condemning which she induced and persuaded Mrs. Estelle Singletary to throw in with.

As for herself, Miss Bernice Fay Frazier was pretty completely lathered up and felt fairly much on the verge of a conniption but managed somehow to forestall it a time while she expressed over the telephone to her sister her own personal impressions of living under the same roof with trash, most especially such trash as would meet a man at a hotel, a man with a streak on his finger where most probably his band had just lately been, and lay with him in the altogether, lay with him undoubtedly in the altogether contorted and twisted and maybe even upside down which Miss Bernice Fay Frazier, who'd been conjuring as she spoke, near about swooned at the sight of in her own mind's eye where a woman was free to contort and twist and upend her parts and pieces after a fashion no actual people had yet evolved the anatomy for. So Miss Bernice Fay Frazier was fairly much ascending to a state and had to hear from her sister Mrs. Estelle Singletary how perhaps she was being a bit hasty and rash in her judgment before she could find sufficient chink in the thing to announce her impending condition to Mrs. Estelle Singletary who detected in her sister's voice a frantic sort of a quiver and so inquired was she perhaps entering just presently into crisis.

Now of course Dr. Dewey Lunt had spent the bulk of a session on crises and how precisely to enter into one and he'd been himself partial to a frantic quiver at the outset followed by a variety of anguished discharge that was meant to be a kind of a shriek with some palpable torment to it, but when Miss Bernice Fay Frazier just quivered and failed to shriek back of it Mrs. Estelle Singletary found herself obliged to inquire of her sister was she or was she not entering into crisis since she could not hope to tell from just the frantic quiver by itself alone and could not afford to wait all the evening for a shriek most especially if a shriek was not in the least bit impending, and she asked of Miss Bernice Fay Frazier over the phone line, "Well?" like served to prod her into a shriek outright and so kicked off her crisis for certain. Naturally she blubbered soon enough as blubbering was to follow fairly hard up on shrieking in a crisis, and she registered her complaints about Miss Mary Alice Celestine Lefler and her complaints about Raymond the philandering salesman and her fears about the naked contortions along with a spattering of gurgly transactional suppositions that were full well as inarticulate and incomprehensible as the majority of the talk preceding them. Like was in keeping with the prescribed course of a crisis, Miss Bernice Fay Frazier's blubbering gave way to a round of forlorn self-pitying discharges that were intended to communicate to Mrs. Estelle Singletary over the phone line how Miss Bernice Fay Frazier did not hardly know what she would do, did not hardly know what she would do ever and felt pressed to wonder why she'd been plunked down on God's earth in the first place if she was only to see her kindness flung back upon her by faithless men and, as best as she could tell from her mind's eye, double-jointed women. It did not hardly seem a fit life to her, and she wondered in a rhetorical sort of a way if it was in fact a fit life and if she should even trouble herself to press on in her effort to live it that Mrs. Estelle Singletary, who'd never met a rhetorical question she didn't hke, responded to at some appreciable length.

Mrs. Estelle Singletary was of a mind that life was fairly grand and should not be squandered or punctuated, life in general, that is, and not truly her very own particular life which was plagued by and afflicted with Mr. Estelle Singletary. But she guessed by and large life could be probably grand in fact for Miss Bernice Fay Frazier who'd not ever troubled herself to wed a plague and an affliction and so, in her declining years, would not likely stroke from aggravation that Mrs. Estelle Singletary gave out as an altogether resplendent blessing which was surely enhanced by Miss Bernice Fay Frazier's housecat Bubbles that Mrs. Estelle Singletary figured for a comfort chiefly and figured only partly for a source of abundant freefloating and altogether migratory cat hair. It seemed, then, to Mrs. Estelle Singletary that Miss Bernice Fay Frazier had before her some numerous blessings to count, but Miss Bernice Fay Frazier was not of a mood to count blessings and was not hardly gaining the mood for it either but had guessed she might wallow instead in her own forlorn circumstances that she endeavored to speak of but just primarily gurgled about.

So she'd gone from the frantic quiver to the anguished shriek to the inarticulate blubbering to the self-pitying discharges that had themselves deteriorated and given way to a bout of forlorn gurgly wallowing hke fairly well served to ensconce Miss Bernice Fay Frazier so deep within her crisis that Mrs. Estelle Singletary could tell even over the phone line how there was not but a lone remaining remedy for it. She had call for an encounter with her elevated interdenominational group that would plumb and fathom her torment and then relate with it and identify about it and delve and testify on account of it sufficiently to drive Miss Bernice Fay Frazier up out from her morass and convince her how she was OK and they were OK and all of them pretty much together were likely about as OK as they could get. The trouble was, however, that Mrs. Estelle Singletary was meaning this very evening to serve dinner to the

Wishons from Greensboro and had plans the night following to dine at the club with Mr. Estelle Singletary so as to use up their meal fee before the new month came on like meant Mrs. Estelle Singletary could not possibly attend Miss Bernice Fay Frazier's encounter until Friday evening and she indicated to her sister how she would be quite thoroughly miffed if Miss Bernice Fay Frazier went ahead and had an encounter without her.

"Can't you just wallow for two days?" Mrs. Estelle Singletary wanted to know, and Miss Bernice Fay Frazier guessed she could maybe hold in a wallow if Mrs. Estelle Singletary would agree to have the encounter in her backyard alongside the fairway and would consider making it pot luck as well since Miss Bernice Fay Frazier could not help but believe she might emerge from her crisis with a craving for waxed bean salad and noodle casserole and the like.

Consequently, then, Mrs. Estelle Singletary agreed to play hostess to the encounter that Miss Bernice Fay Frazier agreed to put off until Friday while she maintained her woeful condition, and she took upon herself the task of calling up the encounterees and explaining to them how she'd come just presently to be in crisis and wondering would they maybe be free to collect Friday evening out by the fairway for purposes of relating and identifying and delving and plumbing and fathoming and might they each bring a dish. Now, of course, nobody much had found cause to relate and identify and delve and plumb and fathom after an organized fashion in the intervening couple of weeks since their gathering at the reservoir, so most everybody was anxious for the chance to hoist Miss Bernice Fay Frazier up out from her predicament as a preface to dining in the out of doors. Mrs. Phillip J. King most especially was anxious for a potluck encounter as she had designs already on an entree, a banger and turnip stew that she assured Miss Bernice Fay Frazier would prove inordinately savory like Miss Bernice Fay Frazier, who was after all in crisis already, was not of a mood to debate about. The widow Mrs. Askew tantalized Miss Bernice Fay Frazier with the promise of fresh and altogether incisive pith for the occasion which got her over the phone line a manner of frantic quiver in reply, and Mr. and Mrs. Luther Teague and Mr. and Mrs. Cecil Dutton agreed to bring some form of salad and frosted cake squares respectively while Miss Fay Dull inquired should she wear pants or simply carry a parka to perch upon. The Sleepy Pittses and the Wyatt Benbows looked forward between them to an evening alongside the fairway and Mr. H. Monroe Aycock expressed his unbounded delight at the prospect of a meal al fresco while the Reverend Mr. Theodore J. Parnell guessed he could stop in and delve and fathom and identify and relate for a spell but could not stay for the evening as he had some of God's work to see after which he seemed to suggest was more significant even than Miss Bernice Fay Frazier's personal crisis that got him his own frantic quiver back.

She'd saved Mrs. Dwight Mobley for last as she had an inquiry to make of Mrs. Dwight Mobley beyond the invitation, a delicate sort of an inquiry that she'd needed time to cultivate and shape to suit her, so finally she did in fact dial up Mrs. Dwight Mobley and chatted for a spell about her crisis and the upcoming encounter to cure it along with the need for one entree further like set Mrs. Dwight Mobley off on some talk of chicken drumettes in a sauce that she'd come across a recipe for, and she wanted to know from Miss Bernice Fay Frazier if didn't chicken drumettes in a sauce strike her as sublime which Miss Bernice Fay Frazier did not truly take time to consider and instead shifted topics of a sudden and entirely to him with the hair and the moustache and the gold sparkly watch and the white streak of fingerskin, him who Miss Bernice Fay Frazier and Mrs. Dwight Mobley agreed was dashing, him who they agreed possessed untold charms, him who Mrs. Dwight Mobley admitted set her heart aflutter. Miss Bernice Fay Frazier was anxious to discover had Raymond maybe one time passed through Berkeley Springs West Virginia that she guessed Mrs. Dwight Mobley might know or Mrs. Dwight Mobley's momma's sister might know instead, but Mrs. Dwight Mobley did not know for certain and could only tell to Miss Bernice Fay Frazier how Raymond had come to be acquainted somehow with Miss Mary Alice Celestine Lefler that he'd admitted to her and admitted to the widow Mrs. Askew he had.

"Acquainted?" Miss Bernice Fay Frazier wanted to know and so heard from Mrs. Dwight Mobley how she believed acquainted was what precisely she'd just finished saying though she did not know in what connection Raymond and Miss Mary Alice Celestine Lefler had come to be previously acquainted in like set off Miss Bernice Fay Frazier's mind's eye which envisioned a variety of connection that was pretty wholly unlikely and quite thoroughly antigravitational as well and so touched off a frantic quiver in combination with an anguished discharge that Mrs. Dwight Mobley took for a sneeze and so told to Miss Bernice Fay Frazier, "Bless you, honey," like caused her to be refreshed over the phone line as to the particular phases of the species of crisis Miss Bernice Fay Frazier had lately dropped off into, not one of which was sneezing.

"Might your momma's sister know acquainted how just exactly?" Miss Bernice Fay Frazier inquired and so heard from Mrs. Dwight Mobley that her momma's sister might like was sufficient to induce Miss Bernice Fay Frazier to take the number herself and to forestall Mrs.

Dwight Mobley as best as she was able from speaking further of the drumettes and from speaking most especially of the sauce as well that was meant to be piquant though Mrs. Dwight Mobley could not from the ingredients alone reason piquant how precisely and was set to ask after Miss Bernice Fay Frazier's own personal opinion of most especially the capers and the raisins in combination when she came to be interrupted by a gurgly discharge that was itself preamble to the thoroughgoing deadening of the line which freed Miss Bernice Fay Frazier to dial straightaway Mrs. Dwight Mobley's momma's sister who was sitting in her armchair with the crinkly beflowered ruffle endeavoring to untangle a word scramble from the newspaper, endeavoring anyway to see with her dead husband's eyeglasses the word scramble clue for the day which was for this Wednesday "insouciant" that Mrs. Dwight Mobley's momma's sister said into the air three different ways entirely prior to studying the word scramble cartoon picture of a man being, she supposed, insouciant himself, of a man striking what she had to take for an insouciant sort of a pose like appeared primarily slouchy to her though she could not hardly begin to make slouchy from the letters she'd been given to make slouchy from hke caused her to pause in her ruminations and set herself to tell into the air, "Insouciant," one time further still which she came to be interrupted at and prevented from altogether by her telephone back of her that rang a piece of a ring and then a full ring and then a piece of another ring behind it before Mrs. Dwight Mobley's momma's sister had managed to push with her shoebottoms against the floor and thereby propel herself and her armchair together in a highly lubricational sort of a way across near about the entire breadth of the room to the far wall where she took up the handset and said sweetly into it her exchange and subsequent digits as well.

So Miss Bernice Fay Frazier came in fact to be edified and instructed, or had that is what she'd felt in her recesses confirmed for her by Mrs. Dwight Mobley's momma's sister who spoke of her with the hps and the fingerends who'd had a washstand be wheeled and him with the hair and the moustache who'd bewheeled it like did not appear to Mrs. Dwight Mobley's momma's sister much of a transgression until Miss Bernice Fay Frazier set forth her theory of how her with the hps and the fingerends and him with the silvery hair had touched off between themselves passionate sparks like had caused them to connive and conspire and to transport at last their mutual enchantment across state lines where they'd come lately to be joined and united in the altogether atop a queensize bed at the Belvedere Hotel, and Miss Bernice Fay

Frazier allowed her mind's eye to run momentarily amok so as to suggest to Mrs. Dwight Mobley's momma's sister the latent possibilities of the ball-and-socket joint. She guessed he had babies at home, Miss Bernice Fay Frazier did. She guessed he likely had an ailing wife gone too splayed in the hips to suit him, not near so svelte and willowy anyway as her with the hps and with the fingerends, her Miss Bernice Fay Frazier had taken to her very bosom and embraced.

"Like a sister," Miss Bernice Fay Frazier insisted and waited briefly for a sympathetic reply that Mrs. Dwight Mobley's aunt attempted one of but her clucking and her humphing got lost in and undone by the static on the line. Of course Miss Bernice Fay Frazier had suspected she was trash all along but had opened her heart and her home nonetheless until she might prove she was in fact a manner of harlot like it seemed to her this day she'd proved it, and Miss Bernice Fay Frazier bewailed briefly the lowly state of humanity and spoke of how dreadful it appeared to her people had come to be and then she left off talking so as to allow for assent from Mrs. Dwight Mobley's momma's sister who took the occasion to inquire of Miss Bernice Fay Frazier if the bugs this summer had been near so thick down her way as they'd been up in Berkeley Springs that Mrs. Dwight Mobley's momma's sister did not truly come to be satisfied about due to how Miss Bernice Fay Frazier made just a quivery sort of a noise at her before the line went dead, and Mrs. Dwight Mobley's momma's sister pondered briefly the receiver prior to launching herself with her shoebottoms back across the room where she raised up her piece of newspaper and sat a time quite apparently idle and unemployed until she drew off a breath to tell into the air, "Insouciant," quite emphatically in the wrong place altogether.

Miss Bernice Fay Frazier just stewed awhile on the settee and endeavored to soothe herself by stroking her cat Bubbles who'd lately nested upside down among the throwpillows like had left upended and exposed a piece of fluffy stomach that Miss Bernice Fay Frazier rubbed with her fingers until Bubbles roused herself sufficiently to sink her teeth into the meat of Miss Bernice Fay Frazier's hand and to scratch with her back claws down the length of Miss Bernice Fay Frazier's forearm which in combination suggested to Miss Bernice Fay Frazier how Bubbles was not presently of a mood to have her stomach scratched. Mr. Dick Atwater called on the phone after her of the acrobatic inclinations, spoke even three of her four names outright to Miss Bernice Fay Frazier who grew directly frantic and anguished both together and came to be shortly quite thoroughly inarticulate in a blubbery sort of a way and so did not truly tell to Mr. Dick Atwater anything much he had asked to know before she left him alone on the line and turned to seek solace once further from Bubbles her cat who'd laid and rotated her ears after such a fashion as to indicate that she was presently of an inflammatory and moderately lunatic disposition like presented Miss Bernice Fay Frazier with yet another circumstance to deepen and complicate her crisis further still as it struck her of a sudden that she'd made some sort of dreadful miscalculation to rely for companionship, here in the shank of her days, on a loose woman and a maniacal cat, and she was telling herself, "Sad, sad," as a commentary upon her very existence when she came to be obliged to answer the ring of the phone and inform Mr. Dick Atwater how life was a thing fraught with pitfalls that she left him directly alone on the line to absorb and consider.

She guessed she'd commence with her withering look that she'd train upon Miss Mary Alice Celestine Lefler once she'd stepped across the threshold and that she'd persevere with steadfastly until she found cause to shift instead to her altogether incredulous expression, the one of them with the wide eyes and the slack jaw and the thoroughgoing preponderance of bottom teeth, and she figured she might at this point in the encounter undertake a quip if a quip came to her or embark instead upon a piece of steely silence if steely silence struck her somehow as more apt. Consequently, then, Miss Bernice Fay Frazier rehearsed her withering look on the front doorlights and allowed herself a purely sardonic exchange with the switchplate alongside the jamb prior to growing slack and toothy and enduring at it a time until she heard in fact Miss Mary Alice Celestine Lefler herself on the steps and atop the decking and pitching finally against the door itself so as to swing it open like brought her squarely before Miss Bernice Fay Frazier who set about reducing her with a gaze.

And Miss Mary Alice Celestine Lefler told to Miss Bernice Fay Frazier, "Hey," and came right on in without even the first trace of hair gel about her while Miss Bernice Fay Frazier, who'd developed a twitchy nerve, endeavored to calm her look down from moderately psychotic to withering alone and so appeared just a little unbalanced and constipated in combination like was enough of an expression to cause Miss Mary Alice Celestine Lefler to linger at the doorway and inquire of Miss Bernice Fay Frazier, "What?"

She had a flush to her, a deep thoroughgoing flush along her neck and up the length of her face, such a deep and such a thoroughgoing and persistent sort of a flush that Miss Bernice Fay Frazier could not begin to suppose Raymond with the hair and the moustache had likely embarrassed her into it and so indulged again her mind's eye that revealed to her a variety of daring gymnastic stunts in the course of which Miss Mary Alice Celestine Lefler tumbled through the air, executed a near flawless twisting manuever with a partial somersault to it, and came at last to be fairly thoroughly impaled much to her unbounded delight which she expressed in a purely unanguished shriek along with a manner of creeping blush that climbed steadily upwards from her toenails to the roots of her, undoubtedly, tinted hair. The sight was certainly more than Miss Bernice Fay Frazier could hope to endure with an unbalanced and constipated expression, so her lips shortly developed a crinkle to them and she believed herself on the verge of a blubbery outburst when Miss Mary Alice Celestine Lefler advanced upon her, routed the cat out from the throwpillows, and sat among them herself from where she took up Miss Bernice Fay Frazier's fingers and looked so sympathetically upon her that Miss Bernice Fay Frazier's resolve to be harsh and withering began to erode but stopped shortly at it once she'd caught a whiff of Raymond's leathery scent on Miss Mary Alice Celestine Lefler in addition to a whiff of cigarette as well like called up another time the exploits that she guessed Miss Mary Alice Celestine Lefler and him with the hair and with the moustache had punctuated together with a smoke.

It was a matter of some debate to her whether she would call her straightoff a harlot or merely inquire instead if wasn't she in fact trash after all so as to allow Miss Mary Alice Celestine Lefler the opportunity for rebuttal which would undoubtedly provide Miss Bernice Fay Frazier occasion for her altogether incredulous expression, and she'd even begun to work her eyes wide and loosen up her jaw in preparation to slack it when Miss Mary Alice Celestine Lefler up and announced how she had a thing to say, confessed how she'd spent the bulk of her absence getting fetched or preparing anyway to get fetched that struck Miss Bernice Fay Frazier as unseemly in fact and very possibly taxing in an anatomical sort of a way since, in her present state, she took fetching for a sort of thing a man and a woman lay naked upon a bed together and did perhaps with the aid and assistance of a healthy dollop of hair gel.

