The Sunset Gang (7 page)

"Why louse up a weekend?" she said. "It was
a good day for it. Why leave things hanging?"

He got up from the bed, turning his face quickly. He did
not want her to see his pain. He walked into the kitchen, ran water from the
tap, and drank two glasses swiftly. Perhaps, he thought, there was something
inside of him he was trying to drown.

From the lounge chair on the screened porch of their
condominium, Seymour Shapiro heard the slamming of the kitchen cupboards. The
sound was foreign enough to his ears to disturb his concentration. Putting the
Ross Macdonald, spine up and spread-eagled on his lap, he cocked his head and
listened.

"Anything wrong, Bernice?" he called, waiting.
More slammings intervened.

"I can't find the tuna fish," she shouted.
"I saw it yesterday."

"Maybe we ate it," he said, lifting the book
again, gathering his concentration. A new Ross Macdonald was always welcome,
and he had waited nearly three weeks for the library to obtain it for him. The
repetitive theme of the lost relative never failed to hold his interest. Lew
Archer was one of his special favorites, along with Harry Kemelman, and
Inspector Maigret and the inimitable Hercule Poirot. Mystery paperbacks overflowed
the bookcase in their small Sunset Village condominium. Most of them he was
able to buy for a dime apiece at flea markets and secondhand bookshops in the Poinsettia Beach area. And there was always a pile of library hardbacks on tables, chairs,
and even stacked under the bed.

Bernice had long since given up any attempt to thwart this
passion on the part of her husband. The best she could muster was to keep the
books piled neatly and well dusted, although she did confide to her wide circle
of friends that she was stymied by his obsession with the mystery books.

"He has always read them," she had complained to
her friends. "But now he devours them like potato chips."

"It'll keep him out of trouble," Harriet Feldman
said. Harriet was a widow and could be suspected of selfish motives. To her,
men were a nuisance. Better to keep them busy somewhere. That way they couldn't
interfere with the lives of her married girl friends. Marcia Finkelstein, on
the other hand, had another view.

"They develop crazy ideas in their retirement,"
she confided one day over the mah-jongg table. "Mr. Magaziner, who lives
upstairs in my section, was a cutter in the garment center for nearly fifty
years. Now he's a fisherman. Every day he goes to the beach and sits there in a
chair a fishing pole."

"Does he catch anything?"

"Once in a blue moon. And when he does, his wife says
it stinks up the whole place. As a matter of fact, even Mr. Magaziner is
beginning to stink from fish."

"And the case of Morris Greenberg, Rose's
husband," Judy Stein interjected. "He sold insurance, came home,
watched television, slept on the couch. That was his whole life. Now he's a
birdwatcher. Every day he gets up at five to watch the birds."

"Better watching birds that fly than birds that
flounce," Bernice said.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Harriet Feldman
said. She was very sensitive about references to predatory females. Jokes and
sly references about widows inflamed her.

"I'm not referring to you, Harriet." Bernice
called her tile and they all paused for concentration. "Sometimes we have
to protect our men."

"Who would want those alte cockers?"

"They may not be what they used to be." Bernice
smiled. "But sometimes they rise to the occasion." The women
snickered. "You'd be surprised at some of these dirty old men."

Seymour could have been a fisherman or a birdwatcher, or a
philanderer or a cardplayer or a what not, Bernice thought, not without some
odd sense of security, since she could always be sure that her husband would be
predictably contented with his nose in a mystery book, or poking around in
bookstores and libraries looking for more. Occasionally, though, this activity
of her husband exasperated her. Unless there was a discussion of mystery books,
their writers and characters, Seymour Shapiro made a boring companion. At the
frequent gatherings of her friends, the mah-jongg players from her afternoon
game, the canasta players from her thrice-weekly games or her cronies from
around the pool, and their husbands, those that had them, Seymour would sit in
a corner and mope. In the midst of animated conversation he would pick up a
mystery book and turn the pages, but she would always pluck it out of his
hands, although she was careful to save her admonishment until later.

"It's impolite to do that in company," she
scolded.

"I was bored."

