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when you think about it. He plays a man by tying an apron around his waist and doing the dishes!”
    Fern had nothing to say to that.
    There was a pause while both women sucked on their cigarettes. Gloria thought of telling Fern about Pitts then and there, the whole story in delicious detail, but Fern spoke before she could start.
    Fern said, “Freddy thinks Milo is unbelievably patient.”
    “Oh?”
    “He said he’d have tossed your belongings into the street long ago. Oh, you know Freddy, Glo — big, old take-the-bull-by-the-horns stuff!”
    “What makes him think it’s patience?”
    “Isn’t it?”
    “Milo has no spine, that’s all. I think he even loves me more, in fact, because I’ve made an — pardon my French — ass out of him! Doesn’t Freddy know Milo by now, Fern?”
    Fern shrugged and chuckled. “I told him he’d better
watch out,
because I was making some notes of my own, for a little project of my own. And honey, don’t think I couldn’t write a book about that man!”
    Gloria glanced out the window again, thinking how boring a book about Freddy would be. He was on his knees by the hedges, pulling up weeds. Anything Freddy Fulton
did
know about gardening, Milo had taught him.
    In Gloria’s novel, she had made the character Miles a stamp collector. That was another of Pitts’ changes.
    “Make him a collector of plain, ordinary stamps. Not foreign stamps or anything romantic, but plain stamps, the kind you can buy in a package for twenty-five cents at any dime store.”
    “Milo buys lots of seeds in the dime store. What’s the difference?”
    “Listen, Gloria,” Pitts had said, “I’m not going to try and make you appreciate your husband, at this point. I’m interested in the novel. You’re writing about a stupid fellow, but that stuff your character Miles says about plant life, for instance, in the twenty-sixth chapter, is too damn clever.”
    “For someone who’s as sophisticated as you are,” Gloria had laughed, “you certainly come up with peculiar ideas about what’s clever in this life.”
    “You just take my word about books,” said Pitts, “never mind life.”
    Gloria had told him she’d take his word about both; and anything else he could come up with.
    As Gloria looked out the window at Freddy, she saw Virginia. She was sitting on her haunches beside her father, in her beige and brown jumper, and her short no-color hair; sitting watching him, looking for all the world like a huge, devoted, cross-eyed Siamese cat.
    Gloria said, “I suppose Freddy’s on Milo’s side.”
    “Oh, who’s choosing up sides, honey? It hasn’t come to that, has it?” She waved away some of the smoke spiraling up between them. “You know Freddy. He’s always liked Milo. Freddy likes people who are different. He likes that subtle stuff Milo’s always talking about, the stuff about the life cycle of insects and saints and all. You know how Freddy is. He hates the corny American Legion, hail-fellow-well-met type!” She paused a moment before she said, “I guess I don’t have to tell you he was never overly fond of you, honey. Freddy’s awfully stuffy when you come right down to it.”
    “Stuffy?” Gloria Wealdon looked at her hard. “That’s a funny word to use about Freddy.”
    “Well, you couldn’t use it about me, could you, honey? I’m a money snob, in some ways, but money snobs are happy as long as they’re not poor, and we’ve done all right. Freddy’s different. He’s a taste snob. That’s why we never had a Cadillac. God knows I love those big chrome boats, love them! But Freddy thinks they’re in bad taste.”
    “Freddy!”
Glo said.
    “Half of our arguments are about my bad taste, honey. He thinks I fill the house up with too much senseless ornamentation. You know me! I like pretty things. I like them all done up fancy. Not Freddy!”
    “Well,
I
don’t overdress.”
    Fern smiled at her. It was the same patronizing smile Gloria could remember from scores of