Free The Theoretical Foot by M. F. K. Fisher

bony and birdlike under Joe’s huge paw.
    I’ve got to go with you, Tim, old chap, Joe thought. I know now you’re the only person in the world who can tell me what to do with this lovely goddamned little woman I’ve got in my blood and around my neck and before me until I die. Help me! Ask me to come with you!
    He then shook Tim back and forth slowly, beaming down at him with a smile on his big infantile face.
    â€œOkay, then, Joe, you’ll come along,” Tim said, looking up at Joe pleasantly, his large blue eyes appearing clear and candid. “Let’s get going, though, Sara wants to get back by six and I’d thought we might drive around the lake, then home on the corniche. The sun will be at our backs.”
    Tim turned toward the path up to the terrace, after one quick glance at Dan, catching sight of his squinting gaze. Tim’s shoulders drooped now slightly, as if he were tired.
    (Damn, damn, damn, he swore. My one chance! Why am I always so thoughtful and kind and generous — when you get right down to it, generally weak? Why don’t I say to this tactless child, No, you cannot come. But Sara and I must get away, it’s been weeks, months, God knows how long, since we’ve been alone. By Christ I’ll get her far away, and soon! There are only a few days until they all leave and then we’ll go to the south of France, to Cassis maybe, or Thorenc, or someplace nobody’s ever heard of. And I’ll have her all to myself. No hurt feelings, no female fights, no thoughtfulness, no cursed over-sensitive souls all over the goddamned place. I’ll tell her this afternoon. We’ll start to make plans. It will be fine. She’ll hate to miss the chrysanthemums here but . . .)
    He then looked at Dan again and said, “Dan, you’d better go into the house and mix yourself a drink. We’re having La Prairie wine tonight and then maybe champage, so I’d suggest you coastover from beer with a good stiff vermouth and soda and that you take one up to Honor.” Then Tim added, “Come on, Joe.”
    Joe followed him rather stiffly up the twisting steps, pulling on his shirt and fumbling clumsily with the zipper of his pants as he went. He felt happy. By Jove, it had looked for a minute like he wouldn’t get Sara and Tim alone and now . . .?
    Then something hit him like a sandbag behind the knees. He grunted and fell sprawling, his hands clawing at the turf under the side of his face, and then at the tense body that twisted him farther and farther down the slick and grassy slope.
    Joe cursed and writhed expertly on top of Dan Tennant’s wiry figure. It had been more than a year since Joe last lunged and sweated down a barred football field, but he felt again the same hot and vicious anger, the excitement and the cunning that had made him one of the finest fullbacks in the United States of America.
    (I’m a bastard, he thought. I am indeed and I like it. And I’ll go get Sara and I’ll spirit her off and we will escape and I’ll tell her my secret plan.)
    Joe grunted and grinned down into Dan’s panting and impudent face.
    â€œSmart fellow, eh?” Joe asked as he dug his fingers into the boney body beneath him.
    â€œDamn right!” Dan said. He was panting, and just then he heard the sound of the little Fiat backing recklessly up the driveway, then honk once at the gate, he relaxed and lay quietly under Joe’s hard and heavy body.
    â€œI was tackle at dear old Princeton Prep,” he told Joe, languidly. “Now, how about that drink, Joe? Tim recommends vermouth and he ought to know.”
    Joe got up from the ground slowly. Something was over and done with and it would never happen again and he felt that now his life was running surely in channels that he could not see and would never love.
    â€œRight-o,” he said and was amazed at himself that he felt no real resentment, only a kind of quiet