he had run out of voice variations. When she said “Hello?” he simply hung up.

He did not want to go to Felix, but he could see no other choice open to him. He stopped off at the Anders’ house on the way home from the bakery. Felix was outside with June, his youngest child. At the Gault Cape Cod across the street, Larry could see no sign of life.

“Can you talk?” he asked Felix.

“What’s the matter? You look in a bad way.”

“We were spotted Tuesday,” Larry said, “and now I can’t get her on the phone. I’m going out of my mind.”

“Relax,” Felix said masterfully. To his daughter, he said, “Junie, don’t pull out the grass.” His daughter nodded, yanked up a clump of grass and stuck it into her mouth, clinging earth and all. Felix pulled it away from her and slapped her hand. “Damn kid sticks everything in her mouth,” he said to Larry. “She swallowed a whole package of phonograph needles last week. Would you believe it?”

“Felix, could you ask around? Ask Betty? Find out what’s happening?”

“Who saw you?”

“Mary Garandi.”

“She’s harmless. A dope.”

“Then why hasn’t Maggie answered the phone?”

“Maybe she’s in the shower.”

“Since Tuesday?”

“Maybe she went away for a while.”

“She didn’t say anything about it.”

“Women are funny. Maybe she went away to think. They like to think a lot. Or at least they like to think they’re thinking. Women don’t really know how to think. Most of their thought emanates from their—”

“Felix, would you find out, please?”

“I’ll try. I can’t ask too many questions or Betty’ll tip. You don’t want Betty to tip, do you?”

“No. But I want to know.” Again he looked across at the Gault house. It seemed empty and silent.

“I’ll try. Can I do more than that?” He smiled. “How’s Eve?”

“Fine.”

“Pretty woman,” Felix said pleasantly.

“Felix, will you find out?”

“Sure,” Felix said. “I’ll try.”

On Monday morning Felix went to work as usual in the Lexington Avenue butcher shop. He changed his clothes in the back room, and then went out to cut meat. At ten o’clock he was slicing cutlets. With his left hand pressed against the meat, he skillfully worked the sharp blade of the knife through the cutlet, stopping just before it was completely severed, and then flipped it open to form a thinner, larger cutlet. He swept some scraps of meat from the chopping block into the bloody bucket behind it, lifted the waxed paper with its meat, and put it onto the scale.

“A pound of veal cutlets, Italian style,” he said. “Anything else, dear?”

The young matron standing before the counter pointed into the glass display case. “How are the sweetbreads?”

“Sweeter than you, dear,” Felix answered, smiling.

“Stop it, Felix,” the woman said, returning the smile. “If they’re fresh, I’ll take half a pound.”

“Fresh and sweet,” he said, and he opened the case. At the back of the shop, the telephone rang. His partner lifted it from the hook and then yelled, “Felix! It’s for you!”

“Excuse me, dear,” Felix said to the woman. Wiping his hands on his blood-stained apron, he went to the phone. “Hello?” he said.

“Felix, this is Larry Cole.”

“Who?” He paused. “Oh, Larry, yes. How’s it going, Larry?”

“Did you find out?”

“Find out?” Felix frowned. “Oh! Oh, yeah, yeah, that’s right. I was supposed to call you, wasn’t I?”

“Well, what is it?”

“She’s sick.”

There was a silence on the line.

“What do you mean sick?” Larry asked. “Is it anything serious?”

“Just a virus. But she had a fever, and they won’t let her out of bed. The phone’s downstairs. That’s why she hasn’t been answering it.”

“Who’s the woman there?”

“Her mother.”

“Oh.”

There was another long pause.

“Why don’t you go see her?” Felix asked, grinning.

“Maybe I will,” Larry said.

“Don’t be stu—” Felix started, but Larry had already hung up.

The woman who answered the door could have been no one but Maggie’s mother. The same hair and eyes, the same figure, older, not as sharply defined, but the same figure.

“Yes?” she asked. Her voice, too, was very like Maggie’s. It held the slight tremolo of advanced years, but as a girl her voice must have been Maggie’s exactly.

“Hello,” Larry said pleasantly. “I’m one of the Gaults’ neighbors. We heard Margaret was ill. I thought I’d stop by.”

Mrs. Wagner appriased him silently. “How nice,” she said. “Come in.”

Larry stepped into the hall. It was the first time he’d been inside the Cape Cod, and he felt rather strange, more like the intruder than he’d ever felt.

“She’s uptairs,” Mrs. Wagner said. “I’ll see if she’s decent.”

“Mother?” Maggie called. “Who is it?”

“It’s just Larry Cole,” Larry answered. “Heard you were sick.” His heart was pounding. He was sure her mother could hear the pounding.

“Oh, come up, Larry,” she said, and there was so much warmth and longing in her voice that he almost ran for the steps. He restrained himself and allowed Mrs. Wagner to precede him. Over her shoulder, she said, “I’m Margaret’s mother, Elizabeth Wagner.”

“How do you do?” Larry said.

“You live right in the development, do you?”

“Yes.”

“How nice,” Mrs. Wagner said. “No work today?”

“Hmh?”

“It’s Monday. Are you—”

“Oh, I work at home mostly.”

“That’s very convenient,” Mrs. Wagner said. “What do you do?”

“I’m an architect.”

“That’s a nice profession.”

“Yes.”

They walked into the bedroom.

She sat in the center of a large canopied bed. She was wearing a sheer bedjacket under which was a nylon gown, and he was ashamed of himself for the first thought which entered his mind. But he could not keep his eyes away from the sharp impact of her nipples against the sheer fabrics. She wore no lipstick, no makeup. For the first time since he’d known her, the tiny scar was distinct and clear, a miniature white cross on her cheek. Her hair was pulled back into a pony tail. She looked very pale and very tired, and she smiled weakly when he came into the room with her mother.

“Hello, Larry,” she said.

“Hello, Margaret,” he answered. He smiled. He wanted to rush to the bed and take her into his arms. “How are you?”

“She’s feeling much better,” Mrs. Wagner said, standing at the foot of the bed, looking first at Margaret and then at Larry.

“Are you?” he asked her.

“Yes.”

“What’ve you got?”

“A virus.”

“They’re murder.”

“Yes.”

“Did you have any fever?”

“Yes. But I’m all right now. How’s Eve?”

“Fine.”

“And the children?”

“Fine.”

“I got sick last week. Don called my mother. He has to work, you know. He couldn’t stay home to take care of an invalid.”

