The Houseguest Read Free Page A

been easier than to erase it, and there had been a time when she would certainly have done so. Perhaps it was just as well that Doug in those days did not yet possess an answering machine: nothing could have resulted from such an exercise of spite but the loss of the impeccable moral status by means of which she survived. Such an action could not but be succeeded by others of the same character, each more bitter and thus even less effectual than the former, for pride can never be served by negative means. Not to mention that Audrey was by nature an ironist who was capable of seeing in the rain that fell on a picnic, the staining of one’s special dress an hour before the start of whichever memorable event, and like calamities not altogether unwelcome confirmations of her basic pessimism. In contrast, Doug habitually entertained favorable expectations. He and she were fundamentally well matched.
    She found the key to the large drawer at the bottom of the desk’s left pedestal, a key that was conveniently kept amidst the paper clips in a little leather-covered open drum on the desktop, next to a larger one that held freshly sharpened pencils. She unlocked and opened the drawer and removed the attaché case from it. Though Doug could be erotically ingenious, his powers of invention were notably banal in other areas of life, and the first time Audrey encountered the little cylinders of the combination lock she had no hesitation in moving them to represent the month, day, and year of his birth, and the hasp popped open on the instant. That had been three attaché cases ago, as of this time, yet the same maneuver was still as valid.
    But today, for the first time ever, there was nothing in the case, not even any legal papers. Audrey was hard hit by this discovery, as she had never been by the occasional item of flimsy lingerie tucked into the pocket in the lining of beige suede. Moving by sheer habit, she replaced the case in the locked drawer and returned the key to a paper-clip burial before sitting down to deliberate on the edge of Doug’s bed. She might have remained there until her husband returned from his walk, in flagrant violation of their tacit agreement, had not the tone of the telephone, so thin in timbre yet so piercing, sounded at that moment, restoring her self-possession.
    She snatched the instrument from the box and said, “You have reached Douglass Graves’s number.”
    As she expected, the caller was surprised by this greeting and for a long moment preserved the silence. But when the voice finally came on the line it was not a woman’s but hoarse and coarse.
    â€œGet Charlie for me.”
    Audrey knew an odd emotion which could have been either relief or regret. She answered sweetly, “I’m afraid you have the wrong number.”
    The caller rudely contested her assertion. “Don’t gimme that. You just go and get Charlie.”
    During such an exchange with a person who was evidently her social inferior Audrey usually felt if not wholly in the wrong to be anyway on an uncertain footing. Therefore she now applied some cogitation to the matter and, after an instant during which she was conscious of the heavy, menacing breaths at the other end of the wire, came up with a possibility.
    â€œCould you mean Chuck, Chuck Burgoyne?”
    The question was received with a grating utterance between a grunt and a chuckle. Then, in manifest derision: “You just tell Chucky-wucky to call Tedesco, see?”
    â€œYes, Mr. Tedesco. Do you want to leave a number?” But, with an uncompromising click, the line was dead.
    Audrey took a sharpened pencil from the leather cup, then looked through the desk in vain for a piece of paper. Though she had been taken aback by the current emptiness of the attaché case, she was not astonished to find that the drawers were barren as well. Doug did no work at the island house; he did little enough at the office. The job was a sinecure