Free Don't Stop the Carnival by Herman Wouk Page B

much difference in the command tones, and Iris caught herself and laughed. "See what comes of living alone with this monster. I'm getting the manners of a lion tamer."
     
     
The governor plunged in the water to wash off the sand, and then approached them. "Did you enjoy your picnic?"
     
     
"We're still enjoying it, thank you." Iris sipped her beer, leaning with her back against Paperman's shoulder.
     
     
"I'm afraid you'll be rained out." He pointed to thunderheads that had boiled up on the horizon near Big Dog, and that now appeared to be drifting toward Amerigo. Norman had already felt a few cold drops.
     
     
"Not a chance. Those things always pass over Pitt Bay and hit Signal Mountain."
     
     
"How did you manage to get down here with that Chevrolet?" The governor was obviously trying to be pleasant, and Iris-for all her talk of liking Negroes-was obviously not making it easy for him. Paperman thought it very awkward that she refrained from offering him beer. He saw Sanders glance at the cooler.
     
     
She said, "Just did it."
     
     
"I wonder if you'll be able to get out?"
     
     
"We'll manage."
     
     
He gestured toward his chauffeur. "Would you like Ronald to take it up to the road for you? I'll be glad to drive you two up in the jeep."
     
     
Iris gave him an extremely twisted smile. "No, thank you."
     
     
The governor raised thick grizzled brows, and reached down to pull the dog's ears. "Don't mention it. Enjoy the rest of your picnic." He stalked away.
     
     
When the jeep started to drive off through the palm trees, Iris flung her beer can after it.
     
     
"What's the matter with you?" Paperman said.
     
     
"All I ask," Iris said, "is that they don't act superior to us. Is that asking such a lot?"
     
     
With a cat's quick turn she knocked Paperman backward, and pinned his shoulders to the blanket. Her blond hair was in a tumble, her eyes shining. Paperman was delighted, flustered, and a bit embarrassed. He could still hear the squeaking and bumping of the jeep. Moreover many big drops were splattering him. It was certainly starting to rain.
     
     
"What's all this?"
     
     
"Just shut up." She kissed him long and hard, seemingly unaware of the rain, but it was falling hard, all at once, falling like a thick bath shower. She looked up at the clouds and laughed, rain running from her hair, her face, her shoulders. Nearby the charcoal embers were hissing and pouring white smoke. "No, no, this is Pitt Bay," she yelled at the sky. "Pitt Bay, stupid! It never rains in Pitt Bay!" She twined her arms and legs around Paperman and rolled over and over with him on the hot sand in the beating rain like a tomboy, almost the way Sanders had been rolling with the dog. Half a rainbow appeared, arching low in the east. "Come on, Norm, let's get on home. Picnic's over, and a damn good thing. Go back to New York, and don't return without your wife!"
     
     
Chapter three
     
     
The Sending
     
     
I
     
     
Henny leaned her head against the icy window glass, wondering whether Norman's plane could land in this weather. Clouds of big snow-flakes were tumbling by outside. A cold draft rattled through the paint-crusted window, a pleasant little puff of relief from the blasting steam heat. Nothing in this building fitted any more or was decently kept up. The heating system was shot. From October to May you froze or you roasted. But at rent-controlled prices, in mid-town Manhattan, the apartment was a luxury, the envy of their friends. On their income, with Norman's habits of casual spending-he lived, as he liked to say, "the cashmere existence"-they couldn't move without going to the low-ceilinged cubicles of the new apartment houses, where you could hear every toilet flush, every wife nag her husband, four floors above and below you; or else out to the suburbs, and that was less thinkable for Norman than the Caribbean.
     
     
Here was Norman's room, almost twenty feet square, ten feet high, facing south, bright