Patricia Highsmith - Strangers on a Train

Helen said she was busy or she would love to. Glancing at her as he locked the car, Guy saw her leaning on Bruno’s arm, changing into her moccasins. Bruno handed Anne the sack of beer with an air of departure.

Helens blond eyebrows fluted troubledly. “You’re coming with us, aren’t you?”

“Not exactly dressed,” Bruno protested feebly.

“Oh, there’s lots of slickers on board,” Anne said.

They had to take a rowboat from the dock. Guy and Bruno argued politely but stubbornly about who should row, until Helen suggested they both row. Guy pulled in long deep strokes, and Bruno, beside him on the center thwart, matched him carefully. Guy could feel Bruno’s erratic excitement mounting as they drew near the India. Bruno’s hat blew off twice, and at last he stood up and spun it spectacularly into the sea.

“I hate hats anyway!” he said with a glance at Guy.

Bruno refused to put on a slicker, though the spray dashed now and then over the cockpit. It was too gusty to raise sail. The India entered the Sound under engine power, with Bob steering.

“Here’s to Guy!” Bruno shouted, but with the odd hitch of repression and inarticulateness Guy had noticed since he first spoke that morning. “Congratulations, salutations!” He brought the beautiful, fruit-ornamented silver flask down suddenly and presented it to Anne. He was like some clumsy, powerful machine that could not catch its proper timebeat to start. “Napoleon brandy. Five-star.”

Anne declined, but Helen, who was already feeling the cold, drank some, and so did Bob. Under the tarpaulin, Guy held Anne’s mittened hand and tried not to think about anything, not about Bruno, not about Alberta, not about the sea. He could not bear to look at Helen, who was encouraging Bruno, nor at Bob’s polite, vaguely embarrassed smile as he faced front at the wheel.

“Anybody know ‘Foggy, Foggy Dew’?” Bruno asked, brushing spray fussily off a sleeve. His pull from the silver flask had pushed him over the line into drunkenness.

Bruno was nonplussed because no one wanted any more of his specially selected liquor, and because no one wanted to sing. It also crushed him that Helen said “Foggy, Foggy Dew” was depressing. He loved “Foggy, Foggy Dew.” He wanted to sing or shout or do something. When else would they all be together again like this? He and Guy. Anne. Helen. And Guy’s friend. He twisted up in his corner seat and looked all around him, at the thin line of horizon that appeared and disappeared behind the swells of sea, at the diminishing land behind them. He tried to look at the pennant at the top of the mast, but the mast’s swaying made him dizzy.

“Some day Guy and I are going to circle the world like an isinglass ball, and tie it up in a ribbon!” he announced, but no one paid any attention.

Helen was talking with Anne, making a gesture like a ball with her hands, and Guy was explaining something about the motor to Bob. Bruno noticed as Guy bent over that the creases in his forehead looked deeper, his eyes as sad as ever.

“Don’t you realize anything!” Bruno shook Guy’s arm. “You have to be so serious today”?”

Helen started to say something about Guy’s always being serious, and Bruno roared her down, because she didn’t know a damned thing about the way Guy was serious or why. Bruno returned Anne’s smile gratefully, and produced the flask again.

But still Anne did not want any, and neither did Guy.

“I brought it specially for you, Guy. I thought you’d like it,” Bruno said, hurt.

“Have some, Guy,” Anne said.

Guy took it and drank a little.

“To Guy! Genius, friend, and partner!” Bruno said and drank after him. “Guy is a genius. Do you all realize that?” He looked around at them, suddenly wanting to call them all a bunch of numbskulls.

“Certainly,” said Bob agreeably.

“As you’re an old friend of Guy’s,” Bruno raised his flask, “I salute you also!”

“Thank you. A very old friend. One of the oldest.”

“How old?” Bruno challenged.

Bob glanced at Guy and smiled. “Ten years or so.”

Bruno frowned. “I’ve known Guy all his life,” he said softly, menacingly. “Ask him.”

Guy felt Anne wriggle her hand from his tight hold. He saw Bob chuckling, not knowing what to make of it. Sweat made his forehead cold. Every shred of calm had left him, as it always did. Why did he always think he could endure Bruno, given one more chance?

“Go on and tell him I’m your closest friend, Guy.”

“Yes,” Guy said. He was conscious of Anne’s small tense smile and of her silence. Didn’t she know everything now? Wasn’t she merely waiting for him and Bruno to put it into words in the next seconds? And suddenly it was like the moment in the coffee shop, the afternoon of the Friday night, when he felt he had already told Anne everything that he was going to do. He was going to tell her, he remembered. But the fact he hadn’t quite yet told her, that Bruno was once more dancing around him, seemed the last good measure of excoriation for his delay.

“Sure I’m mad!” Bruno shouted to Helen, who was inching away from him on the seat. “Mad enough to take on the whole world and whip it! Any man doesn’t think I whipped it, I’ll settle with him privately!” He laughed, and the laugh, he saw, only bewildered the blurred, stupid faces around him, tricked them into laughing with him. “Monkeys!” he threw at them cheerfully.

“Who is he?” Bob whispered to Guy.

“Guy and I are supermen!” Bruno said.

“You’re a superman drinker,” Helen remarked.

“That’s not true!” Bruno struggled onto one knee.

“Charles, calm downl” Anne told him, but she smiled, too, and Bruno only grinned back.

“I defy what she said about my drinking!”

“What’s he talking about?” Helen demanded. “Have you two made a killing on the stock market?”

“Stock market, cr—!” Bruno stopped, thinking of his father. “Yee-hoo-oo! I’m a Texan! Ever ride the merrygo-round in Metcalf, Guy?”

Guy’s feet jerked under him, but he did not get up and he did not look at Bruno.

“Awright, I’ll sit down,” Bruno said to him. “But you disappoint me. You disappoint me horribly!” Bruno shook his empty flask, then lobbed it overboard.

“He’s crying,” Helen said.

Bruno stood up and stepped out of the cockpit onto the deck. He wanted to take a long walk away from all of them, even away from Guy.

“Where’s he going?” Anne asked.

“Let him go,” Guy murmured, trying to light a cigarette.

Then there was a splash, and Guy knew Bruno had fallen overboard. Guy was out of the cockpit before any of them spoke.

Guy ran to the stern, trying to get his overcoat off. He felt his arms pinned behind him and, turning, hit Bob in the face with his fist and flung himself off the deck. Then the voices and the rolling stopped, and there was a moment of agonizing stillness before his body began to rise through the water. He shed the overcoat in slow motion, as if the water that was so cold it was merely a pain had frozen him already. He leapt high, and saw Bruno’s head incredibly far away, like a mossy, half-submerged rock.

“You can’t reach him!” Bob’s voice blared, cut off by a burst of water against his ear.

“Guy!” Bruno called from the sea, a wail of dying.

Guy cursed. He could reach him. At the tenth stroke, he leapt up again. “Bruno!” But he couldn’t see him now.

“There, Guy!” Anne pointed from the stern of the India.

Guy couldn’t see him, but he threshed toward the memory of his head, and went down at the place, groping with his arms wide, the farthest tips of his fingers searching. The water slowed him. As if he moved in a nightmare, he thought. As on the lawn. He came up under a wave and took a gasp of water. The India was in a different place, and turning. Why didn’t they direct him? They didn’t care, those others!