Ex Officio

by Donald E. Westlake

  Robert, coming up behind her, said, “I would have liked to find a place closer to you, but Eustace is just too small a town. I didn’t want to be surrounded by people wondering who I was and what I was doing.”

  “Chambersburg isn’t bad,” she said. “You’re only seven miles from Eustace. Remind me to write down the phone number before I leave.” She turned away from the window, smiling at him and saying, “It’s nice to have you so handy, you know, no matter what the reason.”

  They were standing close together. He reached out and put his hands on her waist, not to draw her in but merely to hold her there, the touch gentle yet firm against her body, making her feel very slender and light and delicate. It was a soothing touch, and at the same time exciting, and she was surprised to feel the languorous warmth start to build within her. That wasn’t what she’d come here for.

  As though he could read her mind—or perhaps her eyes—he smiled at her and said, “I keep telling myself I shouldn’t be thinking about sex now, there must be something wrong with me. There’s serious important things I’m supposed to think about.”

  “I know,” she said. Her voice had become more languorous, too, and her eyelids seemed heavy. Her body was heavy and light at the same time, like a white porcelain jar full of honey.

  “I must be shallow as hell,” he said. He still had made no move to draw her in.

  “You must be,” she said. She knew her smile was lewd, she could feel the lustfulness of her expression, and the awareness only made her smile the more, and the more lewdly.

  “Did I ever tell you,” he said, “that the afternoon is my favorite time for sex?”

  “You’ll have to get a night job,” she said, and their smiling mouths touched in a kiss that began as gentle but developed a quick urgency. He whispered her name, his lips moving against her lips, and she stroked her palms and fingertips luxuriously down his long back.

  He was finished undressing before she was, and strode across the room to be sure the door was locked. He was such a large man, wide but flat, the football player still evident in him, that it always surprised her to see him, when naked, move with grace and agility. Somehow a body that strong looking, that solid looking, should move more slowly, more solemnly.

  He came back smiling, his hand outstretched for her hand, to lead her to the bed in mock solemnity. He flipped the spread and blankets down, shook his head at the pale sheet, and said, “You know this thing is going to squeak.”

  “Do you care?”

  “It worries me terribly,” he said, and pushed her shoulder so that she fell on her side on the bed. She twisted around to lie full length, and he dropped beside her, pulling the top sheet up over them. “Come under here,” he said, ducking his head under the sheet. “I have secrets to tell you.”

  The bed didn’t squeak, it rapped, like a loose shutter in a high wind, but more rhythmically. And they played beneath the sheet like children playing hooky, even though this was the day of the big test.

  At different moments Evelyn would think of the problems waiting outside this warm white cave, but each time she impatiently pushed the thoughts aside. Later, later. The cave filled with the musk of their possession, of it and of one another, and the shutter rattled faster and faster in the wind, and she made a long wind-murmur of completion and contentment and delight against the warm column of his throat, and stroked the rigid muscles of his back, and the wind subsided, the shutter was silent, the cave collapsed around them in warm white folds of sheet.

  He was the first to move, rolling onto his side next to her, but she turned and put one arm over him, murmuring, “Don’t get up yet, don’t go away.”

  “Fine,” he said. “Let me pull up the blanket.”

  She wriggled upward, and the covers covered her to the nose, and she lay pressed against him, her head supported by the pillow of his shoulder. She could feel the chest movement of his breathing, she could faintly hear his heartbeat, and his near arm was protectively and reassuringly around her.

  But her mind had started to tick again. She frowned and fretted, but hooky was over for now, her mind wanted to be active, the weight of their real-life situation had overtaken her again and there was no escaping it.

  “Drat,” she muttered, and rubbed her head against his shoulder.

  He said, “You, too?” He sounded amused.

  “All I want to do is lie here, but my stinking brain won’t let me.”

  “You want to know about the meeting.”

  “Yes, damn it.” She pushed away from him and sat up. “I’ve been wanting to know about it for two days. But I did enjoy just being here.”

  His head was propped on both pillows, and he was smiling indulgently at her. She moved as though to get up, but his hand moved under the blankets and cupped her thigh. “You don’t have to get out of bed,” he said. “We can talk right here.”

  “All right. But give me a pillow.”

  He laughed and sat up and arranged the two pillows against the scarred wooden headboard so they could sit side by side. Then he said, “The meeting didn’t come up with any answers. Mostly it was getting people like Harrison and Bradford, Jr. to—”

  “BJ,” she said.

  “Right. Mostly, it was getting them to believe it. Then it was decided I should take a leave of absence from school and come down here, to be handy in case brawn was needed. Also, Howard is going to move in at the estate, in case brains are needed.”

  “You have brains,” she said. She didn’t like him to denigrate himself, even in fun.

  “Okay, so Howard’s there for the brawn. Also—”

  “Oh, phooey.”

  Grinning, he reached over and tousled her hair. “Stop interrupting.”

  “I definitely will,” she said, mock solemn. “At once.”

  “Good. Also, Dr. Holt is going to find some excuse to come give Bradford a check-up.”

