Lawrence Block: The Burglar in the Library

“Oh,” I said. “Well, Thursday would have been best, but I suppose we could let it go until Friday.”

“That’s Friday week.”

“Right. A week from this coming Friday. We could-”

“We can’t.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Actually,” she said, “I’m afraid I’ll be tied up the whole weekend, Bernie, from Thursday evening on.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Sorry.”

“I was sort of planning on us spending the weekend together, but-”

“I’m afraid it’s not on. Could you hook this for me, Bernie?”

“Uh, sure. Oh, sorry. My hand slipped.”

“Oh, I’ll just bet it did.”

“Well, an irresistible impulse drew it here. But if you don’t like the way it feels-”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Or if you want me to stop-”

“I didn’t say that, either.”

So we made do without Mel Tormé, and I can’t say his absence was much noticed. Afterward I collapsed like a blown tire, and the next thing I knew she had all her clothes on and one hand on the doorknob.

“Wait,” I said. “I can at least see you downstairs and put you into a cab.”

“No need for you to get dressed, Bernie. And I am in rather a hurry.”

“At least let me tell you what I had planned for the weekend.”

“All right.”

“Because we could always do it the following week, if I can manage to get reservations. Or, once you hear what I’ve got planned for us, you might want to cancel your own plans.”

“Well, tell me.”

“Cuttleford House,” I said.

“Cuttleford House.” She frowned in thought. “Isn’t that-”

“The English country house in the Berkshires,” I said. “Exclusive, expensive, and authentic. A coal fire on every hearth. Serving girls dropping curtsies. Serving boys dropping aitches. Tea brought to your room at daybreak. Guests who still haven’t recovered from having lost India. No television in the whole house, no automobiles anywhere on the property.”

“It sounds heavenly.”

“Well, I know what a passion you have for everything English,” I said, “and I saw how much you enjoyed tea at the Stanhope, and I thought this would be the perfect weekend for us. I was planning on telling you on Valentine’s Day, but it had come and gone by the time I managed to get through to them and make the reservation.”

“What a sweet man you are, Bernie.”

“That’s me,” I agreed. “What do you say, Lettice? If you’re positive you can’t shift your plans, I’ll try to switch our reservations to the following weekend.”

“I only wish I could.”

“You wish you could which?”

“Either.” She sighed, let go of the doorknob, and came back into the room, leaning against a bookcase. “I was hoping to avoid this,” she said. “I thought it would be so much nicer for both of us to just make love and leave it at that.”

“Leave what at what? You lost me.”

“In a manner of speaking,” she said, “that’s precisely it. Oh, Bernie, I wish I could go with you Thursday week, but it’s just not on.”

“What else are you doing,” I heard myself say, “that’s so important?”

“Oh, Bernie.”

“Well?”

“You’ll hate me.”

“I won’t hate you.”

“But you will, and I won’t blame you. I mean, it’s so ridiculous.”

“What is?”

“Oh, Bernie,” she said yet again. “Bernie, I’m getting married.”

“‘Oh, by the way, Bernie, I’m getting married Thursday,’” I said. “And my jaw dropped, and by the time I’d picked it up she was out the door and on her way. Can you believe it?”

“I’m beginning to, Bern.”

I suppose she must have been, since she was hearing it for the third time. I’d told her that night, calling her minutes after Lettice crossed my threshold and closed the door gently but firmly behind her. I told her again the following day at lunch. Carolyn’s dog-grooming salon is on East Eleventh Street between University Place and Broadway, just two doors down the street from Barnegat Books, and in the ordinary course of things we lunch together, one of us picking up sandwiches at one of the neighborhood delis and conveying them to the other’s place of business. On this particular day I had bought the sandwiches and we ate them at the Poodle Factory, and between bites I told her the same sad story I’d told her over the phone.

Then, around six, I closed the bookstore and went back to the Poodle Factory, where she was putting the finishing touches on a bichon frise while its owners watched, beaming. “She’s such a darling,” one of them said, while the other wrote out a check. “And you bring out the best in her, Carolyn. I swear you’re a genius.”

They left, darling in tow, and the genius closed up for the night. We walked over to the Bum Rap on Broadway, as we generally do, and Carolyn started to order Scotch, as she generally does, and then she paused. “If you want,” she said, “I’ll order something else.”

“Why?”

“Well, if you want to get good and drunk,” she said, “I could make a point of staying relatively sober.”

“We don’t have a car,” I said. “What do we need with a designated driver? Anyway, why would I want to get drunk?”

“You mean you don’t?”

“Not particularly.”

“Oh. Hey, this isn’t going to be a Perrier night for you, is it?”

Perrier is my drug of choice when my plans for an evening include illegal entry. “No,” I said. “It’s not.” And I proved it by asking Maxine to bring me a bottle of Tuborg.

“Well, thank God,” Carolyn said. “In that case I’ll have Scotch, Max, and you might as well make it a double. They said I’m a genius, Bernie. Isn’t that something?”

“It’s great.”

“If I had my choice,” she said, “I’d just as soon be a genius at something else. Nobody ever got a MacArthur Award for washing dogs. But it’s better than nothing, don’t you think?”

“Absolutely. You could be like me.”

“A genius at picking locks?”

“A genius at picking women.”

“I’m already a genius at picking women.”

“Can you believe it?” I demanded, and launched into my third recital of Lettice’s revelation. “What I want to know,” I said, “is when she would have gotten around to telling me if I hadn’t pressed her about the weekend. I mean, it’s not like she had a date to go to the movies with some other guy. She’s getting married. ”

“Did you know she was seeing somebody else?”

“I more or less assumed it. We weren’t in a committed relationship. Actually we’d only recently started sleeping together.”

“How was it?”

“You mean the sex?”

“Yeah.”

“It was wonderful.”

“Oh.”

“Really special.”

“Sorry to hear it, Bern.”

“But it wasn’t a major love affair. I had hopes that it might turn out to be, but deep down inside I think I knew it wouldn’t. We didn’t have that much in common. I figured it would run its course and resolve itself with some sort of bittersweet ending, and years from now she’d be one more tender memory for me to warm myself with as I slid off into senility. So I was fully prepared for it to come to nothing, but I didn’t think it would happen so soon, or so abruptly.”

“So you’re essentially okay about it, Bern?”

“I’d say so.”

“You’re stunned but not devastated. Is that about it?”

“Pretty much. I feel stupid for having misread the situation so completely. I thought the woman was crazy about me, and all the while she was getting ready to tie the knot with somebody else.”

“He’s the guy to feel sorry for, Bern.”

“Who, the bridegroom?”