1

Jack Mann answered the phone with a yawn, as if he were expecting his mother-in-law. But it was simply contented, end-of-the-day fatigue.

He picked up the receiver and smiled at his pretty young wife, Laura. She was combing their daughter’s hair, getting her ready for bed. Betsy was a lovely child, delicately blond and appealing, like her mother.

It was a still, soft evening, early summer in Chicago, and pleasant weather.

“Hello?” Jack said into the phone, coming down from the yawn with a comfortable sigh.

“Hello? May I speak to Jack Mann, please?”

“Speaking.”

It was a male voice and unfamiliar to Jack.

“Mr. Mann, my name is Winkler.” The voice was cultured, a little shy. “Some friends of yours asked me to call....”

Oh God, Jack thought. He’s visiting town and wants a free sack. Or worse, a free girl.

Laura Mann looked up to see her husband’s comical dismay. “Who is it?” she whispered.

Jack shrugged. “What friends?” he asked.

“The Pringles. Sunny and Page,” Winkler said.

Jack Mann came to astonished attention. “Page Pringle?” he said, and Laura’s face, too, became tense with interest. She forgot Betsy’s hair and watched Jack.

“Is he all right?” Jack asked. “Where is he?”

“Yes, he’s fine,” said Winkler. “I talked with him just two days ago. He says you were roommates at the University of Illinois for a year.”

“That’s right. He signed up for my math course, and when I passed him he offered me a bunk. We ended up good friends. But ...” Jack’s face wrinkled into a mass of worried lines. “I’m surprised to hear he mentioned me to you, after the set-to we had last time we met. My wife and I have been damn worried about him—and Sunny.”

“They’re out in California, in Barstow. On a honeymoon, they said,” Winkler told him. “Should be back here in Chicago in a week.”

Jack, listening to the strange voice, felt himself getting careful and suspicious. Who the hell was Winkler? Sunny and Page Pringle were Jack’s friends, arguments or no, and there was a lot about their lives and their marriage that a stranger would have been stunned speechless to learn.

It was the most curious marriage in all Jack’s wide knowledge: shocking, illegal, passionately faithful, even wildly wonderful at times. Some miracle had held it together, but there was no way of telling for how much longer. It seemed to Jack, whenever he saw Page and Sunny, that the bonds of their love were about to snap and send them spinning apart for the rest of their lives.

“Who are you, Mr. Winkler?” Jack asked frankly.

But Winkler, like Jack, became wary in his turn. “I live here in Chicago,” he said. “I work here, and....”

“And?” Jack prompted.

“Mr. Mann, this is pretty forward of me, but I wonder if I could meet you? If you’d care to have dinner with me?”

“Just a minute,” Jack said, covering the receiver. “Some guy who says he knows the Pringles and they told him to look us up,” he whispered to Laura.

“Well, ask him to dinner with us tomorrow,” she said. Husband and wife gazed uncertainly at each other for a moment. Winkler could be a blackmailer, a detective or a guy with a grudge, as well as a friend. At last Laura made up her mind for both of them. “If it’s about Page and Sunny Pringle, I want to hear it,” she said.

So Jack invited him.

* * *

Winkler’s cautious voice sounded almost relieved. “Thanks, Mr. Mann; I’ll be there,” he said.

Jack hung up, giving Laura a wry grin. “Well, now we’ve done it,” he said, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Who the hell could he be?” He walked toward Laura, catching Betsy on the way and hoisting her into his arms.

“Didn’t he give you a clue?” Laura’s lips were parted with curiosity.

“Just that he met the Pringles in Barstow, California.” He sat down and released his daughter, who scampered out of the room.

“Damn it, honey, do you suppose those two kids worked it out?” Jack said. “Went back together in spite of everything?”

“It doesn’t sound like Page,” Laura answered. “But still, the way he loves that girl is something. It seems to be a case of head against heart. Only I always thought Page was two-thirds head.”

“He thought so too, till he fell for Sunny,” Jack said, lighting a cigarette. “I never saw a kid so much in love. And being married to her only made it better. Gosh, life is goofy. You’d have thought that was the world’s ideal marriage. Two handsome, intelligent people, madly in love, charming, ambitious, happy. They couldn’t miss.”

“That just made it tougher for them when everything suddenly went to hell,” Laura said.

