The Fearsome Particles (18 page)

A brokerish-looking man in the middle looked at the ceiling and sighed.

“This is ridiculous,” said the woman.

Gerald began to feel hot, and a little damp. He wanted to take off the jacket of his suit but he feared these people would mistake the movement for some sort of capitulation, and he had given the obese man his word.

“He was in line before us,” said Gerald, addressing the queue. “He’s trying to treat his family. You would want the same courtesy.”

“No, I wouldn’t,” said the farmerish man, who seemed farmerish to Gerald because he was wearing a mesh-back cap. “I wouldn’t have fucked off to my car in the first place.”

Had none of these people ever tried to do something nice for the people they loved? Could a man not want to bring home doughnuts
and
invest in doughnut treats to come? Was it not something that forgave a two-minute delay? Gerald turned back to the counter girl for no other reason than he needed moral support.

“We don’t even do the stickers,” said the counter girl. “That’s the other place.”

Now he understood that he was standing in defence of a lost cause. A false hope. He was a bleeding and beaten tomato can of a prize fighter unwilling to go down, noble to a degree but mostly pathetic and cringe-making.

The broker tapped the farmer on the shoulder. “Just go ahead,” he said.

“I should,” agreed the older man.

“Do it.”

Gerald was about to make a last desperate gesture and block whoever tried to move in front of him, but before he needed to, the obese man reappeared.

“Sorry! Sorry! I’m here!” he wheezed, cramming himself between unmoveable chairs and the people lined up. “Thanks, man,” he said to Gerald when he made it to the front.

“Unbelievable,” muttered the woman in the windbreaker.

The fat man, out of breath, slapped his sticker card on the counter. “Give me two dozen Boston creams.”

Behind the counter, the girl in the paper cap offered a small fixed smile. “That card doesn’t work here,” she said. “It’s for the other place.”

For a second, the fat man seemed in shock. “No way,” he said. “Really?”

The girl, in response, merely seasoned her smile with pain. “Do you still want the Boston creams?”

Looking up at the signage, as if for help, the man sighed. “Nah,” he said, turning. “Forget it.”

“Infuckingcredible,” said the woman.

At the counter, Gerald reached for his wallet and smiled in a way he hoped was sufficiently apologetic. “One doughnut with chocolate icing, please.”

The girl looked blankly at him for a moment. “Sorry,” she finally said. “We’re out.”

F
or the remainder of his drive home, Gerald blinked against the fatigue of his day and did what he could to revive his debilitated sense of purpose. A few self-righteous cranks lined up for doughnuts were not going to dissuade him from taking the actions he knew needed to be taken. He steered his
GS
450 into corners with precision, he accelerated out of them with resolve, he proved to himself over the final twenty minutes of his commute that he was every bit as focused and determined as he’d been when he wrapped up his meeting with Sandy Beale. And by the time he pulled into the driveway at 93 Breere Crescent and pressed the dashboard button to open the two-car garage, he had come nearly all the way back.

He slid his sedan into its slot to the left, well clear of Vicki’s Camry (which was as usual parked too close to the middle for comfort) because he didn’t trust her in her current state not to open her door into his side. It meant leaving barely enough room on the driver’s side to get out, but Gerald willingly put up with a tight squeeze against the poured concrete wall if it meant not having to worry about Vicki.

In the darkened house he set his briefcase on the breakfast nook table and listened for sounds of life. There were none. Kyle was no doubt in his room, betting away the money Gerald and
Vicki had set aside for his tuition, and didn’t it strike Gerald now as the purest folly to have given his son access to the account. Gerald hit his forehead with a balled fist for not having thought of that detail before – a whole day of luau-slot losses could have been averted. Well, that would be solved in the morning. First thing. And before then other measures would be taken.

“Vicki?” he called and waited. “Vicki!” he called again.

From some distant part of the house, a soft voice answered. “I’m here, Gerald.”

“Where?” he shouted.

“Up here,” came the barest reply. It sounded as if it had come from upstairs.

Gerald grabbed his briefcase and swung through the kitchen and centre hallway toward the foyer, paused to drop his briefcase inside the door of his den, then continued up the stairs.

