Where the God of Love Hangs Out: Fiction Read Online Free PDF Page B

three ice cubes in a dripping dish towel. If ice were what Clare wanted most, she would ask Isabel.
    William hoists himself up, which he would rather Clare didn’t see, and limps over to the couch. She’s already seen him limping so there’s no help for that, and he holds her feet up and puts himself under them and sinks back onto the sofa, pain gnawing at his hip.
    “A lot of activity here,” Clare says.
    “Oh, yes, quite a ruckus,” William says. “I am not going back to that chair anytime soon. David can come back in with Hera and her peacocks, I’m staying on this couch, under these bumpy black-and-blue little feet.”
    “And the peacocks are for?”
    “Peacocks pulled her royal wagon. I have no idea why. She drove everybody crazy. A vigilante about adultery. Most of the myths are about her driving someone insane with her suspicions.”
    “Gosh, I wonder who wrote those stories. She wasn’t wrong, right? Zeus fucked everything. Ship to shore. Ox to goose. Whatever.”
    “Oh, yes.”
    Isabel comes into the room and looks at them. There are things she could say, there are plenty of things she could say about her husband, who doesn’t like her coat to brush against him when he’s driving, who so prefers some space between him and everyone else that he makes reservations for four even when it’s the two of them, and who is now making himself into a footrest for their friend Clare. But Clare looks terrible, crumpled and waxy, and her hair, and the two of them are not likely to run off for some brisk lovemaking—how could they and what has it ever been between them but the rubbing up of two broken wings? And Isabel believes that life is what you make it. She adjusts Clare’s pillow.
    “Do you need anything? David wants to take a little walk, and it’s just so gorgeous today—”
    Clare and William look out the living room’s bay window at the beautiful autumn day, and sigh, as if they have given up all hope of ever walking unaided on beautiful days.
    “It’s really beautiful,” Clare says. I am the worst person in the world, she thinks.
    “It is,” William says. Go, in Christ’s name, he thinks, and take that awful little man with you.
    *  *  *
    “We’ve got an hour to ourselves,” William says. “Where should we start?”
    “How’s Emily?”
    “Oh. Fine. She’s liking law school—what can I say? You want to talk about our kids?”
    “No. What’s the matter with your leg?”
    “Oh, for fuck’s sake. I’d rather talk about the kids. I have bad arthritis, that’s all. It acts up. I’m doing what I’m supposed to. Glucosamine chondroitin. Physical therapy. Whole grains. What do you want from me?”
    “That’s good,” Clare says. “I’m glad.” She doesn’t look glad. She looks chastened and sulky, and she pulls at the corner of her quilt until a wisp of cotton batting appears.
    “What’s wrong? Comparing yourself to Isabel? Thinking how I’d be curled into a fetal position by now if I were in your hands?”
    It is a terrible thing to think and a terrible thing to be seen thinking—Isabel is a better wife than I am—and still Clare’s glad that William knows her.
    “Jesus, be nice. Nicer.”
    “I don’t have to be nice. Leave the quilt alone. I miss you every day, and we’re not even friends anymore.”
    “We are.”
    “We are not, and do not dishonor the memory of that beautiful thing by saying otherwise. You know we’re not.”
    Clare wipes her eyes with a corner of the quilt. “Fine. Jesus.”
    “Less than an hour. If your uncle doesn’t come scuttling back to check on us.” William picks up Clare’s hand and kisses it. He takes a nectarine out of the bag and wraps her hands around it.
    “Look at the size of this,” Clare says.
    Clare twists the nectarine sharply, and it falls into halves, each one a brilliant, glazed yellow with a prickled hot-pink center. The pit falls onto her lap. They eat their halves and watch each other eat, and they drip, just a