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chance.”
    “Shall I put it back?”
    “I’ll take care of it, thank you. Seel, why couldn’t you have told me about this when it happened.”
    “I promised Danny. I gave my word.”
    “You’re married to me. I don’t like Danny roping you in on something like this.”
    “Where are you going to put it? Suppose he comes after it when you aren’t home?”
    “You tell him to wait and you phone me at the school and I’ll come back as soon as I can.”
    “Suppose he’s in a hurry?”
    “That is going to be too damn bad. I want to know what the hell is going on.” He walked toward the bedroom door, turned and said, “I’ve got a meeting at seven.”
    “I don’t know how you expect to use up all the time there is asking me all kinds of questions and then think I can push a magic button and have a meal pop out of the wall or something in two seconds. I was real stupid. I was thinking it was Saturday night and maybe it wouldn’t be too much to expect to get taken out, maybe, and even …”
    “Skip it, skip it,” he said. “I’ll get a sandwich on the way.”
    When he came back into the bedroom she was working on the other foot. He showered quickly and changed. By the time he was ready to leave she had nearly finished shaving her legs.
    “I’ll be back about eight-thirty,” he said.
    “Oh, goody,” she said, not looking up.
    “Maybe we could go out to the drive-in.”
    “Double goody.”
    “Think it over,” he said. He put his hand on her shoulder and she turned a sullen face up for his kiss, turning her lips aside so that his mouth brushed her cheek. He started to say something else, then turned and left the room. She heard the thin slap of the screen door, the whine of the feeble starter, the fading sound of the noisy motor. The room was turning gray-blue with dusk. She went out and phoned Ruthie, but there was noanswer. She went sulkily into the kitchen, made herself a peanut butter sandwich and ate it standing at the sink. The kids next door were having a screaming contest. After she drank a glass of milk she began to look for the money. It took her half an hour to decide it was in his desk drawer, the middle drawer, and it was locked. She worked at the lock with a bent paperclip for a long time, and gave up in disgust.
    She turned on the television, checked the six available channels, turned it off. She looked in her purse and found she had two dollars and a quarter. The evening was beginning to get cool. She put on her powder blue suit and walked down to the bus stop. She left the house unlocked, left no note. Let him sweat. Let him go to the drive-in by himself. She saw the bus coming, and she felt as though she wanted to cry. The night was full of people having fun. And there wasn’t any fun left over for Lucille.

CHAPTER FOUR
Danny Bronson
    Danny woke up at eleven on Sunday morning, the fourteenth of October. He had had another prison dream, full of stone and bars and naked lights and night noises. He brought it out of sleep with him, and it took him long seconds to reorient himself in time and place, to identify the slant of beamed ceiling above him. He raised up on one elbow and looked at the clock and lighted the first cigarette of the day.
    It was an enormous and comfortable bed with a trick headboard with radio, bookshelves, light switches. He exhaled, lay back, and felt the dull pulsation of a mild hangover. Too much liquor, too many cigarettes, and maybe a little bit more than enough of the big brunette, Mrs. Drusilla Catton, who had installed him in this remote and luxurious private lodge and expected frequent and earthy attentions in return.
    Drusilla had explained to Danny why the camp was so luxurious and so isolated. Drusilla was the thirty-year-old second wife of Burt Catton, aged sixty. Burt had built the camp long ago when the first Mrs. Catton had been alive. Burt had originally picked up the sixteen hundred acres of forest land with the idea of subdividing it. But, because