“Afr. Foster,” hissed Arbor, clenching her half-glassful of vodka until her bony knuckles shone white, “you are a rude, crude lout, ill-bred and uneducated; I knew that the minute I met you. You are the type one thinks of whenever one speaks of ‘dirty old men’—a lewd, low, lascivious, middle-aged Lothario. I think—n
“I don’t know how you can think, Mrs. Collier, with all the booze you’ve been slopping down since breakfast,” said Bass in frigid tones, adding, “And I warn you, ma’am, if you don’t just shut up, I’m going to heave you out that door on your damned ear!”
Arbor raised her plucked brows, then nodded. The final argument of barbarians, force. But let me warn you, Mr. Foster, my husband served with the OSS, during the war. They were taught how to kill with their bare hands.”
“Now Arbor,” Professor Collier began. “You know that I never left Wash—”
“Shut up, William!” she snarled ‘Tm talking to this male chauvinist pig!”
Then she returned her attention to Bass. “I insist, Mr. Foster, that you make those two, filthy, disgusting hippies stop using narcotics in this house.”
Before Bass could frame an answer not obscene and physically impossible, Krystal Kent spoke up.
“Mrs. Collier, they’re smoking pot … marijuana. It’s not a narcotic, it’s a hallucinogen, and—”
“Miss Kent,” Arbor snapped coldly, “I was addressing Mr. Foster, if you please. I, for one, do not care to have my friends hear that my husband and I were arrested at a house where a dope orgy was going on.”
Krystal threw back her head and laughed throatfly. “Orgy? Two kids smoking a joint? You call that an orgy? I’ve heard of prudes, in my time, but you—”
Arbor pursed thin lips. “Prudence, Miss Kent, is not prudery. Though I suppose a woman of your kind would call anyone less licentious than herself a prude.”
“And just what,” snapped Krystal brittlely, “is that remark supposed to mean, Mrs. Collier? What kind of woman do you type me as? Or, need I really ask?”
The older woman picked up the half-full glass, drained it effortlessly, and smirked. “Oh, Miss Kent, do you really think my husband and I didn’t hear you sneaking up the hall and into Mr. Foster’s room, last night? Think we didn’t have to endure the sounds of the unhallowed filth you two committed together?”
“What the hell business of yours is it,” Krystal grated from between clenched teeth, “whether or not Bass and I sexed last night… or any other time, for that matter?”
Arbor’s death’s-head face assumed the look of a martyr. “Af r. Foster would not allow my husband—and my husband is a full professor, with tenure, and he holds no less than six doctorates!—and me the use of his big, airy room and a private bath, no, he showed us into that squalid little guest room, with that old, musty bed.” Abruptly, the martyred look disappeared, to be replaced with a cold anger.
Professor Collier had again snapped out of his study. “Now Arbor, dear,” he said slowly and tiredly, “this is Mr. Foster’s house, and who but he has better right to the master bedroom? He wasn’t in any degree obligated to afford us accommodations, you know. I feel—”
“You feel?” snarled his wife. “You feel? Why, you bumbling, overeducated jackass! You, William WilHngham Collier, never had a feeling, an emotion, in your life! You’re so weak, so passive-natured that anyone can manipulate you . . . and generally they do, too. That’s why you weren’t even really considered for department head when that old queer Dr. Ellison died.
“If I played dutiful little wife and left it to you, I’d be nothing but a doormat for all the world to walk on. God knows, in the twenty-two years Fve been married to you, I’ve tried to make something of you, make you something I could be proud of, but…”
Stonefaced, Krystal picked up her glass and the winejug and padded into the kitchen. Foster, too, felt embarrassment at being unavoidably privy to what should have been a private matter.
Muttering, “My ice is all melted,” to no one in particular, he followed the young woman.