Donald Westlake - Smoke

"Me, too," Peg said. "I love to be with you, Freddie, but not in the same place all the time."

"To getting out and about," he said, gripping his wineglass with some little difficulty. They clinked glasses, and drank.

Their appetizers came. They ate; they had a little more wine; they made funny remarks and laughed at them. The bus-boy in the bow tie cleared, and here came the main courses. Everything was just great.

Peg looked up, at the wrong moment. Halfway through the meal, eating and drinking had by now removed almost all of Freddie's lipstick, plus some of the makeup around his mouth. When Peg looked up, therefore, at precisely the wrong moment, with Freddie's mouth open and a forkful of food on its way, what she saw was a guy with a hole in the middle of his face, and in the hole she could just make out, way back there, the inside of the wig.

Peg closed her eyes. For good measure, she put one hand over her eyes. I'll forget that sight, she promised herself. Sooner or later, I'll forget what that looked like.

In the meantime, there were other considerations to consider. "Freddie," Peg said quietly, "when the waitress is around, keep your head down."

Instead of which, startled, he lifted his head. Amber candle-glow glanced dully off those dark sunglasses. Peg refused to look lower than the sunglasses, as Freddie said, "Peg? A problem?"

"A little. We'll take care of it. You go ahead and eat."

"What is it, Peg?"

"You're losing a little makeup, not bad. No point fixing it now, we'll do it when we're done eating."

"Now I'm nervous," Freddie said.

"We're both nervous, Freddie."

"No no," he said, "that's not what I mean. I'm not used anymore to people seeing me, Peg, you know? I'm like a teenager again, self-conscious, afraid people are staring at me."

"Nobody's staring at you," Peg promised him. "Believe me, if anybody was staring at you, we'd know."

"I don't want to know what you mean by that."

"Just eat," she advised.

Neither of them had much to say after that, though they both tried to recapture the spirit. But awkwardness had taken a seat at table with them, and wouldn't get up.

Peg did the talking with the waitress after that, saying the meal had been delicious, thank you, politely refusing dessert and coffee, asking for the check. All while Freddie posed like The Thinker with his gloved fist against his jaw on the waitress's side.

After Marie Antoinette went away to get the check, Peg slipped Freddie the little zipper bag containing his lipstick and makeup, and he went off to the gents' to reconstruct himself. That's what the girl does, Peg thought, not the guy, and decided not to pursue that thought, and then Marie brought the check.

Peg was counting out cash into the little tray when Freddie returned. Standing beside the table, he said, "Okay now?"

She considered him, squinting a bit. "It'll do to get to the car," she decided.

Freddie gave her back the makeup bag. "A guy in there saw me putting on the lipstick," he said.

"Did he make a remark?"

"I think he was going to, so I smiled at him, and he went away."

"I bet he did."

Freddie sighed. "Peg," he said. "I'm turning into something you scare little kids with."

Not just little kids, Peg thought, but she wasn't mean enough to say that out loud. "So we'll keep you away from playgrounds," she said instead. Getting to her feet, the bill paid, she said, "Lighten up, Freddie. Didn't we have fun tonight?"

"Yes," he said, without enthusiasm.

She took his long-sleeved arm, twined hers around it. At least he still felt like Freddie. "Pretty soon," she murmured, as they headed toward the exit, "we'll be back in our own bed, in the dark, without a care in the world."

" That sounds good."

The maоtre d' wished to bid them farewell, and wanted to know how they'd enjoyed the experience. "Let me do the talking," Peg muttered out of the side of her mouth, and then she praised the matter d' and the ambiance and the food and the service and the thoughtfulness of everybody concerned, until the matter d' squirmed all over with pleasure, like a heat shimmer. Then they left the place and crunched across the gravel parking lot in the dark, and at last got into the van.

"Oh, boy," Freddie said, sighing, sagging back against the passenger seat.

"It was worth the try," Peg said.

"I guess it was. Yeah, you're right, it was."

"Needs fine-tuning," she suggested.

"Back to the drawing board," he agreed.

"But we proved it's possible."

He thought about that. "Okay," he decided at last. "Not probable yet, but possible. But I tell you, Peg," and before she could react he'd reached up and whipped the wig right off his head and into his lap, "this wig here is hot. "

There wasn't much light in the Auberge's parking lot, but there didn't have to be. Peg looked at him, at the makeup and the lipstick and the eyebrow pencil and the sunglasses, and then above that at nothing, and all at once, astonishing herself, she started to laugh. Then she couldn't stop laughing.

Freddie looked at her. "Yeah?" he asked. "What?"

"Oh, Freddie!" she cried, through her laughter. "I do love you, Freddie, I do love to be with you, but oh, my God, Freddie, right now, you look like a Toby jug!"

37

The funeral was on Sunday. Wouldn't you know it? Spoiled the entire Fourth of July weekend, putting the funeral on Sunday the second. Can't do anything before it, can't do anything after it, have to stay in town. You might as well be poor, or something.

It was three-thirty on Friday afternoon when Shanana buzzed upstairs, to where Peter and David were just beginning to pack. Mordon Leethe had at last departed, taking the volunteers with him, George Clapp practically singing "Happy Days Are Here Again" and Michael Prendergast weeping bitter buckets, and now Peter and David could prepare to leave, having been invited to Robert and Martin's place way up in the Hudson Valley for the holiday weekend. Then the distinctive buzz of the in-house phone line sounded, and they both looked over at it, and for some reason, some inexplicable reason, something told David to say, "Don't answer it."

Peter gave him a scoffing look. "Don't answer it? Why not?"

"I don't know, something just told me to say that. A premonition or something."

Peter shook his head. "And you call yourself a scientist," he said, and picked up the phone, and said, "Yes, Shanana, what is it? Put him on." Cupping the mouthpiece, he told David, "Amory," then said into the phone, "Archer, how are you?"

David moved closer to Peter and the phone, forgetting his premonition. Dr. Archer Amory, head of NAABOR's research and development program, was their only real link to the tobacco industry that funded them, if you didn't count the attorney, Mordon Leethe, and David certainly did not count that fellow. This was the first they'd heard from Dr. Amory since they'd turned to him with their invisible man problem a month ago and he'd passed them on to Mordon Leethe, who had told them, in an unnecessarily harsh manner, that NAABOR (and Dr. Amory, by implication) had "cut them loose."

And now here was Archer Amory on the phone, and Peter was listening, looking somber, saying, "Oh, too bad," saying, "Let me write that down." He jotted something on the pad beside the phone, said, "Thank you, Archer," said, "Yes, we'll see you there," and hung up. Then he just stood there and brooded for a while.

"Peter? Peter, may one know?"

Peter started, as though from a trance. "Oh," he said. "Sorry. Jack Fullerton is dead."

"Who?"

"The Fourth."

" Who ?"

"The head of NAABOR, the man who ran it."

"Oh." David shrugged. "So what?"

"The funeral is Sunday."