LLP-167 The Reluctant Couple by Grant Roberts


Chapter 1

Standing at the kitchen sink in the small duplex she shared with her
husband, Roger, Diane Slater stared gloomily out through the window at
the cold, rolling fog which had come in over San Francisco's Richmond
District from the ocean. Damn, but she hated the fog! It made everything
so dark and cheerless, so lonely.

She finished washing the last of the breakfast dishes and put them in
the rack to drip dry. Then she emptied the dishpan and wiped her hands
on a dishtowel. In the living room, she fluffed the couch cushions and
straightened the magazines on the coffee table and emptied the ashtrays
-- every day, prosaic chores, fraught with dullness.

She wished it were tomorrow, Saturday, and Roger were home. At least
they could get out then, go for a ride down the coast to Monterey or
across the Golden Gate Bridge into Marin County, anywhere just so long
as they got out of The City for a few hours. But it wasn't Saturday, and
Roger wasn't home. Roger was making neat columns of figures in his
ledger books, or whatever it was Chief Accountants at Waller, Waller,
Crist, and Maxwell did during, working hours.

Diane sat down in the big overstuffed armchair. It was cold in the front
room, and she had gotten a small chill. Well, it was always cold in
there. She'd asked Mr. Comstock, the landlord, to have the wall furnace
checked for malfunction, and he had said he would see to it; but that
had been two weeks ago, and no one had come around yet.

I don't know why we can't afford a better place than this, she thought.
Roger makes good money, almost a thousand dollars a month, and we live
like we're in the throes of poverty. Well, I'm tired of it. We've been
married for two years now, and we have almost eleven thousand dollars
saved. That ought to be enough for that split-level in San Bruno that
Roger is always talking about buying, shouldn't it? At least for the
down payment, and for new furniture and appliances and things like that?

But every time she broached the subject to him, he put her off. "We
still don't have enough money saved," he told her. "I don't want to owe
anybody anything when we make the move, Diane. I want to be free and
clear and independent; I want to own everything outright. That's real
security."

Well, that was fine. But wasn't she entitled to some security now? She
didn't even have transportation -- Roger took their four-year old
Plymouth to work every day -- and if she wanted to go downtown shopping
she had to walk half a mile to a bus line and then transfer twice. What
kind of life was that for a healthy young woman? All she had to do all
day was sit in this duplex apartment and watch television or read,
waiting for Roger to come home and offer her a few kind words and some
companionship.

Diane stood up and went into the bedroom and began to make the large
double bed. Was she being unfair? Was she being too demanding? No, she
didn't think so. She only wanted what other young married couples had --
while she was still young enough to fully enjoy them.


End of Page 1. See llp-167.txt for full story.