CHAPTER ELEVEN

 

Nearly every Saturday morning for the last five years, Audrey and I had gone to breakfast at the Bugle Boy Diner. Sometimes we would have been out together the night before; sometimes we might not have seen each other for several days. Either way, assuming we were both in town, it was our habit, our ritual, to break bread at our local diner.

I remember the first time. It was the same day that Audrey started working at the Thelmont Five-and-Dime. A couple named the Jeromes had opened that store nearly three decades before, and when Old Man Jerome died, his widow decided she needed help running the place. I wanted to get Audrey off to a good start, so I offered to meet her early and treat her to breakfast. We’d shared lunches and dinners before at the Bugle Boy, but that day was our first joint breakfast there. Midway through, we agreed that this was the meal that the Bugle Boy did best—that, in fact, all diners did best. In our months of steady dating, we’d begun to assemble a catalog of life’s little truths, which, we realized, not everyone necessarily subscribed to. We did, though. That particular morning, over our pancakes, we’d ticked them off methodically to see how many we remembered.

“St. Bernards are one part dog and two parts tongue,” I began.

“Pistachio ice cream is a mistake.”

“President Eisenhower would be disturbing with hair.”

“Babies look like marshmallows.”

“Shovels should be shaped like spoons.”

“Fred Mertz is a lousy landlord.”

“Frankenstein is scarier than Dracula.”

“But the Creature from the Black Lagoon is ickier,” Audrey said emphatically.

We must have gone on with a dozen more truths before adding Breakfast is the best meal in the world.

“We should come here next Saturday,” Audrey insisted. “Then the one after that, and the one after that, and again after that.”

“That’s a lot of Saturdays. How long should we keep coming?”

“Forever and a day, Lee. That’s how long.”

So we had, almost every Saturday for five years.

But not today. The morning after our unexpected encounter at the Mercutio was a different brand of Saturday. The night before, while I’d been on duty, she’d been on the sly, in the company of another man. To my mind, that put our breakfast ritual in definite jeopardy. What would we chat about over our muffins? What new cute little truth would we find to add to marshmallow babies and icky fish-men? How about this one: You can’t trust anyone—not even your own fiancée.

I’d been up for more than an hour when the phone rang. I considered letting it jangle itself into oblivion but eventually gave in and answered it. Audrey.

The tenseness in her voice was palpable. “We should meet this morning.”

“I’m in no mood for breakfast.”

“Not breakfast. We can just walk somewhere. We can talk.”

“Talk? Talk about what?”

“Lee…”

I thought about slamming the phone down. Came close. Instead, I went with the hackneyed “We’ve nothing to talk about.”

“Really, Lee?”

I suddenly felt stupid. Stupid and angry and broken. Of course there was something to talk about. Miles of things to talk about.

“Where are you, anyway?” I didn’t try to keep the edge out of my voice. “Still in the Village?”

“No, I’m at my Aunt Beth’s in Yonkers. Since last night.”

I’d forgotten she had a relative down there, probably only about a half hour’s drive north of Greenwich Village.

“That’s where you stayed the night?”

“Yes. I’ll be back in Thelmont in an hour. Can we meet then?”

I grunted in the affirmative. We agreed to meet on the town green and take it from there. I rang off, showered, and shoved some burnt toast and undercooked eggs into my mouth. It definitely was no Bugle Boy breakfast.

*   *   *

I DROVE UP Thelmont’s classic small-town main drag, glancing around for Audrey’s Buick without success. The five-and-dime and the Bugle Boy were among the couple dozen modestly thriving businesses that lined the street. I’d lived in this town since I was seventeen, and Main Street was like a blueprint of my youth. I’d gotten my first professional shave at Owen’s Barber Shop; I’d drawn my first paycheck at Selgino’s Stationery; Eden Florists was where I’d gone to pick up flowers for Mom’s funeral; I’d first met Audrey at the soda fountain of Rowland’s Drug Store; and Huntington’s Crystal Shop was where I’d bought my first Christmas present for her—a tiny grinning cupid. Sappy, I know, but it was a new romance back then …

I parked Baby Blue and walked over to the green. Glancing at my wristwatch, I saw that I was a few minutes early—or a couple of years late, depending on how you looked at it. If I hadn’t put off marrying Audrey for so long, maybe I wouldn’t be standing here now, trying to digest my own cooking and dreading our pending conversation. I settled onto a park bench—but only for the five seconds it took me to remember that it was the same one Audrey and I had sat on the night of our first date. Jarred by the memory of those early kisses, I popped back to my feet and went to lean against the large lone oak situated in the center of the green. It felt somehow like a kindred spirit.

