The War of the Roses by Warren Adler Read Free Book Online

the lower end of the bone would slide along with the skin. Then, carefully, she began to detach the fibers from the carcass. When the skin reached the middle part of the drumstick, she severed the bone and detached the skin, repeating the operation on the other drumstick. The tail came off with the whole skin and she snipped it free with the shears.
    Satisfied with her handiwork, she flattened the skin on the cutting board and began to mend what had inadvertently become torn, then she banged it flat with the side of a cleaver.
    'Because I didn't give a damn,' she cried out to the chicken's denuded carcass. She felt a ball of anger growing inside her, swirling about for definition, detesting its* inarticulateness. She searched her mind for reasons.
    'I must have reasons,' she whispered as the anger burst into the reality of the kitchen and she banged the pointy edge of the cleaver into the wooden cutting surface, scarring it irrevocably.
    What she really wanted after she had received the first call from the hospital was for him to die. That was the absolute truth of it. She wanted him to expire, to be eliminated from her life as painlessly as possible, extracted like a rotten tooth.
    Oliver dead? The idea frightened her and she shuddered. Surely the thought was an aberration. To wish him dead implied hatred. Hatred? Such a response seemed inhuman. She swallowed hard and her body shook. But she could not suppress the urgent clarity. She had, indeed, hoped he would die.
    6
    Oliver barely remembered the cab journey over Memorial Bridge, the swing around Lincoln Memorial, past the State department, around Washington Circle. All these landmarks passed in front of him like indistinct photographs. Ann had apparently been watching from a front window and had opened the door before he inserted his key. The mahogany clock in the hallway read two minutes to six, he noted as he dropped his briefcase on the marble floor. Even in his semiconscious drugged state in the hospital, he remembered he had heard the chimes in his mind like ancient echoes.
    'Josh is at basketball practice. Eve is at her ballet class. Barbara is delivering an order of pate. ' There was a note of apology in her tone and her face searched his, betraying anxiety.
    'I'm fine,' he said. 'Perhaps I look a little pale.'
    'A little.'
    He walked back to the sun-room to see his orchids, which, like him, had miraculously survived. He felt the soil around the root, which was still damp.
    'Not to worry. Daddy's home,' he whispered to the flowers.
    He went up to his bedroom, undressed, debated whether or not to use the sauna, then opted for a long hot shower instead. For some reason he felt the need to shock himself, hoping it might chase the depression. He turned off the hot water and turned on the cold. His skin tingled and for a moment he had to catch his breath, but the pain did not return, and he wondered if he missed it, like an old friend.
    Barbara burst into the bathroom as he toweled himself, and kissed him on the lips. He drew her to him and enclosed her against his damp body.
    'It scared the shit out of me,' he whispered into her chestnut hair, stifling a sob. The warmth of her was reassuring.
    'It must have been awful,' she said, insinuating herself out of his embrace. His body was damp and it had wet her blouse, which she unbuttoned now. Watching her, he noted that she studied her face in the bathroom mirror, throwing back an errant strand of hair.
    'I'm fine now,' he said to her image in the mirror. Running the gold-plated taps, she dipped her face into scoops of lukewarm water. He studied the ridgeline of her spine, wanting to trace his fingers over its peaks and loops. Slipping into his velour robe, he moved back into the bedroom and sank into a bergere chaise, lifting his bare feet to caress the curled wood. From there he could not see her, but he could hear her moving about, then came the rush of water and the cascaded flush. She walked out, wrapped in a