The Black Marble Read Free Page B

sweetly: “Madeline, go easy, we’re playing doubles later and may need you as a fourth.”
    Madeline tried a sassy, nose-wrinkling grin. She stuck out her tongue at Edna, but given the pain and the fear and the Chivas Regal flush in her face, it didn’t come off.
    â€œPut your tongue in, dear,” Edna purred. “You look like the victim of a hanging.”
    The second set was as dilatory as the first. Most of the spectators were of course U.S.C. rooters. Old Pasadena, if the money was still intact, seldom attended state-supported institutions like U.C.L.A. It was impossible to concentrate. She imagined Edna’s vindictive gaze on her back.
    Madeline was in tennis whites and hated it. She was considering trying tennis pants, but was fearful that the club would disapprove if she played in anything but a skirt. Actually she didn’t want to play at all anymore. She had always hated the game, but without some exercise she’d probably look like a medicine ball. (Why the continual weight gain, Doctor? I don’t drink that much. I haven’t eaten a really full meal since my husband left me, I swear!)
    Mason Whitfield. Stanford, class of ’48. Infantry officer in Korea. Decorated for typing a report in a tent near Seoul in freezing weather after the company clerk was evacuated with the clap. He had typed for six hours without gloves and was frostbitten. Mason returned to Pasadena wearing a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart.
    Like his father before him, Mason had gone to Harvard for his LL.B. and joined a law firm in downtown Los Angeles. One of those giant firms where the lawyers in Probate don’t even know the guys in Corporate. He managed to work ten years without ever setting foot in a courtroom. He made big bucks. He was a near-perfect, Old Pasadena scion. He and Madeline prospered. But they didn’t multiply. He had a flaw or two.
    Madeline felt Edna’s eyes on her back, and self-consciously tucked a roll of cellulite under the tennis panty which was cutting into her flesh. Madeline just knew Edna was still telling the Filthy Story about Mason Whitfield, when he made a boozy revelation to the barman at the Hunt Club: “Wanna know why I left my wife? Zero sex appeal, that’s why. And I just came back from a wonderful holiday in Aca-pulco. Wanna know what I like best about my secretary? The moustache doesn’t scratch my balls as much as Madeline’s did.”
    The secretary’s name was Herbert.
    Madeline was sure it was a rotten lie, because within a year Mason fired Herbert and married a San Marino widow without a moustache.
    â€œMrs. Whitfield? You probably don’t remember me? We met at dinner? At the Cal Tech Atheneum?”
    Madeline looked up, blankly. She was feeling the Chivas Regal more than usual.
    â€œRemember? I was with Dr. Harry Gray?”
    He was a balding little man in a lumpy warm-up suit and dirty canvas Tretorns. He made every statement a question.
    â€œOh, yes,” Madeline lied, “of course, you’re …”
    â€œIrwin Berg? Remember?”
    â€œOh, yes, Dr. Berg! Of course!”
    Now she knew him. She had enjoyed talking with him at a Cal Tech dinner party to raise funds for foreign students. He was said to be an extraordinary astrophysicist and a candidate for Big Casino: a hot prospect for a Nobel Prize.
    â€œMay I buy you a drink?” His round, steel-rimmed eyeglasses were fogging and slipping over his perspiring nose.
    â€œI’d love a drink,” Madeline said. She was settling down, the last Scotch working nicely now. She leaned closer and whispered, “The barman probably couldn’t make change for you anyway. Since I’m a member and you’re a guest, I’ll buy.”
    Then Madeline took the little scientist by the arm and walked him into the Hunt Room, where Edna Lofton was ordering a Virgin Mary, her muscular lacy bottom pressed against the mahogany.
    Edna was laughing