Necessity

by Brian Garfield

  “He’s a nice cop,” she invents, “believe it or not. Poor as a churchmouse. He’s got three kids by the former wife. Adorable brats.”

  She’s thinking: How amazing I ever thought of making the gift of my friendship to Diane. What a pathetic creature—her boundaries defined by pretentious brand names and that Park Avenue shrink with his clientele of Valium addicts. You could trade a hundred Dianes for one Charlie Reid or even one Marian or Doyle Stevens and you’d still be incomparably ahead of the game.

  But in those days you didn’t know any better. You had no Marian, no Doyle, no Charlie to compare her with.

  You haven’t missed Diane once. Or any of that crowd. And here you’re already missing the Stevenses and you feel like hell about Charlie even though you’ll see him again within twenty-four hours.

  My God. How is it we become so damned valuable to one another—so painfully important?

  Into the phone she says quietly, “By the way, do you remember Stan what-was-his-name, the one who published those fashion magazines?”

  “I remember him.” Diane’s voice has gone chill. “What about him?”

  “I just got a glimpse of somebody who looks just like him,” she lies. “Do you ever see him any more?”

  “No.” Very curt now.

  “Too bad. Must have been terrific while it lasted. They say he’s a real stud.”

  “I wouldn’t know about that.”

  “Sure you would. You used to meet him in the afternoons in that apartment he keeps on the floor above his offices. You had what they call a torrid affair with him for nearly a year. It always amazed me Jack never found out about it.”

  Diane’s voice is nearly inaudible now. “How’d you know about that?”

  “I did print work up there before we all met. I saw you in the building several times. You didn’t know me then—you wouldn’t have recognized me.”

  “You never said anything …”

  “I know how Jack is about that sort of thing.”

  “He’d break my arms and legs. Just for openers.”

  “You must have known that when you were seeing the guy.”

  “Of course I did. But that was part of the fun of it. I mean, nothing’s fun if you don’t take a few chances, right? I mean, right now you’re taking a hell of a chance just calling me on the telephone—you know that.”

  “I’m pretty sure you won’t tell anybody about it. You won’t mention I called. You haven’t heard from me at all.”

  “Well of course, Matty. If that’s what you want.”

  “If Bert finds me because of anything you might let drop—I hate to do this, dear, but you understand I might have to talk to Jack about you and Stan.”

  There’s a beat of silence; an audible indrawn breath; finally Diane says, “I see.”

  “I thought you’d understand. I’ll probably call again sometime.” She puts on a Texas drawl: “You have fun now, y’hear?” And hangs up.

  Turning away from the phone she’s feeling bleak and angry with herself. All right: you were never truly friends; you never liked Diane. World’s largest aggregation of expensive make-up. Brings a whole new meaning to the word “shallow.” Always primping in mirrors. Flirting with anything in pants—including Bert—whenever she was out of Jack’s sight and thought she could get away with it.

  All the same it’s a cheap shot: a shabby way to treat a woman who’s never done you any harm.

  But it’ll keep her quiet. And you’ve accomplished what you came here to do: you’ve confirmed that Ellen is at the cabin.

  She looks up at the airport clock. Forty minutes to spare before the flight to San Francisco.

  She’s thinking: Charlie, you may not be a cop with three adorable kids but I do believe you’re big enough to dismantle Bert by hand. Question is, would you have the guts for it?

  39 The feel of his body is good. He’s as accomplished a lover as she might have expected: relaxed, confident.

  She could close her eyes and imagine anyone. Replace Charlie in her fantasies with someone else. But she doesn’t want to. She covets no one but Charlie.

  She knows it is a perilous way to feel. The danger signals are up; these qualms are sounding the alarm.

  At the moment she just doesn’t care.

  She watches him, watches everything he does. She wants his hands and his mouth to be all over her. It’s been so long since …

  But finally there’s no more time for languid reflection. Accelerating sensation whirls her. She’s losing her bearings. Afraid at first; but she abandons herself to it and rising ardor becomes a hungering breathless impatience: she craves him with an unsuspected greedy voraciousness.

