“Hey, you!” she said, immediately aware of intention.
“So we’re a shade late,” he said huskily.
“No, Fletch honey. Please! We’ll be too late. And the kids will be coming any minute. Let’s not start anything we can’t finish. I don’t want to be a spoil-sport.”
“The lady is filled with indifference.”
“You know better than that, darling. But honestly. There isn’t time. And besides, I don’t want to wear that darn thing around all evening.”
“Do you think I want to wear this around all evening?”
She gave him the grin he loved. Lopsided, lewd and urchin. “Go ahead, my pet. Maybe they’ll give you a door prize.”
But he saw that her eyes were beginning to get heavy in a familiar way. He pulled her toward him. Just then the bicycles were racked against the house. Dink was yammering at Judge about going too fast. The screen door hissed. Jane bounded off the bed.
“Just one big happy family,” Fletcher said wearily.
She turned from where she was putting the bra on, her arms craned awkardly up behind her. “We might just possibly come home just a little bit early.”
“It’s a thought,” he said. He went to the closet and got his suit out, stripping the brown paper off it. He looked for the spot. They’d gotten it out all right.
Jane’s voice was muffled as she slid the dinner dress down over her head. “That Mobren woman called me up again today. Oh, darling, that’s a dingy shirt. Take one of those with the French cuffs. Those collars look so well on you. And a dark knit tie will look good with that suit.”
“Uh huh,” he said, refolding the shirt he had taken out.
“Anyway, she keeps after me to be on the committee to pick out the prizes for the women’s matches. They decided not to give cups, you know. Useful things this year. Well, I know just how it will be. Nobody has the same taste. If I pick out things, you can be darn well sure that the women that win them won’t like them. And that Mobren woman is just trying to pass the buck to me. That shirt is better, dear. Why don’t you stand on that paper to put the trousers on. That color soils so easily.”
“Okay,” he said.
She sat at the dressing table, taking great care with her lips. Fletcher could hear the kids whispering in the living room.
“I couldn’t be rude to the woman, but really, she’s so persistent. And she goes on and on and on. I keep telling her that I’m spending too much time on the Red Cross Drive and the League of Women Voters. And I haven’t been to a League meeting since we had that dreadful fight with those garbage collection people. I’ve never had anybody call me that word to my face before in my life. Have you thought about Mexico, dear?”
“What!” he said. He was sitting on his bed lacing his shoes. He stopped. “What?”
She turned and gave him a patient look. “About Mexico, dear. About the vacation. Remember? The first two weeks in August while the kids are in camp. We decided it was time we had a vacation by ourselves. Good Lord, thirteen. Fourteen if you count the summer I was too pregnant to enjoy our measly little two weeks.”
“You lost me back there in the League of Women Voters.”
“Oh, I said no to Mrs. Mobren. I was all done with that. Are you trying to change the subject?”
“I better go over the budget again, honey, on the Mexican thing. Charley hasn’t given me the dope on the airline fares yet, anyway.”
“You better decide quick. It’s nearly July, dear.”
He stood up and picked up his suit coat. She stood up. “Do I look okay, darling?”
“Lush and provocative.”
“So are you, dear. Please say something to the kids, but don’t make it too rough. I don’t like to leave them alone after you yell at them.”
“I don’t yell. I speak firmly.”
“Well, what I say doesn’t mean much. I’m around here all the time. They get used to me.”
Judson “Judge” Wyant was thirteen. He spoke in a spasmodic treble-bass. His original nickname had been Jud. Then, when he was eleven, a note from his teacher led to an eye man who put glasses on him. The kids had started calling him Judge. The family had gradually swung over. Judge had adopted a faintly professorial manner to go with his new designation.
“Half an hour late, people,” Fletch said seriously. “A thing which I do not favor. What about it?”
