The Servant Problem | Page 3

wanted to. My larder is on its last legs. But sit down, and I'll make you some sandwiches. I'll make a pot of coffee too--the gas hasn't been turned off yet."
* * * * *
The living room had precisely three articles of furniture to its name--two armchairs and a coffee table. After Judith left him, Philip set his brief case on the floor and sat down in one of the chairs. He wondered idly how she expected to make the trip to Pfleugersville. He had seen no car in the driveway, and there was no garage on the property in which one could be concealed. Moreover, it was highly unlikely that buses serviced the village any more. Valleyview had been bypassed quite some time ago by one of the new super-duper highways. He shrugged. Getting to Pfleugersville was her problem, not his.
He returned his attention to the living room. It was a large room. The house was large, too--large and Victorianesque. Judith, apparently, had opened the back door, for a breeze was wafting through the downstairs rooms--a breeze laden with the scent of flowers and the dew-damp breath of growing grass. He frowned. The month was October, not June, and since when did flowers bloom and grass grow in October? He concluded that the scent must be artificial.
Zarathustra was regarding him with large golden eyes from the middle of the living-room floor. The animal did somehow bring to mind a little old man, although he could not have been more than two or three years old. "You're not very good company," Philip said.
"Ruf," said Zarathustra, and turning, trotted through an archway into a large room that, judging from the empty shelves lining its walls, had once been a library, and thence through another archway into another room--the dining room, undoubtedly--and out of sight.
Philip leaned back wearily in the armchair he had chosen. He was beat. Take six days a week, ten hours a day, and multiply by fifty-two and you get three hundred and twelve. Three hundred and twelve days a year, hunting down clients, talking, walking, driving, expounding; trying in his early thirties to build the foundation he should have begun building in his early twenties--the foundation for the family he had suddenly realized he wanted and someday hoped to have. Sometimes he wished that ambition had missed him altogether instead of waiting for so long to strike. Sometimes he wished he could have gone right on being what he once had been. After all, there was nothing wrong in living in cheap hotels and even cheaper rooming houses; there was nothing wrong in being a lackadaisical door-to-door salesman with run-down heels.
Nothing wrong, that is, except the aching want that came over you sometimes, and the loneliness of long and empty evenings.
Zarathustra had re-entered the room and was sitting in the middle of the floor again. He had not returned empty-handed--or rather, empty-mouthed--although the object he had brought with him was not the sort of object dogs generally pick up. It was a rose--
A green rose.
* * * * *
Disbelievingly, Philip leaned forward and took it from the animal's mouth. Before he had a chance to examine it, however, footsteps sounded in the next room, and prompted by he knew not what, he thrust the rose into his suitcoat pocket. An instant later, Judith Darrow came through the archway bearing a large tray. After setting it down on the coffee table, she poured two cups of coffee from a little silver pot and indicated a plate of sandwiches. "Please help yourself," she said.
She sat down in the other chair and sipped her coffee. He had one of the sandwiches, found that he didn't want any more. Somehow, her proximity, coupled with her silence, made him feel uncomfortable. "Has your husband already left for Pfleugersville?" he asked politely.
Her gray-green eyes grew cold. "Yes, he left quite some time ago," she said. "A year ago, as a matter of fact. But for parts unknown, not Pfleugersville. Pfleugersville wasn't accessible then, anyway. He had a brunette on one arm, a redhead on the other, and a pint of Cutty Sark in his hip pocket."
Philip was distressed. "I ... I didn't mean to pry," he said. "I'm--"
"Sorry? Why should you be? Some men are born to settle down and raise children and others are born to drink and philander. It's as simple as that."
"Is it?" something made Philip ask. "Into which category would you say I fall?"
"You're in a class by yourself." Tiny silver flecks had come into her eyes, and he realized to his astonishment that they were flecks of malevolence. "You've never married, but playing the field hasn't made you one hundred per cent cynical. You're still convinced that somewhere there is a woman worthy of your devotion. And you're quite