Free The Longest Night by Andria Williams Page A

comical about a muffled male voice; it was like someone hollering into a folded towel and expecting to be taken seriously.
    Then she heard a woman, yelling in return, words staccato with rage. After a moment, studying the white house in front of her, she recognized the voices as those of Mitch and Jeannie Richards.
    “Girls, we should go,” she said, but a crude curiosity rooted her to the spot. Before she could spare herself by leaving, the front door flew open and Jeannie herself stormed out.
    If Jeannie Richards had looked beautiful at the party last night, then this morning she was stunning. Her red hair caught the sunlight like a shiny penny, and she wore a dress so gleaming white that she seemed to not only reflect light but also give off her own. Everything but her hair glowed white: high white heels, a small hat with half netting and a smattering of pearls, white wrist-length gloves.
    Jeannie marched down the walk and Mitch, unbelievably, blundered right out the door after her. He was wearing the same collared shirt from the night before, half-untucked; rumpled dress slacks, and socks. His bedroom dishevelment on this celibate, decorous street was what alarmed Nat most.
    There was nothing Nat could do now; she was ten feet from these people. To take off scuttling up the street would attract their attention; crouching behind a shrub would look ludicrous and incriminating if they did catch sight of her. So she stood, hoping there might be some way that, in the heat of this apparent argument, they missed her.
    Mitch stopped in the driveway. “You,” he said to Jeannie’s prim, upright back, “never stop nagging me about every little thing I do.”
    Jeannie whirled on him. “Mitch, I don’t
care
what you do. Have sex with Mamie Eisenhower. Have sex with the pope! It’s all the same to me.
The only thing I care about is you keeping your job.
”
    Nat’s heart was pounding. Jeannie had just said “Have sex!” twice in front of her own home, on a Saturday morning.
    “For God’s sake, I
didn’t
lose my job,” said Mitch. “I’m doing fine at my job.”
    “If you sink us,” Jeannie said, “after all I’ve put up with—”
    “This happens to all the guys from time to time. A little slap on the wrist. It’s those actors from Combustion Engineering. I’ll bet they have a quota, got to make sure it looks like they’re on top of things—”
    “You can put down the bottle at work from time to time, you know. It’s not a pacifier. It’s not a, a
tit
.”
    “My God, Jean!” Mitch stepped back in a paroxysm of disgust. “Have you gone insane?”
    Even in her anger Jeannie held herself perfectly erect, like a small pillar of marble. Her voice was low and eviscerating. “You can gamble any other way you like,” she said, “but not with
that
.”
    “You don’t know the first thing about my job—”
    “I know a monkey could do it, and probably without getting into trouble like you.”
    “That’s enough.”
    “Oh, how I wish I had your job,” Jeannie sneered. “I would be so much better at it than you. I wouldn’t stall out while other people were promoted past me, and I wouldn’t get shoved off to the side like some piece of retired machinery, but if I
did
I would try to improve myself so that I could do better instead of worse! I certainly would not let myself get caught—” She checked herself and lowered her voice so that Nat could barely make out the words. “You never
improve,
Mitch.”
    Mitch’s mouth was half-open in anger, his tongue showing on one side. He’d finally plunged through bewilderment into the realm of self-righteous rage. “You women, you’re all the same. Jealous and bitter, always keeping tabs.”
    “Keep it down,” Jeannie hissed, stepping toward him, her eyes darting nervously.
    But once Mitch got started he only gathered steam. “You’re a bunch of thankless harpies, skimming off men, spending our money on your fancy clothes and shoes while you’re home