Lawrence Block - Enough Rope

But he couldn’t take the bear. He had visions of uniformed Africans going through his luggage, holding the bear aloft and jabbering, demanding to know what it was and why he was bringing it in. He saw himself, flushing crimson, surrounded by other festival-goers, all either staring at him or pointedly not staring at him. He could imagine Cary Grant, say, or Michael Caine, playing a scene like that and coming out of it rather well. He could not envision himself coming out of it well at all.

Nor did he have room for a stuffed animal that measured twenty-seven inches end to end. He intended to make do with carry-on luggage, not much wanting to entrust his possessions to the care of Air Afrique, and if he took the bear he would have to check a bag. If they did not lose it in the first leg of the flight, from New York to Dakar, surely it would vanish somewhere between Dakar and Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso’s unpronounceable capital.

He went to a doctor and secured a prescription for Seconal. He flew to Dakar, and on to Ouagadougou. The bear stayed at home.

The customs check upon arrival was cursory at best. He was given VIP treatment, escorted through customs by a giant of a woman who so intimidated the functionaries that he was not even called upon to open his bag. He could have brought the bear, he could have brought a couple of Uzis and a grenade launcher, and no one would have been the wiser.

The Seconal, the bear substitute, was a total loss. His only prior experience with sleeping pills was when he was given one the night before an appendectomy. The damned pill had kept him up all night, and he learned later that this was known as a paradoxical effect, and that it happened with some people. It still happened years later, he discovered. He supposed it might be possible to override the paradoxical effect by increasing the dosage, but the Burkina Fasians were liberal suppliers of wine and stronger drinks, and the local beer was better than he would ever have guessed it might be, and he knew about the synergy of alcohol and barbiturates. Enough film stars had been done in by the combination; there was no need for a reviewer to join their company.

He might not have slept anyway, he told himself, even with the bear. There were two distractions, a romance with a Polish actress who spoke no more English than he spoke Polish (“The Polish starlet,” he would tell friends back home. “Advancing her career by sleeping with a writer.”) and a case of dysentery, evidently endemic in Burkina Faso, that was enough to wake a bear from hibernation.

“They didn’t pawthrough my bag at Ooogabooga,” he told the bear upon his return, “but they sure did a number at JFK. I don’t know what they think anybody could bring back from Burkina Faso. There’s nothing there. I bought a couple of strands of trading beads and a mask that should look good on the wall, if I can find the right spot for it. But just picture that clown at Customs yanking you out of the suitcase!”

They might have cut the bear open. They did things like that, and he supposed they had to. People smuggled things all the time, drugs and diamonds and state secrets and God knew what else. A hardened smuggler would hardly forbear (for bear !) to use a doll or a stuffed animal to conceal contraband. And a bear that had been cut open and probed could, he supposed, be stitched back together, and be none the worse for wear.

Still, something within him recoiled at the thought.

One night hedreamed about the bear.

He rarely dreamed, and what dreams he had were fragmentary and hazy. This one, though, was linear, and remarkably detailed. It played on his mind’s retina like a movie on a screen. In fact dreaming it was not unlike watching a movie, one in which he was also a participant.

The story line fell somewhere between Pygmalion and “The Frog Prince.” The bear, he was given to understand, was enchanted, under a spell. If the bear could win the unconditional love of a human being it would cast off its ursine form and emerge as the ideal partner of the person who loved it. And so he gave his heart to the bear, and fell asleep clutching it, and woke up with his arms around the woman of his, well, dreams.

Then he woke up in fact, and it was a bear he was clutching so desperately. Thank God, he thought.

Because it had been a nightmare. Because he didn’t want the bear to transform itself into anything, not even the woman of his dreams.

He rose, made the bed, tucked the bear in. And chucked the bear under its chin.

“Don’t ever change,” he told it.

The woman wasexotic. She’d been born in Ceylon, her mother a Sinhalese, her father an Englishman. She had grown up in London, went to college in California, and had lately moved to New York. She had high cheekbones, almond-shaped eyes, a sinuous figure, and a general appearance that could have been described as Nonspecific Ethnic. Whatever restaurant Paul took her to, she looked as though she belonged there. Her name was Sindra.

They met at a lecture at NYU, where he talked about Hitchcock’s use of comic relief and where she asked the only really provocative question. Afterward, he invited her to a screening. They had four dates, and he found that her enthusiasm for film matched his own. So, more often than not, did her taste and her opinions.

Four times at the evening’s end she went home alone in a taxi. At first he was just as glad, but by the fourth time his desire for her was stronger than his inclination to end the evening alone. He found himself leaning in the window of her cab, asking her if she wouldn’t like a little company.

“Oh, I would,” she assured him. “But not tonight, Paul.”

Not tonight, darling, I’ve got a... what? A headache, a husband? What?

He called her the next morning, asked her out to yet another screening two days hence. The movie first, then a Togolese restaurant. The food was succulent, and fiery hot. “I guess there’s a famine in Togo,” he told her. “I hadn’t heard about it.”

“It’s hard to keep up. This food’s delicious.”

“It is, isn’t it?” His hand covered hers. “I’m having a wonderful time. I don’t want the night to end.”

“Neither do I.”

“Shall I come up to your place?”

“It would be so much nicer to go to yours.”

They cabbed to Bank Street. The bear, of course, was in the bed. He settled Sindra with a drink and went to stow the bear in the closet, but Sindra tagged after him. “Oh, a teddy bear!” she cried, before he could think what to do.

“My daughter’s,” he said.

“I didn’t even know you had a daughter. How old is she?”

“Seven.”

“I thought you’d been divorced longer than that.”

“What did I say, seven? I meant eleven.”

“What’s her name?”

“Doesn’t have one.”

“Your daughter doesn’t have a name?”

“I thought you meant the bear. My daughter’s name is uh Paula.”

“Apolla? The feminine of Apollo?”

“That’s right.”

“It’s an unusual name. I like it. Was it your idea or your wife’s?”

Christ! “Mine.”

“And the bear doesn’t have a name?”

“Not yet,” he said. “I just bought it for her recently, and she sleeps with it when she stays over. I sleep in the living room.”

“Yes, I should think so. Do you have any pictures?”

“Of the bear? I’m sorry, of course you meant of my daughter.”

“Quite,” she said. “I already know what the bear looks like.”

“Right.”

“Do you?”

“Shit.”

“I beg your—”

“Oh, the hell with it,” he said. “I don’t have a daughter, the marriage was childless. I sleep with the bear myself. The whole story’s too stupid to go into, but if I don’t have the bear in bed with me I don’t sleep well. Believe me, I know how ridiculous that sounds.”