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          In the living room were salesmen and their wives. Howard discreetly closed the door behind him and felt Betty prodding... too late... to go out again...

          "They have the same dress... my dress!... all of them!" she whimpered.

          Howard glanced about and confirmed this fact, almost. "Well, not Anne, not Marlene. Anyway, they've seen you," he admitted, "but, on the other hand, we've seen them, too. And we can't afford to leave, so we'll just have to make the best of it."

          Marlene first observed, then denied, Betty's distress. "I was just telling Ferdinand that Waldo will be late. He was called away to an important conference of the Civil Defense people. You can't cross the Civil Defense when they're on maneuvers. But he's promised to return for dinner and..." she pointed out... "a little chat."

          Betty stepped away to mingle and discovered Henry's widow, Anne, across the room... drink in hand and a wary smile on her face. The widow, like Marlene, was shrouded in black, standing out among the insurance wives... all in their beige and dark brown patterned "Fall Fantasy" fashion... who parted ranks to allow Betty entry to proffer her consolations. Howard followed, with a fixed, salesman's smile.

          "You look better," he remarked, which was quite true as they had not met since Henry's funeral.

          Anne Harwood nodded with the same bemused, practiced and dreary smile she had borne since Henry's death and, as Betty remembered, for a considerable time before that. "I'm adjusting," she declared, and all three stood with nods and smiles, in perfect understand that anything more, said by anyone, certainly would be wrong.

          Then, Timmy Gray tugged at Howard's jacket.

          "Mr. Slack, can I have ten cents for pineapple-cashew surprise? The ice-cream truck is coming..." and he took a silver pocket watch out of the pocket of the blue and white pinstriped shirt he wore over dark shorts, "...well, very, very soon..."

          "Howard rustled through his pockets, but was interrupted by Marlene Gray. "Timmy, you are not to ask your father's people for ice-cream money."

          "Why not?" the boy asked reasonably. "I've already asked you..."

          "And I have refused. Because of the company, I have prepared a special dinner, with a special dessert treat. You wouldn't want to spoil your appetite now, would you?"

          "No, you're right, Mom... I wouldn't," Timmy answered. "I'm sorry, Mr. Slack."

          Betty chose to hurry these distressing circumstances into history. "Howard and I didn't want you to go to such trouble without at least some small token of appreciation," she said confidentially, "so we brought this bag of jelly mints."

          "How thoughtful," Marlene said, and glanced about the living room to be sure that all of those present had seen the gesture. "Just put it in the kitchen where it will be safe, and keep it tightly closed. You know how some people can get when they smell candy, especially boys. Small boys... and big ones too! Now we're all here but Waldo, Wayne and Beatrice and... well, you'll find out! Mingle, Howard, mingle! Don't just stand around." She waved a pearl-encrusted wrist and beckoned Betty towards the kitchen.

          "It's not exactly candy," Howard heard his wife explain as she trailed Marlene through the living room, into the dining room and the kitchen beyond, and he hoped she wouldn't squander their advantage with a bout of useless talking. The wives and the salesmen had glared scornfully; contempt which changed to envy after Marlene's blessing.

          Now, it was his turn.

          He zeroed in on Ferdinand. Jake would reply sarcastically and, perhaps, encourage the others to mock his enterprise. Their envy, united, might sway Waldo into disapproval. Yes, they would be laying for him now, after Betty's triumph. And Harvey... Harvey might not understand, might answer stupidly and, like a stupid magnet, suck his breakthrough into a vortex of stupidity. Ferdinand Kull, the former chaplain, shorter than the others, but possessed of an innate capacity for empathy and judgment that compensated for his meekness and enabled him to hold his place in the competitive arena that was Waldo Gray Insurance... Ferdie would be just right. Howard reached into his pocket.

          "Hello, gang!" Harvey Swan attempted to blunder between them, with his usual expression of amiable bewilderment, but Howard reached around him, proffering the little cardboard from Tennessee. "Ferdinand... my card!"

          Behind, Howard heard a sound he had dreaded as Ferdie took the card; Jacob's muffled chuckle. The former chaplain nodded gravely, removed his wallet and deposited it, withdrawing something else that made Howard's stomach leap. "Thank you, Howard," he replied in his soft, modulated chaplain's voice, "and won't you please have one of mine?"

          Jake's snickers swelled to a guffaw as Howard's fingers closed on Ferdie's card with a distasteful, limp fish grip. "You'll have one of mine, as well!"

          "Hee hee, hee hee!" Harvey brayed, with dull and fumbling glee. "And one of mine!"

          Howard shoved the cards deep into his pocket's depths and sulked as a distasteful drone, still distant, indistinct, began to slither through Waldo's open window.

          Well," Ferdinand observed, "it we appear that we here are all literate... at least to the extent of reading and responding to that half-page advertisement in the Journal of Insurance."

