So Much for That Read Online Free PDF Page B

use it as a metaphor for something else. Something smaller and silly and much more bearable.”
    “If this is your idea of getting me to change my mind, it’s not working.”
    “When is this you’re planning to depart our shores?”
    “Next Friday. BA-179 out of JFK, the 22:30 for London. Then on to Nairobi, to Zanzibar, to Pemba. You and Zach can come with me up until the minute the flight closes. In the meantime, I thought I’d clear off and give you a chance to think.” A chance to miss me is what he meant. To miss me while you can still un-miss me. And in all honesty he was afraid of her. If he remained here, she would be able to talk him out of it. She was that good. “I’ll be staying with Carol and Jackson. They’re expecting me, and you can reach me there at any time before I go.”
    “I do wish you wouldn’t,” she said idly. Having picked up her glass from the table, Glynis rose and smoothed her slacks in a gesture that he recognized as marshaling herself to prepare another ordinary dinner.
    “Randy is for once entirely handy, and I’m afraid I will need your health insurance.”
     
    L ater that evening, while Glynis was still tidying the kitchen, Shep slipped upstairs and pulled the bathrobe off his suitcase. He put the two shirts back in the third drawer of his dresser, smoothing them so they’d be in respectable condition for work. He removed the needle-nose Vise-Grips, the screwdrivers, and the hacksaw, then fit them back into the tiers of his battered red metal toolbox. When he was down to the comb, before laying it in its accustomed place beside the cigar box of leftover foreign currency, he ran it through his hair.

Chapter Two
    H e’ll never go,” said Carol, rinsing arugula.
    “Bullshit,” said Jackson, as he stole a piece of Italian sausage from the sautéed peppers. “He’s bought the ticket. I’ve seen it. Or them. I told him not to waste the money on the other two. She’ll never go, that’s for sure. I figured it out way before Shep did. Glynis thought it was a game, all those trips. A game she got tired of.”
    “You always think I mean he’s too much of a coward. That’s not it. He’s too responsible. He’ll never leave his family high and dry; it’s not in him. Pick up his carry-on and never look over his shoulder? Start a whole new life from scratch, when he’s almost fifty? Have you ever known anyone to do that really, and why would they anyway? Even if he does go, to make a point or something, he’ll come right back home—Flicka, it’s been at least half an hour. Have you put in your tears?”
    Their elder daughter emitted a nasal sigh, halfway between a groan and a bleat. Its tonalities were refined, managing to convey both no and yes. She rustled begrudgingly into her sweater pocket for the Ziploc, then dosed both eyes from one of several dozen tiny plastic squeeze tubes of Artificial Tears, whose shape always reminded Jackson of FatMan dropped on Nagasaki. As usual, Flicka’s eyes were aflame, the lashes caked with petroleum jelly.
    “What, tail between legs?” said Jackson. “You got no appreciation of male pride.”
    “Oh, don’t I?” Carol shot him a look. “Where is this ‘Pemba’ anyway?”
    “Off the coast of Zanzibar,” said Jackson. “It’s famous for growing cloves. Whole island stinks of them, or that’s what Shep tells me. I picture my man leaning back in his hammock, breathing in the smell of hot whisky and pumpkin pie.”
    “I bet he’ll go,” said Flicka. “If he says he’s going to. Shep’s not a liar.” Though often mistaken for her eleven-year-old sibling’s younger sister, she was sixteen; just as one calculated the relative age of pets, her true age in terms of human suffering was closer to 103. The here and now having proved an eternal trial, Flicka was naturally captivated by the idea of somewhere else.
    Jackson ruffled his daughter’s fine blond hair. They’d kept it close-cropped in her childhood to prevent it