Buried Treasure

The Unpublished Short Stories of Frank Herbert

Even the author of Dune—the best-selling science fiction novel of all time—had trouble getting published. At first.

Frank Herbert wanted to be a writer, and though today his name is practically synonymous with worldbuilding and epic science fiction, Herbert didn’t start out with a particular genre in mind. He wrote mainstream stories, mysteries, thrillers, mens’ adventure pieces, humorous slice-of-life tales, and, yes, some science fiction.

In his early years, Herbert faced many rejections. His submissions came close-but-not-quite at magazine after magazine. Frank Herbert was an inspired writer with an unpredictable muse. He wrote what he wanted to write, about the characters and the situations that struck his fancy, paying very little attention to the market or the requirements of the magazines to which he submitted.

As a result, his stories were often the wrong length—too short to be released as a novel but too long for traditional periodicals. Magazines liked his work but could not use it. His agent also had a frustrating time finding a home for Herbert’s work.

And yet he kept writing.

Finally, in 1956, he found success, placing his novel The Dragon in the Sea with Doubleday, which received wide critical acclaim and made him a writer to watch.

So Herbert wrote another novel … which he couldn’t get published. And another novel, and more short stories, and other novels. He kept trying, with his subjects wandering all over the map, until finally he wrote Dune, which was possibly the most unpublishable SF novel of all, rejected more than twenty times before it was finally released by a house that specialized in auto repair manuals.

And eventually, that novel made him a world-famous author.

In Frank Herbert’s files, we found the completed and polished manuscripts for four novels—High Opp, Angels’ Fall, A Game of Authors, and A Thorn in the Bush—all of which have been released, as Herbert wrote them, from WordFire Press.

We also found the submission manuscripts for thirteen completed short stories, all of which failed to find a home in the magazines of the day. This volume collects all those previously unpublished stories, including the mystery/thrillers “The Yellow Coat,” “The Heat’s On,” “The Wrong Cat,” and “The Little Window”; humorous mainstream stories “The Illegitimate Stage,” “Wilfred,” and “The Iron Maiden”; serious mainstream stories “The Cage” and “A Lesson in History”; South Sea adventure stories “Paul’s Friend” and “The Waters of Kan-E”; and science fiction tales “Public Hearing” and “The Daddy Box.”

Readers can now appreciate the writing of one of the field’s masters in a kaleidoscope of stories that have not previously seen print. Enjoy.

—Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson

 

Mainstream

The Cage

Davis straightened the diagonal fold in the blanket at the foot of his hospital bed, smoothing the U.S.N. initials. He knew the corpsman, Blackie, was standing behind him, and Davis wondered if he’d be able to take it as he’d seen some of the others do. He’d seen it coming in the corpsman’s small, close-set eyes—the way they watched out of the corners—and the sadistic twist of the mouth that smiled without showing teeth. Davis knew he was lucky to have stayed in the ward three days without getting it sooner. “Seventeen” was notorious: Igor Blackston ran it on fear, and he seemed to have a sixth sense to tell him which of the “observation cases” would not rebel at his treatment.

Out of the corner of his eye, Davis watched the corpsman’s feet advancing, and the fear began to rise. Blackie leaned over to examine the bed. That was the way it always started. Criss-crossed shadows from the barred window at the head of the bed framed one eye in the corpsman’s square face. This man was all dark corners, Davis thought.

“A lousy job!” Blackie said. He ripped the blankets off the bed. “Do it again—right this time.”

Turning, he placed a heel on Davis’ slippered left foot, grinding it deliberately. Davis screamed. Blackie lifted his foot and turned back. He put his right hand to his chin as though pondering some question. “Oh, did I step on your foot? I’m sorry.” The right hand described a short arc and cracked against Davis’ jaw, staggering him back onto the bed.

“Don’t scream,” Blackie said. “It gives people the wrong idea. Only crazy people scream.”

Davis clenched his fist and started to push himself off the bed. Out of the corner of his eye he saw two others, the red-haired corpsman and the stocky one they called Shorty, moving down the passage between the beds. Suddenly Davis realized they were afraid of Blackie, too. But Blackie was in charge here.

“Don’t get tough,” Blackie said. “We’d have to restrain you.”

Davis waited, and the others paused.

“If the bed isn’t made when the chow cart comes through, you don’t eat,” the corpsman said, and turned away.

Lifting the covers off the floor, Davis shook the spread free and placed it over the back of his chair. He took a blanket and threw it over the bed. As he smoothed it, he saw the occupant of the next bed standing at the foot.

“Just take it,” the other said. “It’s easier that way.”

The chow cart banged against the outside bars as Davis finished. He looked up. The corpsmen gathered at the head desk apparently weren’t paying any attention to him. He stepped to the foot of the bed and waited his turn. The cart was pushed through the doors, and Blackie took up the ladle. That was a bad sign. The head corpsman didn’t have to do the menial work. When the cart came up, Davis took a spoon, picked a bowl, and held it out. Blackie dipped a small portion of mush into the ladle and upended it into the bowl, poured a few drops of milk over it, and moved on. Davis compressed his lips and remained silent. He knew better than to reach for a cup of coffee or one of the halved grapefruits. He’d seen the young marine across the ward try it yesterday. Blackie’d sent the boy out back to the loony ward last night.

Blackie pushed the cart on up the line, stopping at each bed to give the others a complete breakfast. Davis, watching the corpsman, noticed that Blackie never turned his back on any of the patients, and when he stopped to serve the big Negro at the head of the ward, he stayed on the opposite side of the cart. “Blackie’s afraid,” he thought.

After breakfast, Davis moved over and took his place in the line at the shaving stand. The clang of the inner door brought his head around. A corpsman stood outside the bars with a sheaf of papers. Blackie opened the door and took the papers.

A cuff on his arm brought Davis around. Shorty was holding out a razor and one of the tiny shaving cream tubes. Automatically, Davis took the razor and tube. He stepped into the washroom and found an unoccupied bowl and mirror. The day’s growth of beard made his cheeks appear hollow. “More of their program to lower morale,” he thought: “let you shave only every other day.” His eyes were bloodshot under their thin brows. He put a hand to his head where the cargo hatch had hit him. It still felt tender after all these weeks. Funny they’d stick him in a place like this just because he was hit on the head … take all his clothes, censor his mail, even light his cigarettes for him because he couldn’t have matches.

Looking sideways, Davis saw the eyes of the man beside him staring back from the mirror. Their wild light suddenly made him glad the corpsman was watching from the door. He opened his shaving cream tube and began to lather his face.

After returning the razor, Davis headed for the magazine rack. If he could read for a while, maybe he could forget these sadistic bastards. He debated whether or not it would be wise to try to talk to the doctor. Then he wondered why no one else had ever talked. The white walls of the ward seemed too close to him. He shook his head.

“Davis!”

Blackie was sitting at the desk by the inner door. “Come here,” he said.

Davis walked up to the desk and stood before it, pulling his bathrobe tighter around him.

“You’re up for X-ray today,” the corpsman said. “Be ready at ten thirty.”

Nodding his head, Davis turned away.

“When I’m through talking to you, I’ll let you know.” Blackie’s voice was low. Davis turned back and saw that the corpsman was standing.

“I just wanted to warn you against telling any funny stories while you’re outside. It’d be easy for me to turn in a report that you have a persecution complex. Know what that means?”

Davis remained silent.

“That means you’d be diagnosed as a paranoid. They’d send you up the river to Bethesda and a nice, quiet padded cell. You’d think this cage was heaven.” He paused. “Don’t forget it. That’s all.” He waved the back of his hand toward Davis to signify that he was finished.

At ten thirty, Shorty came down the bed line with a sheaf of papers. “Emlot, Davis, Granowski, Parker, come with me.”

Davis took his place with the others and followed the corpsman outside. They went up the disinfectant smelling hall, climbed some stairs, down another hall, and sat on a bench outside a door marked “X-ray Lab.” Davis went in after Emlot. The impersonal technician ordered him up nude on a bare table and set his head for the picture.

In the chill of the room, with his skin against the cold slab, Davis felt as if this was the way he’d appear on a morgue slab. He pushed the thought out of his mind. Those sons of bitches had him thinking like a crazy man.

When the X-rays were completed, the corpsman led them downstairs again and rapped for the outer door of the cage to be opened. He held Davis’ arm and allowed the others to pass through.

“You gotta see Doctor Knauffer,” he said.

They went down another hallway and through the fracture ward. Davis wondered if the patients in here knew he was from Seventeen. They didn’t seem to be paying any particular attention. At the end of the ward was an office with a lettered board across the door: “R.J. Knauffer, Lieut. Comdr., MC, U.S.N.” The corpsman rapped twice.

“Come in,” a voice said.

Davis entered and sat down on a chair opposite the tailored neatness of the doctor. He felt out of place in the bathrobe.

A full-toothed smile passed across Doctor Knauffer’s tanned face. He raised his manicured hands and steepled them before him, elbows resting on the desk.

“Do people pick on you or talk about you behind your back?” he asked.

Davis felt his body grow chill. What had that son of a bitch Blackie said?

“No … no, sir.”

Doctor Knauffer glanced down at a paper between his elbows.

Was that the ward report?

The doctor looked up. “Have you ever been hit on the head before?”

“A couple of times, sir. When I was a kid I was hit with a baseball. And a girl beaned me with her books once.”

Doctor Knauffer smiled. “Well, you see, what bothers us is that you fainted after being discharged from sickbay and sent back to duty. I went to school with Doctor Logan and have every confidence in his diagnosis. There really was no reason for you to faint unless …” The doctor lowered his hands and picked up the papers. “Are you certain you fainted? After all, the navy does get tiresome at times, and a good rest in a hospital …”

Davis felt the fear tightening his throat, constricting his chest. What were they trying to do to him? He hadn’t asked to come here. “I … I guess I really fainted, sir.”

“You guess you fainted, but you’re not certain. Is that it?”

“Sir, I passed out.”

“Have you ever spent much time in a hospital before?”

“No, sir.”

“I find from the report here that you were in sick bay on the Ajax for three days after you were hit by the hatch.”

“That isn’t very long, sir.”

The doctor’s face hardened. “No, it isn’t. Well, you go back to your ward, and we’ll wait until we see the pictures. They’ll be down shortly.”

Davis stood up. “Uh, doctor …”

“Yes.” Doctor Knauffer already was going on to other papers.

“I wonder if it would be possible for me to get transferred to another ward?”

The doctor looked up sharply. “Why do you want to be transferred?”

“Why, I … uh …”

“Are you certain no one is picking on you—the corpsmen, for instance?”

“Oh, no, sir. They’re very good to me.”

“I see. Well, why do you want a transfer?”

“It’s just that I don’t like the atmosphere in there, sir … all of the …”

“I’m sorry, but you’ll have to stand that atmosphere for at least a week. We have to make a thorough check on you.”

Back in the ward, Blackie caught his arm as he came through the door. “And what did we tell the doctor this morning?” he asked.

Davis was pleased to notice the fear in Blackie’s eyes. He stifled the urge to give a flip answer. “I didn’t tell him anything.”

Blackie brought up his knee and caught Davis in the groin. Davis collapsed on the floor with his leg doubled under him.

“See that you don’t,” the corpsman said.

Rolling over, Davis started to rise. Through the bars he saw Doctor Knauffer turn the corner down the hall and come striding toward the cage. Davis stood up and hobbled toward his bed.

Doctor Knauffer rapped on the bars and the corpsman in the middle cage pushed the buzzer for the outer door. The doctor paused at the head desk a moment, talking to Blackie, then made his way down the aisle to Davis’ bed.

“I saw you on the floor as I came down the hall,” he said. “What happened?”

Davis looked up and saw Blackie’s eyes on him. Did he dare tell the doctor the truth? Blackie’s eyes were unwavering.

“I tripped, sir.”

“Tripped? On what?”

“On my slippers, sir.”

“Oh? Blackston said you seemed to fall down in a faint, but that you got right back up, so he didn’t assist you. Has there ever been any epilepsy in your family?”

Again Davis felt the chill. Why wouldn’t they leave him alone and send him back to duty? A fellow could take that out there, but not this.

“I asked you if there’s ever been any epilepsy in your family,” the doctor repeated.

“Huh? Oh. I don’t know, sir.”

“Well, I came over to have another chat with you, son. The pictures came down right after you left. They show no fracture. Frankly, I’m afraid we may have to send you up to Bethesda for further examination unless we can get some ready explanation of your case.”

Davis turned his head and looked out the barred window to the other barred windows across the courtyard. “This … this epilepsy—you think I have it, sir?”

“No, but you could have a mild form—petit mal.”

“Is that bad, sir?”

“Well, not too bad. But of course we’d have to discharge you from the service. You understand that such a condition would endanger your shipmates. You might pass out sometime when it was important.”

Davis looked up the ward at Blackie. The corpsman was still watching him. “Why not?” he asked himself. “Why not? It’d get me away from these bastards.”

“I had a cousin once with epilepsy,” he said.

The doctor pounced. “I thought so. Did you ever have these fainting spells before?”

“Off and on, sir.”

“Uh-huh. Just as I thought. You know, of course, that you should have told your recruiting officer about this.”

Davis nodded.

“Well, I’ll have you sent to an out ward tomorrow morning. You’ll have to wait several weeks to come up before the board, and then you can go home.”

The first thing Davis noticed about the out ward was that it had no bars on the windows. Maybe the lie was worth it, he thought. It was good to get out of the bathrobe and into his uniform again, too. The corpsman in the office at the end of the ward smiled at him. “Take lower eight,” he said. “You’re in the port watch—cleaning detail every other day. You start tomorrow. The bulletin board is right around that corner. Your name will be posted the day before your survey date.”

Davis went down the ward, found bunk eight, and hung his sea bag from the headpost. He sat down on the bunk and tried the springs. Then he thought of the “No sitting on beds” order in Seventeen. He looked around. Men were sitting on their bunks all up and down the ward. He felt like crying.

The following morning when he returned from the chow hall, Davis found the bulletin board and examined the mimeographed sheet with the names of the men who would come up before the survey board the next day. The names were in purple ink in long, even rows. For ten days he studied the sheet every morning. On the tenth day, a Friday, he found his name fourth from the top in the middle row: “Davis, Charles, S1c.” He went back to his bunk and began putting his sea bag in order.

There was no elation in Davis when he awoke the next morning. He was nervous. What if there’d been a slip? What if they’d written his folks and gotten some wrong answers? He walked over to the main building a half hour early and joined the group waiting on a bench outside the board room. The others appeared nervous, too. “This is it,” someone said. There was a ripple of tight laughter.

Davis hoped he wouldn’t see Blackie. This was in the same wing as Seventeen, but maybe he’d be lucky. Then his name was called, and he stepped through the mahogany door. Blackie sat at a desk just inside the door. Five doctors were in a circle around a table in the center of the room. Doctor Knauffer was in the middle on the far side of the table.

Stepping forward, Davis stood at attention.

“Have you any objection to being discharged?” Doctor Knauffer asked.

“No, sir.” He hoped his voice wouldn’t crack.

“Then please sign the papers the corpsman has over there,” the doctor said.

Davis remained standing before the table. There should be more to it than this.

“That’s all.” The doctor gestured with the back of his hand.

Davis turned and stepped over to the table.

Blackie held out a pen and pointed to a line on a paper. Davis signed. Blackie pointed to another line. Again Davis signed. He looked up and his eyes met Blackie’s. The corpsman smiled and pointed down to the paper. Davis followed the finger to a single word: “Epilepsy.”

O O O

Waiting in the station for the train to take him home, Davis knotted and unknotted the rope on his sea bag. “Well, I’m outta that,” he told himself. “I oughta feel great. That’s the way I oughta feel.”

The dispatcher’s loudspeaker came to life: “Chicago passengers! Chicago passengers! Through gate five!”

Davis arose, picked up his sea bag, and joined the crowd jostling and pushing one another across the depot and through the tall, barred gates.

The Illegitimate Stage

From the outside, it was a peaceful scene—six green-and-white houseboats moored along the east bank of the Wallan River in the shadow of a steel bridge. The houseboats nestled against a weathered gray boardwalk. Between the boardwalk and the riverbank grew cattails and marsh grasses.

The jade-colored curtains on the first houseboat’s riverside windows snapped back. The dark face of a young man appeared at the window, scowling out at the morning sunlight. Without turning his head, he spoke to the slim blonde woman seated at the kitchen table behind him.

“It was your crazy idea in the first place!”

The woman turned her narrow, sensitive features toward the man’s back, drawing her brows down.

“Roger Corot, you stop acting like that! I’m not a child. I just said it for a joke, and you took it up and made everybody believe it.”

The man half turned from the window, raised his palms up, and looked toward the ceiling.

“That’s right,” he said. “It’s all my fault. When I’m fired and we’re reduced to begging on the street, you can tell your friends, ‘Roger did this to me!’”

“Now you’re going to be dramatic,” she said. “You know you’re the one who wants to keep up this Bohemian atmosphere.” She gestured around her at the houseboat, an array of bamboo furniture in pastel greens and oranges, a grass mat rug.

Roger hurled himself into a chair opposite the woman, buried his head in his hands. He raised his head, looked across the table. His dark eyes were opened wide; his black hair was disarrayed, curled slightly at the forehead; his voice was deep.

“Pepina!” he said. “Don’t destroy me! You know I can’t create in a flat. I have to have the soothing atmosphere of life—like the great current of a river around me. Don’t do this to me.”

“Very poetic,” she said. “Now, what about—”

He raised a restraining hand. “Please. If you’d only explain to me why you told everyone we’re not married … Well, perhaps I could understand. If you could only explain it to me.”

The woman brought her hands from her lap—long, thin hands on thin wrists. She put her hands over her face, lowered them. In the depths of her green eyes there was a bemused twinkle.

“Roger, for the nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-ninth time, I was just making a joke. If I had suspected for a moment that you would take me up and make it a great dramatic production—we artists together—I’d have kept my big trap shut, as my father used to say.”

She stood up, an emerald housecoat falling gently into place around her. “Now be a good boy and get off to the college. You’ll have a whole class full of French students wondering where their instructor is.”

Roger stood up, took an English tweed topcoat from the back of an adjacent chair, and draped it over his left arm.

“Yes. And as soon as this story gets back to President Coleman, they’ll know where I am—fired!” He leaned across the table. “Why didn’t you think of that? You knew the president of the college was the chairman of the Wallan County Anti-Vice League.”

Her voice was flat as she replied: “So did you, Roger; so did you.”

He shook his head. “Why? Why? Why?”

“Roger!” Pepina stamped her foot. “I’ve got a why for you. You’ve had two whole years to scotch this story. But no! You have to keep adding to it. You have to brag about it! You haven’t explained that to my satisfaction.”

Roger slumped back into the chair he had vacated, draped the coat over his knees. “I’ve told you. It’s this play.”

“Oh, Roger. You know that doesn’t make sense.”

“Yes, it does. You don’t understand this authoress. I will explain it in words of one syllable. This is Mrs. Abelarde Gruntey. She is the widow of Amos Gruntey, who endowed Gruntey Hall. She has written this play. She calls it Rhythm of Life. That should tell you enough about it.”

Pepina sighed and sat down in her chair. She took an electric coffee pot from the corner of the table, poured herself a fresh cup.

“I’ve read the play. I know. But I don’t understand what all this has to do with your sudden attack of respectability.”

“Pepina,” he said, drawing out the syllables, “President Coleman wants a new gymnasium from this woman. He ordered me to produce her play. I have to do it. And when we get into production, this female behemoth will be at mine elbow.”

He raised his voice. “And sure as fate, one of those dunderhead dramatics students of mine will let it slip to her that we’re a pair of sinners, and she’ll take it straight to Coleman. I tell you, the jig is up!”

Pepina shrugged her shoulders. “So take him our marriage license and make a fool out of her.”

Roger’s voice became low and charged with feeling. “But Pepina! I’d never be able to face them again. Never! The … the shine would be all gone off our relationship. This way it’s dramatic. It inspires them. When I tell them how to act, they leap to obey. They know I’m right. I have the … the Continental touch.”

“Yes,” Pepina said, “and a couple of these starry-eyed students will try to follow our supposed example one of these days, and then the fat will really be in the fire.”

“Everywhere I turn I see a blank wall,” Roger said. “It’s fate creeping up on me. I feel like one of those psychological cats in a puzzle box. There’s no door out.”

“We’ll talk about it tonight,” Pepina said. She looked up at the Bavarian cuckoo clock above Roger’s head. “You’re already five minutes late. I love you. All is lost. Scram!”

Roger leaped to his feet. “You have no soul. I love you anyway. Here, kiss me.”

He bent down, kissed her lips. As he pulled away, Pepina patted his cheek. “Life is but a series of excursions and alarms,” she said. “Now hurry.”

Roger stood up, shrugged. “C’est la vie!” He turned, hurried from the houseboat.

Pepina walked after him, stopped at the door, watching. A soft look filled her eyes.

Roger strode briskly up the boardwalk, shrugging into his topcoat.

Under her breath, Pepina said, “You ham!”

From the reeds at the riverbank there came the rumbling basso of a bullfrog.

“Mr. Amonto,” Pepina said. “I haven’t fed you this morning.”

She went into the houseboat, returned in a moment with a handful of bacon scraps. She tossed a piece of bacon toward the muddy bank. There was a splash. A wide green shape with two up-bulging eyes swam majestically out, engulfed the bacon. The frog floated upward until only the eyes protruded from the water. Pepina tossed the rest of the bacon in front of the frog. Mr. Amonto gave a brief kick with his hind legs, caught the first piece, moved on to another.

Pepina returned to the houseboat.

