Read Scissors for Free Online Page B

no
consequence
; he might as well copy out a mail order catalogue. But maybe his meeting with this editor, this high mucky-muck, will have some
consequences
, who knows?” I’m still not finished with that word when I find myself pouring hot coffee and trying hard not to splash the red, yellow, and fuchsia leatherette wall seats. “As a
consequence
of his misdeeds, the interior decorator should be hanged.” A greasy smell permeates the fibers of my apron, the straps of my top, the locks of my hair. I feel like slapping that customer down there with his elbows on the bar—I can’t stand the way he lets his coffee get cold and looks as though his house has just been seized—but I’ve got to watch the little old freezer repairman, whose eyes aren’t anywhere near focused. Look at him, a miracle, he manages to hold on to the stool. I don’t want to have to lift him out of the beer puddles on the floor again today. I replace the coffeepotand switch on the percolator. Nobody complains about the noise—everybody’s as numb as I am. Only three hours to go.
    I notice a couple I didn’t see come in. Two young people sitting in a booth and facing each other. They look as though they just had a fight. They’re like Ray and me right before we got married, when I was several weeks pregnant. The girl’s a bit plump, the way I was at sixteen. She’s sitting back with her arms folded. Looking at her, you’d say she feels she’s being accused.
    I see their lips moving, and I have the impression I’m listening to us.
    “You want them both. Why compare them, why put them in competition with each other?”
    “Marianne—”
    “You can want to write and you can want our baby.”
    “But I couldn’t choose. I’d be forced to—”
    “Not forced, no. You wouldn’t have to force yourself.”
    “If I was obliged to choose between my family and my writing, I believe I’d choose—”
    “You can have both.”
    “I’d choose writing.”
    I look at the girl. Her face is set. She’s very close to standing up, walking through the bar, and going out. Why shouldn’t she have a choice? Why not her too? Holding back tears, she looks over at the door.
    Then she turns to the boy. “I can make it work. You’ll see. Everything will go so well you won’t have to choose.”
    She falls silent. She’s just sealed her fate. Let no one say this fate was reserved for her at her birth, that it’s the
consequence
of her sex and her upbringing. Let no one say that. It’s the consequence of nothing but her love.
    In that case, why do the blinds on the front window make her think of prison bars?
    The boy leans over and kisses her.
    “I love you so much, Marianne. You’ll never know how much I love you.”
    I choose that moment to approach their booth, coffeepot in hand.
    “All right, you two, what’s your pleasure?”
RAYMOND AND DOUGLAS
    “You visit them?”
    “Of course.”
    “But not when they’re so far away? Not as far as where I live?”
    “Sometimes even farther.”
    “Really?”
    “If it’s necessary. Only if it’s necessary.”
    “When is it necessary?”
    “When I want to prevent them from going over to the competition. How do you think a person becomes one of the three editors that count in this town?”
    “I had no idea.”
    “You’re not going to eat your sushi?”
    “I don’t know if sushi’s my thing.”
    “I’ll eat it for you. Have you brought the manuscript?”
    “The one you mailed me?”
    “We’re going to keep it the way it is now, all right?”
    “Well … I mean … I discussed it with Marianne.”
    “Marianne?”
    “She’s my wife.”
    “I didn’t know you were married.”
    “I married Marianne when she was sixteen.”
    “I got married three times in sixteen years. You don’t want your beer?”
    “You can have it.”
    “My divorce comes through next week.”
    “Marianne finds the cuts—”
    “Lorraine thinks I spend too much time at my office.”
    “She finds the cuts,