Donald Westlake - Smoke

Shortly afterward, Peter and David passed the exit for the Triborough Bridge, but they weren't going that way, and continued on up the Harlem River Drive, did a jog east on the Cross Bronx Expressway, then headed north again on the New York State Thruway. Peg and Freddie, somewhat farther north and a bit to the east, had taken the Bruckner Expressway to the Bronx River Parkway, and left the actual City of New York, crossing the invisible line from the Bronx into the city of Yonkers, about fifteen minutes before Peter and David had a similar experience on the Thruway, just a bit to the west.

With Yonkers to the left of them and Mount Vernon to the right of them, Peg and Freddie drove north, and the Bronx River Parkway became the Sprain Brook Parkway with no discernible change in the road at all. The Sprain, however, at first angled northwest, and soon tangentially touched the Thruway, before curving northward again. Ten minutes later — Peter and the Ford traveled slightly more rapidly than Peg and the van — Peter and David reached the same tangent, where they switched from the Thruway, which would soon cross the Hudson River and be of no further use to them, to the Sprain Brook, and now both cars were on the same road, heading in the same direction.

Peg waited until they were on the Sprain, where the traffic was lighter, now that they were well beyond the city, to start the dread conversation. "Freddie," she said, "we have to talk."

"Sure," he said. The Ayatollah face gave nothing away.

"You know I love you, Freddie."

"Uh-oh," he said.

There went the first half hour of her planned speech. Flipping ahead a lot of pages in her mind, feeling miserable now that she'd started, she said, "I just can't go on this way. You know that yourself, Freddie."

The Ayatollah's cheeks filled with air, as Freddie sighed. He looked as though he might either start praying or declare a holy war, hard to tell. "I know it's been hard on you, Peg," his voice said, slightly muffled as usual by the mask. "I've done my best to make it as easy as I could."

"I know you have, Freddie, that's the only thing that's kept me going this long. But the strain of it, you know? I mean, you know, you're not really there, Freddie. I mean, you are, and you aren't."

"Dinner at that restaurant," he said.

"That's one thing," she agreed.

He sighed again, giving the Ayatollah mumps, then curing them. "Let me think about this," he said.

"I already did think about it, Freddie."

"Well, let me think about it a minute, okay?"

"Okay. Sure." And she concentrated on her driving.

In the red Ford Taurus, David was saying, "A part of me, Peter, you know, a part of me doesn't want to go back at all."

"I know," Peter said.

"Just keep going, not even stop at Robert and Martin's, just drive right on up into Canada and just . . . go. "

Peter smiled, ironically. "Into the north woods?" He sang, "I'm a lumberjack, and I'm okay."

"Oh, you know what I mean ."

"Yes, of course I do."

"Before this," David explained, even though Peter did know what he meant, "we didn't have to think about tobacco at all, did we?"

"Charles Lamb wrote," Peter quoted, ""For thy sake, tobacco, I/Would do anything but die.'"

"Well, so would we, apparently," David said bitterly. "Do anything."

"But smoke the stuff."

"We're living on the stuff, Peter. We never had to think about that before, but we have to think about it now. The American Tobacco Research Institute is nothing more nor less than a public relations piece of puffery for NAABOR. Before this, I never even thought about NAABOR, never thought we had anything to do with NAABOR, not really."

"I know," Peter said.

"But now, this new fellow, Merrill Undertaker, or whatever his name is."

"Fullerton, as you well know."

"He'll always be Merrill Undertaker to me. Peter, even if we never give him what he wants, we've agreed to do his bidding. We're selling out to him."

"I'm afraid, David, we sold out long ago, if truth be told."

"But we never had to notice before!"

"David," Peter said, becoming just the slightest bit irritated, "what do you want to do? Do you want to pay full price for this rental?"

"No, of course not. Isn't there anywhere else we can go, anyone else we could work for?"

"Maybe the government," Peter suggested, "falsifying evidence of cancers downwind from nuclear test sites. Or the insulation industry, struggling to unprove the effects of asbestos. Or a chemical compa—"

"Stop!" David shrieked, clapping his hands to his ears. "Isn't there anybody good in this world?"

"You," Peter told him, "and me. And possibly Robert and Martin, I'm not sure."

David stared out the windshield, trying not to think, and thought.

Eight miles ahead, Freddie broke a long silence in the van. "You want to leave me, don't you, Peg?"

"In a way," Peg admitted. "Kinda."

"I saw you start up the refrigerator, in the apartment."

"You did?" Exasperated and embarrassed all at once, she cried, "Do you see ? Do you see, Freddie? How can I live like that? I never know where you are, and when I do know where you are, it's because you look like something in a horror movie."

"Aw, it isn't that bad, is it?"

"Sometimes. I've gotta admit it, Freddie, sometimes it's very very hard to open my eyes in the morning."

"Ah, hell, I suppose it is," Freddie said. "Jeez, Peg, I do wish sometimes this thing, this, whatever it is, invisibility—"

"The disappearing act," she suggested.

"Up in smoke," he agreed. "I wish it was over."

"Boy, so do I, Freddie."

"I mean," Freddie said, "it was just that one shot they gave me, and the antidote that wasn't worth a good goddam, but how long before it wears off? With the hundred grand from Jersey Josh, and the stuff from before, we're set now for a good long time, we could take life easy, travel, go out together, have some fun."

"Not with you like this, Freddie. Believe me."

"I know. I know." The Ayatollah brooded out the windshield, as the straight highway beneath their wheels changed its name again, this time to the Taconic Parkway.

Peg drove, the speed slackening a bit because she was trying to think. "We can talk on the phone a lot," she said. "And I can come up and see you sometimes. Watch you swim. Stay over, go home in the morning."

"Go home where?" Freddie asked. "Back to the apartment?"

"Sure," Peg said. "Why not?"

"Because that cop is still looking for me. And the lawyer. And they know about the apartment."

"They also know we're not there," Peg objected. "They know we came upstate."

"If I was that cop," Freddie said, "I'd keep an eye on the apartment sometimes, just in case one of us came back for a clean shirt. He's got to know you're still paying the rent on it."

Peg hadn't considered that possibility, but now she did, and she didn't like it. Not have her apartment back? Get chased around by those bad people? She said, "They can't watch an empty apartment every second, Freddie. I already fixed it so I'll go back to work for Dr. Lopakne—"

"You did, huh?"

"I'm surprised you didn't listen to the call." But then she realized they were both getting irritable, which they shouldn't do, and she said, "It's just part time, just for a while, till I figure out what I'm doing."

"Sure," he said, also making the effort to be reasonable. "Makes sense."

"So I'll stay over tomorrow night, I can take that much of a risk, and go in to Dr. Lopakne Monday, and then find a new place after that. I mean, I got nowhere else to spend tomorrow night."

"Well, you do, if you think about it."

"Come on, Freddie," she said. "I have to make this change, I just do. And I have to be in the city tomorrow night so I can go over to Dr. Lopakne Monday morning, I already promised I'd be there."