Evan Hunter: Candyland

Emma wishes she could like or even admire Myra Rifkin, but the fact is her father met the woman only six months after he and Emma's mother separated, and began living together six months after that, which remarkable coincidence — just between you and I — seems a bit far-fetched to Emma, hmm? She fully realizes that it was her mother who wanted the divorce, for reasons known only to herself, and which she has never chosen to share with Emma, but this does not excuse her father's haste, in Emma's eyes at least, in choosing another partner before the funeral meats were cold upon the table, to coin a phrase — not for nothing is Emma the daughter of an academic. Her father is sixty-two years old, and Myra is fifty-eight, but she dresses like thirty, with flirty little velvet hats she picks up in Greenwich Village thrift shops and paisley granny skirts and L.L. Bean boots, Jesus! A Too-Late Hippie, Morgan would call her. A Far Too-Late Hippie. I have to call him, Emma thinks. Tell him what I learned from Lois Ford. Tell him our prime suspect called her to apologize, does that sound like a man who'd just used his bare hands to tear hair from his victim's head? Fill him in on what Cindy said, too. Morgan likes to stay abreast. Morgan gets upset if she acts like a lone wolf. Which she supposes she is nowadays.

"A penny," her father says.

"It would bore you," she says.

"Try me."

"I'm tired, Dad."

"Is that a hint for me to be on my way?"

"If you like. You're welcome to stay."

"Here's your hat, what's your hurry," he says, and drains the glass and puts it onto the doily alongside Emma's pistol. He looks down at the gun. Everything he feels about her profession fleetingly crosses his face as he looks at the gun. He barely restrains a sigh. "Well, be careful," he says, and is starting for the door, when he stops, and turns, and says out of the blue, "I'm a person, too, Emma," and then merely nods and goes out of the room, and out of the house, and into the fog.

She dead-bolts the door behind him.

Stands in the entrance foyer under the imitation Tiffany globe for several moments, and then turns out the light and goes upstairs to the bedroom. The LED display on her answering machine reads 3:44 AM. She pulls back the sheet on the bed, climbs in, and turns out the bedside lamp.

She is dead asleep when the telephone rings.

She looks at the luminous dial of the bedside clock. It is almost four a.m. She picks up the receiver.

"Hello?" she says.

"Lois?"

"Yes?"

"This is Ben," he says.

"Ben?"

"Benjamin Thorpe."

"Oh."

"How are you, Lois?"

"Fine. Wh… what do you want? Why are you calling me?"

"Just to see how you are."

"It's three o'clock in the morning."

"I know."

"Are you in Los Angeles?"

"No. I'm still here in New York."

"She said you might have gone back to Los Angeles."

"Who? Heather?"

"No, the detective. The one who was here."

"A detective came to see you?"

"Said you might have gone back to Los Angeles. Detective Boyle."

"No, I'm here."

She hesitates. Takes a breath. Go ahead, ask him, she thinks.

"Did you kill somebody, Ben?"

"No. What? Did I what?"

" Tell me the truth, Ben."

"Who said I killed somebody?"

"She did. Well, might have. She said you might have killed somebody."

"No. Of course not. No. That's ridiculous."

"I didn't think so. The way you were crying on the phone last night. You sound a lot better now."

"I am a lot better."

"So where are you?"

"I told you. I'm still in New York."

"They're looking for you, you know."

"Do they really think I killed somebody?"

"A young girl."

"No."

"A prostitute. They think you went to a prostitute last night. After you called Heather."

"Why would I do that?"

"Gee, I don't know," she says broadly. "Why do men go to prostitutes?"

"I don't know any prostitutes. I've never been to a prostitute in my life."

"Oh, I'll bet."

"Never."

"Is that why you call Heather all the time? Cause you don't know any prostitutes to call?"

"She's a friend."

"She told me you call her all the time."

"Just sometimes."

"Did you really want to come see us last night?"

"Yes."

"She told me you wanted to come see us."

"I did."

"Both of us, she said."

"That's right."

"It broke my heart, you know. The way you were crying. You didn't have to feel so bad, you know. I wasn't the one who turned you down, you didn't have to call me to apologize. I mean, it was nice of you and all, but I wasn't offended, really. That's a common fallacy, you know. That a girl gets insulted because a man expresses desire for her. If you want my opinion, only ugly girls get insulted. A good-looking girl is flattered by an expression of interest, truly."

"Are you a good-looking girl, Lois?"

"Well, I don't know about that."

"Well, you must know if you're good-looking."

"I don't want to sound conceited."

"What do you look like?"

"I think I'm an attractive woman."

"Are you?"

"I think so."

"Describe yourself."

"That's hard to do. Objectively, I mean."

"Do it subjectively then."

"I don't think I can do that."

"Sure you can. How tall are you, for example?"

"Five-six."

"How much do you weigh?"

"A hundred-and-twenty, but I'd really like to lose a few pounds."

"A hundred-and-twenty is a good weight. For five-six, that's a good weight."

"A hundred-and-fifteen would be better, believe me."

"Maybe, but a hundred-and-twenty isn't fat, Lois."

"I'd like to lose five or six pounds."

"Do you think of yourself as fat?"

"Well, not exactly fat. But…"

"Are you full-figured, is that it?"

"No. No, I wouldn't say full-figured. No. But I could stand to lose a few pounds."

"For example, what are your dimensions, Lois?"

"I really don't know. Only models know their dimensions. I don't know any real girls who know their dimensions."

"Well, for example, what size bra do you wear, for example?"

"I'm a thirty-four B."

"And your panties, for example?"

"Five. I wear a size five panty."

"That's not fat, Lois, I'm sorry."

"I didn't say I was fat, per se. I'd just like to lose five or six pounds."

"What color hair do you have, Lois?"

"Brown. I have long brown hair, bangs on my forehead."

"Brown hair and bangs, huh?"

"I hear that one all the time," she says. "What color is y our hair?" she asks.

"Brown. Well, brownish-black. Dark hair. I have dark hair."

"What do you look like? Tell me what you look like, Ben."

"I'm just your average red-blooded American male."

"I'll bet. Calling young girls in the middle of the night."

"How old are you, anyway, Lois?"

"Twenty. I was twenty in April. How old are you?"

"Too old for twenty, that's for sure."

"Come on, tell me. I've dated older men."

"Have you?"

"Sure. Married men, too. It's impossible to live in this city without getting to know an older married man sooner or later."

"Well, I'm in my forties, let's leave it at that."

"Late forties or early forties?"

"Late."

"Brown hair and bangs," she says, and giggles. "I hear that one all the time."

On the table beside the bed, the electric clock is humming. She has set it for seven a.m. because her computer class, starts at nine and she has to go all the way to Brooklyn. The clock now reads four-ten, and she is wide awake. She can hear the DSC trucks maneuvering on the street below. She can hear the rush of traffic on the East River Drive. She can hear Benjamin Thorpe breathing on the other end of the line.