Patricia Highsmith - Strangers on a Train

“No, Mama.” He sighed and sank down on the brocade sofa. “Everything’s all right, but I’ll probably not take the Palmyra job.”

“Oh, Guy. Why not? Is she—? Is it true she’s going to have a child?”

His mother was disappointed, Guy thought, but so mildly disappointed, for what the job really meant. He was glad she didn’t know what the job really meant. “It’s true,” he said, and let his head go back until he felt the cool of the sofa’s wooden frame against the back of his neck. He thought of the gulf that separated his life from his mother’s. He had told her very little of his life with Miriam. And his mother, who had known a comfortable, happy upbringing in Mississippi, who kept herself busy now with her big house and her garden and her pleasant, loyal friends in Metcalf—what could she understand of a total malice like Miriam’s? Or, for instance, what could she understand of the precarious life he was willing to lead in New York for the sake of a simple idea or two about his work?

“Now what’s Palm Beach got to do with Miriam?” she asked finally.

“Miriam wants to come with me there. Protection for a time. And I couldn’t bear it.” Guy clenched his hand. He had a sudden vision of Miriam in Palm Beach, Miriam meeting Clarence Brillhart, the manager of the Palmyra Club. Yet it was not the vision of Brillhart’s shock beneath his calm, unvarying courtesy, Guy knew, but simply his own revulsion that made it impossible. It was just that he couldn’t bear having Miriam anywhere near him when he worked on a project like this one. “I couldn’t bear it,” he repeated.

“Oh,” was all she said, but her silence now was one of understanding. If she made any comment, Guy thought, it was bound to remind him of her old disapproval of their marriage. And she wouldn’t remind him at this time. “You couldn’t bear it,” she added, “for as long as it would take.”

“I couldn’t bear it.” He got up and took her soft face in his hands. “Mama, I don’t care a bit,” he said, kissing her forehead. “I really don’t care a row of beans.”

“I don’t believe you do care. Why don’t you?”

He crossed the room to the upright piano. “Because I’m going to Mexico to see Anne.”

“Oh, are you?” she smiled, and the gaiety of this first morning with him won out. “Aren’t you the gadabout!”

“Want to come to Mexico?” He smiled over his shoulder. He began to play a saraband that he had learned as a child.

“Mexico!” his mother said in mock horror. “Wild horses wouldn’t get me to Mexico. Maybe you can bring Anne to see me on your way back.”

“Maybe.”

She went over and laid her hands-shyly on his shoulders. “Sometimes, Guy, I feel you’re happy again. At the funniest times.”

Five

What has happened? Write immediately. Or better, telephone collect. We’re here at the Ritz for another two weeks. Missed you so on the trip, seems a shame we couldn’t have flown down together, but I understand. I wish you well every moment of the day, darling. This must be over soon and we’ll get it over. Whatever happens, tell me and let’s face it. I often feel you don’t. Face things, I mean.

You’re so close, it’s absurd you can’t come down for a day or so. I hope you’ll be in the mood. I hope there’ll be time. Would love to have you here, and you know the family would. Darling, I do love the drawings and I’m so terribly proud of you I can even stand the idea of your being away in the months ahead because you’ll be building them. Dad most impressed, too. We talk about you all the time.

All my love, and all that goes with it. Be happy, darling. A.

Guy wrote a telegram to Clarence Brillhart, the manager of the Palmyra Club: “Owing to circumstances, impossible for me to take commission. My deepest regrets and thanks for your championing and constant encouragement. Letter following.”

Suddenly he thought of the sketches they would use in lieu of his—the imitation Frank Lloyd Wright of William Harkness Associates. Worse yet, he thought as he dictated the telegram over the phone, the board would probably ask Harkness to copy some of his ideas. And Harkness would, of course.

He telegraphed Anne that he would fly down Monday and that he was free for several days. And because there was Anne, he did not bother to wonder how many months it would be, how many years, perhaps, before another job as big as the Palmyra would come within his reach.

Six

That evening, Charles Anthony Bruno was lying on his back in an El Paso hotel room, trying to balance a gold fountain pen across his rather delicate, dished-in nose. He was too restless to go to bed, not energetic enough to go down to one of the bars in the neighborhood and look things over. He had looked things over all afternoon, and he did not think much of them in El Paso. He did not think much of the Grand Canyon either. He thought more of the idea that had come to him night before last on the train. A pity Guy hadn’t awakened him that morning. Not that Guy was the kind of fellow to plan a murder with, but he liked him, as a person. Guy was somebody worth knowing. Besides, Guy had left his book, and he could have given it back.

The ceiling fan made a wuz-wuz-wuz sound because one of its four blades was missing. If the fourth had been there, he would have been just a little cooler, he thought. One of the taps in the John leaked, the clamp on the reading light over the bed was broken so it hung down, and there were fingerprints all over the closet door. And the best hotel in town, they told him! Why was there always something wrong, maybe only one thing, with every hotel room he had ever been in? Some day he was going to find the perfect hotel room and buy it, even if it was in South Africa.

He sat up on the edge of the bed and reached for the telephone. “Gimme long-distance.” He looked blankly at a smudge of red dirt his shoe had put on the white counterpane. “Great Neck 166]… Great Neck, yeah.” He waited. “Long Island… In New York, lunk, ever hear of it?”

In less than a minute, he had his mother.

“Yeah, I’m here. You still leaving Sunday? You better… . Well, I took that muleback trip. Just about pooped me, too…. Yeah, I seen the canyon…. Okay, but the colors are kind of corny…. Anyhow, how’s things with you?”

He began to laugh. He pushed off his shoes and rolled back on the bed with the telephone, laughing. She was telling him about coming home to find the Captain entertaining two of her friends—two men she had met the night before—who had dropped in, thought the Captain was her father, and proceeded to say all the wrong things.

Seven

Propped on his elbow in bed, Guy stared at the letter addressed to him in pencil.

“Guess I’ll have only one more time to wake you for another good long while,” his mother said.

Guy picked up the letter from Palm Beach, “Maybe not so long, Mama.”

“What time does your plane leave tomorrow?”

“One-twenty.”

She leaned over and superfluously tucked in the foot of his bed. “I don’t suppose you’ll have time to run over and see Ethel?”

“Oh, certainly I will, Mama.” Ethel Peterson was one of his mother’s oldest friends. She had given Guy his first piano lessons.

The letter from Palm Beach was from Mr. Brillhart. He had been given the commission. Mr. Brillhart had also persuaded the board about the louver windows.

“I’ve got some good strong coffee this morning,” his mother said from the threshold. “Like breakfast in bed?”

Guy smiled at her. “Would I!”

He reread Mr. Brillhart s letter carefully, put it back in its envelope, and slowly tore it up. Then he opened the other letter. It was one page, scrawled in pencil. The signature with the heavy flourish below it made him smile again: Charles A. Bruno.