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

three in the morning past her dad’s library. The old man was a judge, took the law very seriously, but mostly as a cudgel against those who would mooch off the state, long discussion at dinner, more like a lecture, with Eric adding sour notes. Alison’s father was a humorless tyrant, and for the first time Eric knew that when Alison said she hated the man it was no figure of speech, though she loved him as well, a hundred stories of childhood joys. The deck was high—they lived on a cliff—and a light was on downstairs, Eric basically walking on top of the parents’ bedroom. He found Alison’s sliding deck door unlocked, slipped into her bed beside her, snuggled up, pressed close—she slept naked on the hot night—woke her with his ardor. “Buy me a ring,” she said as they began to make love, and said it again, and again.
    “Tell me about Jim,” he said.
    Danielle said, “Like, what about him?”
    “Does he cook?”
    “You’re funny.” The lamplight was in her eyes again, her pupils enormous, vestiges of beauty there, that fund of intelligence.
    “What does he do?”
    “Army Rangers, I told you.” A fund of disdain, as well.
    “Still?”
    “Yes, still.”
    “But he was a teacher with you, I thought you said.”
    She turned back to the stove, clearly bugged. The Rasta cap was dirty, gave an outline to her profile, a girl on a coin. “He was in the reserves. He got called up. He was on the bus within a month. Ask me something more interesting.”
    “Isn’t ‘frenzy’ a noun?”
    She was glad for the joke, quick glance, quick grin. “No. Not always, mister. Sometimes it’s something you can do. Certainly something Jimmy could do.” She swallowed the last of her wine dramatically, filled her glass yet again, ignored his pointedly, took a long time, seemed to think past their conversation, anyway disappeared.
    Eric filled his own glass.
    “No drunken incidents,” Danielle told him.
    “Jimmy,” he said.
    “Jimmy is pretty broken-glassy around the edges. Especially on duty. On duty, he’s all edges. There’s nothing else. And he’s sudden, sudden. He finished college in three years because four was just too fucking slow. He’s a marksman in a strike unit, which in case you squids don’t know is how the Rangers operate.”
    “Like the Navy Seals.”
    “But without the fishes. It’s six guys: marksman, translator, doctor, munitions, navigator. And they’re all warriors, every one.”
    “That was only five.”
    “I forget the other. Strategist, maybe? Doesn’t matter, it’s secret.”
    “How about off duty?”
    “A total player before I got hold of him. Pretty short for a dude, like my height, and stocky, 210 pounds and just one big muscle. He cried the morning of his deployment. His hands are like this big, Eric.” Really big. “And that’s not the only thing!” Even bigger.
    “But really.”
    “He’s jealous. He’s a country boy. You flinched! But I’m serious. He’s like one big hard dick. Jealous. Very jealous. You flinched again! He’s from up there, you know. Presque Isle. His family is Frenchie. His mom still speaks Québécois. They go out to cheap restaurants and eat fucking
poutine.
Poutine
is disgusting. Like French fries with cheese and gravy,
what
? He will squeeze your head like a pimple till it pops when he catches you.”
    “Catches me what?”
    “That pizza, mister, that was super. And that was a great bottle of wine. He would kill you for the greatness of the wine alone!”
    “We’ll be friends, he and I.”
    Danielle shook her head: No you won’t.

Twelve
    SO, DURING THAT visit to her parents, he’d bought Alison a ring, using his new American Express Gold card, which they apparently offered to all employees at law firms, his first plastic. And it wasn’t a real diamond but a cubic zirconium, cut big and with a bluish cast, gorgeous, and under two hundred dollars, still a bite at the time. That way they could get a huge stone, get a gasp out of