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get you something. Whatever you want."
"Nothing, man, we just teasing."
Don shrugged and went on into the house.
In the parlor he took a quick inventory, purely by habit - he'd never had the Helping Hands people take anything he needed, but his new "wife" was complicating things. All his tools were there. But something felt out of place. It nagged at him for a moment. Maybe it wasn't in the parlor. Something he'd seen outside? He'd check it later. He carried his half-drunk Coke and her full one and the bag of food into the kitchen. There she was, looking into the open cupboards. As soon as she heard him, she turned and took a step and touched the massive kitchen table.
"I didn't know if you wanted them to take this," she said. "All the other kitchens have cheap crummy furniture like landlords buy, but this one might have been here when it was a real house. Solid."
It was solid, all right, but had no other virtues to recommend it. Plain as a board fence, that's what it was. "House has to be empty," said Don. "I want everything gone." He slid the full Coke and the bag closer to her. The sight of her there, prowling through the cupboards, "helping" with decisions, infuriated him. He knew, in the back of his mind, that his rage was completely unreasonable. That she had had the full run of every cupboard in the house for months, maybe years, for all he knew. That he was mostly angry because of his frustration over the whole business with Cindy. Because for a few minutes today he had actually thought maybe he was ready to start looking for a wife, but the venture had ended in failure, and now this waif presumed to call herself by that title. As if a wife of his would ever be so hungry-looking, so ill-provided for.
I want everything gone, he had said, and now, with firmness, he added: "Including you."
She took a step back from the table. "Aren't you glad I was here to let them in?"
Might as well tell her the truth, personal though it was. "Not when you tell them you're my wife. My wife's dead."
She looked at him with disgust. "I never told them I was your anything. I found them opening the door and looking around and calling for Mr. Lark and I told them to come on in and get started and don't touch any of Mr. Lark's tools in the front parlor. If the place were cleaner they might have assumed I was your housekeeper."
Of course that's the way it happened. Of course they'd jump to that conclusion. He felt embarrassed at his anger. Now it seemed stupid to him. And yet some of the anger remained. She was still trying to destroy his solitude. If he couldn't have a woman like Cindy Claybourne, why did he have to put up with a girl like this? "I brought you a burger and fries."
"I'm not hungry," she said coolly.
"And a Coke. Drink it and go." He hated himself for being so rude. But this had gone on long enough.
"That was nice of you," she said. There was not a trace of irony in her voice. But that didn't mean it wasn't snide all the same.
"The 'drink it' part was nice of me. The 'and go' part makes me a scumbag." Might as well be honest. He knew he wasn't being noble here.
She shrugged, bent over the cup, and Don saw the brown liquid rise through the straw. After a moment's sip, she stood up, swallowing as if the Coke were the elixir of youth. "Oh, that was nice."
"Hot day," said Don. He looked away from her, toward the window, where daylight peeked through the boards. He thought of the bright windows in Cindy's house. Cindy's immaculate, unlived-in house. Who was the homeless one, really?
Don himself was never going to be anything more than a camper here, a temporary resident, a workman, a servant of the house. It was only the law that gave him the right to throw this girl out of her home. And no one knew better than Don how unjust and arbitrary and sometimes downright cruel the law could be. Don wanted the house to himself because that's what he wanted and he was ready to use the law to get his way no matter what it cost someone else. So how was he different from his ex-wife?
Maybe she understood his silence.