Free The Scarlet Ruse by John D. MacDonald Page B

that funny?"
    "No. I hurt your feelings or something?"
    "No."
    "It… it was relief, kind of. When you said look at your car I thought, Oh God, another of those. You know. You'd have some kind of nasty little thing about two feet high and ten feet wide and twenty feet long, with fifty dials and a speedometer that goes up to two hundred. And I'd have to admire the ugly damn childish thing or even ride in it if you insisted. Then you'd show me your key that fits every Playboy Club in America and overseas, and then you'd try to do the old magic trick."
    "What old magic trick."
    "You know. All of a sudden you turn into a motel."
    "And you laughed because none of that is going to happen?"
    "And because that Miss Agnes is a very dear automobile," she said, pushing open the door to the shop.

Chapter Seven
    On Friday morning I cleaned up after my breakfast, took a couple of overdue loads to the laundromat and sat and peaceably watched some women get their loads whiter than mine. I was not torn with jealousy. I wished them well. On the way back a fat man on a rackety little trail bike nearly ran me down, then yelled out his estimate of my ancestry and lineage. I smiled and nodded and wished him well. I remembered vaguely that the city fathers had put the roust on me. Move off your boat or leave town. I wished them well too. Nourish yourself well at that public trough, boys. Gobble any goodies which happen to float by.
    Meyer was sitting on the dock, legs swinging, waiting for me. He came aboard. He stood behind me as I stowed the laundry.
    "How did you make out?" he asked.
    "Beautiful"
    "What?"
    "This is the best time of year. Right?"
    "I stayed and talked to Hirsh for a while. By the time I got around to calling the shop, you were gone."
    "We left early. Mary Alice and me."
    Turn around, Travis."
    "What?"
    "Turn around a minute and look at me."
    "Sure."
    He stared and nodded. "I see."
    "What do you see?"
    "That you're going to try to help Hirsh Fedderman."
    "What? Oh, sure. That's right. As right as…"
    "Rain?"
    "Whatever you say, old buddy."
    When my chores were done, we had a talk. I pulled my wandering attention in from somewhere out beyond left field and tried to settle down to the task at hand. I remembered what Mary Alice had said about how long the switch would take and how incredible it seemed to her, how she wondered if any switch had really taken place at all. I tried her approach on Meyer.
    "I have to believe Hirsh," Meyer said. "If he saw it, he saw it. His mind is very quick and keen."
    "She really knows all that stuff."
    "What?"
    "All that stamp stuff."
    "I would think it would be more remarkable if, after five years, she didn't know all about it."
    "What?"
    "Never mind. Good God!"
    "I wanted to give her a ride in Miss Agnes. It was a slow afternoon. Jane told us to take off. I followed Mary Alice to her place, in her old yellow Toyota. We had a drink in Homestead and dinner in Naples."
    "Naples?!"
    "I know. We were just drifting along, talking about this and that, and Naples seemed like the closest place. So we came back across Alligator Alley and came here, and I showed her the Flush. It knocked her out, like Agnes did. I like the way she laughs."
    "You like the way she laughs."
    "That's what I said. So then I drove her home and by then it was too late to even stop in for a nightcap."
    "How late is too late?"
    "Quarter past five."
    "No wonder your face looks blurred."
    "Meyer, the whole twelve hours seemed like twenty or thirty minutes. We just hit the edges of all the things there are to talk about."
    "Are you going to be able to think about Hirsh Fedderman's problem?"
    "Whose what?"
    He went away, shaking his head, making big arm gestures at the empty space ahead of him. If he had come back, I would have told him that I had almost decided that there was no problem at all, that Fedderman had been mistaken. If there is no way at all for something to have happened, the best initial assumption is that it didn't