The Trouble With Eden - Lawrence Block [2]
It would be worth it—if they were going to stay in New Hope. If.
The apartment door was locked. She fished in her bag for the key, opened the door. She found the note immediately. It was on top of the convertible sofa, where they always left notes for each other. Businesslike notes, some of the time—“Linda, I’ll be late at the theater, go ahead and eat without me.” Cute love notes—” Marcums, I was here. You wasn’t. I misses you. Does you misses me?”
But she knew as soon as she saw the note what it was going to be. She picked it up and stood by the side of the sofa and read it. Her eyes wouldn’t focus at first, and the words were blurred, but she read it all the way through.
LINDA,
I suppose this is cowardly but I can’t help thinking it’s easier all around this way. I just couldn’t handle another scene. Last night was enough.
I guess I’ll go out to the Coast. I’m getting a ride as far as Chicago which is one reason I’m leaving right now, although it probably wouldn’t have lasted much longer in any case.
Sorry about a lot of things. It was good while it lasted. Corny but true… .
There was a little more. He had left some money in the dresser drawer, not much, but all he could spare. She put the note down and went to the dresser to discover that he had been able to spare one hundred twenty dollars. She counted the bills three times, then got her wallet from her purse and counted up her own cash. It suddenly seemed very urgent to determine just how she stood financially. The thirty-seven dollars in her wallet gave her total capital of one hundred and fifty-seven dollars. After work Friday she would receive thirty dollars from Olive McIntyre, her wages for fifteen hours of work at the Lemon Tree. Around noon Saturday Sully would be around to collect fifty dollars rent.
Problem: If you have one hundred and fifty-seven dollars to start with, and each week you earn thirty dollars and pay out fifty, how long do you last?
Answer: If you can borrow three dollars from somebody, you can last eight weeks. And that’s long enough, because sometime in the course of those eight weeks you starve to death.
She moved to the kitchenette, a corner of the room furnished with a hot plate and a small refrigerator. She checked the refrigerator and the cupboards. There were some cans of chili and ravioli and vegetable soup, a box from a health food store, some eggs and cheese, other odds and ends. It somehow didn’t look like eight weeks’ worth of food.
She opened dresser drawers, checked the closet, all to confirm what she already knew, that he had taken everything of his from the apartment. They had been together for two years, a year and a half in New York and almost eight months here. For the first few months he had kept his old apartment before they decided they were enough of a long-term prospect to live together. Since then they had accumulated rather little in the way of community property. The record player was his, and he had taken it; the typewriter was hers, and it remained behind. He had taken all the records, which was hardly fair in that perhaps a third of them had been hers originally, but she could understand that he would not have wanted to waste time sorting through the stack.
And she had long ago decided that, were she to leave him, she would have left all the records behind. Except for one Billie Holiday record, which he had taken with all the others and which she rather expected she would miss. Alan had bought that record for her—how many years ago?—and she had taken it with her when she left Alan.
She would miss that record. It was good get-drunk music, late Billie Holiday, the rusty old voice just getting by, the phrasing covering up the broken-down equipment.
Do nothin’ till you hear from me … and you never will.
She picked up the letter, and