"Be bored," she said. "But don't be
impolite. These are my friends."

He nodded docility, knowing she was right. Reading mysteries hadn't always been an addiction. Actually he hadn't had that much time
before. Teaching high-school physics had absorbed his energies for nearly forty
years in the Englewood, New Jersey school system. Because he was conscientious,
some said dedicated, he had taken examinations home with him for marking and he
had spent long hours tutoring his pupils in the mysteries of light and sound
waves, the displacement of water and air, and other scientific phenomena. It
was only when he arrived in Sunset Village that he had acquired this new
passion, mostly out of a need to escape from the isolation, the lack of daily
purpose, and as he characterized them, the inanities of most of his wife's
friends. At first Bernice had been offended, openly upset with him, yet fearful
that she had pushed him to make the wrong decision on her choice of their place
of retirement. She loved Sunset Village. She loved her friends and the pace of
life there, and she could pursue her interests in an atmosphere that she
genuinely enjoyed. Except for the sun, the life she led was not much different
from that in Englewood. But Seymour had had his work in Englewood.

"This is one place where you can't be
antisocial," she told him. "Force yourself to make friends. You are a
bright person. Surely there are some friends you could find, some hobby to
pursue. You don't even like the pool or the activities at the clubhouse."

"It's just not my cup of tea."

"Then what is?"

"I'll find something," he promised, feeling the
void created by the absence of his old life--the school, the children, the
exams. But what he really felt he kept inside of himself. He did not want
Bernice to share the burden of his rootlessness. Nor did he dare convey to her
his feelings about her life, her friends. Maybe he was a bit of a snob, he
thought. He hated games, and he could find nothing in the conversation of her
friends or their spouses that could engage his interest. The women were
empty-headed yentas and he could not find any common denominator among the men.
Yet he did enjoy the idea of his wife's contentment and happiness, although he
despaired when he contemplated the future, the squandering of precious time,
the prospect of more rot in the physical sense and the ever-present specter of
death.

Perhaps it was the idea of death that got him hooked on
mystery books in the first place. In mystery books, death was an irrevocable
presence, a necessary device, the central focus of the plot. And he was
intrigued by the puzzle the author presented. Why did death come? What
motivated the death? Death was far more challenging in the mystery books than
in Sunset Village, where it arrived on creaky wheels, an agonizing process of
hurry up and wait.

"Are you sure you didn't eat the tuna fish?"
Bernice called from the kitchen, disturbing his concentration again.

"Why would I do that?" he called back, annoyed
that he had to part company so frequently with the irascible Lew Archer.

"I know it was here," she said, coming out to the
screened porch. "Now we'll have to have peanut-butter sandwiches or egg
salad."

"Too much cholesterol in egg salad," he said,
returning to his book.

He had hardly given any attention to the incident, knowing
his wife's absent-mindedness, but she was a whiz at memorizing mah-jongg hands
and, by her own admission, had a photographic memory at the card table. He had
forgotten the incident until a few days later.

"I know I had frozen hamburger," she said. He
heard the clomp of frozen packages on the formica tabletop in the kitchen.
Again he spread-eagled a book on his lap.

"We had hamburgers a few days ago," he said.

"I know that. I'm really not losing my mind." She
was testy. Looking up, he could see her anger. "I had hamburger right
here." She slammed more frozen packages on the formica table.

"Don't look at me," he said. "I'm not the
culprit."

"Well, I had it," she squealed. "I know I
had it."

"It's gone the way of the tuna fish," he said,
wondering if the humor might set her off. It did.

"To you it's a big joke. I'm telling you I had the
hamburger." She put her hands on her ample hips and glared at him.
"And I had the tuna fish."

"It might have slipped out of the shopping bag when we
transferred it to the car," he said, seeking some logic in her dilemma.

She became thoughtful. "Maybe." She sighed.

"Or the woman at the check-out counter palmed
it."

"The hamburger?"

"And the tuna fish."

