The Hook

by Donald E. Westlake

  The narrow-eyed look became narrower. She turned to gaze at horse and rider as though rethinking her ownership of the piece, then nodded briskly at him and said, “Try, Wayne, not to be too brilliant.”

  “That’ll be easy,” he said, trying for a friendly smile, wanting to keep it as light as possible. After all, he’d want to come back here, wouldn’t he? Another time?

  “Good,” she said. Moving away once more toward the hall, she said, “I won’t be long. A man wouldn’t notice this sort of thing, but this hair is not ready for public inspection. I’ll just be a sec.”

  She was fifteen minutes. He spent part of that time, wineglass in hand, wandering the beige room, thinking these apartments would mostly be rented to corporate people, businessmen assigned for a few weeks or a few months to New York. Lucie Proctorr being here showed that she, too, had put her life on hold, waiting for the divorce, the same as Bryce.

  He also hefted various objects in the room, looking for something lethal. Everything seemed too lightweight. Besides, could he do that? Hit someone on the back of the head with a . . . with that ashtray? All that golden hair; wouldn’t it cushion her?

  When at last she came out, she looked to his eyes the same as before, but she seemed satisfied with whatever changes she’d made. “All set. Is it windy?”

  “No, not really.”

  “I’ll bring a scarf,” she decided, and he thought about strangulations with a scarf. Isadora Duncan. He didn’t see how that would work.

  He helped her with her coat, and they left the apartment to wait for the elevator. Trying to find conversation, he said, “I was thinking, those furnished apartments like that, they’re mostly rented to corporate types.”

  “And divorcing women who live alone,” she said, as the elevator arrived. They boarded, she pushed L, and as they descended she said, “Women who really want to live where there’s a doorman.”

  “I guess so.”

  “Believe me,” she said, “a doorman is just as good as a husband any day. More reliable, usually.”

  “You can feel safe,” he said.

  “I always feel safe,” she said.

  When they crossed the lobby, he kept Lucie between himself and the doorman, who looked up, recognized the tenant, and said, “You wan a taxi?”

  “No, we’re hiking,” she said.

  Looking back at his novela, the doorman pushed a button that opened the glass door as they reached it. They went outside and she said, “Which way?”

  “Over to Columbus, I guess, and up.”

  They crossed Broadway at the corner and headed down the side street. “Oh, it’s a great night,” she said. “I can smell winter, can’t you?”

  “Yes, I can.”

  “Oh, God, then Christmas,” she said, and made a disgusted sound. “Family.”

  “You don’t like your family?”

  “I like them where they are. And I like me where I am.”

  “Where are they?”

  “A place called Carmody, outside St. Louis.” She sounded affectedly weary when she said, “You fly to St. Louis, and some relative has to drive and drive to pick you up and take you home, and then four days later they have to drive you all the way back, and you fly in another airplane, and you say, ‘Please, God, never again,’ but there’s no escape.”

  “What’s wrong with your family?”

  “Oh, nothing, really, nothing,” she said.

  They turned north on Columbus, the herds of headlights descending the avenue toward them, one with every cycle of green, and she said, “If I’d stayed in Carmody, married somebody I went to high school with, they’d all be just great, and I suppose I’d be a nicer person, too. But I went away, I’m more than fifteen years away, and we don’t think like each other any more. I can’t stand the television they watch. Their jokes are so stale and old, and they insist on telling them. And they never understand a word I say, of course. I’ve been in New York all this time. I was married to the rat for seven years, and when you’re married to him you go first class, my dear, you meet the elegant and the swellegant. It’s not just that I’m a big girl now, I’m a big city girl now. But enough about me, tell me, what do you think of me?”

  “I think you’re funny,” he said, a bit surprised to find that was true. I’m not going to like her, I hope, he thought. I don’t have to make Bryce’s mistake and fall in love with her, all I have to do is like her, and everything’s messed up.

  “Funny,” she echoed. “That’s been my goal all these years, to have somebody too cheap to take a taxi think I’m funny.”

