and the landscape it disclosed was certainly more frightening than this stupid game, or the fact that this time they were playing it in the summer house by the lake long after summer had run away for another year.
But none of it had affected her hearing in the slightest. Now it was a chainsaw she heard, snarling away in the woods at some considerable distance-as much as five miles, maybe. Closer by, out on the main body of Kashwakamak Lake, a loon tardy in starting its annual run south lifted its crazed cry into the blue October air. Closer still, somewhere here on the north shore, a dog barked. It was an ugly, ratcheting sound, but Jessie found it oddly comforting. It meant that someone else was up here, midweek in October or no. Otherwise there was just the sound of the door, loose as an old tooth in a rotted gum, slapping at the swollen jamb. She felt that if she had to listen to that for long, it would drive her crazy.
Gerald, now naked save for his spectacles, knelt on the bed and began crawling up toward her. His eyes were still gleaming.
She had an idea it was that gleam which had kept her playing the game long after her initial curiosity had been satisfied. It had been years since she'd seen that much heat in Gerald's gaze when he looked at her. She wasn't bad-looking-she'd managed to keep the weight off, and still had most of her figure-but Gerald's interest in her had waned just the same. She had an idea that the booze was partly to blame for that-he drank a hell of a lot more now than when they'd first been married-but she knew the booze wasn't all of it. What was the old saw about familiarity breeding contempt? That wasn't supposed to hold true for men and women in love, at least according to the Romantic poets she'd read in English Lit 101, but in the years since college she had discovered there were certain facts of life about which John Keats and Percy Shelley had never written. But of course, they had both died a lot younger than she and Gerald were now.
And all of that didn't matter much right here and right now. What maybe did was that she had gone on with the game longer than she had really wanted to because she had liked that hot little gleam in Gerald's eyes. It made her feel young and pretty and desirable. But...
... but if you really thought it was you he was seeing when he gotthat look in his eye, you were misled, toots. Or maybe you misled yourself.And maybe now you have to decide-really, really decide-if you intendto continue putting up with this humiliation. Because isn't that prettymuch how you feel? Humiliated?
She sighed. Yes. It pretty much was.
"Gerald, I do mean it." She spoke louder now, and for the first time the gleam in his eyes flickered a little. Good. He could hear her after all, it seemed. So maybe things were still okay. Not great, it had been a long time since things had been what you could call great, but okay. Then the gleam reappeared, and a moment later the idiot grin followed.
"I'll teach you, me proud beauty," he said. He actually said that, pronouncing beauty the way the landlord in a bad Victorian melodrama might say it.
Let him do it, then. Just let him do it and it will be done.
This was a voice she was much more familiar with, and she intended to follow its advice. She didn't know if Gloria Steinem would approve and didn't care; the advice had the attractiveness of the completely practical. Let him do it and it would be done. QED.
Then his hand-his soft, short-fingered hand, its flesh as pink as that which capped his penis-reached out and grasped her breast, and something inside her suddenly popped like an overstrained tendon. She bucked her hips and back sharply upward, flinging his hand off.
"Quit it, Gerald. Unlock these stupid handcuffs and let me up. This stopped being fun around last March, while there was still snow on the ground. I don't feet sexy; I feel ridiculous."
This time he heard her all the way down. She could see it in the way the gleam in his eyes went out all at once, like candle flames in a strong gust of wind. She guessed that the two words which had finally gotten through to