“If you ask me, you’re just all hung up on the generation gap.”
“Me and everybody else.” Llona sought support in the numbers of the generality.
“It’s a fallacy.” Archer followed her off on the tangent. “You know what the truth about the generation gap is? I’ll tell you. The truth is that the generations are closer than they’ve ever been. That’s right, the gap is narrower than ever before. And that’s the reason there’s all this friction. The generations are drawing so close together that they’re becoming abrasive to each other. It’s simply a case of familiarity breeding contretemps.”
“That’s very profound.” Llona tried flattery as a means of softening his attitude.
It didn’t work. “I ain’t gonna digress no moah, no moah,” Archer decided. “I forbid you to take a job.”
“I told you. I’ve already been hired. I’ve already started work.”
“Well, I want you to quit.” Archer pounded the pillow with his fist.
“Well, I can’t”
“You can!”
“No, I can’t.”
“You mean you won’t.”
“All right then, I won’t!”
It went on like that for the rest of the visiting hour. The more insistent Archer was that Llona quit her job, the more stubborn Llona became about retaining it. When the nurse returned to tell them that she must leave now, the argument was at a stalemate.
“We have to have our enema,” the nurse confided to Llona as the sullen Archer turned a cold cheek to his wife’s farewell kiss.
“Why?” Llona heard her husband demanding as she went out the door. “Why do we have to have our enema? I’m here for a broken leg, for God’s sake. I don’t see where that calls for a purge!”
“Sanitation,” the fat nurse explained. “Hygiene. Hospitals must have cleanliness. Inside and out. Every patient is washed three times daily and his insides are cleansed every evening. It’s routine.”
“It’s sadism!” Archer trying in vain to fend off the approach of the device. “And it’s nonproductive. Since no human being could eat the food here anyway, what’s the point in it? Now you just get away from me with . . .”
His voice faded out behind Llona as she turned the hospital corridor. She was feeling just angry enough at Archer to be glad in the knowledge that he’d lose his batfish Maybe it would purge some of the stubbornness from him!
Her slow burn continued throughout most of the next day. Sitting at the reception desk, naked, used by now to the reactions of those who called to do with Nymph magazine; Llona got mad all over again every time she thought of how unreasonable Archer’s attitude was. And the more she brooded, the greater her resentment grew.
Her attitude wasn’t diminished by the fact of a sudden heat spell during which the company’s air-conditioning system had temporarily conked out. Despite the fact that she was dressed—or undressed, to be accurate about it—more coolly than anyone else on the premises, Llona felt sticky and flushed by the end of the working day. Perhaps this was why she accepted Comstock Bowdler’s invitation without resistance.
“I’m Number One!” Bowdler had rejoiced that day in Raunch Rammer’s office. “I get first crack at her!”
The others had grumbled, more or less in proportion to the numbers they themselves had drawn. But none of them had really been too seriously concerned with Bowdler being first. He wasn’t particularly noted around the office for any Lothario-like qualities.
Not that Bowdler was unattractive. He had a friendly, roundish puppy-dog sort of face with soft brown eyes that looked out on the world with an appealingly open quality. His body was stocky, solid in clothes, a hint of pudginess around the edges when he stepped out of his morning shower. His nature was to be pleasing, which rendered him vulnerable to influences which were sometimes opposing, and so left him tossing leaflike and acquiescent in winds of opinion not really his own. But this same inclination to please was not without its attraction to certain women.
For instance, it served to lull any apprehension Llona might have had about accepting Bowdler’s invitation to have a “tall, wet, cold cocktail” with him after work. If she was going to see Archer (still angry at him, Llona was thinking of skipping a night just to teach him a lesson; but she hadn’t really decided yet), then she’d have time to kill before visiting hours began. Hot and frazzled, a drink in an air-conditioned cocktail lounge sounded heavenly to her. And Comstock Bowdler, seemingly a bit shy and hesitant about asking her, courteous and gentlemanly, seemed harmless enough.
The first iced vodka tonic led to a second, and then a third. It was while sipping the third that Llona sighed to Comstock that she didn’t know how she’d ever be able to bring herself to leave this oasis and face the steamy heat beyond its portals.
“I guess I’m lucky,” Comstock replied carefully. “All I have to do is get in my convertible, put the top down, drive thirty-five minutes, and then hop into the pool for a swim.”
“That’s right. You live out in the suburbs. Do you belong to a pool out there? It sounds divine.”
“No, we don’t belong to a pool. We have one in our back yard. A fifty-foot Gunite pool that it cost me nine grand to put in,” Comstock told her proudly. “On a night like this, I really know it was worth it. And my wife and kids get a lot of enjoyment out of it too,” he added, carefully guileless.
“Oh, you’re married.” Llona hadn’t been sure before. “Sure.” Comstock laughed. “Isn’t everybody?”
Llona didn’t answer. It was safer to let it pass. She wasn’t sure if the secrecy surrounding her own married state included the editor or not.
“Say, I’ve got an idea,” Comstock said as if it had just occurred to him, as if it wasn’t part of a plan he’d been evolving all day. “Why don’t you come on home with me and have a swim?”
“Oh, no. I couldn’t do that.”
“Why not?” Comstock urged.
Llona couldn’t tell him she should go to the hospital and visit her husband. Of course, she could call Archer and tell him she wasn’t coming. After all, it would serve him right. And it was such a hot night, and a swim sounded so tempting. Still—- “Well, your wife probably wouldn’t like the idea if you brought a total stranger home to go swimming,” Llona temporized.
“Nonsense! Why should she mind?” Comstock didn’t mention the fact that his wife was away in the country with the kids for two weeks. Time enough to explain that later-—after he’d lured Llona out there.
“Well, I don’t even have a bathing suit with me.”
“You can wear one of hers, my wife’s.” That would be the day! Mrs. Comstock Bowdler was twice Llona’s size. But Comstock figured that once they were out there a little skinny-dipping might be a solution -- and a goad to further intimacies. “Come on,” he persisted. “What do you say?”
“Well . . . All right,” Llona decided. “Only I’ll have to make a phone call first.”
“Booth’s right in the back.” Comstock produced as handful of change and pointed it out to her. He signaled the waiter for the check as Llona started for it.
“Hello? Who is it?” Archer’s voice sounded cranky.
“It’s me, Archer. Llona. I just wanted to tell you I won’t be there tonight.”
“Why not?” Even crankier.
“I’m hot and I’m tired and I’ve been invited to go for a swim,” Llona told him truthfully.
“What do you mean? Who invited you?” Archer sputtered. “Where are you going?”
“One of the men I work with. He has a pool in his back yard.”
“Oh, great! I knew it! I knew it! I knew it!”
“You knew what?” Llona wondered.
“I knew that when a married woman goes to work, the next thing is she starts kanoodling with the men in the office. I knew it!”