Today, she seemed to be in a sportive mood, taking nothing very seriously. She seemed to be in, for her, a relatively good mood. “Why don’t I come over for a while tonight,” he said, feeling himself become tense. “For a little while.”

“All right,” she said. “Want me to pick you up?”

“No,” he said. He had an old Studebaker that he used to get into Mill Valley to his job. “I’ll get over there on my own power.”

“You’re not bringing that wife, are you? Whatever her name is. Say, just what is her name again, anyhow?”

“I’ll see you,” he said. He hung up.

Hen tone had been stank and overly loud, once she had realized who it was and why he had called. She knows, he thought..We both know.

What do we know?

He thought, We know that something is up; we are doing something. It does not involve my wife or her husband.

What is it? He asked himself. What do I have in mind? How far do I want to go? How far does Fay Hume want to go?

Perhaps, he thought, neither of us knows.

Then he asked himself why he was doing it. I have a really wonderful wife, he thought. And I like Charley Hume. And, he thought, Fay is married and she has two children.

Why, then?

Because I want to, he decided.

Much later in the day, as he was driving back to north west Marin County, he thought, And because she wants to.

In order to visit Charley in the University of California Hospital at Fourth and Parnassus, in San Francisco, I had to take the 6:20 Greyhound bus from Inverness. That got me to San Francisco at 8:00 in the morning. I generally went to the San Francisco public library, where I read the new magazines, picked out books that Charley might like, and did reseanch. Now that he had had his heart attack, I did research on the circulatory system, copying scientific information into notebooks, and, when possible, checking out the actual reference books and articles to take to him to read.

When he saw me coming into his noom, with my knapsack filled with library books and technical magazines, he almost always said, “Well, Isidore, what’s the latest on my heart?”

I gave him what information I had been able to pick up from hospital personnel on his condition and how soon he might expect to get out and back to the house. He seemed to appreciate this detailed account; without me he got the usual clichés about his condition, so to an extent he was dependent on me.

After I had given him the scientific information I got out the notebook that I used for information concerning the situation back at Drake’s Landing.

“Let’s hear the latest on the old homestead,” he almost always said.

On this particular occasion, I referred to my notebook to get my facts in order, and then I said, “Your wife is beginning to become involved with Nathan Anteil in extramarital relationships.”

I had intended to go on, but Charley stopped me. “What do you mean?” he said.

“For the last four days,” I said, checking my facts, “Nathan Anteil has come over in the evening without his wife. And he and Fay have talked in such a way as to suggest a romance between them.”

I did not enjoy giving him this information, but I had set out to keep him apprised of the situation at home; I had made it part of my job, in exchange for what I received in the way of food and lodgings. Along with my other chores bringing him information was my duty, and it had to be scrupulously done, with regard only for accuracy and completeness.

“They sat together on Thursday night drinking martinis until two a.m.,” I informed him.

“Well,” he said presently. “Go on.”

“At one point—they were seated together on the couch—he put his arm around her and kissed her. On the mouth.”

Charley said nothing. But obviously he was listening. So I continued.

“Nathan didn’t actually come out and say that he loved your wife—”

Charley interrupted, “I don’t give a damn.”

“How do you mean?” I said. “You mean you don’t give a damn about that particular piece of information on—”

He interrupted, “I don’t give a damn about the whole subject.” He was silent for a long time and then he said, “What else happened at the old homestead during the week? And don’t give me any more on that topic, about him on her. Tell me about the ducks.”

“The ducks,” I said, glancing at my notes. “The ducks laid a total of thirty eggs since my last report. The Pekins laid the most of that, with the Rouens laying the least.”

He said nothing.

“What else would you like to know?” I asked. “How much egg-gro they consumed?” I had it both by weight and by volume.

“Okay,” he said. “Tell me about that.”

I felt keenly that his failure to take an interest in such an important topic as his wife’s relationship with Nathan Anteil was due to my inability to relate it properly. Obviously I had failed to do justice to it; I had not given him a convincing picture. Had he been present, he would have reacted, but all he had to go on were the barren statements that I presented him. A newspaper on a magazine, when it wants to stir an emotional reaction in its readers, does an expert job of presenting a topic; it does not merely list facts in chronological order, as was my tendency.

Then and there I saw the limitation of my systematic method. As a means of recording significant data it was unexcelled, but as a means of conveying that data to another person, it had no merit. Up to now, my recording and preservation of significant facts had been for my own use … but now I was gathering facts for the use of another person, in this case a man who had little or no scientific education. Looking back, I recalled that in the past a great number of facts that had impressed me had been conveyed in highly dramatized articles, such as those in the American Weekly, and other facts had been conveyed in fictional forms, such as in the stories I read in Thrilling Wonder and Astonishing.

Obviously I had a thing or two to learn. I left the hospital feeling very chagrined, and, for the first time in years, basically questioning myself and my methods.

A day or so later, while spending the afternoon alone in the house, I heard the doorbell chime. I had been folding the laundry that had come out of the clothes drier. Leaving the heaps of clothes on the table I went to open the door, thinking that possibly Fay was back from town and wanted me to carry something in from the can.

When I opened the door I found myself facing a woman that I had never seen before.

“Hello,” she said.

“Hello,” I said.

The woman was quite small, with a huge black pony tail of such heavy hair that I thought she must be a foreigner. Her face had a dark quality, like an Italian’s, but her nose had the bony prominence of an American Indian’s. She had quite a strong chin and large brown eyes that stared at me so hand and fixedly that I became nervous. After saying hello she said nothing at all but smiled. She had sharp teeth, like a savage’s, and that also made me uneasy. She wore a green shirt, like a man’s, out at the waist, and shorts, and gold sandals, and she carried a purse and a manila envelope and a pair of sunglasses. I saw parked in the driveway a new Ford station wagon painted bright red. In some respects the woman seemed to me breath-takingly beautiful, but at the same time I was aware that something was wrong with her proportions. Hen head was slightly too large for her shoulders—although it may have been an illusion due to her heavy black hair—and her chest was somewhat concave, actually hollow, not like a woman’s chest at all. And her hips were too small in proportion to her shoulders, and then, in order, her legs were too short for her hips, and her feet too small for her legs. So she resembled an inverted pyramid.