“It sounds pretty silly,” Dink said soberly. She was a thin wiry girl of eleven, addicted of late to wearing black jeans and a red scarf around her throat. She had inherited Fletcher’s coloring, and her mother’s co-ordination. Her athletic skills frequently frustrated Judge, the blond one, who seemed, like his father, to be able to get his feet or his hands or his head in the way of any intricate maneuver.
“Let’s hear how silly it sounds,” Fletcher said.
“Well, Dad,” Judge said in his best judicial manner, “you will recall that Dink lost her watch this winter. It wasn’t a good one anyway.”
“You have a watch, a good one, and what is this ‘you will recall’ routine?”
“Just a way of talking, I guess. Anyway, you will recall that my Christmas watch is a good one.”
“I just said that.”
“So I didn’t want to take it down there because I was afraid somebody might steal it. There was this boy we were playing with. He had a watch in the locker room. We told him we had to leave at twenty minutes to five. We made him go in and look at the watch a lot of times. Then he said he had to go and he laughed at us and said it was after five.”
“He was a big stinker!” Dink said hotly.
“Curious choice of words, dear,” Jane said with ice in her blue eyes.
“Well, he was. He told us he lied to us because he didn’t want us to go and leave him with nobody to play with until he had to go. We really, honestly, truly meant to be back right on time. Before time, even,” Dink said, close to tears.
“Okay, okay,” Fletcher said. “Silly story accepted. What do you do next time?”
“Ask a grownup, I guess,” Judge said. “I wouldn’t care to take my watch down there. There’s a lot of rough kids.”
“Two boys threw me in,” Dink said proudly.
“Don’t they have a guard down there to keep order?” Fletcher asked.
“Oh sure,” Dink said. “But we didn’t bother him. We just waited and got them one at a time and threw them in. The big one hit his head and cried.”
“I can see that they have a rugged clientele,” Fletcher said solemnly. “Now is there more to this pact you made with your mother?”
“Bed at nine thirty,” Judge said.
“Correction, please. Bed at nine. Half hour penalty for trusting strangers. Okay?”
Judge looked at Dink. She sighed heavily. Judge said, “I guess that’s fair, Dad.”
“Your father and I have to go now. Remember the rules. No guests. Lights out at nine. Call us at the club if you need us. Your dinner is in the oven. It’s turned as low as it will go. Dink, don’t let Judge talk you into doing all the cleaning up afterward, like last time.”
“It was a bet and she lost,” Judge said.
“Then don’t bet this time. Judge, it might rain in the night. So get the bikes under cover, and there’s a ball glove in the back. Near the fireplace.”
They said good night to the children and went out to the car. The sun was low enough so the car wasn’t like a furnace. He backed down out of the driveway as Jane lit two cigarettes.
“This is one of those evenings I could skip,” he said.
“You’ll be all right once you get there. I bet you’ll have a good time.”
“You keep saying that to me.”
“Don’t growl. It just happens to be true. You always do. You know, Fletch darling, I have the strangest feeling about the Corbans.”
“So do I. I wish they both broke a hind leg.”
“I don’t know how to say it. Ellis is all right, I guess. He’s sort of heavy-handed, I suppose y
ou’d call it. But that Laura is a bird of different feathers.”
“Seems quiet to me.”
“But what I mean is, she really doesn’t care. Does that make any sense?”
“Doesn’t care about what, dear? You’ll have to give me more than that.”
He had to stop for a light. The Randalora Club was south of the city. It made an inconvenient drive through town to get to it. Jane had turned sideways in the seat. She was frowning. “She doesn’t care about the things that count around here, Fletch. You know, she wasn’t pleased that we put them up for membership. Just sort of amused. As if it was some kind of a game for kids. As if she was above and beyond all that sort of thing. And when we were house-hunting, she was really almost rude.”
“How?”
“Well, the house she liked, the one they took—I tried to tell her in a nice way that it wasn’t a very fashionable neighborhood. She had a queer look, you know. You can’t tell whether she’s laughing at you or not. She told me she’d try to keep the house fashionable on the inside.”
“Doesn’t sound like much to condemn her for, Jane.”
