Read Mr. Peanut for Free Online Page B

below and resembling a cascade of diamonds. He was suddenly cold, a bone-cold he imagined people stranded in the mountains or who slept on the streets in winter might feel. Alice would stop with her diet, he knew, and in a matter of weeks would gain the weight back. Things would return to how they were before; she would return to being his wife. Because this was how it always went, David thought, the way it always happened.And sometimes it felt like too high a cost, though he now believed he had reserves of patience he hadn’t tapped. He considered what she’d been through, what their marriage had cost her, how she’d changed. And he suffered such a terrible sense of self-loathing that for a moment he felt he might fall to his knees and rend his clothing, act out some biblical display of regret, or dive into the fountain to freeze away the pain.
    He hurried home.
    When David opened the door to their apartment, he heard the sound of retching. There was garbage on the floor, open to-go boxes that formed a Hansel and Gretel trail to the kitchen. The candles he’d bought had burned down to their wicks. He called his wife’s name. Nothing. The kitchen table was a disaster of enchiladas, chiles rellenos, tacos—all partially consumed. Terrible, he thought, a feeding frenzy. She’d finally broken down and ordered in for twelve. The burritos had gash marks that leaked meat, salsa was splattered across the counter and stove, and that’s where the vomit trail started.
    “Alice?” he called, and heard a groan from the bathroom.
    He found her semiconscious, collapsed between the sink and toilet, one arm draped over the rim, the other laced through the sink’s plumbing. The room smelled of stomach acid and shit—her legs were covered in it—and her breathing was like an animal’s, the shallow breaths of a bird. The walls and floors were streaked and spotted with puke, the ends of her hair matted with it so that they appeared as brittle as coral.
    “Alice!” David screamed. He grabbed the phone, dialed 911, and rushed back to her. “Alice, what did you do?”
    He pulled her up by the shoulders and tried to lay her down. Her eyes rolled back. Her head slumped, then struck the tile.
    “What did you do?”
    She whispered something incomprehensible. Spittle bubbled at her lips, then popped.
    David leaned in closer.
    “Mi Corazon,” she said weakly. It was their favorite Mexican restaurant.
    Please, sir, stay calm. Please, I need you to stay right here on the line with me, sir, and just tell me the state she’s in
.
    Sour cream, salsa, and mole, cayenne, cumin, and chipotle: they rolled off the tongue as smoothly as her stretcher did along the hospital floor. Alice opened her eyes to look at him, his head flying upside down above her own. They hurried Alice into the OR, but before they took her away David leaned down to kiss her cheek. He let go of her hand, said her nameonce more, and then watched as the double doors down the hall swallowed her up.
    In the hospital room, David sat across from Alice’s bed and watched her for hours.
    At times he dozed in his chair and occasionally slept fitfully and when he woke she was still unconscious. Once he got up to listen to her heart, and after that he went to the window; in the coned beams from streetlights below, he saw that it was still snowing; then he turned and watched Alice some more. With no change in her condition he sat in his chair and slipped off to sleep himself, a sleep of no dreams. There was snow on the ground when he woke up that morning, snow on the windowsill, snow across all the buildings and water towers of Manhattan. The wind was high and strong and gusts beat the pane, punting the glass. Gulls banked toward the Hudson. Pigeons searched for places to land. The sun rose into a clear blue sky, a white sun without warmth that reflected off the snow, and the whole world brightened with the glare. Then Alice awoke. She’d been propped upright in case she vomited