Juice by Stephen Becker

Author:Stephen Becker
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504026888
Publisher: Open Road Media

9

Joe Harrison came home not sure that he had done well. He was tired, to begin with. His house, handsome and rustic from the road and the drive, no longer impressed him; he was tired of living in it. He was tired of being a good father, tired of being a good husband, tired of being tireless. He was, as all his friends knew, a winner; you could put your money on Joe Harrison; but favorites carry higher weights; backing one was easier than being one. For twenty years he had been on the rise, and he was (although he did not know it, did not formulate the thought) approaching the moment when he would want to be understood rather than admired. There were traces of that need, that surrender, on his features, in the pouches of his eyes and the sharp wrinkles at the corners of his mouth. A Turkish bath, Rhein might have said; all you need is a night in a Turkish bath.

Harrison stepped into the cool of his own foyer and tossed the Panama hat to a small marble tabletop. Hearth and home, it was, and how good to sit before the fire with a bumper of—that was not the answer either, of course; there was no answer. The day you burned the mortgage you started to think about Arizona or Tanganyika or the Pamirs. Rhine and Rhône; Rome and Nome. Nome—that was the place. Night baseball without lights. A wedding night four months long. And the droit du seigneur? How would they work that, north of the Circle? Outside the circle, he thought; outside the circle. Lonely and marvelous. Meanwhile I live here; I own this house; I have plenty of trouble and I’d better stop all this traveling.

“Helen!” His voice echoed faintly; the surfaces of Harrison’s house were plane, its walls unadorned. Faintly too a voice responded. Helen was in the kitchen. I’m hungry, Joe thought with surprise. He passed through the dining area, dropped his jacket on a hassock, and pushed through a swing door into his kitchen, where his wife stood smiling, her skirt crooked, her sleeves rolled, a faint film of sweat on her face. “You look like hell.” He smiled.

“So do you,” she said, and did not smile. She came to him and put both arms around his neck and kissed him; her face was sticky and warm. He held her. The kitchen was cool. It was high noon and there was no sun in the room. He smelled onion and was glad. He wanted onion, cheese, salami, dark bread, and beer. He looked over Helen’s shoulder and saw egg salad, crabmeat salad, chopped ham, potato salad, whole-wheat bread, and beer. He laughed at himself. “Let me go,” he said.

“Never,” she said.

“Our differences appear to be irreconcilable,” he said. “An impasse.”

She laughed and nuzzled him. “How are you?”

“All right,” he said. “Hungry. We’ll talk about it.”

She looked up at him, close, like that, her eyes a few inches from his, and he looked away and she released him.

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