The following morning, Junie Black called him on the phone.

"Were you working?" she asked.

"I'm always working," Ragle said.

Junie said, "Well, I talked to Mr. Hempkin, my attorney." Her tone of voice informed him that she intended to go into the details. "What a cumbersome business," she said, sighing.

"Let me know how it comes out," he said, wanting to get back to his puzzle solving. But, as always, he was snared by her. Involved in her elaborate, histrionic problems. "What did he say?" he asked. After all, he had to take it seriously; if she took it to court, he might be hailed in as the corespondent.

"Oh Ragle," she said. "I want to see you so badly. I want to have you with me. Close to me. This is such a grind."

"Tell me what he said."

"He said it all depends on how Bill feels. What a mess. When can I see you? I'm scared to come around your place. Margo gave me the worst look I've ever gotten from anybody in my life. Does she think I'm after you for your money, or what? Or is it just her naturally morbid mind?"

"Tell me what he said."

"I hate to talk to you over the phone. Why don't you drop over here for a while? Or would Margo be suspicious? You know, Ragle, I feel so much better now that I've decided. I can be myself with you, not held back artificially by doubts. This is the most important moment in my life, Ragle. It's really solemn. Like a church. When I woke up this morning I felt as if I had awakened in a church, and all around me was this sacred spirit. And I asked myself what the spirit was, and pretty soon I identified it as you." She became silent, then, waiting for him to contribute something.

"What about this Civil Defense business?" he said.

"What about it? I think it's a good idea."

"Are you going to be there?"

"No," she said. "What do you mean?"

"I thought that was the idea."

"Ragle," she said with exasperation, "you know, sometimes you're so mysterious I just can't follow you."

He gathered, at that point, that he had made a mistake. Nothing remained but to drop the business about the Civil Defense classes. It was hopeless to try to explain to her what he meant and what he had thought when Mrs. Keitelbein approached him. "Look, June," he said. "I want very much to see you, as much as you want to see me. More, very possibly. But I have this goddamn puzzle to finish."

"I know," she said. "You have your responsibility." She said it resignedly. "What about tonight, after you mail off your entry?"

"I'll try to call you," he said. But her husband would be home, so nothing could come of it. "Maybe later today," he said. "Late this afternoon. I think I can get my entry off early, today." He had had fair luck with it so far.

"No," she said. "I won't be home this afternoon. I'm having lunch with an old friend. A girl friend. I'm sorry, Ragle. I've got so much I want to say to you and do with you. A whole lifetime ahead of us." She talked on; he listened. At last she said good-bye and he hung up, feeling let-down.

How hard it was to communicate with her.

As he started back to his room, the phone rang again.

"Want me to get it?" Margo called from the other room.

"No," he said. "It's probably for me." He lifted the receiver, expecting to hear June's voice. But instead an unfamiliar older female voice said haltingly,

"Is -- Mr. Gumm there?"

"Speaking," he said. His disappointment made him gruff. "Oh Mr. Gumm. I wonder if you remembered the Civil Defense class. This is Mrs. Keitelbein."

"I remembered," he lied. "Hello, Mrs. Keitelbein." Making himself hard, he said, "Mrs. Keitelbein, I'm sorry to have to--"

She interrupted, "It's this afternoon. This is Tuesday. At two o'clock."

"I can't come," he said. "I'm bogged down in my contest work. Some other time."

"Oh dear," she said. "But Mr. Gumm, I went ahead and told them all about you. They're expecting to hear you speak about World War Two. I phoned every one of them up, and they're all enthusiastic."

"I'm sorry," he said.

"This is a calamity," she said, plainly overcome. "Maybe you could come and not speak; if you could be at the class and just answer questions -- I know that would please them so. Don't you think you could find time for that? Walter can drop by and pick you up in his car; and I know he can drive you back home afterward. The class is only about an hour at the longest, so it wouldn't be more than an hour and fifteen minutes at the very most."

"He doesn't have to give me a ride," Ragle said. "You're only half a block away."

"Oh that's so," she said. "You're just up the street from us. Then you surely ought to be able to make it; please, Mr. Gumm -- as a favor to me."

"Okay," he said. It wasn't that important. An hour or so.

"Thank you so much." Her relief and gratitude flooded through her voice. "I really appreciate it."

After he had hung up he got immediately to work on his entries. He had only a couple of hours to get them in the mail, and the sense that they had to be posted was, as always, dominant in him.

At two o'clock he climbed the flight of unpainted, sloping steps to the porch of the Keitelbein house and rang the bell.

Opening the door, Mrs. Keitelbein said, "Welcome, Mr. Gumm."

Past her he could see a shadowy collection of ladies in flowery dresses and a few ill-defined thin-looking men; they all peered at him, and he understood that they had been standing around expecting him. Now the class could begin. Even here, he realized. My importance. But it brought him no satisfaction. The one person important to him was missing. His claim on Junie Black was slight indeed.

Mrs. Keitelbein led him up beside her desk, the massive old wooden desk that he and Walter had lugged up from the basement. She had arranged a chair for him so that he would face the class. "Here," she said, pointing to the chair. "You sit there." For the class she had dressed up; her long silk robe-like skirt and blouse, with billows and lace, made him think of school graduations and music recitals.

"Okay," he said.

"Before they ask you anything," she said, "I think I'll discuss a few aspects of Civil Defense with them, just to get it out of the way." She patted him on the arm. "This is the first time we've had a celebrity at our meetings." Smiling, she seated herself at her desk and rapped for order.

The indistinct ladies and gentlemen became quiet. The murmur stilled. They had seated themselves in the first rows of the folding chairs that Walter had set up. Walter himself had taken a chair in the back of the room, near the door. He wore a sweater, slacks, and necktie, and he nodded formally to Ragle.

I should have worn my coat, Ragle decided. He had sauntered down in his shirt-sleeves; now he felt ill-at-ease.

"At our last class," Mrs. Keitelbein said, folding her hands before her on the desk, "somebody raised a question concerning the impossibility of our intercepting all the enemy missiles in the event of a full-scale surprise attack on America. That is quite true. We know that we could not possibly shoot down all the missiles. A percentage of them will get through. This is the dreadful truth, and we have to face it and deal with it accordingly."

The men and women -- they responded as a body, images of one another -- put on somber expressions.

"If war should break out," Mrs. Keitelbein said, "we would be faced, at best with terrible ruin. Dead and dying in the tens of millions. Cities into rubble, radioactive fallout, contaminated crops, germ-plasm of future generations irretrievably damaged. At best, we would have disaster on a scale never before seen on earth. The funds appropriated by our government for defense, which seem such a burden and drain on us, would be a drop in the bucket compared with this catastrophe."