told you this before, but last year I kept some notes. You wanted me to come to fifty-seven of your charitable whingdings. Out of that I managed forty-five, which is a whole lot more than I'd attend from choice, but it isn't a bad score."
"You bastard! I'm not a ball game where you keep a scorecard. I'm your wife."
Mel said sharply, "Take it easy!" He was becoming angry, himself. "Also, in case you don't know it, you're raising your voice. Do you want all those nice people around to know what kind of a heel you have for a husband?"
"I don't give a goddam!" But she said it softly, just the same.
"I do know you're my wife, which is why I intend to get down there just as soon as I can." What would happen, Mel wondered, if he could reach out and touch Cindy now? Would the old magic work? He decided not. "So save me a place, and tell the waiter to keep my soup warm. Also, apologize and explain why I'm late. I presume some of the people there have heard there is an airport." A thought struck him. "Incidentally, what's the occasion tonight?"
"I explained last week."
"Tell me again."
"It's a publicity party---cocktails and dinner---to promote the costume ball which is being given next month for the Archidona Children's Relief Fund. The press is here. They'll be taking photographs."
Now Mel knew why Cindy wanted him to hurry. With him there, she stood a better chance of being in the photographs---and on tomorrow's newspaper social pages.
"Most other committee members," Cindy insisted, "have their husbands here already."
"But not all?"
"I said most."
"And you did say the Archidona Relief Fund?"
"Yes."
"Which Arcbidona? There are two. One's in Ecuador, the other in Spain." At college, maps and geography had fascinated Mel, and he had a retentive memory.
For the first time, Cindy hesitated. Then she said testily, "What does it matter? This isn't the time for stupid questions."
Mel wanted to laugh out loud. Cindy didn't know. As usual, she had chosen to work for a charity because of who was involved, rather than what.
He said maticiously, "How many letters do you expect to get from this one?"
"I don't know what you mean."
"Oh, yes, you do."
To be considered for listing in The Social Register, a new aspirant needed eight sponsoring letters from people whose names already appeared there. At the last count Mel had heard, Cindy had collected four.
"By God, Mel, if you say anything---tonight or any other time..."
"Will the letters be free ones, or do you expect to pay for them like those other two?" He was aware of having an advantage now. It happened very rarely.
Cindy said indignantly, "That's a filthy allegation. It's impossible to buy your way in..."
"Nuts!" Mel said. "I get the canceled checks from our joint account. Remember?"
There was a silence. Then Cindy asserted, low-voiced and savagely, "Listen to me! You'd better get here tonight, and soon. If you don't come, or if you do come and embarass me by saying anything of what you did just now, it'll be the end. Do you understand?"
"I'm not sure that I do." Mel spoke quietly. Instinct cautioned him that this was an important moment for them both. "Perhaps you'd better tell me exactly what you mean."
Cindy countered, "You figure it out."
She hung up.
ON HIS WAY from the parking area to his office, Mel's fury seethed and grew. Anger had always come to him less quickly than to Cindy. He was the slow-burn type. But he was burning now.
He was not entirely sure of the focus of his anger. A good deal was directed at Cindy, but there were other factors, too: His professional failure, as he saw it, to prepare effectually for a new era of aviation; a seeming inability to infuse others any longer with his own convictions; high hopes, unfulfilled. Somehow, between them all, Mel thought, his personal and professional lives had become twin testaments to inadequacy. His marriage was on the rocks, or apparently about to go there; if and when it did, he would have failed his children, also. At the same time, at the airport, where he was trustee for thousands who passed through daily in good faith, all his efforts and persuasion had failed to halt deterioration. There, the high standards he had worked to build were eroding steadily.
En route to the executive mezzanine, he encountered no one he knew. It was just as well. If he had been spoken to, whatever question had been put, be