52 pickup

5

Barbara said, "You want a drink, don't you?"

"I guess so."

She looked at him a moment, about to say something. Mitchell waited and it passed. He watched her take a fifth of Jack Daniels and two lowball glasses from the cupboard and place them on the counter that separated the kitchen from the breakfast room. Mitchell stood on the side away from the kitchen, leaning on the counter. He watched Barbara fill the glasses with ice from the freezer side of the refrigerator. He could smell something cooking in the oven. Pot roast. With browned potatoes and carrots.

"I thought we were going to eat out."

"I didn't think you really wanted to." Barbara poured two inches of whiskey into the glasses and added a splash of water from the sink faucet. "You looked tired this morning," she said, her eyes raising with a calm, nice expression.

"I guess I am. Last few days I haven't slept much."

"You should go to bed early tonight."

"I'm planning to. If Victor or somebody doesn't call."

"Haven't they fixed… whatever it is yet?"

"Still some machine problems. And now I've got a smart-ass union guy on my back trying to show me how tough he is." He saw her watching him and he said, "I'm not making excuses. It's a simple fact."

"I didn't say anything."

"I know you didn't."

There was a silence as they sipped their drinks. Mitchell lighted a cigarette and handed it to Barbara, then lighted one for himself.

"You didn't read Mike's letter this morning," his wife said. "Now I don't know what I did with it."

"That's right, I forgot. Anything new I ought to know about?"

"He still hasn't said how he's doing in class. It's mostly about parties. He's repairing his motorcycle in the apartment and there's no place to sit down. He has another rice and mushroom recipe he wants to fix for us when he gets home."

"Doesn't know whether to be a cook or a mechanic."

"Marion called. We're going there for dinner Saturday night."

"Fine. Who's going?"

"I didn't ask. I'm sure we'll know everybody."

"Yeah, I guess we usually do."

"The disposal's acting up again. It works and then it doesn't."

"Why don't you call somebody?"

"You said you were going to fix it."

"That's right, I did."

"About a month ago," Barbara said. "The first time it got stuck or whatever it does."

"Yeah, I keep forgetting." Mitchell looked over at the sink. "This weekend, I'll open it up, take a look."

"That would be nice," Barbara said.

"Probably the blades're out of line." He watched his wife sip her drink and place the glass on the counter again.

"I've been seeing a girl," he said.

Barbara's gaze remained on the lowball glass, still holding it. He couldn't see her eyes. He knew she was waiting for him to continue and he didn't know what to say.

"I met her about three months ago."

He waited again as she took a sip of her drink, her eyes still lowered.

"Go on."

"I don't know how to tell it."

"Try," Barbara said. She looked at him directly now. She seemed calm. "Do I know her?"

"No. We met in a bar. I've been seeing her maybe two, three times a week."

"You go to bed with her that often?"

"No, it's not like that."

"Then what are you seeing her for?"

"I'm trying to say, we started seeing each other, it wasn't just sex."

"Is she good in bed?"

"What're you asking something like that for?"

"Why, does it offend you? Your sense of morals?"

"I met the girl, we liked each other. It just happened. I don't know why. I wasn't looking for anything."

"How old is she?"

"Twenty-two."

"A year older than Sally."

"I know. But she doesn't seem that young."

"Sally's married."

"She was, too. She's divorced."

"What's her name?"

"Cini."

"That's cute."

"Cynthia. Her real name's Cynthia."

"She's young," Barbara said. "She's different. You met her in a bar but she's really a nice girl. She's in love with you and she's ready to get married again. Anything else?"

"That's not the way it is." He was trying to appear calm and raised his glass slowly to finish the drink.

Barbara waited, staring at him. "If that's not the way it is, then why are you telling me about it? If you've got something going on the side, why in hell would you want to tell me?"

"You want another one?" He was already pouring whiskey into his glass.

