Smoke

that will be that.'

'Please, Robert,' David said. 'Our future hangs on this. Robert, Martin, you've always been dear friends, you know how horribly we feel about what happened here, please let Peter tell everybody in his own fashion.'

'Put his spin on it,' Robert suggested.

'If you like,' Peter said, who would have agreed with anybody about anything at that point.

Well. It was easy to refuse Peter, no problem, but everybody had always found it hard to refuse David, so it was finally agreed, with great reluctance, that no one would tell the new arrivals anything about the invisible man before Peter stood up and made his general announcement.

And that, a few hours later, was what he did: 'Thank you, Robert, thank you, Martin. Thank you for a lovely weekend, as usual, for charming and exciting guests, for a dinner that we already know is going to be superb. And thank you both for being so understanding and sympathetic and forgiving about an experiment that went so very very wrong.'

Peter sipped his vodka. There was so little grapefruit juice in it by now it looked pretty much like the invisible man himself. Peter went on: 'You all saw that horrible destruction outside, when you came in.'

They had. The murmuring the last half hour had been about nothing else, with those privy to the story merely giggling or sighing or shaking their heads, saying only, 'We promised to let Peter tell.'

So here it came: 'As most of you know, David and I are scientific researchers, and skin cancer, melanoma, is the area of our research. An experiment on a willing — and I must emphasize willing — volunteer subject went terribly awry. It affected his body in the way, well, somewhat in the fashion we'd expected and hoped, but it seems to have, well, affected his mind as well, making him angry and mistrustful, and possibly even violent. I'm sorry, I don't mean to tell you a wolfman story here, but the fact is this fellow, who happens to be a convicted felon, by the way, and his name is Freddie, is, well, he's, you can't see him.'

Everybody looked around. Can't see whom? So what?

Robert called out, 'Say the word, Peter, say the goddam word!'

'Oh, all right!' Peter cried, and finished his vodka, and announced, 'He's invisible! All right? He came here because he knew we were here, and he wanted us to help him stop being invisible, and we can't! And he's, he's extremely angry! And he had a, he had a cohort here—'

'Peter,' David interrupted, 'I don't think one person can be a cohort.'

'I don't care!'

The newcomers were wide-eyed, disbelieving, asking quick whispered questions, getting quick whispered answers, yes, yes, it's true, it's all true, an invisible man, in this very room!

Peter drank from his empty vodka glass, rolled his eyes, took a deep breath, and said, 'This man, this Freddie, is invisible. Yes, he is. He was here, and now he's gone away, we don't know where, we wish we could help him—'

'Oh, yes, we do!' David cried.

'— but we can't, and he's probably gone for good, and we're just so sorry that Robert and Martin's beautiful house and beautiful grounds were just so wantonly, wantonly, that everything here was so, so, so . . .'

Peter was floundering by now, which Martin saw and understood, so he got to his feet and stood in front of Peter, faced the openmouthed guests, and said, 'Peter and David asked if they could invite this person here, this man who'd been a volunteer in their experiment and was turned invisible, and we said yes, of course, because nobody realized, and certainly not Peter and David, just how much trouble this individual would be once he understood that the effects of the experiment were irreversible. It did upset him terribly, and I'm sure we can all sympathize with what he must have been going through, even while we do regret the certain amount of damage that resulted. And now that's the whole story, and I believe dinner is served, and now we can forget all this and go on and discuss other things.'

Not one word was said, on any other topic, the entire weekend.

'A fantastic weekend,' David said, on Sunday afternoon, as he shook Robert's hand and then Martin's, out by the cars in the sunshine. 'You rose to the emergency so well.'

'And so did you, David,' Martin assured him. 'And Peter, too.'

Robert, with a gruff and hearty false laugh, said, 'The landscaping was due for a makeover anyway. You get tired of the same old fountains.'

Peter said, 'We still feel terrible about the whole thing. You two have always been such dear friends, I'd hate to think of something like this coming between us.'

Martin, with his sweetest smile, said, 'Peter, please, don't think another thing about it.'

Smiles; air-kisses; waving farewells. Peter and David climbed into the red Ford Taurus, which seemed smaller and nastier than on Friday, in a more garish and plebeian red. In silent misery, they put on their yachting caps.

David was driving, for the return to the city. He steered out to Quarantine Road, made the turn, and Peter said, 'That Martin. What a slimy creep he is. Nurse Martin indeed. Did you hear him? At least Robert comes out and tells you what he thinks.'

'No, he doesn't,' David said.

'You know what I mean. 'Don't think another thing about it,'' he simpered, mimicking Martin. 'You know what that's all about. Don't think you're ever coming back here.'

David sighed, but saw no point in discussing their ouster from Eden any further. They were on County Route 14 now, and he looked at the remains of a bicycle by the side of the road; it must have been in a truly ghastly accident. I'd hate to have been riding that bike, David thought, trying to find somebody in the world worse off than himself.

'And now the story's out,' Peter complained.

'Oh, not really,' David said. 'That part doesn't worry me. Already it's just an anecdote. People who weren't there won't really believe it, they'll think it's just another of those urban legend things.'

Peter brooded. 'I'd like to see that Freddie now,' he growled.

David sighed. 'Well, that's the problem in a nutshell, isn't it?' he asked.

48

Sunday afternoon. No more stalling. It was time to leave. 'Freddie,' Peg said, looking mournfully at Frankenstein's monster, 'I wish you'd chosen another head.'

'This didn't seem like anybody else's moment, Peg.'

She should have left here yesterday, after she'd done the test spin with Freddie in the green Hornet and he'd pronounced himself pleasantly surprised with its comfort and handling. But somehow neither of them could permit it to end there, just like that. They stood on the driveway blacktop beside the new car, Freddie at that time, yesterday, still in his Dick Tracy mode, and they hemmed and hawed together for a while, and at last Freddie said, 'I have a little idea, Peg. Come on to the pool.'

'What for? I've seen you swim, it's the only time I can see you, or something like you.'

'Just come along, okay?'

His Playtex hand took her hand, and she allowed him to lead her around the house and up the slope to the pool, where he carefully closed the door in the fence and said, 'Come on in the pool, Peg.'

'In?' That would truly be exposing herself to sunlight, with no protection at all. Water was no protection. 'I didn't bring my suit,' she said.

He laughed, as he peeled off his own clothing. 'You don't need a suit,' he told her.

That was so strange, to watch him disappear like that, to watch a complete human being turn into nothing more than a pile of clothing on the deck. Then there was a giant splash as he cannonballed into the water, and there it was, the ghost dolphin again, coursing through the pool.

'Come on in, Peg!'

It was along the lines of a last request, after all, she told herself, so she decided to go along with it, stepping