Deep Water by Patricia Highsmith (best books to read now .TXT) 📕

belong to the club but had been invited by members. Vic looked around for Ralph Gosden, expecting to see him, but Ralph was not there. Ralph had been seeing a good deal of the Wilsons, according to Evelyn Cowan, who had been advising June Wilson about her flower garden. Evelyn was an enthusiastic gardener. The Wilsons had been in Little Wesley only four months, and they lived in a modest house on the north side of town. Evelyn Cowan had told Vic, when they met one day in the drugstore, that Don Wilson was taking a very serious view of the story he had told Ralph about Malcolm McRae, and Vic felt sure that Ralph was helping to rub it in by making himself out a victim of Vic's jealousy, ill will, and general "bad taste." Ralph would of course have said that Melinda had been nothing but a dear friend of his and, since the Wilsons were rather out of the group who knew him and Melinda well, Vic supposed that they had swallowed it. People in Little Wesley had not been particularly friendly to the Wilsons since their arrival, and Vic thought it was Don's fault. He was humorless and standoffish at social gatherings, perhaps because he considered smiles and conviviality unintelligent or unbecoming in a writer. And he was such a hack—western stories, detective stories, love stories, some of which his wife collaborated on, though Vic had heard from somebody that her speciality was children's books. The Wilsons had no children.

       Don Wilson and his wife stood against the wall, Don looking lank and unhappy, and his wife, who was small and blond and usually animated, looking rather subdued. Vic supposed it was because they didn't know many people, and he had nodded and smiled a hello to them and was about to go and chat with them, but Don Wilson's unmistakably cold response stayed him. Perhaps Wilson was surprised to see him there at all, Vic thought, much less to see him greeted by all his old friends as if nothing had happened.

       Vic circulated around the edge of the dance floor, chatting with the MacPhersons and the Cowans and with the inevitable Mrs. Podnansky, whose two grandsons were here tonight. The younger grandson, Walter, had just got his law degree from Harvard. That evening Vic realized that there was something in what Melinda said about people shunning him—people he did not know at all. He saw people pointing him out to their dancing partners, then discussing him volubly, though always out of his earshot. Other total strangers turned away with self-conscious little smiles as he passed them, when at another time they might have introduced themselves and started talking. Strangers often started conversations with Vic about his printing plant. But Vic did not mind the shunning and the whispers. It made him feel strangely more comfortable and secure, in fact, than he usually felt at parties, perhaps because the whispering and pointing, at both him and Melinda, fairly guaranteed that Melinda would behave herself tonight. Melinda was having a good time, he could see that, though tonight she would probably tell him that she had not had a good time at all. She looked beautiful in a new amber-colored taffeta gown that had no belt and fitted her strong narrow waist and her hips as if it had been cut for her to the millimeter. By midnight she had danced with about fifteen partners, including a couple of youngish men Vic didn't know, either one of whom might have been Ralph Gosden's successor under ordinary circumstances, but Melinda was merely pleasant and gracious to them without being coy or hoydenish or femme fatale or pretending to have been swept off her feet by them—all of which tactics he had seen her use on other occasions. Neither did she drink too much. Vic was extremely proud of Melinda that evening. He had often been proud of the way she looked, but seldom, that he could remember, of the way she behaved.

       As Melinda came toward him after a dance, he heard a woman say, "That's his wife."

       "Oh, yes? She's lovely!"

       Someone's laughter obliterated part of the conversation. Then: "Nobody knows, you see! But some people think so… No, he certainly doesn't, does he?"

       "Hi," Melinda said to Vic. "Aren't you tired of standing up?" Her large green-brown eyes looking slurringly at him, as she often looked at men, though usually with a smile. She was not smiling now.

       "I haven't been standing up. I've been sitting with Mrs. Podnansky part of the time."

       "She's your favorite party girl, isn't she?"

       Vic laughed. "Can I get you something to drink?" "A quadruple Scotch."

       Before he could go off to get her anything, one of the young men who had danced with her before came up and said a solemn, "May I?" to Vic.

       "You may" Vic said, with a smile. He didn't think the emphatic "May I?" was a result of the McRae tale, though of course it might have been.

       Vic glanced over at Don Wilson and saw that Don was watching him again. Vic got himself a third helping of lemon ice—liquor had no charm for him that evening—and seeing Mary Meller looking rather detached, he took another portion of ice for her. Mary accepted it with a warm, friendly smile.

       "Evelyn and Phil want us to cool off with a dip over at their house after the dance is over. Can you and Melinda come?" Mary asked him.

       "We didn't bring our suits," Vic said, though that hadn't stopped them on other occasions when they had jumped into the Cowan pool naked. Melinda had, at least. Vic was a little shy about such things.

       "Drop by your house for your suits—or not?" Mary said gaily "It's such a dark night, who cares?"

       "I'll ask Melinda," Vic said.

       "She looks lovely tonight, doesn't she? Vic—" Mary touched his arm and he leaned a little