She shuddered. You don't see people shudder very often--in restaurants,
anyway. She shuddered because that was how it made her feel. She
couldn't help it. And when the spasm passed, her hands went on
trembling--like glassware vibrating after a certain right note has
been struck. "He hired an assistant--a young college graduate--that I
liked, at first. Then--one day--I got so bored and lonely I went into
the greenhouses, which I hated, looking for them. And I found them, all
right."
She began to cry again--and to talk through the tears. "It was
only--two weeks ago. Rol was dreadfully upset. He promised--everything
on earth he could think of. And I stayed a week more--but it was
simply too awful. I finally bought tickets. I--I don't like living
at home--mother's such a sobby mess all the time. I wanted to see
dad--and of course he was about ready to go out and kill Rol.
Somebody--somebody--" her voice sank--"told me that if I read the
Kinsey Report I'd see that what happened to Rol happened to maybe a
third of the men like Rol. I guess it does. What difference does that
make?"
Children, I thought. No. Not even children. Children is just what they
weren't--just what they'd never been--or just what, if they'd ever
been, they refused to let themselves remember. These angel-pusses,
growing up everywhere in America, psychologically hamstrung or maybe
wingstrung in their cribs. Turned into demons by their right-thinking,
practical, realistic, common-sense, hard-headed fathers and mothers.
Marrying, in no better condition for marriage than nuns and eunuchs.
Phooie.
I slid my wrist in my cuff. It was after three. "Yvonne," I said, "are
you busy tonight?"
"I was going to have dinner with dad--as usual. He bucks me up."
"Maybe you could do with a substitute bucker-upper, for a change."
"Dad told me I ought to go out--call up old friends--"
"The hell with what dad told you. And I haven't asked you, yet. I'm
fussy, myself. Can you dance?"
She nodded.
"Rumba?"
"Rol was a swell dancer. And we used to have a teacher come to the
house--in the days before he lost interest in--me."
"Well, I'll pick you up, around eight. The valet keeps my dinner things
here--so put on a long dress."
"I don't need to be rescued, Mr. Wylie. It's sweet of you. But I'd
detest to go out feeling as if I was the object of a missionary
project."
"Then think of yourself as a missionary to me. I have no date. And I am
very uninterested in spending this particular evening alone."
"Why?"
"Because I'm a writer. I put my heart and brain and libido into the
composition of gay, mad, happy stories. Then I have to pay for it--in
compensatory funk. Nothing psychological is free. The illusion that it
is amounts merely to a passing human fancy--about fifty thousand years
old. Surely you're familiar with the fact that humorous authors are
melancholy babies, in the flesh? Well, I just miss being a humorous
author--so I just miss being a one hundred per cent sourball."
"What are you going to do now?"
"That's a very possessive question," I said, "in view of the shortness
of our acquaintance. However, I am going to cut a serial from two
hundred and eighteen pages to one hundred and seventy-eight pages."
"_Exactly?_"
"Well--within a few lines. And not just this afternoon. It takes days.
My wife is up in the country. We were having the house repapered
and repainted. Every time I found a quiet corner and started to cut
bleeding syllables from my precious prose, some damned craftsman with a
mustache like a character in _Midsummer Night's Dream_ spilled paste
on my back. So, finally, I scrammed down here. If my wife had known I
would have to put in more days on the serial--she'd have postponed the
rural clowns. But, not knowing, and with artisans so touchy about their
schedules--"
"Don't tell me!" she exclaimed. "We just had the house in Pasadena done
over!" Her eyes faded. "For what?" She murked about inside herself
briefly. "I'd like very much to go out with you--if you really want me
to. On one condition."
"I know."