She said nothing. She didn't almost cry as she might have a month
before.
* * * * *
Brendel had appeared on their grid a year before, a dark, pugnacious
young man, jittering and nervous. "Clare Webster around?"
"Mother isn't here." Her mother collected men. She met them at drinking
clubs or collector meets. She gave them her grid card and took theirs,
making them promise to come see her. If a man came, she tacked his card
on her bulletin board. If he came twice or three times, she marked his
card with colored pencil.
Brendel twitched his shoulders. "I got the evening. Wanta have dinner,
kid?"
She was seventeen and tired of collecting china roosters and peach-can
labels. She was tired of seeing the same stupid people every day.
Somewhere there was someone handsome and perfect, and she had to find
him and become perfect too. She couldn't waste all her life being
stupid like her mother.
It took her two hours to see that Brendel was the perfect person. He
was handsome, aggressive, easy to be with. He quarreled all the time
and he even had a full-time job.
She married him. She dropped her little-girl collections and
diversions. She was no longer a formless adolescent. She was very
solid, very adult.
But the solidness had gone. She had found that Brendel's aggressiveness
masked fear; his quarrelsomeness masked insecurity. Worst, he had no
imagination. He plodded.
It had begun two weeks before. Brendel had come home from work tight
and tense. He tried eating, he tried opera and quarreling, he tried
exercises. Finally he said, "I'm gonna go see Latsker Smith. Wanta
come?"
"Who the hell's Latsker Smith?" Already she was sick of the opera
routine--and a little sick of Brendel.
"Drives a car. From Boston. Fella at the plant told me he's in
centercity."
* * * * *
Minutes later they gridded out of the suburban maze. They materialized
on a corner grid in centercity. There was no one on the dusty street.
There was no car near the gaunt brick building where Latsker Smith was
staying. They plopped on the doorstep.
Brendel fidgeted and talked. Latsker Smith was the son of a rich
industrialist. His father wouldn't support him unless he worked, and
Latsker wouldn't work. So he had to live on government non-employment
allowance. His pre-grid automobile and airplane were his only
diversions. Since he couldn't leave Boston by automobile, Boston
being walled up like any city by the streetless suburbs, he saved his
allowance until he could commercial-grid his car to another city.
There he raced and squealed and spun through the deserted streets
of centercity until he had saved enough to commercial-grid the car
elsewhere.
A throbbing split the air. A red splinter of car hurtled around the
corner and squealed to the curb. A tall, lank man unfolded, ignoring
them.
Brendel sprang to overwhelm him. He pulled him to the steps to make
introductions. But Latsker Smith peered absently at Pollony and she was
embarrassed that Brendel acted like an eager child confronting some
heroic figure from a dream.
"Latsker's pop got money." Brendel launched into his story again.