“Hello.”
“And a beau of hers.” Smiling like a shark at Doug, she added, “I’m sorry, I’m afraid I don’t know your name.”
She never did. Doug had met Myrtle’s mother half a dozen times in brief passages at the beginning or ending of dates, and Myrtle always introduced him, and her mother always immediately cast his name out of her memory bank.
This time, before Myrtle could say anything, Doug smiled hugely at the nasty old witch and said, “That’s okay, Mrs. Street.” To Murch’s Mom, he said, “It’s Jack Cousteau. Nice to meet you.”
All three women gave him funny looks, which he affected not to notice, turning his smile on Myrtle, saying, “See you in a couple days?”
“Sure,” she said, but still looked confused.
“I’ll call you at the library,” he promised, shook her hand as though they’d just finished a really productive Kiwanis meeting together, and turned to say, “Nice to see you again, Mrs. Street. Nice to meet you, Gladys.” And he went whistling away in the dark.
“One word!”
“Okay, okay!”
“One word to anybody about ‘Gladys,’ and I run you down with the cab!”
“Okay, okay!”
Murch’s Mom released the bunch of Doug’s shirt she’d held clutched in her fist and stepped back, aiming her glare out the kitchen window instead. “If it doesn’t cloud up soon,” she said, “I may run you down anyway.”
FIFTY-NINE
Driving herself home from work and her mother home from the Dudson Combined Senior Citizens Center, Myrtle brooded about Doug Berry and, as usual, came to no conclusion. Was there really an Environment Protection Alliance, even though she could find it in absolutely no reference books or directories? Or was Doug completely and totally false, some sort of con man engaged in some secret nefarious pursuit (other than the nefarious pursuit of her body, that is)?
His having called himself Jacques Cousteau with Edna and Edna’s new friend the other night had really brought the whole problem into focus. Myrtle had been feeling more and more depressed, not even noticing the change in herself, just sliding away into gloom; and all, of course, because she couldn’t make up her mind about Doug Berry. And he’d used that false name, she understood, because her mother refused to remember his real name, which she did because she didn’t trust him, either. And Edna was very often right about such things.
If Myrtle could be sure Doug wasn’t a fake—or at least not a fake about anything except his extravagant claims of desire for and obsession with her own self—they would have progressed beyond the get-acquainted stage long ago. The weather was perfect, for instance, for a nice picnic up on Hochawallaputtie Hill, overlooking the reservoir. But how could she go up there with him when her heart was so full of mistrust?
“Go down Oak Street,” Edna suddenly said, breaking their long silence.
Surprised, Myrtle glanced at her mother and then out the windshield toward Oak Street, still two blocks ahead. “But that’s out of our way,” she said.
“Some gypsies moved in there,” Edna told her. “They’ve got a wrecked old car out front and everything. We’re all calling and complaining. We’re going to get up a petition next. Can’t have gypsies here running down the neighborhood.”
“Gypsies,” Myrtle repeated with a laugh. “Oh, Mother, what makes you think they’re gypsies?”
“Mrs. Kresthaven found a tambourine in their garbage,” Edna said. “Go on, Myrtle, turn. I want to see if that awful car is still there. It’s in the second block.”
As they made the turn onto Oak Street, the world ahead suddenly grayed, losing color and tone. Myrtle leaned forward over the steering wheel to look up at the sky. “Cloud,” she reported.
“Never trust the weather report,” Edna commented. “Slow down, now, it’s up there on the right. See that blue car?”
“It looks perfectly ordinary to me,” Myrtle said, slowing as per instructions, looking at an ordinarily neat house with an ordinarily plain automobile parked beside it.
“They moved some of the junk,” Edna said with mixed satisfaction and regret. Clearly, she was both glad the small-town peer pressure had done its job and sorry she couldn’t keep exerting it. “But you can still see some by the fence,” she added hopefully.
“It’s hidden by the car,” Myrtle said, slowing more and more so she could look at the place as they went by.
As they came abreast of the house, its front door opened and people abruptly started to emerge. Lots of people. They came pouring out of the house as though it were on fire, except that their expressions were happy, delighted, surprised. Running down the stoop and onto the lawn, they pointed skyward, laughing and capering and patting one another on the back.
Astounded, Myrtle watched the people cavort in her rearview mirror. Beside her, Edna said in doubtful surprise, “Was that Gladys?” but Myrtle paid no attention. She had recognized others among that group of people.
Doug? And Wally Knurr? Together? Holding hands and dancing in a circle, like something in a Breughel painting? What’s going on?
“Couldn’t be Gladys,” Edna decided, and craned around to look back. “What are they doing out there?”
“Looking at the cloud,” Myrtle told her, distracted.
Back there, too far away for identification, an older man, who had probably been napping upstairs, came hurrying out of the house, looked up, and nodded in agreement with the sky.
“Maybe they’re farmers,” Edna said, but she sounded doubtful.
SIXTY
With mixed feelings of relief and guilt, Dortmunder watched Kelp, in the living room of the house on Oak Street, work himself yet again into a wetsuit. “I couldn’t do that, Andy,” he said.
“I know you couldn’t,” Kelp said, zipping zippers. “It’s okay, John, don’t worry about it.”
“I just couldn’t do it.”
“It’s gonna be fine,” Kelp said. “Doug’s a real pro. We’ll be perfectly fine down there. And he’s right about one thing: even a total professional like he is shouldn’t make a dive like this by himself.”
“A dive,” Dortmunder echoed. Then he was sorry he’d said it, because maybe Kelp hadn’t thought about that part of it yet.
The fact is, this time into the reservoir was going to be different, unlike anything either Dortmunder or Kelp had ever done. On both previous attempts, they’d walked in. This time, Doug and Kelp were going to plop out of a boat in the middle of the reservoir and sink in. Only of course when a professional does it, the word for sink is dive.
Sure.
Tiny came back in from the porch, having just finished shlepping out all the equipment. “The track’s here,” he said.
“All set,” Kelp told him. Carrying his flippers under his arm, he followed Tiny out of the living room, Dortmunder trailing, and all three went out to the porch, where May, Murch’s Mom, Wally, Tom, and Doug (he had also suited up for the dive) were watching Stan maneuver a large slat-sided open-topped truck backward up on to the driveway in the dark.
The very dark. Today’s single cloud had by now become a cloud cover stretching from horizon to horizon like an extra-thick icing on the birthday cake of the Earth. Not a glimmer of light reached the surface of the planet from the heavens. Stan’s only visual aid, in fact, beyond the truck’s own back-up lights, was a streetlight some little distance away; it was by that faint gleam he was doing his best to bring the rear of the truck reasonably close to the porch without either driving on the lawn (his Mom had warned him about that) or ramming the Lincoln he still hadn’t quite finished fixing up (she hadn’t bothered to warn him about that). The porch light would have helped, but it would also have attracted unwelcome attention if it were on with all this activity around it at one-thirty in the morning. Small-town people are so nosy.
With confusing and at times contradictory advice from Tiny, Stan managed at last to place the truck where he wanted it, and then he climbed down from the cab to help load the equipment. Once all the gear was aboard, Stan got back into the cab, this time with Tom, while Dortmunder and Kelp and Doug and Tiny all clambered up into the back, which smelled faintly of several things: pine trees, possibly sheep, maybe one or two less pleasant things.