The Remake: As Time Goes By by Stephen Humphrey Bogart

Author:Stephen Humphrey Bogart [Bogart, Stephen Humphrey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery
Publisher: Untreed Reads Publishing
Published: 2013-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 21

The flight back to New York was a lot worse than the one the way out had been. R.J. had too much to think about and nothing to do to keep him from thinking about it. And this time he didn’t sleep. He just stared out the window while all the ugly suspicions churned around in his brain.

R.J. knew he should have been concentrating on a plan to corner Janine Wright. He should have been making lists of things to do, ways to connect her to her ex-husband’s death, tricks to get to phone company records. Instead, he just sat and played over in his head that last scene with Casey.

He kept remembering what she had said, “What am I to you?” and trying to figure out what that meant. For Christ’s sake, it should have been clear to her, should have been clear to anybody. He had been seeing her for over six months, hadn’t even looked at anybody else in all that time. She knew that. Didn’t that tell her something? Anything? What was he supposed to do, draw up a position paper and submit it to the head of her delegation?

What in the hell does she want from me?

And then he had another thought, even worse: What if she doesn’t want anything from me?

He didn’t even know for sure which end was up anymore.

He had thought all along that she wasn’t going to hold him up for a ring. She was different. She was a strong, stubborn, independent woman and he was sure she didn’t need that kind of talk, didn’t want to hear it. Maybe he had been wrong. Maybe she wanted to talk about commitment. He had always thought it was a load of crap, and he had thought she felt the same way. They were together, there was nobody else, that was that.

Now he wasn’t so sure. Maybe she thought they had gone past that and she needed to hear it from him. And maybe hearing it would be the last straw for her, make her think R.J. was trying to hold her down, trap her into something she couldn’t walk away from. Goddammit, there had to be something else, something in between loneliness and uncertainty on the one hand and total commitment on the other.

But he landed in New York with no answers. Feeling sour and impatient, R.J. took a cab instead of the train. The driver took him for a tourist and tried to head for Long Beach. R.J. snarled at him to turn around, for Christ’s sake, and the driver headed up toward the Triboro Bridge.

“What the hell are you doing?” R.J. asked.

“Very fast. Very scenery,” the driver said in broken English. “Very nice.”

“Very no,” said R.J. “Midtown Tunnel.”

The driver sulked the rest of the way into the city and up to the street in front of R.J.’s office, but he drove fast, so R.J. tipped him anyway. The driver took the tip, and then yelled a curse at him in Farsi as he drove away.

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