enovel Nymph In Suburbia Kay Martin [Future Story Codes]

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Nymph In Suburbia ....(75k)    by Kay Martin

UP IN MONTE'S ROOM

The large nude on the studio wall left no doubt about Monte's taste and artistic ability. But he was even prouder of his reputation in the king-size, low-slung bed that stood next to it. Monte's companion for this evening, coral sheets turned back to start the performance with an uninhibited touch, was Nadine, his boss's wife.

Monte had dimmed the lights and selected some records for the hi-fi which had always heightened his experiments with women.

Nadine smiled. She wasn't about to be just another conquest in Monte's little black book. In the art of love, Nadine had a genius of her own. She'd given this Casanova the satisfaction of "arranging" the seduction; now Nadine would take over and teach him a few things he'd never dreamed of.

CHAPTER ONE

Dinner at the Whittens' had consisted, this spring evening, of an exotically labeled casserole affair, in which quick-freezing had faithfully preserved the original flavor and texture of boiled newspapers.

It wasn't that Nadine Whitten couldn't cook. When the mood fell over her, or when there was company to impress, she became a stream-lined, female Escoffier. She could, in fact, say with studied modesty (and unquestioned accuracy) that there were no requirements for a suburban wife at which she did not excel. She had designed and decorated the seven-year-old fieldstone and glass contemporary house on Crescent Street herself, and while there were more lavish homes in Riverdale, it was unanimously conceded by the residents of that Western suburban community (an area not as fashionable as Chicago's North Shore but sufficiently moneyed to be impressive) that the Paul Whitten place epitomized good taste.

At thirty-six, she had, with minimum effort, managed to preserve the illusion of willowy youth. She delighted in references to her hair; "the color of pale sherry." More than that, her eyes had been called a "disconcerting grey-green." Nadine had forgotten the source of that compliment, remembering only vaguely that it had been expressed in a bedroom, the decor of which had been an effective backdrop for her coloring.

Nadine was both a producer and an actress, having no reality of her own, but thriving on the impressions she created. That all women should simultaneously envy and admire her, that all men should love her; these were her secretly avowed purposes for living. No one could love her enough; this, since the insatiable hunger and starvation of her childhood and adolescence, was a fact Nadine accepted as naturally as the physical assets and abilities that helped her to fulfill the undeniable need.

No one would understand, Nadine often thought. The affair with Roy Stroud, the clandestine nights with Vince Allegretti. Or, currently, the stolen afternoons with Warren Ryner. Who would understand? Anyone knowing that Warren (whose wife not only admired but stood in awe of Nadine) had left his brewery office early today, and had spent an hour with Nadine in the Whitten's guest room bed ... anyone knowing this, would have called Nadine amoral, she suspected. Or deduced, stupidly, that Paul Whitten was so engrossed in his advertising agency that he neglected his wife, leaving Nadine no recourse but to fall into the open arms of his best friend and most important client. Or, less charitably, that she was an oversexed bitch.

None of these conjectures could be farther from the truth, Nadine assured herself. She loved Paul, loved their only child, loved her home. And since all the requirements of these three were bountifully met, why should she selfishly deny herself (and others!) the plentiful residue of her charms? Most men need to be rescued from their duller wives ... if only for a little while. And though she would have preferred a wider, less dangerous hunting ground than the confining boundaries of Riverdale, she settled for what was available. Who would understand that, she wondered? Or fathom why, when the initial thrill of conquest was over, why she held on to loves she did not truly want, except that any love was important, and once acquired it seemed wasteful to relinquish it.

This afternoon, for instance, Warren Ryner had gone through those necessary lovemaking motions with a palsied, guilt-ridden anxiety, mumbling afterward that Mabel didn't deserve to be cheated on, and his two kids didn't, and God knew Paul Whitten was his best friend and Paul didn't deserve this ... Warren had been impossibly dreary, stooping to revolting cliches, like, "This isn't right, Nadine, but I can't help myself." One expected those huge, teddy-bearish, fullback-type men to be calm and easygoing, but Warren was beginning to act like a fundamentalist in a whorehouse. Yet he was sweet and flattering and it would be senseless, Nadine thought, to let him go. Warren Ryner had such a burning need for her. And the times when he compared Nadine with his wife were an especial joy. Nadine did everything well, he would insist. Everything.

But always, Nadine admitted to herself, always only one project at a time. While it absorbed her mind, the rest of the world might as well have deserted its axis and floated off into uncharted space. And tonight the showmanship was concentrated in dressing for the Ryners' party; one of Mabel Ryner's command clambakes.

She enjoyed being with Paul. Not a predatory excitement, but a languid, slow-warming pleasure. She could relax with Paul, unconcerned about how she looked, what she did, what she said. In his presence there were times when she could be herself, whatever that might mean. Yes, she could almost ... almost identify herself as a person, rather than a composite of other people's impressions.

And Nadine could look at him with the same pride in her impeccable taste that ran through her when she walked through this magazine-illustration house. At forty-one, he was still firm and lean-muscled, his brown hair thick and barely silvered with distinguished grey at the temples. She liked the way he towered over her own substantial height, the unostentatious, yet self-assured way he did everything ... from snapping a cigarette lighter to talking with a client on the phone. Even the usually ungainly motions of dressing found an easy masculine grace in Paul. People liked him. She delighted in being seen with and identified with him.

All of which proved her point ... that she was not a sex-motivated bitch, because no man could overtake Paul's advantage in bed. He was meticulously attuned to her every whim, capable of anticipating her every desire, familiar with the precise timing and action which guaranteed her pleasure in his body. Ironically, she had on one or two occasions found herself wishing the others would do things Paul's way.

Paul's only liability was being Paul. Not someone-new, someone uncertain, someone on whom she could exercise the force of herself as an irresistible personality.

Nadine turned away from the mirror and proceeded to pull on sheer nylons, stretching her legs, pointing her toes, to approve the effect.

"They're still there," she heard Paul say. "Two of them. It's a set."

"Don't be crude." She came close to accusing him, jokingly, of sounding like Vince Allegretti. Vince had a habit of making broad physical inventories.

Slipping into the starch-rigid white shirt, he stood at her side, working on the buttons. "Maybe I can get you a cheesecake job. You know that Weidberger-girl-of-the-month campaign we've been cooking up? Art department lined up a perfect guy for the job. He does those long-stemmed, disproportionate busty babes you see on calendars. Airbrush technique. Charcoal stockings-mph! You can almost feel the flesh."

Nadine laughed. "How singularly gross."

"Wait'll you see the first one he did. Blown up on a billboard, she'll either sell beer or break up the American family tradition."

"Fine. I was beginning to get tired of those rugged guys ... roasting caribou in the woods and swilling Weidberger out of the can."

"No more. Starting this fall, we replace the great outdoors with sex. This Monty Carrell is a find. My reasoning is ... a man would rather booze it up with a hot pigeon than a dead duck. Emphasize the indoor sport ... broader identification."

"Is he on staff?"

"The illustrator? No, free lance. Expensive, but he'll be worth it."

"Sounds good." She was beginning to feel the glow. The turned-on feeling that a junkie must experience. There was always this exhilaration before going out among people, the sense of preparing in the wings before stepping out on a stage, at which time the inner spark would automatically ignite. It was an almost visible radiation that exuded from her whenever she made an entrance. And the glow came in measured degrees, like the light from one of those three-way bulbs. So much if the group comprised women only, another click and a more dazzling incandescence if the group were to include men.

"Was Warren impressed with him?" Nadine gave studious thought to her perfume collection.

"I guess so. This Monty Carrell's a kind of colorful character. Flashy looks, sophisticated patter. Yes, I guess Warren was impressed. Not that it matters. We'd buy illustrations like this Joe produces from an illiterate hottentot. But I expect ole Warren wanted to please the ex-Miss-Weidberger, too. He invited the fellow to Mabel's party tonight."

Nadine could almost hear the third click. The three-way light bulb turned on high and she reached for a scent reserved for special occasions.

"How old a man is he?"

"Carrell? Oh ... late thirties. Why?"

"I just wondered." The telephone saved her from further explanation.

Vince, probably. High as a rocket and starting out early; he was addicted to telephones when he drank, and there was only one number he remembered at times like these. "Will you get it, honey?" Vince would hang up if he heard Paul's voice. If she answered, it might get awkward.

Paul picked up the bedroom extension. It wasn't Vince. From the terse, questioning tone of Paul's voice, Nadine guessed there was something wrong.

"But what did she do? ... Oh? ... There's no possibility of...? I'm sorry. We'll wait for your letter, then ... yes, we'll check the flight ... yes. I'm sorry, too ... If you're sure you won't reconsider...? All right, Miss Tillotson. Goodbye." Paul replaced the phone in its cradle. "Oh, damn!"

"What is it, Paul? Who's Miss ... what's her name?"

"Tillotson!" Paul exploded. "The dean at Sherry's school. Ye Gods, you aren't that out of touch with what goes on...."

"There's nothing wrong with Sher?"

"Just that she's been expelled from Pine Cove."

"Expelled? What for, for heaven's sake?"

"Oh, the woman mumbled something about Sherry and another girl hopping a freighter and going way to hell outside Richmond or somewhere. She's sending a letter explaining the whole thing."

"A freight train?'

"A freight train." Paul lowered himself to the bed. "Whatever would possess the kid ...?"

"Well, she's always had an imagination, darling. I suppose it was an impulse."

"Impulse? Do you know what could have happened to her? What may have happened?"

Paul's voice shook and Nadine walked over to rest a hand on his shoulder. "Miss Tillotson would have said something if it had. Honey, Sherry's got a streak of adventure in her and it's a terribly straight-laced school. Just because your mother went to Pine Cove...."

"Don't blame my mother. Remember it was Sherry's idea in the first place. Or was it yours?"

Nadine decided to evade the question. "Poor kid. She's probably desolate. Couldn't we phone her?"

"Not much point. I'm picking her up at the airport tomorrow morning. Remind me to call."

"You mean they'd actually throw her out of school ... a few weeks before summer vacation? For having a little fun?"

Paul reached over to take Nadine's hands in his own. "Mum, I'm glad you aren't going to hop down Sherry's neck. Maybe she's miserable. But we've got to get it across to her that you can't go through life following ... impulses. Somewhere along the line you bump your head against a rule and there's bound to be trouble."

"I suppose. But what's done is done. Sherry happens to be the underdog...."

Paul managed a thin smile. "And you're for the bottom guy, right or wrong. Okay, Nadine. I love you for that, too. But let's not give Sherry a pat on the back. What she needs is a swat on the behind."

"She's sixteen, Paul. We're out of the nineteenth century, in case your watch has stopped."

"I just want her to grow up without getting hurt."

"We both do."

"You know what my two girls mean to me."

"Paul, you're getting sticky."

"If that's sticky, I'm a taffy apple. And, honey, this summer ... let her shine a little."

"Let her what?"

"Feel that she's not the gangling ugly duckling...."

"Paul, you know I'm as particular about her clothes as I am about my own. Who dragged her to ballet school and cotillion and fussed about her room? Who tried to...."

"I know, I know. But ... tell me something, hon. Was your mother a fabulous creature? With people around, did she sparkle?"

"You know damned well she didn't."

"Well ... ask yourself what you'd have done for attention if she had."

Nadine reflected for a moment. "I doubt," she said slowly, " ... I doubt that I'd have ridden a boxcar to Richmond." Then, brightening, she kissed Paul's forehead carefully, reached a Kleenex on her dresser and rubbed out the smudge. "We'll work it out, Paul. It's not the end of the world."

"You're a softie," Paul told her. "The greatest."

"And, dear, let's not feel obligated to tell everybody Sherry got the axe. I'll think of some excuse."

It seemed that Paul's expression clouded again, then he suggested that they wait until Sherry and Miss Tillotson's letter gave them the whole story. "We'll try to forget it tonight," he concluded.

"Which reminds me ... we're to toot for Leila. And you'll make a better impression in trousers."

They finished dressing, Nadine coming to the comfortable realization that Sherry's premature homecoming would have an exploitable value. Warren was fine ... he really was, and she understood him and he needed her, but the afternoon visits could become a drag and it would have been painful to ask him not to come. With Sherry home, there'd be no nonsense about it ... no need to hurt Warren's feelings ... make it a telephone thing ... keep in touch....

Paul rounded the semicircular Whitten driveway, backed the Chrysler parallel with the curb on the opposite side of the street and braked it, leaving the motor running.

Getting out of the car, he said, "Picking Leila up and hauling her to parties always bugs me."

"I didn't think you minded," Nadine told him. "I thought you liked her."

"I do. I just wish her old man hadn't flown the coop." Paul started across the lawn toward the neatly landscaped provincial house that had been built for Roy and Leila Stroud six years ago.

"What made you bring that up?"

"What made me ... it's the way I feel! Divorces make me queasy; worse than funerals. I liked the Strouds as a couple. We made a good foursome."

Nadine released her breath. "Oh."

"Well, didn't we?"

"I guess so." Not dishonestly, Nadine muttered, "Sometimes I wish Roy were still here, myself."

Paul walked to the door, emerging seconds afterward with Leila Stroud, Leila looking surprisingly pretty in her petite unspectacular brunette way. She sat in the front seat, with Nadine in the middle, as they drove the short distance to the Ryners', sloughing off Nadine's comment to the effect that this was probably a one-way ride.

"Don't count on it," Leila said wryly. "In fact, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Mabel hasn't invited another of those Available Bachelors for me. The last one was D.O.A."

"A card," Paul remembered. "He kept dropping ice cubes down the back of your dress."

"Speaking of drunk on arrival," Leila said, "I had coffee with Gwen Allegretti this afternoon. She was home, working on the books, with no foggy notion where Vince was. If he shows up tonight, he'll be in his usual stupor."

Paul shook his head dolefully. "What would make a guy want to drink himself insensible? A nice guy like Vince?"

"Frustrations," Leila said casually. In the dim light from the dashboard, she glanced toward Nadine. "Don't you suppose?"

"I wouldn't know," Nadine told her. Foolish to imagine that there was some hidden implication in Leila's remark. But she switched back to the original subject hurriedly. "You'll have a motley assortment to choose from tonight, Leila."

"Mabel's corny cousins from the brewery, I s'pose. Big thrill."

"Plus the neighborhood crowd."

"Plus an alien from the art world," Paul added. He brought Leila up to date on the new illustrator he'd lined up for the agency.

"Poor Mr. Carrell," Nadine said. "He'll probably feel like a misplaced Venusian."

Leila threw her reply away and it escaped Paul, but the cooing tone disturbed Nadine. "Try to make him feel at home, dear."

No, she was mistaken. Leila was neither snide nor subtle. And she wasn't bitchy. She doesn't know anything about me that I don't want her to know, Nadine decided. Nothing about me, about Vince, Warren ... or her ex-husband. Nothing.

"Warren should have thought of that," Paul was saying. "Unless he actually invited Monty Carrell for your benefit, Leila."

"It just doesn't occur to people that I'm not in season," Leila laughed softly. "I don't mind in the least being the odd female that tags along with the Whittens. And I'll bet your artist friend would have preferred to invite his own date."

"One of his models, maybe." Paul clucked his tongue as he turned into the Ryners' street. "Make the neighborhood boys forget they've got wives."

Leila turned a lukewarm smile toward Nadine. "Some already have," she said dryly.

CHAPTER TWO

Emperor Shah Jehan had blinded the architect of the Taj Mahal so that the designer might never create a structure exceeding its beauty. Nadine suspected that whoever had perpetrated the Ryner house had probably shot himself voluntarily afterward, to prevent a recurrence.

To be just, the unfortunate architect had worked under the tasteless supervision of Mabel's parents, now deceased. And Mabel Weidberger Ryner, upon inheriting the monstrosity, had perpetuated the memory of Heinrich and Alma Weidberger with additions reflecting their gauche love for the massive, the ostentatious and the expensively hideous.

The house was constructed from smooth and shiny chrome-yellow bricks. It was an overgrown Chicago "bungalow," poking out in a pregnant rotunda at the front, so that Nadine always approached it with an expectant air; at any moment it threatened to give birth to a litter of horrid little replicas of itself. Intricate masterpieces of Czechoslovakian stained glass accented the windows bounding the circular elevation. They were framed by rococo cement-work, a pattern including angels, grape clusters and swags.

There was a broad, curved, concrete stairway at the side of the windowed belly. Flanked by brick and concrete walls, with gargantuan cement urns to accent each five-step rise, the stairway led to a wide double door. The bronze door knocker, flattened for functional purposes, was probably the most immense Liberty Bell west of Philadelphia.

"I used to wonder what people meant," Paul observed as he ushered Nadine and Leila up the steps, "when they said a girl was built like a brick outhouse."

"You didn't think there were any brick outhouses?" Leila asked. "Well, you know now. Wouldn't you swear Mabel only came into money two weeks ago? Three generations of loot and she's still a noveau riche peasant. Going to the supermarket at 10 a.m. with a cerulean mink slung over a little bargain number she couldn't resist in Weibolt's basement. God, all those trips abroad wasted!"

"You're biting the hand that supports us," Paul warned affably.

It was not a butler or a maid who admitted them, but Mabel, short, plump, hopelessly and obviously fortyish, a ludicrous red taffeta cocktail dress completely washing out the greyish-blond hair and the pale-lashed blue eyes. She looked more nervous than her husband had appeared earlier in the day.

Mabel sounded grateful. "Am I glad you're here!"

"Things don't swing until the Whittens make it," Leila said. "You tell people they're coming to your party, it's like offering trade stamps."

Mabel surveyed Nadine fondly. "Ain't it the truth?"

Party noises floated up a basement stairway descending from a hallway at the center of the house. "Everybody in the bierstube?" Paul asked.

"Yeah, downstairs. Go ahead, Paul. The girls can leave their stuff in my bedroom."

"I'll go down now," Leila said. "I'm on the verge of a cold and I'd better keep this shoulder thing on."

Paul and Leila started for the basement and Nadine accompanied Mabel to her rose-printed-quilted-satin-Chinese-modern-Louis-Quatorze bedroom.

"You're looking lovely," Nadine said. No one could doubt she meant it. "Turn around ... let me see the back."

Mabel executed a wadding model's half-turn. The dress boasted a strapless top, revealing an expanse of flouncing, albino-white flesh. A lavish red taffeta bustle of bows, centered with a velvety black orchid, guaranteed attention to Mabel's rear end.

"Whew! I've never seen anything like it."

"That's what Wardy said." (Mabel insisted upon the affectionate bastardization of Warren's name.) "But I'm not so sure he liked it. I had it made."

"You must have!" Nadine said. She tossed a simple wool stole across the garish bedspread.

Mabel was almost pathetic in her desire for Nadine's approval. "If you like it, it's okay," she said. "I was afraid I'd look too ... you know. Racy."

"Well, you don't, Mabel."

"I nearly didn't get up the nerve to wear it. And then everything went wrong, the way it does. I tried those little hors d'oeuvres you made that time ... but they didn't come out good. I got Essie to do everything else, I was so nervous."

"But why? We're all old friends."

"There's some new people. And, listen, Nadine...." Mabel's eyes seemed to water suddenly. Until then, Nadine hadn't noticed that the older woman's eyelids, normally puffy, looked pinkish and swollen. "I shouldn't be holding you up here, but I'm...."

"Mabel, is something wrong?" Nadine laid a comforting hand on a trembling shoulder.

"I wouldn't say this to anybody but you. You wouldn't repeat it ... and you're the only one. Wardy's been acting ... funny."

"Funny?"

"He doesn't hear half of what I say to him. And then he can't do enough for me. You know when a man acts that way, he's got something bothering him."

"He has a big responsibility," Nadine said.

"Yeah, but that's not it. He's not the romantic type. When you got two kids almost in high school ... oh, say, I forgot to call you up and say thanks...."

"For what?"

"Those stamps you sent Junior when he was home with the G.I.'s last week. He says you'd have to know your stuff to pick out stamps he doesn't have already."

You didn't really have to know a thing, Nadine thought. You merely blew a whole afternoon with an expert old philatelist who ran a downtown stamp shop. "I'm glad Junior liked them. You were telling me Warren isn't romantic."

"Well, not like he is lately. After you've been married as long as Wardy and me, you don't go around acting mushy. Not in the afternoon, anyway."

Nadine laughed. "You're having a second honeymoon."

"Maybe Wardy is. I'm not." Mabel hovered on the brink of tears. "He's a good man. I wouldn't want you to get the wrong idea. But there's this young hotcha at the office, she goes around showing her rump in tight dresses. I saw her there the other day. Crosses her legs, you can see what she had for supper. This afternoon I called the brewery, Wardy was on his way home, my cousin Artie told me. Then I got suspicious. I don't know why. Just the way Wardy's been acting. So funny. So I called agin, but I changed my voice and I asked the switchboard girl if I could talk to this other girl in accounting."

"Oh, Mabel!"

"Don't 'oh, Mabel.' Wait'll I tell you the rest. This Evelyn wasn't at work. She had the flu. Flu, my ass!"

"You don't actually think Warren was out with this girl?"

"What would you think? If Paul started to act different?"

"I'd ask him where he'd been. Did you?"

"No. I didn't say anything. I didn't want a fight. We never had a fight ... I sure wouldn't want one the day we got all this company coming."

Nadine pressed the puffy shoulder reassuringly. "You silly goose! Warren was at our house this afternoon."

"Don't just make up a story to make me feel good ... "

"He was! He wanted to return samples on the new labels the agency's making up. He left them for Paul, but you know me. We got to talking about one thing and another."

"You wouldn't kid me, Nadine?"

"Honey, I'll swear he was at the house. You're overworking your imagination."

Mabel released a shuddering sigh. "I guess I have a pretty good one."

"You certainly do! Warren's hardly the type to chase some office floozy."

"I guess he wouldn't."

"I know damned well he wouldn't."

Before the evening was over, Nadine would have to acquaint Warren with the facts. The story would throw a scare into him. He would be more discreet in the future ... and more appreciative. Rare moments were always treasured. And, ironically, she hadn't even had to lie to poor Mabel!

"Thanks," Mabel was saying. "I'll be able to have a good time now."

"In that dress?" Nadine smiled. "I should think so."

Mabel laughed her delight and preceded Nadine down the stairs to the Ryner recreation room, radiant in her newly affirmed confidence. The black velvet orchid waggled back and forth with every step, the red taffeta swished seductively.

Nadine let her hostess rustle into the crowd. Then she took a five-beat pause, lifted her head, smiled, and made an entrance worthy of Empress Eugenie descending the marble staircase at a court ball.

Nadine's eyes swept carelessly over the Weidberger clan; Mabel's uncounted and uniformly dull relatives whose diverse abilities kept the brewery going. She waved casually and exchanged quips with the neighborhood groups. As usual, they had divvied themselves into cliques, the more intellectual set

(advertising, merchandising, medical, sprinkling of professional talents) eyeing what they considered the dimwits with supercilious patronage, and the contracting-merchant-manufacturing group regarding the former as unbearably snobbish and suspiciously egghead. Mabel Ryner either didn't know oil from water or she had a firm faith that Weidberger beer was an infallible catalyst.

Warren presided behind a long oak bar, hand-carved in Germany and imported at a cost that would have curled Bismarck's moustache. Nadine made her way toward an unoccupied barstool. A hand closed over her arm. "I've been waiting for you," Vince murmured.

"I was going over to get a drink."

"It'll wait." She was in his arms, dancing. Neither time nor liquor had obliterated all of the fiery Latin charm that had fascinated her at the outset. Vince was still dark and brooding. He still yearned to be a songwriter, he still wrote scorching poetry. This close to him, she always considered Vince Alle-gretti worth keeping.

Champagne music bubbled from the juke box. Vince was high on something less bubbly. "Why don't I ever see you anymore?"

"You know how it is, Vince."

"How is it?" Candlelight reflected in the dark and hungry eyes.

"I can't get away."

"You used to get away."

"I can't always."

"When?"

"I don't know."

"You could try. Jesus, I think about some of those times ... I get physically sick."

"Vince, don't hold me so close. People...."

"To hell with people."

"You aren't being very poetic."

"And to hell with being poetic. Let's get out of here. Remember the time we left Stroud's party? Went to my place?"

"New Year's Eve. That was four years ago. Look, I'll call you."

"You won't. You keep saying you will, but you won't."

"Vince, I wish you wouldn't drink. It used to be fun being with you when you didn't drink."

"I've got to do something."

"Quit drinking."

"You know how I feel about you. Hell, you know I'd tell Gwen where to go tomorrow if...."

Lawrence Welk wound up the record and Nadine excused herself. "I've got to say hello to Warren."

"What for?"

"It's polite."

"Emily Post is dead, I'm still alive!" Vince shuffled toward the piano. Maybe someone would ask him to play. Maybe the crowd would decide to sing and he'd be occupied for the rest of the evening.

Where was this new character? What was his name? Monty something. Nadine reached the bar to find Warren's eyes probing deeply into hers. She w-edged herself into a space between the bar and an Allegretti pinball machine. Panther Hunt, it was called.

"Long time no see," she smiled at Warren.

He leaned over the wide expanse of mahogany. Big, affable Warren. Their affair terrified him, yet it was good for him to broaden his horizons, Nadine thought.

For everybody's benefit, Warren said, "Well, hello! Haven't seen you in ages, Nadine."

"Liar," Nadine whispered.

Quietly, he asked, "Everything all right at home?"

"Why wouldn't it be?"

"I always worry."

"Worry about Mabel. She thinks you're having an affair with Evelyn."

"Who's Evelyn?"

"Girl at your office."

"Mabel told you that?"

"Just a few minutes ago. I told her you stopped at our house this afternoon."

Warren's face colored under the dim light. "Why'd you do that? Nadine, she'll start...."

"If she mentioned it, you came by to return the label drawings."

"I hate lying, Nadine."

"I hate it, too," Nadine said.

Someone at the far end of the bar called out, "I know you can brew beer, Ryner. But can you pour Scotch?"

"I'll talk to you later," Nadine said.

Her eyes had grown accustomed to the shadowy light. In a corner of the room, talking to Gwen Allegretti and obviously bored, was a man she had never seen before. Warren hadn't fixed her a drink, but she didn't need one. Slowly, she slipped from the barstool and headed for the corner table. Monty Carrell ... his name was Carrell, she remembered now, looked more promising than she had expected.

If he had worn a sign around his neck reading, "I don't belong with this crew," the fact could not have been more obvious.

Monty Carrell didn't look arty with a capital A, nor even aesthetic. And the sophisticated, man-who's-been-around effect was not dependent on the unseasonally tanned face, prematurely silvering hair or the precisely clipped moustache. If anything, these seemed like Hollywood affectations, like the distinctively Italian-cut suit. It was the cynical, half-amused boredom with which he was regarding Gwen Allegretti that marked him as an outlander in the provinces. He had Gwen pegged, all right; he probably had a mental file in which every woman he met was alphabetically classified.

Gwen, hypercharged, unsmiling and terribly unsexy for a well-packed redhead, spotted Nadine first.

And you could always depend upon Gwen to say something scintillating. "Well, look who's here."

"I'm looking," Monty said appreciatively. His grey eyes reduced Nadine to an airbrushed calendar-girl condition. He rose easily, the half-smile more animated now.

"You know each other, don't you?" Gwen asked.

"Not yet," Nadine said.

"Nadine, this is ... what did you say your name was?"

"Carrell. Monty Carrell," he said evenly.

"This is Nadine Whitten. I figured you knew each other. Her husband's...."

"Fortunate," Monty said graciously. He held out a chair and Nadine joined them, Monty settling himself beside her. "I'm trying to orient myself. Distinguish the clients' wives from agency wives."

"It's very simple," Nadine told him. "Mrs. Ryner owns Weidberger Beer, her husband runs the company, my husband's agency takes fifteen percent of their advertising budget."

He nodded. "I'm learning about industry tonight. Mrs....what did you say your name was?"

"Allegretti," Gwen told him.

"Yes. Mrs. Allegretti's been introducing me to the intricacies of the mechanized game business. Did you know that the distributor in southern Ohio orders six Jet Zoomers for every African Safari?"

"Jungle Killer," Gwen said seriously. "The Safari game's moving okay."

Monty smiled delightedly. "Isn't that exciting?"

"It's not exciting," Gwen said deprecatingly. "But it's a good business."

Mabel flounced toward them, her red bows wagging. "Everybody doing all right? Oh ... you don't have a drink, Nadine."

Gwen got up from her chair. "I'll get her one. I've got to go over and take one away from my husband."

"Oh, let him have his fun," Mabel said.

"He's had it," Gwen said. For Monty's benefit, she explained, "Vince drinks too much. It's the only fault he has, but I've got to watch him."

Nadine nodded solemnly. Some women have absolutely no imagination.

Gwen bristled off to find her husband and Mabel stood by, looking uncomfortable, but conversely, rather pleased with the world in general. Monty and Nadine sat quietly, waiting for her to leave. At least it seemed to Nadine that Monty shared her impatience. With men who didn't interest her, Nadine was in the habit of throwing up an impenetrable, impersonal smoke screen. Now, more than ever before, she felt the magnetic person-to-person pull of shared thoughts, common interests.

Stuck with carrying on the conversation, Mabel said, "So you're our new artist! It must be very interesting. Being an artist."

"It is," Monty assured her, unsmiling. "All those colors and everything."

"I bought some paintings when we were in Europe," Mabel continued bravely. "In fact, I brought back all kinds of ... art treasures. Have you seen the stuff upstairs?"

"No," Monty said. "Perhaps Mrs. Whitten will be kind enough to show me around."

"Would you, Nadine? I'd do it, but I kind of hate to walk out on everybody."

Nadine smiled and nodded. "I'll take him on the twenty-five cent tour."

"Yeah. Well, be sure he sees the paintings I got in Paris. I guess he's already seen the Munich beer steins." She turned away from them, flouncing like a schoolgirl toward another table. "I collect those."

Monty's eyes probed deeply as he addressed Nadine. "And what is it that you collect?"

"I'm only interested in functional objects."

"I've been watching you since you came down those stairs."

"And?"

"Even in the acquisition of functional objects, the collector should be more discriminating."

My God, he was talking her language! Nadine's own, un-intelligible-to-strangers native tongue!

She matched the amused, yet penetrating stare. "You think I should give more attention to quality."

Monty snapped open a silver cigarette box, made a cursory offer which she refused, and then flicked a lighter. His nonchalance was less natural than Paul's, but infinitely more dramatic. "Yes," he said, exhaling slowly. "I watched you talking with Mr. Ryner, too. Is that dark, moody character you danced with the husband of the pinball woman?"

"Vince Allegretti. Yes."

"You've put him in mothballs."

Nadine resisted laughter. "You're the most presumptuous man I've ever met."

"Because I'm assuming things about you? That isn't presumptuous, it's a matter of trained observation. Then, too, we recognize each other at sight, don't we? Some latent, instinctive, intuitive means of picking each other out of the herd."

"Like homosexuals," Nadine said. "Or Rotarians."

