Maybe the power has been restored on Juniper Street.He hopes so.She shouldn’t be sitting alone in a dark house.He wonders ifHampton, learn-ing the extent ofthe storm, has returned to his family.
He brings in several armloads offirewood, and places them all carefully in the large iron ring near the fireplace.The air is dank in the house.
The smell from the fireplace is pleasant, however, and the three ofthem sit on the floor in front ofit, enjoying its warmth and the comforting light.Kate continues to drink, though Daniel doesn’t know exactly what’s in her glass, and he doesn’t feel able to ask her.But watching her drink makes him want to get drunk—despite the risk—and he makes his way into the kitchen, holding a candle that drips wax onto his knuckles with each step.He comes back with halfa glass ofbourbon and sits down on the hooked rug in front ofthe hearth, where he and Kate have been play-ing Uno with Ruby.Normally, playing with Ruby like this is one ofthe things that make Daniel feel life is worth living, and the same could be said for sitting in front ofa successful fire, getting a little loaded, even go-ing to bed with Kate after she’d been drinking.But tonight, everything seems fraught and dreary.How can he be here, stuck, trapped, put into a position in which every word out ofhis mouth is a lie? How can he be go-ing through the motions in this sad and threadbare life, a life that now is—he hates to think it, but he must—little more than a terrible obstacle between him and simple human happiness?
Later that night, Daniel waits downstairs before going to bed, poking at the logs in the fireplace and hoping that Kate will have fallen asleep before he ar-rives in their bedroom.He extinguishes his candle when he is halfway up the stairs;all he can see in the darkness is the beady red lights ofthe battery-powered smoke detectors.He feels his way along the wall, down the hallway, and as quietly as possible into the bedroom.He takes his shoes offand gets into bed in his clothes—a pair ofcorduroy pants, beneath which he wears long underwear, two shirts, and a sweater, all ofwhich he must wear for warmth, but which he also hopes will quarantine whatever evidence his body wants to give oflast night’s frenzies.He is operating on three hours of sleep, which he doesn’t fully realize until he quietly slides into bed and an overpowering sense ofexhaustion comes over him in slow, relentless waves.
And Kate is not asleep.She rolls next to him and drapes her leg overhis.
“What were you doing down there?”she asks.
”Hitting a log with the fireplace poker.”
“Oh, you man, you.”
“That’s me in a nutshell,”he says.She presses herselfagainst his hip, and he feels panic rising in him.Because it would seem strange and pos-sibly even brutal not to, he puts his arm around her, though the very act makes him feel compromised, and even jealous—ifhe is capable ofcom-mitting these little endearments, then Iris could surely be doing like-wise.At this very moment.
“Do you really think I shouldn’t call the police about those runaways being here last night?”Kate says.
“I don’t know.There’s not much they can do about it right now.”He really doesn’t want to talk, and he also senses that somewhere within this particular line ofinquiry there lies trouble.
“You’re a tiny bit on their side, aren’t you?”Kate says softly, as ifit were possible to lure him into believing she is not furious at the idea.
“Ofcourse not.I hate that that happened.It was obviously terrifying.
It terrifies me to even hear about it.”
“Then what are you saying?That I should stop talking about it?”
“Kate.Ofcourse not.”
“But it is.That’s what you’re saying, that I should stop talking about it.”
“Well, it’s not what I meant to say.”
“But it’s what you said.”
“Kate, I don’t know what to tell you here.You’re doing the subtext?”
“Yes, I’m doing the fucking subtext.”
“Ah, thefuckingsubtext.”Shut up shut up,he tells himself.But exhaustion, the bourbon, and acute sexual claustrophobia are having their way with him.He forces his eyes open.For a second he feels he might fall asleep—right in the middle ofan argument.
“What?”
He tries to scramble back into the conversation, desperately.“If you want to call the police, call them,”he says.“Or I will.I’ll call DerekPabst.”
“Derek Pabst is an idiot.”
“Then I’ll call someone else.I’ll call the attorney general.”
“It’s a big joke to you.”
“No.It’s not.I don’t know what you want.”
“I want you to care about what happened to me.”
He wants to say that nothing really happened to her, but he manages to control himself.She continues with such vehemence, he may as well have said it.
“It’s because they’re black, isn’t it?”she says.“You feel protective toward them.Like they’re the victims, and the people who try to keep them under control are the bad guys.”
“That’s not what I think.”He digs his elbows into the mattress to raise himself, but he doesn’t have the strength.
“You’re going to turn into one ofthose ridiculous white guys who secretly think they’re black,”Kate says.“Where’s this coming from any-how?You want to tell me?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.I don’t think I’m black.”
“But you wish you were.”
“What I wish I was is asleep.”
“It’s like the Simpson case.When did you start believing that fucking O.J.is innocent?”
“I don’t think that.”
“Really? Do you think he’s guilty?”
“I don’t know! How could I know? I don’t have all the facts.And the trial’s still ongoing.”
“The trial’s still ongoing?The man butchered his wife, a poor girl who told her friends,‘Ifanything happens to me, O.J.did it.’Every rea-sonable person inAmerica knows he’s guilty, including his own lawyers, and all you can say is‘the trial’s still ongoing.’”These last words are delivered in that mocking rendition ofthe male voice that women do—the voice ofsomeone who’s just had a cinder block dropped on his head.
Is that what I sound like to you?Daniel wants to say, in his eagerness to feel like the injured party.But even in the throes ofpassion, with all its atten-dant greed and narcissism, and with the self-centeredness and sociopathol-ogy ofa man on the great emotional crusade ofhis life, Daniel cannot quite manage the moral contortion that would place himself squarely on his own side.His awareness that he is betraying Kate is too corrosively present.He is not only in love with someone else but he is keeping it a secret, and though there are surely worse things in the world that a man can do, there is nothing worse within a marriage, which is, he must finally admit, basi-cally what he and Kate have.He would like to tell her that their time to-gether is finished.They may have made a pledge to each other to be Swiss bankers ofthe heart, but banks fail.Still, he knows he cannot, must not tell her—telling the truth right now would likely put Iris in jeopardy.
“You know when you started thinking that O.J.is innocent?”Kate issaying.
“I never said he’s…”
“Right around the time you started talking about Iris Davenport.”
“Oh, come on, this is insane.And:you’re drunk.”He immediately regrets the aggression ofthis, but Kate seems not to have noticed.