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“Well,” Drummond was saying, “at least there are only five missing now, and …”

“Drummy!”

“Yes, Gloria? Yes?”

“I have decided to stay to lunch after all. I have decided I’m not being fair to you. I helped you make all the plans, and then I back out on you. I’m ashamed of myself, Drummy. I should be taking more interest. I intend to take more interest. I intend to help you.”

“Gloria … that’s wonderful!”

When Mary Jane Elmore came out of room thirteen at noon on Saturday, she left Bitsy Babcock sitting on the edge of her bed making low moaning sounds. Mary Jane had a whiff of hang-over, a faint cranial thud, a sprinkle of sand behind the eyeballs—but she was superbly confident that the symptoms would soon disappear. She was young and in splendid health, well able to throw off the after-effects of a quantity of tequila that would have felled a bison. She wore candy-striped pants in red and white, with a big red cuff button that came just below the knee, a red canvas halter and white sandals. As she walked down the loggia she passed from shadow to sunlight as she walked by each arch, and the sunlight struck the cropped blond hair, giving it a metallic luminousness.

Parker Barnum came out of room six a dozen feet ahead of her, closed the room door and gave her a rueful smile.

“Well, hi!” she said.

“You look revoltingly brisk, Mary Jane. How’s Bitsy?”

“She got herself some miseries. You just now getting up?”

“I’ve been up a whole half hour. I came back to the room to get some cigarettes. I’ll give you the word. We’ve got a black name with Agnes Partridge Keeley. You and me and Bitsy.”

“What about John?”

“He’s a foul traitor. He got up and went to class.”

She looked at the empty patio. “I thought class was right here.”

“It was. They dispersed a little while ago, showing each other their sketches of that fountain, giggling and prancing.”

He gave her a cigarette and they went into the patio and sat on one of stone benches.

“Is there any good reason,” he asked, “why we had to try to drink up all the tequila in Morelos?”

“Well, it was fun, and it was a nice little bar, and anyway I think the altitude has something to do with it.”

“It was fun going out with a couple of middle-aged types?”

“Now you’re fishing for me to say something nice, Park.”

“So say something nice.”

“Well … you and Bitsy seemed to get along just fine.”

“She reminds me of … somebody I used to know. What about her?”

“What do you mean, what about her?”

“Well … tell me about her.”

“She’s my very best friend. I mean we’ve known each other for a thousand years.”

“How old is she?”

“Nineteen.”

“Wow!”

“Now you listen, she’s no baby. She just broke up with a wonderful boy. They went steady a long time. She wants to have fun. That’s why we came down. You know, Park, it was funny about last night. I mean that John Kemp seemed to be … well, sort of amused at the three of us, at you and me and Bitsy, as if he were a lot older than all of us, but he can’t be much older than you, can he?”

“Not much older. Thirty-three or four, I’d guess. I’m thirty-one.”

“What’s he doing down here, anyway?”

“He hasn’t said.”

“What are you doing down here, Park?”

“I told you last night. I’m on a leave of absence from my job.” He tried to change the subject. “So you didn’t have a good time with John?”

“I didn’t say that, did I? It’s just hard to … get close to him. I mean he says funny things and all that, but all the time he seemed to be watching us. Like he was taking notes. Oh, here comes the tequila kid.”

Bitsy came across the patio toward them, scowling in the sunlight. She wore an aqua sunsuit, and her coppery hair came alive in the sun.

“Hi, kids,” she said and sat beside Mary Jane. She looked at Park. “Did you or did you not get us lost on the way back here, darling?”

“Guilty. Finally John asked that soldier.”

“And he wanted to come along with us. Brother, if every night is like last night, I’m not going to last. I wonder how much they love us round here for coming in hooting and stamping at three in the morning?”

Park looked fondly at her. “Bitsy, you look horrible. Maybe you remember that I bought a bottle of José Cuervo’s best when we left that joint.”

She came to attention and ran a tongue tip across her lips. “It couldn’t make me feel worse, could it?”

“Come on,” he said.

