“You were a stuffy fool not to.” She carefully examined a fingernail. “You should know this isn’t a good time, dear. If you want, I’ll send her off on some errands, but I think it would be too obvious, don’t you?”
“I didn’t come here for...”
“Not so loud, darling!” She stood up. “I’ll go change. Victoria will bring some ice. You make us some drinks and we’ll have lunch.”
“I can’t stay that long, thanks.”
With a waspish look, she said, “You make it pretty damn difficult for me to remember I’m spending the rest of my life with you.”
“It’s all decided?”
“Isn’t it?”
“Yesterday you seemed to be setting up some conditions.”
“Oh, that! Just get over all the hostility, sweet. But don’t take too long, please. I want to be your girl, without all this... disputation.”
I went over and sat on a low windowseat and looked at her across thirty feet of the room’s silence. “We’re trying to move too fast,” I told her.
“I know it. I didn’t mean it to be this way. I was going to be the muted widow, darling, with a carefully calculated sigh and snuffle from time to time, and I was going to be terribly proper about the whole routine. But that very first time I saw you, just before Stanley arrived, remember? My splendid intentions went all to hell. It was... like a spell. I guess I knew then I couldn’t continue the act, but I told myself it was just one little slip that didn’t count. Yesterday, darling, maybe you won’t believe this, but I plotted that little sun-lotion routine just to prove to myself I was a girl of character. I was going to tease you, darling, that’s all. I wanted you to want me and be able to do nothing about it. I thought you’d cap the bottle and scramble back to the wall and try to look as if it didn’t matter, and I was going to be laughing at you, inside. But... all of a sudden there was no turning back for either of us. Yes, we’re going too fast. I know that. I didn’t plan it that way. But we are, and I don’t think there’s very much we can do about it.”
“We can avoid opportunities like that.”
“Don’t be such a fool! We’ll be creating opportunities like that. I will, certainly. Gevan, my darling, there is something you should know. I should have told you yesterday. It could make you feel better about us. For almost this whole past year he was totally impotent. I think it was a traumatic thing — that terrible scene. Maybe the knowledge that I’ve always belonged to you became so strong in his subconscious... When I tried to talk about it, and tried to get him to see a psychiatrist, he’d get almost violent. It... wasn’t much of a marriage, Gevan. You should know that... and you should remember that Ken would want us to be happy. He did love us both.”
Again I found myself resenting plausibility. It accounted for his drinking, weeping, and his loss of interest in his work. Maybe it explained why his interest in Hildy was so platonic. It was all so very neat — and so unlike the Ken I remembered.
“Pretty rough deal for a woman like you,” I said. “Has Stanley been able to perform efficiently in that area too?”
After a momentary blankness of shock, she came striding toward me, her face contorted. “That is a goddamn filthy, vicious, stinking thing to say to...” She stopped six feet from me and closed her eyes. When her face was calm she opened her eyes and smiled and said, “I must make myself remember you are a very sensitive guy, my Gevan. You feel guilty about Ken, and you feel guilty about yesterday, and you want to punish yourself, so you keep striking out at me.” She came close and made a soft thud as she dropped to her knees on the carpeting. She took my hand in both of hers, kissed the palm, and then held the palm of my hand against her cheek for a moment.
“Not Stanley, my friend. Not anybody, even though many men seem to have a sixth sense about such situations, and they make little hints about how discreet they could be. Hell, I’m not a hypocrite, Gevan. Certainly I was tempted. I was made to be loved a thousand times a year. There were some highly edgy times around here, believe me, when I’d stalk this house like a randy panther, fighting off that moment when I’d have to shame myself with some nasty, lonely little release or go completely out of my mind. I would ache for you, Gevan. So that’s what happened to us yesterday, darling. So much saved up. Just before I lost the ability to think at all, I was wondering if I was frightening you or hurting you.” She kissed my knuckles and sat back on her heels and smiled up at me. “When I woke up this morning I stretched and stretched. I felt all over silky and warm. I woke into a world full of roses and music and love talk. When I came out of my shower and brushed my teeth, I pretended I was going to crawl right back into bed with you and awaken you in some delicious way. I realized it wouldn’t be long before I could do that, and it made me feel so good I laughed out loud. I guess you think we were dreadfully evil yesterday, Gevan. But today I feel like a bride. Nothing that can make me feel like this can be so horrible, can it?”
“I guess we’ll have to talk this way,” I said, “and I guess we will, if things are going to get the way you believe they’ll be, but right now, Niki, I have to talk about what I came here to talk about.”
“You look so earnest!”
“You made me believe this Mottling thing is important to you, so I decided the fair thing was to come and tell you what I decided. I do not believe Mottling is the man to run Dean Products. That is an objective decision. I’m not trying to spite you or hurt you or show hostility.”
“But don’t you understand that...”
“Let me finish. Walter Granby has certain weaknesses and limitations, but he has a lot of strengths too. I can stay around long enough to bring back the good men Mottling drove off, and get it all running smoothly and solidly, and headed in the right direction. That’s my decision, and that’s the way I vote my stock on Monday.”
Niki came slowly and effortlessly to her feet, frowning. She walked to the coffee table, lit two cigarettes and came back to sit beside me on the windowseat and give me one of them.
“My first impulse is to go up in blue smoke.” she said.
“I expected you to.”
“But if I did you might not listen, and I want you to listen. Will you? This whole thing was botched, right from the beginning. Though our reasons are certainly as far apart as they could be, all of us put pressure on you, Gevan. Lester, Stanley, Colonel Dolson and me. We forgot how stubborn you are. We should have just spread the facts before you and let you make your own logical decision. We should have trusted your judgment. I know you would have backed Stanley.”
“Maybe not, Niki. Maybe he isn’t as sound as you people think.”
She tapped her fist on my thigh. “But are you competent to sit in judgment of a man like Stanley Mottling, Gevan? Yes, you ran Dean Products and they all say you did well at it. But the world changes in four years. Stanley has intricate problems you never had to face. So he did get rid of some men you liked, and you resent it. Were they really as good as you thought they were? Or were they just very good at selling themselves to you? In all honesty, you must admit that possibility. Or maybe you made them feel so indispensable, they thought they could afford to ignore the new control methods Stanley introduced. Think about it, Gevan. I know you have a lot of self-confidence. But doesn’t it get close to a sort of... egomania when you judge a man on the basis of rumor, gossip and one trip through the plant? How sound is that, darling?”
I got up from her side and began to pace through the big room. She had touched the source of my uneasiness. I had decided to come out for Granby as a bluff, but I had been getting closer to deciding that it was, indeed, the proper decision. Karch, Uncle Al and Granby didn’t think much of Mottling, but how much of that was just an emotional resistance to change?