“I’d better turn on the lights.”

“What for?”

“It’s... it’s getting dark in here.”

“Don’t you like to watch a storm?”

“Yes,” she said quietly.

“Then leave the lights out.”

Across the street she saw Arthur Garandi run toward his car with a newspaper over his head. He rolled up the windows and then ran back to the house.

“I like storms,” Felix said.

Eve said nothing. Their eyes met and held.

“Was it very painful?” Felix asked. “Taking off the ribbon.”

In a whisper, she said, “No.”

“Was it?” he demanded.

She raised her eyes to meet his. “No,” she said, slightly louder.

“Now take off the robe,” Felix said.

Lightning flashed into the sky, illuminating the room with its sudden electric glow. Thunder bellowed on the horizon.

“Take it off, Eve,” Felix said gently.

She did not answer. She kept staring at him. She could feel her loosened hair against her cheeks.

“Take it off, Eve,” Felix said. “You want to, and I know it.”

He took a slow step forward. She saw his hands reaching out, but she could not move to stop him. He grasped the lapels of her robe and with a swift motion pulled it open down the front. She felt cold air attack her nipples as her breasts spilled free. Felix backed away from her and studied her appraisingly. She made no motion to close the robe. She stood facing him, staring at him.

“Beautiful,” he said, and then he moved toward her again.

She brought her arm back and released it in a roundhouse swing, her open palm colliding with Felix’s cheek. The slap resounded in the dim silence of the room. Felix blinked.

“Get out,” she whispered.

Rubbing his face, Felix grinned and said, “Let’s not kid each other, Eve. I know what you want.”

“Get out,” she repeated, her voice a deadly whisper.

Felix kept grinning. “Sure, sure. But what we both know is that in about two minutes we’ll be in that other room.”

“Take your filthy eyes off me,” she said, and she pulled the robe shut. She belted the terry cloth and stood facing him, her eyes slitted, her voice going on in its controlled, furious whisper. “Get out of here before I call the police.”

“Now look, Eve,” Felix said, still grinning.

“Get out!”

“Come on, come on,” he said, stepping toward her.

“Oh, you filthy rotten bastard,” she said, and tears welled into her eyes, and in a moment of sudden recognition, Felix realized he’d miscalculated. He realized he’d committed a serious blunder. “Get out! Get out!” she said, and this time she hurled the words, and he could see she was beginning to tremble, and he was afraid she would scream in the next minute. He turned and went to the door. He did not say goodbye. Silently, he walked out into the rain.

Eve stood in the center of the room trembling. She did not want to cry, but she could not stop the tears. She cried into her open hand, and she said to no one, “Oh, the rotten filthy bastard,” crying uncontrollably while the lightning flashed across the sky outside.

It was still raining when Larry got home not ten minutes later. The living room was dark. Eve, in her robe, was still sobbing on the couch.

“What is it?” he said, rushing to her. “Eve, what’s the matter?”

She told him what had happened. He held her in his arms, trying to still her trembling, a wild, unreasoning anger mounting inside him.

“I’ll be back,” he said, and he went out into the rain to look for Felix.

The rain was hard and driving.

He wore no hat. He walked into the rain, and he could feel the water on his face and in his eyes, could feel his clothes going limp and sodden. He thought, I asked for this. I brought this to Eve. His feet were wet, his shoes squishing water as he walked toward Felix’s house, his fists clenched. The rain was cold, and he could feel the beginning of a chill. He went directly to the front door and rang the bell. Betty answered it.

“Larry!” she said, her eyes sweeping his body. “What is it?”

“Where’s your husband?”

“Up at the bar. He came back for the car a minute ago. He stopped by for you but you weren’t—”

“Thanks,” Larry said. He turned and walked down the steps. He glanced only briefly at the Gault house across the street. He thought of what he was about to do, and he thought, Felix can destroy me. I never should have trusted him, but he knew he had to find Felix and let him know that Eve was his wife, Mrs. Lawrence Cole, and that nobody went into his home and molested his wife. He did not see anything ironic or comic about the situation. He kept walking toward the center, and thoughts fitted through his mind, to be immediately rejected. The only thought which seemed to stick was the thought of Felix attacking Eve.