“I see,” Larry said. His eyes locked with hers. Her face looked pure and young and untouched and magnificently beautiful.

“How’d you know I was sick?”

“One of the neighbors mentioned it. Eve would have come by, too,” he said, glancing at Mrs. Wagner, “but she had shopping to do.”

“Would you like some coffee, Mr. Cole?” Margaret’s mother asked.

“If it’s not any trouble.”

“None at all. I have some on the stove.” She smiled briefly and left the room. The moment she was gone, Maggie held out her arms and he rushed to her.

“Darling, darling,” he said. “I was frantic. I called and called...”

“I know. All those wrong numbers. I died each time. They wouldn’t let me out of bed. Larry, Larry, how I’ve missed you.” He reached for her mouth, and she turned her head away. “Don’t kiss me. You’ll catch it.”

“I don’t care.”

He kissed her, and she clung to him and said, “Did it go all right? That day with Mary?”

“Yes. You?”

“Yes. Oh, Larry, I didn’t know how much your voice meant to me. I didn’t realize how much I needed it every day. Let me look at you.” She studied him and said, smiling, “You look handsome.”

“I need a shave.”

“I don’t care. Your face is so rough, so strong. Put your face against mine.”

He held her close and asked, “When can you get up?”

“I have to stay in bed at least another two days.”

“Can I see you Thursday night?”

“Yes. Larry, how will I live until then?”

“I know, I know,” he said, and his hands dug into her shoulders.

“Will you come to see me again?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Of course not. This was a silly chance you took. But I’m so glad you came. When I heard your voice—”

“Shhh,” he said.

“She’s coming. Tell me. Quick.”

“I love you.” He kissed her unpainted mouth briefly and then moved away from the bed. Mrs. Wagner came into the room with a tray.

“I didn’t know what you took,” she said, “so I brought all the fixings.” Casually, she said to Maggie, “What does he take, Margaret?”

“He... I don’t know,” Maggie said.

They chatted leisurely while they had their coffee. Larry stayed for a half hour and then left. They looked at each other constantly during that half hour. After Mrs. Wagner showed him to the door, she came upstairs and went to the bed.

“So that’s him,” she said to Margaret.

Margaret said nothing. She lay with her head turned into the pillow, looking out the window.

“And it’s happened to you,” Mrs. Wagner said.

And with perhaps the first honest words she’d spoken to her mother since the day her grandfather died, she said, “Yes, it’s happened to me.”

It had, apparently, also happened to Linda and Hank.

It had happened with all the ferocity and all the painfully terrible sweetness of youth. Conditioned beforehand by the overt propaganda of the communications industry, they knew what to expect of love; but its unexpectedness startled them nonetheless.

The street on which they parked that night was completely unsuitable for necking during the winter months. During those months the trees were bare and the street lamps illuminated the entire block with scrutinizing intensity. Now, in April, the trees were filling out, and they cloaked the parked car in dappled denseness.

Hank McLean was not a coward, but he’d had an automobile experience which had caused him to become somewhat cautious. He and his friends had discovered a dark houseless street at the top of a hill, a dead-end street which dropped away to give a remarkable view of the sprawling lighted foothills below. It was a good spot for necking. You were safe from the police there, and the spot was certainly romantic as hell and worked particularly well with girls who needed that extra bit of encouragement before getting in the mood. He had gone there regularly with different girls. Sometimes he’d spotted his friends’ cars on the hill, and this had lent a fraternal feeling to the ritual of necking.

One night, long before he’d met Linda, he’d gone there with a girl named Suzie. None of his friends were there that night. Alone, he and Suzie parked at the top of the hill some three feet from the edge of the drop. Suzie was a girl who didn’t need encouragement. Suzie was a girl who, legend had it, had almost been kicked out of college because of a rather spirited session in the storage room behind the little theater’s stage while a play was in rehearsal. Not that Suzie was a pig. She wasn’t. She was a damn pretty girl, and Hank enjoyed her company. She just didn’t need encouragement, that was all. She was rather spirited, that was all.

They had begun necking almost instantly. They’d been exchanging kisses for perhaps fifteen minutes when the headlights appeared behind them. Curiously, Hank never once thought it might be the police. This hilltop spot, he was certain, had not yet been discovered by the fastidious minions of the law. He thought for a moment that it might be one of his friends. So he stepped on his brake pedal in three rapid dashes, which, had the car behind him belonged to a friend, would have been answered by a rapid flick of the headlights.

The car’s headlights did not flick.

Instead, the car pulled up directly behind Hank’s car, almost bumper to bumper. The doors of the car opened and four boys stepped out. It was then that Hank felt his first twinge of fear.

Luckily, it was December, and the windows of his car were rolled up. Just as luckily, and totally by chance, both his door and the door on Suzie’s side of the car were locked. The boys surrounded the car. “Open up!” they shouted, and Hank started the engine. One boy began pounding at the window on his side of the car. Hank looked behind him. He could not back away for a turn because the other car was too close. Nor could he move forward because the drop was too near to permit a turn. He had the sudden vision of himself getting beat up and Suzie getting raped. He knew this would represent no particular loss on Suzie’s part, but the entire idea revolted him. Suzie was with him. He had, in effect, made a bargain with her when he’d asked her out. He was her escort. And escorts didn’t go around letting girls get raped, no matter what the state of their virtue.

He noticed then that there was no one behind the wheel of the other car. He noticed at the same time that the boy on his side was searching the ground for a rock or a stick or anything with which he could shatter the window. “Open up, you bastard!” one of the boys shouted, and Hank realized he had to act now or take what was certainly coming within the next few minutes. He sucked in a deep breath, pushed the gearshift lever into reverse, and then rammed his foot onto the accelerator.

He hit the car behind him with considerable force. He did not take his foot from the accelerator. He felt a surge of delighted relief when the car behind him began to move. He threw his own car into low, moved forward some six feet, almost running over one of the shouting boys, and then went into reverse again, picking up speed as he headed for the other car. He hit it with a solid smash this time, the speed of an extended run behind him. The other car began rolling backward.

A boy leaped onto the running board, shouting and cursing, pounding at the window. Hank’s car was an old one, but it withstood the boy’s fist nonetheless. With elbow room now, he swung around in an arc, backed off, and then faced his car down the hill. He stepped on the gas pedal suddenly so that the car lurched forward, knocking the boy from the running board. The other car had stopped rolling, captured by the bank at the side of the road; but it was out of his way now, and he gunned his old car forward and raced down the hill.

