Too Easy

by Bruce Deitrick Price

“Yes?”

  “Couple months ago. You were in here with one of the CPAs. A bunch of us were talking about this case, a burglary, guy got shot. Remember any of this?”

  “I remember very well.”

  “Oh. Well, I remember it bothered you. So I can give you some good news. The whole thing got settled. Case just evaporated, actually. Happy?”

  She stares at him. Stan doesn’t get the feeling she’s overjoyed to hear all this.

  “Well, thank you, Stan,” she says slowly. “Thanks for telling me.”

  Stan nods. “You do remember, right?”

  She seems to snap a little. “Stan, I told you I recall the case precisely. It was offensive that you . . . that we would be involved in something like that.”

  Stan shrugs uneasily. “Well, people have a right to good counsel.”

  Anne puts down her fork. Stan watches this with a twinge of apprehension. “The man in the yard was a professional burglar,” she says in a low but stern voice. “You knew that. He was not drunk. He was not lost. He was there to break into the house and steal. I don’t pretend to know what proper punishment is. But the whole point of the legal system is to get the facts on the table. At least to try to.”

  Stan smiles. “Not if you’re guilty.”

  Anne stops herself from responding. She picks up her coffee with both hands, takes her time sipping. Slow things down, stay calm.

  Stan’s just trying to be nice, she thinks. Edd took care of it, apparently—he was just trying to be nice. Everybody is trying to be nice. I’m so wound up, I have to be careful. Fake it, lady. Smile. Who cares about a damned burglar and the rest of it? Well, damn, I can’t very well say what I really care about. Oh, Stan, by the way, I think my husband’s planning to leave me. . . . Maybe something much worse. God, it hurts just to think that.

  She gasps. Holds the cup away from her lips. “Still hot,” she lies, trying to smile.

  “Right,” Stan says, looking uncomfortable. “Anyway, I just thought you would want to know.” He stands up. “Well, I’ll be—”

  He glances across the room, sees Edd Lawrence walk in. Edd scans the room, sees them and comes right over. “Well, still here,” he says to Anne. “Good, I’ll join you. . . . Hi,” he adds, turning to Stan.

  Anne looks up at them. “Stan here was just saying that the burglar’s suit has evaporated. That the word, Stan?”

  “Is that so?” Edd exclaims. “I remember it.”

  “You do?” Stan says, surprised. “February . . . yes, I think it was—”

  “Sure,” Edd says. “Anne said it was a silly suit.”

  “I said it was disgusting,” Anne corrects him. “I meant evil. Now, I wonder why I thought that. . . .” Now, she thinks, that I know a lot more about the subject.

  Stan stares down at Anne. “Well . . .” He starts to walk away but doesn’t. “Now you wonder why? I’m sorry?”

  “You boys play your little games,” Anne says, looking down. “And then you’re surprised that people hate lawyers.”

  “Anne, really.”

  Anne is seeing Robert’s face when she says, “It’s just wrong, that’s all. A man’s home is his castle. And a woman’s, too, I would hope.” She pushes the tray back and stands up. Edd is watching her with his passive face, but she can feel his mind whirring. Anne confronts Stan. “We have to be responsible. Is that too much to ask? Life isn’t a game, you know. I’m sorry, Edd, I have to get back to work.”

  “I’m sorry, too,” Edd says.

  Stan’s face moves from one expression to another. Geez, I was just trying to be nice. And look what I get. What is going on here? I didn’t know accountants got so crazy.

  Anne makes a little wave, smiling some, trying to end on a lighter note. “Thanks, Stan. Well, I’ll be going.”

  “You’re welcome,” he says, the words sounding ironic.

  Anne starts across the room. Edd watches her, then sees Stan’s confusion. “Interesting woman,” Edd says.

  Like that explains anything, Stan thinks. “Oh, yeah,” he says vaguely. “Bye.” Sorry he ever came over to talk to her.

  • • •

  Anne settles at her desk, tries to concentrate on the numbers. . . . God, I feel like I’m on fire or something. I can’t do it now, Robert says, and I think he’s talking about divorce. No, no; now I don’t think that’s right. If it was divorce, he’d talk to me about it. He doesn’t talk, so it’s got to be something worse. Something unspeakable . . . as it were. And there’s something in the tone of his voice, something hushed and conspiratorial. We have to make sure everything’s just right, he says. What, for leaving me? I just assumed that’s what he meant. But what would have to be right?

