374
PARTISAN REVIEW
"I can hardly wait!" Tina said. She breathed rapidly and her face
attempted to exude a childlike eagerness from beneath its lacquer. Her
eyes grew huge and achieved a glazed dazzlement, as if some minute,
delicate part-her tummy, heart, or liver-were about to pop.
She sprang up and like a marvelous tin puppet suddenly finding
itself alive with everyone watching, exclaimed: "He's coming!" Clasp–
ing her hands and pressing them to her cheek, she whispered, "The
man I love is on the way." Louder: "Great outdoorsman and chum of
sheiks! Hurrying to me, Tina Buell! Oh, what a marvelous moment, is
it not?"
"Oh gracious," Mrs. Sheehan said.
"Tina!" Ursala Dolmon banged on the table with her fist. " Re–
straint! "
But Tina's emotions whirred on. She panted and throbbed, her
eyes burning like warning lights on a dynamo whining higher and
higher into the red zone.
Still louder Ursula bellowed: "Your exercise! AL once!"
Tina stumbled to a chair, tightly crossed her legs, and digging
her elbows into her hips, took a deep breath. Her eyeballs pulsed with
each thump of her heart, and Mrs. Sheehan and Ursula Dolmon lis–
tened to the clickety buzz as Tina whispered backward from one hun–
dred. This took a while: Tina faltered often, lost her place, and
had to be prompted by the ladies. She gasped through the sixties,
toiled down the forties, but was rather herself when she at last sank
to the bottom of the numbers, with Mrs. Sheehan and Ursula Dol–
mon nodding on each stroke and chanting ".. . five, four, three,
two-one! "
Tina saw me the instant I stepped from the creek but she didn 't
flinch: perhaps I was emerging from a little dream spun by her
dizziness. She blinked-and I was still there. She spoke, and Mrs.
Sheehan and Ursula Dolmon turned.
I waved my big hat and started up the lawn, passing the cart and
the unconscious dogs. At the steps, I bowed.
Mrs. Sheehan's lips twitched and flittered, balancing an expres–
sion between alarm and delight. Ursula Dolmon grunted uncertainl y,
but her suspicions quickly rallied and I heard quite clearly their brassy
little voices yelling
Beware! Beware!
Ursula Dolmon 's brows tightened,
her eyes grayed, and she gritted her lips: it would be combat with no
quarter given, and it was evident her choice of weapons was meat axes:
"Well. A fop. What do you want?"
Tina and Mrs. Sheehan were stunned by this rudeness.
