Free JM03 - Red Cat by Peter Spiegelman

anonymous trysts either.

    Clare had been mostly silent beside me, sometimes reading from her big book, sometimes fiddling with the radio, sometimes just watching through her dark glasses as the asphalt unfolded before us. But the farther behind the city fell, the more she seemed to lighten and uncoil, the more some tension I hadn’t known was there seemed to dissipate. By Glen Cove, she’d put her feet up on the dash; by Melville, she was singing softly with the radio.

    We’d taken the LIE until it gave out in Riverhead, and then made our way onto Route 25. The landscape flattened around us and the pale, immaculate sky grew larger and brighter with light off the water. We’d passed wineries, and acre after acre of bare vines. They were gnarled and tough looking, and mustered in strict rows behind wire fencing. Clare took off her glasses and ran the window down, and a cold, marine wind rushed in.

    We’d stopped for breakfast in Southold, at a tiny diner with a view of a harbor. It was filled with locals and the men had eyed Clare surreptitiously over their eggs and waffles. She’d eaten an omelet and stared at the buttoned-up boats rocking at anchor. I’d had pancakes and thought more about David.

    A few of the errant husbands I’d tracked had offered a kind of diminished-capacity defense when they were caught in the act— a story about judgment impaired by the sudden rush of blood to points south of the belt buckle. As an excuse it had done them no good with wives or divorce court judges, but as an explanation it had a certain honesty. I wondered if that was David’s story. But he’d always been such a directed and self-disciplined bastard, and always so smug about it too. It was hard to picture him surrendering to impulse, or besotted with anyone.

    I’d wondered if these encounters were an outlet for all that restraint, but ultimately didn’t believe it. There was something else going on. I remembered David telling me about his screening procedures, and how satisfied he’d been with his cleverness. “If she won’t play by my rules, I move on.” He liked pulling the strings.

    We’d strolled around the harbor after breakfast, Clare wrapped in her black coat and dark glasses, and with a black Mets cap on her pale blond head. We’d walked to the end of a street, at the end of a hook of land, to a bench with a view of Shelter Island. We sat and watched a small ferry crawl across the water, and Clare leaned into me and put her hand into my pocket. After a while the wind picked up and chased us to the car and we drove farther east, to Greenport.

    Route 25 became Front Street in Greenport, and met Main Street at the harbor. Both streets were lined with low clapboard buildings and they were more crowded than I’d expected on a midwinter day. People shopping, running errands, just walking, and they all seemed to know each other. We parked the car and got out. Clare took her hat off and ran a hand through her hair.

    “It’s like frigging Bedford Falls or something,” she’d said, but she’d been laughing.

    An antique store was just opening up, and she’d led me inside, and up and down the single crowded aisle. She smiled at the guy behind the counter and left without buying. Out on the sidewalk, she’d taken my arm again and we’d wandered up the street. My thoughts wandered back to my brother.

    Power and control, ego and anger: beyond the rationalizations and lame excuses, most of the cheating husbands I’d tracked were driven, down deep, by one or more of these. But David had become a mystery to me since Monday, and harder to read than any of those guys had been. Constructing a secret world, laying down its rules and regulations, and watching people jump through his hoops— that was all about power and control; but what about the rest? Was David’s ego so fragile that he needed the attentions of strangers to shore it up? Or was it anger driving him, and if so, anger at what, or whom? Stephanie