Free The Remedy for Love: A Novel by Bill Roorbach Page A

law, though there’s not much of that in Woodchuck. I’ve spent a lot of time lately advising the Maine legislature. Friend of the chamber, it’s called, no cash. It’s not a great period for environmental law. Jobs. People want jobs and it’s widely been spread that environmental legislation kills jobs, not true.”
    “I’m still thinking of those domestic abusers you get off scot-free.”
    “I’m still doubting you know who Foghorn Leghorn is.”
    “He’s that, like,
chicken.
” Flicker of a smile.
    She got up and found her box of red wine and slammed it a couple of times on the butcher’s block for a joke before opening it. Or maybe not a joke—she didn’t laugh. She poured his glass full from behind and above like someone taking a piss, foamy stuff, poured her own, used the box to push Alison’s bottle off the upturned log; it clonked on the floor and rolled until it was under the Glenwood. And she sat, maybe slightly closer to him. The storm lashed at the little cabin from all directions, total disorder. One of the hemlocks had apparently drooped under its load of snow and was resting on the roof, or anyway something was, ominous scraping and clawing sounds in the wind.
    “Mister-mister-mister,” Danielle said affirmatively.
    Eric sipped the wine. It was as thin and fruity as juice but not actually terrible.
    Danielle slugged hers, pissed herself a refill, adjusted the fire. She was tall in her trousers, as Eric’s father liked to say, tall in general, the fitted T-shirt having been fitted to a more fulsome figure, one she no longer posessed. Eric was on the tall side, too. His last dinner with Alison, who was on the short side, had been almost six months before, he had to admit. The last time she’d kissed him, too, six months, perhaps even planned as a last kiss, a theory he’d developed and revisited in constant retrospect: Alison had come to say good-bye. Eric recalled the kiss very clearly, the abrupt end of one of their dinners, which had until then all ended sexually. “All” meaning the bicycle camping, only that. No shouting or anything, just Alison standing with an apology, kissing his mouth very hard, then taking her coat and leaving, nothing but the grinding sound of her car starting.
    “Tell me a story from lawyer land,” Danielle said. She hefted the wine box and dispensed more for both of them, pulled her chair in closer to the stove, which meant pulling it slightly again closer to him, elaborately folded her legs under herself and sat. She regarded him, not neutral, leaned to rub her ankle. “Look at us sitting here,” she said.
    Eric said, “It’s pretty benign.”
    “Jim would
frenzy,
‘benign.’ And how you stare at me?” She patted her own chest.
    He couldn’t help the grin, a different type altogether. He said, “I was looking at your clothes. I’m interested in clothes.”
    She patted her own butt.
    Guilty, that was what kind of grin. He said, “I don’t care about your posterior.”
    “Liar again.”
    “I particularly like those pants.”
    “Well, then I won’t take them off.” She handed him a half slice of the pepper pizza, her bite marks in it, last piece. He took it and bit her bites away and kept going and it was good to the last crumb of crust.
    She poured more wine. How much did those boxes hold? She put a stick in the fire, and a large split, poked it all expertly into the coals, maximum efficiency. She’d have run out of wood about now, Eric thought, imagined her trying to collect more in the dark, remembered the door, that the door was utterly blocked, so much snow against the house now that the storm seemed more distant, the wind intense but removed. No particular reason, he thought of a visit to La Jolla, where Alison had grown up, the two of them in law school far away and not allowed to share a room in her parents’ big house, views of the ocean. An outdoor deck connected the entire second floor, though, and he crept in the damp breeze at