'Oh yeah, right. He really isn't here now, Mr. Dawes. To tell you the truth, he's in Chicago. He's not getting in until eleven o'clock tonight.'
Outside, Duncan was hanging a sign on the Bowl-a-Score. The sign said:
OUT OF ORDER
'Well he be in tomorrow?'
'Yeah, sure will. Was this a trade deal?'
'No, straight buy.'
'One of the specials?'
He hesitated a moment, then said: 'Yes, that's right. Would four o'clock be okay?'
'Sure, fine.'
'Thanks, Mr. Mansey.'
'I'll tell him you called.'
'You do that,' he said, and hung up carefully. His palms were sweating.
Merv Griffin was chatting with celebrities when got home. There was nothing in the mail; that was a relief. He went into the living room.
Mary was sipping a hot nom concoction in a teacup. There was a box of Kleenex beside her and the room smelled of Vicks.
'Are you all right?' He asked her
'Don'd kiss be,' she said, and her voice had a distant foghorning quality. 'I cabe downd with sobething.'
'Poor kid. ' He kissed her forehead.
'I hade do ask you, Bard, bud would you ged the groceries tonighd? I was goig kith Meg Carder, bud I had to call her ad beg off.'
'Sure. Are you running a fever?'
'Dno. Well, baybe a liddle.'
'Want me to make an appointment with Fontaine for you?'
'Dno. I will toborrow if I don'd feel bedder.'
'You're really stuffy.'
'Yes. The Vicks helbed for a while, bud dow-' She shrugged and smiled wanly. 'I soud like Dodald Duck.'
He hesitated a moment and then said, 'I'll be home a little bit late tomorrow night. '
'Oh?'
'I'm going out to Northside to look at a house. It seems like a good one. Six rooms. A little backyard. Not too far from the Hobarts.'
Freddy said quite clearly:
Mary brightened. 'That's woderful! Cad I go look with you?'
'Better not, with that cold.'
'I'll huddle ub.'
'Next time,' he said firmly.
'Ogay.' She looked at him. 'Thang God you're finally booing on this,' she said. 'I was worried.'
'Don't worry.'
'I wodn't.'
She took a sip of the hot rum drink and snuggled against him. He could hear her breath snuffling in and out. Merv Griffin was chatting with James Brolin about his new movie,
After a while Mary got up and put TV dinners in the oven. He got up, switched the TV over to reruns of 'F Troop' and tried not to listen to Freddy. After a while, though, Freddy changed his tune.
Do you remember how you got the first TV, Georgie?
He smiled a little, looking not at Forrest Tucker but right through him. I do, Fred. I surely do.
They had come home one evening, about two years after they were married, from the Upshaws, where they had been watching 'Your Hit Parade' and 'Dan Fortune,' and Mary had asked him if he didn't think Donna Upshaw had seemed a little . . . well, off. Now, sitting here, he could remember Mary, slim and oddly, fetchingly taller in a pair of white sandals she had gotten to celebrate summer. She had been wearing white shorts, too; her legs looked long and coltish, as if they really might go all the way up to her chin. In truth, he hadn't been very interested in whether or not Donna Upshaw had seemed a little off; he had been interested in divesting Mary of those tight shorts. That had been where his interest lay-not to put too fine a point on it.
'Maybe she's getting a little tired of serving Spanish peanuts to half the neighborhood just because they're the only people on the street with a TV,' he said.
He supposed he had seen the little frown line between her eyes-the one that always meant Mary was cooking something up, but by then they were halfway upstairs, his hand was roaming down over the seat of those shorts-