Monty's laughter was infectuous. "And once we spot another collector, it's hypocritical to shilly-shally, don't you think? We should do what all hobbyists do."

"Swap techniques? Oh, really!"

"Oh, I don't mean we have to exchange confidences. But inveterate liars, once they acknowledge each other, are usually paragons of truthfulness. I wouldn't know what sort of line to hand you, for instance. You've heard them all. I'm reduced to the most abject sincerity."

"How dull."

"It won't be," Monty assured her. He drained his glass ... Scotch on the rocks, probably. "To coin a truism ... there's always something new under the sun. Let's take the guided tour."

Vince Allegretti watched her leave the rathskeller. He was dancing with Gwen at the moment. Paul was lost in the shuffle. Maybe Warren was watching, too, from his post at the bar. Nadine walked up the narrow steps carelessly, conscious of the escort following. Playing it cool; only a cornball like Mabel would succumb to a provocative ascent at a time like this. Besides, Monty Carrell wasn't the type on whom you practiced the obvious. Like herself, he knew every trick in the books, which was, in itself, the most momentous challenge she had ever encountered. This would be like playing the game with all the cards exposed ... and knowing you had met your match.

They were in hysterics before they had made a complete swing of the Ryner house. Returning to the circle-ended living room, she was clinging to Monty's arm in a hilarious rapport at having viewed the result of unlimited money mated with nonexistent taste.

"The place was carpeted when Mabel took over," Nadine said. "So what could she do with the Aubusson rug she brought from France? What to do with the Sarouk from the market in Tabriz?"

"Lay it over the carpeting," Monty said. "What else?"

"And what would you do if you could afford an original Utrillo, a Klee and a Pollock? And you had already laid out a fortune for hand-blocked wallpaper with elegant gold roosters on it?"

"Hang the damned things up!" Monty roared. "Over the wallpaper!"

"But balance the whole sordid mess with a teakwood table. And have a lamp base made out of a Ming vase ... look at it closely, Monty. That's the real McCoy!"

Monty was suddenly serious. "It isn't funny, you know? Didn't you tell me this woman owns the Weidberger outfit?"

"Mabel? That's right. Warren Ryner's father was some sort of superintendent at the brewery. Warren and Mabel grew up together. I don't think he intended to spend the rest of his life running the Weidberger interests, but after he got out of the army...."

"I know. There was his childhood sweetheart and there was all that dreadful money. I can think of less inevitable romances."

"Paul...."

"That's your husband...."

"You know him. Anyway, Paul met Warren while they were overseas."

"And your husband got the Weidberger account. After the armistice, after the Ryner-Weidberger wedding and after Mr. Whitten associated himself with Oliver and Lindsay."

"It's Oliver, Lindsay and Whitten, now," Nadine said, rather proud of Paul at the moment. "Incorporated."

"I know. I was about to comment on the perilous instability of all our modest fortunes. Do you realize that your way of life, not to mention my new commission, hinges on the mood of a woman who'd have a lamp made from a genuine Ming vase? It's frightening, isn't it?"

"Oh, Mabel's dependable as the Rock of Gibraltar."

"Dangerous type," Monty advised authoritatively. "More like an inactive volcano. Are you sleeping with Ryner?"

"Why ... "

"Please. We aren't going to be coy with each other, remember?" Monty's hand found Nadine's.

In that moment she felt as though she had come face to face with herself in the street and she laughed out loud. She let her hand rest, confident and familiar, in Monty's.

"I asked you a question."

"I ignored it."

"No, you answered it. This clutter is about to fall down over me. What else is there to see?"

"Oh ... the piece de resistance. But we have to go into the garden for that."

"A fountain! A little marble boy from Italy, urinating on plastic water lilies made in Hong Kong."

"That's good, but not good enough. Come see."

Nadine led him back through the house. They crossed a glass enclosed solarium and stepped into a formally arranged garden. Tulips and creeping phlox bordered a flagstone walk over which a pattern of new sycamore leaves moved languidly, filtering light from a three-quarter May moon. For some unaccountable reason, they moved softly and Nadine almost whispered, "Years ago, the old Mr. Weidberger's brother was in another business."

"The plot thickens."

"He manufactured gearshift balls. Beautiful marbelized glass gearshift balls. And, naturally, some of them got broken. There were bound to be seconds."

"It always happens."

"So-not to take a total loss-Mabel's father had them imbedded in concrete. I wish we could turn on the lights. This thing has to be seen in broad daylight to be appreciated."

But they had reached the enormous cement birdbath by then ... a spectacle even in that uncertain light. Chunks of the multi-colored glass balls protruded from the cement at half-inch intervals. It was a bird bath roomy enough for South American condors and they stood before it for a few seconds with something like awe before they burst into laughter, Monty reaching out impetuously to sweep Nadine into his arms.

"To think of finding you here, in all this splendor!"

"Were you looking for me?" Nadine asked, mockingly innocent.

Monty held her fast, their faces close together, as though they might be searching for additional, irrefutable evidence of their peculiar oneness. He dropped the facetious tone, interviewing her now with the crisp, succinct directness of a newsman given two minutes with a celebrity.

"When it happens, do you go tick-tick-tick inside or do you crackle, like lightning?"

"Crackle."

"While it lasts, does it consume you?"

"Devastates me."

"Everything else excluded?"

"Everything else canceled."

"It's big."

"Tremendous."

"And you don't allow yourself to recognize any failings in the party of the second part?"

"He becomes flawless."

"You're completely subjective."

"While it lasts."

Monty assumed a thoughtful pose. "But you're handicapped. In your position, you'd almost have to consider consequences, wouldn't you?"

"Only technically. I have a theory that says everyone ought to do what everyone wants to do. There's no point complicating something as simple as that."

"Suppose what you want to do doesn't coincide with what someone else wants to do?"

Nadine pursed her lips, pondering. "I do it on my own time. And I'm careful. Even my very dearest friend only suspects me of being amoral. She couldn't possibly know it."

"That shocks me."

"My being amoral?"

"No, your having a, quote, 'very dear friend.' There's something you'll have to learn if you're going to elevate affairdom to a fine art. You can't have 'very dear friends'! Criminals, writers and collectors must recognize their total isolation from society. Aloneness is both the reward and the penalty of their vocation. They may observe, but they must participate with a form of omniscience. And never, under any circumstances, tell anyone anything. Otherwise they're obliterated by cops, plagiarists and jealous women. I'm assuming your friend is a woman."

"She's here tonight. I'm surprised you haven't made a play."

"I haven't met her. Married, I suppose?"

"Divorced."

"Oh, Lord," Monty sighed. "I avoid divorcees like the plague. They're invariably obsessed with drowning out the old marital mess by embroiling themselves in a new one. Why'd she shed Number One?"

"Leila didn't. Roy left her." Nadine smiled, pleased by the opportunity to prove herself Monty's equal. "He fell madly in love with me, and when I wouldn't run off to California with him, he went alone. Leila claims he was vulnerable."

"She doesn't know you...?"

"Of course not! Actually, she claims he asked her to go with him, to get away from 'that other woman's influence.' And Leila's version is that she'd lived here all her life and wasn't about to start running away from Roy's weaknesses. He's in Los Angeles now ... buried himself in some sort of electronics business. Successful, too, from the size of the checks he sends Leila every month."

"You're positive she doesn't know you were the femme fatale involved?"

"Please don't underestimate me, Monty. Discretion is my middle name. Leila and I are the best of friends."

Monty looked dubious. "She could be laying back, waiting for a chance to even the score."

"Oh, honestly!"

"What about the Allegretti woman?"

Monty had jumped to an astute conclusion about Nadine and Vince. Nadine didn't bother to deny it. "I try to avoid Vince now. And his wife is so wrapped up in that business of theirs, I suspect she takes Coin Machine World to bed with her as a substitute for sex."

Monty smiled. "I had a suspicion that if you opened her head, you'd see a big, red sign flashing 'Tilt!' What about Ryner's wife? My, but you've been a busy little bee!"

"She adores me."

"Good for you. I've always maintained that if you must brush against injured spouses, it's prudent to have them adore you."

All of which made it apparent that Monty Carrell had reduced these emotional excursions to a science. It increased his appeal, knowing that at long last here was a man from whom she could learn something. It was tiring to be always the teacher. Still, she couldn't have him thinking her naive...."I devote a great deal of time to cultivating wives. Even some I'd rather plow under."

"You're ... "

"And don't tell me I'm not like any woman you've ever known. I assume the fact, but if you say it, you'll spoil a perfect illusion."

They were smiling at each other openly now and Monty said, "Every woman is like no other woman I've ever known. I'll have to find a more original category for you. This could be terribly refreshing. Apply the crackle test."

Monty pulled her hard against his body, his mouth closing over hers expertly ... Nadine responding expertly, two undefeated chess-players deadlocked in a championship match, acutely aware of technique, but so enamored of the game itself that the competition became secondary to the experience. A frightening thought, Nadine realized (while she was still capable of the realization, before the surge of naked, un-technical emotion engulfed her completely). But the newness of it, the genuine, sweeping immediacy! There was no room for Nadine-the-director. She was conscious only of the imprint of his body, his lips, the exhilarating, bold, assured intimacy of his tongue, his hands exploring knowingly. That other Nadine might have sounded a warning, "Careful, careful...." But where was that detached observer who always stood apart to criticize, to judge, to call the plays like a sideline coach? She was breathing hard when he released her mouth; fitful breathing not unlike uncontrolled sobs.

Only long, silent minutes afterward did Nadine observe and find relief in the fact that she had had the same effect on Monty Carrell.

"We crackle together," he murmured in her ear. "In the interests of science we owe it to the world to develop...."

Nadine was restored, by then, to that rapier-like state in which she was, once again, sharply articulate. "A scientist sometimes learns as much from what isn't dropped into the test tube as what is. We might also forget we ever saw each other ... see what develops from that."

Anyone else would have argued the point. Or kissed her again before they returned to the house. Monty Carrell only laughed. His arm around Nadine's waist, he laughed the subdued, satisfied anticipatory laughter of a professional fighter challenged by a formidable adversary.

Nadine shared the reaction. It was the best, the most promising of all her beginnings, stirred to a pitch of delirium by their return to the Ryner's bierstube, where a sullen Vince Allegretti played the piano, where Warren Ryner and Paul, arms around each other buddy-style, blending their voices with a barbershop group, bellowed an amazingly ironic rendition of "I Want a Girl, Just Like the Girl That Married Dear Old Dad."

Nadine looked from one to the other, warm with an affection that blanketed them all, warmer still with an exclusive knowledge of each of them.

Warren, in her absence, had had a few, so that he was more affable than ever. He interrupted the vocals long enough to gesture a fraternal invitation to Monty. "Come on, Carrell. Join in!"

Perfect, perfect, perfect! Sometimes life was so crowded with the exciting sensation of fullness that it could scarcely be contained! Shrugging his shoulders, Monty Carrell joined the chorus.

Mabel's red taffeta rustled at Nadine's elbow. Solicitously, her words only slightly slurred, Nadine's hostess said, "Honey, you still haven't had a drink."

Leila Stroud, stationed on Paul's right (his other arm around her, too, buddy-style), stopped singing long enough to wink at Nadine. "She still doesn't need one."

Pleasingly, their harmony filled the room, Nadine singing with the rest:...." a good, old-fashioned girl with heart so true. One who loves nobody else but you...."

Nadine disregarded Monty's advice about 'very dear friends' and winked back at Leila. Any fool could see that Leila was terribly fond of her. Everyone was. Nadine glowed with the thought.

Perfect, perfect, perfect!

CHAPTER THREE

They had been home from the Ryners' for half an hour or more and Paul was calling Nadine from the bedroom. "Mom, I've got to get up early. I just phoned the airport ... Sherry's plane comes in at eight-fifteen."

"In a minute!"

Nadine nudged the encyclopedia volume (B to Bird's Foot) back into its niche on the bookshelf. Not a damned significant clue under "Bear."

"Come to bed!"

"I said I'll be there in a minute!"

"You've been saying that for half an hour!"

"Five minutes!"

"Half an hour. Honey, we had plans...."

"Okay, one more minute!" Nadine called the promise out absently. Damned if she'd be able to fall asleep wondering what Leila had meant in that final exchange before they dropped her off! They had left the party early, Nadine dutifully agreeing when Paul had whispered in her ear that he probably had to be up early the next morning, and there was some unfinished business to attend to at home that appealed to him more than harmonizing "On Wisconsin!" or, "When You Wore a Tulip." Nothing was going to top that breathless intrigue with Monty, anyway....

But there had been no reason for Leila Stroud to leave early. The Ryners or the Allegrettis or anyone from the neighborhood would have driven her home later. The presence of an unattached male with Monty's attractions should have been enough reason for Leila to linger behind. But she had chosen to go home wtih Paul and Nadine.

Paul had kidded about the smoothly executed departure. "One word from me, Mommy hops in the car," he'd said. "I've got her trained."

"Like a seal!" Nadine had laughed.

And Leila had smiled sweetly and muttered, "No. Like a bear. I read an article about trained bears once."

Small talk, but with so definite an emphasis upon the "bear," and so much left hanging and only implied, that Nadine was possessed now with a desire to fathom whatever subtle significance might have been contained in the casual phrase. Like a bear.

Strange, the way Leila's broadest remarks had never before brought forth any response, yet here it was going on one-thirty, Paul feeling sorry for himself in the bedroom, and Nadine finding herself in the den with a passionate determination to know why a trained bear differed from a trained seal, excluding the obvious physical differences. All of this knowing that Paul might possibly fall asleep and be the morose, neglected martyr in the morning. Not a good idea, Sherry coming home. It ought to be a fun day. Paul full of the old Harry and looking young and vigorous, as always after a particularly satisfactory session in bed.

"B-E-A-R-S, a family of large, heavy, long-haired, plantigrade, carnivorous mammals...."

Carnivorous. No, Leila wouldn't draw that square an analogy. But what the hell did "plantigrade" mean?

"Nadine, this isn't fair!" Paul was beginning to sound martyr-like already.

Hurriedly, deciding to skip "plantigrade," and acknowledging Monty's dogmatic warning about friends (for the first time admitting Leila as a possible source of trouble), Nadine resorted to a worn volume dedicated to natural history for children-one of Sherry's old books.

"Mom...?"

It was buried in paragraph three. A bear, Nadine discovered, was peculiar in that it could never be completely domesticated. The most friendly, the most superbly trained bear could not be trusted at any time ... bears had been known to turn on their masters after years of apparent tameness and affection....

That was the bit, the whole stinking, ridiculous bit! Leila had merely tied in one of those irrelevant bits of information we all possess but seldom find use for. But Leila had gone even further this evening. The little cracks loomed up suddenly as a darkening menace. Cross Leila off the list. Don't get too close. Always the possibility that she knew why Roy had left her!

Nadine slammed the idiotic book shut and returned it to its place. So much for Leila Stroud! She walked to the bedroom slowly, her mind shifting to a heady awareness of herself as a woman-of her body, of the reaction it generated in men, of her ability to choose the right locutions, the exact mannerisms, of her precious talent for fulfilling and perhaps even exceeding the ultimate requirements of her sex.

At the Ryners', she had finally gotten around to consuming two or three vodka gimlets, so that it was easy to abandon herself to the pervading mood. And she had enjoyed the close harmony, so that now she felt like carrying on-pulling her dress over her head as she approached the bedroom and singing a hoked-up version of the burlesque standard to which more professional but less confident strippers had been peeling it off since the Year One:

"A pretty girl ... Is like a ... mel-o-dy ... That haunts you ... night and day...."

Nadine tossed the new black job across the vanity bench, turning to face Paul, feeling delightfully smiley and wicked inside, and pleased to see that he had overcome his pique at her Lysistrata-like delay. He hadn't bothered with pajamas or covers and he had doused all the lights except the cute little floorboard nightlight that had been installed by some sexy little electrician who knew how a bedroom ought to be lighted, bless his nasty little heart....

"Just ... like the st-a-rain ... Of a something-something-I forgot-the-words ... re-frain ... "

"Haunting," Paul said, his eyes riveted to her body.

Nadine laughed at her confusion with the lyrics and disposed of the black slip. Over the head. Mussing up her hair. Nice wanton effect.

"My crazy, wonderful...." (Paul's voice hoarse and crowded with admiration.)

For a microinstant, Nadine wondered if she could expect the same rise from a man less devoted to her, a man to whom gazing upon this sort of nonsense (shapely babes with parasol props, or telephones or haystacks) was part of a working day. She waltzed over to where the vanity mirror afforded a dim glimpse of a brief black pantie-girdle and matching bra, both logically filled, regretting the inadequate reflections which did not include her legs, then decided, looking down at their nyloned slickness, that Monty Carrell might be blase, but not that blase....

Then, because Paul was so obviously enjoying the procedure, and because she was doing exactly what she felt like doing, Nadine made a few rhythmic steps toward the bed, humming the overworked melody and playfully working at the stubborn hook-and-eye snaps that separated her breasts from his view.

Nadine stretched herself languidly, arching her back and feeling not unlike a sleek, black cat, wondering ... when it took so little effort or imagination to make a man happy, why was it that so many women resigned themselves to stodgy middle age because, like Mabel, they had two half-grown kids and had been married for sixteen years, or why someone as energetic as Gwen Allegretti replaced sex with statistics on hot-selling pinball machines.

So little effort ... and here was Paul, who could put every other woman's husband to shame, superbly happy in the process of making love to her ... the procedure working both ways, especially since Nadine could close her eyes and visualize another room, another time in which someone she had just met, someone amazingly like herself, might enact this very scene, also with her. And it might not be better, but it would be different. Not that there was anything wrong with what Paul was doing now ... but it would be different.

Reluctantly, Nadine erased Monty from her thoughts. Anything a person did merited complete attention. She concentrated her every effort upon the business at hand.

Later, when their breath was even and the floorboard light had been extinguished, with his face cradled against the hollow of her neck, she heard Paul say sleepily, "Mom?"

"Mm?"

"Little observation. You do this unconsciously, I know. Don't take it as criticism on my part."

"Mm?"

"Oh ... you have a habit of making ... I'm not complaining now...."

"Making what?"

"Sort of ... sexy-breezy talk. You don't mean anything by it and I'm not asking you to stop. You're so damned unaware of it, I think I ought to call it to your attention."

"I make sexy-breezy talk?"

"It's just your way of talking. But some people might get the wrong impression."

"Like for instance?"

"Oh, look ... you're still a damned good-looking woman. Throw a few lines at a man ... say, a man whose wife ... you know what I mean."

"I don't know what you mean."

"All right, a single man. A guy on the prowl. In all innocence you throw out some of that ... double-entendre chatter. I know it's just ... glib talk. But another guy might get completely off-base ideas about you."

"I can't imagine."

"I know you can't. That's why I'm telling you."

"I talk the way I talk."

"Sure, Mom ... I wouldn't want you to change. But do it with me around. Sit on my lap if you have to, but let the boys know it's just talk. You're my girl."

"No more going our separate ways at parties? I'm assuming this observation came to you at the Ryners'?"

"That's the general idea. I don't mean you've got to stick to me like glue. But you know the old South Chicago advice." Paul laughed, his breath warm against Nadine's flesh. "Hang aroun' the guy what brung ya."

They giggled together in the comfortable understanding of two people who share the implied as well as the spoken.

Then, somberly, sleepily, Paul said, "I don't want anybody getting the wrong impression of my baby." His arms tightened, hugging Nadine with the sweet, sexless affection that is only possible after the most fulfilling union. "Not even an old pal like Leila."

"She did make a few funnies tonight."

"Well, no more. Okay, hon?"

Paul's voice drifted with him into peaceful, sonorous sleep.

He was dead to the world when the phone rang. Electrifying sound. Nadine lifted the receiver from its cradle and laid it gently on the night table.

It could only be Vince. Poor Vince. Poor Warren, for that matter. But Warren was probably too busy with his guests now to be concerned. Vince was home by now. It was cruel not to talk to him when he needed so desperately to talk with her. But it was impossible, of course. Think of something else.

"Every woman is unlike every other woman I've ever known." There were a number of hidden possibilities in that sentence. Any number of hidden possibilities in the man who had said it. She would see him again, of course ... think about where or when later.

"This could be terribly refreshing ... Apply the crackle test...."

Crackle, crackle. Nadine smiled in the darkness and then yawned. Stretching first, she curled herself against the warm curve of Paul's body. The telephone near her ear made no sound. Except for Paul's relaxed and heavy breathing and the ticking clock, the room was still.

Who would understand why she loved them all, needed them all, and knew with a firm conviction that she was neither immoral nor amoral? For there had been a time when she had been starved for love and the cupboard had been bare. Was there something evil in indulging yourself after a long, painful period of fasting?

No one was being cheated! Did Paul feel neglected or unloved? How could there be anything wrong with requiring and having enough love to go around ... enough for everyone who reached out...?

CHAPTER FOUR

Nadine arose on Saturday morning reluctantly and, she thought, heroically, considering that she wanted nothing more than a few more hours of sleep.

Over the breakfast table, Paul brightened Nadine's heavy-lidded outlook by acknowledging her sacrifice. "You're a honey, Mom. God, how I hate to eat breakfast alone. I didn't mind fixing it, understand. I just like to have you around."

He kissed her warmly before taking off for the airport. "Back to the sack, witch. Sher and I won't be back for at least two hours. Go on ... you'll fall asleep standing up."

Nadine returned to the comforting warmth of the bed. Sleep eluded her and she toyed with a review of her meeting with Monty Carrell. His effect upon her, she acknowledged placidly, had been devastating. She had been devastated before, certainly, but with the others she had been forced to blind herself to a variety of shortcomings. Roy Stroud had been uncompromising, headstrong and something of a moralist, demanding a clean break, refusing to take the sensible course of having and eating his cake at the same time. Vince was incurably romantic. Not talented, really ... the poetry he wrote for her, seen objectively, was maudlin, trite; an example of revoltingly amateurish prosody. He allowed Gwen to wear the pants in the family. He drank. Drunk, he reduced himself to the most unromantic, crude levels imaginable. And there was something pool-hall-corner-tavernish about his background that clung to him. People might grow wealthy peddling beer or pinball machines, but somehow they couldn't shake off the shoddy aroma. Songwriting dilettante. Vince could afford the Riverdale Country Club, but he'd have blended more gracefully into the Fifty-fifth Street S.A.C., chairman of the St. Patrick's Day Dance, "Count" Kowalski and his Rhythm Counters ... Poor Vince, imagining himself the Misunderstood-Artist-Chained-to-the-Callous-Businesswoman ... oh, and Warren singing a similar tune now, though Warren's only fault was that naivete ... admitting to Nadine that he'd never looked at another woman, apart from the Childhood Sweetheart Mabel! He might have used imagination enough to invent a few affairs to entice her! Good Lutheran stock. Exciting as a bowl of cold noodles. And all that breast-beating about not being able to go on this way! Rather shocking to realize that the Ryners were probably millionaires! But still Little League. No foggy notion of what goes on outside the tiny Riverdale-to-the-Brewery microcosm, Caribbean cruises and European tours notwithstanding.

Still, she was fond of them all, had relished the illusion of being in love with them for brief and limited spans. But there had always been so much about them that it had been necessary to exclude, otherwise the illusion would have been destroyed from the start.

But Monty ... what was it necessary to erase from her picture of him? Nothing she could say would go over his head; he had anticipated her most carefully polished lines. Having admitted a degree of phoniness, she couldn't find fault with him on that score. Rather, he had welcomed her into an exclusive club of one; by confiding and then laughing off his less admirable qualities, he had closed the door to any criticisms she might offer now. Which was clever. And Nadine admired cleverness. Nurtured it in herself, had sought it in others ... and had usually been disappointed. (Paul was intelligent; he was not clever. And Paul was something else again.) Yet how clever Monty would have to be if they were to see each other again! And who could doubt that they would? He would have to do and say what a polished lover had to do and say, without letting Nadine see through the mechanics! And she, too, would be obliged to make him feel important, yet always expendable. She would have to walk a delicate tightrope between practiced allure and casual indifference. And like counter-counter-counter espionage agents, they would develop the most ingenious, most challenging, most subtle of intrigues!

She remembered herself in the stranger's arms. It could be. It could very well be! And a lesser woman would have run from the possibility. That Nadine would not run seemed, at the moment, to be preordained. She could not recall a time in her life when she had run in any direction but forward.

Later that morning there had been two brief visits, one from Warren, who came ostensibly to discuss the revamped Weidberger label (a conscience-clearing maneuver), and one from a curious Leila, who had witnessed Sherry's untimely arrival from her figurative watchtower across the street.

But it was late afternoon now and the Whittens were alone, lolling around the glass-walled living room, Paul attempting to inject some parental dignity into the reunion, Nadine content to study her daughter objectively.

Sherry had stretched herself on the floor, stomach down, her pixie chin propped in her hands. She was slim and a bit gangly, inheriting Paul's height along with his coloring. Something would have to be done about that outdated, chewed-off, Italian-movie star hairdo, and even then, Sherry would retain that paradoxical gawky-gamin appearance. In Nadine's adolescence, Sherry would have been called tomboyish. But to her natural outdoorsy breeziness, Sherry had added the results of a recently blossomed desire for glamour. Too much lipstick. Ye Gods, eyeshadow, too ... and not deftly applied.

Yet Nadine felt no lessening of her own attractions in viewing Sherry's growing maturity. She rather enjoyed telling people that she had a sixteen-year-old daughter. Somehow, even in Sherry's presence, no one quite believed Nadine could be her mother. Yet the tired old "you could pass for sisters" bit was beneath Nadine. They were not close enough for sisters. And, like most considerate strangers, they got along together amicably.

"Wasn't that the end?" Sherry was moaning. "Getting wasted the way I did? That was cold!"

"I'm still not clear on the details," Nadine said. "Did you have a reason for going to Richmond?"

"No. Carolyn and I just got jazzed about the idea one night. You'd have to live in that Mickey Mouse school to know how we felt. And all we did was put on jeans and old sweaters and split down to the railroad yard. And then we hopped this crazy freight car and met this crazy old character. Man, he had a harmonica and he played a lot of rank pop things ... thought he was real cool, I guess."

"A bum?' Paul's face had gone pale. "You didn't tell me...."

"Well, don't sweat it, Daddy. He was older than you are. No sweat at all."

"God."

"But it was funny. He'd finish a number and Carolyn would say, 'How does that grab you, Whitten?' Or I'd say, 'I feature that, don't you, Sankey?' He thought we were wild about him and he kept playing encores. We were gassed!"

"Sherry, did it occur to you that...?" Paul left the implication dangling in mid-air.

"But that's all there was to it," Sherry explained. "Then we got to Richmond and Carolyn knew this boy she said we could count on to drive us back to school. It took us hours to find his house and by that time she had chickened out and said it was too late to call on anybody. So we had to find the bus station and the next bus that got us anywhere near Pine Cove didn't leave until morning."

"You spent the night in a bus station?"

"It could have been the boxcar, Paul," Nadine said consolingly.

"And the heck of it was, we had just enough bread for our ticket, and we were starved. And then we had to walk five or six miles to the school after we got off the bus. So we sneak in the dorm and all hell breaks loose. Tillotson had everybody in a mad uproar. Bla, bla, bla ... I nearly died! She was so positive we'd been out with some horrible boys. That's what you'd expect from an old maid dean ... she couldn't feature anything but you-know-what."

"We don't know what," Paul said irascibly.

"Sure you do. Sex."

"Sherry...."

Nadine shot one of her let-it-go, we'll-talk-about-it-later glances toward Paul.

"I guess you think we were out of our gourds. I mean, it's sort of a burn to get thrown out of school. But you know how it is when you get bugged with an idea."

"I know how it is," Nadine said. "I think we ought to forget it now. Start thinking about next semester."

"I'd like to finish out here. Riverdale High."

Paul seemed relieved. "That might be wise."

"I'll have to get to know some of the kids again." Sherry scrambled up from the floor.

"Mabel's cousin's going to spend the summer here," Paul told her.

"Really, dear?" Nadine hadn't heard. "He's down at Urbana, isn't he?"

"U. of I.?" Sherry's interest flared and then cooled suddenly. "Mrs. Ryner's cousin?"

"He's only about nineteen," Paul said.

"Yes, but he'll probably think he's twenty-five and I'm eight. And if he's anything like Mrs. Ryner, he'll make me think of malt and hops."

Paul got up to throw an affectionate arm around Sherry. "Malt and hops are what keep the wolf from our door, honey."

"I guess. You've done all right for dear old Weidberger, too, haven't you? Carolyn's father owns a department store in Bowling Green. They're lousy with money, but you're tougher stuff in advertising."

"I hope you didn't brag about me."

"I just told the kids you're a genius."

Paul laughed. They were close, those two. Nadine felt warmed by their closeness, completely unresentful and un-possessive, sure of their affection for her, with no need to compete.

"You had me slightly overrated," Paul was telling Sherry. "In fact, until I got the Weidberger account I wasn't even a junior partner. But I've learned a few things along the way."

"Like what?" Sherry wanted to know.

"Oh ... just recently I decided there's only one simple rule for success. Size up the competition-go it one better."

Sherry looked up at her father with amazement. "You just found that out? Oh, man, Mom could have told you that years ago!"

It was after eleven when Nadine walked out of the bathroom, clicked the hall switch and then noticed the pencil-thin shaft of light under Sherry's door.

From her own room came the peaceful rhythmic rumble of Paul asleep and snoring. Nadine moved quietly to the end of the carpeted hallway. Sher had probably conked out with the light on. Pushing the door open cautiously, Nadine was startled to see Sherry sitting up in bed.

"I thought you were asleep almost an hour ago."

"I can't sleep," Sherry said. She looked more like a child in the figured flannel pajamas and her face looked tear-smudged.

"Sher ... you haven't been crying?" Nadine's brow furrowed and she crossed the room to perch at the foot of the bed. '.'We weren't too rough on you about the school thing? I'm sure we weren't."

Sherry shook her head negatively, biting her lower lip. "You didn't say anything." A fresh flood of tears threatened Sherry's cheeks and her voice rose to a strident, accusing pitch. "You didn't seem to care!"

"Darling, of course I cared! I didn't want to rub it in, so...."

"Carolyn's mother was almost hysterical when she found out."

"Would you have liked it better if I'd made a big fuss?"

Sherry looked into the bedspread, embarrassed. Paul had been right. The freight-train episode was less a lark than a bid for attention.

"You know I care what happens to you, goose." Nadine patted what was probably Sherry's calf under the covers. Brightly, she added, "Next time I'll throw a real tizzy."

"There isn't going to be a next time."

"I hope not. It didn't sound too exciting."

"You always manage to make things happen when you're bored," Sherry said. "It turns out all right for you, too. Once in my life I try to be different and all I do is goof."

Nadine felt her body stiffen. "What do you mean ... I make things happen?"

"Oh, you ... whatever you do. Change the house around or get your hair cut. Throw a party. You know what I mean."

Nadine relaxed. "There's no comparison, dear...."

