Bullet Park   ::   Cheever John

"I came into the house," he said aloud, "and I made a drink and then I went upstairs and undressed and took a shower so it must be in the bedroom somewhere." He must have put the wallet on some surface in the bedroom and now he examined all of these-the dressing table, the chest of drawers, etc. It was nowhere. He could not recall having been in any of the other bedrooms but he examined them. He heard Nellie's heels coming down the hall. "I've lost my wallet," he said. "Oh dear," said Nellie. He had no use for the wallet that night, she knew, but she knew that he would not go to the party without it. The loss of any object was for both of them acute as if their lives rested on some substructure of talismans. "I came into the house," Nailles kept saying, "and I made a drink and then I went upstairs and I undressed and took a shower so it must be here somewhere."

For the next half hour or longer they were upstairs, downstairs, in and out of the living room, opening unused drawers onto collections of Christmas ribbon, feeling under chairs, lifting up newspapers and magazines, shaking out pillows and grabbing under cushions. To look into their faces you would have thought they had lost their grail, their cross, their anchor. Why couldn't Nailles go to the party without his wallet? He couldn't. "I came into the house," he said, "and I made a drink and then I went upstairs and undressed and took a shower." "Oh here it is," cried Nellie. It was the pure voice of an angel, freed from the mortal bonds of grossness and aspiration. "It was in the pantry under the minutes of your last meeting. You must have put it there when you made your drink." "Thank you darling, thank you," said Nailles to his deliverer. They started for the party. Thunder sounded. The noise reminded Nailles again of what it had felt like to be young and easy. "You know I was awfully happy that summer I climbed in the Tirol," he said. "I climbed the Grand Kaiser and the Pengelstein. In the Tirol when there's a thunderstorm they ring all the church bells. All up and down the valley. It's very exciting. I don't know why I tell you all of this. I guess it must be the storm."

Eliot and Nellie got to the party at quarter to eight. Ten minutes later Hammer parked his car at the foot of the driveway. He was very drunk and had not changed his clothes. He wore a sweater. Tony called down to him: "Please bring your car up. There's plenty of room on the lawn. Please bring your car up." When Hammer did not move Tony jogged down the drive. "Please bring your car up the driveway," he said. "There's still plenty of room on the hill.