Halfway Down the Stairs

Excerpt from “Timeshare”

“I don’t want to,” Joe said, and he started pacing back and forth.

We’d come on holiday to this town on Cape Cod, highly recommended by our next-door neighbors in Milford back in England. Personally, I would have been much happier to go to Newport, or the Hamptons I’d heard so much about. It was about time we spent some money on ourselves. Of course, Joe saw it differently. A timeshare in a town without even a cinema and no beach of its own worked for him. I always went along, in the end. Sometimes it’s a shame what marriage will do to you. And now I needed to calm him down.

“It’s all right, Joe. Just a thought. Seemed a nice idea at the time, but we can stay right here for the whole two weeks.”

“I mean, what a waste to take a timeshare and then go gallivanting about somewhere else,” he said.

“I was only thinking of the one night, dear. A nice long drive to see the sights and then up to Rockport, where I’m told there’s a wonderful artist’s colony. You know how I like to draw. But forget it, now. What would you like me to get you for your tea?”

If it sounds as if I cater to him, it’s just that Joe’s a nervous type. He needs to feel secure wherever he is or he gets into one of his moods. And I make sure that doesn’t happen. Otherwise, off he goes on a walkabout. It’s his nervous condition driving him. He’s only fifty-six. But there you are. We’ve been together since we were seventeen. So that’s been the way of it.

I mark the change in things when we were seven days into our timeshare. I’d just finished the washing up and Joe was reading in the lounge chair out on the front porch, an old kerosene lamp for light. I could hear crickets, masses of them. The kitchen window looked out over a grove of trees and through them I could see the glint of the small pond nearby. There was a crescent moon.

I was hanging the towel over the rack when Joe called to me. I went to the front door and he was standing on the porch looking out, his eyes dark in the moonlight.

“What is it, Joe?”

“I saw something,” he gestured vaguely with his right hand, “over there.” He was pointing to the road that ran past the house, an unpaved stretch of gravel. You could always hear someone in a car miles before they showed up.

“Looks fine to me,” I said.

“It is now,” he answered, and then he rubbed his hand across his face and sat down again and picked up his book, reading on where he’d left off. I looked at him and then back out to the road.

“An old BBC production of ‘As Time Goes By’ is coming on that public television station they have. I’ll call you when it starts,” I told him. I gave him a light pat on the shoulder and went back into the house.

To read the rest of this mystery story, check out http://www.halfwaydownthestairs.net/index.php?action=view&id=356

Book categories: Crime, Mystery, and Short Stories