A Bone to Pick Page 0,60

the tables erected on the sun deck for the occasion were starched and bright. Marcia was her usual well-turned-out self, as starched and bright as the tablecloths in blue cotton shorts and blouse. She had dangly earrings and painted nails, top and bottom. She exclaimed over the wine and asked if we wanted a glass now. We refused politely and she went in to put it in the refrigerator, while Torrance, looking exceptionally tan in his white shorts and striped shirt, took our drink orders. We both took gin and tonics with lots of ice, and went to sit on the built-in bench that ran all the way around the huge deck. My feet could barely touch the deck. Aubrey sat very close when he sat next to me. Carey and Macon came in right on our heels, and I introduced them to Aubrey. Macon had met him before at a ministerial council meeting Macon had covered for the paper, and they immediately plunged into an earnest conversation about what the council hoped to accomplish in the next few months. Carey eyed my outfit and winked at me, and we talked over the men about how good Marcia and the party food looked. Then the couple who lived in the house across from Carey, the McMans, came up to be introduced, and they assumed that Aubrey and I owned Jane's house together; that we were cohabiting. As we were straightening that out, Lynn and Arthur came in. Lynn was elephantine and obviously very uncomfortable in a maternity shorts outfit. Arthur was looking a little worried and doubtful. When I saw him I felt - nothing.

When Arthur and Lynn worked their way around to us, he seemed to have shaken off whatever had been troubling him. Lynn looked a little more cheerful, too. "I wasn't feeling too well earlier," she confided as Arthur and Aubrey tried to find something to talk about. "But it seems to have stopped for the moment." "Not good - how?"

"Like gas pains," she said, her mouth a wry twist at this confession. "Honestly, I've never been so miserable in my life. Everything I eat gives me heartburn, and my back is killing me."

"And you're due very soon?"

"Not for a couple more weeks."

"When's your next doctor's appointment?"

"In your last month, you go every week," Lynn said knowledgeably. "I'm due to go back in tomorrow. Maybe he'll tell me something." I decided I might as well admit wholesale ignorance. Lynn certainly needed something to feel superior about. She had looked sourly on my red and white shorts outfit. "So what could he tell you?" I asked. "Oh. Well, for example, he could tell me I've started dilating - you know, getting bigger to have the baby. Or he could tell me I'm effacing." I nodded hastily, so Lynn wouldn't explain what that meant.

"Or how much the baby has dropped, if its head is really far down." I was sorry I'd asked. But Lynn was looking in better spirits, and she went on to tell Aubrey how they'd decorated the nursery, segueing neatly from that domestic subject to a discussion of the break-ins on the street, which were being generally discussed. The McMans complained about the police inaction on the crimes, unaware that they were about to become very embarrassed. "You're going to have to understand," Arthur said, his pale blue eyes open wide, which meant he was very irritated, "that if nothing is stolen and no fingerprints are found, and no one sees anything, the burglar is going to be almost impossible to find unless an informant turns in something." The McMans, small and mousy and shy, turned identical shades of mortification when they realized that the new couple next door were both police detectives. After an embarrassing bumble of apologies and retractions, Carey talked about her break-in - which had occurred when she and her daughter were at Carey's folks' house for Thanksgiving two years ago - and Marcia related her experience, which had "scared her to death."

"I came back from shopping, and of course it was when Torrance was out of town; nothing happens but when Torrance is out of town" - and she gave him a knife of a glance - "and I saw the back window of the kitchen was broken out, oh you should have seen me make tracks over to Jane's house." "When was that?" I asked. "Around the time Carey's house was broken into?" "You know, it was. It was maybe