It was Audrey’s practice each summer to bring to the island—or rather, have sent by road and then ferry, while she traveled by air—cartons of outmoded clothing to give to the locals. The distribution of these garments was handled by the housekeeper, Mrs. Finch, and no doubt went mostly to her own female relatives, for though the Finches managed such business as there was on the island, they gave no indication in their visible way of life that they earned large profits. They drove shabby vehicles, lived over or behind their places of business, such as the grocery and the gas station, or in mobile homes with front yards full of firewood for sale and fishing shacks at waterside on the unfashionable stretch of the shore. So presumably various hearts were gladdened, for these frocks and suits and sweaters bore the best labels (whether or not the recipients could appreciate the names) and showed scarce sign of wear. But as Mrs. Finch accepted no gift with more than a curt nod and never reported back with a word of gratitude from anyone to whom she had forwarded it, Audrey had to take it on faith that her generosity did not go for naught. Surely it was preferable to do this than to deal with one of those charitable organizations in the city that were always being investigated for something to do with either corrupt finances or perverted sex.

In an odd emotional state owing to the cupping of her breast by Chuck Burgoyne—in retrospect she could not believe it happened in quite the way it seemed at the time—she went to her rooms to see whether she might augment the collection of Finch-bound garments with several other items from the extensive summer wardrobe with which she stocked her closets: this included a selection of evening gowns, though for at least ten years there had been no island occasion for which such a garment would have been appropriate costume; and equestrian attire, jodhpurs, even a riding mac for rainy days, though no one she knew kept horses locally in this era. She had ridden well as a girl and was reasonably good at archery. But at golf she was hopeless, never really learned to serve at tennis, swam poorly. Her breasts had been well shaped and in fact remained so, largely as a result of fanatical determination. She believed her eyes were too small and pale of iris, but her skin had always been a great strength. At quite an early age her thighs had thickened, obviously a matter of genes, for no diet or exercise subsequently affected them, and she had since never been seen in shorts or bathing dress.

The closet complex included a vertical stack of built-in drawers, a number of which, cedar-lined, were filled with sweaters to be worn on chilly island evenings, which were not unknown during the season, but even Audrey in a reflective mood had to admit they were not so frequent as to require more than a dozen sweaters in just two styles, V-necked and cardigan, and only three colors, white, beige, and navy, but she must have owned twenty-odd, all knitted of cashmere, with the exception of a few routine woolen examples of her own purchase. All of the former had been presents from Doug on the giftgiving holidays, in addition to which he often presented her with a brooch made in the form of a miniature animal with eyes of diamond chips or another gem. Within three years he was capable of repeating himself, and thus she owned two identical little rabbits and also a matching pair of ruby-eyed frogs. On discreetly (though not accidentally) finding that Doug owed his favorite jeweler, the same who had served his family for generations, for too many such gifts, Audrey quietly paid the bill insofar as it pertained to what she had received, naturally letting ride the charges for what he had presented to a succession of his bitches, items which she was amazed, and pleased, to note were usually less valuable than those he gave her.

It had occurred to her that it might be nice to turn over to Mrs. Finch some of her excess of similar sweaters. The housekeeper was far too rawboned to fit into any of them, but presumably there were those who would do amongst the female kin to whom the other garments had gone, over the years. The difference was that the cashmere sweaters were not outmoded in style, hitherto the criterion for disposal. Thus the giving of them would be authentically generous, a true instance of charity in the classic sense of the word. Audrey had finally arrived at an age for performing an act that was uncompromisingly virtuous.

But the moment had come too late. Of the former collection of sweaters, as the all but empty drawers now informed her, only the humble woolen examples were still in her possession. Like moths, who after all are merely practicing their métier, the thief or thieves could discriminate amongst yarns. The obvious culprits would have been the cleaning team, who had been to the house on Friday and would come again on Monday morning, were it not that Audrey had gone through the sweater drawers on Saturday morning, searching through the lookalikes for the particular cardigan into the pocket of which, back in town, she had tucked the latest letter from her traveling friend Molly, that which contained Molly’s schedule for the following month, more than a fortnight of which had now passed.

And as of that time all the drawers were filled. Thus the cleaning women were exonerated even before being tried. Which left Mrs. Finch, who of course had for many years had access to all summertime possessions of the family and guests and had never been known to steal any articles of clothing. Why would she start now and in such a conspicuous manner, taking at once the entire cashmere collection?

