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Authors: John D. MacDonald
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told me you had told him you’d call me. I waited and waited. I phoned the hotel there an hour ago and asked if you’d checked out. They said you hadn’t. I asked if you’d placed a long distance call to Minidoka and they said you hadn’t. Keep talking, dear.”
“You’ve got a hell of a nerve checking on me that way!”
“Don’t bluster, dear. It isn’t becoming. I’m not upset. You’re just a big boy, dear, and you’re six hundred or somiles from the flagpole. Isn’t that what they used to say in the army? I’ll expect you when I see you.”
He started to counterattack and found the line was dead. He banged the phone up. He called the airport. “Sorry, but all the flights are booked solidly, sir. Perhaps tomorrow morning, if that wouldn’t be too late. No, I’m afraid it will have to be tomorrow afternoon.”
He took a long shower, ate too heavily, checked out too late to save a day’s rent, climbed morosely onto a train at five of five. He sat alone in the smoking car with his long, savage thoughts. His face felt grainy and abused. His hands still trembled with hangover. He thought of what he had done, and of how it had happened. Those thermostat people had set her on him, like sicking a dog on a lame horse. Or, he thought with a faint glimmer of objective humor, like sicking a Sabine woman on a Roman soldier. The ultimate of service. The American merchandising ideal, combined with the farmer’s definition. It was a hell of a thing, he thought, to remember so damn little about it, now that the price was apparently going to be paid.
He had never made a particular fetish of faithfulness. Yet, during the years of his marriage—twelve at that time—there had only been three women besides Jane. And two of those had been overseas, over in the crazy wartime wonderland of London. Many months with a warm, loyal little FANY—what was that again?—First Aid Nursing Yeomanry—though they claimed quite happily that they hadn’t done any nursing since the Boer War. Code work, you know. Silly little hats with the round fuzzy button on top. Sturdy legs in impossible stockings. That had been Beatrice. And the other, of course, had been Hannah, the Ingrid-faced OSS typist, who had the little flat, and who had cooked those gargantuan meals for him, and after the heavy, spicy food each evening, they had tumbled into bed, leaving the dishes on the table just three feet away. Then she had been sent home, and after that he had found Beatrice, and then he had been sent home for discharge and a terminal promotion to Major.
Now the third was the redhead and she had no name that he could remember, and she was in this country. Hehad never told Jane of the women overseas. Yet he guessed that she suspected and had, in some coldly feminine way, checked it off to wartime and absence. He knew, obscurely, that this was much the worst, for Jane was in this country too, only three hours away by air. You did not need others when you had Jane, he thought. You didn’t need anything else at all. But he had taken something else. Or been taken by something else. He preferred to think of it that way.
He and Jane had watched the intrigues among many of their friends. One of the intrigues had culminated in a double divorce and a double marriage, with a switch of partners. All good friends, of course. Jane had said it was dirty. In his heart he agreed. So they had prided themselves on being so well mated that there was no need of dirty little subterfuges.
He rode through the night, wondering what he would do, what he would say. He arrived in the Minidoka station that night, three years ago, at quarter of four in the morning. He’d had the crazy idea, during the taxi ride to the old house, the one they had left two years later, that Jane had gone and had taken the kids. He unlocked the door and carried his bag in, carried it upstairs. He risked the hall light and his heart gave a great leap when he peered into the dimness and saw the
“You’ve got a hell of a nerve checking on me that way!”
“Don’t bluster, dear. It isn’t becoming. I’m not upset. You’re just a big boy, dear, and you’re six hundred or somiles from the flagpole. Isn’t that what they used to say in the army? I’ll expect you when I see you.”
He started to counterattack and found the line was dead. He banged the phone up. He called the airport. “Sorry, but all the flights are booked solidly, sir. Perhaps tomorrow morning, if that wouldn’t be too late. No, I’m afraid it will have to be tomorrow afternoon.”
He took a long shower, ate too heavily, checked out too late to save a day’s rent, climbed morosely onto a train at five of five. He sat alone in the smoking car with his long, savage thoughts. His face felt grainy and abused. His hands still trembled with hangover. He thought of what he had done, and of how it had happened. Those thermostat people had set her on him, like sicking a dog on a lame horse. Or, he thought with a faint glimmer of objective humor, like sicking a Sabine woman on a Roman soldier. The ultimate of service. The American merchandising ideal, combined with the farmer’s definition. It was a hell of a thing, he thought, to remember so damn little about it, now that the price was apparently going to be paid.
He had never made a particular fetish of faithfulness. Yet, during the years of his marriage—twelve at that time—there had only been three women besides Jane. And two of those had been overseas, over in the crazy wartime wonderland of London. Many months with a warm, loyal little FANY—what was that again?—First Aid Nursing Yeomanry—though they claimed quite happily that they hadn’t done any nursing since the Boer War. Code work, you know. Silly little hats with the round fuzzy button on top. Sturdy legs in impossible stockings. That had been Beatrice. And the other, of course, had been Hannah, the Ingrid-faced OSS typist, who had the little flat, and who had cooked those gargantuan meals for him, and after the heavy, spicy food each evening, they had tumbled into bed, leaving the dishes on the table just three feet away. Then she had been sent home, and after that he had found Beatrice, and then he had been sent home for discharge and a terminal promotion to Major.
Now the third was the redhead and she had no name that he could remember, and she was in this country. Hehad never told Jane of the women overseas. Yet he guessed that she suspected and had, in some coldly feminine way, checked it off to wartime and absence. He knew, obscurely, that this was much the worst, for Jane was in this country too, only three hours away by air. You did not need others when you had Jane, he thought. You didn’t need anything else at all. But he had taken something else. Or been taken by something else. He preferred to think of it that way.
He and Jane had watched the intrigues among many of their friends. One of the intrigues had culminated in a double divorce and a double marriage, with a switch of partners. All good friends, of course. Jane had said it was dirty. In his heart he agreed. So they had prided themselves on being so well mated that there was no need of dirty little subterfuges.
He rode through the night, wondering what he would do, what he would say. He arrived in the Minidoka station that night, three years ago, at quarter of four in the morning. He’d had the crazy idea, during the taxi ride to the old house, the one they had left two years later, that Jane had gone and had taken the kids. He unlocked the door and carried his bag in, carried it upstairs. He risked the hall light and his heart gave a great leap when he peered into the dimness and saw the
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