Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 124, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 757 & 758, September/October 2004

“When the Footsie lost two hundred points last Thursday morning,” said Harry, “everyone had to go to the john. And there are only so many stalls in the men’s room.”

Harry worked on one of the biggest trading floors in the City. You wouldn’t think it to look at him, but I’d been told by those who know that he was one of the hottest tickets around. The face of a choirboy and the instincts of a wolverine. Even lately, with the markets in free fall, he’d been holding his own. I knew that because he hadn’t cancelled the top-of-the-range BMW he had ordered from me two months before.

Doug stopped looking across the road and came back to the large rustic table where we were and sat down.

“I hate it when women talk dirty,” he said. I looked at him. He was an odd one, Doug. He was the same age as me — in fact, the same age as all of us, give or take a year or two — around forty-five, but he gave the impression of being older. He was stocky, broad-built, with a blocky face and steel-grey hair, sort of crispy. He looked like what he was — a man who had done heavy work in his life before he found a way to build a house and sell it himself instead of building other people’s houses for them. And now he had that sixty-four-house development going up over near Basingstoke. I had an idea that when that development was finished we wouldn’t see Doug for dust. He’d be off to buy one of those million-pound faux-manoir estates that we, or at least our wives, all drooled over. And I wouldn’t even get a new car order out of him. He’d be off to the Rolls-Royce dealership in Guildford. Well, that didn’t work out. But then, so many things don’t.

Bill said, “Doug, look around you. Here we are, it’s a beautiful, sunny, dreamy late afternoon in Greenacres. We’ve had a wonderful meal. The Great Unwashed are not yet at the gates wanting to burn our houses down. Our beautiful wives are across the road, so we don’t even have to worry about entertaining them. Life is good. Enjoy. Relax.”

So Doug sat down with the rest of us. And there we sat. In silence. Four men, approaching middle age, who didn’t, if we’re honest, have a thing to say to each other once we’d exhausted the usual male banter. If it hadn’t been for the wives, I doubt we’d ever have formed even the most distant of acquaintances. But as so often in places like Greenacres, it’s the wives that form the bonds, and we go along. I helped myself to another scotch, I remember.

I’d like another scotch now, as a matter of fact, but I just haven’t the energy to get up. The house is very quiet now, just the occasional purr of an appliance, the central heating, the refrigerator kicking in now and then, and the sound of the odd car passing down the avenue. There’s not a lot of traffic on the avenue and what there is expensive and quiet. There’s especially little on a Sunday. Like that Sunday when

Harry

that’s right... when Harry said, “Perhaps it’s a Tupperware party.” Harry’s dead now — him, too — three months after Doug. Tripped over that enormous cat that Tricia doted on. She came back from her night out with the other wives, did Tricia, and found him at the bottom of that enormous staircase, with his neck broken. The cat was dead, too.

But on this afternoon I’m thinking about, Harry was still alive and so was the cat.

“A what?” asked Doug, disbelievingly, “A what did you say?”

“A Tupperware party,” said Harry defensively. “They happen.”

“Tupperware,” said Doug, still incredulous. “Okay, hands up all those whose wives spend enough time in the kitchen to have any leftovers to put in the bloody Tupperware.”

Our hands remained clasped around our glasses.

Doug said, “Right. On to the next stupid comment.”

Harry looked a little down. I felt sorry for him. I tried to lighten things up a little.

“Okay,” I said, “maybe it’s one of those Ann Summers things.”

“What’s an Ann Summers thing?” asked Bill.

“You know,” I said, “where they model sexy underwear — panties with split crotches, stuff like that. And appliances,” I said.

Bill looked incredulous. I suppose that if you live with your head in a cloud of bytes and bits all day you don’t have much time for the outside world and its grubbier antics.

Harry merely nodded. He knew.

Doug, if it were possible, looked even more sour. He took a large bite from his brandy.

“Ann Summers,” he said, in the same way he’d said “Tupperware.” “Okay, hands up all those who spend enough time in the bedroom for their wives to need stuff like that.”

This was dodgy territory and we all knew it.

He looked round at us.

“Okay. This is how it goes, all right? You get up at six, you drive thirty miles to work and spend fourteen hours sorting out all the shit that has accumulated since the last time you were there. You maybe have time for a drink on the way home, you get home at nine, you eat, and you fall asleep. And that’s the way it is, seven days out of seven. Go ahead, tell me I’m wrong.”

He wasn’t wrong, and we all knew it. That’s the way it was.