Strangers on a Train

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.

Dear Guy:

This is your train friend, remember? You left your book in my room that night & I found a Texas address in it which I trust is still right. Am mailing book to you. Read some in it myself, didn’t know there was so much conversation in Plato.

A great pleasure dining with you that night & hope I may list you among my friends. It would be fine to see you in Santa Fe & if you possibly change your mind, address is: Hotel La Fonda, Santa Fe, New Mex. for next two weeks at least.

I keep thinking about that idea we had for a couple of murders. It could be done, I am sure. I cannot express to you my supremest confidence in the idea! Though I know subject does not interest you.

What’s what with your wife as that was very interesting? Please write me soon. Outside of losing wallet in El Paso (stolen right off a bar in front of me) nothing has happened of note. Didn’t like El Paso, with apologies to you.

Hoping to hear from you soon,

Your friend,

Charles A. Bruno

P.S. Very sorry for sleeping late and missing you that A. M.

C. A. B.

The letter pleased him somehow. It was pleasant to think of Bruno’s freedom.

“Grits!” he said happily to his mother. “Never get grits with my fried eggs up North!”

He put on a favorite old robe that was too hot for the weather, and sat back in bed with the Metcalf Star and the teetery-legged bed tray that held his breakfast.

Afterward, he showered and dressed as if there were something he had to do that day, but there wasn’t. He had visited the Cartwrights yesterday. He might have seen Peter Wnggs, his boyhood friend, but Peter had a job in New Orleans now. What was Miriam doing, he wondered. Perhaps manicuring her nails on her back porch, or playing checkers with some little girl neighbor who adored her, who wanted to be just like her. Miriam was never one to brood when a plan went askew. Guy lighted a cigarette.

A soft, intermittent chink came from downstairs, where his mother or Ursline the cook was cleaning the silver and dropping it piece by piece onto a heap.

Why hadn’t he left for Mexico today? The next idle twentyfour hours were going to be miserable, he knew. Tonight, his uncle again, and probably some friends of his mother’s dropping over. They all wanted to see him. Since his last visit, the MetcalfStar had printed a column about him and his work, mentioning his scholarships, the Prix de Rome that he hadn’t been able to use because of the war, the store he had designed in Pittsburgh, and the little annex infirmary of the hospital in Chicago. It read so impressively in a newspaper. It had almost made him feel important, he remembered, the lonely day in New York when the clipping had arrived in his mother’s letter.

A sudden impulse to write Bruno made him sit down at his work table, but, with his pen in his hand, he realized he had nothing to say. He could see Bruno in his rust-brown suit, camera strap over his shoulder, plodding up some dry hill in Santa Fe, grinning with his bad teeth at something, lifting his camera unsteadily and clicking. Bruno with a thousand easy dollars in his pocket, sitting in a bar, waiting for his mother. What did he have to say to Bruno? He recapped his fountain pen and tossed it back on the table.

“Mama?” he called. He ran downstairs. “How about a movie this afternoon?”

His mother said she had already been to movies twice that week. “You know you don’t like movies,” she chided him.

“Mama, I really want to go!” he smiled, and insisted.