"Shall we go into my room and talk?" Vic asked. "I've got your manuscript in there."
That evening, Melinda brought Cameron home for dinner. Cameron said with a guffaw:
"I'd have taken your wife out to dinner, Vic, but she insisted on coming home to you."
The unbelievable crassness of it left Vic speechless. Brian had heard him. From then on Vic noticed that Brian spent quite a lot of the evening simply watching Cameron and Melinda with a serious, speculative expression on his face. And they put on quite a show. Cameron kept going in and out of the kitchen, helping Melinda put things on the table as if he lived there. Their conversation with each other was about what they had done that afternoon and about building materials and the price of cement. Vic attempted to talk to Brian about poets and poetry, but their voices were no match for Cameron's. Vic kept a little smile on his face to hide his irritation from Brian. He was not sure that he succeeded. Brian was a very observant young man.
After dinner Cameron said, "Well, Vic, Melinda tells me you two've got a little talking to do, so—I thought I'd take her out maybe for a little dance at the Barmaid."
"That sounds nice," Vic said pleasantly. "I think they've got draft beer there, haven't they?"
"They sure have!" Cameron replied, patting his solid, well-fed belly. For all he ate and drank, he was not fat. He had the hard, hip-less bulk of a gorilla.
Brian looked Melinda up and down appreciatively when she came out of her room in high-heeled, low-cut pumps and a short bright red jacket over her dress. She had taken more pains than usual with her face, and her blond hair was neatly brushed.
"Expect me when you see me," she said gaily as she went out the door.
The gorilla followed her, grinning expansively.
Vic plunged into conversation with Brian so that Brian would not have the chance to ask him any questions, but in the young man's face Vic could see his mind hanging on to the questions tenaciously Brian would not forget to ask them later. Vic reproached himself for not having had a talk with Melinda days ago. Horace had been right. He should have said 'something' to her. But would it really have done any good? Had it done any good when he spoke to her about De Lisle?
"Your wife's a 'very' attractive woman," Brian said slowly in a lull in their conversation.
"Do you think so?" Vic asked, smiling. And then he suddenly remembered Brian's surprised "Do you sleep here?" on seeing his room beyond the garage, like the thoughtless, brutal question of a child. It had pained Vic unreasonably. He could not get it out of his mind.
They sat up talking of books and poets until past midnight, when Brian politely suggested that Vic might be wanting to go to bed. Vic knew that Brian wanted to get at the anthology of German metaphysical poets that Vic had taken down from a shelf for him, so Vic excused himself. But in his own room, Vic stayed up reading until Melinda came home at two o'clock. Brian's light was still on. Vic hoped that Brian wouldn't see her drunk. Vic had no idea whether she was drunk or not. He turned out his own light at about two-thirty. Shortly afterwards, very faintly, he heard Melinda's slow, happy, drunken laugh through his partly opened window. He wondered what Brian had found to talk to her about.
The next morning Melinda said, "I think your little friend is terribly cute."
"He's a terribly good poet," Vic said.
Brian was away on his morning walk. He would probably come back with bird feathers, as he had yesterday. This morning, when Vic had looked into his room, he had found the bed made and a blue feather, a pebble, a mushroom, and a dried leaf laid out in a neat horizontal row in the middle of the writing table, as if' Brian had sat there pondering them.
"He said he thought you were very attractive, too," Vic said, though he did not know why he bothered repeating it to her. Melinda's opinion of herself was high enough.
"Since we're exchanging messages, you can tell him I think he's the most attractive young man I've seen since I left high school."
Vic suppressed a comment that sprang to his mind. "You're seeing Tony this afternoon?"
"No, I thought I might see Brian."
"Brian's busy."
"Not all the afternoon. He asked me to go for a row on Bear Lake."
"Oh, I see."
"But Tony's coming over this evening. We're going to play some records. I bought five new records yesterday in Wesley"
"I don't want him here tonight," Vic said quietly.
"Oh?" Her eyebrows went up. "And why not?"
"Because I want to talk to Brian, and I don't want the music coming in the window, even if I talk to him in my room." "I see. And where do you want us to go?"
"I don't care where you go." He lit a cigarette and stared down at the folded 'Times' on the cocktail table.
"And what're you going to do if I bring him here, anyway?" "I'm going to ask him to leave."
"Isn't this as much my house as yours?"
There were so many replies to this that he could make none of them. He drew on
