After lunch, Judd would return to his typewriter.
Stevie napped or read in the afternoons.
She studiously avoided thinking about her illness or what she was going to do about it. That was the purpose behind this respite from her normal schedule, but she couldn't bring herself to dwell on it.
At dusk they drove to the public school campus and played low impact tennis, wearing inexpensive shorts they'd bought in the only dry-goods store in town, where they had also purchased other clothing. Her new wardrobe had little merit beyond keeping her decently cov ered, but she had had more fun shopping for it with Judd than she ever remembered having on a buying spree.
They took drives through the countryside in the cool of the evening, or sat together in the bench swing beneath the pecan tree, or played cards on the porch. Judd cheated unconscionably and sulked when he didn't win, blaming his losses on everything from the weak porch light to the racket made by the cicadas in the trees.
One evening he had disgustedly tossed down a losing hand and said, "Let's play strip poker and the winner has to take off all her clothes."
Gloating, Stevie had raked in her mountain of match sticks. "Such a sore loser."
"That's a game I wouldn't mind losing."
His back was propped against one of the posts supporting the roof over the porch. He was lazily wagging his knee back and forth. Even in the faint glow of the porch light, Stevie could see the intensity of his gaze and sensed that he was no longer teasing.
With clumsy hands, she quickly reshuffled the deck and dealt a new hand. "Maybe if you try playing fair instead of cheating, you'll win this hand."
She didn't acknowledge either his suggestion or the fire in his eyes. Doing so could prove dangerous.
She had been dancing close to the flame since agreeing to stay alone with him. So far, she had been singed, not burned. She wanted to keep it that way. There were undercurrents between her and Judd that she couldn't cope with. It was easier to pretend they didn't exist.
One afternoon they bought an edition of the Tribune at the grocery store. Stevie was crushed when she read the sports page. One of her rivals had won the Lobo Blanco tournament. "They're saying she might replace me as the top-seeded player," she told Judd glumly.
"Ready to go back and face the music?"
She raised her head and stared into his eyes for a moment, seeing in them the same reluctance she felt toward his suggestion. "No. Not yet."
"Me, either." Unable to mask his relief, he playfully jerked the newspaper out of her hands.
After a moment of reading, he said, "Look, here's a letter to the editor from a reader asking about me."
"How does the management respond?"
"That I'm taking a 'few weeks off.'"
'They don't come right out and say that you're fired," she said, reading over his shoulder.
"That must mean they want you back.
Should you call them?"
"No way." He refolded the paper and tossed it aside. "Let Ramsey sweat."
The next morning, the postman delivered a letter to Stevie as she was working in the flower bed. It was addressed to Judd. Wiping her hands on the seat of her shorts, she went inside.
"I hate to disturb you, but a letter just came."
She entered the dining room. Judd, she noticed, not for the first time, typed with his index fingers only.
He finished his sentence, then rolled the paper out of the machine and laid it face down on the card table. He had refused to discuss his plot, characters or anything else about his book with her. He never gave her a glimpse of what he'd written and had forbidden her to pick up the wastepaper that littered the floor every morning.
He read the letterhead and muttered scoff -ingly,
"Ramsey." Judd scanned the brief letter, crammed it into a ball and tossed it onto the floor where his other rejections were strewn.
"Well," Stevie asked impatiently, "is he sweating yet?"
"Like a pig. But he hasn't got to the begging stage."
"He has to beg?"
"Sure he has to beg. I want him to get as low as a slug and then grovel."
She laughed. "I take it that means you're not ready to go back."
"What I'm ready for," he said as he came to his feet, "is lunch." He placed his arms around her, clapped his hands on her bottom, gave the firm flesh a hard squeeze and soundly kissed her.
"Fetch my food, woman."
She slipped out of his arms, asking saucily,
"Or what?"
His eyes became drowsy and as sultry as the summer weather. "Or I'll show you what else I'm ready for."
She fetched his food.
You're awfully quiet tonight. Is something wrong?"
Stevie, who had been staring vacantly over their dinner table, blinked Judd into focus. "No, nothing. I'm sorry I'm not better company."
"You're not having any pain, are you?"
She shook her head. "Just tired I think."
"No wonder. You waxed me today on the tennis court."
She smiled, but it was a fainthearted attempt.
"You still gave me a good workout."
Watching her closely, Judd played with his spoon, turning it end over end. "It's more than fatigue, isn't it, Stevie?"
"Maybe. I don't know. I've got a lot on my mind."
'It was seeing that couple."
She looked at him sharply, then tried unsuccessfully to hide her spontaneous reaction by innocently repeating, "Couple?"
"The young couple we saw in the grocery store this afternoon. The couple with the baby."
She looked away, which was as good as a signed confession.
"Up till then we'd been having a great time,"
Judd' said. "You beat me soundly in three sets, but I lost gracefully. We were joking, wrestling over the last bite of Hershey bar, doing our grocery shopping."
"Then you caught sight of those two attractive young people wheeling their basket down the store aisle, cooing to the kid and smiling goosily at each other over the top of his curly, blond head. After that, you clammed up and have had the personality of a turnip ever since."
"I didn't know that my duties as cook extended to being a court jester, too," she said caustically. "Maybe you should have specified that."
He dropped the spoon onto the table with a clatter and held up his hands in a gesture of suri render. "Touchy, touchy. It's you I'm worried about."
"Well, don't be."
"Too late. I already am."
Stevie gauged his expression. It appeared to be sincere. She wanted, and needed, to believe that it was. With a short, self-derisive laugh, she said, I suppose you think I'm the one who's goosey."
Actually that living portrait of matrimonial bliss and domestic harmony left me a little choked up, too."
I'll bet," she said drolly.
It did. I haven't always been a surly, cynical jerk, you know. The owners of this house, my grandparents, instilled in my father some basic values. He, along with my mother, instilled a few in me."
"What happened to them?"
"They got dashed against the rocky shore of outrageous fortune."
"I hope you're not putting that in your novel. It's terrible."
"What happened to them?"
"They got dashed against the rocky shore of outrageous fortune.'
I hope you're not putting that in your novel.
His lips tilted into a half smile. "Not in those exact words, but they sort of capture the gist of the theme."
She lifted her shoulders, then let them drop as she released a heavy sigh. "Okay, as long as we're being open and honest, I'll admit that seeing that poignant little scene got to me. I was envious."