The Stories of John Cheever

His voice dropped to a whisper, and at the same time some women in the booth on the other side of me began a noisy and savage attack on a friend they all shared. I was very anxious to see the face of the man behind me, and I called for the check, but when I left the booth he was gone, and I would never know what he looked like.

When I got home, I put the car in the garage and came into the house by the kitchen door. Cora was at the table, bending over a dish of cutlets. In one hand she held a can of lethal pesticide. I couldn’t be sure because I’m so nearsighted, but I think she was sprinkling pesticide on the meat. She was startled when I came in, and by the time I had my glasses on she had put the pesticide on the table. Since I had already made one bad mistake because of my eyesight, I was reluctant to make another, but there was the pesticide on the table beside the dish, and that was not where it belonged. It contained a high percentage of nerve poison. “What in the world are you doing?” I asked.

“What does it look as if I were doing?” she asked, still speaking in the octave above middle C.

“It looks as if you were putting pesticide in the cutlets,” I said.

“I know you don’t grant me much intelligence,” she said, “but please grant me enough intelligence to know better than that.”

“But what are you doing with the pesticide?” I asked.

“I have been dusting the roses,” she said.