"... or get somebody all worked up over you."

Sherry was looking at her closely now and it was an effort not to react. "I don't understand that last remark!"

"Well, take the way Mr. Ryner feels about you. Did you look at his face today? Man!"

"Sherry, you mustn't let that ... romantic imagination run away with you. I don't think this sort of talk is a bit clever."

"Maybe you don't even know it. But I think it's fabulous.

I mean, I'd give anything to ... have people go ape over me. But I goof up everything. I blab out everything. There's no ... mystery about me or anything."

"At sixteen, I'd hope not."

"You don't know what I mean. You're ... oh, it's like being on a stage all the time. People flip, but you pretend you don't know how they feel...."

"Honey, this is all garbled and ridiculous...."

"No, it's not. I used to watch the kids in drama class. Some of them had it and ... most of us didn't. I guess the ones that had it were ... sort of phonies. But phonies get a bigger charge out of life. Even when they foul up, they're smart enough not to let anybody know it. I try to do something different and ... either I get a loud ha-ha in my face, or I'm in trouble up to here."

"Sherry, we haven't seen each other since Easter vacation. It seems to me you'd have something more decent to say about...."

"You don't understand...."

"You've practically come out and called me a phony."

"See? Now you're doing the injured mother bit ... and it's so real, anybody'd believe it."

"You don't?"

Sherry hesitated, her eyes focused again on the bedclothes. "Don't sweat it, Mother. It's a compliment, sort of. Most of the kids I know think their mothers aren't too sharp. And, anyway, actresses aren't for real, but people flip over them, don't they?"

"I didn't like that reference to Mr. Ryner, Sherry. It wasn't a bit flattering."

"I guess he is kind of a clod. Nice, though."

"That isn't what I meant. He's a close friend and a rather important business associate. I expect you to show some respect for him. And I don't want any more imaginary implications." Nadine spoke with a convincing resentment-outraged decency was a snap. (Distend the nostrils, stare determinedly into space and think outrage.)

"You don't have to tell me you're mad for Daddy, if that's what you mean. Who wouldn't be? But it must be kicks to know that...."

"That's enough on the subject, Sher. Let's get some rest now. And no more moaning because I didn't throw a fit." Nadine rose, moved toward Sherry and kissed her cheek perfunctorily. The gesture seemed wooden and self-conscious; it was the first time Nadine could recall feeling uncomfortable and insincere, as though Sherry's perceptive analysis had unmasked her. It was like stepping onto a stage without costumes or makeup, suddenly knowing the audience was aware that your lines and postures were only theatrical contrivances, that nothing you were doing was genuine. And finding it impossible to persuade that audience or yourself that it was otherwise.

"Good night, dear," Nadine said absently. "It's good to have you home."

"Would have been a lot better two weeks from now."

"No one has to know all the details, Sher. We'll think of some excuse for your not finishing the semester."

Sherry jerked her head upward convulsively. "No, we won't. Maybe you could get away with it, but I couldn't."

Nadine hesitated in the doorway. Her daughter, like Paul, was painfully addicted to that other kind of truth ... the literal, external, openly discernible reality which needed no imaginative embellishment or rationalization. Yet Sherry's bluntness ignited a small flame of resentment. You could get away with a lie because lying is second nature to you. "You want everyone to know Miss Tillotson shipped you home for staying out all night?"

"I told Leila this afternoon. While you were fixing coffee."

"Oh?"

"She was shocked. She said I could have gotten raped. Or murdered."

"And she hugged you, I suppose?"

"Well, you know she would. Leila's awfully affectionate. Oh, and she said it gave her cold chills to think I'd had such a narrow escape." Sherry's eyes, far from tearful, shone now with a deep satisfaction. "Man, she was really shook!"

Strangely, Nadine had never before considered Leila a competitor ... certainly not in this area. Yet, after she had said good night to Sherry once more and left the room, her mouth felt parched by the first, faint taste of personal defeat.

Leila had probably strengthened her hand with Sherry unwittingly. She wasn't clever enough to ... what was it Paul had stated as his formula for success? "Size up the competition and go it one better." But she had given Sherry the reaction the child wanted; Sherry's adventure had not been permissively dismissed, but magnified and dramatized. "You might have been raped ... or murdered!"

And later, lying stiffly beside Paul in her own bed, Nadine wondered if it was only a mild jealousy over Sherry's affections that rankled inside her. But another concern clung like an unwelcome parasite to her thought. Did Leila know too much? Did Sherry sense too much? They might even be drawn together by a common viewpoint!

This was nonsense, yet how else could she account for the unfamiliar queasiness in her stomach, the initial fluttering of a visceral disquiet closely resembling fear?

Nadine burrowed her head deeply into her pillow. What a convenient faculty ... to be able to draw a curtain on the vaguely unpleasant and turn her mind to brighter vistas! She could think about Monty, savoring their conversation, remembering the uncompromising insistence of his physical overture, projecting herself into that not-distant hour when every implanted seed of promise would mature and be harvested.

For there was one more vital truth about herself to be faced. When the intriguing new episode beckoned, the possibility of discovery would not hold her back. She would not consciously risk disrupting the status quo with Paul and with her daughter. She would merely use the most common-sense caution, trust to luck, and plunge forward.

Early in the week, Nadine thought, yawning. Monday or Tuesday. Give Monty time to think about her, but not long enough to forget.

CHAPTER FIVE

On Tuesday, with a dreary rain thumping against the sidewalk outside, Nadine had lunch with Paul in a French arcade restaurant conveniently close to his office.

Her plan to drive him downtown, meet him for lunch, and spend the hours before-and-after shopping, had been announced abruptly on Monday evening. (Abruptly, but a discreet hour after Sherry had made telephone arrangements to spend Tuesday visiting Riverdale High with Fran Lindholm, a former grade-school chum.)

During coffee, Paul lit a cigarette. "What'd you shop for this morning?"

"Oh ... the gourmet shop at Field's had pomegranate juice. I had them send out a case."

Paul nodded sagely. "We needed that badly."

"And I got a chi-chi bathing suit for Sher at Carson's. Oh, and a book about mushrooms for the cleaning woman's husband. Mr. Sefcik is a bug on mushrooms."

"That's all?"

Nadine considered her purchases for a moment and laughed. "Oh, there's one more thing. I have to pick up something for Gwen Allegretti's birthday."

"When's that?"

"August. It takes time to find something she'll like. But I'm not going back to the Loop. I think I'll comb Michigan Avenue until you punch out."

"Saks rears its ugly head." Paul drained his coffee cup. "You're a child. Once you get a bug in your ear about doing something...." He reached over to pat Nadine's hand lightly. "Don't grow up, Nadine. Keep driving forty miles through downpours to buy pomegranate juice ... and textbooks for the maid's old man. As long as you're a child, you'll need me around."

Paul's compliments were pleasant, but Nadine listened vaguely, wondering how much time Monty Carrell spent in the agency's art department and why he hadn't phoned her ... and why she had really expected to see him today, knowing he free-lanced, and what the next move would be if he didn't happen to be around the agency.

"I'm not rushing you, Mom, but Oliver thinks there's an Eleventh Commandment. Thou shalt not begin a one-thirty meeting at one-thirty-five."

"I'll run up to the office with you," Nadine said casually.

"Oh? Fine."

"I haven't stopped in to say hello in ages. It's all right with you, isn't it, Paul?"

"Sure. Matter of fact, the girls in copy asked about you this morning. What's her name ... Dorothy ... and Miss Levitt."

"I'll make it a quick goodwill tour."

"Good to see you that interested." Paul flashed his quick smile. "Get over to art and production, too, honey. Old Man Pritchard gets a big charge out of you."

"Oh, really? I'm glad you reminded me," Nadine said. Pritchard was the agency's production chief, she recalled.. Fat, nearing retirement, and given to leaving traces of rubber cement when he pinched your cheek. "I hadn't planned on the art room, but guess I can't leave without dropping in on old Pritch, can I?"

Fortunately, Paul's partners were locked with him behind one of the doors in the executive suite. Instead she had devoted five full minutes to a Dorothy Somebody in Copy. She had waved at somebody else in Media and passed Mr. Oliver's office, noting the framed sign above his desk: "I've never met a man I didn't like," and thinking that was going a little too far. Then, after a brief stop in the ladies' room to repair the rain damage, she had swept into the art department, only to discover that Monty Carrell never came near the place! He had occasional meetings with Paul and the art director, but he insisted that the actual production be handled by remote control.

It was simple enough to pry this information from Old Man Pritchard. "I hear you're going in for curvaceous cuties," Nadine told him.

The old boy, harried and messy, sat w-edged behind a littered table of layouts, proofs and the inevitable pot of rubber cement. "Yes, yes," he said in a remarkably high-pitched voice. "Oliver, Lindsay and Whitten going in for jail-bait posters. Never thought I'd live to see the day."

"Easy with the criticism, Pritch. It was my husband's idea, you know."

"Liable to get myself fired, eh? Don't get me wrong, Mrs. Whitten. I still get a rise out of pretty girls." He held up a square of art board, lifted the protective flap, and wagged his head at an illustrated doll. Half-reclining, she smiled at Nadine and toasted the world with a tall, foam-topped glass of amber brew. Under the dark, sheer harem trousers, her legs looked lusciously three-dimensional; her breasts jutted forward with an arrogance that seemed to add a fourth dimension.

"Makes you want to run out and swig beer 'til you're unconscious, hey?" Old Man Pritchard patted the Weidberger Girl's fanny carefully with a plump forefinger. Then he returned her to an artwork rack beside his desk, still addressing her lovingly, "Your daddy's a pain in the tail, sweetheart, but you I like!"

"Don't you get along with Mr. Carrell?" Nadine asked, smiling.

"In this department, you're supposed to genuflect when you mention that sacred name. The day I see an illustrator send back a layout ... he doesn't like it! Nothing like deadlines to think about. No, sir! Engravers like to work all night! And to make things a little more interesting, God sends the rain, so I can't even find a messenger boy to take the damned revision to his studio!"

Pritchard grabbed the phone at his elbow and squeaked, "Did you get a boy to take that envelope to Carrell yet?" He listened for an instant and then his flabby face quivered with frustration. "What do those bastards do ... hide in a movie house when it rains? It's not going all the way to Cicero, Margaret! Just over to Rush Street...."

"Could I take it over for you?" Nadine asked, all concern.

Pritchard slammed the phone down. "He's a spoiled prima donna now. What'll he be like once the bosses' wives start running his errands?"

"But it wouldn't be any trouble. I was going to the Near North Side anyway. If you're really in a hurry to get your layout to Mr. Carrell...."

Pritchard blotted his forehead with a rumpled handkerchief. "Well ... if he gets it before three o'clock, the Lord might get the job back here before Resurrection Day." He looked at Nadine dubiously. "You're sure you won't be going out of your way?"

"Not at all!"

Hesitantly, Pritchard added, "It's raining...."

Nadine got up from her chair opposite the big production table. "I always feel cozy when it rains, don't you?"

"I meant ... Mr. Whitten won't like me using you for a delivery boy."

Nadine reached over to pull a switch on the normal procedure. She pinched Old Man Pritchard's fleshy cheek. "If that's the case, we won't tell him." She smiled. "Is it at the switchboard? ... The layout?"

Pritchard nodded. "Ask Margaret for the manila envelope with Carrell's name on it." Nadine was at the door. "And, say ... thanks a lot!"

"Thank you," Nadine said.

Old Man Pritchard looked up quizzically. Then he shrugged his pulpy shoulders and busied himself with a sheaf of type proofs. Nadine hurried out of the room.

Lovely, lovely, lovely....

Monty Carrell's studio was on the second floor of an old brownstone three-story along what nostalgic Chicagoans poetically call "The Gold Coast." The building's austere facade was forgotten once Nadine mounted the stairway. Plush grey carpeting, a banister of thick, fuchsia-colored silken cord, and a gold and chalk-white wallpaper mural had probably shot the rent to an astronomical figure.

There was only one door on the second-floor landing. It was lacquered black and hung with a polished brass Oriental letter that served as a knocker. Nadine lifted the Chinese arrangement and let it drop. The result was a flat, hollow, unmetallic sound, as if someone had set a frying pan on a table. When Monty opened the door a few seconds later, she smiled her approval of the quick results and said, "It's useful as well as Oriental."

Monty was faithful to an urban sophistication that precluded looking surprised. His eyes, reflecting a cool, pleasurable recognition, moved slowly from Nadine's face, to the doorknocker, to the large manila envelope in her hand. "I don't usually invite the messengers in, but I'll be glad to make an exception in your case."

Nadine paused. "Not if you're working. I happened to be...."

"You happened to be in the neighborhood and you're doing that corpulent gargoyle, Pritchard, a favor."

Before his astute analysis could irritate or embarrass her, Monty took Nadine's arm, ushering her into the apartment and glancing with amusement at the black continental dressing gown in which he was robed. "These aren't my working clothes, so you know I'm not merely being polite. I actually wasn't working."

He led her into a spacious, barely furnished room. A bright red couch and suspended bookshelves occupied one wall, a bank of windows the northern end of the studio. There was a portable bar, in contemporary design, separating a compact kitchen from this area, and a closed door led, presumably, to the bedroom and bath.

In spite of the lack of furnishings, the room did not give the impression that its occupant was impoverished. It was kept simple and uncarpeted for functional reasons; an easel, a small cabinet of paints, and an oxygen cylinder intended for airbrush operation dominated the center of the parquet floor.

"To tell the truth," Monty said, moving away from Nadine and toward the kitchen, "you caught me in the act of brewing my favorite damp-weather drink." He had taken the envelope from her and dropped it now, unopened, on the paint cabinet

"Boiled Weidberger?" Nadine started to examine Monty's library.

He laughed. "Don't report me, dear, but I can't bear the stuff, boiled, sauted, on the rocks or en casserole. Matter of fact, the thought of beer sends cold chills down my spine."

He proceeded to spoon a variety of ingredients into two pottery mugs on the bar. Why had there been two, Nadine wondered? Or had he just placed them there now?

"Wait'll you sample this." Monty filled a jigger from a bottle, the label of which Nadine could not identify at that distance. "All that's missing is a violent snowstorm, skis and a hunting lodge fireplace."

"I'll take off my parka and unbridle the huskies." Nadine slipped out of her coat and draped it over the red couch.

While Monty filled the mugs from a steaming teakettle, Nadine scanned the titles in his bookshelf. His tastes ran to French existentialist novels and avant-garde poets and playwrights. A few art books indicated his preference for the more revolutionary moderns.

"You're taking unfair advantage," Monty cautioned from the kitchen. "Books are a dead giveaway."

Monty rummaged impatiently through what appeared to be a spice shelf. "Damn it! Don't tell me I don't ... no, here it is ... nutmeg. Come over and join the people."

Nadine walked over to perch on a wrought-iron barstool. The hot drinks, frothy and in the process of being garnished with nutmeg, sent up a sensuous, spicy aroma. Monty came around to her side of the bar and settled himself on another stool beside her.

"So you've psyched me out. Now see if you can analyze my private recipe." He lifted one of the mugs and raised it in a toast. "To Oliver, Lindsay and Whitten, Incorporated. And to their excellent taste in messengers."

"Cheers!" Nadine tasted her drink cautiously, Monty watching closely for her reaction.

"Nice?" he asked.

Nadine concentrated on the flavor. "Three guesses, what is it?"

"Something I learned in a London pub. What do you think?"

"I think it's a bastard Tom and Jerry." Monty was amused. "That's close. Damned close. Now see how well you've done figuring me from my reading matter."

"I know one thing. You can't bear an author if he isn't obscure."

"Bravo!"

"You're something of an intellectual snob." Monty seemed perversely delighted.

"And I wouldn't know that if I didn't like exactly the same dish of tea, so that makes two of us."

"Nadine, you're a challenge. By God, upstairs and downstairs, you're a challenge!" The barstools remained stationary, but she felt an illusion of Monty moving closer to her.

She sipped from the mug more confidently now, letting the Christmasy concoction warm her insides, hearing the increased tempo of the rain against the wide window on the opposite end of the room. A few moments ago, when he had called her "dear," she had been seized by a disturbing unsureness, thinking he had forgotten her name. It wasn't a common, easily remembered name, but men invariably remembered it. Now, hearing Monty call her "Nadine," she felt a resurgence of the more familiar glow.

Sometime during this silent reflection, she became palpably conscious of his gaze. This was the moment in which she would choose to be impersonal and noncommital, letting him know that the incident at Ryners' was nothing more than a casual party frolic, or extend the challenge to which Monty had referred.

She turned her head, meeting his gaze squarely. Neither of them were smiling or flippant now, burrowing into each others' secret worlds with their eyes. Something in the pit of Nadine's stomach fluttered uneasily ... a sensation of doves shaking their feathers through her body ... flapping wings inside her head. It was an effort not to let him stare her down. Both of them invincible, they might have continued the stubborn, intimate deadlock indefinitely. Except for the opening of Monty's bedroom door.

It was also an effort for Nadine to show no reaction. Because the party of the third part who came briskly into the studio bore a striking resemblance to the harem-trousered Weidberger Girl Nadine had seen pictured on the artboard at the agency. Except that the pretty brunette was outfitted now in a comparatively prim powder-blue suit, a sport coat thrown over her shoulders, and except that, for all the voluptuousness of her body, her face branded her as freshly wholesome and twenty-twoish.

"I have to get home, Monty," the girl said before she noticed Nadine. Then she looked faintly embarrassed, faintly distant, and, finally, unmistakably resentful.

"So you do," Monty said cheerfully. He waved the mug in introduction. "Mrs. Whitten, Ann Helsley."

"How do you do?" Ann said stiffly.

"Hello, Ann."

"Mrs. Whitten's from Lindsay, Oliver and Whitten," Monty explained. "She brought up a revision of that layout I was discussing."

"Oh ... the one you said was too busy? Not enough white space?"

"That's right, dear." Monty spoke to her indulgently, as though she had just been a bright little girl and deserved a gold star.

Ann was too attractive to look awkward, but she managed to do it anyway, standing near the bar, smiling weakly, pretending not to be inspecting Nadine and probably pondering an appropriate exit line. Nadine felt sorry for her and was relieved when Monty got down from his barstool, took Ann's elbow and graciously guided her toward the door. "I'm sorry you have to run, Annie. Keep in touch."

Ann leaned to mutter something into his ear and Monty returned an adoring smile. She appeared to be more at ease when she turned from the open door and smiled shyly at Nadine. "It was nice meeting you, Mrs. Whitten."

"You, too, Ann."

There were a few more hushed confidences at the door and then Ann Helsley was gone.

Monty headed for the red couch, the thick cup still in his hand. He drew a resigned breath. "Do you know, I completely forgot she was still here! Those barstools are murder. Bring your drink over here where we can be more comfortable."

Nadine joined him and they sat a few feet apart, not discreetly, but because both had a healthy contempt for the obvious.

"She's a lovely girl. Not the sort you'd expect to mislay around the house and forget." Monty sighed.

"In love with you, of course."

"Suffocatingly."

"I was glad you presented me as a business associate. She seemed relieved."

Monty laughed shortly. "I could hardly introduce you as a new mistress."

"An old friend?" Nadine suggested.

"I couldn't have gotten away with it. You don't look like anybody's old friend. But you know what I mean about these carried-away romantics. They get tacky after awhile. I don't have the heart to tell them...."

"No, it's always difficult," Nadine agreed. "And, then, why should you? You never know when you might want to see them again." She finished the mellowing drink and set the mug on an end table. "I'd worry about cutting someone off."

"Afraid they might do something desperate? Oh, they never do," Monty said wisely. "You always think they're going to enter a monastery in Tibet or swallow cyanide tablets. But usually ... I'm speaking only of the women, of course ... usually they move in with a married sister who lives in Win-netka. Or they cash in their government bonds and open a health food store in a poor location." Monty eyed Nadine's empty cup. "Fix us another?"

"No, thank you. I'm driving."

"Not yet. Here, let me...."

"No, really, Monty. One's plenty."

"You don't drink, don't smoke. It frightens me. You swear, I hope?"

"Like a stevedore."

"Good. Then there's hope for you." Monty lighted a cigarette, talking between the initial puffs. "But, you know ... I can't imagine finding you disappointing in any way. And forgive me if this sounds smug, but I like to think of myself as a connoisseur."

"You know the best vintages, the best vineyards?"

"Yes, but when you scratch the surface, people rarely reflect the character of the place that spawns them. I've known socialites from Bar Harbor to Grosse Isle to the Balboa Bay Club. You'd expect them to be at least a trifle swank in the feathers. But if I'm looking for a vulgar evening, the possibilities are infinitely greater with a bored debutante ... or her mother, for that matter, than with a headliner from the Zam-Zam Club."

"How do you account for it?" Nadine asked across the room.

"Oh ... a woman is rarely interesting in bed unless-unless she's trying to prove she has many facets. The Zam-Zam girl tries to convince you she's a lady. Elegant women, matrons, especially, are usually dying to be recognized as good lovers."

"Good God, but you're clinical."

"It pays to be. I've exploited that particular conceit with the most gratifying results." Monty smiled at her engagingly as he got up to refill her drink.

"How many times have you given that lecture? You've got it down so pat, I suspect you've worked the Women's Club circuit."

Monty got their drinks to a table. His hands free, he leaned over to cup her face, lifting it to meet his. "What am I going to do with you? I've run the gamut of approaches and now all I have left is...."

"Boyish confusion?" Nadine said tauntingly.

"Well, hardly!" Monty pressed his mouth against hers. He kissed her once and repeated the word...."Hardly," easing himself downward to the couch until his body was separated from Nadine's by a few magnetized inches. "Somehow you don't bring out the little boy in me."

Considering Nadine's many and varied extracurricular activities, it would have been difficult to convince a casual observer that the purely physical aspects were not especially important to her. Until now, she thought. Breathing unevenly at the withheld nearness of Monty's flesh ... the black robe carelessly tied ... aromatic heat of the first drink making the second one superfluous. Then, too, the knowledge that this was no easily overwhelmed suburban husband. A connoisseur. A thoroughly grounded expert. Obviously attracted to her....

There was only the slightest sinewy moment between Nadine's thought and the moment in which he had slid to the couch, locking her in a purposeful, intense embrace. Then the discovery ... the more abandoned her response to his kisses, the less self-conscious her abandon became. Until, under the exploratory travel of Monty's hands, she experienced a surge of genuine, bona-fide, gold-plated and irrefutable passion, a desire far exceeding her histrionic talents. Supple and malleable in his arms, Nadine forgot to play the actress and the director, becoming a tingling mass of woman-about-to-be-made-love-to.

Except that when Monty's superbly demonstrated art had fanned her to a febrile state, he suddenly lay his head in Nadine's lap, as though succumbing to a mutual lassitude, snuggling his face indolently against the flatness of her belly. "We're a pair, you and I."

She traced the strongly defined outline of Monty's lips and his chin with her fingers, his hand reaching up to press her open palm against his mouth. One thing was certain. He wasn't predictable. She could have sworn they'd....

"When will you have time?" Monty asked. His eyes closed, he seemed to be allowing the momentary sensations to consume him.

"Time?"

"Lovemakimg is like ... breakfast. Some people never appreciate the difference between strawberries out of season and eggs with truffles, in bed ... and coffee and a Danish at Walgreen's counter. I know the difference. When the dish is exquisite, you don't gulp. You ... savor slowly." Monty opened his eyes, looking directly up at her. "Don't tell me I'm presumptuous ... you said that last time."

"What do you mean by ... time?"

"Nobody breathing down our necks. I suppose you'll be going home with your husband?"

"Yes. I'm picking him up at five."

"Of course. He started at nine. But we didn't. Will you call me when you've got a whole day?"

"I don't ... "

"Yes, I know. You're accustomed to being called. But it's much more practical for you to phone me." Nadine hesitated. "All right."

"Please sound more enthusiastic, darling. I really want you to." He had dropped the facetious, airy tone and sounded contrastingly solemn. The depth of his passion reflected itself in his eyes. She felt, once again, the involuntary tremor inside, in the regions where love registers itself biologically and without asking permission.

Later, when he kissed her goodbye at the door, he had still not resumed the crisp, independent attitude she had identified with him earlier. Without sounding maudlin, he held her close and murmured a few soulful phrases into her ear. "Call me tomorrow?" he said huskily.

"Yes."

"Lover ... I can't believe you've happened to me." (There wasn't a man on earth who could have said that insincerely with so much conviction!) For real, Nadine thought. This is for real and it goes for both of us.

Nadine didn't remember going down the stairs. Sometime between then and the time when Paul met her in the parking lot off Michigan Avenue, she recalled a snatch of melody....

"It's almost like being in love."

And sometime, in the interim, she had miraculously found a place to park the Chrysler and had rushed into Saks and hurriedly purchased the first item that caught her eye; an intricately beaded, pale blue evening bag that Gwen Allegretti could wear to the annual Coin Machine Manufacturers' Banquet next fall. (Vince would like it. Vince admired her taste.)

Rain came down in a vengeful torrent as she drove home with Paul.

He had taken the wheel. Peering through the drenched windshield, he said, "Just think, I could be reading my paper on the good old C.B. and Q. right now. I hope whatever you accomplished was worth it."

"It was worth it," Nadine assured him.

"Driving these damn throughways leaves me jumpy. Fix me a nice, relaxing drink when we get home?"

"Sure, honey." She sighed contentedly. "Something hot and spicy?"

CHAPTER SIX

"I made a bitchin' salad," Sherry announced proudly while Nadine and Paul shed their coats. "And I took steaks out of the freezer. They're broiling in the what'sis. How does that grab you?"

It grabbed them fine. Except that Paul suggested "delicious" as a more appropriate adjective for the salad.

And while they had dinner, Sherry extolled the coeducational advantages of Riverdale High versus all-girl Pine Cove, ending up by telling them she had spent the latter part of the afternoon at Leila's.

"She's neat, you know it?"

Nadine counteracted. "I got you a bathing suit you're going to love, dear. Carson's delivers out here tomorrow ... watch for it."

Sherry seemed pleased. Then she inquired about Nadine's other purchases.

Informed, Sherry shook her head incredulously. "That took you all day?"

Paul chewed the rare-to-cremated steak determinedly. "Your mother shops carefully."

"Yeah, I guess! The way it poured all afternoon, I told Leila a person'd have to be out of their box to go downtown." Sherry chewed for a moment, learning the hard way that a broiler turned up to five-hundred-and-fifty degrees could char the outside and leave the heart of a frozen filet stone cold. "I told her you ... probably had your reasons."

"Oh? And what did Leila say to that?" Nadine asked, tensing.

"I dunno. Oh, yes, she said you get a kick out of having lunch with Daddy. She's really a doll ... I mean, the way she digs our whole family."

The phone rang, ending the sparring round. Sherry stumbled in a frenzied effort to reach it. "That's Frannie! She promised she'd call and let me know what her brother's boy friend said about me...."

Sherry returned to the table seconds afterward.

"Frannie's brother's boy friend must be a taciturn character," Paul said, smiling.

"No, it was a false alarm. That's been going on since I came home!" Sherry shrugged her shoulder. "The phone rings, I answer, nobody's there. What a drag!"

"Kids, probably," Paul said.

Poor Vince, Nadine thought. He really suffered, unable to communicate ... and so desperate for the sound of her voice ..!

Nearly eleven. Paul was in the den, his head buried in a leatherbound folio prepared by the media department, some sort of homework relative to the afternoon meeting with Oliver and Lindsay.

Under a warm shower, Nadine decided that Paul worked too hard. Took every damned thing so seriously. You'd think, considering that he and Warren Ryner were the closest of friends, he'd feel more assured about the Weidberger account instead of treating it like a sacred trust ... comparing the cost of one radio station against another until all hours of the night and pondering TV ratings as though people would switch to another brand or start a temperance movement if the agency was guilty of one teensy-weensy miscalculation.

Toweling herself dry later, she took a more charitable view. Paul knew what he was doing. It was his knowing that had paid for the little touch of luxury in this room that was her constant delight. Not even the Ryner house boasted a black-tiled Roman bathtub wide and deep enough to look like a sample swimming pool. Nadine had given the architect carte blanche on the rest of the house, but (she smiled now, remembering) had driven him out of his mind with every detail concerning the sunken tub. Two tiled steps down, seahorse-shaped faucets, the works. Of course, no one used it; Paul, like herself, was a shower addict. But it gave the bathroom character.

Thinking about Paul, and how he deserved to get more fun out of life, and surveying the gleaming four-by-six jet-colored pool, Nadine made one of those impetuous blends in which two separate ideas formed a single, irresistible impulse. She smiled once more, pleased with the splash ofingenuity.

There was no stereo speaker that reached this bathroom , ... certainly not with the door closed. She wrapped herself in a towel, crept down the hall to Sherry's room and found the old portable record player in Sherry's closet. Sherry was sound asleep. Good.

The door to the den was still closed. Paul still busy. Good. In the living room, Nadine quietly selected a seldom-played assortment of records, "Chant of the Weed" the most promising.

With the records under her arm, unable to make her choice from the wet-bar in the den, she rummaged in the kitchen and settled for an ornately decked-up bottle of Chianti. It was bound in raffia and decorated with a life-size, realistic-looking bunch of purple grapes.

Returning to the bathroom with her loot, Nadine turned on the tap, rushing into the bedroom to follow an added inspiration, Wonderful, the way new embellishments fell into place once you came up with a sound idea! From a wide selection, she chose an out-sized flacon of cologne (the label called the stuff "sensuous," but "licentious" would have come closer. Returning to the bathroom, she poured the contents into the rising water, checked the temperature, inhaled the perfume approvingly and shut off all but the small light inside the stall shower. Through the frosted glass it shone dimly, adding shadows of mystery to everything but the toilet. Damn! How could you create atmosphere with something as unro-mantic as a John visible?

There was another flash of inspired thinking. Nadine turned on the shower. Hot. In a few minutes the steam would billow through the room, the same, ethereal, other-world effect produced by the people who created those lavish ice extravaganzas!

Nadine opened the wine bottle, filled a single glass and set it beside the rapidly filling pool. She plugged in the record player, turning the weird music low. Steam was beginning to swirl from the shower; the perfume was barely perceptible to the nostrils, but subtly present nevertheless. There was only the matter of wardrobe....

From a closet in the narrow dressing room between bedroom and bath, Nadine plucked a short brocade jacket. It had been part of a dinner dress, long since discarded. But the jacket, open at the front in a deeply plunging V, buttoned just above the waist, flared out and ended at mid-hip, where its usefulness for purposes of modesty abruptly ended. In keeping with her mood, the brocade was a gold-shot purple. Nadine inspected the effect in a door-mirror. Interesting, but a little austere.

Not until she had daubed on a hint of makeup and returned to the perfume-clouded white hell of the bathroom, did she solve the inadequate-costume problem. Sometimes you could think and think and you couldn't come up with anything approaching those marvelously coincidental things that stared you straight in the face! That lovely wine bottle ..!

