Melinda's door was still closed.
"Melinda?" he called. Then he knocked firmly. When there was still no answer, he opened the door. "Melinda."
She was lying on her side with her back to him. She slowly straightened and turned, with one stretching movement, like an animal.
"You've a gentleman caller," Vic said.
She jerked her head up from the pillow. "Who?"
"Mr. Cameron, I believe it is? I wish you'd come out and take care of him. Or ask him in. He's outside."
Melinda frowned, reaching for her slippers. "Why don't you ask him in?"
"I don't 'want' to ask him in," Vic said, and Melinda glanced at him, surprised but unconcerned. He went out to Mr. Cameron, who was bouncing on his heels in the middle of the driveway, whistling, and said, "My wife'll be out in a minute or so. Would you like to wait in the living room?"
"Oh, no. I'll take the air. Is that where you live?" he asked, nodding toward the projecting wing off the far side of the garage.
"Yes," Vic said, pulling the corners of his mouth into a smile. He went back to his snail cleaning. It was an unattractive aspect of snail raising, cleaning their mess off the glass sides of the tank with a razor blade, and he loathed it when Mr. Cameron strolled over to watch him, still whistling. To Vic's surprise, he was whistling part of a Mozart concerto.
"Where'd you get all those?" he asked.
"Oh—most of them were born here. Hatched."
"How do they breed? In the water?"
"No, they lay eggs. In the ground." Vic was washing the inside of a tank with a rag and soap and water. Delicately, he detached a young snail that had crawled up on the part of the glass he was washing, and set it down on the earth inside the tank.
"Look like they'd be good to eat," Mr. Cameron remarked. "Oh, they are. Delicious."
"Reminds me of New Orleans. Ever been to New Orleans?"
"Yes," Vic said, with finality. He began on another tank, first detaching with his hands or the razor blade the snails of all sizes that were sleeping on the sides of the glass. He looked over at Mr. Cameron and said, "I wish you wouldn't take the screen off, if you don't mind. They crawl out very easily.'
Mr. Cameron straightened up and slid the screen top back with a carelessness that made Vic wince, because he felt sure that a baby snail or two must have been crushed. Mr. Cameron probably hadn't even seen the tiny baby snails. His eyes didn't focus that small. He was coming toward Vic in an aimless way with his affable little smile when Melinda opened the door from the hall, and he turned to her.
"Hello, Tony! Good afternoon! How nice of you to stop by!" "Hope you folks don't mind," he said, walking slowly toward her. "I was just cycling around, thought I'd drop in."
"Drop in here and have a drink!" Melinda said gaily, opening the door wider.
"I'll have a beer, if you got it."
Mr. Cameron stayed for brunch at about four o'clock, and then for dinner at nine, both of which meals Vic prepared almost single-handed. He drank nine cans of beer. At six o'clock, when Vic had returned to the living room from his own room to get some of the Sunday paper, Cameron had been sitting with Melinda on the sofa, bellowing out a story about how he acquired his name.
"What's your real name?" Melinda asked.
"Oh, it's Polish. You wouldn't even be able to pronounce it!" Mr. Cameron told her with a roar of laughter.
He was like a phonograph turned on too loudly. Vic had sat for a while in the living room with them. He had put on a clean shirt and freshly pressed slacks, in hopes that Cameron might think they had an engagement for the evening, but Cameron evidently considered the change of clothing in his honor and that his visit was just beginning. The strange thing was that Melinda seemed to be enjoying it, though she had grown a little tight in the course of curing a hangover by sipping Bloody Marys all day. Mr. Cameron switched from describing a dynamiting process, with violent gestures, to enumerating the demands some clients made on him to provide a view plus shelter from the wind, plus a place for a swimming pool and a tennis court and a lawn, all on three acres of ground.
"Oh, they ask me for everything except a graveyard for when they die!" Mr. Cameron finished, guffawing. It was a typical finish of his stories. Mr. Cameron was outdoing himself. He was like a small boy trying to impress a girl by flourishing a knife or by setting a kerosene-soaked cat on fire.
Vic sat with his cheek in his hand, waiting.
The Petersons brought Trixie and the puppy back from their house, where Trixie had been all afternoon, but the Petersons refused to come in when they saw that they had company.
"'Please' come in," Vic pleaded, but in vain. The Petersons were shy people. It was then that Vic slammed the front door shut in his anger, and said, taking a wild chance that Cameron would leave on it, "Well, I suppose it'll soon be time for dinner."
Mr. Cameron did not say "Good!" but something very much like it.
During what might have been called the cocktail hour, when the Idaho potatoes were baking and the biggest steak Vic had been able to find in the deep freezer was thawing on the drainboard, Mr. Cameron suddenly stood up and announced that he had a treat for them. "I'll be right back. I just want to get something from my bike!"
"What's he
