Free Bonegrinder by John Lutz Page A

out the tensions that had built in him through the day. Thinking too much about the threatened changes that might rend his life suffused him with a curious terror.
    Cheryl, domestic-looking in a plain blue housedress, was just finishing wiping the kitchen table with a damp dishcloth. There was something in her domesticity that keenly aroused Peterson at times, though he didn’t know why. He liked to approach her from behind at moments like this and kiss the nape of her slender neck, to slide a hand around smoothly and quickly cup one of her breasts. This time he stood still just inside the door and waited until she’d finished wiping the table before speaking.
    “It’s been four days,” he said.
    She nodded, held the dishcloth beneath cold running water and wrung it with deft, practiced hands, as if dispassionately wringing the neck of some live thing. Peterson thought she was treating him exactly like the dishcloth. The vulnerability of his love depressed him.
    “Has anything changed?” he asked.
    “Nothing,” she said, draping the dishcloth over the divider between the stainless steel basins of the double sink. She began to place clean glasses two by two in a cabinet.
    Peterson watched her for a long time, his breath deep and even. “I have a suggestion,” he said.
    She interrupted her glass placing and turned to him, as if he’d at last said something positive.
    “A fishing trip,” Peterson said.
    His wife stared at him for a moment, then shook her head in refusal, but not firmly. The kitchen was so quiet that he could hear the inner mechanism of the electric clock on the stove.
    “Why not?” he asked. “We haven’t been since last year. And it would give you—give us both—a chance to get out into nature and think things over clearly, get a fresh perspective.”
    “It will look the same to me, Bill.”
    Damn her, what was she trying to do to him? “What about Melanie? You know how she loves to go fishing with us. If nothing else, it will be one last time for her to remember the three of us together.”
    Cheryl began putting away the last of the glasses, her lips pursed in consideration. Maybe she did owe him that, owe it to Melanie. It wasn’t that she felt guilty. No, there was no guilt involved, only obligation. But she was sure she wouldn’t change her mind about leaving with Carl.
    She found herself thinking of Carl, strong and impetuous in a lazy, appealing way, longing for new places, new adventures, burning with an eagerness that she wanted to consume her. Carl was to Bill what blowtorch was to candle. But Bill couldn’t help it. She had to remember that. And he loved Melanie, even if he only thought he loved Melanie’s mother.
    Peterson sensed her indecision and pounced on it. “I’ll call and make reservations at Lost Pines,” he said hurriedly. “All right?” He smiled at her pleadingly. How could she resist that smile?
    “All right,” she said, and a weight seemed to slip from her, as if to reassure her that she’d made the right decision.
    Peterson walked over to his wife and kissed her forehead. Her body tensed to stillness and she stood with her hands at her sides, as if tolerating his kiss rather than endure an argument.
    “Things will work out,” he said, backing a step and looking intently down into her immobile face. “You’ll see; I promise.”
    “Don’t promise that,” she said quietly.
    Peterson disappeared into the hall where the telephone sat on a small, ornate table they had bought at a rummage sale and he’d refinished.
    A few minutes later he walked back into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator and poured himself half a glass of milk. He downed the milk quickly, as if appeasing a great need.
    “Lost Pines burned down,” he said. “Remember the big forest fire we heard about on the news?”
    “I thought it was somewhere else,” Cheryl said.
    Peterson wiped his lips with the backs of his knuckles and shook his head. “No, it was at Big Water Lake, the