said, and before she could respond I quickly added, âDoes Ralph know about this? Does he go along with this? He is, after allââ
âYou leave Ralph out of this! I donât even want you to mention his name !â
âHeâll just wonder why Iâm not here.â
âYou donât think Iâll tell him? You donât think so?â
I thought she was capable of any idiocy, given her present mood, so rather than reply I stepped outside, picked up the mop leaning against the wall near the door, and went fishing for my suitcase.
Meanwhile, Candy had turned on Liz. Itâs amazing how many coarse names she knew for female private parts. And while the pebbles Liz dropped into Candyâs stream of invective were rather quieter, I wouldnât exactly say they were gentler.
I grasped my suitcase, hauled it up onto the deck, and went cautiously back inside. Candy was heaving so much in her little two-piece yellow bathing suit she looked like a belly dancer trainee, and Liz was also a bit red around the face. Neither, however, was speaking at this precise moment. âMy attaché case,â I whispered to them both, as though there were a sleeper nearby that I didnât want to wake, and I tiptoed to the ladder. Up I went, packed the last few itemsâincluding Bartâs glassesâand carried the attaché case down.
Candy, though still panting, had developed now the beginnings of a puzzled frown on her foxy face. She said to me, âWho?â
Whoops. âAll I can say, Candy,â I said, âis that I did my best to ease your loneliness, and to be a true friend to you when you needed me.â
âWhy, you filthy son of a bitch,â she said, âIâm going to cut your balls off!â And she went around the end of the counter into the kitchen.
âCome, Liz,â I said, with dignity. âI know when Iâm not wanted.â
I crossed the room, opened the screen door, and a bottle of Firehouse Jubilee bloody Mary mix sailed past my head and into the poison ivy. Liz and I exited, and I closed the screen door behind me and spoke through it. âIâll tell Bart your decision,â I said, âand I know heâll be just as hurt as I am that all our acts of kindness, our attempts to bring solace into the drab life of a trapped housewife, have been misunderstood and unapââ
An egg strained itself through the screen; some of it reached my chest.
âMp,â I said. I picked up my suitcase, and Liz and I departed.
Weâd gone a block when the shouts started behind us: âWho? Who ?â Fortunately, Liz was laughing too hard to hear it.
W ALKING WITH L IZ TO Hommelâs, toting my suitcase, I had leisure to think things over. What next, I wondered. Iâd done my con and made it work, Iâd screwed both sisters, Iâd precipitated the break with Candy that I suppose I must have been angling for, so now everything was obviously finished. To repeat the twin gag would be insanity; I couldnât possibly get away with it twice. And while Liz was fun in her way she was hardly restful; I might as well have stayed with Candy.
So what I should do right now was take the next ferry/cab/train back to the city, move into my office (ah, the sleeping bag stored in the closet), and start hustling around for someone else to put me up for the rest of August. Also for another female, though that was at the moment secondary.
But I just couldnât seem to let go. Iâd made the Art-Bart phone call to Betty the minute Iâd gotten off the ferry, Iâd risked severe physical impairment to drop Bartâs name into my farewell scene with Candy, and now I was walking to Hommelâs with Liz, my mind searching for a way to get invited to spend the rest of the summer at the Kerner house. Why?
Well, partly for the Laurentian Lumber Mills, I suppose. And maybe a tenny little bit for that television station in
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