“Has Jimmy come in yet?” asked a gruff voice.
He held the phone away from him, looking at it as though it were a hissing viper, then he barked into it, “Wrong number!”
She continued with her reading without looking up and without saying “I told you so,” for which he would have been grateful had he not been so befuddled. What the hell was going on here? Had the woman suddenly become possessed with some kind of strange powers? Ditch-water dull Nelda, whom he could read like a child’s primer? It couldn’t be.
“Has something happened to you, something strange?” he asked. “I mean — do you feel, er, different? Headache or… anything?”
“Not at all. I feel the same as I always have.”
He couldn’t think of anything else to ask, so he just sat staring at her, going over in his mind the horrendous difference it could make in his life if his wife really had suddenly become a seer into the future. But, of course, he didn’t believe in that stuff and his first thought had been correct. It was just a fad, a phase she was going through, reading all those crazy books. She’d get tired of it soon enough and go back to being ditch-water dull Nelda whose every move and sentence he could anticipate. And that made him psychic in his own right, didn’t it?
But that didn’t explain the telephone business. How had she known?
It had taken him hours to get to sleep that night, but by the next morning he was ready to pooh-pooh the whole psychic business. If you played bridge with the same people week after week, year after year, you could tell by looking at their expressions what kind of cards they were holding, just as he could tell by the expressions, or lack thereof, on the faces of the members of his poker club. And it was a safe enough guess that Barbara Long wouldn’t show up for a lunch date: That hypochondriac canceled half her social engagements because of some imaginary illness. As for the phone, what the hell? They never got any calls at night anyway, so if the phone rang, there was a ninety-five percent chance it was a wrong number.
Nelda was getting ideas from all that crap she was reading. She’d lose interest pretty soon and go back to fashion magazines and the beautiful people, whoever the hell they were.
He scrutinized himself in the mirror extra carefully while shaving. Had it been that long since he’d checked, or had his hairline receded a bit more overnight? And was that puffiness under his eyes the beginning of bags? He worked out at the gym once a week in an effort to keep a flat stomach, but there was nothing the gym could do about eyes and hair. He couldn’t afford to let himself go in any way, not if he wanted to keep Sonja. She was a beaut: statuesque brunette, heart-shaped face with sexy, pouty lips, skin that almost glowed in the dark, and she was fifteen years younger than he. He’d already invested a fortune in her: all that jewelry, lingerie, champagne, and room-service dinners (he couldn’t afford to take her out and be seen by someone who knew him; it would jeopardize his partnership). So he paid her rent in the hotel suite on the twelfth floor, and he hoped that he was the only one who visited her there. Had to be, he kept telling himself, because she was always available for him, even on the spur of the moment.
Tonight he would see her for sure. Nelda could predict ringing phones, sick friends, card games, or the end of civilization as we know it; his own prediction was that he’d have one hell of a night with Sonja.
It was about a week, possibly ten days, later that he had to go home unexpectedly in the middle of the morning. He’d left plumbing estimates for the Grandy building in a folder on the bureau, just walked right out that morning without seeing it. The house was quiet when he entered — no TV or radio talk shows or CDs playing golden oldies — and his first thought was that Nelda wasn’t home, but then he remembered seeing her car in the driveway.
He found her sitting at her little antique desk in a corner of the living room. She was studying something, her concentration so great that she did not even hear him as he approached. As he bent over her, he saw what she was studying so intently. A sheet of white paper, completely blank.
“What…” he began, but at the sound of his voice, she started violently, let out a little scream, and turned in her chair.
“Good Lord, Hugh, what are you doing home now? You just about scared me into apoplexy.”
“Sorry,” he said, “I forgot that folder on the bureau. Had to come back for it. What are you doing?” he added, although it was perfectly obvious she wasn’t doing a damn thing.
“I… I was just thinking.” She had a guilty look about her, as though she had been caught doing something underhanded. “About what?”
She hesitated a second or two, then, looking down at the Oriental rug as though counting figures in the design, said, “It’s gotten worse, Hugh. Much more prevalent.”
He really didn’t have time to stand there and jaw with her about the trivialities of her life. “What are you talking about, Nelda?”
“The ESP… clairvoyance, or whatever you want to call it.”
He didn’t want to call it anything; he’d prefer to ignore it, forget it altogether. She was still reading those stupid books all the time, and he’d certainly done a good job of ignoring that. “What now?” he asked with as much civility as he could manage. “You see something written on that blank paper?”
She nodded, then shook her head. “Not really, but when I first saw this piece of paper, it came to me that I’m going to get a letter today from someone I haven’t heard from in years. Someone I’d completely forgotten about. When you came in, I was trying to figure out who it could be.”
He laughed at her. “Why waste time? Just wait till the postman comes and you will know.” He laughed again. “It’s just your imagination working overtime because of those lunatic books you read. You’re turning into a real loony tune, you know that?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. He went up to the bedroom, got his folder, and went back down to the living-room door. “I may be a little late coming in tonight,” he told her. “There’s a dinner meeting, followed by some business. May be eleven or after before it breaks up.”
She didn’t look around, just nodded.
As he was getting in his car, he saw the postman’s red, white, and blue jeep turn the corner. Ha! He would wait for the mail, take it to her, and convince her that this ESP she thought she had was nothing but pure, unadulterated rubbish.
He took the handful of mail from the postman, and without even looking through it, rushed back into the house and dropped it on the desk in front of her. “There,” he said, “show me the letter from your long-lost friend, or whoever.”
She went through the mail slowly: bills, advertisements, an envelope of coupons, and a letter addressed to her in a strange, circular handwriting. She looked up at him, a somewhat frightened expression on her face, then opened the letter. He leaned over her shoulder and read as she did:
Dear Nelda,
It’s been years, and you probably don’t even remember me, but we were acquainted in college (I hesitate to say friends, because we didn’t see that much of each other). My husband and I have just moved here from Kansas City, and I would like very much to see you again and get reacquainted. We don’t know any people here yet except those Jack works with. I would appreciate it so much if you would call me sometime.
Sincerely,
There was a P.S. which gave the phone number.
He couldn’t get it out of his mind. Had his average, dull, ordinary wife really become possessed of some kind of psychic powers? Impossible! He didn’t believe it for a minute. And yet… What else could explain the strange goings-on?