Эд Макбейн - Running From Legs and Other Stories

“Hey!” he shouted. “Get in before you drown!” Then, seeing the look of hesitation on her face, he immediately added, “I’m not a weirdo, I promise.”

She got into the car.

“My name’s Bobby Hollis,” he said.

“How do you do, Bobby?”

“What’s your name?”

“Laura Pauling.”

“Laura and Bobby.”

“Yes. Laura and Bobby.”

Wide grin, mischievous blue eyes, straight brown hair a bit too carelessly combed, falling onto his forehead, long and lanky Bobby — oh, how the girls on campus went for Bobby! Laura had hooked herself a big one out there in the rain. A young man who’d been on the dean’s list for three successive semesters, wrote a column for the school newspaper, played the lead in the drama group’s presentation of Arsenic and Old Lace, and also played the clarinet. “Would you like to hear the glissando passage at the beginning of ‘Rhapsody in Blue’?” A young man who, most important of all, was absolutely crazy about—

Her.

Wow.

Little Laura Pauling. Five foot four, mousy brown hair that sort of matched her brown eyes. Fairly decent figure but not anything anyone in his right mind would rave about. Except Bobby Hollis, who maybe wasn’t in his right mind.

Wow.

Laura had hooked herself the seventh wonder of the world out there in the rain. When at last he asked her to marry him, she accepted at once. Of course, she accepted! And before she knew it, she had two children who were surely the eighth and ninth wonders, and eventually she forgot what she’d been doing up there on that uptown campus. Forgot she’d been studying to... well, become something. Well, that wasn’t important. Well, yes, it was important, but the hell with it.

Laura had been willing to go along with changing dirty diapers and wiping runny noses so long as she believed Bobby loved her. After all, somebody had to do those things while Bobby was busy making a career for himself. Somebody had to keep those old home fires burning while Bobby was out chasing—

Out chasing.

Period.

She learned about it from a well-meaning associate of his who’d had too many martinis.

“Laura,” he’d said, “forgive me if I’m brutally frank, okay?”

“What is it, Dave?”

“I know a man’s supposed to look the other way and keep his mouth shut when a friend of his is... well... playing around. Supposed to nudge the guy in the ribs, wink at him, gee, you son of a gun. But I like you too much to...”

“I don’t want to hear it,” she’d said.

But he’d told her, anyway.

Five years ago.

Tonight, she watched her husband in action at her own dinner table.

A fierce September rain lashed the window panes of their sixth floor apartment, and far below she could hear the sound of automobile tires hissing on wet asphalt. The clock on the dining room wall read exactly ten o’clock. Over coffee and dessert, Bobby was telling a New York atrocity story to their guests. Laura watched him from the opposite end of the long table, listening only distractedly. She knew it was happening again, and that she was helpless to stop it.

Bobby’s eyes twinkled as he told the story. He liked New York atrocity stories, especially those about cab drivers. A smile was forming on his mouth now in anticipation of his own punch line. She knew he would burst into immodest laughter the moment he finished the story. She knew him so well. She’d been married to him for nine years. He was her beloved Bobby. Her spouse. Her mate. The father of her two adorable children. Under the table, his left hand was resting on Nessie Winkler’s thigh.

“By now, this is the fifth time we’ve circled the Plaza,” he said. “Now even if I were fresh off the banana boat, I’d begin to recognize the same hotel going by five times, wouldn’t you think? I’d begin to maybe suspect a little something?”

Had he just squeezed Nessie’s thigh under the table?

If not, why had she turned to him in that quick conspiratorial way and looked dopily into his face? Nessie. For Agnes. But you could not call a lissome blonde Agnes. Agnes was for the comic characters of the world. There was nothing funny about Nessie Winkler or the fact that Bobby had his fingers spread on her thigh under the table.

“So finally I tapped on the glass — they’re all so terrified of getting held up these days — and he slid open the partition, and I told him he’d better take me to Forty-seventh and Fifth immediately, and do you know what he said?”

Lucille came in from the kitchen just then, and stood immediately inside the swinging door, visibly nervous. She was a plain, brown-haired, pudding-faced woman of perhaps twenty-six and Laura suspected this was the first dinner party she’d ever served. Everyone at the table was watching Bobby, waiting to hear the end of his cab-driver story.

Lucille said, “Ma’am?” and Bobby turned to her immediately and snapped, “Would you mind, please?”

He leaned toward his guests then, and grinned, and in the heavy Brooklyn accent the cabby must have used, delivered the long-awaited zinger to his story.

“He looked me straight in the eye and said, “Look, mister, you shoulda tole me you was a New Yorker!’ ”

He burst out laughing, just as Laura knew he would. Nessie burst out laughing, an instant later. Laura laughed, too. Politely. Everyone was laughing but Lucille, who was standing just behind Nessie’s chair now, looking somewhat bewildered.

“Yes, Lucille?” Laura said.

“Ma’am, shall I start clearing?”

“Please.”

Bobby’s hand was still under the table. Laura watched him incredulously. A fork slid off the plate Lucille was lifting from the table, clattering to the floor. She flushed a deep red and immediately knelt beside Nessie’s chair to retrieve it. When she rose again, her eyes met Laura’s.

There was knowledge in those eyes.

She had seen.

“Delicious,” Nessie said, and folded her napkin.

At five minutes to twelve, Laura went into the kitchen to pay Mrs. Armstrong and Lucille and to thank them for helping to make the dinner party such a success. Mrs. Armstrong accepted her check and told Laura what a pleasure it always was to work for such a fine lady. Lucille took her check and said nothing. Her eyes avoided Laura’s.

Mrs. Armstrong and Lucille were wearing almost identical black topcoats and carrying black handbags. Mrs. Armstrong was carrying a red umbrella. Lucille had no umbrella, and when Laura asked her if she’d like to borrow one, she replied, “No, thank you, ma’am, I’m only catching a bus on Fifth,” which was the longest sentence she’d uttered all night long.

Her eyes still avoided Laura’s.

It was as if she were somehow blaming Laura for what she’d seen earlier.

When the two women left the apartment, Laura double-locked the service door behind them. Bobby was sprawled on the living room sofa, sipping a cognac and watching an old cowboy movie on television.

“Nice party,” he said.

“I thought it went smoothly,” Laura said.

“Want a nightcap?”

“Thanks, no. Are the kids okay?”

“What?”

“I asked you to look in on them while I...”

“Slipped my mind,” Bobby said. “Got involved in the movie here.”

“I’ll do it,” Laura said, and went out of the room and down the corridor to the children’s bedrooms.

Both of them were asleep. Seven-year-old Jessica had the blanket twisted around her like a strait jacket, and Laura had difficulty unwinding it without awakening her. She extricated her daughter at last, and then kissed her on the forehead and went next door to where five-year-old Michael was sleeping with his face to the wall. Laura touched his brow, smoothed his hair, kissed him on the cheek, and tucked the blanket tighter around his shoulder.