His own place was brightly lighted. Betsey ran into his arms when he entered the house. “I just been hoping and praying, sweetie, that you’d get home for supper,” she said, “and now my prayers are answered, my prayers are answered. We’ve been asked out to dinner!” Coverly could not work this in with anything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours and he settled for a mode of emotional and intellectual improvisation. He was tired but it would have been cruel to frustrate Betsey’s only invitation. He kissed his son, tossed him into the air a few times and made a strong drink. “This nice woman,” Betsey said, “her name is Winifred Brinkley, well, she came to the house collecting money for the Heart Drive and I told her, I just told her that I thought this was the lonesomest place on the face of the earth. I just didn’t care who knew it. She then told me she thought it was lonesome too and that wouldn’t we like to come to a little dinner party at her house tonight. So then I told her you were in Atlantic City and I didn’t know when you would return but I just prayed and prayed that you’d get back in time and here you are!”
Coverly took a bath and changed while Betsey transported a high school boy who was going to stay with Binxey. The Brinkleys lived in the neighborhood and they walked there, arm in arm. Now and then Coverly bent his long neck and gave Betsey a kiss. Mrs. Brinkley was a thin, spritely woman, brilliantly made up and loaded down with beads. She kept saying “Crap.” Mr. Brinkley had an uncommonly receding forehead, a lack or infirmity that was accentuated by the fact that his gray, curly hair was arranged in loops over this receding feature like the curtains in some parlor. He seemed gallantly to be combating an air of fatigue and inconsequence by wearing a gold collar pin, a gold tie clip, a large bloodstone ring and a pair of blue-enamel cuff links that flashed like semaphores when he poured the sherry. Sherry was what they drank but they drank it like water. There were two other guests—the Cranstons from the neighboring city of Waterford. “I just had to ask somebody from out of town,” Mrs. Brinkley said, “so we wouldn’t have to listen to all that crap about Talifer.”
“One thing I know, one thing I’ve learned,” Mr. Cranston said, “and that is that you’ve got to have balls. That’s what matters in the end. Balls.” He wore a crimson hunting shirt and had yellow curls and a face that seemed both cherubic and menacing. His gray-haired wife seemed much older and more intelligent than he and in spite of his talk it was easiest to imagine him, not in the bouncing act of love, but in some attitude of bewilderment and despair while his wife stroked his curls and said: “You’ll find another job, honey. Don’t worry. Something better is bound to come along.” Mrs. Brinkley’s youngest child had just returned from a tonsillitis operation at the government hospital and during sherry they all talked about their tonsils and adenoids. Betsey positively shone. Coverly had never had his tonsils or adenoids removed and he was a little out of things until he brought up appendicitis. This carried them to the dinner table, where they then talked about dentistry. The dinner was the usual, washed down with sparkling Burgundy. After dinner Mr. Cranston told a dirty story and then got up to leave. “I hate to rush,” he said, “but you know it takes us an hour and a half to get back and I have to work in the morning.”
“Well, it shouldn’t take you an hour and a half,” Mr. Brinkley said. “How do you go?”
“We take the Speedway,” Mr. Cranston said.
“Well, if you get outside Talifer before you take the Speedway,” Mr. Brinkley said, “you’ll save about fifteen minutes. Maybe twenty. You go back to the shopping center and turn right at the second traffic light.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t do it that way,” Mrs. Brinkley said. “I’d go straight out past the computation center and take the clover leaf just before you get to the restricted area.”
“Oh, you would, would you,” said Mr. Brinkley. “That way you’d run right into a lot of construction. Just do what I say. Go back to the shopping center and turn right at the second traffic light.”
“If they go back to the shopping center,” Mrs. Brinkley said, “they’ll get stuck in all that traffic at Fermi Circle. If they don’t want to go out by the computation center, they could head straight for the gantries and then turn right at the road block.”
“My God, woman,” Mr. Brinkley said, “will you shut your big damned mouth?”
“Aw, crap,” said Mrs. Brinkley.
“Well, thanks a lot,” said the Cranstons, heading for the door. “I guess we’ll just take the Speedway the way we used to.” They were gone.
“Now you got them all mixed up,” Mr. Brinkley said. “I don’t know what makes you think you can give directions. You can’t even find your way around the house.”
