“I DON’T SEE ANYTHING SO BAD about them,” Emma said, yawning. She was in her gown and an old flannel bathrobe and was watching the Johnny Carson show. Flap had just returned from taking the baby-sitter home. The party at the Duffins’ had left him darkly depressed. Flap was normally cheerful, but when he got depressed he got very depressed, and it seemed to Emma that it was happening more often.
“You’re the world’s last optimist,” he said, switching the TV to the late show, which was a Maria Montez movie called Tangier.
“They don’t seem any worse than any other middle-aged couple,” Emma said. “At least they’re both smart. I thought you were glad Rice was finally getting someone like him. It was all you talked about for months.”
“I didn’t foresee him being a prick,” Flap said. He went and got himself a beer and sat down on the couch by Emma, taking off his tie.
“Want to watch the movie or Johnny Carson?”
“Oh, the movie awhile, I guess. Let me have a sip of beer.”
“I think Mrs. Duffin’s getting worried she’s too old, or something,” Emma said. “She’s a little tight under all that poise. I guess having a handsome husband who teaches young darlings all day would be worrisome when you got to her age. I’ll probably be that way when you’re a famous professor and I’m forty. Only she’s thin and I’II be fat.”
“He’s not so handsome,” Flap said.
“I thought he was.”
“Anyway, he doesn’t teach many girls. He mostly teaches hung-up graduate types like me and Jim.”
“I thought you said he was good.”
“He is good. I just don’t trust him.”
“You’re paranoid. I like the movie better.”
Flap got up and switched back and went and got another beer. His depression was lifting a little.
“He’s the type who’ll make trouble just for the hell of it,” he said. “I saw him follow Patsy out to the kitchen. Next thing you know he’ll be trying to screw her.”
“Well, so what?” Emma said, rumpling his hair jovially. “Everybody tries to screw Patsy. I don’t think you have any room to talk.”
Flap grinned sheepishly. “Do you have to preface every remark you make with ‘Well’?” he asked.
“No,” Emma said. “That was the first remark I’d prefaced with ‘well’ all evening. Don’t evade my accusation.”
“I can’t help it if I’m a flirt,” Flap said.
Emma yawned again. “It’s a good thing she doesn’t take you seriously,” she said. “She won’t take William Duffin seriously, either. Let’s have Hank over for dinner this weekend. Now there’s a guy I could take seriously, if the chance arose.”
“Okay,” Flap said, yawning too. Emma was lying rather spraddled out on their old green couch. Flap glanced up her gown and saw the crotch of her white panties. Idly he lifted one of her legs across his lap and began to rub her with one hand. “Want to ask Jim and Patsy too?” he asked.
“I guess,” Emma said, closing her eyes. She opened her legs even further, to facilitate being rubbed. On the screen Sabu was serenading Maria Montez, who was about to lose her heart to a hard-bitten newspaperman.
“Maybe Duffin won’t bother me,” Flap said. “I’m not in his century. Why would he bother a nineteenth-century man?”
“I admit the Rolling Stones were an affectation,” Emma said.
“I’ve seen this movie. The villain gets killed in the elevator. He’s a Nazi war criminal.”
They heard a cough and both were silent. “Teddy,” Emma said. “That sitter covers them up too much. She always has. It’s a bad Southern habit, smothering kids.” They listened, but he coughed only a couple of times and was silent. They relaxed again and Flap continued his stroking.
“Do that some more,” Emma said, settling her hips a little. Flap did it for a while and then abruptly got aroused. “Hey, want the TV off?” he asked, standing up.
“It doesn’t matter, I’m not watching it,” Emma said, pulling up her robe and gown. When Flap got eager, he got very eager, and there was no such thing as getting it home too quickly. He took just time enough to drop his pants and switch off the light by the couch. The glow from the TV screen lit Emma’s large hips and her loins, but Flap was not one to sit and look. He liked the way she smelled behind the ears, and the way her throat smelled. They soon grew very hot, for Flap still had his sports coat on and Emma her gown and robe. Her face was pink and sweating. Neither of them cared. When Flap came, Emma raised her legs and reached under him with one hand so she could hold his balls against her—it was a thing she really liked to do. Flap gave her a few soft little socks and, as always, was surprised, even worried, by the sound she made when she came. He knew it was only pleasure breaking through, but it was so like a sob that until her quietening grateful sighs followed it he was afraid to lift his face from her hair, fearful that he had goofed or hurt her somehow. They went almost to sleep, Flap comfortable between her ample thighs, and were brought back to themselves by a Dodge commercial. Besides being very rumpled, they were confronted with their usual problem: no Kleenex in reach and a fair amount of sperm ready to dribble out on the couch—an object which had already received an embarrassing number of dribblings.
“Well, hell,” Flap said. “Here we are again. I can’t reach my handkerchief without coming out.”
“You don’t have a handkerchief, anyway,” Emma said, feeling around behind her head with one hand, hoping to find something useful on the radio table by the couch.
“Why don’t we ever manage to get to bed?” she wondered, sighing.
“The fault of television. Find anything?”
“No. Go on. Who cares?” He went. “Eech,” she said, covering herself with one hand. She went to the bathroom and Flap sat on the couch and took his shoes off. His left sock had a hole in the toe. Teddy began to cough again, and Emma came back in, in just her gown, with a washrag. She did what she could for the couch.
“Want some coffee?” she asked.
“No. I want another beer. My sock’s got a hole in the toe.”
“If you’d cut your toenails once in a while they wouldn’t cut holes in your socks.”
“You never remind me,” he said.
Emma brought him a beer and made some coffee for herself. She got her sewing box and sewed up the hole in his sock. “I’ll forget it and it will get too big if I don’t do it right now,” she said. They watched what was left of the late show and listened to Teddy’s intermittent coughing. “If he’s got fever in the morning we’re canning that sitter,” Emma said, yawning more broadly. “Let’s go to bed.”
“I want to see the elevator crash,” Flap said. “Go on to bed if you want to. I ought to read some eighteenth century, anyway.”
Emma got out of the chair and came over and sat by him. She ruffled his hair again, yawning. Preston Foster was the Nazi. “I guess I’ll wait for you,” she said.