Suzie was petrified beside him. She sat crouched on the seat, looking through the rear window, trembling. He came very close to loving her while she was trembling. She seemed more like a woman in her fear than she did while exchanging passionate kisses. The attacking boys did not give chase. He took Suzie directly home. At the front door, she kissed him with grateful tenderness. He stopped thinking he might love her as soon as she went into the apartment. But the experience that night had taught Hank a lesson. He discussed it with his friends, and they reached the conclusion that they would thereafter search out streets which were dark but lined with houses.

The street on which he parked with Linda Harder that April night was one which had been uncovered in the corporate search.

He wanted to kiss Linda, but she was in an extremely talkative mood that night. She had been rattling on for the past five minutes about a boy who’d given her a Stevenson button, and Hank was beginning to dislike Intellectuals and Democrats everywhere.

“He was just a fat little boy,” Linda said, “but he had these wonderful dimples in his cheeks, and this big toothy smile. I was terribly in love with him, and he never paid me the slightest bit of attention.”

“Until the Democrats nominated Stevenson,” Hank said.

“Yes. And then he just came up to me one day and said, ‘Here, vote for Stevenson.’ And he handed me the campaign button. I’ve still got it. It was the first time he’d singled me out for anything, the first time he showed he knew I was alive. I can’t tell you how important it made me feel.”

“I’ll have to buy you a trunkful of campaign buttons. Willkie, Landon, Roose—”

“I don’t need that with you, Hank,” Linda said. “I feel important all the time with you.”

“Do you love me, Linda?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“I wonder why people don’t think we know how to love?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean... when we’re young. Why do they always think it’s puppy love or something? Do you know what I believe? I believe we’re the only ones who do know how to love. I mean it. When you get older, you forget. I see it all the time. My parents and their friends. I think they’ve all forgotten what love is. I’m glad I’m young. You know? I’m glad I can love you.”

“I’m glad, too,” Linda said.

“Are you finished with your fat boy?”

“Yes.”

“Can I kiss you now?”

“Anytime you want to kiss me, even if I’m talking, you just shut me—”

He kissed her.

It was a curious thing to be kissing Linda. Hank was twenty-one years old, but he’d never been in love before. Moreover, he had always considered necking the prelude to whatever fortune might allow to follow. Linda’s lips were very nice lips. She was only seventeen, but she kissed well, and she knew how to use the soft inner cushion of her mouth expertly. Kissing her, even though Hank was a man of the world who knew what this sex bit was all about, he felt sort of dizzy, actually dizzy, just kissing her. He listened to her harsh breathing, and he could feel her face feverishly hot against his and he knew without doubt that this was the girl for him, this wonderfully sweet, gentle girl who kissed like this, this marvelously intelligent, remarkably gorgeous girl who kissed like this, this tender, sensitive, amazingly exotic girl who kissed like this was for him, who kissed like this and made him dizzy.

In ten minutes’ time, they both agreed they had better go for an ice-cream soda or something.

Linda buttoned her blouse and put on fresh lipstick.

24

On Thursday night Felix Anders saw Larry’s car leave the development and then, not five minutes later, Margaret came down the front steps and drove away in her car.

He was amazed that they could run their affair in such a slipshod manner and still escape detection. It was a wonder everyone in the world, no less the development, did not know exactly what was going on between them. But even while considering them the most careless sort of fools, he managed to find a tender spot in his heart for them. They were, after all, in love. This spoke in their favor. Like a father picking lice from the hair of two idiot children, Felix Anders felt great paternal compassion for these two tormented fools.

At the same time there was something immensely satisfying about their tortured writhings, something quite pleasurable about watching their silly gyrations and knowing they were rank amateurs playing a game invented for experts. Amateurs amused him. This entire Cole-Gault affair was an entertainment being performed solely for Felix Anders.

And then there was Eve.

Eve was something else again.

Felix walked into the kitchen where Betty was washing the dishes. “Leave them,” he said. “Let’s go to bed.”

“Oh, stop it,” Betty said, pleased.

“Come on, come on,” he said impatiently.

“I don’t like to leave dirty dishes,” Betty said.

He put his hands on her buttocks. “Come on.”

“No. Later.”

“Okay,” he said, shrugging, having made his stud-bull impression, having left Betty with the idea that all he desired in this budding world of beautiful women was her enticing little form alone. “I’m going for a walk. I’ll be back in a little while.”

“Where are you going?” she asked, having become partially interested by his damned wandering hands and toying with the idea of leaving the dirty dishes in the sink.

“Over to say hello to Larry.”

“I’ll be finished soon” she said.

“Okay,” he answered. He kissed her, and he let his hand drift caressingly over her buttocks again. He enjoyed arousing her. He enjoyed being in complete control of the castle which was his home. “I’ll be back.”

Outside, the stars pecked fiercely at the deep blue-black sky. Felix walked the streets of Pinecrest Manor knowing full well that Betty would be waiting at home in her nightgown whenever he decided to return. He would let her wait a while. A long while. He would let her wait until he was ready. It was better for her that way. It was the only way to treat her.

He had long ago stopped believing it was the male of the species who possessed the deep yearning, the insatiable sex drive. He had come to the conclusion that the reverse was true. There was an empty chasm in a woman, and only a man could fill that chasm. And until the chasm was filled, a woman was essentially incomplete. Women had invented marriage only to insure repeated completion, and then had destroyed their own invention when they’d discovered insurance was not necessary. The chasm could be filled, the completion accomplished, by anyone at all.

Felix smiled and ambled up the walk to the Cole house. He rang the bell once, a short, sharp ring. He waited.

Eve answered the door. She was wearing black Bermuda shorts and a black sweater. Her long black hair hung to her shoulders. Her eyes were intensely blue against the overwhelming mass of unrelieved black.

“Oh, hello, Felix,” she said.

Felix stepped into the house quickly. He did not want to ask for Larry while standing on the doorstep. He did not want to be told that Larry was not home and then have no further excuse for entering. Once inside the house, he walked casually into the living room.

“Out for a walk,” he said nonchalantly. “Thought I’d stop by and say hello to Larry.” Quickly, he sat on the couch.

“Larry’s not home,” Eve said.

“Oh, that’s too bad,” Felix answered. He made no motion to rise.

“He went to a lecture at Pratt. He goes every other week or so.”

