The Fearsome Particles Part 10

"He's just going to be a minute." Gerald turned and saw three people in line behind him. "It'll just be a minute," he repeated.

"What are we waiting for?" said a wind-breakered woman at the end.

"Some jerk gone to his car," said a middle-aged farmer-type behind Gerald.

A brokerish-looking man in the middle looked at the ceiling and sighed.

"This is ridiculous," said the woman.

Gerald began to feel hot, and a little damp. He wanted to take off the jacket of his suit but he feared these people would mistake the movement for some sort of capitulation, and he had given the obese man his word.

"He was in line before us," said Gerald, addressing the queue. "He's trying to treat his family. You would want the same courtesy."

"No, I wouldn't," said the farmerish man, who seemed farmerish to Gerald because he was wearing a mesh-back cap. "I wouldn't have f.u.c.ked off to my car in the first place."

Had none of these people ever tried to do something nice for the people they loved? Could a man not want to bring home doughnuts and and invest in doughnut treats to come? Was it not something that forgave a two-minute delay? Gerald turned back to the counter girl for no other reason than he needed moral support. invest in doughnut treats to come? Was it not something that forgave a two-minute delay? Gerald turned back to the counter girl for no other reason than he needed moral support.

"We don't even do the stickers," said the counter girl. "That's the other place."

Now he understood that he was standing in defence of a lost cause. A false hope. He was a bleeding and beaten tomato can of a prize fighter unwilling to go down, n.o.ble to a degree but mostly pathetic and cringe-making.

The broker tapped the farmer on the shoulder. "Just go ahead," he said.

"I should," agreed the older man.

"Do it."

Gerald was about to make a last desperate gesture and block whoever tried to move in front of him, but before he needed to, the obese man reappeared.

"Sorry! Sorry! I'm here!" he wheezed, cramming himself between unmoveable chairs and the people lined up. "Thanks, man," he said to Gerald when he made it to the front.

"Unbelievable," muttered the woman in the windbreaker.

The fat man, out of breath, slapped his sticker card on the counter. "Give me two dozen Boston creams."

Behind the counter, the girl in the paper cap offered a small fixed smile. "That card doesn't work here," she said. "It's for the other place."

For a second, the fat man seemed in shock. "No way," he said. "Really?"

The girl, in response, merely seasoned her smile with pain. "Do you still want the Boston creams?"

Looking up at the signage, as if for help, the man sighed. "Nah," he said, turning. "Forget it."

"Inf.u.c.kingcredible," said the woman.

At the counter, Gerald reached for his wallet and smiled in a way he hoped was sufficiently apologetic. "One doughnut with chocolate icing, please."

The girl looked blankly at him for a moment. "Sorry," she finally said. "We're out."

For the remainder of his drive home, Gerald blinked against the fatigue of his day and did what he could to revive his debilitated sense of purpose. A few self-righteous cranks lined up for doughnuts were not going to dissuade him from taking the actions he knew needed to be taken. He steered his GS GS 450 into corners with precision, he accelerated out of them with resolve, he proved to himself over the final twenty minutes of his commute that he was every bit as focused and determined as he'd been when he wrapped up his meeting with Sandy Beale. And by the time he pulled into the driveway at 93 Breere Crescent and pressed the dashboard b.u.t.ton to open the two-car garage, he had come nearly all the way back. 450 into corners with precision, he accelerated out of them with resolve, he proved to himself over the final twenty minutes of his commute that he was every bit as focused and determined as he'd been when he wrapped up his meeting with Sandy Beale. And by the time he pulled into the driveway at 93 Breere Crescent and pressed the dashboard b.u.t.ton to open the two-car garage, he had come nearly all the way back.

He slid his sedan into its slot to the left, well clear of Vicki's Camry (which was as usual parked too close to the middle for comfort) because he didn't trust her in her current state not to open her door into his side. It meant leaving barely enough room on the driver's side to get out, but Gerald willingly put up with a tight squeeze against the poured concrete wall if it meant not having to worry about Vicki.