O O O

At east Comity College, President Clinton Coleman was having an early morning conference with Mrs. Gruntey. He sat at his wide mahogany desk in a leather-upholstered swivel chair, now and then turning it from side to side.

On the wall behind the president, a linen sampler hung in a dark oak frame: a little red-and-green house with smoke curling from a chimney. Doves and ivy crowded each other in the top corners. Worked in blue cross-stitch across the center was a motto: “If one ferrets out sin wherever it appears, this will be a better world in which to live.”

The remarkable thing about the motto was that President Coleman did resemble a ferret. He had beady eyes set close above a long, hooked nose. A thin mouth poised over a long, outjutting chin, ready to pour out vitriol.

Mrs. Gruntey, a contrast in fat, sat clothed in satins and silks, a sable stole over her shoulders. She looked the German housefrau suddenly come into money. Her face was oval. The eyes had avoided the pinch of fat cheeks and now stared out with a round blue clarity at the world. Mrs. Gruntey was telling President Coleman how she had come to write Rhythm of Life.

President Coleman, his mind adding up the cost of gymnasium flooring, bleachers, and equipment, nodded from time to time as words buzzed somnolently around him.

“I was in Portland,” Mrs. Gruntey said, her voice taking on a dreamy, distant note. “A woman friend just insisted I go with her to see the road show performance of an Italian movie. I didn’t want to go. When I think how close I came to not going, I just shudder. I had Lincoln drive me right home afterward. I was so excited I couldn’t sleep. Finally, I got up and took out Amos’s old typewriter and began my play.”

Her voice took on a flat, explanatory tone. “It’s an Oliver, you know,” she said. “The typewriter. Very old.”

The dreamy note crept back into her voice. “I had the title in my mind before I wrote the first word. The Rhythm of Life.” Her voice lilted over the words; she repeated them. “The Rhythm of Life. It has …” She looked down at her fleshy hands clasped in her lap, brought her hands to her mounded bosom. “It has such vibrations.”

President Coleman nodded. “Indeed it has. I never dreamed you were so talented.” He kept his eyes raised to the level of Mrs. Gruntey’s dyed hair. (“Just a little chestnut tint to bring out the highlights.”)

“Your Mr. Corot is so talented,” Mrs. Gruntey said. “He knows exactly how it should be staged. I’m certain it’s going to be the hit of the Fall Fiesta. The vibrations of my play so fit the mood of the Fiesta.”

President Coleman pursed his lips. “It is a proper play, of course.”

“It’s life,” Mrs. Gruntey said. “It has reality; it vibrates with living. You know that place in the third set where …”

President Coleman coughed. “Well, I’ve not read that far yet. The responsibilities of my position … seeing the architects … You know how it is.”

“You really are such a busy man, Mr. Coleman. It’s unkind of me to take up so much of your time. I must be running along.”

She stood up.

President Coleman arose with her. “Oh, my dear Mrs. Gruntey. Every minute with you is a pleasure. Really. We must get together for tea sometime this week. I want to talk about the new gymnasium.”

“I’ll check my calendar and call you,” Mrs. Gruntey said. “Au revoir!” She raised one fleshy hand. The jeweled fingers flashed and twinkled. The reflected beam from a large diamond flickered into President Coleman’s eyes and seemed to lodge there.

Mrs. Gruntey went out the door.

President Coleman sank back into his chair, opened the bottom right-hand drawer of his desk. He extracted Mrs. Gruntey’s manuscript from where he had placed it, unopened, the day she had presented it to him. He put the manuscript neatly in the center of the green desk blotter, opened to the first page, made a crease down the fold where he had opened it. He began to read:

“Melissa Corday is a beautiful girl of twenty-two whose mother came over from the old country and has raised her daughter by doing housework for the rich. Melissa is actually the illegitimate daughter of a famous count, but her mother has kept this fact hidden from her daughter for fear it would taint the young mind. For a year before our play opens …”

“Mustn’t taint young minds,” he thought.

President Coleman’s telephone rang. He put down the play, picked up the telephone. It was the architect for the new gymnasium. The architect wanted to see President Coleman at the gymnasium. President Coleman said he would be there. He stood up, took the manuscript, and carried it out to his secretary.

“Miss James,” he said to the spinsterish woman in the outer office. “Read this through and write me a two-page report giving the highlights of it.” He put the manuscript on the corner of her desk.

“Yes, Mr. Coleman.”

Mr. Coleman turned, marched out of his office, going over in his mind sample ways of presenting to Mrs. Gruntey the fact that there was a twenty-eight thousand dollar deficiency in the gymnasium building fund.

O O O

For Roger, the day passed in a frenzy of French, a dollop of drama, and a stale slab of meat loaf he ate in the Commons for lunch. The meat loaf sat undigested in his stomach all afternoon.

“Mother would have known what to do,” he thought. “Pepina is being unreasonable.”

Roger’s mother had been the wife of a diplomatic attaché. She had guided her son’s life toward a career in the ballet. When he was two years old, she had enrolled him with special instructors in Paris. She had nurtured his tantrums, clothed his ego, guarded him from the world and, when he was fifteen, had died. This act of maternal desertion had thrown Roger into his first real contact with a father who was a stranger. The father had solved the problem with a Swiss boarding school. The headmaster’s daughter, Pepina, a girl two years Roger’s junior, turned out to have such a close physical resemblance to Roger’s mother that Roger had substituted love for his grief and resentment.

A result of Roger’s ballet training was that he was a graceful man. He walked with the balance of a panther.

As he joined the evening crowds on East Comity’s Center Street in his walk toward the houseboat, Roger added an unconscious dance rhythm to the flow of pedestrian traffic. He deposited a coin in a newsboy’s hand, accepted a paper without pausing more than a half beat, danced aside to avoid a hurrying woman whose arms were loaded with packages. In the same rhythm, he stepped off the curb, crossed toward Lyttle Street. On the opposite walk, he opened his copy of Mrs. Gruntey’s manuscript to the second act, began to read as he walked:

“Melissa takes the baby home to …”

With a thump which sent the manuscript fluttering to the street, Roger collided with a short man who was reading a newspaper.

“So sorry,” Roger muttered. “Wasn’t looking.” He stooped, collected the manuscript.

“Hrrrrmph,” the short man said, and walked around Roger.

Roger folded the manuscript under his arm, stood up.

“Boors,” he muttered, and strode toward the houseboat.

Pepina, wearing a red peasant skirt and halter and tan ballet slippers, was improvising a ballet to the music of “Death and Transfiguration” when Roger burst into the living room. A tall girl, she reflected the Swiss-Italian beauty of her mother and the blondness of her American father. Her eyes were large, nose slightly overlong, lips full, chin gently rounded.

Seeing Roger, she whirled once, did a deep curtsey.

Roger threw his papers and the play onto a couch, leaped into the center of the room. As Pepina picked up her cue, they executed a pas de deux to the closing strains of the music. The record ended. Roger completed the steps of the dance in such a fashion as to bend over the record player, lift the needle, and shut off the machine all in one fluid motion.

“I perish of hunger,” he said, collapsing onto the couch. “Give me your lips and then sweetbreads, perhaps.”

Pepina rose to her tiptoes, bent low over Roger, and brushed his lips with hers. Pulling back, she said, “Fish, m’love.”

“Fish!” Roger made a face, slid farther down on the couch. “You caught it yourself?”

“At Mulganey’s Market,” Pepina said.

Roger’s outstretched hand touched the manuscript of Mrs. Gruntey’s play. He picked it up and leafed through it.

“Don’t try to change the subject. We both know there never has been and never will be a person named Mulganey. That is the name of a stew which is fed to starving peasants.”

Pepina folded her arms on her breast, lowered her head, said, “My lord knows best.”

Without warning she leaped at him, landed in his lap, knocking the copy of the play behind the couch. Their mood dissolved in laughter.

“Was that Mrs. Gruntey’s play you were reading?” Pepina rested her head in the curve of Roger’s neck.

Roger pushed her away, shuddered.

“Don’t mention it before I’ve eaten. It’s hideous. That woman has more money than brains. Unfortunately, her money and the deficiency in the gymnasium building fund appear to have come to some blinding focus in Coleman’s pinhead.”

Pepina blinked her eyes at him. “You’re just tired and hungry.”

“And I have to produce the abominable thing.”

“The deficiency?” Pepina asked.

“Cease, woman; I shall bite you. President Coleman’s command performance must go on!”

Pepina’s voice took on a pensive tone. “You know, Roger, I’ve read the play and …”

“Food!” Roger pushed her off his lap onto the floor. “Come, naiad! Produce the finny brothers you have bewitched from the depths.”

“Mulganey’s,” Pepina said. She stood up.

O O O

After dinner, Roger put on swimming trunks, took a swim in the river from the front porch, and returned to the living room. He sat down, making a damp spot on the straw carpet, and wrapped a towel around his shoulders.

Pepina was on the couch with the play in her hands. Tears of laughter rolled down her cheeks. When she could control herself, she turned to Roger.

“Darling, I’m just reading over some of this thing. This is the most wonderful farce since Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”

“Uncle Tom’s Cabin wasn’t a farce; it was a serious play.”

Pepina nodded, a blonde curl falling across her forehead. She puffed out her lower lip and blew it back. “I know. But sometimes seriousness is the most farcical thing in the world, and you must admit Uncle Tom is now a delightful farce.”

Roger ran a hand through his wet hair and shook the water at Pepina.

“Stop that!” she said.

“If we lampooned that play, the Lady Gruntey would dissolve in the smoke from a burning deficiency.” Roger stretched out on the carpet. “Besides, I’m too lazy.”

“What’re you going to do?” Pepina asked.

“Produce the play. All the time I shall be quaking in my slippers that some egghead doesn’t convey your little joke to her. Pah!”

“Ro-ger …” Pepina’s voice drew out the name with an ominous tone.

Roger ignored her. “After I have produced this disaster, I shall drink a glass of Chablis and walk quietly off the end of the dock.”

“Reciting Shakespeare in a hoarse whisper,” Pepina said. “Besides, you couldn’t walk quietly off the end of the dock. You’d splash.” She leaned toward Roger. “Dear Heart, have you thought of the fact that if you produce this play at all, it’ll get nothing but guffaws? It’s a caricature of life.”

“Mrs. Gruntey is a caricature of life,” Roger said. “You remember her. You saw her at last year’s faculty tea.” He sat upright in a graceful arc. “She speaks of vibrations, and most appropriately. Her whole front vibrates like two bowls of jelly.” Again he reclined on the floor.

Pepina slid off the couch, stretched out beside him.

“You’ll get wet,” Roger said.

“Mmmmmmm,” Pepina nibbled at his ear. “Does my own Machiavelli wish a word of advice?” She slid a hand along his cheek and jaw line.

“What?”

“When the audience laughs, watch your authoress and join her. She may want credit for having produced a hit … intentionally.”

Roger jerked to a sitting position. “That thing? A hit?”

He leaned across Pepina and retrieved the play from the couch. “This needs another look.”

O O O

The casting of Rhythm of Life began the following Friday in an English Department classroom. A temporary stage was created at the end of the room by stretching a length of clothesline across at the level of the window tops and hanging drop cloths at each end.

Roger, Pepina and Mrs. Gruntey—each with a copy of the play—sat in three adjoining chairs about ten feet from the improvised stage. The room lights were turned off. A spotlight set on a table illuminated a junior coed reading Melissa’s part.

Mrs. Gruntey leaned her wide bosom across Pepina toward Roger. “She doesn’t have the correct rhythms for the part.”

“I’m inclined to agree with you,” Roger said. “She’s too skinny. No chest.”

“That dark girl over in the corner,” Mrs. Gruntey said. “I like her emanations.”

Roger’s gaze followed her direction. “Yes, she does have excellent … uh, emanations. She was a supporting player in last year’s play. Not quite so nubile then.” Roger stood up. “Okay. Okay.” He waved the girl into the wings. He turned to the girl in the corner. “Shirley. Take it from where she says, ‘Mother, daaaarling.’ Skip the stage directions. Just read the part.”

The dark girl walked to the stage, taking a copy of the play from the wings.

“Well-developed wench,” Pepina said.

“Good emanations,” Roger said.

The dark girl began reading in a husky contralto.

Mrs. Gruntey leaned toward the stage. “Excellent! Oh, perfect!”

Roger whispered out of the corner of his mouth to Pepina: “Our methods of selection are different, but we are in surprising accord.” He turned to the girl on the stage. “That’s it, Shirley. Start learning the part.” Turning back to Pepina, he said, “Now we’ll pick Leopold. I like Carl Boler, that tall fellow who was talking to Shirley. Remember him from Macbeth?” Roger lowered his voice. “Let’s hope his rhythms are right.”

To the tall, blond student leaning against a wall by a side window, Roger said: “Carl, turn to page nine. Take Leopold from where he says, ‘Suppose the brat is mine?’”

Mrs. Gruntey turned to Roger, a look of exaltation on her face. “He doesn’t have to say a word. I could have chosen him for the part from a crowd of ten thousand. His emanations are positively indecent.”

Pepina leaned close to Roger’s ear. “Your authoress has an observing eye. Carl must be in a rut.”

Carl began reading the part, walking forward of the curtain line.

Mrs. Gruntey again leaned across to Roger. “I know just the costuming he needs,” she whispered. “Black tights and a frock coat. A gold chain around his neck to signify that he’s rich, and right in the middle of his chest, hanging from the chain, a big gold starburst. I have just the thing on an evening gown.”

“A sort of stallion medallion,” Roger said. “Good idea.”

Pepina giggled.

“For the girl—a red, floor-length gown,” Mrs. Gruntey persisted. “And over the bosom, two hands painted on the gown the color of ashes. At the bottom of the gown a rough edge of gray to signify more ashes. A soul burning …”

Again Pepina whispered in Roger’s ear: “Mrs. G. is past her prime, but she has advanced ideas. Me, I’m beginning to think you’ve misjudged her. I like her.”

“Going over to the enemy,” Roger whispered.

“I’ll see my dressmaker tomorrow,” Mrs. Gruntey said. “I believe I have a red gown that could be made over to fit that girl.”

“I hope her feelings won’t be hurt when they laugh at her play,” Pepina whispered. “Invite her down to the houseboat when this is over. I wish to know more of the Lady Gruntey.”

O O O

It was past ten o’clock when the chosen cast of Rhythm of Life, accompanied by the authoress and Roger and Pepina, descended the steps to the houseboat. At the top of the steps, Mrs. Gruntey’s Cadillac and Chinese chauffeur waited in a darkness broken only by a single unshaded streetlight on a telephone pole. Two more unshaded lights strung on thin uprights illuminated the steps.

Mrs. Gruntey held carefully to the handrail as she descended.

“You live in one of those lovely houseboats,” she said. “I’ve seen them so often … from the bridge. So Bohemian looking.”

The bottom step creaked in protest as she eased her weight onto it.

At the houseboat, Pepina switched on the lights, swung open the door, stood aside. Mrs. Gruntey stopped in the doorway, halting the procession behind her.

“Just as I had imagined it,” she murmured. “Oh, you people don’t know how lucky you are. Young … married to someone you love …”

In the background, a member of the cast giggled.

“Married yet!”

Roger drew in a breath sharply, glanced at Pepina. She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.

“Courage,” Pepina whispered.

Mrs. Gruntey moved forward into the houseboat. The others followed.

“Where’s some chow?” someone asked. “Pepina, make some sandwiches. We brought the beer.”

Roger pulled back a corner of the straw carpet and lifted a trapdoor, which exposed a screened box sunken in the river. “Put the beer in here. There’s some down there already cold. We can drink that.”

In a corner of the room, a girl put a record on the player. The music of Ravel’s “Sacred and Profane Dances” filled the room.

From the kitchen, Pepina shouted, “Turn that thing down. It would wake the dead.”

“They should be awake,” Roger said. “This is their hour.”

Mrs. Gruntey had carefully seated herself on the brilliant orange couch. She looked from one person to another, smiling.

Suddenly, she turned to Roger. “I’ve never really lived before. I know you …”

The front door of the houseboat burst open. Three of the four independent college students who occupied the next houseboat walked in. They wore bathrobes, slippers, and swimming trunks.

“Sounds like a party,” the one in the lead said. “Where’s the beer?”

An opened bottle of beer was thrust into his hand. He took a deep drink, wandered over, and sat down beside Mrs. Gruntey.

Mrs. Gruntey beamed upon him. “This is a celebration. We’ve just completed casting my play.”

“You wrote a play?” the student asked. “What’s it about?”

“The vibrations of life,” Mrs. Gruntey said.

The student looked at her out of the corners of his eyes. “You kidding me?”

Roger had seated himself on the floor beside the couch. He leaned across to Mrs. Gruntey. “It’s bad luck to talk about a play to outsiders before it’s had its first rehearsal.” He turned to the student. “Clam up, weasel!”

Pepina entered with a platter of sandwiches, dodged two students dancing past the kitchen doorway, and in a graceful sweeping motion, put the plate on the floor in the middle of the room.

Roger stretched out on the floor, took two sandwiches from the plate, and handed one to Mrs. Gruntey. Carl, an expression of disdain on his narrow face, came from the corner where he had been talking to two coeds. He sat down beside the trapdoor and began lifting bottles of beer from the box, opening them with an opener tied to a string on the trapdoor. The student beside Mrs. Gruntey took one of the bottles, handed it to her. He clinked bottles with her, spilling foam on her bosom.

“Here’s to the success of your vibrations.”

“Oh, I know it will be,” Mrs. Gruntey said. She tipped up the bottle and drained it in a single swallow.

Roger’s eyes bulged. He watched the beer pour down Mrs. Gruntey’s throat. Mrs. Gruntey blinked her eyes, held the bottle away from her, and stared at the label, pursing her lips. “Oh, you shouldn’t be drinking this,” she said. She turned toward the young people in the center of the room. “Would one of you lovely children run up to the top of the steps and tell my chauffeur to get a case of beer from my cellar and bring it down to us?”

One of the students in bathrobe and swimming trunks stood up. “I’ll go.” He ran out the door.

Mrs. Gruntey turned to Roger. “I like American beer,” she said. “Amos had his beer imported from Munich like yours there. But I can’t stomach German beer. I was raised in the Midwest. Amos was my husband, God rest him. May I have another sandwich?”

“We learned to drink German beer in Switzerland,” Roger said. He found another sandwich, handed it to Mrs. Gruntey. He stood up, excused himself, and went into the kitchen, where Pepina was making more sandwiches and talking to Shirley. The dark girl had a knife in her tanned hand and was slicing French bread.

“This is terrible,” Roger said. “She’s turning out to be a human being. And I sneered at her. I feel like the lowest heel of creation.”

“Darling, you’re drunk,” Pepina said.

“Swacked,” Shirley said. “Excuse me while I get some more bread.”

“No.” Roger shook his head. “I’ve had only one beer.” He frowned in concern. “I think I should tell her about her play.”

Pepina whirled on him. “And destroy her happiness? I wouldn’t let you.”

“But …”

“No!” Pepina stamped her foot.

Roger shook his head from side to side. “There’s another thing. She’s drinking beer. What if she asks to go to the bathroom?”

“Well…?”

“Your murals.”

Pepina grinned at him. “So they’re reminiscent of the walls of Pompeii. There are people in this town we don’t even know who have bragged about using that bathroom!”

“The test of fame,” Roger said. “But she’s bound to have some kind of a bad reaction. She couldn’t be a pal of old Cold-man’s without being an anti-vicer.”

“Roger, will you stop figuring out things to worry about? You’re beginning to make me nervous.”

Roger shrugged his shoulders. “One lives; one must expect problems, eh?”

“That’s the spirit,” Pepina said. “Now go back in there and entertain our guest.”

Roger walked back into the living room. The record player blared Boris Godunov. Alexander Kipnis’ baritone voice filled the room.

Mrs. Gruntey raised herself from the couch, avoided a dancing couple, and walked over to Roger.

“Pardon me, Mr. Corot,” she said. “Where is your washroom?”

Roger stiffened.

A student near the kitchen door heard Mrs. Gruntey. “Whoops!” he said. “Prepare for christening!”

Roger glared at the speaker.

Mrs. Gruntey took no notice. “Your washroom?”

Roger swiveled slowly to the left, pointed. “Down that hallway. First door on your left.”

“Thank you.”

Mrs. Gruntey entered the shadows of the hall and disappeared from sight, humming “Once Upon a Time in the City of Kazan.”

Without looking down, Roger reached out with his left hand, found the arm of an unoccupied chair, and slumped into it. He put his head in his hands.

“Ohhhhhhh,” he moaned.

It seemed less than a minute before Mrs. Gruntey reappeared. As she emerged from the hallway, a student took a yellow paper lei from a hook beside the door and looped it over her neck.

“Welcome, oh fellow explorer into the depths of Pepina’s washroom,” he said. “You win the lei of success for surviving the ordeal.”

Everyone in the room except Roger laughed. Roger kept his face in his hands. Pepina appeared in the kitchen doorway, remained silent.

Mrs. Gruntey blushed. She turned to Roger, her eyes wide.

“Who did those magnificent murals?”

“Huh?” Roger raised his head.

“Those murals?” Mrs. Gruntey asked.

“Mrs. Gruntey, I …”

Her words penetrated his consciousness. He fell silent.

“I did them,” Pepina said. “They’re copies of a Pompeian frieze.”

Mrs. Gruntey descended to the chair opposite Roger. “They’re so primitive. When Amos and I were on our honeymoon, we visited India. There’s a palace ruin beside the Mogul desert. Perhaps you’ve heard of it—the carvings on its walls … fertility symbols.”

Roger continued to stare at Mrs. Gruntey, his eyes large, his face expressionless.

