Free A Stranger Like You by Elizabeth Brundage

“there’s a screening tomorrow night if you’re still around.”
    “Thanks. I’ll try to make it.” Hugh put the postcard into his pocket.
    They sat there a moment, drinking. There was the possibility that she’d show up, he thought, although it seemed unlikely. The car was gone; someone had taken it.
    “Where do you suppose she is?” Hugh asked.
    “I don’t really know. It’s not unusual, really, she’s done this before.”
    “Done what?”
    “Disappears for a few days. Usually means she’s pissed off. Mature, huh? Probably gone off to Sparta for a few days to brush up on her ashtanga. It’s out in the desert, no cell phones—I tried calling her office, but everybody was already gone for the weekend and Harold’s on his way to Cannes.”
    “Harold?”
    “Her boss. Where are you staying?”
    “In Beverly Hills,” Hugh managed to lie. “At the Hilton. I live in New York,” he emphasized. “I’m a writer.”
    “Ah,” Tom said. “Good for you.” Apparently satisfied with Hugh’s biography, he stretched out his legs on the coffee table and relaxed. He had the expansive body language of a king or a rock star. At the moment, Hugh was playing the loyal servant.
    “What do you write?”
    “Screenplays,” he said. “I’m afraid I’m not very good at it.”
    Tom laughed. “Well, then, you’ve come to the right place.” He raised his glass. “May you be paid handsomely for your humble efforts,” he said in a King Arthur voice.
    “I guess it’s not all crap,” Hugh said, thinking of Ida. “Some of it’s pretty good.”
    “You’re starting to sound like Hedda. She’s unbearably optimistic.” Tom finished his drink and got up and brought the bottle over and poured more whiskey into their glasses then set the bottle down on the coffee table.
    They drank intently. Tom was sitting on a wood chair that had been covered in cowhide. It didn’t look very comfortable, too small for his long, lanky build. His loose trousers and wrinkled blazer made him look as though he had suffered a lengthy illness. The dark circles around his eyes were those of a chronic insomniac’s. He lit a cigarette and tossed down the pack, then leaned back and again stretched out his legs on the coffee table.
    “This is a nice place,” Hugh said.
    “This? It’s a dump. It’s only temporary, of course.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Until the house is ready.” Tom looked at Hugh. “She told you about the villa?”
    “Oh, yes, right,” Hugh said. “The villa.”
    “Although I sometimes get the feeling that she has second thoughts. Buyer’s remorse.”
    “I had that with my house.”
    “I thought you were in the city?”
    “My wife wanted a house in New Jersey. It was a mistake to move out of the city,” he said, suddenly clear on what had happened to his marriage over the several months inside that house. “It destroyed our marriage.”
    “Wives have a knack for sabotage. It’s Freudian, actually.” Tom dragged on his cigarette with obvious pleasure. “They can’t help themselves.”
    The house in Montclair was blue clapboard with plastic shutters upon which a horse and carriage had been replicated. When they’d gone to look at it for the first time, there were plastic pansies in the window box. The fake flowers had dared Marion, the purist, to save the pathetic Colonial from terminal kitsch. After they’d moved in, she’d replaced the plastic pansies with real geraniums and pulled out the colossal shrubs and lilac bushes surrounding the house. Hugh had tried to be happy about moving out of New York, but it wasn’t easy for him. Unlike the suburbs, the city presented small opportunities for escape. He could get out for a walk, or run a suddenly essential errand, grateful for a few minutes to himself. He found Marion’s silence oppressive. “And we had squirrels in our attic.”
    “Suburbia plus,” Tom said knowingly. “All the comforts of home.”
    It occurred to Hugh that, at the moment,