“Aw, just let him, Christina,” said Bill.
Christina folded the piece of paper in half. “He goes in the vineyard for the day. He’ll have plenty of room to run around, and I’ll get my peace and quiet. He’ll be fine.”
“If you feel that strongly about it,” said Bill. His voice registered slightly off-key.
“I do.”
“Fine then.”
Bill folded a white undershirt quietly, laid it on top of two pairs of fresh white boxers, and said calmly, “Can you at least take him to the peak tomorrow? So he gets a little attention.”
Christina cocked her head, squinted at an imaginary point in the ceiling. It is these little moments, these little negotiations, that compose the skeleton of a relationship, she thought. Do I want the spine to be strong or not? She sat up straight.
“I’ll take him tomorrow afternoon,” she said.
AFTER BILL LEFT, limousine door slammed tight, a sharp sound that cracked the quiet mountain air like a gunshot, Christina realized it was the first time she’d been alone since she’d arrived. They slept together, ate together, hiked together, drove into town together, down the precarious winding road past hidden homes and wide patches of vineyard, Bill whipping around the curves so quickly it made her carsick. Even when she was working in her studio and Bill was working in his office, they were separated only by windows and screen doors and the ripening cherry tree, tiny stems dangling like Christmas-tree decorations.
“I can see you so clearly,” he had told her.
She quietly padded through the front room, passing and then returning to Kong, who rested out near the pool, restrained by the sliding door. She checked the door once more to make sure it was locked. He lifted his head, eyed her, then rested it down again glumly.
Alone at last, she thought. She flashed on herself as a teenager when her parents left her alone for a weekend. I should throw a party, she thought. And then, just as when she was a teenager, she realized she didn’t have anyone to invite. Except for maybe the mountain lions.
Maybe I should look through all of his things, see if I can uncover a cache of stocks and bonds for me to pocket and then flee. Maybe there’s a stash of dirty photos or a stack of love letters, some hidden insight into a dark weakness curdling inside of him.
But she was afraid to touch anything. Everything was so carefully designed and organized in his castle, pristine and tailored, then dusted enthusiastically by the Salvadoran house cleaners he employed weekly to clean his home. Lush suede couches snaked through every room, paired with inviting overstuffed chairs and matching ottomans, the perfect setup for reading and relaxing. The walls were covered sparingly with art, but all of it was original and signed, mostly landscapes, the great outdoors, hills and lakes and ridges, regal sunsets that crowned oceans and mountains.
More prominent were larger photos on his walls of him and his friends—famous ones, some of them—she recognized a few, while the pictures of his daughters when they were little, and a few of them as teens, and some older people—his parents, she presumed—hovered near bathroom doors and light switches. And then there were his glorious bookshelves, a king’s ransom of literature, all separated by type, novels on one, collections of short stories on another, books he’d contributed to, books he’d edited, the classics, the work of his students, and one small creaky shelf weighed down with his remainders, extras sent by his publisher that he’d taken to readings and had never been sold. He had encouraged her to take whatever she liked and read them, fill herself up with words.
She didn’t need to uncover any great secrets about him. Whatever he had done before her, it didn’t matter. And she probably knew it anyway. After all, she had read most of his books.
Christina decided to use the time alone to do her work, consume herself even further with her thesis. Here she was in Alcott’s ideal environment, as she was raised to be by her father and his friends, in the thick of nature. I am here for a reason, thought Christina.