“Well, too bad he’s not home,” Felix said. “I felt like going for a beer.”

“I have beer, if you want some,” Eve said politely.

“No, no,” Felix said, standing. “You’ve got work to do, kids to get to bed.”

“Well...” Eve hesitated. She had already done the dishes and put the children to bed, and so her evening was free. But she’d planned on reading a book she’d taken from the library. She was, in fact, in a particularly uncommunicative mood and was almost glad Larry had gone to his lecture. She did not, however, wish to be rude to Felix. “The children are in bed already,” she said, “and I’ve done the dishes. Would you like a glass of beer?”

She hoped he would say no, but instead he said, “If it’s no trouble, Eve.”

“No trouble at all,” she lied, and she went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. “How’s Betty?” she called.

“Fine,” Felix said. “When I get home, I’ll tell her you’re alone. She may want to drop in.”

“Oh, no need to do that,” Eve said hastily. She had visions of this becoming one of those development drop-in evenings. That was exactly what she needed tonight. Carrying the bottle of beer, a bottle opener and a glass, she went back into the living room. Felix was thumbing through a magazine, which he put down the moment she entered. He uncapped the beer, poured, and then said, “Aren’t you having any?”

Eve shook her head. She smiled to let him know it was perfectly all right to drink without her, and then sat opposite him.

“I always wonder,” Felix said, sipping at the beer, “how a woman feels when she’s alone in the house and a man comes calling.”

Eve shrugged. “The same way she feels when a woman comes calling.”

“Well, not really,” Felix said. He smiled indulgently.

“Mmm,” Eve said, nodding. “Really.”

“Do you mean to tell me that an attractive woman doesn’t feel any difference when her visitor is a man?”

Eve frowned momentarily. Felix had not sounded at all like himself just then. He had called her an attractive woman, and her frown was partially provoked by surprise — she had not thought Felix capable of a subtle pass — and partially by the uncomfortable knowledge of which Felix had suddenly made her aware. She was alone with a man. And whereas she normally might have considered this an unexceptionable situation, Felix had managed to give it a different slant. Still, she didn’t want to seem silly or overly reserved. The frown vanished.

“I guess it depends on the frame of mind of the man or woman involved,” she said.

“Well,” Felix said easily, “what’s your frame of mind, Eve?”

“If a man drops in,” Eve said, “he drops in. I’m not looking for anything, and I assume he isn’t either.”

“What do you mean by ‘anything’?” Felix asked.

“Well...” Again she frowned. Instead of helping the situation, she seemed to have aggravated it. She was becoming slightly annoyed. She’d never really discussed sex with anyone but Larry, and she didn’t feel like discussing it with Felix, who was an absolute stranger and, after all, a man. “Well, anything,” she said, hoping she had stressed the word strongly enough to cut the conversation dead instantly.

“Yes, but what do you mean by anything?” Felix persisted.

She became suddenly flustered by his perseverance. “Oh, anything,” she said, and then she laughed a forced laugh and tried to make her voice light. “I’m just a faithful, one-hunnerd-per-cent American housewife. Very dull. Very boring.”

“Very interesting,” Felix corrected. “The American housewife is the most fascinating person you can find.”

“Well, I’m glad you think so,” Eve said, hoping the conversation was moving onto fresher ground.

“Otherwise I wouldn’t be married to one,” Felix said, laughing.

“Well, Betty must certainly make married life inter—”

“Of course,” Felix said, “some situations develop whether the man and woman are looking for them or not.”

“Perhaps,” Eve said. She felt very uncomfortable now. She did not believe that anyone could dwell so long on a subject unless he had a point to make. She was beginning to receive Felix’s message and was convinced he’d come here to deliver it. She wondered for an instant if he’d known Larry wasn’t home, and then suddenly wished she were wearing slacks instead of shorts.

“Sure,” Felix said, sipping at his beer as if he intended it to last all night. “Sometimes a man and a woman are thrown together and things happen. They just happen. Take a man and a woman on a desert island. How long can they remain platonic friends?”

“That’s a slightly different situation,” Eve said.

“Different from what?” Felix asked, suddenly leaning forward.

“From... from the situation you were describing.”

“Which situation?”

“Where a man and a woman... just are... where...”

“Where they become a male and a female?” Felix supplied.

“This is a pretty stupid conversation, isn’t it, Felix?” Eve asked. She smiled because he was a guest in her home, but the smile was nervous and unsure.

“Well, I like to speculate,” Felix said.

“So do I, but not on situations in which I’ll never be involved.”

“You never know, Eve.”

Eve laughed, but it sounded hollow even to her own ears. “There isn’t the slightest possibility that I’ll ever be stranded on a desert island with any man but Larry.”

“Many women have discovered that there are desert islands on every street corner, Eve.” He was staring at her now. Unconsciously, her hand came up to tuck a stray wisp of hair behind her ear.

“That’s a... a very romantic notion, Felix,” she said.

“I’m a very romantic person,” he said. “Aren’t you?”

“Yes,” she admitted, smiling.

“And a woman never knows when romance is going to pounce on her, does she?”

“There’s... there’s...” She felt very warm all at once. She rose and went to the television set. “There’s not much reason for a... a... housewife to... to... to be worrying about romance,” she said, surprised to hear herself stammering, thinking, The last time I stammered was in grammar school! She snapped on the set and then bent to select a channel. She felt Felix’s eyes on her back and instantly rose to turn the dial from a standing position. “I hope you don’t mind,” she said, hoping her voice sounded calm and assured. “There’s a show I want to see.”

“Certainly not,” Felix answered. “Time and a place for everything. Right?” He paused. “Right?”

She had not thought he’d expected an answer. “Yes,” she said.

“Sure. Good night, Eve,” he said warmly. “I enjoyed the beer, and I enjoyed our little talk. Tell Larry I stopped by, won’t you?”

Eve moved quickly to the door. “I will,” she said, and she smiled graciously. Felix stepped out of the house and onto the front stoop. He waved and then went down the walk. Behind him, Eve closed the door.

Felix looked up at the sky and smiled.

She’s smart, he thought. She’s a smart girl, and she’s playing it exceedingly cool. Good! Smart girls are safe girls.

Smiling, he ambled home to his wife.

25

There was, of course, a girl with Altar.

Larry was somewhat disappointed. He liked talking to the writer, and he’d discovered that Altar assumed a different personality whenever he was with a woman. Besides, this girl wasn’t even pretty. There was a peasant simplicity to her face which was entirely too honest.

