Mr Peanut - Adam Ross [123]
She was chubby-cheeked and shallow-chested, slack-eyed and glum. Nearly pretty, he thought, though everything from her small torso to her pear-shaped face had conspired to keep her from getting there. Her beautifully manicured nails were painted a cherry red so dark they were almost black. When she noticed him looking at them, she tucked the back of her hand under her elbow.
Sheppard checked the time. It wasn’t quite one, but he’d been up since three that morning. “Maybe I will have that drink,” he said. “Same as you’re having, if that’s all right.”
Leaning against the counter that separated them as she fixed his cocktail, he surveyed the place. The only thing on the walls was a large mirror in the shape of the sun, the glass surrounded by jagged strips of gold-plated iron. Hanging over an ugly green couch on the far wall, it was heavy enough to kill the person sitting below it if it fell. Susan’s room—he recognized her shoes beside the dresser—was more or less an extension of this common area, partitioned off the kitchen and without a door. Her single bed sat between two courtyard windows whose venetian blinds were drawn. Only Janet’s room, behind him and to his left, enjoyed the light of three high windows, even that muted by the building next door.
“Cheers,” she said.
They touched glasses.
“How long are you visiting?” she said.
“Two weeks.”
“Susan said you’d only be here one.”
“I’m going up to Big Sur for the second,” he said.
“Lucky. I hear it’s beautiful.”
“It is.”
“I’d give anything to go up there.”
“You should take a drive one day.”
“I mean a place. I’d love to have a place somewhere like that.”
“Who wouldn’t?”
“I’d just die to have one.”
“Maybe you will someday.”
“Not unless I marry a doctor.” She spun the ice with her finger again and stared at him. “Is it just you going?”
“Excuse me?”
“Next week. Is it just you?”
Sheppard looked at his drink and, half-affronted, considered his answer, but then Janet said, “I hear Susan.”
She appeared at the door, having caught it before it flung open, and stood there in the brightness spilling into the apartment’s lightless gloom. For a moment the two faced each other, with Janet leaning against the refrigerator watching, and they didn’t know how to react. Sheppard hadn’t expected this either, though he realized immediately how much had changed for her—how terrifying this new life was—and yet how little it really had, for here he was as well. They took each other by the hands, speechless, and he was moved to see that she’d refreshed her makeup.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” she said. “Work was … ” She looked over his shoulder at Janet, still watching unabashedly. There was an exchange between them, an allusion to some agreement they’d made that Sheppard could tell, by Susan’s expression, Janet had somehow violated.
“I’m going to go lie down,” she said. “Nice to meet you, Doctor.”
She went to her room and lay down on her bed—the foot of it visible through the doorway—but didn’t close the door.
It was all so different, he thought, pointing a thumb toward Janet. Susan shook her head and led him into her dark corner, where, half-hidden, they finally kissed; and Sheppard, forgetting everything for a moment, couldn’t keep from touching her. “Not here,” she said, then whispered. “Not with her.” They kissed again and Susan stopped him once more. “Not now,” she said. “Just let me look at you.” They lay on the narrow bed, kissing and touching and staring into each other’s eyes, though when Susan held him, squeezing his neck so tightly it hurt and explaining how difficult it had all been, the same terrible anxiety seized him anew. Over her shoulder, he stared at Janet’s legs, visible through her door, so still they might as well have been amputated.
He sat up on the edge of the bed and whispered,