So she said to her presently, "Fetched," with palpable distaste and entertained from Miss Mary Alice Celestine Lefler a spate of thoroughly giddy talk on the topic of Raymond with the hair and the moustache and the gold sparkly accoutrements not even to mention the princely deportment and the regal manners that she communicated her view of with a lengthsome exhalation alone.

"He rolled my washstand," Miss Mary Alice Celestine Lefler told partly to Miss Bernice Fay Frazier and partly to the walljoint at the hall doorway where she appeared to see Raymond once more before her washstand with his drill and his casters squatting upon his admirably skimpy posterior hke induced from Miss Mary Alice Celestine Lefler an additional breathy discharge that sounded to have to it considerably more abandon than Miss Bernice Fay Frazier cared to hear of.

Being a lady of no trifling discretion, Miss Bernice Fay Frazier had resolved not to mention the streak of skin, not to throw up in Miss Mary Alice Celestine Lefler's face what appeared to Miss Bernice Fay Frazier the distasteful circumstances of the entire proceeding, and she did even manage not to speak of the streak of skin for a time and did even manage not but to hint obliquely about it for a spell as well before she just up and inquired of Miss Mary Alice Celestine Lefler if wasn't she in fact a home wrecker, if hadn't she in fact with her wiles and charms lured poor Raymond away from his wife and his babies and carried him full into iniquity like made her probably trash and like made her probably a harlot both together which Miss Bernice Fay Frazier let on to be a manner of query and so fell briefly silent in anticipation of a reply. For her part, Miss Mary Alice Celestine Lefler allowed Miss Bernice Fay Frazier to have her previously gripped and held fingers back prior to rising upright off the settee and flattening her dressfront with her open hands by which she prefaced a broad earwax sort of a smile for the benefit of Miss Bernice Fay Frazier who undertook to leer herself back before she grew quivery and anguished and agitated and so set to blubbering into her one hand while she raised the other to get the fingers of it gripped and held again by her who just stood before the settee and looked beyond the fingers that she did not move to grip or hold either one.

"I know where I'm welcome," Miss Mary Alice Celestine Lefler said, "and I know where I'm not. Pardon me, please, ma'm." And with that she spun round and left the front parlor for the backhall and the stairs to her room where she arrived shortly and quite apparently dragged her suitcase out from under the bed. Down on the settee Miss Bernice Fay Frazier could hear the rasp of it across the floor, and she told to the ceiling, "Well!" with measurable indignation and she told to her cat Bubbles who'd reclaimed the throwpillows, "Well!" too and guessed how she had not ever intended to open up a home for shiftless women to come wait for their married boyfriends to shed their various bonds and shackles and fetch them away, and she informed her cat Bubbles, "No we did not," and contemplated stroking the animal with the fingers she'd raised to get gripped but the lay of the ears prevented her from it.

"Go then," Miss Bernice Fay Frazier proclaimed and flung her arm with her indicating finger extended ever so dramatically towards the doorway. "Go then," she said and merely jerked her head instead hke she guessed did not have near so much show and flair to it as the flung arm. "Go," she said and flung her arm another time, "then," which she liked well enough as a combination of flinging and speaking but guessed she might best fling and then speak or speak and then fling and not mingle the two of them together. She tried it sitting and she tried it standing and she tried it mostly upright but pitched a httle against the sofa arm which seemed to her to have some icy style to it, and she flung and then spoke and she spoke and then flung and she laid her unemployed hand to her hip like seemed to purely coagulate the thing altogether and so left her merely to wait for Miss Mary Ahce Celestine Lefler who collected and packed her belongings and then presently came bumping her luggage down the stairway and sliding it up the backhall floor.

"Go then," Miss Bernice Fay Frazier intoned and flung with excessive drama, but Miss Mary Alice Celestine Lefler was of a mind to use the telephone before she actually went so she'd have a way to go in fact which Miss Bernice Fay Frazier guessed she might allow her to do and so flung towards the phone as well though Miss Mary Ahce Celestine Lefler assured her how she knew precisely where the phone was. She engaged in a whispery indecipherable conversation with him, no doubt, who Miss Bernice Fay Frazier endeavored to communicate her opinion about with just her posture against the sofa arm alone and she allowed Miss Mary Ahce Celestine Lefler to cradle the receiver and arrive once more alongside her suitcase before she flung yet again and told to her, "Go then," but Miss Mary Alice Celestine Lefler preferred to wait inside the house if Miss Bernice Fay Frazier could see fit to endure it that Miss Bernice Fay Frazier figured from the sofa arm maybe she could.

Of course, she was not much accustomed to pitching and leaning and so had not anticipated how her various vessels and nerves, most especially her sciatic ones, would come to be pinched and constricted thereby benumbing Miss Bernice Fay Frazier's lower parts which she could not after a time determine she had any of unless she looked squarely at them. She was not, however, tempted at all to confess to Miss Mary Alice Celestine Lefler that she'd come to be pinched and constricted and benumbed and endeavored instead to surreptitiously stomp her feet and thereby incite her blood to circulate like was hardly a thoroughgoing success for Miss Bernice Fay Frazier who could not with her benumbed parts anticipate where the floor might be and so evermore encountered it before she'd figured she might which was just the sort of thing to cause her teeth to beat together and her head to jerk after such a fashion as to pretty much undo and fairly completely mitigate the icy style she'd hoped with the leaning to manufacture. So Miss Mary Alice Celestine Lefler stood alongside her baggage with her arms crossed before herself and her lips laid wide upon the breadth of her face in a sour, unamused sort of a way while Miss Bernice Fay Frazier engaged in a peculiar manner of hoedown alongside the sofa arm and looked baldly back as best as she was able when she was not stomping and inciting instead. They did not speak but by way of reasonably articulate exasperated breaths that told, it seemed, worlds more than actual words might, and Miss Mary Alice Celestine Lefler let on with her discharges how she was a woman in love and did not much care to be construed for a harlot while Miss Bernice Fay Frazier exhaled her own low opinion of men with newfound streaks of skin and the women that took up with them. And together they'd arrived at the verge of hyperventilation by the time Raymond slipped up against the curbing in his blueblack sedan and tooted upon the horn of it so as to announce how he'd come at last to actually fetch away Miss Mary Alice Celestine Lefler in fact.

Unfortunately, however, Raymond did not appear disposed there at the first but to toot and so busied himself tapping upon the padded wheel and did not offer to step into the house and carry off Miss Mary Alice Celestine Lefler's outsized piece of luggage and her overnight case and hanging bag until she arrived upon the porch herself so as to instruct Raymond how he had some items in the house to carry off and she meant truly straightaway. Now Raymond, who of course was acquainted with wifely tones, had not ever previously had occasion to hear one from Miss Mary Alice Celestine Lefler herself and so leapt out of the car from habit but lingered upon the sidewalk from surprise until he came to be shortly instructed again and climbed to the porch and passed through the doorway to the front room where he endured a glare from Miss Bernice Fay Frazier who cavorted with her feet but appeared content to lay and lean with the rest of herself.

"Ma'm," Raymond told to Miss Bernice Fay Frazier as he undertook to collect Miss Mary Alice Celestine Lefler's baggage that he managed to take up altogether and struggle with across the carpet to the doorway that Miss Bernice Fay Frazier watched him at and breathed at him about. She did not wish him to loose the cat into the yard and told him with disdain how she did not wish him to loose it like left Raymond to undertake to mind the baggage and to mind the door and to mind the cat all at the same time which was more truly than he could manage with much grace and princely charm and, consequently, he arrived on the porch a little ill and winded and attempted to rest atop the decking and collect himself, but Miss Mary Alice Celestine Lefler informed him how he'd probably best collect himself later and fairly drove him off the porch and down the steps to the backend of the blueblack sedan where he raised the trunklid and hefted the outsized suitcase into the trunk without hearing even one time of what strapping variety of specimen he was.

He tooted a bon voyage before she could keep him from tooting it and they eased away from the curb and out into the road that Miss Bernice Fay Frazier watched them at as best as she was able from the sofa arm that she'd raised off of but held to nonetheless as she was not, with her benumbed limbs, in any condition to walk even so far as the door. So she just stood alongside the camelback settee and looked out through the doorscreen to where the blueblack sedan had only lately been before him with the hair and the moustache and her with the lips and the fingerends had departed on their way to what Miss Bernice Fay Frazier could not help but figure for an illicit assignation in the altogether like called up for her the likelihood of gymnastics which she stood alongside the sofa arm and inadvertently conjured about before she came to be distracted by her twingy sciatic nerve like brought to mind for her her cat Bubbles with the ears and the attendant fur cloud, her cat Bubbles among the throwpillows that eyed Miss Bernice Fay Frazier with that wild, skewed out-from-the-asylum-on-a-daytrip sort of a cat look prior to leaping onto the carpet and charging headlong through the dining room into the kitchen where she jumped up upon the countertop and knocked from it in the process Miss Bernice Fay Frazier's salad spinner that in turn hit her broomhandle and so caused it to pitch over and slap against the linoleum like was just the sort of thing to terrify a cat and, consequently, terrified Bubbles who departed from the kitchen for the breakfast nook and out of it up the backhall and into the frontroom once more where she gained the settee yet again and hunkered upon it working most especially her back claws deep into the upholstery until Miss Bernice Fay Frazier reached out to soothe her with a touch and so incited Bubbles to depart another time straight out through the air like a nappy bullet.

Needless to say, a frantic quiver ensued, a thoroughly acute frantic quiver which served itself as a prologue to an anguished discharge like was preface to Miss Bernice Fay Frazier's fairly precipitous collapse atop the settee cushions where she lay with her knuckles upon her forehead and endeavored to bemoan her pitiful state that appeared to her just presently quite lowly and pretty completely irredeemable as far as pitiful

states went. She guessed she needed somebody to relate briefly and identify on her behalf and to maybe help her delve and plumb for the time being down past her woes and recent reverses like she figured might hold her until her pot luck encounter. Accordingly, then, she struggled to the phone and dialed her sister Mrs. Estelle Singletary who she hoped would soothe her for the moment but Mrs. Estelle Singletary was right there in the middle of wine coolers and mixed nuts with the Wishons and had no time to speak to Miss Bernice Fay Frazier, so she thought she might call Miss Fay Dull instead but recollected in the midst of calling Miss Fay Dull how she did not truly much care for Miss Fay Dull and how she did believe she'd made lately a frank and candid disclosure to that effect like left her to figure that maybe she'd call the widow Mrs. Askew instead, the widow Mrs. Askew who was just across the road and so could arrive ever so shortly to delve and identify but would undoubtedly cart with her a thoroughgoing dose of unmitigated pith which Miss Bernice Fay Frazier did not believe she could presently endure with any detectable grace. She did not know then who she might enlist to calm and soothe her and was casting about for a candidate when she came to be startled by a rap upon her screendoor rail and looked up of a sudden to find Mr. Dick Atwater standing atop her porch decking with his lacquered hat in his hand. He appeared even through the screenwire to have gotten somehow altered, to have come to be swollen under his one eye and bruised alongside his mouth and it looked most especially to her that he had misplaced a sizeable sprig of hair, not that he'd laid it to the left when he should have laid it to the right or laid it to the right when he should have laid it to the left but that he'd lost it altogether somehow and just had anymore red prickly scalp where only lately a sprig of hair had been, red prickly scalp that was intensely red and prickly both even through the screenwire and so briefly distracted Miss Bernice Fay Frazier from her own personal woes and afflictions.

And she said to him, "Mr. Atwater?" and heard from him back, "Bernice," and then watched him look briefly down at his lacquered hat like revealed to her a second vacant patch of scalp that appeared to have lately entertained a sprig itself.

"I called," he told her. "Twice."

"Did you?" Miss Bernice Fay Frazier inquired and left the phone table to free herself to lurch pathetically towards the front doorway.

"Yes ma'm," Mr. Dick Atwater said and nodded so deeply as to display a third prickly patch where he'd come to be quite violently bald. "Two times."

"We've had here a situation," Miss Bernice Fay Frazier told to him and made what looked to Mr. Dick Atwater an altogether grave face, too altogether grave for him to endure on the porch and so he drew open the screendoor and thereby intercepted Miss Bernice Fay Frazier in the midst of her pitiful lurching, gripped to her at the elbow, and pressed her to tell him straightaway what situation precisely she meant.

Of course the sight of Mr. Dick Atwater newly illuminated by the lamplight and wholly unfiltered by the screenwire put Miss Bernice Fay Frazier off from speaking for a time and she looked from the scrapes and the bruises to the bald patches and then back to the scrapes and the bruises again prior to mustering up the means at last to speak and asking of Mr. Dick Atwater, "What on earth happened to you?"

"Fell down," Mr. Dick Atwater told to her and bore in contusions foremost on Miss Bernice Fay Frazier so as to maybe prompt her directly back to the situation he'd wanted in the first place to hear of.

"Fell down?" Miss Bernice Fay Frazier said to him and eyed the scrapes and the bruises and the patches and the wounds otherwise further still prior to inquiring, "Off what?"

"Just fell down," Mr. Dick Atwater told to her and fairly pinched off her circulation at her bony elbowjoint like Miss Bernice Fay Frazier felt shortly obliged to apprise him about and she wondered just out into the air if there was in this lifetime likely to be any end to her own personal acute suffering, by which she meant chiefly her own personal acute suffering in the general sense as she'd guessed already how she might pinch with her fingernails at Mr. Dick Atwater's forearm so as to relieve the acute suffering visited just presently upon her between her elbow and her fingerends. So they came the two of them to be shortly disengaged and Miss Bernice Fay Frazier veered off in her pathetic lurching away from the doorway and towards the settee where she settled shortly with Mr. Dick Atwater snug up behind her to settle at her side and press her to reveal to him what situation precisely she was suffering acutely about.

"You can't ever know people," Miss Bernice Fay Frazier informed him. "You can't ever know what it is people might do."

"What people?" Mr. Dick Atwater wished to discover and bore in another time on Miss Bernice Fay Frazier who sighed the deep resonant sigh of an acutely suffering woman.

"Oh, Mr. Atwater," she said and did not contribute any comment otherwise back of it but instead grew moved to indulge in a bout of forlorn wallowing that came to be shortly gurgly once it had left off being wheezy first.

For his part Mr. Dick Atwater, who'd peered into the kitchen and listened at the ceiling but had not seen anybody and had not heard anything except the drumming of tiny cat feet, figured for himself how she was not roundabout and figured of a sudden for himself as well who likely she was not roundabout with which incited him to an exclamation, which moved him to tell to Miss Bernice Fay Frazier, who was looking chiefly for a kind word, "That goddam Nestor Tudor. He come and took her off, didn't he? That son of a bitch. Just slipped on over here and snaked his way right in. I should have known it," Mr. Dick Atwater declared. "I should have seen it," and he sighed himself and wallowed a little on his own though not with much wheeze or gurgle to speak of.

Now Miss Bernice Fay Frazier possessed personally the constitution to be anguished and quivery and hotly indignant all at the same time and so she expressed straightaway at Mr. Dick Atwater her outright consternation, drew back anyhow and drew up both at the same time and fairly declaimed, "Mr. Atwater!" that she punctuated with a frantic sort of a tremor prior to persevering briefly with some talk on the moral perils of blasphemy and profanation. Furthermore, Miss Bernice Fay Frazier assured Mr. Dick Atwater that she had not herself laid eyes upon Nestor Tudor since the night previous when she'd spied him across the street in the lamplight with his rumpled nosegay in his hand, the news of which induced from Mr. Dick Atwater a variety of, "Oh," like was meant to express for him his regret on account of the goddam and on account of the son of a bitch though Miss Bernice Fay Frazier was herself hoping for something a trifle more apologetic and so waited in her best icy silence atop the settee until she had in fact induced from Mr. Dick Atwater a thoroughgoing statement of his sincere remorse like freed her to tell to him, "Raymond," that she allowed to sink and settle as best it might.

"Raymond?" Mr. Dick Atwater intoned on his own.

"Raymond," Miss Bernice Fay Frazier told him, "from West Virginia."

"Raymond," Mr. Dick Atwater intoned yet again but with this time a vagrant bend to it.

"Oh, Mr. Atwater," Miss Bernice Fay Frazier said and then fell for a brief spell upon the settee into her pensive silence which was not much like her icy silence at all as her pensive silence had to it relatively steady detectable nosebreathing which suggested, along with some scant and intermittent headshaking, how pensive in fact was what this silence was. So Mr. Dick Atwater did not feel then pressed to end this particular variety of silence with talk of his own personal shortcomings and regrets but just allowed it instead to culminate in a hardy exhalation followed by a brief and relatively pithy piece of talk on the part of Miss Bernice Fay Frazier who'd sat lately at the feet of the master of pith and so had troubled herself to glean some style from her. "When first we practice to deceive," she said, "it is truly a tangled web we weave," and as soon as she'd managed to look earnestly enough upon Mr. Dick Atwater to communicate to him how it was his occasion to snort and exhale he went straight on ahead and snorted and exhaled for her.

She was meaning to get to the particulars but she assured Mr. Dick Atwater, once he'd endeavored to press her, how he could not hardly hope to drive her to them though she did directly confirm for him that it was Raymond from West Virginia and Miss Mary Alice Celestine Lefler lately of the upstairs bedroom who were together an item like was truly the only particular Mr. Dick Atwater needed to hear, or was anyhow the only particular his stomach had cause to know of before it began to drain and empty off that way stomachs sometimes do leaving Mr. Dick Atwater increasingly hollow and ever so thoroughly vacant just up and all at once.

"He rolled her washstand," Miss Bernice Fay Frazier announced after she'd cast about and determined how undoubtedly the washstand itself was the original particular in fact.

But as he'd not quite yet cultivated the talent for gleaning Miss Bernice Fay Frazier had come to anticipate in people, Mr. Dick Atwater returned to the opening particular himself. "Raymond?" he said, "and Mary Alice."