  Oh, good, he thought, let’s have more of that, and they reached the restaurant. “Here we are,” he said.

  * * *

  They sat at one of the tables in the raised section at the rear, where they could look out and down at the bar, already half full, the pretty brunette bartender in constant motion. Later on, there’d be live jazz, and the bar would fill entirely, and there’d be a second bartender.

  After they’d ordered, Lucie turned to him and said, “So how long have you been divorced?”

  Startled, he said, “What?”

  “Oh, come on,” she said, “everybody our age has been married, and you’re not a faggot, and if you’re taking me out you’re not married any more, so you’re divorced. I mean, this is not as brilliant reasoning as you and my dynasty horse.”

  “I’m not divorced,” he said. “Like you, you aren’t divorced.”

  “Oh, I get it,” she said. “En train, the separation in place, the lawyers at the trough. You know, a friend of the rat’s once said he’d never heard of a trial separation that didn’t work, but I say the trial comes before the separation. So who left who? What’s she like?”

  What to say? How to handle this? He had to tell some lies, but not too many. He could describe Susan as she was, but give her a bit more of that hard edge she could sometimes have, not with him, but that tough flat voice he’d heard her use on the phone a few times, talking with people about things related to her job. “Her name is Susan,” he said. “Susan Costello.”

  “She kept her maiden name?”

  “On the job.”

  “What job?”

  “She works for an outfit called UniCare,” he told her. “They allocate money to charities.”

  “What does she do there?”

  “She’s the assistant director.”

  “Of the whole thing?”

  “Yeah, the whole thing.”

  “It sounds like a big deal,” she said. “Is it?”

  “Yeah, it is. She’s testified before congressional committees a couple times. Mostly, though, it’s just keeping everything running.”

  The waitress brought a small dish, then an amuse guise “compliments of the chef”: avocado puree on sesame-crusted salmon with a dab of Japanese barbeque sauce. When they’d admired it and eaten it, Lucie said, “So your Susan makes good money.”

  “Pretty good,” he agreed. “Charity work isn’t that great, but pretty good.”

  “That explains it,” she said.

  The waitress took away the small plates and brought their first courses. Lucie started to eat, and Wayne said, “Explains what?”

  She held her fork up to say, wait, my mouth is full, then put it down to sip some wine. “Very good wine.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And a really good restaurant. You chose well.”

  “Thank you again.”

  He waited, but she didn’t say anything else. When she reached for her fork, he said, “Explains what?”

  “Oh,” she said, as though it hardly mattered. “I looked you up in Amazon.”

  “Oh, did you?” She was that interested, at least.

  “You haven’t published anything for years and years.”

  “Eight years.” No point getting into the tribulations of Tim Fleet.

  “And everything’s out of print,” she said. “I clicked for used copies, and there were just a few, for not much money.”
r />   “I’ve never looked myself up in Amazon,” he said. “I suppose I ought to.”

  “Don’t,” she advised, “you’ll find it depressing. But I wondered, what were you living on? I mean, you don’t have a job, you go around saying you’re a writer. But now, I guess, the only question is, what will you live on after Susan divorces you? She’s the one leaving, isn’t she?”

  “Yes,” he said. “But I’m not living on Susan, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’ve had editorial work,” he said, “other writing work. I support myself.”

  “Well, you don’t have to be defensive about it,” she said, but there was a gleam in her eye.

  * * *

  Between the appetizer and the main course, she said, “Will you get alimony?”

  “What, me? From Susan? No, of course not.”

  “Men can, you know. And, God knows, she won’t get any from you.”

  “You’ll be getting alimony,” he said.

  “You’re damn right I will,” she agreed. “Once the lawyers get finished with their little dance, and I don’t care how long it takes, the longer the better for me, I’m going to be rich, and glad of it. And don’t think I haven’t earned it. Seven years of his ego. And let’s not even talk about sex.”

  “I didn’t intend to,” he said.

