Distant Shores Read Free Page B

I’ve been clean for years. Ask my previous employers. They’ll stand up for my work ethic.”
    â€œWe’re not a huge company, Jack. We can’t afford the kind of scandals and disappointments that are standard operating procedure at the networks. The truth is you’re damaged goods. I don’t see how I can risk my success on you.”
    Jack wished he could be the man he’d once been. That man would have said,
Cram your shit-ass little TV program up your wrinkly white ass.
Instead, he said, “I can do a good job for you. Give me a chance.” Each word tasted black and bitter on his tongue, but a man with a mortgage, a dwindling stock portfolio, and two daughters in college had no choice.
    â€œI’m sorry,” Mark said, though he didn’t look it.
    â€œWhy did you bother to interview me?”
    â€œMy son remembers you from the UW. He thought a face-to-face meeting would change my mind about you.” He almost smiled. “But my son has substance abuse issues of his own. Of course he’d believe in giving a man a second chance. I don’t.”
    Jack picked up his briefcase. He used to think that losing football was rock bottom, the damp basement of his existence. It had been what sent him reaching for a bottle of pills in the first place.
    But he’d been wrong.
    Nothing was worse than the slow, continual erosion of his self-esteem. Times like this wore a man down.
    Finally, he stood up. It took all his strength to smile and say, “Well, thank you for seeing me.”
    Although you didn’t, you officious prick, you didn’t see me at all.
    Then he left the office.
    Elizabeth sat in the dining room, with fabrics and paint chips and glossy magazine pages strewn across her lap, but she couldn’t concentrate on the task at hand.
    Maybe tonight,
she kept thinking.
    For years, she’d listened to daytime television talk shows. The shrinks agreed that passion could be rekindled, that a love lost along the busy highway of raising a family could be regenerated.
    She hoped it was true, because she and Jack were in trouble. After twenty-four years of marriage, they’d forgotten how to love each other; now, only the barest strand of their bond remained.
    Their marriage was like an old blanket that had been fraying for years. If repairs weren’t made—and quickly—they’d each be left holding a handful of colored thread. She couldn’t keep pretending that things would get better on their own.
    She had to
make
it happen. That was another thing the shrinks agreed on: You had to act to get results.
    Tonight, she’d give them a new beginning.
    She kept that goal in mind all day as she went about her chores. Finally, she came home and made his favorite dinner: coq au vin.
    The tantalizing aroma of chicken and wine and spices filled the house. It took her almost an hour to get a fire going in the living room hearth (flammable materials were Jack’s job, always, like taking out the trash and paying the bills). When she finished, she lit the cinnamon-scented candles that were her favorite. Then she dimmed the lights. By candlelight, the yellow walls seemed to be as soft as melted butter. On either side of the pale blue and yellow toile sofa, two dark mahogany end tables glimmered with streaks of red and gold.
    The whole house looked like a movie set. Seduction Central.
    When everything was perfect, she raced into her bathroom and showered, shaved her legs twice, and smoothed almond-scented lotion all over her body.
    At last, she went to her lingerie drawer and burrowed through the serviceable Jockey For Her underwear and Calvin Klein cotton bras until she found the lacy white silk camisole and tap pants Jack had bought her for Valentine’s Day a few years ago. Maybe more than a few. She’d never worn them.
    Then, she’d dismissed them as a gift for him. Now she saw the romance in it. How long had it been since he’d