Джон Макдональд: A Key to the Suite

“Don’t you see?” she said. “Can’t you see what it really is? Can’t you see what it’s always been, sweetheart?”

And with her thumbs she pressed it, and the thick red membrane broke, and she thumbed it aside. He shouted at her, telling her she was spoiling it, that there was no one around to fix it. He yelled that it was not what Jan wanted her to do, that she was making a mistake. But she thumbed it open, spoiling it, and held it in horrid triumph, and he stared into it and saw, to his utter horror, that the inside of it was...

“Hey!” the man beside him said. “Hey, fella!”

Hubbard struggled up out of sleep, sweaty and confused, his heart racing.

“Must of been having a nightmare, the way you were whining and jumping around, fella. You okay?”

“Yes. Thanks. Thanks a lot.”

“Bad one?”

“Pretty bad. Yes.”

“You should hear my wife get going. She sits up in bed with her eyes wide open and howls like a hound dog. It’s a hell of a job waking her up. You woke easy.”

Hubbard looked directly at him for the first time and saw a man of his own age, casually dressed, with thinning blond hair and a wide, pleasant, sunburned face.

“I hardly ever dream like that,” Hubbard said in apology. “I haven’t been getting enough sleep, I guess.”

“On vacation?”

“No. Business trip.”

“Me too. Checking out some raw land for a possible syndicate operation. Resort housing. Waste of time this trip, though. What’s your line?”

The terror and confusion of the dream was still strong in his mind, yet he had begun to be aware of the symbolism of the dream, and it afforded him a sour amusement. “Lately I’ve been in the business of killing things.”

The man looked at him oddly. “You mean like an exterminator?”

“I guess you could call it that.”

The man said, uneasily, “It must be an interesting line of work.”

“At first it isn’t very pleasant. But then one day you realize you’re getting used to it, and you wonder if that’s really very healthy, but you don’t quit because it’s a good job and everybody likes the way you do it.” He realized he was speaking with too much intensity, but he could not stop. “Finally you get to like it. Do you understand? You get to like it, and then there’s no point in quitting, is there? I mean why should a man quit any kind of work he likes?”

“I guess... it’s a good thing to like your work,” the man said, and swallowed, and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.

“I’m sorry. I was just making a bad joke. I was just kidding around.” He knew he had gone too far. He tried to smile reassuringly at the stranger, but the smile was curiously out of control. It kept coming and going, very rapidly. He could feel his mouth twitching with the smile, and he could feel his eyes begin to sting. “I... I’ll tell you what I really do,” he said.

“Listen. Don’t trouble yourself. Don’t bother, fella,” the man said. “Just get your rest.” He got up hastily and moved up the aisle and picked another seat on the half-empty flight.

It was a full thirty minutes before Floyd Hubbard was able to smile at himself and at the alarmed man.

When you plug along too hard and too long, your nerves get a little unraveled. Like the damn-fool tears last night. But this wasn’t as bad as that. And the next time won’t be as bad as this. When you know what to expect, you can handle it easier. For a little while he thought of Cory and Honey and Jan, with an equal ration of fondness for each of them, fondness, patience and understanding.

Then he took his dispatch case from under the seat and, using the surface of it as a desk, began to list in longhand the reasons why he felt Jesse Mulaney was inadequate in his job, the list that would form the meat of the typed confidential report he would deliver by hand to John Camplin before the day was over. As he labored to keep it as terse as possible, it made him think of the brevity of the news items he had found in the early edition of the afternoon paper, the one he had bought fifteen minutes before his flight left. Daniels had been given fourteen lines on page nine. Cory had been given twelve lines on page six. In neither case had the hotel been mentioned by name.

Just as he finished, he heard the strident note of the engines change and knew they were beginning to descend for the landing at Houston. He latched his belt, tightened his buttocks, and began the shallow breathing which would bring the plane in safely, time after time.