She left me at last, heading across the room to say goodbye to her host and hostess. It took me a while to locate Beth in one of the rear sitting rooms of the big, sprawling house. We've got plenty of space in this southwestern country, and few houses, no matter how large, are more than one story high, which is just as well. You wouldn't want to have to climb stairs at our altitude. When I found my wife, she was talking to Tina.
I paused in the doorway to look at them. Two goodlooking and well behaved and smartly dressed party guests, holding their drinks like talismans, they were chatting away in the bright manner of women who've just met and already don't like each other very well.
"Yes, he was in Army Public Relations during the war," I heard Beth say as I came forward. "A jeep turned over on him while he was out on assignment, near Paris I think, and injured him quite badly. I was doing USO in Washington when he came there for treatment. That's how we met. Hello, darling, we're talking about you."
She looked nice, and kind of young and innocent, even in her Fifth Avenue cocktail outfit. I found that I wasn't annoyed with her any more; and apparently she'd forgiven me, also. Looking at her, I was very glad I'd had the good sense to marry her when I had the chance, but there was a feeling of guilt, too. There always had been, but it was stronger tonight. I'd really had no business marrying anybody.
Tina had turned to smile at me. "I was just asking your wife what you were a celebrity at, Mr. Helm."
Beth laughed. "Don't ask him what name he writes under, Mrs. Loris, or he won't be fit to live with the rest of the evening."
Tina was still smiling, watching me. "So you with in public relations during the war. That must have been quite interesting, but wasn't it a bit risky at times?" Her eyes were laughing at me.
I said, "Those jeeps we ran around in caused more casualties than enemy action, in our branch of service, Mrs. Loris. I still shudder when I see one. Combat fatigue, you know."
"And after the war you just started to write?"
Her eyes did not stop laughing at me. She'd undoubtedly been supplied with my complete dossier when she received her orders. She probably knew more about me than I knew about myself. But it amused her to make me read off my lines in front of my wife.
I said, "Why, I'd done some newspaper work before I went into the service; it had got me interested in southwestern history. After what I saw during the war, even if I never got into combat… Well, I decided that men fighting mud and rain and Nazis couldn't be so very different from men fighting dust and wind and Apaches. Anyway, I went back to my job on the paper and started turning out fiction in my spare time. Beth had a job, too. After a couple of years, my stuff just started to sell, that's all."
Tina said, "I think you're a very lucky man, Mr. Helm, to have such a helpful and understanding wife." She turned her smile on Beth. "Not every struggling author has that advantage."
It was the old behind-every-man-there's-a-woman line that we get all the time, and Beth winked at me as she said something suitably modest in reply, but I didn't find it funny tonight. There was that patronizing arrogance in Tina's voice and bearing that I knew very welclass="underline" she was the hawk among the chickens, the wolf among the sheep.
Then there was a movement behind me, and Loris appeared, carrying his big hat and Tina's fur wrap.
"Sorry to break this up," he said, "but we're having dinner with some people across town. Ready, dear?"
"Yes," she said, "I'm ready, as soon as I say goodnight to the Darrels."
"Well, do it quick," he said. "We're late now."
He was obviously trying to tell her that something urgent required their attention; and she got the message, all right, but she spent just a moment longer adjusting her furs and giving us a pleasant smile, like any woman who's damn well not going to let herself be hurried by an impatient husband. Then they were going off together, and Beth took my arm.
"I don't like her," Beth said, "but did you pipe the minks?"
"I offered you mink the last time we were flush," I said. "You said you'd rather put the money into a new car."
"I don't like him, either," she said. "I think he hates small children and pulls wings off flies."
Sometimes my wife, for all her naive and girlish looks, can be as bright as anybody. As we walked together towards the front of the house, past little groups of people grimly determined to keep the party going no matter what time it was or who went home, I wondered what had happened to send Tina and her partner rushing off into the night. Well, it wasn't my problem. I hoped I could keep it that way.
CHAPTER 6
FRAN Darrel kissed me goodnight at the door. Amos kissed Beth. It's an old Spanish custom which Beth detests. Just about the time she outgrew the unpleasant chore of kissing her New England aunts and grandmothers, and could get a little selective in her osculation, she married me and moved to New Mexico, where, she discovered to her horror, it was her social duty to take on all corners.
Amos, to do him justice, was one of the less objectionable male kissers of our acquaintance, satisfied with a token peck on the cheek. I think he made that much of a concession to local custom only because Fran had told him that he might hurt the feelings of some of her friends if he didn't. In a11 social matters Amos took his cue from Fran, since it didn't mean a thing to him, anyway.
Afterwards, he stood there with his vague, bored look while the women went through their goodbye chatter; and I stood there, and found myself suddenly wishing he'd get the hell back inside and out of the light. A guy of his scientific importance ought to have more sense than to hang around in a lighted doorway below a ridge full of desert cedars that could conceal a regiment of expert riflemen. It was a melodramatic idea, but Tina and Loris had started my mind working in that direction. Not that Mac's people were any threat to Amos, but their presence meant trouble, and once there's trouble around, anybody's apt to find a piece of it coming his way.
"It was sweet of you to come," Fran was saying. "I do wish you wouldn't rush off. Mart, you have a nice trip, hear?"
"The same to you," Beth said.
"Oh, we'll see you again before we leave."
"Well, if you don't, I hope you have a wonderful tune. I'm green with envy," Beth said. "Good night."
Then the Darrels were turning away and entering the house together, and nothing whatever had happened to either of them, and we were walking towards Beth's big maroon station wagon where it stood gleaming with approximately four thousand dollars worth of gleam in the darkness.
I asked, "Where are they going?"
"Why, they're going to Washington next week," Beth said. "I thought you knew." -
I said, "Hell, Amos was in Washington only two months back."
"I know, but something important has come up at the lab, apparently, and he's got to make a special report. He's taking Fran along, and they're going to visit her family in Virginia and then have some fun in New York before they come back here." -
Beth's voice was wistful. To her, real civilization still ended somewhere well east of the Mississippi. She always had a wonderful time in New York, although the place always gives me claustrophobia. I like towns you can get out of in a hurry.
"Well, we'll try to make New York some time this winter, if things go well," I said. "Meanwhile we'd better settle on a place to eat tonight. If we take our time, maybe Mrs. Garcia will have the kids in bed when we get home."