The Fiend

(21)

When Charlie arrived home at 5:30, he was so tired he could hardly get out of his car and cross the patch of lawn that separated the driveway from the house. He had worked very hard all day in the hope that his boss, Mr. Warner, would notice, and approve of him. He especially needed Mr. Warner’s approval because Ben was angry with him for staying out too late the previous night. Although he knew Mr. Warner and Ben were entirely different people, and pleasing one didn’t necessarily mean placating the other, he couldn’t keep from trying. In his thoughts they weighed the same, and in his dreams they often showed up wearing each other’s faces.

At the bottom of the porch steps he stooped to pick up the evening Journal. It lay under the hibiscus bush, fastened with an elastic band and folded so he could see only the middle third of the oversized headline: u seen the

Usually, Charlie waited for the Journal until after Ben had finished with it because Ben liked to be the first to discover interesting bits of news and pass them along. But tonight he didn’t hesitate. He tore off the elastic band and unfolded the paper. Jessie’s face was smiling up at him. It didn’t look the way it had the last time he’d seen her, shocked and frightened, but she was wearing the same clothes, a white bathrobe over pajamas.

The headline said have you seen this girl? — and underneath the picture was an explanation of it: “This is a composite picture made from a snapshot of Jessie Brant’s face superimposed on one of a child of similar height and build wearing clothes similar to those missing from Jessie’s wardrobe. The Journal is offering $1,000 reward for information leading to the discovery of Jessie Brant’s whereabouts.”

For a long time Charlie stood looking at the girl who was half-Jessie, half-stranger. Then he turned and stumbled up the porch steps and into the house, clutching the newspaper against his chest as though to hide from the neighbors an old wound that had reopened and started to bleed again. In his room, with the door locked and the blinds drawn, he read the account of Jessie’s disappearance. It began with a description of Jessie herself; of her father, a technician with an electronics firm; her brother, Michael, who hadn’t learned the news until he’d been picked off a fishing boat by the Coast Guard cutter; her mother, the last member of her family to see Jessie alive at ten o’clock.

The official police announcement was issued by Lieutenant D. W. Gallantyne: “The evidence now in our possession indicates that Jessie departed from her house voluntarily, using the back door and leaving it unlocked so she would be able to return. What person, or set of circumstances, prevented her return? We are asking the public to help us answer that question. There is a strong possibility that someone noticed her leaving the house or walking along the street, and that that person can give us further information, such as what direction she was going and whether she was alone. Anyone who saw her is urged to contact us immediately. Jessie’s grief-stricken parents join us in this appeal.”

The light in the room was very dim. Narrowing his eyes to keep them in focus, Charlie reread the statement by Gallantyne. It was wrong, he knew it was wrong. It hadn’t happened like that. Somebody should tell the lieutenant and set him straight.

He lay down on the bed, still holding the newspaper against his chest. The ticking of his alarm clock sounded extraordinarily loud and clear. He’d had the clock since his college days. It was like an old friend, the last voice he heard at night, the first voice in the morning: tick it, tick it, tick it. But now the voice began to sound different, not friendly, not comforting.

Wicked wicked, wicked sicked, wicked sicked.

“I’m not,” he whispered. “I’m not. I didn’t touch her.”

Wicked sicked, pick a ticket, try and kick it, wicked wicked, buy a ticket, buy a ticket, buy a ticket.

Ben called out, “Charlie? You in there?” When he didn’t get an answer he tried the door and found it locked. “Listen, Charlie, I’m not mad at you anymore. I realize you’re a grown man now and if you want to stay out late, well, what the heck, that’s your business. Right?”

“Yes, Ben.”

“I’ve got to stop treating you like a kid brother who’s still wet behind the ears. That’s what Louise says and by golly, it makes sense, doesn’t it?”

“I guess so.”

“She’ll be over pretty soon. You don’t want her to catch you sulk — unprepared.”

“I’m preparing, Ben.”

“Good. I couldn’t find the Journal, by the way. Have you got it in there?”

