The Deceivers Read Free Page B

should have done. Just as he was about to leave, he saw Bernie Madden hurrying down the first floor corridor.
    “Bernie!”
    “Oh, hi, Carl. Just bring her in?”
    “A few minutes ago. She’s a little scared.”
    Bernie took him into a small waiting room near the front desk. He was a small man with wide shoulders, cropped black hair, horn-rimmed glasses, a pale face with dark shadow of beard, a look of vitality and controlled energy. “They’re all scared. Perfectly natural. And so are you. And right now you’re hoping I know my business as well as you think I do. Relax, boy. I don’t tell this to my associates, but I’m a pretty sharp operator. And that’s a sort of a pun. We’ll fool around with some tests and I’ve got her scheduled for ten o’clock Tuesday morning. I’ll give her a spinal.”
    Carl frowned. “You mean she’ll be conscious?”
    “Listen, she’ll be so full of joy juice, she won’t mind a thing. I wish they were all as easy as this one is going to be. Joanie is as healthy as a horse.” Bernie punched him lightly on the shoulder. “You run along and leave everything to Uncle Bernie Madden.”
    He went out and got into the car and drove back to the house, pulling into the car port to park beside Joan’s elderly and moody Hillman. It was five o’clock when he let himself into the house. He stood in the kitchen and listened to the silence. The refrigerator made a subdued whirring. The electric clock on the kitchen wall had started the habit of whining a few months back. When you rapped it briskly, the whining stopped. He rapped it.
    And he said aloud, “Welcome home, ole Carl.”
    His voice had a hollow sound in the house, and his footsteps seemed loud, and he heard creaks in the hardwood boards of the floor that he had not noticed before.
    In less than two hours he could head back to the hospital, and he would see her again tomorrow evening, and when there would be the longest wait of all, until he could talk to Bernie after the operation.

TWO
    He left the hospital for the second time that Sunday at eight-thirty when the visiting hours ended. When he had arrived at a few minutes after seven, the Gray Lady at the temporary desk in the lobby had told him Mrs. Garrett already had two visitors, and patients were only allowed two at a time. He told her that he was Mr. Garrett and she told him somewhat dubiously that he could go up provided he sent one of the other visitors out into the hall.
    He heard and recognized Al Washburn’s hearty and appalling laugh the moment he stepped off the elevator. Joan’s room was only a few doors from the elevator foyer. Al and Jen Washburn were there, and Jen had brought a vase of cut flowers from their garden. Al was the general agent for a large insurance company and the Washburns had moved onto Barrow Lane at Crescent Ridge just a few weeks after the Garretts. The two couples had been reasonably friendly during the five years, drawn together by the bond of being “early settlers.” And Carl had served with Al on the board of the Crescent Ridge Association when it was first formed.
    The bed of Rosa Myers was crumpled and empty. Jen sat on the foot of Joan’s bed. Jen was an arid looking, withered blonde with a great deal of spurious animation in her face, a shrill voice, a great many large dead-white teeth. Carl had never before realized quite how much noise the Washburns created. He hoped they’d have the sense to stay away when Joan was feeling wretched.
    Joan’s bed was cranked up at the head and she was wearing a bed jacket with small blue flowers embroidered on it. She was smiling, but she looked pale under her summer tan, and rather worn. He greeted the Washburns and bent over and kissed Joan, and admired the flowers. After some of the casual and pointless conversation that occurs in all hospital rooms, Al Washburn tugged Carl out into the hall and said, “Fella, we’re going to run into some trouble with the town supervisors again. Now I