Pepina sat down on the arm of Roger’s chair. “Oh, I’ve seen them. I visited India with my father. It was the funniest thing. He tried to leave me behind. I was only twelve. I hired my own guide, and he explained everything in great detail. Poor daddy. He was so disturbed when I started asking questions.”

“Well, some people call them indecent,” Mrs. Gruntey said. She smiled at Pepina. “Somehow I couldn’t quite accept that. After all, what is art?”

Pepina nodded.

“I took photographs of the Mogul carvings,” Mrs. Gruntey said. “Perhaps you’d like to see them sometime.” A reminiscent smile touched her lips. “I had to hide the photographs from Amos. He was a little prudish about some things.” Again she looked at Pepina. “But you have such surpassing talent,” she said. “Those …”

She was interrupted by the entrance of the Chinese chauffeur, who was carrying a large box.

As he came through the door, the chauffeur filled it from side to side. He was a squarish man with a face set in the same pattern, broken only by the upslanted eyes. He paused inside the door; his eyes swept around, fastened on Mrs. Gruntey.

“Ah, Lincoln, put it right there in the floor,” she said. “Is it cold?”

“Right out of the cellar, madam.”

“This is my chauffeur, Abraham Lincoln Li,” Mrs. Gruntey said. “I call him Lincoln. He’s a great practical humanitarian.” She smiled. “Open the case, will you, Lincoln?”

The front door of the houseboat banged open. The student who had taken Mrs. Gruntey’s message to the chauffeur entered. He carried a cardboard box.

“Whooof!” he said, putting it down on the floor.

“What in heaven’s name is that?” Mrs. Gruntey asked.

“I went along for the ride,” the student said. “I noticed a load of grub in your cupboard, so I brought it back. Beer’s no good without something to eat.”

“You are absolutely right,” Mrs. Gruntey said. “Take it out in the kitchen.”

Pepina stood up from the arm of the chair. “Here, I’ll clear a place for it.” She went into the kitchen.

Carl Boler, a copy of Mrs. Gruntey’s play in his hands, slouched over beside Roger, taking Pepina’s place on the arm.

“Roger, this business in the second act where …”

“No more shop tonight,” Roger said. “Learn the part first.” He slumped into the chair.

Mrs. Gruntey turned to Roger. “Your wife has real talent as an artist. How long have you been married?”

Carl laughed. “They’re not married. They’ve got an open agreement, subject to change if either ever wants it. Wonderful thing.”

Roger’s indrawn breath was like a gasp of shock. He sat, unmoving, in the chair.

Lincoln, having opened the case of beer, stood up and walked to the door. “Will that be all, madam?” he asked.

“Uh …” Mrs. Gruntey’s gaze remained on Roger. “Oh, yes, Lincoln. That will be all for now.”

Lincoln gave a silent bow. “Thank you, madam.” He reached for the door knob.

The student who had accompanied Lincoln stood up from the beer case with a bottle in his hand. “Hey!” he shouted. “You’re not sending him away from the party?”

Mrs. Gruntey tore her gaze away from Roger. A look of agitation crossed her face, was quickly erased. “Of course not. This is a celebration.” She looked at Lincoln. “But mind you, Lincoln; you stay sober enough to drive us all home.”

Lincoln nodded his dark head toward her. “Of a certainty, madam,” he said. “Chung lun yu tai hyung oh yau hoy. It is written that a good wheel may do evil.”

“Lincoln is a philosopher, too,” Mrs. Gruntey said.

Lincoln turned to the student who was holding the bottle of beer. “Here. You have to be careful how you open these. They open like champagne.” He put both thumbs to the cap, flipped it off with a loud pop. Foam surged over the top of the bottle. “Shaken up a bit bringing it over,” he said. He put the bottle in his mouth and upended it.

“Hey!” the student said. “That’s quite a trick. How do you do that with just your fingers?”

Lincoln lowered the bottle and displayed a thumb. “Calluses,” he said, and put the bottle back in his mouth.

Mrs. Gruntey looked at Roger.

“You’re not married? I could have sworn you were married.”

Roger nodded his head.

Pepina returned from the kitchen, slipped an arm under Roger’s. “Marriage is for people who aren’t in love. We don’t need a contract.”

Mrs. Gruntey nodded. Her eyes were large, expressionless. “Not married.” She looked around at the room full of students.

“They’re all over twenty-one,” Pepina said.

Mrs. Gruntey looked back at Pepina. “Of course.”

From the darkness outside the houseboat, Mr. Amonto, the bullfrog, gave one basso rumble and subsided.

“Good heavens, what was that?” Mrs. Gruntey asked.

“That was Mr. Amonto, our pet bullfrog,” Pepina said.

“A pet bullfrog,” Mrs. Gruntey murmured. “How delightful.” Her voice lacked vitality.

A speedboat roared past in the river close to the houseboats. The houseboat rocked gently. Mrs. Gruntey stood up, walked over to the far side of the room. She stood there, watching the lights of the speedboat as it rushed under the bridge.

Roger looked at Pepina. “Now you’ve done it,” he muttered.

“What’s wrong?” Carl asked.

“If she doesn’t take that story straight to Coleman, then I’m a monkey’s uncle,” Roger said. He lowered his head to his hands. “Get me the want ads. Gotta start looking for a job.”

Mrs. Gruntey turned from the window, came back to Roger. “It’s getting late,” she said.

“Is it?” Roger asked.

Pepina walked to the couch and sat down. “Party’s over,” she said. “Roger, ring the bell.”

Roger stood up and disappeared into the back of the house. Soon, a ship’s bell echoed over the dark waters. “Lincoln, we’ll take anyone home who needs a ride,” Mrs. Gruntey said. “See that they’re all in the car.” She turned to Pepina. “It’s been a lovely evening. Thank you so much.”

Pepina stood up, shook hands with Mrs. Gruntey. “Certainly.”

When all the guests were gone, Pepina wandered back to the couch and sank into it. She stretched out, stared up at the ceiling.

Roger came into the room, sat in a chair near her. Pepina turned her face away. One tear rolled down her cheek. She tasted salt in her mouth. She didn’t hear Roger stand up and walk over to the couch.

“Pepina! You’re crying! What’s wrong?”

Pepina rubbed her eyes dry. “I am not.”

He sat down on the couch and put his arm around her. “What’s wrong?” he demanded.

“I-I-I l-like that lady.”

Roger stared at her. “And that’s why you’re crying?”

“I’m sorry, Roger. I’m just being silly. But I feel sort of dirty … oh … I don’t know, not quite respectable or something.”

“Oh, darling.” Roger kissed her on the ear. “I did it. I made you cry.” He tried to hug her, but she pulled away. “And now I’ve made you hate me.” His voice was melodramatic.

She took his hand. “It’s just that, well … There’s something else you don’t know …”

He was alarmed. “What?”

“Oh, never mind. It’s just that I’m worried about Coleman and I do like Mrs. Gruntey. I hate to have her feel that way about us.”

Roger looked away from her, studied the toe of one shoe. Neither spoke.

Suddenly Roger stood up and hit one fist into the palm of the other hand. “I’ve had enough of it,” he said. “I’m going to tell them all we’re married. I’ll take our marriage license and frame it and hang it on the door.”

Pepina sat up on the couch and looked at him. “I won’t let you.”

Roger started pacing up and down on the straw carpet. “I won’t have them talking about my wife,” he muttered. “I’ll tell all.”

Pepina stamped her foot. “You will not! You’re just doing it for me; and all you’ll do is prove yourself pretty silly. I absolutely won’t allow it.”

Roger raised himself to his full height. “Nothing you say will stop me!”

Pepina glared back at him. “I won’t be married to a fool. If you dare tell … I’ll leave you.”

Roger’s face crumpled. “Darling, you wouldn’t!”

“I would. I won’t have you showing yourself up like that and ruining everything for yourself. You will not tell anyone.”

Roger turned away from her. He shrugged. “If you put it that way, what can I say?”

Pepina persisted. “Do you promise you won’t tell?”

Roger’s voice was low and unhappy. “I promise.”

O O O

It was the fifth week of rehearsals for Rhythm of Life. Life had settled into an uneasy equilibrium. Roger wondered when Mrs. Gruntey was going to President Coleman with the scandal. He decided she was waiting until her play had been produced.

“She’s using me,” he thought. “I wish I could hate her.”

Roger, Pepina, and Mrs. Gruntey were in the first section seats of the campus’s Little Theater, where the rehearsals had been moved to give the cast the feel of the stage. It was a musty structure; the seats were hard. If one listened, one could hear the floorboards on the stage creak as the actors walked across them.

The theater was darkened. On stage, the dark-haired Shirley, playing Melissa, and Carl Boler, doing Leopold, were going through a scene for the ninth time. There was a wooden uncertainty about their motions, as though they were afraid to move in a way that had previously aroused Roger’s scorn. The actual lighting of the finished scene was being used, although the actors were not in costume. Shirley was wearing slacks and a white blouse. Carl wore dungarees and a blue shirt. The footlights were red, and a purple spotlight was on Shirley. The resultant blend gave a Faustian cast to the setting.

The scene was a boudoir. Props consisted of a settee, dressing table, and chair. Melissa sat at the dressing table. Carl reclined on the settee, jangling his chain and medallion.

In the middle of the scene, Roger leaped to his feet. “Break it!” he screamed.

Shirley stopped in mid-sentence.

Roger sat down, held his head in his hands. After a long pause, he looked up at the silent stage. “The trouble with you, Shirley, is you don’t know how to be a bitch.”

The dark girl flushed. She jumped up from the chair, upsetting it with a clatter, stalked to the front of the stage. Putting both hands, fists clenched, on her hips, she glared down at Roger. “The trouble with you, Roger Corot, is that you do know how to be a bitch!”

Roger leaned back, sighed. “Exactly. That is the tone I want in this scene.” He leaned forward. “Shirley, does Melissa get the necklace?”

The girl on the stage thought a moment. “No. Of course not.”

Roger nodded. “And in this scene she knows she’s not going to get it. But she tries anyway. She is angry but tries to hide it.” Roger pivoted his head toward Carl, who still reclined on the settee. “And you, you big lump of clay. You’re not supposed to be bored. You’re amused. You don’t want this woman anymore. You’re playing with her—cat with mouse.” Roger leaned back. “Now roll through it once more, and this time wrap it up. Take it from where Melissa says, ‘My neck looks so bare.’”

On stage, the scene began to unfold anew. Roger leaned back, closed his eyes. Suddenly, he sighed, relaxed.

Pepina leaned close to him, whispered in his ear. “All right, darling. I give up.”

Roger opened his left eye and looked at her. “Yes?”

“I have been trying for five weeks to figure out something,” Pepina said. “You work on a scene and then you seem to listen; but you don’t listen to the actors. I can tell. I want to know what it is you hear.”

Roger glanced at Mrs. Gruntey, who was bent forward, staring at the stage. He put his mouth close to Pepina’s ear, whispered so low, Pepina had to strain to hear. “It’s Lincoln. He hasn’t missed a rehearsal. He’s back there in the rear. I listen for his laugh. When he laughs, the scene’s ready.”

“How do you know?”

“He’s my sample audience.”

Pepina listened. From the darkened rear of the theater there came a barely suppressed snicker. Pepina nodded her head, smiled, and slid farther down in her seat.

“You are a faker, my only.”

“A successful one,” Roger whispered.

Pepina’s eyes glistened. She looked at Roger, sighed, and put her head on his shoulder. Roger put a hand up, smoothed her hair.

On stage, the scene ended. Mrs. Gruntey sat back in her seat.

“At last. Roger, you are a genius. I thought that scene would never come right. And it was the last one we really had to work on.”

“A matter of finding the correct tone,” Roger said.

“Yes, vibrations,” Mrs. Gruntey said.

“All we need now are the bumps and grinds,” Pepina whispered.

“Did you say something, my dear?” Mrs. Gruntey asked.

Pepina took her head from Roger’s shoulder and sat up. “I said we’ve ground through all the bumps in this one.”

“Yes, haven’t we?” Mrs. Gruntey said. “Roger, we have only four more nights until we open. I’m so excited I can’t sleep at night.”

Roger slapped his palms against his knees. “That’s it. I think we’re all too finely pitched. I’m going to give the cast a two-day rest. We’ll have dress rehearsal Thursday and open Friday.” He stood up, cupped both hands beside his mouth. “Everybody on stage!”

The cast trouped onto the stage. A switch clicked backstage; the theater lights came to life.

“Well, you’re not perfect, but I think you’ll do. This is all we’re going to do until Thursday-night dress rehearsal. I don’t want you going stale before we open. We’ll start the final run at six thirty. Be here on time.”

Mrs. Gruntey arose, resting her fleshy hands on the back of the seat ahead of her. “I want to have a party Thursday after the rehearsal.” She turned to Roger. “May we use the houseboat?”

Roger hesitated. Through his mind raced a cloud of questions: Why does she want to come to the houseboat? Last time she walked out on us. What is that woman going to do to us now that the play is ready to go?

On the tip of Roger’s tongue was an excuse to avoid the party. Pepina forestalled him.

“Certainly,” Pepina said. “The houseboat is the perfect place.”

In Roger’s mind was the question: “Place for what?”

“I’ll phone my caterer in the morning,” Mrs. Gruntey said. “Don’t you worry about a thing. Leave all the arrangements to me.”

Roger shuddered.

A student on stage blew Mrs. Gruntey a kiss.

Pepina tugged at Roger’s sleeve. Roger whirled and looked down. Pepina was half turned around in her seat, staring at the rear of the theater.

“Who was that?”

Roger looked toward the exit, saw the back of a woman who was walking through the curtained arch at the end of the aisle.

“She was writing in a notebook when I saw her,” Pepina said. “She was sitting back there by the end of the aisle. When she looked up, she glared at me and then got up and left.”

“It was a rather broad derriere,” Roger said. “But I confess it was unfamiliar.”

Pepina put a hand to her breast. “I have a premonition.” Her voice quavered.

Mrs. Gruntey moved up beside Roger. “Nonsense!”

Roger’s face was set in tense lines, nostrils quivering, eyes large. “You don’t know Pepina’s premonitions. The last time she had a premonition we packed up and left Vienna in exactly twenty-seven minutes. The next day, the Anschluss, and Hitler’s stormtroopers were rounding up all our friends. We were in Switzerland by that time.” Roger shivered. He looked down at Pepina. “It isn’t a very big premonition, is it, darling?”

Pepina’s eyes were wide and fearful. “Yes. Worse than Vienna.”

Roger gasped. “I shall buy some cyanide immediately! They say it is quick.”

“Good heavens!” Mrs. Gruntey said.

“I’m fey,” Pepina said. “All of the women of my family have been fey.”

Mrs. Gruntey’s nose quivered. She appeared to be smelling the air around her.

“The vibrations do feel a bit uneasy. I shall call my astrologer immediately when I get home. These things always leave me fluttery until I find out what’s going to happen.”

“We could make a pact—go out together,” Roger said.

“You know, I’ve seen her face before,” Pepina said. She brought the tips of the fingers of her left hand to her forehead and closed her eyes, thinking.

“Off the bridge into the river,” Roger said. “A quick death in the depths. Whose face?”

“That woman’s face,” Pepina said. “They are painting the bridge.”

Mrs. Gruntey looked from Roger to Pepina and back to Roger. “Must we give up hope?” she asked.

“You don’t know Pepina’s premonitions,” Roger said. “She had her first when she was thirteen. She kept her father from going to the village of Apari in Switzerland. The next day, an avalanche. Sixty killed. The village destroyed.”

“My word!” Mrs. Gruntey stared at Pepina. Suddenly, she squared her shoulders. “Whatever happens, don’t give up. That’s what Amos always said. If you’re at the bottom, there’s no place to go but up.”

“Like on a roller coaster,” Pepina said, brightening.

“Exactly,” Mrs. Gruntey said.

“I had a friend killed on a roller coaster once,” Roger muttered. “Come, Pepina, let us go home and prepare for the end.”

“I can’t let you go like this,” Mrs. Gruntey said.

Roger turned away from her, walked out to the aisle. Pepina followed. Mrs. Gruntey brought up the rear, wringing her hands. Several of the students, seeing the discussion, had come down from the stage.

“What’s wrong?” one asked.

“Pepina just had a premonition.”

“Ohhhhhhhh.”

They had heard about Pepina’s premonitions.

“Please, Roger,” Mrs. Gruntey said. “At least wait until I’ve consulted my astrologer.”

Roger turned back and stared at her, his eyes seeming to look through her. Mrs. Gruntey shivered.

“Please,” she repeated.

“If you must,” Roger said. He turned and strode up the aisle, followed by Pepina and Mrs. Gruntey. Several students trailed behind.

At the curtains, Roger turned. The procession behind him stopped.

“Life is but a walking shadow,” Roger said. He turned and strode through the curtains, and they fell in place behind him.

O O O

A listless crescent moon dangled over the hills east of the river at eleven o’clock that night. Below the bridge, the lights along the boardwalk illuminated the houseboats. The lapping of water against the float logs, the occasional splash of a jumping fish, and the despondent croaking of Mr. Amonto the bullfrog dominated the night.

The lights of a car came up Lyttle Street above the houseboat. They illuminated the trees on the far bank of the river. The car stopped; its motor was turned off, its lights extinguished. A car door slammed. The wooden clatter of feet hurried down the steps to the houseboats. A rapping sounded at the Corot’s door.

Inside the houseboat, a man screamed.

“They’ve come for us! Run! Hide!” The voice was Roger’s.

“Hush, darling,” Pepina said. “You’re having a nightmare. It’s only somebody at the door.”

“Storm troopers!” Roger screamed.

“We’re in East Comity,” Pepina said. “There are no storm troopers. Now be quiet while I answer the door.”

Bedsprings creaked. A light came on; feet pattered across the floor. Pepina opened the front door with one hand as she finished buttoning her housecoat with the other. Mrs. Gruntey stood on the porch, Lincoln a dark shadow behind her.

“The worst has happened,” Mrs. Gruntey said, and shouldered her way through the door.

Pepina stepped aside, one slender hand at her mouth, her eyes wide.

Lincoln followed, his visored hat held in his hand. “Juh bun shoo shiah yooi swei bin. It is in the book that rain follows its own convenience.”

“Lincoln is so comforting at times like this,” Mrs. Gruntey said.

“Now, perhaps, we can have a little action,” Lincoln said.

Roger appeared in the hallway, belting a cerise bathrobe around him. “What is it?”

“The worst has happened,” Pepina said. “I knew it. My premonition.”

Roger looked at Mrs. Gruntey, who was seating herself in a chair. She looked suddenly old and sad. He thought, She has found out that her play is a farce. She has come to tell us that Coleman knows all.

“We are the outcasts of East Comity,” Roger said.

Mrs. Gruntey nodded, looked up at Pepina. “It’s uncanny … your premonition. They were waiting on my front porch when I arrived home after the rehearsal.”

Pepina’s mind swayed back to Roger’s nightmare.

“Did they have guns?” she asked, leaning forward.

Roger nodded.

Mrs. Gruntey opened her mouth, but no words came out. She looked at Lincoln. “Wau yeh-shur juh-mah shiahng,” he said. “My thought follows your thought.”

Mrs. Gruntey looked at Roger. Again he nodded. She looked at Pepina. “Guns?” she asked.

“The storm troo …” Pepina said. “Oh, goodness! What am I thinking of?”

“It was a deputation from the Anti-Vice League,” Mrs. Gruntey said, drawing down the corners of her mouth with each succeeding word.

Roger staggered, clutched at the door.

Pepina gasped. “That woman! Now I know where I saw her. She’s the one who made the college buy the expurgated edition of Spenser’s Faerie Queene.”

“Mrs. Ellis Trelawney, president of the Women’s Puritan League,” Mrs. Gruntey said. “Her husband is vice-chairman of the Anti-Vice League. They were both on my porch.” Her lips quivered.

“What did they say?” Pepina asked.

“They had an outline of my play. They said they got it from President Coleman. They said such nasty things: ‘illegitimacy, sin, children of the devil.’ Ohhhhh … they called it indecent.”

“I feel faint,” Pepina said. “Roger, get me some water.” She slumped onto the couch.

Roger slowly turned his head toward Pepina, looked down his nose at her. “With the cyanide?”

“Of course not,” Pepina said. She fanned at her face with one hand. “It’s so warm.”

Roger vanished into the kitchen, then reappeared in a moment with a glass of water, which he held to Pepina’s lips. He supported the back of her head with his hand. Pepina looked up at him, a question in her eyes.

“It’s just water,” Roger said.

Pepina took several sips and relaxed on the couch.

Mrs. Gruntey stood up. Her mouth was drawn into a thin line. Her face was flushed.

“I have ordered President Coleman to meet me here.” She stamped her foot. “After all, I do have some influence in this community. We are going to produce my play.”

Roger looked forlornly at the glass of water in his hand. “It’s just water,” he said.

Lincoln, standing by the door, turned and opened it. “I hear somebody coming. Sounds like two people.”

Roger walked to the door, looked over Lincoln’s shoulder. Into the light of the open door came President Coleman, his thin ferret face grim. He was followed by a wide-bodied, wide-faced man with sagging jowls. They stomped onto the houseboat’s porch.

“Good evening,” Roger said.

The two paused. They did not answer.

“Won’t you come in?” Roger asked.

He stepped aside. Lincoln opened the door wider.

The two men entered the living room. Lincoln glanced around the room, said, “Excuse me.” He stepped through the door, closed it behind him. Mrs. Gruntey strode to the center of the room. She nodded to the wide-faced man beside President Coleman.

“Good evening, Mr. Trelawney. We meet again.”

“Hrrrrmmmph!” the man said.

