Too Easy by Bruce Deitrick Price Read Free Book Online

she loses her sexual tension. Another kind pervades her. Intellectual tension, she thinks it might be called. A puzzle takes over her mind. Why would Robert change?
    And she shamelessly channels this tension, this confusion and anger, into a small fake orgasm. Not so much to deceiveRobert, or flatter him. But to hide her thoughts. To give herself freedom to wrestle with the puzzle.
    Robert finishes and slowly eases his large body off her much smaller one, curling up close to her in the dark. The way he normally does, one knee up on her thighs, one arm across her body. Whispering into her ear. “Good night, sweet Anne.”
    â€œThat was nice, Robert. . . . ’Night.”
    She lies there, eyes wide open. How does a man become more passionate, suddenly? How? She feels so stupid, so ignorant. But she comes back again and again to where she started. Something has changed. She doesn’t trust this change. Indeed, if she looks it full in the face, she’s terrified.
    Robert’s already half asleep. She knows his breathing so well. He’s sliding . . . slowly off. Stirring next to her. Tossing a little, the way he does. He’ll finally roll away, once asleep, settle on his back, maybe keep one leg against her.
    Suppose, she thinks, he is bored with me. Losing interest. . . . Oh, it’s all my fault, I’m sure. But he feels guilty, I suppose. So he tries to hide it, tries not to hurt me. Over-compensating, the shrinks would say. I don’t know. Everything between us is so comfortable, so unassuming. He could pull away and that would become part of our pattern. It’d be normal for us. He wouldn’t have to feel guilty. Sincerity, that was always Robert’s long suit. It’s not like him to pretend things.
    It’s almost, she thinks, as if he doesn’t know. Right, that’s it. He’s changed, in bed anyway, and he’s not even aware of it.
    Anne feels her body go rigid. This is the most frightening road to go down. For what could cause such a change? What? Or who?
    She doesn’t want to think about this. She wants to go to sleep. So she can juggle numbers all day. But she can’t see any way around her deduction. Oh, it’s too monstrous to think about. Monstrous and inconceivable. And yet what ishappening everywhere you look? And who’s always the last to know?
    She feels the tension building in her body. She presses on her stomach. A knot has formed in the solar plexus. She kneads it with her fingers.
    Oh, I’m overreacting. What’s wrong with me? Wait until next time, see if it happens again. See if what happens? I’ve got a hot husband, who can’t get enough of me? Ha! Can’t accept a gift, can I? The glass always half empty. I hate that about myself. But what is going on? Seriously, even a klutz like me learns a few things. . . .
    Dear God, all this because Robert really went at it, as they say. Maybe he stopped on the way home at a porno store, looked at some dirty pictures, got himself worked up. Well now. Maybe he’s got some hidden around here.
    Anne smiles in the dark. This is a nice theory. It has the virtue of having only two humans in it, plus porno. Robert and herself. Yes, she always saw it that way. Until they were gray and doddering and then in the ground, side by side. Their children coming now and then to put flowers on the graves.
    She concentrates on this long life together, turns it around and around in her mind, finally drifts off in a restless sleep.

PART
II

Chapter
11
    â€¢  Robert arrives twenty minutes after Kathy, at five. A little hotel on East 32nd Street. Everything worked out. False names. No records. Never seen together. Kathy insists, says it’s only smart. She calls in the reservation at lunch, says her husband is flying in later from Denver.
    Robert comes up the elevator, marveling at the things he’s doing, things he never imagined. Plotting and