"Them," Miss Bernice Fay Frazier told to him and returned to the washstand he'd rolled like was preface to the sparks and the passion and was prologue to the deceit as well. Of course she spoke of the streak of skin and moved from it to the fatherless children and the spavined wife left to shift for them and was meaning to touch upon the graceful bearing and the princely charm as the trappings of subterfuge like called, she believed, in this particular case for a pithy presentation that Miss Bernice Fay Frazier was endeavoring to work up when Mr. Dick Atwater interrupted her with an inquiry, asked of Miss Bernice Fay Frazier, "Raymond?," asked of Miss Bernice Fay Frazier, "Raymond who?"

Though truly not a woman to hunt up a tangent, Miss Bernice Fay Frazier was evermore willing to run with whatever one might get thrust upon her and consequently took up Raymond as a tangent himself and set to delving and plumbing and fathoming and, shortly, undertook to illuminate Mr. Dick Atwater as to what precisely Raymond had seemed to her to be. Of course she touched upon the baubles and the

accoutrements as she had to delve past them to get anywhere much else and she spoke of the silvery hair and of the short prickly elegant moustache hke contributed themselves to the regal bearing which she hngered upon as she was fondest personally of the regal bearing herself, and she'd just set to working her way ever so gradually through the subtleties of Raymond's technique, which would be his caster technique that she could not figure to be awful far removed from his romantic technique as well, when Mr. Dick Atwater horned in one time further so as to vent himself of an inquiry, an inquiry that had quite apparently come to seem to him excruciatingly germane judging chiefly from his pitched inquiring posture and his relatively tortured inquiring face.

"Blueblack sedan?" he wanted to know. "Long blueblack four-door sedan?"

Naturally Miss Bernice Fay Frazier, in the wake of her own semitor- tured expression, assured Mr. Dick Atwater how she would have presently arrived at the sedan herself as she was heading in fact in her systematical sort of way directly towards the blueblack sedan not so much as a vehicle but as primarily a variety of manifestation instead hke would join and compliment the accoutrements and the baubles and the hair and the moustache and the princely bearing and thereby assist in the establishment of a general essence hke anybody that delved and fathomed and related would have surely known she was up to which was meant, by implication, to fairly belittle and chastise Mr. Dick Atwater as to the general altitude of his own personal consciousness like might have ordinarily cultivated some umbrage if Mr. Dick Atwater had not just lately come to be too altogether emptied out for umbrage and such. Quite naturally he called up his particular encounter with the blueblack sedan and the gentleman inside it, the natty gentleman inside it with the northerly hairpart and the silvery locks that swept and laid and the white shirt with the white stripe worked into it and the satiny maroon tie that blended so with the blazer which had upon the breastpocket of it a manner of crest that was bars and swords and horseheads chiefly, and he called up as well the gold ring and the gold watch but most especially recollected the gem-studded cufflink that caught the light and sparkled and served by itself to remind Dick Atwater ever so acutely of his envy and of his admiration that seemed to coagulate somehow together and drop into his evacuated stomach so as to rattle roundabout like a ball bearing.

He felt of a sudden ill and sickly and could not work up the spit even to advise Miss Bernice Fay Frazier to please for a time shut up while he endeavored to keep from upchucking on her throwpillows, so he merely sat and endured extravagant insensible talk on the topic of vehicular manifestations and most especially of the long blueblack four-door variety and consequently he began to ebb and gurgle both together and was coming to believe he might shortly expire from the blow he'd endured, like appeared to him emotional and gastrointestinal joined and blended, when he complicated and worsened even his predicament by conjuring up in his own mind's eye Raymond with the hair and the moustache and her with the lips and the fingerends caught up together under the buglight at the golfrange in a back-to-front embrace that had been instigated, ostensibly, on account of an iron shot but had, quite apparently, considerably more to do with consummating parts instead and their general proximity each to the other. Mr. Dick Atwater could not seem to help but undertake to grow livid though he was not in much condition to be livid truly, and he interrupted Miss Bernice Fay Frazier with his own low and disdainful opinion of Raymond who he suspected, underneath his flair and glitter, was probably a kind of a heel.

"Paw at her all the evening, I'll bet," Mr. Dick Atwater said. "She won't long stand for that."

Of course Miss Bernice Fay Frazier pretty much straightaway plumbed and fathomed Mr. Dick Atwater's misapprehension and regarded herself bound to reveal to him the unseemly truth of the situation and so announced with all the drama she could muster short of armflinging, "She's not getting dated, Mr. Atwater. She's been fetched," and Miss Bernice Fay Frazier pitched her head and elevated her eyebrows after such a fashion as to intimate how fetching was chiefly an acrobatic endeavor with all variety of unevolved anatomical peculiarities to it like her eyebrows by themselves expressed in fact the bulk of.

"Fetched where?" Mr. Dick Atwater wanted to know.

"Off," Miss Bernice Fay Frazier told to him. "Away."

And Mr. Dick Atwater felt his blood rush and his skin prickle as he inquired of Miss Bernice Fay Frazier, "Off? Away?"

"Gone, Mr. Atwater. Gone."

He could not straightoff believe it and told to Miss Bernice Fay Frazier that straightoff he could not believe it at all on account of how him and on account of how Miss Mary Alice Celestine Lefler had cultivated between them a thing, had developed a species of attachment hke would not allow the one or the other of them to just up and get fetched unannounced. "She would have told me," Mr. Dick Atwater insisted. "We had a thing. We were hke this," and he showed to Miss Bernice Fay Frazier two fingers jammed up together which Miss Bernice Fay Frazier shook her head from side to side ever so forlornly about. "She wouldn't have just run off," Mr. Dick Atwater said. "She's too fine a woman for that."

"Mr. Atwater," Miss Bernice Fay Frazier replied in her best breathy elevated voice, "let me explain a thing to you," and she reached out and touched Mr. Dick Atwater's forearm with her own personal fmgerends like did not produce near so galvanizing an effect as he'd known previously. "May I call you Jerome?" she wondered at him and so came shortly to be grunted at back. "Jerome, Miss Mary Alice Celestine Lefler is not in fact a fine woman. Miss Mary Alice Celestine Lefler is conniving trash."

Of course she was speaking of the woman Mr. Dick Atwater loved, or was speaking anyway of the woman who'd produced upon his consummating part the variety of sensation his consummating part had not lately been much acquainted with which Mr. Dick Atwater had guessed he might take for love as it had seemed pretty much like love to him. Consequently, then, he felt stirred and obliged to tell to Miss Bernice Fay Frazier, "Hey!" and attempted to draw off his arm so as to maybe exhibit his offense, but Miss Bernice Fay Frazier pinched up a tuft of armhair in her fingers and thereby forestalled Mr. Dick Atwater who heard from her talk further of Miss Mary Alice Celestine Lefler as an altogether loose and unscrupulous woman, as a harlot in fact with designs and intentions which came to be shortly explained and illuminated for Mr. Dick Atwater who mustered on Hey! further still but nonetheless got presently persuaded that Miss Mary Alice Celestine Lefler was perhaps wily and shrewd and deceitful too, persuaded by Miss Bernice Fay Frazier partly and persuaded partly as well by his own personal internal cavity where he felt, deeply within the pit of it, to have been connived in fact.

And Mr. Dick Atwater loosed a noise, told into the air, "Oh," with just breath primarily like maybe he would have told Oh into the air if he'd been clubbed upon his belt buckle, and he rose up off the settee once his hairtuft had been liberated and stepped over to the screendoor so as to look outside into the evening and feel openly pitiful both together, and he was set even to whine a little, was prepared to air a complaint about his own particular variety of fortune which did not hardly appear to him good fortune any longer but was evermore lamentable fortune instead, and he guessed his life was pretty much done and his usefulness was altogether exhausted along with his dangly consummating part that he supposed he might best just lop off which was truly worth whining on account of and so put him right there on the verge of a discharge which he'd drawn off the breath even to vent when Miss Bernice Fay Frazier whined herself ahead of him and proceeded from it directly into a frantic quiver that yielded shortly to a bout of outright anguishment as she guessed she'd neglected her own crisis long enough and so undertook to revive it with some zeal and some fervor and with a natural talent for whining that Mr. Dick Atwater himself did not hardly begin to possess.

She'd harbored trash. She'd opened her home to a harlot and told as much in her best gaspy tormented voice to Mr. Dick Atwater who guessed even though she was speaking still of the woman him and his dangly organ had been together fond of he'd allow her to persist at it a time since he did not much wish to contradict Miss Bernice Fay Frazier right there in the middle of her torment. So Mr. Dick Atwater lingered by the screendoor and listened at the whining that set out frantic and moderately anguished both together but came shortly to be moist and murky instead and was venturing into the realm of the outright indecipherable by the time Mr. Dick Atwater saw before him his duty and so carried his evacuated and altogether cavernous carcass across the room so as to settle it among the throwpillows alongside Miss Bernice Fay Frazier from where he could reach out with his fingers and take up hers that he simply held to while Miss Bernice Fay Frazier blubbered and moaned and continued to hold to after even she'd left off blubbering and moaning both and was down to just sniveling alone. Of course, he was of a mood to snivel with her but did not guess he would be much use sniveling since he did not suppose he could snivel and soothe at the same time together like left himjust to hold the fingers and just to, every now and again, pat the arm while he assured Miss Bernice Fay Frazier how a woman could not begin to be blamed for having her sundry kindnesses turned against her by conniving trash, or while anyway he listened to Miss Bernice Fay Frazier speak to him of a woman and her kindnesses that some trash might connive about which he came to be allowed to confirm and assent to and so did in fact hold to the fingers and pat the arm as he confirmed and assented to it.

She had a balky sciatic nerve. She had a lunatic cat. She had excess blood sugar and tended to accumulate and retain fluid most especially roundabout her ankles and feet, and she wondered could Mr. Dick Atwater himself imagine the general discomfort of fluid retention in combination with thfe cat and the balky nerve that Miss Bernice Fay Frazier figured was more than any woman should be pressed to endure which seemed to Mr. Dick Atwater altogether likely though his own personal fluid failed ever to travel so far south as his ankles and feet. He did not, then, dispute that Miss Bernice Fay Frazier was in fact a pitiful and afflicted item and she continued to press her case upon him until talk of her woes with her parts and pieces and her pet cat and her live-in harlot lately of the Belvedere Hotel gave way to whimpering and sobbing and presently sniveling again that she persisted at until she grew too weary to snivel even and guessed she might stretch out on the settee under her afghan and nap a while if Mr. Dick Atwater would stay to soothe her once she awoke which Mr. Dick Atwater allowed he would and so helped to cover and situate Miss Bernice Fay Frazier upon the settee and watched as her cat Bubbles climbed up to join her, watched as her cat Bubbles burrowed and nested deep between Miss Bernice Fay Frazier's considerable thighs where she dropped almost entirely out of sight but for her snoutend and, shortly, the scant pink tonguetip that protruded from it.

So Mr. Dick Atwater observed a spinster and a spinster's cat sleep together upon a settee which was hardly what he'd hoped when he'd left his house he was in for. And he just sat a time feeling pathetic and evacuated and aired every now and again low, murmurous whiny sorts of noises that seemed to him in their essence to capture his predicament pretty completely. Miss Bernice Fay Frazier for her part was afflicted with not just a balky sciatic nerve and a lunatic cat and excess blood sugar and fluid that collected in her nether parts but snored as well with all the charm and whimsy of a tablesaw like presently drove Mr. Dick Atwater out from his whiny revery and into the dining room where he stooped to see himself in the scant slip of mirror above the sideboard, stooped to examine his contusions and his newly balded patches and discovered along with them a forlorn and abandoned expression that struck him as especially pitiful since it was his own one. He studied briefly Miss Bernice Fay Frazier's various knickknacks and geegaws after a distracted sort of a fashion and wandered presently back into the kitchen and out of it up the hallway where he stopped off in the bathroom so as to view in the medicine chest mirror his own thoroughgoing personal pathos one time further prior to entering again into the front room where Miss Bernice Fay Frazier was sleeping still by the board foot with Bubbles's pink tonguetip showing above her near thigh like a gaudy pinion. As there did not seem to him much profit in watching a woman and a cat sleep together on a settee, Mr. Dick Atwater proceeded on towards the doorscreen where he stood for a time peering out through the mesh into the gathering night without seeing straightoff any of the night at all since he was plagued with a mind's eye of his own that showed to him her with the consummating gland and him with the full head of silvery hair and the northerly hairpart, him who entertained five fmgerends upon his forearm there in an elegant suite of rooms at the Belvedere Hotel which did not in fact rent out suites of rooms and had long since given over its elegance to general dilapidation and vague squalor instead which could be maintained

without much fuss or effort. So he figured it straightoff for his mind's eye alone but watched nonetheless how the fingerends laid and listened at the suave piece of talk him with the hair and moustache and the gold accoutrements manufactured for the occasion prior to gazing in fact through the screenwire into the actual night that struck Dick Atwater this particular evening as most especially inky and deep.

 

 

iv

 

HE found it savory and aromatic, had figured in fact even prior to arriving in the kitchen that savory and that aromatic was what he would likely find it and so he proclaimed how it was the one and how it was the other both together before Mrs. Philhp J. King had made yet to snatch away the potlid good and thereby reveal to him her stew with chiefly the bangers and the turnips to it. And he would have likely carried on past the savory and past the aromatic as well if he had not caught an actual whiff of the concoction which served by itself to pretty completely undo his fabricated enthusiasm and left him to linger a httle queasily over the rangetop where he eyed the chopped bangers and turnip wedges and watched the juices gurgle and spit. He told to Mrs. Philhp J. King, "Mmmm," so as to be able to speak and keep his mouth shut both at the same time, but an Mmmm just by itself did not much appear to suit her and she pressed him to tell to her one admiring thing further still like he meant even to tell to her one of but somehow could not keep from announcing instead, "It's orange," since aside from unsavory and unaromatic orange was chiefly what it was.

She guessed she should have left it to him to illuminate a defect, guessed she might have anticipated how he would march straight into the kitchen to tell her that her stew was orange hke wasn't even in the first place her fault since she couldn't hardly help it if she lived in a backwater, would not personally endure the blame if her grocer failed to carry a decent variety of banger hke left her to make do with Jimmy Dean pork links which she'd sauteed, she told it, and drained on a paper towel before she'd dropped them in the pot to stew where they'd managed somehow to shed themselves of just barely enough additional orange grease to lubricate a Buick. "I can't help it," Mrs. Phillip J. King said. "There's not the first proper banger in this entire county."

Of course Mr. Philhp J. King moved straightoff to share with Mrs. Phillip J. King his own personal partiality for orange food, most especially soupy orange moderately iridescent sorts of food that he'd cultivated from somewhere an acute fondness for, and he bent a little over the stewpot and beat the air with his one hand so as to paddle the aroma up his noseholes and he made as best he was able to be transported by it, said anyhow, "Mmmm," one time further with inordinate conviction and altogether detectable enthusiasm. As fortune would have it, Mrs. Phillip J. King had just lately taken up her soup dipper off her soup dipper rest that had come to be moderately orange itself and she stirred and churned her stew with it prior to drawing up from down near the potbottom a ladleful of banger slices and turnip wedges that she dumped into a bowl along with some orange savory sauce and offered to Mr. Phillip J. King who'd hoped he could get by with just looking and sniffing and Mmmming at the pot and just looked and sniffed and Mmmmed in fact at his own personal bowl as well before he was presented with a spoon and encouraged by Mrs. Phillip J. King to go on ahead and eat as she hated to see a man kept from his orange food when he'd cultivated from somewhere an acute fondness for it.

It didn't taste to him nearly so dreadful as he'd feared it might which he shared, after a fashion, with Mrs. Phillip J. King who wondered if didn't the tang of the turnips complement and blend with the general banger seasoning in conjunction with the herbal bouquet of the sauce which struck Mr. Phillip J. King as a sheerly miraculous piece of talk since he'd been pretty much set to utter the identical sentiment himself. He even anticipated her query about the subtlety of the juices, told her anyhow once she'd mentioned a particular subtlety in fact that he'd been personally right there on the verge of speaking of it as it seemed to him an especially fine sort of a subtlety, and he smacked upon a scant dollop of sauce so as to appear to be relishing the qualities and even inquired what the item might be that seemed to him most especially piquant like led Mrs. Phillip J. King to explain to him how the recipe had called for a helping of tawny port but as she did not much herself care for tawny port she'd substituted a touch of cranapple juice instead.

"Oh?" Mr. Phillip J. King said to her and swallowed his dollop pretty straightaway while Mrs. Phillip J. King spoke to him of her own personal gift for culinary innovation hke she guessed was an instinct with some people and then allowed Mr. Phillip J. King to guess back of her how with some people it was likely an instinct in fact.

She did not make him eat an entire helping on account of how the whole conglomeration of bangers and turnips and herbs and liquids and greases needed time to mix and meld together and thereby mingle their essences which Mr. Phillip J. King found to be cause for moderate jubilation since by his third spoonful of the banger and turnip stew he had begun to suspect that his arteries were just about to slam shut. So Mrs. Phillip J. King turned off the heat under her pot and allowed her stew to cool on the stovetop, left it the rest of the afternoon to stiffen and congeal prior to settling it for the night in the refrigerator where she expected the essences truly to mingle and so be quite thoroughly melded by morning like would be itself the Friday of the potluck encounter, and the essences did mingle and did meld pretty much by themselves alone but for momentarily deep in the night when Mr. Phillip J. King, who'd gotten up for a swallow of Wink out from the bottle in the door rack, stood in his undershorts in the white refrigerator light and contemplated the pot and the potlid and the potlid knob that he took up between his fingers and so uncovered the mingling stew which had developed a pumpkin-colored sludge on the top with an occasional piece of banger or turnip edge protruding out from it like scraps of land in an altogether unspeakable sea. He hoped she'd skim it, lay even awake a time under the pointy light fixture fearing she might not.

