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She stood in the doorway and turned the knob. She looked as if she wanted to say something else. She wore the white blouse, the wide black belt, and the black skirt. Sometimes she called it her outfit, sometimes her uniform. For as long as I could remember, it was always hanging in the closet or hanging on the clothesline or getting washed out by hand at night or being ironed in the kitchen
She worked Wednesdays through Sundays.
inspo maybe (pano)
"Morning," I said, offering the letter.
He took it from me without a word and went absolutely pale. He tottered a minute and then started back for the house, holding the letter up to the light.
I called out, "She's no good, boy. I could tell that the minute I saw her. Why don't you forget her? Why don't you go to work and forget her? What have you got against work? It was work, day and night, work that gave me oblivion when I was in your shoes and there was a war on where I was ..."
[...] She touched the ewdding band on her ring finger with her thumb. She turned onto her side and then onto her back again. And then she began to feel afraid, and in one unreasoning moment of longing she prayed to go to sleep.
Please, God, let me go to sleep.
She tried to sleep.
"Mike," she whispered.
There was no answer.
Now he was having an affair, for Christ's sake, and he didn't know what to do about it. He did not want it to go on, and he did not want to break it off: you don't throw everything overboard in a storm. Al was drifting, and he knew he was drifting, and where it was all going to end he could not guess at. But he was beginning to feel he was losing control over everything. Everything. Recently, too, he had caught himself thinking about old age after he'd been constipated a few days - an affliction he had always associated with the elderly. Then there was the matter of the tiny bald spot and of his having just begun to wonder how he would comb his hair in a different way. What was he going to do with his life? he wanted to know.
He was thirty-one.
something useful to remember: everybody worries about what they're going to do with their lives. it all ends the same way..
He ran his hand over his face, tried to put it all out of his mind for a minute. He took out a cold half quart of Lucky from the fridge and popped the aluminum top. His life had become a maze, one lie overlaid upon another until he was not sure he could untangle them if he had to.
"Tell you, Jill," he said, "skating on thin ice. Crash through any minute ... I don't know." He stared at her with a fixed, puffy expression that he could feel but not correct. "Serious," he said.
and then she (his mistress) tries to squeeze his blackhead lol
"Is everybody going crazy?" she said. "I don't know what's going to happen to us. I'm ready for a nervous breakdown. I'm ready to lose my mind. What's going to happen to the kids if I lose my mind?" She slumped against the draining board, her face crumpled, tears rolling off her cheeks. "You don't love them, anyway! You never have. It isn't the dog I'm worried about. It's us! It's us! I know you don't love me any more - goddamn you! - but you don't even love the kids!"
"Betty, Betty!" he said. "My God!" he said. "Everything's going to be all right. I promise you," he said. "Don't worry," he said. "I promise you, things'll be all right. I'll find the dog and then things will be all right," he said.
to think about: the repetition of "he said" in the second para? Why?
"It's good to get out now and then. I'll make more of an effort, if you want me to."
She reached for celery. "That's up to you."
"That's not true! It's not me who's ... who's ..."
"Who's what?" she said.
"I don't care what you do," he said, dropping his eyes.
"Is that true?"
"I don't know why I said that," he said.
When they had started on the main course, Wayne said, "Well, what do you think? Is there a chance for us or not?" He looked down and arranged the napkin on his lap.
"Maybe so," she said. "There's always a chance."
"Don't give me that kind of crap," he said. "Answer me straight for a change."
"Don't snap at me," she said.
"I'm asking you," he said. "Give me a straight answer," he said.
She said, "You want something signed in blood?"
He said, "That wouldn't be such a bad idea."
She said, "You listen to me! I've given you the best years of my life. The best years of my life!"
"The best years of your life?" he said.
"I'm thirty-six years old," she said. "Thirty-seven tonight. Tonight, right now, at this minute, I just can't say what I'm going to do. I'll just have to see," sse said.
[...] His life had changed, he was willing to understand. Were there other men, he wondered drunkenly, who could look at one event in their lives and perceive in it the tiny makings of the catastrophe that thereafter set their lives on a different course? [...] he put his face up close to the pitted mirror and looked into his eyes. A face: nothing out of the ordinary. [...]