Patricia Highsmith - Strangers on a Train

“It started coming Monday night after that fight. It’s getting worse. I bet it leaves a scar.”

“No, it won’t.”

“Yes, it will. A fine thing to get to Santa Fe with!” He was sitting in his chair now with his fists clenched and one heavy leg trailing, in a pose of brooding tragedy.

Guy went over and opened one of the books on the seat by the window. It was a detective novel. They were all detective novels. When he tried to read a few lines, the print swam and he closed the book. He must have drunk a lot, he thought. He didn’t really care, tonight.

“In Santa Fe,” Bruno said, “I want everything there is. Wine, women, and song. Hah!”

“What do you want?”

“Something.” Bruno’s mouth turned down in an ugly grimace of unconcern. “Everything. I got a theory a person ought to do everything it’s possible to do before he dies, and maybe die trying to do something that’s really impossible.”

Something in Guy responded with a leap, then cautiously drew back. He asked softly, “Like what?”

“Like a trip to the moon in a rocket. Setting a speed record in a car—blindfolded. I did that once. Didn’t set a record, but I went up to a hundred sixty.”

“Blindfolded?”

“And I did a robbery.” Bruno stared at Guy rigidly. “Good one. Out of an apartment.”

An incredulous smile started on Guy’s lips, though actually he believed Bruno. Bruno could be violent. He could be insane, too. Despair, Guy thought, not insanity. The desperate boredom of the wealthy, that he often spoke of to Anne. It tended to destroy rather than create. And it could lead to crime as easily as privation.

“Not to get anything,” Bruno went on. “I didn’t want what I took. I especially took what I didn’t want.”

“What did you take?”

Bruno shrugged. “Cigarette lighter. Table model. And a statue off the mantel. Colored glass. And something else.” Another shrug. “You’re the only one knows about it. I don’t talk much. Guess you think I do.” He smiled.

Guy drew on his cigarette. “How’d you go about it?”

“Watched an apartment house in Astoria till I got the time right, then just walked in the window. Down the fire escape. Sort of easy. One of the things I cross off my list, thinking thank God.”

“Why ‘thank God’?”

Bruno grinned shyly. “I don’t know why I said that.” He refilled his glass, then Guy’s.

Guy looked at the stiff, shaky hands that had stolen, at the nails bitten below the quick. The hands played clumsily with a match cover and dropped it, like a baby’s hands, onto the ash-sprinkled steak. How boring it was really, Guy thought, crime. How motiveless often. A certain type turned to crime. And who would know from Bruno’s hands, or his room, or his ugly wistful face that he had stolen? Guy dropped into his chair again.

“Tell me about you,” Bruno invited pleasantly.

“Nothing to tell.” Guy took a pipe from his jacket pocket, banged it on his heel, looked down at the ashes on the carpet, and then forgot them. The tingling of the alcohol sank deeper into his flesh. He thought, if the Palm Beach contract came through, the two weeks before work began would pass quickly. A divorce needn’t take long. The pattern of the low white buildings on the green lawn in his finished drawing swam familiarly in his mind, in detail, without his trying to evoke them. He felt subtly flattered, immensely secure suddenly, and blessed.

“What kind of houses you build?” Bruno asked.

“Oh—what’s known as modern. I’ve done a couple of stores and a small office building.” Guy smiled, feeling none of the reticence, the faint vexation he generally did when people asked him about his work.

“You married?”

“No. Well, I am, yes. Separated.”

“Oh. Why?”

“Incompatible,” Guy replied.

“How long you been separated?”

“Three years.”

“You don’t want a divorce?”

Guy hesitated, frowning.

“Is she in Texas, too?”

“Yes.”

“Going to see her?”

“I’ll see her. We’re going to arrange the divorce now.” His teeth set. Why had he said it?

Bruno sneered. “What kind of girls you find to marry down there?”

“Very pretty,” Guy replied. “Some of them.”

“Mostly dumb though, huh?”

“They can be.” He smiled to himself. Miriam was the kind of Southern girl Bruno probably meant.

“What kind of girl’s your wife?”

“Rather pretty,” Guy said cautiously. “Red hair. A little plump.”

“What’s her name?”

“Miriam. Miriam Joyce.”

“Hm-m. Smart or dumb?”

“She’s not an intellectual. I didn’t want to marry an intellectual.”

“And you loved her like hell, huh?”

Why? Did he show it? Bruno’s eyes were fixed on him, missing nothing, unblinking, as if their exhaustion had passed the point where sleep is imperative. Guy had a feeling those gray eyes had been searching him for hours and hours. “Why do you say that?”

“You’re a nice guy. You take everything serious. You take women the hard way, too, don’t you?”

“What’s the hard way?” he retorted. But he felt a rush of affection for Bruno because Bruno had said what he thought about him. Most people, Guy knew, didn’t say what they thought about him.

Bruno made little scallops in the air with his hands, and sighed.

“What’s the hard way?” Guy repeated.

“All out, with a lot of high hopes. Then you get kicked in the teeth, right?”

“Not entirely.” A throb of self-pity piqued him, however, and he got up, taking his drink with him. There was no place to move in the room. The swaying of the train made it difficult even to stand upright.

And Bruno kept staring at him, one old-fashioned foot dangling at the end of the crossed leg, flicking his finger again and again on the cigarette he held over his plate. The unfinished pink and black steak was slowly being covered by the rain of ashes. Bruno looked less friendly, Guy suspected, since he had told him he was married. And more curious.

“What happened with your wife? She start sleeping around?”

That irritated him, too, Bruno’s accuracy. “No. That’s all past anyway.”

“But you’re still married to her. Couldn’t you get a divorce before now?”

Guy felt instantaneous shame. “I haven’t been much concerned about a divorce.”

“What’s happened now?”

“She just decided she wanted one. I think she’s going to have a child.”

“Oh. Fine time to decide, huh? She’s been sleeping around for three years and finally landed somebody?”

Just what had happened, of course, and probably it had taken the baby to do it. How did Bruno know? Guy felt that Bruno was superimposing upon Miriam the knowledge and hatred of someone else he knew. Guy turned to the window. The window gave him nothing but his own image. He could feel his heartbeats shaking his body, deeper than the train’s vibrations. Perhaps, he thought, his heart was beating because he had never told anyone so much about Miriam. He had never told Anne as much as Bruno knew already. Except that Miriam had once been different—sweet, loyal, lonely, terribly in need of him and of freedom from her family. He would see Miriam tomorrow, be able to touch her by putting out his hand. He could not bear the thought of touching her oversoft flesh that once he had loved. Failure overwhelmed him suddenly.

“What happened with your marriage?” Bruno’s voice asked gently, right behind him. “I’m really very interested, as a friend. How old was she?”

“Eighteen.”

“She start sleeping around right away?”

Guy turned reflexively, as if to shoulder Miriam’s guilt. “That’s not the only thing women do, you know.”