  Every time I listen, I hear it in a darker way. Oh, I don’t know what to think anymore. I don’t know how to think about any of this. I mean, how do you? You have to be a cop or something like that. What was it, four or five years ago, Robert and I were joking, You know, we’re both worth a lot more dead than alive. Haha. . . . Is that it?

  She remembers the man who sold her the recording device. Sure, he’d know how to think about this. Everyday stuff. Maybe I should pick a lawyer out of the phone book, talk to him. Or go to the police. But they might just laugh. Well, lady, you want to press charges? What?! Everything’s so inconclusive. All I’ve got’s a half dozen sentences. That last time, they really start to talk and her mother calls! Call waiting. Now there’s an old lady somewhere I don’t even know and I hate her.

  So who can I talk to? Maybe call up Mom, say, Remember your favorite son-in-law? Well, he might be . . . I couldn’t speak the words.

  I feel like such a lunatic just thinking about this, for suspecting that Robert could actually . . . Oh, I must be a lunatic. Yes, definitely. I’ve got this on my mind every other minute. So I’m a lunatic for thinking it. Or thinking it will make me a lunatic. Either way, I end up in the same spot. They get you in a padded room and people peek in the little window and you never get out. Sorry, lady, you thought crazy thoughts. Case closed, door locked.

  Anne remembers that for several minutes before lunch she felt analytical, objective. Here’s a puzzle, try to solve it, she told herself. Turn the pieces around until they make sense. She liked this feeling. It’s the feeling she brings to her work, to solving the tax problems of her clients. But the feeling didn’t last long. She tries to bring it back now. There’s just a jumble of thoughts and in back of them a mist of fear.

  She sits back violently, as if she can jolt these thoughts from her mind.

  She looks up and sees Edd leaning in the door. He’s smiling in his neutral way. She wonders if he saw her jump back like that. Yes, he must have.

  He moves inside the office, stands there looking at her. “Anne . . . I’m sorry. I’m not sure how to say this. You seem very tense the last week or so.”

  Anne shrugs. “Oh, well . . . work’s piling up on me. You know how it is.”

  She glances back and forth from the computer screen to Edd, wondering what he suspects, wondering if her behavior has changed in such an obvious way. She smiles, tries to appear very calm.

  “Right,” he says. “I know how it is.” He hesitates, then adds, “Well, if there’s anything I can do. . . .”

  She looks at him more directly. Maybe Edd could help, she thinks. He’s got a shrewd, even-tempered way of looking at problems. He’d probably know exactly what to do. I really wish I could trust him.

  Edd watches her. Smiling some. Not much of a smile, but this, she thinks, is a man who hardly smiles at all. “If I can be of any help,” he says, “you tell me.”

  “Yes, alright, Edd. I will.”

  He seems reluctant to leave. He looks out the window, then back at Anne. “I don’t like seeing you upset. . . . I’d like to be able to help.”

  I wish you could, Anne thinks. I wish somebody could. She hesitates a moment, trying to think of some way to test him. “What do you think it is, Edd?”

  “Well, I’m not sure, of course
. . . . Maybe something at home. Anne, I really like you. I . . .”

  Then she understands. He’s making some kind of pass. She blinks, trying to think fast. “Edd, I like you, too. So let me be frank. There’s nothing wrong at home. And I think you’re a little out of line here.” She hopes she hit just the right tone of seriousness. Let him think she’s annoyed.

  Edd stiffens, backs up a step. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean . . . to offend you. Well, if I can . . . Whatever it is, if I can help, you tell me. Promise?”

  “Of course, Edd. Thank you.”

  He retreats into the hall. Anne shaking her head in surprise. Her heart pounding so she notices it. What’d he have in mind, she wonders. Things aren’t right at home, so we jump in the sack? What would that be like? Dear God. Is this what happened to Robert? Somebody says, If things aren’t right at home, maybe I can help. . . .

