Robert B. Parker by Wilderness Read Free Book Online Page A

melon slices arranged on a plate, and toasted oatmeal bread, and strawberry jam,and coffee. Almost never did either of them eat the melon, but he liked the look of it on the table.
    She’d spent more than an hour making up and getting her hair organized. She wore a white muslin shirt with loose sleeves and a slotted neck, and high-waisted apricot-colored pants with a draw waist and tapered legs over high heels. She smelled of perfume.
    “Christ,” he said, “aren’t you beautiful.”
    She said, “Thank you.”
    “You come to any conclusion about what we were saying last night?”
    She looked at him over a triangle of toast. “Have you?”
    “No.”
    “Why don’t you talk with Chris?”
    “How can he help?”
    “He’s decisive,” she said, “and he seems to have some understanding of some male hang-up you may have, which I don’t seem to.”
    “Like honor?”
    She gestured with her toast and shrugged.
    “Talk to him.”
    “You want it done, don’t you? You want it done and you figure Chris will talk me into it.”
    “Whatever he did, Chris would do it and have it done,” she said.
    “Like that drunk last night, a couple of quiet words, the guy doesn’t respond and
vap
in the kidneys and out the door. You like that?”
    “I don’t like uncertainty. I don’t like having someone walking around who might, anytime, decide to degrade me or kill me. And I have no say in the matter.”
    “I won’t let him touch you again.”
    “So how will you stop it. Follow me everywhere with a gun? Hire bodyguards? There’s only one way to control this situation.”
    “So why don’t you do it? You’re the big fucking feminist. You want Karl shot why don’t you shoot him?”
    “While you’re doing what? Lifting weights and looking at yourself in the mirror? Home baking a cake? I’ve never fired a gun in my life. I’m tough but I’m not physically strong. You’re big and strong. Aren’t you?”
    He felt trapped and confused. He swayed his head back and forth, staring at the tabletop. “Why don’t you leave me the fuck alone,” he said. His voice was thick and shaky.
    “Why do you persist in seeing this as something I’m doing to you,” she said. “Why do you want to see yourself attacked.”
    “Don’t give me that encounter-group bullshit. Use your assertiveness jargon someplace else. I don’t want to see myself attacked. You are pushing and pushing. You want something done you don’t let up. You keep on and keep on. I’m not talking about it anymore. Now that’s it. You insensitive son of a bitch.”
    The lines at the corners of her eyes deepened and her perfectly made-up face darkened slightly. She looked at the kitchen clock.
    “Jesus Christ,” she said, “I’m late. Aaron, you’ve got to deal with this. We’ve got to be able to talk about it. I was involved in this problem myself. Remember?”
    He brought his open hand down hard on the table-top. Coffee spilled. “I said I wouldn’t talk about it. You want to keep grinding it into me? You want to keep reminding me what some guy did to my wifeand I haven’t lifted a finger?” He raised his hand again, clenched it into a fist, and brought it back down on the table, twisting his shoulder and neck as if he were trying to hammer a hole through the table-top.
    “I gotta go,” Janet said. “I’m late. I gotta go. But I won’t give up. We’ve got to talk about this.”
    Newman hit the table again. His wife picked up her briefcase and her book bag, tan with a green design, and her purse and went out the kitchen door to her car.
    Newman sat at the kitchen table and stared at the
Today
show. He was breathing hard as if he’d run a distance. His sight blurred with tears. With his clenched fist he hit the table softly. Barely moving his fist, over and over.
    He was still sitting at the table at nine-thirty when Chris Hood walked across the backyard from his small white house to Newman’s big one. He came in the kitchen door without