“No.”

“The delivery boy must have missed us. Well, I hate to report him so I think I’ll go pick one up over at the drug store. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“All right.”

“Charlie, listen, you’re O.K., aren’t you? I mean, everything’s fine?”

“I am not sicked.”

“What? I didn’t hear what you—”

“I am not sicked.”

The unfamiliar word worried Ben. As the worry became larger and larger, chunks of it began dropping off and changing into something he could more easily handle — anger. By the time he reached the drug store he’d convinced himself that Charlie had used the word deliberately to annoy him.

Mr. Forster was standing outside his drug store. Though his face looked grave, there was a glint of excitement in his eyes as though he’d just found out that one of his customers had contracted a nonfatal illness which would require years of prescriptions.

“Well, well, it’s Benny Gowen. How’s the world treating you, Benny?”

“Fine. Nobody calls me Benny any more, Mr. Forster.”

“Don’t they now. Well, that puts me in a class by myself. What can I do for you?”

“I’d like a Journal.”

“Sorry, I’m all sold out.” Mr. Forster was watching Ben carefully over the top of his spectacles. “Soon as I put them out here on the stand this afternoon people began picking them up like they were ten-dollar bills. Nothing sells papers like a real nasty case of murder or whatever it was. But I guess you know all about it, being you work downtown in the hub of things.”

“I don’t have a chance to read when I’m on the job,” Ben said.

“Who was murdered?”

“The police don’t claim it was murder. But I figure it must have been. The kid’s gone, nobody’s seen hide nor hair of her since last night.”

“Kid?”

“A nine-year-old girl named Jessie Brant. Disappeared right from in front of her own house or thereabouts. Now, nobody can tell me a nine-year-old kid wearing nightclothes wouldn’t have been spotted by this time if she were still alive. It’s not reasonable. Mark my words, she’s lying dead some place and the most they can hope for is to find the body and catch the man responsible for the crime. You agree, Benny?”

“I know nothing about it.”

Mr. Forster took off his spectacles and began cleaning them with a handkerchief that was dirtier than they were. “How’s Charlie, by the way?”

He is not sicked. “He’s all right. He’s been all right for a long time now, Mr. Forster.”

“Reason I asked is, he came in here yesterday with a bad headache. He bought some aspirin, but shucks, taking aspirin isn’t getting to the root of anything. A funny thing about headaches, some doctors think they’re mostly psychological, you know, caused by emotional problems. In Charlie’s case I’m inclined to agree. Look at the record, all that trouble he’s had and—”

“That’s in the past.”

“Being in the past and being over aren’t necessarily the same thing.” Mr. Forster replaced his spectacles with the air of a man who confidently expected new knowledge from increased vision. “Now don’t get me wrong. I think Charlie’s O.K. But I’m a friend of his, I’m not the average person reading about the kid and remembering back. There’s bound to be talk.”

“I’m sure you’ll do your share of it.” Ben turned to walk away but Mr. Forster’s hand on his arm was like an anchor. “Let go of me.”

“You must have misunderstood me, Ben. I like Charlie, I’m on his side. But I can’t help feeling there’s something wrong again. It probably doesn’t involve the kid at all because it started yesterday afternoon before anything happened to her. Are you going to be reasonable and listen to me, Ben?”

“I’ll listen if you have anything constructive to say.”

“Maybe it’s constructive, I don’t know. Anyhow, a man came in here yesterday asking where Charlie lived. He gave me a pretty thin story about forgetting to look up the house number. I pretended to go along with it but I knew damned well he was trying to pump me.”

“About Charlie?”

“Yes.”

“What’d you tell him?”

“All the right things. Don’t worry about that part of it, I gave Charlie a clean bill of health, 100 percent. Only... well, it’s been on my mind ever since. The man looked like an official of some kind, why was he interested in Charlie?”

“Why didn’t you ask him?”

“Heck, it would have spoiled the game. I was supposed to be taken in, see. I was playing the part of—”

“Playing games isn’t going to help Charlie.”

