Werewolves in Their Youth by Michael Chabon Page A

Daniel could see that it was Hogue who wanted to be left alone here, in this bedroom, contemplating all his untold mistakes and whatever it was that was eating at him. He wanted them out of there. Christy sidled up to Daniel and pressed herself against him, hip to his thigh, cheek against his shoulder. He put his arm around her, and pressed his fingers against the slight bulge of skin under the strap of her bra.
    “You know how important the bedroom is,” Christy said, in a strangled voice.
    Hogue took a thoughtful drag on his cigarette, eyeing them. Then, as before, the fire seemed to go out of him, and he nodded.
    “I’ll meet you downstairs,” he said. “You kids take all the time you want.”
    He went out of the room, but before he did so, he stopped by the pile of laundry, picked up a rather large pair of lobelia blue panties with a lace waistband, and stuffed them into his pocket with the rest of his loot. They heard his tread on the stairs, and then, a moment later, the sound of a cabinet door squealing open on its hinges.
    “He’s going for the silver,” Daniel said.
    “Daniel, what are we going to do?”
    Daniel shrugged. He sat down on the unmade bed, beside the nightstand that Hogue had rifled for matches.
    “Maybe I should call my parents,” Christy said. “They know Bob. Maybe they know what to do when he gets this way.”
    “I think it’s a little too late for us to snub him,” said Daniel.
    Christy looked at him, angry and puzzled by the persistence of his nastiness toward her.
    “That’s not fair,” she said. “God! Just because my parents—”
    “Check this out.” Daniel had been rummaging around in the nightstand drawer, where he had found, in addition to a bag of Ricola cough drops, a silver police whistle, and a small plastic vial of a popular genital lubricant, a greeting card, in a pink envelope that was laconically addressed “Monkey.” He pulled out the card, on the cover of which Greta Garbo and John Gilbert were locked in a passionate black-and-white embrace. The greeting was handwritten: “I have tripped and fallen in love with you. Herman.” After a moment Daniel looked up, feeling a little confused, and handed it to Christy. She took it with a disapproving frown.
    “Herman,” she read. “Herman Silk?”
    “I guess it’s a little extra service he provides.”
    “He must be selling his own house.” She sat down on the bed beside him. “Do they do that?”
    “Why not?” Daniel said. “Plenty of people sell their own houses.”
    “True.”
    He showed her the vial of lubricant.
    “Maybe he should have said, ‘I have slipped and fallen.’ ”
    “Daniel, put that back. I mean it.” She gestured downstairs. “Just because he’s doing it doesn’t mean you should.” She snatched the little plastic bottle out of his hand, tossed it and the greeting card into the drawer, and then slammed the drawer shut. “Come on. Let’s just get out of here.”
    They glared at each other, and then Daniel stood up. He felt a strong desire for his wife. He wanted to push her down onto the bed and pound her until his bones hurt and the smell of smoke from her hair filled the bedroom. But he would never do anything like that. And neither would she. Not in someone else’s house, in someone else’s bed. They were, both of them, hypochondriacs and low rollers, habitual occupants of the right lane on freeways, inveterate savers of receipts, subscribers to Consumer Reports, filterers of tap water, wearers of helmets and goggles and kneepads. And yet their prudence—prudence itself, it now seemed to Daniel, watching Christy’s freckled breast fall and rise and fall—was an illusion, a thin padded blanket they drew around themselves to cushion the impact from the string of bad decisions each of them had made. For all their apparent caution, they had nonetheless married each other, willingly and without material compulsion, in the presence of the three hundred people. Christy had