CHAPTER 32

"Really?" She nodded. 

"I'm scared of him. I'd hate for him to find out anything about me." 

This absorbing information about my neighbor was interrupted by Mrs. McKee suddenly pointing at Catherine. 

"Chester, I think you could do something with HER," she exclaimed, but Mr. McKee merely nodded in a bored manner and turned his attention back to Max. 

"I'd like to do more work on Long Island if I could get the opportunity. All I ask is a start." 

"Ask Sophie," said Max, breaking into a brief laugh as Mrs. Foster entered with a tray. "She'll give you a letter of introduction, won't you, Sophie?" 

"Do what?" she asked, startled. 

"You'll give Mr. McKee a letter of introduction to your husband so he can do some studies of him." His lips moved silently as he invented, "'Henry F. Foster at the Gasoline Pump,' or something like that." 

Catherine leaned closer to me and whispered, "Neither of them can stand the person they're married to." 

"Can't they?" 

"Can't STAND them." She looked at Sophie and then at Max. "What I say is, why keep living with them if they can't stand them? If I were them, I'd get a divorce and marry each other immediately." 

"Doesn't she dislike Henry either?" 

The answer came unexpectedly from Sophie, who had overheard the question and responded violently and obscenely. 

"You see?" Catherine said triumphantly. She lowered her voice again. "It's really his wife keeping them apart. She's a Catholic and they don't believe in divorce." 

Lily was not a Catholic, and I was somewhat shocked by the complexity of the lie.