Clemmie by John D. MacDonald Page B

peephole with a splendid camera.
    That thought made him choke over the last bite of his sandwich and look with wide-eyed consternation at his own reflection in the mirror. No. That wouldn’t be her style. The week end was over. He had had it. When he thought of her there was not the faintest suscitation of desire. It had been a damn fool thing to do, and now it was over and it would not happen again. The problem was to get his clothes back. She had driven him to his houseand let him off in front at eight that morning. Clemmie wouldn’t miss him. She led a busy life. He remembered the hooting and hammering on the big metal door. She had said it was the kids, and giggled against his chest. And one time the phone had rung twenty-seven times before the caller gave up.
    He would return her to the kids, gratefully. He felt a thousand years old. When the endless day finally ended, he drove home. He was too tired to eat. He showered, tumbled into an unmade bed and fell endlessly down black velvet cellar stairs.
    He awakened at seven, after thirteen hours’ sleep. The muscles which had been sore from the ballet exercises she had made him do had stiffened. He got out of bed like an elderly man. He remembered the exercises she had told him would limber him up. He grunted his way through them and then took a very long and hot shower. They seemed to help. He went to a better place than usual and ate a monstrous breakfast. The previous day’s work was like a dream remembered.
    On Tuesday he worked with a drive and intensity he had not been able to manage for weeks. Though numerous problems required his attention, he was able to handle those and also dig deeply into the back work that had piled up. He drove all of his people and drove Betty James particularly hard. Though she claimed to thrive on pressure, she was looking particularly harassed at the end of the day. At five-fifteen, when the others had gone and the only shop noise was on the double shift over in C Building, Betty leaned limply against the door frame and said, “Is that all, I hope? Uncle.”
    “That’s all, Betty. And thanks.”
    “If you aren’t a madman tomorrow too, Craig, I ought to be able to finish the typing by late afternoon, if both of us work on it.”
    “No latrine-o-grams today?”
    “Gosh, no!”
    “When does your vacation come up? I’ve forgotten.”
    “The last two weeks in August.”
    “Where are you going?”
    “Staying in town, I guess. We’ve got a nice backyard. It’s easier to take care of kids at home than on a trip. And Mother doesn’t like to travel. Well, good night now. Don’t you stay too long.”
    “ ’Night, Betty.”
    He sat at his desk for another fifteen minutes, with blank paper in front of him, and he devoted those fifteen minutes to Ober’s curious request to “Think wild. Think big.” He made aimless doodles. He crumpled the paper in disgust. The chair creaked as he leaned back. All through the long demanding day he had held image and memory of Clemmie Bennet back in a neatly sealed compartment of his mind. Now, with caution, he let her out. She stepped out of the compartment, smiling, vivid and nimble. He felt a hollowness in his stomach, a sudden heavy pressure in his loins, a weightiness. And he breathed lightly and quickly, using the shallow tops of his lungs. His heart raced. He could not have responded more quickly or violently had she suddenly slipped onto his lap. It frightened him. It was actual fright. The thrust of desire was as tangible as her hard, smooth legs.
    He went out to Betty’s typewriter, rolled paper into it, and typed a letter to Maura. He made it quite a long letter. He knew he was saying very little, but at least it was long. He felt as though he were writing to a stranger. When he slipped it into an envelope, he knew the whole letter was a lie. But he sealed it, and when he left, he took it with him to mail.
    As he was on a party line at his house, he phoned Clemmie from a drugstore