Robert Parker - Rough Weather

“Trust me,” Susan said. “And she was so intimately proprietary with you.”

“Intimately?” I said.

Susan said, “Yes… stud boy.”

“I don’t know how it looks for us in the long term, though,” I said. “She dropped me for that orchestra leader in a millisecond.”

“I don’t like her,” Susan said.

I was looking at her. She was looking at the people climbing out of the second carriage. Her face stiffened.

“Oh my good God,” she said.

I looked. Stepping out of the carriage, dressed as usual, and carrying a small suitcase, was the Gray Man. He glanced over at us. I looked back. He gave no sign.

“Friend of the bride?” I said to Susan. “Or friend of the groom?”

“Maybe he doesn’t see us,” Susan said.

“He sees us.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Rugar doesn’t not see things,” I said.

“Is that really his name, do you think?”

“It’s the one he used last time,” I said.

“In Marshport?”

“Yeah,” I said, “two, three years ago.”

“When he helped you?”

“Yep.”

“How about when he almost killed you?”

“Yeah, he was Rugar then, too,” I said. “Almost ten years.”

Carrying his small suitcase, Rugar walked across the lawn toward us.

“Dr. Silverman,” he said to Susan. “A pleasure to see you again.”

Susan nodded without saying anything. Rugar was wearing a gray blazer, gray slacks, a gray shirt with a Windsor collar and sapphire cuff links, a charcoal tie with a sapphire tie clasp, and black shoes with pointy toes.

“Spenser,” Rugar said.

“Rugar,” I said.

He smiled.

“Our paths seem to keep crossing,” Rugar said.

“Kismet,” I said.

“I hope we are not here on conflicting missions,” Rugar said.

“Tell me what you’re here for,” I said, “and I can tell you if there’s conflict.”

Rugar smiled again. It was more of an automatic facial gesture than an expression of anything.

“You could,” Rugar said. “But you wouldn’t.”

“How do you know?” I said.

“Because I wouldn’t,” Rugar said.

“I’m not sure we’re as much alike as you think we are,” I said.

“We seemed rather alike in Marshport,” Rugar said.

“The first time we met, you almost killed me,” I said.

“But I didn’t,” Rugar said. “You almost put me in jail.”

“But I didn’t,” I said.

“So I guess we are starting even here,” Rugar said.

“You wish,” I said.

Again, the meaningless smile.

“You have never lacked for confidence,” he said.

“Never had reason to,” I said.

“And perhaps you are more playful than I,” Rugar said.

“There are viruses more playful than you are,” I said.

Rugar nodded.

“But you know as well as I do,” he said, “that the game we play has neither winners nor losers. There are only the quick and the dead.”

“I know that,” I said.

“Makes the game worth playing, perhaps.”

“Especially for the quick,” I said.

“‘Only when love and need are one…’” Rugar said.

“‘And the work is play for mortal stakes… ’?”

“You know the verse,” Rugar said.

“You assumed I would,” I said.

“I did,” Rugar said.

“We quick are a literate bunch.”

“Let us hope it continues,” Rugar said.

He nodded gravely to Susan.

“Perhaps we’ll chat again,” he said.

We watched him walk back across the lawn toward the house. Susan hugged herself.

“God,” Susan said. “It’s as if there’s a chill where he’s been.”

“If I remember right, at the depths of Dante’s Inferno,” I said, “Satan is frozen in ice.”

“It’s as if Rugar has no soul,” Susan said.

“Probably doesn’t,” I said. “Got a couple of rules, I think. But soul is open to question.”

“Does he frighten you?”

“Probably,” I said. “If I think about it. He’s pretty frightful.”

“But… that won’t influence what you do,” she said.

“No.”

The day had darkened. I looked up. Clouds had begun to gather between us and the sun. The day was still. There was no wind at all.

“Gee,” I said. “He really does leave a chill.”

Susan glanced up at the sky and shrugged slightly. When she was focused on something, it was hard to get her off it.

“Do you think it’s a coincidence that he’s here and you’re here?” Susan said.

“Hard to figure how it wouldn’t be,” I said.

“But do you think it is?” Susan said.

“No. I don’t think it’s a coincidence.”

“So if it isn’t,” Susan said, “what does it mean?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“So you’ll just plow along,” Susan said, “doing what you do, and awaiting developments.”

“Yuh,” I said.

By the time I had mastered my tuxedo and clipped on my bow tie (fashion titan though I was, I had never accomplished the art of the bow tie), the view through the tall windows was gray. The skies were dark and low. The ocean was nearly the same color and very still. It took a long stare to see the line where the horizon traced between them. There was still no wind, but there was something in the atmosphere that suggested that some wind would be along.

I had a foot up on an ivory-colored hassock and was putting a short.38 revolver into an ankle holster when Susan came down the hall in a white dress that fit her well. She looked like she was receiving an Academy Award for stunningness. I took my foot off the hassock and put it on the floor and shook the pant leg down over the gun.

“Wow!” I said.

She smiled.

“I thought much the same thing when I looked in the mirror,” she said.

“How about me?” I said.

“I thought you’d say ‘Wow!’ too,” she said.

“No, my appearance,” I said. “Don’t I remind you of Cary Grant?”

“Very much,” Susan said, “except for looking good.”

“That’s not the way you were talking an hour ago,” I said.

“An hour ago,” Susan said, “you were seducing me.”

“Which wasn’t that difficult,” I said.

“No,” she said. “It wasn’t.”

We stood together, looking out at the gathering weather.

“I thought the storm was supposed to miss us,” Susan said.

“You can’t believe the weather weenies,” I said.

“What’s left,” Susan said.

“Don’t get existential on me,” I said.

She smiled and looked at me carefully.

“You seem so unlikely a person to own his own tux,” Susan said.

“It’s hard to find my size in the rental stores,” I said.

“Or anywhere else, I would imagine,” Susan said. “Did you tie that bow tie?”

“I don’t know how,” I said. “If I bought one, could you tie it for me?”

“I don’t know how,” Susan said.

“The things you do know,” I said, “more than compensate.”

“Well, no one can tell if it’s a clip-on anyway,” she said.

We looked out the window some more.

“What is the plan?” Susan said.

“We meet in the chapel,” I said, “at four. We stay with Heidi Bradshaw, sitting in her pew during the ceremony and being handy during the reception.”

“The chapel,” Susan said.

“I think on other days it’s a library,” I said. “But Heidi’s party planner has chapelized it for today.”

Far out to sea, a vertical flash of lightning appeared fleetingly.

“Don’t see that so much,” I said. “This time of year.”

Susan nodded. Her shoulder pressed against my upper arm as we stood. There was a kind of breathlessness in the air outside the window, as if the lightning had ratcheted up the tension in the atmosphere.