The Right Jack

sell it to The National Enquirer. Can't you see the headline now? 'Biological Time Bomb Already in Place.'' She smiled at Sigrid through her rhinestone-and-turquoise glasses. 'I'll be happy to come.'

'It's anised veal,' Sigrid warned.

'I can eat anything the roaches eat.'

'Me, too,' said Alan Knight, with a hopeful expression on his handsome face.

Sigrid was taken off guard.

'Oh let him come,' laughed Jill, pulling on a bright red sweater. 'He'll balance the table and anyhow, Roman will love him. He's never done an article about the Navy, has he?'

It was true that Roman would like having fresh brains to pick. But more importantly, thought Sigrid, four people sharing a meal originally planned for two should certainly ensure no leftovers.

***

In the end, five sat down to dine on Roman's creation. Nauman turned up unexpectedly with a bottle of wine and some tapes and chapter notes which he thought might interest Sigrid from John Sutton's office at Vanderlyn College. To help Val, he had volunteered to clean out her husband's desk and pack up his books and personal effects. Nauman had also brought along some snapshots he found of the Suttons' McClellan days, including one fuzzy group pose.

'There's John,' he said, 'and I think that's Fred Hamilton.'

'He doesn't look much like Ted Flythe,' said Knight, peering over Sigrid's shoulder at the faded photograph.

'Ted Flythe?' asked Dr. Gill from the kitchen sink where she was peeling avocados for Roman. She wiped her hands on a dishtowel and leaned across the breakfast counter where they were clustered in order to see, too. 'Why would Professor Sutton have a picture of Ted Flythe?'

'There's a possibility that he was once part of a terrorist underground organization that began out at McClellan

State.' Sigrid explained the Red Snow connection as he turned the picture so that Jill Gill could get a good look and tapped the figure in the foreground. 'What do you think?'

The entomologist adjusted her harlequin-shaped glasses and examined it closely. 'The eyes are similar,' she agreed.

'Cut the hair, add a beard and fifteen years,' Sigrid said.

'Insufficient data,' Jill replied and went back to peeling avocados. 'Don't you have fingerprints or something?'

'They should be coming tomorrow. 'r

'Then tomorrow you'll know for sure, won't you?' Jill observed sensibly.

Unperturbed by three extra mouths to feed, Roman was doing a loaves-and-fishes act with salad greens, avocados, and mushrooms. He flourished two large Vidalia onions and in his deep bass voice queried, 'Who's unalterably opposed to onions?'

Alan Knight flashed an insouciant grin in Sigrid's direction. 'Anybody planning to do some kissing later?' he drawled.

'Where did you find Huck Finn?' asked Nauman, draping his long body onto the couch.

'Does he strike you as Huck Finn?' Sigrid asked absently. 'I've been thinking he's more barefoot boy with cheek.'

They had repaired to the living room alone after dinner with John Sutton's tapes and notes, and Sigrid was distracted with extension cords for her portable tape cassette player.

From the direction of the kitchen came the rumble of Roman's voice interspersed with Jill and Alan's lighter tones. Roman was reading aloud from his cockroach article while the two guests cleaned the kitchen and made ribald observations on the mating habits of Blatella germanica.

Dinner had been a cheerful and slightly rowdy meal, not unusual when people are meeting for the first time and talking over and around each other in layered degrees of familiarity. Oscar and Jill had known each other for years, Sigrid first met all three last spring, and she and Roman had become accidental roommates back

***

in the summer; yet this was the first time the four had dined together. And, of course, this was Nauman and Tramegra's first meeting with Alan Knight.

Conversation had ranged from insects to Lucienne Ronay, from nouvelle cuisine to art nouveau, from naval maneuvers to marine zoology-whereupon Alan Knight suggested to Roman that he might get a good article out of crawdads.

Nauman's salad fork paused in midair. 'What the hell's a crawdad?'

'You don't know what a crawdad is?' grinned Knight, who'd been a bit awed earlier to realize who Nauman was.

'No, I don't know what a crawdad is.'

Somehow this clash of cultures so delighted Sigrid that she burst into infectious laughter.

Roman chose that moment to bring on his entree. 'Here we are: veau d'anise avec etables verts,' he announced in his mangled French.

'What?' asked Nauman. 'No chitlins or harmony grits?'

During dinner they had finished Oscar's bottle of wine, opened a second, and

Sigrid had now brought the remains of a third to.the living room with them.

'Should you be drinking this much with your medication?' Oscar asked when she spread John Sutton's notes next to the tape player on the low table before them and held out her glass.

'Nope,' she said happily. 'But I haven't taken a pill since morning, so more wine, garcon.'

'I've never seen you tipsy before.'

'I'm not tipsy.' She took a slow sip of the amber wine and reconsidered. 'Relaxed, perhaps, but definitely not tipsy.'

She turned on the tape player, slipped off her shoes, and leaned back lightly against his shoulder with her feet tucked under her.

Pleasantly surprised by her unaccustomed initiative, Oscar shifted slightly so that she fit more comfortably into the curve of his arm while John Sutton's voice filled the room.

23

MONDAY began brightly enough, although the kitchen radio was predicting rain by the afternoon.

Sigrid was in good spirits as she poured herself a glass of juice. She'd slept well and for the first time since Friday night's incident, her arm barely ached. With her hair tightly braided and pinned into a secure knot at the nape of her neck, she felt more like herself than at any time since the knifing.

Roman had again helped with her hair, but he was a mixed blessing this morning, surprised that she felt as cheerful, and unconvinced that she wasn't hiding a headache or a hangover.

'I did not have too much to drink last night and I did not pass out,' she told him firmly. 'I barely slept Saturday night and then worked all day yesterday. That's the only reason I fell asleep on the couch.'

Roman sniffed.

Sigrid supposed she deserved his skepticism. True, it had been a little disconcerting to wake up sometime in the middle of the night in the living room with the apartment dark and silent and a blanket tucked around her, but she'd been too drowsy to care. She'd simply stumbled sleepily to her room, shed her clothes, and crawled into bed where she promptly zonked out again.

'What time did everyone leave?' she asked Roman.