Эд Макбейн - Strangers When We Meet

So this is the real profession of Felix Anders.

He is poised, charming, bored, aloof, secretive, superior and intelligently cunning. He is a discoverer and an explorer and a conqueror. There are worlds of lonely housewives, and Felix is a master at his profession, which is the conquest of these women.

Am I like Felix Anders?

“Love, Larry,” he said. “That look in their eyes, the look that’s for you alone. Sweet, sweet. Ahhhh, you become alive again, do you know? Women are so goddamn sweet. There’s this model I’m dropping now. Not cheesecake, fashion. Pretty as a picture. Long black hair, brown eyes, a high-class model’s walk. Do you know how models walk?”

“Yes.”

“She came into the shop one day with this sweet sweet smile on her face, and she asked for fourteen pounds of eye round. I explained to her that a rib roast would be better if she was planning on so big a party. We got to talking. I’m just a butcher. I start with meat, and from meat I go to other things. We got to talking about parties. She said she liked small parties better than big parties. I said I liked small parties, too. That was the beginning. And now, after three months, it’s almost the end.”

“Is she married?” Larry asked.

“Oh, certainly. Her husband is a salesman. He sells steel. He’s away two weeks out of every three. I was seeing more of her than I saw of Betty. She’s the sweetest thing alive, and she loves me, and I used to love her. But that’s all over now. I only want to get her off my back now.”

He talks differently, Larry thought, when he is Felix Anders, Conqueror.

He warned me not to confide, but he’s confiding in me, telling me everything, explaining Felix Anders, Conqueror. The other Felix is only the mask. The Felix Anders who stands coolly distant on a station platform is not this man in armor. He is only the mask donned for society. Betty and the children are part of that mask. But this Felix Anders is a hero. This Felix Anders was born two thousand years too late. He should be wearing a beard, and a plumed hat, and a sword. He should be laying his way across France, barmaid by barmaid.

“I never kid myself, Larry,” Felix said. “I always recognize that moment when it’s over. I always know when I’m falling out of love.”

“It seems to me you’re never really in love,” Larry said.

“What’s love?” Felix asked. “Do you know?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Then how can you say I’m never in love?”

“Love is mutual and equal pleasure, I suppose,” Larry said.

“But whose pleasure comes first?”

“It has to be equal,” Larry said. “In fact, the other person’s pleasure might even be more important to you than your own.”

“There’s the mistake,” Felix said. “ My pleasure comes first. A woman is a woman, and I never forget that. When I start forgetting it, I always ask myself, ‘How would you like to be married to this girl? Do you think it’d be any different from being married to Betty?’ And I always get the same answer.”

“And what’s that?”

“No.”

“Well... I sometimes wonder what it would be like. Being married to her.”

“Get it out of your mind. You’re crazy.”

“Maybe I am, Felix. All I know is that this isn’t the kind of stuff you’ve been talking about. This isn’t just another streetcar. This is it.”

“It?” Felix laughed. “What’s it? ”

“This. What I have. What she has. What we’ve got together. This is it.”

“It’ll pass,” Felix said. “This, too, shall pass.”

“I hope not.”

“You’re stupid. If you were smart, you’d pull out right this minute. You’d go to that phone and call her and say, ‘Goodbye, Blondie, it’s been swell.’ That’s what you’d do.”

“I can’t. I love her.”

“Everything about her?”

“No. Not everything.”

“What does she look like?”

“She’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever known.”

“Oh, brother!” Felix said.

“I’m talking objectively. Wherever we go, men look at her. You can’t miss her, Felix. It embarrasses me sometimes.”

“They smell it on her. They smell ripeness.”

“No, that’s not it. She’s beautiful.”

“All right, she’s beautiful. What don’t you like about her?”

“A lot of things.”

“Do they bother you? Would you like to change them?”

“Yes.”

“Brother, pull out now. Take my advice. You’re heading for a lot of trouble.”

“No,” Larry said. He shook his head. “I can’t.”

In the finished basement of Felix Anders’ house, they talked. It was the end of February, and they knew each other well enough to talk easily, but with no real friendship between them. Larry had told Eve he’d wanted a look at the finished basement about which he’d heard so much. He’d planned to walk up to the center with Felix, but Betty had gone to a movie with a neighbor, and so they sat downstairs and smoked and talked without friendship in a friendly manner.

“You know the old gag,” Felix said. “It’s the same as that.”

“Which gag?”

“This fellow comes home to his wife, and he’s undressing, and there’s a big lipstick imprint on his undershorts. A big red pair of lips! Well, his wife sees it, points to it, and shouts, ‘There’s lipstick on your undershorts!’ The fellow looks down at it. Then he looks up at his wife. Then, with a surprised look on his face, he says, ‘Hey, how ’bout that?’”

Larry burst out laughing, and Felix chuckled at his own joke.

“It’s just what I was telling you,” he said. “Bluff it through. There’s only one person in your house who knows the truth, and that’s you. Your wife is only guessing. Even if someone actually sees you with Blondie, your wife won’t want to believe it. If you know you’ve been seen, come home and beat her to the punch. Tell her first . Tell her you ran into an old high-school chum and bought her a drink, and she’s married now and has four kids and lives in Richmond Hills with her dentist husband. Lie your way out of it. The bigger the lie, the better. The only thing you can’t lie your way out of is actually being caught right in that bed. And that practically never happens.”

“I don’t like lying,” Larry said. “I’ll never enjoy that part of it.”

“It’s a necessity, part of the game. What can you do? You’ve got to lie. For example, suppose you come home some night smelling of perfume.”

“She doesn’t wear perfume any more.”

“Some night she’ll wear it, believe me. She’ll want to send you home stinking of her, just to make you squirm, just to show your wife that she owns you too. Believe me, Larry, she’ll do it. Especially if her husband’s not home. Then she can pour the stuff on without having to explain why she’s wearing Tabu to a civic association meeting. Does he work nights?”

“No.”

“What is he? A white-collar worker? No? A factory worker? It doesn’t matter. Some night he’ll be out, and she’ll climb into that car reeking of perfume. ‘I just didn’t think,’ she’ll say. Ha!”

“How can I lie my way out of perfume?”

“Oh, simple. On the way home, stop off at a drugstore and buy a bottle for Eve. Tell her the salesgirl, stupid idiot, offered you a sniff and then spilled it accidentally on your shirt front.”

“I see.”

“If you get lipstick on your handkerchief, throw it out.”

“She takes her lipstick off.”

“Some night she’ll smear it on as thick as warpaint. Especially if her husband isn’t home. He works nights, did you say?”

“No. No, he doesn’t.”