Threesome - Lawrence Block [37]
“We’ll be together forever.”
Did we believe it? Some of the time we did, I think. Part of the idyllic charm of that month (was it honestly only a month?) was that we believed what we wanted to believe, so that life was as good to our heads as it was to our bodies.
But perfection is limited by definition, I think, and mountain peaks must be pinpoints in order to be what they are—an endless plateau thirty thousand feet above sea level would boast thin pure air and all that, but it wouldn’t have a view. You have to have a view to be at the top of the mountain. It’s part of the concept.
You couldn’t fall off a plateau, either. With mountain peaks, whatever their nature, there’s always the chance of falling.
RHODA
One morning I awoke fairly early. Harry had already left the bed. Priss was still asleep.
I came awake slowly, being torn from a dream which I can no longer remember, although it did stay in my mind beyond the point of making the transition from sleep to wakefulness. I remember that it was Kafkaesque, and involved my being imprisoned by some monolithic authority. I don’t recall much beyond that. Not important. I don’t suppose.
I groped for cigarettes, lit one, and swung my legs over the edge of the bed. Priss was breathing noisily through her mouth. Sometimes she looks quite beautiful when she sleeps, but this was not one of those times; we had all had far too much to drink the night before, gaily drinking while we gaily chattered and as gaily made love, and the drinking had left Priss’ face puffy and blotchy. There seemed to be a pimple forming upon her chin, too.
(Poor Priss—how unfair in the extreme of me even to have noticed this, much less to have carried the memory around and now to commit it to paper. Our sleeping selves should not be subjected to this sort of treatment, should they?)
I smoked the cigarette all the way down. I felt possessed by an excess of nervous energy, part of it no doubt a matter of having a hangover, but more to it, it seemed, than just that. I stubbed out my cigarette, got up, put clothes on. A pair of skintight dungarees, a sloppy flannel shirt.
I felt—it took me a moment to know how I felt, and then I realized that this house was imprisoning me just now, that I had to be out and away, free of it for long enough so that the feeling could go away. I tucked my feet into a pair of Priss’ loafers—our shoe size is the same, which annoyed me no end in college, as it would have been handy to be able to exchange other clothes occasionally, whereas who in hell wants to wear somebody else’s shoes?
I lit a second cigarette. Smoking is a great cure for depression, reassuring one that, however unpleasant life may be, one is doing something to shorten it. I took a few drags on the cigarette, then started to leave the bedroom.
“Rho?”
I turned.
“Where you goin’?”
“Nowhere. Go back to sleep.”
“Come back to bed.”
“Later.”
“Mmmnnn. Timezit?”
“Early. Go back to—”
“S’Harry?”
“Out Back.”
“Where you goin’?”
“For a walk.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“Go back to sleep, Priss.”
She said something but it came out in a total mumble, and I waited until she had slipped off to sleep again. I went to the kitchen and hurried through breakfast, making do with instant coffee in spite of strong feelings against it, and then let myself out of the house and started for the woods in back.
Of course Harry had picked that moment to decide that he couldn’t stand looking at his sketch pad. He was having a cigarette break in the garden, pacing back and forth, smoking furiously, and examining flowers.
“Hello, there,” he said, too heartily. “You’re up early, aren’t you?”
He was as unfortunately wide awake as Priss was sleepy. This morning both of them seemed to me to be carrying things to extremes. The nervousness, which I now knew was more than a matter of a hangover, did not seem to be going away.
“Thought I’d go for a walk,” I said.
“Oh?”
“In the woods.”
The property backs up on some woods, which constitutes a barrier of no little size between our place (our place?) and the estate to