Wheels

"For how long? A month? Six months? Even a year?"

He answered vaguely, "Depends how things go, I guess."

"What things?"

Pierre shrugged.

"And afterward," Erica persisted, "after this indefinite time, will you call me or shall I call you?" She knew she was pushing too hard but had become impatient with his indirectness. When he didn't answer, she added,

"Is the band playing, 'It's Time to Say Goodbye'? Is this the brush-off?

If it is, why not say so and have done with it?"

Clearly, Pierre decided to grasp the opportunity presented. "Yes," he said, I guess you could say that's the way it is."

Erica took a deep breath. "Thank you for finally giving me an honest answer. Now, at least, I know where I stand."

She supposed she could scarcely complain. She had insisted on knowing and now had been told, even though, from the beginning of the conversation, Erica had sensed the intention in Pierre's mind. At this moment she had a mixture of emotions - the foremost, hurt pride because she had assumed that if either of them chose to end the affair it would be herself. But she wasn't ready to end it, and now, along with the hurt she had a sense of loss, sadness, an awareness of loneliness to come. She was realist enough to know that nothing would be gained by pleading or argument. One thing Erica had learned about Pierre was that he had all the women he needed or wanted; she knew, too, there were others whom Pierre had tired of ahead of herself. Suddenly she felt like crying at the thought of being one more, but willed herself not to. She'd be damned if she would feed his ego by letting him see how much she really minded.

Erica said coolly, "Under the circumstances there doesn't seem much point in staying here."

"Hey!" Pierre said. "Don't be mad." He reached under the bedclothes for her, but she evaded him and slipped from the bed, taking her clothes to the bathroom to dress. Earlier in their relationship, Pierre would have scrambled after her, seized her, and forced her playfully back to the bed, as had happened once before when they quarreled. Now he didn't, though she had been half-hoping that he would.

Instead, when Erica came out of the bathroom, Pierre was dressed too, and only minutes later they kissed briefly, almost perfunctorily, and parted. He seemed relieved, she thought, that their leave-taking had been accomplished with so little trouble.

Pierre drove away in his car, reaching speed with a squeal of tires as he left the motel parking lot. Erica followed more slowly in her convertible.

Her last glimpse of him was as he waved and smiled.

By the time she reached the first intersection, Pierre's car was out of sight.

She drove another block and a half before realizing she had not the slightest notion where she was going. It was close to three in the afternoon and was now raining drearily, as the forecast said it would. Where to go, what to do? . . . with the rest of the day, with the rest of her life. Suddenly, like a pent-up flood released, the anguish, disappointment, bitterness, all of which she had postponed in the motel, swept over her. She had a sense of rejection and despair as her eyes filled with tears, which she let course down her cheeks unchecked. Still driving the car, mechanically, Erica continued through Birmingham, uncaring where she went.

One place she did not want to go was home to the house at Quarton Lake.

It held too many memories, an excess of unfinished business, problems she had no capacity to cope with now. She drove a few more blocks, turned several corners, then realized she had come to Somerset Mall, in Troy, the shopping plaza where, almost a year ago, she had taken the perfume - her first act of shoplifting. It had been the occasion on which she had learned that a combination of intelligence, quickness, and nerve could be rewarding in diverse ways. She parked the car and walked through the rain to the indoor mall.

Inside, she wiped the rain and the tears together from her face.

Most stores within the shopping plaza were moderately busy. Erica wandered into several, glancing at Bally shoes, a display of F.A.O. Schwarz toys, the colorful miscellany of a boutique. But she was going through motions only, wanting nothing that she saw, her mood increasingly listless and depressed. In a luggage store she browsed, and was about to leave when a briefcase caught her attention. It was of English cowhide, gleaming brown.

It lay on a glass-topped table at the rear of the store. Erica's eyes moved on, then inexplicably returned. She thought: there was no reason in the world why she should possess a briefcase; she had never needed one, nor was ever likely to. Besides, a briefcase was a symbol of so much that she detested - the tyranny of work brought home, the evenings Adam spent with his own briefcase opened, the countless hours which he and Erica had never shared. Yet she wanted the briefcase she had just seen, wanted it - irrationally - here and now. And intended to have it.

