WHEN THEY ARRIVE at Matthew’s, Belinda goes into the living room, and Matthew goes into the kitchen to fix himself a drink.  Belinda rarely wants one after dinner.
    “Matthew, what on earth happened here?” she asks.
    “Oh, I forgot.  I should have warned you.”
    He pokes his head around the corner.  Belinda is looking into the hole.
    “There’s a smell, an odor coming from somewhere,” he explains.  “In fact, I can smell it in here and in the den, too.  It’s not quite the same in the den, not quite the same smell.  They’ve been looking for it for a couple of days.  The manager brought in a vice-president from the construction company and some sort of jack-of-all-trades.  They came in here, moved the furniture around, and pulled the carpet back, and then they—we—all got down on our hands and knees and started sniffing.  Nothing.  Couldn’t smell a thing.  So they asked me if they could open a section of the wall to see if it would come wafting out.  I said that was all right, and they made a little hole.”  With his hands he indicates a hole the size of a magazine.  “They poked around and peered in with flashlights, and sniffed, but they couldn’t get anything.  So they made the hole a little larger.  Then they had a little conference, and they made the hole a little larger.  Then they conferred some more, and sniffed some more, and enlarged the hole some more, and they kept on conferring and sniffing and enlarging until three o’clock, when they all packed up and went home.”
    “They don’t know what it is?”
    “Not yet.  I’m supposed to smell it under various conditions to see—well, to see what I see.  Or what I smell.”
    “So these are your notes?”  She’s reading penciled notes on the wall.

12/6—OPENED WALL, NO APPARANT ODOR, PULLED CARPET BACK, NO ODOR
12/7—6:00 PM, NO ODOR
12/8—7:15, SHARP ODOR, ALMOST HURTS MY NOSE, AS IF SOMEONE WERE BURNING ORANGES

A WEEK AFTER LIZ LEFT, Matthew decided that he might as well go out and try his luck at finding solace between the legs of other women; at once the question arose, at first only hypothetically, whether he ought to use condoms.  He was, at that time, afraid of getting herpes, but it seemed awfully timid to be afraid of herpes, and he didn’t want to admit to the fear.  Then along came AIDS, and in a way AIDS has really been a godsend to Matthew.  Now that so many people are afraid of death by sex, he can use a condom without feeling like a coward, and he can avoid herpes.  He has never brought this matter up with Belinda.  The first time they made love, he didn’t use a condom.  He had a lot on his mind, and he tried to concentrate exclusively on the pleasure of the moment, but he couldn’t help himself—he worried a bit; even his sexual fantasies include periods of concern about disease.  For her part, Belinda had a fleeting fear of pregnancy, but they were both so surprised and happy to find themselves making love to each other that they didn’t want to spoil it.  The second time, Matthew used a condom.  He didn’t say anything about it; he just put it on.  He’s sure they both feel much more secure this way, and he suspects—in his case he’s certain—that there’s an element of excitement introduced by the condom, because it implies that Belinda isn’t Matthew’s only lover, thereby making him seem a little more interesting, a man who has sexual adventures.  It makes him feel virile, too, since he might, of course, be using the condom to protect Belinda from an unwanted pregnancy, though he suspects, and has some reason to believe, that there’s little danger of that.  He also supposes that the condom is an emblem of his affection for Belinda, his concern for her well-being, since her assumption must be, if she has inferred properly from the implication in his wearing the thing, that it is she who must be protected from the possible consequences of his adventures.  He also feels that if Liz should come back, if she could be persuaded to come back, he could offer these condoms as evidence of his essential loyalty, a distance that he kept between himself and Belinda.  All these thoughts and feelings reside in a condom, so many ideas in such a small thing.

WHEN THEY'RE FINISHED, they lie for a while on their backs, looking at the night sky through the skylights.  They hold hands, but otherwise their bodies do not touch.  After a while Belinda asks, “What time is it?”
    Matthew sits up and looks at the clock on one of the chrome tables.  “Nearly midnight,” he says.
    “I have to go.  I’m taking Leila skiing tomorrow.”
    He calls a cab.  “I’ll call you during the week,” he says at the door.  He waits until the elevator arrives, blows Belinda a silent kiss, then waits at the door a while longer.  He hears no elevator alarm bell, so he locks up.  He collects his folded clothes from the living room, hangs his pants and jacket, puts his shirt into the bag of things to go to the cleaner, drops his socks and underwear into the laundry basket, gets into bed, and falls asleep quickly.