Mr. Forster’s eyes glistened with excitement. “So now you’re leveling with me, eh, Ben? There is something wrong, Charlie needs help again. Is that it?”

“We all need help, Mr. Forster,” Ben said and walked away, this time without interference. He knew Mr. Forster would be watching him and he tried to move naturally and easily as though he couldn’t feel the leaden chains attached to his limbs. He had felt these chains for almost his entire life; attached to the other end of them was Charlie.

He stopped at the corner, aware of the traffic going by, the people moving up and down and across the streets, the clock in the courthouse tower chiming six. He wanted to quiet the clock so he would lose consciousness of time; he wanted to join one of the streams of strangers, anonymous people going to unnamed places. Whoever, wherever, whenever, was better than being Ben on his way home to Charlie to ask him about a dead child.

Louise’s little sports car was parked at the curb in front of the house. Ben found her in the living room, leafing through the pages of a magazine. She smiled when she looked up and saw him in the doorway, but he could tell from the uneasiness in her eyes that she’d read about the child and had been silently asking the same questions that Mr. Forster was asking out loud.

He said, trying to sound cheerful and unafraid, “Hello, Louise. When did you arrive?”

“About ten minutes ago.”

“Where’s Charlie?”

“In his room getting dressed.”

“Oh. Are you going out some place? I thought — well, it’s turning kind of cold out, it might be a nice night to build a fire and all three of us sit around and talk.”

Louise smiled again with weary patience as if she was sick of talk and especially the talk of children, young or old. “I don’t know what Charlie has in mind. When he answered the door he simply told me he was getting dressed. I’m not even sure he wanted me to wait for him. But I’m waiting, anyway. It’s becoming a habit.” She added, without any change in tone, “What time did he come home last night?”

“It must have been pretty late. I was asleep.”

“You went to sleep with Charlie still out wandering around by himself? How could you have?”

“I was tired.”

“You led me to understand that you’d go on looking for him. You said if I went home for some rest that you’d take over. And you didn’t.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I started thinking about the conversation we had earlier,” Ben said with deliberation. “You gave me the business about how I should trust Charlie, let him have a chance to grow up, allow him to reach his own decisions. You can’t have it both ways, Louise. You can’t tell me one minute to treat him like a responsible adult and the next minute send me out chasing after him as if he was a three-year-old. You can’t accuse me of making mistakes in dealing with him and then an hour later beg me to make the same mistakes. Be honest, Louise. Where do you stand? What do you really think of Charlie?”

“Keep your voice down, Ben. He might hear you.”

“Is that how you treat a responsible adult, you don’t let him overhear anything?”

“I meant—”

“You meant what you said. The three-year-old shut up in the bedroom isn’t supposed to hear what Mom and Pop are talking about in the living room.”

“I wouldn’t want Charlie to think we’re quarreling, that’s all.”

“But we are quarreling. Why shouldn’t he think so? If he’s a responsible adult—”

“Stop repeating that phrase.”

“Why? Because it doesn’t fit him, and you can’t bear listening to the truth?”

“Stop it, Ben, please. This isn’t the time.”

“This is the very time,” he said soberly. “Right now, this minute, you’ve got to figure out how you really feel about Charlie. Sure, you love him, we both do. But you’re not committed to him the way I am, or to put it bluntly, you’re not stuck with him. You still have a chance to change your mind, to get away. Do it, Louise.”

“I can’t.”

“For your own sake, you’d better try. Walk out of here now and don’t look back. For nearly a year you’ve been dreaming, and I’ve been letting you. Now the alarm’s ringing, it’s time to wake up and start moving. Beat it, Louise.”

“You don’t know what you’re asking.”

“I’m asking,” he said, “that one out of this trio gets a chance to survive. It won’t be Charlie and it can’t be me. That leaves you, Louise. Use your chance, for my sake if not your own. I’d like to think of you as being happy in the future, leading a nice, uncomplicated life.”

