thought of Susan yelling. And he thought he should not leave. But darkness rolled through him. You incompetent mental case .
When the man on the phone told him how much it would cost to take a taxi all the way from Shirley Falls to the Portland airport, Bob said he didn’t care. “As soon as you can,” Bob said. “The back door. I’ll be standing right there.”
Book Two
1
The colors of Central Park were quietly fall-like: the grass a faded green and the red oaks bronzed, the lindens changing to gentle yellow, the sugar maples losing their orangey leaves, one floating here, another falling there, but the sky was very blue and the air warm enough that the windows of the Boathouse were still open at this late afternoon hour, the striped awnings extending over the water. Pam Carlson, seated at the bar, gazed out at the few boats being rowed, everything slow-motion-seeming, even the bartenders, who worked with unhurried steadiness, washing glasses, shaking martinis, sliding their wet hands over their black aprons.
And then—like that—the place filled up. Through the door they came, businessmen shedding their jackets, women flipping back their hair, tourists moving forward with slightly stunned looks, the men holding backpacks that carried a bottle of water in a netted pocket on the side, as though they had hiked a mountain all day, their wives holding a map, a camera, the conferring of their confusion.
“No, my husband’s sitting there,” Pam said when a German couple started to move the tall chair beside her. She put her handbag on the chair. “Sorry,” she added. Years of living in New York had taught her many things: how to parallel park, for example, or intimidate a taxi driver who claimed to be off-duty, how to return merchandise that was supposedly nonreturnable, or to say without apology “This is the line” when someone tried to cut ahead at the post office. In fact, living in New York, Pam thought, poking through her bag for her cell phone to check the time, was a perfect example of what great generals had understood throughout history: that the person who cared the most won. “A Jack Daniel’s on the rocks with lemon,” she told the bartender, tapping the counter next to her untouched glass of wine. “For my husband. Thanks.”
Bob was always late.
Her real husband would not be home for hours, and the boys were at soccer practice. None of them cared that she was meeting Bob. “Uncle Bob,” her kids called him.
Pam had come straight from the hospital where she worked twice a week as an intake assessor, and she’d have liked to go and wash her hands now but if she got up the Germans would take her seat. Her friend Janice Bernstein—who had dropped out of medical school years ago—said Pam should wash her hands the minute she left work; hospitals were just petri dishes of bacteria, and Pam agreed completely. In spite of her frequent use of hand-sanitizing lotion (which dried the skin), the thought of this vast array of waiting germs made Pam very anxious. Janice said that Pam was very anxious about too many things, she really should try to control it, not just to be more comfortable but because her anxiety caused her to appear socially eager, and that was not cool. Pam replied that she was too old to worry about being cool, but in fact she did worry about it, and that’s one reason it was always nice to see Bobby, who was so uncool as to inhabit—in Pam’s mind—his own private condominium of coolness.
A pig’s head. Jesus.
Pam shifted on her chair, sipped her wine. “Could you make that a double?” Pam asked, after studying the glass of whiskey set down. Bob had sounded dismal on the telephone. The bartender took back the whiskey, returned to set it down again. “Start a tab, yes,” said Pam.
Years ago—when she was married to Bob—Pam had worked as a research assistant to a parasitologist whose specialty was tropical diseases. Pam had spent her days in a lab looking through
When the man on the phone told him how much it would cost to take a taxi all the way from Shirley Falls to the Portland airport, Bob said he didn’t care. “As soon as you can,” Bob said. “The back door. I’ll be standing right there.”
Book Two
1
The colors of Central Park were quietly fall-like: the grass a faded green and the red oaks bronzed, the lindens changing to gentle yellow, the sugar maples losing their orangey leaves, one floating here, another falling there, but the sky was very blue and the air warm enough that the windows of the Boathouse were still open at this late afternoon hour, the striped awnings extending over the water. Pam Carlson, seated at the bar, gazed out at the few boats being rowed, everything slow-motion-seeming, even the bartenders, who worked with unhurried steadiness, washing glasses, shaking martinis, sliding their wet hands over their black aprons.
And then—like that—the place filled up. Through the door they came, businessmen shedding their jackets, women flipping back their hair, tourists moving forward with slightly stunned looks, the men holding backpacks that carried a bottle of water in a netted pocket on the side, as though they had hiked a mountain all day, their wives holding a map, a camera, the conferring of their confusion.
“No, my husband’s sitting there,” Pam said when a German couple started to move the tall chair beside her. She put her handbag on the chair. “Sorry,” she added. Years of living in New York had taught her many things: how to parallel park, for example, or intimidate a taxi driver who claimed to be off-duty, how to return merchandise that was supposedly nonreturnable, or to say without apology “This is the line” when someone tried to cut ahead at the post office. In fact, living in New York, Pam thought, poking through her bag for her cell phone to check the time, was a perfect example of what great generals had understood throughout history: that the person who cared the most won. “A Jack Daniel’s on the rocks with lemon,” she told the bartender, tapping the counter next to her untouched glass of wine. “For my husband. Thanks.”
Bob was always late.
Her real husband would not be home for hours, and the boys were at soccer practice. None of them cared that she was meeting Bob. “Uncle Bob,” her kids called him.
Pam had come straight from the hospital where she worked twice a week as an intake assessor, and she’d have liked to go and wash her hands now but if she got up the Germans would take her seat. Her friend Janice Bernstein—who had dropped out of medical school years ago—said Pam should wash her hands the minute she left work; hospitals were just petri dishes of bacteria, and Pam agreed completely. In spite of her frequent use of hand-sanitizing lotion (which dried the skin), the thought of this vast array of waiting germs made Pam very anxious. Janice said that Pam was very anxious about too many things, she really should try to control it, not just to be more comfortable but because her anxiety caused her to appear socially eager, and that was not cool. Pam replied that she was too old to worry about being cool, but in fact she did worry about it, and that’s one reason it was always nice to see Bobby, who was so uncool as to inhabit—in Pam’s mind—his own private condominium of coolness.
A pig’s head. Jesus.
Pam shifted on her chair, sipped her wine. “Could you make that a double?” Pam asked, after studying the glass of whiskey set down. Bob had sounded dismal on the telephone. The bartender took back the whiskey, returned to set it down again. “Start a tab, yes,” said Pam.
Years ago—when she was married to Bob—Pam had worked as a research assistant to a parasitologist whose specialty was tropical diseases. Pam had spent her days in a lab looking through
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