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EPISODE 19

The salesmen and their wives gathered in nervous circles in the living room. With one look at his face, Betty gripped Howard, glaring wildly side to side for an abandoned corner. "Who was it?" she hissed, giving up.

"Not here," Howard said, "not here." Everywhere similar marital confrontations raged. "Outside!"

The moon, the rocking chair, the country waited...

"Don't sit down!" he called out sharply, as Betty ran her fingers over the old chair. "It's not ours, it's the Grays'. Besides, it wouldn't hold you."

"Then it's certainly not the Grays'," she answered primly. "If I can't sit down, could Waldo? Marlene?"

"Are we out here to argue?" Howard said. "Or, do I tell you what went on back in there?"

Betty stormed to the railing of the porch and crossed her arms to look out at the moon and country. With her back still turned, she said: "All you have to tell me is whose ass we'll have to kiss for the next twenty years. And God," she added, in a lower, huskier voice, "I hope it isn't Wayne; the thought of going to his suppers makes my flesh crawl. All those men in bowling shirts and Bea's dry cakes..."

"Will you shut up?" snapped Howard. "It's nobody. Nobody's the Vice-President."

Betty turned away from the moon.

"Nobody?"

"That's right," Howard said. "We made our presentations and then Waldo gave a little speech, the lights went off and on and it was over. Finished. Here we are!"

"I think that I remember when the lights went out. It was only for a minute, wasn't it?" And she leaned aback against the railing. "But Waldo's decided, or deciding. He's just waiting for us all to have full stomachs when he tells you. That's reverse psychology. I know the boss. And how did you do?" she inquired.

"Well, there were the good points," Howard lied, "and others not so good. But none of us were perfect. That's why Waldo's chosen nobody. There's still a chance."

"A chance?" laughed Betty. "Sure! I saw your faces when you came out, there's a chance... a chance that he will go outside the company. Maybe he'll bring in a Canadian. And then where will we stand?"

"That's silly," Howard said, but guilt betrayed his confidence. Not only was there the presentation... or, rather, his lack of one... but the other matter. The papers, still in his jacket where his presentation should have been. There had been the good and bad, and just about the only good was that nobody still knew about those papers yet; Betty, Marlene, Waldo. Or his career was over. "And by the way," he challenged her, "what was going on there in the living room? All that laughing, there, was it at us?"

"Oh, that," scoffed Betty. "That was just the beatnik, Mr. Morris. He was quite amusing, you know, telling jokes? Although it got a little grim, at times..."

"What does that mean?" pressed Howard. He detected something being held back, something that might bear on his career. "Out with it! Spill it!"

Betty screwed up her nose in disdain. "Oh, just the way that everybody starts to talk about a person when they leave the room. Like when Marlene sent Ruth into the kitchen for more ice and Karyl put a pillow underneath her dress and Beatrice was saying "no way, no way!" they're just impossible. Things like that! And making war bride jokes when Mimi Kull was sent out for the sour cream and celery."

"You didn't leave the room?" asked a suspicious Howard.

"Me? Of course not!" Betty replied indignantly.

"That's better," Howard frowned. "See that you don't. Did Marlene have a place in this?"

"Oh, she would nod and she would smile at some of the remarks, if they were clever, and once she told Karyl what she said about Ruth wasn't nice..."

"Ruth left the room?" asked Howard.

"Marlene sent her to the kitchen with all of the left-over ice. Anne didn't want any."

"And just what was Mrs. Harwood doing all this time?"

A wan swept fleetingly across Betty's face. "Just sitting in that chair with all the daisies on the upholstery. Crying! It stopped just before you all came out, but you can still the wet on the fabric, if you look..."

"Well," Howard said, "that all seems harmless enough." Betty drummed her fingers on the rail. "I suppose we ought to go back inside now."

He tried the door. They'd been locked out.

"Damn!" Howard shouted and punched it with his fist, which only hurt his knuckles. Betty rang the doorbell.

The beatnik answered. "Pardon me," Zack Morris whistled, "but you two sure seem familiar. Are you selling something? Insurance, maybe? No matter, come on in... the joint is jumping." And he raised an eyebrow to notify them that it was far more likely that the opposite was true.

"He doesn't seem funny to me," Howard whispered as they entered; fortunately Waldo was not present and Marlene seemed not to have noticed. "What was it that he said about us that made you ladies laugh so?"

"I forgot," said Betty hastily.

Howard opened his mouth to make some comment about Betty's memory, but decided that it wasn't worth the bother. He could feel the tension there, and almost smell it... the way one discriminated between a cheap cigar and one of Waldo's panatellas. As the rest of the wives learned that no Vice-President had been selected, loaded conversations rose up from the corners. Now these, and their speakers, began to mingle.

Ruth Swan was holding forth as Howard passed. "Now," she gleamed, "that we have air conditioning..."

"Ever at the ready, Jacob broke in. "Lucky girl!" he said. A cool, consistent temperature helps with the disposition of a household."

Karyl observed them through her fingers and, after pretending to look up from her nails, asked: "Was it a Westinghouse"

"No," Ruth declared, "it was a gift from..."

And she broke off sharply, realizing her mistake.

"Of course there are the payments," she continued, "but they amount to oh... cigarette and candy money."

Karyl savored her victory. "Those finance companies will charge an arm and a leg but, as long as you have someone to make that first, big down payment, you come out right in the end."

Howard was bored, and he told himself his disregard of talk of furniture and air conditioning had no basis in his envy and his vow to have things for himself. After the presentation, that seemed farther away than ever and, to his additional discomfort, Betty seemed at home in this mercenary climate. But then, of course, she didn't know. So he tugged her out of the circle.

"Well, they really don't know what to do, do they?" she said, with what seemed some surprise. "Now, what will happen?"

He pretended indifference. "Whatever, it's out of our hands. There will be a decision, soon, perhaps after dinner." He glanced past her to a bowl of shiny fruit that had provoked an unexpected hungering.

"Forget it, honey, it's fake," Betty said, forgivingly. "Really... it wouldn't be so bad if it was a Canadian. At least he would be from the outside, so maybe we wouldn't be embarrassed every time we had to visit. And I've always wanted to try Canadian food... but... I wonder, what do they eat?"

"Mooses," Howard guessed, and a stab of guilt made him finger the inside of his jacket for the letter he'd put there. After dinner, after someone else had been selected and he didn't have to worry about ruining his chances, he'd seek Waldo's help... appeal to the boss' experience. Maybe the disappointment would mean Waldo would pass up the opportunity to make fun of him, at least in public. He'd do it!

Just then, a fuss broke out about a new machine that Howard hadn't seen before.

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