“Me?” Larry grinned. “I don’t know.”

The heater had begun to throw its warmth into the car. Both men had unbuttoned their overcoats and lighted cigarettes. They both seemed completely relaxed, like two old friends driving home after a day’s hunting. Larry with his knees propped up against the dashboard, Altar slumped idly behind the wheel. Oddly, they were not old friends. Nor was either sure they were new friends. Yet, with the heater spreading its warmth around them, with the barren gray countryside blurring past outside, there was a mood of relaxed friendliness in the automobile. And each man recognized the mood and allowed it to claim him completely.

“Every man has to want something,” Altar said.

“I guess I want too much.”

“What’s that, Larry?”

“I want to be happy.”

“Ahhh,” Altar said.

“Don’t you?”

“Sure.”

“So. That’s all. Just to be happy.”

“How do you just ‘be happy’?”

“I’m not sure I know.”

They fell silent. The automobile hummed through the countryside. A boy rode past on a bicycle and waved at the car. Altar waved back.

“Have... have you ever—” Larry cut himself off.

“Ever what?”

“Ever been in love?” he said, turning to face Altar.

“It depends on what you mean by love.”

“You know what I mean by love.”

“If you mean have I ever known a woman who was beautiful and passionate, yes.”

“Well, more than that. I meant...”

“If you mean have I ever known a woman who was knowledgeable but ignorant, yielding but obstinate, sensible but illogical...”

“Yes, something like that.”

“If you mean have I wanted her despite her shortcomings, or because of them; if you mean, Larry, has a woman ever made me forget myself and yet become myself...”

“Yes,” Larry said, “yes.”

“Then, no. I’ve never been in love.” He paused. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t building to a climactic letdown. I’d like to feel that way about some woman, but I don’t. Do you?” He touched Larry’s arm quickly. “Never mind, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”

Larry hesitated. Then he said, “Jesus, Altar, I’m all mixed up. I feel like a dozen phony people. Do you ever feel that way?”

“Sometimes.”

“I’ve got a closetful of manufacturer’s labels. Architect, Husband, Father, Son, Striver, Brooder, Man! I sew the labels into my clothes, but the suits never fit me. Underneath all the crap, there’s me! And I’m never really me, never the Larry Cole I want to be until I’m with—” He cut himself off, suddenly wary.

“Sure,” Altar said, “and then you fly, don’t you? Then you’re bigger and stronger and handsomer and wittier, aren’t you? Then you can ride your goddamn white charger against the black knight! Then you can storm the enemy bastions!”

“Are you playing with me, Altar?”

“I never kid a man who’s serious,” Altar said. “I thought you knew me better than that.”

“I guess it’s... I don’t know what’s real or true any more. What happens when values shift, Altar? What happens when all your life you’ve believed in honor and trust and decency and all at once they’ve become labels, too? How can you tell right from wrong if wrong suddenly seems right? What do you do, Altar?”

“I don’t know,” Altar said. He paused. “Is this why the house seems unimportant to you now?”

Larry did not answer.

“Whatever you do, don’t lose your head,” Altar advised. “You didn’t invent infidelity.”

Again Larry did not answer.

Altar sighed and turned on the radio.

In his apartment that night, he took the box containing the manuscript from his desk.

THE FALL OF A STONE by Roger Altar

The title pleased him. He had typed it, together with his byline, on a small slip of paper which he’d then Scotch-taped to the lid of the box. Fondly, he lifted the lid now. Then he sat down with the manuscript in his lap. A bottle of Scotch and a box of cigars were on the coffee table before the couch. He propped up his feet on the table and began reading the book from the beginning.

He liked to read his own work. He was, he supposed, his own favorite author. When reading himself, there was always total communication. The perfect author’s foil, he wept when he was supposed to weep, reacted indignantly when he was supposed to, laughed at funny lines, reeled back in shock at surprise chapter endings. It was wonderful to be so understood and so understanding. He made several corrections as he went along, but these were mostly the corrections of typos. He considered himself a craftsman, and he would not have typed “The End” onto the last page had his major revisions not already been completed. The corrections he made now lessened in no degree the pleasure he experienced as he read.