“Don’t start defending her. I guess I shouldn’t have brought it up. I have a feeling about her. She just doesn’t care about the things that matter, and you remember what I’m saying. Because she doesn’t care, she also doesn’t care what she does or what she says. And it may come back on us that we put them up for membership. He’s all right, but I wouldn’t put anything past her.”
He laughed. “Oh, come now! What’s she going to do? A strip tease in front of the bandstand?”
“That’s what I’m trying to say. If she decided it was a good thing to do, she’d go right ahead and do it, and I can see the look on her face while she does it. Like she was laughing at the whole club.”
“Why don’t you suggest it? It’ll make talk for the whole summer.”
“Fletch, you just aren’t taking me seriously. You ought to know by now that I’m pretty good at sizing up people. Remember the gum on the hat?”
“How can I forget it when you bring it up once a month?”
She giggled. “I’ll never forget how mad you got.”
Fletcher remembered. A pleasant young man had come to the door. He wore a pale grey felt hat. He calmly took a cud of gum out of his mouth, squashed it against the hat, then rubbed the smeared place on the floor until it was badly smudged. Then he brought out a small bottle, poured some of the fluid on a cloth and calmly removed the greasy mass, leaving no stain. Fletcher had bought a giant-size sealed bottle of that wonder cleaner for five dollars. It turned out to be a benzine solution so weak that it had no more effect on a spot than plain water. And while the transaction had been going on, Jane had managed to get close enough to Fletcher to whisper, “Dear, I don’t like his looks.”
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll be looking forward to that strip tease. Little on the scrawny side though, isn’t she?”
“Don’t kid yourself, my friend. That little lady is stacked. She just doesn’t wave it around.”
They turned into the club drive at quarter after six. He was going to drop her at the door, but she told him to head right on into the parking area and she’d walk back with him. Some die-hard golfers were teeing off. The pool was full of young people. The bastard-château interior of the club was gloomy and unpopulated. Fletcher hung his straw hat in the nearly empty check room and they walked through to the terrace, which overlooked the eighteenth green, yet was set high enough to be safe from overexuberant approach shots.
They stood in the doorway. Most of the terrace tables were filled. The white-coated waiters scurried around with trays that tinkled. They nodded and smiled at friends.
“There they are in the corner,” Jane said. They walked between the tables. As Fletcher followed Jane, automatically smiling and speaking to friends and acquaintances, he was thinking of Jane’s description of Laura Corban’s attitude. Maybe the girl had something. Shouldn’t take membership in an outfit like this too seriously. It was just one of the ways, perhaps, that people managed to segregate themselves, and preen themselves. You could be pretty well certain that in another three hours a certain immutable percentage of the members would be annoyingly and foolishly drunk. Those only partially so would be making automatic and mechanical passes at the wives of friends, or, when possible, the college-age daughters of friends. A certain number were certain to say something just far enough out of line to provide a tidbit of gossip for the coming week. And, as a result of this evening, there would doubtless be an insurance policy or two sold, a piece of real estate would change hands, a doctor would acquire a new patient, a wife would cry until daylight came. All a little on the pointless side if you looked at it, trying to ask why. It was just because people had to have a place to go, a place to be seen, a place to have fun. It labeled them as having a certain social and financial position in Minidoka, and maybe people felt safer when they were properly labeled.
As he approached the table he decided that he had better drop the clinical approach to the Randalora Club, or he would find himself ceasing to enjoy it. And he began to wonder how much he had enjoyed it in the past. To what extent, to what precise degree. The members who knocked themselves out in club affairs seemed to be the same group who went to college reunions, who sang in the bar, who took the Martini shaker along with the foursome. They got a hell of a bang out of it. He had never enjoyed it that much.
Ellis Corban saw them approaching and jumped up. His smile tightened his apple-red cheeks and flexed his tweedy mustache. He was a man who, in all situations, managed somehow to look overdressed.
“Hello, Jane, Fletch. I guess we’re one up on you. Yes sir, one up on you.”
