"Myself." He looked at her bleakly. "More quarreling about a job?"
"No." She came out onto the porch and settled in the chair beside him.
"Ted, there's the squirrel. That's the one who's afflicted with--with
voyeurism."
"Oh, Ann, for goodness sake."
"His nest is right up there, in the nutmeg tree. Ted, I want you to
destroy it."
"Don't be childish."
"I'm not being childish. They eat young bark and buds and birds' eggs.
They're evil things, Ted."
"I think they're cute."
"Cute. Without the tail, they're just another rat. How some people can
eat them is beyond me."
The pinkness and the sluice and the three-armed man with the enormous
chest seemed to swim, for a moment, in Ted's memory. Hamilton went
scurrying up the nutmeg tree.
"The little devil," Ann said.
Little devil? The devil, maybe? No, not Hamilton. Ted said, "No club
meeting today? No garden, home, cooking, household management or
knitting circle shindigs?"
"Not a one."
"Why don't we drive up the coast and eat out, tonight?"
"I'd love to, Ted. But I really have to finish that petit point for
Dora's anniversary. I shouldn't be sitting here now, without it."
"You look very good without it. We could stop at _Sweeney's_."
_Sweeney's_ had the finest sea food west of New Orleans. And the
immortal Sweeney, himself, behind the bar.
"Don't tempt me," Ann said, and rose. "Why don't you drive up the
coast? You're restless."
"Maybe I will," he said. He tried to make it sound like an accusation,
but it came out a flat, dull statement.
* * * * *
After she'd gone into the house, he sat for a while, considering the
blonde. He didn't even know her name, and still he.... Well, why should
he know her name? There wasn't much of her visible now; she had the
raised section of the chaise lounge turned his way.
Hamilton was nowhere in sight.
He rose, after awhile, and went along the walk to the garage. He
climbed into the convertible, started the motor, and unhooked the top,
pressing the button to lower it.
Driving out into the sunlight, he reflected this was just pique; he
wasn't going to enjoy it, alone. A man, he ruminated, might as well be
single.
He drove along the winding coast road above Ynez Junction and parked
there, with the whole, curving, hilly coast line spread out below him.
The water was blue and calm with just a fringe of white where it lapped
the beach.
It was a clear day, and he could see Venus plainly. He thought of last
night and tried to make it a dream, a product of his wishful thinking,
as were the dialogues with Hamilton.
Sitting around, going simple, that's what he'd been doing. Talking
squirrels and trysts on Venus and a quick trip to Mars. Punchy, that's
all. The devil finds things for idle hands to....
No, it wasn't that; it was just day-dreaming. The devil had no part of
this business. Nor had his idleness. A peeping-Tom, Hamilton might be,
but no devil.
* * * * *
_"I think I can see," Peak thought! "Not much, but a dim mist. Lern,
are you listening?"_
_"I'm listening. I guess Ha is working, all right. He's going to work
on some others, too."_
_Peak outer-thought, "Have you considered our big problem, to keep Lust
minor?"_
_"I believe I have it licked. It's an Earthian custom I've been
studying, and it surely keeps its adherents in line. Lust wouldn't grow
much under it."_
_"A custom?"_
_"Marriage of course. How do you feel about it?"_
_"It's--a desperate measure. It's a--"_
_"A desperate problem," Lern interposed. "True love can survive it, I'm
sure. We don't want a repetition of the situation that forced us to
kill Lust--and lose our bodies. Of course, yours is the final word."_
_"It--well, we'll try it. I just hope Ha keeps working. It would be
just like that whimsical imp to get us half materialized and then leave
us."_
_"Or what if something should happen to him, his spirit killed in some
way?"_
_"We won't even inner-think that."_
* * * * *
Ted drove down the curving, back rocky road to _Sweeney's_. It was a
low-roofed building of cedar shakes, with an open air dining room on
piles above the water of the cove.
Ted stayed in the bar. He had French-fried shrimp and garlic bread and
beer. And after that, some whiskey. And after that, some dialogue with
Sweeney regarding the respective merits of Shahn and Albright. Ted knew
very little about either of them, but Sweeney knew less so it was a
satisfying discussion.
He drove home in a mood. He was remembering the Honolulu days with
Ann, and the days and nights before that. What they'd had, they'd find
again. There was a solution to it all, and not on Venus.
He came home to find a note on the kitchen table:
_Henri's in town and he insisted I visit the Blairs with him. He's just
done over their place. Don't wait up._
Henri was elegantly thin and fairly tall. An interior decorator with a
modern bent. He'd done the Truesdale place three times.
If it were anyone but Ann, I'd be jealous, Ted thought. As it was, he
felt only a grating annoyance. He poured a king-sized jolt of bourbon,
added a trace of water and went into the study.
He didn't turn on the light. He sat in the dark and sipped the
bourbon--and fell asleep....
The blonde had her hair up and was wearing a red jacket above a white
flannel skirt. Her smile was the same as last night's, and possibly a
shade warmer.
"How did you know I'd come?" he asked.
"I didn't, but a girl can hope. Bad day?"
"Oh--unsatisfactory. And yours?"
"Barren. Your wife's out to get Hamilton, isn't she?"
"I guess."
"Does she--suspect about us?"
"No." A pause, and, "Why did your husband leave you?"
"He didn't. I left him. Engineer, lived by the slide rule. Are you
going to leave your wife?"
He didn't answer that. He pulled her close and buried his face in the
bright hair. The violet mists and the smell of grass and the envious
sigh of the willows. Why couldn't all life be like this?...
When he woke, again, dawn was coming through the study window. He rose
wearily and stood near the glass door that led to the rear yard. On
the wet grass, the morning quietness lay like a blanket. In the house
below, he saw the shadowed, stretching figure of a woman behind a drawn
shade. She, too, was awake.
Coincidence? And the rest an illusion? He'd always been more or less
conventional; it was difficult to accept the super-conventional without
reserve or rationalization.
* * * * *
He climbed the stairs quietly, avoiding the fifth, which squeaked.
In the bathroom, he studied his stubbled face as though it were the
face of a stranger. Then he went into the bedroom and rumpled the bed
clothes.
She'd never believe he slept in the study; she'd never believe he'd
been to Venus. For a moment he stood there, looking at the rumpled bed.
Then he went quietly through the dressing room and into her room.
She lay partially on her back, partially on her left side, her dark
hair like ink against the clean white pillow, one slender tanned arm
flung along the pillow's upper edge, her other arm bent, her cheek
resting against the back of that hand.
There was just the breath of a smile on her full lips. What did
she dream of, his Ann? Of porridge and pottery and poinsettias? Of
schedules, menus, rotary floor waxers and blight elimination? Or didn't
she dream, at all?
Wasn't there, somewhere, a dream they could share?