The Fourth Side of the Triangle

“You didn’t have the guts to tell him. Or maybe you never meant to?”

“That’s foul, Dane. That really is!”

“One man at a time, I believe you said. Didn’t you mean one family at a time?”

To his stupefaction, she burst out laughing. “This is very funny. Funnier than you could possibly imagine!”

“You have a peculiar sense of humor!” Every speck of the love he had felt for her was vanishing with the speed of light. Dread began heavily to build up, and with it the insane rage he had been guarding against.

“You think I’ve been sleeping with your father?” Sheila cried. “Let me tell you something, little boy — we aren’t lovers; we never have been. There’s nothing in the least physical about our friendship. Yes, and that’s exactly what it is — friendship! We like each other. We respect each other. We enjoy each other’s company. But that’s all. Of course you won’t believe it. Maybe nobody would. But, so help me, Dane, it’s the truth. For your own sake, if for no one else’s, you’d better believe that.”

He could see his own fists, hear his own shout. “Can’t you think of a more convincing story than that? Friendship! Don’t you think I know the old man’s been parking his shoes under your bed every Wednesday night? I’ve seen some of his clothes in your bedroom closet!”

“He’s been coming here, yes, and he keeps a change of clothing — some comfortable things—”

“To talk over the little events of the week, I suppose, over a tea cozy? In slacks and a dressing gown? What kind of triple-headed idiot do you take me for? For God’s sake, don’t you have the decency to admit it when you’re caught with your pants down?”

He choked; there was a roaring in his ears. He became faintly aware that her lips were moving.

“I don’t want to hurt you, Dane. I don’t want to say things about—”

“You’d better not,” he heard himself growl.

“—about your mother. But apparently I offer your father a... a scope, an experience, that makes it possible for him to talk to me in a way in which he could never talk to his wife. We have a very special and wonderful relationship. It helps him to come here every Wednesday night, Dane. And I’m terribly fond of him.”

“Why am I bothering? Helps him! How? Come on, spin a few more of your lies to me!”

She flared up at that. “It helps his feelings about himself as a man, if you must know — a man in relation to women. I tell you, Dane, he’s my friend, not my lover! He couldn’t be my lover even if he wanted to! There! Are you satisfied now? Now do you understand?”

Dane stood dumb. He couldn’t be my lover even if he wanted to...

“You mean you won’t let him be? Is that your yarn?”

She said, white-lipped, “I mean he’s physically incapable of it. Now you know.”

He could not — could not — believe it. Ashton McKell, big, hairy, strapping, vigorous, virile Ashton McKell, incapable of physical relations with a woman?

He sank onto the ottoman, dazed. The very shock of the thought generated its own believability. Nobody, not even a witch, would invent a story like that about Ash McKell. It had to be true. And suddenly he saw how far this went toward explaining the thrusting McKell drive in business, his tapeworm hunger for commercial expansion. A compensation!

But if that were the case, why hadn’t his mother said anything? The question answered itself. Lutetia McKell could not have brought herself to mention a thing like that, to her son above all people.

“So now you know the truth,” Sheila was saying, and she sounded urgent. “Dane, please, won’t you go? I’ve been trying to find a way to tell your father about you and me without hurting him. Let me work this out my own way. Help me spare him.”

He shook his head violently. “I’m going to tell him myself. I’ve got to know whether this is all true or not.”

She clapped her hands in sheer exasperation. “You’d do that? You’d leave him not one shred of self-respect? His own son! Don’t you know how ashamed he is of his impotence? Dane, if you do that, you’re a rotten, despicable—”

He flung out his arm. “You bitch! Don’t call me names!”

“Bitch?” Sheila screamed. “Get out of my apartment! Now!”

“No!”

She slapped him with all her might.

And then it came. With a rush.

She was not aware at first what her slap had loosed. For she had started for the house phone. “You leave me no choice. I’m calling John Leslie up here to get you out. I never want to see you again.”

From childhood the great flaw in his make-up had been his temper. It had been a hair-trigger thing, exploding at his governess, the servants, other children, his mother — although never his father. Ashton had blamed Lutetia (“You’ve spoiled him”) and hoped that the other boys in boarding school would whip him regularly enough to cure him. But his rages had seemed to feed on violence; and it was not until he was an upperclassman at college that Dane had taught himself restraint. But the lava of his temper was always boiling under his skin.