The Trouble With Eden - Lawrence Block [167]
“That’s splendid. And I have a splendid idea. Why don’t you pack a few things and fly away? I’ll ship the rest as soon as I have an address for you. Or do you already have an address?”
“No, I’ll be living alone.”
“Poor thing. Is there a place you can stay tonight?”
“You cocksucker. Yes, there’s a place where I can stay tonight. And I don’t have to pack a few things because I had the foresight to pack a few things yesterday because it occurred to me that you might pull this sort of shit. It’s just as easy for things to end pleasantly, Warren, but you never forget you’re an actor. You always have to play to an audience even when you’re all by yourself in an empty theater.”
“Wait a minute.”
“What for?”
“For nothing, I suppose. I don’t know. I’m sorry, Bert. It hurts a bit so I try to hurt back. Childish.”
“I’m sorry, too.”
“I’ll tell you what. Let’s neither of us be sorry. It was fun while it lasted, and I’ll always settle for that as an epitaph. For a life or for a love affair. It was fun while it lasted. There’s just one problem. Where do you drop the curtain?”
“You just lost me.”
“We’ve already established that, silly. No, it goes back to what you said about my weakness for the dramatic. The charge is true enough. But don’t you see, it’s so much more awkward to part on good terms. Neither party ever knows when to get off the stage. Much simpler with a lot of door slamming and name calling. Still, we ought to be able to work something out. I think I have it. You play the piano. And sing, I do want to hear you sing. I’ll miss that. You play and sing, and I’ll sit in a dark corner listening to you. Before you quite finish I’ll have gone upstairs, and when you finish you may steal off into the night.”
Bert started to say something, then changed his mind. He seated himself at the piano and studied the keys. Softly he said, “What would you like to hear?”
“Oh, are you taking requests tonight?”
“Just so long as it’s not ‘Melancholy Baby.’”
“Lord. No, you’re better far than I at matching songs with moods. Something that achieves sorrow without reaching slush.”
“Smiling through tears? That effect?”
“Winking through tears.”
He knew it from the first bars of the introduction and thought that Bert had chosen wisely. “Just One of Those Things.” Yes, that was right, every line in it was right. It described a romance that burned itself out quickly, and theirs had been neither that intense nor that brief, and yet the song was singularly appropriate.
As the bridge ended, he got to his feet and slipped silently from the room. He waited out of sight on the stairs and listened to the song’s last verse:
So goodbye, love, and amen
Here’s hoping we meet now and then
It was great fun
But it was just one of those things.
He stood motionless on the staircase until he heard the front door drawn quietly shut. The Volkswagen engine caught, and he listened to Bert driving off. Then he climbed the stairs and went to his room.
He had wanted to make sure Bert did not stay the night. Had he done so, he would have learned that Anne and Robin were there. While his knowledge would have been dangerous only in the sense that any unnecessary complication was a hazard, that had been reason enough to make the break an immediate one.
And so he had pretended pain and bitterness that he had not felt at all. It was not a lack of feeling for Bert, he knew. It was simply that he was under too much other pressure to feel much.
Of course he had shed tears during the song. A statue could not have done less. It was fun while it lasted; and it was just one of those things. They both did nicely as epitaphs. For a love affair or for a life.
Hugh sat looking at the typewriter. There was only one more page to write, and ne knew precisely what it would say. He had written it dozens of times in his head in the course of the past few months, had mentally edited and shaped it over and over. Now all he had to do was put the words on the page.
When he began to type, the words came slowly. He measured each phrase. He wanted to get it just right, and