They met at the Howard Johnson’s across the bridge. Larry parked and locked his car and then walked over to the convertible. Leaning over the girl, Altar said, “This is Joan. Do you want to lay her?” The girl smiled somewhat guardedly. She took Larry’s hand when he introduced himself and then moved over on the seat to make room for him. Sitting beside her, Larry thought back to a ride not so long before with Altar and... Agnes? Had that been her name? Rhinelander 4... He could no longer remember. But the girl had truly flustered him that day, and now, knowing Maggie, he wasn’t the slightest bit interested in Altar’s newest acquisition. In fact, he actively resented her presence.

“The house is coming along nicely,” he said. “I think you’ll be surprised by the progress.”

“You sound antagonistic,” Altar said.

“No.”

“Accusatory then. I’d have gone up to the site, but I’ve been busy with other things.”

Larry glanced at the girl, smiled, and said, “Yes, I see.”

“Not Joan,” Altar replied. “Important things. I think we’ve got a movie sale for Stone. A big fat percentage deal.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Larry said.

“You sound positively overjoyed.”

“Success always pleases me. Do you know any men who’ve bitten dogs lately?”

Altar chuckled. “You expected a movie sale?”

“Didn’t you?”

“I suppose so. In a way, I was hoping we wouldn’t make one. It scares the hell out of me. All we need now is a book club, and the pattern is complete. I can almost see those bad reviews before they’re printed.”

“It’s heartbreaking,” Larry said. “Your life is so dull and meaningless.”

“Larry’s life is very exciting,” Altar said to Joan. “He’s been commissioned to straighten out the Tower of Pisa.”

“That sounds very interesting,” Joan said, as if she thought it were possibly the dullest project in the history of architecture.

“Joan is a very enthusiastic girl,” Altar explained. “Her enthusiasm, however, is limited to several clearly defined areas. Don’t judge her by her silence. She is what is commonly referred to as still water.”

“I’m a very exuberant girl,” Joan said blankly.

“She works for a movie company,” Altar said. “She sorts the mail. She also makes all the decisions which are later attributed to courageous Hollywood producers.” He paused. “Actually, she comes from a very creative family. Her mother is in your profession, Larry.”

“Oh? Is she an architect?” Larry asked, interested.

“No,” the girl said. “She designs sets for the Howdy Doody show,” and Altar burst out laughing.

The land was swarming with workmen when they reached it. They drove down the rutted, mud-soaked road to the construction site and then stepped from the car. Joan chose to stay out of the mud. She opened a magazine and began reading while Altar and Larry headed for the house. It was beginning to take real form. Like a giant bird poised for flight, the structure clung delicately to the slope of the land, waiting to spread the wings of its roof. Even in skeleton there was a soaring sweep to the house, the majestic surge of rising wall against angled roof.

“Jesus, it’s going to be beautiful,” Altar said.

Larry nodded absently. “Do you see Di Labbia around anywhere?”

They searched the grounds for him and then went into the house. Carpenters were busily sawing and hammering. Electricians were paying out lengths of wire. Plumbers were carrying flexible copper tubing which would be twisted into radiant heating loops beneath the floors. There was the smell of sawdust on the air, the reverberating solid bang of metal hitting metal. Trying to keep out of the workmen’s way, they climbed a makeshift ladder to the upper level of the house and found Di Labbia in the uncompleted room which was to be Altar’s study, a room facing north, with floor to ceiling windows stretching its entire thirty-foot length. The windows were not in yet, but the effect of the window wall was obvious even at this stage of construction. The room seemed to extend itself into the woods, enveloping the outdoors, giving Altar a workspace commanding a wide vista of tree and rock and sloping land and sky. Assuming that Altar wanted to feel like a god while he wrote, Larry had spread the world out at his feet.

Di Labbia was squatting on the rough wood floor with his foreman, looking over one of the printed drawings. He looked up when the two men entered. He was wearing skintight dungarees and a filthy white tee shirt. A hammer hung in a loop on his trousers. He rose instantly, his face splitting in childlike pleasure.

“Larry!” he said. “Hey!” and he extended his hand. He shook Larry’s hand vigorously, apparently really pleased to see him. Then he said, “Hello, Mr. Altar. I haven’t seen you in a long time. It’s really beginning to look like something, isn’t it?”

“It certainly is,” Altar agreed.

There was pride in Di Labbia’s eyes. He clapped Larry on the shoulder and said, “I’m really enjoying this house, do you know that? Come on, let me show you what we’ve done. I think you’re gonna—”

“Frank?” the foreman said.

Di Labbia turned. “Yeah, Joe?”

“Do you want to ask him about this door?”

“Oh, yeah, yeah. Ordinarily, I’d have changed it myself, but I know how you are, Larry.” He grinned. “It’s this door from the master bedroom to the bathroom. The way you’ve got it hung, it swings open into the closet. Can we hang it from the right instead?”

“Let me see the drawing,” Larry said.

They talked over the door for several moments. Larry agreed the swing was awkward and okayed the change. Di Labbia seemed pleased that he’d pointed out this small error and had it corrected in construction. Watching them, Altar had the feeling that Di Labbia, no matter what he’d said earlier, needed Larry’s guidance and supervision — in fact, admired and respected it. They began discussing the reinforcement necessary in the basement to support the flagstone entrance hallway, and again there seemed to be complete understanding and rapport between the two men. Then Di Labbia, like a kid anxious to show off his latest toy, said, “Come on, I want you to see what we’ve done!” and he led the men downstairs again.

In planning the living space on the lower level, Larry had utilized two separate areas as expressions of opposing experiences. One was a cool formal living room to be enclosed almost completely by glass, with the sliding doors from Slipwell to provide access to the outdoor terraces. The second area was a smaller living room at the opposite end of the house. Conceived in terms of wood and stone, the room was intended to convey a sense of intimately warm enclosure as contrasted to the open, airy feeling of the larger space. An interior stone wall was to separate the room from the adjoining efficiency kitchen. A mason was working on that wall when the men entered the room.

Larry came in behind Altar and Di Labbia, saw the mason, and stopped. He faced the wall, hands on his hips, and said, “What’s that supposed to be?”

Di Labbia turned, the proud smile still on his face, the eagerness to exhibit his work still shining in his eyes. “What’s what, Larry?” he asked, still caught in the intoxicating grip of what had seemed to be ideal builder-architect rapport.

