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  Vic knew that some people thought Melinda stayed with him because of his money, and perhaps that did influence Melinda to some extent, but Vic considered it of no importance. Vic had always had an indifferent attitude toward money. He hadn't earned his income, his grandfather had. The fact that Vic's father and he had money was due only to an accident of birth, so why shouldn't Melinda, as his wife, have an equal right to it? Vic had an income of $40,000 a year, and had had it since his twenty-first birthday. Vic had heard it implied in Little Wesley that people tolerated Melinda only because they liked him so much, but Vic refused to believe this. Objectively, he could see that Melinda was likable enough, provided one didn't demand conversation. She was generous, a good sport, and she was fun at parties. Everybody disapproved of her affairs, of course, but Little Wesley—the old residential parent town of the newer and more commercial town of Wesley, four miles away—was singularly free of prudery, as if everybody bent over backward to avoid the stigma of New England puritanism, and not a soul, as yet, had ever snubbed Melinda on a moral count.

  Chapter 3

  Ralph Gosden came for dinner on Saturday night, a week after the Mellers' party, his old gay, confident self, even gayer than usual because, having been away at his aunt's in New York for about ten days, he perhaps felt that his welcome at the Van Aliens' was not so threadbare as it had been just before he left. After dinner Ralph abandoned a discussion with Vic of H-bomb shelters, of which he had seen an exhibition in New York and evidently still knew nothing about, and Melinda put on a stack of records. Ralph looked in fine fettle, good for four in the morning at least, Vic thought, though this morning might be his last at the Van Allen house. Ralph was one of the worst offenders about staying late, because he could sleep the next morning if he cared to, but Vic usually matched him, staying up until four or five or even seven in the morning, simply because Ralph would have preferred him to retire and leave him alone with Melinda. Vic also could sleep late in the mornings if he wanted to, and he had the edge over Ralph in endurance, both because two or three in the morning was Vic's average hour of retiring and because Vic never drank enough to make him particularly sleepy.

  Vic sat in his favorite armchair in the living room, looking at the 'New Wesleyan', and now and then glancing over the top of the newspaper at Ralph and Melinda, who were dancing. Ralph was wearing a white dacron suit that he had bought in New York and was as pleased as a girl with the slim, trim figure it gave him. There was a new aggression in the way he clasped Melinda around the waist at the beginning of each dance, a foolhardy self-assurance that made Vic think of a male insect blithely dancing its way through its last moments of pleasure before sudden, horrible death. And the insane music Melinda had put on was so appropriate. The record was "The Teddybears," one of her recent purchases. For some reason, the words lilted maddeningly through Vic's head every time he stood under his shower:

  'Beneath' the 'trees' where nobody 'sees',

  They'll 'hide' and 'seek' as long as they 'please'!

  'Today's' the 'day' the teddybears have their 'pic-nic'!

  "Ha! Ha! Ha!" from Mr. Gosden, reaching for his drink on the cocktail table.

  Home on the range, Vic thought, where never is heard an intelligent word.

  "What's happened to my Cugat?" Melinda demanded. She was on her knees in front of the record shelves, making an unsystematic search. "I can't find him 'anywhere'."

  "I don't think it's in there," Vic said, because Melinda had pulled a record out of his section. She looked at it dazedly for a moment, made a face, and put it back. Vic had a little section of the bottom shelf where he kept his own records, a few Bachs, some Segovia, some Gregorian chants and motets, and Churchill's speeches, and he discouraged Melinda from playing them because the mortality rate was so high for records that she handled. Not that she liked any of his records. He remembered playing the Gregorian chants once when she was dressing to go out with Ralph, though he knew she didn't like them. "They don't put me in a mood for anything except 'dying'!" she had blatted at him that night.

  Ralph went into the kitchen to fix himself another drink, and Melinda said:

  "'Darling', do you intend to read the paper all night?"

  She wanted him to go to bed. Vic smiled at her. "I'm memorizing the editorial page poem for today. 'Employees serve the public 'and' They have to keep their 'place'. But being humble in this 'world' Is never a 'disgrace'. And many times I ask myself—' "

  "Oh, stop it!" Melinda said.

  "It's by your friend Reginald Dunlap. You said he wasn't a bad poet, remember?"

  "I'm not in the mood for poetry."

  "Reggie wasn't either when he wrote this."

