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  Then, when her eyes darted back at him, he would be looking at her again. And that same slow smile would spread on his face.

  The smile was not exactly obscene. It came close, however. It said, in a nutshell, I’m Interested In Taking You To Bed And Sooner Or Later I’ll Do Just That. And there was something about Ted Carr that didn’t let you doubt the idea. If he looked at a woman long enough, and carefully enough, she would melt. She would permit him to seduce her because she accepted her seduction as inevitable.

  Then he started with the foot.

  Now, playing footsies is corny. It is corny and square and very definitely Out. If a man starts playing footsies with somebody else’s wife, she generally laughs at him.

  This was different.

  Because Ted somehow managed to do two things. He made the action a burlesque, so that it was funny instead of being corny. And at the same time he let you know that the burlesque itself was just a mask, that he really deep down inside and underneath and from the heart meant every last nudge of it, that he was playing footsies, in short, without being corny about it.

  “Two spades,” Elly Carr said.

  Nan tore her attention back to her cards. She didn’t remember the hand, or the bidding, but she had a lousy hand and there was no problem. She passed. Ted raised to four spades, the table passed around, and it was her turn, incredibly, to find an opening lead. She tossed out a singleton diamond and tried to get interested in the play of the hand.

  This did not materialize. Ted’s foot kept reminding her that he had more on his mind than bridge, and she kept losing track of things, and Elly made the contract with an overtrick, bringing in game and rubber.

  It was ridiculous, she thought. She should simply laugh the whole thing off. Exurban males made automatic passes at exurban females; it was part of the game, and the passes were rarely very serious. In Italy men pinch women on busses, not for the sexual thrill and not in an attempt to get the females into bed, but simply as an acknowledgment of their physical attractiveness. In Spain and Latin America, males say complimentary things to passing females. And, in exurbia, men makes passes at other men’s wives.

  A custom, a form of compliment, symptomatic perhaps of the rather schizoid nature of exurbanite society. Nothing more, certainly.

  Oh, yeah?

  This, she told herself firmly, was hardly the case. Ted Carr was not a perfunctory pass-tosser. He meant it all. He wanted to take her to bed, and thus he was obviously out of his mind.

  How could she possibly be interested? Oh, there had been men before Howard—that was no secret. But there had been no men since Howard and there were not going to be. She was a married woman with children, a happily married woman. She had no intention of tossing a hot little extramarital affair just to relieve the boredom of—

  Boredom.

  The word stopped her cold. She was bored, she’d been bored all day, she was so damned bored she was ready to go out of her mind. But Christ above, she wasn’t bored enough to be a damned fool, wasn’t sufficiently staggered by stagnancy to have a highland fling with Ted Carr. Nothing could interest her less. Nothing. Why, she loved Howard, she worshipped him, he was everything she wanted in a husband—

  Methinks, a voice said, the lady doth protest too much.

  She was troubled. She went on being troubled when Ted went on with his pass-tossing. He made it a little more physical while she was getting a tray ready with coffee and sandwiches after the bridge game was done for the evening. Ted managed to pass through the kitchen on the way to the john, and he managed to be so crude that it was frightening. He came up behind her almost before she knew he was there, slipped an arm around, her, grabbed hold of a breast—

  She whirled around.

  And he was smiling. “No sense being silly about this,” he said, calmly and levelly. “I’m going to get in your pants. I want you and you want it as much as I do.”

  “I do not!”

  “You will.”

  She felt her temper coming to a boil. “You bastard,” she snapped. “I’m in love with Howard!”

  “What’s love got to do with it?”

  She simply stared at him.

  “I’m going to lay you,” he went on. “And you’re going to love it. I’m going to take you on a neat little ride to the moon, Nan-O. And love hasn’t got a goddamn thing to do with it. I don’t want to love you, Nan-O. I just want to lay you.”

