wanted something which would relieve his feelings of anxiety. His work-schedule was a bitch, he told Ray, and as his commission-rate rose, he found it harder and harder to leave his work-related problems at the office.
He had finally decided it was time to see if the doctor could prescribe something that would smooth off some of the rough edges.
Ray Van Allen knew nothing about the pressures of the real estate game, but he had a fair idea of what the pressures of living with Wilma must be like. He suspected that Pete jerzyck would have a lot less anxiety if he never left the office at all, but of course it was not his place to say so. He wrote a prescription for Xanax, cited the usual cautions, and wished the man good luck and God speed. He believed that, as Pete went down the road of life in tandem with that particular mare, he would need a lot of both.
Pete used the Xanax but did not abuse it. Neither did he tell Wilma about it-she would have had a cow if she knew he was using drugs.
He was careful to keep his Xanax prescription in his briefcase, which contained papers in which Wilma had no interest at all. He took five or six pills a month, most of them on the days before Wilma started her period.
Then, last summer, Wilma had gotten into a wrangle with Henrietta Longman, who owned and operated The Beauty Rest up on Castle Hill. The subject was a botched perm. Following the initial shouting match, there was an exchange between them at Hemphill's Market the next day, then a yelling match on Main Street a week later. That one almost degenerated into a brawl.
In the aftermath, Wilma had paced back and forth through the house like a caged lioness, swearing she was going to get that bitch, that she was going to put her in the hospital. "She'll need a Beauty Rest when I get through with her," Wilma had grated through clenched teeth.
"You can count on it. I'm going up there tomorrow.
I'm going to go up there and Take Care of Things."
Pete had realized with mounting alarm that this was not just talk; Wilma meant it. God knew what wild stunt she might pull.
He'd had visions of Wilma ducking Henrietta's head in a vat of corrosive goo that would leave the woman as bald as Sinead O'Connor for the rest of her life.
He'd hoped for some modulation of temperament overnight, but when Wilma got up the next morning, she was even angrier.
He wouldn't have believed it possible, but it seemed it was. The dark circles under her eyes were a proclamation of the sleepless rug ' lit she had spent.
"Wilma," he'd said weakly, "I really don't think it's such a good idea for you to go up there to The Beauty Rest today. I'm sure, if You think this over-"
"I thought it over last night," Wilma had replied, turning that frighteningly flat gaze of hers on him, "and I decided that when I finish with her, she's never going to burn the roots of anyone else's hair. When I finish with her, she's going to need a Seeing Eye dog just to find her way to the john. And if you fuck around with me' Pete, you and her can buy your goddam dogs from the same litter of German shepherds."
Desperate, not sure it would work but unable to think of any other way to stave off the approaching catastrophe, Pete jerzyck had removed the bottle from the inside pocket of his briefcase and had dropped a Xanax tablet into Wilma's coffee. He then went to his office.
In a very real sense, that had been Pete jerzyck's First Communion.
He had spent the day in an agony of suspense and had come home terrified of what he might find (Henrietta Longman dead and Wilma in jail was his most recurrent fantasy). He was delighted to find Wilma in the kitchen, singing.
Pete took a deep breath, lowered his emotional blast-shield, and asked her what had happened with the Longman woman.
"She doesn't open until noon, and by then I just didn't feel so angry," Wilma said. "I went up there to have it out with her just the same, though-I'd promised myself I was going to, after all.
And do you know, she offered me a glass of sherry and said she wanted to give me my money back!"
"Wow! Great!" Pete had said, relieved and gladdened... and