ADVENTURE ON A BAD NIGHT

BEFORE dinner was quite finished Vivien began wanting to get outdoors, into the air she hadn’t seen since afternoon.

- Shirley Jackson

In an hour or so the evening would have settled down, with George in his chair by the fire and someone maybe calling up about bridge. If she left right away she could stay out in the air for twenty minutes or so, before it turned into night outside, before she had to start thinking about reading a mystery, making George’s hot chocolate, going to bed, before the night started being tomorrow morning, with breakfast and dusting and the telephone.

She sat through George’s second glass of milk, watching him finally lift his napkin to wipe his mouth carefully under the moustache. “Think I’ll run out for a few minutes,” she said.

“For heaven’s sake, what for?” George swung around in his chair to see the window. “On a night like this, for heaven’s sake?”

“I want to get a few things. Cigarettes.”

George picked up the empty cigarette package on the table and looked at it disdainfully. “Ought to give it up,” he said. “I feel a hundred percent better.”

“I want to get some coffee for breakfast, too.”

“Weighed myself in the gym today,” George said as he left the dinette to get into the living room. “Gained three pounds since I gave up smoking.”

“Good for you,” Vivien said, stacking the coffee cups on top of the other dishes in the sink. She could do them when she came back and tonight, because she was going out for a few minutes, she would darn George’s black socks. She stopped in the hall closet to pick up her coat, so that she could go into the living room with it on. “I’ll be right back,” she said, and crossed the room to kiss him.