Эд Макбейн - Barking at Butterflies and other stories

There was more hammering now, louder this time.

“Stop that banging!” Frank shouted, and it stopped immediately. “Fat bastard,” he said, and Millie giggled. “Thinks he owns the place. Move the car, lower the television, bang, bang, bang with his goddamn fist!” He glared at the wall. Millie was still giggling. “Go ahead!” he shouted. “I dare you to hit that wall one more goddamn time!”

There was no further hammering. Frank turned from the wall. Millie had stopped giggling. She was watching him steadily.

“ Are we supposed to be in love with each other?” she asked.

“That was my understanding,” he said quietly.

“That was my understanding, too,” she said. She walked to him, and turned her back to him, and lifted the hair from the nape of her neck. He reached for the zipper at the back of her dress, and gently lowered it.

It was October outside, but the drapes were drawn, and in the room it might have been any season. The bedclothes were rumpled, and a pillow was on the carpeted floor. Millie, in lavender tights and brassiere was applying lipstick at the mirror. In the bathroom, Frank was singing loudly. He sang badly off-key, and she could not recognize the tune.

“Frank?” she said.

“Mm?”

“Don’t you think you should call her?”

Frank came out of the bathroom, a towel around his waist, his hair wet. He had been growing a mustache for the past month, and he wore it with supreme confidence.

“What, honey?” he said.

“Don’t you think you should call Hope?”

“What for?”

“It’s pretty late. She...”

“Hell with her,” he said, and picked up his shorts and trousers, and went back into the bedroom again.

Millie put the cap on her lipstick, dropped it into the bag, and then picked up her hairbrush. Brushing out her hair, she said, “You still haven’t told me why Mae closed the shop so suddenly?”

“I guess she just got tired of it,” he said.

“Maybe she took a lover,” Millie said.

“What?” Frank said, and came out of the bathroom in his shorts.

“I said maybe she...”

“I doubt that sincerely,” Frank said.

“It’s a possibility,” Millie said, and shrugged.

“I doubt it.”

“You forgot to say sincerely.”

“I think she just got bored with selling antiques, that’s all,” he said, and stepped into his trousers and zipped up the fly.

“Probably the pitcher that did it,” Millie said. “My returning the ironstone pitcher. Michael says that stores operating on a small volume...”

“Mae’s shop wasn’t Bloomingdale’s,” Frank said, “but I’m sure a refund on a pitcher that cost fifteen dollars...”

“Seventeen dollars.”

“... wouldn’t drive her out of business. Anyway, why’d you return it?”

“I didn’t like having a pitcher belonging to another woman.”

“It didn’t belong to her. The moment you bought it, it became yours.”

“It still seemed like hers.” Brushing her hair, evenly stroking it, she said, “Would you like to know why she sold the shop? I can tell you, if you’d like to know.”

“Why’d she sell it?”

“Because of your trip last month.”

“My trip?”

“Mmm. Your second honeymoon,” Millie said.

“You mean the trip to Antigua?”

“Well, where else did you go last month?”

“That was not a second honeymoon,” he said. “Have you seen my shirt? Where’d my shirt disappear to?”

“I meant to tell you, by the way, that September is the hurricane season down there. Why anyone would go to Antigua in September is beyond me.”

Frank lifted the bedspread from one of the chairs; his shirt was not under it. “We had beautiful weather,” he said.

“Then why didn’t you come back with a tan? All you came back with was a mustache.”

“I also came back with a tan. Now where the hell is that shirt?”

“Not a very good tan, Frank. Would you like to know why? Because it was a second honeymoon, that’s why. It’s a little difficult to get a tan when you’re up in the room all day long.”

“We were not up in the room all day long,” he said, and got down on his knees and looked under the bed. “Now how did it get there? ” he said, and reached under the bed.

“Then where were you?” Millie asked.

“In the water, most of the time.”

“Suppose a shark had bitten off your leg?”

“There were no sharks,” he said, and stood up, and shook out the shirt.

“A barracuda then. How could you have driven here to New Jersey with only one leg?”

“I’m back,” he said, putting on the shirt, “and I still have both my legs, so obviously...”

“Yes, but you never once gave it a minute’s thought, did you? When you were scuba diving down there.”

“I was snorkeling.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Snorkeling is recreational. That’s the only reason I do it. For recreation.”

“Why’d you have to go all the way to Antigua to do it?”

“Mae wanted to go to Antigua.”

“So naturally, you went. Never mind me.”

“Millie, I was only gone for a lousy three weeks!”

“Twenty-four days, if we choose to be precise. And you never called me once,” she said, and threw the hairbrush into her bag, and crossed the room to the clothes rack, and took her blouse from a wire hanger.

“I couldn’t phone,” he said. “We were on the beach most of the day.”

“Didn’t you ever come off the beach?” Millie asked, and put on the blouse.

“We came off the beach, yes,” Frank said. “But there wasn’t a phone in the room. The only phone was in the lobby.”

“Then why didn’t you go up to the lobby and call from there?” she said, buttoning the blouse.

“Because it took hours to get through to the States.”

“Oh, then you did call the States,” she said, and turned to face him.

“Yes, I called the office once to see how the new campaign was shaping up.”

“But you couldn’t call me,” she said.

“Millie, this was a very isolated little hotel, with these small cottages on the beach, and...”

“Honeymoon cottages,” she said.

“Suppose Mae had seen me making a phone call?”

“You could have told her you were calling the office to check on your brilliant campaign.”

“I’d already called the office, and they’d told me my brilliant campaign was shaping up fine.”

“I still think you could have called me, Frank. If you hadn’t been so busy growing a mustache...”

“A man isn’t busy growing a mustache. It grows all by itself.”

“Yes, and there’s a very definite connection, too. Between a mustache and sexuality.”

“Take Michael, for example.”

“Don’t change the subject. If you hadn’t been so involved with Mae, if you hadn’t been enjoying your second honeymoon so much...”

“Millie, it was not ...”

“Which, of course, is why she sold the damn shop ten minutes after you got back. She simply didn’t need it anymore. She found her husband again.”

“Millie, it was not a second honeymoon. And I don’t think the Antigua trip was the reason Mae sold the shop. And I would have called you if it was at all possible, but it wasn’t. Would you hand me my tie, please?”

“I still think you could have called,” Millie said, and handed him the tie, and then said, “I went to bed with Paul while you were gone.”

“What!” he said, dropping the tie. “Why the hell did you do that?”

“Oh, for recreation,” she said airily.

He stared at her silently, and then picked up the tie, and turned to the mirror.