They all exchanged greetings, and Ellis made quite a ceremony out of getting Jane into one of the two empty chairs. Laura wore an even, careful smile. Her dress was of a pale yellow shade that was subtly perfect for her. Once they were all seated again, Fletcher made a more searching appraisal of Laura Corban than he had previously. Her hair was no color, somewhere between ash blonde and mouse, and in the light he could see that it was silky fine, the smallest breeze moving tendrils of it. Her eyebrows were thin and strongly arched, her nose a bit sharp and with slender oval nostrils. Her mouth was curious—the upper lip a bit long, the underlip quite full, and she held her lips faintly parted. It gave her a slightly expectant expression, and showed the even white teeth which were so small as to look childlike. Her ears were delicate and small and set close to the skull. He saw that his original impression of anemia was inaccurate. Her skin had a healthy glow, even though it seemed to have the texture and coloring of ivory. It was an odd face, he decided, a quiet face, yet full of a promise of passions and storms. She looked as though she could excite a man in the same guilt-laden way that a young girl could excite a man, yet capable of meeting him as a woman. He wondered how deceptive was her look of delicacy.
Even as he realized that he had stared at her several seconds too long, she glanced quickly toward him. Her eyes were clear hazel—and utterly empty. It made him remember a time many years ago when the college psychiatry class had visited a state institution. The resident used a woman patient to demonstrate one of the aspects of catatonic dementia praecox. He had taken the woman’s arm and gently raised it over her head. Released it. The woman stood with her arm in that position, and remained that way until the doctor pulled her arm back down to her side. That woman had had the same eyes.
They shocked him, and then, startlingly, they changed to a bright, questioning alertness, almost birdlike.
Ellis said, “Yes, I was just saying to Laura that one of the most pleasant parts of moving to Minidoka is the opportunity of belonging to this club. We anticipate many happy times out here, don’t we, darling?”
“What? Oh, yes, of course, dear.” Her voice was quite deep, and almost completely unaccented. All words had the same value.
The waiter came and took their order and when he had gone Fletcher glanced toward Jane
and was a bit surprised at the intent way she was scrutinizing him.
“We think it’s quite pleasant,” Ellis said, frowning a bit vaguely in his wife’s general direction.
Laura said, “We’re going to come out here at dawn and run barefoot, hand in hand, across the landscape.”
Ellis laughed mechanically. “Darling,” he said. “Fletch and Jane aren’t used to your … sense of humor. They’ll think you don’t like the club.”
Laura leaned forward, looking quite breathless. “Ah, but I do! I adore it! I’m savoring every moment. Every single perfect moment. I can also sit up and balance a piece of meat on my nose. Until you tell me it’s all right to eat it, of course.”
Ellis looked faintly ill. Jane had bright red spots in her cheeks. Fletcher said quickly and smoothly, “Just because we let you sit at the table like people doesn’t mean we can’t take you out and lock you back in the car.” Ellis and Jane laughed gratefully.
Laura looked soulfully at Fletcher and said, softly, “Woof!”
“That,” said Jane tartly, “is called barking up the wrong tree, dear.”
Chapter Three
Laura Corban read the quick light tone in Jane’s voice, sensed, beneath the pseudosophistication of the remark, a most definite “hands off” warning. Quite a handsome woman, Laura thought. A certain animal wit, but just vacant enough to be undemanding. A tawny, playful, good-tempered lioness, she decided. Certain of her mate, but not so certain that it wasn’t wise to post a few warning signs. A practical executive’s wife, loaded with this shoulder-to-shoulder business, and quite evidently circumspect, faithful, and sure of her values. It would indeed be a delight to be so positive about everything.
The terrace was dim in the fading day, and Ellis was talking about getting the children off to visit his parents at the Cape all summer. It made Laura think of the strange quiet day she had had, alone in the big old frame house they had rented, on the narrow, elm-shaded street where old women rocked and fanned on the shallow porches.
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