From the darkness outside came an echoing rumble by Mr. Amonto.

Pepina stifled a laugh.

“What’s wrong with you?” Roger whispered.

Pepina indicated Mr. Trelawney with her eyes. “He sounds just like Mr. Amonto, our bullfrog,” she whispered.

Mr. Trelawney’s face crimsoned. “Hrrrrmmmmph! What are you two whispering about?”

Again Mr. Amonto echoed his “Hrrrrmmmmph!”

Pepina rolled over on the couch, no longer able to suppress the laughter. The motion dislodged the corner of her robe, revealing a long expanse of tan thigh. The two men in the middle of the room quickly averted their gaze.

“Well, President Coleman,” Mrs. Gruntey said.

President Coleman cleared his throat.

Pepina’s laughter subsided. She straightened her robe and sat up.

“Mr. Trelawney tells me I can’t put on my play,” Mrs. Gruntey said.

President Coleman raised a placating hand. “Perhaps with a few revisions.”

“The other day, when we had tea, you assured me you’d read my play and thought it was wonderful.”

President Coleman blushed. “Yes, yes. But perhaps I was a bit hasty. I was so concerned with the problems of the new gymnasium.”

“For which I kicked in twenty-eight thousand dollars,” Mrs. Gruntey said. “I’ve a notion to stop the check.”

“Just minor revisions,” President Coleman said, his voice pleading.

“Not so much as a word!” Mrs. Gruntey said.

Pepina clapped her hands.

Mr. Trelawney placed a hand on President Coleman’s arm.

“Clinton, I’m afraid you don’t know all of the facts. I’ve been saving something to show you just how depraved these people are.” He looked gloatingly at Mrs. Gruntey. “As for the deficiency in the gymnasium building fund … I’m sure the League could raise it easily.”

President Coleman looked from Mrs. Gruntey to Mr. Trelawney. “What have you been saving?”

Mr. Trelawney pointed at Roger and then at Pepina.

“These … defiers of the commandments—they’re not married. They’re living together in sin!”

Mrs. Gruntey raised a hand, started to speak, then hesitated.

President Coleman paled, swayed. “My French teacher, not … Oh, no!” He shook his head. “Ellis, are you sure?”

“As sure as sure! My wife overheard two students talking. They’ve known it for years. They’ve been hiding it from you.”

President Coleman put a hand to his chest. His face flushed, then became pale. “My heart! I must take my medicine.” He looked around him, eyes darting. “Where … where’s the bathroom?”

Mrs. Gruntey stepped forward, took his arm. “Be calm. The bathroom is right down here.” She led him across the room, steered him into the hallway. “First door on your left. Will you be all right?”

Mr. Trelawney stepped between them. “I’ll help him. Here, Clinton, old man. Calm’s the word. Right down here.” They went down the hallway.

Mrs. Gruntey turned around, started back toward Roger and Pepina. Both were standing in the middle of the room. Suddenly, Mrs. Gruntey remembered the murals in Pepina’s bathroom. She stopped, put a hand to her mouth, started to turn back, then thought better of it. She looked at Roger.

Roger shrugged his shoulders. “C’est le guerre. Some use guns, some use knives, some use words, and some use copies of the walls of Pompeii.” Again he shrugged. “If they …”

He was interrupted by a bellow from the rear of the houseboat. President Coleman charged out of the hallway, his face crimson. He was followed by Mr. Trelawney, jowls jiggling as he walked. Roger, who had stepped to the hallway entrance at the first bellow, caught up the yellow paper lei from its hook beside the door. He looped it around President Coleman’s neck as the latter emerged.

“Must maintain tradition,” he said.

President Coleman glared at Roger, wrenched the lei from his neck and flung it to the floor.

“You!” He pointed a finger at Roger. “You’re fired. I’ll see that the board of trustees acts on it tomorrow.”

Mr. Trelawney, already at the door, opened it and stepped outside. “Come, Clinton. We’re not too soon shut of this sinkhole.” President Coleman thrust his head forward and strode through the door, slammed it after him.

The slam of the door was followed almost immediately by a splashing noise from outside. This was accompanied by howls and screams. Roger, Pepina, and Mrs. Gruntey wrenched open the door, dashed onto the porch. President Coleman and Mr. Trelawney were floundering in the water at the end of the houseboat.

“Good heavens!” Mrs. Gruntey screamed. “They’ll drown.”

“Not if they put their feet on the bottom,” Roger said. “It’s only about four feet deep there.”

Their attention was attracted by a motion on the boardwalk. In the shadows, they could make out Lincoln’s square form leaning against the rail. Lincoln waved at them.

“Somebody took away the plank that goes up to this boardwalk,” he said. “These gentlemen did not watch where they walked.” He paused. “Sheng yo yen shau cho loo chun chun choo yooi, oh yen ming kwahn ten. It was once said that the great unwashed pray much for rain, but a man’s life is in the care of heaven.”

“You!” President Coleman screamed, shaking spray at Lincoln.

“You there,” Lincoln said. He pointed to his left with his left hand. “If you will but walk over there between the houseboats, you will find the ladder meant for swimmers.”

“I’ll sue,” President Coleman shouted.

“I’ll sue,” Mr. Trelawney shouted.

The two men splashed to the ladder, clambered up to the boardwalk.

Behind them, they left the tumultuous sound of laughter.

When Roger could find his voice, he turned to Pepina. “Oh, that was …” he stopped; his face sobered. “I’ve been fired!” He shrugged. “Darling, have we hit the bottom of the roller coaster yet?”

Pepina shook her head negatively. “No. I still have the premonition. In fact, I feel very faint.”

Roger’s face blanched. “If it’s worse than this, there’s no hope for us.”

“You mustn’t …” Pepina began and stopped. “Ooooh,” she moaned, and collapsed into Roger’s arms.

Roger looked around wildly at Mrs. Gruntey. “I knew it!” He lowered Pepina to the floor. “Oh, Pepina, my darling. What’s wrong?”

There was no answer from the motionless Pepina.

Roger looked at Mrs. Gruntey. “The worst is here. She’s dead.”

Mrs. Gruntey squared her shoulders. “Take her inside. Put her on the couch.” She whirled toward Lincoln. “Lincoln, get a doctor! And put that fool plank back.”

Lincoln dropped the board in place, then dashed off toward the steps, pushing aside the dripping forms of Mr. Trelawney and President Coleman.

“We’ll sue,” they shouted after him.

Roger picked up Pepina’s limp form, took her inside, and stretched her on the couch. There was a look of deepest concern on his face.

“My dear,” he murmured, bending over her.

Mrs. Gruntey shouldered him aside, began rubbing Pepina’s wrists. “Get a damp cloth,” Mrs. Gruntey said. “Do you have any spirits of ammonia?”

“I don’t know,” Roger went into the kitchen, returned with a damp cloth.

Mrs. Gruntey applied the cloth to Pepina’s forehead. Pepina moaned. Immediately, Roger was at her side. “What is it, my darling?”

“Ooooooooh,” Pepina moaned.

Tears came to Roger’s eyes. Mrs. Gruntey sniffled.

“Can I get you anything?” Roger asked.

Pepina opened her eyes. “No gardenias. No flowers.”

She closed her eyes and became silent.

“Ooooooooh,” Roger said. He bowed his head.

Several minutes passed, broken only by the gentle rising and falling of Pepina’s breast. Footsteps sounded on the boardwalk. Roger leaped to his feet, dashed to the door and flung it open.

“Hurry!” he shouted. “She’s dying!”

The footsteps came faster. Lights popped on in the next houseboat. Into the light of Roger’s doorway came a small, fat man carrying a black bag. He was followed by Lincoln. The small man had his trousers pulled on over pajamas and was wearing shoes without stockings.

“I’m Doctor Steffens. Where’s the patient?”

“There.” Roger pointed toward the couch, averted his face.

The doctor walked over to the couch, gently eased Mrs. Gruntey aside, and bent over Pepina. He placed the black bag on the floor, opened it, and extracted a stethoscope. He put the stethoscope to his ears, began examining Pepina.

“Hmmmmmmm,” he said. “Hmmmmmmm.”

He rolled back an eyelid, looked at Pepina’s eye. Pepina opened both eyes.

“Ouch,” she said. “That hurts.”

“Dizzy spell?” the doctor asked.

Pepina nodded.

“How long have you been feeling these dizzy spells?”

“Several weeks now.” Her voice was faint.

The doctor leaned over and whispered in Pepina’s ear.

Pepina nodded.

He whispered another question.

Again she nodded.

“What is it?” Roger screamed.

The doctor stood up and smiled. He folded his stethoscope in one hand, looked at Roger out of the corners of his eyes.

“Well, I wouldn’t be surprised, but you’re going to be a father.”

Roger’s mouth made a small “O.” Without a sound, he toppled backward. Mrs. Gruntey caught him.

Pepina sat up.

“I suspected it, but I was afraid to tell him. I knew this would happen.”

O O O

One day passed. Sunset gilded the river. Mr. Amonto croaked a tired soliloquy from his lodgings in the reeds.

The cast of Rhythm of Life sprawled in random positions on the couch, chairs, and straw carpet of the Corots’ houseboat. In a new rocking chair by the kitchen door sat Pepina. Roger bent over her, attempting to tuck a blanket around her feet.

Pepina kicked at the blanket.

“Roger, will you take away that fool blanket? It’s the middle of summer.”

“But darling, you have to be careful.”

Carl, lounging in the corner by the record player, looked up from an album of records. “When’s the little illegitimate going to be born?”

Roger’s face darkened. He turned around. “The baby will be born in about six months. I will thank you to—”

The front door of the houseboat banged open, and Mrs. Gruntey entered. Lincoln followed, carrying a case of beer.

“There’s food up in the car,” Mrs. Gruntey said. “A couple of you young men make yourselves useful.” She looked around at the long faces. “Let’s liven up this wake.”

The students by the door stood up, went outside.

Carl looked at Roger. “What’re you going to call the little illegitimate?” he persisted.

Mrs. Gruntey glanced at Carl. “Young man, you …” She paused, turning back to Roger. “Don’t you think this has gone far enough?”

“What do you mean?”

Mrs. Gruntey fumbled in her handbag and produced a yellow cablegram, handed it to Roger. Roger opened the paper. It crackled under his fingers. It was from Paris, addressed to Mrs. Gruntey.

He read:

“Roger Corot and Pepina Lawrence married at City Hall, Lausanne, Switzerland, August 29, 1938. Father gave away the bride. Eugene Dessereux, European director Ballet Russe, best man. Amelie Basat, daughter of Swiss president, maid of honor.”

The cablegram was signed: “Emile Vudon, Investigations Discrete.”

Roger handed the cablegram to Pepina. She read it and smiled. “I’ll never forget that day as long as I live. You forgot all of your dress shirts at Basel and had to wear one of Papa’s.” She giggled.

“The neck was too small.”

“What is this?” Carl asked.

Roger took the cablegram from Pepina, handed it Carl.

“The joke’s gone on long enough,” he said.

Carl read the cablegram. “Well, I’ll be a double-dyed dog.” He passed the cablegram along. Students clustered around, reading it.

“It was just a joke,” Roger said. “We hated to hurt your feelings. You all seemed so … so dependent upon us.”

Mrs. Gruntey suppressed a grin. “This calls for a celebration.”

Roger started to smile, then stopped. His shoulders sagged. “Sure. Big celebration. Pepina’s going to have a baby. I’ve been fired. Your play won’t go on. Trelawney and Coleman are going to sue me.” Roger curled his lip. “Sure. Big celebration.”

Mrs. Gruntey looked up at the ceiling. “About the play. You remember that old barn of a movie theater out on Center Street that went broke during the depression?”

Pepina showed signs of interest.

“The one where the East Comity Players put on their show last year?” Roger asked.

Mrs. Gruntey nodded.

“What about it?” Roger asked.

Mrs. Gruntey looked at Pepina. “Your charming wife”—she put the sound of doves around the word— “telephoned me last night and suggested I rent it for the play.”

“I’m the brazen one,” Pepina said.

“I’ve bought the theater,” Mrs. Gruntey said. “I detest fooling with leases. There’s an army of workmen in there right now, cleaning up the place. The tickets for our play went on sale at one o’clock today.”

Everyone in the room began to show interest.

“Tickets?” Roger asked.

“I had them printed this morning,” Mrs. Gruntey said.

“How’re they going?” Pepina asked.

“Like hotcakes,” Mrs. Gruntey said. “I once heard there was nothing like being banned in Boston to make a bestseller out of a poor book.” She looked around the room, smiling. “Well, the word is around town that the Anti-Vice League pushed us off the campus.”

“But I’ve been fired,” Roger said.

“And I’ve hired you,” Mrs. Gruntey said. “I can afford it.”

Roger shook his head from side to side. “And every cent I make, those two vultures, Trelawney and Coleman, will take away from me. You heard them say they were going to sue.”

“Oh, now,” Mrs. Gruntey said. “About that. I forgot to mention that I went up to Coleman’s office with my attorney this morning. It seems those two vultures, as you call them, went around telling everybody you and Pepina weren’t married. My attorney asked them how they’d like a slander suit.”

Mrs. Gruntey thrust her head forward belligerently.

“One peep out of the League or Coleman, and I said you’d sue them until they’d have to mortgage the college to pay you off. President Coleman even went so far as to offer you back your job. I said you might consider it, if the salary was right. The president and Mr. Trelawney weren’t speaking to each other when we left.”

Roger frowned and looked down at the floor. “Mrs. Gruntey …” He blushed. “You’ve been wonderful to us, and we don’t deserve it.” He looked up. “I have a confession to make. It’s about your play. You see …”

Mrs. Gruntey raised a hand. “You mean about its being so funny?

Roger nodded. “Yes … and …” He paused.

How I’ve misjudged this woman, he thought.

“I know,” Mrs. Gruntey said. “Lincoln told me. I guess it hurt my feelings for a while; then I remembered something Amos always said. He said the best thing in the world a person could do is to make other people laugh.”

Mrs. Gruntey smiled around at the room.

Pepina stood up from her rocking chair.

“Roger, my premonition is gone.”

“How can it be?” Roger asked. “Nothing has happened. I mean, the baby hasn’t …”

“Silly,” Pepina said. “It wasn’t a real premonition. It was just the baby. I’ve never been pregnant before. I didn’t know how it felt to be an expectant mother.” She smiled. “It’s just like a premonition.”

Mrs. Gruntey walked over and put an arm around Pepina’s shoulder. “This really calls for a celebration. Lincoln, what is a good saying for this moment?”

Lincoln, who had been opening the case of beer, stood up. He cocked his head on one side, thought for a moment.

“Toi hoy nun lei hoi.” He flashed white teeth in a grin. “Sin is a difficult thing with which to part.”

A Lesson in History

Rome’s morning clamor penetrated a fifth-floor room of the Hotel Serfilia, awakened Charles Howorth. He got out of bed, closed the windows. This muted the outside noises enough that he became conscious of water hissing in the shower and the sound of Katherine slapping her skin as she bathed. He glanced at her bed. It had a neat, pulled-together look, almost as though there had been an attempt to conceal its use. Beyond it, on the folding stand, her large suitcase stood open like a giant brown toad waiting for a fly. Charles yawned, turned back to the view. This room was two floors higher than the one he’d had during the war. Up here, he saw tiled tiers of roofs instead of other walls. And up the river, he could make out a curve of the round stone shadow that was Castel Sant’Angelo, Hadrian’s tomb.

Twelve years ago, he thought. It made him feel old, vacant … like one of those echoing grocery warehouses leased by the Howorth Chain Stores where nothing ever happened but the trundling in and out of food. Endless passage of food. But a quickened pulse told him that those seventeen weeks of wartime Rome still hovered in his memory. Something different had happened. He frowned, crossed to the dresser, and began brushing his hair. The bristles dug into his scalp. A narrow, golf-tanned face and ice-blue eyes stared back at him from the mirror: a stranger’s face because the repressions of twelve years separated it from the memories pressing out through his eyes. He could see behind him in the mirror the metallic ivory décor of the room, his own rumpled bed.

“Dora Pucetti,” he whispered. Immediately, he felt foolish, soiled.

Early in his life, High Church and wealthy parents had stretched polite distance between the self of Charles Howorth and the brute nature of his body. He had carried that balancing tension within him for thirty-two years.

Until the seventeen weeks with carnal, erotic Dora Pucetti.

But the war had moved on, taking Major Charles Howorth with it. He’d rebuilt his inner defenses. The memory of Dora had become encysted to keep it from disturbing the polite balance.

And the war had ended, and he had gone home.

Katherine noted, in time, that something not of guns and fighting had happened to Charles overseas. Mention of Rome brought a clouding of his eyes, a straying attention. The marriage bed had become more of a service to an animal—a frenzied animal that appeared to be hunting something lost. The slow patience of a wife with too much leisure—and an accumulation of probing observations—had finally revealed the encysted memory of Dora as surely as if it had been a physical tumor.

Rome … another woman. That was the shape of the thing in Charles.

Katherine had pushed through this vacation over all his objections. “Everybody’s going to Italy this year, Charles,” she’d said.

“The more reason to go somewhere else!”

“We have to go somewhere, you know.”

“Why?”

Katherine had won mainly because Charles had become tired of arguing. (Besides, Lorna Philpott had been there last year, and the Philpotts were going again this year. “And what will Lorna and I talk about if I don’t go?”) When she’d started using those damn bores, the Philpotts, for an argument, Charles had thrown up his hands. But once the decision had been made, he’d been filled with a remorse he couldn’t explain.

So the Howorths had come to Rome, a tourist-crowded city. And a mix-up in reservations had forced them to take rooms in the hotel where Charles had lived for seventeen weeks during the war. It was the kind of coincidence that alerted all of Charles’ religious fears. For three days he’d managed to crowd his time with tourism—ruins, bars, dinners, shopping. But last night he’d dreamed of cannon fire the way it had sounded at Lacata. And this morning, the street noises had set him off. The clock of memory he’d thought safely broken and thrown away had begun its precarious ticking. It persisted while he dressed.

Right down below us two floors—309—that’s where I was the night they threw Dora into my room and nailed the door shut.

He’d been wide awake in his bed, smoking in the dark, his mind filled with fatalistic musings. The door had slammed open with an eruption of light from the hall. A dark figure had been thrust into the room—all shadow against the glare. Then the door had been closed—the pounding, the drunken laughter. And in the dark room, a voluptuous female voice saying, “They geev you to me!” He’d snapped on the bedlight and, in its dull yellowness, had seen Dora wearing nothing but a pair of black lace panties. She’d swayed drunkenly, advanced on the bed.

And Charles remembered her eyes: black holes, undrunk in that gorgeous drunken body.

It had been surprising how easily civilization, High Church, everything had just peeled away, leaving only a man and a woman.

And Charles remembered the things she’d asked for: coffee, chocolate, cigarettes. These had been easy to get for a major in the quartermaster corps.

Now that he was wallowing in the memory—letting his body dress itself—Charles recalled tiny details about Dora: the wild hair that grew beneath her left ear, the white scar on her thigh. Bur her eyes intruded in every memory: the lithe body might be abandoned to passion, but the eyes still measured things, weighed values.

Coffee, chocolate, cigarettes. And once, ten pounds of powdered milk and a case of spam.

Katherine called from the bathroom, interrupted his reverie: “You awake, Charles?”

It took him a moment to come up through the mists that separated past and present. “Yes, I’m awake.” He finished buttoning his shirt.

“Do you want the shower?”

“I took one last night.”

Katherine came out of the bathroom fully dressed. Her round face with its frame of careful blonde hair was blank behind its mask of makeup: the face of a dove, the mouth arranged to say coo. She wore one of her knitted suits—the pale blue one—rigid as armor over the foundation garment.

“Did you sleep well?” she asked.

He stood before the mirror, plugging in his electric razor. “Certainly. Always sleep well.”

She raised her voice above the razor’s buzzing: “You tossed around so much last night, I thought you might’ve had a nightmare.”

He saw her eyes in the mirror, weighing him. No sympathy. That occurred only in her voice while the eyes abstained. Again, he thought of Dora’s eyes: never soft. She’d loved with her body but not with her eyes. Charles put away the razor, knotted his tie.

“All ready?” asked Katherine.

He slipped into his coat, touched his hair once more with the brush, then replaced the brush in its leather case.

“All ready.”

“I’m glad we’re getting an early start,” she said.

He took his homburg and the camera from the dresser as they left, closed the door with a solid thump. There was yellow light in the hall: gently blending, gently unexciting. They made polished walking movements down the dull carpet footing. He wore the hat (it felt light in front, lacking the military eagle) slanted at a sculptured angle across his forehead. Underneath the brim: the ice-blue eyes without pardon, the golf-tanned face. Hands dark and leashed. (And the rest of him beneath the refined tailoring: a sun-shunning powder white.)

Polished, polished movements.

“This seems to be a very nice hotel,” said Katherine.

“They’ve been making money here since the war,” he said.

“Oh? You know this hotel?”

“It was our BOQ.”

“What a fascinating coincidence! Why didn’t you say something before?”

“Didn’t think it was important.”

“Charles, everything you did here was important.”

He cleared his throat. “Crrhummmph.”

The end of the hall opened into a skylighted space with potted green plants and elaborate iron scrollwork across the elevator well. Charles pressed the ivory button. Presently, something clanked below them. There came a grinding humming. He cast a seeking glance around, objecting to what he saw without finding a specific object of objection.

Katherine watched him: waiting, unsympathetic eyes—eyes of a dove intent upon its morsel.

“This place must be full of memories for you,” she said.

“Just another hotel,” he said.

“But you’d just liberated Rome, and the people must’ve been so grateful. I’ll bet you did lots of fascinating things.”

