thought—thought—he was the only one who did. Not even her mother and father would know about that.
Then he would think of the man’s penis—his cock—going up inside her. In the saddle; that phrase came and clanged in his mind idiotically, refusing to die away. He saw them screwing to a Gene Autry soundtrack: I’m back in the saddle again, out where a friend is a friend. . . .
It made him feel creepy. It made him feel outraged. It made him feel infuriated.
The Frisbee soared and came down. Vic followed its course.
He had suspected something, yes. But suspecting was not like knowing; he knew that now, if nothing else. He could write an essay on the difference between suspecting and knowing. What made it doubly cruel was the fact that he had really begun to believe that the suspicions were groundless. And even if they weren’t, what you didn’t know couldn’t hurt you. Wasn’t that right? If a man is crossing a darkened room with a deep, open hole in the middle of it, and if he passes within inches of it, he doesn’t need to know he almost fell in. There is no need for fear. Not if the lights are off.
Well, he hadn’t fallen in. He had been pushed. The question was, What was he going to do about it? The angry part of him, hurt, bruised, and bellowing, was not in the slightest inclined to be “adult,” to acknowledge that there were slips on one or both sides in a great many marriages. Fuck the Penthouse Forum, or Variations, or whatever they’re calling it these days, that’s my wife we’re talking about, she was screwing someone
(out where a friend is a friend)
when my back was turned, when Tad was out of the house—
The images began to unreel again, crumpled sheets, straining bodies, soft sounds. Ugly phrases, terrible terms kept crowding up like a bunch of freaks looking at an accident: nooky, hair pie, put the boots to her, shot my load, I-don’t-fuck-for-fortune-and-I-don’t-fuck-for-fame-but-the-way-I-fuck-ya-mamma-is-a-goddam-shame, my turtle in your mud, bang for the gang, stoop for the troops—
Inside my wife! he thought, agonized, hands clenching. Inside my wife!
But the angry, hurt part acknowledged—grudgingly—that he couldn’t go home and beat the hell out of Donna. He could, however, take Tad and go. Never mind the explanations. Let her try and stop him, if she had cheek enough to do it. He didn’t think she would. Take Tad, go to a motel, get a lawyer. Cut the cord cleanly, and don’t look back.
But if he just grabbed Tad and took him to a motel, wouldn’t the boy be frightened? Wouldn’t he want an explanation ? He was only four, but that was old enough to know when something was badly, frighteningly wrong. Then there was the matter of the trip—Boston, New York, Cleveland. Vic didn’t give a goddam about the trip, not now; old man Sharp and his kid could take a flying jump at the moon for all he cared. But he wasn’t in it alone. He had a partner. The partner had a wife and two kids. Even now, hurting as badly as he was, Vic recognized his responsibility to at least go through the motions of trying to save the account—which was tantamount to trying to save Ad Worx itself.
And although he didn’t want to ask it, there was another question: Exactly why did he want to take Tad and go, without even hearing her side of the story? Because her sleeping around was wrecking Tad’s morals? He didn’t think so. It was because his mind had immediately seized upon the fact that the way to hurt her most surely and most deeply (as deeply as he hurt right now) was through Tad. But did he want to turn his son into the emotional equivalent of a crowbar, or a sledgehammer? He thought not.
Other questions.
The note. Think about the note for a minute. Not just what it said, not just those six lines of battery-acid filth; think about the fact of the note. Someone had just killed the goose that had been—pardon the pun—laying the golden eggs. Why had Donna’s lover sent that note?
Because the goose was no longer laying, of course. And the shadow man who had sent the note was mad as hell.
Had Donna dumped the guy?
He tried to see it any other way and couldn’t. Stripped of its sudden, shocking force, wasn’t I ENJOYED FUCKING THE SHIT OUT OF HER the classic dog-in-the-manger ploy? If you