John Crowley - Aegypt 01 by Aegypt

Author:Aegypt
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

“So,” Rosie said. She swiveled slightly in her comfy chair, feeling quite at home here on her third visit. “It seems like it’s okay, and he doesn’t mind.”

“Doesn’t mind?”

“Well we had some talks. And he didn’t really want to talk about anything legal. But I wanted to get it decided and over with. And he said he thought we should talk a lot more, and anyway he didn’t like the idea of ‘no fault’ when it was me who walked out. So I explained to him what you said. What our options are.”

Heart beating hard and throat dry, stuttering somewhat from overrehearsal, she had made her speech, explaining to Mike that if he didn’t want to participate in a no-fault divorce she intended to sue him for divorce on the grounds of adultery. The awful weightiness of this, which seemed at the same time as weightless and illusory as some big scene in a movie, had ended discussion for the day; Mike, saying he was unsure of his ability to control his response, left the Donut Hole, neutral ground where at a deserted hour they had met.

It was a little like playing Rock, Scissors, and Paper, this countering of Mike’s psychotherapeutic strategies with her new legal ones; sometimes when the hands came down she won, sometimes he, but at least she didn’t always lose.

She had left it at that for a few weeks, feeling like a gambler who has put up a big stake and waits for the other side of the table to see it or fold; she pondered this scary and exhilarating sensation, the sensation of having power, of being out on a limb that was strong enough to hold her. When she thought she had waited enough, she made this appointment with Allan Butterman, and then called Mike to get an answer: Allan, she said, would have to know how he was to proceed.

And Mike had been reasonable. He had, apparently, lost interest in tormenting her about it all, as though he weren’t up for the game; he had seemed—as since their separation she had felt him more and more often to be—distracted, not altogether there, to be on the point of turning away sayingYes yes half over his shoulder, his eyes elsewhere. Rosie supposed she knew the cause, though it surprised her.

“This same woman?” Allan said.

“The same one,” Rosie said. “I thought it was just going to be a fling. It looks like it’s more than that. It looks like he’s kinda swept away. But really he’s always been sort of a dope about women.” That had used to be one of Rosie’s real strengths, that Mike had been a dope about women, that she had known it and he had not. She swiveled thoughtfully in her swivel chair. “I wonder if he’s still in his Down Passage Year.”

“His what?”

“That’s in Climacterics,” Rosie said. “It’s sort of a new science Mike’s inventing. I can’t tell you a real lot about it, because I don’t understand it

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