"Where have you been, honey? I've been home for nearly an hour and dinner isn't even started yet!" the youthful masculine voice came from inside the living-room as Kathy stealthily pushed open the door of their attractive suburban home. She had made infuriatingly slow connections on the buses out of Los Angeles and had hoped to be able to sneak into the house and make some plausible excuse to Henry about gossiping away the afternoon with a neighbor. But now, as she heard the sound of her husband's footsteps coming toward her from their living room with its big picture window facing the street, she knew that he must have seen her hurrying up the sidewalk from the bus-stop at the corner.
"I'm sorry, darling. I went into the city today," she called back, meekly lowering her voice as Henry's slender, solid form appeared in the doorway from the living room. "I got back as soon as I could."
"Dammit, have you been out shopping again, Kathy?" he interrupted, his blue eyes glowering beneath his thick shock of unruly dark brown hair. "I don't see any packages, so I assume you've bought one of the larger so-called necessities of life. What is it this time, a baby grand piano or a mink coat that they're going to deliver tomorrow?"
"Oh, Henry, don't be silly," the sweet-faced blonde girl giggled nervously as she suddenly felt an unreasoning fear that her husband might somehow guess what had really happened to her in his boss' office that afternoon. Her slender fingers gripped more tightly the handle of her leather purse which contained the envelope that Max Alexander had given her. Gazing timidly up at Henry through her long, golden lashes, she tremulously explained, "I… I went in for something else, darling… to see someone."
"Sure, sure, you always go in for something else," he said, shaking his handsome head skeptically. "But someone always manages to sell you something while you're there. Whatever it is, you're going back into town tomorrow and get your money back. I don't work forty hours a week in the Alexander Building so that we'll starve when we're old, Kathy. It's about time you started remembering that."
Kathy raised her eyes to silently protest his automatic assumption of her extravagance, but it was too late. Having completed his tirade, her husband turned on his heel and strode back into the living room, and a moment later, the house was filled with the sound of the nightly television news broadcast.
For the briefest second, the shapely young wife was sorely tempted to march right into the middle of Henry's precious news program and tell him how very wrong he was about what she had done that afternoon, tell him about her new job and the envelope that was in her purse. But guilt and fear held her back. She was afraid that once she began to tell the story of her meeting with Maxwell Alexander, she might accidentally let slip some incriminating detail, alerting him to the fact that his seemingly trust-worthy young wife had made a grave mistake that day, had lost the innocence and virtue that he had always so delighted in. Just the thought of how she had behaved in Mr. Alexander's office, willingly allowing that filthy old man to take the most indecent liberties with her body, made tears of shame spring into Kathy's big brown eyes and she rushed back into the kitchen to busy herself with preparing Henry's dinner before she broke down altogether.
For a moment or two, the pretty young blonde bustled around her bright, modern kitchen, pulling cans from the cupboards and pork chops from the refrigerator, trying to pretend that this was a day just like any other, but her vision kept returning to the kitchen table. As she opened the canned peas and poured them into a saucepan, her thoughts kept going back to that moment on the bus when she had remembered the white envelope that had still been clenched tightly in her hand. Wanting to throw the unwelcome reminder of her horrible afternoon out the window of the moving bus and yet wondering how highly Maxwell Alexander had valued the afternoon's experience, Kathy had impulsively torn open the envelope. One glance at the contents had left her white with shock and she had anxiously stuffed it deep into her handbag, not wanting the other passengers on the roaring vehicle to see the tangible proof of her guilt.
But now, in the kitchen of the home she had shared for six months with her husband, still smarting from the tongue-lashing Henry had so unfairly bestowed upon her, Kathy's thoughts returned to the envelope with a slightly different attitude. There was now money in her purse, a great deal of money, and after all, what had Henry been so upset about? Why else had she gone to Maxwell Alexander's office in the first place, if not to find an opportunity to help with her and Henry's financial situation. The beautiful young woman reasoned carefully as she slowly peeled potatoes over the sink. It was vile and disgusting to make love to other men behind her husband's back, she knew, but if it could save their suddenly shaky marriage, was it too great a price to pay?