IN THE NIGHT, he’s awakened by sounds from his neighbor’s apartment.  A thumping and knocking drag him out of sleep, and when he’s awake he hears cries, four sharp cries.  He has heard these cries before, just this way.  He can’t tell whether the guy is having a nightmare or an orgasm.  He listens for a while, but after the four cries there’s nothing more, and Matthew still can’t tell what inspired them.  He goes back to sleep.

HE HAS A DREAM in which he and Belinda are picnicking in a pretty spot, in a woods somewhere, their blanket spread out in a mossy glade, a brook flowing nearby, just the sort of idyllic spot one always hopes to find for a picnic.  In the glade the sun is shining bright and strong, but woods and shadows surround them.  Then, all at once, but without any sense of suddenness, in that unannounced, unheralded way that people arrive in dreams, no snapping twigs, no rustling branches, another woman is with them, and she sits down on their blanket as if they had invited her.
    Have they invited her?  Matthew isn’t sure, but he has the feeling that he and Belinda know her, know her well, in fact.  Yes, she’s a friend of theirs.  They’re glad to see her.  The three of them are relaxed together, relaxed as one ought to be on a lazy day at a picnic in an idyllic spot like this.  Even though they know this other woman so well, Matthew can’t quite tell what she looks like.  Her face is indistinct.  It’s quite a while before he realizes that she looks like, that she is, Liz.
    Then the little glade is charged with sexuality.  Liz stretches and settles onto the blanket.  Rapid dream time takes over, and in almost no time at all Liz is completely undressed.  There she is, all of a sudden, naked, luxuriating in the soft air, the sun, on the blanket cushioned by the moss.  Matthew has dream-sharp, dream-fuzzy impressions of her smooth skin, the dark triangle of her pubic hair, her small breasts, tight nipples.  And then Belinda, to Matthew’s great surprise, begins undressing, too, but Belinda undresses in slow dream time.  Matthew is surprised that Belinda is being so bold.  It isn’t like her; even in the dream Matthew recognizes that it isn’t like her, and this makes him aware that he’s dreaming, because he has to admit that it’s incredible that Belinda would be stripping to lie naked in the sun in a woody glade with him and Liz—who has never looked better.
    Now the weather seems to have gotten a lot warmer.  Both Belinda and Liz have tans, though they were rather pale when all of this began.  Matthew didn’t really notice how pale they were at the time; he realizes it only now, now that they’re brown and oily.  Liz raises herself onto one elbow, looks at Belinda for a moment, and then caresses her breast.  Belinda, with her eyes closed, stretches, savoring the caress as she had been savoring the sun.  Then Liz kisses her.
    “I don’t think I’m ready for that,” says Belinda.  She isn’t annoyed.  She’s almost apologetic.  She seems to be suggesting that she might be ready at another time, even in a little while, perhaps, but that she isn’t ready just now.
    Matthew drifts up from sleep, out of the dream, almost to wakefulness.  He has developed a notable erection, one of his stiffest, largest, and most pleasant.  The entire dream episode has made him very happy.  It has made him feel that he is potentially a party to a more exotic life than the one he’s currently leading.  In a while, he sinks back into a deeper sleep.  He won’t remember this dream when he wakes in the morning, but the idyll will return to him later, when he sits with his coffee to make his notes, as if it is new, and it will return again from time to time for the next couple of days, whenever he works on his review of the Alley View Grill.

Reservations Recommended is published in paperback by Picador, a division of St. Martin’s Press, at $12.00.

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Reservations Recommended is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, dialogues, settings, and businesses portrayed in it are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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First published by Crown Publishers, Inc., 201 East 50th Street, New York, New York 10022. Member of the Crown Publishing Group.

Now available in paperback from Picador USA, a division of St. Martin’s Press.

For information about publication rights outside the U. S. A., audio rights, serial rights, screen rights, and so on, e-mail Alec “Nick” Rafter, the author’s earnest agent.

The illustration at the top of the page is an adaptation of an illustration by Stewart Rouse that first appeared on the cover of the August 1931 issue of Modern Mechanics and Inventions. The boy at the controls of the aerocycle doesn’t particularly resemble Peter Leroy—except, perhaps, for the smile.