Neither Five Nor Three (Helen Macinnes) Read Free Page A

she lifted the telephone. She was hoping it wouldn’t be Peggy, her sister, calling to say that she and Jon couldn’t come to the party because the baby was sick or they couldn’t get a sitter. But it was Scott’s voice that answered her. “Hello, darling,” he began. And she forgot all her worries, public and private.
    * * *
    Scott Ettley had been wakened at five o’clock, too. His apartment, only a few blocks away from Rona’s, lay almost underneath the incoming plane. He listened for engine trouble, and then—reassured that he wasn’t going to be killed in his bed with the biggest hangover he had had in weeks—he cursed the pilot as heartily as his splitting head would let him. He made out the time with some difficulty on his watch. Oh, God!... He stared angrily at the darkened room, at the litter of living—the scattered clothes, the misplaced books, the tailored cover of the divan which he had ripped off last night, no, it was this morning, and left lying beside his shirt on the floor. He pushed an overflowing ashtray farther away from his nose, and then pulled the sheet over his head as if to blot out all the joys of a bachelor apartment.
    Waking is always hell, he thought. Or I’m getting old. Twenty-nine. I can’t take night club air and the great indoor spaces any more. Twenty-nine, and already giving up the simple pleasures of the poor. Forty bucks, that was what simple pleasures cost nowadays. Forty little bucks. But Rona had enjoyed it. Made up to her for the quarrel last week. My fault, of course. She never says it, but she might as well. I know it was all my damned fault. And why am I admitting it now, anyway? Just to add the final touch of joy on a lousy morning at five o’clock and sleep all gone and this head spinning like an empty boat in a whirlpool? He groaned in pity, and lay with his eyes closed. Because he was so sure that sleep had gone, it came drifting back.
    When the alarm went off, it was ten minutes to eight. He felt slightly better. But waking, he told himself again, was always hell. Slowly, he sat up. He stayed sitting on the edge of his bed, looking down at his crumpled pyjama legs. Then he groped for his slippers, couldn’t find them, and padded into the bathroom on his bare feet. His reflection in the mirror made him feel worse, but a cold shower pulled him half-back into life. He remembered then that he must call Rona.
    “Hello, darling,” he began, and listening to her voice he began thinking of her as she had been last night. “Hello, beautiful... did you enjoy it?... Did I? It was the best evening we’ve had in a long time. Let’s have some more. To hell with the cost, Rona. Are we living, or are we living?” He listened to her laugh, and wished he could manage one like that at this hour. “Honey,” he said, “by the way—I can’t meet you for lunch today. Sorry, got to go out of town... No, I’ll be back in time for the party. Don’t worry. Sorry about lunch, though... I meant to tell you last night, but I was enjoying myself too much, I guess. Forgive me, darling?”
    He replaced the receiver. He was smiling now. Rona was pretty wonderful. In spite of Orpen’s sneers about mantraps, Rona was wonderful. But the smile left Scott Ettley’s face as he thought of Nicholas Orpen, of Rona, of his father, of all the complications in his life. All that was enough to drive him back into gloom, away from the moment of pleasure when he had listened to Rona’s laugh over the telephone. Orpen was wrong about Rona. Rona was understanding, Rona was pliable. It was the only way to be happily married—to take the girl you wanted when she was still impressionable and mould her into someone who would be yours forever. Orpen was right about most things, but he was wrong about Rona.
    Ettley shaved and dressed with care, choosing a dark grey flannel suit, a fresh white shirt, a navy silk tie. Conservative, he told himself with a grin. He left the apartment before nine,