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themselves, and preen themselves. You could be pretty well certain that in another three hours a certain immutable percentage of the members would be annoyingly and foolishly drunk. Those only partially so would be making automatic and mechanical passes at the wives of friends, or, when possible, the college-age daughters of friends. Acertain number were certain to say something just far enough out of line to provide a tidbit of gossip for the coming week. And, as a result of this evening, there would doubtless be an insurance policy or two sold, a piece of real estate would change hands, a doctor would acquire a new patient, a wife would cry until daylight came. All a little on the pointless side if you looked at it, trying to ask why. It was just because people had to have a place to go, a place to be seen, a place to have fun. It labeled them as having a certain social and financial position in Minidoka, and maybe people felt safer when they were properly labeled.
    As he approached the table he decided that he had better drop the clinical approach to the Randalora Club, or he would find himself ceasing to enjoy it. And he began to wonder how much he had enjoyed it in the past. To what extent, to what precise degree. The members who knocked themselves out in club affairs seemed to be the same group who went to college reunions, who sang in the bar, who took the Martini shaker along with the foursome. They got a hell of a bang out of it. He had never enjoyed it that much.
    Ellis Corban saw them approaching and jumped up. His smile tightened his apple-red cheeks and flexed his tweedy mustache. He was a man who, in all situations, managed somehow to look overdressed.
    “Hello, Jane, Fletch. I guess we’re one up on you. Yes sir, one up on you.”
    They all exchanged greetings, and Ellis made quite a ceremony out of getting Jane into one of the two empty chairs. Laura wore an even, careful smile. Her dress was of a pale yellow shade that was subtly perfect for her. Once they were all seated again, Fletcher made a more searching appraisal of Laura Corban than he had previously. Her hair was no color, somewhere between ash blonde and mouse, and in the light he could see that it was silky fine, the smallest breeze moving tendrils of it. Her eyebrows were thin and strongly arched, her nose a bit sharp and with slender oval nostrils. Her mouth was curious—the upper lip a bit long, the underlip quite full, and she held her lips faintly parted. It gave her a slightlyexpectant expression, and showed the even white teeth which were so small as to look childlike. Her ears were delicate and small and set close to the skull. He saw that his original impression of anemia was inaccurate. Her skin had a healthy glow, even though it seemed to have the texture and coloring of ivory. It was an odd face, he decided, a quiet face, yet full of a promise of passions and storms. She looked as though she could excite a man in the same guilt-laden way that a young girl could excite a man, yet capable of meeting him as a woman. He wondered how deceptive was her look of delicacy.
    Even as he realized that he had stared at her several seconds too long, she glanced quickly toward him. Her eyes were clear hazel—and utterly empty. It made him remember a time many years ago when the college psychiatry class had visited a state institution. The resident used a woman patient to demonstrate one of the aspects of catatonic dementia praecox. He had taken the woman’s arm and gently raised it over her head. Released it. The woman stood with her arm in that position, and remained that way until the doctor pulled her arm back down to her side. That woman had had the same eyes.
    They shocked him, and then, startlingly, they changed to a bright, questioning alertness, almost birdlike.
    Ellis said, “Yes, I was just saying to Laura that one of the most pleasant parts of moving to Minidoka is the opportunity of belonging to this club. We anticipate many happy