The Future of Love by Shirley Abbott

Author:Shirley Abbott
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2008-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

18 Antonia

SHE SHUT THE bedroom door behind her. She stopped to get her bearings. Maggie and Toni were in the other bedroom; Sam was in her bed, still asleep. That man’s photo was on TV last night, the one who had put an end to order: Mohammed Atta with a flat, square, dark face and bitter black eyes like the black holes somewhere in space. He was the mastermind, had contrived all this, had cut throats, and had died in the holocaust he had engineered. In American Airlines 11, from Boston, he had hurtled toward her as she stood far below reading Whitman on the side of that fence.

All night she and Sam had tossed and squirmed, dozed and wakened, escaped—but only barely—from debilitating dreams. In one dream, she’d been deep in conversation with Mohammed Atta, who insisted, “I didn’t do this.” Toward 3:00 a.m. Antonia had awakened Sam. “Where is Mark? When will we know?” She was too tired to cry. Sam took her through the scenario, Mark leaving home early, dropping Toni at school, the interview scheduled for 10:00, Morgan Stanley in the south tower, below the line of attack, the impossibility of Mark having gone up there. He must have arrived on Wall Street around 8:30, maybe later. Surely he did not go into that building. He would have been on the sidewalk when the first plane struck. He was lost in the chaos but would turn up.

“Right.” She turned her back to him, reached back and pulled him to her, hooking his leg between hers, arranging his right arm on her hip and up onto her chest. This way they could generate warmth, which would in turn generate sleep. He stroked her, curled up to her as close as he could get.

“I ask you, would he go into a building that’s being torched by jet planes? You said he didn’t want the job at Morgan Stanley anyway. He’d run in there and be barbecued or crushed for a job he didn’t want in the first place?”

“Why hasn’t he turned up?”

“Amnesia?”

“Yeah, like in the romance novels. Oh God, I wish I had amnesia. I wish I’d taken a sleeping pill. Too late. We have so much to do tomorrow. I’ll be a dead person.”

“No, darling. We’ll sleep.”

And they had, until about five, when he had wakened her. She had tried to fend him off, ah, God, she was so tired, but he had parted her legs, slid down below her hips. She was greedy for his need of her, greedy for his desire. This was medicinal. Human. Commonplace.

Antonia took two aspirin with orange juice, and she told herself that Mark was dead. Otherwise he would have called. What would Maggie do? Maybe it was better he was dead. Then Maggie could start over, somebody else would come along, somebody wanting a widow with a charming child, and it would all be fine. But, oh God, right now her eyes burned, her knees ached. A hangman’s knot tightened beneath her left shoulder blade.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.