Green Ice Read Online Free Page B

bastards.”
    “Jennifer wouldn’t go that far.”
    “Want to bet seven years on it? Hold a second … I’ve got to take this other call.”
    The silence made Wiley aware he was clenching the receiver. Before the call he’d been only normally tense. He sat forward, flexed his back, let his head go dead weight, and rotated it one way and then the other. A deep breath. Closed eyes.
    Recall.
    Her with him, wading through dry fall grass on Nantucket. To a tree set apart as though estranged. Leafless, black, networked branches. The nearest house, a new one that looked unoccupied, a hundred yards away. The ocean only a silver line on the afternoon horizon because the land was so level. Sitting, lying, the grass all around tall enough to hide them. It took a while for them to become confident enough of the place. Their sex-making was no swifter than it would have been if they had been surely secluded—and better than any of the several times before, with a sort of intensifying thievery to it.
    And afterward … her thinking aloud: “We go well together.”
    They laughed at the word go .
    She had also said at other times: “You’re spoiling me for any other man, which, of course, would be fine if there never had to be anyone else.” And: “I’m vulnerable again. My telling you I am proves it.” And: “I promise I’ll never expect more of you than I do now.”
    She had helped him fight the rats, stayed up all night two nights in a row with him in that horrible damp warehouse, trying to protect the bean sprouts. The rats didn’t frighten her. The first one she saw, she attacked with a piece of pipe, broke its back.
    Right after the rats they had gone to Arlington, Virginia, where no waiting period was required. Bought a nosegay at one of the flower shops around the corner from the courthouse and were serviced by the same judge who had married the Kissingers. She gave her age as twenty-nine on the license application. A two-year lie.
    Jennifer looked married the moment she was. Her eyes and mouth seemed relieved.
    As it turned out—she had a thin voice that became whinier.
    Insisted on calling him Joseph.
    When she was nude, her walk changed, shorter steps, a sort of awkward ballerina waddle with toes pointed out.
    Yellow to purplish bruises on her thighs from everyday slight collisions, because her body was almost depleted of potassium from years of taking extremely strong diuretics. She was compulsive about keeping underweight, feared gaining like death.
    She had every possible thing monogrammed.
    She sent away for a dwarf banana tree to grow at home. And a hanging strawberry garden that didn’t have a chance above the radiator.
    Soiled or not, whatever she wore she sent to the cleaners after only one wearing.
    She had a nightly bowel habit that was the most unromantic thing he could have possibly heard just before bedtime.
    As it turned out …
    “I’m fed up with your bigshot ideas. I want security. I want to own a house and be like everyone else. You’re a compulsive neurotic. You and your fucking financial roller coaster,” she said. “If you quit this job, I’m going to quit you. I mean it.”
    Her and him in the dark in their king-size bed. A space like a firebreak between them.
    “Hello … you still there?” The divorce lawyer.
    “Yeah.”
    “Sorry about the interruption. I didn’t think it would take that long. Anyway, now she’s accusing you of trying to influence her to commit sodomy.”
    “That’s ridiculous.”
    “It’s in her sworn statement.”
    “Sodomy?”
    “In this state sodomy includes every sex act except straight old-fashioned. She claims you wanted her to indulge orally.”
    How twisted around, Wiley thought. “What does she want?”
    She wanted the apartment on Central Park West, which was a five-room, $60,000 cooperative with $20,000 equity. He was to continue making the mortgage payments and paying the monthly maintenance charges for five years. She wanted all the