  And then, infuriatingly, he had touched her breast again. She pushed his hand away and his other hand moved to stroke her below, insinuatingly. The hand was gone in an instant. And Ted Carr was leaving the kitchen, light laughter on his lips.

  They drank their coffee, ate their sandwiches. The Carrs left. Nan thought once again that Elly was incredibly unfortunate to be married to such a Grade-A son of a bitch as Ted Carr. And then she banished Ted Carr from her mind for the night.

  Not entirely, however.

  She and Howard made love that night. They undressed, and washed up, and brushed their teeth. Nan pulled out the alarm button on the electric clock while Howard got his attaché case in order for the morning’s trip to the office. Then, the chores out of the way, they slipped under the covers into each other’s arms.

  Their lovemaking was slow, gentle, tender. It was the coming-together of two very familiar bodies, two bodies which had grown quite used to one another. It was tender, and it was sweet, and it was very meaningful. They moved together, slowly, questingly, and they reached fulfillment together, and they lay close together for several minutes before Howard rolled over to fall asleep.

  There was only one thing wrong. It was something that may have been present before in their lovemaking; if so, Nan had never been aware of it in the past. Tonight, though, she was aware of it. The awareness was not at all pleasant, not remotely pleasant. It was, as a matter of fact, thoroughly unpleasant.

  Their lovemaking was monotonous.

  Not without sparkle, not without drive, not without zest, not without satisfaction.

  But without surprise. Totally without surprise.

  She knew everything Howard was going to do before he did it. She could lie back and anticipate every caress, every kiss, every stroke and pat and pinch. She could, also, anticipate her own reaction to each caress, her own corresponding and answering caress. The whole affair, from beginning to end, was eminently predictable. It followed the pattern that had already been established in the course of years of marriage.

  Thus it was monotonous.

  She would not have noticed this if it had not been for Ted Carr. His overtures, majestically subtle at the bridge table and incredibly brazen in the kitchen, had made her acutely aware of sex and its various ramifications. And now, after all that, she and Howard had had sex. And it had been, well, boring.

  So now, unwillingly, she thought again of Ted Carr. It would not be love with Ted, as it always was with Howard. It would not be warm. It would not be so thoroughly fulfilling.

  But neither would it be so annoyingly predictable!

  That was the whole thing. She tried to imagine what it would be like—kissing Ted and being kissed by him, touching him and being touched by him, making love to him. It was ridiculous, she would never do it, nothing could be farther from her mind.

  And yet—

  And yet she was thinking about it, was wondering. And, to be as painfully truthful as possible, was interested.

  Damn!

  She could not sleep. She had just had sex, and sex almost always brought sex. But now the very fulfillment of union with Howard left her mysteriously unfulfilled and sleep was not possible. She tossed on her pillows, listening to Howard’s measured breathing, remembering again the boring events of the day from the first ringing of the alarm clock through the loneliness up to Howard’s return.

  Now, suppose she were going to have an affair with Ted. How would they work it? Where would they meet, for the love of God? And what would it be like—what on earth would it be like?

  Ridiculous
, absolutely absurd, simply ridiculous. She wasn’t going to have an affair with Ted. She wasn’t going to have an affair with anybody. She was in love with Howard—

  Love hasn’t got a goddamned thing to do with it. I don’t want to love you, Nan-O. I just want to lay you.

  Damn!

  She took a sleeping pill. After a while, it worked.

  5

  LINC BARCLAY awoke around ten in the morning. He came down to breakfast, buried his face in the Times, drank two cups of coffee in stony silence. Then he folded the paper carefully and placed it on the floor beside him. He shook a cigarette loose from a crumpled pack and lighted it, blowing out a thick cloud of smoke.

  Roz looked at him across the breakfast table. She saw his high forehead, his deep eyes, his hawklike nose, his well-trimmed, square-cut black beard. A handsome man. A man she loved.

  “Morning,” he said.

  “Good morning?”

  He shrugged. “Not especially.”

  “Hung over?”

