Эд Макбейн - Strangers When We Meet

Mary turned toward the instructor at that moment, saw Larry and Maggie, and blinked in slow recognition. Then she smiled and waved.

“Bluff it,” Larry whispered. “I just met you here. Smile. Wave at her. Quick, Mag, wave!”

Maggie smiled in false exuberance. She lifted her hand limply and waved. Mary Garandi said something to the instructor and then opened the door on her side of the car.

“Oh, Jesus,” Larry said, “she’s coming over.”

“Larry, what are we—”

“Shhhh!”

Mary was grinning like a toothpaste commercial. “Hey, how’d you like that parking?” she asked. She was wearing Arthur’s Navy pea jacket over a flowered housedress. She always looked as if she had just come from swabbing a deck somewhere anyway, but Larry couldn’t understand why she felt the need for a heavy coat on a day like this. She was beaming from ear to ear, apparently concerned only with her mother-turtle accomplishment of having parked the car some four feet from the curb. It had not yet occurred to her that the woman with Larry Cole was not his wife, or that the man with Margaret Gault was not her husband.

Anticipating the coming of the dawn, his heart pounding, Larry said, “This is like old home week, isn’t it? First I run into Mrs. Gault in the diner, and now we run into you. Would you like a cup of coffee, Mary?”

“No, thank you. How are you, Margaret?”

“Fine,” Maggie said. “Isn’t this the funniest thing, though? You can walk all over the development without meeting a soul you know, and here the three of us meet miles away from the place.” She grinned feebly, wondering if she were driving the point home too hard. She had almost, despite her fear, burst out laughing when Larry called her Mrs. Gault. She was concerned now only with the task of impressing upon Mary that this was purely a chance meeting. Mary, however, seemed to have more important things than infidelity on her mind.

“Did you see me park?” she asked excitedly.

“You did very well,” Larry said, trying to be nonchalant but thinking. This idiot will explode the bubble. This idiot will destroy us! “How long have you been driving?”

“Just two weeks. Listen, this is costing me five dollars an hour. I have to get back. Listen, what are you doing here anyway?”

“I was shopping for a dress,” Maggie said. “You know the little shop, don’t you?” She knew full well that Mary Garandi did not know the little shop; she herself did not know whether there was a little shop or a big shop or any kind of a shop anywhere near by.

“Sure,” Mary said. She was still smiling, but she looked at Larry inquisitively and he felt the first seed of suspicion as it took root in her mind and then spread slowly onto her face.

“I was in the city all day,” he said. “Stopped off for a cup of coffee, and who do I meet? Mrs. Gault.” He smiled. He was trying to make this thing a nice neighborhood type outing full of good spirit and brimming with the curiosities of fate and chance. “Do you have your car with you, Mrs. Gault?” he asked.

“No, I took a cab,” Maggie said.

“Well, can I drop you off?” he asked. “I’m going home, anyway.”

“That’s awfully nice of you,” Maggie said.

For some reason, the stiff formality of Larry’s offer and the polite acceptance of it by Maggie seemed to dispel whatever suspicions Mary Garandi had. “I’ve got to get back,” she said. “Give my regards, will you?” She gave the pea jacket a slap and walked back to the dual-control car. Larry and Maggie watched, speechless. She backed out of her space, waved to them, executed a wild turn, and then cut into the street without signaling and without looking to see if there was any oncoming traffic.

When the car was out of sight, Larry said, “Whew.”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know.”

“She seemed suspicious.”

“Yes.”

“What shall we do?”

“Let’s get in the car first.”

They walked to the car. When they were seated, Larry said, “We can’t talk this over too long. She may be home before us, Maggie. She lives right across the street from me!”

“I know.”

“Do you think she—”

“I don’t know,” Maggie said. “I thought so for a while, but then she seemed all right.” She paused. “Shall we tell them?”

“I think so. I’ll drop you off right at your door. We’ll make it a friendly kind of thing. I’ll tell Eve I ran into you at the diner. It’s the only thing we can do. Mary may open her mouth.”

“All right, I’ll tell Don, too. This was stupid, Larry.”

“Yes, but it’s done.”

“Are you frightened?”

“A little.”

“I am, too.”

“All right, let’s get it over with.”

“Call me as soon as you can,” Maggie said. “I’ll be dying.”

“I’ll call you.”

“All right. Let’s go, Larry. Please. I’m very nervous about this. Let me know. Please call me tonight.”

He dropped her off in front of her house. They hid nothing. When he stopped the car, he got out, went around to her side, and opened the door for her. Don was not yet home, and he was grateful for that. Some of Maggie’s neighbors watched her as she got out of the car, but none of them seemed particularly interested or excited by what was happening. He said goodbye in a friendly way and, in perhaps a louder voice than was necessary, she said, “Thank you so much. Give my regards to Eve, won’t you?” and then she went into the house.

When he got home, he told Eve about his supposed day in the city and then said, “Oh, a funny thing happened.”

“What was that?” Eve asked.

“I stopped for a cup of coffee on the way home. The diner up on the turnpike. I ran into both Margaret Gault and Mary Garandi. It’s a small world, all right.”

“What happened?”

“Oh, the usual,” Larry said. “We talked for a few minutes, and then I asked them if I could drive them home. I dropped Margaret off.”

“What’d you talk about?” Eve asked.

“With whom?”

“Margaret.”

“Who remembers? I don’t think she’s very bright, do you?”

“What makes you say that?”

“Just the impression I got,” he said. “What’s for dinner, hon?”

The episode, in his home at least, was over.

It remained for him to find out how things had gone in Maggie’s house. He planned to go up to the center to call her immediately after dinner. But the Porters dropped in just as he and Eve were finishing the dishes. Trapped in the house, he fidgeted nervously all night long, hoping Phyllis and Murray would leave early so that he could get out on the pretext of needing some air. They did not leave until two in the morning. He could not risk awakening Don at that hour.

He went to sleep, tossing fitfully all night.

The telephone is our burglar’s tool, he thought.

Sitting in the phone booth the next morning, he found it impossible to conceive of anyone ever having had an affair before the telephone was invented. This was the assurance and the reassurance which kept them together during the week-long separation. This was the advance scout which checked and double-checked on possible danger, warned of it, prepared for it. This was the single grappling hook which connected two separately revolving worlds from which two people had somehow been stolen and thrown together. The telephone was an absolute necessity.

And so was the loose change, he thought, reaching into his pocket. Hastily, he deposited his dime and dialed.

Because the phone calls were stolen, they had to be speedily inserted into the normal routine of two separate lives. There was no time to cash a dollar bill or a fifty-cent piece, no time to linger at the cash register where a curious neighbor might engage you in conversation and then surmise you cashed your bill to make a phone call. He could think of only two conceivable reasons for using a local public phone booth if you had a phone at home. Either you were calling your wife to decipher an item on the shopping list or you were calling another woman. He could understand a curious neighbor buying the undecipherable item the first time around. He could not picture that neighbor buying the same story twice. So it was essential that he have ready change in his pockets, change that would take him quickly into a store or a filling station or a restaurant and then quickly to the phone booth. Once inside the booth, he could turn his back to the glass doors and make his call anonymously.