mentions anything about my getting a call from you late last night, I …”
Wally’s eyes shot over to me. “You need an alibi, Steve? Someone to cover for you?”
“Well, it’s just that last night …”
“She called, right?” Wally said with a slow smile. “She always does, in the end.”
“Who does?”
“The other woman,” Wally said flatly. “She always says she’ll never call you at home, but she always does.”
“This was a little different,” I said quickly.
Wally looked at me pointedly. “It couldn’t have been too different,” he said, “or you wouldn’t have had to lie about it, would you, old buddy?”
He was right, of course. But only partly right. For though Rebecca was not my lover in any technical sense, she had come to represent one: the flight from life’s heaviness, the possibility of escape.
“So is it love?” Wally asked lightly.
I didn’t answer.
Wally’s smile broadened. He didn’t press the question, but settled instead for a different one. “It’s the woman who came to see you in the office that day, am I right?”
I nodded faintly, reluctantly.
“Whew!” Wally said, pretending to wipe a line of sweat from his forehead. “Hot, hot, hot.”
I watched the road, adding nothing, feeling neither shame nor the absence of shame, but only the disquieting sense that I had cheapened the nature of my own feeling for Rebecca by being unable to explain it.
“Does she live in Old Salsbury?” Wally asked.
“A little ways outside it.”
“Do you see her a lot?”
“Not too often.”
Wally shrugged. “Well, just tell her to ease up on the old home phone, you know?” he said. Then he grinned impishly, one worldly man to another. “Either that, or keep me well-informed in case …” He stopped. “What’s your wife’s name?”
“Marie,” I said.
Wally nodded briskly, then finished his sentence. “In case Marie calls me up sometime to find out where the hell you are.”
“She’d never do that,” I assured him. “She’d never try to track me down.”
“Don’t kid yourself, buddy,” Wally said. “If she starts really chewing at it, she’ll track you down all right.”
I shook my head. “No, she wouldn’t,” I told him. “She’d rather die first.”
Suddenly I felt my eyes grow cool and vacant, and there must have been something in my voice, because I felt the car veer to the right, then come to a noisy halt along the bank of the road. I turned toward Wally. He was staring at me worriedly.
“Whoa, now, buddy,” he said.
I glanced at him quickly, defensively, as if some part of a secret plot had been uncovered.
“You look a little weird, Steve,” Wally added. He reached over and squeezed my shoulder. “You don’t want to let things get out of hand, you know?”
“What do you mean?”
“With this woman,” Wally said, “the one’s who’s fucking your mind.” He looked at me pointedly, giving me his best advice. “You don’t want to burn the house down, you know?”
“Burn the house down?”
He smiled indulgently. “The first time a woman comes flying into things, it really jerks your tail into a knot, I know,” he said. “But then, when that one’s gone, another one comes along, and after two or three times like that, you realize that it’s all just fun and games, that there’s no need to get all knotted up about it.”
I shook my head. “It’s not like that with me,” I told him. “It’s not just fun and games.”
He laughed at my boyish innocence. “So, I guess you’re one of these men that has to take it seriously, right?” he asked.
I didn’t answer. I had no answer.
Wally watched me soberly. “Listen, Steve, you can play around with this woman, have your fun and all that, but when it’s all over, you need to go home and warm your feet at the same old fire.” He waited for me to answer. “I’m talking about your wife, Steve.”
“Marie,” I said, but my voice was little above a whisper.
Wally gave me a penetrating look. “You have to be careful and not get things mixed up, that’s what I’m saying.” He paused a moment, his eyes watching me closely. “When they get mixed up, bad things can happen,” he added darkly. “Remember Marty Harmon?”
I nodded silently.
