she turned away from her car and walked into the post office, where she slipped into a telephone booth.
"Hello," she said in a disguised falsetto voice after she had reached her party. "Is this police headquarters? Fine. Are you still looking for Solly Madchen's partner?"
EXCERPT FROM "THE BILLY & GILLY SHOW," MAY 4TH
Gilly: I'd have to agree with you, Billy. Fidelity is the key to a successful marriage.
Billy: Yes, it may sound corny, but when I read about all these wife-swapping clubs and such, I wonder what the world's coming to.
Gilly: I know, and the ideas some of our young people have about, well, sex. I mean, it's almost as if they advocate promiscuity.
Billy: I suspect that there are more moral people around than you think. It's just that the others get all the publicity.
Gilly: You may have something there. And I'II tell you something else. The men who do philander, well they're the ones with problems. I think they doubt their own virility.
Billy: My wife, the psychiatrist.
Gilly: No, really. Actually, I don't think there's anything more attractive than a truly moral man.
MELVIN CORBY
The afternoon sun caressed his face, drawing its golden fingers across his neck. In his mind, Melvin Corby was bronzed, muscled, a man – God behind the wheel of a Lotus-Climax at Le Mans. The Formula One motor throbbed and roared with loin-tingling power as he dominated the turns, conquered the straightaways. Women watched with excitement – the sun glinting on their tanned shoulders and the down-curves of their full breasts. Gillian Blake was in the front row, stretched forward on the tiptoes of her nylon-clad legs; her bust and behind snugly sheathed in white, her face eager, her pink tongue peeking out of her parted lips. RRRRRR . RRRR. RRR. ROWR. ROWP. His power mower stalled, and the daydream disappeared in a kaleidoscope of splintered images. Gillian, he thought. Gillian. Gillian. Gil-li-an. Gilly. Oh, Gilly, Gilly, Gilly. He was still excited as he got off the power mower and faced the fact that he was out of gas. Melvin Corby paid a gardener to take care of most of the landscaping, but running the ride-on mower was a treat he reserved for himself. It was one of Melvin's special joys; the power mower represented a pleasure he could revel in openly. Sitting astride the mower, Melvin Corby – myopic, curly-haired, thin-shouldered, soft-bellied – was somebody. The power mower symbolized his material, if heavily mortgaged, achievement – the front-to-back split-level home and the half-acre that went with it. The house had cost $32,850 – about $6,000 more than it was worth, but he was paying for the address. King's Neck. 69 Selma Lane, King's Neck. The builder had named the street after a daughter; probably, thought Melvin, in honor of her bathmitzvah. He wondered if it bothered the goyim who dominated King's Neck that the builder was a Jew.
It was some address, all right. King's Neck. It meant something. Last winter Melvin and his wife, Myrna, had followed the sun to Miami Beach. They had spent two weeks in that fabled land of papaya juice and potato knishes. Well, it had been worth every cent they had spent on the house to be able to say, "Yes, we live on the Island. King's Neck." When you said King's Neck, people looked up. People paid attention. They figured you were somebody. It didn't matter that Melvin lived in the southern section of King's Neck, that his property had once been part of a potato field, that there was a Negro slum strip on the edge of town less than two miles away. It was still King's Neck. An address like that, it was instant status. It was something you did for your children. In his case, for your child. David was only seven years old, and already he was going to a place where they taught horseback riding. Imagine, his son riding a horse. Only in America. My boy takes horseback-riding lessons.
It annoyed Melvin that his mother wasn't impressed by this. "Fancy, schmancy," his mother had said during one of their phone conversations. "Who needs it? Better he should get good marks." His mother still lived in the four-room apartment in Brooklyn in which he had grown up. Melvin was a good son; he called her every few weeks. He had even offered to come and get her one weekend and bring her out to see the house and David, but she had refused. "So what'll you tell