  She hears herself cry out, full voice. It is an impetuous sound of vehement joy: the frenzied triumph of an escape to freedom.

  Climax.

  “Oh God, Charlie. Oh God.”

  40 On the plane to Chicago he’s businesslike: plans, routes, timing. But then impulsively he seizes her hand, kisses her fingertips, gives her an astonishingly shy smile.

  Christ, this is no good. What have I got myself into?

  The steward comes by, topping up coffee cups, and the captain’s voice blares from what sounds like a torn speaker: “For you passengers on the right side of the plane, we’ve got Lake Tahoe coming up a few miles to the south in just about a minute here.”

  She says, “Story of my life. I’m always on the wrong side of the plane to see anything.”

  “I’ll fly you over Tahoe any time. After we get back.”

  It makes her look away. Broken clouds below the window; the mountains are a deep green, almost black.

  He says, “You still haven’t told me why you went and changed your hair. I liked it better before.”

  She is thinking: what if I level with him? Why not tell him the truth? The whole truth and nothing but the truth. Charlie’ll listen. He’ll understand.

  She turns to look at him. He’s got his nose in his coffee. She studies his face. Her scrutiny draws his attention, then his frown. He says, “What’s the matter, my pretty?”

  She shakes her head in reply and looks out the window again.

  I’ll tell him, she decides. But after Ellen’s free and safe.

  41 Connections are not the best and it is after dark by the time they arrive in Plattsburgh. And it’s starting to rain.

  They check into a Holiday Inn as Mr. and Mrs. Charles Reid. Her pulse is racing—not because of the deception at the registration desk but because Ellen is hardly thirty miles from here and by tomorrow night at this time with a little luck it all will be accomplished: reunited and the dangers behind them.

  If all goes well.

  He carries the bags into the room and kicks the door shut behind him. “We mustn’t keep meeting like this.” He sets the bags down. “Lovey dove, you want to get a drink and some dinner or do you just want to get laid?”

  Sex ought to be the farthest thing from her mind right now. So many details to think about …

  She reaches for his hand. “Undress me. We can eat and drink later.”

  42 It’s an atavistic hunger. She can’t remember feeling this way before. She can’t get enough of him. They make love before dinner and again after dinner; and with the dawn she’s at him again, pestering him until he wakes up laughing and takes her in the massive circle of his arms.

  But it’s subdued this time and as she lies beside him catching her breath she recognizes the thing that has been disturbing her: the rattle of a hard steady rain on the roof overhead.

  He peels the blind back from the window. It’s sheeting down out there. Reaching for the phone he gives her a glance expressive of quizzical distaste.

  He talks and listens, hangs it up and leaves his hand at rest on the cradled receiver. He glances at her. “Stationary low. The front’s stalled right here.”

  “Then we can’t fly today.”

  “Not even a balloon.”

  “What about tomorrow?”

  “God knows.
What happens if we can’t fly until the weekend?”

  “I don’t know. Probably Bert and his crowd will arrive from the city Thursday afternoon. For the long weekend.”

  “So it’ll be harder to take Wendy out of there.”

  Feeling absurdly unconcerned she says, “But it’s only Wednesday morning. It can’t rain forever. Come here.”

  He doesn’t move. He sits on the edge of the bed with one hand propped stiff-arm against the phone; he’s looking down at her over his shoulder and he says, “I feel as if I’ve wandered into one of those one-act plays that nobody understands. It’s time for you to trust me.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Tell me what’s going on. Tell me what you’ve got in mind. In full.”

  She says, “If we don’t show up on time you’re free to take off without us. If we do, you can fly us to Canada. That’s all you have to do.”

  “Just a taxi driver.”

  “I just don’t want to get you involved.”