  He thought that over. “A little bit hung,” he admitted. “Nothing drastic, no bombs going off in my skull. Just a quiet to-hell-with-it hangover. It won’t kill me.”

  He had come home for dinner last night, money in his pocket, a bottle of J.W. Dant bourbon on the seat of the car beside him. His agent had come through, after prolonged argument, with five hundred dollars, half of the thousand he had asked for. The banks were closed by the time he got the check, but he had been able to cash it at a check-cashing office on 42nd Street at Sixth Avenue. They’d eaten dinner, and then Linc had gone to work on the bourbon. Roz drank with him.

  “Well,” she said now. “Sure you feel okay?”

  “Positive.”

  “What’s on today?”

  He looked away. “I don’t know,” he said. “I suppose I should get to work.”

  “Not if you don’t feel—”

  “Oh, hell,” he said. “Not if I don’t feel like writing? I haven’t felt like writing for months. I can’t sit around waiting until I feel like it. I’ve got a goddamned book to finish and I have to finish it. We’re broke, babe.”

  “I know.”

  “And it’s such a rotten book.” He stubbed out his cigarette, poured a fresh cup of coffee from the silex. “It’s a terrible book. Thirty thousand words done so far and all of them ill-chosen. A stupid plot and a cast of cardboard characters.”

  “Don’t you want to finish it?”

  This was familiar ground. They’d had the same conversation for roughly three months now.

  “No,” he was saying now. “No, I don’t want to finish it. But, by Christ, I want it to be finished. I want the damn thing out of the way once and for all, and the only way to accomplish that happy end is to grind out another thirty thousand words of drivel to match the thirty thousand words I’ve got done so far. Jesus, I wish this book were out of the way!”

  The book was a mystery, tentatively going under the title of Murder By Moonlight. The title would probably be changed, if only because it had a too-familiar ring to it and Linc was certain it had been used before at least once. Now, however, the title was the least of anybody’s worries.

  “Why don’t you try something else?” Roz suggested. “A new book, one you can enjoy working on. Something to break the slump.”

  “It won’t work.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I tried. Oh, last week—I didn’t bother to tell you about it. I put fresh paper in the typewriter and went to work on a straight novel, just swinging along off the top of my head. I did ten pages.”

  “Why, that’s wonderful!”

  “The hell it is. I ripped it up, Roz. It was lousy. Wooden prose, stiff dialogue, the works. Genuinely bad. All I managed to do was waste ten sheets of paper. That’s all.”

  She looked at him, then looked away. “This is a bad one,” she said.

  “The worst yet.”

  “It’ll straighten itself out, Linc. It—”

  “It has to, but God knows how or when. Roz, maybe I should take a job. It wouldn’t have to be permanent, just a stop-gap measure until things start to click again. Editorial work, something along those lines. There’s no sense starving.”

  “Is that what you want?”

  His hand went to his beard, stroking it thoughtfully. “Sure,” he said, forcing a weak grin. “Hell, I can hit one of the cheap houses for a job. I can pick up something that’ll mean steady money, a check every week that we can count on. And I’d go on trying to write in the evenings until we worked our way out of this jam, and then—”

  “No!”

  He looked at her.

  “Damn it,” she said, “you’re a writer, Linc. You’re not an editor and you’re not a hired hand. You’re a writer.”

  “Some writer.”

  “Yes, some writer. A damned good writer, Linc. And you don’t have to scoot into New York on the damned 8:30 with the rest of the galley slaves. You can stay right here and you can lick this slump. We’ll manage.”

  He reached across the table, rumpling her dark brown hair. “Wise guy,” he said. “Tough old broad.”

  “I mean it, Linc.”

  “I know you do.”

  He stood up, stuffing the pack of cigarettes into his shirt pocket, picking up a pack of matches. “What the hell,” he said. “I’m going to sit in front of the machine for awhile. The blessed typewriter. Maybe something’ll happen. I’ve been on page 98 of good old Murder By Moonlight for one hell of a long time. Maybe I can make it to page 99.”

