Couples by John Updike Read Free Book Online Page A

me?”
    “Actually, Hass,” Frank Appleby said, “I see you as our local Bertrand Russell.”
    “I put him more as a Schweitzer type,” Freddy Thorne said.
    “You bastards, I mean it.” The tip of his nose lifted under persecution like the flowery nose of a mole. “Look at Kennedy. There’s somebody inside that robot trying to get out, but it doesn’t dare because he’s too young. He’d be crucified.”
    Janet Appleby said, “ Let’s talk news. We always talk people. I’ve been reading the newspaper while Frank reads Shakespeare. Why is Egypt merging with those other Arabs? Don’t they know they have Israel in between? It’s as bad as us and Alaska.”
    “I love you, Janet,” Bea called, across Ken. “You think like I do.”
    “Those countries aren’t countries,” Harold said. “They’re just branches of Standard Oil. L’huile étendarde .”
    “Tell us some more Shakespeare, Frank,” Freddy said.
    “We have laughed,” Frank said, “to see the sails conceive, and grow big-bellied with the wanton wind. Midsummer Night’s Dream . Isn’t that a grand image? I’ve been holding it in my mind for days. Grow big-bellied with the wanton wind.” He stood and poured more wine around. Foxy put her hand over the mouth of her glass.
    Freddy Thorne leaned close to her and said, “You don’t have much of an appetite. Tummy trouble?”
    “Seriously,” Roger Guerin said on her other side, “I’d have no hesitation about calling Hanema and at least getting an estimate. He does very solid work. He’s one of the few contractors left, for instance, who puts up honest plaster walls. And his job for us, though it took forever, was really very loving. Restoration is probably his forte.”
    Bea added, “He’s a dear little old-fashioned kind of man.”
    “You’ll be so-orry,” Freddy Thorne said.
    Frank Appleby called, “And you can get him to build a dike for you so Ken can farm the marsh. There’s a fortune to be made in salt hay. It’s used to mulch artichokes.”
    Foxy turned to her tormentor. “Why don’t you like him?” She had abruptly remembered who Hanema was. At Frank’s party, a short red-haired man clownishly lying at the foot of the stairs had looked up her dress.
    “I do like him,” Freddy Thorne told her. “I love him. I love him like a brother.”
    “And he you,” little-Smith said quickly.
    Thorne said, “To tell the truth, I feel homosexually attracted to him.”
    “Freddy,” Thorne’s wife said in a level voice hardly intended to be heard.
    “He has a lovely wife,” Roger said.
    “She is lovely,” Bea Guerin called. “So serene. I envy the wonderful way she moves . Don’t you, Georgene?”
    “Angela’s really a robot,” Frank Appleby said, “with Jack Kennedy inside her, trying to get out.”
    “I don’t know,” Georgene Thorne said, “that she’s so perfect. I don’t think she gives Piet very much.”
    “She gives him social aplomb,” Harold said.
    Freddy said, “I bet she even gives him a bang now and then. She’s human. Hell, everybody’s human. That’s my theory.”
    Foxy asked him, “What does he do neurotic?”
    “You heard Roger describe the way he builds. He’s anally neat. Also, he goes to church.”
    “But I go to church. I wouldn’t be without it.”
    “Frank,” Freddy called, “I think I’ve found the fourth.” Foxy guessed he meant that she was the fourth most neurotic person in town, behind the fire chief, the Dutch contractor, and the lady doomed to be crushed by magazines.
    Foxy came from Maryland and partook of the aggressiveness of southern women. “You must tell me what you mean by ‘neurotic.’ ”
    Thorne smiled. His sickly mouth by candlelight invited her to come in. “You haven’t told me what you mean by ‘character.’ ”
    “Perhaps,” Foxy said, scornfully bright, “we mean the same thing.” She disliked this man, she had never in her memory met a man she disliked more, and she tried to elicit, from