And once again he thought, I know her. I’ve seen her before, talked to her; she’s familiar to me, her voice, mannerisms, choice of words. Especially her choice of words. I’m accustomed to listening to her talk. It is a voice as well-known to me as anybody in the world’s.
While he was pondering that, a great wave of sound rolled in from the front of the house. The door burst open, people pushed indoors, turning on lights and chattering. Peg and her clerkish pals had returned home with the ginger ale.
Without batting an eye—as if she didn’t hear the people—Susan said, “I’m very interested in all this. I suppose I really have to be. It’s the new trend in selling, more or less. In fact—” She turned her head as Peg appeared with a paper bag at her shoulder.
“What are you doing back?” Peg said, amazed to see him. “I thought you left.” Sweeping past him she set down the bag on the drainboard. The bag clinked.
“I forgot my coat,” he said.
“How did you get in? The door was locked.”
Susan said, “I let him in.”
“You’re supposed to be lying down sick,” Peg said to her. She left the kitchen and returned to the living room, leaving them.
“Is she angry with you?” Susan said. “She acted strangely after you left. You left so hurriedly. How long will you be up here, before you drive back to Reno?”
“It depends on how I make out,” he said. “A day at the most.”
“I’d like to talk to you again sometime,” Susan said, leaning back against the edge of the sink.
“So would I,” he said. “You know, I have the feeling I know you. But I can’t place you.”
“I have the feeling I know you, too,” she said.
“Of course,” he said, “people always say that.”
“A ‘Some Enchanted Evening’ sort of thing.” She smiled. “instantaneous identification of the beloved.”
That quickened his pulse, hearing that.
“You know,” Susan said, “listening to you talk about selling and buying made me feel better. My stomach’s stopped growling.”
“Good,” he said, shelving such statements off to the back of his mind; they did not go with his image of her, the rest of their discussion and all.
“Maybe that’s what I need,” she said. “Everything’s been so mixed up since I got back from Mexico City. That was only a month or so ago, actually. I can’t seem to get back in with things … why don’t you drop by and visit us one day? Here, I’ll give you our official card.” She trailed past him, out of the kitchen. He remained. When she returned she carried a business card which she presented to him with a formal flourish. “Drop by,” she said, “and you can take me out and buy me lunch.”
“I’d love to do that,” he said, already considering how and when he would be up at Boise again. Was it worth making the drive, over a thousand miles round trip, on his own time? If he waited for company business, it might be another six months, and then, as now, it would permit him only a day or so. While he battled it out in his mind, Susan left him and went into the living room with the others.
I could really go for her, he thought. In a big way.
A few minutes later he had said good-bye to everyone and had left the house, for a second time.
As he drove along in his car, back toward the highway, he thought to himself how much better-groomed an older woman was. If they looked good they do so on purpose, not because of chance. Not because nature had flung them a nice build and teeth and legs. They had a cultivated beauty.
And in addition to that, he was positive—without having tried it—that they knew what to do.
He had gotten almost to the highway when, all at once, he remembered who Susan Faine was. Slowing, he drove by reflex, letting the car roll.
Back in those days she had lived in Montario. None of them had known her first name, and of course “Faine” was her married name. Naturally, she had not had that name, then. They all thought of her as Miss Reuben. The last time he had seen her had been in 1949, when he was in high school, still a student, and of course he had thought of himself that way, and so had she. It had been natural for both of them to think of him as a student from the beginning.
Susan Faine had been his fifth grade teacher. At the Garret A. Hobart Grammar School, in Montario. Back in 1944, when he had been eleven years old.
3
He spent the night at a motel on the outskirts of Boise. The next morning he met with the auto supply people and negotiated successfully for the lot of car wax.
At eleven in the morning he had rented a trailer and had begun loading as many cartons as possible onto the trailer and into his car. The auto supply people had meantime confirmed his check. They signed the tag, arranged for delivery of the balance of the cartons, and off he drove, the load and trailer keeping his speed down.
With such a load he could not make the drive back to Reno during the heat of day. Were he to get out on the desert now, the engine of the Merc would overheat, boil off its water, and possibly warp the head. Usually, in circumstances of this kind, he paid a dollar or so and got use of a motel room for the day; he could nap, take it easy, read, and then, at sunset, get back out on the road.
He drove along the motel strip for a time, but then he changed his mind, made a U-turn, and returned to downtown Boise.
At one in the afternoon he parked his car and trailer in front of a shoe store, got out, made certain that the cartons in the trailer could not be pried loose by passing thieves, and then he walked along the sidewalk, with the midday shoppers, until he saw ahead of him a small office with a sign above it reading: R & J Mimeographing Service.
Perspiring with nervousness, he entered the office noticing that the counter and fixtures were modern and that directly across from the doorway another modern office, a real estate and notary public firm, did business. A fan, on the counter, cooled the place. Several dark-shiny waiting room chairs had been set out for customers.
A friendly-looking middle-aged woman wearing a smock approached him. “Hello,” she said.
Bruce said, “Is Miss Reuben around?” Then he wished he had asked for Mrs. Faine; he had given it all away right off the bat. If she heard him she knew he had known her in the past.
But the middle-aged woman said, “Susan didn’t come in today. She phoned about nine this morning and said she wasn’t feeling well.”
“That’s too bad,” he said, relieved. Now he became calmer. “Ill drop by again some other time,” he said.
“Is there anything I can do for you?” the woman asked, standing with her hands clasped together, into the sleeves of her smock. She wore tortoise-shell glasses, and her hair was done up in a braided ring. She had a sympathetic, wrinkled face, round, heavy at the jowls, and when she smiled she showed a variety of gold and silver dental work.
“No,” she said. “I’m a friend of hers. I’m up from Reno and I thought I’d drop by and say hello.”
“What a pity you missed her.”
“Well,” he said, “I saw her last night.”
“Oh, over at Peg Googer’s?”
“Yes,” he said.
“How was she feeling then?”
“Not too well,” he said. “She was lying down for awhile. She said something about being afraid she had picked up a bug in Mexico. It sounded more to me like Asiatic Flu.”
“Listen,” the woman said, with agitation. “Why don’t you drive up to the house? You have a car, don’t you?” She hurried away from him, back behind the counter. Gathering together piles of papers, she said, “I have these things she has to see, today. I was going to close up at four and take a cab out there.” She returned to the counter with an armload. “Checks she has to sign, mail, a manuscript a student brought in that has math symbols in it; we can’t type the symbols, but Susan can draw them in—she’s the one who does that, not me.” She held out the armload to him.