Savage Love by Douglas Glover Page A

rejoiced in the sunlight. Her hair was the colour of slate. She had breasts like liquid fuel rockets. He remembered first love. She was his beginning and his end. He remembered hope. He remembered her nervous whisper, her habit of eating her hair when she was thinking. He remembered she could make quarters dance on her knuckles and disappear. Then he noticed the tall silver-haired gent guiding her toward a black SUV, and the two cherubic teenagers, a boy and a girl, both resembling their parents. They were like visitors from another planet. His ardent heart heaved with adoration, yearning, jealousy, humiliation and rage. “What about me?” he screamed, heaving a rock like a prayer. Then he threw another rock. Who are those people? he thought. The rock clanged off the SUV. Stern faces leafed toward him like pages in a book. The boy nodded omnisciently. The silver-haired gent aimed an elegant pointer finger at the tip of a long arm. They possessed all the qualities Tobin lacked — grace, affection, sang froid, maturity and wisdom. For all Tobin knew, pure ichor ran in their veins. Aganetha gave him an ominous wave, almost as if she regretted it. If she is real, he thought, what of my dreams? my life? He held his breath. He willed himself not to breathe.
    The wind suddenly picked up. A dust devil swirled toward him, whipping street grit into his eyes, stinging his cheeks like nettles. Aganetha kept waving like a railway signal, the rhythmic motion of her hand uncanny and mesmerizing. Her face was molten wax. Her eyes were like pits. Tobin felt the wind lifting him, felt himself the centre of storm. She mouthed the words, I’ m sorry. The roar of the wind was terrific. He had to shut his eyes. His lungs were full of sand. His heart ached. The sound of the wind was like an explosion.
    He remembered everything — his father’s hand on a breast, the rose arbour, his mother’s hot breath on his cheek, the absolute density of the moment from which all meaning emanated. There was always someone coming between you and the thing you love, he thought. Aganetha reminded him of a kite. He was holding the reel, but the line had broken. The kite was almost out of sight. All he had was the reel and a piece of broken string.

Light Trending to Dark
    The trouble began when Lily, a girl I had been seeing, phoned the house one night last summer and spoke to my wife. They talked for an hour, talked like old friends. I was in and out of the sewing room, caught snatches of conversation and brittle laughter, suspected nothing. Then my wife — her name is Ellen — said would I watch the children for half an hour? She had to meet someone for coffee. She never met anyone for coffee, especially not in the evening.
    â€œWho?” I asked.
    â€œNo one you know,” she said, a little stiff, not to be argued with. She gets this way sometimes. She’d had a drink or two earlier.
    â€œNo problem,” I said.
    As soon as she left, the phone rang again. It was Lily. “I just talked to your wife, Ricardo. She’s coming over to see me.”
    â€œAre you crazy?” I said. “And my name’s not Ricardo.”
    â€œYou blew it,” she said. “You said you were leaving her. You said it ’s a dead marriage.”
    â€œYou’re killing me,” I said.
    â€œI’m killing you?” she said. “You think it feels good to find out the man you love has been lying to you all along? She says it’s the first she’s heard. She says you have a happy, stable marriage and three daughters under the age of eight. She ’s studying to be a Jungian therapist — you said she stayed home with the kids and sewed party dresses all day.”
    â€œI never told you that,” I said.
    â€œHere’s a test,” she said. “Did you have sex with your wife last night?” I tried to think. “Did you? You told me sex ended a year ago. You have to think about