Summer Lies Read Online Free Page B

together. Apart from this they invited no one, nor did they visit other people. “There’ll still be time for our friends.”
    When dusk came, they made love. The evening light sufficed them until it was totally dark, when they lit a candle. They made love so peacefully that Richard sometimes wondered if he’d make Susan happier by ripping off the clothes of both ofthem, throwing himself on her, and surrendering himself to her. He didn’t manage to try, and she didn’t seem to miss it. We’re not feral cats, he thought, we’re house cats.
    Until they had their big fight, the first and the only one. They were going to go to the supermarket, and Susan kept Richard waiting in the car because she had to take a sudden phone call, which went on forever. That she let him wait without any explanation, that she had forgotten him or could simply neglect him, made him so angry that he got out, went into the house, and attacked her just as she put down the receiver. “Is this what I have to expect? What you do is important and what I do isn’t? Your time is precious and mine doesn’t count?”
    At first she didn’t understand. “Los Angeles called. The chairman …”
    “Why didn’t you tell me? Why do you always …”
    “I’m sorry I kept you waiting for a few minutes. I thought a European man sees …”
    “The Europeans—I’ve had it up to here with your Europeans. I was waiting out there for half an hour …”
    Now she got angry too. “Half an hour? It was a minute or two. If that’s too long for you, go into the house and read the newspaper. You prima donna, you …”
    “Prima donna? Me? Which of us …”
    She accused him of making an incomprehensible, exaggerated to-do. He didn’t understand what was supposed to be incomprehensible and exaggerated about wanting to count as much as she did, when he had nothing and she had everything. She didn’t understand how he could be so absurd as to think that he didn’t count. By the end they were yelling at each other in fury and despair.
    “I hate you!” She advanced on him, he moved back, she kept coming, and when he was against the wall and could move nofurther, she beat his chest with her fists till he took her in his arms and held her tight. At first she fumbled at the buttons of his shirt, then tore it open, he tried to pull off her jeans and she his, but it was too cumbersome and went too slowly, so they each did their own, yanking off jeans and underpants and socks in a single motion. They had sex on the floor in the hall, fast, urgent, passionate.
    Afterward he lay on his back with her half in the curve of his arm and half against his chest. “Well,” he said, and laughed aloud. She made a slight movement, a shake of the head, a tiny shrug of the shoulders, and pressed herself closer to him. He sensed that unlike him, she hadn’t made the transition from passionate fighting into passionate sex. She hadn’t torn open his shirt because she wanted to feel his chest, she’d torn it open because she wanted to find his heart. The object of passion had been a return to the peace she had lost during their fight.
    They drove to the supermarket and Susan filled up the cart as if they were staying for weeks. On the way home the sun broke through the clouds and they took the next road to the sea, not the open ocean but the bay. The water was unruffled and the sky clear; they could see the tip of the Cape and the other side of the bay.
    “I like it before a storm when you can see so far and the contours are so sharp.”
    “Storm?”
    “Yes. I don’t know whether it’s the humidity or the electricity that makes the air so clear, but it’s the kind of air you get before a storm. Treacherous air: it promises you good weather and what you get is a storm.”
    “Please forgive me for attacking you before. And I didn’t just attack you, I yelled at you too. I’m truly sorry.”
    He waited for her to say something. Then he saw that shewas crying and stood