The Remedy for Love: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

bad foot and sent her off balance. She fell hard, clutching her robe tighter then diving at Eric from a mad crouch, catching a pocket of his jacket, which ripped half off. “Get out! Basics and all! Get the fuck out! You’re so nicey-nice, you fucking . . .
creeper,
with your creeper
gifts.
”
    Suddenly she softened, maybe at the sound of the word
gifts
as it flew from her lips, maybe at the realization that she’d ripped his clothes, maybe noticing that he really had brought food, food she really needed. Stiffly then, not exactly contrite, she said, “You’re crashing in here and grinning at me like a wolf and it really, really
freaks
me
out.
” She was back to shouting: “
You have to understand.
Please, just go. And quit
smiling.
”
    Okay, he really was grinning. He killed it, said, “You were in a private moment. I’m very sorry.”
    She blew up, jumped to her feet, jabbed a finger in his chest, backed him toward the door: “
All
-moments-are-fucking-
private
!”
    Eric backed away, step-by-step and to the heavy front door, defending himself with his hands, the young woman poking at him all the way, trying to get at his face. He yanked the door open to wind and snow, said, “I hope you have a corkscrew down here. That’s nice wine.”
    “Go!” she shrieked, and pushed him by the chest.
    He stumbled down the stone steps, fell into the snow at the bottom.
    “I said
go the fuck away
!”

Six
    OUTSIDE THE STORM was howling, a different kind of snow altogether, curtains of it blowing, already drifted to knee-deep in sculpted ridges along the ground, coming so thick and furious it was as if legions of dump trucks were emptying their loads in his face, in the world’s face, misery: the jostling wind, the river coursing black below.
    He pushed his way through hemlock branches and into their protection—a Mongolian hut of a cavern under there, still the ground bare and soft, cracks of muted light all around him. He barged through and back into the wind at the end of the line, the end of the cabin’s little dooryard, but reluctantly: his socks inside the rain boots were no longer dry, squishing in fact, and the going was more slippery than ever, nothing for a path but slight depressions where his footprints had been only short minutes before. Still, he felt a lightness: he’d given away Alison’s dinner, which amounted to giving up on her, admitting she wasn’t coming home, never again.
    He slipped on hidden ice—it was all ice underneath—dropped to his knees, the snow immediately wet through his pants. If this weren’t such a short hike he’d be in real danger. No great loss, those groceries. Plenty of food at his house, in case Alison did turn up. Plenty more wine. Cases of good beer. He’d watch whatever movie and eat chicken-barley soup. He made good soup and froze it in batches. He put his head down and trudged. The dark was like an eclipse, sudden and thorough. One foot in front of the next, that was all you could do. He bumped up against a tree trunk, a really impressive yellow birch. Close by was another. A hundred years back, there would have been a barn here—yes, a large depression in the earth, great location over the river, when all of this would have been fields and farmsteads and pasture.
    Fine, but the birches and the basement hole had not been on the path before. He followed his footfalls back—less than a minute old and already smoothed, as if each print were the basement of an old barn, nature closing in. He hurried, suddenly afraid, followed his tracks back all the way to the hemlocks near the outhouse, started back up the hill, paying close attention this time, allowing no stray thoughts. He saw immediately where he’d gone wrong: the branches of a white pine pressed down and covered the faint path. The radio had said record falls. But three inches an hour? He’d have to look at the Weather Channel when he got home.
    With great attention he made his way up the long hill and to