Feelings of Fear Read Free Page B

on the kitchen tiles. She tried to slap him again, but when she couldn’t, she wrenched herself free from him and went straight to the front door.
    He followed her, trying to catch her arm. “Susan! I’m sorry! I lost my temper, that’s all! It’s not your fault!”
    She snatched her keys from the hook by the door. Her cheek was flaming red and her eyes were filled with tears.
    â€œListen, I’m really sorry, sweetheart! Don’t go! You can come back here and hit me back, OK? I’m sorry!”
    â€œYou
bastard,”
she said, with a terrible vehemence.
    â€œSusan, for Christ’s sake, don’t go out! You shouldn’t drive while you’re feeling like this!”
    â€œWhat, are you worried I might kill myself?”
    She went out of the door and slammed it behind her. Again he followed her, but she was already halfway down the steps in front of the house.
    â€œSusan! Listen to me!”
    But she didn’t listen. She climbed into her little black Honda sports car and backed down the driveway. By the time Jeff reached the street she had sped off out of sight.
    Across the street, his neighbor, Bill Arnold, was standing in his bathrobe in his open doorway, staring at him.
    â€œWhat the fuck are you looking at?” Jeff shouted at him.
    He went inside and poured himself another large vodka. He looked around the kitchen – at the carefully prepared salad, at the freshly fried
spaghetti frittata,
at the beans still simmering on the stove. He smashed his fist down on the counter and the lid toppled off Susan’s favorite cookie-jar – the one in the shape of W.C. Fields – and broke.
    How the hell could he have hit her? He stared at his offending hand and he couldn’t believe it.
    They had argued before, frequently, and sometimes their arguments had led to slammed doors and nights on the couch. But he had never touched her, not once. If only he could run those few seconds back, and cut them out. If only they could be sitting down at the table, drinking a celebratory glass of Orvieto and eating the dinner that she had spent so much time preparing. He lifted the saucepan out of the sink and flushed away the splattered clam sauce. He felt so upset so that his hands were shaking.
    He went through to the living-room and picked up the phone. It rang for a long time before anybody answered. “Hazel? Listen, this is Jeff.I’m sorry to call you so late. No, nothing like that. Susan and me have just had a bit of a bust-up. Well, yes. It was all my fault. I was tired, I lost my temper. Well, look, I expect she’ll come over to your place. About five minutes ago. Sure. But when she gets there, can you ask her to call me? Can you do that, please? And can you tell her how sorry I am? Well, I will, for sure, but it might help if she hears it from you, too.”
    Hazel was Susan’s sister. She lived a half-hour away in Sherman Oaks. She and Susan had always been especially close, right to the point of choosing the same color dress to wear on the same day and finishing each other’s sentences.
    He put down the phone. Beside it stood a large framed photograph of himself and Susan that had been taken last summer on the beach at Cancun, in Mexico. Susan had her arms around his waist and she was laughing. Look at her, he thought. How could I have hit her?
    They say that people always fall in love with themselves, and that was certainly true of Jeff and Susan. They were both tall, both very slim, and they had a chiseled look about their faces which occasionally led people to think that they were brother and sister. But while Jeff was dark-haired and brown-eyed, Susan had a mass of soft blonde curls and eyes as green as crushed emeralds. In the photograph she was wearing a peacock-blue one-piece swimsuit which showed off her figure – full-breasted, slim-waisted, with long, long legs.
    He had been captivated by Susan the day he had first met her, when