The Blunderer Read Free Page A

waiter had asked them the other evening to put the dog on a leash.
    â€œThe dog is all right,” Clara said, anticipating him.
    Walter sampled the wine and nodded to the waiter that it was satisfactory. He waited until Clara had her glass, then lifted his. “Here’s to a happy rest of the summer and the Oyster Bay sale,” he said, and noticed that her brown eyes brightened at the mention of the Oyster Bay sale. When Clara had drunk some of her wine, he said, “What do you say if we set a date for that party?”
    â€œWhat party?”
    â€œThe party we talked about before we left Benedict. You said towards the end of August.”
    â€œAll right,” Clara said in a small, unwilling voice, as if she had been bested in a fair contest and had to forfeit a right, much as she disliked it. “Perhaps Saturday the twenty-eighth.”
    They began to make up the guest list. It was not a party for any particular reason, except that they had not given a real party since the New Year’s Day buffet, and they had been to about a dozen since. Their friends around Benedict gave a great many parties, and though Clara and Walter were not always invited, they were invited often enough not to feel left out. They must have the Iretons, of course, the McClintocks, the Jensens, the Philpotts, Jon Carr, and Chad Overton.
    â€œChad?” Clara asked.
    â€œYes. Why not? I think we owe him something, don’t you?”
    â€œI think he owes us an apology, if you want my opinion!”
    Walter took a cigarette. Chad had come by the house one evening, just dropped in on the way back from Montauk, and somehow—Walter didn’t even know how—had taken on enough martinis to pass out on their sofa, or at least to fall deeply asleep. No amount of explaining that Chad had been tired from driving all day in the heat had been of any use. Chad was on the blacklist. And yet they’d stayed at Chad’s apartment several times on nights when they went to New York to see a play, when Chad, as a favor to them, had spent the night at a friend’s in order to give them his apartment.
    â€œCan’t you forget that?” Walter asked. “He’s a good friend, Clara, and an intelligent guy, too.”
    â€œI’m sure he’d pass out again, if he were in sight of a liquor bottle.”
    No use telling her he’d never known Chad to pass out before or since. No use reminding her that he actually owed his present job to Chad. Walter had worked at Adams, Adams and Branower, Counsellors at Law, as Chad’s assistant the year after he graduated from law school. Walter had quit the firm and gone to San Francisco with an idea of opening his own office, but he had met Clara and married her, and Clara had wanted him to go back to New York and keep on in corporation law, which was more profitable. Chad had recommended him more highly than he deserved to a legal advisory firm known as Cross, Martinson and Buchman. Chad was a good friend of Martinson. The firm paid Walter a senior lawyer’s salary, though Walter was only thirty. If not for Chad, Walter thought, they wouldn’t be sitting in the Lobster Pot drinking imported Riesling at that moment. Walter supposed he would have to ask Chad to lunch some time in Manhattan. Or lie to Clara and spend an evening with him. Or maybe not lie to her, just tell her. Walter drew on his cigarette.
    â€œSmoking in the middle of your meal?”
    The food had arrived. Walter put the cigarette out, with deliberate calm, in the ashtray.
    â€œDon’t you agree he owes us something? A bunch of flowers, at least?”
    â€œAll right, Clara, it’s all— right.”
    â€œBut why that horrid tone?”
    â€œBecause I like Chad, and if we keep on boycotting him the logical result is that we’ll lose him as a friend. Just as we lost the Whitneys.”
    â€œWe have not lost the Whitneys. You seem to think you’ve got to lick