  In retaliation for the slight to her friend, or perhaps just on a wild whim, Melinda turned the volume up so suddenly that Vic jumped. Then he deliberately relaxed and languidly turned the page of his newspaper as if oblivious of the din. Ralph started to turn the volume down, and Melinda stopped him, violently grabbing his wrist. Then she lifted his wrist and kissed it. They began to dance. Ralph had succumbed to Melinda's mood now and was dipping his steps with swishing movements of his hips, laughing his braying laugh that was lost in the booming chaos of sound. Vic did not look at Ralph, but he could feel Ralph's occasional glances, could feel his mingled amusement and belligerence—the belligerence slowly but surely, with each drink he took, replacing whatever decorum he might have had at the beginning of the evening. Melinda encouraged it, deliberately and systematically: Bait the old bear, hammer it in, kick him, she managed to convey to everyone by her own example, because he's not going to retaliate, he's not going to be dislodged from his armchair, and he's not going to react at all, so why not insult him?

  Vic crossed the room and lazily plucked Lawrence's 'The Seven Pillars of Wisdom' from the shelf and carried it back to his chair. Just then Trixie's pajama-clad form appeared in the doorway.

  "Mommie!" Trixie screamed, but Mommie neither heard nor saw her.

  Vic got up and went to her. "'S matter, Trix?" he asked, stooping by her.

  "It's too loud to 'sleep'!" she yelled indignantly.

  Melinda shouted something, then went to the phonograph and turned it down. "Now what is it?" she asked Trixie. "I can't sleep," Trixie said.

  "Tell her it's a most unjustifiable complaint," Vic said to Melinda.

  "Aw—right, well, turn it down," Melinda said.

  Trixie glared with sleep-swollen eyes at her mother, then at Ralph. Vic patted her firm, narrow hips.

  "Why don't you hop back in bed so you'll be wide awake for that picnic tomorrow?" Vic asked her.

  The anticipation of the picnic brought a smile. Trixie looked at Ralph. "Did you bring me a sewing kit from New York, Ralph?"

  "I'm afraid I didn't, Trixie," Ralph said in a sugary voice. "But I bet I can get you one right here in Little Wesley."

  "You will not," Melinda said. "She wouldn't any more know what to do with a sewing kit than—"

  "Than you would," Vic finished for her.

  "You're being rather rude tonight, Mr. Van Allen," Melinda said icily.

  "Sorry." Vic was being purposely rude tonight in preparation for the story he was going to tell Ralph. He wanted Ralph to think he had reached the end of his tether.

  "Are you staying for breakfast, Ralph?" Trixie asked, swaying from side to side in Vic's arm.

  Ralph forced a guffaw.

  "I hope he is," Vic said. "We don't like our guests to go off on an empty stomach, do we, Trix?"

  "No-o. Ralph's so funny at breakfast."

  "What does he do?" Vic asked.

  "He juggers eggs."

  "Juggles, she means," Ralph explained.

  "I guess I ought to stay up for that," Vic said. "Come on, Trixie, back to bed. It's quiet now, so you'd better seize the moment. You know, 'carpe diem' and 'carpe noctem', too."

  Trixie went with him readily. She loved him to put her to bed, hunt for the kangaroo she slept with and tuck it in with her, then kiss her good nig
ht on both cheeks and the nose. Vic knew that he spoiled her but, on the other hand, Trixie got very cold treatment from her mother, and he felt that he should try to compensate. He buried his nose in her small soft neck, then lifted his head, smiling.

  "Can we have the picnic at the quarry, Daddy?"

  "Uh-uh. The quarry's too dangerous."

  "Why?"

  "Suppose there's a strong wind. We'll all get blown right down."

  "I wouldn't mind that!—Is Mommie going on the picnic?" "I don't know," Vic said. "I hope so."

  "Is Ralph going?"

  "I don't think so."

  "Do you like Ralph?"

  By the light of the merry-go-round lamp on her bed table he could see the brown flecks in her green eyes, like her mother's eyes. "Um-hm. Do you?"

  "Mm-m," she said dubiously. "I liked Jo-Jo better."

  It stung him a little that she still remembered Jo-Jo's name. "I know why you liked him. He gave you a lot of Christmas presents. That's no reason to like anybody. Don't I give you a lot of presents, too?"

  "Oh, I like you best, Daddy. Of course I like 'you' best."

