‘Even here,’ Gorlas said, ‘there is a sweet flush to your cheeks, dear. Most becoming.’
She could almost feel the brush of fingertips to grant benediction to the compliment. A moth, startled awake by the clash of currents in the dusty air, wings dry as talc as it fluttered against her face. She flinched back. ‘Thank you,’ she said.
This was just another game, of course. She realized that now. He did not want things to get messy, not here, not any time soon. She told herself this with certainty, and hoped it was true. But then, why not an explosive shattering? Freeing him, freeing her-wouldn’t that be healthier in the end? Unless his idea of freeing himself is to kill me. Such things happen, don’t they?
‘I do not expect to be back for at least three days. Two nights.’
‘I see. Be well on your journey, Gorlas.’
‘Thank you, darling.’ And then, without warning, he stepped close, his freehand grasping her right breast… ‘I don’t like the thought of strangers doing this,’ he said, his voice low, that odd smile still their, ‘I need to picture the face, one I know well. I need a sense of the bastard behind it.’
She stared into his eyes and saw only a stranger, calculating, as clinical and cold as a dresser of the dead-like the one who’d come to do what was needed with the corpse of her mother, once the thin veil of sympathy was tossed aside like a soiled cloth and the man set to work.
‘When I get back,’ he continued, ‘we’ll have a talk. One with details. I want to know all about him, Challice.’
She knew that what she said at this precise moment would echo in her husband’s mind for virtually every spare moment in the course of the next three days and two nights, and by the time he returned her words would have done their work in transforming him-into a broken thing, or into a monster. She could say All right, as if she was being forced, cornered, and whatever immediate satisfaction he felt would soon twist into something dark, unpleasant, and she would find herself across from a vengeful creature in three days’ time. She might say If you like, and he would hear that as defiance and cruel indifference-as if for her his needs were irrelevant, as if she would oblige out of pity and not much else. No, in truth she had few choices in what she might utter at this moment. In an instant, as he awaited her response, she decided on what she would say and when it came out it was calm and assured (but not too much so). ‘Until then, husband.’
He nodded, and she saw the pupils of his eyes dilate. She caught his quickened breathing, and knew her choice had been the right one. Now, the next three days and two nights, Gorlas would be as one on fire. With anticipation, with his imagination unleashed and playing out scenarios, each one a variation on a single theme.