“That wall,” Larry said.

“It’s gonna make the room,” Di Labbia said enthusiastically. “When you step into this room—”

“You’ll be smacked in the face with a wall that looks like the local bank!” Larry snapped.

Di Labbia blinked, puzzled. “What?” he said.

“The drawings call for a random rubble pattern,” Larry said, his voice rising. “Your mason’s doing ashlar. There’s supposed to be a natural feel to this room, and you’ve got him laying the stone up in neat courses. Look at it! He’s got half the wall done already — and all wrong!”

“Gee, that’s funny,” Di Labbia said. “The elevation—”

“The elevation indicated the pattern clearly!” Larry shouted. “Get the plans! Where are they?”

Di Labbia turned to his foreman. Anxiously, he began leafing through the drawings. When they came to the detail for the wall, Di Labbia bit his lip and frowned. “I can see how he made the mistake,” he said. “You only indicated a portion of the wall, and he—”

“That’s usually enough for a competent mason,” Larry snapped. “Or did you suddenly decide to design my house?”

“Now, don’t get excited, Larry. It was a natural mistake. The mason probably figured you wanted things—” He sought a word with his hands — “neat and even in such an expensive house. He probably figured—”

“It’s my job to do the figuring!” Larry said. “Why wasn’t the drawing followed?”

“It was a mistake,” Di Labbia said apologetically, obviously embarrassed. He looked at Altar, his face trying to indicate how natural the error had been, and then he turned to Larry again, eager to reconstruct the earlier, friendlier feeling. But Larry would not let it go.

“Doesn’t anybody here know how to read a simple elevation?” he asked. “What kind of a builder are you, Di Labbia? Is everybody asleep around here?”

“The elevation showed only—”

“The elevation showed a rough, round, informal pattern! Your man took it into his head to change the design. And your foreman didn’t stop him, and you didn’t stop him, and if I hadn’t come up today, you’d have built that damn wall to China without being stopped!”

“Larry, it was a mis—”

“Rip it out!”

“All right, I’ll rip it out. Don’t get so excited. It’s only a wall. So we’ll—”

“Don’t tell me what to get excited about. I don’t like workmen meddling with my design.”

“But nobody meddled...”

“What else is wrong around here? What else are you trying to hide?”

He went storming away from Di Labbia and Altar. Like a patient father watching a spoiled son in a tantrum, Di Labbia stood with his grimy hands hanging at his sides, chewing nervously at his mustache. Altar didn’t know quite what to say. By association, he felt somewhat like Larry’s accomplice. He could hear Larry shouting at the workmen as he moved angrily through the house. When he returned, his full fury had still not been vented.

“Why hasn’t he started taking it down?” he shouted. “Must I watch you every minute, Di Labbia? I thought you were an honest builder.”

“Now listen—” Di Labbia started.

“What the hell are you? A crook? A cheat?”

“Now just a minute!” Di Labbia said, his voice rising.

“I don’t like crooks or cheats! You said you were a builder. All right, builder, why don’t you—”

“I’m a builder!” Di Labbia shouted, as if his manhood had been questioned. “I’m a damn good builder!” His voice was shrill in indignation now. “Everybody makes mistakes. You designed a door that swung open against a closet, didn’t you?” He paused, and then lowered his voice in an attempt once more to recapture the friendship he’d felt earlier. “Didn’t I point that out to you?”

“Thanks for nothing,” Larry said. “I’d have discovered it myself anyway.”

Di Labbia was trembling now with the effort to make things right again. The house had been going along beautifully, so beautifully, and it seemed incredible to him that a mason’s stupid mistake could cause so wide a breach. He sought the right words, but they would not come. Instead, in childish retaliation, he said, “When am I getting my Thermopane? How can I finish inside if I can’t enclose?”

“Use tar paper,” Larry said.

“What about the glass?”

“It’s on order. You’ll get it, don’t worry. You’ve got plenty to do outside.”

“My exterior work’ll be finished by the end of next week. I want to get started on—”

“Then use tar paper! Don’t create problems. Your big problem now is ripping out that wall.”

Di Labbia nodded. With great dignity, he said, “The wall will be ripped out and rebuilt according to your drawing,” and then he turned from Larry and walked away.

“Come on, Altar,” Larry said, and he strode out of the house. Altar went to Di Labbia to shake hands with him and then ran to catch up with Larry. When he fell into step beside him, Larry muttered, “The crook! I can’t stand a goddamn cheat!”

And Altar very softly said, “Transference is a marvelous phenomenon, isn’t it?”

When he got out of the car after the long drive to Howard Johnson’s, Larry apologized to Altar. The writer gently suggested that perhaps the apology was being misdirected, and Larry promised to call Di Labbia as soon as he got home. He said goodbye to Joan, walked to his own car, unlocked it, and climbed behind the wheel. He sat behind the wheel for a long time without starting the car. The afternoon sun slanted against the windshield, throwing a faint reflection of his face into the car. He looked at the face, a face he once had known. The reflection was transparent, not a true mirror image. Beyond it, through it, he could see people walking in and out of the restaurant. He had the sudden feeling that the person he’d known to be himself, like the face he’d known, was becoming transparent and thin, was fading, and would someday vanish completely.

Today, he thought, I turned on a nice guy doing a job. What do I do tomorrow? Kick a blind man? How many other people will I attack in an attempt to justify something in myself which I know to be wrong? How long can I maintain two separate warring identities within the same body shell? How long can I be two people without being either, borrowing the worst from each to create a monster unlike either? I can’t, I can’t. I can’t go on this way without destroying myself.

I guess I’ll have to leave Eve, he thought calmly. The thought did not frighten him or startle him. It came quite easily and reasonably, as if it were the result of irrefutably logical thinking.

If I were a different person, he thought, I wouldn’t have to leave my wife. I could allow things to go along just the way they’re going now. According to Felix Anders, everyone in the world is cheating anyway, and perhaps Felix is right. Perhaps, after all, there’s nothing new under the sun, nothing startling about two basically decent people who have somehow become so involved with each other that all values are now meaningless. If I were capable of adjusting more easily, he thought, I could doubtless adjust to this too and leave things just the way they are. I could allow my marriage to move along steadily on a rising graph line recording a bank of memories — the birthdays, the sick children, the parties, the traffic snarls, the outings, the anniversaries, the Christmases, the jokes shared, the movies shared, the songs shared — and at the same time there would be another graph for Maggie and me, a similar graph with its own memory bank, separate and apart. I could maintain a split identity which overlapped at some points, do just what Felix says everyone else is doing anyhow.