In the darkened house he set his briefcase on the breakfast nook table and listened for sounds of life. There were none. Kyle was no doubt in his room, betting away the money Gerald and Vicki had set aside for his tuition, and didn't it strike Gerald now as the purest folly to have given his son access to the account. Gerald hit his forehead with a balled fist for not having thought of that detail before a whole day of luau-slot losses could have been averted. Well, that would be solved in the morning. First thing. And before then other measures would be taken.

"Vicki?" he called and waited. "Vicki!" he called again.

From some distant part of the house, a soft voice answered. "I'm here, Gerald."

"Where?" he shouted.

"Up here," came the barest reply. It sounded as if it had come from upstairs.

Gerald grabbed his briefcase and swung through the kitchen and centre hallway toward the foyer, paused to drop his briefcase inside the door of his den, then continued up the stairs.

"Vicki," he shouted as he climbed, seizing and pulling on the banister every few steps as if he were hauling fire hose to the scene of a blaze. "I noticed, darling, that once again you parked too close to my s.p.a.ce in the garage." On the second level he hesitated outside Kyle's door, listened for a moment and considered going in. But he felt it was only fair to make his wife aware of his intentions before he took any decisive steps.

"Vicki?" he called.

"Up here," she called back, using the same soft voice she had used years ago when she had laid Kyle in his crib and didn't want to wake him.

She was on the third level, probably, Gerald thought, in the turret room, where she sometimes liked to sit and look out over the ravine. "It's really the smallest thing I'm asking for," he continued as he made his way up. "Ten inches more, a foot at the most, is all I need. Then we can both get in and out of our cars with no problem."

He grabbed the bal.u.s.ter near the top of the stairs and pulled himself up the last step. The turret room was at the end of the short hallway, past a small bathroom and a guest bedroom that was never used. Its door was open.

"Vicki?"

"I'm here," she said with a voice low and quiet enough to have suited prayer in church.

He walked down the hall toward her. "Vicki, what are you doing? Why do you sound hypnotized?"

When he arrived at the door of the turret room, he saw exactly what he'd expected: she was sitting in a wingback chair, by the window, in the manner of a woman retreating from the world and into her thoughts. But she wasn't looking out the window, she was staring at something on the floor, next to the door.

"It's kept me here for the last hour," she said, staring.

Gerald looked down, next to his feet. Against the wall, by the bra.s.s-plated heating vent, sat Rumsfeld with its tail wavering behind it in the air like the head of a snake.

"I wouldn't make any sudden moves," said Vicki. "Every time I try to get out of this chair it hisses at me."

"Why didn't you warn me?" said Gerald. "I could have brought some sort of weapon."

"I wasn't going to have a conversation with you across three floors."

"Well, we have to get rid of it."

"I know. Get something to shoo it away."

"I mean completely. Out of the house."

She had been leaning with her elbow on the arm of the chair. Now she lowered her head into her hand. "We've talked about this, Gerald. We can't just get rid of the Campeaus' cat."

"Look what it's doing to us!" The cat hissed and Gerald pressed against the door jamb. He dropped his voice to a whisper. "It's causing us incredible amounts of stress."

"Not for me," murmured Vicki. "I haven't had any trouble with it until now."

"Isn't that enough? Look at you! You're being held captive in your own home. How many times does that have to happen?"

"Keep your voice down."

Gerald used a minimal, non-sudden gesture to indicate the floor below. "If you won't think of yourself, think of Kyle. What about him? Have you talked to him? He's in no condition to deal with something like this."

"Kyle hasn't said a word about the cat. I think you're most worried about yourself."

"How dare you!" Gerald found the strain of trying to express his anger and frustration through a whisper hugely taxing. It reminded him of their quarrels years ago in the bathroom, where Vicki had insisted they lock themselves away, whenever little Kyle was awake. "And if I were thinking of myself, which I'm not, I wonder why that would be? I'm only the one constantly under attack."

