this one-she had elected to ignore the subtext and answer the question.
"It means that you're still going to be forty-six this winter whether you own a Porsche or not, Gerald... and you're still going to be thirty pounds overweight." Cruel, yes, but she could have been downright gratuitous; could have passed on the image which had flashed before her eyes when she had looked at the photograph of the sports car on the front of the glossy brochure Gerald had handed her. In that blink of an instant she had seen a chubby little kid with a pink face and a widow's peak stuck in the innertube he'd brought to the old swimming hole.
Gerald had snatched the brochure out of her hand and had stalked away without another word. The subject of the Porsche had not been raised since... but she had often seen it in his resentful We Are Not Amused stare.
She was seeing an even hotter version of that stare right now.
"You said it sounded like fun. Those were your exact words: "It sounds like fun.""
Had she said that? She supposed she had. But it had been a mistake. A little goof, that was all, a little slip on the old banana peel. Sure. But how did you tell your husband that when he had his lower lip pooched out like Baby Huey getting ready to do a tantrum?
She didn't know, so she dropped her gaze... and saw something she didn't like at all. Gerald's version of Mr Happy hadn't wilted a bit. Apparently Mr Happy hadn't heard about the change of plans.
"Gerald, I just don't-"
"... feel like it? Well, that's a hell of a note, isn't it? I took the whole day off work. And if we spend the night, that means tomorrow morning off, as well." He brooded over this for a moment, and then repeated: "You said it sounded like fun."
She began to fan out her excuses like a tired old poker-hand (Yes, but now I have a headache; Yes, but I'm having these really shittypre-menstrual cramps; Yes, but I'm a woman and therefore entitled tochange my mind; Yes, but now that we're actually out here in the BigLonely you frighten me, you had beautiful brute of a man, you), the lies that fed either his misconceptions or his ego (the two were frequently interchangeable), but before she could pick a card, any card, the new voice spoke up. It was the first time it had spoken out loud, and Jessie was fascinated to find that it sounded the same in the air as it did inside her head: strong, dry, decisive, in control.
It also sounded curiously familiar.
"You're right-I guess I did say that, but what really sounded like fun was breaking away with you the way we used to before you got your name up on the door with the rest of the type-A's. I thought maybe we could bounce the bedsprings a little, then sit on the deck and dig the quiet. Maybe play some Scrabble after the sun went down. Is that an actionable offense, Gerald? What do you think? Tell me, because I really want to know." "But you said-"
For the last five minutes she had been telling him in various ways that she wanted out of these goddam handcuffs, and he still hadn't let her out of them. Her impatience boiled over into fury. "My God, Gerald, this stopped being fun for me almost as soon as we started, and if you weren't as thick as a brick, you would have realized it!"
"Your mouth. Your smart, sarcastic mouth. Sometimes I get so tired of-"
"Gerald, when you get your head really set on something, sweet and low doesn't come close to reaching you. And whose fault is that?"
"I don't like you when you're like this, Jessie. When you're like this I don't like you a bit."
This was going from bad to worse to horrible, and the scariest part was how fast it was happening. Suddenly she felt very tired, and a line from an old Paul Simon song occurred to her: "I don't want no part of this crazy love." Right on, Paul. You may be short, but you ain't dumb.
"I know you don't. And it's okay that you don't, because right now the subject is these handcuffs, not how much you do or don't like me when I tell you I've changed my mind about something. I want out of these cuffs. Are you hearing me?"