Free Highsmith, Patricia by Strangers on a Train Page A

after all? What would take it out? But something always had taken the fun out of everything he had ever counted on. This time he wouldn’t let it. He made himself smile. Maybe it was the hangover that had made him doubt. He went into a bar and bought a fifth from a barman he knew, filled his flask, and asked for an empty pint bottle to put the rest in. The barman looked, but he didn’t have one.
    At Lamy Bruno went on to the station, carrying nothing but the half empty bottle in a paper bag, not even a weapon. He hadn’t planned yet, he kept reminding himself, but a lot of planning didn’t always mean a murder was a success. Witness the— “Hey, Charley! Where you going?”
    It was Wilson, with a gang of people. Bruno forced himself to walk toward them, wagging his head boredly. They must have just got off a train, he thought. They looked tired and seedy.
    “Where you been for two days?” Bruno asked Wilson.
    “Las Vegas. Didn’t know I was there until I was there, or I’d have asked you, Meet Joe Hanover. I told you about Joe.”
    “H’lo, Joe.”
    “What’re you so mopey about?“Wilson asked with a friendly shove.
    “Oh, Charley’s hung over!” shrieked one of the girls, her voice like a bicycle bell right in his ear.
    “Charley Hangover, meet Joe Hanover!” Joe Hanover said, convulsed.
    “Haw haw.” Bruno tugged his arm away gently from a girl with a lei around her neck. “Hell, I gotta catch this train.” His train was waiting.
    “Where you going?” Wilson asked, frowning so his black eyebrows met.
    “I hadda see someone in Tulsa,” Bruno mumbled, aware he mixed his tenses, thinking he must get away now. Frustration made him want to weep, lash out at Wilson’s dirty red shirt with his fists.
    Wilson made a movement as if he would wipe Bruno away like a chalk streak on a blackboard. “Tulsa!”
    Slowly, with a try at a grin, Bruno made a similar gesture and turned away. He walked on, expecting them to come after him, but they didn’t. At the train, he looked back and saw the group moving like a rolling thing out of the sunlight into the darkness below the station roof. He frowned at them, feeling something conspiratorial in their closeness. Did they suspect something? Were they whispering about him? He boarded the train casually, and it began to move before he found his seat.
    When he awakened from his nap, the world seemed quite changed. The train was speeding silkily through cool bluish mountainland. Dark green valleys were full of shadows. The sky was gray. The airconditioned car and the cool look of things outside was as refreshing as an icepack. And he was hungry. In the diner he had a delicious lunch of lamb chops, French fries and salad, and fresh peach pie washed down with two Scotch and sodas, and strolled back to his seat feeling like a million dollars.
    A sense of purpose, strange and sweet to him, carried him along in an irresistible current. Merely in gazing out the window, he felt a new coordination of mind and eye. He began to realize what he intended to do. He was on his way to do a murder which not only would fulfill a desire of years, but would benefit a friend. It made Bruno very happy to do things for his friends. And his vie67 tim deserved her fate. Think of all the other good guys he would save from ever knowing her! The realization of his importance dazzled his mind, and for a long moment he felt completely and happily drunk. His energies that had been dissipated, spread like a flooded river over land as flat and boring as the Llano Estacado he was crossing now, seemed gathered in a vortex whose point strove toward Metcalf like the aggressive thrust of the train. He sat on the edge of his seat and wished Guy were opposite him again. But Guy would try to stop him, he knew; Guy wouldn’t understand how much he wanted to do it or how easy it was. But for Christ’s sake, he ought to understand how useful! Bruno ground his smooth, hard rubber-like fist into his palm,