“There’s no such thing.”

“You won’t leave?”

“No.”

“Then God help you.” He went over to the window and stood with his back to Louise so she wouldn’t see the tears welling in his eyes. “A little girl disappeared last night. One person in this neighborhood has already mentioned Charlie in connection with the crime. There’ll be others, not just common gossips like Forster, but men with authority. Whatever Charlie has or hasn’t done, it’s going to be rough on him, and on you, too, if you stick around.”

“I’m sticking.”

“Yes, I was afraid you would. Why? Do you want to be a martyr?”

“I want to be Charlie’s wife.”

“It’s the same thing.”

“Don’t try to destroy my confidence completely, Ben,” she said. “It would be easy, I don’t have very much. But what I have may help Charlie and perhaps you, too, in the days to come.”

“Days? You’re thinking in terms of days? What about the months, years—”

“They’re composed of days. I choose to think of them in that way. Now,” she added in a gentler voice, “do I get your blessing, Ben?”

“You get everything I have to offer.”

“Thank you.”

She turned toward the doorway, hearing Charlie’s step in the hall. It sounded brisk and lively as if he’d had an abrupt change of mood in the past ten minutes. When he came in she noticed that he was freshly shaved and wearing his good suit and the tie she’d given him for his birthday. He looked surprised when he saw that she was still there, and she wondered whether he’d expected her to leave, and if so, why he’d taken the trouble to get all dressed up. He was carrying the evening newspaper. It was crumpled and torn as though it had been used to swat flies.

He put it down carefully on the coffee table, his eyes fixed on Ben. “I found it after all, Ben. Right after you left to buy one I decided to go out and search for it again, and sure enough there it was, hidden behind that shrub with the pink flowers. Remember what we used to call it when we were kids, Ben? High biscuits. I used to think that it actually had biscuits on it but they were up so high I couldn’t see them.”

“I looked under the hibiscus,” Ben said.

“You must have missed it. It was there.”

“It wasn’t there.”

“You... you could have made a mistake, Ben. You were complaining about your eyes last week. Anyway, it’s such a small thing, we shouldn’t be raising all this fuss about it in front of Louise.”

“Louise better get used to it. And if it’s such a small thing, why are you lying about it?”

“Well, I... well, maybe it didn’t happen exactly like that.” The muscles of Charlie’s throat were working, as if he was trying to swallow or unswallow something large and painful and immovable. “When I got home I picked up the paper and took it into my room to read.”

“Why? You’re not usually interested.”

“I saw the headline about the little girl, and the picture. I wanted to study it, to make sure before — before going to the police.”

Ben stared at him in silence for a moment, then he repeated, “Before going to the police. Is that what you said?”

“Yes. I’m sure now — the face, the clothes, her name and address. I’m very sure. That’s why I got dressed up, so I’ll make a good impression at headquarters. You’ve always told me how necessary a good impression is. Do I look O.K.?”

“You look dandy. You’ll make a dandy impression... Jesus Godalmighty, what are you trying to do to me, to yourself? It isn’t enough that—”

“But I’m only doing what I have to, Ben. The paper said any witnesses should come forward and tell what they know. And I’m a witness. That’s funny, isn’t it? I always wanted to be somebody and now I finally am. I’m a witness. That’s pretty important, according to the paper. I may even be the only one in the whole city, can you beat that?”

“No. I don’t think anyone can. This time you’ve really done it, you’ve set a new high.”

Charlie’s smile was strained, a mixture of pride and anxiety.

“Well, I didn’t actually do anything, I just happened to be there when she came out of the house. The police are wrong about which house she came out of. It wasn’t her own, the way the paper said. It was the one—”

“You just happened to be there, eh, Charlie?”

“Yes.”

“In your car?”

“Yes.”

“Was the car parked?”

“I... I’m not sure but I think I may have been only passing by, very slowly.”

“Very, very slowly?”