When he finished the book at eleven-thirty that night, he tenderly placed it back into the empty typewriter-paper box and then put the lid on it again. He felt intense relief and immense gratification, but he also felt a little empty. Tomorrow he would deliver the novel to his agent. Tonight he felt a little empty. He would continue to feel that way until the approval came: approval from his agent, and then his publisher, and then the others, all the others.

He sat in the quiet apartment for perhaps ten minutes. He sipped at his Scotch, and he puffed at his cigar, and he wondered what to do next.

Then he went to the telephone and called a girl.

17

The next name on Eve’s list was Betty Anders.

She didn’t know Felix Anders very well, and her conversational acquaintance with Betty was hardly the stuff of which lifelong friendships are made. But she figured that every good party needed an extrovert, an uninhibited male or female who would supply the spark of revelry, and Betty Anders was perhaps the most uninhibited female she knew. Or, at any rate, the loudest.

Of course, Felix had once asked Larry to work out a landscape plan for him — a task Larry had never even started — and she wondered if Felix’s presence would make him uncomfortable. She decided it would not, and dialed Betty’s number.

“Hello?” the booming voice asked.

“Betty?”

“Yes, who’s this?”

“Eve Cole.”

“Hello. Just a second, Eve.”

Eve heard the telephone clatter to a hard surface, and then she heard Betty shouting something, and then shouting something else, and then she heard someone crying and then the phone was picked up again.

“That little bastard,” Betty said. “He can’t let his sister play in peace. How are you, Eve?”

“Fine. And you?”

“Exhausted. With Felix after me at night, and his monsters after me all day long, I think I’ll wind up in a nut house.”

Eve laughed in delighted phoniness and said, “Why don’t you come over to our place next Saturday night and let your hair down? We’re having a little party.”

“I can use a party,” Betty said. “February depresses the hell out of me. I can use a good stiff drunk.”

“We’ll have a lot of good stiff drunks here,” Eve said.

“You’re a bigger slob than I am,” Betty answered, chuckling.

“What?” Eve said, puzzled for a moment. “Oh. Oh, I didn’t—”

“Let me look at the calendar, Eve. Which Saturday is that?”

“The ninth. Next week.”

“I’ll ask Felix. He doesn’t like to leave the kids with a sitter. If his mother’ll come out, we’ll be there. Can I call you tomorrow?”

“Sure. If I’m not here, just give the message to Larry.”

“Fine. How can you stand living with a man who’s home all the time?”

“Well, you get used to it.”

“If Felix were home, I’d be flat on my back all day long. That man—”

“I hope you can make it, Betty,” Eve interrupted.

“I’ll try my damnedest. I wasn’t kidding about getting fried.”

“You’ll have all the ingredients.”

“It only takes three and I’m flying.”

“All right, call me, will you?”

“First thing tomorrow. I’d better hang up. That bastard is after her again.” There was a sudden click on the line. Eve hung up, smiling to herself.

Actually, she was very pleased with the way the party was taking shape. The idea had come to her impulsively. With Larry in the city for the afternoon, she had made out her list and then begun her calls, more and more excited by the idea. There was, after all, nothing more depressing than a winter in Pinecrest Manor and a party would do a lot toward dispelling the gloom.

Never did the development seem more like a giant apartment house than in the winter time. Then, the individual homes became cubicles in a brick and concrete structure, cubicles separated by thirty feet of browning grass. Wrapped in seeming seclusion, they defied sameness, turned in upon themselves while belching smoke from their identical chimneys. We are alone, the houses seemed to say. We are a brave family unit facing the winter, and we like it this way. But spring gave the lie to the declaration. In the spring, Pinecrest Manor anxiously burst outdoors, where it pursued the favorite sport of all developments: invasion of privacy.

The winter gloom, then, provided Eve with the good reason for her party. The real reason was another thing again.

She would not admit the real reason even to herself. She knew only that Larry was behaving strangely, that something was crumbling the solidity of their marriage. And so, intuitively, she was utilizing the magnetic pull of a man’s home, planning a party with the man and his home as its nucleus. She honestly did not know what the party would accomplish. She hoped only to surround Larry with people he liked in a setting which was familiar and comfortable. She hoped only to remind her husband of what they shared together.