"Gerald."

"It's not as though I can count on you you doing anything to help," he croaked. "You had your chance when I was choking to death." doing anything to help," he croaked. "You had your chance when I was choking to death."

She was rolling her head in her hands. "Do we need to go over this now?"

"I wonder how many husbands can say they were choking to death on an olive, while trying to bring a late-night snack to their wives, and their wives couldn't even administer the Heimlich manoeuvre to save them."

"I said I was sorry!"

"How many choking husbands have had to climb a set of stairs and throw themselves, stomach first, onto the end k.n.o.b of a railing "

"It's called a finial."

" while their wives stood there, worrying about a stain on the carpet?"

Vicki stood up suddenly. "Good work, Gerald."

"I still have the bruise!"

She motioned toward the floor by the heating vent. "It's gone. You've scared it away."

He didn't care about the cat. He was unb.u.t.toning his shirt. "Look at this. Look at this purplish area, right here, under my breastbone." He realized the light was bad. She couldn't see. But he opened his shirt anyway. He spread his shirt the way Superman did, and his bruise from throwing himself on the finial to save his life was his own Superman emblem. "Look!"

She walked by him and out the door.

"This plus my legs!" shouted Gerald. "And this!" He pointed to the scratch on his neck as she continued down the hall. "I'm being killed!" he shouted. "I'm being killed in my own house!"

Recovery came with a generous gla.s.s of Youngerton Pinot Noir. Gerald drank it alone, in his den, while Vicki prepared herself for bed. She had left dinner for him on the island in the kitchen, the same dinner she had been delivering to Kyle in his room at around the time he was phoning her about doughnuts. Under the citrine halo of his desk lamp, he spread the cloth napkin across his knees and lifted utensils weighted with lead and his own sufferance. For a while he made an effort to chew through the asparagus spears and slices of lamb leg pasty with congealed fat, but he decided he didn't have the appet.i.te for it. When he laid down his knife and fork, and pushed the plate away, he realized it was the most effective action he had taken all day.

He returned to the kitchen, searched the rack, and found another bottle of the Youngerton. The cork of this one seemed fused to its green gla.s.s neck and for a time someone coming into the kitchen would have witnessed Gerald kneeling on the floor with the bottle between his knees, applying the critical leverage. Cork released, he stood in a splay of light from the range hood, listening to the machine-like scouring made by the base of his gla.s.s as he swirled it over the island's marble top, and reviewed again, as if worrying a bad tooth, the special futility that had come to define him. In a field of snow, he was the man who huddled naked, without the courage to lift his arms and reach for a coat.

What had he said to Sandy Beale, who'd taken the great risk of approaching a superior with an unquestionably lunatic, but possibly brilliant and salutary, idea? He'd think about it. He'd apply some mental energy to considering it. He'd stand back and a.s.sess it, presumably while scratching his dimpled chin. A small purse of the lips, a contemplative nod, a "hmm" what great decisiveness! What execution of executive power! No wonder Vicki ignored him when he asked her to park in a certain way, or keep the medicine cabinet in a particular order, or please never wash the salad spinach in warm water, only cold. No wonder his son had defied him, to his own great detriment. No wonder his director of sales and marketing had never bothered to inform him of the imminent market share doom. No wonder his puerile bleating in the turret room had fallen on such indifferent ears. He was a weak, ineffectual man. In the feeble glow from the range hood, Gerald took a deep swig of the Youngerton and rued his weakness as it went down.

By the time he was two-thirds of the way through the second bottle, he knew what he needed to do.

He climbed the stairs and moved as noiselessly as possible down the hallway to the door of the master bedroom. Vicki had shut the door, as usual the nightly event of having to face that barricade and turn the k.n.o.b in order to enter his own bedroom had always been a small humiliation for Gerald. He'd felt like an exiled citizen submitting to bureaucratic process in order to reenter the country of his birth.

