dismay. He really wasn't. Gerald was still one turn back.
"You are just so goddamned inconsistent, so goddamned sarcastic. I love you, Jess, but I hate the goddam lip on you. I always have." He wiped the palm of his left hand across his pouting rosebud of a mouth and then looked sadly at her-poor, put-upon Gerald, saddled with a woman who had gotten him out here in the forest primeval and then reneged on her sexual obligations. Poor, put upon Gerald, who showed no sign whatever of getting the handcuff keys off the bureau by the bathroom door.
Her unease had changed into something else-while her back was turned, as it were. It had become a mixture of anger and fear she could remember feeling only once before. When she was twelve or so, her brother Will had goosed her at a birthday party. All her friends had seen, and they had all laughed. Har-har, preety fonny, senhorra, I theenk. It hadn't been funny to her, though.
Will had been laughing hardest of all, so hard he was actually doubled over with one hand planted above each knee, his hair hanging in his face. This had been a year or so after the advent of the Beatles and the Stones and the Searchers and all the rest, and Will had had a lot of hair to hang. It had apparently blocked his view of Jessie, because he had no idea of how angry she was... and he was, under ordinary circumstances, very much aware of her turns of mood and temper. He'd gone on laughing until that froth of emotion so filled her that she understood she would have to do something with it or simply explode. So she had doubled up one small fist and had punched her well-loved brother in the mouth when he finally raised his head to look at her. The blow had knocked him over like a bowling pin and he had cried really hard.
Later she had tried to tell herself that he had cried more out of surprise than pain, but she had known, even at twelve, that that wasn't so. She had hurt him, hurt him plenty. His lower lip had split in one place, his upper lip in two, and she had hurt him plenty. And why? Because he had done something stupid? But he'd only been nine himself-nine that day-and at that age all kids were stupid. No; it hadn't been his stupidity. It had been her fear-fear that if she didn't do something with that ugly green froth of anger and embarrassment, it would
(put out the sun)
cause her to explode. The truth, first encountered on that day, was this: there was a well inside her, the water in that well was poisoned, and when he goosed her, William had sent a bucket down there, one which had come up filled with scum and squirming gluck. She had hated him for that, and she supposed it was really her hate which had caused her to strike out. That deep stuff had scared her. Now, all these years later, she was discovering it still did... but it still infuriated her, as well.
You won't put out the sun, she thought, without the slightest idea of what this meant. Be damned if you will.
"I don't want to argue the fine points, Gerald. just get the keys to these fucking things and unlock me!"
And then he said something which so astounded her that at first she couldn't grasp it: "What if I won't?"
What registered first was the change of his tone. He usually spoke in a bluff, gruff, hearty sort of voice-I'm in charge here,and it's a pretty lucky thing for all of us, isn't it? that tone proclaimed-but this was a low, purring voice with which she was not familiar. The gleam had returned to his eyes-that hot little gleam which had turned her on like a bank of floodlights once upon a time. She couldn't see it very well-his eyes were squinted down to puffy slits behind his gold-rimmed spectacles-but it was there. Yes indeed.
Then there was the strange case of Mr Happy. Mr Happy hadn't wilted a bit. Seemed, in fact, to be standing taller than at any time she could remember... although that was probably just her imagination.
Do you think so, toots? I don't.
She processed all this information before finally returning to the last thing he'd said-that amazing question. What if I won't? This time she got past the tone to the sense