“I think so. I may have stopped for a minute when I saw her on account of I was surprised. It was so late and she shouldn’t have been out. Her parents should have taken better care of her, not letting her run wild on the streets past ten o’clock, no one to protect her.”

“Did you offer to protect her, Charlie?”

“Oh no.”

“Did you talk to her at all?”

“No. I may have sort of spoken her name out loud because I was so surprised to see her, it being late and cold and lonely.” He broke off suddenly, frowning. “You’re mixing me up with your questions. You’re getting me off the subject. That’s not the important part, how I happened to be there and what I did. The important thing is, she didn’t come out of her own house. The police think she did, so it’s my duty to straighten them out. I bet they’ll be very glad to have some new evidence.”

“I just bet they will,” Ben said. “Go to your room, Charlie.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Go to your room.”

“I can’t do that. I’m a witness, they need me. They need me, Ben.”

“Then they’ll have to come and get you.”

“You’re interfering with justice. That’s a very wrong thing to do.”

“Justice? What kind of justice do you think is in store for you, when you can’t even tell them what you were doing outside the girl’s house, or whether you were parked there or just passing by?”

“You’ve got it all wrong, Ben. They’re not after me, I didn’t do anything.”

Ben turned away. He wanted to hit Charlie with his fist, he wanted to weep or to run shrieking out into the street. But all he could do was stand with his face to the wall, wishing he were back on the street corner where he could pretend he was anyone, going any place, at any hour of the day or night.

The only sound in the room was Charlie’s breathing. It was ordinary breathing, in and out, in and out, but to Ben it was the sound of doom. “Maybe I ought to go ahead and let you ruin yourself,” he said finally. “I can’t do that, though. Not yet, anyway. So I’m asking you to stay in your room for tonight and we’ll discuss this in the morning.”

“Ben may be right, Charlie,” Louise said. It was the first time she’d spoken since Charlie came into the room. She used her library voice, very quiet but authoritative. “You need time to get your story straight.”

Charlie shook his head stubbornly. “It’s not a story.”

“All right then, you need time to remember the facts. You can’t claim to have been at the scene without giving some plausible reason why you were there and what you were doing.”

“I wanted some fresh air.”

“Other streets, other neighborhoods, have fresh air. The police will ask you why you picked that one.”

“I didn’t. I was driving around everywhere, just driving around, breathing the free — the fresh air.”

“The way you did the other night?”

“Other night?”

“When I found you on Jacaranda Road.”

“Why do you bring that up?” he said violently. “You know nothing happened that night. You told me, you were the one who convinced me. You said, nothing’s happened, Charlie. Nothing whatever has happened, it’s all in your mind. Why aren’t you saying that now, Louise?”

“I will, if you want me to.”

“Not because you believe it?”

“I — believe it.” She clung to his arm, half-protectively, half- helplessly.

He looked down at her as if she were a stranger making an intimate demand. “Don’t touch me, woman.”

“Please, Charlie, you mustn’t talk to me like that. I love you.”

“No. You spoil things for me. You spoiled my being a witness.”

He jerked his arm out of her grasp and ran toward the hall. A few seconds later she heard the slam of his bedroom door. There was a finality about it like the closing of the last page of a book.

It’s over, she thought. I had a dream, the alarm rang, I woke up and it’s over.

She could still hear the alarm ringing in her ears, and above it, the sound of Ben’s voice. It sounded very calm but it was the calmness of defeat.

“I should have forced you to leave. I would have, if I’d known what was going on in his mind. But this witness bit, how could I have called that?” He looked out the window. It was getting dark and foggy. The broad, leathery leaves of the loquat tree were already dripping and the street lights had appeared wearing their gauzy gray nightgowns. “Either the whole thing’s a fantasy, or he’s telling the truth but not all of it.”

“All of it?”

“That he attacked the child and killed her.”

“Stop it. I’ll never believe that, never.”

