Strangers on a Train
by Patricia Highsmith

Forty

 

A few moments later that morning, Guy stepped out of the director’s office at Hanson and Knapp Drafters, happier than he had felt in weeks. The firm was copying the last of the hospital drawings, the most complex Guy had ever supervised, the last okays had come through on the building materials, and he had gotten a telegram early that morning from Bob Treacher that made Guy rejoice for his old friend. Bob had been appointed to an advisory committee of engineers for the new Alberta Dam in Canada, a job he had been looking forward to for the last five years.

Here and there at one of the long tables that fanned out on either side of him, a draftsman looked up and watched him as he walked toward the outer door. Guy nodded a greeting to a smiling foreman. He detected the smallest glow of self-esteem. Or maybe it was nothing but his new suit, he thought, only the third suit in his life he had ever had made for him. Anne had chosen the gray-blue glen plaid material. Anne had chosen the tomato-colored woolen tie this morning to go with it, an old tie but one that he liked. He tightened its knot in the mirror between the elevators. There was a wild gray hair sticking up from one black, heavy eyebrow. The brows went up a little in surprise. He smoothed the hair down. It was the first gray hair he had ever noticed on himself.

A draftsman opened the office door. “Mr. Haines? Lucky I caught you. There’s a telephone call.”

Guy went back, hoping it wouldn’t be long, because he was to meet Anne for lunch in ten minutes. He took the call in an empty office off the drafting room.

“Hello, Guy? Listen, Gerard found that Plato book… . Yeah, in Santa Fe. Now, listen, it doesn’t change anything….”

Five minutes had passed before Guy was back at the elevators. He had always known the Plato might be found. Not a chance, Bruno had said. Bruno could be wrong. Bruno could be caught, therefore. Guy scowled as if it were incredible, the idea Bruno could be caught. And somehow it had been incredible, until now.

Momentarily, as he came out into the sunlight, he was conscious again of the new suit, and he clenched his fist in frustrated anger with himself. “I found the book on the train, see?” Bruno had said. “If I called you in Metcalf, it was on account of the book.

But I didn’t meet you until December…” The voice more clipped and anxious than Guy had ever heard it before, so alert, so harried, it hardly seemed Bruno’s voice. Guy went over the fabrication Bruno had just given him as if it were something that didn’t belong to him, as if it were a swatch of material he indifferently considered for a suit, he thought. No, there were no holes in it, but it wouldn’t necessarily wear. Not if someone remembered seeing them on the train. The waiter, for instance, who had served them in Bruno’s compartment.

He tried to slow his breathing, tried to slow his pace. He looked up at the small disc of the winter sun. His black brows with the gray hair, with the white scar, his brows that were growing shaggier lately, Anne said, broke the glare into particles and protected him. If one looks directly into the sun for fifteen seconds, one can burn through the cornea, he remembered from somewhere. Anne protected him, too. His work protected him. The new suit, the stupid new suit. He felt suddenly inadequate and dullwitted, helpless. Death had insinuated itself into his brain. It enwrapped him. He had breathed its air so long, perhaps, he had grown quite used to it. Well, then, he was not afraid. He squared his shoulders superfluously.

Anne had not arrived when he got to the restaurant. Then he remembered she had said she was going to pick up the snapshots they had made Sunday at the house. Guy pulled Bob Treacher’s telegram from his pocket and read it again and again: JUST APPOINTED TO ALBERTA COMMITTEE. HAVE RECOMMENDED YOU. THIS IS A BRIDGE, GUY. GET FREE SOON AS POSSIBLE. ACCEPTANCE GUARANTEED. LETTER COMING. BOB

Acceptance guaranteed. Regardless of how he engineered his life, his ability to engineer a bridge was beyond question. Guy sipped his martini thoughtfully, holding the surface perfectly steady.