Read Separate Flights for Free Online Page B

said: ‘Have you been talking to my mistress?’
    â€˜Mistress pisstress. I’ve been talking to you for three years. I’ve been watching you watching women.’
    I believed him. If he knew about Edith and me, it was because he’d guessed: they had not been talking.
    â€˜Am I right?’ he said.
    â€˜I worry about Terry, that’s true. Just getting caught, I mean. I worry about love affairs too: the commitment, you know.’
    â€˜What’s commitment got to do with a love affair? A love affair is abandon. Put the joy back in fucking. It’s got to be with a good woman, though. See, Jeanne knew. She knew I’d never leave Sharon and Edith. Commitment. That’s with Terry. It doesn’t even matter if you love Terry. You’re married. What matters is not to hate each other, and to keep peace. The old Munich of marriage. You live with a wife, around a wife, not through her. She doesn’t run with you and come drink beer with you, for Christ sake. Love, shit. Love the kids. Love the horny wives and the girls in short skirts. Love everyone, my son, and keep peace with your wife. Who, by the way, is not invulnerable to love either. What’ll you do if that happens?’
    â€˜That’s her business.’
    â€˜All right. I believe you.’
    â€˜You should; it’s true.’
    â€˜So why are you so uptight?’
    â€˜I’m not, man. What brought all this on, anyway?’
    â€˜I didn’t like that look of awe in your face. When I said I spent the night with Jeanne, and never broke up with her. I love you, man. You shouldn’t feel awe for anything I do. I don’t have more guts than you. I just respond more, that’s all. I don’t like seeing you cramped. Chicks like you, I see it, Jack. Hell, Edith gets juiced up every time you call the house. Other day Sharon said she wanted a jack-in-the-box, I thought Edith would fall off the couch laughing. Wicked laugh. Lying there laughing.’
    â€˜Jack-in-the-box,’ I said, smiling, shaking my head.
    He slapped my shoulder and we drained our mugs and left. ‘Take care,’ I said, passing the fish man. ‘See you boys.’ He raised his mug. Going out the door Hank turned left, toward the dining room; I waited while he talked to the hostess, nodding, smiling, reaching for his wallet. He gave her four dollars and waved off the change.
    â€˜What was that about?’
    We walked to the front door and I started to go outside, but turned instead and went into the fish market.
    â€˜I bought him a fish platter.’
    I went to the lobster tank, and an old man in a long white apron came from behind the fish counter.
    â€˜He’ll be gone before it’s ready,’ I said.
    â€˜Told her to give him a beer too. He won’t waste a beer. By the time he’s done, there it’ll be.’
    â€˜All right: cool.’ I turned to the old man. ‘How much are you getting for lobsters?’
    â€˜As much as we can,’ winking, laughing, then a wheeze and a cough.
    The chicken lobsters were a dollar seventy-nine a pound; she loved to eat, she’d say mmmm , sucking the claws, splitting open the tail. I asked for two and didn’t watch him weigh them or ring them up. I couldn’t; it was like when they call you in to pay for your crime: your father, your boss: the old humiliation of chilled ass and quickened heart. They were four dollars and fifty-two cents. I did not think about the bank balance until I bought the wine. On the way to Hank’s I stopped at the liquor store and bought Pinot Chardonnay, Paul Masson: two-fifty. Seven dollars. Two on beer. Nine. I went next door into the A&P; Hank was waiting in the car, listening to the Red Sox in a two-nighter. Eight at the service station: seventeen. I bought half pints of strawberry, chocolate, and vanilla ice cream, a bunch of bananas, a can of chocolate syrup, a jar of cherries, a pressurized can of