at any time and plunge him into the freezing water.
How does he explain what he just saw?
Matt understood human nature. Check that. He understood subhuman nature. He had seen the Fates curse him and his family enough to come up with an explanation or, if you will, an anti-explanation for all that goes wrong: In sum, there is no explanation.
The world is neither cruel nor joyous. It is simply random, full of particles hurtling, chemicals mixing and reacting. There is no real order. There is no preordained cursing of the evil and protecting of the righteous.
Chaos, baby. It's all about chaos.
And in the swirl of all that chaos, Matt had only one thing- Olivia.
But as he sat in his office, eyes still on that phone, his mind wouldn't let it go. Now, right now, at this very second... what was Olivia doing in that hotel room?
He closed his eyes and sought a way out.
Maybe it wasn't her.
Again: the screen, it was small. The video, it was jerky. Matt kept going with that, running similar rationalizations up the flagpole, hoping one would fly.
None did.
There was a sinking feeling in his chest.
Images flooded in. Matt tried to battle them, but they were overwhelming. The guy's blue-black hair. That damned knowing smirk. He thought about the way Olivia would lean back when they made love, biting her lower lip, her eyes half closed, the tendons in her neck growing taut. He imagined sounds too. Small groans at first. Then cries of ecstasy...
Stop it.
He looked up and found Rolanda still staring at him.
"Was there something you wanted?" he asked.
"There was."
"And?"
"I've been standing here so long, I forget."
Rolanda shrugged, spun, left the office. She did not close the door behind her.
Matt stood and moved to the window. He looked down at a photograph of Bernie's sons in full soccer gear. Bernie and Marsha had used this picture for their Christmas card three years ago. The frame was one of those faux bronze numbers you get at Rite-Aid or a similar drugstore-cum-frame store. In the photograph Bernie's boys, Paul and Ethan, were five and three and smiled like it. They didn't smile like that anymore. They were good kids, well-adjusted and all, but there was still an inescapable, underlying sadness. When you looked closely, the smiles were more cautious now, a wince in the eye, a fear of what else might be taken from them.
So what to do now?
The obvious, he decided. Call Olivia back. See what's what.
It sounded rational on one level and ridiculous on another. What did he really think would happen here? Would the first sound he heard be his wife breathing heavily, a man's laughter in the background? Or did he think Olivia would answer with her usual sunny voice and then- what?- he'd say, "Hi, hon, say, what's up with the motel?"- in his mind's eye it was no longer a hotel room, but now a dingy no-tell motel, changing the h to an m adding a whole new significance-"and the platinum wig and the smirking guy with the blue-black hair?"
That didn't sound right.
He was letting his imagination run away with him. There was a logical explanation for all this. Maybe he couldn't see it yet, but that didn't mean it wasn't there. Matt remembered watching those TV specials about how magicians did their tricks. You watched the trick and you couldn't fathom the answer and once they showed it to you, you wondered how you could have been so stupid to miss it the first time. That was what this was like.
Seeing no other option, Matt decided to call.
Olivia's cell was programmed into his speed dial in the number one spot. He pressed down on the button and held it. The phone began to ring. He stared out the window and saw the city of Newark. His feelings for this city were, as always, mixed. You see the potential, the vibrancy, but mostly you see the decay and shake your head. For some reason he flashed back to the day Duff had visited him in prison. Duff had started bawling, his face red, looking so like a child. Matt could only watch. There was nothing to say.
The phone rang six times before going into Olivia's voice mail. The sound of his wife's animated voice, so familiar, so... his, made his heart stutter. He waited patiently for Olivia to finish. Then the beep sounded.
"Hey, it's me," he said. He could hear the tautness in his tone and fought against it. "Could