“Not the way I heard it. The Latter Day Saints have been the nearest thing to a prosperous group in the country. Women have been moving there for years, it’s so easy to get married. All the grumbling about polygamy has come from men who can’t stand the competition.”
Catty glanced at me, then looked away.
Had she, I wondered afterward, been thinking how Barbara would have rejected my observation furiously? Or about that day in the spring? Or about Hiro’s earlier comment? I thought about it, briefly, myself.
I also thought of how easily Catty fitted in with the Agatis and contrasted it with the tension everyone would have felt if Barbara had been there. One could love Barbara, or hate her or dislike her or even, I supposed, be indifferent to her; the one thing impossible was to be comfortable with her.
The final choice (was it final? I don’t know. I shall never know now) hardened when I had been nearly six years at Haggershaven. It had been “on” between Barbara and me for the longest stretch I could recall and I had even begun to wonder if some paradoxical equilibrium had not been established which would allow me to be her lover without vexation and at the same time innocently enjoy a bond with Catty.
As always when the hostility between us slackened, Barbara spoke of her work. In spite of such occasional confidences it was still not her habit to talk of it with me. That intimacy was obviously reserved for Ace, and I didnt begrudge him it, for after all he understood what it was all about and I didnt. This time she was so full of the subject she could not hold back, even from one who could hardly distinguish between thermodynamics and kinesthetics.
“Hodge,” she said, gray eyes greenish with excitement, “I’m not going to write a book.”
“That’s nice,” I answered idly. “New, too. Saves time, paper, ink. Sets a different standard; from now on scholars will be known as ‘Jones, who didnt write The Theory of Tidal Waves’,‘Smith, unauthor of Gas and Its Properties,’ or ‘Backmaker, non-recorder of Gettysburg And After.’”
“Silly. I only meant it’s become customary to spend a lifetime formulating principles; then someone else comes along and puts your principles into practice. It seems more sensible for me to demonstrate my own conclusions instead of writing about them.”
“Yes, sure. Youre going to demonstrate ... uh ...?”