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the year 1990 they’re going to have one in every room, so everybody can be watched. The article said”—she faltered, then swiftly proceeded—“nobody could commit adultery.” An angel passed overhead.
    “My God,” Frank said. “They’ll undermine the institution of marriage.”
    The laughter, Foxy supposed, was cathartic.
    Freddy Thorne murmured to her, “Your husband is quite witty. He’s not such a stick as I thought. I. M. Flat in two dimensions. I like it.”
    Harold little-Smith was not amused. He turned the conversation outward, saying, “Say. Wasn’t that a shocker about the Thresher ?”
    “What shocked you about it?” Freddy asked, with that slippery thrusting undertone. So it wasn’t just women he used it on.
    “I think it’s shocking,” little-Smith iterated, “that in so-calledpeacetime we send a hundred young men to be crushed at the bottom of the sea.”
    Freddy said, “They enlisted. We’ve all been through it, Harry boy. We took our chances honeymooning with Uncle, and so did they. Che sarà sarà , as Dodo Day so shrewdly puts it.”
    Janet asked Harold, “Why ‘so-called’?”
    Harold snapped, “We’ll be at war with China in five years. We’re at war with her now. Kennedy’ll up the stakes in Laos just enough to keep the economy humming. What we need in Laos is another Diem.”
    Janet said, “Harold, that’s reactionary shit. I get enough of that from Frank.”
    Roger Guerin said to Foxy, “Don’t take them too seriously. There’s nothing romantic or eccentric about Tarbox. The Puritans tried to make it a port but they got silted in. Like everything in New England, it’s passé, only more so.”
    “Roger,” Janet protested, “that’s a rotten thing for you to be telling this child, what with our lovely churches and old houses and marshes and absolutely grand beach. I think we’re the prettiest unself con scious town in America.” She did not acknowledge that, as she was speaking, Harold little-Smith was blotting, with the tip of his index finger, each of the water drops he had flicked onto her shoulders.
    Frank Appleby bellowed, “Do you two want a towel?”
    A leg of lamb and a bowl of vegetables were brought in. The host stood and carved. His hands with their long polished nails could have posed for a cookbook diagram: the opening wedge, the lateral cut along the lurking bone, the vertical slices precise as petals, two to a plate. The plates were passed the length of the table to Bea, who added spring peas and baby potatoes and mint jelly. Plain country fare, Foxythought; she and Ken had lived six years in Cambridge, a region of complicated casseroles and Hungarian goulashes and garlicky salads and mock duck and sautéed sweetbreads. Among these less sophisticated eaters Foxy felt she could be, herself, a delicacy, a princess. Frank Appleby was given two bottles to uncork, local-liquor-store Bordeaux, and went around the table twice, pouring once for the ladies, and then for the men. In Cambridge the Chianti was passed from hand to hand without ceremony.
    Freddy Thorne proposed a toast. “For our gallant boys in the Thresher .”
    “Freddy, that’s ghoulish!” Marcia little-Smith cried.
    “Freddy, really,” Janet said.
    Freddy shrugged and said, “It came from the heart. Take it or leave it. Mea culpa, mea culpa .”
    Foxy saw that he was used to rejection; he savored it, as if a dark diagnosis had been confirmed. Further she sensed that his being despised served as a unifying purpose for the others, gave them a common identity, as the couples that tolerated Freddy Thorne. Foxy glanced curiously at Thorne’s wife. Sensing Foxy’s perusal, she glanced up. Her eyes were a startling pale green, slightly protruding, drilled with pupils like the eyes of Roman portrait busts. Foxy thought she must be made of something very hard, not to show a scar from her marriage.
    “Freddy, I don’t think you meant it at all,” Janet went on, “not at all. You’re