A Woman Run Mad by John L'Heureux

Author:John L'Heureux [L'Heureux, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781555846831
Publisher: Grove Atlantic
Published: 1988-09-15T04:00:00+00:00

15

Claire leaned forward, making her point. “You sleep with anybody, Quinn says. You have some kind of commitment to her brother, but you sleep with anybody.”

“I have sex with anybody. I sleep with him.”

“With Porter, his name is.”

“With Porter.”

“And you have a gun, he says.”

Angelo thought about that for a while.

“So he says. Or writes, rather. Do you? Or is that fiction? It’s from his notebook, not from the novel, so I presume it’s fact rather than fiction. But with Quinn, you can’t always tell.”

“Not even Porter knows that.”

“It’s a small handgun, a bluish-silver color. You keep it in a nightstand next to your bed. Ever since the beating.”

“Not even Sarah knows that.”

“Well, obviously she does. Since it’s she who told him.”

Silence.

“The back staircase?”

Angelo shook his head, not in disbelief, but dazed by how very much this woman knew.

“She always uses the back stairs. In the kitchen. Behind the panel that holds the spice rack. Maybe she comes down here and snoops around while you’re out.”

More silence.

“I would imagine that it was originally the servant’s staircase, wouldn’t you suppose? In a house this old?”

“I’m trying to think how I feel about this.”

“You’re surprised, of course. People who don’t write are always surprised. But that’s just how writers are. They use everything. Or everyone. It’s all the same to them.”

“But does he write fiction at all? From what you say, it sounds as if he just transcribes what Sarah tells him.”

“Oh, he’ll transform it into fiction, not to worry. Quinn’s the real thing. Sometimes he transforms it as he goes along, right in the notebook; that’s why you can’t ever be sure what’s what. He gives you a harelip, for instance.” She smiled, pleased. “In the end, the raw material doesn’t count. It could have been anything.”

“But in this case, it’s me. It’s us.”

“It just happens to be. You can’t take any of this personally.”

They sat looking at each other in silence. Suddenly Claire laughed, a little choking sound, a remnant of her earlier hysteria. “You know, you look something like Quinn, with your lip like that. Do you suppose…” she said, gasping “… do you suppose I could have another little drink? Angelo?”

Claire had arrived an hour earlier, pale and hollow-eyed and soaked from the sudden downpour. She stood at his door, speechless, and as Angelo repeated, “Yes? Can I help you?” for the second time, she began to tremble and whimper and finally she burst into a torrent of speech, babbling a confused story about driving from Dartmouth and not being able to find a parking place and Quinn and Sarah and a restaurant and being fat, and then she bit at her knuckles and began to cry, and at once her hysteria became the real thing. Angelo had no choice but to let her come in.

He sat her on the living room couch and gave her a good strong drink and told her just to rest for a while. He went to his bedroom and put on some

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