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of them sexually? It was a kind of sentimental harking back to virginity, a silly, vain fantasy that had no factual validity whatsoever. They'd be the first ones to feel affronted if their husbands neglected them in that respect. "Unfortunately, I am married," Vic said.
           "Unfortunately!" Mary scoffed. "You adore her, and I know it! You worship the ground she walks on. And she loves you, too, Vic, and don't forget it!"
           "I don't want you to think," Vic said, almost interrupting her, "that I'm so good as you put it. I have a little evil side, too. I just keep it well hidden."
           "You certainly do!" Mary said, laughing. She leaned toward him and he smelled her perfume which struck him as a combination of lilac and cinnamon. "How's your drink, Vic?"
           "This'll do for the moment, thanks."
           "You see? You're even good about drinking! What bit your hand?"
           "A bedbug."
           "A bedbug! Good lord! Where'd you get it?"
           "At the Green Mountain Hotel."
           Mary's mouth opened incredulously; then she shrieked with laughter. "What were you doing there?"
           "Oh, I put in an order weeks in advance. I said if any bedbugs turned up, I wanted them, and finally collected six. Cost me five dollars in tips. They're living in my garage now in a glass case with a piece of mattress inside for them to sleep on. Now and then I let one bite me, because I want them to go through their normal life cycle. I've got two batches of eggs now."
           "But why?" Mary demanded, giggling.
           "Because I think a certain entomologist who wrote a piece for an entomologist journal is wrong about a certain point in their reproductive cycle," Vic answered, smiling.
           "What point?" asked Mary, fascinated.
           "Oh, it's a small point about the period of incubation. I doubt if it has any value at all to anybody, though as a matter of fact insecticide manufacturers ought to—"
           "Vi-ic?" Melinda's husky voice slurred, "Do you mind?"
           Vic looked up at her with a subtly insulting astonishment, and then got up from the bench and gestured graciously toward the piano. "It's all yours."
           "You're going to play? Good!" Mary said in a delighted tone. A quintet of men was ranging itself around the piano. Melinda swooped onto the bench, a sheaf of shining hair swinging down like a curtain and concealing her face from anyone standing on her right, as Vic was. Oh, well, Vic thought, who knew her face better than he did? And he didn't want to see it anyway, because it didn't improve when she drank. Vic strolled away. The whole sofa was free now. To his distaste, he heard Melinda's wildly trilling introduction to "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue," which she played abominably. Her playing was florid, inaccurate, and one would think embarrassing, yet people listened, and after they listened they liked her neither more nor less for it. It seemed to be neither a liability nor an asset to her socially. When she floundered and gave up a song with a laugh and a childish, frustrated flutter of hands, her current admirers admired her just the same. She wasn't going to flounder on "Slaughter," however, because if she did she could always switch to the "Three Blind Mice" theme and recover herself. Vic sat down in a corner of the sofa. Everybody was around the piano except Mrs. Podnansky, Evelyn Cowan, and Horace. Melinda's swingeing attack on the main theme was evoking grunts of delight from her male listeners. Vic looked at Joel Nash's back, hunched over the piano, and closed his eyes. In a sense he closed his ears also, and thought of his bedbugs.
           Finally, there was applause which rapidly died down as Melinda began "Dancing in the Dark," one of her better numbers. Vic opened his eyes and saw Joel Nash staring at him in an absent, yet intense and rather frightened way. Vic closed his eyes again. His