by Doug Allyn
“You’re weird,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“You didn’t upset me,” she said.
“I was just a bit lonely. I saw you reading the book. And, well, the rest is history.”
“Lonely?” she said.
“A writer’s life is a lonely one,” he said. “You have to do it by yourself.”
“Oh, I see.”
“And you never meet any of the people you do it for,” he said. “They may buy the book, and eventually the publisher tells you how many you’ve sold. But normally you never meet anybody who ever reads them. The people who, after all, are the people you wrote the book for.”
“I never thought of that,” she said.
“Did you ever meet a writer before?”
“Only in school. They had a poet come in. It was in primary school and most of the kids thought her jokes were pretty naff. I kind of liked her, though.”
“And so you continue to read. And here you are, on the train today, reading one of mine. So, where are you going?”
“To Reading. I’m visiting my dad’s mum.”
“Do you like her?”
“Not much.”
“So, it’s a duty visit?”
“Yeah. I go about every couple of months.”
“You’re a very good granddaughter, Cat.”
She laughed. “Dad gives me a tenner and pays the train fare.”
“And you make an old woman happy.”
“She doesn’t usually know who I am, to tell the truth. But it’s a day out.”
“I’m going to Reading, too,” the man said.
“What for?”
“Research.”
“Oh.”
“For my next book. I’m going to have a look at Reading Gaol.”
“The gaol. What for?”
“Because famous people have been incarcerated there. Oscar Wilde, for instance.”
“Yeah?”
“And Stacy Reach. He’s an American actor. Played Mike Hammer on the tele.”
“What was he in gaol for?”
“Drugs.”
“Oh.”
“He’s out now, though.”
“Who’s Mike Hammer?”
“Mickey Spillane’s psychotic, misogynistic private eye.”
“Oh.”
“Not your thing, private eyes?”
“They’re okay, but I like books with more romance in them better.”
“And sex?”
She smiled. “Don’t mind.”
“Like my books?”
She hesitated.
“You haven’t got to the sexy bits then?” He nodded at the open book on the table between them.
“What sexy bits?” she asked.
“I don’t want to spoil them by telling you,” he said easily. “Surprise, unexpectedness... They make sex so much more exciting, don’t you think?”
She frowned at him across the table.
“I’m sorry if I’ve upset you by referring to sex,” he said gently. “You said you didn’t mind. I didn’t mean to offend you. All I mean to do is chat.” He raised one of his hands and counted off on his fingers. “One, chat. Two, see Reading Gaol. Three, invite you for a meal after you see your gran. Four, walk around the park. Then, if we get to the thumb, then maybe we can talk about sex before the last train home. Something like that.”
The man spoke lightly, playfully. But the woman’s mood had become hard. He saw it, recognised it, and said, “What’s wrong, Cat?”
She picked the book up. “I’ve read this book before.”
“A real fan. That’s great. Do you want me to sign it?”
She pulled the book to her chest. “There are no sexy bits in it.”
“There aren’t?”
“None.”
“It’s hard to believe that someone can write a book, can spend all the time and energy it takes to convert blank sheets of paper into something interesting, and then not remember what he’s written.”
“Yes. It is hard to believe.”
“It happens, though.”
“So tell me the story of the book.”
“The story?”
“What is it about?”
“You can write a book,” the man said, “and then once you start on another you can’t remember a single thing about the first. Not a single thing.”
The woman was not impressed with this insight about writers. She and the man looked at one another for a number of seconds.
Then the man said, “I am a writer.”
“Congratulations.”
“My name is John Leith. I’m twenty-seven years old. I’ve written three novels, and finally one of them got published last summer. Actually published. That’s quite a big deal these days. It was called Winter Rain. It came out in June. It went back in again in July. I’ve written another novel since then, but the publishers don’t even want to read it. I have always wanted to be a writer, since I was about twelve. I have always wanted to be on a train or a plane and see a beautiful woman reading one of my books. I’ve wanted to know what it would be like to introduce myself and to see what she felt about what she was reading. Because when I write, the way I do it is by writing as if it’s a letter to a woman I love, by writing as if I am making love to her.”
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 tr
uth,” 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
A new short story 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.
“What are the taxes?” he asked.
When I told him, his face expressed delight and astonishment. They were low. The school taxes, too, and sewer and water.
