"She's fine."
"I mean as a date."
"Better than the car heater."
"Tim, you're a fool."
"When I was a kid," said Tim reflectively, "there used to be a female
siren in the movies. Her pet line used to be 'Kiss me, my fool!' Theda
Bara, I think. Before talkies. Now--"
"No, Tim--"
Another long silence.
"Now, Tim, you've simply _got_ to go!"
"Yeah, I know. You've convinced me."
"Then why aren't you going?"
He chuckled. "Look, you've convinced me. I can't stay so I'll go,
obviously. But now that we've covered this problem, let's drop the
subject for a while, huh?"
"Don't spoil a fine evening, Tim."
"Janet, what's with you, anyway?"
"What do you mean, 'what's with me?'"
"Just this. Somewhere up in the house is this oddball Maxwell who hides
out all the time. He's either asleep or busy. Anyway, he isn't here. Do
you have to report in, punch a time clock, tuck him in--or do you turn
into a pumpkin at the stroke of twelve?"
"Mr. Maxwell is paying me wages to keep house for him. That's all. Part
of my wages is my keep. But it doesn't entitle me to have full run of the
house or to bring guests in at midnight for a two-hour good-night
session."
"I'd like to tell this bird a thing or two," said Tim Fisher sharply. "He
can't keep you cooped up like--like--"
"Nobody is keeping me cooped up," she said. "Like what?"
"What?"
"You said 'like--'"
"Skip it. What I meant is that you can't moulder, Janet. You've got to
get out and meet people."
"I've been out and I've met people. I've met you."
"All to the good."
"Fine. So you invited me out, and I went. It was fun. I liked it. You've
asked me, and I've said that I'd like to do it again on Saturday. I've
enjoyed being kissed, and I'll probably enjoy it again on Saturday. So--"
"I'd think you'd enjoy a lot of it."
"Because my husband has been gone for five years?"
"Oh, now Janet--"
"That's what you meant, isn't it?"
"No. You've got me wrong."
"Tim, stop it. You're spoiling a fine evening. You should have gone
before it started to spoil. Now please put your smile on again and leave
cheerfully. There's always Saturday--if you still want it."
"I'll call you," he said.
The door opened once more and then closed. James took a deep breath, and
then stole away quietly to his own room.
By some instinct he knew that this was no time to intercept Mrs. Bagley
with a lot of fool questions.
* * * * *
To the surprise and puzzlement of young James Quincy Holden, Mr. Timothy
Fisher telephoned early upon the following evening. He was greeted quite
cordially by Mrs. Bagley. Their conversation was rambling and inane,
especially when heard from one end only, and it took them almost ten
minutes to confirm their Saturday night date. That came as another shock.
Well, not quite. The explanation bothered him even more than the fact
itself. As a further extension of his little mechanical mating process,
James had to find a place for the like of Jake Caslow and the women Jake
knew. None of them were classed in the desirable group, all of them were
among the leftovers. But of course, since none of them were good enough
for the 'good' people, they were good enough for one another, and that
made it all right--for them.
But Mrs. Bagley was not of their ilk. It was not right that she should be
forced to take a leftover.
And then it occurred to him that perhaps Mrs. Bagley was not really
taking the leftover, Tim Fisher, but instead was using Tim Fisher's
company as a means toward meeting a larger group, from which there might
be a better specimen. So he bided his time, thinking deeply around the
subject, about which he knew nothing whatsoever.
Saturday night was a repeat of Wednesday. They stayed out later, and upon
their return they took possession of the living room for at least an hour
before they started their routine about the going-home process. With
minor variations in the dialog, and with longer and more frequent
silences, it almost followed the Wednesday night script. The variation
puzzled James even more. This session went according to program for a
while until Tim Fisher admitted with regret that it was, indeed, time for
him to depart. At which juncture Mrs. Bagley did not leap to her feet to
accept his offer to do that which she had been asking him to do for a
half hour. Mrs. Bagley compounded the affair by sighing deeply and
agreeing with him that it was a shame that it was so late and that she,
too, wished that he could stay a little longer. This, of course, put them
precisely where they were a half hour earlier and they had to start the
silly business all over again.
