“Martha Needis, the Jersey City landlady who, last Tuesday, murdered her six roomers in their beds with a steak tenderizer, is still at large.
“In Memphis, debutante Gayla Dennison was today acquitted of murdering her guardian. She wept tears of joy.
“At Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, government psychiatrists today disagreed on their diagnoses in the case of Corporal Brandt Reilly, the enlisted man who, ten days ago, turned an aircraft cannon on a company formation, killing sixteen and wounding twenty-one.
“And here is a light note in the news. Today, Pierre Brevet, French artist, is in serious danger of being lynched by irate American womanhood. He has been in this country for three days. He told reporters that he heartily approves, for French women, the new beachwear consisting of halters only, but after a visit to Jones Beach yesterday, he feels that this is one daring style this country could do without. He stated that his objections are deep-seated. Could that be a pun, Pierre?”
“You have just heard Melvin C. Lynn with the Wilkins’ Mead news. And now do you hear that? Know what it is? You — pouring your first full golden glass of Wilkins’ Mead from its handy lip-sized bottle. And tonight you have that date you’ve been waiting for. The big important date with the ‘one and only.’ Take her a bottle of Wilkins’ Mead too. And then you can be sure that the two of you will enjoy one of the most—”
Bard Lane grunted and punched at the radio button. The airdale voice was mercifully silenced. Sharan Inly said wryly, “No mead for me. But a beer would go good, if the man can arrange it.”
“Did I wake you up with that racket? Sorry.”
“You didn’t wake me up. That creamy little voice of Melvin C.’s is insidious. It crept into my dreams, licking its chops at sudden death, Bard. I listen to him and feel that we’re in an age of decay, and he is its prophet. Wonder what compulsion makes him go all oily over a nice juicy hammer murder?”
“You work all the time, don’t you, Sharan? Always the psychiatrist.”
He could feel her eyes on him. “You always shy away from psychiatry. There’s always a little bitterness in your voice when you bring it up. Why?”
“If I start telling you my attitude, it will turn into an argument. Looks like a beer spot ahead. How’s our boy?”
She knelt on the front seat and reached into the back as he began to slow for the neon flicker far ahead. She turned and plumped down into the seat with a sigh. “He’ll keep for another three hours without a booster shot. Better park where it isn’t too light, so nobody will get nosey.”
There were a few 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 the long 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 pressure of 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 in the moment she denied him.
Women who played for keeps were becoming so rare as to be refreshing.
Until the all-pervading, all-important, capital J Job was done, Sharan Inly would remain Dr. Inly, Project Assistant in Charge of Psycho-Adjustment.
“The General,” she said dolefully, “is going to be muy irritado.”
“That is an understatement. Fat blue sparks are going to crackle off his fingertips.”
She finished her glass, refilled it from the bottle. “How about that argument we’re going to have? Want to start now?”
“You want to hear someone attack your profession, Dr. Inly?”
“Sure. I’m a missionary. I’ll bring enlightenment to your poor layman mind.”
“Here goes. Ever since Freud and Jung, you people have been honing certain basic weapons. I am a layman in psychiatry. However, I am a scientist. As a scientist, I am disturbed by your acceptance of the truth of your basic assumptions. Take the case of the critter we’ve got out in the car. I’ll use a little of your gobbledegook language. He’s been screened two ways. Loyalty and, in your province, stability. You hunted for all the garden-variety neuroses and couldn’t find any of any importance. Ergo, we’ve got a stable guy. No delusions of persecution, no manic-depressive tendencies, no control so excessive it smells of dementia praecox. Doesn’t miss his mother, save lady’s shoes or draw pornographic pictures. Your ink-blot tests, properly fitted into statistical distribution charts, show that Mr. X is a nice clean-living ambiverent, ideal technician material.”