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She looked at Maggie now, noticing again how attractive she was. Lustrous red hair, a full mouth, deep eyes. And a fine figure, with long shapely legs and high proud breasts. She thought again of Dave Whitcomb and wondered how come he had managed to grab off a prize like Maggie. Of course, he made a good living, and he was supposed to be a sharp guy in his field. But he didn’t have Maggie’s verve.

“Pam should be through with school soon,” she heard herself say. “I’ll have to run over and pick her up.”

“Can’t she walk home?”

“It’s a little far. She’s only six.”

Maggie nodded. “We don’t have children. Sometimes I’m glad of it and sometimes I’m sorry.”

“You haven’t wanted them?”

“It doesn’t really matter whether we want them or not,” Maggie said. “Dave is sterile.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I—”

Maggie grinned softly. “Please don’t be sorry. Really, it’s nothing to be embarrassed about. One summer while he was in college he was in an auto accident, had some back trouble. They took too many x-rays, evidently. And that ended his chances of becoming a father.”

“It’s permanent?”

“Uh-huh. But it’s not that much of a tragedy. Oh, I suppose Dave would like to be a father, but I don’t imagine I’m much cut out for motherhood. It’s not my line.” She smiled again. “But it makes the days lonely, I’ll tell you that much.”

“You shouldn’t let yourself be lonely. Just drop in on me. Any time at all, Maggie.”

“You’re a doll, Ell. But I hate to make a pest of myself.”

“Don’t be silly — I like your company.”

“And I like you, Ell.”

There was something strange about the phrase, something a little funny about the way Maggie’s eyes held Elly’s, something weird in the intensity of Maggie’s gaze. Then Maggie’s eyes left hers and studied Elly’s body, glancing at breasts and hips. It was almost... well, almost sensual. A man looking at a woman—

Oh, that was ridiculous. Maggie was looking at her just the way she, in turn, had looked at Maggie. Women did that — they took note of other women’s physical attributes. It was a sort of measuring, with no sexual connotations at all.

“I’d better run, Ell. I’ll see you soon, won’t I?”

“Of course.”

“Fine. Thanks for the coffee, and the sandwich. Why don’t you drop in on me soon?”

“I will,” she promised. “Soon.”

She walked Maggie to the door, then went back to the living room and watched the redhaired girl walk down the driveway to the red and black Buick hardtop. She was aware of the fluid grace with which Maggie Whitcomb moved, the way her lush buttocks swayed as she walked, the way her long legs were shaped.

Well, she thought. Now I have a friend.

She lighted a cigarette, sat down on the couch and smoked. Maybe Maggie would make a difference. Maybe if she had a friend she could stop the wild sex, the horrible promiscuity. Maybe Maggie was an answer. Maybe it was loneliness and emotional insecurity that drove her into the arms of men like Rudy Gerber, loneliness and emotional insecurity that made her fantasy about a phantom lover on a sleek black stallion.

Because, she thought, the promiscuity had to stop. Ted was a good husband, a perfect husband. He was faithful to her — she was confident of this — and she certainly had an equal responsibility to be faithful in return. And, if she went on sleeping with any brawny moron who rang her doorbell, Ted would find out. Sooner or later he would learn, and he would be hurt and shocked, and he would leave her.

Pood Ted. She owed him fidelity. And now, with Maggie Whitcomb as a friend, maybe she could mend her ways.

7

Television is many things to many people. To the great unwashed masses, it is a prime medium of entertainment, a big box which is turned on whenever there is anyone at home to watch it. To a top Hollywood director, it was a boon, in that there was finally an entertainment medium which was markedly inferior to motion pictures.

To Dave Whitcomb, television was a way to earn a living. To many Cheshire Point children, television was simply a substitute parent, ready and willing to spend time with them while their biological parents were drinking, dining or fornicating.

To Nan Haskell, television was a bore.

Nan hadn’t even wanted to get a set in the first place. She hardly ever watched it, and in Manhattan she and Howard had gotten along perfectly well without a set in the apartment. Now, in Cheshire Point, with two small sons in the house, the television was a permanent fixture. It stood on a teevee table in the family room in the basement of their split-level colonial. And now, for the first time in weeks, she was watching it.

Well, not exactly. She had the set turned on, and she was seated in front of it, and her eyes were pointed more or less in the direction of the flickering images on the 24-inch screen. But in another equally valid sense she was not watching television at all.

She did not hear what the fuzzyheaded announcer was saying, and she did not see what was going on upon the screen. She did not know what program she was watching, what channel she was tuned to, or what the hell she was doing in front of the television set, as far as that went. She was killing time, and the television set was on, and that was about all there was to it.

She focused her eyes upon the screen now. The announcer was selling soap, some brand-new washday product which would care for her washing machine and lighten her workday chore load. That, at least, was what the slick announcer was trying to palm off on her. She got to her feet, walked to the set, and flicked a knob that darkened the picture tube and halted the sound.

Then, remembering a picture starring David Niven, she drew back her foot to kick in the picture tube. She stopped just in time, turned on her heel and left the family room.

Everything was such a damned bore. Time was passing her by, time was all over the place and yet she was wasting all the time there was, letting the days sail by without doing anything, without accomplishing anything, without getting any place or doing anything at all.

Bored.

Bored.

Bored

Read a book, she thought. Read a book, go to a movie, make a dress, hoe the garden, cut the lawn — but she did not want to do these things, had no desire to do these things.

Then what did she want?

She knew the answer to that question as well as she knew her own name, as well as she knew that she was bored. What she wanted was a change, a break in the established routine. The introduction of a new element into her life, the element of excitement.

Life had once been exciting. Once she had lived in such a manner that each day was a new adventure, an experiment in dynamic living. But now that period of her life seemed to have come to a sort of end, and that was unfortunate in the extreme. Now she was a wife and mother settled down in a split-level colonial in luxurious exurban Cheshire Point.

And bored to tears.

So, for the tenth or twentieth time that day, she thought of Ted Carr.

She did not think of him in terms of face and body, as a woman might think of a man with whom she was hazily considering the possibility of an extramarital affair. She did not think of him in specifically sexual terms, to be sure, but as a possible means of alleviating all that boredom, of changing all that dreadful monotony.