  Nothing’s what it was, Anne thinks, everything’s gotten so sleazy I can’t recognize it. Funny, Edd could probably help. I was seeing us as a team for a minute. Solving this together. Maybe figuring out how I should defend myself, if it comes to that. I thought I needed an ally. Now I don’t think so. I’m all alone in this.

  She grimaces, feeling proud and terrified in the same instant.

  Robert, Robert. What has happened to you? To us? What are you doing? I can’t make sense of anything anymore.

  She stares finally at the screen. Amounts of money spent for capital improvements, warehousing, executive bonuses, interstate transport. What is all this? she wonders. Does it mean anything? My husband’s planning to kill me—there, I said it! Yes, yes, I really do think that’s what is happening. Now that means something.

  But I’m not even sure about that. Maybe he is. How do I figure this out? Robert, dear husband, could you possibly do such a thing? You’re thinking of what—a gun, a knife, some arsenic?

  She feels a sharp pain all the way down her right side.

  “Oh, Jesus. . . . Look, I’m doing it for him.”

  She breathes as deeply as she can, trying to ease the pain.

  She cannot imagine Robert doing this thing. Not to her, not face to face. “But,” she hisses at herself, “say he does. How’s he . . . ?” The first image she has is of a deserted road, an isolated spot. He wants to go to a great restaurant but it’s over in Connecticut somewhere. “Five star, Anne, just an hour away.” Then there’s some kind of accident. Or he wants to take a little trip. Anyplace I’m not familiar with, really, then he . . . they . . . can set up something.

  She smiles. If Robert mentions a trip now, I think I’d jump out of the chair. . . . No, I’d let him set it up, then change it all at the last minute, see if he objects.

  That’s the only thing she feels sure of, that something unusual will happen. Then she’ll know. . . . No, she won’t know. She’ll be twice as tense, watching, waiting, trying to see this thing coming, whatever it is, before it’s on top of her.

  She shivers all over her chest, going back again to the question that most intrigues her: Could Robert actually think of such a thing, plan it, do it? No, no, no, Anne wants to cry out. No, it has to be this woman, this terrible person he’s somehow gotten involved with. It’s all her idea. Robert could grow tired of her, of course. But could he hurt her? No, it was unthinkable.

  Anne realizes she’s shaking all over, visibly trembling. She stands up decisively, stretches, tries to quiet herself. “Get a grip, lady.” I’ve got to think clearly. It’s the only hope I’ve got.

  • • •

  At 4:15 Anne is in her boss’s office, getting more orders, basically. Anne starts to leave, then says: “Estelle, I want you to know something.”

  “Yes, Anne?”

  “I think I was more qualified for that promotion than the person you chose.”

  “Well, Anne,” Estelle says, looking at Anne in a smug way, “I’m sure I know what’s best for this company,” Still, there’s some confusion there, too. Her eyes narrow. What’s got into Anne?

  “I just want to be on record,” Anne says, thinking, Hey, what’s this office nonsense when your husband might be trying to kill you? “I want to be on record, that’s all. Perhaps you will at some point review the performance of the individuals involved. . . .”

  Anne lets it hang in the air. Estelle stares. What in the world?

  Chapter

  29

  • Robert leaves his office at 1:15 and goes down to 42nd Street and walks west toward Grand Central. He lights a small cigar and puffs it in an obvious way. He crosses Park and continues on, staying on the south sidewalk. Trying to seem lost in his worries about a big story, hardly aware of the people around him. But he can’t resist glancing ahead. She’ll be there, somewhere, suddenly, coming from Fifth.

  He almost expects her to be larger than everyone else, to be glowing, to stand out somehow. He sees her in his mind as floating toward him, smiling, naked, her arms outstretched.

  He doesn’t see her until she’s thirty feet away. A woman of ordinary size, larger people all around her. The other people moving away from him and toward him in a clumsy choreography that tends not to feature Kathy but to diminish and hide her. The close-cut black hair makes her seem even smaller than when he first met her.

  She’s staring straight ahead. Not looking for him at all. Or doing a better job of pretending than he is. At the last second she sees him and says, “Oh . . . Mr. Saunders . . . how are you?”

  “Oh, fine . . . Kathy, isn’t it?”

  She smiles only fleetingly. “Yes, that’s right. Well, duty calls. Bye.”

