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  If Wayne could get Bryce to concentrate on that story, and stick with it for a while, everything would be okay. Just until The Shadowed Other was finished, and accepted by Joe, and paid for. Then Wayne and Susan would have a million dollars that Mark Steiner could invest for them, and Wayne could go on doing the magazine pieces, and Susan would still have her job, and they’d be set in that terrific apartment on Central Park West. He wouldn’t even start another novel, not even if he thought of one, and if he was concentrating on the magazine pieces he doubted he’d even come up with another story.

  And Bryce, after the acceptance of The Shadowed Other, could sink or swim on his own. All Wayne had to do was steer Bryce through these rapids. And remember never to call his idea Kill Me Slowly. Smooth water lay ahead.

  So he said, “I think that story has stuff in it that you can use, that can help you get into that subject you write about so often, the other possibilities besides what really did happen.”

  “That’s true, isn’t it?” Bryce said. “It’s just—I don’t see anything between when he does it and when he confesses to the brother and the sister. What you said the first time, it’s all too interior, he’s got nobody to talk to, nothing to do.”

  “Well, that’s where my suggestion comes in,” Wayne said. “What if he meets the brother and the sister early on? Not long after the murder. But in a different context.”

  Bryce considered that, slowly nodding. “Seeks them out,” he said.

  “Sure.”

  “Wants to know more about the woman he killed. Killed her, but didn’t really know her.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Tries to learn about her through the brother and the sister.”

  “It’s worth fiddling with.”

  “The second woman,” Bryce said.

  “What second woman?”

  “That’s the title,” Bryce said. “The first woman is the one he killed. The second woman is the one he’s trying to find out about.”

  “That’s good,” Wayne said.

  * * *

  There was another party Saturday night, at the big weekend house of people named Hendrickson. Bryce had been right, the social life up here was varied and full. And Wayne and Susan fit into it immediately, probably better than Bryce, because it was mostly couples. Susan in particular nestled in as though the world had merely been holding a place for her here all these years, and Wayne glowed in the light of her pleasure. He loved to see Susan happy.

  And everybody here was friendly, everybody was comfortably well-off, and by now most of them recognized Wayne and Susan as being a part of the group. “You really have to get a place up here,” several people told Wayne.

  On the way home, in Bryce’s BMW, Susan in front, Wayne in back, Susan said, “I really like the Hendricksons. I like them all.”

  “So do I,” Wayne said.

  “They’re great people,” Bryce agreed.

  “They kept saying,” Susan said, “we should get a place up here.”

  “They said that to me, too,” Wayne said.

  Bryce said, “You could do that. Why not?”

  Susan said, “You know, I’m taking two weeks off early in June. I could do some house-hunting then. Bryce, would it be too much if we stayed with you for part of that?”

  “Stay the whole time,” Bryce offered. “Wayne, you bring your laptop, we can both work.”

  “That’s perfect,” Wayne said. “You on The Second Woman, me on The Shadowed Other.”

  * * *

  Three weeks later, on the Saturday, they drove up in the forest green Toyota Land Cruiser they’d just bought. Early June, bright sun, already talk in the neighborhood of drought. Mrs. Hildebrand greeted them like old members of the family and helped them carry their luggage up to the guest room, where Bryce had moved in a large refectory table to serve as Wayne’s desk, putting it in front of one of the windows. The view was of the pool and the hilly woods beyond. Bryce’s office was on the same side of the house, just beyond the guest bathroom, with the same view.

  After lunch, Susan went swimming while Wayne and Bryce sat in the living room to read each other’s work for the week. The Shadowed Other was almost finished. Wayne believed they’d be ready to turn it in to Joe before the Fourth of July, giving him the holiday weekend to read it.

  As to The Second Woman, progress there was more difficult to gauge. The first week, Bryce had worked with manic energy, as though something in him that had been imprisoned had finally been granted release. He’d handed Wayne thirty-two pages of finished copy that Saturday, taking Luke Parmalee from his appointment with the school board’s purchaser through his meeting of Brenda Wade in the high school’s parking lot, dinner, and to bed. Bryce had never been known in his novels for particularly graphic sex scenes, but this one had seemed to Wayne particularly perfunctory, as though the writer weren’t entirely sure what sex was, or even if he wanted to know. Otherwise, the two characters were very good, their dialogue humorous and touching as they hesitantly revealed themselves to one another.

  Wayne hadn’t seen any point in negative criticism, since The Second Woman was very unlikely to ever be an actual completed and publishable novel. It was make-work, meant to keep Bryce happy until The Shadowed Other was done. So he’d merely complimented Bryce on the positive things, the sweetness and humanity of Luke and Brenda, and let it go at that.

