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as he pulled it up to cover her.
    She yawned and sat up suddenly. “Oh, hello. I took a nap.”
    He made a half motion as though to bend and kiss her dutifully, but instead he turned to the bureau and began to empty his pockets. “I thought you might get chilled.”
    “Or maybe you were just covering up an unpleasant spectacle.”
    He turned and gave her a quick sharp look. “Please, Laura. Just please don’t start anything. It’s too hot.”
    “Did you have a lovely, lovely day at the office? Aren’t you home early?”
    “The air conditioning broke down. Mr. Forman shooed us out. I spoke to Fletch Wyant before I left. I wanted to make sure it was all set for tonight.
    “Oh, merciful God!”
    “It’s something we have to do,” he explained patiently. “They expect it. After all, they were nice enough to …”
    “To stick us with an initiation fee and dues for the rest of our life.”
    “I wish you wouldn’t take that attitude. You know we can afford the club. It will do a lot of good. It will give us a good place to entertain. And another thing, Laura. Please be good tonight. Just tonight. Make them think you’re glad they put us up.”
    She swung her legs out of the bed and sat, scratching her arm, acidly amused to see how quickly he averted his eyes from her.
    “It will be quite a trick making Jane Wyant glad, Ellis dear. She treats me as if I were a loaded pistol.”
    “There are plenty of good reasons for getting along with them. I don’t think I have to explain all that.”
    “Please do, dear.”
    “Fletch is a very straightforward sort of man. He does his job and I guess he does it pretty well. But he misses here and there. He makes it look too easy, I think. And there are things he overlooks. If I stay on the right side of him I can make suggestions. Good ones. He’ll take them,and give me credit for them, because he’s that kind of a man. It will help both of us.”
    “Until you get a good chance to insert your boy scout knife, dear?”
    “That’s a hell of a thing to say!” he said with outraged indignation.
    Laura yawned luxuriantly. “Oh, go take a bath or something. I could draw diagrams, dear. You know that. I could chalk a little X on his back, but you don’t need that much help. Don’t kid me. Just pay attention, so it won’t backfire like at Tuplan and Hauser.”
    “If I’m like that, why do you stay with me?”
    “Because I’m too lazy to get out, dear.”
    “Or you have no place to go.”
    “Don’t ask me to prove anything to you, Ellis,” she said in an entirely different voice.
    She watched carefully as he tried to bluff his way out of it, and then broke around the eyes and the mouth, and said, “Laura, darling, we shouldn’t try to hurt each other this way. God, I’d be lost without you. Don’t ever leave me, dearest.”
    “Stop bleating, for God’s sake!”
    He pulled himself together quickly, gave her a cold stare and walked into the bathroom carrying his clean clothing. He always changed in there and he always locked the door. He never went swimming, never wore shorts around the yard. His modesty was pristine and unimpaired.
    As Laura dressed she thought of Fletcher Wyant. She had an indistinct memory of him. Just another big man with a strong blunt face. One of those ex-athlete types, probably a whizz at a dirty story with a good snapper at the end. A smoking room card. A big clean American boy, walking like a man. A pushover, on business trips, for any twenty-year-old chippy with a lusty walk. A big, dull, simple, decent man, and no match for the subtle ripostes of Ellis Corban.
    Ellis, she knew, was motivated by incredible ambition. It was the only forceful thing about him. She had learned enough of his history to understand it. He had been aweak, sickly, painfully shy child. Always on the outskirts of the games fields, always watching, never a part of life. He had found his outlet in school, in standing at the head of his class, in polishing and