The Boy Who Followed Ripley by Patricia Highsmith

room. Once Tom heard an “Oof!” from Frank. Was he going through agony? There were such long silences from the typewriter, that Tom wondered if the boy were writing some of it in longhand.
    Seizing his little batch of receipts—telephone, electricity, water bill, car repair—Tom sat down for a final onslaught, determined to finish. He did, and finally the worksheet and the receipts, but not the canceled checks, because the French bank kept those, went into a manila envelope to be kept in a bigger envelope with the other monthly reports for Pierre Solway. Tom stuck the big envelope into a lower left drawer of his desk, and stood up with a sense of joy and virtue.
    He stretched. And just at that moment one of Heloise’s rock ’n’ roll records started playing below stairs. Just what he needed! This was a Lou Reed. Tom went into the bathroom and washed his face in cold water. What time was it? Six fifty-five already! Tom decided to tell Heloise about Eric now.
    Frank just then came out of his room. “I heard the music,” he said to Tom in the hall. “Radio? No, it’s the record, isn’t it?”
    “Heloise’s,” Tom said. “Come down.”
    The boy had changed from sweater to a shirt now, and the tails hung out of his trousers. He glided down the stairs with a happy smile, like one in a trance, Tom thought. The music had really struck a chord.
    Heloise had it up loud, and was dancing by herself, with shoulder-shrugging movements, but she stopped shyly as Tom and the boy came down the steps, and she turned the music lower.
    “Don’t turn it down for me! It’s nice,” said Frank.
    Tom could see that they were going to get on well in the music and dance department. “Finished the bloody accounts!” Tom announced loudly. “All dressed? You look nice!” Heloise wore a pale blue dress with a black patent leather belt, and high-heeled shoes.
    “I telephoned Agnès. She said come early so we could talk,” Heloise said.
    Frank looked at Heloise with a new admiration. “You like this record?”
    “Oh, yes!”
    “I play it at home.”
    “Go ahead and dance,” Tom said cheerfully, but he saw that Frank, at least, was a bit constrained at the moment. What a life for the boy, Tom thought, writing about murder minutes ago, and now plunged into rock. “Progress this afternoon?” Tom asked softly.
    “Seven and a half pages. Some in my writing. I was switching.”
    Heloise, standing near the gramophone, had not heard the boy’s words.
    “Heloise,” Tom said, “I’m picking up a friend of Reeves’s tomorrow night. The friend stays the night only. Billy can take my room, so I’ll be with you.”
    Heloise turned her pretty, made-up face toward Tom. “Who is coming?”
    “Reeves said his name was Eric. I’ll pick him up at Moret. We have no date for tomorrow evening, have we?”
    She shook her head. “I think I will go now.” She went to the telephone table, where she had left her handbag, and got a transparent raincoat from the front closet, as the weather looked uncertain.
    Tom walked out with her to the Mercedes-Benz. “By the way, darling, don’t mention to the Grais that anyone is staying with us. Don’t say anything about an American boy. Say I’m expecting a phone call tonight. That’s simple.”
    Her face lit with a sudden idea. “Are you maybe hiding Billy? To render Reeves a service?” She was talking through the open car window.
    “No, dear. Reeves has never heard of Billy! Billy’s just an American kid doing some gardening for us. But you know what a bourgeois snob Antoine is. ‘Putting up a gardener in your guest room!’— Have a nice evening.” Tom bent and kissed her cheek. “Promise?” Tom added.
    He meant promise to say nothing about Billy, and he could see from her calm, amused smile and her nod that she did promise. She knew Tom did favors now and then for Reeves, some of which she had an inkling of, others of which she hadn’t. Somehow his favors meant money earned, or