The Fourth Side of the Triangle

She laughed, throwing her head back. Viewing the cream-smooth neck, he felt a lecherous stir and wondered if he shouldn’t encourage it. After all, he had been squiring her around for some time now without a single pass. Wouldn’t she begin to wonder?

The phone rang. Still laughing, Sheila answered it. “Oh, hi,” she said, in a remarkably different tone, moving back into the chair; and Dane sighed — the moment had gone. “How are you?... No, I’m fine... I couldn’t say.” She glanced at Dane, a mere flicker, and he said to himself: It’s my father. He got up and went to the window, and her voice sank. The reflection showed him a scowling and — it seemed to him — evil face.

“I’d like a drink,” Sheila said from behind him. The phone call was over; comedy, recommence! “Something tall and ginny. Be my bartender?”

He turned to her; they were face to — the image persisted, it seemed to him — evil face. She seemed faded, even coarse, the smile on her lips complacent. This is the way of an adulterous woman,/ She eateth and wipeth her mouth and sayeth,/ I have done no wrong... He felt sick at heart, and he was glad of the excuse to turn away and tinker with bottles and ice cubes.

From time to time Sheila received other telephone calls — twice in her office while he was with her, twice more in her apartment — which, he assumed from her guarded tone, were also from his father.

One night at the end of August they attended an old movie in an art theater on the Lower East Side; it was almost 3 A.M. when they emerged. In the car he put his arm around her. She slipped away. “I don’t believe in one-arm driving. Isn’t this safer?” She put her arm around him.

In spite of himself, Dane felt a shiver. “Shall we stop somewhere? How about Ratner’s and a glass of borsht?”

“That pink soup with sour cream in it?” Sheila pursed her lips. “I think I’d prefer a nightcap. Let’s have it at my place.”

“All right.”

It seemed natural. Entering the apartment building lobby was, as always when he was in Sheila’s company, something of a shock — knowing that his parents lay asleep overhead — but he had steeled himself by this time; he did not dwell on it. He did not dwell on much of anything these days.

“Come in, Dane.”

“I’m suddenly reminded,” Dane said, following Sheila into the penthouse apartment, “of the experience of a friend of mine. He accepted the offer of a tropical-looking beauty he met at a party to come up and have a nightcap in her apartment, and when they walked in, lo, there pacing the floor was an economy-size ocelot. Arthur swears it was as big as a leopard. Needless to say, all he got that night was a drink, and he spilled half of that on the rug.”

“Well, my ocelot got the evening off,” Sheila said, “so don’t spill yours. Not on this rug. Handwoven in Jutland, I’ll have you know. Name your poison, pardner.”

The living room, furnished in Scandinavian Modern, was dimly lighted. Always peaceful-looking, it seemed extraordinarily so on this occasion. A feeling of contentment invaded Dane, in the van of which marched a wiry little excitement. It was the queerest thing. Sheila mixed their drinks at her bar, humming to herself the absurd tune to an absurd W. C. Fields song they had heard at the art movies; she reached for the ice, and he caught a quiet smile on her face.

So it happened — not by calculation, not with his father standing aghast and outraged in the living-room archway, not as part of a created plot, but as naturally as breathing. Dane put his arms around her. Sheila turned with the same smile, lifted her perfect face and half closed her eyes, and they kissed.

Her lips, her body, were sweet and soft and full. He had never thought of her body before except in a repellent image, lying in his father’s hairy arms.

Dane heard her say, “I’m glad you waited, darling,” saw her hand him his drink, raise her own. They drank in silence, looking into each other’s eyes. Then Dane set his glass down and took her hand, her strong white little hand with the smudge of violet India ink on the palm, and he kissed it, a brush of his lips; and left.

As he undressed for bed, the thought occurred to him for the first time that night: I’ve accomplished my purpose. I’ve got her. Now all I have to do is arrange the pay-off.

But it’s gone all to pot.

And the horrifying thought: I’ve fallen in love with her.