Deep Water Patricia Highsmith (elon musk reading list .txt) 📖

a moment she stood beside him in white pajamas, on bare feet with crimson nails, looking at herself in the mirror, pushing her hair back from her face. "That's right, you're not. You couldn't be." Then she ran into the bathroom, as agilely as Trixie might have run.

       The telephone rang by Melinda's bed, and at once Vic suspected it was Horace. Horace subscribed to the 'Times', too. Vic went out, crossed the living room to the hall phone and picked it up. "Hello?"

       "Hello, Vic. Did you see the paper this morning?" Horace had a smile in his voice, but a friendly smile, not a malicious one. "Yes, I saw it."

       "Did you know the man?"

       "No, I've never heard of him."

       "Well—" Horace waited for Vic to speak. "This'll end all the talking, anyway."

       "I haven't heard much of this talking," Vic said rather crisply. "Oh-h—I have, Vic. It hasn't been entirely good."

       "Well, Melinda's very happy, of course."

       "You know my opinion on that, Vic." Horace hesitated again, but now he was groping for words. "I think you've—Well, I think she's come a long way in these last couple of months. I hope it keeps up."

       Vic listened to the shower running in the bathroom. Melinda was in the bathroom, hadn't picked up the telephone in her room, he knew, but still he found himself tongue-tied. He couldn't discuss his personal problems with Horace. "Thanks, Horace," he said 'finally'.

       Usually Vic was at the plant by a quarter past nine or nine-thirty, but he sat in the living room now, at ten past nine, waiting for Melinda to finish dressing, waiting for her to say whatever else she was going to say to him this morning, waiting to find out where she was going. He could tell by the haste of her preparations that she had some objective. He heard her dial a number on her telephone, but her voice did not come through the closed door, and he would not have wished to hear what she was saying, anyway.

       Vic couldn't see her going back to Ralph, really, after he'd shown himself such a coward. Joel was in New York, but that was not an impossible distance if Melinda was determined to see him. Vic took a cigarette from the box on the rosewood cocktail table. He had just made the table, had polished its very subtly concave top as carefully as if it had been a lens. He had made it to replace the old cocktail table which he had also made, that dated from Larry Osbourne and had become so stained with cigarette burns and alcohol, in spite of the protective waxes he had always kept on it, that he had had no desire to refinish it. He wondered how soon the rosewood table was going to be stained with rings from highball glasses and burns from neglected cigarettes. When he heard Melinda's door open he sat down on the sofa so that he would appear deep in his newspaper when she came in.

       "Are you memorizing that thing?" she asked him.

       "I was reading something else. There's a new book on mountain climbing I'd like to buy."

       "There's a nice safe sport for you. Why don't you try it?" She took a cigarette from the box and lit it. She had on a white shirt, her flaring brown corduroy skirt, her brown moccasins. She slapped her key case into one empty, restless hand. She looked nervous and wild, the way he had seen her look many times at the start of an affair. This was the kind of mood that always got her tickets for speeding.

       "Where're you off to?" he asked.

       "Oh, I—just made a lunch date with Evelyn. So I won't be home for lunch."

       Vic was not sure if she was lying or not. Her reply hadn't told him where she was going now. He stood up and stretched, and tugged his sweater down evenly over his trousers. "How about cocktails this afternoon? Can you make it to the Chesterfield by about six?"

       She lowered her brows, swung a leg around, pivoting on a toe, like an adolescent. "I don't think so, Vic. You don't really like it. Thanks, anyway."

       "Sorry." He smiled. "Well, I'll be going."

       They went into the garage together and got into their cars. Vic took a couple of minutes to warm his car up, but Melinda in her pale-green convertible was gone down the lane in a matter of seconds.

Chapter 7

Two or three days after the denouement of the McRae case, Vic received a telephone call in his office from a Mr. Cassell. Mr. Cassell said he was an agent of the Binkley Real Estate Company of East Lyme and that Vic's name had been given as a reference in regard to Mr. Charles De Lisle, who wanted to rent one of their houses.

       "Charles De Lisle?" Vic asked puzzledly. He had never heard of the man.

       "I'm sorry to trouble you at your office, Mr. Van Allen, but we weren't able to reach your wife at home. It's actually 'Mrs.' Victor Van Allen on my record here, but I thought you might be able to vouch for Mr. De Lisle as well as she. Can you tell us what you know about him as to his reliability? You know—it's just so we can have something to quote to the landlord."

       Vic had suddenly recognized the name: it was the name of the pianist in the Lord Chesterfield bar. "I don't exactly—I suppose he's all right. I'll speak to my wife at noon and ask her to call you this afternoon."

       "Very well, Mr. Van Allen. We'd appreciate it if you would. Thanks very much. Good-bye."

       "Good-bye." Vic hung up.

       Stephen was waiting for him with some new paper samples. They began to examine them together, holding them in front of a naked two-hundred-watt lightbulb, scrutinizing their areas for consistency of