All the Time in the World Read Online Free Page B

window as she was when attracting men at cocktail parties. All this behavior was ambiguous and kept me wondering.
    And now, though I was not up in the apple tree, I had found various salients in our half acre that allowed me to see a good deal of her at night, when she went to bed. It was always alone, I was satisfied to see. She would sometimes come right up to the window and stare into the darkness while brushing her hair. In those moments, with the light behind her, I would see her lovely shape only in silhouette. Then she would turn and walk back into the room. A long-waisted girl with narrow shoulders and firm buttocks.
    Oddly enough, seeing my wife in the nude usually got me thinking of her financial situation. I did this to assure myself that she would not find it necessary to sell the house and move elsewhere.Her salary at the museum was just adequate, and we had a mortgage, prep-school tuition for the twins—all the usual presiding expenses. On the other hand, I had set up a savings account in her name and had added to it regularly. My investments were in a revocable trust of which she as well as I was a trustee. And I had paid down a considerable part of the mortgage with my last year’s partner’s bonus. She might have to cut back on her clothes purchases and all the little luxuries she enjoyed, she would have to give up her hope of redoing the bathrooms in marble, but that was hardly to suggest her impoverishment. I was the impoverished one.
    My spying was not restricted to her bedtime. Now in the autumn it grew dark earlier every day. I liked to know what was going on. I would hunker down in the garden foliage under the windows and listen to the conversation. There she would be in the dining room, helping the twins with their homework. Or they would all three be putting together their dinner. Never once did I hear my name mentioned. Arguments I could hear from the very edge of the property, one of the twins, screeching and stamping her foot. A door would slam. Sometimes Diana came out on the back porch and lit a cigarette, standing there holding her elbow, the hand with the cigarette pointing at the sky. That was news—she had quit the habit years before. Sometimes she was out for the evening and all I could see were the flickering colored lights of the TV in the family room. I didn’t like it that she left the twins alone. I kept watch at the bull’s-eye window in my attic until I saw her car come up the drive.
    On Halloween, the street was busy with parents escorting their cutely costumed children from one porch to another. Diana always prepared for the onslaught by buying tons of candy. All the lights were on in my house. I heard laughter. And here passing under the window of my garage attic were a few of Dr. Sondervan’s patients.They had come through the bamboo, ambling down the drive, these larger children, carrying shopping bags for the treasures to be collected from somewhat uneasy neighbors receiving them at the front door.
    EVERY TWO WEEKS , the town residents put out for trash their hard, nonorganic items: old TVs, broken chairs, boxes of paperbacks, end tables, busted lamps, toys their children had outgrown, and so on. I had come away previously with a usable, only slightly torn and sperm-stained futon from this resource, as well as an old portable radio that looked as if it might work if I could find some batteries for it. I did miss music as I missed nothing else.
    On this night I went looking for some shoes. Mine had worn away. They were falling apart. It was a damp night; it had rained in the afternoon and slick wet leaves were pressed to the streets. Timing was crucial: By one in the morning, anything that was going to be thrown out was on the sidewalk. By two, anything that was usable was gone. On these nights, people from the south end of town cruised around in their old pickups or in cars that tilted to one side, and they’d pull up and, with their motors running, hop out to judge