None of Your Business by Valerie Block

Author:Valerie Block
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780345478399
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2004-06-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

Mitch woke up in Queens. Every morning he had to remind himself: I am free. It’s a gorgeous day, and I don’t have to go to the office. I don’t have to please my wife, I don’t have to bail my sons out of jail and I live in Jackson Heights.

This elation fell between moments of panic when he burst into a sweat remembering the irrevocable nature of what had been done. Not only did he not have to call his mother, he couldn’t call his mother, ever. Then there were moments of despair when he realized that after a career spent thinking ahead, he found himself in a bleak, uncharted environment where he couldn’t plan the following day. He oscillated between self-congratulation and self-pity. He did nothing all day and was exhausted.

The third night of his exile, he’d put on a hat and beard that Erica had left in the closet, and drove into the city at three A.M. in the Toyota, looking like a Hassid. He and Erica had paid cash—literally cash—for this car, at a car lot somewhere in Nassau County two weeks before. Never in his life had he bought a used car, and it troubled him: anything could go wrong with it.

In Manhattan he sweated at every red light, a throbbing mass of guilt ready to be picked up, interrogated and incarcerated.

Erica waited in Maria’s vestibule with his luggage and five bags of groceries. She got into the passenger seat, still furious, and didn’t help load the car. He held his breath as the car dipped down into the deserted Midtown Tunnel. He took the Queens side streets carefully, petrified of an encounter with a real Hassid. When he arrived in his new driveway without incident, he wondered if he’d ever be able to relax again. She was too mad to speak, apparently; they went to bed without a single word.

After the pizza fiasco, he didn’t go out unless absolutely necessary. There was a tiny concrete patio in the back of the house, but it was exposed to the surrounding houses. A woman, possibly South American, or Southeast Asian, frequently appeared at the back door of the house opposite, sweeping the driveway. She had squinted toward his back door on more than six separate occasions. They should have had some kind of porch or awning built beforehand. Now it was too late. He propped open the door, dragged the armchair to the threshold and took the air. He began reading volume one of Churchill’s history of the Second World War.

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