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Eliminating Mary Jane and Bitsy, there remained Barbara, Jeanie Wahl—a rather remote chance but one to bear in mind—Monica, definitely of low priority but much more acceptable after one had danced with her, Margot, and Gloria Garvey. He rather hoped that Margot would be the one to create a situation of opportunity. She had high round hips and small high breasts, and a manner that was at once remote, dreamy and evil. Gloria Garvey would make a truly handsome trophy, but there was something overwhelming about her which disturbed him. Part of that impression was due to her size. He had never been partial to big women. It had been his experience that no matter how perfectly they were constructed, his tactile memories of them were of a ponderous fleshiness which offended him. Also, she had a raw, bold eye, an earthy laugh, and look of untidiness. His most valuable journal entries concerned those who had been dainty, shy, slim, small-boned and fastidious. The ones who had wept. Of all the women, Barbara was closest to his ideal target. Mother had been small and shy and sweet. He remembered how she hugged him, and her tears against his face when that hairy beast had been ugly to both of them. “Just the two of us, my pretty darling,” she would say. “Just you and me, Paul.”

While dancing was so popular there was little he could do. He danced several times with the Englishwoman. She moved rather stiffly, but did not object to being held closely. Back when Paul had learned that the ballroom is one of the fertile
areas for the hunt, and learned that he had little natural talent for dancing, he had taken an extended series of lessons and had acquired a pleasant competence.

Margot peered at him as they danced and said, “You are really a very pretty man, darling.”

“Thank you. You’re an exciting woman.”

“Ah, such a perfect reading of such a tired line, darling. And you dance so well.”

“I’d say we dance well together, wouldn’t you?”

And she had laughed in his face and said, “Oh, dear God, I really do think that I am about to hear one of those little things I haven’t heard for years. I thought it had all died out of this brazen world, ducks. The next thing I hear from you is a terribly subtle hint that perhaps if we dance so well together, maybe we could do other things well together. Said with a naughty gleam in the eye. Do say it, darling, because maybe I can get all confused and girlish. I haven’t been confused and girlish since Rommel was chased out of the desert. You know, I might even hold my breath and see if I can get a little pink into these withered old cheeks.”

“I was just trying to be complimentary, Margot.”

“Oh, dear. Now you’ve gone all stanch and honorable. And I am really getting quite winded, darling. Couldn’t you launch us toward that nice bar and then haul me to a shuddering and exhausted stop and give me a transfusion? Just Scotch, darling. A great coarse dollop of it, with a dash of water and no ice.”

Agnes Partridge Keeley sat with Dotsy and Hildabeth, drinking a sweet rum drink and talking above the sound of the music, telling them about her life in Pasadena, her home, her classes, the paintings she had sold, her investment properties. And quite suddenly she found herself sitting, in consternation, back inside herself, listening to her own voice going on and on. “… always wanted to take advantage of a single woman in a business way, trying to cheat me on leases and things, but I’ve got a head for figures and I can tell you that I don’t let them get away with a thing.” She hauled herself to a stop with an effort. “My goodness!” she said. “Do you know, I think I’m tight! I never never get tight!”

“Well, you’ve got an inch left there of your third one,” Dotsy said, “and this is a full half of my first one, and we’re drinking the same thing, some kind of a punch he said, a
Planter’s Punch, and if they made yours the same as mine I don’t wonder a bit you feel funny, because I feel pretty darn funny myself on a half a one.”

“I have the feeling I should go outdoors,” Agnes said.

“When you feel that way it’s a real good thing to do,” Hildabeth advised her.

