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'Utch is going to know!' I cried aloud as I panted past the new science building - wherein, no doubt, George James Bender was breeding fruit flies and pondering the predictable results.
Utch was lying languidly in the bathtub. 'Get out,' I said. 'Put on anything - we'll take the car. Would you like to meet Audrey Cannon?' I held up the keys to the gym and wrestling room and waved them in her face like a gun. 'Come on,' I said. 'I'll show you who's retired.'
'Whatever you're doing, stop it,' she said. 'Please don't be crazy.'
'You think he's suffered so much,' I said. 'Well, come see him suffer. Come see what his whole problem is.' I yanked her out of the tub.
'I don't like leaving the children without even telling Jack where we've gone.'
'Stop stalling, Utch!' I yelled at her. 'Severin is getting laid in the wrestling room! Don't you want to see who he's fucking now?'
'No!' she screamed at me. 'I don't want to see him at all.'
I snatched up her blouse and handed her my writing pants; they always hung on the bathroom door. 'Get dressed,' I said; it didn't matter what she wore. I found my jacket with the leather elbow patches and made her put that on. She was barefoot but it wasn't cold outside, and we weren't going to be outside for long. She stopped resisting me, and at the car she slammed the door after herself and sat staring straight ahead while I slipped in beside her. I said, 'This is for your own good. When you see what a super bastard he is, you'll feel better about all of this.'
'Shut up and drive,' she said.
The light was still on in the wrestling room - they were having a long session - and I insisted that we wait for them at the pool. 'It might make him remember something,' I said. 'Caught twice at the same act! How stupid can he be!'
'I'll look at whatever you want to show me,' Utch said, 'but just stop talking to me.'
I couldn't find my way out of the locker room and through the showers, but Utch knew the way. We went up to the first balcony above the swimming pool and sat where I imagined Edith had once waited. I said, 'I should go get Edith too.'
'It can't be Audrey Cannon,' Utch said. 'He's simply incapable of seeing her again.'
'Then it's another Audrey Cannon,' I said. 'Don't you see? There's going to be one Audrey Cannon after another for him, because that's how he is. It's probably some volleyball player who's missing four fingers. It's Audrey Cannon again and again, with him. I know.'
'You know you,' said Utch. 'That's all you know.'
She huddled on the hard bench in her wet blouse, in my jacket with the elbow patches hanging at her wrists, in my pants with the crotch sagging to her knees. She looked like a clown whose house had burned down in the night and had only managed to get dressed in whatever was handy. I put my arms around her, but she struck at me, grabbed my hand and bit it hard so that I had to pull away from her.
'Just wait and see,' I said.
'I'm waiting.'
We waited a long time.
When I heard Severin singing in German in the shower, I realized that of course Utch would know the song, and that maybe this hadn't been such a good idea. Then the underwater lights flicked on and two naked bodies sprinted, laughing, across the tiles and into the water. Nobody had limped. The short, powerful, seal-like body that broke water at midpool and snorted like a walrus was Severin, of course, and the slim, graceful woman who glided through the green light and slid against him, her hand fondly cupping his balls, was Edith.
'It's Edith,' I whispered.
'Of course it is,' said Utch.
They saw us as soon as we spoke. Edith swam to the far edge of the pool and hugged the curb. Severin, like a buffalo in his wallow, treaded water in the deep end and stared at us. No one spoke. I took Utch's arm, but she freed herself and walked down the balcony stairs. It took us forever to reach the shower door. My only thought was that our misunderstanding was now complete, because I was sure the Winters thought that Utch and I had just finished a ritual of our own.
My last look at Edith was not returned. Her slim back was to me, her wet hair lay on her shoulders, her body was pressed against the side of the pool. Severin still bobbed out in the water, his round face puzzled, apparently finding the coincidence quite funny because he was grinning - or was he just straining to keep afloat? Who knows? Who knows what he ever thought?
At the shower door I turned and flung the key ring at the tempting target of his head. He ducked and I missed.
When we got home, Jack was awake, his narrow body like a knife in the shadow at the top of the stairs. 'Why are you wearing Daddy's pants?' he asked Utch. She slipped out of them right there on the stairs and kicked them away.
'I'm not anymore,' she said. She led Jack back to his bed, his hand on her naked hip, though I've told her a hundred times that he's getting too old for her to be naked in front of him.
'I didn't know where you were,' Jack complained. 'What if Bart had woken up? What if he'd had an earache or a bad dream?'
'Well, we're home now,' Utch told him.
'I wasn't really worried,' he sa
