A Fine and Private Place Read Free Page A

suocero . I bleed with you. But what do they say? You won’t be losing a daughter, you’ll be winning a son-in-law.”
    â€œSo true,” the tall man murmured. “Well, Nino. I can only say I’ll do my damnedest. Oh, yes. About those proofs …”
    â€œWhat about them?”
    â€œNothing, nothing.”
    â€œI keep my bargains,” Importuna said. “Do you doubt my word?”
    â€œCertainly not—”
    â€œAnd you may keep your controllership and the vice-presidency. You pull this off and I may even raise your salary, give you stock. But I warn you, Mr. Big Shot.”
    â€œAbout what, Nino?”
    â€œNo more borrowings from Superba Foods, Ultima Mining, the others. Little borrowings that add up so fast to so much. Capito ?”
    â€œOf course. Naturally.”
    â€œAnd no more magic tricks with the books. Hartz will be checking you.”
    â€œNino, I give you my word—”
    â€œAnd don’t offer Hartz a cut of your thievings to give me false reports—there will be someone you don’t know double-checking him . Not that I give nine damns in hell whether you rot in jail or not, caro . But how would it look for the wife of Nino Importuna? Her own father. Excuse me.” He picked up one of the battery of telephones on the Florentine table, the one that was discreetly buzzing. “Yes, Peter.”
    â€œMr. E just got in from Australia,” a man’s voice said.
    â€œMr. E? He’s here? In the apartment?”
    â€œWaiting.”
    â€œGood, Peter! I want to see him right away.”
    Importuna hung up and waved his right hand to his visitor in dismissal. He appeared no more self-conscious about the hand in waving it a few feet from the tall man than when he had kept it in sight on his chin during their long conversation. The hand possessed only four fingers; where the index and middle fingers should have been there was a single finger of double thickness, a sort of digital Siamese twin.
    It was curiously flexible.
    â€œ Ciao, suocero ,” the nine-fingered multimillionaire said gently.

CONCEPTION
    Under normal conditions the ovum lies in the uterus for about 24 hours, waiting .
    If fertilization takes place, then, instead of passing through the uterus into the world of waste, the organism — now a zygote — attaches itself to the uterus wall and sets about its built-in program of growth .

From the Diary of Virginia Whyte Importuna
    DECEMBER 9, 1966
    I wonder why I keep adding to this, oh, construction . This higgledy-piggledy, slam-bang architecture of feelings … hopes, disappointments, terrors, joys, the lot. Is it because of the joys? The few I have? And the almost addictive need to express them? Then why do I keep dwelling on the bad scenes? Sometimes I think this isn’t worth the risk. If N. were ever to find you, Diary … Well, what could he do? After all!
    Plenty.
    He would, too. And not just to daddy.
    Let’s face it, Virginia. He’s got you by the lady parts.
    I feel … Today was the Bitch of Time. A bad one, yea, verily. It began on that marvelous self-generating morning note of hope, rising, raising the flesh really in a gorgeous thrill of beauty digging deep and a sense of much more under that , like Sutherland at the Met when she’s in top voice … Oh, stop drooling along like some ninny teen-ager rolling around in her first crush. At the age of twenty-five! And allegedly married.
    The fact is I was on the upsurge, wanting, wanting to be alone with P., not daring even to look at him with that monstrous kipper of a Crump around watching with those fried eyes of his while that prissy mouth shapes those luscious “Madams” that sound as if he’s tasting me.
    And old Editta with her red and squishy nose. I swear it twitched this morning when P. and I happened to nearly collide in the hall outside my dressing room. Or is that the hem of my guilt showing? To be