Corkscrew

by Donald E. Westlake

  Wayne said, 'I'm Wayne Prentice, I'm the guy Bryce foisted off on you.'

  'Oh, that's who you are!' His expressions kept swerving, a kaleidoscope of different kinds of joy. 'I'm so glad you could make it,' he said.

  'So am I. It's a terrific play.'

  'Thank you.'

  Looking around, Wayne said, 'Bryce's ex-wife is here someplace, isn't she?'

  'Oh, Lucie! Sure, she's a buddy of Janet's. You don't know Lucie?'

  'Bryce and I hadn't seen each other in years, until just recently. I guess he started looking up old friends after the marriage died. Listen, I'd love to meet Lucie Proctorr, but I don't know how to go about it.'

  'Easiest thing in the world,' Wagner said. 'It's just, I tell you what, we won't mention you're a friend of Bryce's.'

  'Good idea. What if I know you,' Wayne suggested, 'because I called you one time to get some background about journalism for a novel I was writing.'

  'Perfect. Come on.'

  Lucie was in the kitchen, in a little cluster of people by the refrigerator, next to a door that had a stub of porch outside it and beyond that the darkness of offstage. Wagner waited his moment, and then said, 'Lucie, I want you to meet somebody.'

  She had a bird's alertness, Wayne noticed, in the way she turned her head, and in the brightness of her eyes. She stepped out of that conversation like stepping out of a tub. 'Yes?'

  'Lucie Proctorr, Wayne Prentice.'

  'How do you do?'

  'Wayne's a novelist, but he's all right.'

  'Oh, some novelists are all right,' she said, and grinned slightly at Wayne as she said, 'Are you a famous novelist, Mr Prentice?'

  'Oh, no,' he said, 'I'm just a door-to-door novelist, I sell books out of the trunk of my car.'

  'You must be a very persuasive salesman.'

  'I try to be.'

  'Sell me,' she said.

  He didn't follow. 'What?'

  'Sell me a book,' she said.

  'Excuse me,' Wagner said, being called away, but neither paid any attention.

  'Sell me your latest book,' she said.

  That would have been too complicated. He said, 'No, I'll make it easy on myself. I'll sell you my first book.'

  She watched him with amused keenness. 'Why is that easier?'

  'I was very enthusiastic then.'

  'Aren't you enthusiastic now?'

  'Sometimes. My first book was called The Pollux Perspective, and it was about two army men whose job is to safe-guard a doomsday machine. One of them decides it's a manifestation of God, and has to be protected at all costs, and the other decides it's Armageddon, and its release should not be thwarted. They both think of themselves as the good guy.'

  'Very arty,' she said.

  'Actually,' he said, 'I was trying to be very commercial. Blowing everything up, you know.'

  She looked thoughtful. 'What did you say that was called?'

  'The Pollux Perspective.'

  'But I've read that book!'

  Astonished, he said, 'You have?'

  'My husband had it. Ex-husband. Had it, probably still has it. Do you know him?'

  'Your husband?'

  'Ex-husband, or at least eventually. Bryce Proctorr.'

  'Oh, he's famous,' Wayne said. 'I don't think he sells books out of the trunk of his car.'

  'No, it might be better for him if he did,' she said. 'Would you fill my wineglass?'

  'Delighted,' he assured her, and carried it away, and filled both glasses.

  When he got back, she was in a different conversation, but she left it immediately, took her glass, and said, 'Thank you. The Pollux Perspective. Why aren't you famous, Mr Prentice? You're as good a writer as my former. Don't you push yourself?'

  'Maybe not enough,' he said.

  'Well, you're never going to get anywhere being a shrinking violet,' she told him. 'How many books have you published?'

  'Twelve.'

  'And still among the great unwashed. I think you should be ashamed of yourself.'

  'It might not be entirely my fault.'

  'All the losers say that,' she commented.

  He could not let her see him become annoyed. 'Have you been around a lot of losers?' he asked her.

  'Not for long. What are you working on now?'

  'A man whose brother disappears, and he goes looking for him. I think it'll turn out, what he's searching for is himself.'

