Strangers (31 page)

She had been loved. No matter what happened, that was
real,
and she would sleep easy knowing that.

— | — | —

SEVENTEEN

AT TEN o’clock on Friday morning, Michael stepped into Vern Engelking’s office. “You wanted to see…”

“I did, Michael,” Jan Pretre said. He stood at the floor to ceiling window, hands behind him,
his
back to Michael.

Seated at his desk, toying with a round glass paperweight, Vern said, “Jan has some news for you.”

At last! Michael thought. His public life had been borne and his secret one lived for this, Jan’s proclamation!

Jan turned around. Behind him, the early November sun was a blinding wash of light, silhouetting him, blurring the outline of his form. Looking at him, unable to discern his features, Michael remembered their first meeting, long ago, the first stirring of the sense he’d had that Jan Pretre was like him—and was something even more as well.

“You know Beth had her second appointment with me yesterday,” Jan said.

Michael nodded.

“Beth thinks, of course, that you can say anything at all to your therapist in strictest confidence. A shrink’s office is as sacred as a confessional. She told me something interesting, Michael.”

“Okay,” Michael said, “what did Beth tell you that you think I ought to know?”

“She’s alienated from you,” Jan Pretre said. “I think you realize that. She refuses to believe what she thinks are her paranoid fantasies about you, but she’s emotionally cut herself off from you. Right now, at best, she views you as a casual acquaintance with whom she lives. Nothing more.”

Michael shrugged and then he grinned. “W’al shucks, I guess I jes’ ain’t been workin’ hard enough at keepin’ that I’ll ole gal o’mine happy and content.”

“You haven’t,” Jan Pretre said. He walked closer to Michael. “Someone else has.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Beth’s having an affair,” Jan Pretre said. “She has a lover.”

Michael tugged at his earlobe. He said, “Bullshit.”

“No, Michael. Fact.”

“Beth screwing someone else? For Chrissake, she was a virgin, I mean complete with cherry in place, until two months before I married her. She wouldn’t. She’s not the type.”

Vern chuckled. “It appears the cuckholded husband cannot accept the truth of his mate’s philandering.”

Michael snapped a quick look at Engelking. Vern’s face was a grinning puzzle. Something was wrong here, out of balance. Jan and Vern were his allies, yet they seemed to be united against him in a way he did not at all comprehend.

Jan pointed an accusing finger. “Michael, You transformed her into the type.”

“No,” Michael protested. “I’ve always acted like the super-supportive husband.”

“Yes, Michael,” Jan said quietly, “but she saw through the act.”

A lover! Beth was fucking someone!
Only now was the full impact of Jan Pretre’s revelation hitting him. He should have known,
godddamnit,
should have realized she had a private game going. For just about a week now, she’d been out of her
hang-dog
depression but acting icily civil to him. From time to time he’d seen an expression on her face—a look he should have interpreted as an almost childish gloating, “I know something you don’t know, naa-naa-naa…”

Goddamn her! There was a surging heat within him. He tried to determine just what he was feeling and then he had it: Outrage!
The bitch had deceived him!
He had spent half a lifetime fooling her and now she’d made a fool of him.

He was suddenly tired. He sat in the chair alongside Vern’s desk.

“Last week Beth suffered a major anxiety attack,” Jan Pretre said. “With all that she’s gone through, she was overdue for something of the sort. She desperately needed somebody, there was somebody there, and they wound up in bed.”

Michael quietly said, “And this weekend last Saturday, she was with him, too, wasn’t she?”

“That’s right,”
Jan
answered.

The clues were there and he’d missed them.
The long time in the bathroom, the perfume and make-up and clothing.
Then she was off. She knew he didn’t have anything scheduled for the afternoon; he could watch the kids. Well sure, fine, no problem, and he reached for his wallet because she would need money to go shopping. No, she didn’t want money, and who said she was going shopping? Well, say, where
was
she going?

She hadn’t told him but now he knew. The bitch! She was going to go spread her legs!

“All right,” Michael sighed, “and I suppose that in a week or so, after she’s had her itch scratched, Beth will come to me with the guilty weeps, confessing her sins and asking to be forgiven.”

“I doubt it,” Jan Pretre said. “I told you your wife has a strong will. She’s severed her emotional ties to you. She’s not feeling guilty. She’s not even guilty about not feeling guilty. Oh, she’s flying right now, that first heady whirlwind feeling of romance, but she’s already considering a life without you, thinking about divorce.”

She was going to divorce him? Hey, lady, Ms. Shit-for-Brains, you could bet the ass that you were pumping in some guy’s bed that
Hubby
would be the one getting the separation. No alimony, no child support, and nothing but a final settlement. Bitch!

A question occurred to him but he did, not ask it because the answer simultaneously came to mind: Why had Jan chosen to tell him about Beth this way, in front of Vern? They were both warning him: You
fucked up, Michael.