Agnes stood up. The floor seemed a long way away. When she took a step her foot came down too hard. She waited for balance. Then, with her pink face screwed up into a look of great determination, looking like the face of a fat, vicious child trying to get even by burning down the house, she plodded, implacable and monolithic, through the dancers, out through the lobby, and out through the main gate. The sun was nearly down. She felt she should walk. She did not want to walk up and down the hot road. She turned onto the path, but she could not seem to adjust to the angle of descent. She would slow to a stop with one foot poised out in front of her, or she would find herself trotting heavily forward and have to fight for balance. And suddenly, to her horror and alarm, she found the trotting was out of control. It had become a waddling lope, and then a joggling, flapping, suety gallop that could have but one horrid termination when her churning legs could no longer keep up with the upper half of her. She tried her utmost, squeaking with fear. It is to her credit that she very nearly reached the bottom before she pitched forward. Through some miracle of primitive instinct, she tucked her chin down and rolled her right shoulder under, so that she took it almost professionally. After the roll she was clear of the ground for a moment and then came down in a sitting position with a thunderous shocking thump of the seat of yellow linen slacks against the earth. There was still enough forward momentum to roll her back up onto her feet and pitch her over onto her hands and knees.

She could easily have been seriously injured. She had not struck any rocks. She was merely shaken up. She remained upon her hands and knees for several moments, weeping with anger, fright and relief, trembling with the excess of adrenaline in her blood, that adrenaline that had burned up the liquor in moments. She was on a grassy spot. When her breathing was easier and she was not shaking so badly, she rolled slowly over into a sitting position. Under normal circumstances Agnes Keeley had difficulty in arising from a sitting position. She puffed her way up out of chairs. But on that occasion she had barely
touched the ground when she found herself on her feet. The only thing, she thought, which could have duplicated such a sensation would be to sit on a carpet of hornets and have each one bite simultaneously and with enthusiasm. She clapped her hands to her seat and received such a hot renewal of sensation in those fractional areas where her hands touched that she yelped involuntarily.

It did not take much search to learn the cause. Through some malignancy of fate, as though to even the score for an escape without serious injury, she had been permitted to thump the broadest part of her anatomy solidly on a squatty species of broad-leaf cactus plant. In luxuriant life it had been about eight inches high and about one yard across its roughly circular dimension. It lay flattened, compressed and ruined, the dark luxuriant green of the broad thick leaves split to expose the pale pithy centers. But in its moment of demise, it had accomplished, at last, the age-old ambition of all cacti, instantaneously to lose all available needles to maximum depth in an all-inclusive target of opportunity.

Agnes reached back with caution to touch herself with one finger. It was like backing into a live wire. The dusk shadows were gathering in the bottom of the barranca. She looked around the area until she saw a sister plant of the smashed one. She bent over and peered at it. The slender needles on the broad leaves were almost as thick as fur. She touched the needles with her finger, very lightly, and three of them, almost as fine as glass fibers, stuck into her finger and came free of the plant. She pulled them out carefully.

The problem had monstrous aspects. Self-treatment presented incalculable difficulties. Dr. Dorothy Stepp was in Pasadena. It was unthinkable to ask the assistance of one of the female students. She was aware that her condition had very probably been noted when she had left. And she had enough objectivity to know that it was just the sort of disaster that too many of them would find hilarious.

She climbed slowly back up the path, still snuffling from time to time. Climbing was uncomfortable. Each flex and ripple of the great buttocks seemed to send streaks of fire from side to side, as though she was being followed by a careless person with a blow torch. Once she reached the top she found that walking was hardly more comfortable. She soon adjusted to a gait which provided a minimum of discomfort. She walked
carefully and rather stiff-legged, planting her feet wide and setting them down easily. The straps of her straw sandals had chafed her feet during her run, so when she reached the corridor, she kicked them off and picked them up. She padded silently down to the door of her room. Even such a minor matter as reaching into the pocket of her slacks to get her room key created shocking discomfort by tautening the seat of the slacks across the billion needles.

When Pepe heard the unmistakable sound of the key being inserted into Agnes’ door, he was standing at her bureau, her red leather wallet in his hand, the top drawer open. After the first instant of panic, he reacted swiftly. There was no time to wriggle out between the narrow bars on the window. He dropped the wallet into the drawer, closed it, and disappeared under the bed like Richie Ashburn sliding into second base. The overhang of the spread left a gap of about five inches between the edge of the spread and the tile floor. He pressed himself back against the wall, out of sight. He could only hope that it was a short visit to the room. The boy was very angry at Felipe Cedro. Felipe had told him that this would be a very good time to sneak into the rooms, while they were drinking. Pepe had not thought so. He had objected. Felipe had answered his objections by rapping him on the head with hard knuckles.

