posters: the label was to have a pair of antlers with a gun and a fishing rod crossed beneath them. The singing commercial was a reinforcement of this theme; I didn’t think it was very original but I admired the subtlety of “just plain old-fashioned relaxing.” That was so the average beer-drinker, the slope-shouldered pot-bellied kind, would be able to feel a mystical identity with the plaid-jacketed sportsman shown in the pictures with his foot on a deer or scooping a trout into his net.
I had got to the last page when the telephone rang. It was Peter. I could tell from the sound of his voice that something was wrong.
“Listen, Marian, I can’t make it for dinner tonight.”
“Oh?” I said, wanting further explanation. I was disappointed, I had been looking forward to dinner with Peter to cheer me up. Also I was hungry again. I had been eating in bits and pieces all day and I had been counting on something nourishing and substantial. This meant another of the T. V. dinners Ainsley and I kept for emergencies. “Has something happened?”
“I know you’ll understand. Trigger” – his voice choked – “Trigger’s getting married.”
“Oh,” I said. I thought of saying “That’s too bad,” but it didn’t seem adequate. There was no use in sympathizing as though for a minor mishap when it was really a national disaster. “Would you like me to come with you?” I asked, offering support.
“God no,” he said, “that would be even worse. I’ll see you tomorrow. Okay?”
When he had hung up I reflected upon the consequences. The most obvious one was that Peter would need careful handling the next evening. Trigger was one of Peter’s oldest friends; in fact, he had been the last of Peter’s group of oldest friends still left unmarried. It had been like an epidemic. Just before I’d met him two had succumbed, and in the four months since that another two had gone under without much warning. He and Trigger had found themselves more and more alone on their bachelor drinking sessions during the summer, and when the others did take an evening off from their wives to go along, I gathered from Peter’s gloomy accounts that the flavour of the evening was a synthetic substitute for the irresponsible gaiety of the past. He and Trigger had clutched each other like drowning men, each trying to make the other the reassuring reflection of himself that he needed. Now Trigger had sunk and the mirror would be empty. There were the other law students of course, but most of them were married too. Besides, they belonged to Peter’s post-university silver age rather than to his earlier golden one.
I felt sorry for him, but I knew I would have to be wary. If the other two marriages had been any indication, he’d start seeing me after two or three drinks as a version of the designing siren who had carried off Trigger. I didn’t dare ask how she had done it: he might think I was getting ideas. The best plan would be to distract him.
While I was meditating Lucy came over to my desk. “Do you think you can write a letter to this lady for me?” she asked. “I’m getting a splitting headache and I really can’t think of a thing to say.” She pressed one elegant hand to her forehead; with the other she handed me a note written in pencil on a piece of cardboard. I read it:
A squashed housefly was scotch-taped to the bottom of the letter.
“It was that raisin-cereal study,” Lucy said faintly. She was playing on my sympathies.
“Oh, all right,” I said; “have you got her address?”
I made several trial drafts:
The main thing, I knew, was to avoid calling the housefly by its actual name.
The phone rang again; this time it was an unexpected voice.
“Clara!” I exclaimed, conscious of having neglected her. “How
“Shitty, thanks,” Clara said. “But I wonder if you can come to dinner. I’d really like to see an outside face.”
“I’d love to,” I said, my enthusiasm half genuine: it would be better than a T. V. dinner. “About what time?”
“Oh, you know,” Clara said. “Whenever you come. We aren’t what you’d call punctual around here.” She sounded bitter.
Now I was committed I was thinking rapidly of what this would involve: I was being invited as an entertainer and confidante, someone who would listen to a recital of Clara’s problems, and I didn’t feel like it. “Do you think I could bring Ainsley too?” I said. “That is, if she isn’t doing anything.” I told myself it would be good for Ainsley to have a wholesome dinner – she had only had a coffee at the coffee break – but secretly I wanted her along to take off a bit of the pressure. She and Clara could talk about child psychology.
“Sure, why not?” Clara said. “The more the merrier, that’s our motto.”
I called Ainsley at work, carefully asking her whether she was doing anything for dinner and listening to her accounts of the two invitations she had received and turned down – one from the toothbrush murder trial witness, the other from the dentistry student of the night before. To the latter she had been quite rude: she was never going out with him again. She claimed he had told her there would be artists at the party.
“So you aren’t doing anything then,” I said, establishing the fact.
“Well, no,” said Ainsley, “unless something comes along.”
“Then why don’t you come with me to Clara’s for dinner?” I was expecting a protest, but she accepted calmly. I arranged to meet her at the subway station.
I left the desk at five and headed for the cool pink Ladies’ Room. I wanted a few minutes of isolation to prepare myself for coping before I set out for Clara’s. But Emmy, Lucy and Millie were all there, combing their yellow hair and retouching their makeup. Their six eyes glittered in the mirrors.
“Going out tonight, Marian?” Lucy asked, too casually. She shared my telephone line and naturally knew about Peter.
“Yes,” I said, without volunteering information. Their wistful curiosity made me nervous.
4
I walked down towards the subway station along the late-afternoon sidewalk through a thick golden haze of heat and dust. It was almost like moving underwater. From a distance I saw Ainsley shimmering beside a telephone pole, and when I had reached her she turned and we joined the lines of office workers who were tunnelling down the stairs into the cool underground caverns below. By quick manoeuvring we got seats, though on the opposite sides of the car, and I sat reading the advertisements as well as I could through the screen of lurching bodies. When we got off again and went out through the pastel corridors the air felt less humid.
Clara’s house was a few blocks further north. We walked in silence; I thought about mentioning the Pension Plan, but decided not to. Ainsley wouldn’t understand why I found it disturbing: she’d see no reason why I couldn’t leave my job and get another one, and why this wouldn’t be a final solution. Then I thought about Peter and what had happened to him; Ainsley, however, would only be amused if I told her. Finally I asked her if she was feeling better.
“Don’t be so concerned, Marian,” she said, “you make me feel like an invalid.”
I was hurt and didn’t answer.
We were going uphill at a slight angle. The city slopes upwards from the lake in a series of gentle undulations, though at any given point it seems flat. This accounted for the cooler air. It was quieter here too; I thought Clara was lucky, especially in her condition, to be living so far away from the heat and noise of downtown. Though she herself thought of it as a kind of exile: they had started out in an apartment near the university, but the need for space had forced them further north, although they had not yet reached the real suburbia of modern bungalows and station wagons. The street itself was old but not as attractive as our street: the houses were duplexes, long and narrow, with wooden porches and thin back gardens.
