The Right Jack

work, so you can take your tender little chauvinistic heart and go to hell!'

She jerked away from him, striding across the dilapidated pier, to the very edge, where she stood staring down into the murky water that lapped against the rotting pilings. She wished the water was cleaner, the day warmer, and that she could just dive in and swim toward thes un until all the churning inside her was washed away.

Her arm throbbed viciously and she slipped it back into the sling and pressed it with her free hand to ease the pounding.

Knight had followed her and he sat down on one of the nearby pilings. 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I guess I spoke out of line.'

Sigrid shrugged and continued staring down into the river, grateful for once that her hair was loose and that the wind kept blowing it across her face and hid what she never willingly allowed anyone to see.

On the next pier over, an oriental man walked out almost to the end carrying a large bundle of red material. He was accompanied by a small girl in pigtails, who frolicked about him like a puppy. They were obviously father and daughter and he called warnings as she ran too near the edge, while her laughter bubbled out in lilting joy.

While Sigrid and Knight watched, the man placed his red bundle on the pier and began working on it. Curious gullsw heeled overhead.

Knight. glanced over at Sigrid. 'I'm sorry,' he said again. 'I keep forgetting that all women don't show-'

'All women don't do anything,' Sigrid said between clenched teeth. 'No more than all men.'

'Hey, I'm no chauvinist,' he protested. 'I like women. Really.'

Still unsettled and now annoyed at herself that she'd lost her temper, Sigrid brushed aside his protest. 'Forget it. It's not important.'

On the next pier, the long mass of red cloth grew a ferocious golden dragon's face and became first a limp red wind sock and then a swelling sinuous dragon with streamers that caught the wind as it clawed its way into the sky. The child clapped her hands gleefully as it dipped and soared against the blueness like a wild untamed beast straining against its leash. At one point, it toyed with disaster and skimmed the surface of the water, then a twitch of the line sent it climbing again.

It was innocent and graceful and without realizing it, Sigrid began to relax.

'I'm not really a chauvinist pig,'Alan Knight said coaxingly. 'Thick-headed at times maybe, but not sexist.'

'No?' Sigrid gave him a jaundiced look, for he suddenly reminded her of some of her Lattimore cousins when they meant to wheedle her into trying something she didn't particularly want to do. Whenever the charm switched on, she'd learned to tread warily.

Sensing a slight softening in her manner, Knight smiled persuasively and held up three fingers, with his thumb and pinkie touching. 'Scout's honor. I truly do like women.'

Sigrid brushed her hair back behind her ears and looked down into his deep brown eyes.

'That must make your wife very happy,' she said sardonically.

Beneath the brim of his hat, his handsome face became unexpectedly flushed. 'Uh-Well, you see, I'm not exactly married.'

She shot a telling glance at the gold band on his left hand.

'I've never been married,' said Knight.

'Then why-?'

'The ring? I bought it in a pawnshop and started wearing it in college.'

'Why?'

'Well, look at me.'

Bewildered, she looked him over completely and saw nothing to alter yesterday's original impression. Lieutenant Alan Knight was a remarkably attractive specimen of American malehood.

She said as much.

'Yeah, now, he said without vanity. 'Up until my sophomore year in college, I was an Alfred E. Neuman lookalike: my ears stuck out like jug handles, my front teeth made Bugs Bunny's look good, I was as tall as I am right now, but weighed a hundred and ten sopping wet, and I had cowlicks fore and aft-goofiest looking face outside a comic strip.'

Sigrid lowered herself to the dock and leaned back against the next piling with her left knee drawn up and her right leg dangling over the edge.

'What happened your sophomore year?'

'I worked on my uncle's tobacco farm, ate my aunt's cooking all summer, and put on twenty-five pounds. It seemed to make everything fit together. Then before

I went back to college, my sisters hauled me down to their beauty shop and they found a way to cut my hair so it didn't look like a haystack in a hurricane. All of a sudden, I looked pretty much like I do now.'

'And that was bad?'

'Scared the living bejesus out of me,' he replied earnestly. 'I told you I like women and I do. I grew up in a household with six sisters, a terrific mom, and more aunts than I can count, but I never had a sweetheart. Girls at school used to tell me all their problems 'cause they knew I'd understand. They never wanted to go out with me, though. As far as they were concerned, I was just good old dumb-looking Alan. They kept telling me I was almost like a brother to them, only no girl wanted to date her brother.'

Across the way, the pigtailed child had her hand on the thick cord that bound the majestic dragon to the earth, and they could hear her lilting tones as she cajoled her father to let her fly it solo.

Alan Knight leaned down to scoop up a handful of loose gravel scattered alongt he pier and began plinking it into the water.

'When I got back to college that fall, I didn't know what hit me. I sort of liked it, having girls like me-who wouldn't? But I also didn't know how to handle it. Most guys, the guys that girls go after, have time to get used to how to act. From kindergarten, most of them; and certainly by junior high; and there I was, all the way in college, for God's sake.'

Sigrid smiled.

'Yeah,' he said self-mockingly. 'Funny as hell, right? And the worst thing about it was that after a while I missed having girl friends. I don't mean lovers, but friends who are girls. Sorry, I guess I should say women.'

'I'm not hung up on semantics,' Sigrid said mildly.

'No? Anyhow, every time I'd try to be friends with a female, she'd either slap me down or expect us to go to bed together. It got to be such a hassle that I bought the ring and told everybody it was a secret marriage and that she'd promised her parents to finish school out west somewhere first. That took a lot ofp ressure off right away.'

'I shouldn't have thought a ring had that much power anymore.'

'You'd be surprised.'

'What happens when you're attracted to someone?' she asked curiously.

'I take it off. Or I tell her my wife and I are separated at the moment.'

'So you have your cake and eat it, too.'

'At least I'm not trying to pretend the cake doesn't exist,' he said; then added boldly, 'Why are you?'

'In case you hadn't noticed,' she answered flatly, 'I'm not a college sophomore. I did all the growing up and filling out I'm ever going to do and, unlike you, I didn't turn into a swan.'

'But women are different,' he said, 'there's so much you can do to help the swanning along.'

'Oh Lord, don't start on the hair-makeup-sexy clothes bit.'

She pulled both knees up sharply and rested her strong chin on them.

'Why not? What are you afraid of?'

'I'm not afraid of anything, andf rankly. Lieutenant, I can't see that it's any of your business.'

'The guy you're living with-Is he the one trying to get you to nibble some of the cake?'

'Oh for God's sake,' Sigrid groaned and swung herself up to leave.

'That's what my sisters always used to say when I got uncomfortably near the truth,' he called, stridng after her.

'I'm surprised they didn't smother you in your crib,' she muttered as he caught up with her.

'They tried. Mother wouldn't let them.' He smiled at her persuasively.

'She did not smile back.