“Vicki,” he shouted as he climbed, seizing and pulling on the banister every few steps as if he were hauling fire hose to the scene of a blaze. “I noticed, darling, that once again you parked too close to my space in the garage.” On the second level he hesitated outside Kyle’s door, listened for a moment and considered going in. But he felt it was only fair to make his wife aware of his intentions before he took any decisive steps.

“Vicki?” he called.

“Up here,” she called back, using the same soft voice she had used years ago when she had laid Kyle in his crib and didn’t want to wake him.

She was on the third level, probably, Gerald thought, in the turret room, where she sometimes liked to sit and look out over the ravine. “It’s really the smallest thing I’m asking for,” he
continued as he made his way up. “Ten inches more, a foot at the most, is all I need. Then we can both get in and out of our cars with no problem.”

He grabbed the baluster near the top of the stairs and pulled himself up the last step. The turret room was at the end of the short hallway, past a small bathroom and a guest bedroom that was never used. Its door was open.

“Vicki?”

“I’m here,” she said with a voice low and quiet enough to have suited prayer in church.

He walked down the hall toward her. “Vicki, what are you doing? Why do you sound hypnotized?”

When he arrived at the door of the turret room, he saw exactly what he’d expected: she was sitting in a wingback chair, by the window, in the manner of a woman retreating from the world and into her thoughts. But she wasn’t looking out the window, she was staring at something on the floor, next to the door.

“It’s kept me here for the last hour,” she said, staring.

Gerald looked down, next to his feet. Against the wall, by the brass-plated heating vent, sat Rumsfeld with its tail wavering behind it in the air like the head of a snake.

“I wouldn’t make any sudden moves,” said Vicki. “Every time I try to get out of this chair it hisses at me.”

“Why didn’t you warn me?” said Gerald. “I could have brought some sort of weapon.”

“I wasn’t going to have a conversation with you across three floors.”

“Well, we have to get rid of it.”

“I know. Get something to shoo it away.”

“I mean completely. Out of the house.”

She had been leaning with her elbow on the arm of the chair. Now she lowered her head into her hand. “We’ve talked about this, Gerald. We can’t just get rid of the Campeaus’ cat.”

“Look what it’s doing to us!” The cat hissed and Gerald pressed against the door jamb. He dropped his voice to a whisper. “It’s causing us incredible amounts of stress.”

“Not for me,” murmured Vicki. “I haven’t had any trouble with it until now.”

“Isn’t that enough? Look at you! You’re being held captive in your own home. How many times does that have to happen?”

“Keep your voice down.”

Gerald used a minimal, non-sudden gesture to indicate the floor below. “If you won’t think of yourself, think of Kyle. What about him? Have you talked to him? He’s in no condition to deal with something like this.”

“Kyle hasn’t said a word about the cat. I think you’re most worried about yourself.”

“How dare you!” Gerald found the strain of trying to express his anger and frustration through a whisper hugely taxing. It reminded him of their quarrels years ago in the bathroom, where Vicki had insisted they lock themselves away, whenever little Kyle was awake. “And if I were thinking of myself, which I’m not, I wonder why that would be? I’m only the one constantly under attack.”

“Gerald.”

“It’s not as though I can count on
you
doing anything to help,” he croaked. “You had your chance when I was choking to death.”

She was rolling her head in her hands. “Do we need to go over this now?”

“I wonder how many husbands can say they were choking to death on an olive, while trying to bring a late-night snack to their wives, and their wives couldn’t even administer the Heimlich manoeuvre to save them.”

“I said I was sorry!”

“How many choking husbands have had to climb a set of stairs and throw themselves, stomach first, onto the end knob of a railing –”

“It’s called a finial.”

“– while their wives stood there, worrying about a stain on the carpet?”

Vicki stood up suddenly. “Good work, Gerald.”

“I still have the bruise!”

She motioned toward the floor by the heating vent. “It’s gone. You’ve scared it away.”

He didn’t care about the cat. He was unbuttoning his shirt. “Look at this. Look at this purplish area, right here, under my breastbone.” He realized the light was bad. She couldn’t see. But he opened his shirt anyway. He spread his shirt the way Superman did, and his bruise from throwing himself on the finial to save his life was his own Superman emblem. “Look!”

She walked by him and out the door.

