"What were you talking to Mrs. Podnansky so long about?" Mary asked him when they had sat down.
"Lawn mowers. Hers needs sharpening, and she's not satisfied with the job Clarke's did for her the last time."
"So you offered to do it, I'll bet. I don't know what the widows of the community would do without you, Victor Van Allen! I wonder how you have 'time' for all your good deeds!"
"Plenty of time," Vic said, smiling with appreciation in spite of himself. "I can find time for anything. It's a wonderful feeling."
"Time to read all those books the rest of us keep postponing!" She laughed. "Oh, Vic, I hate you!" She looked around at her merrymaking guests, then back at Vic. "I hope your friend Mr. Nash is having a good time tonight. Is he going to settle in Little Wesley or is he just here for a while?"
Mr. Nash was no longer having such a good time, Vic saw. He was still standing by himself, brooding at a figure in the rolled-up carpet near his feet. "No, he's just here for a week or so, I think," Vic said in an offhand tone. "Some kind of business trip."
"So you don't know him very well."
"No. We've just met him." Vic hated to share the responsibility with Melinda. Melinda had met him one afternoon in the bar of the Lord Chesterfield Inn, where she went nearly every afternoon around five-thirty more or less for the express purpose of meeting people like Joel Nash.
"May I say, Vic darling, that I think you're extremely patient?"
Vic glanced at her and saw from her straining, slightly moistening eyes that she was feeling her drinks. "Oh, I don't know"
"You are. You're like somebody waiting very patiently and one day—you'll do something. Not explode exactly, but just—well, speak your mind."
It was such a quiet finish that Vic smiled. Slowly he rubbed at an itch on the side of his hand with his thumb.
"I'd also like to say, since I've had three drinks and I may not have such an opportunity again, that I think you're pretty wonderful. You're 'good, Vic'," Mary said in a tone that meant he was good in a biblical sense, a tone that betrayed a little embarrassment at having used such a word in such a sense, and Vic knew she was going to ruin it by laughing at herself in another few seconds. "If I weren't married and you weren't, I think I'd propose to you right now!" Then came the laugh that was supposed to erase it all.
Why did women think, Vic wondered, even women who had married for love and had had a child and a fairly happy married life, that they would prefer a man who demanded nothing of them sexually? It was a kind of sentimental harking back to virginity, a silly, vain fantasy that had no factual validity whatsoever. They'd be the first ones to feel affronted if their husbands neglected them in that respect. "Unfortunately, I am married," Vic said.
"Unfortunately!" Mary scoffed. "You adore her, and I know it! You worship the ground she walks on. And she loves you, too, Vic, and don't forget it!"
"I don't want you to think," Vic said, almost interrupting her, "that I'm so good as you put it. I have a little evil side, too. I just keep it well hidden."
"You certainly do!" Mary said, laughing. She leaned toward him and he smelled her perfume which struck him as a combination of lilac and cinnamon. "How's your drink, Vic?"
"This'll do for the moment, thanks."
"You see? You're even good about drinking! What bit your hand?"
"A bedbug."
"A bedbug! Good lord! Where'd you get it?"
"At the Green Mountain Hotel."
Mary's mouth opened incredulously; then she shrieked with laughter. "What were you doing there?"
"Oh, I put in an order weeks in advance. I said if any bedbugs turned up, I wanted them, and finally collected six. Cost me five dollars in tips. They're living in my garage now in a glass case with a piece of mattress inside for them to sleep on. Now and then I let one bite me, because I want them to go through their normal life cycle. I've got two batches of eggs now."
"But why?" Mary demanded, giggling.
"Because I think a certain entomologist who wrote a piece for an entomologist journal is wrong about a certain point in their reproductive cycle," Vic answered, smiling.
"What point?" asked Mary, fascinated.
"Oh, it's a small point about the period of incubation. I doubt if it has any value at all to anybody, though as a matter of fact insecticide manufacturers ought to—"
"Vi-ic?" Melinda's husky voice slurred, "Do you mind?"
Vic looked up at her with a subtly insulting astonishment, and then got up from the bench and gestured graciously toward the piano. "It's all yours."
"You're going to play? Good!" Mary said in a delighted tone. A quintet of men was ranging itself around the piano. Melinda swooped onto the bench, a sheaf of shining hair swinging down like a curtain and concealing her face from anyone standing on her right, as Vic was. Oh, well, Vic thought, who knew her face better than he did? And he didn't want to see it anyway, because it didn't improve when she drank. Vic strolled away. The whole sofa was free now. To his distaste, he heard Melinda's wildly trilling introduction to "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue," which she played abominably. Her playing was florid, inaccurate, and one would think embarrassing,
