She didn’t look happy, despite the love. Poor little girl! The guy who pinched her tetrodotoxin ought to be shot for the major crime of worrying her. And then there was John Hall …
He took her face between his huge hands, holding it like a single rose. “You are so beautiful,” he said in the back of his throat. “How did I ever get this lucky?”
“No, how did I?” she whispered back, stroking his hands. “One look, and I was done for. I will love you until I die, James Keith Hunter.”
His laugh was almost too quiet to hear. “Oh, c’mon, honey! Death is just a transition. D’you think that our molecules won’t shift heaven and earth to be together as long as time endures? We may die, but our molecules won’t.”
Her laugh was silent. “Just taking the mickey, my love, my joy — my dear, dear love.”
“This time next year we’ll be comfortable, I promise.”
“A promise I’ll hold you to.” She twisted a scarf around her neck and shrugged into a sweater before he helped her into her down coat, old and weeping, but Chicago-warm. “Oh, winter! I can’t wait for spring this year. 1969 is going to be ours, Jim.”
His own Chicago down coat was a better fit than the tux, creaking at its seams. “At least it’s not snowing.”
“I dislike these people,” she said as she watched him lock the front door. “Fancy John turning up their relative.”
“You know what they say — you can choose your friends, but not your relatives. Though the Tunbulls aren’t too bad once you get to know them.”
“Poor John! I wonder how he’ll feel when he meets his stepmother. From what he said last night, most of his contact with his father concerned proving that he was the long lost son,” said Millie.
“That’s logical,” Jim answered. “Don’t worry, Millie, it will all come out in the wash sooner or later.” He looked suddenly hopeful. “Just think! I’ll soon be able to pay John back for that sinus operation if my book does what they say it will. Ten thousand dollars! Yet one more debt. A hundred big ones in student loans …”
“Stop it, Jim!” she snapped, looking fierce. “We’re Chubb faculty now, you’re about to be famous, and our income will pay back every last debt.”
“If Tinkerman doesn’t suppress A Helical God. Oh, Millie, it’s been such a long, hard road! I don’t think I could bear another disappointment.” Jim removed the stick from under the old Chevy’s gas pedal. “The car’s good and warm. Get in.”
Davina and Max Tunbull lived in a big white clapboard house on Hampton Street, just off Route 133 in the Valley, and not more than half a mile from the invisible boundary beyond which the Valley became a less salubrious neighborhood. There were actually three Tunbull houses on this longish, rambling street of mostly vacant lots, but Max and Davina lived in the dominant one on the knoll, by far the most imposing. A house on the far side of the street had some pretensions to affluence, but there could be no doubt whose residence kinged it over all others.
When Millie and Jim arrived they found themselves the last — dismaying! — had it really taken so long to squeeze Jim into his hired tux? What an idiocy! Black tie!
It wasn’t the first time she had met Davina, but the woman still jarred and disturbed her. Millie’s life to date had been spent in traditionally unfeminine pursuits and with mostly male peers, a pattern set very early on thanks to her liaison with Jim. So the Davinas of this world were more foreign even than this Davina really was; they chattered of things Millie knew nothing about, nor hungered to know about.
John Hall was almost pathetically glad to see them, which made it all worthwhile; despite Jim’s importance to Max, they probably would have declined this invitation had John not visited last night and implored them. The poor guy was terrified, but that was typical John, a loner, shy, unsure of himself until he settled into the kind of friendship he had enjoyed with the Hunters back in California.
But of course Davina wouldn’t leave them alone. Not surprising to Millie, who knew of Davina’s reputation: see an attractive man and go for him, then, when he became too ardent or amorous, run screeching to husband Max for protection. John, with genuine good looks skating on the verge of female, was a logical Davina target. The weird servant, Uda, had obviously assessed John to the same conclusion, and plied the poor man with martinis he had the sense not to drink. What was Uda’s stake in it? wondered Millie, eyes busy.
It was the only way to make the time go, especially in this almost all-male assembly. Under ordinary circumstances Millie would simply have barged into the middle of the men and demanded to be included in conversation whereof she knew she could hold her end up. But with Davina present, no luck! Not to mention the pregnant Mrs. Markoff, the only other woman, and not, from the look on her face, a Davina admirer.