He saw the Oldsmobile parked outside the bar, the lone car in the rain-swept lot. He opened the door of the bar, walked in, and stood dripping just inside the entrance. The bartender looked up at him. There was a cautious uneasiness to the bartender’s casual glance, as if he were steeling himself for a holdup. A glass of beer rested on the bar at the far end of the room. A telephone booth was pasted against the rear wall, alongside the men’s room. Larry began walking toward the booth.

“You want something, Mac?” the bartender asked.

Larry didn’t answer. He pushed open the door of the booth.

“... well, you’ve got to realize it’s not as easy as...” Felix was saying. He stopped talking when the door opened. He turned and looked up at Larry. “Just a second,” he said into the mouthpiece, and then covered it with his palm. “I’m on the phone, Larry.”

“Hang up.”

“What for?”

“Eve told me what happened,” Larry said tightly.

“Forget it,” Felix said. “I misjudged her. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry isn’t enough, Felix.”

“No?” Felix grinned. “I’d hate to have to tell Don Gault all about you and his—”

Larry reached into the booth, seizing the front of Felix’s shirt. He brought back his fist and then threw it at Felix’s mouth. Felix dropped the receiver. A thin line of blood trickled from the corner of his lips. Larry reached for him again, hitting him with his right fist, releasing his shirt and hitting him with his left fist, and then the right again, and then battering his face and his body with methodical precision, administering a coldly objective beating as Felix scrambled to escape the driving punches.

At last Larry shoved him into the booth, and Felix slumped against the rear wall, blinking, his lip bleeding, his right cheek streaming blood.

“Keep away from Eve,” Larry said.

He turned and started out of the bar. The bartender asked, “That guy do something?”

“Yes,” Larry answered, and the bartender nodded knowingly.

29

There were, by the next day, six people who knew that Felix had received a punitive beating.

Of the six who knew, the bartender was least concerned. A beating had been administered in his place of business. So what the hell? It was a quieter fight than most which took place in his bar. It could hardly be termed a fight at all, for that matter. He had led Felix to the men’s room, where he’d washed the blood from his face, and then Felix had gone home. By the next day the bartender had forgotten the fight completely.

It was not as easy for Felix to forget the beating.

To begin with, whereas the cut inside his mouth did not show, he had to explain the gashed cheek when he got home to Betty that night. He told her that some crazy bastard had hurled a beer bottle across the room and that the bottle had accidentally hit him. The man was obviously drunk and had been suddenly possessed of an urge to fling the bottle, not aiming at Felix and certainly not intending to hit him. As a matter of fact, Felix added tolerantly, the man had apologized profusely, when the incident was over, and had offered to take Felix to a doctor, which medical aid Felix had heroically refused.

Betty was properly sympathetic and properly indignant. She could not understand why a man drank in a bar — wasn’t his home a good enough place for drinking? But if he had to go to a bar, why did he choose a place where drunks threw around beer bottles? Fussily maternal, she had made him a purifying ice-cream soda with vanilla ice cream and Coca-Cola, and then they’d gone to bed. Felix lay awake half the night, thinking. By morning he had formulated an attitude and a course of action.

He admitted reluctantly that he had been wrong about Eve. It wasn’t that she couldn’t be had; there wasn’t a woman alive who couldn’t be had. It was simply that she couldn’t be had right now. His timing had been off, that was all. Nonetheless, he put Eve Cole out of his mind as a possible acquisition. He had violated one of his own tenets — “Never spit where you eat!” — when he’d approached her. The experience had been unsatisfactory and served to strengthen his own sound judgment regarding neighborhood philandering. Eve Cole, as far as Felix was concerned, was finished business.

On the other hand, Larry Cole stuck in his craw.

Felix had taken the beating, but even while the fists were pummeling him into the booth he’d been thinking, You won’t get away with this! He had lain awake the night before plotting his revenge. By morning, he realized that revenge, for the time being anyway, was impossible. Not only impossible but unthinkable. It annoyed him that instant reprisal was to be denied him. Larry Cole had behaved like an absolute ass. A man who was playing around had no right to get offended when a pass was made at his wife. Didn’t Larry know the elementary rules of the game? Immediate revenge against this rebel would have been delightful — but for now revenge was impossible.