  “I’m involved, honeybunch. I’m involved.” He hikes a hip back on the bed and lightly with a fingertip begins to trace rosettes around her nipple. In a musing voice he says, “The minute old Bert knows we’ve used a plane he’ll be on the horn to every airfield around. We’ll have no place to set down. You sure you’ve thought this out, sugar doll?”

  “We won’t land at an airfield. You’ll pick a farm or a country road. Up in Quebec Province somewhere. Drop us there and take off again, by yourself.”

  “What happens to you and Wendy?”

  “We’ll walk. Hitchhike. If we pick our spot sensibly it won’t take long to get to the nearest city. Wendy and I will lose ourselves in the crowd. We’ll take our time back to California. Please don’t worry about it—we’ll be fine.”

  To prevent him from asking more questions she hurries right on: “You can fly back to Vermont or New Hampshire. Land in a field and tell the farmer you had engine trouble—ask if you can leave the plane for a couple of days until you can get a mechanic out to fix it. Then you could make your way to Boston or Albany and drop a postcard to the people you rented the plane from—tell them where to find it. And then,” she lies, “we’ll meet you in Los Angeles.”

  His fingertip draws a line from her throat to her belly. She reaches for him. “I’d like to make love now.”

  He lets her pull him toward her. His face looms above hers. Not altogether admiringly he says, “You’re kind of a clever bitch.”

  “Trying to save my kid. Necessity,” she says. “You know. The mother of invention.”

  They make love in oddly affectionate silence. But afterward he’s still got the knucklebone of suspicion in his teeth and he won’t let it go: he stands at the window and glowers at the rain. “You want to tell me the truth now about you and your kid and your husband?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I get the feeling the truth is you just took a walk. There aren’t any child custody rulings, are there? Did you ever file for divorce?”

  She broods at him. “What gives you that idea?”

  “Your evasiveness, mostly, and a picture I’m compositing of your husband. The macho deer hunting stuff, the way you’ve gone to such extremes to cover your tracks—maybe I’m making unwarranted assumptions but he doesn’t strike me as a guy who’d take kindly to being served with a divorce action.”

  “You’re very perceptive, Charlie.”

  “Yeah. But you’re going to let me go right on wondering, aren’t you.”

  “I just don’t want to get you in unnecessary trouble,” she says. “Trust me.”

  “I do, my little valentine. Question is, when are you going to vice the versa?”

  43 He awakens her with soft kisses to her forehead and the tip of her nose. “Rise and shine, love of my life. I want to have a look at this crate we’re renting.”

  “What’s it like out?”

  “Grey. Dewy. Clearing up.”

  He climbs out of bed and she watches him pad to the bathroom. She lies back with her eyes shut, listening to the splash of the shower and watching a display of bright fireworks explode across the insides of her eyelids; she is thinking this ought to be a moment of guilt because she oughtn’t to feel so bloody good: it seems somehow a betrayal. This has got to be Ellen’s day …

  But why shouldn’t it be my day too?

  She sits up, beaming. “It’s going to work. I know it is. Nothing can go wrong today.”

  Filled with adrenaline she goes charging into the bathroom, singing at the top of her voice, and opens the frosted glass door and climbs into the shower with him. Charlie laughs at her and she tickles his ribs and in retaliation he’s all over her, soaping her down, sliding his hands over her body.

  She reaches up to clasp her hands behind his neck; she stands back at arms’ length and lets him look down at her and she feels good when he likes what he sees.

  He has been full of quiet passion: considerate and attentive and easy with a confidence that is not yet quite proprietary.

  “You like my boobs, Charlie?”

  “I do love them.”

  “You don’t think they’re too big or too small or too high or too low or something?”

  “Passion flower, your boobs are the most perfect little boobs I’ve ever seen in my life. Just absolutely positively perfect.”

  “What do you mean little, you son of a bitch?”

  Laughter explodes from him. They struggle for the soap.