Suddenly, with an expression of unusual determination on her face, Kathy set down the potato and peeler and turned around to face the kitchen table, hurriedly wiping her hands on a dishtowel she had grabbed from a rack near the sink. Only her wide eyes showed her anxiety as she reached out and fumbled with the clasp of the leather bag, finally opening it and pulling the crumbled white envelope out of the very bottom.
At first, she hesitated to look into it staring instead beseechingly at the door to the living room, as though mutely pleading for a compassionate reprieve from the future that fate seemed to have designed for her. But nothing issued from beyond that door but the sound of the evening news and at last with a sigh, she withdrew the contents of the envelope. Closing her mind to everything else, to the brassy sounds of the television and the persistent, slightly painful tingle between her thighs that served as a nagging reminder of her betrayal of her marriage vows, Kathy slowly and deliberately counted the money, twice.
It was five hundred dollars, more than her husband made in two weeks! It was twenty times the amount she had spent at the bargain sale yesterday and if he never found out how she had gotten it, it was more than enough to make Henry view her in a new light, to start talking to her like an equal again and maybe even to care enough about her to take time and much-needed care with their sex life, talking about new things and making love considerately like he used to.
Even in her intense concentration, Kathy was suddenly aware of the click of the television off-switch and then the low footsteps that suddenly filled the silence of the house. In her panicky fear of discovery, the frightened girl could think of nothing to do but hide the five hundred dollars behind her back as she heard Henry coming toward the kitchen.
"Honey, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have jumped on you like that," his apologetic voice came into the back of the house even before his sheepishly smiling face appeared in the kitchen doorway. "The printer forgot to put Mr. Alexander's picture in the magazine and I'm just worried about the explosion that's coming tomorrow when he notices it. What did you do downtown today, anyway?"
"Well… well, I…" Kathy faltered, trying desperately to conjure up some reason for their newfound wealth, "I saw… a lawyer," she suddenly decided aloud, a smile of profound relief lighting up her naturally sunny facial features as she seized upon the bold lie. "D-did I ever tell you about my great-aunt in Baltimore? She… she died."
"Oh, honey, I'm sorry," Henry blurted out consolingly, rushing up to wrap his arms around her slim shoulders as he saw her soft lower lips begin to quiver and her eyes grow shiny with real tears.
"No, you don't understand," the young blonde wife said, no longer able to hold back her tears of helpless misery. Tearing free of his embrace, she tried frantically to smile as she brought her hands from where they had been hidden behind her back and pressed the hundred-dollar bills into his hand. "Here… the lawyer gave me this… She left me the money. Now we don't have to worry about… about money anymore," she explained through her uncontrollable sobbing.
Her good-looking husband stared at her, first in astonishment then with concern as he thought he began to understand the true reason for her distress. Tossing the money down on the kitchen table, he laced his wiry arm around Kathy's tiny waist and drew her closer to him, until her head nestled warmly into his shoulder. Softly stroking her face with his other hand, he murmured gently, "I'm so sorry, honey. I didn't think you were taking our money problems to heart so much or I never would have been so hard on you. It's not that important. It really isn't."
"I know, darling, I know," Kathy gasped out through her tears as she leaned wearily against the comforting warmth of her husband's tall form. In her heart, however, the voluptuous young wife was thinking something that was entirely different, for Henry was holding her tenderly, speaking more gently with her than he had done in weeks, making a real effort to understand how she felt. He seemed suddenly different now, radically changed from the way he had acted toward her for such a long time, changed from the way he had acted when she had walked in the door only fifteen minutes ago. And to her mind, there was only one thing that could account for the sudden shift in his whole attitude toward her.
Kathy's brown-eyed gaze drifted to the tiny pile of green one hundred dollar bills that lay on the kitchen table and she realized that, yes, she definitely would be returning to the Alexander Building, tomorrow as she had promised.