The Cost of Caviar

by Paul Cullen

Frank sat down at the dinner table to read his mail before turning to the evening's paper. The habitual glass of sherry stood before him to whet his appetite to the size of which the comfortable paunch of easy and successful middle age bore ample witness.

Helen, as usual, was lighting the tall white tapers before she, too, sat down opposite him. There was no mail at one side of her plate, nor was there a folded paper at the other. Rather, in place of what Frank considered as important as silverware to the enjoyment of his meal, she had lain a book at an angle which seemed at variance with the otherwise orderly appointments of the room in general and of the table which stood at its center in particular. To mark the place where she had stopped reading she had inserted a letter which was still in its distinctive blue envelope and caused a slight bulge in the book.

As she sat down, Frank shuffled through the small pile of letters, but, finding none sufficiently interesting, reached for his glass of sherry with one hand while he flipped the paper over to look at the rest of the headline. As he did so, his glance fell upon the plate of hors d'oeuvres which Helen had placed near at hand. He looked up at her rather shortly with the same sort of look that a bull might assume when suddenly confronted with a red flag. His wife, however, was calmly reading her book. He had had a typically "hard day at the office" and was still slightly flushed from the day's battles. As he looked at her, his glance lost some of its severity. There was no reason to take out the day's irritations on her. "What," he asked in a somewhat milder tone than his ruffled feelings might otherwise have led him to use, "is that?"

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