Shepherd sat at Paul's desk, absorbed in signing a stack of reports. He didn't look up. Briskly, his eyes still on the papers, he flicked on the intercom set. "Miss Finch -"
"Yessir."
"On this monthly security report: did Doctor Proteus tell you how he planned to handle Finnerty's admission without escort yesterday?"
"I planned to keep my big mouth shut about it," said Paul.
Shepherd looked up with seeming pleasure and surprise. "Well, speak of the Devil." He made no move to get out of Paul's chair. "Say," he said with hearty camaraderie, "I guess you were really hung over, eh, boy? Should have taken the whole day off. I know my way around well enough to fill in for you."
"Thanks."
"No trouble. There really isn't a heck of a lot to the job."
"I expected Katharine to watch over things for me, and call for help if she needed it."
"You know what Kroner would think of that. It doesn't take a whole lot more trouble to do things right, Paul."
"Do you mind telling me what Kroner wanted?"
"Oh, yes - he wants to see you tonight instead of Thursday. He's got to be in Washington tomorrow night, and for the rest of the week."
"Wonderful. And what's the good news from the police?"
Shepherd laughed richly. "Some foul-up. They were all excited about a pistol they found down by the river. They claimed the serial numbers were for a gun checked out to you. I told them to check again - that no man who's bright enough to be manager of the Ilium Works is dumb enough to leave a pistol around loose."
"That's a nice tribute, Shep. Mind if I use my phone?"
Shepherd pushed the phone across the desk and went back to signing: "Lawson Shepherd, in absence of P. Proteus."
"Did you tell him I had a hangover?"
"Hell no, Paul. I covered up for you all right."
"What did you say was wrong?"
"Nerves."
"Great!" Katharine was getting Kroner's office on the line for Paul.
"Doctor Proteus in Ilium would like to speak to Doctor Kroner. He's returning Doctor Kroner's call," said Katharine.
It wasn't a day for judging proportions. Paul had been able to take the disturbances of Kroner, Shepherd, and the police with something bordering on apathy. Now, however, he found himself enraged by the ceremony of official telephone etiquette - time-consuming pomp and circumstance lovingly preserved by the rank-happy champions of efficiency.
"Is Doctor Proteus on?" said Kroner's secretary. "Doctor Kroner is in."
"Just a moment," said Katharine. "Doctor Proteus, Doctor Kroner is in and will speak to you."
"All right, I'm on."
"Doctor Proteus is on the line," said Katharine.
"Doctor Kroner, Doctor Proteus is on the line."
"Tell him to go ahead," said Kroner.
"Tell Doctor Proteus to go ahead," said Kroner's secretary.
"Doctor Proteus, please go ahead," said Katharine.
"This is Paul Proteus, Doctor Kroner. I'm returning your call." A little bell went "tink-tink-tink," letting him know his conversation was being recorded.
"Shepherd said you'd been having trouble with your nerves, my boy."
"Not quite right. A touch of some kind of virus."
"Lot of that floating around. Well, do you feel well enough to come over to my house tonight?"
"Love it. Is there anything I should bring - anything in particular you want to discuss?"
"Like Pittsburgh?" said Shepherd in a stage whisper.
"No, no, purely social, Paul - just good talk is all. We haven't had a good, friendly talk for a long while. Mom and I would just like to see you socialwise."
Paul thought back. He hadn't been invited to Kroner's socialwise for a year, since he'd been sized up for his last raise. "Sounds like fun. What time?"
"Eight, eight-thirty."
"And Anita's invited too?" It was a mistake. It slipped out without his thinking about it.
"Of course! You never go anywhere socially without her, do you?"
"Oh, no, sir."
"I should hope not." He laughed perfunctorily. "Well, goodbye."
"What did he say?" said Shepherd.
"He said you had no damn business signing those reports for me. He said Katharine Finch was to take off your name with ink-eradicator at once."
"Say, now just hold on," said Shepherd, standing.
Paul saw that all of the desk drawers were ajar. In the bottom drawer the neck of the empty whisky bottle was in plain view. He slammed each of the drawers shut in quick succession. When he came to the bottom one, he took out the bottle and held it out to Shepherd. "Here - want this? Might be valuable sometime. It's got my fingerprints all over it."
"Are you going to get me canned - is that it?" said Shepherd eagerly. "You want to make an issue of it in front of Kroner? Let's go. I'm ready any time. Let's see if you can make it stick."
"Get down where you belong. Go on. Clear out of this office, and don't come back unless I tell you to come back. Katharine!"
"Yes?"
"If Doctor Shepherd comes in this office again without permission, you're to shoot him."
Shepherd slammed the door, railed against Paul to Katharine, and left.
"Doctor Proteus, the police are on the phone," said Katharine.
Paul stalked out of the office and went home.
It was the maid's day off, and Paul found Anita in the kitchen, the picture, minus children, of domesticity.
The kitchen was, in a manner of speaking, what Anita had given of herself to the world. In planning it, she had experienced all the anguish and hellfire of creativity - tortured by doubts, cursing her limitations, at once hungry for and fearful of the opinions of others. Now it was done and admired, and the verdict of the community was: Anita was artistic.
It was a large, airy room, larger than most living rooms. Rough-hewn rafters, taken from an antique barn, were held against the ceiling by concealed bolts fixed in the steel framing of the house. The walls were wainscoted in pine, aged by sandblasting, and given a soft yellow patina of linseed oil.
A huge fireplace and Dutch oven of fieldstone filled one wall. Over them hung a long muzzle-loading rifle, powder horn, and bullet pouch. On the mantel were candle molds, a coffee mill, an iron and trivet, and a rusty kettle. An iron cauldron, big enough to boil a missionary in, swung at the end of a long arm in the fireplace, and below it, like so many black offspring, were a cluster of small pots. A wooden butter churn held the door open, and clusters of Indian corn hung from the molding at aesthetic intervals. A colonial scythe stood in one corner, and two Boston rockers on a hooked rug faced the cold fireplace, where the unwatched pot never boiled.
Paul narrowed his eyes, excluding everything from his field of vision but the colonial tableau, and imagined that he and Anita had pushed this far into the upstate wilderness, with the nearest neighbor twenty-eight miles away. She was making soap, candles, and thick wool clothes for a hard winter ahead, and he, if they weren't to starve, had to mold bullets and go shoot a bear. Concentrating hard on the illusion, Paul was able to muster a feeling of positive gratitude for Anita's presence, to thank God for a woman at his side to help with the petrifying amount of work involved in merely surviving. As, in his imagination, he brought home a bear to Anita, and she cleaned it and salted it away, he felt a tremendous lift - the two of them winning by sinew and guts a mountain of strong, red meat from an inhospitable world. And he would mold more bullets, and she would make more candles and soap from the bear fat, until late at night, when Paul and Anita would tumble down together on a bundle of straw in the corner, dog-tired and sweaty, make love, and sleep hard until the brittle-cold dawn. . . .
"Urdle-urdle-urdle," went the automatic washing machine. "Urdle-urdle-ur dull!"