Perhaps Erica thought, she would give the briefcase to Adam as a parting, splendidly sardonic gift.

But was it necessary to pay for it? She could pay, of course, except that it would be more challenging to take what she wanted and walk away, as she had done so skillfully the other times. Doing so would add some zest to the day. There had been little enough so far.

Pretending to examine something else, Erica surveyed the store. As on other occasions when she had shoplifted, she felt a rising excitement, a heady, delicious combination of fear and daring.

There were three salespeople, she observed a girl and two men, one of the men older and presumably the manager. All were occupied with customers. Two or three other people in the store were, like Erica, browsing. One, a mousy grandmother-type, was examining luggage tags on a card.

By a roundabout route, pausing on the way, Erica sauntered to the display table where the briefcase lay. As if noticing it for the first time, she picked it up and turned it over for inspection. While doing so, a swift glance confirmed that the trio of salesclerks were still busy.

Continuing her inspection of the case, she opened it slightly and nudged two labels on the outside into the interior, out of view. Still casually, Erica lowered the case as if replacing it, but instead let it swing downward below the display table level, still in her hand. She looked boldly around the store. Two of the people who had been walking around were gone; one of the salesclerks had begun attending to another customer; otherwise, everything was the same.

Unhurriedly, swinging the briefcase slightly, she strolled toward the store doorway. Beyond it was the terraced indoor mall, connecting with other stores and protecting shoppers from the weather. She could see a fountain playing and hear its plash of water. Beyond the fountain, she noted, was a uniformed security guard, but he had his back toward the luggage store and was chatting with a child. Even if the guard saw Erica, once she had left the store there was no reason for him to be suspicious.

She reached the doorway. No one had stopped her, or even spoken.

Really! It was all too easy.

"Just a moment!"

The voice - sharp, uncompromising - came from immediately behind. Startled, Erica turned.

It was the mousy grandmother-type who had seemed to be engrossed with luggage tags. Except that now she was neither mousy nor grandmotherly, but with hard eyes and thin lips set in a firm line. She moved swiftly toward Erica, at the same time calling to the store manager, "Mr. Yancy! Over here!" Then Erica found her wrist gripped firmly and when she tried to free it, the grip tightened like a clamp.

Panic flooded through Erica. She protested, flustered, "Let me go!"

"Be quiet!" the other woman ordered. She was in her forties - not nearly as old as she had dressed herself to look. "I'm a detective and you've been caught stealing." As the manager hurried over, she informed him,

"This woman stole that case she's holding. I stopped her as she was leaving."

"All right," the manager said, "we'll go in the back." His manner, like the woman detective's was unemotional, as if he knew what to do and would carry a distasteful duty through. He had barely glanced at Erica so that already she felt faceless, like a criminal.

"You heard," the woman detective said. She tugged at Erica's wrist, turning toward the rear of the store which presumably housed offices out of sight.

"No! No!" Erica set her feet firmly, refusing to move. "You're making a mistake."

"Your kind of people make the mistakes, sister," the woman detective said. She asked the store manager cynically, "Did you ever meet one who didn't say that?"

The manager looked uncomfortable. Erica had raised her voice; now heads had turned and several people in the store were watching. The manager, clearly wanting the scene removed from view, signaled urgently with his head.

It was at that moment Erica made her crucial mistake. Had she accompanied the other two as they demanded, the procedure following would almost certainly have fitted a pattern. First, she would have been interrogated - probably harshly, by the woman detective - after which, more than likely, Erica would have broken down, admitted her guilt and pleaded for leniency. During the interrogation she would have revealed that her husband was a senior auto executive.

After admitting guilt, she would have been urged to make a signed confession. She would have written this out, however reluctantly, in her own handwriting.

After that she would have been allowed to go home with - so far as Erica was concerned - the incident closed.