There could be no evading the fact that the possibilities had been immediately reduced to her daughter-in-law. She knew nothing of Lydia—in any event, nothing that had been confirmed. Bobby had married this girl in some county clerk’s office in rural parts, not far from the university from which they had both only just graduated. Audrey had met Lydia for the first time when the newlyweds arrived on the island a week before, only hours before the coming of Chuck Burgoyne, after which she had been distracted from reflecting on a situation in which she found a touch of squalor, and all the more so when she heard, for the first time, that Bobby had been living with the young woman for most of the last year of college—yet had never mentioned her in his occasional telephone calls, which were always and solely concerned with begging more money from home. Neither Audrey nor Doug had gone to the commencement ceremony, but then no invitation had been received.

As to Lydia’s bloodline, it could scarcely be less prepossessing, the family business, however profitable, being private refuse collection, and indeed the less said of her the better, a principle devoutly honored by both Audrey and Doug, but if the girl proved to be a kleptomaniac, what could one do? Then again, better her foible be kept within the family than revealed to the outside world. What if she were apprehended in a shop? One of Audrey’s cousins had had a messy divorce that got into the papers years before, but that had been a glamorous embarrassment, what with the references to figures with meaningful names to journalism: statesmen, financiers, and the like, her cousin’s reputed promiscuity having been an issue. And some relative of Doug’s had once got into some trouble with the Securities and Exchange Commission. But no one in any familial association with Audrey had ever been charged with ignoble common theft.

Tact was called for here. Lydia had left the house and grounds only to go once, with Bobby, to visit the club. That had been three or four days back, before the sweaters were missing. Therefore they must now be no farther away than her room. Could she be that brazen—or demented? But it took a special sensibility to perform such a theft at all—from an in-law and one’s hostess, when furthermore you were the only person under the same roof who could fit into the garments in question.

But perhaps it was intended to be conspicuous, as a provocation of some sort. Who could say what were the motives of other people, especially those of not only another generation but also another class? It might even be a kind of malicious joke, designed to elicit a hysterical response from herself; then, once she had lost self-command, the sweaters would be returned secretly and revealed with much derisive laughter. Of course, this was to make an inordinate flight forward of the kind against which she had been sternly warned by her doctor, who insisted that only a little self-discipline was needed to withstand the impulses of a masochism that was by no means of natural origin but demonstrably acquired.

She was well aware that she encouraged others, especially men, to take advantage of her basic generosity. For example, in her affair with Max Hopworth (which unlike any of Doug’s was characterized by true love on the part of both participants, though to be sure Max’s had not proved long-lived), it had always been she who had to defer to what at the time he presented as his obligations (wife’s birthday, rituals pertaining to his kids, etc.) but what in retrospect she strongly suspected were merely his own wishes. Yet even when she discovered that she was only one of the two women with whom he regularly consorted extramaritally, she could manage no more than a weak protest which was soon replaced by a gasp of great feeling as he put his hand between her thighs. Many years had gone by between Max’s doing that for the last time (Bobby had been a small child, and Dr. Hopworth was his pediatrician) and Chuck’s recent touch of her clothed breast, with nothing (but a few drinks) in the interim, yet Audrey had never thought of herself as being forever beyond the reach of passion.

But, as she was totally dependent on Chuck to make the next move, which might not come soon, what with, God damn him, Doug’s decision for once to stay beyond the weekend, she had time enough to investigate the matter of the missing knitwear. Her first job was to gain access to their room while the young people were occupied elsewhere. Bobby must be encouraged to remove Lydia from the house, perhaps take her on a tour of the grounds, most of which of course consisted of dense woods, but there was the antique gazebo amidst the grove—where one of Bobby’s teenaged girlfriends had charged that she had been sexually importuned by his father and then ardently molested, all but raped. True, Doug was capable of that, but the little bitch did habitually mince about in abbreviated clothing and obviously found Bobby wanting.

That had happened during the period in which Audrey had definitely decided Bobby was homosexual, and in fact nothing much since had occurred to change her mind until he now turned up with too vulgar a wife for an invert to marry: they invariably chose long-lipped, horsey-looking women with contralto voices.

Just as she was ready to leave to look for Bobby, her husband came into the room, as usual without knocking though he demanded that courtesy be shown by visitors to his own quarters and in fact usually made it a necessity by having thrown the lock.

He acted as if he were pursued; he peered about, then quickly turned the key in the door to the hallway.

“Come over here, Audrey.” He drew her to a far corner between the vanity and the bed that had been left unmade, for it was Mrs. Finch’s day off. “We are in trouble.”

