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By Root 1019 0

felt like a fool. For a while he tried to ignore her, but her efforts to remain quiet had turned into a whimper and, now frustrated, he ordered her to go to the bathroom. She hurried to the back of the plane, sobbing visibly, and when the stewardess walked by he ordered them both a drink. He stared out the window at the desert below, visible on this cloudless part of the trip. It was staggering, America’s size, and this made him wonder at the small structure drifting beneath them, a white speck that was perhaps a house, nearly comical in its remoteness, at the end of a needle scratch of road. Who could live in such a place? The stewardess brought him their drinks. He wasn’t sure of the cause of Marilyn’s suffering, but he guessed it had to do with going back, to Los Angeles, where their adult lives had begun, the dream-state that flight brought on, and the inescapable reflex this return engendered to unspool the four years since they’d left and then take stock, examining it frame by frame for clues about the present. That strip of negative was theirs, but the images, he had learned, were utterly different and the contrast between them could make a person despair.

Marilyn returned to her seat and lifted the martini glass by the stem. It shook in her fingers. “Thank you,” she said.

They didn’t speak again for the rest of the flight.

Of course, the maddening thing about these episodes was their sudden disappearance; they were as fast moving as a squall. Deplaning onto the tarmac, in sunlight so bright it was painful to behold, Marilyn clutched her hat in the breeze and said, “I can’t believe we’re back!” She was suddenly so excited and happy that she took Sheppard’s arm, which revolted him as surely as if her touch were radioactive and might somehow sicken him. But she didn’t notice this, which only further disgusted him. Her mood eclipsed her ability to notice anything other people were feeling; her mood was the world. Months ago, he’d promised himself to ponder this feeling long enough to do something about it—to finally leave. It was why he’d come. In the meantime, he helped the skycap find their bags.

And suddenly Jo Chapman, Chappie’s wife, was at the terminal, both her arms in the air, hands waving at the wrists. “You two,” she said. “You two!” She wore a tight white turtleneck, riding pants, and boots; her brown hair was tied off sportingly, her face thinner, a bit haggard around the eyes, the result, Sheppard guessed, of smoking, the stress of being a surgeon’s wife, and the burden of relaxing all the time. She hugged him with that equestrian’s strength, power he could feel straight from her core, then held him at arm’s length to look at him. “Still a handsome dog,” she said, then turned to Marilyn. “Emphasis on dog.” It made Marilyn laugh. And Sheppard, smiling inwardly, realized that Jo had always held him at arm’s length. He was a man, she always had to remind him, and in her book men were almost entirely fools. She and Marilyn would be better off without them. Or perhaps it was that in their lives as a foursome—Jo, Chappie, Marilyn, and Sam—she always felt compelled to stress that loyalty-wise, Marilyn came first.

“Should we drop you off at Dr. Miller’s?” she asked him.

“It’s in the opposite direction,” Sheppard said.

“I don’t mind. Do you mind, Marilyn?”

“I do if it doesn’t get us on the beach before sunset.”

“I’ll take a cab,” he said. “You girls go on.”

Sheppard had the skycap load up the car and kissed Jo good-bye.

“Is Chappie driving you up?” she said.

“Yes,” he said. “On Sunday.”

Before Jo got in the driver’s seat, she said over the roof: “Be sure to tell him to go to hell.”

She was always offering this sort of public complaint. Over dinner she’d tell you how many eons it had been since they’d slept together. Its familiarity made Sheppard chuckle, though Jo didn’t: she was busy lighting a cigarette and starting the car.

He and Marilyn stood facing each other. She seemed sad again, but he couldn’t bring himself to ask why.

Then she put her arms around his neck and hugged him. “I’ll be thinking