— that looks better, smells better, tastes better, and is better, said a young man's voice on the radio.
— But how can you be lonely? I'm here.
the next number on our program, the Academic Festival
Overture, by Tschaikovsky.
— Arny, have you filled out the papers?
— What papers?
— The papers, what other papers. For the Red Heart Adoption Center.
— It's the Sacred Heart. Red Heart's a dog food.
— Well anyway, have you?
— Yes Maude.
— And can we go up and get it in the morning?
— We may have to wait.
— How long?
— Maude, please don't have another drink.
— A little brand-new one, Arny. It will make everything different between us again, won't it? for you? I mean for me, it will make us more like we used to be, won't it?
— Is dinner ready?
— Do you want chutney?
— Chutney?
— With the curry.
— Yes.
— Then you'll have to go out and get it. There isn't any.
— Never mind then.
— But I want chutney.
— I'll wait while you go out and get it. The walk might do you good, he added, looking up at his wife's eyes, wandering past him wed to nothing. — There's someone at the door.
— Oh Herschel, I forgot, Herschel called and you can't get him off the telephone until you make some kind of date with him, he said he'd stop in…
— Are you going to answer the door?
— Herschel!. Arny, it's Herschel, and… he has a girl with him!
Outside the door stood a young lady adjusting a garter. Her companion watched. — Anyhow, come in, said Maude. Herschel waited until the garter was taken care of, the stocking smoothed over the knee, the skirt over the thigh. Then he said:
— Baby! looking up to see Maude for the first time, and he offered both his hands. Herschel was tall, and had always been handsome. He had been the handsomest boy in his home town, and the only one in that part of Ohio to own dinner clothes. His picture, in dinner clothes, still stood in the photographer's window on Front Street where, faded and fly-specked, it continued to exact a certain prestige, for it was some years since he'd been home. — I brought along a little two-legged friend, he said. — Arny and Maude, I want you to meet.
— Adeline, the blonde supplied.
— Adeline.
— How do you do, I'm sure, said Adeline.
— Baby is your name really Adeline? I had a nurse named Adeline, a black one, big West Indian black Adeline. One day under the apple tree I bit her right square.
— Herschel!. your head is brachycephalic, Maude said from where she'd gone to pour drinks, whisky with water (she'd heard soda was bad for the stomach lining). — It's the coming shape in heads.
— Aren't you kind, baby. No one's ever told me that before.
— Maude.
— Arny, it's true. Head shapes are very important. Arny thinks I'm silly, reading books about heads, that book there. Do you see the picture it's open to? That's a good domestic. That's why I want to look at the babies first, we don't want one that will be a domestic. On the next page there's one kind of sticking out in the back, that's the Intellectual. And the kind of big square one is a Leader of Men. We're going to have a baby, she said pausing on her way to the kitchen for more water. Adeline stopped her drink halfway to her lips and looked at the other woman's figure curiously. — Tomorrow morning. Adeline looked downright insulted.
— Oh God, baby, again? Herschel sank back in his chair.
— No, this time we're really going to get there, aren't we Arny?
Tomorrow morning at nine. Oh, did you want a drink? I didn't know you wanted one, Arny.
— I shouldn't tell this, baby, but if you're shopping for a bargain.
Maude cried out from the kitchen. — Oh… a cockroach. I hate New York, no matter where you live, you have them. The people downstairs have them, they chase them up here and then I chase them back down, up and down the drain.
— Why don't you use D.D.T.?
— It's no good, it just makes them hysterical, Maude said, coming in with water. — They run around screaming.
— Cockroaches?
— Well you can't really hear them, but you can tell that's what they're doing, that's what you do when you're hysterical.
— Baby.
— Yes, tomorrow morning at nine. Have you finished that already, Arny?
— If you're not in a wild rush, Herschel said slyly, — I know someone who might help you. Someone who's going to have one. I mean really have one. Not just yet, though.
— A woman? But how does that help.?
— Because she doesn't want it, baby. Someone told me she was looking for a doctor, someone who must be nameless, and he asked me. Can you imagine me knowing such a thing?
— A doctor? I know so many doctors, what kind? Back doctors, bone doctors.
— No, a doctor to take care of it for her, one with an in-strument.
— Oh!
— Maude, you're spilling your drink.
— You know Esther, baby. well I'm not to tell but.
— I saw her on the street, Maude said. — She has such bad luck.
— She told you about it?
— About Rose?
— Oh no, everybody knows about Rose, that they've sent her sister Rose back from the tee-hee farm and Esther has to take her in. But this is something you mustn't tell, baby. This is for your tomblike little ears. She has a turkey in the oven.
— She has what?
— She's preg, baby.
— But. her husband?
— Her husband! No one ever sees him. I've never met him. I'm sure if he had ever said anything amusing I would have met him somewhere, but I understand that he lives underground. Or underwater. Some really absurd part of town. No one's ever been there.
— He used to paint, didn't he? used to paint things? — Oh who didn't, so did I, said Herschel, — the naughtiest. — No one's seen him since that boy Otto… do you remember, Otto?
— Otto? Nobody's named Otto any more, he must be an impostor. — Herschel, you've met him, silly. He used to show up everywhere with Esther before she and her husband… I mean after she and her husband.
— Oh I do remember him, Otto. He talked all the time. He was rather cute. Yes, I remember Otto, for almost a year he and Esther made half of a very pretty couple. You mustn't repeat this, but I was told that Otto and Esther's husband. — Herschel, don't.
— Baby I'm not responsible for all the queer things that go on. It was all explained as a father complex or a mother complex or something vulgar. Why, no one has secrets any more. — But Esther's husband, what.
— You mustn't tell, but he's mixed up with an international counterfeit ring, he makes gold down there, out of fingernail parings…
— Herschel, silly… Adeline looked very interested.
— But baby everyone knows it. And there's a skinny little girl he keeps there. well, there are simply terrifying stories about her. It's known she takes dope. Known simply everywhere.
At that, Maude took out a small round Battersea enamel box, with the words We Live in Hope on the cover, and took out a pill. — Arny, not another drink, tomorrow morning. — Don't you want another? — No, I have a little headache.
— Don't be put out if I ask you this, Herschel commenced, — after all we all had the same analyst.
— I wish Arny had finished, I almost finished mine, Maude said. — He reminded me of Daddy. He introduced us, did you know that? — You and Arny?
— Yes, he thought we could help each other, so he thought we should get married. I guess that's why we never finished. Analysis I mean. Arny you've almost finished that bottle of whisky. You know what happened Saturday.
— But. you can tell me, why don't you just go ahead and have a baby?