Burnt Offerings (Valancourt 20th Century Classics) Read Online Free

around the room, straightening the pictures and sconces, checking the lamps and bowls and figurines and vases that filled all the polished surfaces.
    “I whupped it good,” he said. The piano had stopped.
    “Very funny, very funny.” Surprisingly there was no damage. Her panicky look softened into a helpless reluctant smile. She shook her head. “Idiot.”
    “Where’s that beer?” he said, dropping onto the couch.
    When she came back with the beers, the piano started up again, as resonant as before. Ben threw up his hands. “It’s got to be a conspiracy. The whole bloody city is after my ass.” He patted the cushion beside him. Marian handed him his glass, took out two coasters, and settled beside him.
    “ You face her now,” she said, nodding at the floor.
    “Let the old bitch worry about facing me .” He took a sip. “She’ll think you did it. That’s what I’ll tell her anyway.”
    “You would, wouldn’t you?”
    “It’s every man for himself, sister.”
    “Hey,” she said after a pause. “I’ve got a great idea.”
    “Yeah?”
    “Let’s move.”
    He smiled, staring into space, and pulled her closer to him. He had unbuttoned his shirt. She played with the seam and then slipped her hand inside, rubbing his chest which was hard and damp.
    “There’s no one down there, you know,” she said confidentially, “just a piano playing itself. And feet above us that run back and forth. No real people, just resident sounds.” She walked with her fingers up his chest. He settled deeper into the couch, touching the wall with the back of his head. “Unwinding?” she asked.
    “Getting there.” He gave a long sigh, then lifted his feet onto the coffee table. Marian leaned forward and moved the cut-glass cigarette box.
    “I ever tell you about my last breakdown?” he asked.
    “No.”
    “Remind me sometime.”
    She nodded. “Always something new to find out, even after nine years. Is that what they mean by the adventure of marriage?”
    His hand moved to her knee which he stroked lightly. He was staring, expressionless, at a small crack in the ceiling. She could see, beyond his profile, the windows of the neighboring building. A figure in striped drawers was moving in one of the apartments.
    “So how’d it go today?” she asked finally. “Or shouldn’t I ask?”
    “You shouldn’t but you did,” he said lazily. “How’s it always go? The kids were bright, responsive; on fire, all of them. Then to top it all, a faculty meeting that for sheer heart-pounding excitement . . .”
    He belched and she said, “Pig.” He turned to face her, and the smile was innocent and vulnerable, and whether he was over the hill, as he claimed, or not, she still found it irresistible.
    “You know something?” he said. “I don’t like what I’m doing very much.” He said it as though it had come as a revelation to him.
    “You always say that this time of year.”
    “And I always mean it.”
    “A month to go, right? You’ll survive.”
    “Not this time, baby. I’m cracking.” He sat up, and looking at her sideways, announced: “I lost the car.”
    “How’d you manage that?”
    He told her. She laughed and he failed to see what she found so funny. “It’s a sign, you know.” He made the sound of something large collapsing – he was great with sound effects.
    “You mean – ?” She pointed to the side of her head and twirled her forefinger. His mood seemed to have changed suddenly, and instead of a reply in kind – like a vigorous nod of his head – he reached for a cigarette quietly. “About time you caught up with the rest of us,” she said, but Ben only half heard her, distracted by something – the piano, the children playing under the windows. Or the beer. Beer worked on him, quicker than wine; he seldom drank anything stronger. “Hey!” she said, nudging him, and whatever part of him had left the room came back. He said, “Hi.”
    “I’ve got the answer to all our