Separate Flights by Andre Dubus

mine?’
    â€˜Do you remember?’
    â€˜We were lying on the floor and he was on my right, so I’d say his nose was to the left of mine.’
    â€˜Lying on the floor, huh? Goodness.’
    â€˜I’d squatted down to get a beer from—Oh shut up.’
    â€˜I was only teasing.’
    â€˜You were doing more than that. You’re glad he kissed me.’
    â€˜Let’s say I’m not disturbed.’
    â€˜Well I am.’
    She got out of bed for a cigarette and when she came back I pretended to be asleep and listened to her smoking deeply beside me. Then she put out the cigarette and started touching me, the old lust on quiet signal, and I mounted her, thrusting the sound of bedsprings into the still summer night, not a word between us, only breath and the other sound: and I remembered newly married one morning she was holding a can of frozen orange juice over a pitcher and the sound of its slow descent out of the can drove us back to bed. I could feel her getting close but I still was far away, and I opened my eyes: hers were closed. I shut mine and saw Edith this afternoon oh love ; then I thought she is thinking of Hank, behind those closed eyes her skull is an adulterous room , and now he was here too and he had given me the forty dollars and it was Hank, not I, Hank who was juggling us all, who would save us, and now we came, Hank and Terry and Edith and me, and I said, ‘Goodnight, love,’ and rolled over and slept.
    2
    O N A MOONLIT SUMMER NIGHT , in a cemetery six blocks from my house, lying perhaps among the bones of old whaling men, in the shadow of a pedestaled eight-foot bronze angel, Hank made love to my red-haired wife.
    At midnight I had left them on the front porch. Edith had the flu, and Hank had come over late for a nightcap; it was the day after payday and I gave him ten dollars which he didn’t want to take. We drank on the front porch, but I was tired and I watched them talking about books and movies, then I went to bed, their voices coming like an electric train around the corner of the house, through the screen of my open window. I slept. When I woke my heart was fast before I knew what it knew. I lay in silence louder than their voices had been, and listened for the creak of floor under a step, the click of her Zippo, a whisper before it died in the air. But there was only silence touching my flesh, so they weren’t in the house; unless making love in the den or living room they had heard my heart when I woke and now they were locked in sculpted love waiting for me to go back to sleep. Or perhaps they were in the yard and if I went outside I would turn a corner of the house and smack into the sight of her splayed white legs under the moon and the white circle of his wedging ass.
    The clock’s luminous dial was too moonlit to work: with taut stealth I moved across the bed, onto Terry’s side, and took the clock from the bedside table: two-twenty. I waited another ten minutes, each pale gray moonlit moment edged with expectancy, until I was certain it was emptiness I heard, not their silence. And if indeed they were listening, I would cast the burden of cunning on them: I rolled over and dropped my feet thumping to the floor, and walked to the bathroom next to my room and turned on the light. I flushed the toilet, then went out through the other door, into the kitchen, the dining room, the living room, and stepped onto the front porch. The night was cool and I shivered, standing in my T-shirt so white if they were watching. His car was parked in front. Their glasses were on the steps. I picked them up: lime and gin-smelling water. Then I went to bed and waited, and I saw them under the willow tree in the backyard, the branches hanging almost to the grass, and I asked myself and yes, I said, I want the horns; plant them, Hank, plant them. I wanted lovely Edith now there with me and twice I picked up the phone and once dialed three numbers, but she