Nine Volt Heart by Annie Pearson Page B

of
you.”
    “Because you were glad to see her go, you believe that she’s
worthless to others?”
    “She interviewed three replacements before she chose you,
Ephraim. They were all richer and more famous than either of us. Whatever else
you think, you have to acknowledge that Dominique is an accomplished liar. You
saw for yourself how ugly she could be in the studio before you got involved
with her.”
    “She’s beautiful. I like her voice.”
    “You are joking.”
    “Different people have different tastes. Perhaps my tastes
are more plebian than yours.”
    “But the lies, Ephraim, the lies.”
    “It’s a way she covers for weakness. I like to think she
feels safer with me, less threatened. She has less need to lie to me.”
    “I never threatened her.”
    “There are many ways to make people feel unsafe, Jason.”
    “I promise to wish you luck when I don’t feel so threatened
myself.”
    “You know, Stanley Donan and Gene Kelly worked together for
years after Kelly took Donan’s wife. Tell me, if you’re so unhappy with her
now, what did you once see in her?”
    “She came after me like I was God’s own child. It wasn’t
until later that I realized I was God’s own foot stool.”
    “Dominique is young—what was she when you first found her,
Jason? Twenty-two?”
    “She found me, Ephraim. I didn’t go looking for her.”
    “No one ever taught her how to behave. She was a spoiled
rich girl at the start, and not much better when you left. But she’s learning.
I like to think that she needs an older, steadying influence. I rather enjoy
the job.”
    The two women came up the hallway on a parallel path,
unaware of each other. One tall, in a long red leather coat and high-heeled
boots, attracting everyone’s attention, the other as anonymous as lilies in the
field, her pale face luminous in the hall’s dim light.
    “Keep her away from me, Ephraim. And watch your phone bills.
Check your back every now and again, to be sure she hasn’t knifed you.”
    I turned away, toward the light.

18 ~ “The Night’s Too Long”
    JASON
    S USI TOUCHED MY ARM and said
my name as she came up. Lord help me, when I turned around I wanted to just put
my arms around her and run from the building, to have her to myself, to finish
what we had started in the afternoon, to flee from the world. She led me as if
I were half-blind to join the playboy vice-principal from our earlier meeting
where he stood with an older couple, a stooped giant of a gentleman and a tiny
grand dame with immense dignity.
    God alone knows how I made it through that part of the
evening, shaking hands with people I had never met and would never see again.
Feeling that I needed to protect Susi from something, but not seeing what.
Wanting to poke Randolph in the nose, just for the pleasure of it. Smiling the
whole while, charming the grandmother who seemed to be my assigned seat
partner. Randolph worked out the arrangements, so Susi sat as far from me as
possible. While I conquered the adrenalin rush from not being close enough to
protect her, the grandmother chatted about Schubert and dying young being such
a tragedy.
    Then, just as the lights dimmed and we applauded the concert
master, everyone stirred and Susi took the seat beside me because, the
grandmother said, Susi couldn’t sit by someone wearing too much perfume.
    I had almost calmed down by the time the orchestra made it
through the Schubert piece, knowing I was sublimating the residue of feelings
from speaking with Ephraim, and projecting all my flight-of-fear emotions onto
Susi, who was about as safe as a person could be, with the grandfather chatting
in her ear as soon as the lights came up. The sole threat to her well-being was
the overchilled air from the HVAC system. I saw the tiny frisson of a shiver
shimmying up her spine and, without even considering another alternative, I
draped my jacket around her shoulders as Randolph and his kin huddled beside
her during the break, longing for her