Free Diablerie by Walter Mosley Page B

now," I was talking in a way that I had so long ago that I hardly remembered. "That man been in your pussy like a gopher down his own hole."
    I said it perfectly, even curled my upper lip in a disparaging sneer.
    "You bastard," she said.
    "Then stand out of the way and let me leave."
    Mona saw through the ploy. She realized that I had used words to anger her enough to let me go. But did she also know that I wanted her to see through me, that I wanted to find out what she was up to with Harvard Rollins and his looking into my past.
    "I'm not going to let you bait me, Ben," she said. "I want to know what's going on with you, why you're acting so strange."
    "Me? You're the one who went to your mother's and didn't even call. And she's not sick either. I doubt if she's even in town."
    Again Mona needed time to regroup her defenses. She didn't know how much I knew. I had the key to her mom's place. I could have come by. I knew about the condoms. I at least suspected Harvard Rollins of being her lover.
    I let her stew in these fears for a moment and then said, "Why don't we go in the living room and talk this out like adults?"
    She sat on the sofa and I on my chair. She held her legs at a slant, knees together. I sat spread-legged, hands out to the side.
    "What?" Mona asked, her eyes moist, her voice taut.
    "I've only had one lover since we've been together,'' I said, speaking lightly, feeling the liberation of truth. "I know you've had at least three, the last of which is this Rollins guy. I don't blame you. I can only hope that on the off chance that we make love, that you have made sure he's . . . healthy."
    Mona was frozen. Her eyes did not know me. The way I was sitting, the words I spoke; I was another man for her—the way I was, but not who I was, for Svetlana. If she would have spoken honestly at that moment, Mona would have said that I had never paid such close attention to her. She would have said that she felt stripped naked and that she didn't like it—not one bit.
    "So you admit having a lover?'' she said finally.
    "Come on, Mona. I won't use the words but you've been doing it too. You've been doing it a lot. And I don't blame you.''
    "You don't?"
    "Baby, listen to me," I said, my own words in my ear. "For years, all the years that you've known me, I've been like a cold-water fish at the bottom of the lake. I haven't done a thing for you except to give you Seela. I don't know how to fuck—excuse me, how to make love. My job is more boring than fungus growing in the dark. I know. You haven't said anything and I just went on. And so now it's out. You got a man who makes you want to carry condoms around in your bag. And me . . . I just need to get back into therapy and figure out what it is that made me into such a, such a blank space."
    Every word I said rang true and clear but it was all a cover for what I really wanted from my just-now-estranged wife.
    "You don't care if I have a lover?" she asked.
    "I care, babe," I said. "It's just that I understand why you would need one. Your life is Med with excitement and sexy people. I've done the same thing every day almost without exception for twenty-two years."
    It's odd being so hyperaware of your own words and intentions. I had lived an extraordinarily humdrum life. I ate the same kind of doughnut—chocolate, chocolate glaze—every day for twelve years. Then I switched to strawberry yogurt. I loved my job but it was as dry as sawdust, as plain as brown wrapping paper. Mona would be better off with some arty guy with less security and more character.
    But all that was over now. I wasn't the same man I had been. Mona was as good as gone. But I needed to know what she was talking about in that bed with Harvard. I needed to know what they knew about me.
    "Are you leaving me?" Mona asked.
    "I'm gonna move out for a while," I said. "Maybe we'll get back together, but I can't see why you'd want to. I mean, I'm just a lump—that's all I'm ever gonna be."
    "What's going on with