  It was too facile, Vic thought. She was getting awfully facile. Vic smiled, thinking how pleased Trixie would be if he told her he had killed Malcolm McRae. Trixie had never liked Mal because he had not liked her and, being a tightwad of the first water, he had never brought her a present of any kind. Trixie would whoop with joy if he told her he had killed Mal. His stock would go up 200 percent. "You'd better go to sleep," Vic said, getting up from the bed. He kissed both cheeks, the tip of her nose, then the top of her head. Trixie's hair was the color of her mother's now, but it would probably get a little darker, like his. It grew straight down from a partless crown and looked the way a six-year-old brat's hair ought to look, Vic thought, though Melinda complained because it was so difficult to curl. "You asleep?" he whispered.

  Trixie's lashes were down on her cheeks. He turned off the light and tiptoed to the door.

  "'No!"Trixie' yelled, giggling.

  "Well, you'd better get to sleep! I mean it now!"

  Silence. The silence gratified him. He went out and closed the door.

  Melinda had turned another lamp out and the living room was much darker. She and Ralph were doing a slow, shuffling dance in the corner of the room. It was nearly four o'clock.

  "Is your drink all right, Ralph?" Vic asked.

  "What? Oh, yes, thanks. I've had about enough."

  It couldn't possibly mean that Mr. Gosden was thinking of leaving, not at four in the morning. Melinda was dancing with her arms around Ralph's neck. Because she thought he had said something horribly rude to Joel Nash she was going to be extremely accommodating to Ralph tonight, Vic supposed. She was going to encourage him to stay and stay, and stay for breakfast, too, no doubt, even if Ralph turned white with fatigue, as he sometimes did. "Stay, darling, please. I'm in the mood to stay up tonight," and he'd stay, of course. They all did. Even the ones who had to go to an office the next day, and Mr. Gosden didn't. And of course the later they stayed the more chance there was that Vic would go to his room and leave them alone. Often Vic had left Melinda and Ralph alone at six in the morning, reasoning that if they had spent all afternoon together, why not let them spend two and a half hours more together until he came in at eight-thirty to get his breakfast? It was another petty thing, perhaps, annoying Melinda's callers by sitting up all night in the living room with them, but somehow he had never been able to be so obliging as to get out of his own house to please them, and besides he always read a couple of books, so his time was not wasted.

  Tonight Vic was aware of a strong, primitive antagonism to Mr. Gosden that he had never felt before. He thought of the bottles and bottles of bourbon that he had provided for Mr. Gosden. He thought of the evenings that Mr. Gosden had ruined for him. Vic stood up, put his book back on the shelf, then went quietly toward the door that opened into the garage. Behind him, Melinda and Ralph were now practically necking. His leaving without saying anything could be explained as '(a)' his not wanting to embarrass them when they were kissing each other; '(b)' that he was possibly coming back in a moment; or '(c)' that he was too annoyed with their behavior to say good night to either of them. Explanation '(b)' was the correct one, but only Melinda would think of it, because Mr. Gosden had never seen him leave and come back. He had done it several times with Jo-Jo.

  Vic turned on the fluorescent light in the garage and walked slowly through, glancing at his neat herb boxes, at his aquaria full of land snails that were gliding through the moistened jungle of oat shoots and Bermuda grass in which they lived, glancing at his opened electric drill case on his worktable and automatically noting that every tool was present and in its proper place.

  His own room was almost as severe and functional as the garage—a plain three-quarter bed with a dark-green slipcover on it, one straight chair and one leather desk chair, a huge flat-topped desk on which stood dictionaries and carpenters' manuals, ink bottles, pens and pencils, account books, and paid and unpaid bills, all arranged in an orderly manner. There were no pictures at all on his walls, only a plain calendar, donated by a local lumber company, over his desk. He had the ability to sleep for as long as he wished without the aid of anything or anyone to awaken him, and he looked at his wristwatch and set himself to awaken in half an hour, at seventeen minutes to five. He lay down on the bed and methodically relaxed himself from head to toe.

  Within about a minute he was asleep. He had a dream of being in church and of seeing the Mellers there. Horace Meller smiled and congratulated him for having murdered Malcolm McRae in defense of his marriage. The whole town of Little Wesley was in church, and everyone smiled at him. Vic woke up smiling at himself, at the absurdity of it. He never went to church, anyway. Whistling, he combed his hair, straightened his shirt under his pale-blue cashmere sweater, and strolled back through the garage.