  She looked at him with laughing surprise. “Wit!” she cried. “I had no idea you could be witty! Wit and brilliance. What a catch you’ll be for some solvent girl.”

  * * *

  He paid cash, to avoid any record in this neighborhood. Walking homeward, Columbus Avenue traffic behind them now, giving the sidewalk ahead of them a shifting dull gray gleam, the sky above them featureless, not black but like a thick black cloth over a faint source of light, she said, “I had fun.”

  I’m sure you did, he thought, but said, “So did I. That’s a good place.”

  “Do you miss writing?” she asked.

  “I write,” he said, but he himself could hear that he was being defensive again.

  “I mean novel writing,” she said. “Come on, you knew what I meant. The rat had to do it, I told him it was like an addiction, take him away from it a few days, it was like withdrawal, he turned into an absolute bear.”

  “I guess that’s pretty normal,” he said, thinking how much Bryce must have enjoyed having Lucie describe him to himself, time after time. While he was probably trying to get back to work.

  “Nothing’s normal with a writer,” she said. “If you swore off, and I guess you must have, left it or it left you, you are no doubt a better person for it.”

  “No doubt,” he said.

  They were mostly quiet as they walked the side street over to Broadway, crossed, and turned south. Then she said, “You’re very calm, aren’t you?”

  What now? “Am I?”

  “Oh, I see a little edginess in you sometimes,” she said, “but not a lot. I think you’re basically a calm person.”

  “You do?”

  “Oh, dear. That sounds dull, doesn’t it?” She pretend-smacked herself on the side of the head. “I didn’t mean dull,” she said, “you’re not dull. I just mean you’re not antsy all the time.”

  He had to smile. “Like the rat?”

  “Exactly. Why did Susan leave you?”

  “Maybe because I was dull,” he said.

  “Ouch,” she said, and briefly touched his arm, as though to ask forgiveness. “I really didn’t mean dull,” she said. “Really.”

  “Okay.”

  “So what was it? Were you playing around?”

  “No, of course not,” he said.

  “Of course not?” When he glanced her way, he could see her give him a measuring look. He faced front again, as they approached her building, and she said, “I can see you as a very unfaithful guy. Saying, ‘Oh, it doesn’t count because I only really love Susan, but boy, I would like to get next to that one, and that one.’ Do you still love her?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, wishing she’d ride him on some other topic. “I suppose we go on loving the person we used to love, one way or another.”

  “Are you kidding?” They’d reached her building, and both stood on the sidewalk while she said, “Do you think, do you honestly think, I have any love in me for the rat? My dear, he wore that off me a long time ago.”

  “Was he playing around?”

  “No,” she said, sounding disgusted. “I don’t think so, anyway. The great love of Bryce Proctorr’s life, you know, is Bryce Proctorr. Why would he need to play around?”

  “Well, he should be happy now, I guess,” Wayne said.

  “I certainly hope not,” she said. “I suppose you want to come up.”

  This was the problem he’d been worrying over since partway through dinner. She was so aggressive, and so fast, that he had come to realize she would expect more from him on a first date than he’d expected, or was prepared for.

  I’d kill her, he thought, but I won’t sleep with her, I didn’t come here to be unfaithful to Susan. But what was he going to do? He didn’t want to alienate Lucie, because he needed to be able to come back, to see her again, take her somewhere safe, when he was ready, when he knew exactly how to go about it, when he was armed.

  Go with it. For a while, at least, go with it. “I suppose so,” he said, to echo what she had said: “I suppose you want to come up.”

  “Well, there’s enthusiasm,” she said.

  “I don’t want to push myself on you.”

  She tapped his chest with her fingertips. “Don’t worry, my dear, you’ll never do that. But you can come up for a few minutes, if you really want. Just so you understand, I will not go to bed with you.”

  He hid his relief by pretending to hide his disappointment with a deadpan, “Okay.”