They parted after a final fifteen-minute discussion at the front door.
This discussion covered Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and finally came to
agreement on Wednesday.
And so James Holden went to bed that night fully convinced that in a town
of approximately two thousand people--he did not count the two or three
hundred A.E.C.-College group as part of the problem--there were entirely
too few attractive leftovers from which Mrs. Bagley could choose.
But as this association grew, it puzzled him even more. For in his
understanding, any person forced to accept a second-rate choice does so
with an air of resignation, but not with a cheerful smile, a sparkle in
the eyes, and two hours of primping.
James sought the answer in his books but they were the wrong volumes for
reference of this subject. He considered the local Public Library only
long enough to remember that it carried a few hundred books suitable for
the A.E.C.-College crew and a thousand or so of second-hand culls donated
by local citizens during cleanup campaigns. He resorted to buying books
by mail through advertisements in newspapers and magazines and received a
number of volumes of medical treatises, psychological texts, and a book
on obstetrics that convinced him that baby-having was both rare and
hazardous. He read _By Love Possessed_ but he did not recognize the many
forms of love portrayed by the author because the volume was not
annotated with signs or provided with a road map, and he did not know
it when he read about it.
He went through the Kinsey books and absorbed a lot of data and graphs
and figures on human behavior that meant nothing to him. James was not
even interested in the incidence of homosexuality among college students
as compared to religious groups, or in the comparison between premarital
experience and level of education. He knew the words and what the words
meant as defined in other words. But they were only words and did not
touch him where he lived.
So, because none of the texts bothered to explain why a woman says Yes,
when she means No, nor why a woman will cling to a man's lapels and press
herself against him and at the same time tell him he has to go home,
James remained ignorant. He could have learned more from Lord Byron,
Shelley, Keats, or Browning than from Kinsey, deLee, or the "Instructive
book on Sex, forwarded under plain wrapper for $2.69 postpaid."
Luckily for James, he did not study any of his material via the medium of
his father's machine or it would have made him sick. For he was not yet
capable of understanding the single subject upon which more words have
been expended in saying less than any other subject since the dawn of
history.
His approach was academic, he could have been reading the definitive
material on the life-cycle of the beetle insofar as any stir of his own
blood was concerned.
From his study he did identify a couple of items. Tim Fisher obviously
desired extramarital relations with Mrs. Bagley--or was it premarital
relations? Probably both. Logic said that Mrs. Bagley, having already
been married to Martha's father, could hardly enter into _pre_marital
relations, although Tim could, since he was a bachelor. But they wouldn't
be _pre_marital with Tim unless he followed through and married Mrs.
Bagley. And so they must be _extra_marital. But whatever they were
called, the Book said that there was about as much on one side as on the
other.
With a mind mildly aware of the facts of life, distorted through the eyes
of near-nine James Holden, he watched them and listened in.
As for Mrs. Bagley, she did not know that she was providing part of James
Holden's extraliterary education. She enjoyed the company of Tim Fisher.
Hesitantly, she asked James if she could have Tim for dinner one evening,
and was a bit surprised at his immediate assent. They planned the
evening, cleaned the lower part of the house of every trace of its
current occupancy, and James and Martha hied themselves upstairs. Dinner
went with candlelight and charcoal-broiled steak--and a tray taken aloft
for "Mr. Maxwell" was consumed by James and Martha. The evening went
smoothly. They listened to music and danced, they sat and talked. And
James listened.
Tim was not the same man. He sat calm and comfortably on the low sofa
with Mrs. Bagley's head on his shoulder, both of them pleasantly bemused
by the dancing fireplace and with each other's company. He said, "Well,
I'm glad this finally happened."
"What happened?" she replied in a murmur.
"Getting the invite for dinner."
"Might have been sooner, I suppose. Sorry."
"What took you so long?"
"Just being cautious, I guess."