shining new cars in the large parking lot, a larger number of dusty heaps, some pickup trucks and a few huge trans-state trucks. Bard parked near a weary-looking clump of live oaks, and carefully locked the car. He straightened up and stretched stiffness out of his joints. Sharan, standing nearby, made the time-honored and infinitely feminine gesture of looking back down over each shoulder to see how badly her skirt was wrinkled. The night breeze molded the thin skirt against the long clean thigh-lines, the trim hips. He felt the stir of pleasure in looking at her, along with the knowledge of the trap. Biological trap. Nature takes clear fresh skin, and youth and a slim body, and the child-bearing ability, holds it up and says, “This is what you want.” And the pulse responds.
The acid twang of a jukebox cowhand quavered on the night air. “… She never reely tole me that she loved meeeee … ”
There were metal tables on the patio, on the stones that were still warm underfoot from the sun-heat of thelong day. He held a chair for Sharan, then went inside, walking the cramped tiredness out of his legs, muffling a yawn with the back of his hand.
Inside there were booths and dancers and girl-laughter and soft drinks held under the table edge for the quick jolt from the package store bottle. He stood at the beer bar and waited patiently, a tall tanned man with blunt bones in his face, with widow’s peak slanting sharply back into the crisp brown hair, gray-touched, with an odd look that combined both mildness and authority. He wore a rumpled khaki hunting jacket over a faded blue work shirt, open at the throat.
He carried the two frosted bottles and one glass out to the table. Sharan was making up her lips, turned in the chair so the light from the doorway struck her mirror at the right angle. She smiled up at him, capped the lipstick and dropped it back into her white purse.
“How are we running on time, Bard?”
“We can kill a half hour and still get there a good hour before the conference.”
“Want me to drive for a while?”
“No thanks. It’s better to be doing something.”
His big brown fist rested on the table top. She patted it with a quick, affectionate gesture. “Don’t let it get you down. Screening wasn’t your responsibility.”
“My responsibility is to get the job done. I couldn’t pass the buck if I wanted to.”
The light behind her haloed her cropped curls. She was indeed pleasant to look at. A face that was almost, but not quite, thin—with eagerness, mobility, sensitivity. She held her glass in both hands, like a child. Thrown together on the job, they had kept their relationship on the plane of friendship, mutual respect. There had been isolated moments—bending together over a desk, a quick glance across a crowded office, an inadvertent touch—when he had become conscious of his own awareness, and hers. But by unspoken agreement between them they always forced a return to an unemotional status. Maybe one day there would be time. Maybe one day the pressureof responsibility would be taken away, and there would be time for play.
He had wondered about her in the beginning. This new crop of young professional women no longer had any consciousness of fighting for equality. It existed. In the beginning he had accepted the idea that her amorality would be no less casual than that of the other women her age on the project. For a time he had skirted the idea of asking her to add the self-evident closer aspect to their association. But, at the time, he had decided that his duty was to maintain all his energies at the highest possible peak.
Now he was glad he had made that decision, for as he had come to know her better he realized that a casual amorality would not integrate with the rest of her character. In fact, she would probably be decidedly old-fashioned in that regard. And, had he asked her bluntly, he suspected that something in their relationship would have ceased to exist
The acid twang of a jukebox cowhand quavered on the night air. “… She never reely tole me that she loved meeeee … ”
There were metal tables on the patio, on the stones that were still warm underfoot from the sun-heat of thelong day. He held a chair for Sharan, then went inside, walking the cramped tiredness out of his legs, muffling a yawn with the back of his hand.
Inside there were booths and dancers and girl-laughter and soft drinks held under the table edge for the quick jolt from the package store bottle. He stood at the beer bar and waited patiently, a tall tanned man with blunt bones in his face, with widow’s peak slanting sharply back into the crisp brown hair, gray-touched, with an odd look that combined both mildness and authority. He wore a rumpled khaki hunting jacket over a faded blue work shirt, open at the throat.
He carried the two frosted bottles and one glass out to the table. Sharan was making up her lips, turned in the chair so the light from the doorway struck her mirror at the right angle. She smiled up at him, capped the lipstick and dropped it back into her white purse.
“How are we running on time, Bard?”
“We can kill a half hour and still get there a good hour before the conference.”
“Want me to drive for a while?”
“No thanks. It’s better to be doing something.”
His big brown fist rested on the table top. She patted it with a quick, affectionate gesture. “Don’t let it get you down. Screening wasn’t your responsibility.”
“My responsibility is to get the job done. I couldn’t pass the buck if I wanted to.”
The light behind her haloed her cropped curls. She was indeed pleasant to look at. A face that was almost, but not quite, thin—with eagerness, mobility, sensitivity. She held her glass in both hands, like a child. Thrown together on the job, they had kept their relationship on the plane of friendship, mutual respect. There had been isolated moments—bending together over a desk, a quick glance across a crowded office, an inadvertent touch—when he had become conscious of his own awareness, and hers. But by unspoken agreement between them they always forced a return to an unemotional status. Maybe one day there would be time. Maybe one day the pressureof responsibility would be taken away, and there would be time for play.
He had wondered about her in the beginning. This new crop of young professional women no longer had any consciousness of fighting for equality. It existed. In the beginning he had accepted the idea that her amorality would be no less casual than that of the other women her age on the project. For a time he had skirted the idea of asking her to add the self-evident closer aspect to their association. But, at the time, he had decided that his duty was to maintain all his energies at the highest possible peak.
Now he was glad he had made that decision, for as he had come to know her better he realized that a casual amorality would not integrate with the rest of her character. In fact, she would probably be decidedly old-fashioned in that regard. And, had he asked her bluntly, he suspected that something in their relationship would have ceased to exist