A Game for the Living by Patricia Highsmith Page A

loyalty—I would doubt it for a wife. I used to fall in love every month when I was younger, depending on what I was working on. A new picture, a new style, and there was another girl to go with it. Something like that might have happened if I’d married Lelia. As it was, I—I went on being in love with her for three years. It was pleasant for both of us, I think.” He frowned and tossed his whisky down in one gulp. “I don’t want to talk about that now. I’m tired, Ramón, and so are you.”
    Ramón stood up suddenly. “Then I won’t keep you up. We are all tired. So we’ll tuck ourselves in our little beds.” Ramón looked at him from his full height, and there was still the contempt in his face which both annoyed Theodore and hurt him.
    â€œRamón, let’s say you loved her more, loved her a longer time—that you would have made her a good husband—but I loved her, too, Ramón.” He put his hand on Ramón’s shoulder, expecting Ramón to jerk away, but when Ramón was motionless, Theodore’s fingers tightened. “My friend, I’m sorry it couldn’t be.”
    â€œWhat?” Ramón asked impatiently.
    Theodore took his hand away. “Shall I come out with you? Do you want to get a libre ?”
    â€œThank you, I’ll walk a way.”
    Theodore went out and opened the gate for him. He started to say that Inocenza sent her regards, then decided not to. “Try to rest, Ramón.”
    â€œOh yes,” Ramón said mockingly, and then he disappeared into the darkness.

CHAPTER EIGHT
    A week passed. Sauzas telephoned Theodore one afternoon and asked him to come to the prison to look at six ‘suspects’ he had gathered. Theodore had not seen any of the men before, to his knowledge, though one, a wretched, scrofulous fellow of thirty-five, had been guilty of another brutal rape and murder.
    Theodore tried to paint, but did so badly he stopped. As was usual with him, he was having a delayed reaction, and he felt more depressed in the third week after the murder than he had in the first. He slept badly, and got up often in the night to write something in his diary and to read what he had written in the past. He looked also for names of people that Lelia might have dropped in talking to him, and found not a single one, because he did not usually enter that kind of detail in his diary.
    He phoned the Hidalgos one evening with an idea of going to see them. Carlos answered and said he had to work all evening.
    â€œWhat about tomorrow?” Theodore asked. “Could you both come for dinner?”
    â€œAll this week is bad, Teo,” Carlos said. “I’ll give you a ring next—”
    â€œOne thing I wanted to ask, Carlos. Nothing else has occurred to you? About Lelia? Some name she mentioned, some fear—anything?”
    â€œTeo, I’m as much in the dark as you.”
    â€œYou were at least here in January, and I wasn’t.”
    â€œBut I didn’t see her.”
    â€œNot even when she did the Lysistrata sets for you?”
    â€œOne set. It was nothing at all. She came out to the Universidad one afternoon—” Carlos broke off.
    â€œAll right,” Theodore said, with a sigh.
    They agreed to get in touch the following week.
    To add to Theodore’s nervousness, two or three times when he answered the telephone he got no response from the other end of the line. Theodore mentioned this to Sauzas, who showed a mild but persistent interest in it. Had Theodore heard any noises in the background? Who had put the telephone down first? Theodore had, though the second time it happened he thought he had waited about three minutes. Why hadn’t he waited longer? Well, there hadn’t seemed to be any purpose in waiting longer! The telephone calls might not have anything to do with the murder, after all. Could it be Ramón? Ramón was acting very strangely,