Эд Макбейн - Strangers When We Meet

“Larry,” Mrs. Harder said.

“A new one, huh?”

Lois, bright-eyed and almost seven, said, “He’s tall.”

“How do you know?” Eve asked. “You were asleep when he called for me.”

“I wasn’t asleep,” Lois said impishly. “I peeked.”

“I peeked, too,” Linda said. “He’s nice, Eve. Do you think you’ll marry him?”

“He hasn’t asked me yet,” Eve said breezily. “Is this coffee mine, Mama?”

“Evie has a boy friend,” Lois chanted. “Evie has a boy friend, Evie—”

“Oh, stop it!” Eve said.

“Evie has a boy—”

“Mama, will you please ask this child to shut up!”

“Shut up, Lois,” Linda said.

“Your sister is very sensitive about her gentlemen friends,” Mr. Harder said, smiling. “Especially when they’re attractive.”

“I don’t like you to say shut up, Linda,” Mrs. Harder said. “That’s a foul expression.” Linda pulled a face and went back to the comics. “Aren’t you going out with him again, Eve?” Mrs. Harder asked.

“I suppose so.”

“When?”

“Next Saturday.”

“He seemed like a very nice boy, Alex,” Mrs. Harder said. “He used to be a captain.”

“A lieutenant, Mama,” Eve corrected.

“Yes, that’s higher than a captain, isn’t it? He just got discharged, Alex.” She turned to her daughter. “That’s right, isn’t it?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“A nice boy, Alex.”

“They’re all nice boys,” Mr. Harder said without enthusiasm. “Is there any more syrup?”

“You should see him again, Eve,” Mrs. Harder said pleasantly.

“Stop marrying the girl,” Mr. Harder said. “Is there any more syrup?”

“Linda, get your father some syrup. In the cabinet.”

“Why can’t Lois ever get anything?” Linda asked. “Can I be a flower girl, Eve?”

“ May I,” Mrs. Harder corrected.

“May I, Eve?”

“When I get married,” Eve said.

“Me, too?” Lois asked.

“You, too.”

“He’s very good looking,” Mrs. Harder said, and Eve grimaced. “He is, Eve. Stop making such ridiculous faces. He’s studying to be an architect, Alex.”

“Who went out with him?” Mr. Harder wanted to know. “You or Eve?”

“I can see nothing wrong with taking an interest in my daughter’s friends,” Mrs. Harder said with a touch of royal dignity.

“I’m delighted he’s so handsome and is going to be an architect, Patricia,” Mr. Harder said in an attempt at irony which was difficult for a Sunday morning, “but will somebody please get me the syrup?”

“I’ll get it,” Linda said, rising.

“And then you can leave the comics and begin practicing,” Mrs. Harder said.

“On Sunday? ” Linda protested. “Gee whiz!”

“We spent eleven hundred dollars for that piano,” Mrs. Harder said, “and someone is going to learn to play it.”

“Well, why pick on me?” Linda asked. “Eve’s got bigger fingers.”

“You play very well, Lindy,” Eve said. “You really shouldn’t let your practicing go.”

Linda put the syrup down in front of Mr. Harder and climbed onto Eve’s lap. “Are you really going to marry him, Eve?” she asked.

“Oh, don’t be silly, Poo. I hardly know him.”

“Did you hear me play the ‘Minute Waltz’?”

“No.”

“It takes me more like an hour, but I’ll play it if you like.”

“I’d like to hear it,” Eve said.

Linda went into the living room.

“This stinks,” Lois said. “I hate it. When’s she going to learn Boogie-Woogie?”

“Quiet,” Mrs. Harder said.

Linda began playing. Mr. Harder started eating his pancakes, and then opened the Times again. “The new look,” he said. “It’s more like what you wore when I first met you, Patricia.”

“I like it,” Eve said.

“I’m against any style that hides a woman’s legs,” Mr. Harder said. “Incidentally, young lady, don’t you think you should start wearing a robe to the breakfast table?”

“Larry Cole,” Eve said, and again she grimaced. “I’ll probably never see him again after next Saturday.”

Mrs. Harder raised her eyebrows in something close to restrained displeasure, and from the living room Linda shouted, “Hey, are you listening?”

Inexplicably, she continued to see Larry. She still did not like the way he looked. Oh, he was all right, she supposed. In fact, when she invited him to her Freshman Tea at N.Y.U., some of the girls thought he was quite attractive and wanted to know if he’d pinned her yet. The idea was preposterous. Eve knew exactly what she expected her man to look like, and Larry Cole didn’t fit the mental image at all.

Besides, he was fresh.

Not obnoxiously fresh, and perhaps not fresh at all, but certainly fast. Larry Cole, it became clear, did not believe there were any intermediate steps between necking and petting.

“Never sit on a boy’s lap,” Mrs. Harder had said.

Well, despite Mrs. Harder’s mysterious proclamation, Eve had sat on a good many laps. She considered herself a knowledgeable young lady who was familiar with most of the approaches then in vogue. But Larry’s speed amazed her. And what amazed her more was the rapidity with which she adjusted to his pace. Swept along by him, she began to look at him in a different light.

He was, she discovered, a remarkable person to be with. Everything he said or did seemed calculated to please her and no one else. He performed this feat effortlessly, and she imagined it was standard procedure with every girl he dated, but she nonetheless enjoyed the exclusiveness of being with him. She found herself refusing other dates, gradually whittling down the list of boys who called her, surprised but somehow pleased when she realized she had no desire to go out with anyone but Larry. It was then that they officially began going steady.

She did not know whether or not she loved him.

She liked him enormously. She looked for good in him and, looking, she found it. Unsatisfied, she enlarged upon his virtues so that in her eyes he became impulsive without being childish, discriminating but not intolerant, dedicated but not fanatic, comical but not foolish, polite but not deferential, talkative but not garrulous, serious but not solemn, stylish but not foppish, romantic but not... well, the poems for example.

He was the only boy she’d ever known who wrote poetry to her. She was later to discover that many boys wrote poems for girls, but up to the time she received Larry’s first effort she’d thought it was something reserved for Byron or Shakespeare.

Mrs. Harder brought the letter up from the mailbox together with the rest of the afternoon mail. It was a Saturday, and Eve was going over notes for a French class. Her bedroom was to the left of the kitchen, facing on Eighty-ninth. The window was open, and the curtains rustled in a mild spring breeze. Linda was murdering Beethoven in the living room. Lois was destroying the kitchen in an attempt to bake a cake. Both girls miraculously appeared in Eve’s bedroom the moment Mrs. Harder handed her the letter.

“It’s from Larry,” her mother said.

“Larry?” and she felt an immediate sense of doom.

“What does he want?” Lois asked.

“Is he sick?” Linda asked.

“Mama, would you get them out of here, please?” Eve said.

“Come, girls,” Mrs. Harder said.

“But what’s in the letter?”

“Is it a love letter, Eve?”

“Evie got a love letter, Evie got a love letter...”

Mrs. Harder shooed the girls out and closed the bedroom door. In the living room, the piano started again. Eve opened the envelope. He had typed on graph paper. The back of the page was covered with a hasty floor plan, a rough elevation sketch, and penciled notes in Larry’s own undecipherable shorthand. She realized he’d probably torn the page from his notebook impulsively and then typed on it. She read the poem. Then she read it again. And then she read it a third time: