“No.”
“Well, I’m glad of that.” He let his breath out, sighing with relief. “That should settle the whole matter, shouldn’t it? Where’s the trouble going to come from?”
He got to his feet, holding out his hand.
“Now that we’ve settled that, how about another cigarette?”
“Sure.” She passed the pack.
“Thanks.” He took a cigarette and sat down again. He beamed cheerfully at her.
“Verne, you’re still like I remember you. In many ways. In many, many ways.”
“You remember me?”
“Oh, yes. I remember you, Verne.”
He didn’t know quite how to take that. “Well, I’m glad to hear it,” he murmured, not so cheerfully.
“Are you?”
“Of course.” He lit the cigarette nervously. “No one likes to be forgotten.”
“No. That’s true. No one likes to be forgotten. It’s not a nice feeling.”
Verne felt vaguely displeased. “Why do you say that? Is there some implication I’m supposed to perceive?”
“No.”
He scowled. What was she brooding about? He didn’t like it. He knew when something was being dug into him. He stood up again, pushing his chair back and moving away from the table.
“Where are you going? Outside in the sun?”
“No.” He didn’t know where, but not outside in the sun.
“Where, then?”
“I’ll have to think about it.”
“Stay here. It’s nice and cool, as you said to me a little while ago.”
“How the hell long can you sit at the table after you’ve eaten, just rocking back and forth in your chair? It gets me down, after the first hour.”
“You sound like Carl.”
“Do I?” He moved around the kitchen restlessly.
“What do you propose to do instead? I’m open to suggestion.”
“I don’t know. This is going to be a problem during the next week or so. Let’s hope the yuks get here soon. The sooner the better.”
“You sound angry.”
“I’m not. Just bored. I hate to sit and do nothing at all.”
“That comes of working all your life.”
“I suppose so, but that’s how I feel.”
“We could divide the Company up into three parts and play blackjack. How would that be?”
“No good.”
“You could go help Carl explore.”
Verne laughed. “With a pirate map and a flashlight? No thanks. I’m not interested in buried treasure.”
They both smiled at that. Some of the tension left the room.
“He enjoys it,” Barbara said. “After all, was it so long ago that we would have been glad to go racing all around, exploring and getting into things—”
“Sitting behind all the big desks and putting on all the badges and pins.”
“Carl can be any kind of an official he wants.”
“We all can. We can all be important.”
“Who gets to be manager of the station? I think we should let Carl be manager first.”
“Why?”
“It means more to him. We can take turns after him. But let him start, for the first day or so.”
“I think a big bonfire—” Verne murmured.
“Oh, no. There’s some things we want to keep.”
“Like what?”
“Well, I’ve always wanted to sleep in the manager’s bed,” Barbara said. “I hear the mattress is stuffed with duck feathers.”
“Has that been your ambition?” Verne said, grinning.
Barbara smiled evenly back. “Not any more than yours.”
“Have to get to the top some way.”
“Top for you,” Barbara said with hard humor. “But bottom for me.”
“You have changed since I knew you.”
“That was four years ago. I wasn’t even of age, then.”
“I remember that.”
“I imagine you do.”
“It was an inconvenience.”
“Not so much, though. Was it?”
Verne could think of nothing to say. Barbara had got up from the table and was pushing her chair under. He watched apprehensively as she crossed the kitchen toward the door. “Now what?” he muttered.
She stopped at the door, studying him thoughtfully. “I tell you what,” she said. “I have a proposition.”
“What’s the proposition?”
“Neither of us wants to sit here and rock. I still haven’t got all my stuff uncrated yet. You can help me.”
“Sounds like work.”
“Take it or leave it.” She opened the door.
“I’ll take it,” Verne said.
He followed after her quickly.
The halls of the dormitory building were cool and dark. They smelled of perspiration and baths and cigarettes. The two of them went upstairs to Barbara’s floor. The door to her room was closed and locked. She took her key from her purse and unlocked it.
“Why locked?” Verne said.
“Habit.” They went inside, Barbara leading the way. She had left the shade down and the room was not too warm. She opened all the windows.
“What a day,” Verne said. “Getting hotter each minute. Maybe it’s the fiery furnace.”
“Maybe so.”
With the windows open fresh air was sweeping into the room. But the air was dry and hot. The room had taken on an amber cast, with all the shades down. In the amber dimness Barbara moved about, carrying things to the chest of drawers and into the closet.
“Can I sit down?” Verne said.
“Yes. You can sit and watch.”
“When I’m needed, call me.” He sat down on the edge of the bed. The bed groaned under him. “It doesn’t like me. Listen to it. Like a thing in pain.”
“Maybe it’s trying to warn me,” Barbara said.
Verne ignored her. He stretched out on the bed, making himself comfortable. His body felt heavy and tired. Sweat was running down his arms, inside his shirt, collecting in pools at his armpits. His neck was damp, his collar rubbed irritatingly. He unbuttoned his top shirt button and removed his tie.
“Mind?” he asked.
She paused, her arms full of clothes. “What?”
“I took off my tie.”
She turned around and went on working. Verne sighed. He wanted to help, but he was much too dragged out by the mounting heat. On days like this, sitting at his desk, he always found himself falling asleep, sliding slowly into the typewriter, until his forehead came up hard against the keys and tab indicators. Then he would come awake with a start and return to the endless stacks of files and memos.
But now he could relax. There were no memos. It was all over with. All in the past. There would be no more forms, no more punch cards, files, tabs, endless papers. He had seen the dusty stacks in the closet of the office. The curtain had been rung down. He could relax.
But he was restless. And irritable. He stirred, moving around on the bed. He took out his handkerchief and wiped his neck. There were drops of moisture on the inside of his glasses. He wiped them, too.
“Maybe the sun is expanding,” he murmured.
“Yes, it is getting pretty steamy in here. Like a hothouse.”
“I feel myself slowly taking root and growing fast to the ground. All desire to move around is gone.”
“You don’t intend to help me at all, then?”
“What can I do? You were supposed to let me know when I was needed.”
“You could open this box. It’s nailed shut. I don’t even know how to start on it.”
“Don’t you?” He grinned, getting up from the bed with great effort. “Well, I suppose that’s not too much to ask.” He pulled himself together elaborately. “This would be a good day to lie under a bush in the shade. With the leaves blowing all around you. Where’s a hammer?”
“Look around. There should be one with the boards and things. Carl got it for me last night.”