  “He doesn’t need an excuse,” she said. “I made Bradford promise to have a check-up before leaving. He’s supposed to call Joe, but he keeps stalling about it.”

  “Lean on him,” Robert advised.

  “I will.”

  “And I’ll call Holt and tell him not to worry about an excuse, but to wait for the call.”

  “Good. What else?”

  “We want to know how Bradford’s communicating with the Chinese,” he said. “I got the impression Wellington was going to look into that. Also Howard will see what he can find out after he moves in. He’ll probably want you to help.”

  “Whatever I can do. What about when Bradford decides it’s time to go?”

  “No decision yet. No ideas. We can’t even just quietly lock him away in the attic or something, because, as Howard pointed out, Bradford’s still a public man, he’s expected to still make public statements from time to time. If he suddenly became unavailable, some enterprising reporter would want to find out why.”

  “That’s so awful anyway,” she said. “Locking him away somewhere. That would kill him, it really would. I think humiliation would kill Bradford faster than anything else on earth.”

  “You could be right. Anyway, everybody’s supposed to think about the problem and hope somebody will come up with something in time.”

  “What if nobody does?”

  “We’re not asking that question yet. Oh, yes, and they want you to tell Bradford you’re going with him.”

  “Tell him I am? Why?”

  “So he’ll keep you up on his plans.”

  She frowned. “I don’t think he will anyway, not the details. But all right. Except, how do I get him to believe it? He thinks now I’m going to stay because of you.”

  He shrugged and said, “I suppose you’ll have to tell him we had a fight.”

  “Over what?”

  “Over him. I said he was crazy or something, and that did it.”

  “I’m not good at lying like this,” she said. “The whole idea of it makes me scared.”

  “I know,” he said, smiling reassuri
ngly at her, and reached out to pat her hand, saying, “It shouldn’t be for very long.”

  “God, I hope not. Was that all from the meeting?”

  “So far. Has there been anything else from Bradford?”

  “No. He spends almost all his time in the library these days, reading. He isn’t doing any work on The Coming of Winter at all.”

  “That’s the next volume in the memoirs?”

  “Yes. I don’t think he’s gone near it in over a month. Howard has a perfectly legitimate excuse to come stay for a while.”

  “I suppose Bradford’s too interested in his future now,” Robert said. “He doesn’t care very much about the past any more.”

  Evelyn drew her knees up, still covered by the blankets, and leaned forward to rest her folded forearms on them. “Joe thinks he’s had a stroke, doesn’t he?”

  “He isn’t sure yet, but he thinks so, yes.”

  “The real thing this time, not the little ones like he had before.”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s awful,” she said. She looked at him, feeling very strongly now a sense of the waste involved, the waste of a valuable man, a fine brain. “There’s nothing to be done, if he’s right,” she said. “Is there? The damage can’t be fixed.”

  “That’s the way I understand it,” he said, and in his troubled expression she saw that he empathized with what she was feeling.

  “He’ll always be like this, from now on,” she said. “Erratic, full of impractical schemes, a little impatient with people slower than he is, and never knowing there’s anything wrong.”

  “Yes.”

  “What if we told him?” She peered into Robert’s eyes, as though he really might have the saving answer somewhere inside his head. “What if we said, Bradford, this is what’s happened to you, this is why you’re thinking these things, acting this way, what then?”

  “He wouldn’t believe you,” Robert said. “I’m sorry, Evelyn, but he’d just think you were lying for an ulterior motive, he’d think you were simply trying to thwart him.”

  “I hate this,” she said, and found, to her surprise and annoyance, that she was crying.

  At once he drew her in against himself, his arms around her. “I know,” he whispered. “I know, I know.”

  “I hate it,” she said bitterly, words muffled against his chest as she held him tight, clutching him close because he too was impermanent, because everything ended, all good things became bad and stopped. “I hate it,” she said in helpless anger, “I hate it, I hate it, I hate it.”

  ii

  THAT EVENING, AFTER PUTTING Dinah to bed, she went to the library to talk to Bradford. She’d put it off as long as she could, but now the only thing to do was get it over with. Not letting herself pause for second thoughts, she walked into the library, shutting the door behind her, and said, “I’ve made up my mind.”

  Tonight he was reading a book called China After Mao, by a well-known reporter from The New York Times, in a pre-publication copy sent to him by the publisher’s publicity department. Books were constantly being sent to Bradford, but only rarely did he respond with a comment they could use in their advertising. Now he put a green leather bookmark in to keep his place, closed the book on his lap and said, “About staying?”

  “About going,” she said. The words stuck in her throat, then, until she blurted them out: “I want to go with you, Bradford.”

  He was surprised, and showed it. “With me? Are you sure?”

  She turned away, looking for the other chair, and sat down, doing so partly because nervousness was making her weak but also because she needed a distraction, an excuse not to meet his eye.

  Bradford was saying, “I didn’t expect this, Evelyn. I was resigned to going alone.”

  “I couldn’t have you leave by yourself,” she said, and though what she was saying was a part of a larger lie, there was emotional truth behind it. She did care for him very much, she couldn’t let him journey out into the darkness without her. With that kernel of truth within the lie, it became possible to look at him again, to look at his face and show her own.

