Эд Макбейн - Criminal Conversation

She shook her head in wonder. A drop of sweat rolled down between her naked breasts.

“He called her later that night,” she said. “That’s how I found out.”

“How?” Sarah asked.

“I got up to pee — I always pee the whole night through when I’ve had too much wine, don’t you? Doug wasn’t in bed. This is three in the morning, I think, ‘Where’s Doug?’ Reasonably, no? Three in the morning? Is Doug in the bathroom? Is Doug also peeing? Will I have to wait in line? Or shall I go use the bathroom down the hall, off the study? But no, Doug is not in the bathroom, the bathroom is empty. So I relieve myself, as they say, and I go back into the bedroom, and Doug still isn’t in bed, so where is Doug? Overwhelmed by curiosity — as who wouldn’t be, my dear, it’s three in the morning — I go out in the hall, and I see a light burning in the study, and I call out ‘Doug?’ and I hear a click. Click. Just a tiny little click but I know it’s somebody hanging up a phone. Three o’clock in the morning, and my husband’s making a phone call down the hall. Well, he comes out of the study wearing nothing but pajama bottoms and a shit-eating grin, and he tells me he had to look up a word in the dictionary. A word ? I say. Driving me crazy, he says. Couldn’t sleep. A word ? I say again. What word? I’m still believing him, you see. I’m still thinking I must be mistaken about that click, it couldn’t have been him hanging up the phone, it had to be something else, maybe he was just closing the dictionary. Eohippus , he tells me. That’s the word he was looking up, three o’clock in the morning. Eohippus. You mean like the horse? I say. He says, ‘Yes, exactly, but how do you spell it? That’s what was driving me crazy.’

“Well, that’s reasonable, too, no? I mean, that’s something a person can understand, am I right? The burning question of whether it’s i-o or e-o ? Three o’clock in the morning, we’re standing in the hall; and he’s telling me he got out of bed to go look up eohippus and it’s e-o , and now he can go back to sleep, which he promptly does, snoring, with his hand tucked between my legs. The next night, when I get home from work and he’s still at the office with one of his important accounts, the bastard, I look up eohippus. It’s e-o , all right. I figure, ‘Listen, there are stranger things than a man looking up eohippus three o’clock in the morning.’ But then the phone bill comes on November seventh.”

“Uh-oh,” Sarah said.

“Indeed. Listed under long-distance calls for the first day of November at two forty-eight in the morning is a call to Wilton, Connecticut. Twelve-minute call, so maybe I wasn’t wrong about that click, hmm? Gives the phone number and all, lo and behold. I call the phone company and tell them the number is unfamiliar to me, can they please let me know to whom it is listed? Very cool and very calm, to whom , mind you, even though my hand is shaking on the phone. The operator tells me the phone is listed to one Felicity Cooperman, who is a junior copywriter at the agency, who by the way curtsies me half to death every time I go up there. Nineteen years old if she’s a day, and my husband is calling her at two forty-eight in the morning on All Saints’ Day. That was when I decided to smash in his head with a hatchet the very first opportunity I got.”

“I’m glad you didn’t,” Sarah said.

“Cooler heads prevailed,” Heather said, and smiled.

She herself looked nineteen when she smiled. Big girlish grin cracking her face, blue eyes squinching shut. Thirty-two years old, still looked like a teenager, firm cupcake breasts, flat tummy, the long legs and lithe body of a team swimmer — which she’d been in high school. Well, no children. Which, considering her present situation, was a blessing, Sarah guessed.

“I called a lawyer recommended to me by the woman who threw the Halloween party who’s herself been divorced three times. I told her a friend of mine was having trouble with her husband, and so on and so forth, lying in my teeth, I don’t think she believed me for a minute. Anyway, the lawyer tells me I should put a tail on Mr. Douglas Rowell, which I agree to do, and it turns out I was mistaken in my surmise, he isn’t screwing young Felicity blind two, three times a week, he’s screwing her deaf, dumb , and blind every day on his lunch hour, plus the two, three times a week he has to work late on all those important accounts of his. You should hear the tapes, Sarah, they’re...”

“You’ve got tapes ?”

“Well, a tape, actually. I’ll play it for you some night.”

“Here? With you?”

“No, no. Actually, it’s in the lawyer’s office. Strictly X-rated, not for the kiddies. Doug’s Delicious Dick , starring nineteen-year-old Felicity Cooperman in the role she made famous, delivering the unforgettable line, ‘I just adore sucking your gweat big dick, golly gee, I can just come heaps sucking that big bee-yoo-ti-ful dick of yours,’ the little bitch !” Heather said, and flicked angrily at a sand fly. “I could kill them both,” she said. “With a hatchet !”

“Don’t tell that to Michael when he gets here.”

“When will that be, anyway?”

“As soon as he can get away. Something important came up.”

This was the twenty-eighth of December. Sarah had taken Mollie down on the day after Christmas. Michael was still up north; apparently some sort of big meeting was to take place today, and the DA had insisted he stay in town for it. Heather hadn’t yet told her parents that she and Doug were separated. Wait till she dropped that bombshell. Little Dougie? Sweet little Dougie? Yes, Mom, sweet little Dougie with the big bee-yoo-ti-ful dick little Felicity just adores sucking. They were in London at the moment, at Claridge’s, where they went every year at this time. Stay as long as you like, darlings. We won’t be back till the middle of January.

“And when he does get here...”

“Yeah?”

“Put on your top.”

“Mom?”

Twelve-year-old Mollie, standing on the verandah looking as sleepy-eyed as an eight-year-old and wearing only white cotton panties in possible emulation of her aunt. Brown as a pudding after only two days in the Caribbean sun, she blinked into the glare and said, “Can I go in the water now?”

“Come on down, sweetie,” Sarah called.

Her sister shot her a look. She wasn’t yet finished with her one-sided conversation, and she didn’t need a child intruding. Impatiently, silently scowling, she watched as Sarah hugged her daughter close and asked if she’d had a good nap, and why didn’t she ask Yolande to give her some cookies and milk, and then she could put on her bathing suit and maybe Mommy and Aunt Heather would go in the water with her. Aunt Heather sat frowning through all of this. There were more important conversations than those with a twelve-year-old child. Besides, why did Sarah persist on calling herself Mommy and talking virtual baby talk to a twelve-year-old with perceptibly budding breasts? All this was on Heather’s face as Mollie walked flat-footed back into the house.

“I wanted to go to bed with every man in sight,” Heather said. “Have you ever felt that way?”

“No,” Sarah said.

“Kill him first, then go to bed with every construction worker in New York,” Heather said.

Sarah glanced toward the verandah. Her daughter had already gone into the house.