I didn’t have to wait long before Audrey appeared, walking toward me as hesitantly as I’d want her to. Once she was abreast of me, I stepped away from the tree and gave her what I hoped was a curt, masculine nod that registered supreme disapproval. I had decided that she was going to be the one to speak first. I had my dignity.

She complied, obviously nervous. “The traffic was a little thick. Hope you weren’t waiting long.”

I wasn’t going to make this easy for her. Or me. I provided no information as to how long I’d waited.

In the face of my silence, she pressed on. “I need to explain why I ran out like that last night without even talking to you.”

“That’s what you need to explain?” I had maintained as much of my strong, silent male persona as I could—about twenty seconds’ worth. My anger now came gushing out shrilly. “How about the fact that you were there at all? Or that you were there with that punk Spires? Seems like there’s a boatload of explanations you owe me.”

It took her a few moments to reply. “Yes, you’re right. I need to tell you everything.”

Suddenly, the previously benign word “everything” had acquired a weight and a disturbing power that I didn’t want to see unleashed. I wasn’t certain at all that I wanted to know everything. A black wave of nausea rose from breadbasket to brains, and I felt more than a little dizzy. I managed to squeeze out one word: “How?”

My monosyllabic query seemed to throw Audrey. She narrowed her eyes and parted her lips in an unspoken question.

I realized I needed to expand on my sentence. “How could you do this to me?”

My words seemed to hit Audrey like a belly punch, and she actually drew her hands to her stomach. Her face reddened as tears rose in her eyes. “Lee.” She had become monosyllabic herself.

My thinking process had slowed to Neanderthal level. I didn’t know whether to scream out in primitive torment or gather Audrey up in an embrace of comfort. I opted for simply standing there and waiting to see if she could summon more words.

She could, but not before gulping for air for several seconds. “Lee, I never ever meant to hurt you.”

“Never ever…” I repeated the phrase mechanically. It seemed to be something out of a fairy tale—an ugly, hapless one with a lousy ending: And they never ever were happy again.

Audrey pulled a handkerchief from her purse and dragged it over her face. There was nothing ladylike or genteel about the gesture. Clearly, the floral-patterned cloth had ceased to be a hankie and was now more like the sop rag that a cornerman would use to wipe his boxer’s bloodied face. Once she’d tucked the handkerchief away, I studied her features. The button nose, full lips, hazel eyes, and short, sassy brown hairdo were all there, but they somehow couldn’t come together in the pretty, perky way they usually did. Right now, Audrey did have the look of someone who’d just been pummeled. Not outside but within, where it really hurt.

She cleared her throat. “I’ll tell it from the beginning.”

I didn’t want to hear the tale chronologically. I wanted to hear the most dreadful part first. “Are you sleeping with Byron Spires?”

“No!” The firmness in her voice gave me hope, a hope that was further fortified when actual resentment crept into her tone. “Is that what you think of me?”

I tried to get out my own “No!” as quickly and firmly she’d gotten hers out.

Audrey drew herself up. “Just because I’m down in bohemia doesn’t mean I’ve become a bohemian girl. Not in that way.”

“In what way, then?”

She sighed. “A few days after you and I went to the Café Mercutio, you were out of town working on a case, and I decided I wanted to go back. It seemed like such an interesting place.”

“Meaning Byron Spires seemed like such an interesting guy.”

“Yes,” she said very softly, “but it wasn’t just him. It was the whole scene.”

“So you went down alone.”

“Like I say, you were out of town, and I knew I could spend the night with Aunt Beth in Yonkers. It was a little adventure for me.”

“An adventure,” I parroted. “Of course, Spires remembered you from our earlier visit. I’m sure he was pleased to have you in his den again.”

Audrey drew in a deep breath, as if filling her sails for a difficult voyage. “Yes, he was performing that night. I was sitting alone, so he joined me after his set, and we talked and had a little wine—not too much—and he told me about his travels and his music. It was … nice.”

Nice. Again, a previously harmless word had suddenly become odious.

She continued. “He struck me as such a different kind of person than I’m used to. So are all the people down there, really. Of course, the Village itself is so very different from Thelmont. I mean, if you took the people who live in the Village and dropped them right here, it would seem like some sort of crazy carnival, wouldn’t it?”

I was in no mood to speculate on cross-pollination. “So you kept going down without telling me.”

“You weren’t here. You’d flown out to California to help your sister.”

“You and I spoke by phone a couple of times, though, and you sure didn’t mention it then.”

“We pretty much just talked about Marjorie’s health, didn’t we?”

“Sure, but you could have slipped in a passing reference to your new boyfriend.”

