The Easy Way Out by Stephen McCauley Read Free Book Online Page B

wasn’t sure about the fit, but twenty-five dollars for an all-cotton sweater, how can you go wrong?”
    Fields smiled condescendingly. He had a long, craggy face and one of those unkempt, stained beards so popular among fifty-year-old Harvard professors with marital problems. “Very nice,” he said softly. “But I asked about the reservations.”
    Better, but not good enough. “That’s what I thought,” I said, “but in fact, it doesn’t show the dirt at all. And it’s one-hundred-percent washable.” I shrugged and folded my hands on my desk. “What brings you in this morning?”
    â€œDid you get the hotel reservations?” he asked in a normal tone of voice.
    â€œYes,” I said. “They haven’t sent in the confirmation slip yet, but I’m expecting it any day.”
    â€œI’m beginning to get worried, Patrick. You’re sure it’s all confirmed?”
    â€œQuite sure,” I said. “I can’t imagine why they haven’t sent the slip.”
    He looked at me suspiciously, but I knew he wouldn’t call my bluff. We had an understanding.
    Fields had come in in January to book a trip to Bermuda for Memorial Day weekend. He told me he was taking his niece, Zayna Carmine, out of obligation to his sister, whose husband had just divorced her. I thought nothing of it at first, and then he told me, in his moronic whisper, that I wasn’t to cross-reference the plane reservations in any way, that Zayna’s ticket was to be paid in cash, and that I was to assign seats for them on different parts of the plane, “in case of a crash.” I wasn’t to call him at home or office, and I wasn’t to send any information on the trip through the mail. Whenever he did call me, it was from a phone booth, with traffic noise in the background. I imagined him standing in a rest stop on the Mass Pike in a long coat and sunglasses. To confirm my suspicions, I called Harvard student information and asked if they had a listing for Zayna Carmine. I was promptly given a telephone number, which I didn’t write down.
    I honestly wouldn’t have cared if he was traveling with a donkey he planned to sodomize on the lawn of the Houses of Parliament. But I resented his effort to hide the obvious, as if I couldn’t read the signs, would care, or was likely to be indiscreet. Half the leisure-travel industry has something to do with illicit sex—what made him think he was so special? I’d managed to get him seats on the plane, but the hotel was another story. He wanted to stay at an exclusive resort—basically a pink stucco drinking club for wealthy anti-Semites—and each time I called the place, I thought about Fields boozily chasing Zayna around a king-sized bed, lost heart, and hung up. If the trip came together at this point, it would be a miracle.
    â€œNow, I really could try to get a child’s fare for Zayna,” I said, “if you think your niece could pass for under twelve.”
    â€œDoubtful.” He laughed. “She’s very mature for her age.”
    Equally doubtful, I’d have guessed. Mature college students are the ones who know their place. Zayna’s place was not with a married zoology professor in any case, and certainly not under a moon-gate arch in Bermuda.
    I looked at the call-back slips Fredrick had handed me. There were three from a divorced man who was trying to give meaning to his life by planning a trip to swim with dolphins, two from Tony’s fiancée (I was booking their honeymoon at a health spa in California), and one from my friend Jeffrey in New York. I crumpled up the first five and tossed them into the wastebasket. Jeffrey’s I impaled on my message stick.
    â€œIs there something else I can help you with?” I asked, hoping to make him think I’d helped him with anything at all so I could get rid of him and call Jeffrey.
    â€œYes, as a