The Remedy for Love: A Novel by Bill Roorbach

Author:Bill Roorbach [Roorbach, Bill]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2014-10-14T00:00:00+00:00

Twenty-Four

HE USED A spatula to carefully scrape off the ruined crust of his mac and cheese, added a little water, and put the dish back in the oven to crisp again. They had to eat, no matter what emergencies befell them. He’d kept the fire at the hottest temperature it could produce, so hot that the stovepipe glowed red. The food would be ready all but instantly. The kitchen area, at least, had warmed with the success of their labors, and Danielle had pulled off the huge cabin sweater once again, and then the top camisole (she wiped her brow with this), leaving only the pink camisole, a worn old thing. He could make out her steep nipples, briefest glimpse, then against his will looking again, against his will remembering the feel of her in the heat of the emergency, bony, protective. He’d feed her now all right. Alison was the big girl, lots of curves and cushions, lovely and feminine (if you didn’t get too close), never protective, insulated, insular. Danielle more the stick, someone you could imagine staying up nights writing angry poems, making phone calls at all hours, opening little packets of cocaine or meth, filling her nose (and reaching for your cock, hard squeeze), but also the one to wipe the snow and hemlock needles from your eyes, your very nostrils.

The foot of the avalanche still pushed against the face of the cabin, unimaginable weight. The shove had already moved the structure appreciably on its piers, Eric was certain, and there were still creakings and groanings beneath—how far could the cabin move before it fell? And if it fell, what would become of the stove, for example, the stovepipe, all the hot coals, the burning logs, the smoke? And what would become of Danielle and of him, no way out? The shed with its girlie calendar might remain; perhaps they could retreat there. Or maybe they could smash out the front window. He stepped over the two trunk-thick pine branches, put the hammer on the sill, just in case. It’d be a soft landing in all that snow. Unless the house moved so far they ended up in the river, not more than ten feet away and twelve or fifteen feet down. Unlikely, he decided: the beams might fall off the piers, but then the piers would poke up through the floor between joists, and that would keep the place from going very much further.

But who built a house with only one exit!

“Yo, food,” Danielle said.

“Okay, Miss Manners,” Eric said.

“I regret the loss of your nice bottle of wine, mister.”

“At least the wind’s all outside again.”

“Are we scared?”

“We’re cautious,” he said.

“I was like.”

“We’re going to have to find a way out, Danielle.”

“Like, shaking.”

He pulled his dish out of the oven.

She found her next box of wine.

The house seemed to be staying put. The groaning had definitely quit. Every flake of snow must have hurtled off the steep hillside, so no more slides. Unless a lot more snow came down, and in fact a lot more snow was coming down.

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