So you lie to the women you make love to, the woman thought. She said, “And so you made all that stuff up.”
“Yes. To find out what it would feel like. To see if it was worth my continuing to write. To see if it was worth keeping on trying.”
“And is it?”
“It was very nice while we were talking, while we were getting along. Extremely nice. I liked it.”
“Even though you were lying through your teeth.”
“You wouldn’t have talked to me otherwise, would you?”
“No.”
“I have no regrets,” he said.
“How did you know there was nothing in the book about the real Clive Kessler?”
“I study the book racks in railroad stations. I make a list of books with no picture of the author and nothing saying he’s sixty-five, gay, and a leper.”
“You make a list?”
“I’m a very organised person.”
“Did you really write a book called Winter... whatever it was?”
“Winter Rain.”
“Yeah.”
“No,” he said. “I’ve never written a book. But I’m only twenty-four. I have time.”
“Never written a book,” she said, “but you have picked up girls this way before.”
“Yes,” he said.
“Really?”
“No,” he said. “In fact, this is the first time I’ve tried it. I was in Taunton station and I saw you buy a copy and so I looked at another copy and there was nothing about the author, and then I saw you sitting alone.” His voice trailed away.
She smiled and raised one eyebrow as she watched him think.
“You said you’d read it before.”
“Yes.”
“But you bought a new copy.”
“I read a library copy,” she said, “but I wanted one of my own.”
“Oh,” he said.
“Or I read a mate’s copy, and wanted one of my own. Or I lost my first copy. Or I just wanted two.”
He stared at her.
“No more questions? I thought authors were always full of questions.”
“Have you read it before?”
“Of course not.” She laughed.
“Oh,” he said.
“And I don’t have a grandmother.”
“You don’t?”
“I am going to Reading to meet my boyfriend.”
“You are?”
“To tell you the absolute truth,” she said, “he and I are going to sort out how we can get rid of his wife.”
“I don’t believe you,” the man said. “You’re just getting back at me.”
“It is the truth,” the woman said. “And it’s such an exquisite relief to be able to tell someone, someone who can’t possibly hurt me.”
“I can’t?”
“For one thing, you’re a complete stranger. For another, you’re a liar and a fantasist. Nobody would ever believe you. I feel really good for having said it out loud now. Not that I am getting cold feet. I’m not. My boyfriend — well, he’s a little old to be called that — but he’s exactly what I have always wanted in a man. He’s mature. He’s exciting. And he is extremely rich, or at least he will be if his wife dies by accident. My only worry is that he’ll chicken out, so chances are I’ll have to do it myself. I won’t mind that. She’s a bitch and a ball-breaker. She deserves to die. I figure I’ll run her over. She jogs, so it shouldn’t be hard. God, I hate joggers. Don’t you?”
“You’re making all this up,” he said.
Her look at him was the coldest he’d ever seen. “Yeah,” she said. “Making it all up. Just don’t read the papers for the next few days.”
“That’s awful,” he said.
“That’s what I hate about men,” she said. “Under the bluster they’re so soft. You only go round once in this life, right? Well, this is my chance to get the gold ring.”
The man sat staring at her, silenced.
The woman said, “Hey, talking about finally being rid of her is making me prickly. You fancy a quickie? We could do it in the toilet at the end of the carriage. You’re not HIV positive, are you?”
“No,” he said.
“I didn’t think so. I can usually tell by looking.”
The man said, “Come on, it’s a joke, right?”
“You go first. I’ll knock twice when I want to come in.”
The man rose unsteadily. He left the carriage without looking behind him.
At his fleeing back the woman made a heartfelt V sign. She finished her coffee. She picked up her book.
Perfect in Every Way
by Seymour Shubin
© 1994 by Seymour Shubin
Seymour Shubin has made his mark on mystery fiction by combining suspense with a profound interest in social and psychological issues. Like his bestselling first novel, a powerful book against capital punishment, most of his recent books have received international attention...
I don’t know why I had this feeling they would be the ones to buy our house. They were a young couple, in their late twenties, just about the age Melissa and I were when we’d bought it forty-two years ago, only then, the first time we walked in, we had Becky with us, each of us taking turns holding her hand so she wouldn’t run around the house. But it wasn’t just their age that made me feel it, for there had been other couples of about that age; it was the way the wife stood there, just off the foyer in the living room, and looked around with a little smile and a certain look that seemed to say yes, this could be it, let it stay being it as we walk on through it. But even more it was the husband’s look — the look that came after he’d taken those first glances at the living room, the ceiling, the walls, everything; the way he turned to her that seemed to say without words, this is what you want, isn’t it?
Melissa spoke to them first, hand extended. “Hello, I’m Mrs. Phillips, this is my husband,” and my hand went out to first one and then the other. “Please,” she said, “feel free,” which would imply, wouldn’t it, that they could go through the house on their own? Something I mention only because Melissa drifted along with them, and I drifted along too, in back.
Once, Melissa glanced at me with a touch of a smile. It said: See? And it said, too: I’ll just bet you they will.
You see, she had insisted we do it without a real-estate agent so we wouldn’t have to pay a commission. I’d pleaded with her no — all I wanted was to sell it, get out of there. Forty-two years in one house — enough, enough! And so every day for the past four weeks, especially those long, long Sundays, we’d been sitting and waiting, leaping up but trying not to seem overanxious whenever someone showed up. And just today, for maybe the fiftieth time, I had pleaded, “Let’s get an agent, I’m sick of this.”
And now there was her smile.
The woman, who’d introduced herself as Mrs. Williams, said, “This has how many bedrooms?”
Melissa beat me to it. “Four.”
“And bathrooms?”
I took over, fast. “Four. A powder room down here, two upstairs and one in the basement.”
Really a perfect large-small house, I told them. The woman smiled at the term and I went on to explain that it was a small house, basically, in the sense that it wasn’t overwhelming to maintain, far from it, but large in the sense that in addition to the four bedrooms it had a den which they hadn’t seen, and there was a finished basement and an attached two-car garage, and, oh yes, a nicely insulated attic.