eyes traveled away again. She put on a pair of sunglasses. There was some unfilled time before she said, “John?”
“Oh, Christ,” he said. “Fuck it.”
He would remember a movement at her jaw, a locking motion.
They swam again, taking turns diving from the dock, going deep, then they dried themselves in the sun and walked up to the cottage for a late lunch. Kathy spent the remainder of the afternoon working on a book of crossword puzzles. Wade sat over a pile of bills at the kitchen table. He built up neat stacks in order of priority, slipped rubber bands around them, dropped them in his briefcase.
His eyes ached.
There was that electricity in his blood.
At three o’clock he put in a call to Tony Carbo, who wasn’t available. A half hour later, when he tried again, Tony’s secretary said he’d gone out for the day.
Wade thanked her and hung up.
He unplugged the telephone, carried it into the kitchen, tossed it in a cupboard under the sink.
“Kill Jesus,” he said, which amused him.
Maybe he dozed off. Maybe he had a drink or two. All he would remember with any certainty was that late in the afternoon they locked up the cottage and made the six-mile drive into town. He would remember an odd pressure against his ears—an underwater squeeze. They followed the dirt road west to the Rasmussen cottage, where the road looped north and crossed an iron bridge and turned to loose gravel. Wade would remember giant pines standing flat-up along the roadbed, the branches sometimes vaulting overhead to form shadowed tunnels through the forest. Kathy sat with her hands folded in her lap; after a mile or two she switched on the radio, listened for a moment, then switched it off again. She seemed preoccupied, or nervous, or something in between. If they spoke at all during the ride, he would have no memory of it.
Two miles from town the land began to open up, thinning into brush and scrub pine. The road made a last sharp turn and ran straight west along the shoreline into Angle Inlet. Like a postcard from the moon, Wade thought. They passed Pearson’s Texaco station, a small white schoolhouse, a row of lonely looking houses in need of paint. Somebody’s cat prowled away the afternoon on the post office steps.
Wade parked and went in to pick up the mail. A statement from their accountant, a letter from Kathy’s sister in Minneapolis.
They crossed the street, did the grocery shopping, bought aspirin and booze and tanning lotion, then sat down for coffee at the little sandwich counter in Arndahl’s Mini-Mart. A revolving Coca-Cola clock put the time at 5:12. In nineteen hours, almost exactly, Kathy would be gone, but now the corners of her eyes seemed to relax as she skimmed the letter from her sister. At one point she snorted and made a tossing motion with her head. “Oh, God,” she moaned, then chuckled, then folded the letter and said, “Here we go again.”
“What’s that?”
“Patty. Double trouble, as usual—two boyfriends. Always the juggler.”
Wade nodded at the counter and said, “Good for Patty. More power to her.” There was that sizzle in his blood, the smell of fish and sawdust sweating up from the Mini-Mart floorboards. An aluminum minnow tank near the door gave off a steady bubbling sound.
“Power’s fine,” Kathy said, “but not more men. No kidding, it seems like they always come in pairs—for Patty, I mean. They’re like snakes or politicians or something.” She flicked her eyebrows at him. “That’s a joke.”
“Good one.”
“John—”
“Clever, clever.”
A muscle moved at her cheek. She picked up a glass salt shaker, tapped it against the counter.
“It’s not my fault.”
Wade shrugged. “Sorry.”
“So stop it,” she said. “Just goddamn stop.”
Kathy spun around on her stool, got up, went over to the magazine rack, and stood with her back to him. Dusk was settling in fast. A cold lake breeze slapped up against the Mini-Mart’s screen door, startling the plump young waitress, causing a spill as she refilled their cups.
It was 5:24.
After a time Kathy sat down again and studied the frosted mirror behind the counter, the ads for Pabst and Hamm’s and Bromo-Seltzer. She avoided eye contact, sliding down inside herself, and for an instant, watching her in the mirror, John Wade was assaulted by the ferocity of his own love. A beautiful woman. Her face was tired, with the lax darkening that accompanies age, but still he found much to admire. The green eyes and brown summer skin and slim legs and shapely little fingers. Other things, too—subtle things. The way her hand fit precisely into his. How the sun had turned her hair almost white at the temples. Back in college, he remembered, she used to lie in bed and grasp her own feet like a baby and tell funny stories and giggle and roll around and be happy. All these things and a million more.
Presently, Wade sighed and slipped a dollar bill under his saucer.
“Kath, I am sorry,” he said. “I mean it.”
“Fine, you’re sorry.”
“All right?”
“Sorry, sorry. Never ends.” Kathy waited for the young waitress to scoop up their cups. “Stop blaming me. We lost. That’s the truth—we lost.”
“It was more than that.”
“John, we can’t keep doing this.”
Wade looked at the revolving clock. “Mr. Monster.”
They had a light supper, played backgammon for dimes, sat listening to records in the living room. Around eight o’clock they went out for a short walk. There was a moon and some stars, and the night was windy and cool. The fog had not yet rolled in off the lake. In the coming days John Wade would remember how he reached out to take her hand, the easy lacing of their fingers. But he would also remember how Kathy pulled away after a few steps. She folded her arms across her chest and walked up to the yellow cottage and went inside without waiting for him.
They did not take their blankets to the porch that night. They did not make love. For the rest of the evening they concentrated on backgammon, pushing dimes back and forth across the kitchen table.
At one point he looked up at her and said, “Kath, that stuff in the newspapers—”
Kathy passed him the dice.
“Your move,” she said.
As near as he could remember, they went to bed around eleven. Kathy snapped off the lamp. She turned onto her side and said, “Dream time,” almost cheerfully, as if it did not matter at all that she was now going away.
