Tomorrow! Read Free Page B

begin.
    He’d reached the house, by cab from the airport, just in time for dinner. He had wanted then to phone Lenore of his arrival. But he had felt it would slight his family, his mother especially, if he immediately sought out someone else. He had hoped all during the meal (which the siren had spoiled as a family reunion anyhow) that Lenore might step across for some reason or another and find him there. Maybe the Bailey phone would be out of order—or they’d need to borrow coffee-or something. He had known the hope was preposterous. He had also reflected during the meal (while he told his mother that life in the Air Force “wasn’t bad at all” and while he had watched with incredulity the amount of food Nora consumed) that in years past he had run over to the Bailey house freely, casually, while now he felt a definite constraint.

    He still felt it as he walked along on the mowed grass between his driveway and the privet hedge, examining the Bailey house. There was a Buick parked at the curb—“a Buick,” his father often said, “trying to look like a Cadillac”—and a Ford in the back yard. That meant all three Baileys were probably at home: Beau, Netta and Lenore. But it didn’t mean Lenore had no date that evening or that Chuck, at twenty-four, could simply enter without even knocking as he’d done when he and Lenore had studied algebra together.

    He had about decided to go back in the house and phone formally when a door opened and somebody came out. At first he couldn’t tell who the person was. Not Mrs. Bailey: too tall.
    But it wasn’t Beau: no sign or his expanded waistline. It was somebody, he could see, in a kind of plastic jumper, yellow, with a hood that covered the head. The person was carrying a box with wires attached to it and a silvery gadget dangling from the wires. This figure turned toward the open door and called in a husky, pleasant voice, “Don’t wait up for me. I’ve got a date—after.”

    It was Lenore’s voice. Chuck, completely bewildered, shouted, “Hey!”

    The box with its attached gadgetry was set on the lawn. The voice now floated toward him. “Chuck! When did you get back?” Lenore ran toward him.

    Had Charles Conner been more experienced in the behavior of women, had he even been of that temperament which is given to shrewd scrutiny of others, he would have noticed the impulsiveness with which the girl started toward him. It was emphasized by the fact that she remembered the outlandishness of her costume only later, when she had skirted a neat bed of tea roses, come up to him, held out both her hands and exclaimed, “What a wonderful surprise! Why didn’t you let me know?”

    He was not such a person. He was a gentle and dreaming kind of young man, somewhat introverted, modest, in his opinion far from handsome. His head was long and narrow, his features somewhat ascetic; his hair had retreated a little way: he would soon be half-bald like his father; meantime, the effect was to make his forehead seem extraordinarily high. Lenore’s good looks invariably brought out his diffidence.

    In addition, her regalia (astounding for any woman and all but unthinkable for Lenore) put him off. She was dressed as if she were going to crawl under the Buick and fix it-a chore of which she was capable; but it was not for that, he knew. He knew it if for no other reason than that neither her mother, whose social ambitions were limitless, nor her father, who had matching financial desires, would let their daughter play mechanic in the street.

    It was only when they touched hands there in the gathering twilight, with a subconscious pulling—when they felt warmth and strength each in the other—that Chuck associated the girl’s costume and recent events. “Ye gods!” he cried, letting go of her, “a Geigerman !”

    She nodded serenely, a little impishly. “Isn’t it becoming?” She pirouetted like a model.
    “Yellow,” she went on, “is the fall color. The