BooksBarbecue
Back True Enough Save as PDF
Chapters (29)
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Dedication
  4. One
  5. Two
  6. Three
  7. Four
  8. Five
  9. Six
  10. Seven
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. Twelve
  16. Thirteen
  17. Fourteen
  18. Fifteen
  19. Sixteen
  20. Seventeen
  21. Eighteen
  22. Nineteen
  23. Twenty
  24. Twenty-one
  25. Twenty-two
  26. Twenty-three
  27. Twenty-four
  28. Twenty-five
  29. Acknowledgments

He put them back in the book and set the book on the night table, careful to leave it exactly where it had been. He wasn’t going to leap to conclusions. Maybe Russell had had his prescription changed. Unlikely, and besides, these weren’t new glasses. He swept back the sheets. No bodies there. There was no reason to assume anything. He looked back at the idiotic, infuriating “book.” If Russell was cheating on him with a man who read Becoming the You You Deserve to Be, he was getting what he deserved. On the other hand, if Russell was cheating on him, maybe he, Desmond, was getting what he deserved. As he looked out the window beside the bed to the courtyard in the middle of their building, Boris started to play the piano. So he hadn’t quit after all, hadn’t moved, hadn’t taken up painting. He started playing a slow, halting rendition of “Night and Day.” Like the beat beat beat of the tomtoms indeed. For the first time in the years Boris had been playing, Desmond wished he were able to flip a switch and turn off the practice session. He sat on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands, looking down at the floor. There, poking out from under the mattress was a black sock. He reached down and grabbed it. Inconclusive. Everyone wore socks and they were all more or less the same size. He stared at it for a moment, listening to the piano, feeling a fluttering in his chest that was either grief or rage or maybe both at the same time. The simplest thing to do would be to get dressed and leave, wait an hour and call from around the corner, telling Russell he was arriving ahead of schedule. Give him time to bury the evidence, if that’s what it was. He slipped on his underpants, T-shirt, and socks. But as he was trying to find his shirt, he heard the door to the apartment open, footsteps in the hallway, creaking floorboards. Now he was trapped. Caught. Caught double if Russell wasn’t alone.

“Desmond?”

He was standing in the bedroom, slim and bespectacled, alone, a wry smile in his eyes. “You’re early,” he said.

“I am,” Desmond said, wondering if maybe it wasn’t more a matter of being late.

Twelve

A Relaxing Weekend

1.

“Her bread is terrible,” Caroline whispered, “but I have to buy a few loaves to support her efforts. I can stop at the food pantry tomorrow and donate them.”