  He said, of course, “What about Robert?”

  She had rehearsed for hours a long explanation about a fight, Robert having said bad things about Bradford and so on, showing himself to be not really interested in her in any long-range way, but now that the moment had come she just couldn’t say it. It was embarrassing to tell such a story, but that wasn’t the only reason, or even the main one. With some sort of instinctive mystic fear, she recoiled from putting it into words because it might then come true, and she would have lost Robert because of words out of her own mouth.

  But she had to say something. She hesitated, feeling the silence, feeling Bradford’s eyes on her, knowing that Bradford’s mind—however altered—was still keen, and she moved her hands vaguely, trying to find a way to say what she was unable to say, and growing more and more frightened that her silence would reveal to him the truth.

  But he misinterpreted her hesitation, saying, “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. There was trouble between you, eh?”

  “Yes,” she said. She almost smiled with her sense of relief; he had absorbed the story without her having to say the words.

  “Nothing that can be fixed up?” His concern for her was obvious, and real, and touching.

  “It can’t be fixed up,” she said. She didn’t know what expression her face should carry, but the strain of indecision must itself have given her a look that matched Bradford’s idea of what had happened, so that he remained deceived.

  He said, “Are you sure? This isn’t just a lover’s quarrel.”

  “No. It’s over for good, I’m sure of it.” Now that the lie had been communicated to him, it became easier for her to speak of it, it became only play-acting and didn’t count.

  “If that’s true,” he said, “I have mixed emotions. I know you cared for Robert, I know he could have been important to you, and I’m sorry it had to come to an end.”

  “Well, it was better to end now, I guess,” she said. Should she act more depressed about it? Or perhaps angry. Or maybe merely cold and impersonal would be best. She didn’t really have an attitude planned, she was improvising from step to step and was constantly afraid she was about to say something or do something that would strike a wrong note and ignite his suspicions.

  But it hadn’t happened yet, because he said, “On the other hand, you know how much I was hoping you’d come with me, so I can’t help being glad that it has ended and you will come.”

  “I’m glad, too, in a way,” she said. “I mean, I’m glad the split happened now, and not after you left without me.”

  “So that leaves only the one last question,” he said.

  “When we leave.”

  “Oh, no. I know when we’ll be leaving, approximately. The question is, what about Dinah?”

  “Dinah?” For just a second, Evelyn was so disoriented that she thought Bradford meant his dead wife, but then she realized he had to mean the living Dinah, his four-year-old great-granddaughter. But what about her? “I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

  “There’s no question in your mind?”

  “Question? No. Question about what?”

  “Do you intend to bring her with us, is that it?”

  “Bring—” Astonishment blanked Evelyn’s mind completely.

  “Because if you do,” Bradford went on, quiet and earnest, “are you sure that’s the best for her? I’m not sure you’ve given this enough thought. You and I are at an age where we can decide our own lives, but Dinah’s a child. If she comes with us, she’ll be raised in an alien culture, she may never feel that she truly belongs anywhere. She may grow up to hate us both.”

  “I see,” Evelyn said slowly, trying to think about this new development. Because this was all make-believe, it was only play-acting, she had never even considered Dinah. But of course Bradford thought it was all real, so he would consider all t
hese other elements.

  Bradford was saying, “But could you bear to leave her behind? I suspect you haven’t thought about this. You’ll have to, you know. And you may decide to change your mind again, you may decide it would be best after all if you stayed here. For Dinah’s sake.”

  “No,” she said firmly. “I want to go with you, that’s definite.”

  “Then what about Dinah? Do you want her to come with us, or to stay here? I’m sure Howard and Grace would be happy to take her.”

  Evelyn had no idea what to answer. Suddenly the conversation had become a trap, a trick question to expose the fact that she was lying. Which answer would be suspicious, and which would not? She tried to imagine herself truly in the situation he thought she was in, tried to imagine she really was leaving this country forever to go live behind the Bamboo Curtain with Bradford. Would she want to bring little Dinah into that exile? Could she bear to leave the child behind?

  It was no good. The situation wasn’t possible, she couldn’t visualize herself in it, she couldn’t begin to guess what her response would be. She finally had to shake her head and say, “I don’t know. I’m sorry, I just don’t know.”

  “There’s still a few days,” he said. “If you want her to come along, she can travel on your passport. If you want her to stay, it just so happens that Howard is going to be here.”

  She wasn’t supposed to know anything about that. She said, “He is?”

  “He phoned this afternoon while you were out. He insists on coming here for a week or two, he wants me to work on The Coming of Winter. As though I had time to think about the past now. I tried to talk him out of it, but you know how Howard is.”

  “Yes,” she said, allowing herself a small smile because Bradford would think it referred to Howard.

  “I didn’t want him to get suspicious,” Bradford went on, “so finally I said yes, he could come, and he’s driving out tomorrow.”

  “With Grace and the children?”

  “No, just by himself. What we can do, if you decide to leave Dinah, is leave Howard a letter explaining the situation and asking him to take over the child’s guardianship. You know Grace would be happy to do it.”