Privileged Conversation
Page 26
He remembers that the tape is still in the video player.
He snaps on the television set, picks up the remote control unit, hits the PLAY button and then the RW button and sits down to watch as the tape rewinds. As it flickers in reverse, as the actors walk backward out of a room, or move out of each other’s arms instead of into them, David keeps watching the flickering images on the screen. The main titles appear, running backward to the very beginning of the film. The movie is almost ready to start all over again. He hits the EJECT button. The tape slides out of the video player with an audible click. He snaps off the set, carries the tape back to where its protective plastic case is sitting on the coffee table.
He stands looking at the blank screen.
He stands looking at it for a long while, as if trying to remember what the movie was all about.
Well, no matter, he thinks.
He finds a blanket and a pillow in the hall closet, stretches out on the couch, and tries to make himself comfortable. At last, he closes his eyes and drifts off to sleep.
He dreams that they are taking a long walk up the beach. He and Helen are holding hands. The girls are running up the beach ahead of them, circling back occasionally to hug them both around the legs, skipping off again, skirting like sandpipers the waves that gently rush the shore.
“Forever, right?” Annie says, turning to look back at him.
“Forever,” he says.
Annie leaps over someone’s abandoned sand castle, lands flat-footed and crouched on the other side of it.
“Boop!” she says.
And he awakens with a start.
About the Author
Ed McBain is one of the many pen names of legendary author Evan Hunter (1926–2005). Named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America, Hunter is best known for creating the long-running 87th Precinct series, which followed an ensemble cast of police officers in the fictional city of Isola. A pioneer of the police procedural, he remains one of the best-loved mystery novelists of the twentieth century. Hunter also wrote under the pseudonyms Richard Marsten, Hunt Collins, John Abbott, Ezra Hannon, Curt Cannon, and others.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1996 by Ed McBain
Cover design by Jason Gabbert
ISBN: 978-1-5040-3930-7
This 2016 edition published by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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