Mrs. Estelle Singletary had intended to devil a dozen eggs and pimento cheese maybe a few celery stalks since she was after all the hostess and had a spate of logistical matters to see to which she explained to her sister Miss Bernice Fay Frazier who'd never herself thrown an encounter and so could not possibly imagine the myriad details of one. Miss Bernice Fay Frazier, however, was not looking to imagine myriad details and had dialed her sister only to make what she figured for a meager request, only to wonder would please Mrs. Estelle Singletary cook for her ailing sister her special green bean casserole with the canned crusty onions and the cream of mushroom soup like she guessed, once she'd heard of the deviled eggs and the celery stalks and the regular spate of matters, was maybe more than one woman should ask of her own flesh and blood in a time of thoroughgoing crisis and she vented a frantic quiver and issued an anguished adieu prior to hanging up the phone and then lingering alongside it so as to be handy for what return call she'd known all along would ensure. Miss Bernice Fay Frazier insisted on making the iced tea herself and steeped the bags in a stockpot with a touch of mint from alongside the back doorstep where she'd planted one time a stand of it that Mr. Wayne Fulp's dog Bill was fond of in an irrigational sort of a way like Miss Bernice Fay Frazier had failed to discover he was until she'd already steeped her tea and had climbed up on a dinette chairseat to fish a jug out from the back of a cabinet when she saw through the window over the sink Bill the speckled hound go three-legged by the mint and then turn a circle and go three-legged by it again like was just the sort of thing to induce a tremor in Miss Bernice Fay Frazier who was coming to be already quite emotionally unraveled and so could not hardly stand the complication of urinational contamination. Naturally, she emptied her stockpot into the sink and discovered as well that she was altogether too shaken for additional teamaking that she called her sister about so as to issue to her a quivery report prior to retiring a time to her chamber where she lay sprawled atop the spread with the back of her hand upon her forehead and, shortly, her cat Bubbles snug up against her opposite armpit where she kneaded the gland most mercilessly with her sinewy feet and her pointy claws together.

Throughout the course of the afternoon Miss Bernice Fay Frazier entertained calls from well-wishers who asked after the state of her crisis and hoped she was improved but not healed entirely since they were all of them looking forward to the potluck encounter, most especially the widow Mrs. Askew from across the road who'd come to be a little distressed in the wake of her initial call on account of how Miss Bernice Fay Frazier had sounded to her inordinately chipper, had struck her as perhaps on the verge of a recovery that she called back to have dispelled for her by Miss Bernice Fay Frazier who assured the widow Mrs. Askew that she was not in fact much improved and anticipated she would maintain her funk for a while yet that the widow Mrs. Askew was grateful to hear of as she'd made already a curried fruit dish with an oatmeal crust which had been no little trouble to concoct like somehow put the widow Mrs. Askew in mind of a pithy thing that did not have much to do with curried fruit or oatmeal or lowslung funks either but was just incomprehensible after a totally irrelevant fashion.

Miss Bernice Fay Frazier could not determine what precisely to wear which proved of course to be an additional source of anguishment for her. She was hoping to discover an ensemble that would fairly harmoniously communicate and proclaim how she was afflicted yet stylish and reasonably svelte as well, but there was not certainly in Miss Bernice Fay Frazier's closet any ensemble so articulate and well spoken as that, so she tried her striped dress with the belt which was entirely too gay for the occasion and she slipped partway into her green suit that had come somehow to constrict her places it had never constricted her previously. Her beige outfit with the billowy skirt appealed to her until she discovered the brown stain upon the seat of it where she had not ever previously seen a brown stain and she cast back to when she'd last worn the thing and recalled where she'd been and supposed she had probably paraded all over the place with a stain on her backside like induced in

Miss Bernice Fay Frazier a bout of retroactive yet thoroughgoing humiliation and distress which was sufficient to send her another time to her bed where she sprawled atop the spread and came to be shortly a study in tragedy and armpit massage both together.

Her deep blue dress with the spots had not struck her straightoff as an appropriate item but once she'd come across it in the closet and drawn it out into the light she found it to hold some appeal for her on account of how it was solemn and grave of color but relatively tentlike of girth, what Miss Bernice Fay Frazier called to herself flowing, which implied elegance and style and room enough for a couple of Bedouins as well. The tiny white spots somehow helped to render Miss Bernice Fay Frazier moderately svelte before the mirror or anyhow enhanced and illuminated her native svelteness that she turned full around to admire the whole of, and she tried on her white shoes to match the spots but did not approve of how they forced her toes to lay and lap like prompted her to twirl and pose in her navy shoes with the slight leather bows instead which she'd spread already and expanded to suit her. Naturally, she was much taken with her aspect in the glass, informed herself what an altogether appropriate aspect it was since she managed to appear plagued and troubled but quite thoroughly dapper about it, and she vented a frantic quiver just to see what precisely a frantic quiver looked like and undertook an anguished discharge back of it which she found herself obliged to repeat and alter on account of how her initial anguished discharge did not much sound to have been induced by a grave emotional blow but maybe just fried onions instead. So she honed her particular symptoms and tinkered with her general aspect and, finally, proclaimed herself quite thoroughly fit for an encounter.

They were to gather at six alongside the fairway back of Mrs. Estelle Singletary's house hke meant Mrs. Philhp J. King had cause to bring her banger and turnip stew out from the refrigerator in the vicinity of three o'clock and allow it to sit and warm of its own accord before she settled it upon the burner eye and raised it slowly to a simmer after what fashion she'd read somewhere promoted succulence. It was churning then already by the time Mr. Philhp J. King arrived home to stand upon the doorsill, like was anymore his custom, and announce himself into the house so as to maybe receive back some indication of Mrs. Phillip J. King's hormonal disposition. She sang out to him from the kitchen, sang out like she'd not lately been accustomed to singing out which would be with some noticeable spirit and good humor that kept Mr. Philhp J. King upon the doorsill a brief spell longer as he wondered might she be laying some variety of devious trap for him that he could not possibly ever discover from the doorsill he guessed and so ventured on into the house proper and made obliquely for the kitchen with pauses and sidetrips and aimless straggling along the way until he came to be beckoned, until he came to be charged to advance ever so straightaway onto the linoleum and over by the range where Mrs. Phillip J. King dipped her longhandled spoon into the pot and drew up for Mr. Phillip J. King a thick chunky helping of stew that was still entirely too orange to suit him.

She'd hauled out for the occasion her momma's fancy tureen with the scrolled handles on the sides and the lidgrip that was meant to look leafy and did look a httle leafy in fact, and Mr. Phillip J. King saw fit to remark upon the extravagantly leafy and scrolled qualities of it prior to hoisting it off from the countertop and hauling it to the stove for Mrs. Phillip J. King who was put upon to hear in transit how Mr. Phillip J. King had not anticipated such a comely item would be so ponderous as well and he did not suspect he could carry that extravagantly leafy and scrolled tureen one step farther than the stovetop as it had to it more bulk than he'd ever anticipated a tureen could have which was just the sort of talk to briefly incite Mrs. Phillip J. King's hormones that caught fire and singed in the process Mr. Phillip J. King down the full length of his frontside. So he became, then, inestimably delighted to have a tureen to carry and settled it upon the stovetop with marked and profound regret like Mrs. Phillip J. King guessed she could not hardly begin to blame him for as it was such a charming and singularly ornate tureen to have in the first place the privilege to haul about.

As he'd plumbed already for the hormones and come up on them, Mr. Phillip J. King undertook to render himself ever so agreeable and admired the leafy lidgrip prior to informing Mrs. Phillip J. King how lovely he figured her momma's tureen would look full of orange stew that Mrs. Phillip J. King was fairly breathlessly anticipating the sight of on her own and so began to dip stew out from the pot with the matching white porcelain tureen ladle that was itself relatively leafless and more shallow truly than was useful even for her thick lumpy turnip and banger concoction. She was a while, then, filling the tureen but topped the thing off presently with the last of the scraps from the potbottom that served as a manner of charred and crusty garnish in conjunction with a palmful of dehydrated parsley flakes that Mrs. Phillip J. King flung and sprinkled to what Mr. Phillip J. King assured her was fairly extraordinary effect and they stood together and admired the orange stew that Mr. and Mrs. Phillip J. King both agreed was delectable and was exotic and was presented to the best possible advantage in the

porcelain tureen with the scrolled handles and the leafy lidgrip that Mr. Phillip J. King wondered how he might raise up without the aid of a block and a winch.

Out alongside the fairway, Mr. Estelle Singletary had not hardly set up the tables to suit Mrs. Estelle Singletary who'd issued an explicit directive to him about where it was the redwood picnic table went and how it was the folding table should extend perpendicular from it like was itself the trouble chiefly since Mr. Estelle Singletary did not personally possess a pure and unclouded sense of the perpendicular and so had situated the folding table on a manner of relatively unperpendic- ular tangent in order to dodge a hole in the yard that he wished to put under the tabletop so as to keep people safe from it. Mrs. Estelle Singletary, however, had not requested a tangent of Mr. Estelle Singletary which she troubled herself to remind him about prior to repeating for him her explicit directive one time more that she punctuated with a wish to be heeded as it did not seem to her any longer she was ever heeded much which she spoke of presently as well while she crossed her arms over her frontside and glared from the backdoor at Mr. Estelle Singletary and then beyond him to the tangent he'd made.

Mrs. Estelle Singletary was herself in the midst of fabricating her special green bean casserole with the crusty onions and the cream of asparagus soup that she'd substituted for the cream of mushroom which Mr. Estelle Singletary had gone on ahead and helped himself to the last can of just the Saturday previous like was part of how come she was so excessively peeved with him in addition to his murky sense of the perpendicular that had helped together to raise her to a fairly rarified level of irritation along with the general unmitigated condition of her sister Miss Bernice Fay Frazier who let on to be too frazzled even to make tea. It was more than most women could likely have stood up under which Mrs. Estelle Singletary figured for small congratulations as she watched Mr. Estelle Singletary skid and slide the folding table as far beyond perpendicular as he'd been just lately shy of it which she screeched at him about and so heard from Mr. Estelle Singletary a brief snatch of low mumbly inarticulate justification back like probably would have set Mrs. Estelle Singletary off had she been a woman of regular lowslung inclinations but as she was elevated and as she was uplifted she told to Mr. Estelle Singletary merely, "Shut up!" instead which Mr. Estelle Singletary, who could plumb and fathom and delve a little himself, mined straightaway the gist of.

As the afternoon began to yield and give way to the evening, Miss Bernice Fay Frazier endeavored to maintain a relatively quivery state which she came to be assisted at by Mr. Dick Atwater who'd promised to pick her up and drive her in his Toronado to the encounter but who called late here on the day of it and begged off sighting an infirmity he did not wish to speak specifically of since they were not truly awfully well acquainted and their recent brush with intimacy consisted chiefly of her snoring and him watching her at it. So Miss Bernice Fay Frazier's crisis compounded, not so much because she could not any longer hope to ride with Mr. Dick Atwater but because she had probably to ride with the widow Mrs. Askew instead who was riding herself with Mrs. Dwight Mobley who was tolerable on her own but exhibited a pronounced tendency towards pith in the widow Mrs. Askew's presence. It was hardly a prospect Miss Bernice Fay Frazier could bring herself to savor, so she allowed it to complicate and deepen her crisis further still, laid anyhow upon the bedspread in a variety of tragic languishment and suffered shortly the vigorous attentions of her cat Bubbles upon her exposed gland.

Mr. Philhp J. King got charged to hold the tureen on his lap like seemed to him an altogether daunting proposition since he could not figure in the first place how to get the thing off the stovetop and through the house and out across the porch and down the steps to the Monterey where he could sit and have a lap to hold it on. He tried to lift it up by the scrolled handles and did even manage to raise it a little and venture a step or two off from the range before he felt himself growing a trifle herniated from the strain and so settled the tureen upon a convenient piece of countertop from where he turned back to peruse the full four feet he'd traveled. Mrs. Phillip J. King had hoped for a journey a scant more epic than four feet and she shared with Mr. Phillip J. King her thwarted expectations and suggested how he might, if he was able, better unthwart them and shortly. Of course, she meant to be helpful to him in his venture and so volunteered that the best way she could see for Mr. Phillip J. King to haul the thing out from the house to the car was to pick it up and plain go with it like did not, as a suggestion, have sufficient nuance to it to motivate Mr. Phillip J. King who straightaway took Mrs. Phillip J. King's proposal under advisement and left it there. He had the nature of the route to consider and looked for places he might settle a tureen if he came along the way to be strained and put upon, and he'd even set himself to embark on the second leg of his banger and turnip journey when Mrs. Phillip J. King cautioned him how he might best pull lightly upon the right scrolled handle which had broken once already and been Crazy Glued back together. Naturally, Mr. Phillip J. King could not determine how he might just pull lightly upon it and so induced from Mrs. Phillip J. King a second proposal that he took and left under advisement as well.

He wandered the house seeking a solution or a handtruck, whichever he happened upon first, and came presently across a kind of amalgamation of the two of them together in the TV cart from the bedroom which he lifted the TV off of so as to free the thing for tureen transport duty. Now Mrs. Phillip J. King was not enthusiastic about the enterprise at the outset since rolling an heirloom tureen upon a plastic and woodgrain TV cart did not much strike her as stylish and apt, but once Mr. Philhp J. King had hefted the vessel and settled it upon the cart top she revised her judgment due to how stately of a sudden the tureen looked to her and she determined that it was truly a dramatic and significant dish that had cause to be rolled out from the kitchen which she induced Mr. Philhp J. King to throw in with, Mr. Philhp J. King who did not know when last he'd seen a stewpot so proper and refined. They crossed the dining room together with Mr. Phillip J. King pushing the cart and Mrs. Phillip J. King steadying the lid by means of the leafy lidgrip which she pressed upon so as to prevent the variety of clatter that seemed to her might undo the tone of the procession, and they traveled the breadth of the frontroom as well and out across the threshold onto the porch where they paused before the steps so as to allow Mr. Phillip J. King the occasion to assure Mrs. Phillip J. King how he could not possibly hope to take up the tureen and haul it down to the walk which he shortly got persuaded to stand corrected about by Mrs. Phillip J. King who subscribed herself to positive thinking and so revealed to Mr. Phillip J. King how she meant positively for him to take up the tureen and depart from the porch with it and she was speaking of shortly, she told to him, speaking probably even of straightaway, and she smiled at him her toothsome elevated smile and indicated to Mr. Philhp J. King the waiting tureen that needed to get hefted and hauled hke Mr. Phillip J. King undertook to heft and haul it and did even full well lift it clear of the cart and travel with it to the porchedge before he wondered might he set it down please for a moment that Mrs. Phillip J. King told to him sweetly, "No sir," about.

So he staggered down the steps holding heavily the good scrolled handle and holding lightly the Crazy Glued one and he did not burn and blister himself through his shirtfront but moderately though he managed with the hot stew to heat his belt buckle enough to brand himself across the belly button like served to distract him from the agony of his herniated muscles that tormented him all the way down the steps and across the httle strip of sideyard to the Monterey where he moved to set the tureen upon the hood until Mrs. Phillip J. King, who was fearful for their green metallic finish, advised him sweetly against it and entertained back of it a request from Mr. Phillip J. King who wondered might she somehow bring herself to traipse on down the steps and throw open the sidedoor for him since he could not after all do every little thing alone. Of course, Mrs. Phillip J. King wanted shortly to know from him an item and so inquired, "Traipse?" and lingered at the porchedge watching Mr. Phillip J. King struggle to hold to the tureen which had begun to impart its appreciable heat to his trouser fly that was proving an altogether effective conductor which Mr. Philhp J. King came directly to discover and so attempted to shift and resituate the tureen and his nether parts both but could not somehow manage to separate them hke inspired Mr. Philhp J. King to reveal to his wife how what he'd meant by traipse was would she please haul her butt straightaway down the stairs and open the goddam door before his organ got quite utterly scarred and melted and he added back of it a variety of Argh! that Mrs. Philhp J. King had not ever expected to come across but in the funny papers. She grew, understandably, sufficiently impressed to actually haul her butt down the steps and open in fact the goddam door for Mr. Phillip J. King who fairly tumbled onto the carseat with the tureen but managed to stay righted and to get settled and to separate his organ from his whitehot zipper track which Mrs. Philhp J. King learned from him he'd done before she abused and berated him and repeated for him everything he'd just lately told her that she could not find altogether much charm in.

She wanted to carry the TV cart with them as well but guessed since she could not count on Mr. Phillip J. King to climb out from the car to get it she'd fetch it herself and load it onto the backseat which she undertook to do while she simultaneously protested about it and once she'd situated the thing she climbed in under the wheel and apprised Mr. Phillip J. King of how the tureen was surely not nearly so hot or so heavy as he'd made it out to be that Mr. Phillip J. King was set to dispute and would have undoubtedly disputed but for the streak of orange stew he'd allowed somehow to seep out from under the tureen hd and drip down the side of the vessel that Mrs. Phillip J. King found ghastly and endeavored to clean with some spit on a tissue while she informed Mr. Philhp J. King how he did not but have to lay his fingers to a thing to muck it up which Mr. Philhp J. King decided to dispute instead and had begun even to dispute it, had begun already to catalog for Mrs. Philhp J. King his own personal unmucked successes when she turned the key to start the Monterey, turned the key to start the Monterey twice in fact like would be once while it had call to get started and once after it was running already that served to produce a variety of uproar, truly two varieties of uproar like would be the one from under the hood and would be as well the one from alongside the tureen that was chiefly itself an Argh!

It did not seem fitting to Miss Bernice Fay Frazier that she get made to ride in the backseat of Mrs. Dwight Mobley's Caprice Classic which did not even have to it but front doors in the first place like would leave her to clamber past the upflung seatback and drop fairly irretrievably onto the rear cushion from where she could not possibly hope to raise and remove herself that Mrs. Dwight Mobley commiserated with Miss Bernice Fay Frazier about since she guessed she had not considered how troublesome a backseat might sometimes be for a girthsome woman which precipitously moved Miss Bernice Fay Frazier to explain for the benefit of Mrs. Dwight Mobley chiefly the staggering difference between a girthsome woman and a svelte creature with merely girth- some bones. The widow Mrs. Askew, who arrived from across the road in the midst of Miss Bernice Fay Frazier's illuminating piece of talk on girth and how to gauge it offered straightaway to give over the front seat to her though neither Miss Bernice Fay Frazier nor Mrs. Dwight Mobley could tell it for certain due to how the widow Mrs. Askew had cloaked her largess in some appreciable pith and so had rendered it altogether inscrutable like left Miss Bernice Fay Frazier, on behalf of Mrs. Dwight Mobley, to wonder at the widow Mrs. Askew, "What now?" which got her told another time the same identical inscrutable thing only louder and with remarkably crisper diction. The widow Mrs. Askew did directly make good, however, on her indecipherable offer by clambering herself into the backseat which effectively closed off the inquiry and allowed Miss Bernice Fay Frazier the occasion to observe for the benefit of Mrs. Dwight Mobley how the widow Mrs. Askew, who possessed herself little spindly bones with some fleshy girth roundabout them, could clamber well enough on account of how fleshy girth was not near so troublesome as bony girth could be which the widow Mrs. Askew heard and comprehended enough of to feel pressed of a sudden to air a sentiment that Miss Bernice Fay Frazier most especially did not have to labor at all to decipher.