It took a razor blade and a few minutes of frantic, determined sawing of wire before the ornament came free from the rounded fifth. Nadine fitted the grapes where they'd be most effective. But how...? And then, to prove that the right muse was cooperating with this all-consuming project, Nadine considered that the wide grape leaf would cover up the modus operandi. Humming along with the opium-strained music, immeasurably thrilled by her imagination, Nadine opened the medicine cabinet and took out the adhesive tape.

A few minutes later, she called out, asking Paul to join her.

Their bedroom was dark and Paul held her close, their nakedness made innocent by virtue of a pre-bedtime satisfaction.

"Just when I think I know what to expect from you," Paul said drowsily. "Surprise!"

"Was that fun?"

"Fantastic."

"I'm only trying to prove I have many, many facets," Nadine said carelessly. "A woman isn't really interesting in bed, is she, unless she's out to prove that? For instance, you wouldn't expect all that vulgar showmanship from the same gal who counts your socks when they get back from the laundry and mashes your potatoes. From a stripper at the Zam-Zam Club, yes, from your lawfully wedded, no. But I'll bet the stripper would be a let-down ... trying to convince you she's a lady. Me ... I'm a suburban lady trying to win recognition as a good lover."

Paul's body, until then relaxed pliably against hers, seemed to tense. "Where did you hear that?"

"Hear what? Oh, about the...."

"All of it," Paul said tersely. He drew away from her, half sitting up in bed.

"I don't know. What makes you think I ... Paul, what a question!"

"I heard the whole theory at a production meeting once. When Pritchard suggested that one of Carrell's illustrations looked ... what did he say? Like a cross between a debutante and a two-bit whore." Paul's voice shook with unbelievable tension. "Carrell makes a speech on the slightest provocation. But it was all there. Including his peculiar, original Zam-Zam Club."

Nadine released her breath slowly. Stupid. She was either sleepy or stupid. She mustered all her talent before saying lightly, "Then I must have heard it from him. At the Ryners'. We talked a long time."

"About this sort of thing?"

"Honey, you aren't annoyed?"

"Annoyed isn't the word for it!"

"You know it was only a conversation...."

"It's not the kind of conversation your wife makes with another man. It's what I tried to tell you the other night. That ... sonnovabitch has enough ideas without being encouraged."

"You think I encouraged him?" The talent had not failed her. Nadine believed herself to be cruelly hurt.

Paul relaxed only slightly and pulled her into his arms, kissing her cheeks and brushing the hair from her forehead. "Mommy, you just don't understand. You don't know how men think. You don't know what a cockeyed impression you give to a rounder like Carrell."

Sounding superbly naive, Nadine asked, "Don't you like him, Paul? He seemed like a fairly pleasant person."

"Not around anybody's wife, or sister. Or daughter. And the more I see of him, the more I'm convinced my opinion isn't exclusive. I can't think of one decent guy who could listen to him for as long as I have without wanting to break his jaw."

"But you seemed to like him. You said Warren was ... impressed."

"We like his work. For our purpose. Apart from that ... you know the way some people grow on you? With this guy, the process is reversed."

Nadine's arms moved upward to encircle her husband's neck. She was Gretel now, protected by Hansel from a dark, evil world beyond her virginal comprehension. "I'm sorry, darling. You know it was just ... talk."

"Be Cleopatra with me, Mommy," Paul said. He embraced her with a surprising kind of desperation and Nadine struggled for breath. "The wilder and crazier, the better. But I want everyone else to know you're ... what you are. Sherry's mother. My wife. My wonderful, wonderful...."

He held her for a long time, words failing him, sleep coming hard considering the exhausting effects of the Roman epic.

You can't be too careful, Nadine reminded herself. A homily as time-worn as language itself, but indisputably sage nevertheless. She yawned. If you want to keep everybody happy, you can't be too careful.

And wasn't that the whole reason for existence, keeping everybody happy? On that selfless, noble thought, Nadine fell blissfully asleep.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Nadine would always remember the Night of the Roman Bath as a turning point.

It was as if she had traced the outline of a hairpin with her finger, confidently moving upward, alternating between brilliant flashes of joy and complacent assurance that all was well with the unique world she had chosen to construct around herself. And then, having teached the curved apex of the wire, found that the shape of the thing moved inexorably downward.

Paul's questioning of that careless quotation from Monty had been blithely explained away. But it marked the beginning of a turn ... and the change manifested itself less in her relationship with Paul than in her contacts with the others who peopled her world.

There was the widening chasm between herself and her daughter. Until these first two weeks in June, their lack of rapport, or more precisely, Nadine's unmaternal fondness for Sherry, had sufficed. And Sherry's lukewarm impersonal response had also been, if not deeply satisfying, at least adequate.

Now every motion that Sherry made outside of Nadine's immediate orbit, evoked a sense of personal loss. Sherry had seemingly given up her need for Nadine's attention. She renewed old friendships, and made new friends at the prodigious rate characteristic of teen-agers in a youth-oriented suburb. If the youthful friendships could be discounted as normal and not worthy of competition, Sherry's growing regard for Leila Stroud could not. Leila enjoyed Sherry's respect. More than that, her confidence. On more than one occasion, Nadine heard of a proposed beach party or weiner roast from Leila before she heard it from Sherry.

And the two shared projects that excluded Nadine. There was nothing she would purchase in a smart teen shop that could compare with the Leila-Sherry-do-it-yourself knitting kick.

Nadine approached it casually at first. "Hey, Granny! You're not knitting? You'll be trading in your George Shearing records for a musical rocking chair!"

"I'm making a bulky sweater for school," Sherry said flatly.

"I didn't know you could...."

"Leila's teaching me."

It was a petty incident, but the petty incidents multiplied themselves in Nadine's consciousness. Someone preferred someone else to Nadine. In their joint company she felt like an intruder, working too hard at being cheerful and companionable, aware of their exclusive, self-sufficient camaraderie.

She could have surmounted this single, minor threat to her ego. Consumed as she was with the Monty Carrell affair, Sherry's coolness would have gone by the boards. Except for the frustration of being too far removed from the Near North Side to make the promised return visit. There simply weren't any logical excuses to take her away from Riverdale long enough. After the Zam-Zam Club faux pas, she had become exceedingly cautious.

When the booming romance smelted down to a daily telephone call, it was ironic that this crumb of satisfaction should further her separation from Sherry.

Nadine had phoned Monty one afternoon while Sherry was across the street mastering the anachronistic art of knit-one, purl-two. Monty was in high romantic gear, his deep voice flowing through the receiver like thick honey.

"I resent all these miles and miles of wire separating us, dear."

"I know, I know...."

"Darling, you aren't locked in a stone tower. There aren't any fiery dragons guarding the moat?"

"Monty, you don't understand...."

"I adore you, I want you, I need you." (Yes, they had progressed to that stage through the blessed medium of Mr. Bell's affair-saving invention.) "I want to consume you the way you're consuming me...."

It was all hyperdramatic; possibly (if listened to objectively) ... even a bit on the hammy side. Except that Nadine did not listen objectively. She gave herself to the passion-laced dialogue without reservation. They were in love. It was driving them out of their minds to be cruelly separated. Gradually the emotional and physical symptoms superseded the myth. She had to have Monty Carrell. She told him so, closing her eyes and letting the elixir of his reply pour through her veins. He wanted her, too, he said, as he had never wanted any woman in his life.

Nadine sat with eyes pressed shut, savoring the mood after they had said goodbye. Perhaps a minute had gone by before her sixth sense introduced an awareness of someone else in the room.

Nadine turned. Too late to assume a bland nonchalance. She felt the color drain from her face, the visible tautening of nerves. "Sherry. I ... you went to Leila's, I thought."

"You thought right. Did I come home too soon?"

"Of course not, dear." There was no way of knowing how much Sherry had heard. Perhaps, Nadine thought, I didn't even call Monty by name. Foolish to panic. "Daddy wanted to know...."

Sherry didn't interrupt the hollow excuse; it choked in the web of its own inadequacy. And Sherry spoke only with the silent, deadly articulation of young, disbelieving eyes.

"What's wrong, darling? You look as though...."

Sherry's disgust shone in those eyes. Disgust, disillusionment ... and, conversely, a blazing confirmation of something until now vaguely suspected, circumspectly hinted at. As if, in one fell swoop, the need for cautious innuendoes had been canceled. The glisten of resentful tears was permissable now. "Don't tell me how I look! You should have seen yourself just now in a mirror!"

"Sherry, I don't know what you're talking about, but ... , people who listen in on conversations...."

"... find out that Daddy's name is Monty!"

Sherry turned to run from the room. That last dig had emerged hysterically shrill. "Sherry, listen to me...." Nadine began.

"You don't have to ask me not to say anything!" Sherry was in the hall, pounding savagely toward her room. "I couldn't! I couldn't, I couldn't...!" The strident voice dissolved in angry sobs and a door slammed violently in the bedroom wing.

Arguments or explanations would only heighten the impression of guilt. Ignore it, Nadine thought. Pretend Sherry had made a ludicrous mistake. Believe it strongly enough yourself. Adolescents are prone to melodrama; ignored, they begin to question their own motivation.

Emphatically, with the emphasis faltering only slightly, Nadine convinced herself that Sherry would forget.

It was at Frederic's Beauty Salon that Nadine ran into Gwen Allegretti, who was normally too busy for anything but a brisk exchange. On this morning, though Nadine still found it impossible to look at Vince's wife without visualizing colored lights flashing on a glass-cased scoreboard and bells going ding-ding-ding, Gwen appeared haggard and enervated.

"I took the morning off," Gwen sighed. "I figured, what the hell ... maybe Frederic'll do something for me."

"Your hair looks lovely."

"I mean my morale, kiddo." Gwen's fingers trembled as she lit a cigarette. "That Vince ... I tell you!"

"We don't see much of him these days," Nadine said noncommittally.

"Who does? I wish I wasn't such a softie. Next time he comes back from a three-day toot, he'd find the door locked." Gwen made an unflattering grimace. She seemed reluctant to reveal the smallest hint of senti mentality in her nature. "But you know how it is. You're married to a guy ... what're you gonna do?"

Maybe you should have told him this a long time ago, Nadine thought. It was as close as Gwen would come to saying she loved Vince: You're married to a guy ... what're you gonna do? And, of course, Vince thrived on more poetic expressions ... at least when he was sober.

"Can you ... talk to him?"

Gwen hooted shrilly. "That's all I've been doing! Leila tells me I nag too much. But I can't let him go to pot, Nadine! That lousy bottle...." She smoked thoughtfully for a moment and then, more optimistically, she added, "Oh, hell, what makes Leila such an expert? She didn't have all the answers when Roy got itchy feet. She's got it in her head when a man starts acting up, there's got to be some other woman involved."

"She didn't say that? To you?"

"Not in so many words. She started to, I think, but I set her straight. You have to know Vince, I said. Maybe he drinks, but he doesn't chase."

Nadine nodded, "He's a little frustrated. You know all those screwy ideas he has ... writing songs. God almighty, I wouldn't mind if he did something serious about it ... got it out of his system. But you know and I know a guy could beat his brains out in that racket from here to Christmas and never make a dime. Even if he was good at it, and if he went about it like a business. Vince mostly talks about it and ... pops corks."

"I'm sure Leila was wrong," Nadine said testily. Another needle of suspicion had just been jabbed under her skin. How much did Leila know? And what in hell was she trying to do?

Perhaps, Nadine decided after the conversation with Gwen Allegretti, perhaps I've been taking my security for granted. She made a mental list, that afternoon, of shaky areas that needed patching.

One, Leila would have to be "felt out." Of course she knew nothing about Warren, and certainly nothing about Roy. But there was a possibility that Vince had talked too much or been too obvious. And, too, Sherry had probably told Leila about that unfortunate telephone conversation with Monty Carrell. If that were the case, and if it seemed that a denial would be futile, it would be necessary to appeal to Leila's ego by asking for advice. I'll tell her, Nadine planned, that I'm the victim of an overimpulsive personality, that I've made the mistake of getting involved with two hyper-romantics ... and how would she suggest that I disentangle myself?

Good. Item two, Monty. Monty was necessary now, to replenish the weakening confidence. Bowling him over completely would make it easier to handle everyone else. All of the recent tactical errors were attributable to frustration.

Three. Nadine took care of this minor problem immediately. She dialed the Ryners' number, exchanging banalities for fifteen minutes and leaving Mabel solidly in the pro-Nadine camp. Tomorrow she would think of a warming gesture for Gwen Allegretti.

That left Sherry. Nadine opened the door to her daughter's bedroom, finding the latter sullenly going through the motions of tidying her dresser.

"I've been thinking," Nadine opened cheerfully, " ... this room could stand a redoing. Any ideas?"

"It's okay the way it is," Sherry mumbled.

"Wouldn't a new bedspread and draperies...?"

"No, it's fine. Just needs straightening."

"Seffie had cramps and couldn't get here today."

"I know. Sorry I left a mess this morning. I was in a rush."

"Did you go to the park?"

"Yes."

"Play tennis with Frannie?"

"Yes."

"Was her brother there?"

"He always is."

"His boyfriend?"

"He's always around, too."

It would take infinite patience to break through that wall of taciturnity. "I just had a chat with Mabel Ryner. You know about her cousin George spending the summer with them?"

"Daddy said something about it."

"Mrs. Ryner's expecting him next week. She's afraid George will be bored. You know ... not knowing any young people in town. I know she'd be grateful if you'd introduce him around."

Sherry's interest overcame her determination to remain aloof. She pretended concentration on the littered vanity table and her indifferent tone was far from believable. "Didn't Daddy say he's nineteen?"

"Yes. And he's had a year in college. Of course, he'll be working part-time. In Mr. Ryner's office. That was part of the deal, Mabel told me."

"What deal?"

"Well, Mr. Ryner paid for his new Corvette." Nadine pitched in, clearing the dressing table of lipstick-smudged Kleenex, waiting for the inevitable reaction.

"He has a new Corvette?"

"And you wouldn't want him sitting around the Ryners' backyard, moping." Nadine smiled and for a moment Sherry seemed to forget their rift.

Then Sherry stiffened. "I like boys. Sure, I'd be out of my gourd if I said I didn't." She drew herself erect, summoning a last reserve of resentment. "But men don't mean as much to me as they do to some women!"

Nadine's lips parted. Glancing into the vanity mirror she saw that her eyes had grown misty. "Oh, Sherry! Sherry, baby, you don't understand! Do you remember the things Miss Tillotson thought about you? The way she took an innocent little lark and twisted it into something ... vile?"

"I didn't do anything...."

"But it looked that way to someone who didn't trust you." Nadine reached for a fresh tissue and dabbed at her eyes. "Someone who didn't love you."

"Well, she was wrong! She's got a filthy mind to begin with and we...."

"Couldn't you be wrong, dear?" Nadine asked brokenly. Tears welled in her eyes. "Couldn't you...."

There was a long, searching silence. Then a terrible, gasping sound came from Sherry, "Oh, Mom!"

And they were in each other's arms, Sherry sobbing convulsively, Nadine rocking the tall, gangling body against her own, gently patting the heaving shoulders.

"I don't know why ... everything gets so mixed up ... I goof all the time...."

"Don't cry, honey. It's all right. Please don't cry...."...." I told you ... whatever I do, I goof...." Sherry choked on the words. Tears streamed down her face, rolling off to splotch Nadine's blouse.

Nadine cried, too. She wept as she had never wept before ... as Sara Bernhardt had never wept in her most memorable portrayals of immortal tragedy. Sherry was her child. She loved Sherry. Loved her, loved her ... loved everybody!

CHAPTER EIGHT

On a Friday afternoon in the middle of June, Paul phoned to tell Nadine, "I'm going to eat at the Merchants and Manufacturers with Lindsay and some visiting firemen from the Red Rover outfit in Elkart. And then Pritchard wants my okay on the first of the Weidberger girlie ads. He's having an engraver pull a few enamel proofs soon as it's finished, but it might be late."

"How late, dear?"

"I don't know. They're going to stay with it until the plate's finished. Eleven o'clock ... maybe midnight. Don't worry about picking me up. I'll take a cab from the station."

"No. Phone me, dear. I'll be up."

"Sher home?"

"No. The little Lindholm girl and her brother picked her up about an hour ago. They're having dinner at Frannie's and then they're going to somebody's house to listen to records. Call me from Union Station when you know which train you're catching. That'll be better than waiting around that dumb depot."

"All right. I don't know what I'll do to kill time after I leave Lindsay and the dog food exec. We might stroll over to Carrell's studio. The engraver's on Rush Street ... just a mile or so from where he lives. He lives on Rush, you know."

"I thought you didn't like him."

"It won't be a social call. He'll be interested in this proof, too. After all, it's his illustration."

"All right, darling. Try not to be too late."

"You know me. I'm a home boy."

Nadine spent a few minutes after that wondering if the combination of Paul, Old Man Pritchard and Monty might not pose a threat. Then she decided, no ... Pritch hadn't wanted Paul to know about the messenger-boy incident. Besides, he had probably forgotten about it by now. But how was she going to manage an evening alone?

She thought of Monty Carrell. Of how desperately she loved Monty Carrell. Of how he might be pacing his studio apartment at this exact moment, hungering for her. She reenacted their scene together, closing her eyes to experience, palpably, the firm possession of his mouth over hers, seeing the intriguingly arrogant, disdainful expression he assumed when discussing other women, the deeply buried passion erupting from every part of him when he spoke her name. Tonight ... tonight they could write history together. Amatica historia. Historia erotica. Hell!

Nadine drew open the draperies covering the glass window-wall. A light burned in Leila's front bedroom. Kill two birds with the single proverbial stone? Go over and kick it around with Leila? Must be awful to sit in that big, empty house night after night ... why didn't she get out and meet a few eligible men? Unbearable to be alone that long!

No, she wasn't up to Leila. But to be alone this way! ... How long had it been since Roy Stroud took off one morning, leaving nothing but a note: "This is rotten, Lei, but it would be just as rotten if I had the guts to face you and tell you why I can't...."

She began to remember Roy. From the beginning, going over that first realization several times because the details were fuzzy. Bringing them into focus. Sherry at a Girl Scout meeting, phoning home with a tearful request: could someone please bring the apron she'd worked on for the sewing badge ... it was Awards Night and she'd forgotten her project on her dresser! Rain. Paul off somewhere with the car ... Leila saying, "I don't think I can talk Roy into carrying an apron into a roomful of District big-wigs in green uniforms. But the least he can do for Sherry is drive you over, Nadine."

On the way home, it had happened like a violent, mutual explosion. Roy had only kissed her that night ... but the three days he was supposedly at an engineer's convention and she had driven every morning to that motel near Wheaton ... telling Leila something about dental appointments....

And suddenly Nadine recalled a date and found herself with a necessary project that would fill at least a few minutes of the evening that yawned emptily ahead. June eighteenth! She had remembered! June eighteenth was only two days away. Airmail to California ... she could get a note off to Roy in time for his birthday!

Nadine weighed the thought of driving to Clebb's drugstore to buy a card. Then, too anxious for delays, she settled for informal stationery, picturing the recipient ... Roy's bitter, heartbreaking half-smile, the stirring of old memories, the poignant resignation and yet the inward flutter of excitement in tearing open an envelope bearing her handwriting!

Dear Roy, she wrote.

(What would thrill him? What would he like to hear?)

Tonight, thinking of you, I can't help remembering that you predicted it wouldn't matter how many years or miles separated us. Whenever either of us thought of the other it would....

Nadine, deep in nostalgic reverie, jerked in her seat at the sound of the door chimes. She shoved the unfinished letter under a desk blotter and rose to go to the door.

Geared as she was for a possible visit from Leila, Warren Ryner came to Nadine as a shock.

"Hi, Nadine," he said. "The old bear around?" It was the voice he used for public consumption. He obviously didn't think she was alone.

"Paul's downtown," she said. (Sultry. Somehow she couldn't help the sultry intonation.) "Come in."

"I don't know. Is Sherry...?"

"She's out, too."

"I'd better come back. I came to talk to Paul about a brainstorm Mabel had at dinner. When do you expect him?"

"Any time now," Nadine said. It was only eight-fifteen, but the hours before midnight stretched interminably before her.

Warren followed her through the wide entry hall reluctantly. In the living room, he waited until she had seated herself before he settled in an occasional chair across the room. "Mabel thought I could use a few days at the lake."

The Weidberger clan, Nadine remembered, owned an enormous rustic lodge on the shore of a lake in northern Wisconsin. "Could you?"

"I could use a change of scenery. Get away, fish. I'm going to take the boys and I thought Paul might like to come. He's been driving himself pretty hard on the fall campaign. What do you think?"

"About Paul wanting to go? Oh, I imagine so. You know how he loves to fish. Depends on how full his schedule is."

"I always liked fishing with Paul," Warren said. He filled his pipe nervously and there was a wistful quality in the past-tense reference. "Overseas, we used to wonder if we'd ever get back and get to go fishing together. The few times we've made it to the lake we had a great time. We used to...."

He got up and started a systematic walk from one end of the room to the other, laying the pipe aside, forgetting to light it. "The kids tried to talk Mabel into coming. That would have meant inviting you, too."

"Didn't you want to invite me, darling?"

Warren stopped in the center of the room, staring through her with a disturbing intensity. "I'd get a lot of sleep, wouldn't I? With you in a bed in the next room. Christ! Oh, Christ! It's bad enough to wake up at night and know you're only eight blocks away. When it might as well be a million miles...."

"I know," Nadine said softly. "I know what you mean." (It wasn't exactly dishonest to comfort him with those words. Not too long ago she had known.)

"Someone's here," Warren said. He spoke in a hushed whisper, though there was no possibility of being heard by anyone but Nadine. "Car behind mine in the driveway."

Nadine joined him, seeing only a pair of glaring headlights. "You aren't worrying about Mabel?"

"She knew I was coming here. It was her idea."

They waited for the lights to be extinguished, for a car door to slam outside.

"We shouldn't stand here gawking," Warren suggested. "Maybe it's Sherry. Does she have a boy friend?"

"If she did, I doubt they'd be necking in our driveway with the headlights shining into the house."

"Oh, wait a minute...." Warren squinted his eyes, peering at the dim outline of the car. "That's a Buick ... Allegrettis', maybe? Why don't they come in?"

"There's one way to find out," Nadine said. She headed for the door.

Gwen normally drove the Buick, but she was nowhere in sight. Slouched behind the wheel, his face harshly illuminated by the dashboard lights, Vince watched her approach.

"Vince?" Nadine called. "What are you doing out here?"

Vince grinned blearily. "I am waiting for my lady love." He enunciated the words precisely. They managed to sound slurred in spite of his effort. "My beautiful, honey-voiced, dewy-eyed lady love...."

"Vince, you're drunk."

"Everybody keeps telling me I'm drunk. Everybody knows everything ... Vincent knows nothing."

"You ought to know better than to come here in that condition."

Vince started to get out of the car, sliding across the seat first and fumbling with the latch on the side where Nadine stood. "If I was drunk, I wouldn't remember ... third Friday of the month. Paulie goes to Ad Club ... this the third Friday? You're damned right."

"Not during the summer, he doesn't. Does Gwen know where you are?"

Vince had maneuvered to his feet on the driveway. "No-o-o, it's a deep, dark secret. Honey, you've got beautiful eyes. Wrote a song once...." He moved unsteadily toward the house, slipping his arm around Nadine's waist.

"Warren's here, you know," Nadine said.

Vince seemed unaffected by the warning. "Good man, Warren. Have to go to college ... learn all about chemistry ... can't make good beer if you don't know your chemistry. D'you know that?"

They were on the stoop. What was she going to do with him?

They came into the house and Warren got up, frowning as Vince greeted him with a wobbly, exaggerated salute. "How goes it, Ryner?"

Warren scowled at Nadine. "Fine. How're you, Vince?"

"Nadine says I'm drunk."

"Then suppose I drive you home?"

"I was going to fix some black coffee," Nadine said.

Vince sank to the piano bench. "No. Honey, no. I get sick if I drink ... what else you got?"

"There's nothing in the house," Warren said firmly.

"You know your way around the place!" Vince flashed a spasmodic smile. "You know it's the third Friday of the month, too?"

Warren's face had colored and he looked uncomfortably annoyed. "Let me get you home, Vince."

"He won't go home if he leaves here," Nadine whispered to Warren, her back turned to the piano wall. "He's liable to kill himself driving around in that condition." She walked toward the kitchen, Warren following her.

"I'm not going to leave you here alone with him!"

"Oh, Warren ... really!"

"I told Mabel I'd be back in half an hour. But I'm not going until he goes."

"He's just a neighbor. Do you think he'd be more manageable if I gave him a drink?"

"God, no. Nadine, you don't pamper drunks...."

"But he's lonely. You know he wouldn't come around if he didn't need someone to talk to. I'll make coffee ... he'll drink it once it's made."

"What do you do, adopt every alley cat that comes to the door?"

"I don't see any reason for you to get burned up, dear...."

Warren's mouth tightened. He slapped a clenched fist against an open palm. "You mean I shouldn't act like I'm your husband. What am I ... just one of the alley cats?"

"Warren, honestly!"

"I don't like the way he acts around you. At our house, while you were dancing with him, I...." By ten-thirty, the situation, which seemed to be considerably more upsetting to Warren Ryner than to Nadine, had resolved itself as nothing more than a dull impasse.

Vince Allegretti, entertaining them intermittently with piano and vocal excursions, apparently had no intention of leaving. Warren was doggedly determined to wait it out until Paul arrived.

Between the senti mental music and lyrics, unmistakably intended as personal messages for Nadine, Vince grated on Warren's nerves with daring, physical allusions to Nadine.

Several times it took a pacifying sentence from Nadine to prevent a resentful outburst from Warren. Once he passed his hand over his face in an agitated motion, exhaling audibly and asking no one in particular, "What am I doing here?"

Contrasted with Warren's fearful discretion, Vince's pointed remarks were shockingly revealing. Almost as though he wants everyone in the world to know, Nadine thought. And she teetered between being mildly alarmed, and basking in the flattering realization that Vince loved her so terribly that he couldn't live with himself without drinking. And with liquor giving him courage, he couldn't keep the enormous secret closeted within himself. Dangerous, actually. She had promised herself she would be more careful. Get Vince out of the house before Sherry or Paul came home. But how, without hurting his feelings? Even soused, he was still a human being. Not fair to hurt anyone when it was so little trouble to be kind....

She dispensed with the benign attitude shortly afterward.

While Warren had excused himself, going to the den this time to phone Mabel, Vince turned the customary sexy stare toward Nadine. This time, however, there was an almost baleful quality in his expression. Only the faintest hint of malevolence, but it jarred her.

"I know you," Vince slurred. "Better'n anybody knows you. Not supposed to be observing. Drunken ole Vincent ... blind as a bat. That's what they think!"

"Vince, what's with you tonight? It's always so nice to be with you when ... you make sense."

Abruptly, he spun around to face the piano. Picking out the old nursery tune perversely with one finger, he began to adlib a parody on "Once There Was a Little Girl":

"Once there was a ... guy named Paul An' he wore a little horn ... Right in the middle of his forehead...."

"Vince ... that's enough of that!"

Vince snickered, delighted with himself. "Now you sound like the wife." Cuttingly, he mimicked a shrewish voice. "That's enough, Vincent! That'll be enough out of you!" He slammed his hands against the keyboard. The loud discord pleased him and he turned to smile, affectionately this time, at Nadine's discomfiture. Then he picked up the unfinished parody:

"... and while it was good, It was ... very, very good...."

Vince laughed, anticipating the next line, as Warren returned to the room.

"But when he caught on, it was hor-rid ... I"

"Mabel's going to phone Gwen," Warren muttered into Nadine's ear. "So she won't be worried about where he is. Christ, I feel sorry for that woman!"

They turned their eyes to the entry hall as the door opened, then closed, and Paul came into the room.

Nadine hurried to greet him. "You got home early. Good!"

Paul pecked at her cheek, smiling in bland surprise at the others as he set his leather portfolio on an end table. "Well, how about this ... a welcoming committee."

"How goes it, Paul?" Warren said. "Welcome, welcome!" Vince said effusively. "How did you get home, dear?"

"McLean. You know, Chet. He's sales chief for that link-belt outfit. They live on Oakcrest. I ran into him at the M. and M. Club and he was driving."

"Was your proof all right?"

"Beautiful. I'll have to show it to you, Warren. Pritch and I expected a long wait, but I phoned during dinner and those demons at Edco told me it was ready. What a deal!"

"Edco. Oh, sure. The engravers," Warren said stiffly.

"Excuse the shop talk," Paul addressed Vince. "This is the first ad in a new campaign. Wait'll you see, boy. A stacked doll guzzling Weidberger-how can we miss?"

"They have a new artist," Nadine told Vince.

"I met him," Vince smiled, emphatically polite. "I can't wait to see what he can do."

"Let me get my bearings, I'll drag it out," Paul said.

"Are you hungry, darling?"

"God, no. I could use a drink. That Lindsay would make a drunkard out of Billie Graham." Paul looked around, glimpsing the empty coffee cups. "Hey, you're a swell hostess. Can't we afford booze? Why don't we mix a few ... call the girls and celebrate?"

"You got something to celebrate, Paul?" Vince wanted to know.

"The new campaign. Is that an excuse, Warren?"

"I can't stay," Warren said. "Reason I came, though ... He seemed pathetically anxious for Paul to know there had been a legitimate reason. "I'm taking Junior and Bucky to the lake Friday. Would you like to come?"

"Friday? For how long?"

"Just the weekend. Well, you'd have to take Friday off ... I figured on leaving early ... maybe five o'clock ... get up and beat the traffic. You'd be back at the office Monday."

"I dunno, Warren. I've got a lot of things in the mill."

"One day won't break anybody. Muskies, Paul! Remember those big, mean bastards that time we went with Mabel's Uncle Ed?"

Paul looked to Nadine for a decision. "Muskies, Mommy."

"Well, don't look at me, honey. You make your own decisions."

"I hate to leave you alone over a weekend...."

"Oh, she'll be all right," Vince said. They had almost forgotten he was in the room.

Nadine was unaccustomed to surprises from Warren Ryner. She opened her eyes widely at his next statement:

"Vince is coming, too. Aren't you, Vince?"

"Crawl out of bed in the dark ... freeze your ass on a goddamn boat waitin' for some goddamn sardine to ... whoa-a, no! Not me!"

"I'll bring a case of Canadian Club. You'll be in charge of the ... non-fishing duties." Paul laughed. "Come on, Vince. We'll pretend we're bachelors."

"Not me. Nah-nah-nah."

"Ex-Captain Ryner, laying it on the line for a shavetail. "You're in, Allegretti. I won't take no for an answer."