          "There's still Wayne," Harvey predicted with a wet, creepy anticipation. But now the distasteful noise stood revealed as the Bloodmobile - for the old home of Waldo Gray, the last before the country, was where it would pass, turn around at the entrance to the bad place, next door, and backtrack towards town.

          "...tell the outsiders," it promised, "just the way that we feel about the wishy washy propositions of their challenger."

          The politician's voice rose to a crescendo as the pickup truck drew even with Waldo's driveway.

          "ON ELECTION DAY let's send our message... loud and clear. We want Blood! We want Blood!"

          Jacob Shea sharply shut the open window, and the bellow faded to a murmur. He jostled Harvey from his place upon the sill of adulation, drew the curtains and expressed stern facial disapproval at the interruption. "Harv," he chided, "I'd just as soon not be oppressed further by Mr. Blood's voice and his rolling coffin. I don't think that mobile junkyard even has insurance... not that any reputable firm would write them up. Canadians, perhaps..."

          "Now Jake..." Ferdinand advised, favoring Marlene with an especially smooth, simpering smile, "this is a social occasion. "No sports, no politics and..." he smirked, "no religion, either. Why don't we all consense to leave behind the jealousies and pressures of the day where they belong... back at the office. Look at the sunny side, and speak of the simple pleasures. For instance, the new member of our household... a registered Abyssinian kitten."

          "Aren't they the ones with hair?" Harvey broke in with evident relief at being rescued from a dispute in which, as almost always, he would be deep over his head. "What does Gomer think about that?"

          "Popular superstition to the contrary, they enjoy one another's company. Of course he is almost fourteen, which is an advanced age for so small a dog. Still, I found a source of inspiration in their daily trials and encounters. If human beings could take an example from these alleged mortal enemies..."

          "Ferdie, you're out of the Army," snapped Jacob. "You're not a chaplain anymore so where, in the name of all that is kind and decent, is this drivel leading us?"

          With a sad sigh of understanding and forgiveness... and having determined, out of he corner of an eye, that Marlene still watched... Ferdinand stepped back and placed his right palm on the Gray's hi-fi, which Howard caught himself comparing to their own. "Only to the conclusion that values and perceptions endure, even after the circumstances which have engendered them have changed. A bit more empathy would make better salesmen... and better people... of us all."

          Howard wasn't sure about this, but he thought the Gray's hi-fi was made of genuine expensive wood, all the way through - maple, walnut or some such tree. Not cheap plywood, covered by a sheet of the real stuff. But he was drawn back to the here and now by a sudden eruption from Jake.

          "There! So much for the petty pressures and the office. You're such a hypocrite... it's comic, really! Well, just as a point of fact, I wrote up three policies this afternoon which, barring something similar by you or Howie, puts me back up on top. Numero uno!" He whirled and beheld Marlene coldly regarding him, cranked up his smile and wheedled, too. "And it's all due to Waldo's observations and his pertinent advice. I owe him everything! Don't we all?"

          Marlene nodded at the sudden humility while wives buzzed around her, like so many bees, or in the way that buzzards and jackals will circle a lioness at her kill. She spoke softly, causing all the salesmen to lean inwards. "Now what is this I hear about my Waldo giving you so many forms and paperworks that you don't have time for your families?"

          That silenced them. Howard, screwing himself up with a reminder of his triumph and ordeal, finally answered, deferentially. "Actually it's the liability seminars. We've begun another course, which will be in session, almost, until Christmas."

          "It's strange, you know," came Mrs. Harwood's ghostly murmur from what seemed a corner of some other, distant galaxy. "Henry always did his at the office. He didn't return until nine or even ten, some nights. I always thought paperwork was... oh, something nice, like wrapping presents. Or drying dishes with those new, disposable owls... I mean, towels..."

          After a short, embarrassed silence, Karyl Shea guided the widow towards a chair at the far end of the living room. Jacob frowned, then filled and lit his pipe.

          "Well, there's certainly enough with these new courses," he said. "I think we'll all deserve one of your husband's Santa Marta number sixes when we've passed our State examinations."

          "Why I thought that you hated cigars," Marlene chided.

          "Oh I do... assuredly I do!" And Jacob sucked and then blew out another zephyr of smoke. "It's the accomplishment that matters."

          Marlene nodded. "I'll be sure to mention that to Waldo." She scanned the herd and chose... "Mimi! What do you think of Ferdie's paperwork?"

          "Oh I agree with Mrs. Harwood." Mimi Kull spoke softly, with the faint, but discernable accent that had left the war bride an outcast to society. "I'm happy that the only paper work I have to bother with is wrapping our left-overs and drying new, thicker dishes with those paper towels."

          "Amen!" Betty volunteered.

          Howard's eyes rolled with disgust.

          The doorbell chimed.

          "It's Wayne!" said Ruth and Harvey Swan, in unison.

          And Jacob, through smoke, looked at his watch and added "Late again... as usual."

 

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