Lawrence Block - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 129, No. 6. Whole No. 790, June 2007

Chekhov had been right, he thought, still crafting the short story in his head, trying in vain still to distract himself from the other story, from all that had happened in recent hours. Each of us does have two lives, one open and the other running its course in secret. But Chekhov had missed the despair of never truly being able to know the other’s secret existence, always balancing trust against doubt. Gurov had found some prurient irony in the idea of secret lives, Anna Sergeyevna had been torn asunder by her two worlds, and Evgeniy von Diderits... But it wasn’t Evgeniy’s story, after all, Philip recognized, the simplest truth. Anna’s and Gurov’s was the grand, conflicted passion. Von Diderits’s life was static, negligible. Philip had simply chosen the wrong character. And while another man had been wooing and perhaps winning Catherine, Philip had stuck himself away in 1890s Russia, missing the chance to be of significance in his own story, precisely when he should have been strengthening his role.

But now he’d secured a place in both stories, had taken special pains to assure that his presence would be felt.

Dawn had broken by the time Philip drove the rented Buick back to his own house and parked it at the curb where the Land Rover had stood the night before. The neighborhood was now lit in soft tones. Sprinklers were rotating in a lawn down the street — set off by an automatic timer, as regular as clockwork, as if nothing had changed. In another yard, a cat stalked some animal unseen. As Philip walked toward his front porch, he heard the neighbor’s door open and then saw her step out to pick up her paper. She stopped when she spotted him, and even from a distance he could sense her hesitancy, her apprehension. Did she not recognize him? He saw that she didn’t have her glasses on. The Buick must have confused her too. Perhaps she suspected an early-morning burglar?

“Good morning, Mrs. Rosen,” he called out, with a nervous wave. “Just me. Philip.” Yes, just like the sprinklers, he told himself. Act asif nothing has changed. And then he thought, But maybe she has seen me clearly, maybe it’s not that she doesn’t recognize me but that she’s sensed something better than she should. He quickly turned his key in the front door and pushed it inward, not waiting for a reply.

Once inside, however, he still felt himself an intruder, as if actually breaking into some strange house. He saw even the most familiar objects as if for the first time: a piece of pottery he and Catherine had picked up in Chatham County, a photograph of them on their honeymoon in London, Catherine’s purse on the chair. The painting over the mantel seemed darker than usual. The fabric of the couch didn’t quite match the floor. He noticed that a Mingus CD he had left in the player had been swapped out for Moby and that an empty bottle of Pinot Noir stood on the kitchen counter. Two glasses sat in the sink.

Had Buddy touched this newspaper on the counter? Which chair had he sat in? The carpet runner in the hallway had been kicked up at the corner. The hand towel in the bathroom had a streak of grime. Was that another man’s piss on the rim of the toilet? Under the fluorescent lights, he noticed that there were still traces of red on his hands — ink? No. Not ink. Not ink — not this time. He took a moment to wash them again and then waited to let them dry in the air, reluctant to share the hand towel that the other man had touched.

In their bedroom, the rising sun crept around the edges of the window, leaving the room in morning twilight, and Philip detected the thick scent of black currants again, wildflowers. Beneath the sheets wrapped around her, Catherine’s breasts rose and fell in easy rhythms. Her black hair strayed out across the pillow, and a mascara stain marked the case, almost in the shape of an eyelash itself. Someone had propped a condom against the edge of the alarm clock. Durex. Unopened.

Sitting down in the chair in the corner of the room, Philip twirled the condom in his hand, examined the edges of the wrapper, the expiration date, phrases from the package: “super thin for more feeling,” “nonoxynol-9,” “if erection is lost before withdrawal...” It was from a box of twelve in the bathroom, he knew, and he also knew that if he hadn’t come home before she awoke, if he’d really been in Virginia, then the condom would have been returned to its spot, the evidence vanished. But unopened? He started to go into the bathroom and count the ones that remained in the box, to see if others were missing, but he couldn’t remember with any certainty how many had been in there before he left. It had been awhile since they’d made love, he realized with regret, with shame.

Catherine shifted her weight, stretched an arm out to her side. Philip clasped the condom in his hand and moved up to the bed to sit beside her.

“Catherine,” he said, “are you awake?” He laid his free hand on her arm, resisted an unexpected urge to shake it. “It’s me. Philip.”

“Philip?” she mumbled, still half asleep, leaning into his touch. Her eyes parted just slightly. “It’s too early, Philip, it’s—” Her body tensed, her eyes opened wide, she looked up at him bewildered. “Philip?” she said again, sitting up sharply. The sheet fell away from her bare breasts, and it struck him that Buddy had seen her nakedness too, and probably not just long ago. He watched her glance toward the clock, saw her confusion deepen. “Where...? It’s seven in the morning. I thought you were—”

“You said you were sick,” he began, and despite himself he could hear the accusation seeping into his tone. “I came home because—” But even before he said them, he knew the words weren’t right, that disguising the truth would make him no better than her. The very next moment would determine everything that came after. “I never left,” he began, sternly, pridefully, measuring his anger. “No, I’ve been in Raleigh the whole time. I’ve used up a whole tank of gas, Catherine. I’ve been driving, I’ve been thinking... I saw him, and I don’t know what to make of it all, don’t know what to make of you.” He caught her glancing again at the clock, at the place where the condom no longer stood, and he felt his hand clenching tighter, the foil wrapper crinkling within. “Is this what you’re looking for?” he asked with a sneer, and he flicked the condom onto the bedspread with his freshly washed hands. The evidence was there. She would have to admit the truth, confirm that he’d been right. Unopened or not, it was still proof. Intentions were—

But as he watched her face, her expression betrayed little. She stared down at the condom for a moment and then pushed her hair behind her ears, lifted her head to meet his gaze. As with everything else in the house, Philip had the vague sensation of seeing Catherine now for the first time: the cleft dividing her chin; those faint clusters of freckles across her cheeks, usually masked by powder; the uncommon color of her eyes. Her irises were a deep, impenetrable green, her pupils unfathomably opaque. He thought of the painting above the mantel, those swaths of color brushing against one another, connecting, parting. “Oh, Philip,” she whispered, gently shaking her head, “why did you go away? Why did we need to do this?” and in her wry, pained smile he glimpsed the ragged edges of her secret life, forced open, unable to be hid. My God, he thought, did I make this? — his anger fleeing him now and some other dull feeling taking its place. The next step was inevitable, he saw then, already written, and he wanted desperately now to go back and mend things — everything that he’d opened up, to hide his own secret life, to leave everything hid.