As he drives them back to what was once his house, Lorraine, in the backseat, exclaims,“I just don’t get it.You left your keysinyour car? I just don’t understand why you’d do that.”
“He always leaves them in the ignition,”Kate says.They are already a mile out ofthe village, driving through the wet, luminous night.
“It doesn’t make sense,”Lorraine says.
It strikes Daniel that perhaps she means to suggest some foreknowledge on his part, or even a degree ofcollusion with the robbers.And though confronting Lorraine is as far from Daniel’s temperament as reaching over the backseat and giving her a smack across the face, he can-not resist asking her,“What are you suggesting, Lorraine?”
“Everyone in the whole place seemed to know who those guys were,”she says.“And you were jumping through hoops to make them think otherwise.”
“And?”
“It’s just weird, that’s all.”Lorraine is slumped down, the back ofher hand is pressed against her forehead.
“Our nerves are shot,”says Kate.“All ofus.I’ve never been robbed before.”She clutches her chest, trying to make light ofit.“Oh my God.
I’m a crime statistic.”
“They didn’t rob you the first time they came to your house?”Lorraine says.
“No, not really.I told you.They wanted to use the facilities.”
“Gross.”Lorraine shudders.“But you were right next to them.Were they the same ones who just held us up?”
“How can she know that?”Daniel says.
”It’s important,”Lorraine says.“They should catch those fucking kids and feed them to the wolves.”
“I agree,”says Daniel.“Or maybe a lynching.”
“Our nerves are shot,”Kate repeats.She pats Daniel’s knee, and then leaves her hand resting on it.
“They took two hundred and thirty dollars offme,”Lorraine says.
“And my wallet, my address book, my Filofax, all my credit cards.Mylife was in that bag.”
“That could be the problem right there,”Daniel says.
”Fuck yourself,”Lorraine says.
They arrive at Kate’s house.The windows blaze with light.A weather-worn old Ford is in the driveway.Kate sees Daniel react to the unfamiliar car and tells him,“That’s the baby-sitter’s.”He nods, surprised by the little trickle ofgratitude that goes through him.Lorraine climbs out ofthe back door, waits for Kate with her back to them both.Kate powers down her window and says to Lorraine,“I’ll be right in.I just want to talk to Daniel.For a minute.”Lorraine shrugs without turning around and trods offto the house.
Kate waits for Lorraine to let herselfin, and then she turns to Daniel.
“I miss you.What do you think about that? Do you miss me?”
“Derek was acting so strange toward you in there.Did you notice that? It was as ifhe was furious with you.”
“It’s fine.We had a communication problem, and it’s all ironed out.
Can you answer my question? Do you miss me?”
“Ofcourse I do.And Ruby.How is she?”
“Fine, we’re both fine, we’d like you to come home.”The ping ofthat little hammer blow ofconfession breaks her voice.
“Kate…”
“You know what?”she says.“I never told you, I mean I never actually said the words‘I love you.’But I do.I love you.”Her eyes glitter, the color rises in her face.She seems moved, even inspired by her own words.Hav-ing said what was for so long unutterable, she now feels capable ofsaying anything.“I love you.You’re my guy, you’re my sweet man.I just assumed you knew, but now I see that sometimes it needs to be said.”
“This is so painful, Kate.”
“You’re involved in something with her that’s simply never ever ever ever ever going to work out, and I want to give you the chance to get out ofit, and come back.You deserve that chance, Daniel.You really do.Peo-ple get stuck in their bad decisions and they think nothing can undo them.Can I be honest with you?You look like you’re about to pass out.
But I know what’s going on in that house ofhers.That man’s not going to suddenly get better.She’s going to be looking after him for a long, long time.And that’s the best-case scenario.We don’t even want to talk about worst-case.But the fact is, you did this to him.For whatever rea-son, it was you.”
“Whatever reason? It was an accident!”
“Maybe you’ve been looking to even the score ever since those black guys kicked you down the stairs.”
“That’s the stupidest fucking thing I have ever heard.”
“Blacks and whites don’t get along,”she says.“Too much has happened.It’s ruined.Ifsomething doesn’t begin well, how can it end well?”
Daniel is silent, trying to think ofsomething to say, some way ofending the conversation without enraging her, a way ofsending her into the house that won’t be humiliating.But Kate interprets his silence as Daniel’s somehow being swayed, or evenmovedby what she is saying, and she puts her hand on his chest in a familiar, nostalgic way, and then quickly leans in to him with a deep, possessive kiss.
[18]
Morning.Warm dusty light pours through the uncurtained windows.
Daniel has kicked the covers offhis bed, and though he has slept only four hours, he is awake.His penis is hard, in a slightly disconcerting and even irritating counterpoint to his otherwise grim state ofmind.Re-lax, you idiot.He stares at the ceiling, with its chicken-skin paint job, and thinks about the money he lost last night.His mind is pierced by the pic-adors ofsudden money anxieties.He has made the mistake oftotaling up the money he would have made had he stayed in NewYork at his old firm.
He is minus about three hundred grand from that lovely decision.Two years now, he has been living in the half-life ofhis former affluence, but some time ago, without his admitting it to himself, his savings were de-pleted, the clothes he had bought when he was flush had begun looking like old clothes, his hair has forgotten what it is like to be cut by a master, and he no longer has that cheerful, ironic, healthy animal sheen ofa young man with more money than he needs.He has never computed how much money he had been saving by living with Kate.Even coming up with about halfofthe monthly mortgage payments—and lately he has come to suspect that the sum she requested was less than half, that she was float-ing him to an extent—he was exempt from phone, electric, and heating bills;and groceries, which he usually paid for in full, used to cost in a month less than he was now spending in restaurants in a week.
Courting Iris has cost a king’s ransom.Before he secured this little $1,400per month tract house—he knows he is being robbed—he was spending hundreds ofdollars per week on hotels, motels, and inns.He has spent $3,800he can’t afford on a pair ofdiamond earrings Iris can’t wear.(Sometimes, she puts them on when she comes to see him, but mostly she forgets them, and last time when he asked why she wasn’t wearing them she said that diamonds make her think ofapartheid, which struck him as unfair and aggressive.) He spends money on having her sidewalk shoveled and her lawn mowed when he is unable to take care of it himself.He brings bags ofgroceries into her house when the coast is clear, and leaves them on the porch when members ofHampton’s or Iris’s family are on hand, and he has never collected a penny in reim-bursement.He has brought her car into the shop for a new transmission and simply paid the bill.He bought her a purple-and-blackAmish quilt that was hanging in the window ofan antique store in town because when they walked by it one day she slowed down and looked at it.He forces himself to stop thinking ofthe tabs he has picked up, the munifi-cence that has been his second nature.He is not regretting it, not a ges-ture, not a penny.Receiving these things never failed to delight Iris, who, as it turns out, is becoming very careful with her money;Hampton’s cof-fers are rather full and his disability insurance is not only coming up with biweekly checks that approach what he was making before the accident but is also paying out for those occasional medical expenses his health in-surers manage to duck.Nevertheless, Iris’s frugality seems to be grow-ing.She patrols her house, turning offlamps.Daniel has watched with amazement as she scratched a single postage stamp offa letter because the post office failed to cancel it and she thought it could be used again.