Hare in March
Page 18
“… so if he comes,” Margaret was saying now, “you just won’t be able to have a fourth drink. Don’t imagine you can sneak one without John Hark noticing it!”
There was that flat, emphatic note to her voice that told Robert she would take time out to reach into her bag for a cigarette. She never lit a cigarette when she was making a point, not Margaret. Margaret knew what she was about; Margaret had definite ideas. Robert turned his head away from the road and looked at her very carefully, taking her in with a certain wonder. He saw her in profile, the pale blue chiffon scarf whipping her cheeks in the wind, the creamy beige crêpe dress hugging her body; at the indentation of her bosom, the large gold necklace he had bought her at Jay Thorpe—her cool, soft features familiar, all of them—familiar as his own. Still, an enigmatic sensation filled Robert Bowser when he looked at his wife. He had been married to her for over two decades, yet he could predict only her performance, the same way he could predict the performance of an adding machine, or the Lincoln, or the sump pump at their house. In no way could he predict what Margaret was thinking, or whether she could stray as far from their lives as he so often did in his thoughts.
“There’s a fifty-mile limit on this road,” Margaret said then. “You’re not nervous, are you? It’s all over now, Robert.”
“I wasn’t nervous. You mean about the directorship?” “Yes.”
“I wasn’t nervous about it.”
“There’s always a let-down after a build-up of anticipation. It’s very common. You’re probably a little depressed.”
“Am I?” He wondered if that were true, that he was depressed. The truth was, he decided, he felt nothing.
“Very common,” said Margaret. “A natural feeling.”
“Do you have it ever?”
“Everyone does, of course. I just wish you’d slow down. You’re driving too fast and we’ll get a ticket.”
Robert smiled to himself at her threatening him with the law.
Margaret said, “I don’t blame you for driving fast through this part of the trip, though. I wonder how people live like this. I suppose they don’t even know the difference. They’re too caught up with basics—making a living, paying for the television set, raising children they can ill afford—basics. Slow down, please, Robert. Why don’t we just exclude John Hark? We’ll invite him another time.”
It was a wretched landscape, full of paint-peeling diners and dilapidated houses built too close to the road; Tastee-Freeze stands, discount houses, oil drums for garbage, gas stations and billboards. There was a dump somewhere nearby, a stench from it, and smoke that hung over the area like a tired haze of hopelessness. Still, many, many times when Robert drove this route he felt not a repugnance like Margaret’s, but a fascination—a wonder—and oddly, something akin to desire—not for any one thing, certainly not for any one—but for another way of being. There was a house along this route, somewhere very near where they were, a particular house that always happened to Robert. That was the only way he could think to put it. It “happened” to him. He was watching for it now.
“Do you want to exclude John Hark?” said Margaret.
“So I can have a fourth drink before dinner?” A fourth, he thought, and perhaps a fifth … and he saw himself in a small cafe in Brazil. It was hot and the cool drinks tasted marvellous.
“You’ll feel a little festive when you return, Robert. Why shouldn’t you have a fourth drink? Last week when all this Baker business came up, you were having four and five before dinner. One night I counted five.”
“Were you worried?”
“Of course not! I’ve never once seen you intoxicated! You’re not a John Hark. It’s very simple.” “What is?”
“Don’t be picky, Robert. You know what I’m saying. I can’t tolerate drunkards, not John Hark’s sort. He gets very sloppy, Robert. You never do! It’s very simple.”
“Yes, I guess it is. Very simple.”
“Most things are,” said Margaret. “We just won’t ask him.”
It was precisely then that Robert saw the house, at the very moment Margaret made it definite that John Hark was not to attend their party.
