RANSVESTIA

(Later)

Bud did not awake from his first sleep in over forty hours until early that evening. There was a message asking him to phone home at his earliest convenience as he entered the squad room and sat at his desk.

It wasn't until Clara's tight voice said, "Linda was here to see you," sneering as she said 'Linda', that Bud came fully awake and remembered where he should have been that afternoon.

"Oh, I'm sorry," he said, turning the battery-operated electric shaver off. She'd given it to him for his birthday. "What did they want?" he asked in a guarded tone, for Ray Pezanski and Al Seivers were talking in low tones at the other end of the office.

"How did you know that she brought her boyfriend with her?" asked Clara in surprise. Then she came suspicious. "Did you know all about this Clay fellow before, Tyler Hamilton? Did you?"

"No," said Bud, as surprised as his wife seemed to be with him. "I'm just with some other people -- you know?"

There was a pause on Clara's part. “Oh," she said. “Well, if you don't know now, I'll tell you. Linda," again that sneer, "has a boyfriend. She was most put out that you weren't here to meet Clay. You should have seen them." There was disgust in her voice. "She was behaving just like a girl, and that Clay," Bud could see his wife pulling a face just like she did when she saw something rotten, "he couldn't keep his hands off her. And Bud, she said he's her fiance.”

Bud, remembering the sunny, bright, little boy who'd been his younger brother, from whom he's grown apart upon leaving home, felt his hair raising up on end. It's his life, he thought, trying to quell the feeling of rage that rose up within him. But he could feel the perspiration breaking out along his forehead, and the anger catching at the back of his throat. If it's his life, why must he keep affecting me so, he thought bitterly. Why do I let it bother me? It's not right, a voice from his memory told him, and you're the one to blame for the way he is. With a start, Bud realized that he was hearing his mother's voice and her persistent, quarreling tone turned against his father.

"Tyler, are you still there?" Clara sounded anxious. "Yes, I'm still here," snapped Bud. He noted that Sei- vers and Pezanski had stopped their conversation and were now watching him.

"Linda wants you to call her at her apartment," she

-52-