Vince shrugged his shoulders. "If that's the way you put it, okay! Okay, so I'll go! Who the hell cares what I do?" Surprisingly, too, he wandered blankly to the door immediately afterward, ignoring the goodbyes and snorting at Warren's offer to convoy him home. He was unbelievably rude and, Nadine thought dejectedly, unbelievably lonely. It would be good for him to get out with the boys-away from Gwen. But none of the others understood the lost romantic, the hopelessly idealistic soul that was disguised from everyone but Nadine by the alternately silly, sexy, surly facade. She watched Vince Allegretti leave with a poignant yearning inside herself. Comfort him, make him feel important, tell him you know what none of the others know ... love him!

Saturday morning. Nadine in bed, only half awake. Mrs. Sefcik whining the vacuum cleaner fiercely around the guest room.

Paul's voice cut through the monotonous drone. "Mom, did you happen to see a...."

"Come in here, Darling ... I can't hear you."

The door opened and Paul appeared in the doorway. "I had a little sheet of scratch paper with some phone numbers on it ... when I was working in the den a few nights ago. Have you seen it around?"

"I can't recall...."

"What the devil did I do with ... maybe I was at the other desk." Paul moved out of the doorway into the hall, mumbling to himself.

"Was it important?"

He called back, "Couple of people I promised Jim I'd contact."

"Did you ask Seffie?"

"She wouldn't know. I may have left it at the office, but it seems to me I...."

"Ask Sherry."

Paul's voice carried to her from the living room. "She's still asleep. Don't worry about it ... just something I want to clean up before I take off Friday."

"Honey ... you left the door open!-Paul?" Under her breath, Nadine murmured, "Nuts!" She jammed a pillow over her head to shut out the vacuum cleaner sound.

She was almost asleep when she heard the door close. It took several seconds before she realized that Paul had come into the bedroom, closing the door behind him.

"Find it?" Nadine asked sleepily.

"No. I thought I may have slipped it under the . .

Under the desk blotter ... under the desk blotter! My God, she must be losing her mind! To go to bed after the company left last night, leaving....

"Oh, hell! Oh, hell!" Paul's cry had a strident, unnatural sound. In the same instant she felt the weight of Paul's body dropping to a corner of the bed. Nadine shoved the pillow aside and opened her eyes, propping herself up to see Paul sitting near her feet, the incriminating sheet of deckle-edged paper in one hand, the other covering his face ... a mannerism familiar to Warren, chillingly alien in Paul.

When he realized she was looking at him, Paul turned toward her, a look of utter confusion in his eyes. "Say something," he whispered hoarsely. "Explain it to me. Tell me I've gone off my rocker ... I didn't read it right!" The unfinished letter trembled in his hand. "Tell me this isn't your handwriting ... it's one big, fat mistake...." He was fighting for control. A losing battle. Suddenly he crumpled the letter viciously with one hand and hurled it to the floor. It rested on the carpet like a discarded gardenia, monstrously huge, dominating the room.

Think, think, think! Horrible to see Paul so crushed ... hard to believe shock could change not only his expression, but his appearance. He looked like a dazed old man.

Nadine searched hard and deep in the bottomless barrel of her imagination. After all, she hadn't signed her name to the letter. What she could remember of it included no personal identification....

"Roy! Roy Stroud!" Paul was saying in a curious, broken voice.

There was a spark, a glimmer, then a gradual flooding of brilliant white light in Nadine's mind. Could be...? Why not? Why, certainly! Yawning, in a tone that implied only the vaguest interest, she asked, "Is that the letter Leila and I started yesterday ... the thing to Roy?"

The question threw Paul a curve. He could only gape un-comprehendingly.

"Why'd you crumble it up, hon? 'Course, she'll have to copy it over before she sends it, anyway ... but why the fuss?" Nadine softened her approach, then, pouring out an understanding, slow-dawning effect. "Oh ... I know! You don't want me ... meddling in their business."

"You weren't writing a letter for Leila." It was neither a question nor an accusation. Unsure of himself, Paul's words were ambiguous.

Nadine laughed quickly. Mocking the ludicrous thought, she said, "No, dear! I was writing a love letter to Roy myself!" More patiently, the story developing in credence so that Nadine actually sympathized with Leila's writing block, she elaborated, "Leila'd die if she knew I ... broke her confidence. But she freezes up ... literally freezes up inside when she goes to write a letter. I think that's typical of quiet, kind of ... introverted people, don't you think?"

"Nadine, she was married to this man. She can certainly tell him whatever's on her mind without...."

"You'd think so. I argued the same point, come to think of it. But she...." Nadine shook her head dolefully. "Paul, she took it a lot harder than she lets on. I can't imagine myself ever having something I wanted desperately to tell you ... and not being able to find the words. But we aren't all alike. And, hon, what was I going to do ... tell her to go to hell when she asked me for help?"

"Don't tell me a woman's going to...." Paul leaned over, retrieving the letter, smoothing out the wrinkles, eager to relinquish his more credible first impression, yet, being far from stupid, not quite ready to accept the switch. Not quite ready, but not wanting to believe, unable to believe that his own wife....

Nadine shoved the covers aside and wriggled her way toward Paul. Tilting his chin upward with her index finger, so that they faced each other, she said, "If I thought you thought I was writing letters to Leila's ex, I'd spit in your eye, Mister!"

Paul looked deeply into her eyes, as she wanted him to do.

"You'd like to see Roy and Leila get together again," Nadine said, "as much as I would."

Paul turned his head, and Nadine couldn't be certain that he had accepted her explanation. But he said, "When two people carry their differences through to a divorce, there might be ... underlying causes that we don't know anything about. What business would you have mixing into...."

"She'd be terribly embarrassed if she thought you knew this, Paul. Women say things to other women that they wouldn't dream of...."

"Leila's still in love with Roy?"

"Didn't you know that, Paul? Naturally she isn't going to go around in widow's weeds. She has some pride."

"Sure, a person's bound to ... try to save face. But I had a strange notion she...."

"Yes?"

"No, skip it."

"She what, Paul?"

"Oh, there's an impression I sometimes get when she's around...."

Nadine tensed. Not acting now. Not pretending the slow sunrise of an astoundingly new revelation. Feeling it in her marrow. "You think Leila's...?" She caught a sharp swallow of breath. "About you?"

Paul made a short, deprecating sound and got up from the bed. "It was just male intuition, which isn't worth a damn." He still hadn't dismissed the possibility that Nadine had written the letter to Roy in her own behalf; she saw no relief in his expression.

"I meant well, darling," she said testily.

"Look, if Leila wants Roy back, she knows why she lost him and she'll know what to do about it. I'm pulling for her, but we didn't mess up their marriage, so let's not think we can patch it up."

Nadine followed Paul to the door. "I'm sorry, honey."

He looked at her for a long time, unresponsive when she kissed him, wearing a determined, far-away expression that revealed nothing of his decision.

"At least I don't want you thinking I'd write a silly letter to...."

"Let's wake Sherry up and have some breakfast," Paul said flatly.

He left the room abruptly, opening the door to let in the persistent droning sound of the vacuum cleaner, then closing the door quietly.

He'll believe me, Nadine assured herself. He won't question Leila. He'll believe me.

Her hands shook as she dressed for breakfast, but she repeated the assurance to herself with mounting conviction. Of course he'll believe me. Paul would never believe that I'd had anything to do with Leila's husband.

CHAPTER NINE

On the following Saturday, having seen Paul off on his fishing trip with Warren, his sons, and Vince Allegretti early the morning before, Nadine wondered how she would endure another empty, excuseless day without Monty. Miraculously, Sherry had decided to spend Friday evening at home. They had baked a cake, invited Leila to share it, and the three of them had watched television, Nadine trembling inside with frustration. Even a phone call to Monty had been unfeasible ... and when was Paul likely to go away for three consecutive days again?

But late Saturday morning, Sherry galloped into her bedroom and made a dramatic announcement. "I saw him!"

"Saw whom?"

"George Weidberger! Fran and I drove past Ryners' house a while ago. He was on the lawn with Mrs. Ryner. Oh, man!"

"That much reaction ... from a quick view?"

"And he does have a Corvette. White. He was smoking a pipe, real mature, and yeeks ... is he a doll!"

"Didn't you stop and say hello? When you drove by Ryners'?"

"In my filthy tennis shorts? With this hair?" Nadine appreciated the reasoning.

"But wait'll I tell you! Frannie had to go buy buns a while ago ... for the hamburgers tonight. And who do we meet in the bakery! Mrs. Ryner. You know what she had on? Pink capris. And rhinestone earrings."

"Baby, those weren't rhinestones."

"I shouldn't be chopping her, though. You know what she said? She's going to bring George over to meet me! She said it right in front of Frannie. I wonder what that did for her chromosomes? But the deal is ... the girls are having this pajama party at Frannie's tonight...."

"All night?"

"Well, don't sweat it, Mother ... it's only on Hill Drive ... next door to the Allegrettis'."

Nadine smiled indulgently. "I suppose it'll be all right."

"But what if Mrs. Ryner brings George over tonight?"

"You wouldn't want to be sitting around on a Saturday night waiting for him?"

Sherry pondered for a moment. "Oh, man ... I didn't think of that. You could tell him I had a date. You wouldn't be fibbing. Just don't say what kind of date. Maybe it's a good thing I won't be home tonight. Hey, is it all right if I split over to Frannie's now?" Sherry hesitated. "I hate to leave you alone...."

"I was thinking about ... going to an auction downtown. I might stay down and see a movie."

"Hey, swingin'! Take Leila."

"That's a thought."

Sherry left the house moments afterward with Nadine's blessing.

Every wall in the house crackled. There was a phone call to make. A shower and a final decision, not only on the dress but everything that would be worn beneath it.

Under the shower, Nadine, who was not given to bathroom vocalizing, sang, "Oh, What a beautiful Morning...!"

She was still humming the tune as she drove north on Rush Street shortly after noon.

A starkly black and white mural, composed of barely identifiable nude abstractions, covered three walls of Monty Carrell's bedroom.

There was a bleached mahogany chest of drawers against one wall, a matching stereo cabinet against another. It was only four in the afternoon, but an enormous gold and white sculptured lamp was lighted, casting faint light and oblique shadows over the parade of angled nudes. Heavy coral-colored draperies had been drawn across the room's solitary window, and Hoist's The Planets, tuned low, added to the other-world atmosphere.

They rested on a king-sized, legless bed, the vivid coral, raw silk spread no longer drawn tightly over its low-slung contours.

Monty's fingers delineated the tilt of Nadine's left breast lanquidly. "You know what I like best about you?"

"Nope."

"You dig sex. The way I do."

Sleek, complacent animal contentment oozed through her veins. "If I wasn't so comfortable, darling, I'd get up and curtsy."

"Are you lunchish?"

"Would we have to dress?"

"No."

"Maybe in a little while. I'm not really hungry."

Monty sidled over to etch her body with a slow, provocative trail of kisses. "I am."

They both laughed, embracing delightedly, lolling luxuriously over the unnecessarily broad expanse beneath them. Slow, heady physical wine. Monty was only a commercial hack at his easel, but here he was an artist. Here he gave himself painstakingly, reverently, to the world's most time-mellowed art.

None of Vince's crudeness, none of Warren's self-castigations. Soul music, counterpoint for the rising acceleration of her pulse. "I'd like to curl myself into a tiny atom and live inside you." Demonstrating the idea in the limited manner possible to him....

"Monty, it's too soon...!"

Smiling up at her from the center of the bed; "I'm a little boy turned loose in a candy shop."

"Stop playing down your checkered past! This isn't new to you." Inviting the inevitable compliment ... knowing the past few hours would go down in any man's book as memorable.

He became passionately serious, toying with her body while he spoke, as though a profound mystery had been revealed to him for the first time. "But you are new. New and exhilarating and wonderful." Somewhat wistfully, somberly, he said, "Do you know what it means to starve in the midst of plenty? You can't visualize me as someone ... lonely, can you?" She was touched. Genuinely touched. "You, Monty?"

"Oh, I'll admit I've enjoyed the butterfly-netting process. Stick a pin through the thorax of enough lepidopterae, though, and the hobby starts becoming a chore." To emphasize his need for Nadine, he buried his face against her thigh. "I'd begun to doubt there was anyone capable of accepting me completely. All of me, lover ... the way I want possession of your mind, your body, your soul...."

Nadine had closed her eyes, wanting nothing to distract her from this blissful transport. The distraction that came assaulted her ears. In the adjoining studio-living room, the phone began to ring.

If Monty heard the sound over the "Mars" movement of the planetary suite, he refused to let it dissuade him from his purpose. When the ringing became an annoyance, Nadine said, "Aren't you going to answer that?"

"It's Ann Helsley. One of the butterflies. She's convinced I've only tired of her because she's putting on weight and I can't use her as a model. How would I explain to her that I've found a key to my existence?"

Nadine was only slightly jarred by the lines ... jarred because she had used words to the same effect with others. Yet she had never duplicated Monty's fevered intonation, and she needed no instructions from Nadine-the-director to breathe unevenly, to half-close her eyes, to part her lips in submissive passion.

The rhythmic bell-staccato of the telephone finally ended.

Monty sighed his relief, then plunged into a championship bout of the flesh that left Nadine helpless. Clasp of surprisingly muscular arms; hands appreciative of every gentle curve of her body, respectors of no secrets.

Raging eroticism, then the tender agony of worshipful love! Oh, glorious tour de force of intricately balanced ecstasies! Why had she derided sex as the least important of her needs from other men? Yet how obvious the answer to that question! She was in love, she was in love ... said it before, believed it before, but all the others scattered now before the formidable avalanche of Monty's possession. Now it was true!

Sometime during the evening, they combined lunch and dinner, Monty producing a questionable assortment of delicacies ... pate de foie gras, soup terrapin with sherry, truffles, tongue, an endive salad plus an undecipherably exotic dressing with anchovy overtones. Brandied cherries followed their coffee. He played Nadine's game all the way.

Some of this fare was shared with an unbearably particular Siamese cat. Nadine had missed meeting her on the first trip, and "Certainly," (who had earned her name by a semiannual inability to say "No" to Gold Coast tomcats)...."Certainly" had been locked out of the bedroom earlier to insure privacy.

"She goes wherever I go," Monty said, trying to interest the Siamese in a strip of anchovy. "Do you ... go often?"

"I get bored. I've been seriously thinking of Paris again. New York for a month or two. Then a wire to my old concierge in the Rue de Tournon."

Strangely practical for a moment, Nadine asked. "Does Paul know you don't intend to stay?"

"Oh, I'll have him piled up with calendar girls for a year ahead. He won't be left high and dry."

"Will anyone?" Nadine asked pointedly.

Monty dropped the Siamese to the floor. He came over to the red couch to kneel at Nadine's feet, taking hold of her hands and fixing her with a devastatingly earnest gaze. "How I wish you could come, too!"

"Paris?"

"It was built for us, Nadine! Have you ever been?"

"No. No, I haven't actually gone much further than Lake Ste. Germaine."

"I want you to be with me."

"I couldn't begin to...."

"Not the tourists' Paris." (Nadine thought of the Ryners and was positive there must be a Paris exclusively meant for her.) "None of your Eiffel Tower ogling, not even the highly touted strolls down the Champs Elysees. Our Paris, Nadine. How I wish you were free!"

Nadine pictured herself in a Parisian street cafe, eyes turned in her direction, Monty following worshipfully behind. Pernod, passion, Paris! She stroked Monty's silvery hair and bathed in the exquisite fantasy.

Paul was the kindest, the most understanding, most wonderful man in the world. And Sherry was a delightful girl. But what if fate threw the inevitable into your face? What if you shared another love with someone who would always be lonely and incomplete without you? Someone you loved? A romantic garret, with a great, unrecognized artist laying his heart at your feet throughout the intoxicating Parisian....

The stereo speakers poured out Tschaikovsky's Fifth and the telephone began to ring once more.

Monty groaned. "Some women live on a cloud. Do you have the same problem, lover? Men who don't know enough to bow out gracefully when it's over?"

Nadine nodded. "Why don't you talk to the poor girl? I feel terribly sorry for her."

Monty raised his brows as though that concept was entirely new to him. "Why? She had two of the best months of my life."

Tschaikovsky filled the room with a stirring crescendo. After a while the telephone was silent again, and at nine o'clock, when they ran out of conversation, they went to bed. At two or three or four, they went to sleep.

It was only part of the fabric of dreams, but it seemed to Nadine that the telephone rang intermittently throughout the night.

CHAPTER TEN

Nadine returned to an empty house early Sunday afternoon, her return uneventful except for the slow, wordless wave from Leila Stroud, who was watering her precious roses as Nadine turned into the drive.

It was after seven-thirty when the phone awakened her. Nadine answered it in the den.

"Hello?"

"Mother? Where were you? I tried to call you all morning."

"I must have been awfully sound asleep. How are you, dear? Have a good time?"

"I called Leila, I was so worried. She said the car was gone."

"It's back now. I left it at Mike's to have the oil changed last night."

"Oh. What did you do-walk home?"

"It's only six blocks to the garage."

"How come you didn't go to the movie? Did you go to the auction?"

"No, honey ... I decided not to. The traffic's ..

"Reason I called ... did Mrs. Ryner come around? With it?"

"It? Oh, you mean George. No, honey. No one's been here. It's been very quiet. I asked if you had a nice time?"

"It was okay. We're still over here at Frannie's. Would you have a hemorrhage if we went to the show? I mean, it doesn't look like whozit's coming over."

"It's all right with me if you want to, Sher. Try not to be too late. Dad's coming home and we ought to be here."

Sherry giggled. "To clean the fish? Hey, they're yelling for me. I'll see you, 'kay?"

Nadine had barely gotten out of the den when the phone summoned her return. She expected a postscript from Sherry. It was Mabel Ryner.

"Nadine? Say, don't you pay your phone bill, kid?"

"Pay my ... oh, did you try to call me earlier? I'm sorry ... I ran over to Leila's for awhile."

"I called you yesterday, too. I thought we could ... do something."

"Yesterday? Oh ... I went to an auction."

"The boys are going to be late. See, Paul tried to call you around 'leven this morning, but you weren't home. So when Wardy called here, he said for me to call and give you the message."

"That they'll be late?"

"Uhuh. They had a time with Vince last night. He got plastered and he wandered off somewhere ... I think they were up half the night looking for him."

"I hope he didn't fall into the lake."

"Nah, Wardy found him in some tavern. I said to Wardy, 'llnder the table, I bet,' and he said, 'No, in a damn phone booth.' How about that? Anyway, they didn't get out on the lake until late and they didn't catch anything today. So they decided to try again after lunch and leave about four o'clock."

"Oh ... I'm glad you told me, Mabel. I'd have worried. If Paul had thought to call me at Leila's...."

"Wardy said he did. Oh, well, just so you know. I told Gwen, too ... say, if you're just twiddling your thumbs, come over in about an hour. Gwen's coming ... we could play some cards."

"I'll see, Mabel." (There had to be an excuse!) "I promised I'd take Sherry and her girl friend to a drive-in, but if they change their minds...."

Mabel accepted the alibi graciously; her kids always come first, too, she said. People's kids should!

Nadine decided to digest the conversations while under a shower. The contradictions about the auction and being at Leila's would probably never come to light. It was vain to suppose people devoted their conversations to comparing notes on what you had said to them. No sweat, as Sherry might say.

She took her time in the bathroom; restless, not anxious to spend the evening buttering up the family bread-and-butter-Mabel. Yet too stimulated to be alone. Couldn't even expect a call from Vince to break the monotony ... everybody gone. She began to resent Paul's lateness; she had counted on his company tonight! Since there was no one around to appreciate the results, there was no special reason for Nadine to rearrange her hair and make a prolonged production of applying make-up to her face. But the processes killed some time.

Afterward, rather enjoying the freedom of nudity, she puttered around the bedroom aimlessly. Until the door chimes sounded.

Nadine wrapped herself in a diaphanous red affair that had been a Christmas present from Paul. Somewhat racy for a negligee, but consisting of so lavish a use of transparent nylon that the total effect was opaque. Providing the lights weren't behind you.

A second summons from the chimes and Nadine wriggled her feet into a gamy pair of spike-heeled mules. It was probably Leila, curious about the all-night absence. Nadine smiled inwardly. (If she's going to accuse me of behaving like one, I may as well look like one.) The smile had lighted up her face before she opened the door.

"Hello," he said.

Nadine gaped at him.

He gaped at Nadine and said "Hello" again, this time making it sound like a question. "My cousin said ... I dropped by to see if...." He caught his breath. "I'm George Weidberger."

Nadine's smile warmed as she took in the intelligent young face. Blue eyes reminiscent of Mabel's, sandy crew-cut hair. Somehow the pipe and the terribly Ivy-Leaguish clothing disguised his tender years, but he was a kid for all his height and in spite of the rolling bass voice. And, God knew, she wasn't even remotely interested in collecting juveniles. So that when he asked, politely, if Sherry was home, it was a total surprise to Nadine to hear herself saying, "No, but she'll be here any minute. Why don't you come in and wait?"

George Weidberger brightened the doorway with a wide, college-boy grin. "Why not? You're ... I guess you're...."

"I'm Sherry's mother," Nadine assured him, adjusting the low decolletage of the negligee to a more maternal primness. "I just talked with Mabel. I didn't know you'd gotten into town yet."

George followed her into the living room, seating himself as Nadine gestured at the long sectional sofa. "I think she's disappointed in me. Mabel had an idea she was going to take me to see a Tarzan movie and three cartoons at the Riverdale on Saturday ... and bake gingerbread men, the way she used to do when I came home on vacations from military school. Twelve years ago, that is."

"Won't she accept the fact that you're grown up?"

"No. Luckily, I happen to know a few people in town." George twisted his mouth into a wry, man-about-the-city smile of irony and lighted his pipe. "I get around."

He had some of Warren's Teutonic massiveness, but in another ten years, Nadine suspected, he would make Warren look like a country boy.

Still, it would take ten years. She had no interest in him beyond the fact that there was no one else around to talk with, no one else to admire the ravishing effect of red gossamer stuff against the freshly showered, scented body ... and he was so eager, poor darling, to feel mature and vital and sophisticated. It was the same feeling she had experienced the first time she had come upon a chagrined Sherry wearing lipstick ... years ago, meeting her accidentally in the street, seeing Sherry's embarrassment and then smiling and saying, "Honey, how nice you look. That's exactly the right shade for you, too!" And how Sherry had adored her for that ... yet it had taken no effort at all! Just as it was no effort now to ask George, "Would you like a martini?" He would refuse, of course, but he would enjoy being asked.

"No, thanks," George said. Indifferently, he added. "I'm on the wagon."

"Aha. Too much wild living at the fraternity house."

He seemed pleased. "I'm afraid it wasn't exactly conservative, Mrs. Whitten."

Nadine settled in a chair opposite him. "Careful! You don't want to reveal your wild past to a girl's parents."

George laughed. "You caught me off guard. Somehow you don't...." George paused, looked at Nadine directly for a tenuously personal man-woman instant, during which he was Mr. Weidberger, then averted his gaze, concentrating it on his pipe and probably wondering if being Mabel's little cousin Georgie wouldn't be more comfortable. "You don't strike me as the ... parental type," he finally blurted out.

Nadine enjoyed talking with him. Drawing him out, letting him discuss his future plans, his contempt for the beer business, his intention to become an industrial psychologist. He puffed impressively on the pipe while he delineated the functions of a corporation Freud.

Nadine listened attentively, never condescendingly, constantly aware of the picture she presented. And of George Weidberger's probable fascination with a glamorous older woman who had offered him a martini instead of ginger cookies. He was filling her evening, providing her with the ever-necessary audience. And, reciprocally, she was making him happy. Speaking to him with a frankness generally accorded to only the most polished, worldly-wise adults....

"I think I'm beginning to understand you, George. You're going to be one of those psychologists who prepare tests for future executives. You'll ask questions like ... o-oh-h ... 'If you had to choose between sleeping with your wife and working overtime, what would you do?' And if the applicant says, 'Sleep with my wife,' you cross him off the list as a poor prospect. A properly conditioned corporation man is supposed to place Company before Sex. Right?"

"Well, we haven't gotten into that aspect of it yet," George said, coloring pleasurably. "I mean ... professors don't ... most of them aren't as ... sharp as you are."

"Don't tell me they treat you as Mabel does?"

"Not quite, but ... they don't seem to recognize that maturity isn't strictly a matter of age. For instance, you and I ... well, talking this way, it's obvious that a few years' difference isn't really important when ... say, when people think along the same lines...."

The hours flew by so uncounted that it was startling to hear the front door pushed open and to note that it was after eleven and that Sherry was making a noisy, almost obtrusive entrance, like that of a child barging in on an elegant candlelit dinner for distinguished adults.

Without seeing George (though his car must have been parked outside, an unmistakable warning clue), Sherry breezed into the house, gave Nadine's negligee a cursory examination, saying, "Eeyow! Where'd you dig that up?" and announced that the drive-in double feature had consisted of two stinkers; one about hot-rod, blue-jean, chicken-playing, flying-saucer-piloting teen-agers from another planet, and one about three girls who meet in a nursing home for unwed mothers. Frannie and Peg had seen it before, anyway, but decided to see it again for laughs. "Peeyoo!" Sherry said, kicking off her thonged sandals. "And I do mean peeyoo...."

In the next breath she caught sight of George Weidberger, who had risen politely from the sofa. And in the same instant, Sherry, whose face was already colorless from a lack of cosmetics, blanched to an unnatural whiteness. "Oh...! Oh, I didn't know ... someone was...." Her voice trailed off hopelessly.

"This is Mrs. Ryner's cousin, dear," Nadine said. "George Weidberger. George, this is my daughter, Sherry."

Nadine felt torn between annoyance and sympathy for her daughter. Sherry showed the ravages of a sleepless pajama party, of gabbing all night with the girls and of going to a drive-in movie where she wouldn't be seen by others in the audience ... carelessly dressed in jeans and an unflatteringly loose cotton jersey pullover. And her hair ... I

"Hello, Sherry," George said. His voice and fond expression seemed warmly paternal.

Sherry mumbled something unintelligible. And added that she hadn't known there was a visitor ... to which George added that he had parked half-a-block up the street, mistaking the address and walking the block until he found the right house....

Banal, awkward, hesitant talk; a contrasting let-down from the preceding conversation. Long pauses, and Sherry's lack of ease transferring itself to George and, ultimately, to Nadine.

Considerately, Nadine suggested that the young people might like to get acquainted and that she was nearing her bedtime.

The idea sent Sherry into a panic, and George suddenly remembered that he hadn't told the Ryners he was going out and they were probably beating the bushes for him like worried parents. He left shortly afterward, telling Nadine that they must have another chat soon, and telling Sherry that he was happy to have met her and sorry she and her girl friends hadn't enjoyed the movies, but as you started growing up, you became more discriminating. She would learn that there were fewer amusements for adults than for children. That was the price you paid.

"Well, what did you think of him?" Nadine asked after the door had closed behind George. "Still think he reeks of malt and hops?"

There was no reply from Sherry.

"He's nothing like Mrs. Ryner, is he, dear? I'm sure you're going...."

"I hate you!" Sherry whispered. The words were almost indistinguishable, and it was not until they were repeated that Nadine absorbed them as realities. "I hate you!"

She turned to see Sherry clutching at the rim of an occasional table, a vitriolic expression twisting her face into something less gamin-like and more closely resembling some small underground creature trapped in a corner or shed ... no exit, sensing a foolish, little death, turning its hatred on the captors but hating its own helpless stupidity more.

"Sherry, I'm sorry you weren't all fresh and prettied-up for this meeting, but there wasn't any way I could phone to let you know he was here. And I assumed you'd see his car outside...."

"A lot I care!" Sherry's words dripped a slow venom. "Anybody that doesn't like me the way I am ... the hell with them! Sure, if I'd known he was here, I'd have...."

"Honey, I know you think it's the end of the world. But listen to this...."

Sherry moved away from the extended hand, recoiling as if approached by something loathsome. "I don't give a damn how I look!" Her voice was shrill and unnatural. "I'm looking at you! The way you look! The way he was looking at you!"

"But, Sherry, I didn't expect him...."

"You're supposed to be my mother!"

"Yours, baby. Not Whistler's." Nadine forced a tinny laugh. "A boy always projects himself into the future. If a girl's mother is a crone, he suspects the girl's going to be one, too, someday and...."

"You could have changed. You knew he...." Sherry was staring at the red negligee and Nadine became uncomfortably aware of the lamplight at her back. "He can project himself into the future all he wants to ... but when I'm thirty-six I'm not going to pose around half-naked like a ... like a cheap ... like a...."

Sherry never brought herself to scream "whore." But there was no need for her to. The word was in the ungainly, clomping, hurried exit and in the disturbing, choking sounds that were a hybrid of sobs and audible anger.

"Sherry, you don't understand...." It was a feeble attempt and it succumbed in weakness.

"Understand, understand! You think I'm as dumb as Daddy? The guttural sounds receded down the bedroom hall. "I wish I didn't! I wish ... I was dead!" Then an animal sound more terrible than those preceding it, an undistinguishable sentence ending with a sobbed...."hate you!" after which a door slammed.

Sherry in her room, crying. It wasn't right, but there would be no approaching her until tomorrow. Make Sherry happy. Terribly happy ... that was the sole objective at the moment.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Nadine woke up at nine-thirty on Monday morning to discover that Paul had come home, slept in the guest room and gone to the office without wakening her. Except for finding his fishing gear on the service porch, she wouldn't have known he had returned from the Wisconsin hiatus. The Chrysler sat in the driveway.

In the kitchen, Nadine exchanged good-mornings with Mrs. Sefcik who was occupied with applying some mysterious cleaning ointment to the inside of the oven.

"Were you here this morning when Mr. Whitten left for work, Seffie?"

"I was here seven-thirty!" Mrs. Sefcik said defensively. "I meant ... well, I was wondering how he got down to the station."

"Mrs. across the street, she was outside, on the grass," Seffie said, her head poked inside the oven and her voice hollow from the cavernous interior. "She was pick weeds. So early in the morning, she work, work, work. That's a good lady. Like you."

"Mrs. Stroud drove my husband to the station?"

"Was nice, ah?" Nadine retired to the den to ponder the situation. Paul was considerate about letting her sleep late.

He had come home from the last fishing jaunt with Warren at 3 a.m., kissed her, related every detail of the trip and had made love to her, saying it had all been fun except sleeping alone. Why hadn't he done the same thing last night? In all the years of their married life, he had not once slept in a separate room. And this morning! Why hadn't he wakened her then?

And Leila up and about, conveniently ready to play chauffeur at seven-thirty! Of course she always got up early; used to make enormous breakfasts for Roy at six o'clock before he left for the plant. Any other morning Nadine would have dismissed the incident lightly. But this morning....

Someone had said something to Paul! Sherry? Warren? No, not Warren. Vince. Vince with a load on, talking too freely, as he'd talked the other night. And she hadn't been home when Paul had phoned. He had tried to reach her at Leila's. What if Leila mentioned the car being gone all night? Oh, and Vince had made a few revealing allusions to Monty last Friday night, too. In three days he might have given Paul ideas. And if Paul was still annoyed about the letter to Roy ... or if he had mentioned the letter to Leila....

