Strangers on a Train

by Patricia Highsmith

She’s going to have a child, Guy’s voice said. The little floozy! Women who slept around made him furious, made him ill, like the mistresses his father used to have, that had turned all his school holidays into nightmares because he had not known if his mother knew and was only pretending to be happy, or if she did not know at all. He recreated every word he could of his and Guy’s conversation on the train. It brought Guy close to him. Guy, he considered, was the most worthy fellow he had ever met. He had earned the Palm Beach job, and he deserved to keep it. Bruno wished he could be the one to tell Guy he still had it.

  When Bruno finally replaced the paper in his pocket and sat back with one leg comfortably crossed, his hands folded on his knee, anyone seeing him would have judged him a young man of responsibility and character, probably with a promising future. He did not look in the pink of health, to be sure, but he did reflect poise and an inner happiness seen in few faces, and in Bruno’s never before. His life up to now had been pathless, and seeking had known no direction, finding had revealed no meaning. There had been crises—he loved crises and created them sometimes among his acquaintances and between his father and mother—but he had always stepped out of them in time to avoid participation. This, and because he occasionally found it impossible to show sympathy even when it was his mother who was hurt by his father, had led his mother to think that a part of him was cruel, while his father and many other people believed him heartless. Yet an imagined coolness in a stranger, a friend he telephoned in a lonely dusk who was unable or unwilling to spend the evening with him, could plunge him into sulking, brooding melancholy. But only his mother knew this. He stepped out of crises because he found pleasure in depriving himself of excitement, too. So long had he been frustrated in his hunger for a meaning of his life, and in his amorphous desire to perform an act that would give it meaning, that he had come to prefer frustration, like some habitually unrequited lovers. The sweetness of fulfillment of anything he had felt he would never know. A quest with direction and hope he had always felt, from the start, too discouraged to attempt. Yet there had always been the energy to live one more day. Death held no terror at all, however. Death was only one more adventure untried. If it came on some perilous business, so much the better. Nearest, he thought, was the time he had driven a racing car blindfolded on a straight road with the gas pedal on the floor. He never heard his friend’s gunshot that meant stop, because he was lying unconscious in a ditch with a broken hip. At times he was so bored he contemplated the dramatic finality of suicide. It had never occurred to him that facing death unafraid might be brave, that his attitude was as resigned as that of the swamis of India, that to commit suicide required a particular kind of despondent nerve. Bruno had that kind of nerve always. He was actually a little ashamed of ever considering suicide, because it was so obvious and dull.

  Now, on the train to Metcalf, he had direction. He had not felt so alive, so real and like other people since he had gone to Canada as a child with his mother and father—also on a train, he remembered. He had believed Quebec full of castles that he would be allowed to explore, but there had not been one castle, not even time to look for any, because his paternal grandmother had been dying, which was the only reason they had come anyway, and since then he had never placed full confidence in the purpose of any journey. But he did in this one.

  In Metcalf, he went immediately to a telephone book and checked on the Haineses. He was barely conscious of Guy’s address as he frowned down the list. No Miriam Haines, and he hadn’t expected any. There were seven Joyces. Bruno scribbled a list of them on a piece of paper. Three were at the same address, 1235 Magnolia Street, and one of them there was Mrs. M. J. Joyce. Bruno’s pointed tongue curled speculatively over his upper lip. Certainly a good bet. Maybe her mother’s name was Miriam, too. He should be able to tell a lot from the neighborhood. He didn’t think Miriam would live in a fancy neighborhood. He hurried toward a yellow taxi parked at the curb.

  twelve

  It was almost nine o’clock. The long dusk was sliding steeply into night, and the residential blocks of small flimsy-looking wooden houses were mostly dark, except for a glow here and there on a front porch where people sat in swings and on front steps.

  “Lemme out here, this is okay,” Bruno said to the driver. Magnolia Street and College Avenue, and this was the one-thousand block. He began walking.

  A little girl stood on the sidewalk, staring at him.

  “Hyah,” Bruno said, like a nervous command for her to get out of the way.

  “H’lo,” said the little girl.

