“Why are you looking at me like that?” Debbie asked.
He held his arms out toward her. “Come here,” he said. Maybe it wasn’t the pills. Maybe he was actually happy.
She walked barefoot over to him and he reached out and untied her robe and let it fall open. He stood and reached inside the robe and slid his hand down the bumps of her ribs to the round curve of her hip.
She inhaled sharply and bit her lip. “It’s been a long time,” she said.
Archie pulled her toward him and kissed her on the neck, inhaling her. “Tell me about it,” he said. He pushed the robe off her shoulders and it fell behind her on the floor and she stepped away from it into his arms.
He knew her. Her breasts, the left one just a little larger than the right. The constellation of moles on her pale stomach. The small pad of pregnancy fat on her upper abdomen.
He kissed her on the mouth and backed onto the bed, pulling her on top of him. She tasted like peppermint toothpaste. She moaned and reached down to unbuckle his pants. He stopped her, taking her hand by the wrist and lifting it to his mouth so he could kiss her fingers. He willed himself to respond. He wanted to make love to her. He did love her. But his body resisted. It had been like that since Gretchen. He didn’t know if it was the physical trauma of what he’d been through, or if he was just so poisoned by his lust for Gretchen that his body wouldn’t betray her, wouldn’t get hard for anyone else.
He was going to make love to his wife. He was going to do this one last time. Even if it meant cheating just a little. So he decided to let Gretchen into his mind just for a moment. He closed his eyes. And there she was. God, she was beautiful, her blond hair and milky white skin, her mouth open, wanting him. He tasted Debbie’s earlobe, and it was Gretchen’s earlobe. He ran his hands through Debbie’s hair, and it was Gretchen’s hair. He felt instantly hard. He could feel Gretchen unbuttoning his pants, slipping her hand inside his underwear, taking hold of him. It was good. He wondered why he hadn’t done this before. She covered his neck with butterfly kisses like Debbie used to do. But that wasn’t what he wanted. He pushed his tongue into her mouth, pushed the waist of his pants down, and flipped her over and pushed himself inside her. He was rough and the force of him caused her to take a breath and it turned him on more. He thrust as hard and as deeply as he could. He couldn’t stop it. He wanted to fuck her harder than anyone ever had before. Any of the men she’d had. The men who’d killed for her. The men she’d killed. He wanted to reach the center of her.
He heard, from somewhere far away, his wife say, “You’re hurting me.”
And then he came. His whole body shook with it, his back muscles spasmed. All the rage and stress and grief he kept bottled up was screwed up on his face. And he opened his eyes.
“Jesus Christ, Archie,” Debbie said. She was trembling, her eyes huge.
Archie pulled out of her and rolled off her onto the bed. He could taste, in his mouth, a faint trace of peppermint. “I’m sorry,” he said, disgusted with himself.
Debbie was quiet for a long time, sitting on the bed. She held the sheet tight around her torso, her knuckles white where she gripped it. “You see your therapist,” she said finally. “Tomorrow.” She got up and headed into the bathroom, taking the sheet with her. She turned on the faucet and looked in the bathroom mirror at Archie’s reflection, as Archie stared back at hers. “Or I will fucking drag you to her myself.”
CHAPTER
37
Are you smoking?” Susan asked.
It was dark in the room. Susan had been asleep until the smell of cigarette smoke had wrenched her from a perfectly lovely dream in which she and Archie Sheridan were having an adventure in a city that looked a lot like Atlantis. Susan lay there for a few minutes, inhaling the damning evidence of her mother’s midnight smoke break.
“Mom?” she said.
Her mother didn’t answer.
Susan reached over and flipped on the bedside lamp. It cast a triangle of light that revealed Bliss hunched over the side of her bed, her naked back to Susan, holding a cigarette just below the edge of the mattress to hide the telltale glowing tip.
Bliss’s blond dreads were tied back in a jumble that fell almost to her waist. She glanced back at Susan. “Just a puff,” she said, holding up her cigarette. “I couldn’t sleep.”
Susan sat up. “No,” she said. “You can’t smoke in here. It’s no smoking. You’ll set off the fire alarm. Hold it out the window.”
Bliss drew the cigarette to her mouth and took a drag. “The windows don’t open,” she said.
Susan threw her head back in frustration. “Mom,” she groaned.