  'Arty but commercial again?'

  'Lots of skulduggery,' he said. 'South American generals.'

  'Oh, don't we know all that?'

  'We don't know my guy and his brother.'

  'I'm not sure we need to know them,' she said. 'Sell it to me.'

  'Not here. Too much distraction.'

  Again, that sharp bird look; a bird of prey? 'Are you asking me for a date?'

  He hadn't been. She was so aggressive, so fast, that all he could do was struggle to find immediate answers. Being with her was like being in a tennis match, not having known you'd be expected to play.

  'Sure,' he said, because closer to her was where he would have to be, no matter what happened next. He remembered Bryce warning him that he had fallen in love with this woman once, and mightn't Wayne do the same? No. He'd said no before because of Susan, but now he could say no because of Lucie; she wasn't restful enough to fall in love with. You might lust after her, to see if it was possible to pin down with your cock that quicksilver quality, but that wouldn't be love.

  He said, 'Dinner next Monday?'

  'I'm busy Monday. Why not call me Tuesday?'

  'Because I don't know your number.'

  'Oh, you're about to know my number,' she said, laughing at him, 'and I do believe I'm about to know yours.'

  •

  Susan was waiting up when he got home.

  'I met her,' he said, and went to the kitchen for another glass of wine, and found Susan expectant in the living room when he got back. He sat down and said, 'Susan, I don't think I ought to talk about this from now on.'

  'Just tell me,' she said, 'did you like her?'

  'She's interesting but repellent,' he said.

  'Good.'

  He said, 'I think, Susan, it's time for us to go to bed and have a sexual encounter.'

  Amused, she said, 'So Lucie turned you on, did she?'

  'She reminded me how much you turn me on,' he said, which was almost the truth.

  And later, after Susan fell asleep, he lay thinking how that kind of woman could be a strong draw for a confident, high-powered personality like Bryce. She'd be a challenge to him, and he would never give up believing he was up to the challenge. But she would be relentless, there would never be any ceasefires with her, there was no way to bring that war to an end. Well, one.

  •

  Next day, in the mail, came four copies of a contract, between Bryce Proctorr and Tim Fleet, resident at this address. The wording was careful but straightforward. It described exactly the agreement Bryce had offered when they'd met. 'I notice,' he told himself, 'I get a quarter of any future earnings, subsidiary rights. Movie sales, see that? But that's okay. This is merely a passage through hell, that's all, like Jim Gregory's passage through Guatemala. If The Domino Doublet, or whatever Bryce changes it to, if it makes millions and millions of dollars, so what? Let him have three quarters, let him have it all. It wouldn't make a penny, if it didn't have Bryce's name on it in the first place. And after all, one way or another, it isn't about money anyway, is it?'

  Along with the contract had come a note on Bryce's small stationery:

  Dear Tim,

  Please sign all copies, keep one, send the other three to me. Send them when you think the time is right, and I'll carry them with me when I leave for California for a couple of weeks.

  I'm sure this collaboration will be a success for both of us.

  Yours,

  Bryce

  'California for a couple of weeks,' he echoed. 'Of course, to be a continent away when it happens.'

  In his office
, Wayne had a four-drawer gray metal filing cabinet, man height, beside his desk. He took from its second drawer a fresh unused manila folder and inserted the four copies of the contract and the note into it. Then he took from his wallet the torn off piece of Playbill on which, last night, Lucie Proctorr had written her name and phone number and address uptown on Broadway. He copied all that on to a card on his Rolodex, and then the Playbill scrap also went into the folder.

  He considered the folder for a while, trying to decide what heading to put on the tab, then at last left it blank. He slid it into the drawer between 'LEGAL' and 'MAGAZINES.' He'd know where to find it: 'LUCIE.'

  7

  For a week and a half, Bryce worked contentedly on Two Faces in the Mirror. It wasn't that he forgot his troubles, merely that they felt far away.

  Structurally, the book was quite good, though there was some time-frame business in the middle that could be plainer; he made it plain. Changing the tone and feel of the book from a Wayne Prentice novel to a Bryce Proctorr novel wasn't hard; instantly he knew how to phrase Wayne's thoughts in his own words.