When they had all assembled for lunch, Miles Drummond made an announcement. “I suppose that everyone is … uh … delighted that we have finally gotten under way. Miss Keeley’s class was … ah … particularly … rewarding this morning and she has asked me to express her disappointment that … uh … several of you did not attend. But I am certain that … on Monday morning she will see all of your … ah … bright and shining faces. This afternoon at two-thirty in the patio, Mr. Torrigan will give a lecture and do a demonstration painting and I am sure that … uh … none of us will want to miss it. We have a guest with us today, and I sincerely hope that she will be … uh … with us often. She should be with us because the Cuernavaca Summer Workshop is … her brain child. May I introduce, for those of you who have not met her, Mrs. Gloria … ah … Garvey, sitting there between Mr. Kemp and Miss Mary Jane Elmore.”

Miles Drummond sat down and picked up his soup spoon, beaming nervously, bobbing his head.

Mary Jane had been curious about the Junoesque and unkempt blond stranger. She had seen the unmistakable directness with which Gloria Garvey had moved in to sit beside John Kemp, and she sensed in Gloria the flavor and arrogance of money.

Gloria turned to her and frowned and said, “Did he say Elmore?”

“That’s right. Mary Jane Elmore.”

“Fort Worth?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“I’ll be damned! Rix Elmore’s kid, you must be. Look a little like him around the eyes. Key-rist, you make me feel like an antique. You know, the last time I saw Rix and Caroline was one hell of a long time ago. My second husband, Mike Van Hoestling, was in the ranch racket.”

“I’ve heard Daddy mention him.”

“Oh, Lordy, I remember one time we all got loaded in Houston and Rix phoned the ranch and had his pilot bring the
old DC-3 down and take us all to Palm Springs. There must have been seven couples along. Rix had just won some kind of a tax thing, something about oil wells. Good old Caroline. After the sixth drink she’d always start to take off her clothes. How is she?”

“Not very well, Mrs. Garvey. She and Daddy are divorced and Daddy is married again. She spends a lot of time in … institutions.”

Gloria pursed her lips and nodded. “She never could handle it. She could get pretty messy. Rix used to get disgusted with her. Well, kid, I’ll see you around.”

And Mary Jane suddenly found herself looking at the back of Gloria’s large, strong and shapely right shoulder, and heard her say, in a voice pitched a full octave lower, “Hello, John Kemp.” She had turned around toward him with, Mary Jane thought, the same forthright manner with which a woodsman’ might spit on his palms, pick up the ax and square off in front of the big tree. By leaning forward a little way, not conspicuously, Mary Jane could see John Kemp’s expression. She could not see the expression on Gloria’s face. But she could guess at it from the way John reacted. His throat worked as he swallowed, and he responded with a small, sickly and apprehensive smile. It reminded Mary Jane of the time out at the ranch when the big white goose had decided that Bugsy, the brown dachshund, was its friend for life, and had taken to following him wherever he went. For weeks, until the goose had backed under the front wheel of one of the jeeps while intently admiring Bugsy, the dog had gone about wearing the same look of apprehension, apology and half-concealed alarm.

Park Barnum said, his mouth close to Mary Jane’s right ear, “And he was such a nice guy.”

Mary Jane suddenly felt quite irritated and annoyed. She turned toward Park and hissed, “You men are so dang
stupid
. She’s so obvious. And messy.”

“But real eager.”

“Oh, shut up.”

Barbara Kilmer sat quietly at John Kemp’s left, eating her tasteless lunch and trying not to listen to the conversation between John Kemp and Gloria Garvey. She felt grimly amused at the predicament in which she found herself. She knew her parents would be appalled were they to learn the living conditions to which they had so innocently and fondly subjected her. But
she knew she could not be truthful in letters to them. Her father had paid the money. It was most unlikely that anyone could get any part of it back. Better to write them and make it sound like what she imagined they believed it to be.

