Mr Peanut - Adam Ross [124]
Susan sat up too, looking startled. She grabbed his arm. “What do you mean?”
He pointed at Janet’s Wicked Witch legs. “Is she staying here?”
Susan seemed puzzled. “This is her apartment.”
“I mean this week. Couldn’t you have made arrangements?”
“I thought … ,” she said. “I thought you would.”
It hadn’t occurred to him. He’d assumed it wouldn’t be like this, that they’d have some privacy. He pinched the bridge of his nose: the flight and the drinks were catching up with him.
“I’m going to go,” he said.
“Why? Where?”
“To my friend’s house. Dr. Miller’s. Where I’m staying.”
“You’re not … I thought you were staying at a hotel.”
“No.”
“But how will we—?”
“We will,” he said. “It’ll be fine.” He put his hand over hers, his mind racing. “I promise.” He stood up.
“Please don’t leave,” she said, grabbing him by the wrist.
“It’s just for a few hours,” he said, now unnerved that she looked terrified, but he smiled and rubbed her arm. “I’ll call you as soon as I get things squared away.”
He was at once thwarted and furious. There was something about Susan’s panic that he’d never seen before, and in the cab to Michael Miller’s he thought about what to do. To suddenly move to a hotel would make Marilyn suspicious and could lead to confrontations he wasn’t ready to have, at least not yet. Yet being apart from Susan was already making him ache, transporting him back to the time before they’d ever made love, and then, afterward, to the overwhelming need to get somewhere. Neither was this what he’d expected, these obstacles so far from what he’d wanted.
Though on arriving, he forgot these troubles temporarily. Michael had moved to a beautiful house in Beverly Hills, a giant colonial just off Burton Way and within a mile of Coldwater Canyon. He looked hale and tan, his snow-white hair slicked back, the ridge of his long, proud nose burnt as pink as his golf shirt (he was just back from a round at Hillcrest). His wife, Emma, had laid out a lovely late lunch by the pool, which glistened as brilliantly as the day itself. The children appeared, and in four years’ time they’d grown into little people: Anne, at ten, bespectacled and bookish, was carrying Ivanhoe under her arm; Roger, eight, wanted to know about Otto Graham. “Is he really your friend?” Sheppard nodded. “We race cars together,” he said, then produced an autographed poster—it was Marilyn’s idea—that sent the boy sprinting to his room to hang it. He gave Anne Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. “I’m going to start reading it right now,” she said, and ran off too.
This left the adults alone for lunch, and they talked long after they’d finished eating in the kind of place on the kind of day that made Cleveland seem like Nod.
“Number one,” Michael said, “if you moved out here, your golf game would improve. Number two, you’d get a lot richer.”
“Are you really thinking about it?” Emma said.
“I think about it all the time,” Sheppard answered.
“Oh,” Emma said, “I’m so sorry Marilyn couldn’t come. And now she’s going to miss the big party.”
Sheppard looked at Michael, who said, “It’s nothing.”
“Maybe not for you,” she said. “You don’t do any of the work.”
Michael rolled his eyes. “It’s a monthly thing,” he said to Sheppard. “Poker game for the junior doctors and their wives.”
“You make it sound like the wives are allowed to play,” Emma said.
“They could if they took it seriously, but all they do is talk.”
“That’s because poker is so boring.”
Michael sighed, then reached out and squeezed Sheppard’s shoulder. “Sam, if there’s a mistress you need to go see during this rare stretch of freedom, please don’t feel like you have to stand on ceremony.”
“Could I bring her tonight?” Sheppard said.
It was a joke, of course, but it would be lovely if the solution was that simple. He decided he needed a swim—a swim and a nap—to clear his mind, and then he and Susan could talk and make another plan. He changed into his trunks and strode out onto the diving board, and after a jackknife he did several vigorous laps. Happily, he’d lost no power over the years.