Shattered

year. To start.”
        He whistled. “Not bad for your first really professional job. But look, you aren't the only one with good news.”
        “Oh?”
        Doyle looked at Colin, who was squeezed into the telephone booth with him, and he tried not to sound like a liar when he told the lie: “We got into Reno a few minutes ago.” In fact, they had never gone to Reno at all, but to Carson City. And they had arrived early this morning, not minutes ago. They had slept all afternoon, right through the supper hour, and had awakened at half past eight, little more than an hour ago. “Neither one of us is sleepy.” This was true enough, though he did not want to have to explain why neither one of them was sleepy, since they were not supposed to have been dozing in a motel all day. “It's about two hundred and fifty miles to San Francisco, so… ”
        “You're coming home tonight?” she asked.
        “We thought we might as well “Look, if you're sleepy-sleep.”
        “We aren't sleepy.”
        “One day doesn't matter,” she said. “Don't get in a big rush to finish the trip. If you fall asleep at the wheel-”
        “You'll lose a new Thunderbird but gain valuable insurance money,” he finished for her.
        “That isn't funny.”
        “No, I guess it isn't. I'm sorry.” He was irritable, he knew, only because he did not like to lie to her. He felt cheap and somehow dirty, even though he was only lying to save her unnecessary worry.
        “You're sure you feel up to it?”
        “Yes, Courtney.”
        “Then I'll keep the bed warm.”
        “ That I might not feel up to.”
        “You will,” she said. She laughed again, more softly this time. “You always are up to it.”
        “Bad joke,” he said. “Bad joke.”
        “But one of those that just had to be made. So… What time can I expect you and the Marvelous Mite?”
        Doyle looked at his wristwatch. “It's a quarter of ten now. Give us forty-five minutes for supper… We should get to the house around three in the morning, if we don't get too lost.”
        She gave him a noisy kiss via telephone. “Until three, darling.”
        
        At eleven o'clock George Leland passed a sign which gave the mileage to San Francisco. He looked down at the speedometer and did some figuring. He was not as quick about it as he once would have been. The numbers were slippery. He could not seem to add with even a third-grader's skill. And he was not as sure of himself as he had once been, either, for he had to refigure the thing three times before he was satisfied with the answer.
        He looked at the shimmering golden girl beside him. “We'll reach your place by one o'clock. Maybe one-thirty,” he said.

----
        

    Saturday
        

    Twenty-one
        
        Courtney gathered up the stacks of trash that had accumulated from moving and taking delivery on new furniture-empty wooden packing crates, cardboard boxes, mounds of shredded newspapers, plastic and paper wrappings, wire, cord, rope-and put it all in the guest bedroom, which had not yet been furnished. It made quite a large, unsightly hill of rubble in the center of the carpet. She stepped into the hall and closed the door on the junk. There. Now they wouldn't have to look at it or think about it until Monday, when it would become necessary to haul the whole lot away somewhere to make room for the guest-room furniture. It was a bit like sweeping dirt under a carpet, she supposed. But as long as no one lifted up the carpet to look, what was wrong with that?
        She went back to their bedroom and stood in the doorway, surveying it. The dresser, highboy, nightstands, and bed were all of matching heavy, dark wood which looked as if it had been hand-carved and hand-polished. The carpet was a deep-blue shag. The bedspread and drapes were a rich dark-gold velvet that looked almost as soft and horned as her own skin when she had a good tan. All in all, she thought, it was a damned sexy room.
        Of course, the spread didn't hang perfectly even all around. And there was a cluster of perfume and make-up bottles on the dresser. And maybe the full-length mirror needed polishing… But all these things were what made it a Courtney Doyle Room. She left her mark of casual, minimal, harmless disarray wherever she lived.
        “Remember,” she had warned Alex on the night before their wedding, “you aren't getting a good