Such a very strange group. And I, she thought, am as odd as the oddest. I want to keep myself to myself. I don’t want to be drawn back into life by these people. I should have known from the ad Daddy showed me that it might be a curious collection of students. The old widows are sweet. Mr. Drummond is sort of nice and helpless. Every time I look at those newlyweds I feel all lost and unused. That Killdeering woman is a real grotesque. Mr. Klauss is a strange one. I don’t understand him at all. He seems shy and lonely … too. And quite nice-looking. The colonel is very fierce. The girls from Texas are certainly not down here to study painting. I’ve never liked the Park Barnum sort of man. All poised and glossy and full of sharp little remarks. And right now, I know just what I am doing. I’m trying not to hear a word that Garvey female is saying to Mr. John Kemp. He seems nice. And the sketches he did were truly handsome. I have to train my hand and my eye all over again. I was clumsy. Please, John Kemp, don’t let her move in on you. I shouldn’t care. I really don’t care. But just don’t be gullible. She’s a harpy … It’s none of my business. Why shouldn’t you have your fun and games, Mr. Kemp? The fact that there is something about you that reminds me just a little bit of Rob should have nothing to do with it. Do as you please. Everyone in the wide world can do just as he or she pleases. Just so long as I am left alone.

Paul Klauss sat across the table from Barbara, and as he ate he studied her subdued and delicate and lovely face, the slender line of her throat, the structure of her shoulders. As he ate he tenderly, deftly undressed her. This mental game is, with most men, a rather inexact procedure. They visualize the unveiling of an idealized version of the female form or, out of the fuzziness of an untrained memory, endow the dream object with a figure once seen, perhaps on a calendar. But with Paul Klauss it was a precision operation. He had seen Barbara Kilmer walk. He had accurately estimated her measurements. He had selected her as his first venture of the Workshop summer. Out of his past experience he had learned the more intimate physical characteristics to be expected of the fair, Nordic, slim-boned, long-legged, short-waisted female in the middle twenties. So, given
that knowledge, and a look at the clothed dimensions, and the other small clues, such as the skin texture of her throat and the curl and shape of her mouth, the shape and size of her hands, he could reconstruct the nude figure with such a marvelous accuracy of detail that he might err only in the size and placement of an appendectomy scar.

This was, of course, no more remarkable than the skill of the white hunter who, given a few pad marks in the moist earth, can tell not only the variety of the beast, but the size, weight, sex, whether it has recently fed, how fast it was moving, and how long since it has crossed the game trail. It is a compound of experience, intuition and natural talent.

Klauss could achieve an almost equivalent degree of accuracy in estimating which approach would be most likely to succeed, and, after success had been obtained, just how the victim would react during ultimate conquest. But this was not of the same high degree of accuracy as the construction of physical detail, because it had been conditioned by invisible factors, such as a mother’s tale of marital horror, of a husband’s impatience, or too impressionable a reading of the works of Henry Miller.

Just as, by candle light, he had removed the final wisp of dainty garment, Margarita Esponjar reached around him and refilled his coffee cup. When it was full, Margarita reached stealthily down and caught a small fold of flesh of the back of Paul Klauss, just above his beltline and just over his right kidney, between a strong brown thumb and a strong brown finger. She gave him a love tweak, a little pinch. But not only were her fingers, as a result of many years of the slapping and kneading of tortillas and other forms of manual labor, as effective as a pair of needle-nose pliers, she had also selected an unusually sensitive area for the caress.

Klauss’s vision of the fair Barbara by candle light was gone in one small portion of a microsecond. His mouth opened in a soundless cry of anguish. When it was at its widest, Margarita whispered into his ear,
“Esta noche, querido
.
”
She paddled away in her big red shoes, grinning back over her shoulder and swaying her hips a good three inches farther to each side than usual.

Hildabeth McCaffrey, on Paul’s left, stared after the girl, then whooped and banged Paul solidly under the heart with her
elbow and said, in a carrying voice, “I believe you’ve made a conquest, Mr. Klauss. I believe you have.”

Paul looked around the table. Everybody was looking at him, most of them with amusement. He felt his face get hot. He wanted badly to explain, but there was nothing to say. His back where she had pinched it felt as if a red-hot wood rasp had been imbedded in it. He bent his head over his plate, a temporarily beaten man.

Gambel Torrigan stood beside the easel he had erected in the open patio and counted the house. On the second count he knew who was missing. Agnes Partridge Keeley, of course. And Park Barnum and the two girls from Texas. After lunch Barnum and the two girls had been yawning vastly and giving off telltale fumes of tequila.

He checked over his materials, faced the group, hooked his thumbs in his belt and glared at them. It was an act he had done many times. Torrigan’s Demonstration.