Fury on Sunday Read Free Page B

an instinct for love and protection in a needful time. But then she knew she’d felt this way before she’d become pregnant too; pregnancy had only made it worse. Or better.
    She was afraid that sometimes it was too obvious. She dreaded making a pest of herself; men never loved that kind of clinging woman, she was sure. And yet there wasn’t a single detail of him that didn’t fascinate her. She watched him dress, admiring his tall, muscular body, paying minute attention to each motion he made. Each morning she did that until he was dressed. Then she would rush into the kitchen and make breakfast.
    She liked to watch him eat, enjoying the relish he gave each meal. She liked to watch him when he worked sometimes after office hours, bringing his briefcase full of papers to set out on the card table. She even liked to watch him shave; that’s how bad it was. Watching him do everything gave her the feeling of absorbing him completely, every detail of him. It gave her a strange yet certain feeling of safety; as if she belonged to him and was protected from all bad things.
    She sighed and pressed against him.
    “Now what are we going to call him?” Bob asked.
    “Who?” she asked.
    “Our son.”
    “Mary?” she suggested.
    “Not tough enough,” he said, “What about George?”
    She shook her head. “Uh-uh.”
    “Max?”
    “Nope.”
    “Sam, Tom, Bill, Phil, Jim, Len, Vince—oops, sorry, slip of the tongue.”
    She didn’t smile.
    “Wonder where he is,” Bob said.
    “I don’t know,” she said.
    She felt the other feeling now; the one that came whenever something was discussed that seemed to mar their happiness. It was silly to feel that way, she knew, as if she wanted to wear blinders or be like that sundial. What was the statement that went with it?
I record only the sunny hours
. Well, that was really silly. There was a lot of night in the world too.
    But, at least, you didn’t have to think and ponder about things that were all over with. There was only one person who could let her past with Vince hurt them and that was her. She mustn’t dwell on the past, as Bob said.
    “God, I’ll never forget that afternoon up in the agency,” he said, “It was—crazy.”
    “Don’t,” she said.
    “All right.” He smiled and kissed her cheek.
    They sat listening to music some more. He tried to forget it but the memory of that scene stayed with him. Sometimes he would jolt up from the bed in the middle of the night, reliving it. The thunder storm, working alone in his office after a bad afternoon, and then, to top it all off…
    He shook it off.
    “Are we going to that party next Friday night at Stan’s?” he asked.
    “It’s up to you, honey,” she said.
    “Well, there’s no use lying; I don’t particularly want to go. Stan’s all right, but Jane gives me the creeps. I get the feeling she’s going to explode sometime right in my face; a million pieces of Jane Sheldon flying all over the apartment.”
    “I get the same feeling,” she said. “At college, Jane used to throw herself around so much I wondered how she’d ever graduate.”
    “Did she?”
    “In the top ten per cent of the class.”
    “My God. Wouldn’t you know it.”
    He looked down at her and smiled as he stroked her soft hair. He shook his head slightly without her seeing it. How in hell she and Jane ever managed to stand each other’s company for three years at college, he’d never know. They were so utterly different. Jane was a hand grenade with the pin out. Ruth was…
    No, you couldn’t pin a pat little metaphor on Ruth; she was too atypical.
    Jane you could characterize. You could put her down in words. She was more like a taut spring than a woman, made of sharp lines and angles with no contour that was smooth or soft; stiff, high breasts, hips and buttocks flat and hard, and legs like taut pistons driving her on.
    That was a woman, maybe, but not the kind of woman he wanted. It wasn’t that he’d been brought up so