“Robert wait a minute, the police will be here—”
“I’ve got like three dollars on me,” the man says.
“Give me your fucking three dollars then.” Robert presses the barrel of the gun against the man’s jaw. His entire body is trembling. The barrel of the gun, where it presses against the man’s skin, moves as though trying to burrow itself inside.
“I’m reaching for my money,” the man says. “Don’t shoot me. Please for the love of God don’t shoot me.”
I want him to cry, Robert thinks. How do I make him cry.
The police show up and say “You two were very lucky. Normally we don’t recommend that citizens attempt to apprehend an armed perpetrator. However, we cannot conceal our glowing respect when they do.”
“The local news is coming by,” one of the officers says. “Would you two like to be on television?”
“I think we ought to be on our way,” Robert says.
“There are normally forms to fill out,” the officer says. “But you know what? We’ll take care of that.”
“We recognize a kindred spirit,” says his partner, clasping Robert by the shoulder.
~ ~ ~
“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Viola’s uncle says. Viola is packing. Her flight is in a couple of hours.
“Are you going to keep the house?”
“Vivi, don’t leave me here. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
The distant cousins promise that they have space for Viola’s uncle at their house in Zebulon, if need be. Viola’s uncle and the distant cousins see her and Robert off at the airport. At the security check, her uncle hugs her close and says, just loud enough that she knows Robert can hear, “Vivi, when are you coming back home for good?”
The distant cousins try to comfort him. They assure Viola that he’ll be alright. Viola keeps playing with the tag on her suitcase, nearly twisting it off. Her uncle doesn’t smile or tell her anything’s okay. Robert puts out his hand to shake and her uncle doesn’t appear to notice. The distant cousins both give Robert hugs that go on a little too long.
The security personnel spend several minutes sorting through Viola’s badly packed suitcases. “Ma’am, if you folded your clothes in an orderly fashion, and put all electronic devices near the top of your luggage, you wouldn’t be holding up this line right now.” Viola’s uncle stands just outside the security checkpoint, longing after her like a ghost.
~ ~ ~
Robert drives to the west side. Where the self-storage facility once was, is a pit, and a sign advertising new developments. Robert gets out of his car and hoists himself over the fencing into the pit. He looks out over a long stroke of nothing that has been cut into the earth.
Viola keeps expecting the FBI agent to reappear at the library, to call her, to materialize out of the shadows as she goes to unlock her car some night. It is like a long pause after a note, when you can’t be certain another note will follow. Finally, she stops waiting.
~ ~ ~
Robert wants Viola more than he can remember wanting Viola. And yet he’s so angry at her that he can hardly imagine having sex with her. When he sleeps next to her, he keeps turning towards her and grasping her tightly around the stomach, then turning away from her so that they’re no longer touching. Eventually one of them gets up to sleep in the guest room. If it’s Robert who’s left alone in their bed, he masturbates, still smelling his wife on the sheets.
Viola thinks of what it means, that she wants someone to hurt her during sex. Does it mean that she’s a bad person? Does the fact that Robert is unwilling to hurt her during sex mean that he is a fundamentally good person? Will he stay always by her side? Is he true? Is he chivalrous? Is he well-mannered? Well-heeled? Will he defend her against the evils that arrive time and time again in life? Or is he lacking in backbone? She thinks about when they were in North Carolina, when he chased and tackled the mugger. Was that backbone? Or was that an attempt to redirect other, overwhelming frustrations in his life, and hence (perhaps) a lack of backbone? Does she want backbone? Does it take any backbone to hit her during sex, when she so vocally wants to be hit? And what does any of this have to do with her upbringing?
It doesn’t have a damn thing to do with her upbringing, she decides.
Robert holds Viola down on their bed. He slaps her. He doesn’t feel anything. He slaps her again. She is breathing hard. He can feel how she pushes against him, he can tell — the word that occurs to him is “observe,” he is observing — how much she is enjoying it. He thinks, I could continue to do this. He thinks, There’s nothing actually difficult about this, about not caring. There’s no particular reason I need to care. I could live my entire life in this space, empty, performing the actions that I need to perform at any given moment. Viola makes sounds like she is about to come and then she comes.
Viola sits on their back porch drinking a nonalcoholic drink she concocted from peach syrup and soymilk. She’s wondering if such a drink already exists. If not, she’ll have to give it a name.
Robert looks down on her from their bedroom window. What he wants, more than anything else in this moment, is for Viola to look up at him and smile. What is wrong with me, he thinks, that I can have, from moment to moment, such disparate wants?
Viola works in their garden in the back yard, pulling up weeds from between what she hopes will one day be fresh herbs. She has a book on fresh herbs that she’s been following, hoping that this year her garden will come to something. How can she even be thinking about herbs, given everything that’s been happening in her life over the past several months? And yet she still manages to pay some attention to her herb garden, from time to time. She sits back on her haunches and passes a moment, amazed at the fact that she can think about herbs.
Robert considers his future. Does he want to search for an associate position in some other law firm? Does he want to set up a sole proprietorship? Does he even want to stay in law? He thinks about other things he could do. He could manage a coffee shop. He could become a whitewater rafting instructor. He could teach classes on how to effectively prepare for the LSAT or the Bar exam. What is holding me in Indianapolis anyway, he thinks.
Robert goes to a bar on the west side by himself. He is sure that someone has followed him.
Viola lies in bed, eyes towards the darkened ceiling, asking herself, Is this the time he won’t come back? Is this?
Driving home, Robert thinks, Can I even say the word love without swallowing my own tongue? I love, Robert thinks. That is a true statement. But what the hell does it mean? Can love exist without an object? Can love be a state of being, unfocused?
Viola thinks. Robert thinks. Viola thinks.
After a time, Robert crawls back into bed beside his wife.
He doesn’t want to think that this is all love comes down to, that every night that he’s able, he crawls back into bed beside his wife.
Viola thinks, Okay. Robert thinks, Is that all? Is it as cheap as that? I come back, she comes back, I come back? Viola thinks, Okay. That’s something.
~ ~ ~
And then there is a moment. Perhaps a week. Robert and Viola are happy. They go out to eat with friends. Viola works in the garden. Robert makes extravagant plans for their future. When they are together, they kiss. They have sex in the kitchen. Viola braces herself against the kitchen island and thinks that things are not so bad and, objectively, cannot get so bad. It is as if they are singing. Perhaps they are singing. Later, Robert makes lemonade from lemon juice and water and sugar substitute. They sit out on the porch and drink it and talk about how warm it’s gotten.