They rode towards the country club by a route Miss Bernice Fay Frazier would not personally have selected had she been charged herself to select a route, but she guessed some people could go just any old way they wanted to like brought to mind for the widow Mrs. Askew a scrap of pith that she leaned up towards the seatback to impart, a scrap of pith about how it is we all of us travel through this vale of woe and strife that had in fact a thing to do with routes but was concerned truly more with woe and with strife instead that Miss Bernice Fay Frazier detected it was and felt obliged to share the news of it with the widow Mrs. Askew like she was pretty well set to do when she looked briefly out the windowglass to gain her bearings and found herself inclined to speak directly to Mrs. Dwight Mobley, to inquire of her, "Where in the world are you going?" that Mrs. Dwight Mobley responded to exclusively with the ball of her right foot that she raised off of the accelerator so as to beat one time upon the brake pedal and thereby dislodge Miss Bernice Fay Frazier who bounced off the glovebox girthsome bones foremost like Mrs. Dwight Mobley had hoped she might.

Mrs. Phillip J. King was closing herself on the country club from another direction entirely alongside Mr. Phillip J. King who was diverting her with talk of how he did not figure he would probably ever stand full upright again which would partly be due to lifting the tureen but would partly be due to sitting beneath it as well since he did not guess his organ and sack had been manufactured with tureen support in mind. He claimed to be presently in the throes of some genuine agony but Mrs. Phillip J. King, who guessed she knew better, assured him he wasn't and wondered would he please for a time quit whining at her. Since she was hoping to make a variety of splash, Mrs. Phillip J. King did not wish to arrive at the country club too awful early on and so induced Mrs. Phillip J. King to loiter in the throes of his agony for a spell further while she passed on by Mrs. Estelle Singletary's street and struck out along the old Burlington Road so far as the Sertoma Park where she pulled into the gravel lot and idled beside the pool for longer truly than Mr. Phillip J. King guessed he was fit to endure and so he whined in earnest another time at Mrs. Phillip J. King and explained how the bottom lip of the tureen was mashing his housekey into his thighskin with surely sufficient force to make an indelible impression like seemed to him an altogether frightful circumstance and he undertook to communicate the pure frightfulness of it with a woeful look and necknoise both together which served only to touch off Mrs. Phillip J. King who did not suppose she'd had a moment's peace since they'd left the house and wondered why in the first place Mr. Phillip J. King would fret so over chiefly an organ he didn't seem much disposed but to sluice into the bowl with anyhow like straightoff stung Mr. Phillip J. King who was pained and anguished already and did not need to be stung as well.

"Me?" he wanted to know. "My organ?"

And Mrs. Phillip J. King told him yes him and yes his organ and reminded Mr. Phillip J. King how they'd last shared between them an amorous moment in the late spring of the year. "Twenty-fourth of May," Mrs. Phillip J. King said. "I recall I had to waylay you."

"Me?" Mr. Phillip J. King wanted to know still even after he'd gotten told yes him already, and he provided Mrs. Philhp J. King with one of his fairly undiluted exasperated expressions that came replete with a whiny breathy discharge like served as preface to his inquiry of Mrs. Philhp J. King if he had personally to remind her how she'd gone lately quite thoroughly hormonal in the wake of which Mrs. Philhp J. King told to him, "Oh," and told to him, "that," like induced one whiny breathy discharge further.

Mr. Philhp J. King confessed from under the tureen how lately he would have as likely caught up a groundhog in a tender embrace as Mrs. Phillip J. King that Mrs. Phillip J. King found diverting and so snorted about it prior to admitting how certainly she'd suffered through a bout of hormonal turbulation but had settled recently into a state of relative flashlessness like left her neither hot nor cold but pretty much room temperature all the time. She allowed how certainly her juices had flowed in the past weeks but insisted how they'd ebbed already pretty dramatically and were evermore ebbing further still.

"Ebbing," Mr. Phillip J. King said.

And Mrs. Philhp J. King told to him, "Yes baby," and slid partway along the seatcushion leaving her left foot pretty much on the brake pedal though not truly sufficiently on the brake pedal to prevent the Monterey from edging ever so gradually across the gravel lot and crunching stone beneath its tires after such a fashion as to distract Mr. Philhp J. King who said, "Sugar?" said Sugar in fact twice hke would be once while Mrs. Philhp J. King was still in the middle of sidling and once after she'd already arrived snug up next to him where she laid her foremost finger to most especially the soft dangly portion of his near ear and then dragged it tipend foremost down his neck and along his collar and under his T-shirt so as to gain his solar plexi and touch at last his special place which unerringly rendered him tingly and so rendered him in fact tingly on this occasion as well, tingly even in his unguided mobile Monterey and with a ponderous tureen of unspecified but doubtless considerable weight upon his lap, and he could have under the circumstances probably stood to be tingly alone but grew aware shortly of his own juices flowing and felt his personal item begin to unfurl and stiffen and Mr. Philhp J. King in his stirred and anguished state looked out the windshield and saw how they would likely meet shortly with a trash barrel that he was hoping to speak of when he opened his mouth but what with his Monterey unguided and his juices flowing and his lone organ undertaking to levitate a tureen he managed to turn his head and tell to Mrs. Phillip J. King just "Argh!" alone.

Naturally Miss Bernice Fay Frazier explained as best as she was able how precisely she'd lapsed into crisis in the first place like came complete with a disclaimer for the benefit of Mrs. Dwight Mobley who Miss Bernice Fay Frazier did not hold personally responsible for her own present tragic circumstances since most probably Mrs. Dwight Mobley had not known her momma's sister's friend from Berkeley Springs was trash which Mrs. Dwight Mobley insisted was in fact the truth of the thing. Of course news had already circulated as to Raymond and Miss Mary Alice Celestine Lefler's intimate attachment like would be partly on account of Miss Bernice Fay Frazier, who'd fairly thoroughly broadcast her circumstances, and partly on account of Mr. H. Monroe Aycock as well who'd learned from Mr. Bethune at the Belvedere Hotel how Raymond and Miss Mary Alice Celestine Lefler together had holed up and then absconded which managed to touch off in Mr. H. Monroe Aycock a bout of moral indignation and served as the inspiration for his weekly murky geopolitical editorial in the Chronicle which was not, for one of his geopolitical editorials, most especially murky but was chiefly just moderately opaque instead like rendered it near about intelligible, particularly the part concerning Raymond ("a gentleman from distant climes") and the part concerning Miss Mary Alice Celestine Lefler ("an import of late with charms and wiles"). Even the passage about their dalliance at a local inn of repute and tradition would yield up its nugget in the face of acute analysis. At heart, of course, Mr. H. Monroe Aycock's primary concern was Godless communism and he'd touched on Raymond and Miss Mary Alice Celestine Lefler's illicit union only as an illustration of how lately the national moral fabric was getting pretty thoroughly rent that Mr. H. Monroe Aycock found to be a wholly woeful circumstance and he prognosticated that we were surely as a people well on our way to calling each other comrade and wearing those gray slouchy hats with the tiny bills that communists seem so inordinately fond of which struck Mr. H. Monroe Aycock as sufficient of a danger to fill any God-fearing soul with mortal dread.

The widow Mrs. Askew who, with her recently cultivated powers of plumbing and delving and fathoming, had read Mr. H. Monroe Aycock's column and had managed to come to a relatively lucid understanding of Mr. H. Monroe Aycock's personal opinion of the state of the nation's moral fabric informed Miss Bernice Fay Frazier and Mrs. Dwight Mobley both how she'd heard somewhere that communists were prone to rape and pillage, that rape in fact and pillage along with general and thoroughgoing Godlessness was what pretty much communism was all about. With various democratic principles at risk, then, the widow Mrs. Askew could not quite understand how a man and a woman might bring themselves together in a hotel to rend the national moral fabric in the first place, and she wondered at Mrs. Dwight Mobley and Miss Bernice Fay Frazier if she'd spoken to them previously of the variety of tangled web people wove when they practiced there at the outset to deceive which Mrs. Dwight Mobley and Miss Bernice Fay Frazier said harmoniously together, "Yes," about.

Since it was after all her encounter in the first place they'd near about already arrived at, Miss Bernice Fay Frazier wondered might she speak freely of her present state without the inconvenience of inteijected pith which the widow Mrs. Askew allowed she might though she could not resist appending to it a statement on the topic of friends together in all kinds of weather which struck Miss Bernice Fay Frazier as suspiciously pithy after its own fashion. Nevertheless, she proceeded and provided the ladies with her personal version of events and spoke of Raymond with his hair and his moustache and his accoutrements and his blazer and his general princely charm and spoke as well of whom she called That Woman, That Woman with the raven locks and the lips and the fingerends and the thoroughgoing indecent streak as well, That Woman who was undoubtedly trash to the core which inspired the widow Mrs. Askew to throw in with one comment further on the topic of the national moral fabric which Miss Bernice Fay Frazier allowed since she was pleased to find her ramifications broad and farreaching. Mrs. Dwight Mobley was especially curious as to the nature of the encounter upon Miss Mary Alice Celestine Lefler's return from her foray which Miss Bernice Fay Frazier was briefly forestalled from speaking of by the widow Mrs. Askew who found foray most apt and invigorating and took occasion to congratulate Mrs. Dwight Mobley about it which Miss Bernice Fay Frazier allowed as well though she communicated chiefly with a sidelong leer how her native generosity was fairly precipitously eroding.

"She was flushed," Miss Bernice Fay Frazier said, "from the toes up," and she added how she'd viewed well enough in her own mind's eye the means by which a woman with Miss Mary Alice Celestine Lefler's rubbery joints might come to get flushed atop a bed in an inn of repute and tradition. "Talk about rending your moral fabric," Miss Bernice

Fay Frazier told most especially to the widow Mrs. Askew and then humphed back of it after such a fashion as to speak worlds of her personal pain and indignation at least according to the widow Mrs. Askew who fathomed in the breathy discharge the acutest emotional consequences of That Woman's thoughtless and altogether selfish carnal foray, she called it.

"It was surely a blow," Miss Bernice Fay Frazier admitted and cast a wounded look at the rubber floormat before her.

Mrs. Dwight Mobley wanted to know had sparks flown because she figured if she'd been the one waiting for her own houseguest to return from a foray sparks surely would have, and Miss Bernice Fay Frazier confessed that sparks did in fact presently fly but did not fly straightoff due to how Miss Bernice Fay Frazier, being a Christian woman, had provided Miss Mary Alice Celestine Lefler with the occasion to explain her absence, had greeted her in fact sweetly upon her return but could not afford truly to ignore the incriminating flush and, most especially, the rank cigarette smell and the leathery scent with it like together had inspired Miss Bernice Fay Frazier to an inquiring and altogether arch expression that she demonstrated for the benefit of Mrs. Dwight Mobley and the widow Mrs. Askew as well who found it in fact appreciably more inquiring than arch but allowed how it was certainly some of both and suspected between them it was precisely the sort of expression that would draw a response from a plagued and guilty conscience that Miss Bernice Fay Frazier assured them it had.

"She told me he'd come to fetch her," Miss Bernice Fay Frazier said. "Told me he'd rolled her washstand, gushed like a girl and her having just left from a hotel bed, having just engaged with a man in unseemly gyrations and the like, a man with a wife, a man with babies."

"A wife," Mrs. Dwight Mobley said and the widow Mrs. Askew added back of it, "Babies."

"You just can't know what some people will do," Miss Bernice Fay Frazier told earnestly to the widow Mrs. Askew back of her prior to shifting round to tell to Mrs. Dwight Mobley, "You can't. Not hardly a scrap of shame left in this world," and the widow Mrs. Askew and Mrs. Dwight Mobley could not believe between them they'd ever before heard a truer thing and congratulated Miss Bernice Fay Frazier on how she'd cut just like a knife to the heart of the predicament.

"She had to go," Miss Bernice Fay Frazier said like inspired the widow Mrs. Askew and Mrs. Dwight Mobley to purely ejaculate together how they guessed she most certainly did. "Couldn't stay under my roof," Miss Bernice Fay Frazier added and so rendered the ladies ejaculatory one time further that together they persevered at for longer truly than Miss Bernice Fay Frazier found proper most especially since she was intending to speak directly of the icy style with which she'd propped and flung as she expelled Miss Mary Ahce Celestine Lefler out from the house to the waiting arms of him with the hair and the moustache who got charged with the luggage, and she re-created the entire episode once the clamor had dwindled and died, approximated for the ladies how she'd pitched and then she flung for them and spoke and spoke for them and flung and managed even one time simultaneously to speak and fling together that Mrs. Dwight Mobley and the widow Mrs. Askew were most especially partial to as a means of eviction and so requested an additional display of it from Miss Bernice Fay Frazier who obliged them with an altogether chilling rendition.

"I guess she went then?" Mrs. Dwight Mobley said and heard from Miss Bernice Fay Frazier that she did in fact go and straightaway hke was the intention but touched off as well Miss Bernice Fay Frazier's present difficulties which would be chiefly her balky nerve, her mischievous cat, and the ever present threat of ne'er-do-wells hke singly or together could leave her dead or afflicted atop the rug in her underclothes for just any old body to find. "Any old body," Miss Bernice Fay Frazier said and laid her one hand flat out upon her breastbone as she set to quivering in what the widow Mrs. Askew determined straightoff for a frantic sort of a way which the subsequent anguished discharge served to confirm resolutely for her.

Fortunately, however, they'd gained at last the country club, had driven already through the rail gateway and were drawing up on Mrs. Estelle Singletary's house where the driveway was thoroughly choked with cars and the curbing out front was entertaining a Pontiac as well hke proved to be sufficient of a vehicular inducement to elevate Miss Bernice Fay Frazier to performance pitch and she quivered and wailed and raised a pitiful lamentation that worsened once Mrs. Dwight Mobley had run her front radial up onto the curb and then bounced it back down into the gutter like induced Miss Bernice Fay Frazier to wonder had she not yet suffered quite enough jolts already thank you very much which itself touched off the widow Mrs. Askew who'd not found lately occasion to speak of the sea of turbulation and woe we all float upon but discovered in Miss Bernice Fay Frazier's renewed suffering cause to speak of it which failed somehow to improve Miss Bernice Fay Frazier's general humor. She emerged, then, ill from the Caprice Classic and peevish and sufficiently weak as well at her nether joints to call for support from Mrs. Dwight Mobley who gripped her at her one elbow and the widow Mrs. Askew who squeezed her at her tender armpit and so helped to heighten Miss Bernice Fay Frazier's general disposition down the drive and around back of the house to the strip of yard alongside the fairway where she arrived in an altogether churlish state and straightaway removed Mr. Sleepy Pitts from his webbed lawnchair, fairly dumped him out of it as she asked him would he get up like she guessed any gentleman might before he had in the first place to be asked.

She dropped onto the seat of the thing herself and the plastic webbing stretched and whined while the aluminum frame popped at the joints and creaked everywhere otherwise as reminder of how they were after all just plastic and aluminum and had not been manufactured truly but for bones of a regular sort of a girth. Mr. Wyatt Benbow bet Mr. Cecil Dutton that the entire item would collapse in a heap before Miss Bernice Fay Frazier loosed even her first frantic quiver, but Miss Bernice Fay Frazier had come to be so extravagantly quick on the quiver by now that she was out with a spate of them before the chair could even set up much of an additional fuss.

They'd all arrived there before her, they'd almost all arrived there before her anyhow, and the Reverend Mr. Theodore J. Parnell stepped forward to take up Miss Bernice Fay Frazier's fingers and to offer to her his actual fullsized elegant silky handkerchief out from his breastpocket in the event that distraught blubbering ensued which seemed to the reverend likely and imminent. Miss Bernice Fay Frazier, however, decided to forestall her blubbering briefly for the benefit of a pitiful lamentation which she engaged in instead, a pitiful lamentation which was in truth fairly moist and rheumy but did not have to it the blubbery sort of heaving and gasping the reverend had anticipated since the heaving and the gasping would have surely undone the pathetic inquiry Miss Bernice Fay Frazier had decided in the first place to set up her lamentation about. She was anxious to discover how it was she'd come to deserve such treatment as she'd lately received at the hands of trash when she'd evermore endeavored to be a goodly woman, but she did not wait to hear from the reverend a response and did in fact blubber after all, quaked and heaved and laid her face into the Reverend Mr. Parnell's silky handkerchief which proved about as absorbent as Saran Wrap and so served to smear her various emanations which diluted and mingled with her rouge and her fleshtone powder and her sparkly bluegreen eyeshade as well after such a fashion as to fairly transform her visage which she raised up her head and exhibited primarily in the direction of Mr. Luther Teague who told to her straightaway, "Good

God" and entertained a tattoo played upon his ribs by Mrs. Luther Teague with both her foremost fingerends together.

Miss Bernice Fay Frazier might likely have incited additional exclamations on the topic of her transformed visage if most everybody had not come already to be distracted from the blubbering by the arrival of Mr. Philhp J. King, or more accurately by the arrival in fact of Mr. Phillip J. King's TV cart with Mrs. Phillip J. King's momma's tureen upon it, Mr. Philhp J. King's TV cart and Mrs. Phillip J. King's momma's tureen that had together effected somehow an escape from Mr. Philhp J. King who was pursuing the cart and the tureen both down the edge of the driveway alongside the vehicles and was receiving from up at the head of the drive strident encouragement from Mrs. Phillip J. King who apparently had told him already previously how he was in some danger of losing the cart before he in fact lost it which she seemed excessively anxious to remind him about. They were the three of them, hke would be the cart and the tureen and Mr. Phillip J. King as well, heading pretty directly towards Mrs. Estelle Singletary's bushy peonies at the bottom of the drive, or heading anyhow for Mrs. Estelle Singletary's rustic roughhewn timber bushy peony border that Mrs. Phillip J. King up by the Monterey informed Mr. Philhp J. King about prior to taking occasion to lavish him with threats and imprecations and to speak briefly of what life for Mr. Phillip J. King in the wake of a TV cart/roughhewn timber collision might resemble which sounded most especially to Mr. Wyatt Benbow and Sleepy Pitts together hke nothing a man could look forward to with much fervor.