  The second week, Bryce had produced twenty-one more pages, but they were jumpier, less polished. The transition from the first night in the motel to the later meeting outside the second motel was abrupt and awkward, badly written, with lumpy sentences. In the dialogue, while Luke remained essentially the same character as before, sweet, a little sad and unsure of himself, Brenda was almost a different person, harsh and accusative and manipulative in obvious ways. The dinner scene was awkward and stilted, and the manuscript ended as they were leaving the restaurant.

  This third week should be the murder scene, but what Bryce gave Wayne was a manuscript of seventy-one pages, from page one. “I made some changes,” he said, “so I thought you ought to look at it from the beginning.”

  “Okay, fine.”

  Bryce was finished reading Wayne’s eleven new pages first, of course, so he leafed through a magazine while Wayne kept reading. The Second Woman began as it had before, with maybe some cutting in the first scene with the buyer, but then the parking lot scene was longer and Brenda was already a little harsher than she’d been, more like the person of the second encounter. The transition to that second encounter was considerably longer and much better written, the lumpy sentences smoothed out. Dinner was also longer, and Brenda here was less harsh, so the character in this version made hardly any change at all between the two scenes. Also, in this version, Brenda talked a bit about her brother and sister, establishing who they were. The pages ended, as last week, with them leaving the restaurant.

  “That’s much better,” Wayne said, when he’d finished. “You’ve really got Brenda consistent now, and I like bringing in the brother and sister.”

  “Yeah, that felt good,” Bryce said. “Do you, uh, have any ideas for the next part?”

  “No, I think you just do what you planned to do.”

  “Okay.” Bryce nodded, looking at the stack of pages Wayne had given back to him. “I think,” he said, “maybe I’ll go do some work on it now.”

  “And I might as well get my stuff set up,” Wayne said. “Any comments on the new pages?”

  “What? Oh, yours. No, it’s fine, the book’s just sailing.” Bryce grinned. “You don’t need me on that one.”

  “Good,” Wayne said. “That means you can concentrate on The Second Woman.”

  And wouldn’t it be strange, Wayne thought, if Bryce actually made a real novel out of this thing. He still believed that was very unlikely, but maybe not impossible. Bryce just might be able to pull it off after all. Wayne hoped he would. He didn’t have faith in it, but he could hope.

  They went upstairs together,
and into their separate rooms, and Wayne unpacked his ThinkPad and the new small printer he’d just bought for this trip and the rest of his materials, distributing them onto the refectory table. He looked out the window, and Susan was in the pool, doing laps.

  It would be great to have their own house somewhere around here, particularly if it already had a pool, but there was no hurry. This house was big and comfortable, and Mrs. Hildebrand was fabulous. Wayne and Susan could stay here through this two-week vacation, and then weekend here through the summer. Susan would like that, she’d fallen in love with this house.

  Thirty-one

  Lucie used to swim naked in the pool; they both did. But there was no one in these rooms then, looking out the window.

  Bryce sat at his desk, looking to his left at the window, and out it, at Susan doing laps in the pool. She had been doing that twice a day, after breakfast, and after lunch, for almost two weeks now. This was the second Thursday of their stay, and they’d be leaving on Sunday. But coming back, of course, next weekend.

  Bryce remembered Lucie naked in the pool. He remembered how water would bead in her pubic hair when she came out of the pool, and he’d say, “Your cunt is winking at me,” and she would laugh. Sex in the water was never totally successful, but they tried it a few times anyway, and he remembered the pale sleekness of her wet skin as she moved. He remembered the way she moved.

  Susan wore a two-piece bathing suit, not quite a bikini. She had three of them, one with a design of white stars on red, one a solid royal blue, and one just swirls of color, like a kaleidoscope that had bled. Today, she wore the kaleidoscope. Every once in a while, she would climb out of the pool to use the diving board. Diving, she was efficient, made no big splash, but wasn’t particularly graceful.

  He closed his eyes. Time to go to work, go back to work, stop stalling, get moving here, break through that block while Wayne was still staying here. This was Bryce’s last chance, and he knew it. Wayne was being very patient, urging him but not nastily, but Bryce could sense Wayne’s patience wearing thin.

  He couldn’t get to the murder scene. Every time he approached it, the two people walking, the argument, establishing the dark, establishing the solitude, no one else around, his mind veered off and he thought about something he should do or undo in the pages that already existed. Like improve the sex scene, make it individual, make it real but not crude; he’d done that Monday. Every day he did more, he’d even tried to leapfrog to the later scene, when Luke would meet Dillon, Brenda’s brother, but it didn’t work. Without that experience behind him, Luke didn’t yet exist in the later scenes, and Bryce had no way to write the man.

  I have to do it today, he thought, and opened his eyes and looked out to see Susan toweling herself. The pattern was, she’d come in now and shower, then go down to the kitchen to chat with Mrs. Hildebrand a while. She did that every day.

