Lisa Unger - Sliver Of Truth

The second book in the Ridley Jones series, 2007

She wondered, Is it possible, maybe even normal, to spend twenty years of your life with someone, to love that person more than you love yourself sometimes and then sometimes to truly hate him, so much that you think about taking your new cast-iron grill pan and bringing it down on the top of his head? Or maybe these thoughts were just a result of one of her random yet tempestuous perimenopausal moments. Or the fact that the piece-of-crap air conditioner she’d been begging him to replace for two summers was no competition for a kitchen where there were three pans on the stove and a pork roast in the oven.

The heat didn’t seem to bother him as he sat directly in front of the unit with a copy of the Times in his hands, his feet on the hassock, a glass of merlot on the table beside him. He’d offered to help; it was true. But in that kind of non-offer way he had: “Do you need some help?” (without looking up from the sports section), not “What can I do?” (as he rolled up his sleeves) or “You sit down a minute; let me mince the garlic” (as he poured her a glass of wine). Those were what she considered true offers of help. She wanted him to insist. Especially since she knew that she could never sit reading with a glass of wine while he slaved away at some annoying task like cooking for friends (friends of his, by the way), regardless of whether he’d rebuffed her offers of help or not.

She glanced at the clock and felt her stress level rise. Just an hour before their guests arrived and she hadn’t even showered. She released a sigh and banged a pot down in the sink, which caused her husband to look up from his paper.

“Everything all right?” Allen asked, rising.

“No,” she said sullenly. “It’s hot in here and I need to take a shower.”

“Okay,” he said, coming over to her and taking the slotted spoon from her hand. He wrapped his arms around her waist and smiled that devilish smile he had, the one that always made her smile, too, no matter how angry she was.

“Take it easy,” he said, kissing her neck. She leaned back from him a second, playing mad and hard to get, but soon enough she melted.

“If you need help, why don’t you ask for it?” he whispered in her ear, raising erogenous goose bumps on her neck.

“You should just know,” she said, still pouting.

“You’re right,” he said into the space between her throat and her collarbone. “I’m sorry. What can I do?”

“Well,” she said, suddenly feeling silly, “I guess it’s mostly done.”

He pulled away from her, took a glass from the cabinet, and poured her some wine. “How about this, then? You go take a shower and I’ll get a head start on the cleaning, take care of some of these pans.”

She took the glass from his hand, gave him a kiss on the mouth. After twenty years, she still loved the taste of him (when she wasn’t imagining clocking him with a grill pan). She looked around their West Village apartment, most of which could be seen from the space over the bar that separated the kitchen from the dining and living area. It was small and cramped but filled with the chic clutter of objects and books and photographs they’d collected over their life together. The couch and matching love seat were old and worn, but good quality and as comfortable as an embrace. The cocktail table was an old door from an antique shop in New Hope, Pennsylvania. Their television, like the window air-conditioning unit, was a dinosaur that badly needed replacing. Their bedroom was so small that there was barely room for their queen-size bed and two bedside tables piled high with books. They could afford something better, something much bigger…maybe in Brooklyn or out in Hoboken. But they were Manhattanites to the bone and couldn’t bear to be separated from the city by a bridge or a tunnel. Maybe it was silly, but between that and the fact that the rent was just six hundred dollars a month (as it had been since 1970), because the apartment had been grandfathered to Allen by his brother when his brother had moved to a lovely carriage house in Park Slope, they’d just stayed on there. The children they’d hoped for had never come; they’d never had a reason to expand. Only recently had things become uncomfortable for them.

The new landlord knew he could be getting about two or three thousand dollars a month for their apartment, so he was very slow to fix things that broke, hoping to force them out. And in an old apartment in an old building something was always broken, a fuse was always blown, something was always leaking.

They’d talked more about moving recently, but prices in the city were so outrageous. They’d lived a life where experience and travel had always mattered more to them than a status apartment or a flat-screen television. And though they’d done well, she as a crime reporter for various city newspapers and finally, now, at the Times, and he as a commercial photographer, choices had to be made along the way. Live well, travel well, and save for retirement, while doing without where the apartment was concerned. It had never been a difficult trade. They’d seen the world and were still explorers at heart. In their early fifties they were in good shape to retire in the next ten years, though they’d never owned any property.

She thought about these things in the shower, felt good about them. Blessedly, the hot-water heater was working today. Ella and Rick, Allen’s friends from college, would arrive carrying a hundred-dollar bottle of wine; Ella would be wearing something outrageously chic and expensive, Rick would talk about his new toy, whatever that happened to be. They weren’t snobs; they were unpretentious and kind. But they were very wealthy and it came off them in waves, demanded noticing, begged comparisons. And when she wasn’t feeling good about herself, it bothered her in a way it shouldn’t. Allen wouldn’t have understood; his mind didn’t work that way. He enjoyed his friends’ successes, their toys, their vacation homes, as much as he would if they’d been his own. He didn’t believe in comparisons.

She thought about this as she rinsed the conditioner from her hair. Somewhere in the apartment or maybe above or below them, there was a loud knocking, loud enough to startle her. It could have been the hot-water heater, or something on another floor. She just prayed, prayed that it wasn’t their guests arriving early. Or the landlord, wanting to finish the fight they’d had with him earlier about the terrible leak in the bathroom when the people above showered. Today they’d threatened to start putting their rent into escrow until he fixed it once and for all. The conversation had devolved into him reverting to his native tongue, something harsh and Eastern European, and screaming at them unintelligibly. They’d shut the door in his face and he’d stormed off, yelling all the way down the stairs.

“Those Eastern Europeans are a hot-blooded lot, aren’t they?” Allen had remarked, unperturbed.

“Maybe it’s time. Interest rates are low. We have the money for a sizable down payment. Jack has been telling us we have to invest in real assets to be truly comfortable in retirement,” she said, referring to their accountant.