Sea Glass_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [104]
“But now you don’t,” she says, studying him.
He flicks his ashes onto the porch. “Now I don’t,” he says. From the window above them, there is the sound of a man calling a name frantically in his sleep. Rosemary. “That’s Ross,” McDermott says, pointing upward. “His wife’s name is Rosemary.”
Vivian smiles. “Hard for them all to be away from their families,” she says.
“Wouldn’t know about that,” he says.
“It’s more obvious than you might think,” she says.
“What’s more obvious?” McDermott says.
“The thing that’s obvious,” Vivian says.
McDermott bends to tie his shoe. He ties the laces slowly and deliberately. His fingers feel like thick sausages.
“Bit of a thorny problem, though, isn’t it?” Vivian says.
“Don’t know what you mean,” McDermott says.
“The shady husband and all,” Vivian says.
McDermott instinctively glances around as though someone might have heard.
“Don’t worry,” Vivian says. “The husband’s obtuse. I just happen to notice things. I’m very good at it. I do it as a hobby.”
“Lucky for you,” McDermott says, his heart racing.
“Your secret is safe with me,” Vivian says.
“Don’t have secrets,” he says. Vivian searches for an ashtray. “Just stub it out with your foot,” he says.
Vivian puts the toe of a delicate high-heeled pump on her cigarette butt. “I think she feels the same, if it’s any consolation,” she says.
McDermott tips his chair back and puts his feet on the railing again.
“Nothing she’s said, mind you,” Vivian says. “I can just tell.”
He studies the cone of moonlight on the water.
“I’m upsetting you,” Vivian says, reaching across the space between them and touching him on the shoulder. “I didn’t mean to do that.”
“She’s married,” he says.
Vivian withdraws her hand and sighs. “And ain’t that a shame,” she says.
Mironson is padding softly along the hallway, a wet towel over his arm.
“You too?” McDermott asks, keeping his voice low.
“Thought a bath would help,” Mironson says.
“Must be something in the air,” McDermott says. “Vivian just left.”
“We’re all keyed up,” Mironson says.
“I’m leaving early in the morning,” McDermott says. “I’ll see you back at the city.”
“Why?” Mironson asks.
“Eileen needs me. I haven’t been around for weeks.”
“Sorry about that. Of course you should go. But listen,” Mironson says, “there are about a hundred newsletters left that have to be put together. If you could do those before you leave, you could take them with you. Wake up Mahon. Get him to drive you in.”
Alphonse stirs on the mattress, his bedroll having unraveled hours ago. McDermott takes off his shoes and pants and shirt and gently tries to nudge Alphonse off the diagonal and over to his side of the mattress. But Alphonse, in his sleep, is a dead weight and will not easily be budged. McDermott slides his bedroll onto the floor. He lies on top of it in his underwear, studying the eerie moon-glow on the white windowsill. Beside him Alphonse is still snoring, and down the hall, a thousand miles away, a woman he knows is sleeping.
I think she feels the same, if it’s any consolation.
He folds his arms under his head and stares up at the ceiling. Even from that first day on Christmas Eve, he felt Honora getting inside him. He didn’t know it that day, but he remembers the sense of giddiness when she drove away, his direct prayer to God. He thinks about what happened earlier on the wet grass. The way her skin felt under his hand. In his mind, he goes over the kisses again. Were there two or three? The sound she made at the back of her throat. He knows he will remember the precise sound of that moan all his life, that he will have to listen to it again and again — a record on a turntable.
Alphonse twitches on the mattress, and McDermott turns to look at him. He can make out the spindly frame in the moonlight. The boy, in his sleep, turns onto his stomach and stretches his arms out toward the wall. He seems to be growing, McDermott thinks, even as he watches.
Honora
Earlier, she heard voices outside the window, Vivian’s and McDermott’s on