Hunger overcomes him. He has not slept since Friday night, has driven across half the country at high speed, in bad weather more than not, and has experienced an exciting and emotional hour and a half in the Stillwater house, confronting his destiny. His stores of energy are depleted. He is shaky and weak-kneed.
In the kitchen he raids the refrigerator, piling food on the oak breakfast table. He consumes several slices of Swiss cheese, half a loaf of bread, a few pickles, the better part of a pound of bacon, mixing it all together without actually bothering to make sandwiches, a bite of this and a bite of that, chewing the bacon raw because he doesn’t want to waste time cooking it, eating fast and with single-minded fixation on the feast, ravenous, oblivious of manners, urgently washing down everything with big swallows of cold beer that foams over his chin. There is so much he wants to do before his wife and kids return home, and he doesn’t know quite when to expect them. The fatty meat is cloying, so periodically he dips into a wide-mouth jar of mayonnaise and scoops out thick wads of the stuff, sucking it off his fingers to lubricate a mouthful of food that he finds hard to swallow even with the aid of another bottle of Corona. He concludes his meal with two thick slices of chocolate cake, washing those down with beer as well, whereafter he hastily cleans up the mess with paper towels and washes his hands at the sink.
He is revitalized.
With the silver-framed photograph in hand, he returns to the second floor, taking the stairs two at a time. He proceeds to the master bedroom, where he clicks on both nightstand lamps.
For a while he stares at the king-size bed, excited by the prospect of having sex with Paige. Making love. When it is done with someone for whom you truly care, it is called “making love.”
He truly cares for her.
He
After all, she is his wife.
He knows that her face is good, excellent, with a full mouth and fine bone structure and laughing eyes, but he can’t tell much about her body from the photograph. He imagines that her breasts are full, belly flat, legs long and shapely, and he is eager to lie with her, deep inside of her.
At the dresser, he opens drawers until he finds her lingerie. He caresses a half-slip, the smooth cups of a brassiere, a lace-trimmed camisole. He removes a pair of silky panties from the drawer and rubs his face with them, breathing deeply while repeatedly whispering her name.
Making love will be unimaginably different from the sweaty sex he has known with sluts picked up in bars, because those experiences have always left him feeling empty, alienated, frustrated that his desperate need for true intimacy is unfulfilled. Frustration fosters anger; anger leads to hatred; hatred generates violence—and violence sometimes soothes. But that pattern will not apply when he makes love to Paige, for he belongs in her arms as he has belonged in no others. With her, his need will be satisfied every bit as much as will his desire. Together, they will achieve a union beyond anything he can imagine, perfect oneness, bliss, spiritual as well as physical consummation, all of which he has seen in countless movies, bodies bathed in golden light, ecstasy, a fierce intensity of pleasure possible only in the presence of love. Afterward, he will not have to kill her because then they will be as one, two hearts beating in harmony, no reason for killing anyone, transcendent, all needs gloriously satisfied.
The prospect of romance leaves him almost breathless.
“I will make you so happy, Paige,” he promises her picture.
Realizing he hasn’t bathed since Saturday, wanting to be clean for her, he returns her silken panties to the stack from which he had plucked them, closes the dresser drawer, and goes into his bathroom to shower.
He strips out of the clothes he took from the motorhome closet of the white-haired retiree, Jack, in Oklahoma on Sunday, hardly twenty-four hours ago. After wadding each garment into a tight ball, he stuffs it into a brass wastebasket.
The shower stall is spacious, and the water is wonderfully hot. He works up a heavy lather with the bar of soap, and soon the clouds of steam are laden with an almost intoxicating floral aroma.
After drying off on a yellow towel, he searches bathroom drawers until he finds his toiletries. He uses a roll- on deodorant and then combs his wet hair straight back from his forehead to let it dry naturally. He shaves with an electric razor, splashes on some lime-scented cologne, and brushes his teeth.
He feels like a new man.
In his half of the large walk-in closet, he selects a pair of cotton briefs, blue jeans, a blue-and-black- checkered flannel shirt, athletic socks, and a pair of Nikes. Everything fits perfectly.
It feels so good to be home.
Paige stood at one of the windows and watched the gray clouds roll in from the west, driven by a Pacific wind. As they came, the earth below them darkened, and sunmantled buildings put on cloaks of shadows.
The inner sanctum of her three-room, sixth-floor office suite had two large panes of glass that provided an uninspiring view of a freeway, a shopping center, and the jammed-together roofs of housing tracts that receded across Orange County apparently to infinity. She would have enjoyed a panoramic ocean vista or a window on a lushly planted courtyard, but that would have meant higher rent, which had been out of the question during the early years of Marty’s writing career when she’d been their primary breadwinner.
Now, in spite of his growing success and impressive income, obligating herself to a pricier lease at a new location was still imprudent. Even a prospering literary career was an uncertain living. The owner of a fresh-produce store, when ill, had employees who would continue to sell oranges and apples in his absence, but if Marty became ill, the entire enterprise screeched to a halt.
And Marty was ill. Perhaps seriously.
No, she wouldn’t think about that. They knew nothing for sure. It was more like the old Paige, the pre-Marty Paige, to worry about mere possibilities instead of about only what was already fact.
Appreciate the moment, Marty would tell her. He was a born therapist. Sometimes she thought she’d learned more from him than from the courses she had taken to earn her doctorate in psychology.
In truth the constant bustle of the scene beyond the window was invigorating. And whereas she had once been so predisposed to gloom that bad weather could negatively affect her mood, all of these years with Marty and his usually unshakable good cheer had made it possible for her to see the somber beauty in an oncoming storm.
She had been born and raised in a loveless house as grim and cold as any arctic cavern. But those days were far behind her, and the effect of them had long ago diminished.
Appreciate the moment.
Checking her watch, she pulled the drapes shut because the mood of her next two clients was not likely to be immune to the influence of gray weather.
When the windows were covered, the place was as cozy as any parlor in a private home. Her desk, books, and files were in the third office, rarely seen by those she counseled. She always met with them in this more welcoming room. The floral-pattern sofa with its variety of throw pillows lent a lot of charm, and each of three plushly upholstered armchairs was commodious enough to permit young guests to curl up entirely on the seat with their legs tucked under them if they wished. Celadon lamps with fringed silk shades cast a warm light that glimmered in the bibelots on the end tables and in the glazes of Lladro porcelain figurines in the mahogany breakfront.
Paige usually offered hot chocolate and cookies, or pretzels with a cold glass of cola, and conversation was facilitated because the overall effect was like being at Grandma’s house. At least it was how Grandma’s house had been in the days when no grandma ever underwent plastic surgery, had herself reconfigured by liposuction, divorced Grandpa, went on singles’ cruises to Cabo San Lucas, or flew to Vegas with her boyfriend for the weekend.
Most clients, on their first visit, were astonished not to find the collected works of Freud, a therapy couch, and the too-solemn atmosphere of a psychiatrist’s office. Even when she reminded them that she was not a psychiatrist, not a medical doctor at all, but a counselor with a degree in psychology who saw “clients” rather than
