Nailles had a second drink and went back to the road. The conversation at the bar had disconcerted more than it had amused him. What about the man on the bowling team? Did he know or care how his wife spent her Thursday nights? Nailles was monogamous-incurably so-and the existence of promiscuity bewildered him. He had fallen in love with Nellie the first time he met her and the success of his marriage was not an affair of the heart-it was a matter of life and death. He remembered a recent Saturday afternoon when she had fallen asleep in his arms. Holding her he had experienced a sense of being fused as heady as total drunkenness-a sense of their indivisibility for better or for worse, an exalting sense of their oneness. Her breathing was a little harsh and he was supremely at peace. She was his child, his goddess, the mother of his only son. When she woke she asked: "Did I snore?" "Oh, terribly," he said, "you sounded like a chain saw." "It was a nice sleep," she said. "It was nice to have you in my arms," he said, "that was very nice…" When he got home that afternoon he mixed them both a drink and going upstairs to wash his face he opened the medicine cabinet for the same obscene and detestable purpose as had the stranger in the bar. Then he went downstairs and asked Nellie what sort of a day she'd had. "I went shopping," she said. "I didn't buy anything. I just looked at dresses. Everything was the wrong size or the wrong color."
"Would you come into the living room for a minute. There's something I want to ask you." She followed him into the living room and he shut the double doors into the hall so their voices wouldn't be heard by Tony.
In the natural course of events and in a society whose sexual morals were empirical, Nellie, as an attractive woman, had been approached by a number of men. The following things had happened. One Saturday night at the club the Fallows had introduced her to a young house guest named Ballard. He asked her to dance and when he took her in his arms she felt a galvanic flash of sexuality, much stronger than anything she had ever felt for Nailles. She could tell that he was equally disturbed. They moved absentmindedly over the floor. If he asked her to go out with him to his car she could not have refused and why should she? She was in the throes of the most profound sexual attraction of her life. He didn't ask her to go out. He didn't have to. They were both pale. He simply gave her his arm and they walked off the floor but as they passed the bar someone shouted: "Fire, fire, fire!" The bar began to fill up with smoke and the drinkers poured out into the corridor, jostling the lovers. Then down the hall came Nailles, carrying a brass fire extinguisher, and plunged into the smoke-filled room. The band went on playing but all of the dancers left the floor and crowded in the doorways. The fire department was there in a few minutes and the bartenders, coughing and weeping, began to carry the bottles out into the hallway, two by two. A white canvas firehose was dragged along the crimson carpet but they got the fire under control without having to inundate the place. When Nailles finally came out of the gutted room, smeared with soot, Nellie ran to his side and said: "Oh, my darling. I was worried about you." Then they went home and she never saw or thought of Ballard again.
Among the village libertines was a man named Peter Spratt although he was naturally known as Jack. His wife was a heavy drinker and there was endless speculation about whether his philandering had begun with her drinking or vice versa. At parties he often took Nellie aside and spoke about what he would do if they were ever left alone. She was not offended and was sometimes provoked. He borrowed Nailles's hedge clipper on Saturday. At Monday noon he rang the bell. Nellie answered the door. He stepped into the hall, put the hedge clipper onto a chair and giving Nellie an amorous and penetrating look that made her head swim said: "Now I've got you alone." Whether or not Nellie could have resisted him will never be known because Nailles was upstairs in bed with a bad cold. "Who's there, dear," he asked, "who's there, sweetheart." He appeared at the head of the stairs in his bathrobe and pajamas. "Why Jack," he said, "why aren't you working."
"I thought I'd take a day off," Jack said.
"Well have a drink, come in and have a drink." Nellie got the ice and the two men had a drink. Spratt never tried again.
Another philanderer in the neighborhood-Bob Harmon-had several times asked Nellie to lunch with him and at a time when she was bored with Nailles and his worries about mouthwash, she accepted. She was thirty-eight years old and what harm could there be in flirting over a restaurant table with a good-looking man? They met in a midtown bar and instead of taking her to a restaurant he took her to an apartment. Here was all the paraphernalia for a seduction, including champagne and caviar. She ate a caviar sandwich and drank a glass of wine while he began to tell her how barren his life had been until he met her. He had still not moved towards her when either the caviar sandwich or something she had eaten for breakfast started a volcanic disturbance in her in-sides. She asked the way to the bathroom, where she remained for the next fifteen minutes, racked with cramps. When she reappeared she was quite pale and shaken and said that she would have to go home. He seemed, if anything, glad to see her go. So her chasteness, preserved by a fire, a runny nose and some spoiled sturgeon eggs was still intact, although she carried herself as if her virtue was a jewel-an emblem-of character, discipline and intelligence.
When the extremely shabby scene in the living room ended, Nellie went upstairs and washed away her tears. Then she served dinner so that Tony would not suspect there was anything wrong. At the end of dinner Nailles asked: "Have you done your homework?"
"It's all done," Tony said. "I had two study halls."
"Shall we play some golf?"
"Sure"