“You half believed it when you walked in this door. You came here for reassurance. You wanted to be told that Charlie arrived home early last night, that he and I had a talk and then he went to bed. Well, he didn’t, we didn’t. This isn’t a very good place to come for reassurance, Louise. It’s a luxury we don’t keep in stock.”

“I didn’t come here for reassurance. I wanted to see Charlie, to tell him that I love him and I trust him.”

“You trust him, do you?”

“Yes.”

“How far? Far enough to allow him to go to the police with his story?”

“Naturally I’d like him to get the details straight first, before he exposes himself to... to their questions.”

“You make it sound very simple, as if Charlie’s mind is a reference book he can open at will and look up the answers. Maybe you’re right, in a way. Maybe his mind is a book, but it’s written in a language you and I can’t understand, and the pages aren’t in order and some of them are glued together and some are missing entirely. Not exactly a perfect place to find answers, is it, Louise?”

“Stop badgering me like this,” she said. “It’s not fair.”

“If you don’t like it, you can leave.”

“Is that all I ever get from you any more, an invitation to leave, walk away, don’t come back?”

“That’s it.”

“Why?”

“I told you before, one of the three of us should have a chance, just a chance.” He was still watching the fog pressing at the window like the gray facelessness of despair. “Charlie’s my problem, now more than ever. I’ll look after him. He won’t go to the police tonight or any other night. He’ll do what I tell him to do. I’ll see that he gets to work in the morning and that he gets home safely after work. I’ll stay with him, talk to him, listen to him, play the remember-game with him. He likes that — remember when we were kids, Ben? — he can play it for hours. It won’t be a happy life or a productive one, but the most I can hope for Charlie right now is that he’s allowed to survive at all. He’s a registered sex offender. Sooner or later he’s bound to be questioned about the child’s disappearance. I only hope it’s later so I can try and push this witness idea out of his head.”

“How will you do that?”

“I’ll convince him that he wasn’t near the house, he didn’t see the child, he didn’t see anything. He was at home with me, he dozed off in an armchair, he had a nightmare.”

“Don’t do it, Ben. It’s too risky, tampering with a mind that’s already confused about what’s real and what isn’t.”

“If he doesn’t know what’s real,” Ben said, “I’ll have to tell him. And he’ll believe me. It will be like playing the remember- game. Remember last night, Charlie, when you were sitting in the armchair? And you suddenly dozed off, you cried out in your sleep, you were having a nightmare about a house, a child coming out of a house...”

He had to write the letter very quickly because he knew Ben would be coming in soon to talk to him. He folded the letter six times, slipped it into an envelope, addressed the envelope to Police Headquarters and put it in the zippered inside pocket of his wind-breaker. Then he returned to his desk. The desk had been given to him when he was twelve and it was too small for him. He had to hunch way down in order to work at it but he didn’t mind this. It made him feel big, a giant of a man; a kindly giant, though, who used his strength only to protect, never to bully, so everyone respected him.

When Ben came in, Charlie pretended to be studying an advertisement in the back pages of a magazine.

“Dinner’s ready,” Ben said. “I brought home some chicken pies from the cafeteria and heated them up.”

“I’ll eat one if you want me to, Ben, but I’d just as soon not.”

“Aren’t you hungry?”

“Not very. I had chicken pie last night.”

“We had ravioli last night. Don’t you remember? I cut myself opening the can. Look, here’s the cut on my finger.”

Charlie looked at the cut with polite interest. “That’s too bad. You must be more careful. I wasn’t here last night for dinner.”

“Yes, you were. You ate too much and later you dozed off in Father’s armchair in the front room.”

“No, Ben, that was a lot of other nights. Last night was different, it was very different. First I took that delivery to the Forest Service. All that heat and dust up in the mountains gave me a headache so I went to the drug store for some aspirin.”

“The aspirin made you sleepy. That’s why you dozed—”

“I wasn’t a bit sleepy, I was hungry. I was going to take Louise some place to eat — I don’t mean eat her,” he added earnestly. “I mean, where we could both eat some food. Only she wasn’t at the library so I went by myself and had a chicken pie.”