But not tonight. Tonight he was grateful for any reminder of how marginalized he had become in his own home. It fortified his sense of purpose. When he saw the closed door, he smiled.

Inside the bedroom, the only illumination came from the LED LED hum of his digital clock radio, the pallor of Breere Crescent's solitary street lamp against the sheer drapes on his wife's side of the bed, and the custardy glow of the night light plugged into the electric shaver outlet of the ensuite. Gerald surveyed the scene and decided it was more than enough. hum of his digital clock radio, the pallor of Breere Crescent's solitary street lamp against the sheer drapes on his wife's side of the bed, and the custardy glow of the night light plugged into the electric shaver outlet of the ensuite. Gerald surveyed the scene and decided it was more than enough.

Vicki lay shrouded in the cadaverous inertia typical of her first few hours of sleep, a coma-like state that had always struck Gerald as creepy, especially in their first few years together, when he would roll over and lay a tender arm across her stomach, and startle awake at the stillness of her breath. He would poke her arm with a stiff finger, or tweak a nipple, and nothing would happen. The thought occurred to him, even then, that she was simply ignoring him. But the thought never stuck because that was back in the days when Gerald truly believed himself to be CEO CEO material, and he couldn't imagine how his wife could sustain such a steadfast indifference toward him. A few times, in the dark, he had made himself hard, climbed on and pressed himself against her, and on one of these occasions her lips had actually parted, so that he thought perhaps, subconsciously, she approved. But the next morning, when he had slipped in a mention of their "shared moment" of the night before as she was sipping coffee, her eyes held him with such fear over her cup that for days his skin crawled at the thought of himself. After that, he did it only once more. And though knowing she would be horrified had made the whole procedure, from beginning to end, intensely exciting, his remorse the next morning had clotted up so thick that he had immediately booked them a three-day Manhattan weekend. material, and he couldn't imagine how his wife could sustain such a steadfast indifference toward him. A few times, in the dark, he had made himself hard, climbed on and pressed himself against her, and on one of these occasions her lips had actually parted, so that he thought perhaps, subconsciously, she approved. But the next morning, when he had slipped in a mention of their "shared moment" of the night before as she was sipping coffee, her eyes held him with such fear over her cup that for days his skin crawled at the thought of himself. After that, he did it only once more. And though knowing she would be horrified had made the whole procedure, from beginning to end, intensely exciting, his remorse the next morning had clotted up so thick that he had immediately booked them a three-day Manhattan weekend.

Gerald glanced over at his clock. Around two in the morning was when Vicki began to show signs of life he had been jabbed awake enough nights to know and if a noise or a movement was ever likely to rouse her, it was then. But his clock told him it was only 12:33, so he knew he had plenty of time.

He stood at the end of the bed, looked down at the twin crags of her duvet-draped feet, and folded back the duvet's edge. Now the crags were aged cathedral spires hiding beneath protective sheeting of the kind that concealed extensive restoration work, the sandblasting and replastering meant to return great monuments to their former glory. And Gerald, staring at his wife's spires through the veil of six or seven rotund gla.s.ses of very fine Pinot Noir, managed to convince himself, at least partly, that he was about to render a similar service to her.

The sheet came untucked in one smooth tug. He left it draped over her feet, against the slight chance that a cool draft could touch the tender ankles and cause her to stir, because he wanted her toes exactly as they were, upright and accessible. There was a spryness to his step, a vivacity, as he made his way across the cabreuva flooring and into the ensuite. And though the nail clippers weren't in the drawer they were supposed to be in, that didn't surprise Gerald in the least. He was used to nothing being as he wanted it to be.

He pressed the door to the ensuite shut and turned on the light, but no amount of rooting in the drawers or in the cabinet behind the mirror could unearth the clippers. There were small zippered makeup bags belonging to Vicki made of the kind of high-tech materials that might once have been vital in aeros.p.a.ce applications and Gerald admired the micro-fibre texture and tensile strength of these bags even as he pawed through the lipsticks and brushes and eye pencil shavings they contained.

