Orbit 2

“It’s the truth!” he cried. “What do you want me to do? Lie to you?”

“Oh, do as you like. I don’t care.” With a resigned air she began putting away the various items. “Now hurry and change your clothes. They’ll be here any minute.”

He was scarcely halfway up the stairs when she came dashing after him. “Your feet! What’s happened to your feet?”

“Don’t know.” He shrugged. “They just didn’t hurt when I got up this morning.”

“What did I tell you,” Helen told him triumphantly. “You wouldn’t go to see Dr. Levine. He’s only the best orthopedic specialist in town but of course you know more than he does. If I hadn’t made an appointment for you, you’d never have gone. Now admit it. Those arch supporters did help, didn’t they?”

“If I’d worn those arch supporters one more day I wouldn’t be ambulant now.”

“But they must have done you some good.” She regarded him with despair.. “If it wasn’t the arch supporters, what was it?”

Bill did not answer immediately. He leaned against the railing, gazing thoughtfully at some of Helen’s abstract artwork on the opposite wall.

“Last night,” he declared solemnly, “my feet were healed.”

“Healed?”

He nodded. “What they called a miracle in the old days.”

“So it was a miracle and not the arch supporters?”

“Why couldn’t I be cured by a miracle?” he demanded angrily. “Other people are. People with their stomach and lungs eaten up by cancer. Suddenly they’re all right. They rise from their bed and walk. They’ve got sworn medical testimony to prove it.”

Helen hesitated uncertainly. “But you’re not the miracle type.”

“What’s the matter with me?”

“I always supposed you had to be kind of on the saintly side.”

He dismissed her objection with* a wave of his hand.

“Merely a technicality.” He closed his eyes for a few moments as if in meditation. “I hadn’t intended to say anything about it, but for your information, I was healed by an angel who appeared in my room last night.”

“So that was what I heard going on in there.”

“She appeared over by the filing cabinet,” Bill continued. “She was surrounded by a golden halo that illuminated the whole room. I thought I’d forgotten to turn the lights out at first.” His voice dropped almost to a whisper. “She was no ordinary angel, either.”

“It’s so nice you got special attention.”

“She had the most beautiful golden-red hair.” There was a faraway look in his eyes. “Her name was Edna.”

“No last name?”

“Naturally I was somewhat startled at the sudden appearance of this apparition. ‘What do you want?’ I asked, in a voice that trembled.

“ ‘Have no fear, William,’ she replied, approaching the bed. ‘I have come to heal you. Not to harm you.’

“ ‘To heal me?’ I whispered.

“ ‘Move over, William,’ she said, ‘so that I may touch you.’

“So I shoved over in the bed a little—”

His narrative was interrupted by the flash of headlights and the sound of a car pulling up in the driveway.

“There they are now!” Helen exclaimed. “And here I’ve been wasting my time talking to you about your feet and this red-headed angel.”

Bill slowly mounted the stairs, his lips continuing to move inaudibly. In his room he stood for a while inspecting the place where he had recounted Edna’s appearance. From the lower depths came the shriek of feminine voices raised in greeting interspersed with occasional masculine rumbles. Evidently the Nortons had picked up Bernice and Clem on the way over. Clem Tuttle was in advertising and Jim Norton was an agent for Inertia Acres, a real estate project for the retired. Bernice Tuttle and Dottie Norton were among his favorite wives, but he found it hard to work up much enthusiasm for their husbands. It was while struggling into his shirt that it occurred to him that all the people they saw were friends of Helen’s. Outside the office he had no friends.

Bill came downstairs, said hello all around, and made a quick exit to the kitchen to mix the cocktails. He put too much vodka into the martinis and had to drink a couple of glasses to provide more room for the vermouth. Back in the living room he had hoped to strike up a conversation with Bernice or Dottie, but the situation was hopeless. The girls were in ecstasy over Helen’s Christmas tree, which was not a Christmas tree at all but a dead limb salvaged from the oak in the back yard. She had adorned its gnarled branches with blue and silver balls, with here and there an aerodynamically inadequate angel in flight. Since the girls were engaged, he was thrown upon the company of Jim and Clem, who were discussing the situation that had developed at Anoakia U., their old alma mater. It appeared that the quality of the faculty and student body had been steadily deteriorating since their departure in ’41. Since Bill had never attended Anoakia U., and never had had much use for the place anyhow, he found the conversation less than fascinating. He sipped his cocktail, and moodily contemplated Bernice Tuttle’s knees.

As if from a great distance he heard Helen calling him. “Bill, telephone.” He went into the hall, taking his glass with him. As he expected, it was Mac.

“Bill, what’s your dispersion on that plate?” “Hundred and ninety angstroms per millimeter.” “What kind of plate was it?”

“Ha-O, baked. Why?”

“Just checking, was all.”

“Say, Mac, I explained to your wife it was my fault about getting home late.”

“Well, as a matter of fact, I’m still at the office.” “Still at the office!” Bill went cold sober in an instant “Mac, what do you know?”

“Nothing I want to talk about yet. But I think I’m gaining on it.”

“Give me a ring—” But he had hung up.

Bill’s mind was racing. Mac would never have called unless he was on to something big/A “critical” object that might settle the cosmological controversy once and for all. He gulped down the rest of his drink and casually strolled back to the living room. How petty they all were. Jim and Clem were thoroughly agreed that autonomy was not for Anoakia U. The girls were deploring the Santa Claus situation that had developed at the various department stores around town. That Santa Claus at the Bon Marche, they must have got him from central casting! Did you get a whiff of his breath? And the way he talked to the children! Honestly, you’d have thought he was playing King Lear!

The soggy part of a Hillhurst evening came after dinner, when the guests were swollen with food, and the cocktails only a dull memory. There were two ways to endure the time till departure: (1) the men gathered at one end of the room and talked about their automobiles and their children, while the women went into a huddle at the other end and talked about their clothes and their children; or (2) somebody showed color slides of their trip to Hawaii last summer. One hostess had made a valiant attempt to break the pattern by handing out selected passages from Ovid and Chaucer to be read aloud, but some of the men had balked. But a few bold spirits still fought on. When her guests were comfortably relaxed over their coffee and liqueurs, Helen stepped to the center of the room and clapped her hands.

“Now I’m not going to let you sit around all evening,” she informed them. “We’re going to play a game called Three Answers. One person, called the Grand Inquisitor, asks the questions. The rest of us give the answers. We make up some sort of story and the Grand Inquisitor, by questioning us, tries to find the key to it.”

This announcement was followed by a brief silence. “Sounds like one of these fun things,” Clem grunted, knocking the ashes from his cigar.