He said, “There’s nothing wrong with a grown person riding a bike.”
“Can I ride it sometime?”
“Sure,” he said. “Of course you can.”
“Is it hard?”
He said, “You haven’t ever ridden a bike?”
“No,” she said.
“This one has a gearshift,” he said. “It’s English.”
Now she did not seem to be listening to him; she drove in a preoccupied manner, her face somber. “Listen,” she said after a while. “Are you going to go running home to your wife and tell her about me propositioning you?”
He said, “Are you propositioning me?”
“No,” she said. “Of course not. You propositioned me. Don’t you remember?” She said it with absolute conviction. “Isn’t that why you came over? Good god, I wouldn’t dare let you in the house. That’s why I’m driving you back.” They had gotten almost to his house, now, and he realized abruptly that she really intended to drop him off. “I’m not letting you into my place,” she told him. “Not without your wife. If you want to come over you bring her along.”
With anger he said loudly, “You’re a nut. A real nut.”
“What?” she said, faltering.
“Don’t you pay any attention to anything you say?”
That seemed to crush her. “Don’t pick on me,” she said. “Don’t you get picky. Why do you pick on me?” Her tone reminded him of the younger child’s tone, the whining, self-pitying tone. Perhaps she was calculatedly imitating her child’s tone; he had an intuition to that effect. It was both a satire and a theft. She used it and satirized it simultaneously, waiting to see how he reacted.
“I think you’re a real kick,” he said. And he did. She intrigued him, her flashing moods; he could not tell at any moment which way she would jump. She seemed to have an infinite supply of energy. She went on and on, without fatigue.
“You don’t take me seriously at all,” she said, and then she smiled at him, a mechanical, even formal, smile. “Well, thanks for wanting to help me.” They had come to his house and she was stopping the car. She evidently was quite angry at him, quite cold. “I really am furious with you,” she said in a dead, level voice. “I really am. I’ll never forgive you for your treatment of me. The hell with you.” She leaned over and grabbed at the car door. “So long.”
“So long,” he said, stepping out.
The door slammed; the can roared off. In a daze, he started up the steps to his own porch.
The next day he telephoned her, not from home but from his real estate office. “Hi, Fay,” he said. “I hope I didn’t catch you when you’re busy.”
“No,” she said. “I’m not busy.” On the phone her voice had a thin, brisk quality, as if he were talking to a woman accustomed to doing a great deal of her business transactions on the phone. “Who is this? Not that fink Nathan Anteil?”
He thought, And this is a thirty-two-year-old woman. He said, “Fay, you use the worst language of any woman I’ve even known.”
“Stick it up your ass!” she said animatedly. “Did you phone me to pick on me some more, on what? Yes, why did you phone me? Just a second.” He heard her throw down the phone and then go shut a door. Back again, she said deafeningly in his ear, “I’ve been sitting here going over what happened last night. Evidently I don’t understand the masculine mind. What got into you? For that matter, what got into me?”
Today, she seemed to be in a sportive mood, taking nothing very seriously. She seemed to be in, for her, a relatively good mood. “Why don’t I come over for a while tonight,” he said, feeling himself become tense. “For a little while.”
“All right,” she said. “Want me to pick you up?”
“No,” he said. He had an old Studebaker that he used to get into Mill Valley to his job. “I’ll get over there on my own power.”
“You’re not bringing that wife, are you? Whatever her name is. Say, just what is her name again, anyhow?”
“I’ll see you,” he said. He hung up.
Hen tone had been stank and overly loud, once she had realized who it was and why he had called. She knows, he thought..We both know.
What do we know?
He thought, We know that something is up; we are doing something. It does not involve my wife or her husband.
What is it? He asked himself. What do I have in mind? How far do I want to go? How far does Fay Hume want to go?
Perhaps, he thought, neither of us knows.
Then he asked himself why he was doing it. I have a really wonderful wife, he thought. And I like Charley Hume. And, he thought, Fay is married and she has two children.
Why, then?
Because I want to, he decided.
Much later in the day, as he was driving back to north west Marin County, he thought, And because she wants to.
(ten)
In order to visit Charley in the University of California Hospital at Fourth and Parnassus, in San Francisco, I had to take the 6:20 Greyhound bus from Inverness. That got me to San Francisco at 8:00 in the morning. I generally went to the San Francisco public library, where I read the new magazines, picked out books that Charley might like, and did reseanch. Now that he had had his heart attack, I did research on the circulatory system, copying scientific information into notebooks, and, when possible, checking out the actual reference books and articles to take to him to read.
When he saw me coming into his noom, with my knapsack filled with library books and technical magazines, he almost always said, “Well, Isidore, what’s the latest on my heart?”
I gave him what information I had been able to pick up from hospital personnel on his condition and how soon he might expect to get out and back to the house. He seemed to appreciate this detailed account; without me he got the usual clichés about his condition, so to an extent he was dependent on me.
After I had given him the scientific information I got out the notebook that I used for information concerning the situation back at Drake’s Landing.
“Let’s hear the latest on the old homestead,” he almost always said.
On this particular occasion, I referred to my notebook to get my facts in order, and then I said, “Your wife is beginning to become involved with Nathan Anteil in extramarital relationships.”
I had intended to go on, but Charley stopped me. “What do you mean?” he said.
“For the last four days,” I said, checking my facts, “Nathan Anteil has come over in the evening without his wife. And he and Fay have talked in such a way as to suggest a romance between them.”
I did not enjoy giving him this information, but I had set out to keep him apprised of the situation at home; I had made it part of my job, in exchange for what I received in the way of food and lodgings. Along with my other chores bringing him information was my duty, and it had to be scrupulously done, with regard only for accuracy and completeness.
“They sat together on Thursday night drinking martinis until two a.m.,” I informed him.
“Well,” he said presently. “Go on.”
“At one point –they were seated together on the couch– he put his arm around her and kissed her. On the mouth.”
Charley said nothing. But obviously he was listening. So I continued.
“Nathan didn’t actually come out and say that he loved your wife –”
Charley interrupted, “I don’t give a damn.”
“How do you mean?” I said. “You mean you don’t give a damn about that particular piece of information on –”
He interrupted, “I don’t give a damn about the whole subject.” He was silent for a long time and then he said, “What else happened at the old homestead during the week? And don’t give me any more on that topic, about him on her. Tell me about the ducks.”
“The ducks,” I said, glancing at my notes. “The ducks laid a total of thirty eggs since my last report. The Pekins laid the most of that, with the Rouens laying the least.”
He said nothing.
“What else would you like to know?” I asked. “How much egg-gro they consumed?” I had it both by weight and by volume.
“Okay,” he said. “Tell me about that.”
I felt keenly that his failure to take an interest in such an important topic as his wife’s relationship with Nathan Anteil was due to my inability to relate it properly. Obviously I had failed to do justice to it; I had not given him a convincing picture. Had he been present, he would have reacted, but all he had to go on were the barren statements that I presented him. A newspaper on a magazine, when it wants to stir an emotional reaction in its readers, does an expert job of presenting a topic; it does not merely list facts in chronological order, as was my tendency.