  Bruno glanced at the people on the lighted porch, a plump man fanning himself, a couple of women in the swing. Either he was tighter than he thought or luck was going to be with him, because he certainly had a hunch about 1235. He couldn’t have dreamt up a neighborhood more likely for Miriam to live in. If he was wrong, he’d just try the rest. He had the list in his pocket. The fan on the porch reminded him it was hot, apart from his own feverlike temperature that had been annoying him since late afternoon. He stopped and lighted a cigarette, pleased that his hands did not shake at all. The half bottle since lunch had fixed his hangover and put him in a slow mellow mood. Crickets chirruped everywhere around him. It was so quiet, he could hear a car shift gears two blocks away. Some young fellows came around a corner, and Bruno’s heart jumped, thinking one might be Guy, but none of them was.

  “You ol’ jassack!” one said.

  “Hell, I tol’ her I ain’t foolin’ with no man don’t give his brother an even break. . . .”

  Bruno looked after them haughtily. It sounded like another language. They didn’t talk like Guy at all.

  On some houses, Bruno couldn’t find a number. Suppose he couldn’t find 1235? But when he came to it, 1235 was very legible in tin numerals over the front porch. The sight of the house brought a slow pleasant thrill. Guy must have hopped up those steps very often, he thought, and it was this fact alone that really set it apart from the other houses. It was a small house like all the others on the block, only its yellow-tan clapboards were more in need of paint. It had a driveway at the side, a scraggly lawn, and an old Chevvy sedan sitting at the curb. A light showed at a downstairs window and one in a back corner window upstairs that Bruno thought might be Miriam’s room. But why didn’t he know? Maybe Guy really hadn’t told him enough!

  Nervously, Bruno crossed the street and went back a little the way he had come. He stopped and turned and stared at the house, biting his lip. There was no one in sight, and no porch lighted except one down at the corner. He could not decide if the faint sound of a radio came from Miriam’s house or the one next to it. The house next to it had two lighted windows downstairs. He might be able to walk up the driveway and take a look at the back of 1235.

  Bruno’s eyes slid alertly to the next-door front porch as the light came on. A man and woman came out, the woman sat down in the swing, and the man went down the walk. Bruno backed into the niche of a projecting garage front.

  “Pistachio if they haven’t got peach, Don,” Bruno heard the woman call.

  “I’ll take vanilla,” Bruno murmured, and drank some out of his flask.

  He stared quizzically at the yellow-tan house, put a foot up behind him to lean on, and felt something hard against his thigh: the knife he had bought in the station at Big Springs, a hunting knife with a six-inch blade in a sheath. He did not want to use a knife if he could avoid it. Knives sickened him in a funny way. And a gun made noise. How would he do it? Seeing her would suggest a way. Or would it? He had thought seeing the house would suggest something, and he still felt like this was the house, but it didn’t suggest anything. Could that mean this wasn’t the house? Suppose he got chased off for snooping before he even found out. Guy hadn’t told him enough, he really hadn’t! Quickly he took another drink. He mustn’t start to worry, that would spoil everything! His knee buckled. He wiped his sweaty hands on his thighs and wet his lips with a shaky tongue. He pulled the paper with the Joyce addresses out
of his breast pocket and slanted it toward the street light. He still couldn’t see to read. Should he leave and try another address, maybe come back here?

  He would wait fifteen minutes, maybe half an hour.

  A preference for attacking her out of doors had taken root in his mind on the train, so all his ideas began from a simple physical approach to her. This street was almost dark enough, for instance, very dark there under the trees. He preferred to use his bare hands, or to hit her over the head with something. He did not realize how excited he was until he felt his body start now with his thoughts of jumping to right or left, as it might be, when he attacked her. Now and then it crossed his mind how happy Guy would be when it was done. Miriam had become an object, small and hard.

  He heard a man’s voice, and a laugh, he was sure from the lighted upstairs room in 1235, then a girl’s smiling voice: “Stop that?—Please? Plee-ee-ease?” Maybe Miriam’s voice. Babyish and stringy, but somehow strong like a strong string, too.

  The light blinked out and Bruno’s eyes stayed at the dark window. Then the porch light flashed on and two men and a girl—Miriam—came out. Bruno held his breath and set his feet on the ground. He could see the red in her hair. The bigger fellow was redheaded, too—maybe her brother. Bruno’s eyes caught a hundred details at once, the chunky compactness of her figure, the flat shoes, the easy way she swung around to look up at one of the men.