"I might as well," his wife said. The glass was something to touch and turn and look at thoughtfully. She couldn't stare at the wallpaper or the cupboards for very long. She couldn't look at Mitchell for more than a few moments at a time. She couldn't press down on him with her gaze and purposely make him uncomfortable. The son of a bitch.

She said, "All right, two supposedly intelligent people who have been living together for twenty-two years are now having a little talk. If you're not planning to marry the girl-can I assume that?"

"No, I'm not planning to marry her."

"Then what are you telling me about it for? Why wouldn't you use a little sense and keep it to yourself? Are you bragging about it or what?"

"I don't know. I guess it's been bothering me." He looked at his wife and made himself hold her gaze. "Barbara, I don't do things like this. I can't get used to sneaking around. I feel like I'm somebody else."

"It's been bothering you," Barbara said. "Poor baby."

"Do you want to hear about it or not?"

"I don't know. Maybe I don't."

"All right, let's forget about it."

"Forget about it!"

"I mean talk about it some other time. Maybe I shouldn't have brought it up."

Barbara shook her head, almost in wonderment. "You're too much. Maybe you shouldn't have brought it up."

"Look, it isn't a simple thing to explain."

"I guess not, if it could blow a perfectly good marriage that's lasted twenty-two years." She paused. "Or hasn't it been so good? God, all of a sudden I'm not sure I know you. Much less her. Is she pretty or flashy or what? She have big knockers?"

"Barbara-she's not what you picture. She's kind of plain-looking."

"Well, tell me what the big attraction is. She know a lot of kinky sex tricks?"

Mitchell shook his head. "We got along, that's all. We laughed, we had a good time together."

"We get along," Barbara said. "We laugh. At least we used to."

"I know it. It doesn't make sense. It's just something I felt."

Barbara frowned. "Wait a minute. Why the past tense? Aren't you going to see her again?"

"I don't know. Right now I don't even know where she is."

"You mean she left you? But you're still interested?"

"It's a little more complicated than that."

"What is?"

"If I told you the whole story-I don't know, I guess my timing's bad. It'd sound like I was sucking around you for sympathy."

"Boy, it would have to be an awfully sad story to get any sympathy from me."

"Well, it's not something that happens every day."

"But you won't tell me about it."

"Not yet."

"So all I know is you've been fooling around."

Mitchell let it pass and took a sip of his drink. Barbara stared at her glass. She said, "I never thought it would happen to us. I never even considered it. Ever."

"I didn't either," Mitchell said. "I think about it now-it would've ended, you never would have known the difference."

"I think I have known," Barbara said, "for at least a month. But God, I wish you hadn't told me."

From ten until twelve that morning Barbara Mitchell played doubles with her regular Wednesday group at the Squire Lake Racquet Club. It was twenty-five minutes past twelve when she reached home and turned into the drive. Barbara didn't get out. She sat in the Mercedes and lighted a cigarette. She was alone. She could hear the engine idling and, faintly, Roberta Flack's voice on the radio. It was warm in the car, reasonably comfortable. She wore a scarf and a suede coat over her tennis whites, no pantyhose; her legs were still tan from two weeks in Mexico in February. She could go in the house and change into slacks and go to Marion's for lunch and talk to the girls and laugh and pretend nothing had happened. Or she could back out the drive and get to a freeway and go north or south or any direction, it didn't matter, and keep going and feel the speed of the car-see how fast it would go-and see fields and trees and road reflectors rushing past and… what?

Or she could drive over to Ranco Manufacturing and go into Mitch's office and kick the great lover in the balls. The bastard. The rotten son of a bitch. Twenty-two years. And he had to tell her about it.

She wondered if he'd ever had a girlfriend before. No, he would have somehow given it away. Or, with his conscience killing him, he would have told her. She doubted that he had ever lied to her. Harry Straightarrow. The good guy.

But God, he was dumb. Falling for some little ass-shaker, cute little mindless fluff who probably didn't wear a bra and said "groovy" and "cool" and smoked pot.

