Vic caught her arm and jerked her back. He closed the swinging kitchen door behind him. "Oh, no, you won't. The Mellers don't care for him and that's that. They've asked us."
"I'll take him along whether they like it or not!"
"I don't think you will, Melinda," he said quietly, though he heard his voice shake with anger.
"How're you going to stop me?"
Vic closed his lips, ashamed of his own anger, and baffled by Melinda's abrupt fury. "All right. Let's let it go," he said.
Melinda looked at him a moment, then apparently taking his words as a concession of victory for herself, the corner of her mouth went up, and she walked past Vic out of the kitchen.
"Tony, don't you need a beer opener?" she asked, and Vic remembered that she had picked one up while she had been talking to him, that she had been holding it in her hand.
Vic did not go to the Mellers' barbecue the next day. He had left it up to Melinda to accept the invitation and he did not know what she had told them, but at the last minute he told her he was not going. Cameron arrived, not on his bicycle but in his cafe au lait–colored Plymouth station wagon, in which he carried his bicycle around when he traveled, Vic supposed. Both Cameron and Melinda looked long-faced when he said he was not going.
"What's the matter?" asked Cameron. He was in a freshly pressed summer suit and white shoes, out to make a good impression on the Mellers.
"Nothing. I just have some things I'd like to do. You two go ahead."
"What're the Mellers going to think?" Melinda asked a little blankly.
"I don't know. You'll have to wait and see," Vic said, with a disarming chuckle.
Mr. Cameron's expression did not change. "Sure wish you'd change your mind."
Vic walked away from them on the lawn. "You two go on. Have a good time and give the Mellers my regards." Melinda's hands were fidgeting with her car keys, Vic saw. He went into his room.
A moment later the two cars left.
Vic reminded himself that Cameron probably wasn't having Anything to do with Melinda—physically speaking. He really believed that. But it didn't help. And as he sat there in his room after they had left, trying to compose himself so that he could read, he almost regretted that he had been so childish as to refuse to go to the Mellers'. He could still go, he thought. But that seemed more childish now. No, he would not go. But he knew it would mean another painful or awkward conversation with Horace.
Melinda did not come home until one in the morning. Vic was in his room, reading in bed, and he did not go into the house to see her. He didn't want to see her, anyway. She was probably drunk. The time of her coming home, ten past one, made Vic think that she had been sitting with Cameron in some bar in the latter part of the evening, because all the bars closed punctually at one.
Horace called on him at twenty to seven the next evening, when Vic was at the plant. Vic had predicted that he would get a visit from Horace today, and he had predicted the expression on Horace's face.
"What happened to you yesterday?" Horace asked. "We called you at home. You didn't answer."
Vic felt himself flush with shame as if he had been caught out in a serious lie. He had heard the telephone ring last evening and he had not answered it. "I took a little walk after Melinda left. I wasn't in the house."
"Well, we certainly missed you."
"Oh, I wanted to think over some things. You know. I thought Mr. Cameron could handle my share of the barbecue." "That he did!"
"Was it good?"
"Oh, it was fine. Mr. Cameron entertained us with his clarinet."
"Yes, I've heard him, too," Vic said.
"You don't care for him, I gather. Neither do I."
Vic felt another stab of shame, but he kept his face calm and pleasant. "What do you mean?"
"Shall I say it straight, Vic? I don't like Cameron and I don't like the way he acts around Melinda. And I don't like the way you're just taking a back seat again, waiting for things to blow over."
"Well, don't they usually?" Vic asked, smiling, but he felt trapped and uncomfortable.
"You weren't there last night. Melinda got pretty tight and said several things—such as that she thought Cameron was the answer to her prayer. Cameron acts as if he—"
There was a gentle rap on the door.
"Come in," Vic said.
Stephen Hines opened the door. "Oh, hello, Mr. Meller. How are you?"
"Fine, thank you, and you?"
"Fine, too. Carlyle took the truck," Stephen continued to Vic. "He's going to call at the post office tomorrow morning and see if that new roller's come."
"All right. There's no hurry on that," Vic said, mechanically reckoning that it would be three weeks before they used the new roller on Ryder's poems. Vic had deliberately allowed an ink roller to rust in order to get a texture effect when he printed directly onto the paper with it.
"Is there anything else?" Stephen asked.
"I don't think so, Stephen."
"Good night, then. See you tomorrow".
"Good night," Vic said. Then he turned to Horace. "By the way, Xenophon's back from the bindery! Would you like to see one of them?"
"I would, Vic—but I think what we're talking about is more important, don't you?"
"Go ahead, Horace."
"Well—I got the impression Cameron's thinking of taking Melinda away and she acts as if she's quite willing to go."
"Taking her away?" Vic asked with astonishment, some of which was genuine.
"His next job is in Mexico, and he has two airplane tickets to Mexico City—or so
