Bride & Groom

distinctive, and who but an ornithological zealot like Artie would go birding at this bleak sanctuary during a deluge? Steve said the obvious: “That’s Artie’s car.”
    I slowed down and pulled to the side of the lane. “He must’ve dragged Rita here to add some rain-loving migrant to her life list. We’d better try to rescue her. We can all go and get sushi somewhere.”
    Steve tried to stop me. As I opened my door, he said, “The motor’s running.”
    “Rita’s probably making Artie wait for the rain to let up.”
    “Holly—”
    What failed to register on me was that although the motor was, indeed, running, and although the windows were defogged, no one was sitting in the car. Did I imagine that Artie and Rita had left the engine going as they wandered nearby in search of a rara avis? No, I did not. I imagined nothing whatever. Fool that I was, I pulled up my hood and ran through the downpour to Artie’s car.
    Fate was smarter than I was and more effective than Steve had been. Fate and nothing else prevented me from rapping on the glass before I looked in the car. Stretched out on the rear seat, wearing a black merry widow I’d last seen in her hand, was Francie Julong, the dowdy birding buddy of Rita’s we’d met at the mall. Francie didn’t see me; her eyes were closed, and her attention was elsewhere. Specifically, it was on the man whose face I couldn’t see.
    Rara avis was the wrong Latin phrase. The right one was in flagrante delicto.
     

CHAPTER 14
     
    My first word was dog. I spoke it at the age of nine months and—yes—haven’t shut up since. Now, for once, I was not only silent on the subject of dogs, but shocked into utter speechlessness. Utter. Sorry. Victim that I am of anxiety-driven punning, I could serve as a case study in the verbal psychopathology of everyday life. The Viennese Dog Man would have understood. Now, he’d have been quick to remark that the source of my tension was sex. While I’m on the subject of Freud, let me digress briefly by guessing that little Sigmund’s first word was almost certainly Hund.
    Anyway, after tiptoeing away from Artie Spicer’s car and hastening to my own, I got in and drove slowly away without so much as swearing or groaning.
    Steve refrained from saying that he’d told me so. Actually, he hadn’t. Not outright. What he said, with maddening equanimity, was, “Not Rita, I take it.”
    I exhaled noisily. “Steve, the worst of it is that I’m not sure it was Artie. And whether it was Artie or someone else, if you want to say ‘I told you so,’ that’s okay. Except that you didn’t. Not exactly. And why should you have had to? Who’d’ve thought that I could be so stupid? Here’s this nowhere place with a car pulled in at what any idiot would recognize as a lover’s lane, and the engine’s running, and when I don’t see anyone sitting in the car, do I reach the obvious conclusion? I do not. And why not? Because it never crosses my feeble excuse for a mind that Artie Spicer, nice Artie Spicer, Artie the birdwatcher, is a lying, two-timing bastard who isn’t just cheating on Rita, but is doing it in the backseat of his car like some teenager, for God’s sake, in daylight! If it was Artie. And with that smarmy little hypocrite, who, I have to tell you, had the nerve to fall all over Rita! But it’s possible, remotely possible, that she borrowed Artie’s car. Anyway, I saw her clearly. Maybe I should’ve tapped on the window! That way, I’d know for sure whether it was Artie or not.”
    “You want to go back?”
    “No! Of course not. And we’re not lurking around until they drive out, either. You know what’s amazing? Steve, I literally can hardly believe it! I saw it myself about two minutes ago, and I am having trouble convincing myself that I saw what, believe me, I really did see. Incredible!” With the calmness I love so deeply, Steve said, “Holly, you need to slow down. Slow it all down. For a start, you need to pull over and let me drive.”
    I had the sense to realize that he was right. With my foot safely off the gas pedal and Steve at the wheel, we headed for Route 2 and then toward Cambridge.
    “The woman was someone you know,” Steve said.
    “Francie Julong. I met her on Friday when Rita and I went to the Chestnut Hill Mall, and let me tell you, Steve, she greeted Rita like a dear friend. She gushed. And kowtowed. She’s a member of Rita’s birding group. In other words, Artie Spicer’s birding