She could see Mitch trying it, holding the twisted cigarette delicately in his big tool-grinder fist, trying to hold in the smoke curling out of his nose. The dope. The wrong dope got the dope. Bob Hope had said that in a movie. She remembered the line but didn't know why. She didn't remember the name of the picture, only that they had seen it together before they were married: Mitch working days at Dodge Main and taking engineering courses at night-while she was working on her masters in English lit, which she never completed-and every Saturday or Sunday they'd go to a show or a ball game, Tigers or the Lions, depending on the season.

Twenty-two years used up, gone. Photographs in a bottom drawer. She remembered sitting on the floor with Mitch-a year ago, right after Sally was married-looking through the pile of snapshots they were going to sort out someday and put in albums, chronologically, with dates, a pictorial family record. But there were no dates on most of the photographs. Sally and Mike, little kids on the beach. Sally and Mike standing by the car. Barbara younger, with a tight hairstyle and a long skirt. By the car. Mitch, heavier, with a crewcut. By the car. Why did they always take pictures standing by a car? It was a good thing, Mitch said. It was a way to identify the year. The cars changed and the people changed. A time they could look at but not remember as a particular day. There were pictures taken at a party at least eighteen or twenty years ago. Look at how young everyone looked. Good friends who were still friends, most of them. Everyone laughing. Every weekend. Bring your own. A case of beer or a bottle of Imperial, two-forty-nine. No money, but they talked and laughed and seldom seemed to worry about anything. She remembered saying to him-perhaps a month ago-"Why don't we have fun anymore?" And he said, "We have fun. We go to Florida and Mexico, we've gone to Europe, we play tennis, we go out to dinner every week, we go to shows." And she remembered saying, "You haven't answered the question." That time, looking at the photographs, she said, "Can you hardly wait till Sally has a baby?" And she remembered him saying, "I guess not, except then I'd be married to a grandmother, wouldn't I?" Being funny, but telling her something at the same time.

Go upstairs and throw his clothes out the window. His drip-dry shirts and jockey shorts and ratty sport coat and the blue sweatsuit he jogged in every morning. Let him come home and find all his things in a pile on the front lawn, the bastard, and have to shovel them into his showboat bronze Grand Prix.

Grow up, she said to herself, and go to lunch.

Barbara got out of the car and crossed the lawn to the front steps. She was reaching for the handle when she noticed the door slightly open, the copper weatherseal touching the jamb but not closed all the way. This morning she had gone out the back to the garage. Had she opened the front at all? Yes, to get The Free Press. Then had slammed it closed. She could have left it unlocked easily enough-they had lost the key to the front door and usually didn't make a point of locking it until they were in for the night. But, she knew, she had not left the door open this morning.

In the foyer she took off her coat and draped it over a chair. It was when she paused then, listening, that she knew someone was in the house. There was no sound that she heard; she sensed it. Someone was here, now.

Alan Raimy was sitting in a big chair by the fireplace, his legs crossed, an attache case on the floor at his feet.

He watched Barbara come into the living room: nice tan legs in the short tennis dress, yes, very nice. A good-looking well-preserved broad. Nice hips; she moved nice.

He said, "Slim, I'll tell you what I'm going to do."

Barbara turned abruptly to see him fifteen feet away from her in the easy chair: a bony, pale-looking young man with long hair, wearing a dark business suit, sitting in Mitchell's chair. She noticed his boots and the attache case.

"I'm going to give you a personalized monthly accounting service," Alan said. "Take care of all your bills and expenditures for a low three-and-a-half-percent charge, guaranteed to be accurate or we eat the difference."

"Who are you?"

"In fact, that's our motto. Silver Lining Accounting Service-we satisfy or we eat it."

"How did you get in here?"

"I walked in, Slim. I knocked, nobody answered. The door was open so I walked in."

Barbara kept her voice cold, dry. "Well, would you mind getting up now and walking out?"

"For example," Alan said, "I figure you got about an eight-, nine-hundred-dollar mortgage payment. You got all the credit cards ever invented and you spend in excess of four thou on monthly bills, right?" Barbara stared at him and Alan shrugged. "All right, let's say four for right now."

