åDELIGHT å

They returned to their Buick and drove through the roadblock, out towards the suburbs.

"Magnificent!" said Betty, one more time. "The way you looked up there... up against the night, the stars, the rising moon..."

"I told you tonight would be different. Did you notice how I worked Jed Powell? How I used his sort of talk to get him on my side? Uneducated talk? I think tomorrow, Betty, we're going to be a pair of different people... Betty?"

"I know, I know," she began to sniffle. "It's just silly fears I get, like back there? What about failures, Howard... what happens to them?"

"Well, they have a choice," he told her. "It they don't want their rates to go up, they have to spend four nights watching autopsies at the morgue, out in that concrete shack behind the hospital, and pay the coroners for the privilege..."

Betty made a face. "That's awful!"

"I suppose it is. Remember, that was Wayne's idea, not mine, and I think he made some sort of deal with City Hall. On the other hand, a safe street is important, and a lot of streets are lots more important. Besides, I hear that most of them go Saturdays. Wayne says that the sessions aren't so bad, the coroners are a world of fun, you know, if nobody dead's wheeled in. Besides, it's educational. "Sort of...." he trailed off.

"But those men had guns. Do you think they would have shot us if we'd tried to drive away?"

"I don't know," Howard said. "No... not us, someone else, perhaps. At any rate, we're almost to the Grays."

He turned the Buick right, driving past a modern ranch house with a dozen floodlights and a white sheet hanging from the roof over the picture window. Howard's lips formed words as he saw them, but didn't speak them... "WELCOME! SOFT BALL BANQUET!" From the dark, adjacent property, a thin and gawky shadow shouldering a long black tube pointed it at the road across where they'd be passing.

"It's a gun!" shrieked Betty.

"I don't think so," Howard said, but clenched his teeth and gripped the steering wheel as he drove by, ready to duck in case his guess was wrong. "I think that was an amateur astronomer," he reflected, when they were safely past. "There is a new, portable telescope - I've seen them in the shopping center. Betty, there are people who go out each night, and watch the stars... or Mars... or something... I hear there's even a bunch of them, a club that takes their telescopes up Turner's Knob. The air is thinner there, because it's higher off the ground," he pointed out.

Betty grunted. "That's silly! Why would they do that when they could be safe at home, watching the Arthur Godfrey show?"

"Beats me," Howard answered. "Anyway, I remember because we're almost in the country, where light from the stars... or other places... travels faster. There's Waldo's house and then that place, you know... and then you have the country!"

Howard steered left and crept up a long, winding gravel driveway. Betty slouched and pointed past the dying cornstalks in the yard and out into the void. "This place is creepy. Beautiful inside, but it's so... old!" And out there is that place, and then the country. I know... I'm just scared. These seasons! After all, it's Daylight Savings now and Halloween just over, next comes Election Day. Besides, there's something wrong about that boy of theirs.

"Nonsense!" Howard scoffed. "Timmy Gray is gifted. Didn't I just hear you say, just now, how good his manners were? Well so their house is old... but it's expensive. Why I bet they have at least five acres and, of course, it seems much bitter. Executives have the right to be different from the rest of us, it's the purg... the peergoverage of genius. Sorry! Froggie in the throat - croak, croak!"

"Well I don't care... it's strange. I'd be perfectly content to have a house in Haddon Heights, like Henry Harwood had," said Betty, opening her purse and squeezing the gift mints between her ankles. "And I believe that we should lock the car!"

"But Waldo is my boss!"

With that, they pulled alongside a row of other cars: a Ford, a Pontiac and Jake and Karyl's sportscar. Wind pulled old brown leaves against their ankles as they stepped out. Just beyond... the country! An owl-shaped cloud obscured the moon. On the porch of Waldo's old house, an old weathered rocking chair... its gray wood showing beneath old, brown flaking paint... was slowly rocking; empty, creaking at the wind's command. Most times the wind blew out from town across the country but, on some late-autumn evenings, it changed direction and brought a gust of wild smells from the bad place and the forest. A night like tonight! Howard felt the dead weight of the bad letter reposing in his pocket like a canned heart attack. Maybe he'd tell Waldo he'd tasted the wild win, or done what he had done to spy on the competitors. He'd win the boss' admiration, and in the boss' own house!

No... Waldo would never fall for that...

"If it makes you feel better," Howard said, shamefacedly, "I'll let you lock the doors."

They key turned and the knob inside went down. Locked! "Oh Howard," Betty fussed, "you wore that awful tie clip! What ever will I do with you? You know that all that other people see of you is your head and hands... I read that in those books you bought to leave around. The other ninety five percent of what they see is clothes."

Howard stood still while she straightened his tie. A great, enclouding ease had settled round her, for the tranquilizers were in full effect. Arm in arm... and with the paper bag holding their offering between them, the Slacks walked towards the porch and Waldo's old, white door.

"Only a mouse," smiled Howard. He patted Betty on the shoulder. "We're almost in the country... you know?"

They climbed the porch steps and Howard pressed the doorbell. Deep inside, an old chime resonated and the wind dropped away, the old rocker ceasing its monotonous, rocking motions. Moonlight fell over it as the owl cloud passed, and Betty squeezed her husband's hand again.

The door swung open. Light and noise and fragrant cooking smells and good tobacco; cheer and confidence blew past the Slacks and out into the country. Marlene, in tasteful black and pearls, awaited them.

"Welcome!" said the boss' wife. "Betty and Howard... come in. Welcome! Welcome!"

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