Again he cleared his throat. “We fought a war.”

“But not all the time. Not every minute.”

He turned, stared at her, encountered the probing eyes. “Sometimes we ate, and sometimes we slept.” And he thought: We should’ve gone someplace else … back to France. Rome belongs to a time better forgotten.

“Does the hotel look the same?” she asked.

“All redecorated.” Again he studied his surroundings. “You can bet they did it with dollars.” He became aware that the elevator sounds had stopped, and he pressed the buttons.

“So many tourists,” she said. (Sweet moist pressing voice!) “But I’m so glad we finally came. Your stories about the war made me so curious.”

He darted a sidelong glance at her. I never mentioned Rome … except to say that we came through here.

She said: “Anyway, I’m tired of France.”

There’s no way she could possibly know about Dora, he thought. And he said: “It was quite a bit different here during the war.”

“One would imagine,” she said.

A feeling of bitter distaste for this place welled up in Charles. He fought down an involuntary shudder.

“You look tired,” said Katherine. “Are you sure you want to go out today? Perhaps you should just rest in …”

“Of course I want to go out! Not tired. Just hungry. Where’s that damned elevator?” He leaned his thumb against the ivory button.

Remorse at the outburst came over him. She’s just trying to be kind. I must learn to control my temper. I must be kinder to Katherine and put Dora out of my mind. Katherine is soft, sweet, tender sympathy. She never smells of sex and sweat. I must be kinder.

Now the elevator resumed its sounds: a humming, mechanical awareness. The cage arose out of the depths, operated by a gnome-faced little man in a blue uniform. The Howorths entered, relaxed in the iron well.

Breakfast in the hotel dining room: silver sugar service, Roman eagles on the cups and plates. Wide reaches of round white tablecloths, spotting of dark heads. Sleepy gliding of help.

A murmurous, expensive clinking.

“This damn coffee tastes of licorice!” said Charles. “They always use too many spices! And they’ve put some hot stuff on my eggs.”

“That’s too bad,” said Katherine.

“You’d think they could understand a simple order! I told him I wanted plain fried eggs.”

“They do things so differently here,” she said.

“Huh! Things have sure as hell changed since the war! Krauts took everything with ’em. Even cleaned out the food. We had to feed everybody!”

“It must’ve been hard for you. Helping so many hungry people.” Watching eyes. “But weren’t they grateful?”

Hah! Grateful! Stealing everything they could lay their hands on! Begging! He began to feel drunk with anger. An image of Dora arose in his mind. Whatever happened to her? He wiped his mouth with the napkin, pushed the image aside. By now—if she’s still alive—she’ll be a fat slattern surrounded by squalling brats.

“But it must’ve been interesting here during the war,” said Katherine.

Charles took a deep breath, stared around the room, seeking an object to catch his attention. The balcony. “Our flag hung right over there from that balcony.”

“I find it hard to picture you here during the war,” she said. “What did you do with your spare time?”

He waved a hand. “Nothing.”

A woman walked past under the balcony. The proud swinging motion of her young body caught his eye, and against his will, the image of Dora returned. She walked like that. And she used to say, “What’s a woman without a man?” That’s one thing about these Italians: their women know how to treat a man. He cleared his throat. These are thoughts I must not think! And he became aware that Katherine had spoken.

“I asked you about these tables, dear,” she said.

“Eh?”

“Did you have these same tables here during the war?”

“These?” He nudged the table. A dollop of water spilled from his glass. Damn waiter keeps them too full! “No. These are new. We had stuff we liberated from some fascist’s palace.”

Katherine moved her gaze around the room. “The women are beautiful here,” she said. “Don’t you think so?”

He shrugged.

“Rome is famous for its beautiful women,” she said. “Did you meet any beautiful women during the war?”

“Too busy,” he said. “Didn’t notice.”

He shot a glance at her, looked away. Could she know? Nonsense! No way for her to know.

Katherine stirred more cream into her coffee. “Did you have anything in particular in mind for today?”

“Nothing special. I want to get some more pictures at the Forum before we go on up to Florence. Never had a camera with me during the war.”

And a good thing I didn’t have a camera, he thought. I’d probably have taken pictures of Dora, maybe saved one. He passed a hand in front of his eyes, looking at the marks in his palm. God! How she used to tread the bed like it was a trampoline! Bouncing! Not a stitch on! Hair flying! Jumping up and down on the bed like it was a trampoline. And laughing. “You like to see me like this. Yes you do.”

“Perhaps we could look at antiques this morning,” said Katherine. “I heard about a little shop off the Via Magdalena.”

His eyes shorted across sudden attention. “Antiques? Oh, now, I …”

“Just to look. I feel like browsing.”

“Katherine, I am remembering the carpets from Brussels.”

Little S’s beside her mouth. “You know I didn’t get cheated very much.”

He stared at her armor-tortured bustline. “Cheated, though.”

Kinder, he thought. This is not being kinder.

“We could go for a little while this morning,” he said. “They tell me afternoon light’s best in the Forum.”

And he thought: It’s not much she’s asking.

“Sometimes you’re very sweet, Charles,” she said.

“Huh!” Yet he smiled a sad, heavy smile.

Some cars filled Charles with metal dread. This astonishing taxi made his skin crawl. It was old, high, neck-jerking—driven by a gawky, leather-skinned creature with a great Franz Josef mustache. But it had been the only taxi at the stand outside the hotel.

We should’ve waited for another one. Rice on the seats. A wedding? Do they have that custom here? I never learned.

Poplars lined the Via Magdalena. Whiz-chop of little squirtdarting cars. Gas stink. Bicycles. Upcraned necks.

“We must get the correct intersection,” said Katherine. “I’m told it’s hard to find.”

He glanced at her neck, saw little powdered creases infolding above the dress collar. So neat. So prim. They opened like mouths when she leaned forward to peer.

Paper-bag anger popped in his chest.

“Here!” he barked. “We get off here!”

The taxi jerked to a stop at the curb.

“But …” said Katherine, her dove face blank while the eyes measured his mood.

“You said it was in the Torrenta Alley just off the Via! We can walk from here.”

Weak laughter in her pale, powdered throat. “Of course. You still know the city from when you were here before.”

He was impatiently polite with the driver, positive of the overcharge, letting the bastard know his game was so damned transparent. The money isn’t important, you little bastard. I make more in a day than you make in a year! It’s the principle of the thing. To hell with your … No, Signore! No, Signore! To hell with it!

And the minute the taxi had pulled away in its cloud of oil stink, he felt remorse overtake him. The man probably has a big family to support. Needs every cent he can get. For all I know, he could be married to Dora. I’ll wait until I see him again outside the hotel, send him a tip. Charles tried to imagine Dora living with the taxi driver and failed. No. She was the kind who’d catch on to a petty official, a clerk in some ministry. Once her beauty started to go.

Katherine spoke from the walk behind him: “Are we going?”

“Uh … yes.”

Now the Torrenta Alley. There had been a whorehouse at the end of it, and his men had gotten into a fight there. But now the neighborhood was changed. Little outpulled drawer balconies on new buildings. The hotel clerk had said the rough districts moved farther out.

Out of the Via’s sunlight into a dark, broom-swept, twisting, narrow grotto effect: cool after the glare on the avenue. Charles had an abrupt jolt-bounce thought of all the people who’d witnessed these yellow-ochre bricks. Ancient. A lesson in history. It was as though a heavy cape had been pulled away, flickering, and he saw down the years: Centurion, Barbarian, Christian knight, Blackshirt, the Second Hun, and the Citizen Army—the brawling Citizen Army—and himself coming to get Sergeant Brady’s platoon away from the MPs.

But it was not the same now. Too clean. And the smells were different. Drier.

“This must be it,” said Katherine. “Number eight.”

Thin, in-shadow doorway. He allowed himself to be guided by her movements through into a green-washed gloom. A deep-sea stillness, scent of camphor. His eyes adjusted to the dim light. A room of controlled patience: crowded with dutiful furniture that waited on fat legs, on slim legs. Only to obey. The placidity of the place filled him with a latent rage.

“It’s beautiful,” said Katherine. “Simply beautiful. All these lovely antiques.”

Provoked, he said, “All this damned dust stinking crap full of worm holes!”

A little silence. Again she watched him: the undove eyes in the dove face. “Suppose I just buy one piece,” she said.

“Suppose you just look and don’t buy anything.”

“Darling, could I come back this afternoon, or tomorrow? I mean, while you go take your pictures of the Forum or whatever?”

“Let you come here alone? I’d as soon let you loose in an arena full of hungry lions!”

“Darling!” she hissed. “They probably speak English here!”

“Good.”

This silence was longer.

She sighed, said, “I wish you could understand the simple pleasure I get out of …”

“Simple!” He thumped onto the word with both feet.

In the back of the shop, green curtains parted with a sound of scratching vellum. The shopkeeper glided out of the gloom—a pale, wizened man with conundrum lines between his eyes, a dry sprinkling of somberness over small features. But the eyes clashed with the rest of him—as though they were the man’s only weapons, and he had learned out of necessity to slash and parry with them.

“May I be of assistance?” he asked, and his English hopped along on a tired accent. A pill-sounding voice. Bitter medicine.

Katherine put on her public poise. “I’m interested in something for our upstairs sitting room, something to suit a Renaissance décor.”

“I’m warning you,” said Charles. “We’re not plundering the Continent this time.” And there was the sourness of pen scratching in his tone.

“My husband likes his little joke,” she said, one gloved hand outstretched like a particular exclamation point.

“You are my guests,” said the shopkeeper. Hopping of dry accent. An eye-concealing nod.

And Charles thought, Thus spoke Caesar to his victims! “The dollar,” he said. “The world’s most welcome guest.”

She pencil-lined her mouth, no sweetness. “Darling! Must you?”

Must I what? Be a bore? Such a bore? Boor, perhaps? Why’d I let her talk me into this? I’ve never been so bored in my whole life. Or maybe I’m just bored!

He startled her by chuckling.

“I fail to see the humor,” she said.

Kinder, he thought. I must try to be kinder.

“It’s all right, dear,” he said. “Private joke. For noncoms and privates only.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Do your duty, dear. Do your duty. That’s all we did when we came through here from Lacata, from Sicily.”

“But you were an officer … a major.”

“Yes, dear.”

“Oh, the war!” She dismissed it, all squeezed up in three words like an accordion.

The shopkeeper concealed his embarrassment (or amusement?) in a dry-lidding of his weapon eyes, half turning away. One purple-veined hand stroked the dark blue velvet of a chair back.

White spots accented Katherine’s cheeks. “Well?” she said.

“Well what?”

“What am I supposed to do?”

He shrugged. It’s the indifferences that drive her mad. Never give her a clue what to expect.

“I’ve made my point then?” she asked.

“Let’s say you’ve established a beachhead.” And he could all but hear the stick mixed words of her mind: “Still in the war. Won’t he ever leave his toy guns?” That’s what you’re thinking. Ah, my dear, I know you too well. I know you so much better than I knew Dora. God! I must try to be kinder!

Nectarine in her voice: “Darling, you know that I …”

“Oh, for Christsakes!” His breakfast eggs began to taste sour in the back of his throat. Why does merely the sound of her voice make me flare?

She was not deceived. Victory was in sight but not won. Not yet. Readily watchful dove. “This is special, darling. This is the place where Lorna got …”

The darting of his mouth lines told her her mistake.

“So that’s it! This wasn’t a simple little foreign expedition this morning. Just to browse! This is something you and Lorna cooked up!”

“Perhaps we’d better come back after lunch,” she said. “Let’s go to that place the man from Pasadena recommended. We could have lobsters, a salad, perhaps some melon.”

This is what happened Friday in the dress shop, he thought. She pressed me too hard. She always presses too hard. Except in bed. Too softly hard. Catch her using a bed for a trampoline!

“Are those your final terms?” he asked. Why can’t I keep the coldness out of my voice?

“I’m only thinking of you,” she said. Her hungry gaze went to the shopkeeper’s hand on the blue velvet chair.

“Huh!” His mouth tucked in with little tic-seals.

“Such a beautiful chair,” she murmured. “That one. It’d look so nice with our other pieces.” A sigh, lifting, collapsing.

I must force my careful attention upon being kinder.

“One piece,” he said. “You can get one piece. No more.”

Again she was not deceived. The victory was gratuitous, and not, therefore, a victory. “Now you’re being your old, sweet self,” she said. And again she watched him, speculating.

“My pleasure,” he said.

She turned toward the shopkeeper, encountered bright eyes, benign mocking.

A deep breath against the armored foundation garment. She resumed a semblance of her poise. “I am interested in early Florentine also. Our upstairs sitting room must have … something.”

“I congratulate you, madam.” The hopping accent. (Selling a sofa to Caesar’s wife. Dead Caesar’s wife.) “The Florentine is our best. We have recently acquired some particularly fine pieces.”

One old Roman hand lifted in invitation to precede him.

She’ll pay ten prices for something made last month in an antique-faking factory for tourists!

“Oh, that’s pretty!”

She’s found something else already! I thought he was going to hook her with that blue velvet monstrosity. This is probably more expensive. No dickering now, dear! Pay the first price! Christ! I cannot listen! He tried blanking his mind to their murmurous voices, but still the words poured through to feed his rage. He turned. “I’ll call a cab.”

“I’ll have my boy call your cab, sir,” said the shopkeeper. He excused himself from Katherine, moved away: grey-green color wash fading through vellum scratching curtains.

Katherine looked at her husband. Behind the dove mask, the undove moved impatiently.

He nodded a prepared nod, smiled. He knew she would recognize the smile. It said: “I forgive you for all your mistakes, my dear. Even when you’re impossible, I forgive.” A stubborn smile, and he knew that its image was burned upon her memory out of a thousand such incidents. Dora never saw my forgiving smile, he thought. I wasn’t kind to Dora.

“We can go to the Forum right after lunch,” said Katherine.

“Since when have you wanted to go to the Forum?” he asked.

She took the words without rising to them as she always had. Suddenly, emotion was running white hot in the air between them. Her eyes caught his attention, compelled him. In the gloom, Charles abruptly saw two faces: two frozen shades, four polar eyes: the image of Dora overprinted on the reality of Katherine—the shock of bitter wax flowing out of sweet honey. A twin reality with new meanings.

I paid Dora with coffee, chocolate, and cigarettes. Katherine takes it out in … what? Antiques? There’s no real difference between them. The world’s full of Dora Pucettis. It’s full of Katherines. It’s full of …

“This is what I’m getting,” said Katherine. “Do you like it?”

She put a gloved hand on a pedestal-footed octagonal table upthrusting in the careful clutter. A figure dimly golden painted on it. Wings? He stepped closer. Horrible saccharine pseudo-Romance: a Roman eagle snared in laurel intertwined by a misty ring of doves.

“Isn’t it lovely?” she asked.

The shopkeeper swished back through the curtains. “Your taxi comes, sir.” He saw the intense downpouring attention. A shutter-blink velvet smile jumped across the old face. “You like it, sir? The design is by Giordano. Very old. It is symbolic of Caesar’s standard.” Dry chuckle rendering sere lips. “The Roman peace.”

Caesar’s standard come to this! The last of all the Romans! Hysteria climbed his mind. Katherine’s hand fluttered against his arm. The deadly, subtle shirring of feathers. And he heard her voice as from a great distance: “You’re very sweet, Charles. So kind to buy me this. Charles? Charles! Why are you laughing, Charles?”

Eagle doves, doves eagle, eagle doves doves eagle eagle doves … All the eyes staring at him. Slowly, the drunken, reeling overflow of images receded. He quieted, looked up at Katherine, encountered sudden mockery in her gaze. She smiled for the first time this day, and her voice dropped all of its pressing sympathy; it came to him with the soft pounding of a muffled drum.

“This piece makes me very happy, Charles. You see, I wanted something that would remind me of Rome … too.”

Wilfred

If you’d ever heard Louis Donet sing, you never would’ve tied him up with Wilfred Long. But that’s where you’d have been wrong. They were the same person—in the flesh, that is. Where his character was concerned, though, he was like a chameleon—as if changing his part to fit different backgrounds.

I first met the man when he still was Wilfred Long. He was fresh from the Continent and the Academie des Arts Princips. There was a thin coat of Parisian mannerisms over his British veneer, and beneath it all was the hard shell of ego sealed from the world. He wore that Continental air of a man who has just heard a long, dull story.

The Brunswick Recording Company brought Wilfred to New York in the middle twenties because of a reference from Sir Hugh Blakely-Smythe of the Philharmonic Society to Hal Radcliffe, our managing director.

In the course of time, I received the usual list of “facts” with which to prepare the public for our new find. I leafed through the list and realized I’d need an artificial glow to be able to give even a faint glimmer to Wilfred.

I picked up the phone and called Hal. “Look,” I said, “this Wilfred Long, the name, it’s …”

“I know,” he said, “but it has to stand. Do what you can.”

I heard the receiver click, cradled my own, and slammed out of the office. Right then I needed something that could be had only at Vincentes, the best speak in town. “A chicken ranch,” I told myself. “I work in a chicken ranch where all the roosters cackle and want to take credit for the eggs.”

George Bates was sitting in my favorite booth, and I slid in opposite him. George directed the recording orchestra that played for most of our contract vocalists. He was a native of Cincinnati, a little guy—I’d say about five feet six and kind of stout. A piano player by profession, he had the shortest fingers of any pianist I’d ever seen. He was always getting mad at me, the way I’d ask him to play something like Chopin’s Raindrop Nocturne where his fingers would get a workout. George had the coldest temper of any man I’ve ever known. His controlled ferocity could make you shiver even if you weren’t the object.

He looked up at me as I sat down. “Hullo, Felix,” he said. “I gave ’em a breather. We’re makin’ My Old Kentucky Home with Jules Preston, an’ they just tossed out the sixth one.”

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“The usual stuff,” he grunted. “We get wax in the cutting channel, distortions, squeaks, noises, everything. Why don’t they invent something so we don’t have to go to all this trouble?”

He frowned and gulped his drink. The waiter came up with my regular double scotch.

“Finish that,” George said, “an’ come up an’ give us some luck.”

I downed the drink, and when the shivers had stopped, nodded. “Okay, George. But you better cross your fingers for me, too. I gotta make a singer by the name of Wilfred look like copy. I won’t be able to show my face in a newsroom for a year.”

“Wilfred,” he repeated unbelievingly. “Let’s have another.”

We got back to the studio about a half hour later, and I took a seat high up in the back while George collected the orchestra. They’d just repainted the studio, and the smell of turpentine mixed with the odor of the floor compound the sweepers used was doing things to my stomach. I wished I was anything right then but a publicity agent for a platter palace. I looked around me. What a racket!

Preston, the vocalist, was slouched in one of the front seats with his hat over his eyes. George went over and poked him in the ribs. “Okay, Press. Let’s try it again.”

The singer tipped back his hat, stood up, and walked over to the big square horn that led into the cutting room. We didn’t have any of these fancy electrical pickups in those days. The vocalist had to stand in front of the horn with the orchestra members crowded as close as they could get behind him. They always had to shout at the damn horn and then hope like hell they were on the wax. It was a common thing to make the same disc over six or seven times before it got the okay. On an average of once a week, some yokel would come bouncing in right in the middle of the one cutting that everyone knew was going to be perfect. The door couldn’t be locked because of some damn fire rule, so they’d set up a red light and a sign.

That’s how we met Wilfred. He barged in just as they were finishing the seventh try on Foster’s classic. A trolley was passing by on the avenue, and its clanging seemed to fill the room.

George hushed the orchestra with a resigned air and slowly turned on the intruder. We all waited expectantly for the slightly unkempt stranger to wilt under George’s famed vitriolic tongue. Wilfred was taller than George by a good three inches, and he had bushy hair, which made him seem even taller; there was a supercilious set to his red features. Continental look, I believe you’d call it. We’d seen bigger ones routed by our bantam champ, though, and didn’t doubt the outcome of this one.

“You saw the red light and thought you’d come to the right place, eh, junior?” George asked in a deceptively soft tone. He strode up to Wilfred, pointing his baton as if he wanted to skewer the man. “Well!” he shouted. “This is a recording studio, and we don’t like bastards like you wandering in here and flirting with our girls! Get the hell out!” He gestured with his baton. “And next time, don’t believe everything the taxi driver tells you!”

We guffawed until the room seemed to expand. George was in rare form.

Wilfred cleared his throat, looked George up and down with an infuriatingly aloof glance, and stepped past him. The baton was knocked aside. “Droll fellow,” he said, “but that sort of humor always fails to amuse me.”

He walked over to the horn, a big affair about eight feet across. “So this is a recording studio,” he murmured. Swiveling, he fixed Preston with his eyes. Even from the back of the room, I could see the almost hypnotic gleam.

Preston stopped laughing and stood there with a silly grin on his face.

“You’re the vocalist,” Wilfred said in an accusing tone. Before Preston could recover, Wilfred continued, “Well, I’m Wilfred Long. You’re to show me how this thing is done so I can make a few records tomorrow.”

“So that’s Wilfred,” I said to myself. “Oh, brother. Oh, Bro-ther!” I groped into my pocket and brought out my flask.

By this time George had regained his voice. “Oh,” he said apologetically. “You’re the new singer.”

We shifted our eyes to George with an amazement that lasted only until we saw the glint in his eyes.

“Well,” he shouted boisterously, “I guess I jumped too soon. Come on over and sit down while we run through this thing again. You can ask all the questions you want. Just sit quietly until I give you the sign.” He grabbed Wilfred’s arm. “Say your name’s Wilfred?” he asked and turned toward the orchestra. “Boys, this is Wil-fred.”

