Button, Button(18)

Maxwell guffawed.

It was a raven-haired, limp-lidded vamp that night. On her outfit spangles moved and glittered at strategic points.

"Hel-lo, honey lamb," she said. "My name's-"

"What have you done with our dog?" challenged Frank.

"Why, nothing, honey, nothing," she said. "He's just off getting acquainted with my poodle Winifred. Now about us-"

Frank shut the door without a word and waited until the twitching had eased before returning to Sylvia and television.

Semper, by God oh God, he thought as he put on his pajamas later, fidelis.

The next two nights they sat in the darkened living room and, as soon as the woman rang the doorbell, Sylvia phoned the police.

"Yes," she whispered, furiously, "they're right out there now. Will you please send a patrol car this instant?"

Both nights the patrol car arrived after the women had gone.

"Complicity," muttered Sylvia as she daubed on cold cream. "Plain out-and-out complicity."

Frank ran cold water over his wrists.

That day Frank phoned city and state officials who promised to look into the matter.

That night it was a redhead sheathed in a green knit dress that hugged all that was voluminous and there was much of that.

"Now, see here-" Frank began.

"Girls who were here before me," said the redhead, "tell me you're not interested. Well, I always say, where there's a disinterested husband there's a listening wife."

"Now you see here-" said Frank.

He stopped as the redhead handed him a card. He looked at it automatically.

39-26-36

MARGIE

(SPECIALTIES)

BY APPOINTMENT ONLY.

"If you don't want to set it up here, honey," said Margie, "you just meet me in the Cyprian Room of the Hotel Fillmore."

"I beg your pardon," said Frank and flung the card away.

"Any evening between six and seven," Margie chirped.

Frank leaned against the shut door and birds with heated wings buffeted at his face. "Monstrous," he said with a gulp. "Oh, m-mon-strous."

"Again?" asked Sylvia.

"But with a difference," he said vengefully. "I have traced them to their lair and tomorrow I shall lead the police there."

"Oh, Frank!" said Sylvia, embracing him. "You're wonderful."

"Th-thank you," said Frank.

When he came out of the house the next morning he found the card on one of the porch steps. He picked it up and slid it into his wallet.

Sylvia mustn't see it, he thought.

It would hurt her.

Besides, he had to keep the porch neat.

Besides, it was important evidence.

That evening he sat in a shadowy Cyprian Room booth revolving a glass of sherry between two fingers. Jukebox music softly thrummed; there was the mumble of postwork conversation in the air.

Now, thought Frank. When Margie arrives, I'll duck into the phone booth and call the police, then keep her occupied in conversation until they come. That's what I'll do. When Margie-

Margie arrived.

Frank sat like a Medusa victim. Only his mouth moved. It opened slowly. His gaze rooted on the jutting opulence of Margie as she waggled along the aisle, then came to gelatinous rest on a leather-topped bar stool.

Five minutes later he cringed out of a side door.

"Wasn't there?" asked Sylvia for a third time.

"I told you," snapped Frank, concentrating on his breaded cutlet.

Sylvia was still a moment. Then her fork clinked down.

"We'll have to move, then," she said. "Obviously, the authorities have no intention of doing anything."

"What difference does it make where we live?" he mumbled.

She didn't reply.

"I mean," he said, trying to break the painful silence, "well, who knows, maybe it's an inevitable cultural phenomenon. Maybe-"

"Frank Gussett!" she cried. "Are you defending that awful Exchange?"

"No, no, of course not," he blurted. "It's execrable. Really! But-well, maybe it's Greece all over again. Maybe it's Rome. Maybe it's-"

"I don't care what it is!" she cried. "It's awful!"

He put his hand on hers. "There, there," he said.

39-26-36, he thought.

That night, in the frantic dark, there was a desperate reaffirmation of their love.

"It was nice, wasn't it?" asked Sylvia, plaintively.

"Of course," he said. 39-26-36.

That's right!" said Maxwell as they drove to work the next morning. "A cultural phenomenon. You hit it on the head, Frankie-boy. An inevitable goddamn cultural phenomenon. First the houses. Then the lady cab drivers, the girls on street corners, the clubs, the teenage pickups roaming the drive-in movies. Sooner or later they had to branch out more; put it on a door-to-door basis. And naturally, the syndicates are going to run it, pay off complainers. Inevitable. You're so right, Frankie-boy; so right."