“No.”
Jay drives like hell broken loose, Joel thought to himself; he decided not to say it. Whatever’s happened, he thought, one thing he doesn’t need is that kind of talk about him. Or even thinking.
He began to realize, with a kind of sardonic amusement, that he was being superstitious as well as merely courteous. Why I don’t want to go up till we hear, too, he said to himself. Hands off. Lap of the gods. Don’t rock the boat.
Particularly not a wrecked boat.
“Of course, it does seem to me, Jay drives rather recklessly,” Catherine said, carefully.
“Everybody does,” he told her. Rather, indeed!
“I remember I was most uneasy when they decided to purchase it.”
Well, you’re vindicated.
“Progress,” he told her.
“Beg pardon?”
“Progress. We mustn’t-stand-in the way-of Progress.”
“No,” she said uneasily, “I suppose not.”
Good-God, woman!
“That’s a joke, Catherine, a very-poor-joke.”
Oh.
“I don’t think it’s a time for levity, Joel.”
“Nor do I.”
She tilted her head courteously. Taking care not to yell, he said, “You’re right. Neither-do-I.”
She nodded.
Working his way through another editorial as through barbed wire, Joel thought: I had no business calling her. Why couldn’t I trust her to let me know, quick’s she heard. Hannah, anyhow.
He pushed ahead with his reading.
A heaviness had begun in him from the moment he had heard of the accident; he had said to himself, uh-huh,