  “Think we ought to call her, Dick?” she asked in that thin voice. “It’s kinda late.”

  A corner of the shade in the front window lifted. “Honey? Don’t be out too long!”

  “No, Mom.”

  They were going to take the car at the curb.

  Bruno faded toward the corner, looking for a taxi. Fat chance in this dead burg! He ran. He hadn’t run in months, and he felt fit as an athlete.

  “Taxi!” He didn’t even see a taxi, then he did and dove for it.

  He made the driver circle and come into Magnolia Street in the direction the Chevvy had been pointed. The Chevvy was gone. Darkness had closed in tight. Far away he saw a red taillight blinking under trees.

  “Keep going!”

  When the taillight stopped for a red and the taxi closed some of the distance, Bruno saw it was the Chevvy and sank back with relief.

  “Where do you want to go?” asked the driver.

  “Keep going!” Then as the Chevvy swung into a big avenue, “Turn right.” He sat up on the edge of his seat. Glancing at a curb, he saw “Crockett Boulevard” and smiled. He had heard of Crockett Boulevard in Metcalf, the widest longest street.

  “Who’re the people’s names you want to go to?” the driver asked. “Maybe I know ’em.”

  “Just a minute, just a minute,” Bruno said, unconsciously assuming another personality, pretending to search through the papers he had dragged from his inside pocket, among them the paper about Miriam. He snickered suddenly, feeling very amused, very safe. Now he was pretending to be the dopey guy from out of town, who had even misplaced the address of where he wanted to go. He bent his head so the driver could not see him laughing, and reached automatically for his flask.

  “Need a light?”

  “Nope, nope, thank you.” He took a hot swallow. Then the Chevvy backed into the avenue, and Bruno told the driver to keep going.

  “Where?”

  “Get going and shut up!” Bruno shouted, his voice falsetto with anxiety.

  The driver shook his head and made a click with his tongue. Bruno fumed, but they had the Chevvy in sight. Bruno thought they would never stop driving and that Crockett Boulevard must cross the whole state of Texas. Twice Bruno lost and found the Chevvy. They passed roadstands and drive-in movies, then darkness put up a wall on either side. Bruno began to worry. He couldn’t tail them out of town or down a country road. Then a big arch of lights appeared over the road. WELCOME TO LAKE METCALF’S KINGDOM OF FUN, it said, and the Chevvy drove under it and into a parking lot. There were all kinds of lights ahead in the woods and the jingle of merry-go-round music. An amusement park! Bruno was delighted.

  “Four bucks,” said the driver sourly, and Bruno poked a five through the front window.

  He hung back until Miriam and the two fellows and a new girl they had picked up had gone through the turnstile, then he followed them. He stretched his eyes wide for a good look at Miriam under the lights. She was cute in a plump college-girl sort of way, but definitely second-rate, Bruno judged. The red socks with the red sandals infuriated him. How could Guy have married such a thing? Then his feet scraped and he stood still: she wasn’t pregnant! His eyes narrowed in intense perplexity. Why hadn’t he noticed from the first? But maybe it wouldn’t show yet. He bit his underlip hard. Considering how plump she was, her waist looked even flatter than it ought to. Maybe a sister of Miriam’s. Or she had had an abortion or something. Or a miscarriage. Miss Carriage! How do you do? Swing it, sister! She had fat little hips under a tight gray skirt. He moved on as they did, following evenly, as if magnetized. Had Guy lied about her being pregnant? But Guy wouldn’t lie. Bruno’s mind swam in contradictions. He stared at Miriam with his head cocked. Then something made a connection in his mind before he was aware of looking for it: if something had happened to the child, then all the more reason why he should erase her, because Guy wouldn’t be able to get his divorce. She could be walking around now if she had had an abortion, for instance.

  She stood in front of a sideshow where a gypsy woman was dropping things into a big fishbowl. The other girl started laughing, leaning all over the redheaded fellow.

  “Miriam!”

  Bruno leapt off his feet.

  “Oooh, yes!” Miriam went across to the frozen custard stand.

