Wilderness by Robert B. Parker Page A

see if we can work out some kind of plan,” he said.
    “Good night, Chris.”
    Hood left. Janet cleaned up the kitchen and turned off the lights and went upstairs. In the bathroom she put up her hair and washed off her makeup and put on her night cream.
    When she came into the bedroom he was still awake, lying in bed leaning against a propped pillow, watching the Red Sox game on television with the sound off and listening to the play-by-play on the radio. He didn’t say anything as she got into bed and turned off the light on her side.
    “Night,” she said.
    “Night.”
    “Are you mad at me?” she said.
    “No.”
    “Then why do you sound it?”
    “I’m watching the game.”
    “Oh.”
    She was quiet.
    “I didn’t do well this afternoon,” he said.
    “Chris says you just need experience.”
    “You ever wonder how that would make me feel?”
    “Being scared, you mean?”
    “Yeah, being scared. You ever think, maybe, ‘Gee the poor guy must be really down and feeling bad, how can I make him feel better?’ You ever have any thoughts like that?”
    “I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.”
    “Jesus Christ. It’s not ‘supposed to.’ Don’t you have any instincts, any fucking heart? Can’t you see I’m hurting? Don’t you have any impulse to help me. To put your arms around me and say ‘I love you. I don’t care what you do, I love you’?”
    “Aaron,” she said. And stopped. And took a deep breath. It shook in a slight vibrato as it went in. “Aaron, grow up.”
    “What’s that mean? Only little kids need love and compassion?”
    “I love you. But if you feel bad about yourself and how you acted I can’t fix that. You have to fix that.”
    “While I’m fixing it, it might help to know you’re caring about me.”
    “Aaron, I’ve lived with you for twenty-three years. Doesn’t that suggest I care about you?”
    “Sure, you care about me, but not like I care about you. You don’t look forward to coming home and seeing me. You don’t get a thrill when I walk through the door. You don’t get a thrill from touching me.”
    “And don’t you resent it,” Janet said. “Don’t you take every opportunity to make me feel guilty that I don’t feel like you do. Is there only one way to love? Does everyone have to love the way you do or be not loving?”
    “How can you love someone and not feel as I do?” he said.
    “One can. One does. The trouble with you is that you’re over-invested. You dwell on me too much. Every encounter. Every event. Every exchange of words or ideas is charged as if it were a moment of high passion.”
    “True. I care only about you. I care only for your approval or disapproval. I have achieved an autonomy in my life that only you violate. Only you and the girls, and the girls are growing and going away. Now it’s all turned on you. And you’re turning out. You’re doing committee work and loving it in there in your asshole department with all the asshole academics pretending to care about Chaucer and Andrew Marvell when all they really want is tenure and promotion.”
    “Aaron …”
    “I know it’s hard. I know you feel the pressure. I try and change. I try and love you less.” His voice thickened. “But think what I lose if I love you less. The central meaning of my life. At forty-six I have to change it?”
    “Goddamn,” she said.
    He turned his face away from her.
    “We have long periods where it’s fine,” she said. “What happened?”
    He shrugged. His back turned.
    “It’s Karl,” she said. “This thing with Karl is eating us both.”
    He was silent.
    “What is it, about Karl?”
    “What do you mean, what is it? The sonova bitch has two goons violate my home and leave my wife tied up nude for me to find. What the hell do you think it is?”
    “It’s not anger,” she said. “You’re scared.”
    “Of course I’m scared. We’re trying to kill a professional thug with bodyguards. Only a fool wouldn’t be