Bill Pronzini - Snowbound

“What?”

“I have your tomato sauce. Was there something else?”

“No,” Kubion said. “No, that’s it.”

He gave her a dollar bill, and she rang up the purchase on the old-fashioned, crank-type register. She handed him his change, put the two cans into a paper sack. Hughes came out of his office with a sheaf of bills in his hand and counted them out to Verne Mullins-four hundred and fifty dollars. Mullins tucked them into a warn leather billfold, said, “Thanks, Matt, you’re a good lad,” and started for the door.

Hughes called after him. “Don’t forget church on Sunday, Verne.”

“Now would a good Irish Protestant like me be forgetting church on the Sunday before Christmas? I’ll be there, don’t you worry; somebody’s got to put a dime in the collection plate.”

Hughes laughed, and Mullins went out as Maude Fredericks said to Cain, “Yes, please?”

“Bottle of Old Grandad,” Cain said.

Kubion picked up his paper sack and left the store. Bank, he was thinking. Safe in that office. Four hundred and fifty dollars without even looking at the check first. If this Hughes operates a kind of unofficial banking service, if he regularly cashes checks for the people who live here, how much does he keep on hand?

Hell, Kubion told himself then, you’re starting to think like a punk. A hick village like this, for Christ’s sake, the amount in that safe has to be penny-ante. We need a score, sure, but something big, something damned big now. And you don’t crap on safe ground to begin with, especially not with the kind of heat we’re carrying. Forget it.

He went up the snow-tracked sidewalk to his car.

When the telephone rang at four o’clock, Rebecca knew immediately that it was Matt and that he was calling to tell her he wouldn’t be home again that night. She put her book aside and stared across the living room to where the unit sat on a pigskin-topped table. Ring. Silence. Ring. Silence. Ring. I won’t answer it, she thought-and then stood up slowly and walked over to the table and picked up the handset.

“Yes, Matt,” she said.

“Hello, dear. How did you know it was me?”

“I’m psychic, how else?”

He laughed softly. “I just called to tell you I won’t be home again until late tonight. Neal Walker wants me to go to the City Council meeting in Coldville, and I-”

“All right,” she said.

“I’ll try not to be too late.”

“All right.”

“Rebecca-is something the matter?”

“Now what could possibly be the matter?”

“Well, you sound tired. Are you feeling well?”

“Lovely,” she said. “Have a nice time, won’t you?”

“Yes. Don’t wait up.”

“I wouldn’t think of it. Good-bye, Matt.”

Rebecca put the receiver down without waiting to hear if he had anything further to say. She stood there stiffly, thinking: How many times have we played that same little scene? Fifty, a hundred? And such trite dialogue, like something written by a third-rate playwright. Rebecca Hughes: character in a pointless drama. Reciting her lines, going through the motions, while the unseen audience watches in boredom and suppresses snickers because the entire episode is so totally and ridiculously conventional.

She went to the main hall and along it into the kitchen. Earlier in the day she had gone down to the Mercantile to get coffee, and she had had the percolator on ever since she returned; she poured another cup-did that make ten for the day, or was it fifteen? — and stood drinking it by the table. Through the window over the sink, she could see white-flecked darkness: snowing again, a whipping veil of snow. Beginnings of a heavy storm. She could remember a time when she relished one of these mountain winter blizzards — curled up with Matt on the rug in front of the fireplace, insulated against the turbulence without, drinking hot eggnog and perhaps making a little love in the crackling glow of the fir-log fire. Soft, shared warmth and soft, shared love.

And wasn’t that, too, as trite as the rest of it?

I don’t want to be alone tonight, she thought. I don’t think I can stand being alone again tonight. But where could she go? The Valley Inn? No, there would be friendly, probing questions as to Matt’s whereabouts, and she would have to repeat his lie and then listen to them talk about what a fine, upstanding man he was, and all in all it would be worse than being alone. Ann Tribucci? Ann was her closest friend in the valley, though Rebecca had at no time been able to talk to her about personal matters; she had wanted to often enough, to purge herself woman to woman, but she could never quite manage the courage. Tonight would be no different. If anything, seeing Ann tonight would make things worse: the previous weekend, she and Johnny had moved temporarily from their home near Mule Deer Lake to Vince and Judy Tribucci’s house-Ann hadn’t wanted to be alone out there with the baby coming-and Rebecca would have to face all four of them; she would have to witness the solicitous way Johnny looked at his wife and the happiness that was theirs with the baby due so soon now…

Abruptly, Rebecca wondered if things might have been different if she and Matt had had a child. Well no, probably not, and anyway, the question was academic. He had told her during their brief engagement that he was sterile-their childless marriage was in no way responsible for his infidelity, either-and she had said then that it didn’t matter, they had each other and that was enough. There had been some talk at that time of adopting a baby later on, but neither of them had mentioned it again in the seven years they had been man and wife.

Her eyes strayed to the window again, and she could just make out the familiar, iridescent glow of light in the cabin above. And she found herself wondering about Zachary Cain again, wondering as she had on the previous night if he too was lonely. Would he welcome some company on this stormy night, the same as she? Would he be receptive to a visit from a young-old and cuckolded wife?

Oh, stop it, she told herself. The only thing you’d accomplish by going up there is to make a fool of yourself; remember Reno, remember that, and it doesn’t matter that it’s not the same thing. There’s nothing up there for you, nothing at all.

Rebecca finished the last of her coffee, put the cup down, and went back into the living room. She was cold again-odd how she couldn’t seem to keep warm lately. Picking up her book, she climbed the stairs and ran a hot bath and undressed and slipped into the tub. The steaming water helped a little; she could feel herself beginning to relax.

The book she was reading was one of those sex-and-big business best sellers-not really absorbing, just something to read-and she opened it again as she lay soaking. After two pages, she came to another in a long series of boudoir scenes; but this one, as coldly clinical in detail as all the others, had a curiously and intensely erotic effect on her. Her nipples grew erect beneath the warm bathwater; her hips moved featheringly against the smooth porcelain; her thighs opened and closed in a gentle, involuntary rhythm. God, it had been such a long time now! Dry-throated, she closed the book sharply and put it aside, shutting her eyes, willing her body still. After a time the sexual need began to ebb-but she was cold again, even in the warm bath she was cold again…

Half an hour later, fully dressed, she sat with a tasteless sandwich-she could not recall the last time she had taken a genuine pleasure in the consumption of food-and a cup of coffee at the kitchen table. Seven o’clock now. Blizzard flinging snow at the window, wailing emptily. It was going to be such a long, long night-and I don’t want to be alone, she thought.