Except that I am not everyone else.

I am me.

And I suppose I’m basically a monogamist, which, according to Felix, is an incredibly naïve thing to be in this supersonic day and age. According to Felix, cheating is the safety valve, the one emotional release which prevents the water boiler of marriage from exploding. According to Felix, marriage is a practical joke perpetrated on young lovers. And if Felix is right, and marriage is a joke, what do I do when and if I leave my wife? I marry Maggie, do I not? I become the butt of the same tired gag again. And why?

Because I was raised as a monogamist. Because I have had love and marriage drummed into my mind, etched on my brain as inseparable units in the scheme of human relations. And being a monogamist, I want only one woman, and I suppose that woman is Maggie.

Well, maybe basically decent monogamists shouldn’t go around looking for trouble because there sure as hell is a lot of trouble to find if one decides to look for it. I didn’t decide to look for it, but I found it in carloads. Or maybe I did decide to look for it. And maybe I’m not even a basically decent monogamist or a basically decent anything. Maybe I’m just plain rotten.

In which case everyone in the world is just plain rotten and we might as well throw down the barricades and let the Mongol ponies ride through the streets. Because, discounting any egotistical notions I may have about myself, I imagine I’m more or less the same as any other male walking the streets. I work hard for a living, and I’ve got a wife and a family and a mortgage: I come home nights, usually, and I’ve got my private dreams and disappointments, my illusions, my hopes, my fears. I tell dirty jokes, and I smoke, and I drink, and I react to Marilyn Monroe. I’m an average American male.

I’m Felix Anders, so to speak.

But I’m not Felix Anders, he thought. Felix is playing a game, and I’m not playing. I’m serious, I’m dead serious. I’m drowning in an ocean of morality and all the while I thought I knew how to swim. All the while I thought I was a sensitive, sensible man who could reconcile action with ethics, frivolous speculation with responsible behavior. Perhaps I am not sensible or sensitive, but I am a monogamist and I want only one woman. And at the same time I don’t want to hurt Eve. But what makes me believe a clean break would hurt her more than falsely living a failure? Oh, yes, yes, face it, it’s a failure, the marriage is a failure. Somewhere long before Maggie there was no more fun and no more surprise. There was only failure. And that’s where Felix comes in again because Felix says all marriage is an ugly disappointment, all marriage is the burial ground of identity. And if Felix is right, what makes me think it’ll be any different with Maggie?

If Felix is right, won’t I start another alliance with another woman five years, ten years, fifteen years after marrying Maggie? Does marriage automatically become a quagmire of boredom and disillusionment from which escape is an absolute necessity? Escape or die? Escape or be buried alive?

But how can I hurt Eve? How can I willfully hurt someone I’ve loved, lived with, shared with, dreamed with, grown with? How can I hurt someone who is an essential part of me? And how can I consider her an essential part of me and still think of leaving her? And what about the kids? What do Chris and David mean to me? What’s my role as father? What’s my true relationship to them? Hello, Chris, hello, David, pat on the head, don’t wet the bed, don’t do this, don’t do that, here now give me a kiss before you go to sleep, an accidental relationship. What do they mean to me, and what do I mean to them?

What does my father mean to me?

He’s a crashing bore who puts me to sleep every time he opens his mouth. Will Chris and David think I’m a bore when they grow up? Will I be able to sit across a restaurant table from a grown-up son and have an intelligent, interesting conversation with him? Or do all parents turn into crashing bores? What’s a parent but a judge and a jury and a pain in the ass? What real affection does Chris feel for me? Or David?

Questions, questions, questions.

Where are all the answers? Who’s giving out the answers today? Isn’t there a man who stands on street corners with answers? A man like Roger Altar who has all the pat endings in a big bag of tricks? But try to apply those endings to reality, just try. In real life, you pick a happy ending, and there are fourteen other people involved who’ve decided on fourteen different endings. And all the endings are in conflict, and either you stick to your own ending and make a lot of people unhappy, or you take one of their endings and make yourself unhappy.

I don’t want to hurt people, he thought.

I really don’t want to hurt anyone. Do I have to kill Eve to prove something to myself? And what am I proving after I’ve killed her? I’m simply proving that I’m willing to indulge my own selfish whims to their most ridiculous extreme. I am destroying her in order to build a new image of myself, which image may or may not be valid.

But it is valid.

It is the only valid image of me.

I want the job in Puerto Rico, and I want Maggie. I do not want one or either; I want both.

I, I, I, the enormous ego of me, the enormous self-centred universe of me! But what else is life about? Isn’t it all about me? The happiness of me, and the sadness of me, and the hopes of me, and the shattered or realized dreams of me? Isn’t ME the most important concept and hasn’t it always been? Why did I marry Eve if not to please ME? Was I thinking of her, was I thinking of how magnanimous I was being in showering upon her the rains of this magnificent being who is me? Wasn’t I thinking of myself alone and of how much Eve pleased ME? Am I not the sum total of the universe? Doesn’t the universe have its nucleus in each and every solitary individual who shouts “I, I, I!” against the total oblivion of anonymity?

I, I, I!

I want the job in Puerto Rico, and I want Maggie.

He reached for the ignition key.

And in the second it took him to twist the key and start the engine, he decided to accept the Baxter proposal, divorce Eve, and take Maggie with him to Puerto Rico.

26

The men met in a midtown bar on a Monday afternoon two weeks later.

By that time Larry had formulated a tentative plan of action. And the one certainty in that plan, it seemed to him, was the Baxter proposal. He had realized early, and with some loss of assurance, that he could not definitely count upon Maggie’s affirmative reaction to his scheme. He would, after all, be asking her to make a decision which he himself had reached only after grave consideration. He could not expect her to leap into a new experience blindly, without first giving it serious thought. He did, in truth, feel she would readily agree to anything he suggested. But he was certain that the presentation of the Puerto Rican job as a fait accompli, the concept of the island as a sanctuary, would help her in deciding to sever whatever ties still bound her to Don. And so he did not discuss his decision or his scheme with her. He would do that after he spoke to Baxter. The acceptance of the Baxter proposal was his foundation; upon that he would build.