It didn't at all appear that he'd catch the thing, not even to Miss Bernice Fay Frazier who'd interrupted her blubbering and had lifted her visage to see what the fuss was about, and he didn't in fact catch the cart at all but only gained upon it there at the last and reached the bushy peony bed himself so close after the crash that he managed by dent of extraordinary good fortune and impeccable timing to grab up the tureen in both his arms and clutch it tight to his shirtfront once it had risen off the cart and floated briefly free on the air. Of course the cart itself took flight and traded ends prior to landing top foremost in Mrs. Estelle Singletary's bushiest peony with the withering papery pink blossoms upon it, but nobody much noticed how the cart had upended and sailed on the air as they had instead Mr. Phillip J. King to watch and admire, Mr. Philhp J. King who dashed through the peony bed himself, cleared the far border of it with a graceful leap and fairly bolted across the yard with the tureen hd clattering and the banger and turnip stew sloshing and dripping and his shirtbuttons hot hke firecoals against his ever so tender stomach skin which, all taken together, served just precisely as the variety of inducement to propel Mr. Phillip J. King to a purely astounding velocity that he managed to maintain clean across the yard to the perpendicular part of the buffet where he unburdened himself of the tureen and jumped and beat his arms and rubbed his shirtfront and did not generally appear awfully much relieved.

The ovation, however, seemed to soothe him a bit, most especially as it grew and swelled and came to be a fairly thoroughgoing and widespread ovation that had initially been confined to Mr. Wyatt Benbow and Mr. Sleepy Pitts alone who had instigated the hooting and the stomping and the clapping too. Of course Mrs. Estelle Singletary herself did not join in the merriment as she'd stepped across the peony bed and seen with her own eyes the carnage. "My prized Edulis superba," Mrs. Estelle Singletary said as she flung her arm peonyward with the sort of flair Miss Bernice Fay Frazier was pleased to have raised up her visage and witnessed. "Crushed. Beat back altogether." And she induced Mr. Phillip J. King to gaze himself across the yard to the peony bed like was anymore four regular leafy moderately beflowered peony bushes and one bush otherwise among them that was partly stems and leaves and withering blossoms as well but was chiefly anymore plastic wheels and brassy wheel collars on the tipends of four upraised woodgrain legs with a brassy wire shelf between.

"Edulis," Mrs. Estelle Singletary said,"superba," and Mr. Phillip J. King, who was growing genuinely contrite on account of the horticultural havoc he had quite apparently wreaked, was fairly well set to offer a consohng sentiment to Mrs. Estelle Singletary but got to be prevented from it by Mrs. Phillip J. King who'd circled around the peony bed herself and had pretty much stormed across the yard so as to arrive at where precisely Mr. Phillip J. King was presently growing contrite and grab him up by a particular piece of shirtfront that assured her not just a handful of polyester blend dress shirt and cotton undershirt beneath it but a representative sample as well of Mr. Phillip J. King's remaining chesthair like was primarily what altered Mr. Phillip J. King's contrition and transformed it of a sudden to acute distress.

And Mr. Phillip J. King told to Mrs. Phillip J. King, "Argh!" one time further and heard straightaway back every little thing Mrs. Phillip J. King had troubled herself to speak of previously up at the top of the drive which concerned chiefly the cart and Mr. Phillip J. King's grip upon it that had appeared to her insubstantial which she refreshed Mr. Phillip J. King she'd told him it had and Mr. Phillip J. King made to cast back to see if he could not himself remember such a conversation and

Mrs. Phillip J. King didn't have to twist her handful of shirt and follicles but the merest bit to produce from Mr. Phillip J. King a miraculous snatch of verbatim recall. Mrs. Phillip J. King wondered why he'd not bothered to heed her which naturally incited Mr. Phillip J. King to wonder pretty much the same identical thing on his own, and it seemed to him she might rare back and punch him on his breastbone like she'd been known in fits of pique to punch him on his breastbone previously, but Mrs. Philhp J. King had her tureen and her banger and turnip concoction to see after so she merely twisted and tweaked his chesthair one time further prior to letting loose of him altogether and attending to her concoction.

She licked a tissue and cleaned the outside of her tureen with it in the company of Mr. and Mrs. Luther Teague who'd not between them had call to identify and relate with Mrs. Philhp J. King lately and so had stepped over to inquire was she in fact still OK hke they were OK themselves and Mrs. Philhp J. King was explaining as she wiped the ways precisely she was OK and the ways precisely she was not OK at all, was not even middling truly, which Mr. Phillip J. King managed to suffer the brunt of the blame for most especially once he'd assured Mr. and Mrs. Luther Teague how he was himself pretty completely OK all over. As soon, however, as Mrs. Phillip J. King had laid the blame and Mr. Philhp J. King had agreed to absorb it, circumstances improved remarkably and the Kings and the Teagues related and identified and delved and fathomed in the gayest sort of way right up to the very instant Mrs. Phillip J. King took hold of the leafy grip and lifted the tureen lid so as to dip her porcelain ladle into the stew and stir it which struck Mr. Luther Teague as reason enough to gape into the dish where he watched Mrs. Philhp J. King churn up the banger bits, which he could not personally identify as banger bits, along with the turnip wedges, which did not themselves look truly to be turnip wedges to him, not even to mention the near about Day-Glo orange sauce which she beat and folded into a frothy mass like pretty much by itself alone induced Mr. Luther Teague to inform Mrs. Philhp J. King along with most anybody else who cared to know it, "Good God" that nobody anywhere had fingerends pointy enough to punctuate.

Off from the table over by Mrs. Estelle Singletary's ornamental pear tree, Miss Bernice Fay Frazier was coming to feel neglected and she wondered aloud to nobody in particular why it was she'd bothered to cart her crisis clean across town in the first place when she could have been ignored altogether in the comfort of her own home hke appeared to strike a chord with the Reverend Mr. Parnell who stepped over to

join Miss Bernice Fay Frazier, laid even his fingerends upon the knobby bone along the back of her neck which seemed undoubtedly prelude to commiseration, and the reverend leaned down close and asked softly of Miss Bernice Fay Frazier, "You done with my handkerchief?" that Miss Bernice Fay Frazier had not anticipated at all as the nature of the reverend's intentions and she held up for the reverend his silky handkerchief which had gone lately fairly technicolored and as she trained her sullen visage upon him she told to him, "Here then," with no lilt to speak of and she crossed her arms over herself and laid against her folding chairback with what Mr. H. Monroe Aycock shortly insisted had been undue alacrity like would be after her rear legs had begun to plunge and sink into the ground and she'd shrieked and hollered and thereby induced the reverend and induced Mr. H. Monroe Aycock to hoist and right her by chiefly her tender armpit glands.

And if it wasn't enough already that she'd blubbered and wiped and so altered her visage and had not even found occasion yet to delve and plumb and fathom and relate and identify but had only sunk a httle through the turf instead, she shortly spied at the top of the drive not just Miss Fay Dull with her parka over her arm and her bowl of mandarin salad clutched tight against her dressfront but Mr. Tiny Aaron and Mrs. MaySue Ludley as well, Mr. Tiny Aaron and Mrs. MaySue Ludley together as an item judging from how Mrs. MaySue Ludley gripped Mr. Tiny Aaron at his elbowjoint and Mr. Tiny Aaron did not thrash about to free himself of her. She'd seen his ensemble just lately, Miss Bernice Fay Frazier had, his madras jacket with the stripes and the checks and the white shirt and the skyblue Sansabelt pants so she pondered primarily instead Mrs. MaySue Ludley's flowing green skirt that she did not think truly awful much of most especially in combination with Mrs. MaySue Ludley's speckled blouse that appeared to Miss Bernice Fay Frazier just plain crawling with spots. Apparently Mrs. MaySue Ludley was anymore a woman of conspicuous visage herself, conspicuous even unblubbered on and unwiped since she appeared from a distance pretty much all hps and eyelids and not just to Miss Bernice Fay Frazier but to Mrs. Dwight Mobley and Mrs. Cecil Dutton as well who suspected together that Mrs. MaySue Ludley applied her ointments and glosses and powders with a basting brush. Of course Mrs. MaySue Ludley's scent ensued, wafted clean down the drive and across the yard and tainted the general atmosphere with its thoroughgoing treacle that thickened and compounded as Tiny Aaron and Mrs. MaySue Ludley advanced on the encounter group somewhat in the company of Miss Fay Dull and her green parka, Miss Fay Dull who managed presently to

outstrip the pair of them so as to arrive firstoff in the backyard and proclaim how she'd met them at the curb and should not be construed to have come with them at all.

Mr. Tiny Aaron was carrying a thing in his free hand. Mrs. Estelle Singletary noticed straightaway how Mr. Tiny Aaron was carrying in his free hand a thing that she was at first too misty from the wafting treacly scent to make out but determined shortly to be a breadloaf in a sack, a brown whole wheat breadloaf which did not strike Mrs. Estelle Singletary as awful much of a contribution most especially from the likes of Mr. Tiny Aaron who'd not in the first place been invited anyhow which Mrs. Estelle Singletary, being a woman of extravagant social grace, determined she'd not speak directly of but would only maybe imply snidely. Consequently, then, she offered Mr. Tiny Aaron and Mrs. MaySue Ludley a fairly sour greeting and embarked straightaway on an imphcation concerning Mr. Tiny Aaron's breadsack that did not seem to provoke in Tiny Aaron detectable offense and he informed Mrs. Estelle Singletary how MaySue—and he shifted to look sweetly upon MaySue as he uttered her name, MaySue who fairly beat up a wind with her eyehds back at him—had encouraged him to give over white flour for whole grains instead on account of the general healthful effects of whole grains that anymore he sopped with exclusively, and Tiny Aaron braved the treacly scent so as to lean in and exhibit his appreciation to Mrs. MaySue Ludley by means of a peck on the check which induced Mrs. MaySue Ludley to turn and admire Tiny Aaron back like, out of all Mrs. MaySue Ludley's traits and habits, was the one he was truly fondest of since she managed evermore to turn and admire him just precisely like he guessed, were he able, he'd turn and admire himself.

So Mrs. MaySue Ludley watched Tiny Aaron and Tiny Aaron watched Mrs. MaySue Ludley watch him and together they proved impervious to Mrs. Estelle Singletary's ongoing implications even once they'd surpassed snide altogether and had grown quite thoroughly testy and sharp. Worse yet, Mrs. MaySue Ludley continued to cling to Mr. Tiny Aaron's elbowjoint as Mr. Tiny Aaron squired her about and presented her after a courtly sort of a fashion to whoever it was they came up on to present her to, so most everybody got wafted and treacled at up close and had to suffer through what Mr. H. Monroe Aycock identified as Mr. Tiny Aaron's blandishments not even to mention the visage and the fluttery eyehds as well. And Mr. Tiny Aaron spoke with open affection of Mrs. MaySue Ludley and deferred every now and again to her so as to allow Mrs. MaySue Ludley to speak with open affection of him back which the women in particular took some notice of since they could not many of them say when last they'd been warmly deferred to or had heard their men blandish even a little on their accounts. Even Miss Bernice Fay Frazier admitted to the widow Mrs. Askew that they seemed to her a cute couple once they'd stopped by her chair to pay their respects and to condemn and vilify Miss Mary Alice Celestine Lefler who Mr. Tiny Aaron in particular had suspected was trash all along which he insisted at Miss Bernice Fay Frazier he had, insisted it twice in fact with altogether palpable conviction and so was not reminded of the catsnatching by Miss Bernice Fay Frazier who did not wish to undo a couple so cute.

Needless to say, Miss Bernice Fay Frazier was growing fairly anxious to delve and relate and fathom and plumb and identify now that everybody who was meant to come and two people who weren't had all arrived, but the tide of opinion was running stiffly against her since most everybody otherwise was of a mind to eat before they encountered. Were she pressed, however, Miss Bernice Fay Frazier guessed she might relent and ingest an altogether minuscule portion of Mrs. Estelle Singletary's bean casserole if someone would be so kind as to spoon it up for her and carry it to her hke got delegated to Mr. Estelle Singletary pretty much by thoroughgoing default and he brought to Miss Bernice Fay Frazier a plate with not a thing in the world on it but an ever so puny dollop of bean casserole as well as some attendant bean casserole juices like appeared to Miss Bernice Fay Frazier a waste of a perfectly good excursion since Mr. Estelle Singletary could certainly have stood to spoon up a few other puny dollops for Miss Bernice Fay Frazier's perusal as long as he was coming her way in the first place. So she presently got her food heaped and piled and mounded up on the plate just like most everybody otherwise except for Mr. Tiny Aaron who did not want to seem in the presence of Mrs. MaySue Ludley a glutton and so spooned up only those items Mrs. MaySue Ludley saw fit to spoon up herself and in portions smaller even than Mrs. MaySue Ludley's own personal portions hke were slight and, as best as Mr. Tiny Aaron could tell, altogether dainty. Nevertheless, he was succeeding down the length of the buffet to seem a man of moderation until he turned the perpendicular corner and arrived at last at the porcelain tureen with the scrolled handles and the leafy lidgrip and Mrs. Phillip J. King herself in attendance for purposes of ladling and elucidation. Now Tiny Aaron, being a man in the company of his own absorbent breadloaf, was partial to greases and sauces not even to mention the iridescent union of the two, so he bent and gaped into the tureen with some considerable interest and not a little enthusiasm, and he pointed at a turnip and inquired of Mrs. Phillip J. King, "What's that?" which she spoke of straightaway in addition to the bangers that he did not even have to inquire about to hear of as well along with the herbal bouquet that had served in conjunction with the low cooking heat to extract the essences from the turnips and the hangers both which Mr. Phillip J. King got enlisted to confirm and so rested his own fork long enough to confirm it.

He had to have him a taste of it, but Mrs. Phillip J. King was not meaning to ladle up mere tastes and so deposited a sizeable helping between Mr. Tiny Aaron's dollop of mandarin salad and his lone chicken drumette, and straightaway he sampled a banger which met with his giddy approval and he nibbled as well at a scrap of turnip which he proclaimed to be as savory a scrap of turnip as he'd ever had occasion to nibble-hke touched off Mr. Phillip J. King who stilled his fork and told into the air, "Savory," as he could not somehow seem to keep himself from it. Naturally, Mr. Tiny Aaron was anxious to baptize a breadslice and he opened the neck of his sack and drew one out, a brown breadslice fairly riddled with hulls and chaff and various lumpy healthful inedible items otherwise. He tore the thing in half and dipped with the crustless part direct into the orange sauce, swirled and sopped it about until it looked to him as saturated as a lumpy halfslice could get when he folded it expertly with his fingers like only an inveterate sopper might and raised it dripless to his mouth where he took in the entire item.

He was quite directly overcome with delight and Mmmmed like Mr. Phillip J. King could never in this lifetime hope to, Mmmmed with infectious passion and assured Mrs. Phillip J. King how her banger and turnip concoction was purely ambrosia to his palate, assured her once Mr. H. Monroe Aycock had suggested ambrosia and had suggested palate both in the wake of Mr. Tiny Aaron's infectious discharge. He could not speak too highly of the orange turnip and banger stew. It possessed the items he most adored in a dish like would be grease and salt and pork and herbs simmered and reduced together to their succulent essences, and Mr. Tiny Aaron proclaimed so everybody might know it how the essences were in fact succulent, broadcast his approval of the orange stew and invited those people who'd been put off by the orange chiefly and the iridescence somewhat to step forward and sop up a puddle of it with brown lumpy bread he would gladly supply from his own personal sack. And they came forward, men exclusively, and sopped sauce at the recommendation of Mr. Tiny Aaron who spoke of how they might savor upon their palates the grease and the salt and the pork and the turnips in addition to the herbal bouquet which the men that bothered to sop did in fact savor all of, even Mr. Luther Teague who'd been previously reluctant to so much as look upon the orange juices which he had not suspected were the least bit ambrosial as far as orange juices went.

The Mmmming was riotous and near about deafening and Mrs. Philhp J. King could not help somehow but grow flashy in the face of it, not especially hot flashy or especially cold flashy either but just prickly flashy instead, goosepimply flashy from the general reception her stew had inspired hke expunged altogether from her recollection the kidneys she'd attempted previously. She accepted the accolades and the various culinary discharges with almost measurable modesty and proclaimed ever so briefly that her stew was hardly the triumph it was presently getting taken for though she managed soon enough to be convinced otherwise by a coalition of Mr. Wyatt Benbow and Mr. Sleepy Pitts and Mr. Tiny Aaron too who insisted on discovering the ingredients but got charged to guess them instead by Mr. Phillip J. King who bet they could not name the one most piquant which the three of them together failed in fact at.

"She' s got an instinct," Mr. Philhp J. King announced in the wake of the disclosure and he caught up Mrs. Philhp J. King across the shoulders and squeezed her to him.

"I've got an instinct," Mrs. Phillip J. King announced herself in the direction chiefly of the widow Mrs. Askew whose own personal curried fruit dish had gone so far relatively untouched and altogether unsopped in like probably was what induced her to tell to Mrs. Phillip J. King back, "I'll bet you do," with so remarkably httle pith as to be fairly arresting.

"She's got an instinct," the widow Mrs. Askew told to Mrs. Cecil Dutton as preface to a thoroughgoing exchange of smirks between them. "An instinct," she said to Miss Bernice Fay Frazier once she'd arrived at her folding chair. "She's got one." But Miss Bernice Fay Frazier for her part could not even muster a proper smirk to display and only sneered weakly at the widow Mrs. Askew prior to informing her how she might as well have just stayed home for all the attention her crisis was getting which was not, as best as Miss Bernice Fay Frazier could tell, any attention at all, and she quivered frantically and discharged in an anguished sort of a way and turned at last her besmeared visage on the widow Mrs. Askew so as to speak of Bubbles her cat who evermore grew forlorn in her absence. "She misses me so," Miss Bernice Fay Frazier said. "I hate to go off and leave her for no more call than this," like touched off the widow Mrs. Askew who wondered had she ever previously shared with Miss Bernice Fay Frazier how it was the fog sometimes came in on little cat feet.