“Where?”

“The cafeteria you manage. It wouldn’t be loyal to go anywhere else.”

“You picked a hell of a time to be loyal,” Ben said. “Did anyone see you?”

“They must have. There I was.”

“Did you speak to anyone?”

“The cashier. I said hello.”

“Did she recognize you?”

“Oh yes. She made a joke about how everyone had to pay around that joint, even the boss’s brother.”

That fixes it, Ben thought. If he’d planned every detail in advance he couldn’t have done a better job of lousing things up. “What time were you there?”

“I don’t know. I hate watching the clock, it watches me back.”

“What did you do after you finished eating?”

“Drove around, I told you that. I wanted some fresh air to clear the dust out of my sinuses.”

“You were home by ten o’clock.”

“No, I couldn’t have been. It was after ten when I saw—”

“You saw nothing,” Ben said harshly. “You were home with me by ten o’clock.”

“I don’t remember seeing you when I came in.”

“You didn’t. I was in bed. But I knew what time it was because I’d just turned out the light.”

“You couldn’t be mistaken, like about the ravioli?”

“The ravioli business was simply a device to get at the truth. I knew you’d been to the drug store and the library but I wanted you to recall those things for yourself. You did.”

“Not this other, though.”

“You were home by ten. I wasn’t asleep yet, I heard you come in. If anyone asks you, that’s what you’re to say. Say it now.”

“Please leave... leave me alone, Ben.”

“I can’t.” Ben leaned over the desk, his face white and contorted. “You’re in danger and I’m trying to save you. I’m going to save you in spite of yourself. Now say it. Say you were home by ten o’clock.”

“Will you leave me alone, then?”

“Yes.”

“You promise?”

“Yes.”

“I was home by ten o’clock,” Charlie repeated, blinking. “You cut yourself opening a can of ravioli. You were bleeding, you were bleeding all over the bloody kitchen. Let me see your cut again. Does it still hurt, Ben?”

“No.”

“Then what are you crying for?”

“I have a... a pain.”

“You shouldn’t eat highly spiced foods like ravioli.”

“No, that was a mistake.” Ben’s voice was a rag of a whisper torn off a scream. “I’ll try to make it up to you, Charlie.”

“To me? But it’s your pain.”

“We share it. Just like in the old days, Charlie, when we shared everything. Remember how my friends used to kid me about my little brother always tagging along? I never minded, I liked having you tag along. Well, it will be like that again, Charlie. I’ll drive you to work in the morning, you can walk over to the cafeteria and have lunch with me at noon—”

“I have my own car,” Charlie said. “And sometimes Louise and I prefer to have lunch together.”

“Louise’s lunch hour is going to be changed. It probably won’t jibe with yours anymore.”

“She didn’t tell me that.”

“She will. As for the car, it seems wasteful to keep two of them running when I can just as easily drive you wherever you want to go. Let’s try it for a while and see how it works out. Maybe we can save enough money to take a trip somewhere.”

“Louise and I are going to take a trip on our honeymoon.”

“That might not be for some time.”

“Louise said September, next month.”

“Well, things are a little hectic at the library right now, Charlie. There’s a chance she might not — she might not be able to get away.”

“Why does Louise tell you stuff before she tells me? Explain it to me, Ben.”

“Not tonight.”

“Because of your pain?”

“Yes, my pain,” Ben said. “I want you to give me your car keys now, Charlie.”

Charlie put his left hand in the pocket of his trousers. He could feel the outline of the keys, the round one for the trunk, the pointed one for the ignition. “I must have left them in the car.”

“I’ve warned you a dozen times about that.”

“I’m sorry, Ben. I’ll go and get them.”

“No. I will.”

Charlie watched him leave. He hadn’t planned it like this, in fact he had planned nothing beyond the writing of the letter. But now that he saw his opportunity he couldn’t resist it any more than a caged animal could resist an open gate. He picked up his windbreaker and went quietly through the kitchen and out of the back door.