  When he’s finished shaving and she’s putting on makeup she says, “There are some things I’ve got to buy in town. Child things. You know. Diapers and such. I don’t imagine we want wet upholstery in the airplane. I’ll take a taxi. Meet you at the airfield no later than ten-thirty.”

  “All right. That’ll give me time to do the paperwork, make sure the crate’s topped up and ready to go.”

  He’s dressed now. Flying boots and khaki chinos, a lumberjack sort of shirt. He finishes shoving things in his suitcase and comes to her; he rests his hands on her bare shoulders and watches her in the mirror. She leans her head back against his abdomen.

  “Are you going now?”

  “Get dressed and close up your suitcase and I’ll take it with me.”

  “I feel strange, Charlie. Like there’s something wrong with me. I ought to be scared to death right now and worried about my kid. I just want to leap back in bed with you.”

  “Natural enough, honey sweet. Biology of the beast. Primitive instinct. Happens when we’re just about to go in harm’s way. We get scared and that sets all the juices to flowing. Battle anticipation—combat nerves. Why do you think the birth rate booms in wartime?”

  She gets to her feet and turns into his arms, wanting to be held.

  44 She knows she’ll be lucky to pluck Ellen away with as much as the clothes on her back. There’ll be no time in that house to stop and gather blankets or toys. She’s going to need everything: baby food and spoon and bottle and toddler clothes sufficient to last several days. She’s got some of these things in her suitcase but there didn’t seem any point weighting it with Gerber jars or thick packages of disposable diapers.

  Speeding on the hypodermic of nervous energy she whirls through a supermarket tossing things into a wheeled basket.

  Now then. Stop. Breathe. Think. Forgotten anything?

  To hell with it. If I did it’ll just have to wait.

  There’s only one register open and she has to wait in line behind two matronly customers who are comparing at length the excellences of their respective teenage sons. Each of them has a cart piled high with purchases enough to equip a family for the entire season; and the check-out girl appears to be suffering from a case of terminal inertia.

  She has to restrain herself from screaming at them but actually there’s loads of time; it’s only half past nine when she emerges from the store with her loot and settles into the back seat of the taxi.

  The driver says, “That was quick. My wife never gets out of
there in less than an hour.”

  It’s turned into a clear summer’s day, a few cirrus clouds floating high; good flying weather at last.

  A few minutes after ten the taxi decants her at the seedy little flying field. The rented Jeep, painted a dark forest green, is parked next to a motorcycle in the shade of what passes for a hangar; the place looks as if it may have seen previous service as a cow barn. Beyond it she sees Charlie in a row of pegged-down light planes, talking with a skinny little man in a cowboy hat. She waves to Charlie, pays off the cab driver and lugs her packages across the dewy grass runway. By the time she reaches the parking area her feet are soaked.

  The man in the cowboy hat turns out to be not much more than a kid—Adam’s apple, peach fuzz and acne; he gives her a startled bashful grin of white buck teeth, nods his head several times with jerky nervousness and plunges toward the nearby glass-sided shack in full ungainly retreat.

  She says to Charlie, “The grass is wet. Do you think we’ll have trouble?”

  “Probably.”

  The flat tone of his voice brings her eyes up to his. There’s a mask down over his face; she doesn’t like what she sees.

  He says: “You didn’t tell me we’re going in against the fucking Mafia.”

  45 The shock of sudden fear makes her furious. “What did that kid tell you?”

  “He said it may rain again tomorrow.”

  Charlie is very cool. He’s got his arms high, testing an aileron at the back of the wing, moving it up and down with his hands, watching the control yoke inside the plane move from side to side in response.

  She keeps her voice low. “What about the Mafia, Charlie?”

  “Says he never heard of any Albert Hartman. But one Albert LaCasse fits the description—twelve-room house, so forth. The kid says everybody knows him. Seems they know him just well enough to stay clear of him.”

  He drops his arms to his sides. His eyes are narrowed; he’s fuming. “Who is he? Who’re you?”