Just the Lady We’re Looking For
DONALD E. WESTLAKE
That morning Mary cleaned the kitchen, and after lunch she went shopping. It was a beautiful sunny day, but getting hot; the lawns and curbs and ranch-style houses of Pleasant Park Estates gleamed and sparkled in the sunlight, and in the distance the blacktop street shone like glittering water.
Mary had lived here barely five weeks now, but one development was very like another, and in her seven years of marriage to Geoff she’d seen plenty of them. Geoff transferred frequently, spending six months here, eight months there, never as much as a year in any one location. It was a gypsyish life, but Mary didn’t mind: we’re just part of the new mobile generation, she told herself, and let it go at that.
All the stores in the shopping center were air-conditioned, but that only made it worse when Mary finally walked back across the griddle of a parking lot to the car. She thought of poor Geoff, working outdoors ’way over at Rolling Rancheros, and she vowed to make him an extra-special dinner tonight: London broil, a huge green salad, and iced coffee. In fact, she’d make up a big pot of iced coffee as soon as she got home.
. . .
