Jesse waited.
“It’s a hard balancing,” Jenn
said. “If I go too far the other
way, I give myself away. I become entirely dependent on someone else to direct my likes and dislikes, what I want to do, what I should do. You know?”
“Yes,” Jesse said.
“And after a while I resent it, and the resentment builds, and
after a while I explode and go the whole other way. Instead of being all about you, it becomes all about me.”
“Be nice if you could find a middle
ground,” Jesse
said.
“Yes,” Jenn said.
Jesse was lying on his back in the dark, with the phone hunched
in his left shoulder. His handgun was on the night table beside the bed. There was no sound in the apartment.
“Maybe I can,” Jenn said.
“We both have changes to make,” Jesse said.
“I wonder who we’ll be when
we’ve made them,” Jenn
said.
“Whoever we are,” Jesse said,
“we won’t be
worse.”
“I can’t seem to get you out of my
life,” Jenn
said.
“I know,” Jesse said.
“Can you wait?” Jenn said.
“Until I get better?”
“I have so far,” Jesse said.
“But will you still?”
“I don’t know, Jenn. I try not to plan too far
ahead.”
“I don’t want a life without you in
it.”
“That’s not entirely up to you,
Jenn.”
Jenn was quiet for a time. The bedroom was in the back of the apartment, away from the harbor. There was a dim hint of light from the street made a little brighter by the snow cover.
“Is there anyone else?” Jenn said.
“Not yet,” Jesse said.
“But there might be?”
“Jenn,” Jesse said. “My life
would be far less complicated if I
could be happy without you.”
“I know,” she said.
“But so far,” Jesse said, “I
can’t.”
They were both quiet, still connected by the phone line, with nothing much else to say. The silence extended.
“The pressure about those serial murders must be awful.”
“Everyone feels it would be good to catch them,” Jesse
said.
