The Demonologist Read Online Free PDF

rattle upward in the old elevator to our floor I’m readying the news of this strange day, deciding what to lead with, what to bury. I want to tell Diane about O’Brien, my chat with Will Junger, the Thin Woman, because there is no one else to share these particular items with, each too intimate, in their own ways, to lay out before a colleague or at a dinner-party table. But there is also the hope of reaching her. Revealing something that might give her pause, arouse her interest, her sympathy. A delay of the inevitable, which is maybe all I can play for these days.
    I open the door to the apartment and find Diane standing there, waiting for me, a nearly empty wine glass in her hand. What’s her expression say? It says whatever story I may tell will make no difference.
    “We need to talk,” she says.
    “The four most dreaded words in the history of marriage.”
    “I’m serious.”
    “So am I.”
    She leads me into the living room, where another wine glass (this one full) awaits me on the coffee table. Something to dull the blow she is about to deliver. But I don’t want to be dulled. That’s been her problem all along, hasn’t it? That I’m rarely present in the moment. Well, whether it’s the strange and terrible events of the day or a new resolution I’ve just now arrived at, I feel pretty damn present in this moment.
    “I’m moving out,” Diane says, her tone one of practiced defiance, as though this is an episode of courage for her, of daring escape.
    “Where will you go?”
    “My parents’ place on the Cape for the summer. Or part of the summer. Until I get my own apartment in the city.”
    “Two Manhattan apartments. How can we pay for that? You win the lotto?”
    “I’m proposing there’s no ‘we’ anymore, David. Which means I’m talking about just one apartment. Mine.”
    “So I shouldn’t mistake this for a trial separation.”
    “No, I don’t think you should.”
    She takes the last sip from her glass. This was easier than she thought. She’s almost out of here, and the idea of it is making her thirsty.
    “I’m trying, Diane.”
    “I know you are.”
    “So you can see that I am?”
    “It hasn’t stopped you from being like someone you pass every day and say hello to but never really know. You think you do, but when it comes down to it, you don’t.”
    “There’s nothing I can say?”
    “It’s never been about saying. It’s been about doing. Or not doing.”
    I can’t argue with any of this. And even if I could, we’ve never been the arguing kind. Maybe we should have been. A few more nasty accusations, a few more passionate denials and confessions might have done the trick. But I’m not sure how that sort of thing is done.
    “You going to live with him?” I ask.
    “We’re talking about that.”
    “So when I saw him today, when he ‘bumped into me,’ he was just rubbing my face in it.”
    “Will’s not like that.”
    You’re wrong, Diane, I want to say. That’s exactly what he’s like .
    “What about Tess?” I ask.
    “What about her?”
    “Have you told her yet?”
    “I thought I’d leave that to you,” she says. “You’re better with her. You always were.”
    “It’s not a competition. We’re a family.”
    “No, that’s over now. It’s over.”
    “She’s your daughter, too.”
    “I can’t reach her, David!”
    At this, Diane surprises herself by bursting into loud, if brief,sobs. “There’s something wrong with her,” she manages. “Nothing you could ask a doctor about, that’s not what I’m saying. Nothing that would show up in a scan. Something wrong you can’t see .”
    “What do you think it is?”
    “I don’t know. Being eleven years old. Almost a teenager. The moods. But that’s not it. She’s like you,” she says, a coincidental, if angrier, echo of O’Brien’s words. “The two of you holed up in your private, untouchable little club.”
    She’s lonely. I see this now as clearly as the lipstick stain on the rim of