The Trouble With Eden - Lawrence Block [118]
“Just driving around.”
“That’s what the car’s for, I guess. Just driving?”
“What else?”
He looked at her, then looked away.
“I’ll be going out tonight,” she said.
“Oh?”
“For a drive.”
“For a drive,” he echoed. “You be home by the time I close the joint?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Oh, a late evening, huh?”
“That’s right.”
“Just gonna see what you come up with, huh?”
“Not exactly.”
“Oh?”
“I have a date.”
“A date.”
“Yes.”
“Who’s the lucky—”
“I’ll tell you later.”
“Tell me now.”
“No.”
He closed his eyes and took several deep breaths. Very softly he said, “You cunt.”
“Do you want to go upstairs?”
“Not now.”
“When I come home, then.”
“You fucking cunt.”
“Are you going? You didn’t have dessert.”
“I don’t want any.”
“Sully—”
He turned in the doorway. “I didn’t mean to call you that. It’s just—I’ll wait up for you, baby.”
“I like it when you call me a cunt.”
“I’ll wait for you.”
“Good.”
The evening crawled and she could not make it hurry. She washed the dinner dishes, then went upstairs and took a long soak in the tub. The hot water baked the tension out of her muscles but new tension had taken its place before she had toweled herself dry. She wrapped herself up in a terrycloth robe of Sully’s and sat in front of the television set without paying any attention to the program on the screen.
Cunt.
That was what she was. Perhaps it was what she had always been, although it did not seem to her that this was the case. It was true that she had always enjoyed sex. She could not remember when she had first become aware of the difference between little boys and little girls, but as long as she had been aware of this difference she had been enthusiastically in favor of it. An attractive girl, an outgoing and popular girl, she had been the frequent recipient of sexual overtures from an early age. She had found all aspects of this enjoyable, from kissing games at children’s parties to fumbling adolescent petting and beyond.
But it had always been an easy enjoyment, a carefree enjoyment. This compulsion that she had found within herself was new, and although it brought her great pleasure it also frightened her. She was afraid of both what she herself was becoming and what might happen to her.
Sully was hard to understand, so very hard for her to understand. Everything she did was ultimately for him, and he knew this, but his immediate reaction each time was one of loathing and bitter contempt. You fucking cunt. She sensed that he had to despise her for what she did, that this was a part of the magic that flowed between them. So far his rage was always quiet and smoldering, never harsh and violent, but how could she be sure it would never change its form? He was a big man, a powerful man. He had always been beautifully gentle with her. If he ever turned violent, she was certain he could kill her with a single blow of one of those heavy hands.
The thought of dying beneath Sully’s rage chilled her, but she could not really make herself believe it was more than a fraction of a possibility. Thus it bothered her less than the question of the sort of person into which she herself was evolving.
Or was that really it? She frowned, challenging herself. She was becoming a swinger, a sexual experimenter, and this did not bother her in and of itself. On the contrary, she was surprised how easy it was for her to accept these changes in her own attitudes. As long as she and Sully were content with the pattern of life they led, nothing else really mattered much to her. She had no friends, and since she had married Sully she had never been unpleasantly conscious of the absence of friends.
She closed her eyes tightly, then opened them wide. She knew what it was.
What bothered her was the thought of other people knowing. What bothered her, what summed it all up, was that Warren Ormont had been able