The Deceivers by John D. MacDonald Read Free Book Online

and she drank too much because living sober with that petty little self-important tyrant was too much to take. And we both know that the wrist cutting was so superficial he could have been found twenty-four hours later without any special damage done.”
    “No, Cindy. We’re just too close to Crescent Ridge. And weboth despise certain aspects of it for too many of the same reasons. If we could be objective, we could see legitimate tragedy, maybe not in the case of the Crosbys, but certainly in some other episode.”
    “Dear Carl, I didn’t mean to imply that your example would make you something weak and sniveling. It won’t happen, of course, but were it to happen, you would take it in a gutsy way. But the guy who wrote this book wasn’t dealing in that area. He is in an area where I seem to be currently functioning.”
    “What do you mean by that?”
    “Forget it. I shouldn’t have said it. Refill?”
    “If you’re having one.”
    “I certainly am. A true slob goes all the way. I am going to put on pounds of suet.” She brought the beers back to the booth and slid in and sat with her cheekbone propped against her fist in a way that tilted her left eye up. “But I am not going to stick with books of this ilk. I wonder what language ilk comes from? No, I am moving from this into the hard stuff. Stuff I’ve neglected too long. I want to flex some of the sagging muscles between my ears. You should too, Carl. It will give us some fertile new areas for argumentation.”
    “I know I should. I used to read a lot. I’d program my reading to pick up the stuff other kids learned in liberal arts colleges while I was taking banking and insurance and accounting in the Wharton School at Pennsylvania. Big programs. Anthropology one winter. Then geology. Then archeology. I started to goof when we moved out here. There didn’t seem to be any time. Too much do-it-yourself. And then the Crescent Ridge Association and so on. Now my reading is pretty superficial stuff. Escape, I guess. No work involved. Who killed whom, and who rose to the rescue of the beleaguered wagon train. I should start again, I guess.”
    “Sometimes it gets to be too easy not to do any of the hard stuff. My God, I’m not after information, stowing away definitive little facts like a squirrel in September. I just want to use some of these muscles up here that God gave me before they wither away entirely. I want to read some of the boys who make me have to strain to stay up with them.”
    “I know what you mean.”
    She looked down and drew a fingertip through the wet ring her glass had left. “About what I said before.”
    “I didn’t understand what you meant.”
    “I know you didn’t. I shouldn’t talk about it. I don’t wantadvice or guidance or anything. I don’t want you to think I’m putting you in the position of being a marriage clinic. But, dammit, there isn’t anybody else to talk to. And you can always get things in more perspective in your mind if you talk to somebody. You and I … we sort of think alike. I guess I have a masculine turn of mind. That’s what they told me in school. It made me nervous at the time, I remember.” She kept looking down at the table.
    “Troubles?” he said.
    “Now try to tell me you didn’t know,” she said, defiantly.
    “Just a little suspicion here and there. A sort of strain between the two of you. But, believe me, nothing very apparent. At least nothing so apparent that Joan has noticed anything. If she had, she would have spoken to me about it.”
    “I’m glad we’ve hidden it that well. It’s the main reason I had to get the kids out of here this summer. To do some heavy thinking, Carl. To make up my mind once and for all whether to accept the situation and make the best of it, or get out while the kids are young enough so it won’t mark them too badly.”
    “I’m very sorry, Cindy.”
    “I know you mean that sincerely, and I thank you. It’s no grand tragedy. I guess it