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By Root 734 0

her back and tightens her lips and clenches her jaws so hard she’s sure her teeth are being ground to stumps, and tints her hair maroon, and buys a new outfit, an Italian leather suit in an opulent shade of vermilion. She has several unsatisfactory flings with men. She rolls about with them, fitfully, self-consciously, as if her bedroom’s wired for sound: she knows she’s acting. She hopes the news of her reckless unfaithfulness will get back to Mitch and make him writhe, but any writhing he does is in the privacy of his own home, if the viper’s nest he’s living in can be called that. Worst case: maybe he’s not writhing. Maybe he’s delighted at the possibility that some hapless fall guy might take her off his hands.

Harriet phones: she thinks Roz might like to know that Zenia is seeing another man, in the afternoons, while Mitch is out.

“What sort of other man?” says Roz. Adrenalin rushes through her brain.

“Let’s just say he wears a black leather jacket and drives a Harley, and has two arrests but no convictions. Lack of witnesses willing to come forward.”

“Arrests for what?” says Roz.

“Dealing coke,” says Harriet.

Roz asks for a written report, and pops it into an envelope, and addresses it anonymously to Mitch, and waits for the other shoe to drop; and it does drop, because one Monday just before lunchtime Harriet calls her at the office.

“She’s taken a plane,” says Harriet. “Three big suitcases.”

“Where to?” says Roz. Her whole body is tingling. “Was Mitch with her?”

“No,” says Harriet. “To London.”

“Maybe he’ll join her there later,” says Roz. Well, well, she thinks. Bye bye black sheep. Three bags full.

“I don’t think so,” says Harriet. “She didn’t have that look.”

“What look did she have?” says Roz.

“The dark glasses look,” says Harriet. “The scarf-around-the-neck look. I’d lay money on a black eye, and two to one he tried to throttle her. Or somebody did. I’d say from all appearances she’s on the run.”

“He’ll go after her,” says Roz, who doesn’t want to get her hopes up. “He’s obsessed.”

But that evening, when she walks into her house, into her living room with its deep pink-and-mauve carpets and its subtle off-green accents, neo-forties revival with postmod undertones, there is Mitch, sitting in his favoured armchair as if he’s never been away.

Sitting in his favoured armchair, at least. But as for away, yes, that’s where he’s been. Far away. Some cinder of a planet in a distant galaxy. He looks as if he’s been drifting around in deep space, where it’s cold and empty and there are things with tentacles, and has just barely made it back to Earth. A stunned look, a conked-on-the-head look. Mugged, pushed face first against a brick wall, crammed into a trunk, tossed half-naked onto the stony roadside, and he didn’t even see who did it.

Glee leaps up in Roz, but she stifles it. “Mitch,” she says, in her best hen voice. “Honey, what’s wrong?”

“She’s gone,” says Mitch.

“Who is?” says Roz, because although she won’t demand a pound of flesh, not at this juncture, she does want a little blood, just a drop or two, because she’s thirsty.

“You know who,” says Mitch in a choking voice. Is this sorrow or fury? Roz can’t tell.

“I’ll get you a drink,” she says. She pours one for each of them, then sits down opposite Mitch in the matching armchair, their usual position for conversations like this. Have-it-out conversations. He will explain, she will be hurt; he will pretend to repent, she will pretend to believe him. They face each other, two card sharps, two poker players.

Roz opens. “Where did she go?” she says, although she knows the answer; but she wants to know if he knows. If he doesn’t know it won’t be her that tells him. He can hire his own detective.

“She took her clothes,” says Mitch, in a sort of groan. He puts one hand to his head, as if he has a headache. So, he doesn’t know.

What is Roz expected to do? Sympathize with her husband because the woman he loves, loves instead of her, has flown the coop? Console him? Kiss him better? Yes, that’s what, all right. She hovers on the edge of doing it