  We all have our patterns here, he thought, we’re a little community, we all have the things we do every day, but today what I have to do is the murder scene.

  Susan, the towel around her, walked toward the house, moving out of sight. Bryce focused again on the screen in front of him, his fingers resting on the keyboard.

  “Brenda,” he said, his hands clenching into fists

  Was that right? Fists? Was it like a boxing match, punching, throwing hooks and jabs? That didn’t seem right, it didn’t seem violent or brutal enough. This isn’t “the fights.”

  his fingers curled into claws,

  No, she should be the one who scratches, claws and scratches. Why didn’t Wayne have scratches on him?

  Beyond the wall behind him, he heard the shower start. Not wanting the distraction, any distraction, he concentrated on the words on the screen.

  “Brenda,” he said, his fingers curled into claws,

  Her name isn’t Brenda. Is that the problem? What is her name, if it isn’t Brenda?

  One of the reference books he kept on the shelf was a little paperback called 4000 Names for Your Baby. He took it down now, started to leaf through it. What initial? Not L.

  Do this later, he told himself. Push the scene through now, get past this scene, change the names later.

  He put the book away, and a knock sounded at the door. When he was alone here, he kept his office door open, but with people in the house, and him being so easily distracted these days, he kept it shut.

  He turned that way, called, “Hello?”

  “It’s Wayne.”

  “Come on in.”

  Wayne opened the door as the sound of the shower stopped. “I have to go to Danbury,” he said. “Want to come along?”

  “What do you need in Danbury?”

  “A new ink cartridge for my printer.” Wayne grinned, pleased and sheepish at the same time. “I thought I had enough till we got back to New York, but I’m working faster than I expected. Want to ride along? You haven’t been in our new car yet.”

  “Sure,” Bryce said, and gestured at his screen. “Just let me—”

  Shut it all down, he meant, but then he looked at the screen and saw

  “Brenda,” he said, his fingers curled into claws,

  and knew it was wrong. “Wait a second,” he said.

  “Sure.”

  Bryce touched the keyboard.

  and his shoulders hunched. His left hand moved out, almost of its own accord, and closed painfully on her upper arm.

  She turned

  pulled back

  said,

  “Bryce?”

  Bryce took his fingers from the keys, looked at Wayne in the doorway. “I think I should stay,” he said. “I want to get through this part.”

  “Oh, okay. How’s it coming?”

  “Oh, it’s slow, you know,” Bryce said. “There’s progress, but it’s slow.”

  “You’ll get it. See you.”

  “See you,” Bryce said, and thought, I’m lying to Wayne now, exactly the way I used to lie to Joe. The same lie, the same words.

  Wayne shut the office door and Bryce put his fingers on the keyboard. Faintly, he could hear the sound of the hairdryer.

  “Claudia,” he said, and yanked at her arm. “You’re pushing me too hard.”

  “Get your goddam hands off me,” she said, and swung at his face.

  She starts it? Why would she start it? And if she starts it, doesn’t that change the dynamic of the whole episode? I’m absolving him, then, if she starts it, and I’m not here to absolve him.

  Claudia. That’s like a joke, a stupid joke, about claws. Santa Claws, the patron saint of tough women. How tough is she?

  “Just how tough are you, Brenda?” he said, and slapped her across the face.

  A slap. A slap doesn’t do anything, a slap is an insult, not a threat. He has to do . . . more. He has to begin.

  I should go with Wayne, he thought, get out of here, go for a ride in his shiny new car, think about . . . Easier to think if I get away from this screen for a while.

  Ask him. In the car. Say, “Wayne, just theoretically, how would this violence begin? How would it start?”

  He got up and went out to the hall, leaving the office door open. He crossed the hall to go into his bedroom and look out the front window there to see if the Land Cruiser was still parked in its usual place down below, but it was gone. Wayne had already left.

  He went back out to the hall. He could hear the hairdryer. Today was Thursday, Mrs. Hildebrand’s day off, she was in Danbury, visiting friends.

  Bryce walked down the hall and opened the guest room door. Susan, seated at the vanity table, wearing a gray robe, saw the movement in the mirror there and turned as Bryce walked in. She switched the hairdryer off and said, “Bryce? What is it?”

  “You see, what the problem is, Lucie,” he said, “I just have to know.”

  She stood. “My name is Susan,” she said.

  “Not any more,” he said.

  Donald E. Westlake has written numerous novels over the past thirty-five years under his own
name and pseudonyms, including Richard Stark. Many of his books have been made into movies, including The Hunter, which became the brilliant film noir Point Blank, and the 1999 smash hit Payback. He penned the Hollywood scripts for The Stepfather and The Grifters, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Screenplay.

  The winner of three Edgar awards and a Mystery Writers of America Grand Master, Donald E. Westlake lives with his wife, Abby Adams, in rural New York State.