Blue Angel by Francine Prose

Author:Francine Prose [Prose, Francine]
Language: deu
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
ISBN: 9780749005801
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2000-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Swenson checks the mailbox. Nothing. Well, not nothing, exactly. A brown envelope of coupons that will languish on the kitchen counter where he and Sherrie will eye it, guilty for being too lazy to practice these small domestic economies, until one of them gets sick of looking at it and tosses it in the trash. He thinks of Len Currie, facing his stack of unanswered invitations to glamorous parties, to literary conferences in Tuscan villas and Sonoma vineyards.

The contrast between Len’s undeserved popularity and his own undeserved exile generates a vapor of discontent and irritation that, for want of another solid object, collects around Sherrie, who’s done nothing to deserve it short of having the bad luck to be sitting in the kitchen, leafing through a cookbook, no doubt seeking something soothing to prepare at the end of a long day he’s spent cheating on her—or trying to—with a student.

Sherrie must have had a tough day, too. It’s The Cooking of Sicily, roots she tends to return to when things are a trifle rocky. The cuisine of a culture in which a wronged wife’s male relations are the vigilante marriage counselors practicing kidnap-murder therapy.

“What do we want?” asks Sherrie, without looking up from the book.

“A million bucks. A new life. Roll back the clock twenty years—”

“For dinner?” says Sherrie, impatiently.

“Oatmeal,” Swenson says.

“Excuse me?” says Sherrie.

“I broke a tooth today.” Swenson probes the jagged edge with his tongue. He’s got to go to the dentist. What if he needs a root canal? What if he’s exposed a nerve? Wouldn’t he know that already?

Sherrie winces. “Oooh. How did you do that?”

“On an olive pit,” says Swenson.

“Where did you get an olive?” says Sherrie. “An olive’s way exotic for the Euston Commons.”

Is that all the sympathy Swenson’s going to get? The wince, the little moan. And now we’re onto the olive. The worst student malingerers must get a few more seconds than that.

Anyway…Swenson hadn’t given much thought to the nonexistent olive. He waits a beat, then watches the liar inside him get busy. “Well, it was the strangest thing. I got this craving…for olives. I went to the MinuteMart and bought a jar of olives and ate the whole jar, and you know how you save the pits in the corner of your mouth? And then forget they’re there? Crunch.”

It’s pure adrenaline talking, but fine, whatever works. Often the most effective lies are the most unlikely.

“Are you pregnant?” Sherrie asks.

“What?” says Swenson. “What?”

“Weird food cravings. Ted? For a second it looked like you were scared you might be pregnant.”

“It’s not a joke, Sherrie. Breaking a tooth. When you’re twenty-two, you think everything can be replaced. At forty-seven, you know better.”

“I’m sorry,” says Sherrie. “You should have come to the clinic. We could have fixed you up.” Sherrie’s flirting with him in that reflexive, unserious, conjugal way.

“I guess it didn’t occur to me.” Swenson seems to have lost the reflex.

“Does it hurt?”

“Only psychically. But let’s not do the big juicy steak dinner tonight?”

“When’s the last time we ate steak? Listen, I’ve got an idea.

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