"What's Betelgeuse?"

"A distant star. I use it as a metaphor. In any case, we know there's no guesswork involved... except perhaps in the final stage. When it's a choice between two or three squares."

"Then I can flip a coin," Ragle agreed.

"But then," Lowery said thoughtfully, rubbing his chin and waggling his cigar up and down, "when it's a question of two or three squares out of over a thousand, it doesn't matter. Any of us could guess it, at that point."

Ragle agreed.

In the garage of their home, Junie Black crouched before the automatic washer, stuffing clothes into it. Under her bare feet the concrete was cold; shivering, she straightened up, poured a stream of granules from the box of detergent into the washer, shut the little glass door, and turned on the machinery. The clothes, behind the glass, proceeded to swirl about. She set down the box, looked at her wristwatch, and started out of the garage.

"Oh," she said, startled. Ragle was standing in the driveway.

"I thought I'd drop by," he said. "Sis is ironing. You can smell that fine burned-starch smell all over the house. Like duck feathers and phonograph records roasted together at the bottom of an old oil drum."

She saw that he was peering at her from the corner of his eye. His straw-colored, shaggy eyebrows drew together and his big shoulders hunched as he clasped his arms together. In the mid-afternoon sunlight his skin had a deep underlying tan, and she wondered how it was achieved. She had never been able to tan that well, try as she might.

"What's that you have on?" he asked.

"Slim-jims," she said.

"Pants," he said. "The other day I asked myself, What's the psychological reason for my admiring women in pants? And then I said to myself, Why the hell not?"

"Thank you," she said. "I guess."

"You look very good," he said. "Especially with your feet bare. Like one of those movies where the heroine pads over the sand dunes, her arms to the sky."

Junie said, "How's the contest today?"

He shrugged. Obviously he wanted to get away from it. "I thought I'd take a stroll," he said. And again he peered at her sideways. It was a compliment to her, but it always made her wonder if she had left a button undone; she could scarcely resist glancing furtively down. But except for her feet and midriff she was well covered.

"Open midriff," she said.

"Yes, so I see," Ragle said.

"You like-e?" With her, that passed as humor.

Ragle said, almost brusquely, "I thought I'd see if you'd like to go for a swim. It's a nice day, not too cold."

"I have all this housework to do," she said. But the idea appealed to her; at the public park, on the north end of town, where the uncultivated hills began, were a playground and swimming pool. Naturally the kids used it mostly, but adults showed up, too, and quite often gangs of teen-agers. It always made her feel good to be where teen-agers were; she had been out of school -- high school -- only a few years, and for her the transition had been imperfect. In her mind she still belonged to that bunch which showed up in hot rods, with radios blaring pop tunes... the girls in sweaters and bobby socks, the boys in blue jeans and cashmere sweaters.

"Get your swimsuit," Ragle said.

"Okay," she agreed. "For an hour or so; but then I have to get back." Hesitating, she said, "Margo didn't -- see you come over here, did she?" As she had found out, Margo loved to blab.

"No," he said. "Margo's off on some--" He gestured. "She's busy ironing," he concluded. "Involved, you know."

She shut off the washer, got her swimsuit and a towel, and shortly she and Ragle were striding along across town to the swimming pool.

Having Ragle beside her made her feel peaceful. She had always been attracted to big burly men, especially older ones. To her, Ragle was exactly the right age. And look at the things he had done, his military career in the Pacific, for instance. And his national fame in the newspaper contest. She liked his bony, grim, scarred face; it was a real man's face, with no trace of double chin, no fleshiness. His hair had a bleached quality, white and curled, never combed. It had always struck her that a man who combed his hair was a sissy. Bill spent half an hour in the mornings, fussing with his hair; although now that he had a crewcut he fussed somewhat less. She loathed touching crewcut hair; the stiff bristles reminded her of a toothbrush. And Bill fitted perfectly into his narrow-shouldered ivy-league coat... he had virtually no shoulders. The only sport he played was tennis, and that really aroused her animosity. A man wearing white shorts, bobby socks, tennis shoes! A college student at best... as Bill had been when she met him.

"Don't you get lonely?" she asked Ragle.

"Eh?"

"Not being married." Most of the kids she had known in high school were now married, all but the impossible ones. "I mean, it's fine your living with your sister and brother-in-law, but wouldn't you like to have a little home of your own for you and your wife?" She put the emphasis on _wife_.

Considering, Ragle said, "Ultimately I'll do that. But the truth of the matter is I'm a bum."

"A bum," she echoed, thinking of all the money he had won in the contest. Heaven knew how much it added up to in all.

"I don't like a permanent thing," he explained. "Probably I picked up a nomadic outlook in the war... and before that, my family moved around a lot. My father and mother were divorced. There's a real resistance in my personality toward settling down... being defined in terms of one house, one wife, one family of kids. Slippers and pipe."

"What's wrong with that? It means security."

Ragle said, "But I'd get doubts." Presently he said, "I did get doubts. When I was married before."

"Oh," she said, interested. "When was that?"

"Years ago. Before the war. When I was in my early twenties. I met a girl; she was a secretary for a trucking firm. Very nice girl. Polish parents. Very bright, alert girl. Too ambitious for me. She wanted nothing but to get up in the class where she'd be giving garden parties. Barbecues in the patio."

"I don't see anything wrong with that," Junie said. "It's natural to want to live graciously." She had got that term out of _Better Homes and Gardens_, one of the magazines she and Bill subscribed to.

"Well, I told you I was a bum," Ragle grunted, and dropped the subject.

The ground had become hilly, and they had to climb. Here, the houses had larger lawns, terraces of flowers; fat imposing mansions, the homes of the well-to-do. The streets were irregular. Thick groves of trees appeared. And above them they could see the woods itself, beyond the final street, Olympus Drive.

"I wouldn't mind living up here," Junie said. Better, she thought, than those one-story tract houses with no foundations. That lose their roofs on the first windy day. That if you leave the hose running all night the water fills up the garage.

Among the clouds in the sky a rapidly moving glittery dot shot by and was gone. Moments later she and Ragle heard the faint, almost absurdly remote roar.

"A jet," she said.

Scowling upward, Ragle shaded his eyes and peered at the sky, not walking but standing in the middle of the sidewalk with his feet planted apart.

"You think it's perhaps a Russian jet?" she asked mischievously.

Ragle said, "I wish I knew what went on up there."

"You mean what God is doing?"

"No," he said. "Not God at all. I mean that stuff that floats by every now and then."

Junie said, "Vic was talking last night about groping around for the light cord in the bathroom; you remember?"

"Yes," he said, as they trudged on uphill once more.

"I got to thinking. That never happened to me."

"Good," Ragle said.