And, before she could stop him, he tilted his head back (did he need to do this to remember things, Janis wondered, or was it another affectation) and began to recite:

“At first, she thought she must be the luckiest woman alive, but as time went by, Helen came to realize that she was anything but that. Luck, the good kind anyway, was a commodity she was desperately in need of but forbidden, like a patient in hospital refused the one drug that might cure her.”

Todd looked at Janis, his lips flecked with spit (or cocaine, she thought).

“Did I make that up, Janis?” he said. “Did I just make all that up?”

Janis looked at Todd. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a crossroads in her life was looming up. She wasn’t sure if she was at the crossroads yet, but she could see it. It didn’t look like a threatening crossroads either, the kind with a gallows at the roadside and the devil next to it. It looked like a promising sort of crossroads. But she wasn’t there yet.

Not quite.

“No, you didn’t make that up,” Janis said. “Because it was quite good.”

Todd glowered at her.

“Not great, I grant you. But it was quite good.”

Todd’s eyes seemed to glow. His face certainly did, fire engine cherry red. He took a step forward. He raised his hand.

Janis also took a step forward. She took Todd’s hand.

“I want you to stop acting like a jerk,” she said. “I want you to be my husband, and be an adult. And—”

She let go Todd’s hand and it fell to his waist.

“—I want you to stop screwing Sara Hotchkiss.”

Before Todd could reply, Janis had walked out of the room. She didn’t sleep long that night—it was nearly three now—but she slept well.

*  *  *

Sunday was a quiet day at the Milsteads’. Janis cleared up the mess in the living room and was going to leave the dirty glasses and crockery for Todd when she realized he’d be so hungover that he’d probably smash everything to pieces. So, she compromised: she cleaned up everything but Todd’s study. If he wanted to wade ankle-deep in the great American novel, that was up to him.

After she’d cleared up, she went to visit a gallery with a friend, and came home about four to find that Todd had shut himself in his study and was—by the sound of it—making notes on his new book. She knew when he was making notes because he would spend hours getting everything just right—finding the perfect pencil, sharpening it, getting out his yellow legal pad, aligning everything so it was parallel to the sides of the desk—and then do jack shit until dinnertime.

*  *  *