  And she’s gone. And he almost turns around to call after her. Please, stop—hug me, kiss me, let me feel you. No, he tells himself sharply, keep walking. He crosses Madison and then Fifth. He stands on the steps in front of the big library. Smoking the rest of his cigar, staring up at the warm blue sky. Solving that big story. Thinking actually about how obsessed he is with this woman, how in love he is. Thinking what a good actor she is. Thinking of the word rehearsal, what Kathy calls this. “Today is just for me,” she said. “On the actual day you’ll leave more tracks. Tell your secretary you’re going out to think, and so on.” Rehearse . . . funny, I never noticed the word hearse in there before; are they really spelled the same? I’ll have to look that up. He grins uncomfortably. Then he comes down the steps and crosses in front of the library and heads back on East 4lst. In seven minutes he reaches Third, turns left and goes into the lobby of his building.

  He comes back to his office, his desk, sits down at what used to be his favorite spot in the whole world. Now that’s wherever she is. He feels the tingle of anxiety along his arms, the worry, the fear. But at the moment they are faint and far away. Not a problem, he tells himself.

  I’m fine, he thinks. Everything’s fine.

  He has the sense of falling into a dark pool. But it’s not scary, it’s pleasant. A dark, tropical pool perhaps. Everything is warm and sensuous. The only texture is the way her skin feels. Her voice is the only sound he hears. The only smell is Kathy’s smell. . . .

  “Mr. Saunders? . . . Hello?”

  “Oh, Wilson . . . I’m sorry.” He focuses on the young reporter in front of his desk. “What?”

  “You said we’d discuss the Board of Ed story.”

  “Thieves and idiots.” Kathy, so real a moment before, fades.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “My opinion, not the paper’s. Pull up a chair. But I want you to bear down on this crew. We’ve got to have better schools.”

  “Oh, yes, sir.”

  “Feet to the fire, that kind of thing.”

  “I’d like that.” He leans eagerly toward Robert, eager for editorial guidance.

  Yeah, this is definitely what I’m good at, Robert thinks. And maybe nothing else. The Peter Principle. Everybody finally reaches the level where they’re incompetent. Where they’re bound to fail. This thing with Anne, maybe that’s the level I shouldn’t try for. Kathy thinks she can just bop up there on the train, sto
p by to commit a . . . murder, and waltz right back. “Who’s to know?” she says. “Takes less than ninety minutes. A long lunch hour. You can say you saw me somewhere in there, so it can’t be me. And the day before, the day after, I’ll stop in shops around here, talk to people. Weeks later you think anybody can be sure which day it was?” Jesus, the audacity. Woman’s something. If anybody can do it, it’s her. . . .

  “Mr. Saunders?”

  “Yeah?” He focuses on the reporter again. “Just thinking it over. . . . Your story.”

  God, I’d give anything to see her today. Have her right here on this desk, legs apart, drawing the skirt up an inch at a time. Slooowwww. No, faster, I have to see it. Every beautiful black hair. . . .

  “Mr. Saunders . . . if this isn’t a good time?”

  Robert snaps at him. “It’s a great time. Let me think.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I am positive.” He lets Kathy fade again, reluctantly, just as she lifts the skirt, then the sheer slip, leaning away from him. He feels a rush through his body, lust, anger, panic. He isn’t faking his sudden ardor. “Damn it, Wilson, just burn them! The biggest per capita budget in the universe, and the worst results. Sherman through Georgia—be that.”

  “What is Sherman through Georgia?”

  “Jesus! Are you serious? They teach anything in school anymore?”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “Well, you can’t have it. . . .”

  Robert wants to stand up, storm around some. But he realizes he’s got an erection and better stay seated. This dope graduated from college and J school and he doesn’t know what Sherman through Georgia is. Are things really that bad? Robert feels old. Horny beyond belief and old.

  His heart is pounding. Oh, just do it, Kathy. This world’s not that big a deal; people getting dumber by the month. If I can’t have you, fuck it. He glowers at the reporter.

  “Wilson, feet to the fire, okay? I should’ve stopped when I was ahead. If they all call up here bitching and moaning, then you did a good job. Got it?”

  “Yes, sir. . . . Uh, what will you tell them?”