“You’re on.” So I called Kathy back and told her I’d bring the social lion about seven. He stalked into my office at six, grumbling: “I’d better get a good meal out of this, Mitch. Your Miss Mathis appeals to me. What a dope! Does she have sense enough to come in out of the smog?” “I don’t believe so,” I said. “But Keats was properly hooked by a designing wench, and Byron didn’t have sense enough to stay out of the venereal ward. Swinburne made a tragic mess out of his life. Do I have to go on?” “Please, no. What kind of marriage have you got?” “Interlocutory,” I said, a little painfully in spite of myself. He raised his eyebrows a trifle. “Maybe it’s just the way I was brought up, but there’s something about those arrangements that sets my teeth on edge.” “Mine too,” I said, “at least in my own case. In case Tildy missed telling you, my beautiful and talented wife doesn’t want to finalize it, we don’t live together, and unless I change her mind in four months we’ll be washed up.” “Tildy did miss telling me,” he said. “You’re pretty sick about it, seems to me.” I almost gave in to self-pity. I almost invited his sympathy. I almost started to tell him how rough it was, how much I loved her, how she wasn’t giving me an even break, how I’d tried everything I could think of and nothing would convince her. And then I realized that I’d be telling it to a sixty-pound midget who, if he married, might become at any moment his wife’s helpless plaything or butt of ridicule. “Middling sick,” I said. “Let’s go, Jack. Time for a drink and then the shuttle.” Kathy had never looked lovelier, and I wished I hadn’t let her talk me out of shooting a couple of days’ pay on a corsage at Carrier’s. She said hello to O’Shea and he announced loudly and immediately: “I like you. There’s no gleam in your eye. No ‘Isn’t he cute?” gleam. No. ‘My, he must be rich and frustrated!’ gleam. No ‘A girl’s got a right to try anything once’ gleam. In short, you like me and I like you.” As you may have gathered, he was a little drunk. “You are going to have some coffee, Mr. O’Shea,” she said. “I
ruined myself to provide real pork sausages and real apple sauce, and you’re going to taste them.” “Coffee?” he said. “Coffiest for me, ma’am. To drink coffee would be disloyal to the great firm of Fowler Schocken Associates with which I am associated. Isn’t that right, Mitch?” “I give absolution this once,” I said. “Besides, Kathy doesn’t believe the harmless alkaloid in Coffiest is harmless.” Luckily she was in the kitchen corner with her back turned when I said that, and either missed it or could afford to pretend she did. We’d had a terrific four-hour battle over that very point, complete with epithets like “baby-poisoner” and “crackpot reformer” and a few others that were shorter and nastier. The coffee was served and quenched O’Shea’s mild glow. Dinner was marvelous. Afterward, we all felt more relaxed. “You’ve been to the Moon, I suppose?” Kathy asked O’Shea. “Not yet. One of these days.” “There’s nothing there,” I said. “It’s a waste of time. One of our dullest, deadest accounts. I suppose we only kept it for the experience we’d get, looking ahead to Venus. A few thousand people mining-that’s the whole story.” “Excuse me,” O’Shea said, and retired. I grabbed the chance. “Kathy, darling,” I said, “it was very sweet of you to ask me over. Does it mean anything?” She rubbed her right thumb and index finger together, and I knew that whatever she would say after that would be a lie. “It might, Mitch,” she lied gently. “You’ll have to give me time.” I threw away my secret weapon. “You’re lying,” I said disgustedly. “You always do this before you lie to me-I don’t know about other people.” I showed her, and she let out a short laugh. “Fair’s fair,” she said with bitter amusement. “You always catch your breath and look right into my eyes when you lie to me-I don’t know about your clients and fellow employees.” O’Shea returned and felt the tension at once. “I ought to be going,” he said. “Mitch, do we leave together?” Kathy nodded, and I said: “Yes.” There were the usual politenesses at the door, and Kathy kissed me good night. It was a long, warm, clinging kiss; altogether the kind of kiss that should start the evening rather than end it. It set her own pulse going-I felt that!-but she coolly closed the door on us. “You thought about a bodyguard again?” O’Shea asked.