“…Get so darned rumpled in a car.” She twitched at the skirt, which was only slightly rump-sprung—and that by one of the shapeliest behinds this side of a barbershop calendar—and checked the stocking seams. The stockings, it appeared then, had to be pulled up. This might have seemed rather pointless in view of the fact that as soon as it penetrated my thick skull her delights were available now on a help-yourself basis; rather than having to wait while she rubbed cold cream on her face and had a sandwich and a glass of milk, the stockings were supposed to wind up on the bedroom floor along with assorted slips, garter belts, and panties—except of course that the act itself involved a great deal of unconscious skirt-raising and the revelation of rounded and satiny expanses of thigh above the tops of them. For her, this was admittedly crude, but maybe desperate situations called for desperate measures; when you had to probe the enemy across this type of terrain, you used only the battle-proven troops. She straightened, still talking, and gave me that half-pixie, half-inscrutable smile she does so well. “Does it seem awfully warm in here, or is it —is—?” Her voice faltered and trailed off to a stop. She’d seen the fighter.

“Is it what?” I asked politely.

She swallowed, licked her lips, and tried to go on, while her eyes grew wider and wider as they followed its course—up—down—up— “—is it just—just—?”

“Just you?” I asked. “I never thought of that, but I’ll bet it is. And it’s damned flattering too. It isn’t often a husband gets this kind of testimonial.”

She gasped. Her mouth dropped open, and a hand came up in front of it as if I were going to hit her from ten feet away. She backed up a step, her legs hit the sofa at the left of the dining room door, and she sat down. “I don’t know—don’t know what you mean.”

“I mean it’s heart-warming as hell when a girl who’s shopped around over the neighborhood still feels an urge to come home for a good time. Unless, of course, you just dropped in to cash a check!” I began to break up in rage then. I stood up and started toward her.

She tried to get off the sofa and run. I threw her back, and pinned her there with a handful of blouse and bra. “What’s the matter?” I asked thickly. “Don’t you want to hear the news? Your boy friend is dead.”

She twisted and beat at my wrist, her eyes crawling with fear. “Have you gone crazy? Let me go!”

I leaned down in her face and shouted: “How long has this been going on?”

She drew up both feet, put them in my stomach, and kicked out like an uncoiling spring. There was the strength of desperation in it. The blouse tore. I lurched backward to keep my balance, hit the coffee table with the backs of my legs, and sprawled on the floor just past the end of it. She shot past me into the hall. I scrambled to my feet and tore after her. In the darkness I miscalculated the turn beyond the den and crashed into the wall. She had too much lead on me now, and just before I reached the bedroom door I heard it slam and then the click as she threw the night latch.

I crashed into it with my shoulder. It held. I hit it again, heard something start to give way, and the third time it flew open as the bolt tore off part of the door facing. I regained my balance, spun around, and groped for the light switch. She was nowhere in sight.