It was a run-down, squat, two-story house, gray shingle, next to one of Route 22’s ubiquitous diners. The grass around it had not been cut in all the years Robert had been studying it. Many of the windows were broken. In front, the mailbox was damaged, so that the white container dangled off its post, upside down. In the side yard there was a rusty icebox, and on the front porch, bedsprings with a few coils popped. Perhaps this evening Robert noticed details he had not noticed before (he could not remember having seen the turned-over mailbox), but the house itself was the same and his feeling was the same. He knew the psychological name for his sensation was déjà vu—the feeling of having seen it before, and more—the feeling of hiving experienced it before. Lived in it? No, not that at all—experienced it was the only way he could think of it. Robert knew that the psychologists would point out that Robert had made the trip from Bucks County to New York and back countless times in the past fifteen years. He had probably seen the house, without thinking about it, for years, and only in recent years noticed it. Yet did that explain the sudden impact of shocking nostalgia that had overcome him the first time he had noticed it? And the same reaction, somewhat diluted by repetition, each time thereafter? The curious thing about it was that mixed with the nostalgia and the déjà vu was a sharp revulsion, a fear—a feeling that he had already experienced total degradation, and that the smell of it was in his nostrils and its taint all through him. At times he tried imagining himself living there, but he could not really visualize himself in the house. He could only wonder who would ever think to look there for Robert Bowser. It was before he had any reason to believe he would need a hideout. It was back in the years when he was in between risks, after he had left Brown & Forbes, and before he had become treasurer for King & Clary.
They drove beyond the house while Robert recalled those years. There had been opportunities, of course, and temptations. In Robert’s work there always were. Robert’s conceit was that he was selective and cautious—that he would not expend any energy on a project simply for the thrill of a gamble. Robert had a scorn for the petty gambler, the petty thief—the small mind whose ambition could be temporarily satiated by a lucky day at the racetrack or a successful venture through a bedroom window at night. The scorn was mixed with wonder as well—the same wonder Robert always felt when he observed people who had simply let go the rules, senselessly, flatly, and were facing the consequences. When he saw, in the tabloids, photographs of disheveled thugs who had been caught accosting their victims on city streets, in taxis, or hallways (usually with little more profit than ten or fifteen dollars), it was as though he were witness to their nakedness. He felt as though he had come across them walking around nude—a revulsion and a wonderment. What had ever made them think they could get away with it? In those years between risks, Robert asked himself that question often, and always with disgust for them, and for all get-rich-quickers. No, it took time and thought for the coup, and in the past five years, while Robert did not frame the thought exactly in his mind, part of his exhilaration was rooted in a dim awareness that he was not going for little things in a little way. No one would ever have reason—even now—to look in a house like that for Robert Bowser. That thought came to mind, and with it a strange inch of fear, and then Margaret’s voice brought him back to the present.
“I said, shall we have dinner at the Canal House when we get to New Hope, or shall I fix something from the freezer?”
Robert Bowser took hold of himself, let the past moments all go … even the near past and very pressing ones of his dilemma. He came full center to Right Now. Until Sunday night when the Varig jet left the ground, Right Now was the exigency. He must believe that and act in that belief. He was Margaret Bowser’s husband. They were driving home and trying to decide, en route, where to eat.
He said, “I’d rather eat at Chez
Odette, on the way into New Hope.”
He even thought of escargots Bourguignons, saw the shells, smelled the pungent odor of the garlic sauce; saw his hands beside the plate, reaching for the silver implements for spearing and shell gripping.
The only trace of strain was the beginning of a severe headache. He could feel the pressure, as though somewhere in his brain was the minute start of a crack, prelude to a gradual crumbling, as though somewhere in the depths of his mind everything would come apart suddenly, if he could not contain the pressure.
Read more of Intimate Victims
F+W Crime is committed to developing the past, present, and future of crime fiction in all of its forms. With widely-praised content at its core, F+W Crime offers readers a true community experience that crosses all spectrums of media, and boldly shares in the evolution of how a story can be told.
Visit us today for information on new authors, exclusive offers, and more!
fwcrime.com
This edition published by
Prologue Books
a division of F+W Media, Inc.
4700 East Galbraith Road
Cincinnati, Ohio 45236
www.prologuebooks.com
Copyright © 1966 by Vin Packer, Registration Renewed 1994
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
eISBN 10: 1-4405-3703-8
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-3703-5