The Art of Fielding_ A Novel - Chad Harbach [100]
This cast the whole evening—their failure to have sex, the arguing after—in a new light. Schwartz had been willing to take the blame, to offer up Henry and exhaustion and Vicodin as excuses. But Pella had her own thing going on. Look at her waltzing in here, kissing him, climbing on top of him, and then saying, It’s okay baby it’s okay, don’t worry about it, when really it was her own hesitation he’d sensed, her own body that was sending off warning signs. Really, she was worried about David coming. Or worse, glad.
“When?”
“Soon.”
“How soon?”
“I don’t know… maybe tomorrow?”
“Maybe,” Schwartz repeated. He meant to be sarcastic, but it came out sounding incredulous and pathetic. He tried again: “Maybe?”
“Tomorrow,” Pella admitted. “He’ll be here tomorrow.”
“Where will he stay?”
“In a hotel.”
“Where will you stay?”
She smacked him on the shoulder in a way that was supposed to be playful, but it had real force behind it. “Where do you think? At my dad’s.”
“Not here.”
“I can’t. Not tomorrow.”
“Because of your husband.”
“He’s only my husband because we’re not divorced yet.”
“So why’s he coming?”
“He’s in Chicago on business. Or so he claims. Anyway, it was stupid of me to think that I could slink off and that would be that. We need to sit down and talk things out. Closure, et cetera. He’s been calling my dad’s place ten times a day.”
“I’ll talk to him.”
“Yeah, right,” said Pella. “That’s just what’ll calm him down. If he knows we’re fucking around.”
“Is that what we’re doing? Fucking around?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I’m not sure I do.”
“What do you want me to say? Fine, we’re fucking around. Or were, until tonight.”
Schwartz wasn’t sure whether this was a comment about their failure to have sex or a declaration that they were breaking up. His phone, which was lying on the cardboard box that passed for a bedside table, began to skitter and dance. Pella stiffened from head to toe. There was no way he was going to take Henry’s call, not right now—but the fact of the call was itself the crime, and not answering helped nothing. The phone gave a final shudder and fell silent.
“I don’t know why I ever decided to come here,” she said.
“So leave. What’s stopping you?”
“Don’t worry, I’m leaving.” Pella was out of the bed, zipping her sweatshirt over her otherwise naked torso. Schwartz felt a blast of regret at the disappearance of all that beautiful bareness. She turned in the doorway with fire in her eyes. “You love to make life difficult, don’t you? Mike Schwartz, Nietzsche’s camel. The weight of the world on his big ol’ shoulders. But guess what? Not everybody wants to maximize their pain. Some people have enough trouble making it from one day to the next. I’m sorry I went to prep school, okay? I’m sorry I never worked in a factory. Sure, I dropped out of high school. I wash dishes in a dining hall. But that’s just slumming, isn’t it Mike? That’s not real, it’s not real suffering, it’s not the fucking South Side. For which I apologize. I’m sincerely fucking sorry my father went to grad school instead of drinking himsel—”
“I thought you were leaving.”
“I’m already gone.”
The bedroom door slammed, as did the front door. Then came the angry tambourine jingle of the front gate flying open and knocking back against itself. Schwartz turned on a light and tried to read, but he couldn’t concentrate, so he popped two Vikes that were earmarked for tomorrow and wandered out into the hall.
A thin crease of light came from beneath the shut bathroom door. The toilet flushed and Arsch’s wide pink body, even wider than Schwartz’s, filled the door frame. He scratched his balls through his boxers. “You all right?” he asked, squinting without his contacts.
Schwartz shrugged. He had to drag up words from somewhere deep within: “Could be worse.”
“Could always be worse.” Arsch disappeared into his bedroom and came back with a stack of his mother’s chocolate-walnut-ginger cookies. “Nuke ’em for a few seconds,” he said. “There’s milk in the fridge.”
“Thanks.”
Arsch scratched his balls some more, squinted. There