The Trouble With Eden - Lawrence Block [55]
“Jesus, how many times do I have to tell you—”
“Have you had this problem before, Sully?”
He hesitated, but only briefly. “Well, of course I have. After a certain age it happens to everybody from time to time. A youngster in his twenties, that’s all he thinks about. You get older and other things get on your mind, business and taxes and one thing or another, and on top of working hard you can’t unwind and for a while, you got a problem. That’s all there is to it. Now can we get some sleep?”
They left it at that, but he got little sleep that night. There were more questions that she had not asked but would not forget. And now he sat in the darkened living room waiting for her and wondering what he would say to her when she came home. The sky was light when her little sports car turned into the driveway, and he was still sitting there and still had thought of nothing to say.
He met her at the door. She told him he shouldn’t have waited up for her.
“I couldn’t sleep,” he said.
“Aren’t you going to ask?”
“What should I ask? All right, I’m asking.”
“Well, you already know the answer. You know what I did, you just don’t know who with.”
“Who was it?”
“I’m not going to tell you that. It doesn’t matter anyway, does it?”
“No, I don’t suppose it does,” he said. He walked away from her and sat down on the living-room couch with his hands cupped over his knees. She followed him and sat in a chair across from him. He said, “I hope you enjoyed yourself.”
“Sure, I enjoyed myself.”
“That’s good.”
“He wasn’t as good as you, but I enjoyed myself. And he enjoyed himself, and I needed that.”
“Yeah, I suppose you did.”
“So now you got an excuse,” she said. He looked al her. “To divorce me. I went out like a tramp and got screwed all night and now you got an excuse to divorce me. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“No. No, that’s not what I wanted.”
“I’m not so sure of that.”
“Is that what you want? A divorce?”
“What I want is for you to want to screw me, and you won’t, so let’s not talk about what I want.”
“I told you—”
“I know what you told me. You told me a lot of shit about business and taxes. All your headaches, but you only get those headaches at home. Those headaches don’t get in the way when you’re with one of your other girls.”
“I don’t have any other girls.”
“I know I’m stupid, Sully, but you can’t think I’m stupid enough to believe that. Don’t you think I know you better than that? You’ll fuck anything that’s warm. You’ve had your girls since we were married. I always knew about it.”
“And it didn’t bother you?”
“Just at the beginning, but I got over it right away. I knew what you were like before I married you. And I thought why the hell should it bother me when you and I had such a good thing going. You always had it for me, so if you had some left over for the rest of the world that was your business. Wait a minute. Jesus, I’m stupid, all right.”
“What?”
“This always happens, doesn’t it? With your other three wives. The same thing. All of a sudden they don’t turn you on anymore. It’s not you trading them in when you’re bored. It’s you not being able to do anything and then the whole thing goes to hell from that point. Tell me if I’m wrong.”
He had closed his eyes and he kept them closed now. “You’re not wrong.”
“Something else I just realized, and I’ll bet I’m right. You never wanted a divorce. You don’t want to divorce me and you didn’t want to divorce them. It was their idea.”
He nodded.
“Tell me something else. You never had this conversation with any of them, did you?”
“No.”
“Well, that’s something.”
“It is? Why?”
“I’m not sure but it is. I’m gonna make some coffee. You want a cup? I’ll just make instant.”
“If you’re having some.”
When she brought the coffee she sat beside him on the couch. After awhile she said, “There’s doctors for kind of thing, too. You know. Psychiatrists.”
“They don’t do any good.”
“You tried?”
“With my first wife I would of tried anything. The guy kept asking me all this crap about my childhood. Things I couldn’t remember