  The third chapter, a very powerful mountainside near-death scene, was now the first chapter, with the rest adapted to fit, which was partly because Bryce thought it read better with that strong opening and partly because, if one of the few people who'd seen the book in its original form were to pick it up and start to read it, the story wouldn't seem instantly familiar. If it felt familiar later on, that would be all right; most novels remind us of other novels.

  On the weekend, he could be with Isabelle. A divorced woman of thirty-four, soft and round with lustrous black hair, she was the daughter of a Spanish diplomat who'd retired back to Spain not long ago from some sort of long-term post at the United Nations. Isabelle's ex-husband was Spanish, had divorced her in Spain, and had custody of their three children, all under twelve. This was Isabelle's ongoing agony and struggle, the way Lucie was Bryce's, and they could find temporary respite and forgetfulness and comfort with one another. In Madrid, Isabelle's father was doing his best to get the case reopened, but for some reason the Catholic Church seemed to be on the ex-husband's side; Bryce thought it smarter not to delve too deeply into that situation.

  They traveled separately to and from Connecticut every week-end, she driving up Friday morning and back Monday afternoon. She was a copywriter for an ad agency, working mostly on catalog copy for manufacturers of faux country-style clothing. Her arrangement with her boss was that she could work at home — at Bryce's home, actually — Fridays and Mondays, so long as she was available to have material faxed to her and to fax copy back. Otherwise, it was merely expected that her long weekends would leave her refreshed, with new copy in hand.

  Bryce took the train. He used to drive, used to love it, but three winters ago he and Lucie had been a minor part of a multi-car pile-up during bad rain on Interstate 84, and the sight of the much greater destruction just beyond his own battered BMW — the one he'd gotten for doing the ad — had left him fearful for a long time. He was enjoying too good a life to want to throw it away. And he wasn't a commuter in the normal sense, he didn't have a job with time pressure at the New York end, so why not conveniently, comfortably, safely take the train?

  Monday morning he took the train, a later one than the rush-hour people, and again he had a dual seat to himself, so he could continue to go over Two Faces in the Mirror. Occasionally, on the train, somebody would ask him for an autograph, but most riders on this line were more sophisticated than that. He could see them recognize him from time to time, but they left him alone.

  He had done almost all he could with the manuscript. It had been a good novel to begin with, and he felt he'd made it better. Really, all that was needed now was for Wayne to return the contract.

  He had. Bryce got home just before lunchtime, and Saturday's mail was waiting for him, and there was the envelope with 'Prentice' on the return address. Manila envelope, manuscript size, not too thick. Priority Mail sticker.

  He saw it, on the table just inside the front door where Jorge, the doorman, always put his mail when he was away, and he felt an instant of terrible fear. He's done it! he thought. She's dead!

  He didn't open the envelope then, nor look at the rest of his mail, but went beyond it, feeling weak, knees shaky, and sat in the living room, his back to the view of Central Park. He was trembling, and his throat felt constricted.

  No, she isn't dead, he told himself. Calm down. He knew what I meant when I mentioned California in the note. She's still alive.

  When he had himself convinced that the only reason he'd experienced that moment of dread was because he'd thought Prentice might have killed her before Bryce could establish his California alibi, he got up and went to the kitchen and found in the refrigerator an open container of plain yogurt. That would settle his stomach. Lucie hadn't liked it when he'd eat yogurt directly from the carton, then put the carton back in the refrigerator, but there was no one around to complain now.

  Back in the entryway, he glanced at the rest of the mail without opening it or caring about it, then at last opened the manila envelope from Wayne Prentice, and there they were, the three copies of the contract, with an extra blank sheet of typing paper that said only, in computer printout:

  Enjoy California.

  There were things to do, the travel agent to be called, other people, packing to do, Isabelle. Could she come to be with him for a while in California? But instead of doing any of that, he put in a call to lawyer Bob, and was told that he was with a client. 'Would you ask him to call me as soon as he's free? It's sort of urgent.'

