George Higgins - A change of gravity

Dan's habitual and persistent infidelity's just about the only flaw in it, at least that I can see. If he did decide now that he wanted to change, for whatever reason some philandering close friend of his were to die of AIDS and throw a big scare into him he probably couldn't do it. He's priapic. By now he most likely can't help it."

Mercy sighed.

"It isn't an uncommon problem, Marcy," Diane said. "Several of the Kennedy men seem to've suffered from it. Lots of marriages that have it survive forever, and I don't mean just royalty, either. Far more couples than most people think stay together despite incorrigible infidelity or at least until one of the spouses dies, as close to forever as we get. If you're able to be happy even though it means you'll always have to overlook his one shortcoming — maybe that isn't the right word my advice would be: Leave it alone.

"But if you were happy, or could convince yourself you were, you and I wouldn't be having this conversation. Or any of the others we've had about essentially the same subject through the years. So then, if all of that means that you haven't been happy, just unhappily sort of inert; that you're not happy now and don't really see much chance you ever will be, as long as you stay with him, for the rest of this one life you have left, then I would say: "It's over; it's dead and ain't gonna get better pronounce it. Call it quits. Kick him out."

Then the Sunday night dinners suddenly became very important to Hilliard, taking on an aspect of poignant urgency.

Merrion was compassionate. He had watched a number of people whom he knew reasonably well as they stumbled and staggered emotionally and mentally through divorces, and he was satisfied that the days and nights that they exhausted invariably brought demoralizing anguish under the best of circumstances. "But yours is going to be worsen the usual mean pissing contest, and God knows those're bad enough. This one I'm braced for."

"Oh, she's going to crucify me," Hilliard said, sharing a six-pack of Heinekens one night in the office on High Street.

"I reckon she'll try to," Merrion said.

"And you don't blame her," Hilliard said.

Merrion had prepared for that question. "Danny," he said, "I didn't say anything, you start having the one-night stands while you're staying in Boston. I think it was prolly quite a while before I begin to know about them. Mercy knew as much as I did, I think, and what I knew was nothin'. You were bein' very careful then.

"But then around me this's just around me; I don't think you've gone completely out of your mind so that you've started tippin' off Mercy it seems like you maybe start getting' a little careless. Droppin' a few hints here and there; sort of letting things slip out. I was stunned.

It was so outta character for you. Adultery wasn't like you, Dan.

"Cheating? On his wife? Danny Hilliard doesn't cheat, not on anybody.

He doesn't break his word. Dan Hilliard told you something? It's gold; you can take it to the bank." I think that's how you got away with it so long. People who'd known you a long time, including me and Mercy, we never dreamed you'd ever do a thing like that to her. We weren't looking for the signs and so we didn't see them.

"So you start givin' clues. I do my best to ignore them. If you're getting laid in Boston, well, I didn't think it was the best idea you ever had maybe get yourself a little herpes you then bring home to the bride; might be tough, explain that but then I'm not your chaperone, tell you to keep your pants zipped. You didn't hire me for that. I'm your, what, "close advisor"?" '"Confidante," Hilliard said. "That's what they call you. They think I confide in you. We've heard the chimes at midnight. Tell you what it is I've got on my mind; ask you what you think I should do."

"Okay," Merrion said, 'so I'm your "confidante" then. "Friend" would've been what I would've said, somebody asked me what I was, I was trynah be anyway, but "confidante" 's okay. Lemme see if I got this straight now: this would then mean that when you started dropping the hints you'd been fucking your brains out and I mean that here, literally you were meaning to do it. You weren't being careless at all: You were confiding in me that you were getting a lot of out-of-town pussy while you're far from your happy home, and asking me for my advice.

"Geez, I'm really sorry, Dan; I blew it. Really let you down; didn't realize that's what you wanted. If I had've, my advice would've been I didn't think it was very damned smart, fucking around on the side. In fact I thought it was fucking stupid, that is what I thought it was.

"Then I would've told you what you should've already known: "Seeing how I'm getting laid now and then, not as often's I'd like, but not bad, I know I'm not being a good example for you; but I'm not trying to be one. Being a good example's never been part of my job. If it had been, I wouldn't've taken it.

'"And furthermore," I now see I should've said when what you were after was advice about extra-curricular fucking, but I was too stupid to see it I should've reminded you of something that I would've thought you already knew, without me reminding you; I should've said: "I am not married. This is a very important distinction when what we're talking about's getting laid. I know there're people, still lots of people, who don't approve of getting laid unless the person who's in bed with you's your wife. Or if you're a woman, your husband. But nobody seems to think you should be punished for it if she isn't unless she's someone else's wife, or you've also got a wife. Then they think you should be at very least admonished heavily, like we sometimes say in the court. Some would even go so far as to say you should be booted out on your lying ass and see how you like that." And as of course we — and the rest of the population of the entire Commonwealth of Massachusetts now know, Mercy belongs to that group.

"But that stands to reason. She's a wife. Wives're especially prone to this kind of thinking, or so I've been told. I do not have a wife.

Once I thought I probably would, some day, if Sunny ever decided she oughta maybe come home and slow down a little, but as you know she died first still goin' strong. Too bad. But the result is I not only don't have a wife; I never did have a wife and I never ran for office, so what I do is nobody's business. It's always been okay for me to get laid. Not always easy, but if I got lucky, okay.

"Since you do have a wife," as you did, back then, when I wasn't giving you the advice you wanted; pretty soon I now think you're not gonna, "getting laid isn't okay, no matter how big the young lady's tits are, or how hot she is for your rod. So my advice to you is "Cut it out."

"But you wouldn't've," Merrion said. "If I'd advised you to stop fucking around, you wouldn't've done it you would not've stopped fucking around."

"Probably not," Hilliard said, looking gloomy.

Merrion laughed. "Absolutely not," you mean," he said. "Never in one million years. Because when you started letting me know you had all these gorgeous women coming onto you down there, you weren't being careless you were doing it on purpose. And you weren't doing it so I would then clear my throat and give you lots of good advice you wouldn't take. You were doing it to let me know I wasn't the only guy who could get a piece of ass; even you, a married guy, were getting more, and better. What you were doing was bragging, old chum, just plain old locker-room bragging."

Hilliard looked miserable. He rubbed the knuckles of the ringers on his left hand with his right thumb, and pursed his lips. He mumbled something to himself.

"I know, Danny, and I'm really sorry," Merrion said, 'but I think you oughta hear this. You fuckin' earned it. When you were hurting Mercy, you were also putting me in a box, you started letting me know what you'd been doing. You hadda know it, too; that you were putting me in an awful position with Mercy.