Despite his hunted manner, she refused to take him seriously, and disparaged his assertion without making any effort to find sense in it: only by this means had she ever been able to hold her own with him, if such it could be called.

“I’m sure you’re mistaken.”

As always he paid no mind to her reaction, but went on as if she had assented. “He carries a gun, by God. Oh, it’s real all right, and I have no doubt he’ll use it if he has to.”

“Doug,” Audrey said, stepping away, “are you on something?”

“Both phones are out,” said he. “Look here.” He went to the nearer of the two little ivory cabinets that flanked the head of her bed, and lifted the pale blue telephone that was there. He listened at the earpiece for an instant, then brandished the instrument before replacing it. “Then there’s a confederate named Perlmutter. It occurred to me that he might even be hiding somewhere in this house—unless the guy merely changed his voice. I suspect Chuck knows something about phone systems. I’m sure I dialed Operator correctly. How could anyone make a mistake dialing 0? Yet a woman came on who claimed to be Information way out West in some godforsaken place.” His breathing was labored.

Audrey went farther from him. “I haven’t any idea what you are talking about. Have you been drinking?”

“Chuck Burgoyne,” Doug said, with the emphasis given that which inspires unusual emotion.

For Audrey too the name inspired feeling. “Yes,” said she, “ask Chuck about the phones. Maybe he can fix them before the repairman gets here.”

Doug at last attended to her. “Haven’t you been listening?” he asked in rage. “It’s Chuck I’ve been talking about. He’s a criminal!”

Audrey now advanced on him and laughed in his face. Doug slapped her across the left cheek, and she recoiled against the vanity.

Slowly returning to the upright position, she used an idiom that was unique for her. “You motherfucker.” She groped at the top of the dressing table and came up with a tiny cuticle scissors. “I’ll cut your balls off if you touch me again.”

But her husband was once again in the state in which he seemed unable to see or hear her responses. “He’s just a little runt,” said he, “but what chance would I have against a gun? I’m no coward, but neither am I suicidal.”

“Get out of here, you cocksucker,” Audrey cried. “And don’t ever come back.” All the same, she had a terrible sense of powerlessness: never in her life had she voiced such language and thus now suspected it lacked the passionate conviction with which it was delivered by those to whom the gutter was home. In any event she always cowered when she heard it directed to others of their own kind by base types in the city, people with tattoos, shirts with the arms severed at the shoulders, caps bearing indecipherable devices, pushing wheeled contrivances or operating heavy machinery.

Doug continued to remain deaf to her speech. Could she be only imagining she spoke aloud? Of course she had for some years been given to abusing him tacitly in these terms, which strangely enough had seemed much stronger in the unspoken medium.

“But maybe, just maybe,” Doug was saying, “if his attention could be diverted for a moment, he could be successfully jumped. I don’t know. I’ve kept myself in good shape, but he’s at least twenty-five years younger.” He glared at her. “God Almighty, Audrey, must I be asked to perform a miracle?”

So the obscenities had not been of service. Audrey therefore returned to her old style, though she was still holding the cuticle scissors. “You’re overwrought,” said she. “That woman has got you running in circles. You don’t have the self-possession of years ago when you chased jailbait. You may be over the hill, Doug: you don’t seem to know when it’s over.”

Her husband was obliviously squinting past her. “You know, Aud, you could distract him. You have a motherly effect on him, Audrey! I’ve noticed that. He likes to impress you. That’s what the cooking is all about.” He stared at the ceiling, as if exasperated at heaven. “What a pretty pass, when a man has to ask his wife for help in this kind of matter and can’t expect any from his son, who is a gutless wonder.”

Audrey wondered whether to try to defend Bobby. The trouble here was that she basically agreed with Doug’s assessment of their son. And Doug had just ignored her worst, which accurately reflected her genuine emotions. Furthermore, she still did not believe Doug’s charges against Chuck. But that he was authentically exercised seemed obvious.

“All right,” she said for motives of practicality, and sighed. “Okay, I’ll take it up with him if that will calm you down. There’s nothing at all wrong with Chuck. He happens to be the nicest houseguest we’ve ever had. He’s sweet and kind and, and …” She really did not want to praise him to someone whom she despised: it was the worst of taste. She at last found the nerve to look at herself in the dressing-table mirror, and was amazed not to be able to discern the mark of Doug’s blow, which she still could feel—or had that too been only imaginary?

Doug now astonished her by saying, with apparent gratitude, “That’s all I ask.”