  She stayed in her seat and watched him go. She thought how much she loved him, during the good times and the bad times as well. Now he was going to torture himself, was going to tear his hair out trying to make words come, trying to draw water from a dry well. But he had to do this, had to continue going to the typewriter every day and sitting there as long as he could. Eventually something would happen. Eventually the words would come again, the well would yield water, the words would push out at breakneck pace. Then he’d be in his study for hours on end, punching typewriter keys like a madman, going without food and sleep, living on coffee and cigarettes until the book was done and another book was started. When Linc worked, he was a dynamo. Now, in a slump, the current was off and he could do nothing about it.

  The slump would end. All slumps ended.

  Soon, she wished. God, make it be soon!

  6

  ELLY CARR hadn’t heard the car stop at the curb in front. She was busy vacuuming the living room rug, and the noise of the vacuum cleaner was enough to drown out the sound of the big Buick hardtop pulling to a stop in front of her house. She heard the doorbell, though, and she switched off the vacuum cleaner and glanced out the front window. She saw the Buick, a red and black orgy in chrome, and couldn’t place it at first. Who did she know who drove a Buick hardtop? Not one of her friends. Maybe a salesman, maybe—

  God, she thought. Maybe a man, tipped off by another man that all you have to do is ring Elly Carr’s doorbell and she spreads the welcome mat on her bed for you. Oh, God in heaven!

  She went to the door, nervous, upset. But there was no man. Outside was a woman, a very attractive redhead who hid her eyes behind forbidding black glasses.

  Maggie Whitcomb.

  “Hi,” Maggie said. “You busy, Ell?”

  “Nope. Come on in. I … I didn’t recognize the car.”

  “It’s Dave’s. I usually take the VW but I felt like a bigger car today. How are you fixed for coffee?”

  They sat in the living room and drank black coffee from china cups. Elly hardly knew Maggie Whitcomb, had only spoken to her a half dozen times that she could remember off hand. But in towns like Cheshire Point informality was the rule and open friendliness an obligation. When a community is composed of refugees from New York, all of them tossed together in a place where they have few if any friends, acquaintanceships are made quickly and easily.

  “You have a lovely place here,” Maggie was saying now. “I’v
e never been over before.”

  “You should have come sooner.” What, Elly wondered, did Maggie Whitcomb want? It seemed strange that she would just drop in for coffee out of the blue. And yet so far it seemed like a purely social call. She wasn’t collecting for a charity, wasn’t organizing a neighborhood committee, wasn’t, in short, doing anything but drinking black coffee and making small talk.

  “I suppose you’re wondering what prompted this visit, Ell.”

  “Why—”

  Maggie’s eyes were twinkling. “You have a perfect right to wonder. It’s just that I thought we ought to get to know one another. You seem like the sort of gal I might be able to relax and unwind with. And we’ve never really had much chance to let down our hair and get acquainted. I mean just the two of us, without a host of drunks around and without Dave and Ted making shop talk all night long.”

  Dave Whitcomb, Elly remembered, was an assistant producer of a pair of morning teevee quiz shows. She tried to remember just what he looked like and couldn’t bring his face into mental focus. He was a quiet man, easily dominated in company by his dynamic redhaired wife.

  “I’m glad you came,” Elly said. “Ted’s in the city and Pam’s at school and I’ve done about as much housework as I feel like doing.”

  “Then I picked a good time.”

  “You did.” She put down her coffee cup. “How about a sandwich? There’s some cold roast in the fridge.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t want you to bother—”

  “It’s no bother, Maggie. Just sit here.”

  She hurried into the kitchen and put sandwiches together, then brought them back into the living room. They ate slowly, punctuating their conversation with small talk that was as easy and relaxed as it was fundamentally irrelevant. Elly found herself growing more and more at ease. Maggie was a striking woman, an interesting woman. Maybe, she thought, they would become close friends. And suddenly she realized just how desperately she needed a friend.