“This plus my legs!” shouted Gerald. “And this!” He pointed to the scratch on his neck as she continued down the hall. “I’m being killed!” he shouted. “I’m being killed in my own house!”

R
ecovery came with a generous glass of Youngerton Pinot Noir. Gerald drank it alone, in his den, while Vicki prepared herself for bed. She had left dinner for him on the island in the kitchen, the same dinner she had been delivering to Kyle in his room at around the time he was phoning her about doughnuts. Under the citrine halo of his desk lamp, he spread the cloth napkin across his knees and lifted utensils weighted with lead and his own sufferance. For a while he made an effort to chew through the asparagus spears and slices of lamb leg pasty with congealed fat, but he decided he didn’t have the appetite for it. When he laid down his knife and fork, and pushed the plate away, he realized it was the most effective action he had taken all day.

He returned to the kitchen, searched the rack, and found another bottle of the Youngerton. The cork of this one seemed fused to its green glass neck and for a time someone coming into the kitchen would have witnessed Gerald kneeling on the floor with the bottle between his knees, applying the critical leverage. Cork released, he stood in a splay of light from the range hood, listening to the machine-like scouring made by the base of his glass as he swirled it over the island’s marble top, and reviewed again, as if worrying a bad tooth, the special futility that had come to define him. In a field of snow, he was the man who huddled naked, without the courage to lift his arms and reach for a coat.

What had he said to Sandy Beale, who’d taken the great risk of approaching a superior with an unquestionably lunatic, but possibly brilliant and salutary, idea? He’d think about it. He’d apply some mental energy to considering it. He’d stand back
and assess it, presumably while scratching his dimpled chin. A small purse of the lips, a contemplative nod, a “hmm” – what great decisiveness! What execution of executive power! No wonder Vicki ignored him when he asked her to park in a certain way, or keep the medicine cabinet in a particular order, or please never wash the salad spinach in warm water, only cold. No wonder his son had defied him, to his own great detriment. No wonder his director of sales and marketing had never bothered to inform him of the imminent market share doom. No wonder his puerile bleating in the turret room had fallen on such indifferent ears. He was a weak, ineffectual man. In the feeble glow from the range hood, Gerald took a deep swig of the Youngerton and rued his weakness as it went down.

By the time he was two-thirds of the way through the second bottle, he knew what he needed to do.

He climbed the stairs and moved as noiselessly as possible down the hallway to the door of the master bedroom. Vicki had shut the door, as usual – the nightly event of having to face that barricade and turn the knob in order to enter his own bedroom had always been a small humiliation for Gerald. He’d felt like an exiled citizen submitting to bureaucratic process in order to reenter the country of his birth.

But not tonight. Tonight he was grateful for any reminder of how marginalized he had become in his own home. It fortified his sense of purpose. When he saw the closed door, he smiled.

Inside the bedroom, the only illumination came from the
LED
hum of his digital clock radio, the pallor of Breere Crescent’s solitary street lamp against the sheer drapes on his wife’s
side of the bed, and the custardy glow of the night light plugged into the electric shaver outlet of the ensuite. Gerald surveyed the scene and decided it was more than enough.

Vicki lay shrouded in the cadaverous inertia typical of her first few hours of sleep, a coma-like state that had always struck Gerald as creepy, especially in their first few years together, when he would roll over and lay a tender arm across her stomach, and startle awake at the stillness of her breath. He would poke her arm with a stiff finger, or tweak a nipple, and nothing would happen. The thought occurred to him, even then, that she was simply ignoring him. But the thought never stuck because that was back in the days when Gerald truly believed himself to be
CEO
material, and he couldn’t imagine how his wife could sustain such a steadfast indifference toward him. A few times, in the dark, he had made himself hard, climbed on and pressed himself against her, and on one of these occasions her lips had actually parted, so that he thought perhaps, subconsciously, she approved. But the next morning, when he had slipped in a mention of their “shared moment” of the night before as she was sipping coffee, her eyes held him with such fear over her cup that for days his skin crawled at the thought of himself. After that, he did it only once more. And though knowing she would be horrified had made the whole procedure, from beginning to end, intensely exciting, his remorse the next morning had clotted up so thick that he had immediately booked them a three-day Manhattan weekend.