When he had exhausted the clipper potential of every drawer and shelf and countertop receptacle in the ensuite, Gerald sat on the edge of the bubble-jet tub and let his mind roam to other options. The clippers were probably at the bottom of one of his wife's umpteen purses, and for a minute he entertained the thought of finding all umpteen and dumping out their contents onto the duvet beside her, and after finding the clippers, filling the bags back up with indiscriminate handfuls of purse effluvia, to see whether she would even notice. But as engaged as he was by this idea, as delightful as he thought it would be to watch his wife reach into one of her bags expecting to find a certain key or card, only to discover that it had by some mysterious force been misplaced like so, so many of the things to which he tried to attach permanence and order only to have them redistributed by others like a graceful snowdrift attacked by a gas-fuelled blower and turned into flying smithereens Gerald couldn't accept the image of himself as a purse-rooter. So there had to be some other way.

For the next twenty minutes, his search for an alternative to clippers took him through most of the main and lower levels, rummaging through every household-implements drawer he could think of. It became clear to him that his pleas for Rosary to for G.o.d's sake apply some logical order to the implements to, for instance, centralize the scissors had had the unintended effect of making the scissors disappear. Somewhere in the house that seemed logical to Rosary, there was a drawer or a box choked with scissors, and he was incapable of finding it. As he made a second pa.s.s through the main level of the house, rifling drawers he had already searched, rescattering the spatulas and spoons, Gerald felt sure that he was entering a period in his life of change and flux in which incapacity would be his only constant. Then he thought of the garage.

In the garage, rejoicing.

Amongst the gardening tools, beneath a coil of rubber hose, he found a small pair of red-handled pruning shears, for cutting grapevines and rosebush stems. The curved blades were coated with black grime but he was able to get most of that off at the kitchen sink with dish soap and paper towelling. When the blades were clean he held them up to the range hood light and snipped the air with approval. To make sure they worked, he tried the shears on his own longish thumbnail and found that, if he positioned the nail at the very crux of the curve in the blades, like the tip of a tongue poking through a smile, he could manage a remarkably precise, if short, cut. There was no gap between the blades, as there often was in regular scissors; it was metal on metal, edge against edge, all the way. It seemed plausible to Gerald that, other than actual nail clippers, there existed no better tool for cutting toenails than a pair of pruning shears like these. He snipped the air again and breathed in with a sense of control he hadn't felt in months.

In the bedroom, he knelt at the end of the bed and pulled back the sheet. Against the faint light of the street lamp coming through the drapes, Vicki's toes stood up like short, plump fence posts following the arc of a hill, each crowned by a bit of savagery, like the spiky armaments used to keep pigeons from roosting. He decided to attack the nails of the right foot first, and just to make sure his wife was as deeply asleep as he hoped her to be, he took the middle toe between his thumb and forefinger and wiggled it. She didn't move.

Gerald held the shears against the nail of her pinkie toe, but something about the size and vulnerability of the pinkie, next to the severity of the shears, made him hesitate. Better, he thought, to start on the big toe, and work largest to smallest. He got a firm grip of the big toe, his thumb against the fleshy oval pad, and set the blades of the shears against the nail.

He needed more light. There was no sense in taking chances. He got up and opened the bedroom door just wide enough to let the light from the hallway fall across Vicki's legs, up to her shins. On his way back to the end of the bed, he picked up a chair cushion and placed it on the floor for his knees. Then he went back to work.

His first snip was invisible. He'd been afraid of cutting too deep so he removed the merest sliver, the thickness of a fine pencil line, and even that little took considerable courage. But he realized there was no point to the exercise unless his clipping made some demonstrable difference. He slid the shears down until the blade closest to him was pressed lightly against the soft tip of her toe, where a cut would take off a three-millimetre swath.

