In the Woods полностью

It sounds like arrogance, fancying myself some irresistible Casanova, but I truly don't think it was that simple. You have to remember that I'd never seen Cassie like this before. I'd never seen her cry, I could count on the fingers of one hand the times I'd seen her afraid; now her eyes were puffy and bruised-looking under the clumsy defiant makeup, and there was that flinch of fear and desperate appeal in them every time she looked at me. What was I supposed to think? Rosalind's words-thirty, biological clock, can't afford to wait-rubbed at me like a broken tooth, and everything I'd read on the subject (tattered magazines in waiting rooms, Heather's Cosmo skimmed blearily over breakfast) backed them up: ten ways for "thirty-something" women to make the most of their last chance, Awful Warnings on leaving child-bearing too late, and, for good measure, the odd article on how you should never sleep with your friends because it inevitably led to "feelings" on the woman's part, fear of commitment on the man's, tedious and unnecessary hassle all round.

I had always thought of Cassie as a million miles from these chick-lit clichés, but then (Sometimes, when you're close to someone, you miss things), I had also thought we were the exception to every rule, and look how that had turned out. And I didn't intend to be a cliché myself; but remember that Cassie wasn't the only one whose life had gone haywire, I was lost and confused and shaken to the core, and I held on to the only guidelines I could find.

And then, too, I had learned early to assume something dark and lethal hidden at the heart of anything I loved. When I couldn't find it, I responded, bewildered and wary, in the only way I knew how: by planting it there myself.

Now it seems obvious, of course, that even a strong person has weak spots and that I had hit Cassie's full force, with all the precision of a jeweler fragmenting a stone along a flaw. She must have thought, sometimes, of her namesake, the votary branded with her god's most inventive and sadistic curse: to tell the truth, and never to be believed.

Sam showed up at my apartment on Monday evening, late, around ten. I had just got up and made myself toast for dinner and I was already half asleep again, and when the buzzer went I had an irrational, craven flash of fear that it might be Cassie, maybe a little drunk, demanding that we sort things out once and for all. I let Heather answer. When she banged irritably on my door and said, "It's for you, some guy called Sam," I was so relieved that it took a moment for the surprise to kick in. Sam had never been to my place before; I hadn't even realized he knew where it was.

I went to the door, tucking my shirt in, and listened to him clumping up the stairs. "Hi," I said, when he reached the landing.

"Hello," he said. I hadn't seen him since Friday morning. He was wearing his big tweed overcoat; he needed a shave and his hair was dirty, falling in long dank streaks across his forehead.

I waited, but he didn't offer any explanation of his presence, so I brought him into the sitting room. Heather followed us in and started talking-Hi I'm Heather, and it's lovely to meet you, and where has Rob been hiding you all this time, he never brings his friends home, isn't that very bold of him, and I was just watching The Simple Life, do you ever follow it, God it's mad this year, and on and on and on. Finally our monosyllabic replies got through to her: she said, in injured tones, "Well. I suppose you boys want some privacy," and when neither of us denied it she flounced off, giving Sam a warm smile and me a slightly chillier one.

"Sorry for bursting in on you like this," Sam said. He looked around the room (aggressive designer sofa cushions, shelves of long-lashed porcelain animals) as if it baffled him.

"That's all right," I said. "Would you like a drink?" I had no idea what he was doing there. I didn't even want to think about the intolerable possibility that it had something to do with Cassie: she wouldn't have, I thought, surely to God she wouldn't have asked him to have a word with me?

"Whiskey would be great."

I found half a bottle of Jameson's in my kitchen cupboard. When I carried the glasses back into the sitting room Sam was in an armchair, still wearing his coat, his head down and his elbows on his knees. Heather had left the TV on, with the volume off, and two identical women in orange makeup were arguing with silent hysteria about something or other; the light skittered wildly across his face, giving him a ghostly, damned look.