Hard Rain Falling - Don Carpenter [145]
“Lemme catch my breath,” he said. “God, I got to quit smoking.”
“Everybody’s quitting,” Bronson said. He watched Billy run down toward the water, and saw his governess get up from her table, hesitate, and then sit down again, as Billy swerved and ran back up to the other children. Billy would not drown here, not at St.-Tropez. The children here were so well cared for that nothing could possibly happen to them. No one had to worry about his children. That was all paid for.
“Where’s Sally today?” the man wanted to know. He was wiping his face with a towel and not looking at Bronson. Bronson had seen him the other night, leaning against Sally in a corner of the garden, pressing her up against a wall, but it had not bothered him. He knew the man wanted to sleep with Sally, but he had also heard Sally, that night in their bedroom, snort and say, “I wouldn’t want that fat hog on top of me.” Anyway, Sally was sleeping with her first husband these days, and had no time for anyone else.
“Oh, she’s off on a yachting party,” he said. “She’ll be back by dinner.”
The man made a face. “That actor feller?”
Bronson nodded. He began to shuffle the cards; the other two players were coming up out of the surf now, and as soon as they were dry, the game would begin. They all played together ever afternoon. Almost everybody else played poker, but these four preferred bridge.
Of course, the trick was to get rid of Sally and still keep the boy. She did not want to go back; she had had enough of America. She had finally come into her own, living in Paris, surrounding herself with a circle of writers and artists and a few of the more intelligent young French movie people. She was happy in Paris, and she did not want Billy to go to American schools. She wanted him to go to Switzerland, to boarding school. She did not even call him Billy; she called him Myron. She wanted to change his name legally, but Bronson managed to keep putting it off.
It was really too bad about Sally. She was only thirty-two, but already she was getting brassy and overdone; what had once been charming in her was now grating, at least to Bronson. Billy did not like her any more, either. She would pick the strangest times to be motherly. The only person Billy really loved, in fact, was his French governess. He would feel very bad about leaving her. But it was necessary. The question was, how to get rid of Sally? It was a definite problem. He would have to give it a great deal of thought. He would have to make sure he was doing it for the boy’s sake, and not just to satisfy some urge in himself to hurt her. He hoped that wasn’t it.
“Okay, let’s cut for partners.”
Myron cut, and drew the potential senator. It managed to spoil his entire afternoon. He really enjoyed bridge, and he hated to see his partner make such a botch of it.
THIS IS A NEW YORK REVIEW BOOK
PUBLISHED BY THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS
435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014
www.nyrb.com
Copyright © 1964, 1966 by Don Carpenter
Introduction copyright © 2009 by George Pelecanos
All rights reserved.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Carpenter, Don.
Hard rain falling / by Don Carpenter; introduction by George Pelecanos.
p. cm.—(New York Review Books classics)
ISBN 978-1-59017-324-4 (alk. paper)
1. Problem youth—Fiction. 2. Swindlers and swindling—Fiction. 3.
Portland (Or.)—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3553.A76H37 2009
813'.54—dc22
2009012732
eISBN 978-1-59017-390-9