  They all bought frozen custards. Bruno waited boredly, smiling, looking up at the ferris wheel’s arc of lights and the tiny people swinging in benches up there in the black sky. Far off through the trees, he saw lights twinkling on water. It was quite a park. He wanted to ride the ferris wheel. He felt wonderful. He was taking it easy, not getting excited. The merry-go-round played “Casey would waltz with the strawberry blonde . . .” Grinning, he turned to Miriam’s red hair, and their eyes met, but hers moved on and he was sure she hadn’t noticed him, but he mustn’t do that again. A rush of anxiety made him snicker. Miriam didn’t look at all smart, he decided, which amused him, too. He could see why Guy would loathe her. He loathed her, too, with all his guts! Maybe she was lying to Guy about having a baby. And Guy was so honest himself, he believed her. Bitch!

  When they moved on with their frozen custards, he released the swallowtailed bird he had been fingering in the balloon seller’s box, then wheeled around and bought one, a bright yellow one. It made him feel like a kid again, whipping the stick around, listening to the tail’s squee-wee-wee!

  A little boy walking by with his parents stretched his hand toward it, and Bruno had an impulse to give it to him, but he didn’t.

  Miriam and her friends entered a big lighted section where the bottom of the ferris wheel was and a lot of concessions and sideshows. The roller coaster made a tat-tat-tat-tat-tat like a machine gun over their heads. There was a clang and a roar as someone sent the red arrow all the way to the top with a sledge hammer. He wouldn’t mind killing Miriam with a sledge hammer, he thought. He examined Miriam and each of the three to see if any seemed aware of him, but he was sure they weren’t. If he didn’t do it tonight, he mustn’t let any of them notice him. Yet somehow he was sure he would do it tonight. Something would happen that he could. This was his night. The cooler night air bathed him, like some liquid that he frolicked in. He waved the bird in wide circles. He liked Texas, Guy’s state! Everybody looked happy and full of energy. He let Miriam’s group blend into a crowd while he took a gulp from his flask. Then he loped after them.

  They were looking at the ferris wheel, and he hoped they would decide to ride it. They really did things big in Texas, Bruno thought, looking up admiringly at the wheel. He had never seen a ferris wheel big as
this. It had a five-pointed star in blue lights inside it.

  “Ralph, how ’bout it?” Miriam squealed, poking the last of the frozen custard cone into her mouth with her hand against her face.

  “Aw, ’s ain’t no fun. H’bout the merry-go-round?”

  And they all went. The merry-go-round was like a lighted city in the dark woods, a forest of nickel-plated poles crammed with zebras, horses, giraffes, bulls, and camels all plunging down or upward, some with necks arched out over the platform, frozen in leaps and gallops as if they waited desperately for riders. Bruno stood still, unable to take his dazzled eyes from it even to watch Miriam, tingling to the music that promised movement at any instant. He felt he was about to experience again some ancient, delicious childhood moment that the steam calliope’s sour hollowness, the stitching hurdy-gurdy accompaniment, and the drum-and-cymbal crash brought almost to the margin of his grasp.

  People were choosing mounts. And Miriam and her friends were eating again, Miriam diving into a popcorn bag Dick held for her. The pigs! Bruno was hungry, too. He bought a frankfurter, and when he looked again, they were boarding the merry-go-round. He scrambled for coins and ran. He got the horse he had wanted, a royal blue one with an upreared head and an open mouth, and as luck would have it, Miriam and her friends kept weaving back through the poles toward him, and Miriam and Dick took the giraffe and the horse right in front of him. Luck was with him tonight! Tonight he should be gambling!

  Just like the strain—te-te-dum—

  Of a haunting refrain—te-te-dum—

  She’ll start upon—BOOM! a marathon—BOOM!

  Bruno loved the song and so did his mother. The music made him suck in his belly and sit his horse like a ramrod. He swung his feet gaily in the stirrups. Something swatted him in the back of the head, he turned belligerently, but it was only some fellows roughhousing with one another.

  They started off slowly and militantly to “The Washington Post March.” Up, up, up he went and down, down, down went Miriam on her giraffe. The world beyond the merry-go-round vanished in a light-streaked blur. Bruno held the reins in one hand as he had been taught to do in his polo lessons, and ate the frankfurter with the other.