The Burglar in the Library Read Free

noticed. Afterward I collapsed like a blown tire, and the next thing I knew she had all her clothes on and one hand on the doorknob.
    “Wait,” I said. “I can at least see you downstairs and put you into a cab.”
    “No need for you to get dressed, Bernie. And I am in rather a hurry.”
    “At least let me tell you what I had planned for the weekend.”
    “All right.”
    “Because we could always do it the following week, if I can manage to get reservations. Or, once you hear what I’ve got planned for us, you might want to cancel your own plans.”
    “Well, tell me.”
    “Cuttleford House,” I said.
    “Cuttleford House.” She frowned in thought. “Isn’t that—”
    “The English country house in the Berkshires,” I said. “Exclusive, expensive, and authentic. A coal fire on every hearth. Serving girls dropping curtsies. Serving boys dropping aitches. Tea brought to your room at daybreak. Guests who still haven’t recovered from having lost India. No television in the whole house, no automobiles anywhere on the property.”
    “It sounds heavenly.”
    “Well, I know what a passion you have for everything English,” I said, “and I saw how much you enjoyed tea at the Stanhope, and I thought this would be the perfect weekend for us. I was planning on telling you on Valentine’s Day, but it had come and gone by the time I managed to get through to them and make the reservation.”
    “What a sweet man you are, Bernie.”
    “That’s me,” I agreed. “What do you say, Lettice? If you’re positive you can’t shift your plans, I’ll try to switch our reservations to the following weekend.”
    “I only wish I could.”
    “You wish you could which?”
    “Either.” She sighed, let go of the doorknob, and came back into the room, leaning against a bookcase. “I was hoping to avoid this,” she said. “I thought it would be so much nicer for both of us to just make love and leave it at that.”
    “Leave what at what? You lost me.”
    “In a manner of speaking,” she said, “that’s precisely it. Oh, Bernie, I wish I could go with you Thursday week, but it’s just not on.”
    “What else are you doing,” I heard myself say, “that’s so important?”
    “Oh, Bernie.”
    “Well?”
    “You’ll hate me.”
    “I won’t hate you.”
    “But you will, and I won’t blame you. I mean, it’s so ridiculous.”
    “What is?”
    “Oh, Bernie,” she said yet again. “Bernie, I’m getting married.”
     
    “‘Oh, by the way, Bernie, I’m getting married Thursday,’” I said. “And my jaw dropped, and by the time I’d picked it up she was out the door and on her way. Can you believe it?”
    “I’m beginning to, Bern.”
    I suppose she must have been, since she was hearing it for the third time. I’d told her that night, calling her minutes after Lettice crossed my threshold and closed the door gently but firmly behind her. I told her again the following day at lunch. Carolyn’s dog-grooming salon is on East Eleventh Street between University Place and Broadway, just two doors down the street fromBarnegat Books, and in the ordinary course of things we lunch together, one of us picking up sandwiches at one of the neighborhood delis and conveying them to the other’s place of business. On this particular day I had bought the sandwiches and we ate them at the Poodle Factory, and between bites I told her the same sad story I’d told her over the phone.
    Then, around six, I closed the bookstore and went back to the Poodle Factory, where she was putting the finishing touches on a bichon frise while its owners watched, beaming. “She’s such a darling,” one of them said, while the other wrote out a check. “And you bring out the best in her, Carolyn. I swear you’re a genius.”
    They left, darling in tow, and the genius closed up for the night. We walked over to the Bum Rap on Broadway, as we generally do, and Carolyn started to order Scotch, as she generally does, and then she paused.