Do You Love Your Wife?

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“Sometimes I feel like you’re… I don’t know, not really there anymore,” she said. “Like no matter what I do, it wouldn’t make any difference, would it. Know what I mean?”

They were lying in bed. He was tired and a little buzzed from the scotches after work. Greene’s The Power and the Glory lay open on her lap. He was halfway through Stone’s Bay of Souls.

She was right. Stone could obviously rouse himself. He could not.

She was heading to California in a few days, leaving behind the chill of New York and his own chill for a week or so. Her ex-lover beckoned. Perhaps he’d become her lover all over again. Bass hadn’t asked.

“I’m not complaining,” she said. “I’m not criticizing. You know that.”

“I know.”

“And it’s not just you and me. Seems like it’s everything. You used to write. Hell, you used to paint. It’s not like you.”

“It’s like part of me obviously.”

“Not the best part.”

“Well. Maybe not.”

She didn’t say the rest of it. Even after three whole years it’s still her isn’t it. She hadn’t the slightest urge to hurt him with it. She was simply observing and leaving him an opening should he wish to talk. He didn’t. It wasn’t precisely the loss of Annabel that was bothering him these days anyhow. It was what was left of him in her absence. Which seemed to amount to less and less — a subtle yet distinct difference. He continued to feel himself rolling far beneath the whitewater wake of their parting. Way down where the water was still and deep and very thin.

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