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Page 22.

Chapter 9

A telephone waited in fingerprinted, dusty repose under a rubber palm tree in the Dohertys’ apartment. Stifling summer air penetrating to its quiet perch took on a hopeful, seeking, delicately probing quality. Having neither lungs nor taste buds nor soul, however, the telephone receiver, rarely ever rung, responded to this organic stimulus by stolidly sitting between the involuted globules of its handset.

When the air had achieved a late-afternoon fullness, the apartment door opened, then closed. A pocketbook sailed rapidly and briefly to a landing in the cotton and dust of an easy chair. Hands struggled with high-heeled shoes that dropped heavily to the wood floor. Bare feet padded on the glossy wood floor (one might have choreographed a dance of liberation from sweltering office routine) and fingers rustled in cotton clothing which swished in being removed over long limbs. Cotton clouds sighed to the floor as bare feet padded onto the linoleum kitchen floor and then the tile bathroom floor and then there was the rattle of water on enamel, made hollow by the acoustics of a bathtub and the snare drum of a shower curtain.

The telephone reposed under the rubber palm, subject to the waxy brushings of the palm’s large, gnawed-looking leaves. An electrical impulse quickened as the telephone—receiving hints of a sweaty, nervous, importuning emotion far away—prepared to ring.

Shower water turned off. Dozens of small needle jets stopped striking printed flowers on a snare drum plastic curtain. Nothing followed. Two minutes later, the curtain rattled aside on brass rings. A tile floor whispered with wet footprints and water spatters.

In the living room, the phone shrilled over hardwood, ending a long, cruel stillness.

Bare feet padded quickly on the floor, leaving damp prints on the linoleum and then on the wood. A terrycloth towel made a muffled snapping sound, drawn over a long, slender back. A hand with long fingers still moist under the fingertips picked up the receiver.

A male voice crackled, “Mrs. Doherty?”

Merile said, “Yes?”

“Charley Anderson from the Archie Department. You know, the Susskinds’ party? My wife wore the orchid?”

“Yes?” Slightly harried, she sat on the armrest of the easy chair, her dangling breasts beaded with stray droplets, as she strove to wrap the towel up around her sopping hair.

“I was just headed home from the office and I thought I might stop by and drop off some mail for your husband.”

She laughed to herself in relief, having feared an invitation to another party. At these parties were always a collection of wives, ranging from the orchid-wearing to the mousy or brassy-voiced, engaged in irrelevant but feelingful subterraneous clashes. She’d inevitably just as well see smiling dons in their hushed puppies and carefully unkempt tweeds—worn these days with suede elbow patches—once a plaintive sign of undergraduate poverty, nowadays an understated symbol of overstated status. She recalled seeing maids and servants tendering cocktails; colleagues with tactical smiles and carefully hoarded cleverness; and, amid all that, one or two queer-eyed, suntanned, dirty-fingernailed field workers like Bill, briefly back from the actual work.

She said, “Sure, Mr.—ah—Anderson, when?”

“How about a—haha, right now?”

She frowned. It sounded as though he’d licked his lips.

“Will you be there this evening?” he asked.

She frowned. Do I detect…? “Why yes, if you think it’s important,” she said.

He (she could feel his moist smile) said, “I’ll just stop by in about fifteen minutes.”

What’s just stopping by versus stopping by?

She hurried to finish drying herself. Left her hair in that turban for drying later, under the fan, combing it, while moths ticked against the screen window. Slipped on sheer panties and a bra (which she did not care to wear around the house). And left her housecoat by the door like a suit of armor (not of amour).