The Wapshot Scandal by John Cheever

Tivoli. But she did not return. What had happened? Had she hurt herself? Had she climbed out the window? He threw open the bathroom door and found her sitting naked on the edge of the tub, reading an old copy of Newsweek . “What’s the matter, sugar?” he asked.
    “Nothing,” Betsey said. “I was just reading.”
    “But that’s an old copy,” Coverly said. “That’s about a year old.”
    “Well, it’s very interesting,” Betsey said. “I find it very interesting.”
    “But you’re not interested in current events,” Coverly said. “I mean you don’t even know the name of the vice president, do you?”
    “That’s none of your business,” said Betsey.
    “But do you know the name of the vice president?”
    “That’s just none of your business,” Betsey said.
    “Oh, sugar,” groaned Coverly, his feeling swamped with love, and he raised her up in his arms. Then the verdure of venery, that thickest of foliage, filled the room. Sounds of running water. Flights of wild canaries. Lightly, lightly, assisting one another at every turn they began their effortless ascent up the rockwall, the chimney, the flume, the long traverse, up and up and up until over the last ridge one had a view of the whole, wide world and Coverly was the happiest man in it. But according to him none of this had happened. How could it have?

CHAPTER VIII

    Judge Beasely’s offices were on the second floor of the Trowbridge Block. Enid Moulton, Mabel’s sister, let Honora into the farther room where the judge sat examining or pretending to examine papers. Honora guessed that he had been asleep and she looked at him gloomily. Time, that she had seen turn so many things and men into their opposites, had forced him into the image of a hawk. She did not mean that he seemed predatory—only that the thinness of his face made what had always been a sharp nose hooked like a beak and that his thin gray hair lay on his scalp like moulting feathers. He humped his shoulders like a roosted bird. His voice was cracked but then it always had been. The skin of his nose had peeled here and there, showing a violet-colored underskin. He had been a lady-killer—she remembered that—and at eighty he still seemed proud of his prowess. Above his desk was a large, varnished painting of some antlered deer, leaving a gloomy wood to drink at a pond. The frame of the picture was festooned with Christmas tinsel. Honora gave this a glance. “I see you’re all ready for Christmas,” she said meanly.
    “Hmmm,” he said, uncomprehending.
    Honora told him her problem, trying to estimate its magnitude by the degrees of consternation on his thin face. His memory, his reason, seemed not impaired but retarded. When she was done he made a temple of his fingers. “County court won’t convene for another five weeks,” he said, “so they can’t indict you until then. Have they put a lien on your accounts?”
    “I don’t believe so,” Honora said.
    “Well, my advice, Honora, is that you go directly to the bank, withdraw a substantial sum of money and leave the country. Extradition proceedings are complicated and prolonged and the tax authorities are not altogether pitiless. They will invite you to return, of course, but I don’t think a lady as venerable as you will be subjected to any unpleasantness.”
    “I am too old to travel,” Honora said.
    “You are too old to go to the poor farm,” he said. The light in his eye seemed as uncomprehending as a bird and he seemed, like a drake, to have to turn his head from side to side to bring her into his vision. She said nothing more, neither thank you nor good-bye, and left the office. She stopped at the hardware store and bought a length of clothesline. When she got back to her own house she climbed directly to the attic.
    Honora admired all sorts of freshness: rain and the cold morning light, all winds, all sounds of running water in which she thought she heard the chain of being, high seas but especially the