“Just don’t do anything desperate,” Audrey said. “There’s a reasonable explanation for all of this, I’m sure. It’s an optical fantasy or something. You’ll see.” There was something here that might be puzzling but it could hardly be sinister. The fact was that Doug, despite his bluster, was a coward. Small wonder where Bobby got his own character. Were Audrey to take any of this seriously, she might well hope that Chuck would use his so-called gun to shoot her husband.

Bobby’s search for Chuck was quickly successful. As he came in from the greenhouse after the outrageous encounter with his father, he saw the houseguest on the point of entering the sitting room off the deck, and he followed him.

Without turning to see who was behind, Chuck said, “Sit down. I want to talk to you.”

They chose facing chairs. Chuck spoke in a lowered voice. “Bobby, I’m sorry to say that I have been made to feel unwelcome here, and I’m leaving.”

“Aw,” Bobby groaned. “It’s gone that far? Listen, he’s the one that will be leaving any minute now. He always flies back on Sunday evenings. Stay till next Friday, anyway. He won’t be back till then. Everybody wants you to stay.” Bobby had been right to refuse to take seriously Lydia’s lack of enthusiasm for the houseguest: the next thing Chuck had done was save her life!

Chuck was shaking his head. “I’m afraid that would miss the point. There’s a matter of pride, you know, of honor.” He crossed his legs. The cuff of his trousers rode up, exposing the gun in the ankle holster.

Bobby’s reaction to this phenomenon was as it would have been to Chuck’s sudden exposing of his genitals apropos of nothing. Blood suffused his face. It took all his strength not to permit his eyes to descend again, and the gun-bearing leg, supported by the other knee, was within the lower margin of his proper field of vision unless he stared above the houseguest’s sleek scalp.

Bobby did what he could to steady his voice, but he was none too successful. “I wanted to, uh, say how grateful I am—we all are, even Dad had to admit that—” His voice cracked here, and he tried to clear his palate. Finally he shouted, in physical and moral desperation, “You saved Lydia’s life, for God’s sake!”

Chuck nodded silently.

“Well,” said Bobby, “there you are. We can’t tell you how grateful we are, we all are. …” He had successfully brought his voice under control, but now it rose again to a shout. “It never happened before: a guest saving anyone’s life!” That his father had been right, that Chuck carried a gun did not necessarily mean that he did so with criminal intent, but the problem was how to ask him about it without being offensive and inhospitable.

And Chuck was not helping. He continued to nod in silence.

“With my father you have to consider the source. He’s jealous. Everything manly has to be done by him. He couldn’t forgive you for saving the life of a young female, furthermore his daughter-in-law. He sees that as reflecting adversely on him.”

Chuck leaned forward with an arched eyebrow and spoke at last. “What are you saying, Bobby? That he and Lydia—?”

Funny, Bobby had quarreled with his father in response to a suggestion that Lydia and Chuck might be sexual partners. “Oh, no,” he said hastily. “Nothing like that.”

“Then he’s changed his ways?”

How could Chuck have known? Bobby had never mentioned his father’s nasty habits to anyone but … Lydia. He shook his head violently. “No,” he repeated. “That’s not true.”

“What’s not true?” Chuck asked. “That he never made advances to the girls you brought here in the past, some of them underaged? Or that he simply hasn’t got around to putting the make on your wife?”

Bobby hated the turn the conversation had taken, because it required him to defend his father. “Really, Chuck,” he said, “I think you’ve got the wrong impression, with all respect. Dad might not be perfect, but—”

“There’s a lot of deceit in this house,” Chuck said. “That’s what strikes me as a guest: how much you all lie to one another. Unless you’re all simply that insensitive and unobservant.”

He might very well be correct, but Bobby felt awfully squeamish about considering such a theory with a stranger, which apparently was not an unfair designation for Chuck, whom it had been established that neither his father, Lydia, nor he had known prior to Chuck’s self-institution as houseguest … unless of course Lydia was lying.

Bobby found the courage to ask, “Are you an old friend of my mother’s?”

“Q.E.D.,” said Chuck with an air of triumph. “Now, what is that, mere insensitivity?”

Bobby was embarrassed. “Well,” he said finally, “the important thing is we all want you to stay. Don’t pay any attention to my father. He goes off half-cocked.”

“I haven’t had any trouble with Doug. Far from it! He’s been a perfect host.” Chuck frowned. “If you must know, Bobby, it’s Lydia. She seldom misses an occasion to make it clear she dislikes me.”

Bobby felt enormous relief. He cried out in false exasperation, “And you just saved her life!”

