Mr Peanut - Adam Ross [179]
He stared at her, speechless.
“You don’t believe me.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“It’s the man who broke into our house,” she said. “I know it.”
“No,” he said, though not to her.
“I see him everywhere. Out of the corner of my eye. In my dreams. He’s like the little doll in that Karen Black movie.”
“Trilogy of Terror,” Pepin said, amazed. He’d just been thinking of it.
“Yes.”
“But you’re—”
“I know,” she snapped, nodding, angry now. “I’m just imagining it.”
“No,” he said.
“No, fine, all right! You don’t want to hear it. You don’t want to hear anything I have to say.”
She stormed into their bedroom as, out the window, the low clouds pulsed with white flutters of electricity. Pepin grabbed his cell phone and raced downstairs.
“You son of a bitch,” he said. He was on the street, pacing.
“What did I do?” Mobius said.
“Enough. Off. Game over, okay?” Pepin said. “Abort, do you understand?”
“Abort what?”
“I’m not going to say.”
“Abort what, exactly?”
“Why did you take the end of my book?”
“It’s my book now.”
“Oh no it’s not.”
“Oh yes it is.”
“Fuck you.”
“The first ending’s too sappy. The second’s too neat. Me, I prefer to end with a bang.”
“What do I need to do to fucking end this?”
“Keep away from me,” Mobius said, and he hung up.
Pepin threw his phone down so hard that it disintegrated on the sidewalk.
It began to rain, so instantaneously and heavily it was like a Charlie Brown cloudburst that didn’t seem to start until it was directly over Pepin’s head. He stood staring at his feet, seeing nothing, listening to the wind tearing through the trees, to his own labored breathing, to the downpour hissing along the curb.
“David?”
He looked up. It was Georgine.
She was as soaked as he was, unprepared for the rain in her jeans and sweatshirt. She’d emerged from the gated entryway of a nearby brownstone as if she’d been hiding in the shadows beneath the steps leading up to the front door.
“What are you doing here?” Pepin said.
“I needed to see you. I was going to call but then you … just appeared.”
She smiled, and he couldn’t look at her. She came to him and lifted his face, his wet beard, up to hers and searched his eyes, and involuntarily he felt himself lean against her palm in relief. He hadn’t realized that he’d missed her so much, so consumed had he been by Alice’s return, the relief of their reunion, and her subsequent spiral. He’d been so sure things would be different. Georgine’s blond hair was in ringlets from the rain, curly and heavy with water. He thought: our children would have terrible hair. Then he thought: what are you thinking?
“I’ve been worried about you,” she said.
He nodded.
“You haven’t been yourself.”
He shook his head.
“I know we agreed not to talk at work, but I can’t stand seeing you like this. And I can’t stand not talking to you.”
“Yes.”
“So tell me what it is. Tell me you’re okay.”
She kissed him, and the taste of her wet lips was salvation. He rested his forehead against hers and looked at her, at her mouth and eyes, flooded suddenly by memories of their pleasure together, how it was of another order from what he knew with Alice, neither greater nor lesser but wonderfully different. She was strong in ways Alice was not. In spite of this recognition, he was terrified of expressing his own feelings about anything, and possibly of showing any woman any signs of weakness. He couldn’t say whether or not this had been a function of his marriage, a deformation of his character because he didn’t believe Alice was capable of handling it, or if he’d sought out someone as needy as she was because it protected him from ever needing such comfort. In any case, Georgine’s offer was as tremendous as it was frightening, and it seemed to bring him to a fundamental choice. It occurred to Pepin that you could be married to any number of people, that you were simply trading on what you were willing to give and take, on whatever good came with the bad. And it was also a sad truth that you might not be equipped for certain kinds of ease or