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congregated there, the police and the highway crew, the out-of-season fishermen and the momentarily bankrupt businessmen. "Don't seem to have any oranges either," she said, tugging at the two produce drawers of sticky green metal. "I did buy some peaches at that roadside stand over on 4."
    "Do I dare to cat a peach?" Jane quoted. "I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach." Sukie winced, watching the other woman's agitated hands—one tendony and long, from fingering the strings, and the other squarish and slack, from holding the bow—dig with a rusty dull carrot grater into the blushing cheek, the rosiest part, of the yellow pulpy peach. Jane dropped the rosy sliver in; a sacred hush, the spell of any recipe, amplified the tiny plip. "I can't start drinking utterly raw gin this early in life," Jane announced with puritanical satisfaction, looking nevertheless haggard and impatient. She moved toward the den with that rapid stiff walk of hers.
    Alexandra guiltily reached over and snapped off the TV, where the President, a lugubrious gray-jawed man with pained dishonest eyes, had been making an announcement of great importance to the nation.
    "Hi there, you gorgeous creature," Jane called, a bit loudly in this small slant space. "Don't g et up, I can see you're all settl ed. Tell me, though—was that thunderstorm the other day yours?"
    The peach skin in the inverted cone of her drink looked like a bit of brightly diseased flesh preserved in alcohol.
    "I went to the beach," Alexandra confessed, "after talking to you. I wanted to see if this man was in the Lenox place yet."
    "I thought I'd upset you, poor chicken," said Jane. "And was he?"
    "There was smoke from the chimney. I didn't drive up."
    "You should have driven up and said you were from the Wetlands Commission," Sukie told her. "The noise around town is that he wants to build a dock and fill in enough on the back of the island there to have a tennis court."
    "That'll never get by," Alexandra told Sukie lazily. "That's where the snowy egrets nest."
    "Don't be too sure" was the answer. "That property hasn't paid any taxes to the town for ten years. For somebody who'll put it back on the rolls the selectmen can evict a lot of egrets."
    "Oh, isn't this cozy!" Jane exclaimed, rather desperately, feeling ignored. Their four eyes upon her then, she had to improvise. "Greta came into the church," she said, "right after he called my Haydn prissy, and laughed."
    Sukie did a German laugh: "Ho ho ho."
    "Do they still fuck, I wonder?" asked Alexandra idly, amid this ease with her friends letting her mind wander and gather images from nature. "How could he stand it? It must be like excited sauerkraut."
    "No," Jane said Firmly. "It's like—what's that pal e white stuff they like so?—saue rbraten."
    "They marinate it," Alexandra said. "In vinegar, with garlic, onions, and bay leaves. And I think peppercorns."
    "Is that what he tells you?" Sukie asked Jane mischievously.
    "We never talk about it, even at our most intimate," Jane prissily said. "All he ever confided on the subject was that she had to have it once a week or she began to throw things."
    "A poltergeist," Sukie said, delighted. "A polter-frau."
    "Really," Jane said, not seeing the humor of it, "you're right. She is an impossibly awful woman. So pedantic; so smug; such a Nazi. Ray's the only one who doesn't see it, poor soul."
    "I wonder how much she guesses," Alexandra mused.
    "She doesn't want to guess," Jane said, pressing home the assertion so the last word hissed. "If she guessed she might have to do something about it."
    "Like turn him loose," Sukie supplied.
    "Then we'd all have to cope with him," Alexandra said, envisioning this plump dank man as a tornado, a voracious natural reservoir, of desire. Desire did come in containers out of all proportion.
    "Hang on, Greta!" Jane chimed in, seeing the humor at last.
    All three cackled.
    The side door solemnly slammed, and footsteps slowly marched