Mr. Peanut by Adam Ross Read Free Book Online Page B

new thing. “Well, good night then,” David said. He sat there and waited.
    “Good night,” she said, then turned out the light and rolled over.
    David lay watching her, wondering if her eyes were open or closed, hoping she might roll over and look at him, and when she didn’t, he lay down himself, staring at the ceiling. I must be patient, David thought. I must be faithful. That would be the right thing to do. Be faithfully patient.
    He woke the next morning to an empty bed.
    Usually he was up first, and for a moment he suffered the same sense ofdisorientation and abandonment he’d had as a child when he slept over at a friend’s house, forgetting where he was for a terrifying second. He smelled coffee and went to the kitchen to find Alice sitting at the table. She had her laptop open and a legal pad full of notes and presently was peeling the shell off a hard-boiled egg. As soon as he poured himself coffee and came over to her chair, she stopped what she was doing, closed the computer, and covered the pad—which David couldn’t believe.
    He indicated everything with a sweep of his mug, and though he’d promised himself to be patient and faithful, he couldn’t help but ask, “Is this part of changing your life?”
    Alice waited, and he did too.
    “Are you mocking me?” she said.
    He was and he wasn’t, and certainly couldn’t admit the former. “Of course not,” David said.
    Silence.
    “But I think I deserve to know something about all of this.”
    “You do,” Alice said, “but not right now.”
    “Oh,” he said. “Any idea when?”
    “No,” she said.
    “How about any idea of when you might have an idea?”
    “Can’t help you,” she said.
    They stared at each other, deadlocked.
    He was suddenly determined not to back down. He would show her by force of will that he could wait her out in this emotional standoff, that he would draw the line here, in their own kitchen, in his T-shirt and boxers. If this is the game she wants to play, David thought, let’s play! He stood stock-still until the silence between them became something absurd and useless, a pointless exertion of stamina, like a kissing marathon. He could feel his petrified facial expression; his upper lip adhered to his dry front teeth. He needed desperately to blink—his eyes were watering—but Alice hadn’t. He had to swallow so badly he thought he might choke.
    And he balked. He wasn’t able to match her mysterious inner resolve. He slumped at the shoulders. A splash of coffee landed between his feet.
    “Fine,” David said, “When you’re ready to talk just let me know.”
    He showered and dressed, then left the apartment without saying good-bye.
    At work he decided that all of this was simply a phase in his wife’s recovery, some sort of post-traumatic effect he had to endure. For a time, he must simply expect nothing from her. This mental approach was a tremendous relief, and he had a terrifically productive day. He felt confident,focused, and because he deserved it, he asked Georgine Darcy, the gorgeous programmer they’d just hired, to lunch.
    “Took you long enough to ask,” she said.
    Georgine, David thought. Could she be any more different from his wife? She was lithe and athletic, hard-nosed and independent, a Brooklyn girl born and bred, leggy and blonde, exponentially less curvaceous than Alice but curvaceous nonetheless, a former professional dancer until she blew out her ACL at age eighteen. Two months ago, she’d sent David and his partner, Frank Cady, the first game she’d designed—a marvelous, all-out-fun piece of work. It was based on the great board game Labyrinth, the simple wooden box with a maze inset, its attitude and pitch controlled by a pair of knobs that you manipulated to move a small black marble through the labyrinth while avoiding the holes. Georgine’s game took the marble’s point of view. Your avatar, a tiny black humanoid figure, was inside the marble itself, the mazes growing in