"I'm going to ask you once more-"

Alan held up a hand. "Another couple hundred for restaurants. You sign because it's easier, am I right?"

"Or I can call the police," Barbara said.

"What for?"

"What for? You walk in my house, you refuse to leave-"

"I didn't refuse to leave. You haven't given me a chance."

"All right, you've got it. Now get out."

Alan took his time rising, picking up his attache case. "Forty-two hundred times three and a half, that's roughly, in round figures… five fours are twenty, three fours are twelve… about a hundred and forty bucks a month, you never have to balance another bank statement. How does that sound?"

"What's the name of your company?"

"Silver Lining Accounting. I told you."

"What's your office phone number?"

Alan started across the room. "That's all right, I'll get back to you. Never inconvenience the customer, put them to any trouble."

"Give me the number," Barbara said. "Or your card."

Alan patted his side pocket. "I ran out of cards." He smiled at her then. "Don't worry, Slim, we'll be in touch."

He walked through the foyer and out the front door.

Barbara reached the door, opening it again partway, to see him crossing the lawn to the street. He waited at the edge of the pavement. After only a few moments a white Thunderbird appeared and rolled to a stop. The bony, pale young man got in with his attache case and the car continued up the street.

Barbara turned again to the living room. From the arched entranceway she looked around. Nothing seemed to be out of place. She ran upstairs to the master bedroom, went directly to her dresser and took out the case that held her good jewelry. Nothing was missing. She looked around. The room didn't seem to have been disturbed.

She knew she should call the police. But she'd have to wait here for them and answer questions and what, specifically, could she tell them? It hardly seemed worth the trouble-in the light of eternity, or just in the light of current events. The bastard. She began to change, taking off her tennis dress. She'd have something to talk about at lunch and wouldn't sit there like a clod, thinking.

"I see the car pull in," Leo Frank said, "and I think, Christ, what's he going to do?"

"I was upstairs," Alan said. "You can't ever get caught upstairs. They don't believe shit they catch you upstairs. But she stayed in the car a while like she was sneaking a smoke. So when she comes in I'm sitting in the living room in my blue suit."

Leo drove carefully, watching the speedometer, as the Thunderbird followed Long Lake Road east, through a rolling wooded residential area of large homes set far back from the road. Leo didn't know the area and it made him nervous to be here. He was anxious to hit Woodward and turn south, toward the hazy skyline of the city.

"I gave her Silver Lining Accounting Service," Alan said. " 'We satisfy or we eat it.' "

"Silver Tongue Service," Leo said. "You chow-hound."

"She's not bad," Alan said. "It wouldn't be bad duty at all."

"I'm surprised you didn't proposition her."

"Who says I didn't?" Alan sat with the attache case on his lap, his palms flat on the leather surface, his bony fingers drumming slowly, in silence.

"Well," Leo said, "you going to tell me what's in there, or what?"

"You won't believe it."

"Tell me. Let's see if I do."

Alan's thumb snapped the brass fasteners open. "You ready? Ta-daaa."

"Come on, for Christ sake."

Alan opened the case. "I got a sport coat."

"Yeah." Leo glanced over. The coat was folded neatly to fit in the case and seemed to fill the inside.

"I got a shirt. Underneath."

"Yeah."

"I got a tie. Just in case."

"Sharp-looking tie?"

"He doesn't own one. And I got-you ready for this? The fucking good luck jackpot award of all times." Alan raised the coat, folded, out of the case and Leo glanced over again.

"Jesus Christ," Leo said.

"A genuine no-shit thirty-eight Smith and fucking Wesson, man," Alan said. "How's that grab you? The piece, the paper that goes with it and a box of thirty-eights."

"Jesus Christ," Leo said again. "You're hoping for something like that going in, unh-unh, never in a million years."

"Clean living," Alan said, closing the attache case. "It pays off every time."