Break and Enter by Colin Harrison Read Free Book Online

when she wore heels; they were unabashedly sexy, and Janice had beautiful legs. He and Janice had made love last November in a Club Med swimming pool in a desperate flight to the Caribbean to inject something lost into their lives. In the lapping chlorinated water, she was remiss at first but he convinced her that not only was it anatomically quite possible but that no one could see them. They had laughed about it later, and for the rest of their vacation she kept bringing glassfuls of cloudy pool water up to their hotel room.
    Now Janice was checking her watch but in a casual way, which meant she expected him to be late. People walking into the restaurant were staring at him but he didn’t care—I don’t care what you think, that’s my wife in there, mister, don’t touch her, he thought, don’t look at her, don’t even think about it.
    He yanked off his hat, ran his hand through his hair, unbuttoned his coat, and opened the door.
    “Peter,” she said softly as she turned around, offering her large blue eyes to him, whispering his name with such disarming and conspiratorial love for him that it was as if they had booked a room at the old Bellevue-Stratford Hotel three blocks away for a tryst, something they had never done but which the tone of her voice allowed him to imagine—heavy blankets, champagne, high view of the city, snowy rooftops, the color of the winter dusk across her breasts. Of course, the old Bellevue-Stratford, once one of the finest hotels in the country, rivaling the swanky New York hotels—faux marble and thick red carpeting in the lobby—had been chopped up into offices, stores, restaurants, and a parking garage, and was called something else now.
    They went silently through the cafeteria line, sliding bright green trays along chrome rails, aware of the distance between their shoulders. By habit he leaned close to her, then corrected himself when he saw her stiffen. He ordered an omelet with ham. She looked at him in surprise.
    “Eating meat again,” he said.
    She smiled at him tentatively and paid for herself before the cashier could ask whether their orders were together. He watched her hold her wallet, believing he could name from memory nearly every paper and card inside it.
    “But,
I still put that brewer’s yeast in my cereal.”
    They found a table. The artwork on the wall was a collage of President Bush with a big grin. Instead of teeth, the President flashed a row of miniature white space shuttles. On the left upper incisor—Peter knew the term from forensic dentistry testimony—was a tiny picture of a homeless black man. Thus, the smile wasn’t complete.
    “What’s up?”
    “Oh, just busy. I told you we have a full house. We’re working with the next group of volunteers,” Janice said evenly.
    “New crop?”
    “Half will burn out by the third session. Too invested in their own issues to help others. One woman is so mad at men she can’t be nurturing of others now. She’s on a kick to warn women away from men.” Janice nodded at him. “Pretty unfortunate.”
    “What did you tell her?”
    “I had to bring her into my office and say maybe she had to work out some personal issues before helping other women.”
    “Did you point out the fascist similarities between radical feminists and the neo-fundamentalists?” he asked, trying to sound amusing.
    “Peter, she
means
well—”
    “We all mean well.”
    “Everybody does, Peter,” she said softly before taking a small, precise bite. “You know that.”
    “Yeah.” He needed to hide his bitterness. “Can’t you at least tell me where you’re living?”
    He knew her secret and now she realized that. She stared at him, thinking.
    “No, I can’t.”
    “Why? You found some guy?”
    “No.”
She angrily dug her spoon into her grapefruit.
    He didn’t expect another man yet; not at all, actually. He knew Janice better than that. And neither did he expect himself to be involved withanother woman. He