“What kind of kick are you on, Molly?”
“It takes different forms. Tom calls it my bedlam routine. It’s a special vision. It enables you to see the world is mad, and you are dreaming most of it, anyhow.”
He stopped her and took her hand and delicately pinched the flesh just above her wrist, without pain.
“Ow,” she said, dutifully, and they walked on.
“Quinn-Murdock,” he said. “It gives me an institutional feeling. Quinn and Murdock. Murdock and Quinn.”
“Or Quinndock, for cute? Let’s not talk about it.”
“Yes, but I wish there were a good way to stop thinking about it for a little while, Molly dear.”
“I keep wondering if he is a nice man.”
“He is a very nice man. He is a superb man. He is a veritable bank vault of a fellow. Ol’ Ross has great discrimination.”
“Marvelous instincts.”
“How can I be drunk without drinking?”
“You can be anything, because I am dreaming you, too. And let’s cling to our little dream of glory for a while, Johnny Quinn. Let’s have fun with it, before I kill it with a word.”
He stopped her and looked down into her eyes. “Before you what?”
“Before I say, ‘No, thanks,’ of course.”
“But you can’t!”
“Dear Johnny, dear friend, I am not the type.”
“Molly,” he said, and took her by the wrist. The people walking by gave them quick glances of curiosity.
“You’re hurting me,” she said.
“I’m sorry. Let’s go back to the hotel.”
“All right, Johnny.”
They went to her suite. The Ross Hamilton organization had made another gesture of hospitality. There was a tray with glasses, bottles of mix, sealed bottles of Scotch, bourbon, gin, and vodka.
“Well, now!” John Quinn said with hollow cheer. He lifted the lid of the ice bucket. “All we need is thirst.”
“Vodka and tonic, please,” she said. “Make it weak.”
Quinn handed her drink with a strange, formal little bow, and she carried it to a chair by the windows. “This is weak?” she said, making a face.
“Compared to this one. Let’s get to it. I just can’t let you throw—”
“I want a boy, you know.”
“What?”
“Poor Tom has to live in a welter of females.”
“So have a boy. You have my permission. As soon as we get Q-M off the ground, have him in good health.”
“I miss my children. I ache for them. My working made some sense, Johnny, but I’m running out of sense. I’m getting into excuses.”
“Molly, Molly, for heaven’s sake! Kiss them in the morning. Hug them at night. The fireside bit is for gals like Cathy.” He got up from the couch and began pacing. “You see, honey, I just can’t let you do this to me. I can’t permit it.”
“Permit it? That’s a big word.”
He whirled and faced her, hands outstretched. “Why is this exclusively your problem, your decision? How can you be so selfish about it? There are eight people in this thing, Molly. You and Tom, me and Cathy, and four children. So, because you have this crazy guilt feeling about working, you want to do something that will make you feel better about yourself. That’s all it is. Actually, you don’t give a damn about the other seven people.”
“That’s a dreadful thing to say to me!”
“I have to say it. I have to get you to the point where you’re thinking soundly about it, Molly. What is your obligation? Isn’t it, perhaps, to use all the talent and energy you have?”
“Stop it, Johnny! Stop it!” she said, getting to her feet.
He looked at her for a long moment of contemptuous silence. “Maybe it’s something else. Max thought you could do no wrong. Max made you look good, honey. Since he died, you’ve been out where the cold wind blows, and maybe you don’t like it. Maybe all this marriage-obligation thing is just a cover, and actually you’re scared you can’t cut it without kindly ol’ Max providing the muscle.”
She swung very quickly, without conscious thought, and gave him a ringing slap across the cheek. She saw his eyes widen and then narrow, saw his hand come up quickly and then go slowly back to his side. She saw the red fingermarks appear against his pallor.
“Cute as a bug,” he muttered in a rusty voice.
“Get out of here, Johnny!”
“Anyone would say I hit a nerve.”
“I don’t think I know you as well as I thought I did. Maybe I don’t know you at all.”
“I’m fighting for my life this time, Molly. It can make a difference.”
“Leave me alone for a while.”
He shrugged, gave her a strange, mocking smile, and strolled slowly to the door. He closed it gently behind him.
She stood in silence in a world less sane, less predictable and comfortable than it had been, and she had the feeling that she had lost some important fragment of her own identity. I am Molly Murdock, she told herself. Wife and mother. Part-time businesswoman, on the verge of permanent retirement. She felt like a victim of something she could not understand, and in her need to reaffirm herself, she went very quickly to the phone and put through a call to her husband in Vermont.
The operator said she would call her back in a few minutes. Molly paced restlessly, planning what she would say to Tom. She would tell him about it as though telling him some ludicrous joke. She would present it to him in such a way he would know she had no intention of accepting it.
But suddenly she found herself wishing with all her heart she could somehow phone Max Andro and tell him about it. Max was the only one who could have truly comprehended what a tremendous thing it was for Molly Murdock just to be made such an offer. Tom tried to understand her triumphs and disasters, but because he had no great interest in her workaday world, he could not evaluate the importance of the things that happened to her. If she told him Ross Hamilton wanted to send her to Mars on the first space ship built in Texas, Tom would merely try to detect her own reaction and then respond in the way he thought she might expect. The world seemed a meaner, smaller place with Max Andro out of it. She ached to hear the pride and pleasure he would never be able to express again.
She hurried to the phone when it began to ring.
“Mrs. Murdock? I have your party on the line, but it is a bad connection. I can’t seem to get a better one. Do you want to try it?”
“Yes.”
“Go ahead, please.”
“Tom?” she called. “Tom?” She listened to a windy whining, a roaring and humming, and heard his voice but could not understand what he said.
“Can you hear me, darling?” she called. “Can you hear me?”
“Hear you clearly.” His voice came from the depths of a cave close to the sea, and she could hear him in the lull between the waves.
“Darling, Mr. Hamilton has offered me a wonderful opportunity. I’m not going to take it. Can you hear me? I’m not going to take it. But it took my breath away to have him offer it. I’ll be coming back tomorrow night or Friday morning.”
She strained to hear him, and heard a vagueness and remoteness saying, “As you wish. Do as you wish.”
“What? I can’t hear you, dear.”
“Children are fine. Beautiful weather.”
“I love you!” she called, and wondered why it could have become such a cry of desperation.
“Whatever you decide—”
“Good-by,” she said, in her normal voice. “Good-by, darling,” she said, and hung up. She sat on the edge of the bed for a few lost moments before she realized the tears were running freely down her cheeks.