“I’m afraid that hasn’t made much difference,” said Chuck. “She has some kind of basic aversion, I guess. Perhaps it’s a visceral thing.”

“Oh, that isn’t true at all! All she can talk about now is what a hero you were.”

Chuck said sadly, “I’m afraid she hasn’t told me.”

It was not right for Lydia to withhold her gratitude from the very man who most should hear it. A new facet of her character was here being revealed. When with Bobby, she talked only of Chuck’s feat. She was using this thing as an instrument of power. Bobby usually submitted to her wishes, but he could not put up with this situation, which placed him in a sensitive situation with Chuck, and Chuck, for whatever reason, carried a gun.

Bobby therefore decided to pass the buck to his wife. “Say,” he told the houseguest now, “you go and knock on her door. She’s just napping. Go and tell her you’re leaving, and you just see what she says.”

“I don’t know,” said Chuck. “Isn’t that somewhat degrading?”

“I don’t think so. She really ought to do the right thing, and I’ll say this: it isn’t like Lydia to neglect something like that.”

“Oh,” asked Chuck, “you thought I was referring to myself?”

The question was too cryptic for Bobby, who shrugged and said, “Please do it, Chuck, and please don’t leave. We need you.” The houseguest had long since crossed his legs the other way, but the cuff at his armed ankle had caught on the butt of the pistol and had not descended. Bobby had been peripherally looking at the weapon throughout the conversation, but he still lacked the nerve to ask about it.

Chuck slowly smiled at him. “You may be right. Still …”

“Oh, don’t worry about waking her up. Look, but for you she wouldn’t be safely napping in a dry bed.”

“Maybe you should lead the way.”

“Oh, no,” said Bobby. “This is something between you and her. It would be bad taste for me to intervene.” Furthermore, he had missed completing his own nap, from which he had been harshly awakened by Lydia with the news of her near-drowning, and the encounter with his father had exhausted him further. If left alone he could easily snooze while slumped in the wicker chair in the far corner of the room, away from the deck.

“It’s your idea then,” said Chuck. “You have only yourself to blame.”

His father had turned out to be right about the houseguest’s carrying a gun, but was it likely that a criminal would be so emotionally vulnerable as Chuck had proved? Leaving a house because his feelings were hurt? Wouldn’t a criminal simply shoot the offending person? Not that Bobby did not pay the revolver the respect it deserved. It was just that he saw no reason to panic. This was an appropriate era in which to possess an effective means of self-protection. The so-called martial arts were useless against a vicious assailant. The college karate champ, on a visit to the city, was all but killed when attacked, on a crowded midtown street, by a crazed man wielding a souvenir dagger.

Whatever the ambiguities with respect to Chuck, he had done a certifiable job of lifesaving—or, at any rate, according to Lydia, and what motive would she have had to lie?

“You’ll see,” Bobby told the departing Chuck. “She thinks the world of you.”

*   *   *

Lydia was experiencing that kind of sleep that is profound yet does not delude the sleeper into believing for a moment that it is routine consciousness: the bogeyman cannot appear, and one does not suffer from a sense of one’s unpunished criminality or a monstrous passion for a near blood-relative. It is the sleep that, with luck, sometimes follows the worst phase of an illness, signifying a definite turn towards recovery. That she now enjoyed it rather than a nightmare suggested the basic soundness of her being, body and spirit. In her sleep she began to develop a conviction that she was invulnerable. A Chuck would inevitably appear to pluck her back from the brink of catastrophe. Hers was a charmed life.

Therefore when Bobby changed his mind and came back and got into bed with her, she determined not to wake up more than just enough to receive him, for with thorough consciousness would come the reasonable recognition that she was as mortal as ever, if not, given the near-drowning, more so. But her slow opening of legs was not quick enough to meet his unprecedented impatience. He spread them violently and with little preamble thrust himself into the closest of all connections, even hurting her a little, though she never could be called tardy in response, and she approved of this new brutality, at the outset anyway, as an appropriate sequel to her brush with dying.

Weary, she easily relinquished the self-command ordinarily at stake here: at the moment it was more sensible to serve than to lead. Only a determination not to wake up made it possible for her to admit to no amazement at Bobby’s transformation into a savage lover, but then everything in existence was all at once unprecedented since her death and miraculous rebirth. Her husband furthermore was now proving inexhaustible, he who formerly had come and gone so briskly, and even in her somnolence she was undergoing a series of intensities, each nearer the edge of paroxysm than the last, and had each not been accompanied by more distracting pain of a nonerotic nature, she might have expired of pleasure … but the fact remained that while he made “love,” he was mutilating the skin of her back and buttocks with bladelike fingernails and then, without disengaging at the pelvis, managed to writhe into a position in which his teeth were embedded in a sizable piece of her breast.

