Smart Moves (27 page)

BOOK: Smart Moves

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Keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust ’em;
Good signior, you shall more command with years
Than with your weapons.

It was signed, “With thanks, The Moor.”

The next morning I got up and told Shelly to return the tuxedos, pay whatever the woman at the costume shop demanded for the damage, pack our things, get our plane tickets, and meet me at the airport. He reminded me that I wasn’t supposed to leave the hospital for one more hour.

A doctor, a nurse, and a woman whose job I never figured out tried to talk me out of leaving, but they were amateurs at the game. It took me about half an hour to dress with one arm in a sling, but I was out of the front door of the hospital before lunchtime. The bill was thirty bucks, but it was worth it. I hobbled into a cab and made it to the airport, ignoring the cabbie who cursed the other drivers, the Japanese, his wife, the gas ration board, and someone named Oscar. I gave him a small tip. I had considered stopping to say goodbye to Pauline, to visit Albanese once more in the hospital, maybe even to look up Carmichael’s widow, then told myself I was too sick, that I had things waiting for me in L.A., that Shelly was waiting. All of it was true and all of it was a lie. I didn’t look out the window when we took off. Airplanes scare me. I closed my eyes and slept, while Shelly read eternal truths from the dental brochures he had taken as trophies.

I remember changing planes once or twice, I don’t remember where. I remember landing in Los Angeles but I don’t remember taking a cab. I remember my landlady, Mrs. Plaut, tapping gently at my door and entering to say in her precise high voice, “Mr. Peelers, it is the telephone for you. Dr. Minck says that his wife has run off with Peter Lorre. What shall I tell him?”

“Tell him,” I said, sitting up and testing my arm, “that I’ll be there in half an hour.”

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa

This edition published in 2011 by
MysteriousPress.com
/Open Road Integrated Media

180 Varick Street

New York, NY 10014

www.openroadmedia.com