He heard the door close, saw her bare feet go by close to the bed, and heard the jangle and clatter as the heavy faded draperies were pulled shut across the window, the sound of metal rings sliding on the wrought-iron bar. The feeble light was turned on. He heard her sigh, very deeply and heavily, with an odd little squeak at the end. Then there came rather frequent little grunts of effort, and swishings of fabric. The fabric sounds stopped, but the gruntings continued. From time to time she spoke fervently. Pepe could not understand her words, but it was clear that she spoke in bitter anger and frustration.

Inevitably his curiosity became stronger than his caution. He determined that her bare heels were aimed toward the bed, and wriggled cautiously forward until he could look out at her, and see all of her. Agnes Partridge Keeley was five foot five and weighed one hundred and seventy-eight pounds. She was pink and white.

Even had Pepe been blind and deaf, he could hardly have survived those years of his childhood spent in a two-room hovel
with parents and older brothers and sisters without acquiring basic knowledge of the ways of the world. With his acute senses and his active curiosity, he had long since passed the point where any peculiarities of anatomy could be expected to startle him. Yet nothing had prepared him for the vision of Agnes Partridge Keeley in the buff. It was a stupendous vision, particularly from his low angle of sight. She was engaged in some incomprehensible effort, armed with hand mirror and tweezers. Each violent effort set up a veritable cascade of ripples which, much like tidal movements in a constricted pass, met at random angles to form visible wave patterns.

Even as a Balboa, catching his first glimpse of the broad and shining expanse of the Pacific, might be expected to stand long in awe and reverent reflection, Pepe forgot all caution, until suddenly he realized she had ceased her efforts and her tilted face, purple with effort, was staring at him from around one Jell-O hip, staring with a frozen consternation which matched his own.

As she straightened up, screaming like all the sirens of the Cruz Rojo and ran toward her closet, Pepe scrambled out from under the bed and raced for the door in a wild panic. Apparently his flight changed her immediate objective, because she caught him at the door and, as he wrested it open, she inflicted a series of surprisingly heavy blows on his head and shoulders

When the door burst open, Dotsy Winkler was directly opposite it. It was a violent tableau which would never completely fade from her memory. Pepe fled. Agnes stood for a moment just inside the door, her expression maniacal, and then was abruptly, helplessly hysterical. Dotsy went in and pulled the door shut and found a robe and put it around the shuddering, whooping woman’s shoulders, and smacked her face with precision and energy. As the hysterics changed into a milder sobbing, Dotsy urged Agnes back and had her sit on the bed. This, it turned out, was a mistake. Agnes leaped high with a strange wild cry and from her incoherencies, Dotsy at last pieced together what had happened.

Dotsy Winkler was a kindly and practical woman. It did not take long for her to organize things to her satisfaction. The patient lay face-down on her bed, with the robe up around her waist. Dotsy had borrowed the colonel’s Coleman lantern. It hissed busily and cast a white and pitiless light on the broad areas of injury. Dotsy used her own broadnose tweezers and
Hildabeth’s rectangular magnifying glass that she used to read newspapers.

She pulled a chair close to the bed, placed the lantern in the most advantageous position and surveyed the field of operation.

“Land sake!” she said. “You look all over like the top side of a caterpillar, Agnes. I just don’t see how anybody could have done it so … complete.”

“Are you sure the door is locked?” Agnes asked weakly.

“It’s locked tight. Now don’t you worry. This may take some time, but it’s got to be done. And it shouldn’t hurt any, pulling them out.”

She began to work deftly and logically, starting from the edge and clearing each area completely, rapping the spines off into a dish beside her.

“Dotsy,” Agnes said after a long time had passed.

“Yes?”

“I’m so grateful to you. But … you won’t tell anyone, will you?”

“Now it would be real easy for me to say no, wouldn’t it?”

“But …”