“So that’s the situation, Michael,” Jan Pretre said. “Now you know…”

…
and
before I didn’t know jack-shit, and it took you to tell me, right?

“…
so
it’s up to you to handle it as you choose.”

It would be handled. There was only one more thing he needed from Jan Pretre: a name.

Jan told him.

Kevin Bollender.
Michael hoped that Beth truly loved him deafly, completely, totally “need him,” “can’t live without him” loved the sonofabitch.

Then he went to his office and telephoned Eddie Markell.

In his office in the narrow wing off the library, Kevin Bollender had his feet up on the desk. He burped, tasting the onions from the burgers he’d had for lunch. He had an hour until his two o’clock—“Intro to Phych” class and he thought about spending it napping.

There was a knock at the door and before he could get his feet down, a handle turned, the door opened, and Eddie Markell stepped into the office. He was wearing a dirty trench coat and his right hand slipped inside it and came out with a .357 magnum.

“You’re the professor, so you’ve got to be a smart guy. Be smart and be quiet and I don’t blow your fucking head off.”

“I’m not a professor,” Kevin said and then he could no longer say anything. The full effect of cold terror hit him. Jesus Christ, he’d worked at the Manteno mental institution and there’d been some pretty damned inchy doings there, including one raving maniac who’d tried to rip his face off, but he knew that never before this moment in his life had he been utterly, paralytically afraid.

“We’re going for a ride, professor,” Eddie Markell said. “You do what I say and your curly head stays right on your shoulders where you want it.”

Kevin thought that whoever this man was, he sounded as though his entire vocabulary consisted of clichés from old gangster films. Kevin looked at the gun, realized his mouth was as dry as if he’d spent three days lost in the Sahara desert, and thought of a cliché himself:
He’d as soon kill you as look at you.
The man was drunk, you could see it and smell it, and that made him even more, dangerous.

“Put your feet on the floor,” Eddie Markell said. “You stand up slow, put on your jacket, and take a walk with me.”

“This is all a mistake,” Kevin said. The instant the words were spoken, he anticipated what the response would be:
Yeah, and you made it.

He had a dizzying flash of unreality, an impossible answer to all the questions that were leaping like grasshoppers through his mind. This was a 1940s tough guy film and somehow he’d been plugged into it. Boing!
Twilight Zone time…
He was going to be all right then. He was the good guy, after all, and…

Kevin tried once more. “You’ll never get away with this.”

Eddie Markell said, “You know, I don’t give a shit. And if the marines bust down the door to save your sorry ass, professor, I still don’t give a shit. So how about you shut the fuck up and we get out of here.”

Kevin walked down the corridor. Eddie Markell was a
half-step
behind him. He’d put away the gun and a dozen times Kevin thought
Run!
He did not run. The man would shoot, Kevin had no doubt, and there were people in the halls, the custodian with his broom, that guy in a wheelchair, maybe a crippled vet using his GI benefits to further his education, that old woman who was probably on her way to a class in data processing so she could re-join the work force. They were the “innocent bystanders” who always seemed to get hurt, whose injuries and deaths were duly noted in network newscasts and whose names were forgotten during the first Ken-L Ration commercial.

They took the elevator down and stepped out of the school. There had been a change in the weather, the skies clouding over, and now a light cold rain was falling.

Eddie Markell took him to a rusted-out green 1976 Chevrolet Impala. Glancing around the parking lot, Eddie unlocked the trunk. “Get in,” he said.

Kevin didn’t move. “Look,” he said, “someone’s going to see…”

Eddie slammed a knee into Kevin’s crotch. The pain fanned up, twisting his guts and spearing his lungs. He whoofed and Eddie toppled him into the trunk, forcing his legs inside.

The trunk lid slammed.

The darkness was total. Breathing hard, Kevin lay on his side. The stink of gasoline and grease curled around him. The roar of the engine as the car started was as loud as the rushing cylindrical hurricane in a wind tunnel.

The car was moving, picking up speed. He had to do something.

The wires to the rear lights! He had them, cold and
plastic-feeling
. He tugged, ripped them loose.

Now he had a chance! A red light, a stop sign, slowing for a crossroad, an intersection, merging traffic, and a cop would be there. “That guy’s brake lights are out. Let’s write him a ticket!”

Except how many cars without brake lights or headlights, taillights, turn signals traveled a zillion miles every day without being stopped? And who in the hell didn’t know that “There’s never a cop around when you need one”?

He kicked. He yelled. “Help me! Help!” He pushed against the trunk lid.

The car slowed, pulled to the right, and then stopped. The trunk opened. From the corner of his eye he saw the gray sky and felt the welcome cool rain.

Eddie Markell leaned down. “Shut up!”

Kevin tried to move, to sit up, and Eddie hit him twice, on the temple and then on the cheekbone. The pain was a kaleidoscopic burst behind his eyes.

“I said shut up and I mean shut up,” Eddie Markell said.