The bar at five o’clock was full of editors and publishers discussing their fall lists. As Larry waited for Baxter, he found himself inadvertently eavesdropping, hoping to hear some discussion of Altar’s name or the new book. The hot topic of discussion, though, seemed to be a new novel by a fifteen-year-old Indian girl who — judging from the wild enthusiasm — had very important things to say about sex and saris. Larry couldn’t imagine what important things a fifteen-year-old girl had to say about sex. He mused that he was surely approaching middle age when he began considering adolescence unimportant, and then in self-defense tried to learn the title of the book so that he could buy it and read it with appreciative tolerance for the very young. Apparently none of the editors or publishers were interested in the title. They were solely concerned with discovering how a fifteen-year-old Indian girl had come to know so much about sex. They were climactically discussing a particularly inflammable chapter of the book when Baxter walked into the bar.

Larry rose and signaled to him, and he came to the table immediately, his hand extended.

“Good to see you, Larry,” he said. “I need a drink. Where’s the waiter?”

They shook hands, and then ordered. Baxter made himself comfortable and said, “I was hoping Eve would be with you.”

“No, not today,” Larry said.

“I like that girl,” Baxter said. “How is she?”

“Fine.”

“I like her a great deal,” Baxter said, and Larry felt a first indefinite twinge of warning. “Ah,” Baxter said, “here’re the drinks.” He waited while the drinks were put down, and then he picked up his glass. “Something wrong with the times,” he said. “Do you know that? I really look forward to this drink at the end of the day. Look forward to it? By God, I need it! I’m a mild alcoholic, I’m sure. But all I know is that after a day of pounding and pounding and pounding, I need this drink. Cheers.” He drank. “How’s Eve?” he asked.

“Fine,” Larry repeated, the warning twinge stronger now.

Baxter nodded. “How does she feel about Puerto Rico?”

“Well...”

“Or haven’t you discussed it with her?”

“Certainly I have.”

“Does she seem favorably inclined?”

“Well...”

“Or do I seem to be putting undue stress upon Eve’s reaction?” Baxter smiled pleasantly and sipped at his drink. “Eloise and I will be going to Puerto Rico to live, you see. This isn’t Scarsdale, Larry, and you simply don’t commute. We’ll be making our home there for at least five years, perhaps longer.” He smiled again. “If you accept the job, we’ll be working together most of the time. And we’ll probably be together a lot socially, too.”

The warning twinge was no longer that. It had grown into full-fledged recognition. Larry felt the blood draining from his face. He sat quite still, holding his glass to the table with both hands.

“That’s why I’m so delighted Eve is the kind of person she is,” Baxter said.

“What do you mean?” Larry asked, knowing his meaning already, knowing it now before amplification. His hands were beginning to tremble. Hastily, he gulped at his drink.

“Don’t misunderstand me. Your wife could be the queen of England, and I still wouldn’t have offered you the job if you weren’t a good architect.” He paused. “By the way, how’s the Altar house going?”

“Fine, fine,” Larry said. There was a tight knot inside him now. He kept staring across the table at Baxter, knowing what was coming, and yet silently, desperately hoping he was wrong.

“Good,” Baxter said. “But Eve is important. She’s the wife you should have, and the wife I’m glad you have. She’ll help you a great deal on the island. And, of course, I’m being selfish. I like her company, and so does Eloise. We want her with us. She’s one of the reasons I asked you.” His smile widened. “Besides, I was hoping she’d sway you in favor of accepting. Has she?”

“I... I don’t know. You mean,” Larry said, “Eve is... is part of this?”

“Well, isn’t she?” Baxter asked, his eyebrows raising in surprise.

“Of course,” Larry said quickly. “I meant...”

“Do you mean if Eve were against it, would I allow you to take the job anyway?”

“Well, yes. Something like that.”

“Definitely not!” Baxter said. “I believe in marriage strongly, Larry. And I don’t think I’ve seen two people more perfectly suited to each other than you and Eve. If Eve doesn’t want to go, I wouldn’t dream of separating you. Maintaining a marriage is the most important thing I can think of. More important than Puerto Rico. Even more important than architecture. That’s the way I feel about it.”

“I see,” Larry said dully.

“Why? Doesn’t Eve want to go?”

“It’s not that.”

“What is it then?”

“Nothing. We... we just haven’t decided yet.”

“Oh?” Baxter seemed surprised. “I was hoping that was why you wanted to see me today.”

“No, no. I just felt like socializing, I guess.”

“Well, I’m glad you came in. I’m always happy to see you. But bring Eve next time, why don’t you?”

“I will,” Larry promised.

“I like that girl,” Baxter said. “She’s pretty, and intelligent, and a woman. And she has dignity. I can’t abide women who are too blatant about their femaleness. Eve is a quiet woman, the kind I’d like for a daughter.” Baxter grinned. “Perhaps I shouldn’t be telling you all this. But I’m trying to make our relationship something more than a cut-and-dried business deal. I want to work with you, Larry, but I want us to be friends, too.”

“I understand,” Larry said, thinking how quickly everything seemed to drop to the common denominator of free choice. There were always simple choices to be made, except the simple choices were always so goddamn difficult. And now it was no longer a question of Puerto Rico and Maggie. The choice was between them — one or the other. A very simple choice, he thought, for a man who wants and needs both. Take Puerto Rico, and be unhappy without Maggie. Take Maggie and be unhappy without work. The choice is really very clear and simple: You can either be unhappy or — you can be unhappy.

Choose!

“I hope you’ll be letting me know your decision soon, Larry,” Baxter said. “If Eve has any doubts, let me know and I’ll talk to her.”

“No,” Larry said hastily. “It isn’t that. We’re just considering every possibility.”

“I see. Well, of course it’s up to you. But Eve’s a sensible girl, and I doubt very much that she’ll let you pass up an opportunity like this one. Not unless I’ve greatly underestimated her.”

Larry tried to grin. “I’m getting an inferiority complex,” he said.

“No need to. Whatever we feel for Eve reflects upon you. She’s your wife, Larry, and that’s what marriage is. A complete sharing. It has to be if it’s going to work.”

“Yes,” Larry said.

Baxter looked at his watch. “Can I inveigle you into dinner with Eloise and me?”

“Thanks, not tonight,” Larry said. “I’ve got to get back.”

“Well, then, I’ve got to rush. Larry, think this thing over seriously, won’t you? Time’s running short, and I want you and Eve with me. Sincerely, I do. Think it over.” Baxter smiled. “When you get right down to it, I’m sure you’ll find it’s not such a hard decision to make at all.”