The accent on the first syllable seemed to go unnoticed as George ushered the singer to a seat in the background.

While the boys went back to Kentucky, I examined our new addition. So help me, he looked like a Wilfred. He didn’t look like a Will or a Fred; he just looked like a character who had been created for the whole name. There are some men who can carry the name well, but when it’s attached to someone like this it’s like kicking a man when he’s down. Wilfred’s eyes held a round, owlish expression which was made almost ludicrous by overhanging eyebrows slanted steeply toward the nose. The eyebrows appeared to be leering while the eyes gave a gentle, wise admonishment. Under his clothes Wilfred looked flabby, and his neck was short, with a roll of fat just above the collar. He didn’t look paunchy; he merely gave the picture of a man who has been fat and reduced only in odd spots.

The eighth cutting received a grudging approval from Sayles in the work room; George gave the orchestra the “ta-dumpha” wave with his baton, and they began picking up the pieces and filing out in whispering, rustling, and clattering groups.

A little smile hovered around George’s lips as he stepped up to Wilfred. “Any questions?” he asked.

“Not at all,” Wilfred said. “Really quite simple, isn’t it?”

“Quite simple,” George agreed.

I had about five of my friends down from the front office the next day to watch the fun, and we just managed to squeeze into an empty space along the back wall. There was a schoolroom, giggly undertone in the room. Wilfred strode in at about one minute before rehearsal deadline and took his place before the horn. He stood there, glancing through some sheet music and seemingly unaware that the room was packed. George appeared just as the second hand whirled straight up and, knowing how unpunctual he usually was, we took this as an omen.

Wilfred and George bent their heads over the music for a minute, then George straightened. “Mr. Wilfred Long will sing ‘Duna,’” he said.

A deprecating smirk flitted over one side of Wilfred’s face. We all clapped, and he bowed slightly.

They rehearsed the song three times—a remarkably small number—and each time, George’s grin became broader. Wilfred’s voice was … well, I guess common is the word that best describes it. I turned to Callahan of Booking, who was standing beside me. He shrugged his shoulders.

After the third rehearsal, George nodded to Wilfred and shouted into the horn, “Cut this one!”

He returned to his stand, motioned the orchestra in, and raised his baton, lifting slightly on his toes. He appeared more like someone about to lead a series of yells than an orchestra. The buzzer sounded, and they went at it.

The music was wonderful—most especially the violins. It’s the string section that really can sabotage a singer. The brass, woodwinds, and tympany can destroy a musical effect as quickly, but a voice usually can hold its own against them through contrasting tonal values. Let the violins run wild, though, and the singer might as well be shouting down a rain barrel.

When they finished, we waited for the cut-down to the center of the platter and started clapping. George put one arm around Wilfred’s shoulder and motioned toward us. Wilfred acknowledged our ovation distantly. He was beginning to see the light.

It was about an hour and a half wait for the casting and playback, so we adjourned to our own business. The playback would be an anticlimax anyway, we thought; we’d seen the show. I was anxious to hear it, though, if only to watch Wilfred while it was being run. At about twenty minutes after the hour, I wandered back to the studio. There was a crowd of people at the door, all listening to Wilfred tell what he had said to the Duke of Montmarte. His sang-froid seemed to have returned.

“So I told the duke the fox couldn’t have gone that direction,” he was saying.

I turned around and went back down the hall out of earshot. I suddenly felt sorry for the poor dope. Didn’t he know the silly picture he made? Could anyone really be that dumb? I turned the corner and bumped into a little blonde tester from the factory named Lisa Engman. She had a package in her hands.

“Whooof!” she said. “Felix, you scared the daylights out of me.” Her voice was about three tones above a falsetto. “What’s in this?” she asked, holding up the package. “They told me to treat it like fragile china.”

I glanced at the tag. “Darling,” I said, putting my arm around her and taking the package, “you are looking at the rise and fall of a guy by the name of Wilfred Long. Let’s take it into the cutting room, and I’ll buy you a drink after we’ve had our fun.”

Sayles was standing by the cutting room door as we passed. I winked and handed him the package, then went up the hall to spread the word. Lisa and I squeezed ourselves into the studio and found a couple of empties along the far wall. We started to sit down but were interrupted by a commotion at the entrance. Radcliffe was coming in with Callahan. Room was made for them near the door. I looked around for George and found him down front with several of the orchestra members. Wilfred was the last to enter. His composure seemed to have deserted him. He stood by the exit as if ready to bolt or do a death scene.

A hush came over the room as the music started, but as it progressed, we leaned forward like a nest full of baby robins grabbing at a worm. The voice coming out of the horn was good—maybe better than good—and the orchestra was properly in the background. I looked at George. He had scrunched down in his seat, and a nerve at his temple was jerking. His complexion had taken on a boiled-cherry hue, dark and violent against his white collar

The recording wasn’t easy to explain—in fact, the only explanation was that it had happened before. If there was one thing you could say about the recording business in those days, it was that the platters were unpredictable. Through some acoustical quirk, Wilfred and the loud orchestra had hit the right combination. They didn’t seem to go together any more than Gilbert and Sullivan, but they made beautiful music.

When it was over, Wilfred turned to George with a positively glowing expression. He looked as though someone had just run a heater over his face. “You know,” he said, “when we were making that record I thought you were a little loud, but I guess you know more about this business than I do.”

“Yeah,” George said. “I guess we do.”

He brushed past Wilfred and went out the door. I had one devil of a time following him. There was a crowd milling around Radcliffe and Wilfred. Radcliffe had the broad smile of a man whose hundred-to-one shot has just romped home. He was shaking Wilfred’s hand as though it was a pump handle.

I found George at Vincentes, and we drowned our woes.

“That damn pipsqueak and his lousy voice!” George kept repeating. “That damn pipsqueak …”

That was the beginning of a really wonderful hate.

Wilfred’s contract read for five masters, and when he’d completed those, the company signed him for ten more. He’d cut three of the new batch when he got an offer from a Broadway company to do the lead in Star Night, a musical being produced by Royce and Bodington. This sort of thing always was good publicity for the platters, so the company gave Wilfred a leave of absence, stipulating in the contract with his producers that all the throwaways and posters mention Brunswick—the usual procedure.

Royce and Bodington had heard all of Wilfred’s recordings and assumed his voice was of the same quality. They had no reason to assume otherwise and didn’t even bother to hear him before completing the contract.

I wasn’t at the first rehearsal—or any of them, for that matter—but I understand it was something new on Broadway. It was all over town in a couple of days. They started Wilfred on one of the more difficult scores, a duet with the feminine lead, Eugenia Moran. Royce and Bodington heard about twelve bars of it and motioned for the conductor to stop. The orchestra trailed into silence and Royce, a big, blustery fellow, stood up in his seat.

“This is no time to make jokes,” he shouted. “Sing with your right voice, the one we hear on the records!”

Wilfred ignored him and ordered the maestro to continue. Somehow they struggled through the rehearsal, and toward the end, Wilfred’s voice seemed to become a little better—or maybe they merely became more accustomed to it.

“A liddle tightness in de t’roat, mebbe?” Bodington inquired when it was all over.

Wilfred brushed right by him and followed Eugenia Moran down to the dressing rooms. They let him go. There were a lot of bucks tied up in Wilfred’s contract, which maybe accounted for part of their reluctance to antagonize him. Besides, artists were supposed to act that way.

The only person who failed to notice anything wrong with Wilfred’s voice was Miss Moran. Of course, she could have been too busy listening to herself.

Then, too, a baritone so close to her probably was a novelty. Tenors usually took the romantic leads.

Two days before the show opened, I received two tickets through the office mail. I buzzed George, and he said he had a couple too.

“The whole damn orchestra and Radcliffe got Oaklies,” he said. “Wilfred wants to show off. You got ’em because you’re publicity.”

“You going?” I asked.

When George quieted down, I said, “Maybe it’ll be a flop.”

There was such a long silence that I thought George had hung up. “You still there?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “Maybe it’ll be a flop.”

Opening night, I took my tickets and Lisa Engman, the blonde from cutting, and went to hear Wilfred. They were playing at the old President Theater, and the place was aglitter with lights, jewels, white faces and shirt fronts and bright talk. The usher led us down front, and I had to admit Wilfred had given us good seats. They were about a third of the way back from the orchestra, right in what is called the acoustical focus. We stepped past some expensive knees and sat down. A few minutes later, George and Gladys, his wife, came in. They had the seats beside ours. George shifted around so that he was sitting next to me.

“’Lo,” he said.

I nodded and leaned over him to speak to his wife. “Gladys, this is Lisa Engman.”

They made a few polite remarks, which I don’t remember. George pushed me back—rather rudely, I thought. He was in a pretty rough mood.

“You still think it’ll be a flop?” he asked.

“What do you think?” I countered.

“Could be,” he said, and turned to glance back over his shoulder. “That bastard sure must have sent out a lot of Oaklies.”

George’s voice was none too quiet, and a woman behind us must have heard him. She sniffed so loud she could be heard for six rows. Gladys leaned over and shushed George. The introduction started on time or it could’ve been a family row.

By the middle of the second scene, we knew it wasn’t going to be a flop. They had done things with props and lights, and the music was good … catchy. It would have taken a worse voice than Wilfred’s to knock the box office from under that show.

George made only one other comment during the evening. He leaned over and whispered in my ear, “That bastard is still getting the breaks.”

I looked at Moran, whom our Wilfred was fondling with more than the required intimacy during their love scenes. “Yeah,” I agreed.

This Moran was what could be called a dish. She looked as though she’d just come from a conference with a snake and an apple. Wilfred appeared interested enough to take a bite himself.

George gave me the slip when the curtain came down, so I said, “To hell with it!” and went out and had myself a time with Lisa. It was about two AM when I got back to my hotel, and there was a call at the desk for me. I took it, went over, and crawled into a booth. It was George’s wife.

“I’m sorry I bothered you,” she said. “I was worried about George. He brought me straight home and then went out, but he just came in.”

I heard a hoarse voice in the background say, “Who’n ’ell you talkin’ to now?”

“Okay, Gladys,” I said. “Put him to bed with an ice pack. He’s had a large disappointment.”

It didn’t come as a surprise to any of us when Wilfred and Eugenia Moran began seeing a great deal of each other. What with those torrid love scenes, one thing and another, I guess they convinced themselves they really were in love. It has happened before and most likely will happen again—many times. Both of them were married, but that rule isn’t supposed to apply to artists.

I’d met Wilfred’s wife once—in Mendel’s. I’d gone in to buy a new tie, and there was Wilfred and a mousy-looking woman. The term had been coined for her. Mousy she was and dressed in gray. A rather big nose jutted out above a wide, thin-lipped mouth, and her forehead was tall and smooth.

Wilfred was trying on a new suit, a tweed thing. I believe he fancied himself a type—the English gentleman, y’know. All he needed was a monocle.

I walked over to him. “Quite a piece of burlap you have there, Wilfred,” I said.

He didn’t stop admiring himself in the full-length mirror, but he glanced at me in the reflection. “Maude,” he said, “this is Felix Jacobsen. He works at Brunswick. Say hello.”

The little gray woman stepped away from Wilfred and gave me her hand. “I’m delighted,” she said, and she made me believe it. I took back all the things I’d been thinking. Her smile was beautiful—full of warmth, affection, and … oh, a grand love of life.

“Mrs. Long, where has Wilfred been hiding you?” I asked.

She looked back at her husband, and a haunting, poignant expression flitted across her features and was gone. “Oh, I’ve been busy opening a new house out at Great Neck,” she said. “A home is such a bother. Really, all I need is a stable.”

Again she favored me with that smile. “Why don’t you come out and ride with me some morning? Wilfred never has time.”

Hearing his name, Wilfred looked away from the tailor with whom he was speaking. “What’d you say?” he asked.

“I only said that you never seem to have time to ride with me anymore.”

Wilfred turned away, muttering. “Silly beasts,” was all I caught, but his wife’s face looked as if he’d slapped her. The expression vanished so quickly that it was almost as if I’d imagined it.

“Do come out,” she said. “I’d enjoy becoming acquainted with one of Wilfred’s friends. I know so few people over here.”

I murmured a banal, “One of these days,” and took my leave. Wilfred hardly noticed my going.

I heard later that Maude came from a wealthy British family. Wilfred was a crown citizen, of course—South African—but not many people knew it until he was picked up at Nuremburg and the trial was splashed all over the papers. He always was pretty much a mystery man, and he really didn’t look the type.

Well, along in the fall of that year, Star Night closed shop in New York and went on the road, the understudies taking over. Eugenia Moran went to Reno “for her health,” the tabloids quipped, and Wilfred disappeared. I don’t mean he vanished in the usual front-page sense with police hunting him; he just didn’t show up at any of his regular places, and gradually the talk died. He was resurrected for a short while when news of Eugenia Moran’s divorce broke, but it didn’t last. We simply forgot about him.

I first learned that Wilfred was back in town from a friend of mine—Lee Adams, a reporter on the Sun. It was about eleven months later. Lee said he’d seen Wilfred in the customs line getting off the Muritania.

“You sure it was him?” I asked.

“Yeah, it’s him. Got a face full of whiskers, though—regular Evans Hughes badger. But you can’t miss ’im; it’s the same Wilfred. He was standing in the D line.”

We both laughed.

It wasn’t until a week later that I ran into Wilfred for myself. I was leaving Vincentes just as he was entering. He was with Eugenia Moran.

I grabbed his arm. “Wilfred, old boy,” I said. “When’d you get back? And what’s with the bush?”

He regarded me with a cold stare. “Wilfred?” he inquired, freeing his arm. “Are you acquainted with someone by that name who resembles me? My name is Louis Donet.”

I turned to Eugenia.

“Excuse me,” she said, looking up at Wilfred. “Allow me to introduce Mr. Felix Jacobsen. He’s director of publicity at the Brunswick Recording Company, darling.” She turned to me. “This is Mssr. Louis Donet of the Paris Opera.”

“Louis Donet!” I protested. “Why, this …”

But Wilfred already had my hand. “Delighted,” he said. “It’s such a pleasure to meet Uzheenyaa’s friends. We must see more of each other.” He looked down at Eugenia. “I understand the Brunswick company is seeking a new baritone.”

“We simply must be going,” Eugenia interrupted. “We’ll see you some other time, Felix.” She turned back to Wilfred.

It was Wilfred. I knew it!

“We have a big night ahead of us, haven’t we, darling?”

“Uh, oui, cheri,” he murmured, looking into her eyes and then returning his gaze to me. “It has been delightful meeting you, Mr. Jacobsen.” He gave me a courtly little Continental bow and turned away.

I stood there watching them as they disappeared into the club. “What the hell’s the pitch?” I asked myself.

As it turned out, I was the first of the old crowd to meet the new Wilfred, but we all received the same greeting. He brushed everyone off cold—all his old acquaintances at Brunswick, the show, everyone. I understand Radcliffe almost had apoplexy. There was one possible exception, of course, and that was Eugenia. But I’m not sure to this day about her.

In a week’s time, Wilfred was the favorite topic of conversation in all the dives across town. “Have you seen Wilfred Long—I mean, Louis Donet?” the conversation would begin. There’d be a long round of laughter and a few more rounds of drinks.

You have to say this for him, though: he carried it off. I don’t think it was demonstrated any more fully than at the trial when his ex-wife (there was some kind of a European divorce) sued him for her commission on his income. It developed that she had picked Wilfred out of a South African church choir, taken him to London, and financed his voice training. She had a contract, too, for ten percent of his income. When, as Louis Donet, he refused to pay, she hired two high-powered lawyers (Cole and Hamilton) and went after him in the courts.

The courtroom was as jammed for the trial as the little studio had been the day George Bates had taken his flop. Wilfred was up against a different situation here. Mrs. Long took the stand. Her hair was turning gray, and a slim shaft of light from one of the tall windows along the left wall caught her head in a yellow-and-silver halo. She was every bit the English lady sitting there and telling her story in a calm, dispassionate voice.

“He was a nothing—a nobody,” she said. “I took him and made him into something of which he could be proud and of which I could be proud.” Using the same calm tones, she leveled a finger at Wilfred and said, “No one could take pride in this … this …”

She was too much of a lady to use the correct term, but her story became all the more convincing because of her restraint. There was a stirring through the court, and the judge rapped for order. Wilfred, sitting at the trial table, hadn’t moved or changed his bored expression.

“Continue, Madam,” the judge said.

“There is no doubt that this man is Wilfred Long,” she said. “I was married to him for five years. He hasn’t a mannerism with which I am not familiar.”

The judge leaned down from his bench. “It is quite possible, madam,” he said, “that you could solve this case in a simple manner. Did Mr. Long have any peculiar markings on his body which would not be known generally?”

Without a blush, she looked directly at the judge and said, “He has a cherry birthmark on his right thigh.”

This time the judge had to rap his gavel repeatedly before the noise subsided. “One more such outburst and I shall clear this court,” he said. He turned to Mrs. Long. “You may step down, madam.”

In the silence that followed, we could hear someone coughing in the rear of the courtroom. The judge leaned over and addressed himself to Wilfred’s attorney. “Is there any objection to your client stepping into my chambers for a personal examination?”

With a tired, disinterested wave of his hand, Wilfred arose with his attorney. He raised his eyes to the judge in a condescending manner. “I’ve never seen this woman before in my life,” he said. “She must be mad. However, if it will satisfy those present, I will submit myself to this distasteful ordeal.”

The judge rapped his gavel once and stood up, the spectators arising with him. “There will be a ten-minute recess,” he said. “Will counsel for the plaintiff accompany us, please?”

Mrs. Long’s two lawyers arose and, with Wilfred and his attorney in the lead, made their way around the clerk’s desk and into the judge’s private chambers. They were gone the full ten minutes. A hush fell over the courtroom when the door reopened and they filed out. The sessions clerk arose and rapped his gavel, calling the court to order. Everyone stood until the judge had taken his seat, and then we sat down again. The lawyers and Wilfred made their way to the trial table, all seeming to wear the same inscrutable expression. It was maddening. I searched their faces for a clue to what had happened but could see nothing. The judge cleared his throat.

“I have before me,” he said, “documented evidence that supports the claim of Mr. Louis Donet that he is the said Louis Donet.” (He was referring to a French passport and birth certificate, both of which, it turned out, were forged by a Russian émigré in Paris.)

“On the other hand,” the judge continued, “I have the claim of Mrs. Maude Chester Long that Louis Donet is one Wilfred Long, an alleged defaulter on a commissions contract. Viewing all the evidence, I am forced to the conclusion that Mrs. Long is laboring under the delusions brought about by a remarkable resemblance between Mr. Donet and her ex-husband. Mr. Donet has no such birthmark as she describes.”

There was pandemonium. The judge pounded his gavel steadily, then gave it up and took a drink of water. He leaned forward, and only those of us in the front rows heard him say to Mrs. Long: “If at a later date, madam, you are able to bring before me sufficient evidence to substantiate your claim, I will reopen this case. Meanwhile, it is dismissed for lack of evidence.”

Wilfred had done it again.

(Years later, when it was too late, we learned that the birthmark had been tattooed into oblivion by another Paris artisan. Wilfred had been thorough.)

I bumped into George as I was leaving the court and had to shepherd him through twenty bars on the way home. We both were in pretty rough condition when we got to his place. Gladys, ever understanding, opened the door. She saw how it was right away.

“George, George, where have you been?” she demanded.

“I been out fin’in’ out how to get ahead in the worl’,” he told her and collapsed face forward onto the carpet.

I leaned against the doorjamb. “It takesh genyush to be a first-clash heel,” I said. The opposite doorjamb suddenly did the funniest thing. It split into four doorjambs with a Gladys standing beside each one. Each Gladys had a kind of accusing and hurt look, and each one said, “It isn’t right to hate someone like that. It just isn’t right.” Somebody pulled a curtain over the scene.

I awoke the next morning inside a giant object that throbbed in a million places. Reaching upward with one hand, I felt the object; it was my head. There was a sudden crashing noise by my ear. I forced open one eye and saw Gladys clinking a creamer against a coffee cup. She was in a dressing gown and had a paper under her left arm. I saw a picture and the familiar face of Wilfred and grabbed the paper. The story was all over page one. Mrs. Long was returning to England, it said. I threw the paper into a corner, got up, and took my head down to the studio—stopping off at a bar on the way.

It was four days before George came back to work. The first trumpet had taken over for him, and they’d gotten along as best they could. George had a lot of fast talking to do up front, and they put him on probation. He came into the studio in time for the two o’clock session—it was a Tuesday, I remember. I was downstairs in the cutting room, trying to get up a game for that night. George stood in the doorway for I don’t know how long before we noticed him. He was well oiled. There were a few “Hi ya, George!” calls from the gang, but he didn’t seem to hear them.

“Wilfred is going to sing for us,” he said.

“You mean Louis Donet?” I asked.

Everybody laughed … everybody, that is, except George. He fixed me with a baleful glare, and the laughter died in self-conscious splutters. After that, we always referred to Louis Donet as Wilfred whenever George was around.

Donet was signed by Brunswick to do five platters starting the first of the following month—November, it was. Nothing was said about Wilfred Long’s unexpired contract. I don’t believe he fooled anyone in the front office; it was more likely that they’d been reading the papers.

While we were waiting for him to put in his appearance at the studio, the news was released that he’d been engaged to do a concert at Carilon Hall, a place referred to in the trade as “… where the dowagers dangle.” We all figured he was cashing in on his trial publicity but had to admit it was good box office. The hall was sold out two weeks in advance.

I collared George the day before the concert and showed him a copy of the program and two tickets I’d managed to wangle from Bennie, the scalper.

“Sorry, Felix,” he said. “I’ve had enough. You can’t touch him.”

