Эд Макбейн - Strangers When We Meet

“Larry, if you...”

“They don’t care, Signora. Here they are in the country, why should they care? Here’s the big dream. The corner plot, and the white house with the pink shutters, and the entrance hall, and that washing machine humming in the basement, and that one-year’s free service contract for that oil burner humming in the basement, and that slate patio in the back yard, and that new garage going up with its Building Permit tacked to the door. Here’s the big dream, who cares if we ate beans and bread crusts for the first fifteen years of our married lives?

“Signora, here are all these people in the idyllic little collections of crackerboxes with the pastoral-sounding names dreamed up by copywriters in Madison Avenue offices who live in the heart of the big, dirty, no-fresh-air city. Maplebrook Acres! Or Hillside Knolls! Or Four River Birches! Here they are ready to start living that big fat American dream! But when the hell does the living start?

“When is there time, after that crab grass has been picked, and that storm replaced by a screen, and that Boxer walked, and that newest shrub planted, and the fence put up, and the gable painted, and the patio built, and the lawn mowed and fertilized and limed and edged, and the slide-upon and the swing erected, and the rubber swimming pool inflated and filled, and the automatic sprinkler set on the lawn, and the forsythia cut back, and the asphalt tile put into the basement — when is there time to sit on that new patio and have that lousy gin-tonic you’re thirsting for? When is there time to live?”

“There’s time to live, Larry,” the Signora said.

“Oh, sure, there’s time. We have fun at our gleeful out-door barbecues, don’t we, where the flying sparks almost burn down the whole damn development, and where every scroungy hound in the neighborhood comes around to snatch some beef, and where the hamburgers are burned and where your identical neighbor who is just as old as you are and who has just as many kids as you have and who earns as much money as you do and who is at that very moment in his identical back yard having the same identical barbecue yells over, ‘Hi, there, neighbor! Having a little outdoor barbecue?’

“Sure, there’s time. Don’t we have fun at our indoor and outdoor ingrown versions of the cocktail party? Where every neighbor brings his own bottle, and where we’ve all chipped in for stale potato chips and the keg of beer upon which the matriarchs get so crocked they can’t walk? We have fun at those, don’t we? We laugh loud as hell, don’t we? Laugh, laugh, oh, how these sturdy rafters ring with the laughter of the identical people who live in the identical houses.

“JESUS, SIGNORA, THEY’RE DEAD!

“They’ve got their stupid dream, but the dream really has them ! And one day all these silly sons of bitches will wake up and realize they’re living in a cemetery for young people, and that they all dropped dead the day they took title to their**!! All brick four bedroom entrance hall separate dining room wall ovens all G.E. appliances spacious plot walking distance church and shopping center bus to school and station fifty minutes New York City!!** coffins!

“They’ll realize their dreams are dead, too. They’re only young dead men living with old dead dreams. And do you know how they’ll solve it, Signora? Do you know how they’ll accomplish the resurrection?”

“How, Larry?”

“By moving into another development! A split-level development this time. A house that costs twenty thousand instead of fifteen-four-ninety on the same goddamn sixty-by-a-hundred plot with the identical neighbors all over again!”

“If you hate it so much, why don’t you get out?”

“Because I can’t, Signora. I’m trapped. God help me, I’m trapped. You know what I want? I want golden bridges, big golden bridges spanning sapphire waters! I want to gallop over them in ruby chariots, but I’m trapped, I’m trapped.”

He poured more rye into his glass.

“Go easy, Larry.”

“I’m all right.”

“Why don’t you go to Eve?”

“Why doesn’t Eve come to me?”

“Larry, Larry, you’re so unhappy.”

“I’m happy as hell. Don’t tell me I’m unhappy.”

“Do you want to come in the other room?”

“I want to stay here by the sink,” Larry said. “Leave me alone, Signora. I want to go down the drain.”

“Larry...”

“Leave me alone!”

In the living room, Felix Anders was talking to Phyllis Porter. Phyllis was a brunette with green eyes and a good figure. She had a pert Irish nose and an Irish sort of mouth, puckering, with good white teeth behind it. Her husband, Murray, was telling a garment-center joke to the Garandis and Eve and Fran.

“Of course,” Felix said, “a man has dreams, too. A man doesn’t always want to be a butcher.”

Phyllis, having consumed a good deal of alcohol, listening to Frank Sinatra singing his Wee Small Hours album, hearing the gentle hum of conversation all around her, feeling motherly and womanly and understanding to all mankind and to all men in particular, said, “What’s your dream, Felix?”

“It’s a big dream,” Felix said. “For a butcher, anyway.”

“Butchers can dream the same as candlestick makers,” Phyllis said philosophically. “What was Marty if not a butcher. Didn’t he dream? Of course he dreamed. What’s your big dream, Felix baby?”

“My dream is to make people happy,” Felix said. He paused dramatically. “Does that make sense to you, Phyllis?”

“Sure it does. Who you want to make happy, Felix?”

“Everybody,” Felix said. He was still holding the first drink that had been given to him that evening. He was not drunk and had no intention of getting drunk or even slightly high. “Everybody,” he repeated. “You.”

“Me?” Phyllis grinned lopsidedly. “How would you make me happy?”

“How do you think?”

“I d’know. You tell me.”

“What would you like?”

“Right now?”

“Right now.”

“I’d like to go to bed,” Phyllis said. “I mean, to sleep.”

“So would I.”

“You’ve got things on your mind,” Phyllis said slyly. “Little Felix the cat has things on his mind.”

“Nothing. Just to make people happy.”

“You can’t make me happy, Felix.” Phyllis shook her head solemnly. “I’m happy already.”

“You see?” Murray said, delivering his dialect punch line. “Everybody’s cutting corduroy, we had to cut voile?”

“I think I hear David,” Eve said. “Excuse me.”

Larry had taken off his shoes, and he leaned against the sink and looked into the bottom of his glass. It was almost one o’clock, and he wondered when Eve would serve coffee and cake, wondered when all these people would go back to their own houses. The Signora had gone into the bathroom, and he stood alone in the kitchen, holding up the sink and listening to the saddest music in the world and hearing the happiest, gayest voices in the world and hearing above those the ring of the telephone.

“Telephone,” he said.

No one answered. He put down his glass, shoved himself off the sink and went into the corridor leading to the bedroom. The light in the boys’ room was on, and he could see Eve leaning over David’s crib, talking to him soothingly. The telephone kept ringing.

“Nobody going to answer that?” Ramsey shouted from the living room.

“I’m getting it,” Larry said to Ramsey. “I’m coming, I’m coming,” he said to the telephone, and then he picked up the receiver.

“Hello,” he said.

“Hi.”

David was crying without reason, the way only a small child can cry when awakened by strange voices in the middle of the night, crying without fear, without sadness, simply crying uncontrollably.