Free The Hour of Bad Decisions by Russell Wangersky Page A

was ever an opportunity to pull back, this was it, and that the chance would not come again. Decisions made of small moments that look like instant choices, but really aren’t that at all, he thought. The decisions are made much earlier – it just isn’t obvious when or how they are made.
    Pat was fixing her lipstick and pulling her skirt back down over her hips, first one side, then the other.
    â€œGive me a drive home, would ya?” she said, grabbing him by the wrist. He tried hard not to pull away, the sudden possessiveness in her grip unnerving him.
    â€œNo, I can’t,” he said, the possibilities and dangers whirling through his head all at the same time.
    And then he did anyway.
    While he drove, Kevin tried to work it out rationally: he tried to think about chaos theory, wanted to consider just plain inescapable original sin. But the words rattled around in his head, empty, meaningless. The snow battering against the windshield, for amoment an image of Helen sleeping with the book face down on the blanket, the whirling feeling you get when you dance too fast… Then Pat’s hand on his thigh again. Kevin putting on the turn signal, pulling the truck off the side of the road into deeper snow. Philosophy meaning very little in the instant.
    The gearshift was in the way and they wrestled for a few moments with stubborn and uncooperative clothing: later he remembered seeing, over his shoulder her bare foot on the dashboard in the orange of the streetlight. Jarring, moving memories – cars flicking by on the road, the snow starting to pile up on the glass with fat wet flakes, Pat’s breathing. And the disconcerting feeling that he was somehow watching everything from a distance, an observer, rather than a participant.
    They didn’t speak while they drove the last few blocks to Pat’s driveway: a small suburban house, her apartment in the basement with only a few windows that could even catch light. The two windows on the front were lit yellow from the lights inside, but the snow was filling the windows in.
    â€œWant to come in?” Pat asked.
    â€œNo,” Kevin said quietly. “I don’t think so. But thanks.”
    â€œAll right then. That was nice,” Pat said, out of the truck quickly and slamming the door, heading up towards the house. She waved over her shoulder without looking back. Kevin put the truck in reverse, and backed away.

    D RIVING THROUGH THE SNOW , the flakes catching in the headlights and then rushing eagerly towards the front of the truck, the evening came back to him in a visceral rush that he could feel right through the centre of his body. He could still taste the smoke on Pat’s lips, still feel the fluid curve of her hips arcing against his own. It felt to him that he had been painted, all over, with a special sort of paint that you couldn’t help but see. And he tried to look back and convince himself that it had been wrong – but it was a difficult equation to work through, without coming up with exactly the same answer, the same action.
    No matter how he put it together, he ended up in the same place, feeling her fingers spread and gripping his back – knowing that he shouldn’t have done it, but that he would have done it again, without a moment’s extra thought.
    You get what you build, he thought, and I’ve built this. Watching the snowflakes fall, each one’s staggering tumble explainable, even if the calculation is so incredibly complex as to render it unprovable.
    He pulled into his own driveway, turned off the headlights and the engine, and sat there. Listening to the engine tick as it cooled, watching the snowflakes at first melting on the windshield, and then starting their slushy climb up the glass.
    Inside, in bed, Helen is sleeping, Kevin thought. She’s sleeping, and for her, absolutely nothing has changed. The world is still spinning true, and will stay that way, axis