  She said she would, and he went to the bedroom to lay out the things he'd want to take to Los Angeles with him. Too early to phone people there, and he didn't yet feel like calling the travel agent.

  The thing is, what if it wasn't necessary? If this divorce thing were going to end soon, then all he and Wayne would have to do would be wait a few weeks, maybe a month at the outside, and then turn in Two Faces in the Mirror without the threat of having to give half the money to Lucie. Once the agreement was signed, everything could work just like before, but without that one dangerous step.

  If we don't have to take that one dangerous step, he told himself reasonably, it would be better. For us. For me.

  It was almost an hour before lawyer Bob returned the call. His voice was distinctive, deep but rough and raspy, as though he could almost sing bass in a barbershop quartet except he wouldn't be quite musical enough. He said, 'Helen says it's urgent.'

  'Well, I don't know about urgent,' Bryce said. 'The thing is, I'm going to LA for a while, possible movie deals—'

  'I'd hold them up, if you can.'

  'Oh, I know, we can do that,' Bryce assured him. 'The thing is, before I leave, I was wondering, is there any chance at all we're gonna see daylight soon?'

  'Daylight?' Lawyer Bob didn't seem to understand the concept.

  'I mean, closure,' Bryce said. 'Is there any possibility, in the next few weeks, we'll be signing those papers, getting this thing behind us?'

  'Not a chance,' lawyer Bob said. 'Next few weeks? I thought you understood, Bryce, it isn't going to happen this year. Spring, if we're lucky.'

  'Oh, Jesus, Bob, it's so—'

  'Bryce, we've still got unresolved issues before the court. State of residency, for instance. Your copyrights exist where you are. If you were a Connecticut resident, and Lucie remained a New York resident throughout, can a New York court distribute Connecticut property? In some cases, yes. In this case, it's not so clear-cut.'

  'I thought we resolved that,' Bryce said. 'I used the Connecticut house as my residence because Connecticut didn't used to have an income tax, and Lucie kept the New York apartment as her residence because it was in her name and they couldn't go crazy with the rent on us.'

  'They're appealing the decision,' lawyer Bob said. 'It's really very dry and dull, Bryce, you don't want to hear every gory detail, but believe me, at the end of the day, we'll p
revail.'

  'The end of the day.'

  'Frankly, I think one reason they're stalling is because they're waiting for your next book to be published.'

  'Bastards.'

  'At some point, not yet,' lawyer Bob said, 'we can make that argument to the court, and I believe it will be persuasive. Until then, we just have to go through the process, that's all.'

  'Not this year.'

  'Next year. Almost guaranteed.'

  'Almost?' He couldn't believe lawyer Bob was serious, but on the other hand, the man had no known sense of humor.

  'These things are unpredictable, Bryce,' lawyer Bob said. 'Mostly because people are not at their most rational in a divorce. But my guess on this case, barring anything unforeseen, is sometime in the spring. Thank your lucky stars you two didn't have children, that would really drag it out.'

  Like Isabelle's children in Spain. There's always somebody worse off than you, Bryce told himself, and an image of Lucie flashed by, immediately suppressed. 'Thanks, Bob,' he said. 'I just wanted to know where I stand.'

  'Pretty much where you stood, Bryce.'

  'Got it,' Bryce said.

  While he was looking up the travel agent's number, he thought, call Lucie? He had the phone number at the apartment she'd taken. Gall her, say to her, why don't we just get this over with, go on with our lives? You tell your lawyer to quit stalling, I'll tell my lawyer to quit stalling, we'll just end it, no more bitterness, start thinking about the future for a change.

  No. He could hear her voice, he could hear her laugh, he could hear her scorn. Open himself up to her like that? She'd slice him in two.

  Besides, there are phone records. There shouldn't be a record of a call from him to her just before…

  The travel agent's number. He dialed it.

  8

  'I'll be going out tomorrow night,' Wayne said.

  Susan almost asked him where he'd be, he could see it in the light of the candles as they ate dinner together, as usual, that Tuesday evening. He could see the question form, and then see her find the answer on her own, and she looked down at her plate, as though embarrassed, and said, in a low voice, 'Will you be late?'