Эд Макбейн - Strangers When We Meet

And, realizing this, he began crying.

The windshield, dissolved already in the incessant wash of the rain, became a muddy, shifting, protoplasmic mass as he blinked to keep back the blinding tears. He wept from the very roots of his being, the tears welling into his eyes and streaming down his face as he sped into the storm and onto the high span of the bridge. He could no longer see ahead of him. The road seemed to be one he’d traveled before and often, the repetitious, monotonous, ungratifying landscape of an alien land in which he was a familiar stranger. Decided but decisionless, committed but lacking real commitment, he wept bitterly. The rain cascaded against the roof; wind tore at the windows. Helplessly, he clung to the wheel, weeping. Blindly, he followed whatever crude instinct propelled him through the night, rushing to reach her side, rushing to Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, Maggie.

Perhaps the car went into its skid only because it was suddenly sideswiped by a fresh fierce gust which blew in over the open water to the span of the bridge, causing the tires to relinquish for an instant their tenuous grip on the slick pavement. Perhaps he remembered for a split second his earlier decision and impulsively pushed his foot onto the brake pedal in an attempt to follow the demands of reason by executing a now-unreasonable, all-impossible turn. Or perhaps — perhaps the familiar road was suddenly recognized as a road without an end; perhaps, confronted with a bewildering despair he had never known before, he turned the car deliberately toward the edge of the bridge.

The car turned sharply and then entered a sideswinging skid, its speed undiminished. He remembered something about always turning into a skid, but if he knew how to correct the sudden slipping motion, he made no attempt to do so. And then the moment for action was gone, and he recognized with a small shock that he had lost all control of the automobile. The shock passed almost at once. He sat in nearly expectant resignation as the car swung sideward in what seemed to be an endlessly long arc, swinging, swinging, swinging, and then striking.

He felt the impact as the car hit the guard railing, heard the splintering sound of glass and the crunching tear of metal above the noise of the wind. Held low by the weight of the engine, the nose of the car clung to the dark pocket where concrete met steel. The rear end buckled and leaped into the air of its own momentum and then was captured by the wild rush of the wind at hurricane force, lifting, lifting the back wheels and then flipping the car over like a toy. His chest rammed hard against the steering wheel, and he felt sharp, unbearable pain as the car completed a somersault which sent it spinning over the steel railing. He clutched for the roof of the car, and then the seat, felt the automobile lurch clear of the steel rail, upright again for just an instant, and then hurtling free, unhampered, loose on the wild night air, dropping for the river below.

Pinned behind the wheel, he thought. This is it.

Helpless in the spinning automobile, he thought, I’m going to die, for God’s sake, I’m going to die.

The thought surprised him and amused him. It was such a damn funny, shocking thought, he was going to die like this, what a goddamn corny, ridiculous, stupid way to die! He was amazed by it, and yet he felt somehow that his reaction was rather thin, the false shock at the entrance door to a suspected surprise party. He sat with pain knifing his chest as the world revolved around him and the wind screamed in his ears, and he thought, This is the way it happens, you sweat and you worry and you work and you wonder and then you die for nothing, no cause, where are all the prizes, if you never really lived, how can you learn to die so soon?

I wonder if Chris will go to college, he thought.

Eve, he thought. Eve.

I must call Baxter. We’ll do Puerto Rico. We’ll make it, don’t worry, we’ll make it.

With the unbearable pain in his chest, and the car spinning forever to the swirling black waters below, falling like a stone, he thought, Poor David still wets the bed. Oh, Jesus, my poor

The music for Pinecrest Manor’s Third Annual Beer Party was live.

The leader of the band was a man who sold insurance in the development. He played trumpet rather forlornly and was followed sadly by four musicians who had come all the way from Queens and who looked upon these suburban shenanigans somewhat dimly. In Queens, people knew how to live.

The musicians read their sheets but they didn’t play with any particular gumption because October was a sad month and besides this wasn’t even a union-scale job. Not that there was any danger of a union representative asking them for their cards at this obscure American Legion hall. But scale should have been $22.00 per man, with double for leader, and the band was getting only $22.00 per man, with the leader — because of his civic attachments — forsaking the double salary. And so, though the music was alive, it wasn’t very lively.

The musicians had arrived at 8:00 P.M. and were set up and tuned by eight-fifteen even though the party wasn’t scheduled to start until eight-thirty. A few early birds arrived on the dot. There were always, the musicians mused, a few early birds who arrived everywhere on the dot, as if unwilling to miss even a moment of the forthcoming festivities. The real exodus from Pinecrest Manor to the American Legion hall, however, did not begin until nine. By that time, all the baby sitters and mothers-in-law had received their detailed instructions.

There were, to be sure, some last-minute hassles with children in some of the development homes. But the children were being raised to understand that the night was a mysterious time of adult pleasures. Hadn’t Mummy and Daddy spent the whole day trying to make the kids happy, hadn’t they gone on all the rides at Joyland and eaten hot dogs and popcorn and had heaps of fun? So go to sleep, you little bastards. We don’t come to your parties, do we?

At nine o’clock, as if by prearranged signal, the front aluminum storm doors of the development ranches, Cape Cods, and split-levels opened. The women emerged smiling in their finery, and the men followed them to the cars. The sprinklers were going on the front lawns even though it was October already. The right to sprinkle was a God-given one which only reluctantly retreated before the approach of winter.

The sedans and the station wagons — of which many were in evidence — and the convertibles backed out on the concrete driveway strips and headed for town. There was a deep peace in the air over the development, an almost tangible feeling of heavy contentment. The street lights glowed warmly in the orderly streets. The lawns which had received their addict’s fix of 10-6-4 sparkled greenly under the glistening saturation of the sprinklers. There were warmth and beauty and bliss in Pinecrest Manor. On the front seats of the automobiles, the bottles of booze were wrapped in brown paper bags, the couples’ surnames inked onto the labels. There would be setups available at the American Legion hall. This was going to be a damn fine affair!

There was a lot of milling around in the entrance hallway, the couples who’d arrived alone trying to decide where they would sit and with whom. There was, too, the usual cloakroom bottleneck, but this was straightened out in time and it didn’t take long for friends to find friends. Chairs were pulled up to the long wooden tables, and everyone sat down in the cheerless wooden box which was the American Legion hall, and each neighbor looked at his neighbor with a patient, bored, anticipative expression which seemed to say, “Well, I’m here. Entertain me.” The men went for setups and then opened the whisky bottles. The band began playing. Drinks were poured. Chairs were shifted. Laughter resounded throughout the hall.