This was very quiet for George, so I played my trump and opened the program. “Look,” I said, “he’s going to sing ‘Sylvia’ and here, ‘Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life’ and …”

George grabbed the program.

“With that voice it’ll be murder,” I goaded him. “We’ve been waiting too long to miss the payoff.”

“Do you think we could get the concession selling the rotten tomatoes?” George asked, returning the program.

“I’ll meet you at Vincentes at seven tomorrow night,” I said.

He nodded and went off down the hall.

It started to rain about five o’ clock the next afternoon, and both of us were soaked by the time we got to the hall. It had been George’s bright idea to walk. The rain didn’t seem to have cut the crowd any, though. Carilon Hall was filled with all that tinsely chitter-chitter-chitter that usually accompanies a gathering of the intelligentsia. We barely got into our balcony seats before the house lights dimmed, turning off the small talk. The curtains parted, showing a big Steinway, and a pianist by the name of Torrell came on stage and took his seat. There was a slight wait, and then Wilfred appeared from the wings. A scattered wisp of applause echoed through the house, and he bowed. The pianist struck the opening chords of “Sylvia,” and Wilfred began to sing—I mean, Louis Donet began to sing. This voice and this stage personality didn’t belong to Wilfred Long, not the Wilfred Long I’d known. We could see the dowagers in their plush boxes below us lift their lorgnettes and lean forward as he delivered those low, vibrant, passionate notes. You could almost count the delicious shivers running up and down their fat spines.

Well, we had to admit it: he was good. No … he was better than good. He was tremendous. He had stage presence, and that voice … ah, that voice. Where in hell had he found those pagan pipes?

During the intermission, we stayed in our seats. George was leaning back with his eyes closed. “You know,” he said, “when I close my eyes and try to forget it’s that bastard singing, I almost enjoy myself.” He opened his eyes and looked at me without lifting his head. I had to turn away. Unrequited hate is as terrible to witness as unrequited love.

Overnight, Louis Donet was in. Brunswick put him on a long-term contract after reading the morning paper reviews; he was booked solid for two years in advance. Then he married Eugenia Moran, and they left on a combined tour and honeymoon in Europe. They were gone five months. During that time, we slid back into our accustomed rut at the studio. You know how it is with a regular job—one month looks just like any other.

Wilfred returned to us on a Monday. I came into the office about eleven o’clock that morning and passed Radcliffe’s door; it was open just a crack. Inside, I could hear Radcliffe arguing with a vaguely familiar voice. “I will have it or else,” the vaguely familiar voice said, and Wilfred burst out of the office, slamming the door behind him.

I went into my cubicle and called Radcliffe. “Well?” I said.

“So you’ve been peeking in keyholes again,” he growled.

“We have a Monday morning special on murders,” I told him. “Two for the price of one. What is it our prima donna will have or else?”

“He will have a special orchestra for his recordings!” Radcliffe shouted, and slammed the receiver down.

I looked at the phone and thought of what this would do to George. An open slap in the face—it would break him.

It did.

When George came back from his three-week bender, he didn’t have a job. I offered to help him, but he turned me down with the same damn quotation from Shakespeare and just disappeared. There wasn’t even a farewell party. Just blooey! A little man by the name of Feldman was imported from Chicago to take over. Damn good musician and a nice guy, too, but he just didn’t seem to fill George’s shoes.

I heard from some of the crowd that George had gone back to Cincinnati and returned to his old job of piano accompanist for a local symphonic group. They said he was doing a little teaching on the side. After a while, we put him in the back of our minds.

Things were pretty rocky for me at about that time. Sales had hit a terrible skid, and I was receiving my share of the blame as it filtered down from the top. Our full sales chart looked like a profile of the Matterhorn, and it seemed I was the only one who’d admit what was wrong. I believe this was because I was the only one around the office who hadn’t made a foolish prediction about this new “fad,” radio. Odds had been given quite freely that radio wouldn’t last more than six months—then a year—then two years. “Who wants to sit at home and listen to music?” they said. Now the betting was on how long we could stay in business.

I gave the company another year to last at the outside and decided to quit the ship. This decision was abetted by an offer from Rheinhardt & Sellars, the San Francisco advertising firm, and a different kind of an offer that I had made to Lisa Engman the night before. The answer to both offers was “Yes.”

Radcliffe came into my office that morning wearing a face like ten years of ulcers. “Jacobsen,” he said. (He usually called me Felix.) “Jacobsen, you’ve got to do something about this publicity. It’s this lousy publicity that’s killing our sales.” (Evidently he’d just come down from the directors’ meeting.)

I stood up, picked the wire basket full of flimsies from the previous day’s copy off the desk, and placed it on his head—hat fashion. It slid down over one eye, and he stood there in a shower of onionskin paper, mouth hanging open, while I put on my hat and walked out the door. I’ll wager that was the most silent resignation they’d ever had—nothing but the slither of paper.

Lisa and I were married and in San Francisco in two weeks. It was the wisest move I ever made. A man doesn’t really appreciate life until he’s married and has a family. (Two boys and a girl.)

Three years kind of whizzed by, and one Friday I had to go to Portland to install a new branch manager there. In Portland, I crossed paths with Wilfred again. The first thing I saw as I drove uptown from the depot was a scare-face poster announcing Louis Donet, world-famed baritone, at the Civic Auditorium. “Saturday and Sunday,” it said. This was Sunday.

I had a damnable time getting a ticket, but finally I remembered Susy Paulus, drama editor on The Journal. I’d fixed her up with some tickets once in New York. She had just one.

It was a half hour to curtain time when I got to the auditorium. I felt slightly foolish among all those strangers—digging up old memories. Opening the program, I glanced down it, really not seeing anything until a name leaped out and almost smashed me senseless. “George Bates, accompanist.” I couldn’t believe it. Things still were hazy when the program started. To this day I can’t remember the music. The whole thing was a jumble of lights and faces.

Wilfred looked the same, but I was shocked at the change in George. He was thin, very thin, and his eyes held a haunted, almost feverish look. His playing hadn’t suffered—he had the same nimble, talented fingers—but that face.

After the show, I went backstage. I saw George standing in the hallway, smoking a cigarette, and was a little at a loss on how to greet him. Finally, I walked up and stuck out my hand.

“George, you old son-of-a-gun,” I said. “Long time no see.”

He dropped his cigarette, and the look on his face was almost pitiful. The old memories must have flooded back all in one big wave.

“Felix,” he muttered as if he couldn’t believe it. “Felix, boy, where’ve you been all these years?” He put his hand on my shoulder. His eyes were bright.

“Oh, around,” I said, and gestured with my hand. “Donet in there?” I nodded toward the door.

“If you mean that bastard Wilfred Long,” he said, “yes, he’s in there.” George took my arm. “Come on. Let’s go get us a drink and pick up the loose ends.”

Before we could start, the dressing room door opened, and Wilfred stood there in a mandarin dressing gown. He started to speak to George in his same old condescending manner.

“George, how many times must I tell you that the audience pays to hear me sing, not to listen to your piano playing? You deliberately tried to drown me out in the third stanza of my first number tonight. I won’t …”

He saw me for the first time. “Hello, Felix,” he said (just like that) and turned back to George. “Don’t forget it next time.” He closed the door.

George and I went out and found an all-night speak on Third Avenue. We crawled into a little booth with a curtain across the front. As we sat down, I noticed that George’s face was as gray as the bar mop that had been left on the table. I ordered two double scotches out of habit, and when the waiter brought them, sat there toying with my glass. George still hadn’t spoken since we’d left the auditorium. Abruptly, he looked up at me and grinned. It was the old George, that grin. I breathed a sigh of relief. I hadn’t realized how tense I’d been.

“You’re wondering why I’m working for that SOB and why I take that stuff,” he said. He moved his glass in a little circle in its sloppings and looked down at it. “Well, it’s this way: I’m waiting for him to make a slip and go back to Wilfred Long for just one second. He knows it, too. He can’t go on forever. I’ll be there when it happens to hang it on him for his first wife, for myself, and for all the others—there’ve been plenty.” He laughed bitterly, picked up his drink, and gulped it.

His laugh frightened me—the suppressed venom in it and that quavering overtone which is next to madness. I searched for something to change the subject. “How’s Gladys?” I asked.

The glass dropped out of his hand and clattered onto the table. He ignored it and looked past me.

“Dead,” he whispered.

“Oh.”

I didn’t know what else to say, and there was a long silence.

“She had a cancer,” he added. “That was almost two years ago. I couldn’t afford good doctors.”

I had to take George home to his hotel room that night, and it was almost like old times. Only there was no Gladys waiting for us at the door. It filled me with deadening nostalgia. When I’d tucked him in, I went out and got myself plastered good.

The next day I had a lot of business to do explaining things to our new manager, and I didn’t get a chance to see George or Wilfred before they left for Seattle.

It was a month later and I was back home when I learned that George had died in Chicago. I was reading a copy of Variety on my way to the office and almost skipped over the item. His name wasn’t even in the headline. The only reason there was a story was because he’d been Donet’s accompanist. The obit said he’d had a heart attack.

I was in pretty rotten shape for work that day. George had been … well, I’d thought a lot of him. I found out the funeral was to be in his hometown and wired a Cincinnati florist. One of the saddest damn feelings I ever had, sending those flowers.

It’s funny how you pick up the loose ends on a story such as this one. Reading about George’s death caused me unhappiness—oh, it had been deep enough—but when you’re alive, you soon forget about the dead. They come back to you only when they’re prompted by some little thing with which you’ve associated the one who’s gone. George had faded out of my mind, and I hadn’t thought about him for six months when one day down at the office …

It was one of those bright San Francisco days, and I felt less like working than … well, than almost anything. But I had the Farber Fisheries copy to get out, and it had to be done. My secretary interrupted the second skull session over the layouts.

“There’s a man here to see you about a fine arts campaign,” she said.

I looked at the card she handed me. “Reuben M. Feldman.” The name didn’t mean anything at first, and then it clicked. Feldman, the fellow who’d taken over when George got the sack. I dismissed the gang and told her to send Feldman in.

It was the same fellow, all right. And the funny part of it was, he didn’t recognize me. I was merely another advertising executive and had been patted into the conventional shape—a little thicker here and grayer there.

Feldman came bouncing across the room on the balls of his feet. “How do you do?” he said.

“Hello, Reub,” I greeted him, rising from my chair.

He stopped in midstride and took a closer look. I could see he recognized me but couldn’t remember my name.

“Felix Jacobsen,” I said.

“Felix Jacobsen,” he repeated. “Brunswick, wasn’t it?”

“Sure,” I said, motioning toward a chair. “Business can wait. Sit down and give me the news from the big burg.”

He sat down in the leather chair across the desk from me. “Well, I don’t know where to start. How long’s it been?”

“I’d hate to say,” I said, and we both grinned.

“You hear about George Bates?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“And you remember Louis Donet, of course.”

Did I remember Louis Donet?

“He and the Moran just got divorced,” Feldman said.

“No! When’d that happen?”

“Shortly after Bates died. She went to Reno.”

“Where’s Donet now?”

“Down in Florida someplace. He’s singing tenor in a road show. Another dame … and you know the romantic parts those tenors get.”

“He can’t sing tenor,” I said.

“You’re right,” Feldman agreed. “I’ve heard him, and you’re right. Such music shouldn’t be, but he does it. He sings Pagliacci. You wouldn’t believe it. A second Caruso he thinks he is yet. The new blonde thinks tenors are wonderful, though.”

“He change his name?” I asked.

“No, but you should see him. He’s shaved off his beard. Remember the beard? And what with no hair on top, he’s a sight to scare little kiddies. He’s got some more weight, too. Looks like Humpty Dumpty. The people are laughing themselves sick.” Feldman threw up his hands and laughed.

I had a great reunion with Feldman. We hadn’t known each other too well, but we’d known all the same people. It was like meeting each one of them again. I took him home to dinner, and the kids loved him. He knew some stories about a little pig who wanted to grow up and scrub the pigpen bright and shiny; the pig became toothbrush bristles. It shocked Lisa, but the kids loved it. I was really sorry to see him go.

Well, the years went by as they do. There were … let me see, about seven, I’d guess. I remember this day very well, though. It was a Friday, and I’d been up the whole damn night with Hank—he’s the youngest. I was reading the paper on the way to work, or at least I was pretending to read it. One of the pictures on an inside page caught my eye. There was a face in it that looked familiar in spite of the German uniform. “Reich Musik Führer Wilfred Long at the opening of the Berlin opera season,” the caption said.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” I thought. “So he’s changed his name back to the original.” The fact that he was tied up with the national socialists and that new chancellor, Hitler, didn’t seem strange at all. I guess I’d gotten to the stage where nothing Wilfred did could surprise me. My education had started abruptly the day he’d burst into the studio and bowled George over. Good old George.

I put the whole thing out of my mind, and there followed some years when the past just became more remote. I didn’t think about Wilfred again until the spring of 1942. We were invited to a cocktail party that evening. Lisa and I hadn’t been out of the house since before the war, so we hired a YWCA girl to sit with the kids and decided to make a night of it. The party was at Lawrence Coulard’s. He’s an executive with a pineapple import company we handle.

It was a bracing spring night with just a little breeze coming in from the bay and maybe a touch of fog in the air. We put the car top down and enjoyed the breeze. The Coulards live out toward Bolinas—quite a drive, but it didn’t seem as though it was any time at all before we were there. At that, we were late. Lights and noise were bubbling out of the house. We parked the car at the end of a long line, got out, and walked up the stone steps and through the open doors. The butler took our wraps and announced us to a room that seemed to pay no attention. I noticed Lawrence coming toward us down a hall. He grinned and waved his hand.

Suddenly I was startled by a voice calling my name. “Felix! Felix, dear boy!”

I turned around, and there was Eugenia Moran plowing her way across the room with a drink in one bejeweled hand. She looked a good deal older and somewhat more painted than I remembered, but there was no mistaking that long, lovely face.

“Felix, it’s been so long,” she said as she came up. “But perhaps I shouldn’t mention that. Hello, Lisa.”

Eugenia grabbed my arm and began dragging me toward the punch bowl. I made futile signs to Lisa, but she waved and wandered away with Coulard. She knew all about Eugenia Moran. I finally wound up in an alcove corner with the ex–Mrs. Donet. She still had her grip on my arm.

“Felix, where have you been keeping yourself?” she demanded. “I was back in New York last month and saw all sorts of our old friends. They all asked about you, but of course I couldn’t tell them a thing.”

Like hell, I thought.

“My, you still look so handsome,” she rattled on. “Time hasn’t changed you a bit. Still the same old dashing Felix.”

She broke off her monologue, put a hand to her hair, and looked at me in what she must have imagined was an arch manner. It was my cue, I suppose, to say she hadn’t changed a bit either. I decided to break it up by being politely rude.

“Say, whatever happened between you and Wilfred Long or Louis Donet or whatever you want to call him?” I asked.

Eugenia pouted. “You’re a rude boy,” she said. “But I adore you anyway.” She reached out and patted my cheek with that cold, diamond-studded hand. “So I’ll tell you.”

Looking out the window beside us, she paused for a long minute. When she began to speak, it was as though another person had control of her body; her voice and manner both changed.

“We were in Chicago, you know,” she said. “Louis had just finished his engagement there. It was a dreary night—rainy and cold.” She shivered. “Louis went up to the room, and I stayed in the bar to have a nightcap with George. Poor boy, he grieved so over his wife’s death. Drank constantly. He got quite drunk that night and kept referring to Louis as Wilfred. He swore a great deal—really dreadful words. I didn’t know what to do. Finally, I left him and went upstairs.”

She pursed her lips before continuing.

“Louis was lying on the bed with all his clothes on. He looked … well, he wasn’t a handsome man, you know. He’d opened his belt and thrown back his coat. I sat down at the dressing table to take off my dress. But it was rather difficult—buttoned in the back. It was too late to call a maid, so I asked Louis if he would unbutton me.”

Eugenia paused again, and when she continued, her voice was lower. “Only I said, ‘Wilfred, will you come unbutton me, please?’”

She was silent for so long a time that I thought she wasn’t going to continue.

“Yes,” I prompted.

“That’s all,” she said. “I heard the bed spring croak and waited. After a few minutes, I noticed that there was no sound in the room. I turned around, and Louis was gone. I never saw him again. I didn’t learn until the next morning that George had died in the bar. His heart, you know. I waited several weeks and went to Reno. Louis and I hadn’t been getting on so well.”

She lifted her hands and stared at her fingers. “I often wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t called him Wilfred. I feel quite guilty sometimes. Perhaps he wouldn’t have gone to Germany and become a filthy Nazi.”

“Perhaps,” I agreed. “But who can say?”

Well, that’s about all there is to Wilfred’s story—all but the concluding item, which had to wait until the war was over to bring all those things back to me. It was a story in yesterday’s paper that told how Wilfred Long, awaiting trial for treason, hanged himself in his cell with a strip torn from his blanket. Perhaps there’s a moral in this somewhere, but I really didn’t intend that there should be. I just keep going over this thought that ran through my head when I read that story. I thought, Well, Louis Donet is dead.

The Iron Maiden

To Pete Waller, coming across the park toward it at 1:28 on a Saturday morning, the Belroc Arms looked sinister—which he knew meant left-handed, and he felt all left-handed at the moment, on a fool’s errand.

The building towered as a black outline punctured by three golden squares—windows of an apartment on the corner. Not Hal Kerrigan’s apartment, which was toward the center. All the windows were dark there. This fact almost stopped Pete, but he remembered the vow of friendship: “Anytime, pal … anytime.”

Pete took a deep breath, swallowed. Haloed streetlights fringed the park, and there was a wet smell of dead leaves around him. From up the street on his left came the brush-whirr-rasp of a mechanical sweeper growing louder, muffled motor whispers echoing against the stone buildings. Pete darted across the street, used the key Kerrigan had given him, took the elevator to the top, and let himself into the apartment.

The door made a thump-click as it closed behind him. The room was sonorous with sleep-breathing, and he tried to determine if it was one person breathing or two. One, he thought. He started across the familiar room, collided at shin level with a harsh edge that made a crash of sound. He barked, “Sonofabitch!” and rubbed his shin.

The sleep-breathing stopped. Kerrigan’s voice came out of the dark: “Whassat?”

“I bumped my shin,” Pete said. “Who moved the damn table? Uh … you awake, Hal?”

“Who’s ’ere?”

“It’s me, Pete.”

“Pete?”

“Yeah, Pete. Is there … I mean, are you alone?”

“Chrissakes, Pete. You’re about as subtle as a tank. What if I had a … guest?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

“I oughta take away your damn key.”

There came a scratching, fluttering sound, rattling of a lamp chain, a click. Warm yellow light flooded the room, striking golden glints on a red wall. The light revealed an oblong living room jammed with a clutter of both living room and bedroom furniture. Clothing on hangers had been thrown over most surfaces. A rolled rug lay bent across the back of a basket chair.

In the center, crowded on all sides by the furniture, stood an oversized square bed with golden covers over black silk sheets. Sitting upright in the bed, his hairy chest bare, was the object of Pete’s visit, a darkly tanned black Irishman with blue eyes and hunting hawk features—Hal Kerrigan.

Pete stared around at the mess—walls, color scheme. It was all different from his last visit less than a week ago. Two of the walls were now red, two black, the ceiling golden. Everything had been grey and cream before. Chinese brocade draperies of black with red-and-gold dragons covered the windows at the end of the room. The dragons undulated to a breeze pouring in from an open window. Through the clutter of furniture, Pete could see little wedges and trapezoids of a grey-and-gold rug.

Kerrigan reached for a folding alarm clock tucked onto an end table beside his bed with a full pipe rack, a bronze tobacco humidor, and a pair of brown slippers. He peered at the clock, owl-eyed, and muttered, “One thirty-four! For Chrissakes, Pete!”

Pete hobbled farther into the room, still rubbing his shin, then stopped, confronted by a tall mirror leaning against a chair. The mirror was pitiless, revealing a tired, hatless man with dun brown hair, brown eyes, a rather round face with a small nose and skin that looked decidedly pink. It always looked pink—baby skin. He tore himself away from the mirror, flopped down on a corner of the bed.

“What’s all the mess?” he asked.

“I met a dame—interior decorator. What you doing bumbling in here at this ungodly hour?”

Pete looked up at the black marble fireplace behind the bed, noting something that hadn’t been changed by Hal’s interior decorator—a pair of holstered .45 automatics with Marine Corps insignia, each with a name burnt into the leather: Pete and Hal. They always struck him as out of place in this room.

“Hal, I got a problem,” Pete said.

Kerrigan fumbled an open pack of cigarettes from the floor beside the bed, lit one, and tossed the pack across the golden blanket toward Pete, who ignored it.

“What’s her name?” Kerrigan asked.

Abruptly, Pete got up, threaded his way across to the automatics above the fireplace, returned to the bed with the one bearing his name, and began field stripping it. His fingers worked with a casual, deceptive rapidity: snick, click, swish, click, swish, click, snick.

Kerrigan smoked silently, knowing there was no hurrying Pete in this mood.

Presently, the gun lay disassembled, spread out on the blanket. Pete began reassembling it, spoke without looking up. “You’re in bed kinda early tonight.”

“We were at a house party until 4:00 AM yesterday, and decided to play some tennis. Afterward we went sailing, and I just didn’t get to bed until 9:00 PM.”

“Whatta life you lead!”

“What’s the problem, Pete? Tell your old Uncle Hal. You didn’t come all the way up here at this hour to show me how fast you can strip that .45.”

“I don’t know how to say it,” Pete said.

“You got some babe in trouble?”

“Nothing like that.”