Instead of hamburger they had veal that night, but the next
time they went to the supermarket, they watched the clerk at the check-out
counter put each item into the bags, checking it off on the sales slip. Then
they carefully moved the metal cart to the trunk of the car, sure that not a
single package had been waylaid. When they got home, they checked everything
again and put it in the appropriate places in the cabinets and the
refrigerator.

"Who knows how much has been lost by our not paying
attention?" he said.

"Everybody's trying to get something for
nothing," Bernice agreed. "Years ago nothing like this would ever
have happened. Nor would it occur to us to take such strict precautions."

"Let the buyer beware," he said, sitting down on
his favorite chair on the screened porch and dipping into his latest mystery
with joyful expectation.

Bernice's games were played in varied sites. Sometimes at
the card tables in the cavernous clubrooms. Other times in her friends'
condominiums. But, mostly, the games were held at their place, since it gave
her the illusion of not leaving her husband alone. Actually, Seymour was as
isolated as ever, sitting in the easy chair in the bedroom, lost in the world
of the Poirots, or the Archers, the Spades, the Maigrets, Father Brown, and
Ellery Queen, among others.

Because she was being gregarious and generous, Bernice's
door was always open and her friends were forever poking into their living room
to pass the time. Despite the annoyance of the constant interruptions in his
other world, he was proud of his wife's popularity. She was a good woman, he
had concluded long ago. He had, indeed, been lucky in his choice of a wife.

One afternoon she came rushing in from the swimming pool.
He was sitting on the porch in his familiar pursuit.

"Sorry I'm late, Seymour," she called from the
kitchen.

He hadn't noticed.

"Some new person from Washington was chewing my ear
off."

"And you didn't want to be impolite?" he mumbled.

"So we're only going to have sandwiches for dinner.
Hope you don't mind?"

He grunted, hoping that she would settle down until he
finished the chapter he was reading.

"The bread?" she cried. "Where is the bread?
She came out to the screened porch. "Did we eat all the bread?"

He put the book down with irritation, looking up at her.
She was agitated.

"Are you sure we had some left?"

"Of course I'm sure."

"Well, it couldn't just walk away."

He got up and followed her to the kitchen, searching inside
the cabinets, the refrigerator, the oven.

"It wouldn't be in there."

"Sometimes you can absent-mindedly put it in a
ridiculous place."

"I'm not absent-minded."

When he had satisfied himself that the bread was nowhere to
be found, he leaned against the wall and stroked his chin.

"The tuna fish, the hamburger, the bread," he
said quietly, watching his wife's face.

"What are you saying?"

"We're either going crazy or being systematically
robbed."

"Robbed?"

"It's either that or we're going nuts."

"I can't believe it."

"Then how would you explain it."

She appeared thoughtful, then shrugged her shoulders.
"Maybe I am becoming absent-minded," she concluded, not daring to
contemplate the implications. "You're reading too many mystery
stories."

"Well, you've got to admit that it is a mystery."

"I'll open a can of salmon. We'll have a salmon
salad."

He felt a strange exhilaration. Reality suddenly had more
fascination than his mystery books. He felt the thrust of his mind reshaping
itself into the cast of one of his mystery heroes, as if he were picking up the
rhythm of their thought processes.

"We are being cleverly burglarized," he said.

"That's ridiculous."

"Well then, offer another explanation."

She paused, interrupting the chore of opening the salmon
can. "Who would want to steal food?" She sighed, resuming the opening
of the can.

"Perhaps it's not only food," he said. Putting
the can down, she rushed into the bedroom and opened her jewelry box. The
necklace was her single valuable possession. He had bought it for her for their
twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. Seymour had followed her, reaching upward to
the top closet shelf, where he kept cash in a cigar box. It held three hundred
dollars. He counted the bills with precision.

"All there."

"Do you think we should put a double lock on the door?
We have been careless." She became thoughtful. "I thought we left all
that behind us up north." They would never dare leave their apartment in Englewood without first locking the doors and checking the locks. There, robberies were to
be expected, a way of life. But here, in Sunset Village?

"Should we call the police?" she asked.

"The police. Do you think they'd come out here on the
basis of what we've lost? One can of tuna fish. One pound of hamburger. One
loaf of bread."