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her eye on the current husband.”
    The fact that Tootles could snag four or five husbands, and her looking like a horse, meant to him that Constance could have had a dozen, if she had chosen that route.
    To his eyes Constance was the best-looking woman he had ever seen; she had been the most beautiful girl he had ever seen back when they were both students in Columbia, and the years had been loving and kind to her. Her platinum hair had never darkened, and now that it was starting to turn gray, it looked no different from all the years he had known her. She moved with the grace of a dancer, and her slender body had not changed that much. The little bit of weight she had picked up over the years was a plus, he thought. Back when Tootles either had said what a waste, or hadn’t—he really wasn’t all that certain—he had been cut sharply, because he had believed it. Constance was wasted on anyone but a god, he had thought then. He knew the theory that the passion of youth matured and became companionship, if the couple was lucky, and he knew that if he were a religious man he would thank God that the theory was baloney. They had the companionship and the mutual respect their maturity demanded, and they still had the passion. But also they were individuals, not a matched set, and by God, he thought then, she was the one who had to give a little; just a fraction of an inch would have been sufficient, but it had to come from her.
    If he had said any of those things at that moment, if he had simply kissed her, he thought later, they probably would have gone to the party together. But he said, “Send me a postcard,” and stalked from the room.
    Constance knew almost precisely what had gone on in Charlie’s head during those few moments, not the word-byword struggle, but the essence. She knew far better than he did if he gained or lost a pound; she knew to the day when the first gray hair had appeared in his crinkly black curls. She knew the way the light came into his eyes and then left them flat and hard black, the way his face softened or turned to stone, the way the muscles on his jaws worked, and each nuance spoke multiple meanings for her. The words had formed in her mouth, “Oh, Charlie,” meaning, this time, we’re having such a silly quarrel. Her hand had nearly spasmed when she restrained its motion toward him. The moment passed that could have ended all this.
    The day the invitation came, she had been dismayed by his instant reaction, his instant refusal to go to the party, but after no more than a second or two, she had decided he was right and probably he should not go. Actually, she did not want him to go with her. When Charlie first met Tootles—she bit her lip in exasperation with herself, but that had been her name from the time they both wore diapers and it was hard to remember it was no longer appropriate. When Charlie first met Tootles, she started again, he had been deeply offended. Charlie, so faithful and steadfast, so young, had not approved of promiscuity, and Tootles was promiscuous. Honest and truthful, he had not approved of lying, and Tootles sometimes seemed to make little or no distinction. He suspected that people who talked of their work as Art, always with a capital A, had to be phonies of some sort, and Tootles had talked of her WORK as ART, and of little else in those days. Charlie, unstinting in his own generosity, was suspicious of people who were born to be takers, and Tootles, he had said, was a saltwater sponge.
    Those first impressions had endured for more than twenty-five years and nothing else about Tootles had stayed with him, although they had been with her subsequently half a dozen times at least. He had failed to see the three or four other artists Tootles always maintained because they were even hungrier than she was. He found no virtue in her real appreciation of the work of others. He never had seen her working with a child, a teenager, any talented novice.
    Constance