The contradictions and possibilities of discovery piled up in Nadine's mind like an inverted pyramid. One kick at the shaky foundation! One word from any of a dozen-odd people, one comparative conversation ... the garage, the auction, Leila's reticence about writing letters, Warren's implacable conscience, Vince and his damned telephone compulsion! Sherry not speaking, knowing about Monty, angry about George and the red negligee! And always back to Paul. The rumpled pillow in the guest room. Silent arrival, silent departure. Why?

Her breath forced itself against her lungs like a wall of pressure. Get it over with. Impossible to map out the strategy without determining the situation on the battlefield. Nadine picked up the phone and called Paul at the agency.

He was friendly. He was polite. Yes, he'd had a great time. No fish, but fish were secondary when a man loved fishing. Nadine had been asleep when he got home. She was sleeping like a baby when the alarm rang. He hadn't wanted to disturb her ... and he couldn't talk now; he was busy. Paul was too polite! Intuitively, Nadine sensed a newness, a strangeness. And whenever she had phoned him at a bad time before, he had offered to call back. This time Paul had said, "Sorry, I'm busy," and let it go at that. She hadn't dared to ask why.

Sherry hadn't come out of her room at two o'clock. Which was the time Leila chose to cross the street with a sheet of sweater-knitting instructions that had arrived in the mail.

"Sherry wanted me to send for these," she told Nadine. "Is she around?"

"In her room," Nadine said. She didn't offer to call Sherry or suggest that Leila take the patterns to the bedroom.

They sat opposite each other stiffly, the airy living room becoming unbearably close from their thick exchange.

"Isn't Sherry feeling well?"

"She's just a little tired."

"Big weekend?"

"You know the way kids stay up all night at a p.j. party. Then she went to the movies last night."

"I know. I was talking to Gwen at the market a while ago. She lives next door to Sherry's friends."

"So she gave you a play-by-play report of what the girls did?"

Leila lighted a cigarette. "Only because it didn't tie in with what you'd told Mabel. Gwen and Mabel got together last night, you know."

"Yes, I was invited."

"You told Mabel you had to take Sher to a drive-in. And then when George came by, you told him Sherry was due home any minute, when you knew damned well she'd gone to a show with the girls and wouldn't be back for hours."

"Well. We-ll-U, isn't it getting to be a small town! From Mrs. Lindholm to Gwen to Mabel, back to Gwen and over to Leila for a quadruple play. How can you stand around and listen to such petty...."

"If it's petty, your hands shouldn't be shaking, Nadine."

"I'm not upset. Just...."

"Tired? You had a big weekend, too. Mabel says you went to an auction Saturday. Gwen says Mrs. Lindholm said Sherry said you didn't. Then George came home while Gwen and Mabel were still chewing that one over and what do you suppose he said? Oh, they must have had a real evening! Vince's wife and Warren's wife. Sounds cozy, doesn't it?"

"Leila, I'm not in the mood for...."

"They were having such a stimulating time that they were still up when Warren came home. After he dropped off your husband and Lover Number Two. From the way Gwen tells it, Warren was madder than hell about something. And when Georgie-porgie started raving about you, Warren and Mabel blew their corks. And Gwen discreetly went home to her Vince, who was out like a light. Dreaming, I suppose. Anyway, he mentioned your name twelve times in his sleep. And he must have been having the kind of dream old Siggy Freud would have adored. Gwen couldn't repeat everything he said, but what she did repeat was awfully hard on this poor, sex-starved grass widow."

"Shut up, Leila."

"I forgot. You're tired. You looked at calendar art over the weekend."

"Damn it, Leila...."

"Stop being ungrateful. I'm only giving you the facts, so you'll know how to wriggle your way out of the mess." Leila sent an indolent smoke-cloud into the air. "Oh ... and Paul tried to reach you at my number yesterday, so don't bother telling him you spent the morning with me."

"Are you finished?"

"I think so. No ... no, there was another quadruple play concerning the Chrysler. Did you tell Sherry you'd left it at Mike's garage to have the oil changed? Sherry told Mrs. Lindholm, and she mentioned it to Gwen. Because it struck her as quaint, I suppose."

"That was quaint?"

"It wouldn't have been, Nadine, except that Mike and Cora are celebrating their twentieth anniversary and they've gone to Starved Rock for a second honeymoon. Mike's garage has been closed since last Monday!" Lelia sighed. "I do these little favors for you so singularly cheap. And you have no gratitude, Mrs. Whitten. No appreciation at all."

"I could thank you for getting Paul to his train this morning."

"That was no trouble. He was about to get into your car when it occurred to me that he loathes driving downtown. So, I figured you might not be feeling well...."

"And you came over to inquire about the state of my health. I hope you had a nice chat at the C.B. and Q. station."

"Paul wasn't in a talking mood," Leila said, dropping the light sarcastic tone and sounding contrastingly somber. "We discussed the crab-grass problem, if you really want to know. And, somehow, I suspect his heart wasn't really in it."

The phone rang and Nadine excused herself.

"I won't wait," Leila said, going for the door. "Give Sher the sweater things...."

"It's probably one of Sherry's friends," Nadine said lamely.

"Sure," Leila said. She waved and was gone.

Nadine answered the phone in the bedroom. It was Warren. "What are you trying to do to me?" he asked.

"Darling, is that the way to say hello when I haven't seen you since...."

"Look, Nadine, it's getting too risky. You should have heard Vince this weekend. I had one hell of a time keeping him away from Paul ... drunk and talking about you. About us. Talking that way in front of my boys!"

"What did he say?"

"Just ... little personal digs. Then I get home and there's Mabel and Vince's wife and Mabel's cousin, all of them discussing you. Nadine, I don't like it. You don't know what you do to men, let alone a kid with milk on his chin. George is down here at the office. First day on the job. I took him to lunch with Mr. Schultz, our master brewer. This is an old man, Nadine. He worked for Mabel's grandfather. And he's nice enough to ask George if he plans to make a career of the brewery. And George says, no, he's going to be an industrial psychologist. Then he tells Mr. Schultz ... mind you, this is an old-school European ... way past retirement age ... a real, solid Lutheran. Well, George tells him that someday he's going to go through the brewery and fire every man who would rather sleep with his wife than work overtime. Damn punk smart-alec. I wanted to throttle him."

"Oh, Warren, what a shame!"

"It was bad enough to see the old man so embarrassed. But then George laughs and tells me he got the idea from you ... and he starts telling us you're ... my God...."

"I'm what?"

"The sexiest woman he ever spent an evening with! If Mabel wouldn't raise hell, I'd break the kid in two and throw away the pieces."

"Oh, really, dear...."

"I wish you'd slap him down. Slap Vince down, too. You're too ... warm. Nadine, I went through holy hell at the lake. I love you so damned...." Warren's voice dropped suddenly to a whisper. "George is coming up the line. I'll talk to you later." There was a long, painful sigh on the other end of the receiver. "Think of something, Nadine. My God, think of a way we can be together...."

All the broken bits and pieces could be cemented. Nadine was certain of it, confident in her own ability.

But what was there to be done with Sherry, who reluctantly joined her parents and said nothing during dinner except, "No, thank you," and "Yes, please."

And what offense could be employed when Paul started to go to the guest room at eleven o'clock, then looking hopelessly weary and removed from the present situation, nodded a resigned agreement when Nadine said, "Shall we go to bed?" and changed his course without further explanation?

In the bed beside her, yet not reaching for her, not touching her, an unspoken misery exuded from him and crowded the still, dark room.

"Paul?" Nadine held her breath, then released it. Get it on the table. Whatever was bothering him, get it in the open, face it and explain it away. "Paul? Don't you feel well? Darling, you've been away for a long time and I was sure you'd ... want...."

"I'm tired," Paul said. "Tired and confused."

"Confused about what?"

"About ... everything."

"Is it something I've done?" Nadine asked plaintively.

"No. Don't mind me." There was a brooding silence and then Paul said Jim Oliver had given him a hard time all afternoon about hiring a free-lance artist instead of working through a reliable art studio. Early in the day, Monty Carrell had announced his intention to leave for New York, possibly Paris, expressing a willingness to work by mail, damn the imperious bastard. Jim had made a real production number of it, saying Paul had stuck his neck out, not that Monty was the only artist who would produce airbrushed legs, but....

"Is that all that's bothering you?" Nadine persisted.

"That's all," Paul told her, not convincingly. He lied as amateurishly as Sherry.

Nadine risked the second question. "Did Monty ... did your artist say when he was leaving?"

"No. Just ... soon."

Paul turned over then, saying he hadn't slept much at the lake ... only a few hours last night.

Everyone annoyed with or suspicious of or angry with her! Or leaving her! Deserting Nadine, who loved them all and wanted only for all to be happy!

Monty going away! If only he could have her with him ... if they could go together! Paris!

Everyone around her had asked for it, Nadine decided. In rejecting her love, they had invited this inevitable conclusion! How they would berate themselves ... how they would miss her ... how they would speak with regret and belated admiration of Nadine, who had gone far away to France with her one true and undiminishing love!

She could hardly wait for morning to phone Monty Carrell.

CHAPTER TWELVE

In the days that ebbed from the calendar, carrying Nadine toward the end of June, one thought recurred over and over: it was no longer fun.

She had only to scan a mental check-list to realize this.

Sherry had gone out with George Weidberger three times, but she had not reported on these exciting events. Sherry remained silent, sullen and aloof. Nadine made it a point to avoid Sherry's caller, speaking to him a patronizing adult-to-child manner when she was forced to speak to him at all. (And learning not from Sherry, but from Leila Stroud, that George spoke to Sherry of many things ... but mostly about her mother!)

And Vince. No word from Vince. Had he guessed Nadine's rapport with Warren ... her closeness to Monty? Did Gwen know? Why didn't Vince call?

And why didn't Warren Ryner stop calling? There was nothing Nadine could do for him. His behavior was somewhat less adult. She began to think of him as she thought of Vince. Poor Warren. A bore, but pitiable. Poor, dear Warren.

Then, of the two major frustrations, there was Paul. Tense, moody, depressed. Not touching her. And Nadine afraid to approach him for fear of being rejected completely. Wondering through the unbelievably loveless nights, why? And still afraid to demand the answer.

Growing sick with desire and frustration. Beaming that desire toward Monty, whom it was impossible to see. Never a feasible time, never an adequate excuse. Nadine substituted long, impassioned letters to which Monty did not respond; but only because he did not dare. And she spoke to him through afternoon-long phone calls white Sherry was out of the house.

"When are you going away, dearest?"

"Don't talk to me about separation. I only want to think of being in your arms."

"I'd love to go with you."

"To France?"

"Yes. Would you want me?"

"Yes ... yes, certainly I'd want you ... but you...."Monty, I'm so miserable here. I can't tell you how miserable it's been."

"Come here, lover. Now."

It was a word-game. They played it each afternoon, with Nadine making the phone calls only because Monty could never be sure she was alone.

But it wasn't fun anymore. With no one to love her, with Paul using tiredness and a nebulous "confusion" as his excuse, there was no one but Monty Carrell.

Nearing the end of June, Nadine existed almost wholly in a dream world in which Monty made continual and fervent love to her and in which the Rue de Tournon held more reality than the main drag in Riverdale. And the mundane morning and evening sound of the C.B. and Q. commuter train was lost in the penetrating bass beep of the S.S. America's ail-aboard horn. Confetti, serpentine, baskets of fruit, farewell-waving at the rail, Nadine clinging to Monty's arm. Flowers in their cabin...."Do Not Disturb" sign hung from the doorknob to warn the steward that they wanted to be alone. Monty and Nadine ... alone with their love ... alone....

And regretting the moment in which the five-forty-six pulled into Riverdale to disgorge its passengers ... the reverie ending with the approach of a disconsolate advertising executive who flashed nothing now but imperceptible, subliminal smiles and said as he approached the Chrysler, "Hello. Been waiting long?"

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

It began on the last Saturday in June. Began undramatically and almost innocuously, with Paul out of the house. (He had gone to Clebb's drugstore for aspirin and cigarettes, commodities which in recent weeks, he seemingly stocked in carload lots.) The weather was hot and sultry. And the air lay heavy over Riverdale. Nadine, in white shirt and shorts, cooled the cement driveway with the garden hose. It was something to do. Little River Seines trickled down to the curb. She held an imaginary conversation with a Monty who had sprouted a Parisian smock and beret. Tolouse Le Carrell spoke to her above the whoosh of the hose spray.

It began then, with the screeching stop of Mabel Ryner's yellow convertible. Mabel was wearing shorts, too, Nadine noticed, grateful that she had been spared the rear view. Mabel stamped across the lawn. Her shirtwaist was grey, her shorts were fire-engine red, complementing her face.

Sounding ludicrously like the heavy in a grammar school theatrical, Mabel said, "Just the person I want to see!"

"Hello, Mabel," Nadine said. Perversely, she added the standard summertime cliche, "Hot enough for you?"

Mabel bristled across the wet driveway. Two feet away from Nadine, she stopped. "Listen, I wouldn't have believed it! I used to say, if there's one person I can trust, it's Nadine."

"Mabel, for goodness' sake ... here, let me shut off this hose and we'll go inside...."

"Don't bother! I wouldn't step inside your house! And believe you me, if I didn't feel sorry for Paulie, you wouldn't be able to make the payments on it!"

Nadine looked into the blazing face of one of the original Furies. "Mabel, what's come over you?"

Now one of the angry red cheeks glistened with a tear, Asking the question with unvarying monotony, even though the train was never late ... and Nadine could not tell Paul how long she had waited or how far she had traveled in those five fanciful minutes. then the other. What was called for, Nadine decided quickly, was a delicate blend of injured-friend, what's-all-this-about? and you-poor-dear-you've-misunderstood-something-but-I-won't-hold-it-against-you-once-you've-realized-y our-mistake. Nadine assumed the proper posture and expression, listening to Mabel's tearful, uncontrolled recital of suspicions, conversations with Gwen and quotes from an argument between Wardy and Cousin George.

Sifting the salient points, Nadine concluded that there were no Definite Proofs upon which Mabel could firmly stand. There were only ambiguities; "I'm not as dumb as you think I am," and, "Gwen isn't a dummy, either," and, "Why would Wardy get so mad at George if there wasn't something going on with you two, tell me that?"

No firm footing, and tears, demonstrating that Mabel regretted the need for this tirade and would appreciate discovering that she was wrong. It would be a great kindness to prove her wrong. Nadine waited patiently until Mabel exhausted her accumulation of the garbled half-truths (half true because Mabel didn't suspect nearly enough to make her accusations wholly true). Then, mustering pained tears of her own, Nadine said, "If you want to believe all that about me, Mabel ... there's nothing I can do to defend myself, is there?" (For, at that moment, there was nothing Nadine could do. She stood horribly accused, defenseless and hurt. Terribly hurt, and the tears, as she thought of it thus, flowed like spring wine.)

Mabel waited for more. The silence thickened, more leaden than the oppressive heat. Nadine stared pitiably at the driveway and the rivulets at their feet, chewing her lower lip, shaking her head, refusing to believe that a friend ... a dear friend could even have dreamed, let alone said that....

Mabel's face was too florid to reflect a blush of embarrassment. She blushed, instead, with the tremulous uncertainty of her words. "Nadine ... you know I ... sure don't want to think ... I'd feel like two cents if...."

Nadine brushed aside a tear with her wrist, careful not to smudge her mascara. "You're entitled to believe anything you want to, Mabel."

"It's not that I want to...." Mabel was frightened now. She sounded sick. She moved her arms aimlessly, as though searching for a support.

"Don't cry, Mabel. Please ... honey, I've made a lot bigger mistakes in my day. Why, the first year Paul had your account, I used to be jealous as hell. All I heard around the house was Warren this and Mabel that. I actually resented you."

"Me?"

"Why wouldn't I?" Crying beautifully now, Nadine stammered, "You have everything, Mabel. Absolutely everything. Sometimes I don't think you realize what your position is. We're so completely dependent on you ... financially, socially. I realize now that Paul ... that he only thinks of you as a wonderful friend. But at first...."

"You were jealous of me? Oh, Nadine...."

"Maybe I listened to too many ... catty women. You know the kind."

Mabel furrowed her brow, undoubtedly recalling the poisons implanted by Gwen Allegretti. "Most women are that way," Mabel admitted hesitantly. "Except you. I've got to say that. You never stab anybody in the back ... "

Slowly, expressing a simple, uncontestable philosophy, Nadine said, "I think people in a neighborhood like this should ... think of each as family. You know? Paul and Warren are like brothers. For a long time now I've thought of you as my...."

Nadine left the "sister" unsaid deliberately. It was more effective that way. For any references to familial ties evoked in Mabel the same response that "White Christmas" wrings from homesick troops overseas.

"I've been so ... nervous lately," Mabel said feebly. "Getting ready for Georgie ... and ... everything."

It was touching, a moment of gripping poignancy; Mabel weeping copiously, Nadine not letting herself be outdone.

Before Mabel returned to her car, apologizing that she felt too miserable to come in for coffee, they exchanged a long, soulful look of repledged sisterly devotion. And Nadine added what she considered an inspired sprig of parsley to the dish, a you-crazy-wonderful-silly-girl-you half-smile and a gentle corrective punch to Mabel's plump arm.

But when Mabel had driven off and when Nadine had turned the hose spigot and returned to the house, she found herself shaking with a palsied breathlessness. It had been a job well done. Everyone was happy. Yet the performance had not been casually and effortlessly executed. She felt drained, siphoned dry, and uneasy.

She might have reclaimed her composure if Sherry had not been standing next to the screen door as she came in. And Sherry had heard. One glance at that mirror-sensitive face and there was no doubt that Sherry had heard.

Anticipating the battle, Nadine struck the first blow. "Is it getting to be a habit with you, Sherry? Eavesdropping on private conversations?"

Sherry glared her inarticulate disgust.

It was enervating. Handling Mabel had been a strain. And now to be plunged into another tournament of wits without a moment's respite ... plus having to overcome that most formidable of weapons, frozen silence! Speaking first put Nadine at a disadvantage-placed her on the defensive-yet Sherry's stony wall of contempt called for some positive action....

"I expect you're going to twist everything out of perspective and misconstrue every...."

"I thought it was fabulous," Sherry said in a drab monotone.

"You thought...?"

"Mrs. Ryner's so square and you're so sharp. It was fabulous. At Pine Cove ... you could have coached the drama teacher." Sherry's eyes were direct and uncompromisingly cold. "The way you had her apologizing ... oh, man! I was afraid she wouldn't let George come here again. I was even afraid Daddy might lose the Weidberger deal. I just didn't give you credit! Mommy, you're the most gifted lying bitch in the world!"

"Sheryl, you'll apologize for that!"

"The way I apologized for thinking the same things Mrs. Ryner thought? I said I was sorry! I was sorry! What a laugh! Will you make Daddy say he's sorry, too? When he finds out?"

"How can you possibly...?"

"Oh, can it! Can it! It won't work with me. Once, sure, but not over and over. What do you take me for? A meat-head like Mabel Ryner? A poor, dumb sap like Dad?"

Sherry's cry was punctuated by the slam of the screen door. They had moved only a few feet down the entry hall during the argument. Paul's entrance made a nonchalant retreat impossible.

Nadine and Sherry stiffened. Paul slowed his step just inside the door, looking from one to the other, picking up the tense vibrations, showing it with concerned, questioning eyes.

Nadine waited for him to ask what was wrong; any im-perceptive stranger would have sensed their discord.

Paul only paused, grim ... adding to the suspenseful tableaux.

And then, with shocking, incredible swiftness, Sherry threw herself forward, almost falling the few feet to where Paul stood, and flinging her long arms around his neck, shrilling the terrifying sounds of hysteria, "Oh, Daddy ... Daddy, I can't stand it ... I can't take any more ... I don't ever want to see her again! ... Oh, Daddy, you don't know, you don't know!"

Paul folded Sherry in his arms. The carton of cigarettes in his hand seemed fearfully incongruous to Nadine. It was like some bizarre bit of symbolism, though exactly what it could represent eluded her imagination. She stared at the long, trembling white carton, remembering a movie Pop had taken her to see when she was no more than five or six ... All Quiet on the Western Front; that close-up of the dead soldier's hand, and the bright, gay, horrifyingly out-of-place butterfly landing there, seeing the same chilling strangeness pressed now against Sherry's convulsive back; King-Size Filter-Tip, magnifying the contrast of the inconsequential with the rakingly genuine sorrow.

Nadine turned from the scene. No, it was no longer a scene but an unmanageable reality, beyond her control. And she longed for the play-acting episodes in which the drama had stemmed from the bottomless depths of her chimerical mind. These passionate cries were emerging in spite of Nadine; she ached for a return to that unperturbing stage upon which all scenes could be ended with the drop of a curtain, her own hand pulling the drawcord.

She had an obscure impression of Paul walking Sherry to her room. Of their voices rising and falling from behind a muffling barricade of doors, of her own regret, not at what had been done (for, as always, her intentions had been beyond reproach) but at having stupidly permitted this uncomfortably, inescapably real state of affairs.

A long time later, after Nadine had retreated from the hallway battlefield to the sanctuary of her bedroom (exclusively hers since Paul's weekend at the lake), the bewildered and bewildering mood, her illusion of being suspended in a vacuum, ended abruptly with the appearance of Paul.

Truthfully, it was only the ghost of Paul who closed the door behind him. Pale, a shadowy quality in his presence, spectre eyes that simultaneously saw nothing and everything. Nadine stretched herself resignedly across the chaise lounge. Paul dropped to an unsettled perch on the edge of her vanity bench.

He sat rigidly for a moment; silent, breathing heavily. Then his hand slid across his face, smashing his features in its downward movement, finally dropping weightily into his lap. "I can't ... I don't want to. I'm like that poor kid in there. I refuse to believe ... but it's not because ... I'm incapable of seeing the truth." Paul sighed, a minor, moaning, dying wind sound. "I just don't want to, Nadine! I want to go on believing you're my Mom ... my girl ... Sherry's mother ... oh, Jesus Christ, how I wish I was as stupid as you've made me out to be! Christ, Christ, Christ!" His fist pounded the bench in a desperate rhythm of emphasis. "I don't want to face what you are!"

Nadine had managed feminine tears effectively and, in recent weeks, often. But the sight of Paul weeping, enormous, crooked tears zigzagging across that undeniably masculine face, paralyzed the usual rapier-sharpness of her brain. Paul speaking in that agonizing, tense half-whisper and crying ... Paul ... my God, crying!

"Dear...."

"Don't say anything! You'll do...."

"Paul, you've got to...."

"... such a remarkable job of convincing me I'm wrong. It's what I want! What everyone around you wants." Paul shook his head like a wet terrier, the unaccustomed tears changing their course. "You can do it. You'll sell me a bill of goods ... maybe that's what hurts most. Knowing you can look me in the eyes...."

"You might tell me what's happened!"...." stare me straight in the face. 'Vince is just another neighbor.' 'Leila can't write her own letters.' How many other times? I'll never know. Maybe everybody around me's been laughing behind my back. My own kid ... calling me a damned fool. My kid ... my wife ... my family. God, Nadine ... my whole goddamned life!"

It would be impossible to reach him now, on any level. What was important was to learn exactly what he knew and from whom. (Vince and Roy. Nothing certain, nothing recent.) Painful to listen to him, more painful to look at him. But how else could she pour oil over the troubled waters? She had to hear him out because she had to know.

"What's this about Vince?" she asked quietly, unbelieving.

"I could have killed him. I wanted to kill him. If it hadn't been for Warren ... telling me the guy's drunk ... he's only doing a little wishful thinking out loud...."

"What did he say? Vince, I mean."

"The bleary cracks. All the way there, all the way home. And, in between ... grabbing at every excuse to mention your name. Comparing you with Gwen. Throwing dirty digs at Warren ... as though you were the town strumpet ... insulting a friend like Warren, implying he felt the same way about you ... with Junior and Bucky in the car! How could the man defend himself?"

"Warren? You see how ridiculous it is? Listening to a drunk...."

"I knew that was ridiculous, sure. Warren's not a ... , I can trust him. But not Vince. Not you!"

"Paul, how can you...?"

"I heard enough to convince me it wasn't pure imagination. That it wasn't one-sided. And don't ask me for details ... I couldn't bring myself to repeat them. Nadine, I was sick enough to do it. Kill him!"

"Thank God Warren was with you."

"Sure. Having to lie ... tell me it wasn't you Vince was calling from that phone booth...."

"How do you know...."

"I've had a ... hunch for a long time ... all those middle-of-the-night calls. It wasn't really what Warren kept saying that stopped me. I actually felt sorry for that plastered sonofabitch."

"I feel sorry for him, too, Paul...."

"Not for the same reasons," Paul said thickly. "I got to thinking ... to looking back ... remembering ... fitting little pieces together. That time the two of you disappeared from Stroud's on New Years' Eve ... the way he makes a bee-line for you at parties. And the way you encourage him."

"Yes, wave yourself under his nose. Is that what you did with Roy? Is that why he left?"

He was only guessing. And apparently Sherry hadn't told him about Mabel's visit ... or the phone conversations with Monty. Paul, like Mabel, had worked himself into a lather over nothing but unprovable suspicions! She told him so resentfully, shocked that he would take the fanciful mutterings of a dipso against her word.

"There's more to it," Paul said tiredly. "Once I lost confidence ... once I stopped believing in you the way a man believes in his wife ... it began to pile up and stare me in the face. Just tell me why? Why, with a couple of weaklings like Roy Stroud ... like Vince?" Bitterly, he added, "You could have done better, Nadine. Wound all three of us around your little finger ... lied to them the way you lied to me. But I'm a trusting sap. They're a couple of mixed-up characters who live in a dream world. You could have done better."

"That's a terrible...."

"Vince seemed to think you were more in Monty Carrell's league. Apparently he kept a closer eye on you at Ryners' party than I did. I came close to beating his head in when he talked about ... how you'd knocked Monty off his feet...."

"God, he must have been drunk!"

"Sickening! And then I got to thinking about ... the Zam-Zam Club." Suddenly, throwing the question out like a lance, Paul demanded, "Where were you Saturday night?"

"Where would I be...?"

"I was afraid Vince had reached you. Worried about him upsetting you ... furious ... I don't know. I tried calling you myself. I tried all night and all Sunday morning!"

"Where did you think...."

"Answer me!"

"I was...."

"There was no answer at Monty Carrell's, either! You were out somewhere with him! Making a laughing stock of me ... of yourself!"

"Myself?"

"You think he's a dumb lovesick slob ... like Roy? Like Gwen's husband? Like yours? You think he could ever give a damn about you ... beyond a quick roll in the hay?"

"Paul, don't shout! Sherry...."

"It's too late to think about Sherry!"

"Don't scream at me!"

"You were with him! Like any one of his cheap one-night stands! My wife. Mommy! Throwing herself at...."

"I didn't throw myself at him!"

It was too late to cover up, too foolish to entangle herself further in the web; Paul knew too much and now he had struck at that most inflamed, sensitive Achillean heel ... her ego. What happened now was up to the gods ... but damned if he was to go on believing Monty had used her!

"You asked for this, Paul! It wasn't any cheap one-night stand!"

"Oh, wasn't it!"

"He's in love with me...."

"Oh, Christ...!"

"I love him!"

And this was more like it. Nadine tingled with the ultimate in dramatic declamations. It was heartbreaking to tell him, but Paul had to know. She was in love ... against her will, against her judgment ... against all her powers to resist.

"I'm in love with him!"

"But you waited until you were trapped to tell me! The jig is up ... might as well let the old fool know...."

"Nor

"Go. Go on. Go on, get out! God almighty, go to him ... I don't know you ... I've lived eighteen years with a stranger!"

"Paul, I don't want you to be hurt...."

"My God! You don't want me to be hurt!"

"Couldn't you try to understand?"

"Go on! You're free ... I'm not holding you. I never had you ... I never knew you. Vince knows you! Maybe Roy did! Lead your kind of life, but get out ... get out of my sight, let me pick up the pieces, you ... you...."

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Nadine prepared the dinner, adding inspired flourishes. From behind the guest room door, Paul tersely declined, saying his stomach was upset. Sherry was bitingly polite: "Thank you, I'm not hungry." Nadine drank two cups of coffee and, heavily disappointed, cleared the table.

It might take a little longer this time, she concluded. She had seen Paul only once during the morning, shuffling down the hall toward Sherry's bathroom. Something had turned over inside her, seeing his red-rimmed eyes; no need to wonder if he had slept. And she hadn't let him see her, darting instead into the den, building herself up for the awkward dinnertime meeting, which never materialized.

At eight that evening she answered the door chimes to find George Weidberger beaming his big-wheel-on-the-campus smile.

He had a date with Sherry, she was informed.

Sherry swept past Nadine into the living room, greeted George without her usual enthusiasm and Nadine heard them leave the house a few moments afterward.

Alone in the house with Paul. This was the logical time to approach him. If he didn't love her, he wouldn't be miserable. And since he did love her, it shouldn't take too much effort to win him over, then work on Sherry tomorrow, while he was away at the office.

Nadine returned to the bedroom to map out her strategy. It took too long. At about the time she had decided on the most effective method, she heard the Chrysler starting up in the driveway and looked out the window to see Paul driving away.

He had left the house silently. He hadn't been waiting for her to break the depressing deadlock. He hadn't wanted to talk with her and patch things up!

Knowing this, and not knowing where Paul had gone, brought tears to Nadine's eyes. She would have made an evening of it ... Tragedy of the Deserted Wife and Mother. She would have sobbed into her pillow. Except that even her brilliant imagination could not conceive of having lost Paul for more than a day or two. And also because there was no one around to appreciate the scene.

Monday, thinking it a waste not to take advantage of her hard-gained "freedom," Nadine decided to surprise Monty with a day-long visit.

And she did surprise him-in the act of persuading Ann Helsley that she should get lost. They had apparently been involved in a rousing argument when Monty came to the door.

Tears, tears ... Nadine was beginning to be bored to tears with tears. Ann was crying as Nadine stepped into the apartment. And the girl's resentment was unconcealed this time. Ann glared venomously at Nadine, told Monty she would call him later and slammed the door in leaving.

Monty sighed his exasperation. "Why should it be difficult to understand why I have no intention of settling down to connubial ennui with that?"

"Is that what she wants you to do? Marry her?"

Monty stretched himself wearily across his red couch. Relaxed, he let out a chuckling sound of amusement. "Letting her model for me gave Annie delusions of grandeur, I think. Can you imagine me marrying a roofing contractor's daughter? Who teaches ballet, tap and baton-twirling in a West-Side dancing school?"

Nadine crossed the room and he -edged over to allow her sitting room beside him. "You haven't kissed me."

"So I haven't."

Monty threw himself whole-heartedly into making up for the omission. And pressed his mouth against her ear, whispering, "Lover ... how long it's been!"

They would be together permanently soon, Nadine assured him, saving the thrilling news for the end; "I've told Paul about us."

