Mr Peanut - Adam Ross [62]
“It’ll pass.” His voice, as always, was calm.
Dying for a drink, David opened the wet bar. “Thank you for the flowers,” he said, and looked at the note. It read Love.
“You thought of them,” Harold said, “not me.”
This was true. When they’d entered the lobby, a bride was having her pictures taken, holding an enormous bouquet, and he’d thought: If I could fill the room with flowers for her, I would. “Are you saying you’re a telepath?”
“I’m a good listener.”
“What are you hearing now?”
“Why don’t you tell me?”
In his mind, David saw his wife cradling their child in the airplane bathroom. As much as he wanted to forget that, he never would. And there was something else.
“I need to confess something.”
“What?”
“It’s like a crime. But it’s not something I did. I don’t know how to say it.”
“You will when you’re ready.”
It was akin to love, David thought, to trust a person so immediately and completely, a feeling as real as being hungry, which of course he was.
“Have you made dinner reservations?” Harold asked.
David looked at his watch: just after six o’clock. “No.”
“When would you like to go?”
“In an hour, but I might have to cancel. I want to see how she’s feeling.”
“All right.”
“What should we do?”
“When?”
“Tomorrow.”
“What would you like to do?”
“I don’t know. When we travel, Alice usually makes all our plans.”
“I understand.”
“I’m not very curious.”
“That’s fine.”
“I only travel for work.”
“We’ll take care of it.”
“She does everything.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself.”
“I never do anything.”
“Easy, David.”
For a moment, he wasn’t even sure if Harold was real.
“Go on,” Harold said. “Ask me.”
“It’s the wrong thing to be thinking about.”
“No it isn’t.”
“What is Diamond Head?”
“It’s a dead volcano. Though in Hawaii, it seems that none of the volcanoes are truly dead.”
Later, at dinner, Alice asked the same question. If she was impressed that he knew, she didn’t let on. It was just background noise, a brief pause between their respective engorgements, the only thing they’d paused to speak about. He ate relentlessly and had never seen her eat so much either. She ordered calamari to start, a large plate meant for sharing that she consumed without coming up for air. She ordered tuna tartare and then the sea bass, the last served on a bed of risotto; finally, for dessert, a cheese plate. Throughout the meal, he listened to her breathing through her nose.
“What will we do tomorrow?” she asked once the last plate was emptied.
“It’s a surprise,” he said.
“What if I don’t like your surprise?”
“Then we won’t do it. You can just tell me what you want to do instead.”
“What if I want to go home?”
“That’s fine.”
“I mean now. Tonight.”
“That’s fine too.”
“Don’t keep fucking agreeing with me, David. Stop being so goddamn compliant.”
He waited. Her anger was so barely containable that he was afraid to move.
“Don’t try to turn this into fun,” she said.
“I won’t.”
She sighed, then folded her napkin disinterestedly.
“I think we should stay here for a while,” he said. “I just want to wait.”
She said nothing after that.
Later that night, he woke to her sobbing, at times wailing so loudly he was sure security would start pounding on the door. He tried to hold her, but whenever he did she flung her elbows and arms at him, so he finally gave up and left the bed, their physical distance seeming to calm her ever so slightly. She lay there, her back heaving in the dark, piled in the sheets, mumbling something into the pillow, and he stepped out onto the lanai and shut the door, her grief twisting his lungs.
After several minutes he came back inside.
“Talk to me,” he said. “Please.”
He waited. She went still. Then she got onto her knees, the sheets curled around her like a pedestal.
“Don’t make me say it,” she said.
He fled the room, went to the bar downstairs, and drank until he couldn’t keep his eyes open. When he came back upstairs she was asleep.
He woke in the middle of the night to find her gone. The doors to the lanai were open and the sound of the breeze and palms filled the