Fortunately, his formerly elongated body had lately dwindled to be hardly more than hers, and with a great heave that used more strength than she ordinarily commanded, she dislodged him and rolled out from under, over the edge of the bed, hit the floor, and was up instantly and in a rage.

But he was not Bobby. He was Chuck Burgoyne.

Lydia was aware that she had license to faint at this moment: it was not fair that all these things could happen at once, if ever, to a person like her, who always tried to do the right thing. But she was also aware that on awakening again she would never be able to find more than a few fragments of her former self.

Chuck was spread-eagled on the tangled bedclothes, which included the damp towel in which she had earlier come from the shower. He too was visibly damp at the groin, with matted hairs, and some of this wetness was surely of her own secretion, her property, to be dispensed only of her own volition. He was therefore a house-breaker.

He grinned and spoke genially. “You must have liked it: you came three or four times.” He reached for her at the lower thigh and was rapidly ascending as she jumped away.

She went even farther from the bedside, but made no move towards her clothing or even to cover herself, modesty being beside the point now. “I could kill you for this,” she said. Her breast was stinging where he had bitten her, but that was the least of it.

At last he began to suspect that her reaction did not honor him. He jeered. “Kill me? I just saved your life. That means you’re mine, I’ve got a right to you. Just think about it, and you’ll have to agree.”

“No, I don’t!” she cried. “I don’t have to do anything.”

The statement made him smile. “Come on, we’ve got something, you and me. We’re not like them.”

Lydia was breathing as rapidly as if she were still performing the act of copulation. “I’m not like you,” she said. “Don’t ever think that.”

“Hell,” said Chuck, stretching, yawning, “you don’t know me. But that can be easily corrected. Meanwhile, just get back over here. Don’t worry about that prize husband of yours: he’s occupied. He won’t walk in on us—not that I’d care much if he did.”

In truth she had not yet given Bobby a thought, but now, guiltily, she cried, “You haven’t hurt him?”

He guffawed. “What would you care? You’re out to take him for all he’s got. You haven’t fooled me for a minute.”

“Where is he? Have you done something to him?”

Chuck compressed his lips, then opened them to say archly, “You’ve got to come over here to find out.”

Lydia was beginning to feel her nakedness in a moral way. She backed towards the built-in dresser drawer that held her underwear. Somehow she believed her least vulnerable side was that which gave clearest access to her sex organs, perhaps because he had already used them. She bent slightly at the knee, and with a hand behind her, opened the drawer. Funny how vanity could not be forgotten altogether no matter the extremity: by touch alone she tried to find one of her more attractive pairs of pants. Obviously this was not for the purpose of inciting his ardor, but rather an honoring of her mother’s principle that the victim of an accident need never feel shame when wearing clean underwear. For what had happened here was a terrible accident, of which she had clearly been victim and not perpetrator, but then why did she suffer from such guilt? How could she, in a state of pristine ignorance, have failed to respond to him? Oh, retroactively it was easy enough to recognize the many differences in touch and rhythm and warmth and texture and on and on, including smell, Bobby being virtually odorless while Chuck had in recent memory used shaving lotion or cologne and soon exuded the natural musky scent of sex. But in the heat of the encounter details were as nothing; ripeness was all.

Damn, she could find nothing identifiable with the groping hand behind her back. She turned and seized any old pair and climbed into them. She whirled around, now in the white hip-huggers but still bare-breasted, and shouted at him, “All right, you saved my life. You have a right to my gratitude, but not to my person! I don’t care what your theory is!”

“I hope,” said Chuck, “you’re not going to claim you didn’t enjoy it.” At least he was finally limp by now, and consequently not quite as arrogant, and he had lost his grin. His hair had stayed perfectly combed. Lydia’s own was undoubtedly a mess: soaked in the sea and then the shower, roughly rumpled by towel, then slept on, then whatever happened to it during the act. She could not yet bear to look at herself in a mirror.

She stared at Chuck. “You raped me, you bastard. I was sleeping!” Which though not exactly true in particular, did support the general incontestable point, namely, that one’s body was one’s own, and lawful access to it by another could be gained only by permit, real or genuinely implied. Nowadays not even marriage provided unconditional license to one spouse to use the other without the latter’s agreement. “I never did one thing to suggest I wanted your sexual attentions. Not one thing! God damn you.”

