Best Friends by Thomas Berger Page A

tend to that bruise. It’s getting darker.”
    â€œGoodbye, Roy.” She abruptly turned away and, at a measured pace, walked to her Navigator, its big black bulk standing by itself in a corner of the lot, well away from the other parked cars.
    Roy kept watch lest any further harm was offered to her, until she had driven away in the direction her ex-husband had taken, but at a much more deliberate speed. Roy had lied to Sam about once having loved her, because lying to one’s best friend was the next best thing to lying to oneself. How could it ever have been love? It was nothing but lust. Lust could be defended as having merits of its own, but he or she who mistook it for love was pitiful. Francine, to give her her due, had never made that mistake.

4
    R oy lived in a duplex apartment fashioned from the north wing of a mansion built by a rich eccentric of the early twentieth century. The imposing pillared façade and the great semicircular sweep of the front driveway made a superb backdrop for photographs of Rolls-Royces and Bentleys. It would have been perfect for a Model J Duesenberg, but he considered such great classics as out of his reach now that they fetched millions at auction.
    After the daily workout in his home gym, he breakfasted on the usual high-protein, multivitamin cocktail of which the base liquid was skim milk. He had awoken with a clear head and a positive prospect. The incident in the parking lot of The Hedges had not been pleasant, but maybe it would prove therapeutic for all concerned, including the unfortunate Martin Holbrook.
    As to Francine, Roy assumed his previous problem in getting free of her had now been solved in the cleanest way; that is, by her being able to believe she dumped him. At least so he interpreted her final, curt goodbye, a style of leave-taking she had never used before. For Francine, one moment was but the prelude to the next. Whenever they parted company she responded to his farewell with a fluid turn on the ball of the foot and quick, almost dancing steps away, all in utter silence. Then, soon as he reached home, if that was where he went—and if he had not, he had better explain why—she would check on him by telephone. She would not admit this was policing. “I’m always worried, driving the way you do, and more about you getting arrested than having an accident.”
    She had never loved him, but neither did she want him to have any alternative existence. Being himself largely immune to jealousy of a sexual kind, which could never be anything but negative and grow more destructive in the degree to which more energy was applied, he had little patience with hers.
    He had just stepped out the front door when a police car entered the driveway, probably in response to a call from the aged widow who lived, with a female companion almost as old as she, in the remainder of the cavernous house. Her late husband, C. Edgar Swanson, had been a good customer of Roy’s, and when Swanson died he bought back, at favorable prices, some of the vintage cars he had once sold to the man. Not to mention that the rent Roy paid for the high-ceilinged apartment, from which the river was visible through the upstairs windows in all seasons, was set by old Doris at scarcely above the level she remembered from her bachelor-girl days many decades earlier when she had worked as secretary to Swanson, who had made a fortune manufacturing plumbing fixtures.
    Doris frequently called the cops to come check the premises after a night in which she and Myra believed they had heard unusual noises in the wee hours but did not want to bother the officers with it then; and because she was rich, and generous to the charities they endorsed, they always showed up and performed a cursory inspection that found no cause for alarm.
    As a courtesy to the policemen, Roy waited now until the two of them left their car. Usually only one came on these calls. Doris was getting royal treatment