Audrey shut her eyes and exhaled deeply. I was past trying to guess which particular emotions were gripping her now. I sure didn’t have a clue as to what my own were. They were raw and ragged, that much I could tell you.

Audrey reopened her eyes and fixed them on my own. “Byron’s not my boyfriend.”

“Don’t tell me he’s your new fiancé.” I said it in spite, but once the words had hit the air, I wondered, for a quick illogical moment, if I’d stumbled on the truth.

Audrey seemed to have regained some of her composure. “Of course he’s not my fiancé. And he’s not my boyfriend. I really don’t know what he is. To be honest, I don’t know what I am, either.”

“What the hell’s that mean?”

“It means I’m looking at myself these days, and I’m not sure what I’m seeing. I’m closing in on twenty-nine, Lee. Most of the girls I went to school with are married and have kids. A century ago, I’d have been known as Old Lady Valish and people would make up stories about me being some loopy old witch.”

In better times, that would have dragged a laugh out of me. Presently, I was well inoculated against all mirth and merriment. At that very moment, as if responding to some onstage cue, three little children came bounding across the green in a giggling, gangly sprint. Somewhere there must have been a script that read, Enter stage right: The Kids You Never Had. We watched the little frolickers vanish into the day, then turned to face each other once more.

“I’ve barely been out of Thelmont,” Audrey said earnestly. “You at least got to travel a few years back. You saw something of the country … journeyed out west.”

“Are you blaming me for that?”

“No, I’m just—”

“Because that was before you and I were really together.”

“I know, Lee. It’s just that maybe I need some little escapades myself.”

Escapades? That sounded worse than journeys or adventures.

Audrey continued. “For me, the Mercutio is like entering some wild realm. The people down there see life in a very different way than people do here. Not every guy there worries about cash and a career, and not every girl wants a husband and babies.”

I was getting even more confused, if that was possible. “So which is it? You want to be a wife and a mother or you don’t?”

“I want…” She tilted her head back slightly, her eyes fixing themselves on the clouds above. Was the answer somewhere up there in the ether?

“You want what?”

“I want…” she repeated hazily.

Realizing that nothing else was forthcoming, I returned to a more concrete line of questioning. “Have you kissed Spires?”

That yanked Audrey back down from the clouds. “Just once, last weekend,” she said softly, but directly, “and only for about half a minute.”

Only half a minute? Breaking through my shock, my mind did some rapid-fire calculations: a lot of wanton, passionate kissing could be squeezed into thirty seconds.

“I was the one who pulled back,” she continued.

“Did he force himself on you?”

“No, not at all.”

I wasn’t sure what answer I’d hoped for there. Probably, under the circumstances, no reply could be satisfactory.

“Since we’ve been together, I’ve always been faithful,” I told her truthfully.

“This is the only time that, well…” She changed course midstream. “I left so abruptly last night because I was stunned and disoriented. For a moment, I wondered if you’d tracked me down there. Though afterward, I realized that since Mr. O’Nelligan was with you, you were probably on a case—maybe something to do with Lorraine Cobble’s death. I’d gotten your message earlier that you were out on a job. Is that why you were there?”

“Yes, it was.”

Audrey nodded thoughtfully. “When I was mulling it over later, it occurred to me how remarkable it all was.”

“Remarkable?” That struck me as an odd choice of words.

“I mean that it almost felt like fate that your work should bring you down to the Café Mercutio just—”

I cut her off. “Just in time to catch you in the act.”

“Listen, Lee, I went down to the Village last night because I’d already told Byron I’d meet him. I’d set that up before I knew you’d be home from California. Once I found out you were back, I was going to call him to cancel, but then I got your message. I figured that since you’d be working anyway, I might as well stick to my plans. I thought it would be a chance to, well … to make things clear to Byron.”

“What about making things clear to me?”

“Lee, I do want to be your wife.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I know we keep putting things off, and that we’ve sort of cast you as the culprit in that, but, well, maybe I’m the culprit. Maybe it’s always been me. Oh, I don’t know…”

“You can’t have a fiancé and a … a…” I settled on an O’Nelligan-ish word: “Dalliance.”

“I know that. If I tell you I won’t see Byron again, will you believe me?”

I took me a long time to answer. “To tell you the truth, I’m not sure.”

I’m not certain what I expected Audrey’s response to be—a renewal of tears or a steely protest or a huff of indignation. It was none of these. Instead, she smiled in a sad, contemplative way and sighed again.

“That’s an honest answer, Lee.” She reached over and squeezed my hand. “I appreciate that. I need to get over to the five-and-dime now. I’ll be late for work.”

Then she released me, turned, and headed off across the green. I stood there in the shadow of the large lonely oak—though, in reality, I had no idea exactly where I stood.