Wilderness

"You can't do this in complete safety, Aaron," Janet said.

"It's a matter of degree," Newman said. "What Chris said sounds good but it doesn't mean anything."

"You know it does, Aaron. I've read your books, you understand that."

"No, I don't. Not this way. It's like you want to take risks."

"Risks are part of it," Hood said. "If it's worth doing."

"You act like the risks make it worth doing." Janet said, "What do you think we ought to do, Aaron?"

"I think we ought to shoot him as quick as we can and get this over." Hood smiled. "We agree, Aaron. I think that too, but you need intelligence. You need to know the enemy before you can make a move, and we haven't gathered enough to figure out how to hit him and get this done with."

Newman ate a forkful of pasta with a basil-and-oil pesto sauce. He drank some beer.

"I think you ought to try to get him in the woods," Janet said.

Hood said, "Woods?"

Janet nodded. "He's got a summer place up in Fryeburg, Maine. I looked it up on the map. It's southwestern Maine, near the New Hampshire border. According to an article in the Herald American, April 18, 1976…" "She's a scholar," Newman said.

Janet went on: "He's a real hunter and fisherman and goes to his place in Fryeburg whenever he can." "Do you know the address?" Hood said.

"I drove up there this morning. It's about two and a half hours, and I looked him up in the phone book."

"You cut class?" Newman said.

"Yep."

"I wished you'd waited. We could have driven up together and maybe had lunch on the way back and had a nice time."

Janet didn't answer.

"Maybe that's the end to work from," Hood said. "Maybe we should go up there and wait for him to come." "Fryeburg's awfully small," Janet said. "It would be easy to be noticed."

Newman opened another beer.

Hood said, "We could keep watching him here. I assume if he heads up to hunt and fish we could tell. Rods, gun cases, waders, that sort of thing being loaded into the car." Newman said, "I'm going up to bed. You folks work this out and let me know."

They both watched in silence as he walked out of the kitchen and up the back stairs.

Janet shook her head.

"He feels bad," Hood said. "He thinks he didn't react well in the alley today."

"He worries an awful lot about things like that," Janet said. "And then he waits for me to make him feel better. And I don't know what the hell to do."

"Nothing to do, I guess. Just let him know you love him. He'll work it through. He's a good man."

"I know. But he's a complicated man and one with ferocious passions.

Sometimes I feel…" She shook her head again.

"How do you feel?"

"Inadequate to his passions. And that makes me mad. There's a lot of pulling and shoving in our life. And now this. It will be awful for us both if he can't do this."

"If he can't he'll be dead. Maybe all of us. You can't forget that, Janet."

"I know."

"Do you really know? It's easy to forget it sitting here in the kitchen. But we're involved in a very serious undertaking. And if we do it wrong we may be dead." "I don't forget," Janet said. "I also don't forget what happened to me." Her face was bright as she said it.

"Yeah." Hood smiled briefly. "I guess you don't." He got up and headed for the back door. "I'll come over in the morning when he's feeling better and see if we can work out some kind of plan," he said.

"Good night, Chris."

Hood left. Janet cleaned up the kitchen and turned off the lights and went upstairs. In the bathroom she put up her hair and washed off her makeup and put on her night cream.

When she came into the bedroom he was still awake, lying in bed leaning against a propped pillow, watching the Red Sox game on television with the sound off and listening to the play-by-play on the radio. He didn't say anything as she got into bed and turned off the light on her side.

"Night," she said.

"Night." "Are you mad at me?" she said.

"No."

"Then why do you sound it?"

"I'm watching the game."

"Oh."

She was quiet.

"I didn't do well this afternoon," he said.

"Chris says you just need experience."

"You ever wonder how that would make me feel?"

"Being scared, you mean?"

"Yeah, being scared. You ever think, maybe, "Gee the poor guy must be really down and feeling bad, how can I make him feel better?" You ever have any thoughts like that?"

"I don't know what I'm supposed to say."

"Jesus Christ. It's not ' to." Don't you have any instincts, any fucking heart? Can't you see I'm hurting? Don't you have any impulse to help me. To put your arms around me and say

"I love you. I don't care what you do, I love you'?" "Aaron," she said. And stopped. And took a deep breath. It shook in a slight vibrato as it went in. "Aaron, grow up."

"What's that mean? Only little kids need love and compassion?"

"I love you. But if you feel bad about yourself and how you acted I can't fix that. You have to fix that."

"While I'm fixing it, it might help to know you're caring about me."

"Aaron, I've lived with you for twenty-three years. Doesn't that suggest I care about you?"

"Sure, you care about me, but not like I care about you. You don't look forward to coming home and seeing me. You don't get a thrill when I walk through the door. You don't get a thrill from touching me."

"And don't you resent it," Janet said. "Don't you take every opportunity to make me feel guilty that I don't feel like you do. Is there only one way to love? Does everyone have to love the way you do or be not loving?"

"How can you love someone and not feel as I do?" he said.

"One can. One does. The trouble with you is that you're over-invested. You dwell on me too much. Every encounter. Every event. Every exchange of words or ideas is charged as if it were a moment of high passion."

"True. I care only about you. I care only for your approval or disapproval. I have achieved an autonomy in my life that only you violate. Only you and the girls, and the girls are growing and going away. Now it's all turned on you. And you're turning out. You're doing committee work and loving it in there in your asshole department with all the asshole academics pretending to care about Chaucer and Andrew Marvell when all they really want is tenure and promotion."

"Aaron…"

"I know it's hard. I know you feel the pressure. I try and change. I try and love you less." His voice thickened. "But think what I lose if I love you less. The central meaning of my life. At forty-six I have to change it?" "Goddamn," she said.

He turned his face away from her.

"We have long periods where it's fine," she said. "What happened?"

He shrugged. His back turned.

"It's Karl," she said. "This thing with Karl is eating us both."

He was silent.

"What is it, about Karl?"

"What do you mean, what is it? The so nova bitch has two goons violate my home and leave my wife tied up nude for me to find. What the hell do you think it is?"

"It's not anger," she said. "You're scared."

"Of course I'm scared. We're trying to kill a professional thug with bodyguards. Only a fool wouldn't be scared." "No," she said. "That's true, but that's not it. You're scared you'll fail. That you won't be able to act like a man should, you would say, when someone has manhandled his wife and, your phrase, '' his home."

He didn't say anything.

"That's not an unreasonable feeling," she said.

He was silent and motionless, his back to her. The ball game continued.

"I don't blame you for feeling that way."

"Will you, please, for once in your life, just, please, shut the fuck up."