Russell Banks - Affliction

With the motor and wipers off, his own windshield was quickly covered over, and he felt suddenly as if he were inside a cave, looking at the walls. He opened the door and stepped out, moved to the other side of the Dumpster, lit a cigarette and waited. Like a cop, he thought. Well, why not? He was a cop, was he not? Damn straight. And Lillian, was she a suspected criminal, or was she just his ex-wife meeting some guy on the sly, and if that was all, then was Wade merely perversely curious, a kind of Peeping Tom?

He knew it was a man she was meeting, no doubt about it: he had heard it in her voice: “ Please , ” she had said, and “Hurry.”

The pain from his tooth was cutting like a bandsaw up the side of his face, and he placed the palm of his hand against it, as if to shush it, keep the noise down, while he moved carefully away from the Dumpster and then down the shallow embankment to the parking lot, where he slipped along the side of the building to a darkened doorway, the back door to the restaurant upstairs, and stepped in out of the snow. He had a good angle on the Audi from there and could not be observed from the car without some effort: he was still behind the vehicle, but to the side now and only thirty feet away; he could easily see Lillian sitting behind the wheel, smoking.

Was she smoking? But Lillian did not smoke anymore, he remembered. In fact, she made a big deal of it, told him repeatedly and with disgust that she could smell it in Jill’s clothing and hair whenever she came back from being with him. He looked closer. She was smoking, all right, but it was not a regular cigarette; no, sir, it was not tobacco. He could tell from the way she held it between thumb and forefinger and then examined it after she had inhaled that she was smoking marijuana.

He was shocked. And suddenly he was panting, and his legs were watery with an eroticized rage that confused him. There was nothing wrong with smoking a joint; hell, he did it himself now and then. Whenever someone offered it to him, actually. But the sight of her doing it now, combined as it was with her waiting in a parking lot to meet someone he knew must be her boyfriend, her lover , made him feel sexually betrayed in a very peculiar way. It was peculiar, Wade knew, that he felt betrayed at all, as if she were stepping out on him, her ex-husband, and not the man she was married to (a decent enough guy, Wade thought for the first time, though still a bit of a jerk), but it also turned Wade on sexually. It was as if he had inadvertently come upon her secret stash of pornography. Manacles, dildos, whips. He was thrilled, erotically charged, and he was enraged, and he was ashamed.

He closed his eyes for a few seconds and leaned against the cut-stone wall behind him, and when he opened them he saw a car ease through the falling snow into the parking lot. It was a dark-green Mercedes sedan driven by a man who, Wade knew at once, was here to meet Lillian. The car drew up next to Lillian’s Audi, and she instantly got out, walked purposefully around the front and got in.

The headlights reflected off the wall of the warehouse and cast light back into the car, and Wade could see Lillian and the man clearly, as if they were up on a stage, while they kissed. It was a long serious kiss, but slightly formal too, done without their arms around one another: they were a man and a woman who had been lovers for a long time and who knew that their kiss was only a preliminary and did not have to stand for everything else. Then, when they drew apart, Lillian handed what was left of her joint to the man, and he relit it and inhaled deeply, and Wade realized that he knew him.

The man backed the Mercedes away from the wall, and his face disappeared into darkness again, but Wade had seen him; he knew absolutely who he was. There could be no doubt. The face was one Wade would never forget: it had shamed him, and then it had haunted him, and Wade had come to despise it. The face was smooth and symmetrical, as large as an actor’s, with square chin, wide brow, long straight nose. The man’s hair was dark, with distinguished flecks of gray, combed straight back. And he was taller than Wade by six inches, at least, and appeared to be in good condition, the kind of condition you buy from a health club, Wade had once observed. His name was Cotter, Jackson Cotter, of Cotter, Wilcox and Browne, and he was from an old Concord political family, and no doubt he was married, had three beautiful children and lived in a big Victorian house up on the west end. And here he was having an affair with Lillian, who three years before had been his client in what he no doubt regarded as a simple but slightly unpleasant upstate divorce case.

Jackson Cotter turned his big green Mercedes around and headed out of the parking lot to the street, turned left and disappeared. Wade realized that his mouth was open, and he closed it. He felt wonderful. Jesus, he felt great! He was standing alone in a darkened doorway next to a restaurant parking lot in downtown Concord in a snowstorm, and he felt more purely cheerful than he had felt in years. Maybe ever. He clapped his hands together as if applauding, stepped from the doorway and strode into the falling snow.

A minute later, he was back in The Stone Warehouse shoving a quarter into the pay phone at the bottom of the stairs. This time, after three rings, someone answered: it was Lillian’s husband, Bob Horner; he caught Wade by surprise. Wade pictured the man with an apron tied around his waist and almost laughed, but he quickly recovered and said in what he felt was his normal manner of speaking to Horner on such occasions, “This’s Wade. Is Jill around?”

Horner was silent for a few seconds. Then he said, “Ah… no. No, Wade, she’s not here.”

“Jeez, that’s too bad. She out with her mom someplace?”

“No. No, Jill’s with a friend.”

“You expect her back soon? I’m in town, you see. In Concord. And I was hoping maybe I could scoot by and take her out for a pizza or something.”

Horner hesitated, then said, “It’s kind of late, Wade… and she’s… Jill’s staying overnight with a friend tonight.”

“Oh-h.” Wade hoped he sounded disappointed.

“Yeah, well, maybe if she’d known you were going to be in town…”

“I didn’t know myself,” Wade said. “But next time I’ll call ahead,” he offered.

Horner said that was a good idea and he would tell Jill that he had called. Then he said, “Wade, maybe I shouldn’t mention this, but I was wondering…”

“What?”

“Well, I don’t want to stir things up again, but… look, I lost my hat the other night up there. In Lawford. I was wondering if maybe somebody picked it up. You didn’t see it, did you? After we left.”

Wade said, “Your hat? You had a hat?”

“Yes.” His voice had turned cold; he knew Wade was lying. “A green felt hat.”

“Jeez, Bob, I don’t remember any hat. But I’ll keep an eye out for it. Maybe somebody else snagged it. You never know.”

Horner said thanks and then hurriedly got off the phone.

Smiling broadly, Wade hung up, mounted the stairs and stood at the cash register for a second. He noticed that the three young women and the two guys at the bar had left; the place was almost empty now. There were only a few diners sitting at the tables, and the waitresses were standing around in the back, talking to one another.

The cashier, a stout middle-aged woman filing her nails, said to him, “How much snow out there?”

“Oh, inch or two, I guess. Not much.”

“Enough to keep everybody home, though,” she said.

“Yeah. Which is where I ought to be getting,” Wade said.

“It’s too early for winter,” the woman observed.

“Yeah. Yeah, it is,” Wade said, and he pulled his watch cap down over his ears. “But I like it,” he said, and he waved and went out the door.