For a split second, Monty looked as though he had been stabbed.

"Told him?" he asked.

"Yes, I told him. I couldn't keep it to myself."

"Without any provocation?"

"Some. For one thing, he was convinced I spent Saturday night with you."

"But you're clever enough to have ... surely you had an explanation...?"

"Monty, it doesn't matter now. He knows and I'm free and we're going to be together. That's all we want, isn't it?"

"Yes, but there ... one doesn't leap into this sort of arrangement, darling. It's going to make the Weidberger job difficult ... you should have considered that."

"You told me you're going away...."

"I'll certainly have to now. Moves up my schedule ... between this, and that nonsense with Ann ... gad!"

He furrowed his brow and Nadine suspected, though only briefly, that he was annoyed with her.

"Paul won't want to see you again," she admitted. "He's not ... speaking to me at the moment."

"Do you want to leave him?"

"Only for you."

"Yes, I know, but ... is this what you really want? Dearest, I'd never forgive myself if I destroyed years and years of happiness and security ... and then you found me disappointing. I don't want to influence you. This is a serious decision ... something I'm forced to let you suffer alone. Because I love you. I can't help you plot your future course because I'm biased."

His kisses lacked some of their usual fire, but it was understandable; it was all too overwhelming.

"Think about it. Don't listen to me. We'll stay apart from each other until you've made the decision alone...."

Monty rose from the couch, walking to his easel and gazing disconsolately at an abstract, noncommercial painting, only half-finished. "I live for you. For you and my art."

"You'd be able to devote all your time to serious work in Paris, wouldn't you?"

"Yes. Yes, no more being suffocated by vulgar beer advertisements."

"We'll manage somehow," Nadine said bravely.

"We...? Oh, in Paris. Yes, we'll struggle it out. As long as you have faith in me, love. It gets desperately cold in winter. We'll laugh at the cold. You and I."

"How cold?" Nadine asked cautiously.

"One January ... I'll always remember it as the month I lived on crackers and cheese and the pipes froze. If you only knew how revoltingly barbarian the French plumbing is!" He launched into a floor-pacing diatribe against insincere artists who refuse to relinquish their comforts to produce the zenith of their expression ... to wrench the heart from its warm niche of materialistic complacency....

It was impossible to channel the conversation, or the activity, into the more mundane channels. Or the more romantic ones.

"I hadn't realized," Nadine said, shoving aside a growing discomfiture, " ... that your work means so much to you."

Monty clasped her in his arms. "You're my art, too, Nadine. Why do you think I want this period of aloneness? You've got to be unshakably certain ... before you melt your pain-wracked soul with mine forever...."

"Monty, I get a little uncomfortable when you say things like that."

"Dearest...."

"I do. My soul isn't pain-wracked. I simply think we'd be gloriously happy together. And the hammy snow job about frozen plumbing isn't going to frighten me off. If the pipes freeze, we'll move to a flat where the toilets do flush."

Monty laughed uproariously and hugged her. "You're delightful!"

"Were you trying to frighten me off?"

"You've exposed me. I'm thinking of Paul. Lover, I have an absolute horror of irate husbands. They've been known to whip out pistols ... dreary episodes of that sort."

"Paul isn't going to challenge you to a duel. He's heartbroken, of course, but he's given me ... my freedom." The sentence came out sounding hollow; Nadine had never been inside of a cage.

"Paul's not apt to come looking for you?"

"He realized we ... have to have each other, I think. It was terribly painful ... but he told me...." Nadine gave the line all the time it deserved. "He told me to go to you."

"You handled it rather well, at that," Monty conceded. His sweeping kiss showed he had not lost his touch. "It's more comfortable in the other room," he said huskily, his lips brushing Nadine's.

With the coral curtains drawn and without the big Siamese to distract them, it was.

It was not until she had returned home that the queasiness set in. I am not Ann Helsley, Nadine reminded herself. I am not twenty-two and childishly naive. There was something lacking in Monty's reception; there was a restraint, a subtle reserve in his lovemaking.

Rejection was unthinkable. He loves me; Nadine's mind was adamant in this conclusion. But it only took that faint uncertainty to make Monty indispensable. The slightest possibility that he could resist her made him an object of scorching desire.

Paul's aloof return home at nine-thirty stirred a similar response in her. Besides, he looked so hopelessly forlorn!

Sherry was spending the night with Frannie Lindholm, anxious to get out of the funereal atmosphere of the house. At ten o'clock, Nadine came into the den where Paul sat blankly staring at a folio of figured sheets. He looked up solemnly as Nadine entered the room.

"Paul ... let me talk to you."

"Is there anything to say?"

"I can't help it, can I? If I'm ... capable of loving more than one person?"

"I always believed it was ... the two of us against the world. The two of us and Sherry."

"Would it help to know Vince was only ... babbling?"

"Don't. Please ... I don't want to hear names...."

"And I never looked twice at Roy. I really did write that letter for Leila ... "

"All right."

"I've been desolate about you...."

"That wasn't the impression our September girl-of-the-month gave me."

Nadine felt her face grow warm. "Who?"

"Miss Helsley. You remember seeing her early today? You do remember?"

Nadine's breath stopped.

"I took her call in Jim Oliver's office. Nice, Mommy? Your bed-hopping boy friend seems to have gotten her pregnant."

"I don't believe it. Monty's...."

"Too clever to err? She had two objectives in calling. Seems she thinks it's possible to garnishee his wages ... needs money, scared to death to tell her parents. I had to explain that Mr. Carrell doesn't work on salary. And that without a court order there wasn't much we could do to help her."

"Oh, Paul, I'm so sorry...."

"She only mentioned seeing you at Carrell's today in passing." Paul lowered his head, moving it from side to side, his eyes pressed shut. "How much can a man take?"

Nadine knelt at his feet, touching his hand. Paul made no effort to move away from her touch.

"Paul ... honey...."

"Didn't you know? Didn't you know what it would do to me? To all of us?"

(What if it were true about Monty and Ann? What if Monty's coolness today had been a replica of his callousness toward the lovesick Helsley girl? How much wiser, safer, to be here ... indisputably loved ... needed! What if Paris was cold and Monty was a flop as an artist? It was only a fluttering panic. But combined with her deep sympathy for Paul, for this tortuous emotion that wracked him, it made a reunion with Paul almost imperative!)

"I love you, Paul. I'm not like you ... this is the way I am and it's hard to explain...."

Paul opened his eyes to look deeply, painfully into hers. "Is it because you're sick? Emotionally sick? Maybe I ought to get help for you."

Paul pulled his hand from under hers and grasped at her shoulders, digging his fingers into her flesh. "Is that it, Nadine? You couldn't have destroyed me otherwise. You're kind ... you wouldn't hurt a fly ... you'd go twenty miles out of your way to pick up some trinket because somebody might enjoy having it. I love you. God damn it ... I love you enough to let you go if I thought another man could make you happy where I've failed...."

"You haven't failed, Paul."

"But he'll hurt you. He'll use you and hurt you."

That early it could have been almost anyone. Yet when the phone at Paul's side startled them with a sharp, jarring ring, Nadine knew instinctively who had dialed their number.

Paul lifted his head, whipping out of the anguished mood. "Answer it!" he said tersely.

"Answer it!"

Nadine fought to keep her hand steady as she lifted the receiver. Her own heartbeat pounded in her ears like jungle tom-toms.

"Hello...?"

"I can't go to bed alone tonight. I've been thinking about you...."

Paul's eyes burned into her; Vince's voice, woozy and deeply purring, came through with an audible clarity. With Paul only inches away, Vince may as well have screamed.

"... thinking about that night I picked you up ... parked behind the club...."

Paul's arm swung out without warning. Thudding, hard impact ... the telephone clattering to the floor, the short cord yanking the receiver out of her hand.

"Paul!"

"You lying bitch!" Paul leaped to his feet, blind with fury, knocking her off balance and rushing out of the room.

"Paul, wait! What are you going to do?"

"Get out!" she heard him cry. "Get out where I won't have to look at you! Downtown ... to a hotel ... as far from you as I can get!"

Sprawled on the floor, too stunned to move, Nadine heard the front door open and close. Listening closely, her breath coming in short gasps, she heard the motor starting up, the car roaring savagely away from the house.

Nadine thought for a moment. Apparently Paul wasn't going to do anything drastic. The call was a damned nuisance

... without it, everything would have been placid and pleasant by now. And there wasn't anything she could do to help Paul. Not until he cooled down and came home....

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Paul came back to the house Tuesday night, making it clear that he had returned only because of Sherry. He stayed at the agency until eight or nine the next three evenings, and for this there was a curt explanation, too. Monty Carrell had notified Mr. Pritchard that he was leaving Chicago next week, but would be willing to pile up enough illustrations to tide the agency over until a replacement could be found. Paul was spending his days calming Jim Oliver and inspecting art samples with Old Pritch. His routine work was pushed onto an evening schedule.

Sherry, too, had used the house for sleeping quarters only. Grimly silent, she ignored any attempt at reconciliation. Nadine would see her crossing the street to Leila's in the morning. Or speeding away with one of the Lindholm kids. Even in greeting them, she was soft-spoken and dolorous; the brassy colloquialisms had been erased from her vocabulary; Nadine yearned to have Sherry call something "swingin'" or "bitchin' " again.

No word from Warren, no calls from Vince. No visits from Leila Stroud. No one left but Monty ... and he never called. Courageously, he was restraining himself from influencing her final decision.

But because the hours were empty and sterile, and because he had invited Nadine to melt her "pain-wracked soul" with his, she wrote long, detailed, and intimate letters to Monty, telling him of her recent torments, subtly reminding him that there were others who desired her as he did, mentioning one who had left his wife because of her, naming two others who would be willing to follow suit were it not for the fact that she had now found the one absorbing love of her life. And would Monty please feel free to write or phone her? There was no one around now to intercept when the mailman came or the phone rang.

She wrote one letter on Monday, another on Wednesday. Nervously, Nadine waited for replies. When there were none, she phoned the studio; no one answered the prolonged ringing. He was avoiding Ann's persistent calls, but why couldn't he write? (She refused to think about Ann Helsley. It was too depressing ... too sordid to think of the sticky, confession-magazine implications associated with the silly girl.) Why didn't he write? He was cautious, that was why. Monty was too clever, too discreet to risk exposing their affair on paper. Someone else could read words intended only for her. Never underestimate Monty. (Yet he was leaving next week ... leaving!) By Friday night Nadine began to glimpse the writhing emotional state that had made an escapist of Roy, a nervous wreck of Warren, a Zombi of Paul, a drunk of Vince. To want something ... to want and want and not to have ... not to know why you have been denied! Everyone else was swept from her mind. Day and night, parched with a single hunger, a solitary thirst ... Monty brilliant and nonchalant, Monty suffering the cruel scourge of those who failed to comprehend his art ... Monty in whirling, sweat-glistening damp-rumpled-coral-silk-spread erotic dreams; half-awake, half-asleep ... ravenous ... starved for him!

On Saturday evening, the last day in June, Paul went out for a walk; to get over his headache, he told Sherry before she closed herself in her room.

Nadine drove to the Gold Coast.

"You can call me Cass," the girl told Nadine.

Nadine followed her into Monty's studio apprehensively. It was an effort to appear casual.

The girl had barely glanced at Nadine. She had evidently been engaged in a messy job when the Chinese knocker had called her to the door. Cass returned to her task; wiping the tops of paint jars with a damp sponge and packing them into a corrugated carton. She was beautiful in the disheveled, long, black, tangle-haired manner of an operetta gypsy. Tiger eyes, luxuriantly shaded by dark, astoundingly thick curved lashes. No shoes ... black leotards ... a smudged white paint smock pinned together sloppily by an outsized safety pin.

And young, Nadine observed uneasily. Middle twenties ... no need for make-up except the careless smear of bright lipstick on her full, wide mouth.

Nadine looked around the studio, still attempting nonchalance.

"He's not here," Cass said carelessly. "Want to wait? He might get back." She shrugged indifferently. "Then again, he might not."

"I'm...."

"Nadine," Cass said. "I figured you had to be the ad guy's wife, from the way he described you."

Burning inside, Nadine forced a wan smile. "I don't think he's ever told me about you."

"I'm his mother."

The phone began to ring. Cass muttered, "Damn!" and answered it, explaining to the caller with a patronizing patience that Monty was out and, no, she didn't know where he could be reached or when he'd be back.

Cass returned to her job, lighting a cigarette in the process. "Imagine a babe getting brushed off because she's stupid? Know what I mean? Flips, gets herself knocked up, then wants a guy to change his way of living because she didn't know enough to count."

"Was that Ann Helsley?" Nadine was picturing the pretty girl in the powder blue suit, her sympathy with the caller.

"Who else?" Cass rested her cigarette in the end of the easel trough. She picked out several almost-empty paint jars and dropped them in a convenient trash box. "A kid like that should play in her own back yard. Take you ... you're older, you've knocked around. Take me, I'm out for kicks. Nobody reaches me. You dig? So I can't get smashed. A kid like that's got no business fooling around with a full-time lover boy."

Sickly, Nadine. nodded. Cass hadn't looked up at her, but the yellow-eyed Carmen was extremely affable nevertheless.

"What she doesn't know is Mont would preen like a goddamn peacock if she jumped off the Wrigley Building. I think he'd reach the height of his ambition if some broad got so hung up on him she'd commit hara-kiri. Meanwhile, he's had to steer clear of her. Yowling bores him ... you know Mont."

"Yes ... I certainly do."

Cass picked up the cigarette for a quick drag. "I told him ... serves you right, Cellini. Feeding her all that flowery bull about your anguished souls! Jesus Murphy! 'Together we'll be one ... and we'll produce art!' If he tried that with one of us, he'd get his apricots kicked in. But she's a West-Side kid." Cass sighed. "That's the breaks, y'know?"

"You're helping Monty pack," Nadine said absently. (Her mind elsewhere, her insides floating off, churning somewhere in space.)

"Nah ... this is some stuff he said I could have. Not worth shipping but too good to toss out."

Nadine brightened. The girl wasn't going with Monty! They were only friends....

"Are you an artist, too?" Nadine asked.

"Nah ... my ex-husband is. I'll drop this crud at his place before we take off."

"You're going with ... Monty?"

"Maybe I am, maybe not," Cass said wearily. "I mean, it's been two years since I made the Apple, so I may go with lover-face. I don't think I'd dig the Frogs, though. Know what I mean ... kind of greasy and they eat snails, so I told Mont he can shove Paris. It's just talk with him, anyway."

"No, he really wants to go. He's always loved Paris."

"Where, on post cards? This is as far as he ever got from Queens, New York, dig? You know how Mont slings it. Good in bed, but so full of bull, it's comin' out of his ears...."

Nadine didn't wait for Monty's return. Cass waved her off agreeably without looking up from the messy chore.

Nadine drove erratically, her mind preoccupied with the revealing conversation. And then with the justification: the girl meant nothing to Monty. A mess. She was a parlor hipster and a mess. Safety-pinned clothes ... hair that hadn't seen a comb in days. She couldn't be more than an old, casual acquaintance.

Nadine tried a new tack. Monty was an artist. Inevitable that he would have off-beat bohemian friends....

And another turn. Why be incensed over discoveries of phoniness? During their first meeting Monty had admitted he was no boy scout. You had to color yourself a little to be interesting. I do it myself, Nadine reflected. We're so close because we're so alike!

Before she reached Riverdale, Nadine stopped at a public phone booth to dial his number. If Cass answered, she would hang up.

Amazingly, she reached Monty. He was thrilled by the sound of her voice. Sorry he had missed her. They talked for nearly ten minutes, Monty explaining that he had started several letters to her, but....

"... words are so inadequate. If I were a poet, I might be able to express what I feel about you. I can only put our love on canvas...."

"Monty, I wish you'd get down to specifics. If I'm coming with you, I've got to make plans...."

"I was going to suggest that I could go on ahead and find us a pad where we won't be disturbed too often," Monty said hesitantly. "That would give you time to ... finish up your business here and ... get organized."

When Nadine hung up, after a passionate adieu from Monty, she was less disturbed than she had been after the brief session with Cass. Yet a long, long way from knowing that inner security that gives unequivocal assurance; he meant every word of it ... I'm not being conned by an expert at the game.

Nadine pulled up in the driveway, noticing that the house was dark. She hadn't reached the door when headlights blinded her. Then the area was plunged into darkness again and she was able to distinguish the outline of the white Corvette. She waited on the walk until George Weidberger approached, calling her name. "How're you tonight, Nadine?"

"Fine, thank you. I ... just this minute got here."

"I noticed." He stood next to her, more nervous than she had ever seen Warren. "I just ... happened to be driving by."

"I don't think anyone's home. No lights. I imagine Sherry...." She stopped, uncomfortably aware of his nearness. "Was she expecting you?"

"No. I hope I don't need an invitation to drop in on you. Frankly, I'd rather talk to you. Not that Sherry isn't interesting, but you and I seem to converse on the ... same level."

"You may have misunderstood, George. We...."

"I don't think so," he said in a surprisingly even tone. "Let's face it, I'm young, but I'm not stupid. We hit it off ... no point in pretending we didn't. We've already agreed that age is a ... relative matter."

She would have been forced into an untypical, unkindly, unNadine-like brushoff in another minute. But as they talked, Nadine caught a glimpse of headlights passing the house, then the sound of a car braking to an abrupt stop and backing to the curb.

George turned. Uneasily, probably recognizing the Cadillac more quickly than Nadine, he muttered, "It's Warren.

He was going right by until he saw my car. He keeps tabs on me ... like a juvenile officer!"

Warren came up the walk with a heavy, determined step. He dismissed Nadine with a brief, "Evening, Nadine," and turned in undisguised irritation toward George.

"Did you have a date with Sherry tonight?" he asked, his tone thick with implication.

"No, I didn't ... officially...."

"I wondered. Her father called the house earlier, wondering if she was with you."

"I was there at the time, Warren. You know I answered the...."

"Exactly what I'm trying to get across," Warren said. "You knew Sherry wasn't here, but you came to see her anyway'"

George shifted nervously. "I thought she might be back by now."

"Is she?" Warren demanded.

"No, she's...."

"Then there's no reason for you to wait around, is there?"

"We were only chatting about ... college courses," Nadine said, failing to lessen the tension.

For several seconds the pair stood facing each other like stags wondering whether locking horns would be worth the effort, after which George mumbled, "Goodnight," adding a more pointed, "Mrs. Whitten" and stomping angrily in the direction of his car.

Warren waited until the Corvette had charged down the street. Then, strangely shaken, he said, "I've about had it with that kid. He's upset Mabel ... given her all kinds of ideas. And now I find him hanging around you like a pup around a...."

Warren cut off the sentence abruptly. Nadine followed his gaze across the street. "What's the matter?"

"Is that Leila's car turning into her driveway?"

"Is that something to get shocked over?"

"I hate to be seen here, under the circumstances. I offered to drive Paul wherever he wanted to go, but he said Leila'd already volunteered...."

"For what?"

"To look for Sherry. I guess they found her, all right."

Under Stroud's porch light they saw Leila hurrying ahead to unlock her door, Paul following with a protective arm around Sherry.

"I hope Paul didn't see my car," Warren said. "If he did, tell him ... I was concerned about the kid."

"She was probably at Frannie's ... somewhere in the neighborhood. I can't see any reason for all this intrigue."

"As upset as Paul was ... I imagine he'd phoned all the obvious places." Warren apparently remembered the tell-tale Cadillac again. "Damn, always having to invent excuses ... having to lie!" And then, turning his guilt-ridden ire toward Nadine, "Aren't you going over there? You could see Sherry crying...."

"No ... they'll come here in a bit."

"Why didn't they come here to begin with?"

"How do I know? Maybe they didn't think I'd gotten home yet." Nadine reflected on the stupidity of the statement; certainly Paul would have seen their own car as well as Warren's. Irascibly, she said, "You're starting to make noises like a Riverdale housewife."

"I guess they gossip ... they're human," Warren conceded. "But one thing you can say for most of them. Their kids know where to find them ... and they know where to find their kids."

There was a brief, tense pause, the air around them heavy with the sounds of their first quarrel. Then Warren said, "I don't want to argue. I've had enough of that, lately, at home." He shook his head, as though attempting to brush away a swarm of plaguing irritations. Then he walked swiftly toward his parked car.

Nadine ignored his departure, looking beyond the long, black car to the lights in Leila's house, resenting her exclusion from a growing circle of people. Sherry and Leila. And now Sherry, Leila and Paul. Why had they gone there instead of coming home? And where in hell had Sherry been, getting everyone in an uproar and creating the embarrassing bit with George, giving Warren a derogatory impression when up until now he had thought of Nadine as perfection personified?

Cass, the questionable conversation with Monty, and now all this! Nadine sighed, discovered that the front door was unlocked, and walked through the dark and empty house to the bedroom, flopping disconsolately across the bed.

Confidence slipping ... filtering between your fingers, so that in the very act of grasping for it, you admitted defeat. Dumbo without his magic feather, King Arthur without the charmed sword, Excalibur. Any one of the thousands of fairytale heroes and heroines deprived of their enchanted talisman ... a jewel, a spindle, a cloak, a steed ... Nadine rejected and powerless to cast her spell ... shorn of her invincibility; if everyone did not love her, then perhaps no one did ... no one, no one, not even Paul, who had given her the bewitched treasure of supreme confidence in her-self!

Nadine was awake when Paul returned to the house. He came into the bedroom quietly, flicking on a dresser lamp and apologizing for the light. "I'm sorry to disturb you."

"It's all right," Nadine said. "I couldn't sleep."

"Not very late. It's not eleven yet."

Politely banal, warming up to a cementing of relations, Nadine surmised. People always approached the patching of a rift with soft-spoken, exaggerated politeness.

"Did Sherry go to bed?"

"She's staying at Leila's."

"I can't say that I like the idea, Paul."

"She didn't want to come home, Nadine. Think about that for a while and ask yourself if anything ... if anybody's worth that. Sherry didn't want to come home. And tonight she left a note ... saying she wasn't ever coming back."

"Actually running away? Like a ten-year-old-boy ... running away to join the circus?"

"She was going to Bowling Green to see Carolyn Sankey. At least that's what she said at the bus station."

"Oh, not that again ... that freight-car-bus-station bid for sympathy! I suppose she told you in her note that she'd be taking a bus ... made it easy for you to find her! I suppose you and Leila had to drive all the way downtown and that you both made a dramatic fuss over her...."

"Yes!"

Nadine looked up, startled. Paul hadn't moved far from the doorway. He was standing there now without any support, unbelievably straight and immobile. He rarely raised his voice, but the "yes" had been hurled like a loud challenge.

He repeated the word now. "Yes! You're right on all counts! She ran away to get sympathy because, God damn it, any kid in her position could use plenty! And much as she wanted to run away, she wanted even more to be found. Let that sink home, Nadine ... she wanted us to find her! So I'm not ashamed that I went looking ... and I'm damned grateful her note tipped me off where to look. Because until I found the note, I could only bite my nails, wondering where she'd gone."

"And after that, you could rush over and let Leila drive you to the rescue. Oh, I can just see the two of you...."

Paul had come to the edge of the bed while she spoke. Leaning down, he grasped Nadine's arm, fingers closing over it hard. "You've got that a little twisted, haven't you? Sherry and I didn't want a replacement for you. We still don't. Let's keep in mind who walked out on whom ... who paired off with strangers, when all Sher wanted was you ... and all I'm ever going to want, as long as I live ... is you. Let's keep the record straight!"

The remainder was lost on Nadine. The essential thought lay in Paul's avowal...."All I'm ever going to want ... is you!"

Nadine reached out to retrieve the magic feather, the holy sword, the thrice-blessed charm. Her hand lifted to touch Paul's. Gently, she said, "I wish everything was ... the way it used to be."

As though the strings of the rigid puppet had been cut, Paul dropped to the bed. "What do you think we want, Mom? We want you to be funny again ... to ... do crazy things ... but only with us. I could forget ... Sherry could, too ... forget everything we heard ... everything that happened...."

"And everything you imagined, too, Paul?" (To accept forgiveness on any other terms would have left her too vulnerable to criticism in the future.)

His arms reached for Nadine, trembling violently. "When you get desperate, you begin to imagine things ... I suppose I did that, too."

"That nonsense about Roy...."

"Don't talk about it."

"And Vince. Ye Gods, and even that thing with Monty has been ... purely ... aboveboard. Not physical or anything...."

Paul winced. "I said let's not talk about it."

"You believe that, though? If you don't, there's no use in our ... "

"All right, I believe it. I want to, God knows. All I want to do is forget it because I won't ... I can't accept your being in love with anyone but me ... or caring about anyone more than Sherry."

Nadine sighed and nestled in his arms. She felt like crying ... perhaps, after all the important reconciliatory points had been covered, she would cry. And Paul would hold her and adore her for being silly and impetuous and be glad she was back where she belonged....

"Tomorrow," Paul said hoarsely, " ... let's make Sherry want to come home."

Nadine nodded against his chest.

"I love you," Paul said.

Nadine clung tightly to the magic feather without which she could not fly. Clung tightly and knew she could handle any of them now ... Monty included. "I love you," she said.

Not once, but many times in the bittersweet hour that divided Saturday from Sunday. (Her Excalibur ... her divinely protective sword!) "Hove you, too, Paul...."

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

At eight-fourteen on the morning of the Fourth of July, one of Riverdale's more patriotic citizens saluted America's independence by firing off four illegal cherry bombs and a string of two-inch firecrackers. The artillery effect brought a hysterical response from every dog in Cook County, and answering yelps from the counties DuPage, Lake and Desplaines. It was a helluva way to wake up, Nadine thought.

Had it not been for the racket, Nadine and Paul would have slept until ten. Since their reconciliation, Paul had vacillated between brooding silences and passionately enthusiastic love-making. Like someone driven, there were the hours in which he could not drain enough love from her to restore his battered confidence, smothering her with attention, retiring to thoughtful silences and bursting forth once more with violent declarations of his love and demands that Nadine demonstrate hers. Last night had been such a night; on this holiday morning they would have, except for the ungodly noise, slept late.

But, being up and about before eight-thirty, and seeing Leila out on her lawn struggling to run a flag up the tipsy pole Roy had imbedded in concrete five years ago this morning ... remembering that they had all gone to Crystal Lake for a picnic that day and returned to find Roy's tribute to the founding fathers had slipped to a rakish angle and hardened ... then the funny argument, Leila insisting that Roy had run that heavy flag up before the cement had dried under the pole and Roy saying ... whatever it was he had said ... anyway, remembering that day when Leila had not been alone, was probably what prompted Paul and Nadine to call her over to join them at breakfast.

And while they dawdled over coffee, Leila had thrown a firecracker that made the neighbor's cherry bombs sound like duds by comparison.

"I had a nice letter from Roy yesterday, did I tell you? He's getting married."

Nadine set her cup down shakily. On the rebound, of course. Not in love with the girl. Desperate attempt to forget the one significant love that was beyond his reach.

Paul looked chagrined, apparently not knowing which response would be worse-an expression of gladness for Roy or condolences for Leila.

"It's about time," Leila continued. "It wasn't normal for him to try burying himself in electronics." She sipped at her coffee and then threw the blockbuster. "I wrote him a long letter last night ... wishing him luck, naturally. And I enclosed a note to the girl. I s'pose that's strictly from hunger, but I don't want her going into marriage thinking there's a resentful woman in Roy's past. I don't think I got too mushy. I just-you know ... wished her the best."

"You wrote to Roy?" Paul said flatly. "And to the woman he's going to marry?" Only Nadine could recognize the shaking significance of his question.

Leila was blithely unaware. "You think that's too corny? I haven't mailed the letters yet ... maybe I'll read them over before I do. One of my compulsions. Too much time on my hands. Plus four brothers and two sisters, every darned one of them living out-of-state, would you believe it? Gad, writing letters is second nature to me, like opening my eyes in the morning." Leila started to lift her cup again, then hesitated. "Paul? Do you feel well?"

"Certainly, I...."

"You look a little groggy." She turned to Nadine. "Come to think of it, you both look a little groggy."

"Not enough sleep," Nadine explained weakly. "Maybe I should wait until later to ask you, then...."

"Ask me what?" Nadine grasped hopefully at a change of subject.

"I've been thinking ... it's rather silly for me to rattle around in a three bedroom house alone. The place was too big for Roy and me in the first place. I thought of calling Bud Cooke and having him appraise the place ... maybe throwing it on the market."

"Where would you go?" Nadine asked.

"That's no problem. Point is, before I let anyone look at the house, I'd like to have the basement finished."

There was a painful lull; everybody probably remembering Roy's excited do-it-yourself kick; starting the basement recreation room, leaving it with half the flooring piled in the garage, plywood panels ordered, delivered two days after his departure.

"I thought," Leila said, recovering first, "Paul might have some idea of what a carpenter would charge for the job. If I don't have any idea, one of these characters that figures I'm a loaded widow is going to give me a padded estimate and I'll bite."

"I'm not much for figuring that sort of...."

"Well, you'll remember what the Allegrettis spent on their place. I won't hold you to any figure. Just let me show you what's supposed to be done and give me a rough idea."

"Let's go," Paul said, pushing his chair from the table.

"No hurry. Anytime today. I haven't even called anyone about the job."

"Now's as good a time as any," Paul said blankly.

"More coffee?" Nadine offered.

"He hasn't let me finish the first cup," Leila laughed. "Come along, Nadine? Big thrill ... inspect the naked plumbing for a wet-bar."

"I think I'll pass."

Paul was on his way out of the house, his expression sickly cold.

Paul was gone too long. In an hour and a half he could have built Leila's damned fun room, starting from scratch!

Nadine remembered the morning Roy had proudly invited her to see his progress with the room. Leila at the market ... the two of them alone in the basement ... no two people on earth caring less about acoustical ceiling squares or a proposed shuffleboard made of asphalt tiles. And now Roy was getting married. Married!

Nadine all but slammed the breakfast crockery into the dishwasher. She was hurt by Paul's delay, concerned about the letter business, wondering if Paul and Leila were discussing it now. And appalled by the thought of Roy throwing himself away blindly on some fool female in California. The girl was probably one of those theatrical Hollywood fluffs, impressed with Roy's successful business, not really capable of understanding his deeper, crying needs. Los Angeles virtually crawled with women like that; she'd read a magazine article about them once.

And Monty leaving on the fifth ... leaving tomorrow, with only a tenuous arrangement, so that she could not recall whether, during their phone conversation yesterday, she had asked him to make a plane reservation for her ... or had told him she'd join him later. One thing she did know; since the truce with Paul, with her confidence buoyed, she had held the upper hand. Monty had ended up by pleading with her, trying to break down her aloof resistance, practically begging her to come to New York with him! He, too, wanted most what seemed unavailable.