That seemed like too much. Being so close to the toe itself meant there was no margin for error, it would be too easy to cut into the quick and then what? Dark images of exactly what flashed through Gerald's mind and he shuddered. He tried to ease the shears up off the skin of the toe, about a millimetre, but he was finding it difficult to keep the blades steady; he had nothing to brace against and his elbows were hovering in mid-air. His pulse was also racing more than he'd expected, which made his hand, and therefore the shears, waver. He needed some kind of purchase.

Gerald forearmed the sweat off his face and tried to calm his breathing. Part of the problem, he realized, was attempting to work over two feet at the same time; one was always going to get in the way. He pulled the sheet and the duvet back farther, lifted up Vicki's right foot by the heel and swung her leg out forty-five degrees.

In this position, she looked like a tightrope walker putting a foot out for balance, which was faintly absurd, and now Gerald found that although he could set his elbows securely on either side of the foot, he was forced into a half-kneeling-on-the-floor, half-lying-on-the-bed position, like someone swinging a leg up to mount a horse, which was far too awkward to manage. He stood up, took Vicki's left foot by the heel, and swung this limb an equal distance away from centre. Now she looked vaguely wanton, her legs spread for him, which caused Gerald his first twinge of guilt. He'd begun by trying to correct a problem that had gotten out of hand, and here he was debasing his unconscious wife! He quickly pulled her right leg back to its original position.

On his knees once again at the foot of the bed, he glanced over at the clock, cursed himself for having wasted so much time, and looked one last time at Vicki's serene face. Then he grabbed hold of the toe, positioned the blades of the shears two millimetres down from the top of the nail, and began to cut.

The nail, he found, was incredibly tough. It was like wood. No, not wood, laminate, the kind used for countertops, made to stand up to the sharpest blades. Whether this was the effect of years of painting the nail with alternating coats of varnish and varnish remover he couldn't know, but quickly what should have been an easy snip became more like gnawing. Gerald began to have his first doubts about the efficacy of the shears. Somewhere in the garage was a sharpener for blades like this and he realized now he should have used it. Trying out the shears on his thumbnail was one thing, but evidently a woman's hardened toenail was something else. By the time he'd made it halfway through the nail of Vicki's big right toe, Gerald was using both hands on the shears.

He paused again to wipe his face and felt the first parasitic tickle of panic. Somehow the great plan of tr.i.m.m.i.n.g his wife's ten shabby toenails in the middle of the night while she lay naive and asleep was starting to lose its allure, much as colonialism, thought Gerald, must have struck General Gordon as a bad idea around the time of the fall of Khartoum. He considered abandoning the whole operation, prying the shears from where they were now wedged, dumping them back into the box in the garage, getting into bed beside Vicki and shutting his eyes as tight as he could. Nothing would have been sweeter. But thanks to him the half-cut nail, its sharp f.l.a.n.g.e sticking out like a tusk, had become more of a weapon than ever, and the idea of having to sleep in proximity to something that threatening made Gerald forge on.

With repeated squeezes on the red-handled shears he made incremental progress across the breadth of Vicki's big nail. It had been wrong to attempt the big nail before all the others, he saw that now; it was like trying to climb Everest the first time out. The lesser nails would have given him practice, would have filled in the knowledge gaps. Did you try and land a make-or-break client before you'd learned how to service smaller, less demanding customers? Of course not. What kind of idiot COO COO let himself get sucked into taking on the big boys before all the systems and processes were honed? Gerald would have pounded himself on the forehead, but he still needed two hands on the shears. let himself get sucked into taking on the big boys before all the systems and processes were honed? Gerald would have pounded himself on the forehead, but he still needed two hands on the shears.

As he girded himself for the last push, the final third, when it should have been getting easier, a shadow fell across the bed, near Vicki's feet, and Gerald saw that opening the bedroom door had let in more than light. On the arm of a stuffed chair that sat near the doorway perched Rumsfeld, its rope-trick tail a twisting silhouette above its head.