“Is it your job? I could have my old man transfer you anywhere in the company you—”

“No! I’m happy in the shipping department. If I learn enough, maybe I can be boss there someday, but …”

“You wanta be promoted tomorrow?”

“Hal, you embarrass me. Sometimes I’m …” Pete broke off, shrugged.

“You sorry you saved my skin there in that rice paddy?”

“Don’t say that! I’d have …”

“You’d’ve done it for anybody, I know. But you did it for me. What you want, Pete?” He waved an arm. “Take it.”

“All I need’s some advice … from your experience. I just … don’t know. Maybe I better skip it.” He started to get up.

Kerrigan snaked out an arm, dragged him back. “Oh, no you don’t! You don’t wander in here in the middle of the damn night and then leave without saying why.”

Pete shook his head. “This is … well … I dunno.”

“Look! Petey boy, it’s Hal. What’s mine is yours. Anytime. Advice? That I provide at no extra cost. So give.”

“Hal, I dunno what to do about her.”

“Which her?”

“Virgie.”

“Virgie?”

Pete took out his wallet, extracted a photograph. He gazed at it a moment. It showed a blonde young woman in a bikini, proportions about 40-28-36. He sighed. She didn’t make him feel sinister at all—just left-handed.

Kerrigan pulled the photograph from Pete’s hand, whistled softly. “Mmmmmmmmmm,” he said, then peered more closely at the photo. “Oh, no! Not that Virgie!”

“I thought you’d recognize her,” Pete said. “She’s in shipping, too, as you know, and …”

“Ahh, Pete.” Kerrigan threw the photograph face up on the golden blanket.

Pete stared at him. “You … uh … know her?”

“Before I went out and got myself that nice green uniform. I dated her once, just once. I know others who’ve tried. Give it up, Pete. That’s the original iron maiden.”

“Hal, I just gotta …”

“You in love or some crazy thing?”

“Maybe. I guess so. I dunno.”

“That figures. With Virginia, you never know anything.”

“Hal, don’t say that. You don’t know what happened.”

“The hell I don’t! You went out on a date with her and afterwards a little parking somewhere and …”

“What’s unusual about that?”

“Wait a minute, son,” Kerrigan said. “You parked. One thing led to the next thing, and pretty soon you’re getting eager.”

Pete ran a finger under his collar.

“The dress came off,” Kerrigan said. “And the slip. They were easy. And then you ran into it.”

Pete stared at him, pale faced. “I didn’t know girls wore those things anymore,” he said. He didn’t ask himself how Hal knew about it.

“It’s the modern chastity belt, son,” Kerrigan said. “It’s called a foundation garment. You should come up into the store sometime and look around.”

Pete tried to swallow with a dry throat. He felt like a fool.

“It slowed everything down to a fumbling walk,” Kerrigan said. “She had time to think, and she changed her mind. That is what happened.”

“I dunno what to do about her,” Pete said.

“Drop her,” Kerrigan said. “That’s my free advice for tonight. Find yourself another doll.”

“I don’t know any other girls.”

“Pete, the world’s full of …” Kerrigan stopped, stared at Pete. “Hey, fella, what about all those stories you fed us in the bull sessions? The babe in Passaio, the little wench in Amegate?”

“Hal, you know I was the youngest guy in the outfit. I lied about my age to get in. You know that.”

“A terrifying thought occurs to me,” Kerrigan said. “Answer me, friend: are you a virgin?”

Pete blushed.

Kerrigan slapped his forehead with his palm. “Holy Colonel Magee!”

“Okay, laugh!”

“Pete, I’m not laughing, believe me. I’m sad.”

“What am I gonna do?”

Kerrigan sighed. “In a thing like this, one cannot hold one’s friend by the hand through the entire operation. You know that. However …” He shook his head. “Does it have to be Virgie?”

“Yes!” Pete looked away. He knew he had spoken too loudly, betrayed himself, but he wasn’t quite sure what he had betrayed.

Kerrigan stubbed out his cigarette, said: “Better …” He paused. “… let us say more experienced men than you have tried and failed.”

“I still …”

“Okay, okay.” Kerrigan held up a hand, bent his head. “Say no more. A friend comes for advice; I give advice.” He shook another cigarette from the package, lit it, stared through the smoke. “Have you tried night swimming?”

“Hell, I thought of that. She’s afraid of what might be in the water, she says.”

“In the water?”

“Frogs and stuff. You know.”

“Well, have you tried just right out asking her—yes or no?”

“Aw, come off it, Hal!”

“Yeah.” Kerrigan stared at his cigarette. “There’s gotta be some way to get her out of that armor.” Presently, he asked: “Did I ever tell you the camera ploy?”

“Camera ploy?”

“Somewhere in all this stuff’s a 35-millimeter camera. You take that camera … lots of dolls are exhibitionists, see. Tell ’er you’re the arty type and you …”

“Nude pictures? For Chrissakes, Hal! I couldn’t.”

“Did you come here for my advice?”

“Well … yes.”

“Okay. Here’s what you do. You take her to dinner—some quiet place with atmosphere, candles, wine, that sort of thing. Take your time over …”

“Hal, I couldn’t ask her to …”

“Just listen, son. You introduce her to the idea very slowly. It’s almost as though it’s her idea. Tell her how much you admire her beauty. Everything inspirational.”

Pete nodded. There was something hypnotic about the flow of Kerrigan’s words.

“Tell her her hair is like brilliant sunshine,” Kerrigan said.

“Yeahhhh … brilliant sunshine.”

“Photogenic, you understand? Say there’s something French about her. Aiyah! The French have a way with them, understand?”

“Her grandfather’s French Canadian. She told me.”

“All the better. Now, for dinner, I know just the place—that Gypsy Cellar over on 64th. Violins, the works. Arrangements, lad, arrangements—it’s all in your arrangements. Tell her you admire the gypsy in her.”

“Yeahhh.”

“You’re at dinner, soft music, soft cushions—tell her she’s a lovely, natural thing. Natural, got that?”

“Yeah, natural.”

“Explain that only the natural things of the world are worth having.”

“When do I spring the camera?”

“Easy, lad. You have to go slow, but slow on these things.”

“Okay, but …”

“After dinner, you adjourn to one of those jazz joints across town, Ferreti’s or Johnson’s Tub or one of those pizza cellars out by the university. There’s one called the Sweet Spot has a good combo. Nothing like hot jazz to get a woman in the mood.”

“Jazz, okay. Then what?”

“You bring her back here.”

“Here? You mean here in your …”

“You’ve got your key. I’ll be gone next weekend. The place’ll be all straightened up by then.”

“I spring the camera then, huh?”

“Didn’t I tell you slow? You gotta be cautious as a cat, son. I’ll have the cleaning woman lay a fire in the fireplace. Good music—you know how to work the stereo over there. You get the fire going and stand her over by the fireplace while you …”

“Stand?”

“I said stand. Don’t interrupt. Then you sit down on the floor and admire her. You just admire. From a distance.”

“How far?”

“Far enough that you don’t look too eager. While you’re admiring, you use your hands like a frame—make a little square with ’em and stare at her through it. All the time you’re telling her how much you’d like a picture to treasure.”

“I got a picture; the one she gave me.”

“But not a natural picture, something to express the real Virgie, got that?”

“I think so.”

“She’s standing here against the fireplace, and you tell her the setting fits her perfectly except for one thing.”

“What thing?”

“The clothes, lad. And if she gets out of that armor, you’re on your own.”

Pete shook his head. “Hal, I dunno. You really think this’ll work?”

“It never fails.”

“But what if she …”

“Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.” He glanced at his bedside clock. “I don’t know about you, but I need shut-eye. Let’s sleep on it. You can sack out here with me.”

Pete heaved a deep sigh. “Okay. I guess you oughta know about these things.”

Presently, darkness again enfolded Hal Kerrigan’s apartment. The Chinese brocade draperies rustled faintly to the breeze.

Pete cleared his throat. “Hal?”

“Mmmmph.”

“Hal?”

“Yeah?”

“When you’re with a girl … I mean, what’s it really like?”

“Oh, for … go to sleep, son. Trust your Uncle Hal and go to sleep.”

O O O

The sun came up. The sun went down. Up, down—seven times, and once again it was Sunday with sunshine touching the grey-and-gold rug at 8:18 AM.

The telephone rang. Pete answered it. He felt dopey with lack of sleep … and angry. “Hullo? Oh, hullo, Hal. No, I’m alone. Okay, see you in a few minutes.”

Pete dressed and flopped down on the grey semicircle of the davenport in front of the black marble fireplace. He stared moodily at the dead ashes in the fireplace, shifted his attention to two empty wine glasses on an oval coffee table at his left. A sneer curled his lips.

The outer door opened. Hal breezed in, throwing his hat across the room. “Hiya, Petey boy! Whatta weekend! How’d you make out?”

Silence.

Kerrigan threw his coat over a chair, sat down across the davenport’s curve from Pete. “You all worn out, friend?”

“Sure.”

“Wanta tell your old Uncle Hal?”

“No.”

“Gentlemen don’t tell; that’s the boy.”

“Hah!”

“Whatta you mean, hah?”

“Just hah!”

“Didn’t you follow the program?”

“Program!”

“You know, dinner at …”

“Dinner at her place with her family: brussel sprouts, tuna and noodles.”

“Oh?”

“Great dinner. They wanted to know how well I knew you, the boss’s son and everything. And Virgie told them about the rice paddy thing. How’d she find out about that?”

Kerrigan shrugged. “My old man, probably. The whole store knows it. Don’t think anything about that. He likes you.”

“She even knew about the .45s over your mantle, said a girlfriend told her.” He glared at Kerrigan. “Is that right?”

Kerrigan raised his right hand. “So help me. It must’ve been the jewelry buyer, Miss Franchot.”

“Yeah, okay. So I told them it wasn’t really sentimental, only a sort of joke. And I told them how much dough you won betting on me.”

“Stripping the .45, you mean. Sure. Remember the time we took the five hundred iron men from Sergeant Keeler? Man! The look on his face!”

“Yeah, I told them.”

“Keeler had a good boy going up against you, too—old Krouty. But man, you took him by eight seconds.” Kerrigan took a deep breath. “So it was a great dinner with her folks. Well …”

“Just great. Family staring at me all through dinner. How much do I make a year? What with the boss’s son being my best friend, my prospects must look pretty good, huh? Taxes are getting worse, though, aren’t they?” Pete leaned forward. “Hal, did you know that a set of good living room furniture costs upwards of six hundred dollars?”

“It was pretty bad, eh?”

“It was awful.”

“Did you go out afterward?”

“To the Sweet Spot, sure.”

Hal grinned. “They’re great, aren’t they? Man! That sax sound. They’re laced with it—a real coal-colored noon beat.”

A touch of animation replaced the stony glare on Pete’s face. “They’re pretty good. I’ll give you that.”

“She liked it, huh?”

“She liked it.”

“So you stayed awhile and then came up here.”

Silence.

“You did come back here?”

“Sure, we came up here—the fire, the stereo, the hands, the whole bit.”

“So?”

“She told me I shouldn’t get dirty ideas from you.” He glared at Kerrigan. “How’d she know about that?”

Kerrigan gulped. “Pete, I swear to you, I never …”

The glare continued.

“I swear,” Kerrigan said. “So help me, you saved my life. I wouldn’t lie to you about this. I never.”

“Then you must have some dame who’s doing a lot of talking.”

“That’s always possible.”

Pete sank back, stared at the black fireplace. He hated his own feelings of inadequacy, his suspicions, this apartment, Hal, life, the store—everything except Virgie.

“Now that you’ve given up on Virgie,” Kerrigan said, “maybe I could fix you up with a cute little …”

“Who said I’ve given up?”

“Well, you just as much as implied …”

“I didn’t imply anything. She was absolutely right about you. I shouldn’t have tried that camera trick. It’s cheap.”

“That’s one of its big advantages.” Kerrigan shrugged. “But you did strike out!”

“And how I struck out!”

“But you didn’t give up?”

“Sic semper et cetera,” Pete said. “I’ll tell you—the lights in here were still down pretty low, the stereo was going, and I was sitting here feeling like a fool. So she came over and put her arms around me and said it was all right, she understood—men have these animal urges and everything.”

“Animal urges. That’s very good.”

“It was kind of sooty in here, those dark walls. I kissed her. Her lips were moist and …” He broke off, stared moodily at the fireplace.

“Well?”

“A funny thing: she shaped her mouth up funny, almost like a poodle and she made this little noise.”

“Noise? What noise?”

“It sounded like nusssss or ‘nice.’ So I kissed her again.”

“Yeahhhhh.”

“Pretty soon she’s saying, ‘Please, Please, Please.’”

“Yeahhhhh.”

Pete cleared his throat.

“So?” Kerrigan demanded.

“Oh, nothing.”

“Whatta you mean nothing?”

“Nothing.”

“Let me guess,” Kerrigan said. “Off came the dress and the slip and you ran into that armor again.”

Pete swallowed.

“Right?” Kerrigan asked.

Pete nodded disconsolately. “She’s saying, ‘Wait. No. Lemme think.’ And I’m trying to get that thing unfastened and it’s like it was put together with steel girders. I was all thumbs. I kept thinking if it was a .45 I could strip it, but this was too much.”

“What’d you say?” Kerrigan asked.

“Huh?”

“Just then, what’d you say?”

“What’d I say what?”

“About stripping a .45.”

“It was just a crazy thought. I was half nuts.”

“No, wait. You had an inspiration.”

“I did?”

Kerrigan leaped to his feet, grabbed one of the .45s from its holster over the mantle. He whirled, faced Pete. “You know what you’re gonna do?”

“At gun point?” Pete asked. “Are you crazy?”

“No, not this,” Kerrigan said. He put the gun back in its holster, returned his attention to Pete. “You’re gonna get one of these foundation garments. You’re gonna strap it onto a couple of pillows. And you, pal, you are going to practice field stripping that armor until you can get it off those pillows in nothing flat!”

O O O

Pete stared at the contraption on the floor of Kerrigan’s apartment. The thing was pink in a shade that clashed with the grey and gold of the rug beneath it. Pillows protruded from each end. Two straps stretched over a pillow at the top. Garter snaps dangled limply from the bottom. A zipper reached up the right side with hooks over it. Part of a similar hook-and-eye arrangement lay unfastened on the left with a flap turned back. This revealed a second layer underneath, which suggested with its crossing bands of elastic an illustrated anatomical section of muscle tissue.

The whole thing possessed an obscene hint of fibrous flesh, Pete decided. It looked dead in a horrible, decapitated way.

Kerrigan stood over it in a maroon robe, a martini in his left hand. He sipped the martini, reached out a foot, and rolled the contraption over. This revealed tight lacings all the way up the back. “Almost takes the heart out of a man,” he said. “You sure this is the same kind?”

Pete nodded.

He stood at the corner of the davenport, cracking his knuckles, knowing this betrayed his nervousness but unable to stop.

Kerrigan glanced at the moving hands, frowned. “What’s eating you? This is just something to disassemble. Think of the .45 and how you beat Krouty. Practice, that’s all. Speed.”

“That lady on the phone when we ordered it,” Pete said.

“She bother you?”

“I didn’t like the way she laughed. All those questions about size and color and price range and …”

“Why didn’t you just make up a size?”

“All I knew was to describe it,” Pete said. He blushed and hated himself for it.

“Take it easy, pal,” Kerrigan said. “We’ll just start in easy. Just get down there beside it and …”

“Maybe I should come back tonight and practice. I really shouldn’t take the day off this time of …”

“I ordered you to take the day off,” Kerrigan said. He downed the martini, put the glass aside. “You’re helping me on a very challenging problem.” He squatted beside the pillow-stuffed garment. “Come down here now, and let’s analyze this thing.” He touched one of the shoulder straps. “Y’know, these’d probably just pop right out if you yanked them. Give ’er a try.”

Pete dropped to his knees beside Kerrigan, said: “I don’t want to … well, tear it.”

“Yes, you do. You’re the rampaging male. She’ll love it.”

“You sure?”

“Sure I’m sure. Go ahead and try it.”

Pete put out his right hand, withdrew it.

“Close your eyes and imagine it’s Virgie inside it,” Kerrigan said. “Go ahead.”

Pete wet his lips with his tongue, caught the strap in a desperate grip while Kerrigan held the pillow. Pete wrenched the strap. There came a small tearing sound, and it pulled out of its binding seam.

“Strong hands, that’s what it takes,” Kerrigan said. “Now, how about those snaps?”

Pete felt the challenge of the problem grip him. He took a deep breath, bent forward more intently. “Maybe if I roll them between my fingers they might just pop open.” He demonstrated. “Hey! It works!”

Kerrigan got to his feet, said: “What the mind of man can do, the mind of man can undo. Fasten that thing back together best you can while I get my watch. We’ll run a few time trials.” Presently, he returned carrying a stop watch, said: “I borrowed this from the store. We may as well do this scientifically. Don’t try for speed the first time. Just get the feel of the thing.”

Pete nodded, began popping snaps, working zippers. He crouched back on his heels when it was done. “How long?”

“A minute and fifty-four seconds. Let’s put ’er back together and try again.”

“I don’t like you calling it her,” Pete said.

“What else would you call such a thing?” Kerrigan asked. “Here, I’ll help you reassemble … it.”

“Okay!”

He went at it again … and again … and again. Kerrigan called time after the twenty-fifth run with the time down to thirty-seven seconds. “That’s enough for today,” he said. “Take my car and go for a drive or something. Think about it. I’ll see you tomorrow night after work.”

“Thirty-seven seconds,” Pete said. “That’s not bad.”

“Not bad, not good. It’s just a beginning. See you tomorrow.”

“It looks kind of … used,” Pete said.

“It’ll look worse before we’re through,” Kerrigan said.

By Thursday, with the time down to nine seconds, the contraption did indeed look worse, Pete decided. It looked wilted, and frayed cloth showed around the snaps. Both shoulder straps had been torn loose. Only one garter strap remained.

“What time is it?” Pete asked.

“Nine thirty-five. You getting tired?”

“Yeah.”

“Take a break. How you feeling generally?”

“My hands are tired.” Pete stood up, stretched. “I feel like I’ve unfastened that thing ten thousand times.”

“Almost five hundred,” Kerrigan said. “Think you can cut your time any more?”

“Gosh, Hal, I don’t see how. There’re just so many connections. I have to get each one.”

“You got this date with Virgie tomorrow night?”

“We’re going dancing at the lake.”

“You feel ready?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be.”

“Tell you what—knock off. Rest your hands. I think any more training’s just a waste of time. You can overtrain on a thing like this, you know.”

“I guess so.”

“You’re not scared, are you?”

Pete swallowed. “Maybe a little.”

“Don’t be, pal. You’ve got it made. Blitz! She won’t know what hit her.”

“I don’t like that kind of talk,” Pete said. He cleared his throat with a cough. “Hal, I been thinking. Maybe I shouldn’t do this.”

“What?”

“Well, it’s not really fair … kind of.”

“Fair! Is it fair what she’s been doing? Leading you right up to that armor and cutting you off?”

“Maybe it’s not her fault exactly.”

“Not her fault, he says. You think she really wants to stop?”

“Wellll … I dunno, maybe not.”

“You know damn well she doesn’t want you to stop.”

“I guess you’re right.”

“It’s your duty, Pete.” Kerrigan lowered his voice. “You’re really saving her from her inhibitions.”

“I guess you could look at it that way.”

“Think of how she’s teased you,” Kerrigan said.

“You really think she’s been teasing me?”

“I know she has.”

“Yeah! You could call it that.”

“It’s nothing else. Now you get in there and fight.” Kerrigan glanced around the apartment. “You want to use my place?”

“If it’s okay with you.”

“Be my guest. Be my guest.”

O O O

It was Saturday high noon in the apartment, and Pete reclined on the davenport in Kerrigan’s maroon robe. He dangled a torn length of pink strap in his left hand, studied it with a pursed-lip frown of concentration.

A hesitant knock sounded at the hall door.

Pete ignored it.

The knock was repeated.

Pete raised his head. “Yeah?”

“It’s me, Hal.” The voice sounded muffled, conspiratorial.

Pete stuffed the strap into a pocket of the robe. “Come on in.”

Kerrigan let himself in the front door, crossed to the davenport, and draped his coat over it. He leaned on the coat, looked down at Pete.

“Hi, Hal,” Pete said.

Kerrigan glanced around the apartment. It looked neat—everything in its place, nothing disarranged. He returned his attention to Pete, noted a smudge of lipstick across Pete’s neck.

“You’re looking pretty good,” Kerrigan said.

“Hal, we’re getting married,” Pete said.

Kerrigan’s lips moved without a sound, then: “You’re getting married?”

“Yeah.” Pete frowned up at him. “You sound like you don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“Oh, it’s a great idea. Great, great.”

“We think so.”

“What’ya been doing here all this time if you were just going to get married?” Kerrigan demanded.

“Are you sure you’re happy about this?” Pete asked. “You sound kind of funny.”

“I’m delighted! I’m overjoyed.”

“I was gonna ask you to be my best man.”

Kerrigan passed a hand across his eyes. “Sure, Pete. Sure.”

“I owe it all to you,” Pete said. “She was too inhibited to get married. I proposed every night last week, but she kept putting me off.”

Kerrigan pointed to the place on the rug where Pete had practiced disassembling the contraption. “You mean … while we were working with that … every night?”

“On the phone after we got through. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to go through with it.” Pete blushed.

“But you went through with it?”

Pete dropped his feet to the floor, sat up. A look of animation came over his face. “Hal, I watched the luminous second hand on your mantle clock. Hal, seven seconds! Think of it: seven seconds!”

“Yeah,” Kerrigan said. “I’m thinking.”