Free The Cry of the Owl by Patricia Highsmith

rocks, knocked half unconscious, trying to cling to the rocks and finding them too slippery or himself too weak to hold to them. And the siren moaning on and on while the rescue boats’ lights swept over the surface of the Delaware, not finding what they looked for. The fellows at the office had told him that if anyone were caught in the rapids—and there were dozens of them up and down the river—it was hopeless. The best the river patrol could do was find the body. One man at the office had told of finding a corpse lying at the edge of the water in his back yard, the body of an old man who had fallen in twenty miles or so above where he washed up. Or the bodies could wash all the way down to Trenton. Robert set his teeth. Why think about that, since he had no intention of going swimming or boating or fishing even when the summer rolled around?
    Robert walked to his bureau and looked at the sketch he had made of an elm tree out his window, a neat, precise sketch, too precise to begood as a sketch, he supposed, but he was an engineer and precision was his curse. The opposite page of his sketchbook was blank, and later would be filled with a drawing of an elm leaf, when he could see one in the spring.
    There was a knock. Robert set his drink down and went to the door.
    “Hello,” she said.
    “Come in.” He stood aside for her. “Take your coat?”
    She gave him her coat and he put it in the closet. This time she had no snow boots. She wore her high-heeled pumps. “This is a nice apartment,” she said.
    He nodded, wordless.
    She had sat down in the center of his sofa.
    He lit a cigarette and took the armchair, then got up to get his drink from the bureau. “Can I give you a drink? Or some coffee? I have
espresso
or you can have regular.”
    “No, thanks, I don’t want anything. I wanted to say, Robert, that when I talked with Greg just now I didn’t say you were the cause of it. But that’s part of it.”
    He stared at the floor.
    “You made me see something I never saw before. Like a catalyst. But it’s not really the right word, because a catalyst doesn’t count as anything but a changer, does it? And you count for something. It’s you that I like. Whatever it means—that’s it.”
    “You don’t know anything about me,” he said. “You don’t know, for instance, that I’m married. I told you a lie. I’ve been married for three years.”
    “Oh. Then it was because of a girl you left New York. Because of your wife.”
    “Yes.” She looked less surprised than he had expected. “We had a disagreement. You don’t know, for instance, that I had a breakdown when I was nineteen. I had to be under treatment for a while. I’m not the stablest character. I nearly cracked up in New York in September. That’s why I came down here.”
    “What’s all this got to do with whether I like you or not?”
    Robert didn’t want to make the bald statement that girls who liked men were usually interested in whether they were married or not. “It makes it difficult, you see, if I’m not divorced.”
    “And you’re not going to be?”
    “No. We just want to spend a little time apart, that’s all.”
    “Well—please don’t think I’m going to interfere. I couldn’t, anyway, if you love somebody. I’m only telling you the way I feel. I love you.”
    His eyes flickered toward hers and away. “I think the sooner you get over that feeling, the better.”
    “I’m not going to get over it. I know. I always knew I’d know when it came along. It’s just my hard luck you’re married, but that doesn’t change anything.”
    Robert smiled. “But you’re so young. How old are you, anyway?”
    “Twenty-three. That’s not so young.”
    Robert would have guessed even younger. She seemed younger every time he saw her. “I don’t know about Greg. Maybe he’s not the right fellow for you. But it’s not me. I’m a very difficult guy to get along with. Lots of quirks. A little off the beam here and