I’m a monster? What if my wife might know where my favorite shoes are? Even if it’s a trivial thing to know.”
“LuAnne called and said she’d kept down both dinner last night and lunch. She can’t wait to get back here. If you ask me, which nobody ever does, that soccer player wasn’t worthy of her and this is all for the best.”
“I wonder how other couples talk to each other,” he said. “I really do wonder that. But there’s no way to find out. You can’t believe what you see in the movies or on TV or in books, least of all the so-called reality shows. Maybe Roz Chast has some idea. That’s about the only person I can think of.”
“I saw a shoe on the back stairs. I have no idea where the other one is. Women don’t misplace their shoes.”
“Back stairs. Just a minute.”
She sat on the bed—king-size, at his insistence; separate reading lights, two night tables with identical spherical digital clocks whose alarms chirped a birdcall. She had to set hers at the highest volume; years ago, when she first came to Maine, she’d trained herself to sleep through the sounds of birds and crickets. Now the sputtering, muffler-missing motorcycles that constantly passed by posed a different sort of challenge: how to resist stringing razor wire across the road.
“Thank you. They were on the back stairs. One shoe was on top of the other.”
“Women don’t stack their shoes,” she said. “You have a way of turning discussions to the differences between men and women. I don’t really think about that all the time, but I find I always have to talk about it. Going back to your earlier point, Hughes would do anything possible to keep you, and if you said you were sick of so much flying . . .”
“Hughes and the Genius aren’t on the case the way I am, I agree. Why don’t you call Hughes and say just that? I wouldn’t stop you. I would, however, be angry if it backfired, and he sent me to California more often.”
“You can have dinner at Perbacco,” she said. “That almost makes it worth it.”
He looked at his phone. “Text from LuAnne,” he said. “She’s going to bed.”
“It’s not even four o’clock.”
“What would you have me do? Text her and tell her to walk around the block and slap her cheeks a few times?”
“Yeah. And communicate all of that with the smiley symbol and lots of exclamation points,” she said. “I never wanted a king-size bed. The maid hates putting on the sheets. She spends half of her four hours here being exasperated with the bed. Even when she gets the contour sheet on, she keeps staring at it like it’s a field of smoldering embers.
“Remember the time you forgot your driver’s license and you missed the flight?” she said. “For about a year I was convinced you’d done it on purpose, to come home when I least expected it, to see what I was doing.”
“Excuse me? Wouldn’t that have required excessive effort, and might that not indicate some paranoia on your part?”
“Remember what I was doing?”
“I was really upset. I thought I’d lost both my AmEx and my driver’s license, and I knew I could grab my passport, but I guess, well, I guess I was feeling paranoid, like someone might have slipped the two most important cards out of—”
“Are you stalling for time because you don’t remember what I was doing?”
“Jesus! I remember what you were doing. You’d put some grease all over your hair and were sitting stark naked on the front porch wearing nothing but a shower cap, except that you’d dragged out some huge scarf to cover yourself with if anybody walked by, though I don’t know how you could be so sure you’d see them, and you were having a cigarette, the last year you smoked cigarettes.”
“I was looking at Vogue and drinking a virgin margarita.”
“Why do you bring this up?”
“Because what I do is so innocuous. I spend my time thinking about a party at Water Country. I can’t even plan our son’s birthday
“LuAnne called and said she’d kept down both dinner last night and lunch. She can’t wait to get back here. If you ask me, which nobody ever does, that soccer player wasn’t worthy of her and this is all for the best.”
“I wonder how other couples talk to each other,” he said. “I really do wonder that. But there’s no way to find out. You can’t believe what you see in the movies or on TV or in books, least of all the so-called reality shows. Maybe Roz Chast has some idea. That’s about the only person I can think of.”
“I saw a shoe on the back stairs. I have no idea where the other one is. Women don’t misplace their shoes.”
“Back stairs. Just a minute.”
She sat on the bed—king-size, at his insistence; separate reading lights, two night tables with identical spherical digital clocks whose alarms chirped a birdcall. She had to set hers at the highest volume; years ago, when she first came to Maine, she’d trained herself to sleep through the sounds of birds and crickets. Now the sputtering, muffler-missing motorcycles that constantly passed by posed a different sort of challenge: how to resist stringing razor wire across the road.
“Thank you. They were on the back stairs. One shoe was on top of the other.”
“Women don’t stack their shoes,” she said. “You have a way of turning discussions to the differences between men and women. I don’t really think about that all the time, but I find I always have to talk about it. Going back to your earlier point, Hughes would do anything possible to keep you, and if you said you were sick of so much flying . . .”
“Hughes and the Genius aren’t on the case the way I am, I agree. Why don’t you call Hughes and say just that? I wouldn’t stop you. I would, however, be angry if it backfired, and he sent me to California more often.”
“You can have dinner at Perbacco,” she said. “That almost makes it worth it.”
He looked at his phone. “Text from LuAnne,” he said. “She’s going to bed.”
“It’s not even four o’clock.”
“What would you have me do? Text her and tell her to walk around the block and slap her cheeks a few times?”
“Yeah. And communicate all of that with the smiley symbol and lots of exclamation points,” she said. “I never wanted a king-size bed. The maid hates putting on the sheets. She spends half of her four hours here being exasperated with the bed. Even when she gets the contour sheet on, she keeps staring at it like it’s a field of smoldering embers.
“Remember the time you forgot your driver’s license and you missed the flight?” she said. “For about a year I was convinced you’d done it on purpose, to come home when I least expected it, to see what I was doing.”
“Excuse me? Wouldn’t that have required excessive effort, and might that not indicate some paranoia on your part?”
“Remember what I was doing?”
“I was really upset. I thought I’d lost both my AmEx and my driver’s license, and I knew I could grab my passport, but I guess, well, I guess I was feeling paranoid, like someone might have slipped the two most important cards out of—”
“Are you stalling for time because you don’t remember what I was doing?”
“Jesus! I remember what you were doing. You’d put some grease all over your hair and were sitting stark naked on the front porch wearing nothing but a shower cap, except that you’d dragged out some huge scarf to cover yourself with if anybody walked by, though I don’t know how you could be so sure you’d see them, and you were having a cigarette, the last year you smoked cigarettes.”
“I was looking at Vogue and drinking a virgin margarita.”
“Why do you bring this up?”
“Because what I do is so innocuous. I spend my time thinking about a party at Water Country. I can’t even plan our son’s birthday
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