Bubbles, in fact, was being presently forlorn. She was dangling from the sheer draperies back of the settee fairly much in the throes of despondency judging from her expression since she could not appear to decide how she might, now that she'd managed to dangle from the draperies, come to undangle from them. Out on the strip of grass between the walk and the curb alongside the phonepole Mr. Dick Atwater watched Miss Bernice Fay Frazier's cat Bubbles swing in silhouette and thought her as well to appear quite thoroughly forlorn at it though Mr. Dick Atwater had dropped off lately into such a mood that no matter where he looked he found desolation, even in a cat dangling from sheer draperies which struck him as a source of grief. He'd been two days now and one full night hollow and cavernous and relatively done in by her chiefly with the hair and with the hps and with the fingerends and he saw her face most all over and heard her dainty laugh on the breeze, or strenuously undertook anyhow to see her face and to hear her dainty laugh like he figured maybe he ought to to be truly forsaken. She'd sent him a card. She'd not just up and left after all but had taken the time to explain to him her motives and inclinations in as much as she could explain her motives and inclinations to him on the back of a Belvedere Hotel postcard with, on the front of it, an artist's rendering of the Belvedere Hotel itself which the artist who'd rendered it had quite obviously not ever laid eyes on since he'd fashioned the place to look pretty much like the palace at Versailles but with potted geraniums and a green canvas awning out front, just the sort of a spot where a man and a woman could throw in together on a fullblown assignation like Mr. Dick Atwater could not, along with the face and the dainty laugh, help but undertake to conjure up as well.

It was pretty much your typical Dear Jerome sort of a card. She saluted him there at the outset with a Hey! prior to sharing with him the news of how she'd found him to be nice, found him in fact to be awfully nice and would evermore cherish the evenings they'd passed together though she preferred, she guessed, to be diddled by somebody else entirely which of course she'd not come flat out and said though Mr. Dick Atwater, who'd read that card every way but edgewise, had assumed it almost straightoff as an implication. She wished him much success in his pursuits and went to the trouble even to bless him prior to signing off with Xs over top of a happy face and Mr. Dick Atwater

caught onto the Xs chiefly and invested them with undue passion, passion enough anyway to leave him to wonder how she could give him over and X him so both at the same time.

"Aw Mary Alice," Dick Atwater said from the strip of grass between the walk and the curb and extracted the card from his coatpocket so as to study it one time further like would be the sentiments on the back and like would be the grand and preposterous rendition on the front as well.

He'd taken to wandering about, had anyway for two days and one evening now wandered about as he'd not known otherwise what in the world to do with himself and his troublesome vacant cavity and so had figured he might as well be afoot, figured he'd just as soon drift and roam loose from his moorings, so he'd walked and loitered and walked some more like had made him most especially difficult for Mr. Nestor Tudor to find, Mr. Nestor Tudor who'd been seeking Mr. Dick Atwater in his Fairlane, had been trolling around for him on account of how it seemed to him he had a thing likely to say to Mr. Dick Atwater, Mr. Dick Atwater who he'd beaten and balded for the sake of a woman who'd run off to rend the national moral fabric with somebody else altogether. He didn't truly know what thing precisely it was he had to say, but he felt sure it would come to him once he'd found Mr. Dick Atwater to say it to. So he rode round this evening like he'd ridden round the evening previous and headed south down the boulevard and headed north back up it and swung east towards Mr. Dick Atwater's house where Mr. Dick Atwater did not appear to be and headed then southwest where he eased up before Mr. Wayne Fulp's and spied at last Mr. Dick Atwater alongside the phonepole on the strip of grass.

For his part, Mr. Dick Atwater was not at all aware he was being joined until he'd been in fact joined already by Mr. Nestor Tudor who Mr. Dick Atwater turned briefly and glared at prior to standing again like he'd stood and watching again what he'd been watching. Nestor Tudor just stood as well for a time but did presently manage to speak, looked where it was Mr. Dick Atwater was looking and worked up an inquiry on account of it, asked of Mr. Dick Atwater, "What is that?"

"Cat," Mr. Dick Atwater told to him, and together they studied how Bubbles clung to the sheer drapery which itself twitched and swayed in the windowbox.

"He hung up?" Nestor Tudor wanted to know.

And Mr. Dick Atwater told to him, "She seems to be."

Nestor Tudor confessed how he did not suppose he would ever have a cat himself since he'd never worked up somehow a partiality for cats that Dick Atwater confessed back he did not hardly give a happy shit about like would usually have touched off some turmoil but Nestor Tudor supposed he'd had with Mr. Dick Atwater turmoil enough already so he allowed Mr. Dick Atwater not to give a happy shit unscathed and just stood for a time alongside him watching the draperies sway and lurch before wondering was Mr. Dick Atwater meaning to stand against the phonepole on the strip of grass all the night.

"I might be," Dick Atwater told to him.

And Nestor Tudor said, "Well," and then turned and indicated his Fairlane, "I got my car there. Thought I'd go riding."

"Go riding," Dick Atwater told to him and then laid his fingers to a contusion like had come over the past couple of days to be a habit with him.

"Why don't you come on?" Nestor Tudor said. "Why don't you come on and ride with me?"

And Dick Atwater did not guess he would and did not guess he wouldn't either one but just laid against the phonepole watching the outline of Bubbles the dangling cat endeavoring somehow to come to be undangled.

"Come on, Dick," Nestor Tudor told to him, "ain't nobody here," and Dick Atwater looked from the windows to the ground before him and from the ground before him to the windowbox again and he said presently to Nestor Tudor, "Ain't nobody here, is there?"

"Nobody," Nestor Tudor assured him and then stood watching Dick Atwater alongside him and continued just to stand watching Dick Atwater even once he'd raised off the pole and stepped into the gutter and struck out across the road to the Fairlane where he situated himself on the seat and cranked down the window and inquired of Nestor Tudor, "You coming?" that Nestor Tudor from atop the grass strip between the walk and the curbing jerked his head yes about.

And they just rode there at the outset, south down the boulevard so far as the bypass and north back up it beyond the square and the colonel with his sword unsheathed and near about to the power plant where Nestor Tudor swung west so as to show to Dick Atwater a house he'd come across previously, a white frame house with gaudy turquoise shutters and an altogether inexplicable barn red door like were sufficient in combination to induce Nestor Tudor and Dick Atwater to agree how they did not know precisely what was wrong with some people. They passed a place Dick Atwater used to live as a child before it had come to be a thicket chiefly with a chimney in it somewhere and a splintery elm stump out front in a swale where the tree had succumbed to the beetle and the blight, and Dick Atwater recalled his momma had grown roses in the sideyard and they stopped dead in the road to look for the remnants of a bush but could not see much past the milkweed and the brambles. "She had a touch with roses," Mr. Dick Atwater said. "It's not everybody that does," which Nestor Tudor straightaway agreed about and sat in his Fairlane in the road looking with Mr. Dick Atwater at the chimney and the thicket and the splintery stump, Mr. Dick Atwater who reached up with his fingers and laid them to a contusion on his cheek that he left shortly for a red prickly bald patch instead which he touched and loitered upon and discharged a breath about, a breath fairly ripe with longing and regret like served itself as preface to an observation, an observation Mr. Dick Atwater turned towards Nestor Tudor and made. "I wish," he said, "you hadn't pulled out these here. I won't ever get them back."

And Nestor Tudor and Dick Atwater looked for a moment square across the Fairlane at each other hke seemed to Nestor Tudor a suitable occasion for him to tell Dick Atwater the thing he'd gone to the trouble to hunt him up in the first place to tell to him which he still had not cultivated exactly the words for and so merely snorted instead, snorted and shook his head back of it hke prompted from Dick Atwater an identical display and turned out after all to be the thing Nestor Tudor had meant all along to say.

"I think I could use a soda," Dick Atwater told to Nestor Tudor. "Got a few things to wash down," and Nestor Tudor, who confessed he was pining a httle for a soda himself, proceeded west to the junction at 87 and north up it past a Sunoco that was shut already for the night and so far as Mr. Tadlock's sports complex that Nestor Tudor turned into the gravel lot of under the bluewhite vapor lights and eased on up to the rail fence short of the carpet links where a child was lingering alongside number twelve attempting to fracture the concrete slab with his putterhead alone notwithstanding how he was being ever so passionately advised over the loudspeaker that fracturing the slab was just the variety of thing they discouraged out on the carpet links. And as they got out of the car Nestor Tudor looked from the links to the range to the illuminated cinder path off towards the pond and told to Dick Atwater, "Some place. Can't say I've ever been here."

"I have," Dick Atwater told him back. "Once."

"Didn't know you golfed."

"Oh yeah," Dick Atwater said. "Send that ball screaming."

Nestor Tudor bought Sundrops from the machine and him and Dick Atwater together strolled out between the range and the links where they sat on a bench and watched Mr. Dale Gentry hit with a long iron,

Mr. Dale Gentry who had on shiny white golf shoes and red trousers and a white shirt with tiny blue horizontal stripes to it and a bird on the breastpocket not even to mention his skyblue golfing glove and his skyblue golfing hat and his slender embossed green towel dangling from his beltloop, his slender embossed green towel that he wiped his clubheads with most especially in the wake of a shank like was for Mr. Dale Gentry rare since he tended to hit the ball square and true, had established what Mr. Dick Atwater called at Nestor Tudor his personal rhythm and thereby induced Nestor Tudor, who'd been watching previously just the red pants chiefly that struck him as uglier even than his own purple horsehead shirt, to study pretty much the rest of Mr. Dale Gentry as well, Mr. Dale Gentry who hunkered and waggled and flexed and set and rotated and cocked and paused and uncoiled and swept and squealed and extended which was just itself for practice and served as preamble to the ensuing legitimate hunkering and waggling and flexing and setting and rotating and cocking and pausing and uncoiling and sweeping and squealing and extending that put the actual ball in flight.

Now Nestor Tudor was not himself a student of the game and he turned straightoff to Dick Atwater and confessed how he was not himself a student of the game at all, "but I've seen those boys on TV," Nestor Tudor said, "and I don't recall that they do much squealing," which prompted and inspired Dick Atwater to spit Sundrop in a sparkly mist all over the both of them.

If Miss Fay Dull had gone to the trouble in the first place to carry her parka with her she was meaning to perch upon it and announced as much most especially to the Reverend Mr. Theodore J. Parnell who she guessed would know that they could not the bunch of them encounter with any good effect from patio furniture since they had cause to get down low with their karmas if they hoped to delve and plumb with measurable success. The Reverend Mr. Parnell, however, had worn this evening his buffcolored suit that would undoubtedly show off grass stains like neon which induced him to differ with Miss Fay Dull along with most everybody otherwise who differed with Miss Fay Dull as well except for Tiny Aaron and except for Mrs. MaySue Ludley, Tiny Aaron who sat directly on the grass and Mrs. MaySue Ludley who sat on Tiny Aaron's madras jacket that he'd flung and laid for her with extravagant ceremony. Miss Bernice Fay Frazier retained her folding chair with the addition of a plank beneath the backlegs which Mr. Estelle Singletary assured her she would surely not under regular circumstances require but the ground had come to be somehow so spongy and soft that even the merest wisp of a woman like Miss Bernice Fay Frazier might sink in it up to the fenders. Everybody else went pretty much plankless and as there were not sufficient chairs to go around Mr. Phillip J. King and Mr. Wyatt Benbow and Mr. H. Monroe Aycock sat on the picnic bench while Mr. Cecil Dutton, who went off to the garage after a crate to upend, discovered instead Mrs. Estelle Singletary's folding lounger that he carried out and unfolded and lounged shortly upon.

The Reverend Mr. Parnell, who had duties and obligations that would soon call him away, guessed he might for his part touch off the proceedings with a variety of invocation, and as it was his custom to stand and invoke he did stand and did begin invoking in his deepest preacherly tones. He sought to bless their gathering and to give thanks to the Maker for the bounty they'd just enjoyed and called out even a few of the dishes by name like would be Mrs. Estelle Singletary's bean casserole, Mrs. Luther Teague's chicken in a pot with the feathery crust, and most especially Mrs. Phillip J. King's iridescent banger and turnip stew which the reverend had found unique among the dishes. Of course, Mrs. Phillip J. King rose directly up out from her own seat and gave thanks herself, interrupted the invocation so as to tell how the banger and turnip stew had been in fact nothing truly. She spoke as well of her joy at seeing it sopped and devoured after what fashion it had been sopped and devoured in fact, and she grew fairly rapturous at the prospect of other unique dishes she might carry to encounters in the future convinced like she was that there were people roundabout with the palates to relish fine cuisine.

"Ambrosia to mine," Tiny Aaron fairly hollered at her from down alongside Mrs. MaySue Ludley who clutched at his elbowjoint and admired how he'd just lately hollered.

"Aw," Mrs. Phillip J. King told to him in such a tone as to invite Mr. Tiny Aaron to repeat and confirm what he'd only just lately finished hollering, so he did in fact repeat and confirm it.

As best as Miss Bernice Fay Frazier could tell, her personal encounter was ever so rapidly degenerating into a manner of testimonial to Mrs. Phillip J. King's covered dish and she sought to regain the purpose of the affair in the first place by manufacturing a plaintive sort of a wail that did not in fact regain the purpose straightaway but managed to rouse Mr. Luther Teague who'd dozed off in the midst of the invocation atop Mrs. Estelle Singletary's lounger and grew sufficiently stirred on account of the plaintive wail to raise up and inquire of everybody, "What?" like punctuated Mrs. Phillip J. King and Mr. Tiny Aaron both and allowed the Reverend Mr. Parnell to take up one time more the reins of the invocation which he gripped and held to as he spoke just generally of Miss Bernice Fay Frazier's recent tribulation and strife.

"A whole sea of it," the widow Mrs. Askew could not help somehow but inteiject though she suffered herself to be forestalled by the reverend from interjecting further, the reverend who invoked mostly at her, "Yes, a sea of tribulation, a sea of strife, an entire world of pain suffered at the hands of a stranger in our midsts, a faithless woman," which Miss Bernice Fay Frazier, who'd not personally intended to interject herself, could not truly help but inteiject in back of due to how she felt inclined to suggest to the reverend conniving trash as a substitute for faithless woman since faithless woman did not seem to Miss Bernice Fay Frazier to travel awful close to the heart of the thing.

"Conniving trash?" the reverend said.

And Miss Bernice Fay Frazier told to him, "Please, if you will," like the reverend supposed he might though he found conniving trash quite thoroughly irregular in an invocational sort of a way. He made it, however, fit in nonetheless and sound even a little prayerful as he invoked it and he concluded with the hope that Miss Bernice Fay Frazier might go for a while pretty completely unconnived that most everybody otherwise saw fit to throw in with and interject about.

Once he'd left off the invocation and suffered himself to be congratulated about it, the Reverend Mr. Parnell departed almost straightaway, after that is he'd taken up Miss Bernice Fay Frazier at the fingers and shared with her a low preacherly sentiment meant just for her alone and intended not at all for Mrs. Cecil Dutton who leaned in only to learn from Miss Bernice Fay Frazier of her wishes that Mrs. Cecil Dutton would lean back out again. Of course in the absence of the reverend, the widow Mrs. Askew felt duty bound to step forward and take charge of the encounter herself and she provided fair cause in the form of an elaborate and quite incomprehensible declaration partly on the topic of how uneasy it is the head lies that wears the crown but partly as well on a topic otherwise that sounded to Mr. Tiny Aaron to have a thing to do with a verdant copse like was not a sort of copse he knew personally anything about and so sought illumination from Mr. H. Monroe Aycock who was evermore prepared to illuminate.

The widow Mrs. Askew did not truly stir much ardor as a candidate for encounter leader and Mr. Estelle Singletary, who'd deciphered a pointed glance, nominated Mrs. Estelle Singletary in her stead, Mrs. Estelle Singletary who demurred so convincingly that Mr. Estelle Singletary moved to unnominate her and so entertained one glance

further still. The ensuing vote left Mrs. Estelle Singletary the altogether decisive victor which the widow Mrs. Askew muttered a moderately gracious sort of a pithy thing about before retiring to the far reaches of the encounter circle between Mr. Luther Teague, who'd lately sought the position of Worshipful Master at the Masonic hall but had lost it in a runoff and so guessed he could purely relate to and identify with the widow Mrs. Askew's present plight which he insisted at her in breathy elevated tones he could, and Mr. Cecil Dutton sprawled flat out again atop the lounger with his eyes shut and his head laid over sideways and a streak of drool trailing out the corner of his mouth. Mrs. Estelle Singletary who'd had, she insisted, no designs on encounter leadership accepted boldly the challenge of the position and swore as her oath to be as sensitive to as many needs and vibes as she could possibly be sensitive to like prompted Mr. Estelle Singletary to endeavor to incite a huzzah but he could not manage somehow to incite one.

Naturally, it seemed to Mrs. Estelle Singletary that Miss Bernice Fay Frazier's vibes and needs were the ones they all should straightaway pay some heed to which Mrs. Dwight Mobley seconded and Miss Fay Dull seconded with her and so together carried the motion which Mrs. Estelle Singletary took as a mandate and consequently turned the floor directly over to her afflicted sister who received an ovation at the instigation of Mr. Estelle Singletary as recompense for the huzzah he'd lately failed to incite. Miss Bernice Fay Frazier, of course, hardly knew exactly where to start and so set out with a frantic quiver that gave way to a scant bout of blubbering which brought forth a tissue from Mrs. Phillip J. King, a tissue she'd licked to wipe her tureen with but had not truly made any use of otherwise like had left it only a httle orange in places. As a suggestion, Mrs. Wyatt Benbow wondered if wouldn't Miss Bernice Fay Frazier sketch out for them all her recent plagues and torments which Miss Bernice Fay Frazier did in fact attempt and got so far as her cat Bubbles and her troublesome sciatic nerves before she fell into the throes of some relatively inarticulate puling and whining on the topic, as best as anybody could tell, of the taint that had come to Miss Bernice Fay Frazier from her with the hair and the lips and the fingerends, her who'd lately rended the national moral fabric which prompted Mr. H. Monroe Aycock to interject at Miss Bernice Fay Frazier, "Rent," and he used it for her in an utterly unrelated sentence about the national moral fabric and then repeated for the benefit of most everybody, "Rent," and expressed behind it his own personal belief that it was not such a stretch to be distraught and correct at the same time.