There was an awful feeling in the crotch of her underpants. For an instant she believed she had, humiliatingly, urinated in the emotion of the moment, but suddenly understood that it was instead the emerging of the semen that had been injected into her, under false pretenses, by the man on her bed, and she was on no contraceptive medication; Bobby nowadays used condoms, his idea: the constriction helped keep him firm… . God, she was full of the stuff, her pants were soaked, and one only microscopic spermatazöon could do the job of procreation. What if she became pregnant by reason of this scum’s scum?

She rushed into the bathroom, tore off the pants, used the toilet, then quickly douched, but the complexities of the process of generation were such that none of this provided any insurance whatever. At last she stared at herself in the mirror. She looked exactly like somebody who had been drowned, brought to life, and raped.

Chuck entered while she was so engaged, marched to the toilet bowl, and grossly, with a powerfully pressured torrent, began to empty his bladder. Had she possessed a weapon, the time to get him would have been now, as he spread-legged himself before the toilet bowl. But if the weapon had a keen edge, what a mess there would be! A bludgeon might be aesthetically preferable, but would she have had the strength to deliver a lethal blow? That he would get away with this vile deed, however, was insupportable. It went without saying that her father and brothers would be eager to avenge her, but this was precisely the kind of shame that she would do anything to keep secret from those of her own blood, for irrespective of the necessity for revenge, no male of her family would really believe her account, given the peculiar circumstances. To begin with, her father had always thought her too tarty ever since the onset of her pubescence. First she had been indecently premature in wearing a brassiere and makeup; then when, after a few years, she gave up the former altogether and the latter in part and shortened her hair, she “looked like a boy,” and that was perhaps even more immoral. Taking up with Bobby Graves was the ultimate example of character failure: the Graveses would have been unpleasantly astonished to know how poorly they measured on the gauges of religion, culture, and even social status when the criterion was “our own kind.” “You know what they would call that,” Lydia had blurted in sheer exasperation. “Gangsters!” At which her mother said her mouth should be washed out with soap, and her father had not subsequently spoken to her though had sent an outlandishly large check on hearing she had married the guy. They had yet to meet Bobby. On this visit she was meeting his parents for the first time. And within a week she had been raped by another guest under the same roof.

She silently left Chuck where he was and went out to the bedroom and quickly covered herself with beltless jeans and an oversized man’s blue workshirt. While this was under way she heard the sibilance of the shower. His effrontery was, alas, impressive. Obviously he had no concern about Bobby’s return. Chuck’s contempt for her husband could not but have its effect on Lydia, who blamed Bobby now for not having been at hand—while worrying that he might return and catch her within a private enclosure with a naked man. Somewhere here too was a concern for his emotional well-being. Physically he was at least a match for Chuck, who unclothed was even shorter and slighter of build than when dressed, as opposed to the way it was with her brother Tony, who pumped iron but looked deceptively slender in a dark suit. On the other hand, Chuck was psychically a thug. She must get out of this room and find her husband, forestalling a confrontation until the ground had been well prepared.

But the person she found first—he was just coming into the main sitting room from the deck—was her father-in-law. For the first time he appeared not quite well groomed, though no detail supported this impression: it was one of mood.

They spoke at the same time. Doug could not distinguish her words. What he said was, “Have you seen Bobby?”

Obviously she had not heard the question, for she broke off and then resumed, with her own version of what he had said to her. “I’m looking for my husband.” She had been briefly attractive when seen in the swimsuit, but now she was back to being even less fetching than usual: hair damp and disordered, her face blanched, eyes reddened. If she was a confederate of Chuck’s, she had none of his style.

“I just asked you the same,” Doug said, with a chilly elevation of his chin. There was no longer any reason for courtesy if she was a participant in a conspiracy to take power in his home. She might be the weakest link, easily overwhelmed unless she too was carrying a concealed weapon, but before jumping her he would remain cautious until he could define the precise nature of her role.

As she stared at him now her eyes began to fill with tears. Of course it could be a hoax—he had had more than one mistress for whom weeping was but another manipulative device—but his daughter-in-law suddenly seemed genuinely forlorn.

Nevertheless, he stayed his distance, asking warily, “Why are you crying?”

She hung her head and spoke as if to her modest bosom. “Oh, God, how can I …”

“I heard about your problem with the undertow. Bobby really should have made it clear that swimming there is ill-advised.”

