“. . . surrendered at shortly after noon today at the home of a brother. The other escapee is still at large,” said the announcer. Amanda noticed for the first time that he was wearing a bow tie which had a clip-on air. “And now, a look at the weather. . . .”
She left the set on for the forecast. She looked in on Rosie, peacefully asleep with her knotted rag on the pillow beside her, and returned to wash her dinner utensils, not really listening yet because there was always a good three minutes of auctioneerlike babble about other places, including some handy information about the Dakotas and northern Michigan, preceding any word about the local weather. When she had turned off the faucet she stood still at the sink, blotting out the voice from the living room and trying to assess some subtle change in the house, or the night.
The wind had dropped with the abruptness of a switched-off electric fan; everything, including the cottonwood tree, was stilled. Did that mean a possibility of snow? Yes, said the announcer promptly; beginning after midnight, with an expected accumulation of two to four inches.
In a perverse way Amanda missed the wind, because now the silence of the house in which she was in charge of a fragile two-year-old had the quality of a blackboard which might be written upon at any moment. She thought uneasily that if she strained hard enough she might be able to hear leaves or buds in the plant room stirring in the moist dark, communicating with each other. In spite of the wholesome atmosphere which surrounded growing things, it was not a pleasant idea.
Distantly, the palomino whinnied, as if aware, too, of the altered fabric of the night. Amanda switched off the television set, found herself a novel, gave the telephone a resentful glance as she passed it. Why hadn’t Justin, if in fact it had been Justin calling the Lopezes in search of her, tried her here, attempting, in this season of goodwill, to leave a message with her aunt?
The telephone remained silent for the time being. When it did ring, it wasn’t Justin.
“You know, I think we might drift out of here and have some reviving Irish coffee at my place,” said Lucy Pettit.
Justin was in hearty agreement with the first half of this proposal. There were two topics of discussion at the party: how Edie was taking the divorce and whether Max had really resigned from his highly paid public relations job or, as a majority seemed to think and hope, been fired. Justin was the only guest present not up on these matters—even Lucy had said to him disbelievingly, “Oh, but you must know Max. Everybody does” —and whatever he had been drinking (punch, he was beginning to suspect) had given him a severe headache.
Although the headache might have had its real birth in the crash with which the poetry-reciting head-stander had suddenly overbalanced without warning. His nimble-looking sneakers had the impact of ski boots, and the leg of a coffee table had flown free, striking the shin of an elderly woman in unguarded lavender chiffon. The magicians, true to their calling, had surveyed the shards of their cloisonne cigarette box and said with a kind of anguished imperturbality that it didn’t matter at all, just so long as he hadn’t hurt himself.
Now, headache notwithstanding, Justin wanted to have another try at reaching Amanda while there was a telephone readily available. Mrs. Balsam must be home by now. He said to Lucy, “Will you cast an eye around for our hosts? I’ll be right back,” and began to thread his way through clusters of people to the room with the photographs and the caged doves.
Here he met with an obstacle. A blond woman as large and slippery as a walrus was seated at the desk, one hand firmly and protectively on the receiver. “I hope you don’t want to use this,” she said, “because I’m waiting for the New York operator to call back.”
“No, that’s all right,” said Justin, and gave the doves a hypocritical greeting and withdrew. Wait? No. Longdistance circuits tended to busy around holidays, the blond woman looked implacable, the need for solid food was becoming imperative. Feeling manipulated by an unfriendly fate, he went in search of Lucy, the magicians, and, as soon as possible, the door.
“Mrs. Balsam?”
It was a woman’s voice this time. Amanda, who had had time to reflect that Mrs. Balsam’s situation was not a fleeting one and there might well be arrangements which she would want cancelled, said, “My aunt is in the hospital, I’m afraid. May I take a message for her?”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.” It was detached, perfunctory. “This is a neighbor, and I’m calling to say that her horse is out.”
“Again?” Still, for Amanda, it had no significant echo. Horses got loose with frequency; on a number of occasions she had tethered one to a tree on her front lawn so that the cruising owners could locate it easily. “Thank you for letting me know. I wish I could go after her, but I can’t right now.”
There was a severe silence; she had sinned against a code. Horse owners got up at all hours in all weathers to retrieve animals who might cause property damage, or get a leg caught in a barbed-wire fence or fall and become wedged in a dry irrigation ditch.
“I don’t know this area at all well,” said Amanda doggedly, “and I have a very young child here whom I can’t just leave.”
There was another judgmental pause and then a very cool, final, “Well, it’s her horse.”
Amanda didn’t like her. “As a matter of fact, it isn’t,” she said pleasantly, a fact which they both knew made Mrs. Balsam all the more responsible. Where is the horse, in case