The effect upon Miss Bernice Fay Frazier's personal psyche was palpable and immediate and she puled and whined and blubbered with renewed zeal and spoke ever so damply of how she was not just anymore plagued and tormented but was grammatically culpable on top of it, chastised and humiliated and kicked surely when she was down like brought to bear upon Mr. H. Monroe Aycock what he himself identified as thoroughgoing opprobrium. He guessed he was in some danger of becoming a veritable pariah, which he spoke of as well, when Mr. Tiny Aaron wondered might Mr. H. Monroe Aycock, as long as he was making sentences, devise one for verdant copse on account of how, Tiny Aaron confessed, he did not have much grip on verdant copse truly. Needless to say, the opprobrium shifted to Tiny Aaron almost straightaway since he was quite plainly unelevated himself and had not even been invited to the encounter in the first place that Miss Bernice Fay Frazier and Mrs. Estelle Singletary and the widow Mrs. Askew as well took turns insinuating before Mrs. Phillip J. King, who'd been gratified previously by Tiny Aaron's enthusiasm for her turnip and banger stew, rose to his defense, or said anyhow to the ladies in question, "Just hush," like served to shift the opprobrium one time further still.

Miss Bernice Fay Frazier found herself shortly pressed to wonder if couldn't they please get back to her plagues and torments as she had not by a long stretch exhausted her puling and her whining like inspired the widow Mrs. Askew to air a pithy sort of a sentiment about the wonders of this world and how they did not ever seem to her to cease, a sentiment however not near in fact so pithy as to remain incomprehensible even to Miss Bernice Fay Frazier who was in chiefly her puling and her whining mode but possessed the personal resources to fathom and plumb simultaneously and so grew sufficiently offended to inform the widow Mrs. Askew how if she did not personally care for the tenor of the proceedings she could pack up her pith and just haul it on out of there.

"I believe I might," the widow Mrs. Askew declared and then sought straightaway to revise her declaration to the effect that what she believed she might do was step on over to the buffet and enjoy a helping of her exotic curried fruit dish with the altogether extraordinary oatmeal crust that she'd not seen anybody much have the decency to taste even like was cause yet for another pithy item about her own personal culinary nonconformity and how the world whipped her with its displeasure on account of it which prompted her as she rose to suppose straightoff how if she always scorned appearances she always could which itself inspired her to an additional item about the hobgoblin of little minds which she was pretty much in the midst of when she stepped full into the hole in the yard Mr. Estelle Singletary had attempted with the semiperpendic- ular buffet to cover before he'd come to be prevented from it. For a hole it was not awfully deep but was spacious enough to accommodate the widow Mrs. Askew's right leg well up the shinbone past the ankle like seriously impeded and punctuated her pith entirely which itself gave way to what amounted to some puling and some whining of her own and she cried out and pitched over after such a fashion as to seem to Miss Bernice Fay Frazier pretty much a ruse and Miss Bernice Fay Frazier turned far enough around in her folding chair to tell to the widow Mrs. Askew, "Get up," but the widow Mrs. Askew just laid upon the ground in a heap and puled and whined and whimpered until Mr. Wyatt Benbow stepped over to her to inquire about her predicament when she gurgled a little as well.

He meant to raise her to her feet, extract her from the hole and set her once more upright upon the yard but did not presently possess the strength of ten men like Mr. Wyatt Benbow discovered, once he'd caught up a piece of the widow Mrs. Askew and pulled at it, he'd have some call for if he meant to lift her even a little. So he enlisted the assistance of Mr. Sleepy Pitts and Mr. Luther Teague and Mr. Estelle Singletary and Mr. Phillip J. King and Tiny Aaron as well who assured them all he'd hoisted women previously and so knew precisely just how to go about it, and they each grabbed onto a piece of the widow Mrs. Askew and puled and whined and whimpered themselves as they brought her out from the hole and righted her onto her feet and then came to be persuaded by the widow Mrs. Askew, who felt weak and who felt wobbly, to carry her back to the encounter circle where they settled her upon Mrs. Estelle Singletary's reclining lounger once Mr. Wyatt Benbow had managed, by the application of his shoetoe chiefly, to dislodge Mr. Cecil Dutton who jumped to his feet and stood of a sudden blinking before the widow Mrs. Askew and her entourage and felt compelled to inquire of them, "What?"

Mr. H. Monroe Aycock, who was not of course a doctor himself, was acquainted nonetheless with medical dictates, he called them, and so assumed the task of feeling with his fmgerends the widow Mrs. Askew's ankle and telling to her, "Hmmm," just precisely like an actual doctor might. He pronounced it a sprain though he did not speak of what sort of sprain exactly it was and so heard straightaway from the widow Mrs. Askew who campaigned for a severe sprain while Miss Bernice Fay Frazier inquired of Mr. H. Monroe Aycock if wasn't it likely a scant and altogether niggling sort of a sprain instead that Mr. H. Monroe Aycock guessed he could not from just his fingerends say, and he was set to enlarge upon the medical uses and limitations of fingerends when Mrs. Estelle Singletary got up out from her own chair and crossed through the heart of the encounter circle to the lounger where she took occasion to berate Mr. Estelle Singletary on account of the hole in the yard that he certainly should have seen to previously already which touched off from Mr. Estelle Singletary talk of the moderately perpendicular buffet table with which he'd intended to cover the hole before he'd come to be prevented from it. Naturally, Mrs. Estelle Singletary wondered was he implying it was all primarily her fault then, and Mr. Estelle Singletary told to her after a fashion yes, or did not anyway tell to her no like she could not help but take for yes and so she grew induced to berate Mr. Estelle Singletary further still and was intending to speak of his various poor qualities when Miss Bernice Fay Frazier wondered might the blame lie elsewhere instead, might the blame he maybe with the inedible curried fruit dish that the widow Mrs. Askew had been drawn to eat since nobody else could.

Understandably, the widow Mrs. Askew rose as best as she was able to the defense of most especially her elaborate oatmeal crust and had begun to tell of the particular ingredients when Miss Fay Dull, who hardly intended to perch upon her parka all the evening, interrupted the widow Mrs. Askew so as to inquire in a general sort of a way if they meant to delve and relate and plumb and fathom and identify further still since she had better things to do than loll upon the ground and the widow Mrs. Askew, who was not truly of a mood to bear interrupting, told to Miss Fay Dull, "Well get up then," and Miss Fay Dull guessed she just might and so raised her fingers in the direction of Mr. Wyatt Benbow, Mr. Wyatt Benbow who had not suspected he'd pass the evening hoisting sizeable women and made a face that pretty thoroughly informed Miss Fay Dull of it.

Mrs. Cecil Dutton guessed at Mrs. Luther Teague that a capable encounter leader would have long since brought some order to the proceedings and Mrs. Luther Teague could not possibly have agreed with her more and suggested that they make a frank and candid disclosure on the topic to Mrs. Estelle Singletary herself, Mrs. Estelle Singletary who was still berating Mr. Estelle Singletary with apparently inexhaustible energy and enthusiasm, Mrs. Estelle Singletary who heard out even the bulk of the frank and candid disclosure on the topic of her meager powers as encounter leader before she shared with Mrs. Cecil Dutton and Mrs. Luther Teague how she did not personally give a big goddam what they thought like was simply grist, the ladies agreed, for the mill.

Most everybody, then, was growing offended by stages and the men in particular who'd savored and sopped the orange stew were coming to be palpably dyspeptic as well and so stood roundabout with their hands upon their bellies and paid some appreciable heed to their juices and gases that mingled and that surged, so much heed in fact that they could not hardly hope to delve and plumb and relate and fathom and identify not even to mention quarrel and bicker and seethe and so just stood by instead marshaling their ducts and sweating under their noses and wondering of their wives in frail httle voices if couldn't they possibly head on out towards home. Mrs. Luther Teague and Mrs. Cecil Dutton themselves touched off the exodus since they'd suffered already a staggering affront at the hands of their hostess and they gathered up their dishes and simply departed, or truly got driven and herded up out of the backyard and past the house to the curb by Mr. Luther Teague and Mr. Cecil Dutton who were both together dancing to the tune of the banger and turnip two-step and were feehng between them far more lubricated than they guessed they had any right or inclination even to feel. Miss Fay Dull, who'd lolled upon her parka quite long enough, went off shortly herself in a fit of pique and was followed fairly precipitously by Mr. and Mrs. Wyatt Benbow and Mr. and Mrs. Sleepy Pitts together that wished they'd not ever agreed to encounter in the first place, most especially Mrs. Sleepy Pitts who was missing at that very moment the show on the cable about the mysteries of the universe, the show on the cable that was this evening to have focused upon an altogether inexplicable sinkhole in Cincinnati that she wished she'd stayed home for.

Even Mr. H. Monroe Aycock, who'd hoped to find occasion in the course of the evening to rail against Godless communism, could not foresee any longer the prospect of it and so took his leave of Miss Bernice Fay Frazier and Mr. and Mrs. Estelle Singletary along with the widow Mrs. Askew and her indeterminate sprain and was about even to make off clean before he came to be enlisted by Mr. Tiny Aaron and Mr. Phillip J. King and on behalf of Mr. Estelle Singletary, who was too busy getting berated to speak, to help them to haul the widow Mrs. Askew across the backyard and up the drive to the curb since they did not want to get left alone to haul her notwithstanding how she'd failed yet to request to get hauled hke they suspected shortly she would request it. So they hauled her preemptively, the four of them at first but the three of them presently since Mr. Estelle Singletary could manage to suffer hardship and abuse on only one front at a time, and they carried her across the grass to the drive where they set her down by mutual consent flat upon the asphalt or explained anyhow that by mutual consent they'd set her down once they'd all three of them together in fact dropped her instead. It was Tiny Aaron who suggested the TV cart, though Mr. H. Monroe Aycock disclosed how he'd been ruminating himself upon the matter, and they fetched the thing out from alongside the peony bed and endeavored to entice the widow Mrs. Askew to climb upon it, the widow Mrs. Askew who was looking to get raised and lifted and so did not in fact offer to climb but merely stayed where she'd ended up until they plucked her together up off the drive and settled her upon the cart that flexed and creaked but did not somehow splinter into countless little woodgrained slivers like Mr. Phillip J. King in particular had suspected it might.

Mr. H. Monroe Aycock offered to navigate, offered exclusively to navigate alone but came shortly to be charged to push as well on account of how the little plastic wheels were not themselves even half so well lubricated as the indigenous digestive tracts, so they all three together heaved and groaned and advanced up the drive after a slow and stately sort of a fashion while the widow Mrs. Askew held as best as she was able to the cart edges and thereby completed the spectacle which looked most especially from down in the backyard like some variety of parade float gone horribly wrong. Mrs. Estelle Singletary could not even manage to rail and berate much in the face of such a display and so abused Mr. Estelle Singletary in only a wan and feeble sort of a way while she watched the TV cart advance up the drive, watched in the company of Mr. Estelle Singletary and Mrs. Dwight Mobley and Mrs. Phillip J. King and Mrs. MaySue Ludley as well, Mrs. MaySue Ludley who removed a lacy handkerchief from her pocketbook and waved it in the air as she shouted encouragement to most especially Mr. Tiny Aaron who was quite obviously, she told it, bearing the bulk of the weight.

They accumulated even some velocity as the driveway peaked and flattened and they gained the road at what seemed particularly to the widow Mrs. Askew an altogether reckless speed which she was entirely too busy shrieking and wailing to speak of, most especially once they'd swung out into the middle of the street and wheeled round to make for the passenger door of Mrs. Dwight Mobley's Caprice Classic where it appeared to the widow Mrs. Askew she would surely come to be wrecked and mangled. However, Mr. Phillip J. King and Mr. Tiny Aaron and Mr. H. Monroe Aycock managed in fact to slow the cart sufficiently so that they did not find call but to bounce the widow Mrs. Askew off the fender well just the one time which she proved to be inordinately grateful about and she lifted her arms so as to allow herself to get raised and hefted once further, raised and hefted and deposited altogether abruptly upon the carseat which she came to be informed had been in fact the product of mutual consent as well.

Mrs. Dwight Mobley, who'd walked up the drive herself in the wake of the procession, could not quite figure how she might offload the widow Mrs. Askew once she'd gotten her home and she endeavored with a look alone to entreat Mr. Phillip J. King and Mr. Tiny Aaron and Mr. H. Monroe Aycock too who would not somehow stand to be entreated and so joined Mrs. Dwight Mobley in her general bafflement and did not guess they could much themselves figure the thing either. Mrs. Dwight Mobley returned partway down the drive to yell into the backyard at Miss Bernice Fay Frazier and inquire was she intending to ride home with her but Miss Bernice Fay Frazier only sat in her folding chair upon her plank and gazed out before herself at the encounter circle like was anymore just chairs and a bench and a lounger along with some vacant grassy places, her encounter circle where she'd anticipated she would likely manage to come to be improved if not healed outright, would likely plumb and fathom and delve and relate and identify and get sufficiently at last in touch with her own feelings to discover that she was probably OK after all like she'd not in fact done truly any of but had only instead stained her dressfront with ambrosia juice and pretty dramatically smeared her visage.

"Bernice," Mrs. Dwight Mobley called to her one time further and managed even to turn her partway around. "You coming?"

And Miss Bernice Fay Frazier told her back a breathy Yes like was hardly enough of a Yes to suit Mrs. Dwight Mobley who inquired another time further still which served to raise and animate Miss Bernice Fay Frazier who pushed out from her chair and crossed past the buffet to the drive where she endured a rendezvous with Mrs. Phillip J. King whose tureen was so near to empty that she could pick it up herself like she'd picked it up herself which she showed to Miss Bernice Fay Frazier she had and carried it even up the drive alongside Miss Bernice Fay Frazier and so far as the curbing where she issued some altogether frantic instructions to Mr. Phillip J. King whom she wished would come and take the tureen as merely a convenience to her and not hardly because it was burdened any longer with much stew at all to speak of.

Miss Bernice Fay Frazier bid everybody good evening, told anyhow, "Night then," to Mr. and Mrs. Phillip J. King and Mr. and Mrs. Estelle Singletary and MaySue Ludley and Tiny Aaron and Mr. H. Monroe Aycock as well before she moved towards Mrs. Dwight Mobley's Caprice Classic where she discovered the widow Mrs. Askew nursing her indiscriminate sprain in the front seat and so climbed herself past the seatback Mrs. Dwight Mobley had upraised for her and settled her girthsome bones upon the rear cushion where she allowed herself to be consoled by the notion that she had at home to comfort her Bubbles her fluffy cat who'd managed in fact only lately to disengage herself from the sheer drapery by rendering the entire item into a manner of gauzy wadding.

North out the highway at the golf range, Nestor Tudor and Dick Atwater found they had together wearied of Mr. Dale Gentry's assorted antics and were not much taken any longer with the buglight as well and its intermittent shower of ignited moths and beetlebugs, and it was Nestor Tudor who suggested that perhaps they should ride further still and he had in mind the place precisely they should ride to which Mr. Dick Atwater was agreeable about and so proceeded with Nestor Tudor to the Fairlane and rode with him out from the lot and east to 14 and north up it to Nestor Tudor's own house where Nestor Tudor slipped into his drive and around back to the shed he'd built to put a car in but could not hope to get a car in any longer as he'd seen fit to fill it instead with flotsam and detritus, just any old thing he felt inclined to heave in through the doorway. He had an item to show to Dick Atwater and situated him in a springy metal chair in the backyard so as to prepare him to view it while he himself retired briefly to the house and returned with his bottle of Ancient Age and a bowl of ice cubes along with a squat and legitimate liquor glass for Mr. Dick Atwater and a Yosemite Sam jelly tumbler for himself. He poured the both of them pretty much full, too full but for a solitary cube apiece and insisted that they bang their glassrims together before they sipped and exhaled, so they did in fact bang their glassrims and then did sip and did exhale both.

Nestor Tudor instructed Dick Atwater in how precisely to sit in his springy metal chair with his feet upon the upended log before him which Dick Atwater was relatively quick to master and so rocked and sprung with Nestor Tudor who waited for the circumstances to get just precisely propitious before he pointed west out over the tops of the slash pines and the loblollies alongside his lot, pointed precisely at his own personal streak of gaudy sky which was fading presently from orange to pink as preamble to how it would shortly drain past the horizon altogether and so leave just the stars and the wispy clouds along with what piece of moon had been up a time already. And Dick Atwater was of a mind that it might perhaps be the most resplendent streak of gaudy sky he'd ever had the pleasure to see except for maybe a similar streak he and Mrs. Dick Atwater had shared together the sight of down at Salter Path sometime back. They'd sat on a piece of treetrunk by the sound and had watched the sun dip and fade off beyond the Coratan Forest.

"It was purely a sight," Dick Atwater confessed and looked from the present streak of gaudy sky to Nestor Tudor prior to gazing for a time into his squat legitimate liquor glass as he drew in a breath and discharged it. "Purely a sight," he told to his lone cube, and Nestor Tudor, who had a dead wife himself, took occasion to gaze into his own tumbler and breathe a little as well.

And the light gave way and the jarflies set in and with every new dram the glassrims beat together. Nestor Tudor smoked his Old Gold filters and Dick Atwater, who did not smoke, smoked Nestor Tudor's Old Gold filters too and, as they drew and inhaled, their cigarette coals illuminated their faces and a faint breeze carried their sparks and ashes off across the yard into the darkness which was anymore complete and thoroughgoing but for the ever so scant glow from the piece of moon that had climbed to the south of them and hung what appeared directly over town where it threw its paltry light down on the boulevard and the square and rooftops roundabout with the people beneath them who slept already and the people beneath them who didn't yet, the ones with cats to chastise and pitiful states to lament, the ones with ankles to elevate and icepacks to apply, the ones with almanacs to read upon the ring and wives to berate them as they did it, the ones with women to admire them like they would if they possibly could admire themselves, and the ones as well like Mr. and Mrs. Phillip J. King, Mr. and Mrs. Phillip J. King who had retired together to the bedroom where Mrs. Phillip J. King had slipped off to the halfbath to apply her unctions and ointments and various beauty creams while Mr. Phillip J. King had disrobed pretty much entirely but for his fuzzy blue socks and was sitting in the altogether atop the bedclothes awaiting Mrs. Phillip J. King who did in fact presently swing open the bathroom door and had embarked even upon a bit of talk further about her triumphant stew when she spied Mr. Phillip J. King, or spied anyway the moderately prominent token of his enthusiasm which fairly completely punctuated her and allowed Mr. Phillip J. King the occasion to slap at the mattress, cut his eyes sidelong like a variety of devious and sophisticated mackerel, and tell to her, "Babydoll," which in conjunction with the token itself induced Mrs. Phillip J. King to un-Scotchtape her hair and ungirdle her blue quilted housecoat and utterly spook and unnerve her terrier Ittybit that she drove before her as she charged across the room with as near as she could get anymore to abandon.