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Albert was loudly saying, “I open with one heart and she says one spade. I haven’t the cards to help out in that suit so I bid two clubs. And what does she do but follow that with three no-trump!”
George Hough was a hale, farmerish sort of man in his twenties. Hearing Albert, he winked across the dining room table at Ruth and loudly said, “My gosh! What husbands have to put up with! And she’s so ugly, too!”
“You play a few hands, you’ll see,” Albert said. And he glared at him over his highball glass.
Radiators were overheating the house and around eleven o’clock George helped Milton collect and hang the men’s jackets.
Albert grinned and patted his thigh as he temptingly called to his wife in German, “Na Kleiner, komm doch mal rüber.” In English: Hey, sweetie, come over here. Ruth vaguely understood what the sentence meant, but she did not understand that in Germany it was the street invitation of a prostitute.
She went over to the folding table and fell girlishly into Albert’s lap. She hugged him tight and asked, “How’s it going, honey?”
He finished his highball. “I’m losing.”
“Look at the lovebirds!” Serena called.
Ruth kissed his head. “It’s so true. Cantankerous is just an act with him. Albert’s my sweet little lamb.”
“Who’s she describing?” Dr. Stanford asked, to general laughter.
“Are we going to play bridge or what?” Albert said.
“Okay, okay,” George Hough said, sitting down again. “Don’t get your kidneys in an uproar.”
“Kidneys? My kidneys are fine. Are you a wiseacre, George?”
“Oh, calm down,” Ruth said, and walked back to the dining room.
Albert filled his highball glass, failed at distinguishing clubs from spades in the next hand, then forgot what happened to his jacket.
“I hung it up,” George reminded him.
“Oh? Well, we’ll see about that,” Albert said. He swerved when he walked to the foyer closet.
“Snyder!” Ruth called.
But he was already rooting around, swatting overcoats aside. And then he was hunting through his jacket pockets and yelled, “Where’s my wallet?”
“Look on the floor,” Milton called.
Albert bent low inside the closet. “It’s gone! Who stole my wallet?”
Milton stood. “I’m sure we’ll find it somewhere.”
“But I had seventy-five dollars in it! And it’s gone! What kind of friends you got, Milt?”
“Hey, watch it!” called Cecil Hough.
And now his brother stood. “Are you talking about me?”
“I don’t know,” Albert yelled. “Are you a thief?”
Ruth just looked down at the dining room table and in exasperation called again, “Snyder!”
“Would you like to mix it up?” George asked. “I’ll oblige.”
Albert smiled as he unbuttoned his shirt cuffs. “Oh, fella, you are barking up the wrong tree.”
But Milton Fidgeon intervened, and Serena put on a platter of Paul Whiteman hits, and within the hour Albert was laughing heartily at Dr. Stanford’s jokes.
