Homeplace by Anne Rivers Siddons

think. Nachos and beer. And maybe after we’re done talking I’ll take you to Bobby Van’s for pizza.”
    He got up and walked toward the bathroom, peeling off the velour sweat suit.
    “I can think of one resolution that sounds good,” she called after him, her voice trembling a little with the effrontery of what she was about to ask. Her heart started its slow, sick thudding again.
    “And that is?” he said, disappearing into the bathroom. She heard the splashing into the lavatory bowl.
    “I … thought I might sort of keep you company this summer. Maybe put most of my stuff in storage and just bring a few things, and go in once or twice a week to get my mail and look at apartments. I could do some research for you; I know you hate that.” She could hear her voice going on and on and hated it, but could not seem to stop it. If she stopped, she would have to hear what he would reply.
    “I’ll do de cookin’, honey, I’ll pay de rent,” she added, and fell silent with the awfulness of it. In thesilence, the thought formed and hung, perfect and terrible: I don’t have anywhere else to go.
    Water splashed into the basin, and then it stopped, and she heard the shower go on. Perhaps he had not heard her. Relief swept her; please God, don’t let him have heard me, she prayed.
    “Doesn’t sound like a bad idea,” he called back over the shower’s luxurious thunder, and her heart leaped up again, from the cold floor of her stomach to her throat. Lightness flooded her once more. Not to be alone … just not to be alone right now … For the first time in more than twenty years she felt giddy with the need to be with someone, giddy with the relief of that tidal need met.
    She sprang up out of bed, stumbling a little on pin-prickling feet, and stepped into her slacks and slid her feet into her moccasins. She walked to the mirror over his bureau and looked at her face, which looked pale and luminous; her fire was back. She grinned at herself. Picking up the ivory-backed brush that he had gotten in Kenya last summer, she attacked her matted hair until it stood out around her head like a nimbus, and swept the rough bristles lightly over her cheeks, and watched the sepia freckles fade under the quick wash of color. She felt suddenly silly and capricious and very young, and did a small, quick dance step on the little square of Navaho rug he had laid down in front of the bureau.
    The room was really very hot. Mike walked around to his side of the bed and leaned down to turn off the electric heater. Her foot stuck something just beneath the edge of the bed and sent it spinning across the glassy floor, where it came to rest against a leather rhinoceros stool from Abercrombie and Fitch. It was a tape recorder, the old Panasonic he had had ever since she had known him. It gave a click and sighing whirr, and her own voice came bleating out into the room at full volume.
    “You wanted history, you got history.”
    “I asked for history and I got tragedy,” Derek squalled from the injured recorder, and Mike got up and went over to it and pressed the stop button. She sat back down on the side of the bed. She stared stupidly at the recorder.
    She became aware presently that he was standing in the door of the bathroom, a towel around his waist, looking dispassionately at her. One eyebrow was cocked up.
    She looked at him silently.
    “I guess I can assume that the famous block is about to break and you’ll be starting a new book soon, so you won’t be wanting company after all,” she said finally. Her ears and head rang mightily. The hateful buzzing started in her wrists.
    He reddened slightly and grimaced.
    “Christ, I hope you don’t think I’d use that,” he said. “I just thought you ought to have it on tape, use it for a therapeutic tool, like Annie does.”
    She kept on looking at him steadily.
    “Matter of fact, the dam does feel like it’s breaking, a little,” he went on. “You know how I am when I’m working,