“Yeah. They didn’t know about each other when they married. At least we knew about us, honey. We knew the worst. Maybe we figured we couldn’t last and when we did, it came as a wonderful surprise.” They smiled at each other.

“Here we are, safe and comfortable and indecently happy,” Jack went on. “If I could just teach you to squeeze the toothpaste from the bottom.” She laughed.

“Couple of queers,” he said, speaking the word gently, without malice. “And we made it. The Pringles barely had seven months before the sky fell on them.”

Laura shook her head with pity. “I still think they could make it work,” she said. “They have a tough thing to live with, but Sunny’s ready to try. If Page could only—”

“Page is the problem child. He always was,” Jack said.

“Problem? Or child?”

“A little of both. And in a crisis, a lot of both,” he said.

“Maybe this thing will force him to grow up,” Laura said.

“Maybe. If he has the guts to go back and live with Sunny.”

“Lord, she’s beautiful,” Laura remembered. “I don’t see how he can keep his hands off her.”

“Hang on, doll,” Jack laughed. “Just because you can’t—”

“I never touched her!” she protested indignantly. But his doubtful grin made her add, “Well, not like you think, darling. I never made a pass at her. You know, the kind you make when you feel like bed.”

“You never felt like bed with Sunny Pringle?” Jack teased. “Come on, honey, don’t put me on.”

Laura pulled her poise around her like a shawl. “Sunny’s a wonderful girl,” she said. “She is also the prettiest girl I ever saw in my life. And to make it all perfect, she’s in love with her husband.” She spoke ruefully enough to make him chuckle again. He couldn’t help kidding this wife he treasured, but he did it with obvious love and she never resented it. Their relationship was odd, but satisfying to them.

“I just held her,” Laura admitted. “I comforted her when she hit the dumps. I even kissed her hair. Like a sister. You show me a sister who could be any more proper than I was!”

“I’ll show you a sister who’d have kissed more than her hair, that’s for damn sure,” he said.

“Jack, you talk like a jealous husband.”

“Which I am,” he said softly.

She relented and went over to his chair, going behind to massage his shoulders. He relaxed with a sigh.

“I know you are,” she said. “You’re never noisy about it, but it hurts you to see me with a woman. Jack darling, sometimes I think you ought to find somebody, too. Just for now and then, for a release. You wouldn’t feel so possessive about me, then. It’d make you happier.”

“I’m as happy as I can stand to be,” he said, caressing her hands. “I have you and Betsy. And I’m through horsing around with pretty boys forever. When you hit forty you look too silly chasing the teen-agers. All I want now is my family.”

She smiled down at the top of his brush cut.

“And if I have to be a little jealous ... well, what the hell. It’s a small price.”

She gave his head a fond shove, dislodging his heavy tortoise-shell glasses. “Okay, have it your way,” she said. “Just explain one thing to me. How come two inverts like us can make a marriage work, and two normal people like Page and Sunny can’t?”

“If I could explain that, I’d write a book.”

Laura was a lesbian. But like all lesbians, she couldn’t escape her femininity. She loved Jack Mann in every way but one, and she would never leave him. Her love had given her the courage to bear him their child. She admired his mind, enjoyed his company, and needed him. No other man would ever touch her.

Jack gave her her head with the women she wanted, but she never abused his confidence, nor exposed him and Betsy to her occasional crushes. That part of her life was completely separate from her home.

For Laura and Jack Mann, home, love, and marriage were inviolate. Their life together hadn’t been easy to build, and they were proud of it. It made the Pringles’ crack-up all the more sad and dramatic to them.

“If you and I had found out about ourselves what Page and Sunny found out—so suddenly—after they were married,” Jack mused. “Honey, I’m not so sure I could have taken it any better than Page did. It was that bad.” He ditched his cigarette in an ashtray by the chair.

“Did you ever know anybody named Winkler?” she asked him.

“I will tomorrow night,” he said.

“What does he want to tell us? That Page and Sunny are going to stick it out?” Laura said.

“Think it over,” Jack said. “If he can tell us that, he knows the whole damn crazy story.”

“He couldn’t!” she cried. “Almost nobody knows.”

“If he doesn’t, I’ll bet my last dollar he wants us to tell him,” Jack said. “And that gives me an idea.”

“An idea who he is?” she said.

But he only winked at her.