“It’s really been a perfect house for us,” I said. “Perfect.”
Maybe you didn’t notice, I continued, but it’s all stone, solid stone. And the place didn’t take much to heat because of the insulation and the way it stood in relation to the sun. The roof — we’d just put on a new one, just as the owner before us had done. No termites, a perfectly dry basement, central air. And there was a garden that was small enough to take care of by yourself, but large enough so that it wouldn’t be embarrassing to call in a gardener. And the trees — had they seen that fir in front, and the cherry to one side? In back of the house there was a large apple and several oaks, and it had loads of forsythia and hyacinth — you’ll see for yourself.
Melissa said, “Do you have children?”
They had one, Mrs. Williams said, then added with a smile that they’d just learned that another was on the way. Which, Melissa quickly replied, her hand instinctively going out to her, was exactly what we’d had — Becky had been three when we moved in and Katie was born eight months later.
“Where do your children live now?” Mrs. Williams asked.
When Melissa told her that Becky and her husband and two children lived right in the next township, and Katie and her brood were just about a thirty-minute ride away, Mrs. Williams turned to her husband and with a slight intake of breath said, “Wouldn’t Mother and Daddy just love that?” None of her brothers and sisters, she explained to us, lived within five hundred miles of her parents, and one even lived in Australia. “My parents say it all the time, if only one of you lived close. And they say it’s true of all their friends — every one of their children lives far away. You’re very fortunate.”
“And we know it,” Melissa said with a wise nod. “But you have to be very careful you don’t intrude on their lives.”
“I would say, hearing that, they don’t have that problem.”
We walked on through the first floor, Melissa and I taking turns — but almost always in response to their questions — to give other of the house’s attributes. Schools — absolutely great schools — “One of the big reasons I wanted to live in the township was the schools,” Melissa said. “And they’ve kept up. You can talk to anyone around here with children.”
Mrs. Williams nodded at that, for apparently she’d heard too.
“And the children,” Melissa went on, “are in walking distance — what could be nicer than that? And I mean to all the schools, not just grammar, but the middle school, the high school.”
“Now, that’s nice,” Mrs. Williams said with a look at her husband.
What’s also nice, I said as we neared the kitchen, is that though you have all the advantages of a suburb, you can walk to the train to the city. And, oh yes, there’s a playground a few blocks away, and a pond where the kids go ice skating. And the police are very, very nice; and you may have passed it, there’s a fire station only about four blocks down the street.
Walkin
g into the kitchen, Mrs. Williams stopped all at once and looked around and that smile of hers broadened. “Oh, I always wanted a kitchen like this. George, look,” and she pointed at almost everything — the copper pots that overhung the island, the large shiny stove, the refrigerator that released a crackle of ice with a touch, the round breakfast table near the windows overlooking the back garden. And in the midst of this, while nodding and agreeing with her how perfect it was, somewhere Mr. Williams found time to look at me and to say, almost apologetically, “This would be our first house.”
He’d caught me off guard, for during the past few moments, while my face might have been all light and air, I’d been thinking the darkest thoughts, the thing I’d been thinking about for so long — how this house had become a trap for me, how I had to get out, didn’t know what I’d do if I had to stay any longer.
Had said it to Melissa that day, maybe for the millionth time. Who’d given me the look of disdain it always produced.
“I’m sorry,” I said to him, “what did you say?”
“This would be our first home.”
“It was ours, too.” And with this it began to come back — though of late it seemed always at the edge of my consciousness — the little apartment we’d had over a real-estate office in center city. It was an apartment you had to walk up a long flight of narrow, wooden stairs to get to, and where each room was on a separate level. It was so cozy, just right for us. especially in winter when you’d see cars stalled and skidding around in the snow, and we’d feel so good and secure, putting on our boots to go out to eat or to a movie, while the rest of the world struggled with cars and distances. Even my office — a little one-man, storefront ad agency I’d started — was just around the comer.
There was such a sense of freedom living there.
I said to Mr. Williams, “Where do you live now?”
“A little apartment, but it won’t be enough for our needs now.” Still, did I detect a touch of sadness there?
“That was our problem,” Melissa said. “We had an adorable apartment.”
“I really didn’t want to leave,” I said. “It was like... something in Greenwich Village, I guess. But it didn’t serve our purpose anymore. And this place had everything. Has everything.”