  Ralph and Melinda were in a corner of the sofa and had apparently been reclining, or half reclining, because they both straightened up at the sight of him. Ralph, pink-eyed now, looked him up and down with drunken disbelief and resentment.

  Vic went to the bookshelf and bent over, scanning the titles.

  "Still reading?" Melinda asked.

  "Um-hm," Vic said. "No more music?"

  "I was just about to leave," Ralph said hoarsely, getting up. He looked exhausted, but he lighted a cigarette and threw the match viciously in the direction of the fireplace.

  "I don't want you to leave." Melinda reached for his hand, but Ralph swung away and took a step back, staggering a little. "'S awfully late," Ralph said.

  "Practically time for breakfast," Vic said cheerfully. "Can I interest anybody in some scrambled eggs?"

  He got no answer. He chose the pocketbook 'World Almanac', a book he could always browse in with pleasure, and went to his armchair.

  "I should think 'you'd' be getting sleepy," Melinda said, looking at him as resentfully as Ralph.

  "No." Vic blinked his eyes alertly. "Had a little nap just now in my room."

  Ralph wilted visibly at this information and stared at Vic with a stunned expression as if he were about to throw up the sponge, though his eyes, shrunken and pink in his pale face, burned all the harder. He stared at Vic as if he could have killed him. Vic had seen the same look on Jo-Jo's face, and even on Larry Osbourne's lean, blank face, a look inspired by Vic's demoniacal good humor, by his standing clear-eyed and sober at five in the morning while they wilted on the sofa, wilted lower and lower in spite of their efforts to haul themselves upright every fifteen minutes or so. Ralph picked up his full glass and drank half of it at one draft. He'd stay to the bitter end now, Vic thought, as a matter of principle: it was nearly six in the morning, and what was the use of going home to sleep now, since tomorrow was ruined anyway? He might pass out, but he'd stay. He was too drunk to realize, Vic supposed, that he could have Melinda all the afternoon tomorrow if he wanted her.

  Suddenly, as Vic watched him,
Ralph staggered backward, as if something invisible had pushed him, and sat down heavily on the sofa. His face was shiny with perspiration. Melinda pulled him toward her, her arm around his neck, and began to cool his temples with her fingers which she dampened against her glass. Ralph's body was limp and sprawled, though his mouth had set grimly and his eyes still bored into Vic as if he were trying to hang on to consciousness now by simply staring fixedly at one thing.

  Vic smiled at Melinda. "Maybe I'd better make those eggs. He looks as if he could use something."

  "He's fine!" Melinda said defiantly.

  Whistling a Gregorian chant, Vic went into the kitchen and put a kettle of water on for coffee. He held up the bourbon bottle and saw that Ralph had finished about four-fifths of it. He went back into the living room. "How do you like your eggs, Ralph—besides juggled?"

  "How do you like your eggs, darling?" Melinda asked him.

  "I jus' like 'em—like 'em juggled fine," Ralph mumbled. "One order of juggled eggs," Vic said. "How about you, puss?" "Don't call me 'puss'!"

  It was an old pet name of Vic's for her that he hadn't used in years. She was glaring at him from under her strong blond eyebrows, and Vic had to admit she was not quite the little puss she had been at the time he married her, or even at the earlier part of this evening. Her lipstick was smeared, and the end of her long, upturned nose was shiny and red, as if some of her lipstick had got on it. "How do you want your eggs?" he asked.

  "Do' want any eggs."

  Vic scrambled four eggs with cream for himself and Melinda, since Ralph was in no condition to eat any, but he made only one piece of toast, because he knew Melinda would not eat toast now. He didn't wait for the coffee, which was not quite dripped through, because he knew Melinda wouldn't drink coffee at this hour either. He and Mr. Gosden could drink the coffee later. He brought the scrambled eggs, lightly salted and peppered, on two warm plates. Melinda again refused hers, but he sat beside her on the sofa and fed them to her in small amounts on a fork. Every time the fork approached, she opened her mouth obediently. Her eyes, staring at him all the while, had the look of a wild animal who trusts the human food-bringer just barely enough to accept the food at arm's length, and then only if there is nothing in sight that resembles a trap and if every movement of the food-bringer is slow and gentle. Mr. Gosden's red-blond head was now in her lap. He was snoring in an unaesthetic way with his mouth open. Melinda balked at the last bite, as Vic had known she would.