Which was all that was necessary; to know that she was wanted. Nadine had forgotten all about the idea once she was sure of that. But now, with Paul angry again, the street sounds of New York and Paris rose above the rumble of the dishwasher. She was in an explosive mood when Paul dragged himself back from Leila's. Explosive and frustrated, having taken the time to dial Monty's number and getting no answer. Tomorrow he'd be gone! She might never see him again! Though he would always remember her, of course ... go through life comparing other women with her as Roy would compare his rattle-brained second choice ... miserable afterward....

"Did you give Leila her estimate?" Nadine asked Paul as he came into the house. "Or did you nail up all the plywood panels?"

"Don't cover up with brittle remarks. You know why I wanted to get out of here."

"Because now that she's lost him completely, Leila can force herself to write to Roy. But while she...."

"Oh, shut up!"

"Paul...."

"That's it. Just shut up. Whatever you say, it's going to be a brilliant lie ... and if it's not, I'll think so, anyway."

"Did you ask Leila why she can write to Roy now when she couldn't...."

"No, I didn't ask her. I'd be ashamed to. Besides, I'm not too sure she's selling the house because Roy's gone out of her life for keeps."

"Oh?"

"Maybe it's because she's seen us all ... lovey-dovey again."

"And she's given up waiting around for you? Is that it, Paul?"

"Hell, I don't know ... she wouldn't want to see us break up. I know that much about Leila. And if you've got any wild ideas in your head about what goes on when I'm alone with her, forget them. She's not a bitch. I'm not a guy who goes for bitches. I should have learned my lesson ... marrying one!"

Paul was pacing the dining area as he spoke, his voice gaining in volume. So that neither of them were conscious of Sherry's presence until she addressed them:

"And a happy firecracker to you, too, everybody."

Nadine put on a sprightly smile. (One had to go along on the slim assumption that Sherry hadn't been listening.) "Morning, honey. You managed to sleep through all the noise."

"I heard it," Sherry said dully. Then, on her way to the kitchen: "Around here you get used to it."

Because of Sherry, they agreed, wordlessly, to a cease-fire. By the time she left the house, her destination unannounced, there seemed to be nothing left for either of them to say.

Nadine tried. Once, early in the evening, she tried. Coming into the den where Paul lay face down on the settee...."Paul, it was so wonderful these past few days. Couldn't we...."

"Leave me alone," he muttered. "Get out and close the door behind you."

"I'll get out," Nadine threatened. "I'll get out and I won't come back!"

He only moved his head, as though nodding in agreement. Dismissing her callously ... as though she weren't worthy of a final comment!

Enraged, Nadine tore into her closet. She'd had enough ... had all she could take. Damned if she'd stay here and be ignored and insulted!

Packing, she hoped Monty had made her plane reservation. Leave the Chrysler at the airport ... cash a check in the morning before they left ... write Paul a farewell letter from New York. It would be a bitter blow, but he'd asked for it just now ... ignoring her completely....

Nadine had left her suitcases and hat box in the car. She would tell Monty about them later, surprise him. They'd have a drink, then, to celebrate.

She lifted the Oriental knocker, not letting it fall, but tapping out an exuberant rhythmic staccato: Pum-ta-da-dump-dum ... Pum, pum!

She waited.

He might be in the shower. Out running a last minute errand. Saying goodbye to Cass. (She could laugh about Cass now.) They were going away together. Monty and Nadine ... they could laugh off anybody!"

Waiting, letting the pulse-stirring realization saturate her; from this moment on, she would live with Monty ... share his pain and his ecstasy, live with him ... awaken mornings to find him warm beside her ... live with....

Nadine knocked again, less amusingly, more emphatically. When you were going to live with your lover for the rest of your days, it was a little ludicrous to stand on ceremony; from now on, if Monty's door was open, Nadine could walk in unannounced.

It was open and she did. Several pieces of luggage rested where the easel and oxygen cylinder had stood in the center of the parquet-floored room. He couldn't be far away. From the bedroom, a zhoosh-zhoosh-zhoosh sound came through the twin speakers; Monty had let a record run out. He was probably in the shower; he wouldn't have gone out and left the stereo....

"Certainly" meowed. The alien noise in the supposedly empty room startled Nadine. She gasped, then laughed at the ridiculousness of being rattled by the big, gluttonous Siamese. And then looked for a suspended, breathless period in the direction of the meowing sound, looking frozenly and long to where "Certainly" perched on Monty's back-Monty lying face down on his bright red couch. Napping.

It screamed inside her. He was tired from packing, lying down to rest, oblivious to her entrance or the heavy cat on his shoulder blades or the repeated zhoosh-zhoosh-zhoosh from the bedroom ... and it didn't matter that his arm formed a bizarre Z-shape with his fingers rigid in a curled, open starfish pattern with his wrist pressed hard against the floor ... while he napped.

Cautiously, feeling the cat's eyes watching her movement, Nadine crept closer to the couch. Thinking in terms of feeling Monty's pulse now, made aware of pulse and heartbeat by the audible, erratic drum-beat of her own.

And whimpering when she drew close enough to see that the red couch was a deeper red in that flat, wide cushion under Monty's chest ... a red that would come away on your fingers if you dared to reach out and touch it. Releasing a thin, brief, crying sound at the sight of Monty's face. With no homicidal experience needed, with only a terrorizing intuition to tell her there was no need to take his pulse, no need to call out for help, no need to phone for a doctor.

Under her breath, Nadine whispered, "Oh, no. Oh, no." Her words echoed like thunder through the stripped studio.

She caught her breath once more at the sudden thudding sound; Monty's cat leaping from her grotesque perch to the bare floor and slinking anxiously toward the kitchenette.

I am not heartbroken, Nadine's mind raced. Astounding: my heart is not broken. I have no urge to throw my arms around that strangely still form with its left arm turned askew and beg it to speak to me ... to open its eyes ... to cease being dead. It. The corpse. The horrible, unpersonal, dehumanized it. I want nothing but to run from this room!

No desire to do anything but get away ... before someone comes. Before I'm involved in what must be, what obviously ... what can only be the thing people read about in books and newspapers but rarely, rarely encounter in life. Murder! Verbalizing the thought flooded Nadine with a second airless panic, blocking her lungs. Murder! Being discovered at the scene of a murder! Not a self-devised play-acting scene, but one directed by some unknown stranger ... garishly red and revolting and real ... murder ... run ... run ... get out of the room....

The record-end sound repeated itself monotonously, following Nadine down the grey-carpeted, fuschia-cord-bannistered stairway she would never climb again.

In the street, hurrying toward the car in which her luggage was locked, Nadine came close to colliding with a small, dirty-faced boy.

He should have been in bed hours ago, but this was the Fourth and here he was, blocking the dusty sidewalk, pointing up at the sky.

"Hey, lookit ... lookit ... green an' red stars ... lookit ... lookit ... blue ones, too ... Jeesus ... you see that?"

There was no one else in sight, though he may have been addressing someone in the dingy basement flat just below the sidewalk level.

"You see that?" the boy repeated. He was talking to her!

Nadine had not looked up to see the pyrotechnic miracle. She had been too absorbed with inner fireworks of her own.

Later, he might be a witness who would recall seeing a woman of Mrs. Whitten's description on Rush Street at such-and-such-an-hour.

But now ... after all, the boy was no more than seven ... and so joyously eager to share his enthusiasm ... it would take so little to make him happy ...!

"It was beautiful, wasn't it?" Nadine said. "Wasn't that a beauty?"

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Hadn't he moved? In all the time she had been gone, had Paul remained there, lying on the settee in the den, staring into the darkening space, so that now when Nadine flicked on a lamp, his arm jerked upward in a reflex motion to shield his eyes from the unaccustomed light?

She wouldn't have had to tell him the truth. Nadine could more conveniently have hidden her luggage and told him she had gone for a ride, to a movie, to watch the fireworks display at the country club.

But without prelude or prologue, out of a stomach-fluttering fear that made it impossible to contain the immensity of her discovery within herself, Nadine told Paul where she had been.

He continued to gaze into an infinite emptiness before him. "I was going to go to New York with him. And Paris."

"What do you want me to do? Thank you for changing your mind? Why did you come back? To twist the knife a little deeper into my gut?"

"He was dead!"

It took a while before her whispered statement registered. Paul sat up abruptly. "He was what?"

"Dead. I found him dead!"

"What from? What...."

"I think somebody killed him."

"Nadine, this isn't one of your...."

"I didn't imagine it. He was ... there was blood all over the couch. Someone shot him. Or stabbed him. I couldn't tell."

"You're sure it wasn't an accident?"

"I don't know why, but I doubt it. Oh, Paul, it was ... gruesome!"

She expected him to fold her in his arms, comfort her after her terrifying experience. Poor Nadine ... darling, what a shock it must have been....

Paul only pummeled her with questions. "Did you do anything? Call a doctor or the police?"

"No."

"Did anyone see you?"

"I don't think so."

"You've been there before," Paul noted grimly. "You would have been recognized."

Nadine ignored the grating sarcasm. She was engrossed, momentarily, in a strange analogy. If she had returned tonight to find Paul lying on that couch as she had found Monty ... yes, she was sure of it! She would have wept and screamed and held him to her ... savagely angry with the fate that had robbed him of life and deprived her of his love. In Monty's studio she had experienced only a distinct unpleasantness, an urge to remove herself from the scene. Paul ... she would have been racked by grief if it had been Paul!

He was saying something to her. Something terse and cutting. "Did you do it, Nadine?"

"Did I...? You can't be serious!"

"If he dumped you, you'd have hated him enough. I've learned the magnitude of your ego. You could have!"

"How can you even suggest...."

"All right, you didn't. Who did? I might have. He broke up my home. If he was really murdered, it'll occur to the police."

"Oh, Paul!"

"But, of course I didn't. I'll be able to prove I wouldn't have had enough energy to kill every man you've slept with."

"Paul, that's...."

"Unfair. Go on, convince me again. Build me up for the next letdown. Try it!"

Challenged, she found nothing to say.

"You must have had a few other jealous lovers. You don't suppose our friend over on Hill Drive got a load on and decided to...."

"Vince isn't a murderer!"

"Neither is Sherry."

"Sherry?"

"Do you know what she said to me a few nights ago, Nadine? She'd like to kill whoever it was that had wrecked things for us. Good thing she didn't know about Monty."

Breath coagulated in her lungs. "Paul ... she did know. I mean ... she knew of him...."

Paul's eyes found hers. Not accusing now, not filled with the previous, stark misery, but alarm. "Sherry was gone all day. She came home only a few minutes before you did."

"You aren't going to start accusing your own child...."

"Can you imagine what she's gone through? The hatreds you put into her?"

"I refuse to even consider...." (But she was considering. Icicles prodding at her conscience ... sharp and cold!)

"She was gone all day. She went to bed without coming in here ... without telling me where she'd been!"

"Paul, it's out of the question. She wouldn't ... you know she couldn't! And assuming that she was capable ... how would she find him? Where would she get a ... gun ... or a knife or whatever...."

"How could she possibly hop a freight train to Richmond and get herself expelled from school? Because she's so mixed up, she's liable to do anything. And you've been a great help! You've been a five-star mother to her!"

They sat quietly through a rigidly tense, interminable period, each of them retired to a personal horror chamber of the mind in which the incredible became a blistering possibility. Their child ... Sherry gone all day ... Sherry, who had sobbed, "I'd like to kill...." And Sherry's iamgination, she suspected, was more vivid than Paul's. Paul didn't know about the telephone call during which their daughter had learned to hate a faceless adversary named Monty.

Paul ended the separate silences. "What a wide choice the cops will have! How many damned fools like me must have wanted to see him dead! Other husbands ... other women." And saying "women," Paul's eyes lighted, then clouded with a saddening suspicion which came to Nadine in the same instant. Not a suspicion, but an obvious, sorrowful conclusion.

Ann Helsley I

"She sounded like a kid on the phone," Paul said. "Like a scared kid. Not much older than Sherry."

Paul's sympathy was based only on that disorganized, embarrassing telephone call taken in Jim Oliver's presence. But Nadine could recall now the pretty young face ... that wholesome young face, last seen distorted with frustration and tears. She could hear a voice (now dead ... difficult to think of it as a voice from the past!) ... contemptuous; "She's convinced I've only tired of her because she's putting on weight."

"Letting her model for me gave Annie delusions of grandeur."

"She had the best two months of my life." Derisive. Cruel.

And the day Nadine had met Ann, the day Ann had worn the powder blue suit, Monty had whispered something personal and warm to the girl, probably something that had ridiculed the possibility of Nadine Whitten as Annie's competitor! For Ann's smile had reflected love ... love ... love and gratitude. Monty had thrived on both.

"I hope she gets away with it," Paul was saying. "I hope they never find out."

Nadine nodded slowly. Poor Annie ... poor roofing contractor's daughter ... poor teacher of tap, ballet and baton-twirling in a West Side dancing school!

Long after she had gone to the bedroom alone, sleepless for hours and then awakening from a tormented dream, Nadine thought she heard hushed voices outside her door. Someone moving through the house ... subdued conversation. Later still, she had a faint impression of hearing car doors slam outside, a motor starting up and receding into the distance.

Nadine opened her eyes to discover she had slept longer than it seemed; daylight had begun to filter in through the drawn draperies on her left. If she pressed her eyes tightly shut, she would blot out the obtrusive dawn, blot out everything, everyone. And return to sleep.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Daylight came again, a harsh, glaring daylight to which she awoke because the telephone at her side had pierced her ears with a shrill knife sound ... and because someone else was ringing the door chimes.

Nadine picked up the phone. A strange male voice asked for Mrs. Whitten.

"This is Mrs. Whitten speaking."

"I wonder if you'd answer a few questions, please? This is Cliff Farraday, International News...."

Nadine dropped the receiver. Think. Time to think before she answered questions.

The door chimes sounded more insistently. She threw a quilted robe over her nightgown and padded shakily toward the front door. It must be late. Paul must be at his office. It was Mrs. Sefcik, probably, though she wasn't due until Friday.

Nadine opened the door.

There were two of them. Pleasant-looking chaps, one with a camera, one who addressed her like a long-lost buddy. "Nadine Whitten? I wonder if you'd be good enough to...."

Intuitively, she started to slam the door, accomplishing the feat, but not until after a blinding light had flashed in her face and the cameraman had purred a satisfied, "Thank you ... thank you very much."

Nadine leaned against the closed door, panting. The telephone had started to ring once more and she stayed fixed in her position until it stopped. Then, cautious, peering through the slit where the living room draperies came together, she watched the two newsmen drive away in a new Ford sedan ... and noted that the Chrysler was still in the driveway. Paul had either called a cab or he was still in the house.

He was gone. Paul was gone, and a frantic surveyal of Sherry's room showed that she was gone, too.

Wild inventory of Sherry's closet ... Paul's shirt drawer ... the top drawer of his chest left open ... empty. Everything empty.

Where had they gone ... and why had they hurried so? She dialed the agency. Mr. Whitten was not available, said Margaret at the switchboard. "But this is Mrs. Whitten."

A long, puzzling silence. Then, "Would you want to ... speak to Mr. Oliver?"

Something in the girl's tone warned Nadine that speaking to Mr. Oliver might be a depressing experience.

"No. No, thank you. When my husband gets in, would you have him call me?"

"But, I thought...."

"Yes?"

"You know he's taken a leave of absence. Everyone here's awfully upset. He called this morning after the ... excuse me ... there's another call...."

"Never mind," Nadine said. She hung up.

Nearly noon. Nadine sat beside the phone, dredging her mind. There must be someone to call ... end the suspense ... learn how much was known, where Paul had gone ... what to expect. There had to be someone to call! Unbearable to be alone!

When the phone resumed its shrill whine, she sighed heavily and lifted the receiver. "Hello?"

"Nadine...."

It was Leila. "Oh, it's you. I was afraid...."

"I thought you might like to come over. There's no one outside now. Lock the door and hurry."

"Why should I...."

"Unless you want the newshounds to eat you alive. I saw the first contingent ... there's bound to be more."

Nadine began to cry. Unphoney, unpremeditated, unrehearsed and quiet tears. "Leila, they're gone! Paul and Sherry...."

"Paul's taken her to a hotel. I can't tell you where. Paul wasn't sure himself when they left."

"But they...."

"I don't know how long he can keep Sherry away from newspapers or the radio or a TV set. But you can't blame him for trying. Are you coming over?"

"What's in the papers? Did they...?"

"I'll talk to you when you get here."

"You haven't seen the paper," Leila surmised, pouring coffee. "Do you want to drink this first?"

Nadine shook her head. "No." She seemed to be speaking aloud, but her words emerged barely audible. "Let's see it. Get it over with."

Leila produced the morning news. One of the less conservative afternoon papers would dress the story up with the doorway shot of Mrs. Whitten in boudoir regalia and tousled hair. But the early version was enough to drain blood from the veins:

There was a headline in which "model,"

"murdered," and "artist" had been valued above "pregnant,"

"mistress" and "Lothario" in the sub-head.

Yet how frustratingly varied had been the caption-writer's choice of juicy phrases ... and names!

In the straightly reported story, Monty's body had been discovered by a Miss Cassandra du Val, a gypsy-haired "beatnik friend," who was depicted in an adjoining column, holding a Siamese cat and viewing the murder scene in the company of a stoic detective.

Apparently the solution had not taxed even the greenest addition to the homicide squad; Cass had only to mention a jilted expectant mother and all the pieces had fallen into place. Ann Helsley's picture occupied two columns.

Nadine gave only superficial interest to these dismal facts.

It was the feature story, the circulation-boosting feature that paralyzed her sight; the reproduced fragments of her own handwriting, plus someone else's, with names circled by a news-wise editor; names pointing up the infinite variety of Monty Carrell's lovers ... and the romantic link between Monty's women and other men.

The letters from socially prominent Mrs. Roger Brent Westphall, patroness of the arts and sponsor of the "artist's recent one-man show" were probably playing hell, this morning, with North Shore suburbia.

And in Riverdale, Warren Ryner, the "playboy heir to the Weidberger brewing millions" could see his name mentioned beside that of a "wealthy advertising executive, partner in the firm of Oliver, Lindsay and Whitten, Inc.," with a delectable side-notation about Vincent Allegretti, "pinbail king and brother of the notorious Louis Allegretti, St. Louis racketeer serving time for income-tax evasion."

How diligently the members of the Fourth Estate had labored in the still hours before daybreak! How painstakingly they had pried and dug, exposed and shattered ... all because a frightened girl had borrowed a gun from her father's desk and spoken the age-old message of a woman spurned!

"Thorough, isn't it?" Leila said when the paper had been dropped to the floor. "Thorough, complete. Nobody left untouched, nothing left unsaid."

Nadine looked deep into her coffee cup.

"I feel sorry for all of them," Leila went on. "They'll hurt a long time. But somehow they'll recover. Maybe they'll come out of it wiser or ... finer, the way metals are purified by fire. But you? You know why I feel sorrier for you?" She didn't wait for an answer. "I don't think you'll learn anything, Nadine. I don't think you'll change. Maybe you'll hurt as badly as the rest of them ... Paul ... Warren ... all of them. And maybe more, because I think you've lost them, Nadine. Really lost them. But tomorrow, if you had it to do over again, you wouldn't be able to stop yourself, would you? As long as you live, hell or high water, you're going to go on being Nadine." By ten-thirty that evening the concern about reporters seemed needless. Nadine would have preferred to spend the night at Leila's, but Leila hadn't made the suggestion and there was nothing to do but lock herself inside the empty house. And to lick the barbs that had been thrust into her as an aftermath of the initial wound.

Gwen had phoned Leila earlier. Boiling, fuming, furious. Finished with Vince ... and if she ever got her hands on that lousy bitch...! Leila had not mentioned Nadine's presence. And Gwen had calmed down enough to report the latest developments from the Ryner household.

Mabel had piled Bucky and Junior into her car and headed for northern Wisconsin. Gwen was concerned about her. Nobody ought to drive in that hysterical condition. Mabel had gone completely to pieces, alternately thanking God that Mama and Papa Weidberger hadn't lived to see the family name dragged through the mud, and harrassing Jim Oliver at the agency, threatening to withdraw the Weidberger account, then apologizing; it wasn't Paulie Whitten's fault ... he had gotten the dirtiest deal of all. But Mabel was going to call the family lawyer about Wardy. After all she had done for Wardy ... as faithful as she had been to Wardy! But what was she going to tell the boys?

Warren was in no shape to help, Gwen revealed. At around two-thirty, Essie, the Ryner cook, had phoned Doc Ayers from the house. Mr. Ryner wasn't himself, Essie had said. (Gwen had gotten the story from Essie first-hand later.)

Doc Ayers had rushed over to find Warren beating the desk in his study with his fists, asking over and over, "What's Bucky going to think about me? What's Junior going to think?" And after Doc had given him a sedative and made several discreet calls to a hush-hush hospital that specialized in you-know-what-kind-of-cases, Warren said nothing more about his sons; he allowed himself to be led like a docile child, but repeatedly asked in a plaintive voice, "Has Paul said anything to you, Doc? About me? He's my best friend ... my buddy from overseas. Has he said anything to you about me, Doc?"

Nadine's eyes had riveted themselves to the luminous clock. In the pressing darkness she saw that it was after midnight when she heard the key turned in the lock.

She listened to the sounds in Sherry's room, waiting as long as she could before walking down the hall. Paul had come back. Maybe Sherry was home, too. (It had been so silent and frightening to be in the house without them!)

Paul was alone, packing what was left of Sherry's belongings. They weren't coming back.

Nadine watched him from the doorway. It was a long time before she spoke. "I wish there was something I could say, Paul."

He didn't answer. But his uncoordinated movements gave him away; he'd been drinking.

"I know what this has done to you, having to face people at the agency-around the neighborhood."

Paul dropped a pair of soiled tennis shoes into an open suitcase crammed with Sherry's lingerie.

"I can't tell you how sorry I am, Paul. After it's ... all forgotten and you come back, I'll spend the rest of my life making it up to both of you."

Silence. Sherry's room was still. Utter, desolate, silence.

"I will! And you'll forgive Warren ... everything's going to be all right with the account. You know Mabel! You know how much she thinks of you. And you'll be busy ... thinking up a new campaign...."

Her voice rising, rising and soaring out of control....

"Talk to me, Paul! It wasn't all true ... you know the way newspapers twist and distort everything!"

Then, remembering that the morning paper had said nothing about her ... had only reprinted portions of her letters to Monty: "I know how you feel, Paul! I don't blame you...."

He slammed the suitcase shut, fastening the locks.

"Paul, I couldn't stand it here alone! You know what it'll be like for me! Don't you remember anything? How wonderful it used to be? It could be that way again...!"

Paul ignored her, tight-lipped and silent. "If you leave me, I'll ... kill myself. I will, Paul. Don't say I didn't warn you! I'll kill myself!"

He had finished gathering up Sherry's most necessary possessions. A suitcase in each hand, Paul stumbled past her down the hall.

"Is that what you want me to do? All right ... all right, you'll have your way! Tomorrow morning I'll be dead and you'll wish you hadn't!"

She followed him into the living room. A cab waited in the driveway; diffused beams from the headlights traced wide, white circles on the draperies.

Child-like tears now. He would stop, he would send the cab away, he would see how desperately she loved and needed him!

"Paul, it's been eighteen years! We've been happy together for eighteen'years! If I'm willing to try ... if I promise to try ... think of Sherry ... think how ... divorces always made you sick ... you said anything was worth forgetting if it meant holding a family together...."

Not until then did Paul break his leaden quiet. He set down the suitcases and opened the door.

"Always wanted you, Mommy," he said softly. "It's just ... I've discovered the only way you're ever going to want me."

"Don't go! Paul, don't ... please! Please ... oh, please ... I"

She was screaming it when the door closed behind him.

Untheatrical screams, bone-fide tears, emanating from Nadine. Nadine, a person! Nadine, a living, breathing, one-hundred-percent genuine human being who knew what it meant to scream and to cry and to hurt. Someone foreign and unknown until now. Nadine, whom no one had ever really known. And least of all, Nadine.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Mid-September. Afternoon. Raining hard now, the hush sound magnified in the empty house, hollow echoes of it whispering from the barren walls.

It was fortunate, Nadine thought, that the movers had finished loading the furniture before it started to rain. Some of the smaller pieces would go to the apartment Paul had rented on the North Side. Sherry had probably asked for her bedroom ensemble. The rest would go into storage. For how long or for what purpose had not been discussed in those few crisp, formal telephone conversations with Paul's attorney.

It was fortunate, too, that Leila had decided against selling her house. Two houses for sale in one block would have been psychologically bad.

Leila was a rare visitor. Living like a recluse, Nadine avoided other, less charitable neighbors, driving to the next-nearest suburb to do what little marketing was required, for fear of running into Gwen or Mabel.

Vince (Leila said) seemed more addicted to the bottle than ever, but he had reached a compromise with Gwen and was doing his drinking at home or at the pinball plant. The Allegrettis were being viewed rather dimly by the Membership Committee of the Riverdale Country Club since Vince's family skeleton had been brought to light; Vince had a new excuse for getting drunk.

And Warren was home, too, restored to a more rational state by Mabel's forgiveness and equally forgiving visits from Paul, but still under treatment for his nerves. The brewery was having to manage without his services or those of Cousin George, who had gone back to school.

Nadine had been opening the door once each day to check the mail, emptying the contents of the box and darting furtively into the hall. She did it now, hoping the daily hope

... that there would be a letter from Sherry. Today there was a phone bill, a hardware store circular and an engraved announcement informing his patients of the removal of Dr. Ayers' practice to the more spacious new Riverdale Medical Center Building.

It was the last mail she would receive in this house, just as she had finished the last cup of coffee, the last shower, the last walk through the cavernously empty, echoing rooms.

She made the'last telephone call then, calling for a cab. There would be a wait for the taxi, the driver told her from his outdoor phone next to the train depot. It was raining ... and with only three cabs available, it might be a while, he apologized.

"I'm not in a hurry," Nadine assured him.

Luggage next to the door ... still undecided about where to go. Hotel apartment? Maybe the airport? There was no hurry when there was no destination.

And where would there ever be to go, where Nadine would sparkle like a diamond, the way she had scintillated here, where Paul and this house provided a deep velvet background for her glitter? And what could she revive of the old loves when now she wanted only one? Only that one love was being severed now by stacks of legal forms and documents. (Paul ... Paul ... Paul and my child!) What could she stir up in the bleak future that would not be an anticlimax to the tinseled and tragic adventure with Monty Carrell? What could she begin, with confidence, without desire, with all her love and enthusiasm turned toward the past? Even Ann Helsley had something to look forward to; a forthcoming trial was better than nothing at all.

Yet, earlier in the day, when Leila had come to see if she could help, Nadine had almost been relieved to find all her ties with the past breaking. Not until all of the greasepaint had been wiped away, until the theatre had been cleared of its last action, could the actress walk out the stage door ... no longer a performer but a woman. There must be some kind of future, however misty, for a woman.

Leila had been painfully honest: "I started waiting for Paul the day Roy left me. Someday, I thought, Paul's going to need me ... but it's only going to happen because Nadine makes it come about. Someday a bigger tiger's going to step into her jungle. It won't be my fault. I won't have to feel guilty if she lets herself be devoured...."

"Maybe I was playing your game, too ... a milder, passive version, when I pretended not to know about your affair with Roy. And when I kept telling you how lucky you were to have Paul, I meant it ... because I loved him. But I was giving you rope, too. Making you sure of him. You wouldn't ever guard anything you were sure of, would you? And if I didn't tell Paul what I knew about you, it wasn't out of any sense of ... nobility. Forgive me for that, too. I only knew one thing. If I'd told Paul you were a ... whatever you were, he'd have walked away from me in disgust. I knew he'd never learn to care for a woman who'd been one jump ahead of him, knew his secrets, hurt his pride. How stupid you must have thought me! How blind!"

Nadine hadn't asked if Leila's long-term program had produced results. Paul phoned her daily. Leila admitted this humbly, not crowing about it; she was nearly apologetic in saying the three of them, Sherry, Paul and Leila, were having dinner with the Ryners next Saturday. But not until Nadine had left the neighborhood. It would have been awkward to know Nadine was so near.

"I'm glad Paul didn't lose the account," Nadine had said. (Thinking of the dinner at Ryners', remembering Leila's joking complaints about how rarely anyone invited the "odd" woman to a party.) "I'm glad there's someone around to ... make Paul feel important again."

"It's no effort on my part," Leila had said. "To me he's always been important."

Nadine had summoned her last reserve of pride. Laughing it off ... the facetious dismissal. "I suppose, eventually, he'll marry you. We'll still be friends, won't we ... you and I?"

Leila shook her head solemnly. "None of us are going to stop caring about you, Nadine ... just because we'd like to. We can't live with you. But once you've loved someone the way all of us loved you...."

Nadine's laugh sounded faked. No more actress ... the director was dead. But she had to say something. "Shall we play it Hollywood style? Invite the ex-wife to dinner some night?"

"No. No, I'm sorry. I waited too long." Leila's eyes filled with tears. "And I've known you too long ... too well. I'd never underestimate what you can do, Nadine. I'll never invite you to dinner."

It was nearing dusk when the cabbie came to the door, running, because the gentle September rain had developed into a torrential downpour.

He picked up the suitcases and Nadine took the house keys from her handbag. Lock the door, follow him to the cab, don't turn around and look back. Leila would be watching from her window across the street....

The telephone, scheduled to be disconnected in the morning, began to ring.

"I'll take your suitcases out an' wait in the cab," the driver said.

Nadine walked back to the den. The phone sat on the carpeted floor, looking dishearteningly out of place 'and deserted.

Last incoming call in this house. It might be Paul. It might be Sherry. (Knowing as she picked up the receiver that it would be neither of them.)

"Hello?"

The hesitant pause, the old familiar mumbled sound: "Nadine ... Honey, I've ... been thinking about you all day...."

Nadine closed her eyes. My God, the last of the faithful, the last of the true, lover to end all lovers, until death do us part....

"Nadine? Listen ... there's nothing to stop you from getting out now ... could you meet me at...."

"There's someone waiting for me, Vince," Nadine said. "I can't talk to you now."

"Why can't you...?"

She dropped the receiver, hurrying out of the room. Out of the house. Last turn of the key.

And hurrying through the cool, absorbing rain ... rain that brought a brief, unwelcome recollection of heated liquor and a rising nutmeg aroma, hearing the telephone behind her, ringing and ringing....

Breathless, Nadine settled in the back seat of the Riverdale Black-and-White cab.

"Well ... where we goin' on this bright, sunshiny day?" the driver asked.

Everyone in Riverdale was casual and friendly and warm. You felt at home here. You always felt as though you belonged....

He started up the motor.

Nadine thought hard. Looking directly in front of her, through the rain-blurred windshield, thinking hard.

"Depot?" the driver asked. "The depot?"

"I figured with them suitcases .. "Yes, I guess so."

She saw his eyes in the rear-view mirror, narrowing ... puzzled.

"Yes, certainly, the depot," Nadine said. She closed her eyes. "The depot will be just fine."

THE END
Nymph In Suburbia ....(75k)    by Kay Martin





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