Two Much! by Donald E. Westlake

said, and before she could respond I quickly added, “Does Ralph know about this? Does he go along with this? He is, after all—”
    â€œYou leave Ralph out of this! I don’t even want you to mention his name !”
    â€œHe’ll just wonder why I’m not here.”
    â€œYou don’t think I’ll tell him? You don’t think so?”
    I thought she was capable of any idiocy, given her present mood, so rather than reply I stepped outside, picked up the mop leaning against the wall near the door, and went fishing for my suitcase.
    Meanwhile, Candy had turned on Liz. It’s amazing how many coarse names she knew for female private parts. And while the pebbles Liz dropped into Candy’s stream of invective were rather quieter, I wouldn’t exactly say they were gentler.
    I grasped my suitcase, hauled it up onto the deck, and went cautiously back inside. Candy was heaving so much in her little two-piece yellow bathing suit she looked like a belly dancer trainee, and Liz was also a bit red around the face. Neither, however, was speaking at this precise moment. “My attaché case,” I whispered to them both, as though there were a sleeper nearby that I didn’t want to wake, and I tiptoed to the ladder. Up I went, packed the last few items—including Bart’s glasses—and carried the attaché case down.
    Candy, though still panting, had developed now the beginnings of a puzzled frown on her foxy face. She said to me, “Who?”
    Whoops. “All I can say, Candy,” I said, “is that I did my best to ease your loneliness, and to be a true friend to you when you needed me.”
    â€œWhy, you filthy son of a bitch,” she said, “I’m going to cut your balls off!” And she went around the end of the counter into the kitchen.
    â€œCome, Liz,” I said, with dignity. “I know when I’m not wanted.”
    I crossed the room, opened the screen door, and a bottle of Firehouse Jubilee bloody Mary mix sailed past my head and into the poison ivy. Liz and I exited, and I closed the screen door behind me and spoke through it. “I’ll tell Bart your decision,” I said, “and I know he’ll be just as hurt as I am that all our acts of kindness, our attempts to bring solace into the drab life of a trapped housewife, have been misunderstood and unap—”
    An egg strained itself through the screen; some of it reached my chest.
    â€œMp,” I said. I picked up my suitcase, and Liz and I departed.
    We’d gone a block when the shouts started behind us: “Who? Who ?” Fortunately, Liz was laughing too hard to hear it.

    W ALKING WITH L IZ TO Hommel’s, toting my suitcase, I had leisure to think things over. What next, I wondered. I’d done my con and made it work, I’d screwed both sisters, I’d precipitated the break with Candy that I suppose I must have been angling for, so now everything was obviously finished. To repeat the twin gag would be insanity; I couldn’t possibly get away with it twice. And while Liz was fun in her way she was hardly restful; I might as well have stayed with Candy.
    So what I should do right now was take the next ferry/cab/train back to the city, move into my office (ah, the sleeping bag stored in the closet), and start hustling around for someone else to put me up for the rest of August. Also for another female, though that was at the moment secondary.
    But I just couldn’t seem to let go. I’d made the Art-Bart phone call to Betty the minute I’d gotten off the ferry, I’d risked severe physical impairment to drop Bart’s name into my farewell scene with Candy, and now I was walking to Hommel’s with Liz, my mind searching for a way to get invited to spend the rest of the summer at the Kerner house. Why?
    Well, partly for the Laurentian Lumber Mills, I suppose. And maybe a tenny little bit for that television station in