A couple of dimwits, Turee thought contemptuously, dramatizing themselves, out of boredom, into a situation that neither of them was equipped to handle. He said, “And Harry hasn’t suspected a thing?”
“No.”
“For your information, Esther has and does.”
“I thought as much. She was very cold when I called her last week and invited her to go to a séance a friend of mine was giving. I was only trying to be affable.”
“Why?”
“For Ron’s sake. I don’t want him cut off from Esther’s children the way he was cut off from his first wife’s. It’s not fair.”
“The courts seem to think so.”
“The courts in this country, yes. Oh, this place is so stodgy and provincial. I wish we could live in the States, Ron and I and the baby.”
The front door opened and Harry came back into the hotel lobby walking unsteadily and with his feet wide apart like a newly debarked sailor bracing himself against the pitch and roll of a ship that was no longer under him. Although the night air was still balmy, his lips were blue with cold and his eyes had a glassy stare as if unshed tears had been trapped there and frozen.
“... some place where they don’t have these long terrible winters,” Thelma was saying. “Oh, how I hate them! I’ve reached the point where I can’t even enjoy the spring any more because I know how short it will be and how soon fall is coming when everything is sad again, everything dying.”
“Let’s go into that some other time,” Turee said brusquely. “Now tell me, was Ron driving the Cadillac when he came to your house tonight?”
“I think so.”
“Did it have the top down or up?”
“Down, I think. Yes, definitely down. I remember waving out the window to him and wondering if he might catch cold with all that draft on the back of his neck. He complained of feeling ill anyway.”
“I can believe it.”
“No, I mean he complained about it before I told him anything about the baby. Really, Ralph, you’re in a nasty mood tonight.”
“I wonder why.”
“After all, it’s not your funeral.”
Harry walked slowly but directly toward the telephone booth and in spite of Turee’s restraining hand he forced open the door. “Let me talk to her.”
Turee said, “Thelma, here’s Harry. He wants to talk to you.”
“I don’t want to talk to him. I have nothing to say.”
“But...”
“Tell him the truth or give him a story, I don’t care. I’m going to hang up now, Ralph. And if you call back I won’t answer.”
“Thelma, wait.”
The click of the receiver was unmistakably final. “She hung up,” Turee said.
“Why?”
“Didn’t feel like conversation, I guess. Don’t let it worry you, old boy. Women can get pretty flighty at...”
“I want to call her back.”
“She said if you did, she wouldn’t answer.”
“I know Thelma,” Harry said with a wan smile. “She can’t resist the ringing of a telephone.”
Once again the two men exchanged places and Harry put in a collect call to Mrs. Harry Bream in Weston.
The operator let the telephone ring a dozen times before she cut back to Harry. “I’m sorry, sir, there’s no answer at that number. Shall I try again in twenty minutes?”
“No. No, thanks.” Harry came out of the booth wiping his forehead with the sleeve of his fishing jacket. “Sonuvabitch, I don’t get it. What’s the matter? What did I do?”
“Nothing. Let’s go back to the lodge and have a drink.”
“What were you and Thelma talking about all that time?”
“Life,” Turee said. Which was true enough.
“Life, at three o’clock in the morning, long distance?”
“Thelma wanted to talk. You know women, sometimes they have to get things off their chest by talking to somebody objective, not a member of their family. Thelma was in an emotional state.”
“She can always count on me to understand.”
“I hope so,” Turee said softly. “I hope to God so.”
“It’s this uncertainty that gets me down. Why won’t she talk to me? Why did she keep saying Ron’s name over and over again?”
“She’s — fond of Ron and worried about him. We all are, aren’t we?”
“My God, yes. He’s my best friend. I saved him from drowning once when we were in school together, did I ever tell you that?”
“Yes,” Turee said, not because it was true but because he’d had enough irony for one day, he couldn’t swallow any more; his throat felt tight and raw and scraped. “Come on, Harry, you look as if you need a drink.”
“Maybe I should stay in town for the night, take a room here and get a couple of hours’ sleep and then try to reach Thelma again.”
“Leave the woman alone for a while. Give her a chance to collect herself.”
“You may be right. I hope she remembers to take the orange pills I left for her. They’re very good for relieving tension. I’m told they’re the ones that cured the Pope of hiccoughs when he had that bad spell.”
Turee felt, simultaneously, a certain sympathy for Thelma and a twinge of impatience with Harry. He would have liked to point out that Thelma’s ailment was quite remote from hiccoughs and that it would require more than orange pills, or blue, or pink, to cure her. “There’s nothing more we can do here,” he said, “unless we inform the police that Ron is missing.”
“He may not be missing anymore. By the time we drive back to the lodge, he’ll very likely be there. Don’t you agree?”
“It’s possible.” But not, Turee added to himself, very probable. If I were in Ron’s shoes, the last thing in the world I’d want to do would be to come up here and face Harry. Ron may have taken a room at a hotel for the night. Or gone down to his cottage near Kingsville. Or maybe he’s just driving around alone the way he does sometimes when he and Esther are on the verge of a quarrel. Ron can’t stand scenes, trouble of any kind makes him sick. The time Bill Winslow and I had the big argument about politics Ron simply disappeared, and Esther found him later, retching behind the boxwood hedge.
Harry looked at his watch and the very sight of it made him yawn and brought water to his eyes. “My God, it’s nearly four o’clock.”
“I’m well aware of it.”
“In another hour or two the fellows will be up and raring to go. We’d better start back, don’t you agree?”
“I agreed some time ago.”
“By Jove, you know something, Ralph? I feel better, I feel much, much better. I don’t know what you said or did exactly, but you’ve given me a little perspective on things.”
Turee forced a feeble smile. “Good.”
“Yes sir, you’ve given me a new slant. Why should we worry over two perfectly mature adults like Ron and Thelma? After all, neither of them would ever do anything foolish.”
“That’s the spirit.”
“Let’s go back to the lodge and have a drink to celebrate.”