John's Wife by Robert Coover

Author:Robert Coover
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: John’s Wife
ISBN: 9781941088845
Publisher: Dzanc Books
Published: 1996-06-11T16:00:00+00:00

“Hello, honey—? Me again. Hey, where the hell are you? I ask, nobody seems to know. I hope at least you’re listening to your messages. I need somebody to talk to, sweetie, things are so weird now, you’re the last best friend I’ve got, and all I get’s your damned answering machine. And, believe me, I mean batshit weird—like, Winnie’s back? Living with us? I know, I know, there’s the old guilt trip crap, and I drink too much, we both do, and mostly it’s Stu who sees her or thinks he does, what’s left of his red hair standing right up on end, just like in the comic strips, but I saw her one night, too, when Stu woke me up with his goddamned country-boy snoring. Standing there, right at the foot of the bed, all lit up, big as life and twice as mean. And you know what I thought of when I saw her? It probably made her mad, but I couldn’t help it. You remember Harvie, you know, Yale’s brother, the one we called Hard Yard and King Dong? The one who’s carrying that monstrous thing around in girls’ panties now? Well, maybe you never saw it, goody-goody that you were, but it was not only long as your arm, it had a very peculiar color, or rather lack of color, pale and waxen from the root all the way to the end of it like all the blood had got sucked out, and faintly peachy in tone the way they paint up dead bodies, very spooky, at least in the dark. I never saw it in daylight. Maybe they were shining a light through it, I can’t remember. But even when it was soft, which I guess was most of the time, the end of it was a kind of see-through blue like it was bruised somewhere deep below the surface, the opening of it just a gray metallic slit—it looked like it had been stapled at the tip. Well, that’s what Winnie’s mouth looked like, a thin gray staple in her bluish face, and the rest of her, too: opaque like Harvie’s cock and waxy and sort of glowing from inside but pale and bloodless except for her eyes which were red-hot, just like Stu had said they were. Made me laugh, sort of, what I was thinking, but she scared the shit out of me, too. Almost literally—I mean, I was loose for a week, and I’m still not back to anything regular. Which is why I’ve been thinking about calling the whole thing off. What whole thing? You see why I need to talk to you? What’s the matter, honey? Are you ticked off at me because of what the useless asshole I’m married to did to you out at the club that night? Listen, forget it. Forget him. Remember that photo he keeps on his desk, the one from your wedding party? Well, just between you and me, old Stu-pot’s about to get a whop in the chops with another fucking piece of cake.

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.