  “We’ll have one more glass of wine,” she told him, “and we’ll have a nice chat, and then I’ll throw you out.”

  “It’s a deal,” he said, and would have shaken her hand to confirm it, but she’d already turned away toward the entrance, and the doorman had already seen her and pushed the button to open the door.

  Once again, he hid behind that head of golden hair as they went past the doorman’s desk.

  * * *

  “I’ll just be a minute.”

  “Fine.”

  On one side wall of the living room stood a glass-doored, glass-shelved cabinet that contained a sparse display of trophies and commemorative plates from the fifties and earlier; some decorator’s idea of what the nomadic businessman would like. Wayne looked at them, the honors and memorials bleached of meaning in this beige room, while Lucie went off down the interior hall again, and soon he heard a toilet flush.

  The end table with the Chinese horse and rider was near the cabinet. Wayne studied it without touching it. This artifact did have meaning for her. What?

  She came in with two glasses of the red wine, not as good as what they’d been drinking in the restaurant, but in better glasses. “You don’t mind the same glass,” she said.

  “Not at all.” He accepted the glass she reached toward him, and she held hers up for a toast, saying, “To divorce.”

  “Sure,” he said, grinning, tapping glasses with her. “Why?”

  “Because you get to meet all new people,” she said, and laughed, and sipped her wine.

  “Like Alzheimer’s,” he said, and drank.

  She made a disgusted face. “Oh, don’t be morbid, for God’s sake. What did you think of the play the other night?”

  Apparently they were to stand here, a two-person cocktail party. He said, “It was fun.”

  Another wrong answer. She made a scrinched-up face, and said, “Did you really like it?”

  “I take it you didn’t.”

  “What trash,” she said. “Poor Janet, that’s all she gets are these lighter-than-air yuppie comedies; supposed to be all about sex, they’re just about some loser’s idea of witty repartee. She wants to do better work, she
wants to direct at the Public, but she has to build a body of work, and all it is is this trash. I told her once, ‘Janet, you’ll have to tie weights to the actors or they’ll float up into the flies,’ that’s how lightweight they all are.”

  “I bet you did,” he said.

  “Of course I did. I always tell the truth, it’s easier that way. You like the truth, don’t you?”

  “Love it,” he said.

  “I knew you did. Is Susan any good in bed?”

  “Very,” he said, and put his wineglass down on the table next to the dynasty horse, and punched Lucie as hard as he could in the stomach.

  They were both astonished. He thought, not now! This is wrong, this isn’t what I meant, this is too messy, this isn’t right!

  Her eyes were widening, her arms were moving in slow motion to fold across her belly, her mouth was opening, she was folding forward. He punched her again, hard, this time in the face, and she jolted back into the cabinet, knocking plates and trophies awry, and he moved in after her.

  It’s started, it’s too late now, I can’t go back, what am I going to do?

  She leaped at him! He hadn’t expected that, either, and his deflection was clumsy, both arms swinging around, thrusting her lunge to his left. He’d thought she would keep falling, back and back, as he would go on hitting her, but her instincts were so aggressive, it was as though they were both acting without thought, even though his brain was full of thoughts, a vast confusion of thoughts, while outside his brain everything was happening too fast.

  She came at him with nails, fingers into talons, and he ducked back and away, knowing he couldn’t permit her to scar him, mark him, he couldn’t leave traces of his flesh under her nails. He kicked wildly, hitting the front of her right thigh, half-turning her as he backpedalled.

  She came at him again, blood on her face, mouth distorted, not screaming yet, but soon she’d scream, and he couldn’t have that, either. He jumped back a pace, this time aimed, and kicked her solidly, the outside of his right shoe squarely against her right knee. She jerked toward him, and looked astonished as she fell, and he kicked her in the mouth as she was going down.

  Loud thump. Let the people downstairs be at the movies. She landed face down, and he dropped heavily to his knees onto her back, reached down, grabbed her jaw in his right hand, the golden hair clutched in his left, and tried to jerk her head around to the right.