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to take the bait. No teeth showed in his mouth. It waited, a fraction open, for her to come into it. As a mouth, it was neither male nor female, and not quite infantile. His nose was insignificant. His eyes were lost behind concave spectacle lenses that brimmed withtremulous candlelight. His hair once might have been brown, or sandy, but had become a colorless fuzz, an encircling shadow, above his ears; like all bald heads his had a shine that seemed boastful. So repulsive, Freddy assumed the easy intrusiveness of a very attractive man.
    Overhearing her rebuff, the man across the table, Smith, said, “Give it to him, girl,” adding as if to clarify: “ Donnez lelui .” It was evidently a habit, a linguistic tic.
    Roger Guerin broke in. Foxy sensed his desire, in this presuming group, to administer a minimal code of manners. He asked her, “Have you hired a contractor yet?”
    “No. The only one we know at all is the man who’s the partner of the man who sold us the place. Pi-et …?”
    “Piet Hanema,” the Smith woman called from beyond Freddy Thorne, leaning forward so she could be seen. She was a petite tense brunette with a severe central parting and mobile earrings whose flicker communicated across her face. “Rhymes with sweet.”
    “With indiscreet,” Freddy Thorne said.
    Foxy asked, “You all know him?”
    The entire table fully laughed.
    “He’s the biggest neurotic in town,” Freddy Thorne explained. “He’s an orphan because of a car accident ten years or so ago and he goes around pinching everybody’s fanny because he’s still arrested. For God’s sake, don’t hire him. He’ll take forever and charge you a fortune. Or rather his shyster partner Gallagher will.”
    “Freddy,” said his wife, who sat across from Foxy. She was a healthy-looking short woman with a firm freckled chin and narrow Donatello nose.
    “Freddy, I don’t think you’re being quite fair,” Frank Appleby called from the end of the table, beyond Marcia little-Smith.His large teeth and gums were bared when he talked, and there was a salival spray that sparkled in candlelight. His head was florid and his eyes often bloodshot. He had big well-shaped hands. Foxy liked him, reading an intended kindness into his jokes. “I thought at the last town meeting that the fire chief was voted the most neurotic. If you had another candidate you should have spoken up.” Frank explained to Foxy, “His name is Buzz Kappiotis and he’s one of these local Greeks whose uncles own the town. His wife runs the Supreme Laundry and she’s pretty supreme herself, she’s even fatter than Janet.” His wife stuck out her tongue at him. “He has a pathological fear of exceeding the speed limit and screams whenever the ladder truck goes around a corner.”
    Harold little-Smith, whose uptilted nose showed a shiny double inquisitive tip, said, “Also he’s afraid of heights, heat, water, and dogs. L’eau et les chiens .”
    Appleby continued, “The only way you can get your house insured in this town is to give Liberty Mutual even odds.”
    Little-Smith added, “Whenever the alarm goes off, the kids in town all rush to the spot with marshmallows and popcorn.”
    Roger Guerin said to Foxy, “It is true, the rates in town are the highest in Plymouth County. But we have so many old wooden houses.”
    “Yours is beautifully restored,” Foxy told him.
    “We find it inhibiting as far as furniture goes. Actually, Piet Hanema was the contractor.”
    Seated between Ken and little-Smith, Janet Appleby, a powdered plump vexed face with charcoal lids and valentine lips, cried, “And that alarm!” Leaning toward Foxy in explanation, she dipped the tops of her breasts creamily into the light. “You can’t hear it down on the marsh, but we live justacross the river and it’s the absolutely worst noise I ever heard anything civic make. The children in town call it the Dying Cow.”
    “We’ve become slaves to auctions,” Roger Guerin was