“Chuck,” Lydia began chokingly, as if she could hardly rid her throat of the name. “He—”

Doug was icy now. “Oh, yes,” he said, “your friend. He supposedly saved you, didn’t he? Well, you’re partners after all, aren’t you?” She certainly looked vulnerable at this moment. Surely he could deliver a disabling blow before she could draw the gun she carried in the waistband of the jeans, under that oversized shirt.

Lydia raised her face and asked, “My friend? He’s my friend?” Her tears had stopped flowing.

Doug could make no sense of the shifting emphasis. “Well,” said he, “he’s hardly mine. Furthermore, he pulled a gun on me. Can you imagine that? A guest in my house? Threatens me with a gun?” This incident had continued to burgeon in memory: Doug had by now convinced himself that Chuck had thrust the muzzle at him and cocked the trigger. “How’s that for a Sunday at the shore?” he asked. “You can get your head blown off for no reason, by a houseguest you don’t even know.”

Lydia was frowning. “Then whose friend is he?”

“He isn’t yours?”

His daughter-in-law glared at him. “He just raped me.”

Doug accepted this startling announcement with exterior aplomb, though within he was agitated morally and erotically. “Would you like to lie down?” he asked. “I’m afraid we can’t call the police: he’s done something to the phones. I don’t have any weapons. Maybe I can get out to the cars before he spots me, and make a break for help.”

“He’s put at least one of them out of commission,” Lydia said. “That’s why Bobby couldn’t get to the club. I’ll bet the other one won’t run, either. How did he get here himself? Where’s his car?”

“I suppose he got a ride,” said Doug, thinking of this matter for the first time. “He has a confederate, you know.”

“On the property somewhere?”

“I don’t know, but we’re in an extreme situation.” She had begun to weep softly again. He had to do something by way of comfort: she was young and female and a relative. He touched Lydia at last: he took her cold hand. “We’ll get him, dear. We’ll get him.”

Lydia’s fingers stirred within his grasp. “I didn’t see his gun.”

“Carries it in an ankle holster,” said Doug, releasing her, not wishing to convey the wrong idea. He had actually started to feel protective, an emotion unique for him.

“Damn!” she said. “Then it must have been someplace in the pile of his clothes on the floor. If only I had known!”

“Would you have shot him?”

“Sure!”

Doug was impressed by the girl’s spirit. “All right,” he said. “Good for you.” He was not himself the kind of man who could take a woman against her will. The thought was repugnant to him: he could scarcely desire a female who had to be forced to accept him, which would be the nullification of all that he sought when resorting to the opposite sex.

“By now, though,” Lydia went on, “he’ll be finished with his shower and be just about dressed. We should take cover somewhere.”

Doug led her out of the room. “We better not go to my part of the house: he’s back there all the time. I’ve got it: the utility room: we can talk in private there.” This was the site of the oil furnace (whose heat was available if required, the house being equipped for all seasons though routinely used for only one), the water heater, and washer-dryer; it lay behind the kitchen and except for vents for the appliances had no communication with the outer world. A cul-de-sac in which one could be trapped as well as hidden.

They entered this place and closed the door. A naked bulb of low wattage jutted from the wall; it was kept permanently lighted, for reasons of safety.

“Now,” said Doug to her dimly illuminated and thus even paler visage, “you’re not going to be crazy about this plan, but in view of the existing situation I think it would work. But you’d have to go to bed with him again—that is, get him to undress and take off his gun, and keep him distracted just long enough for me to come in and get the pistol.” She was grimacing. “I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “Forget it. Bad idea. We’ll think of something else.” He was continually being astonished by this new delicacy of his.

“No,” said she. “No, it’s a fine plan. But I’ll get the gun. You don’t have to come in.”

He shrugged. “You’re so modest, even in such an emergency? I assure you—”

“No,” said Lydia. “I don’t want you to risk your life. This is my problem.”

He was injured by her selfishness. “Didn’t I say he robbed me at gunpoint?”

She had expressive eyes; they understood him. “All right, we’ll be partners, but I still don’t want you to take such a risk. Let me grab the gun, though. Then I’ll yell for you.”

Now that he had learned of the eloquence of her eyes, he examined them for a moment. “You don’t want to just capture him and turn him over to the police. You want to shoot him, don’t you?”

“I don’t know what I want, except to make the first move against him. I hate the way he made me feel.”

“Did he really save your life?”

“I can’t deny that. But I can’t live it down, either, till I pay him back. It’s all of a piece: the lifesaving and the rape. One can’t be separated from the other. I have to even the score.”

She might be seen as demented to a degree, yet Doug felt she made a certain sense. He and she had affinity in their common concern for honor.