Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 150, Nos. 5 & 6. Whole Nos. 914 & 915, November/December 2017
- Автор: Фузилли Джим, Харрис Шарлин
- Год: 2017
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines
- ISBN: 0013-6328
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 150, Nos. 5 & 6. Whole Nos. 914 & 915, November/December 2017». Краткое содержание книги:
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Only that I’ve been thinking about my life a lot lately — about yours too.”
“Since when did you become a thinking man?”
Sighing stoically, he murmured, “Do you think you could sit still a minute while I tell you about a dream I had this morning?”
“Dreaming isn’t the same as thinking,” she advised, dropping his mug in front of him with a splash, and unloading the poundage she’d acquired, especially during the past two years, onto the chair across.
“Actually it was more of a nightmare.”
“Okay, tell me about your nightmare— I’m all ears.”
All mouth, he thought. “I’m not sure how to explain it to you.”
“Don’t worry, I’m smarter than I look.”
Thinking he’d better leave out the part about the vulture, he said, “I dreamed that only a handful of couples in the world are living the lives they’re supposed to be living.”
This confession left him gasping.
“Stop making that noise!”
He sat without blinking, profoundly depressed.
“Believe it or not,” she said, “I had a similar dream last week.”
Arte’s wife had always tried to make it seem she was one step ahead of him in all respects, or so he believed. But he feigned surprise: “You did?”
“Yes, and I gave it a lot of thought — I too got to thinking about the past and the future.”
“Fascinating,” he said. “Did you come up with any ideas about what could be done in this situation?”
“I considered downloading Ancestry.com to see if the stories of my ancestors might help me understand my present situation better and lead me to a path that’s more rewarding than the one you’ve dragged me along.”
Convinced the meager accomplishments, and possibly heinous crimes, of her forebears would provide no help in resolving their dilemma, he said: “What would you do if you didn’t find any useful clues on Ancestry.com?”
“Beyond that, I suppose we could Google people in our neighborhood to see if we could find a better fit close to home.”
“Amazing — I was thinking along very similar lines this morning.”
“I did this last week.”
Big deal — one week ahead of me.
“What about you?” she demanded. “Did you come up with anything that makes sense?”
“Like you said, I figured we might Google every one of our friends, coworkers, servers at the country club, clerks where we shop to see if we could find coordinates in personalities and lifestyles and goals that might match up better for us.”
“You probably fixed yourself up with Althea.”
“Whatever would give you that idea?”
“You don’t think I’ve noticed the chickadee grins you flash at each other?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“What about your rendezvousing with her at Stop and Shop?”
“Are you being serious or just trying to aggravate me?”
“Tweet tweet!”
“I strongly suggest you consider seeing someone about your problem.”
“If anyone’s crazy in this family, it’s the one who has birdies in his belfry.”
“Look, Deme, this banter is not helping us solve our problem.”
“Fine, just answer my question: Were you able to come up with anything constructive?”
Taking a painful breath, he said, “I came to the conclusion that it’s all far too complex, too interconnected, too locked in place for us to get the better of the gods who caused all this trouble.”
“You’re right! It’s the goddamn gods who did this to us.”
Pleased they’d finally agreed on something, he said in a tolerant tone: “How far did you get in your thinking?”
“I stopped searching for a way out of this mess once I took identity theft into account: Even if we were able to come up with congenial matches for ourselves, how would we know they weren’t scoundrels using someone else’s identities?”
A full minute of silent sluggishness filled the space as if a leaden cloud had flowed in through the window, seeped into their minds, and prevented them from thinking of anything to say. The coffee had become so thick at the bottom of the urn they couldn’t even use the slurping of that slimy substance as an excuse for not speaking.
At last Arte was struck by an inspiration: “When my vacation rolls around this summer, I wonder if the Republicans would let you take off the same week with a Democrat.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“Maybe we ought to send Ollie and Elly to Camp Chingachgook while you and I steal away to that hotel in Saranac Lake.”
“The one where we shacked up nineteen years ago?”
“I’ll never forget those romantic lodgings.”
“Fabulous food, cozy accommodations, and, as I recall, even a bit of insipid sex.”
“Insipid sex?”
“You know, stick it in and pull it out.”
“Stop being crude!”
“Don’t tell me you thought it was great sex?”
“I wouldn’t go so far as to call it great.”
“How would you rate it?”
“I don’t know — never thought about it.”
“Since you’re a thinking man, why not think about it now?”
“I have no interest in thinking about sexual favors we exchanged nineteen years ago.”
“It may have started a long time ago, but I can tell you it continues to hang over our relationship like a vulture on road kill.”
Arte thought it revealing she’d compared their sex life to a vulture, but what made her confession especially hurtful was that he’d always thought sex had been the one department in which they’d been reasonably well paired — at least in the early days. Now he was beginning to think that Deme had been one of the gods’ undercover vultures all along, and he could envision only one way out of this quandary: grab that long, sharp knife off the table and jam it between her breasts, an action he felt couldn’t have been instigated by the gods since he’d just come up with the idea. Such a deed would nullify any concerns Deme had with regard to being misaligned with her husband, he thought, but where would that leave him? Arte would still be hanging around — undoubtedly behind bars — continuing to carry the burden of his bogus life.
“I’m going to open the package!” she announced.
To distract her from what he considered her growing obsession, he said: “I may have a solution to our problem.”
“Aha, you’ve been thinking again.”
Arte allowed the ragged wings of Deme’s remark to flap over his head.
“Are you going to reveal this solution or are we playing Jeopardy?”
“In my considered opinion,” he said, “the only honorable way out of this dilemma is for us to establish a suicide pact.”
Gagging momentarily, she spat: “You’re the one who needs psychiatric attention — seven days a week!”
“Since neither of us has been living the lives that should have been ours, what’s the point of living at all?”
This observation must’ve crimped Deme’s vocal cords because she didn’t say a word. Arte kept going: “If I killed you first, or you killed me first, and the remaining spouse committed suicide, it would end this farce of bogus lives for both of us, while eliminating the need to search the world for the lives that should have been ours.”
Regaining her equilibrium Deme said: “You and I don’t agree on very much, so how do you expect us to decide who should go first?”
Having anticipated this very question, he said quietly: “Whoever guesses the flip of a coin correctly can choose to go first or last.”
Drawing a slow, wary breath, she said, “What do you propose the method should be?”