Disclosure

`Jesus," he said, and turned to leave the room.

"You picked this fight," she said.

He turned back. "I did not."

"Yes, you did. You were the one who started in with the traveling."

"No. You were complaining about no sex."

"I was commenting."

"Christ. Never marry a lawyer."

"And your ego is fragile."

"Susan, you want to talk fragile? I mean, you’re so fucking selfinvolved that you had a shitfit this morning because you wanted to look pretty for the pediatrician."

"Oh, there it is. Finally. You are still mad because I made you late. What is it? You think you didn’t get the job because you were late?"

"No," he said, "I didn’t-"

"You didn’t get the job," she said, "because Garvin didn’t give it to you. You didn’t play the game well enough, and somebody else played it better. That’s why. A woman played it better."

Furious, shaking, unable to speak, he turned on his heel and left the room.

"That’s right, leave," she said. "Walk away. That’s what you always do. Walk away. Don’t stand up for yourself. You don’t want to hear it, Tom. But it’s the truth. If you didn’t get the job, you have nobody to blame but yourself."

He slammed the door.

He sat in the kitchen in darkness. It was quiet all around him, except for the hum of the refrigerator. Through the kitchen window, he could see the moonlight on the bay, through the stand of fir trees.

He wondered if Susan would come down, but she didn’t. He got up and walked around, pacing. After a while, it occurred to him that he hadn’t eaten. He opened the refrigerator door, squinting in the light. It was stacked with baby food, juice containers, baby vitamins, bottles of formula. He poked among the stuff, looking for some cheese, or maybe a beer. He couldn’t find anything except a can of Susan’s Diet Coke.

Christ, he thought, not like the old days. When his refrigerator was full of frozen food and chips and salsa and lots of beer. His bachelor days.

He took out the Diet Coke. Now Eliza was starting to drink it, too. He’d told Susan a dozen times he didn’t want the kids to get diet drinks. They ought to be getting healthy food. Real food. But Susan was busy, and Consuela indifferent. The kids ate all kinds of crap. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t the way he had been brought up.

Nothing to eat. Nothing in his own damned refrigerator. Hopeful, he lifted the lid of a Tupperware container and found a partially eaten peanut butter and jelly sandwich, with Eliza’s small toothmarks in one side. He picked the sandwich up and turned it over, wondering how old it was. He didn’t see any mold.

What the hell, he thought, and he ate the rest of Eliza’s sandwich, standing there in his T-shirt, in the light of the refrigerator door. He was startled by his own reflection in the glass of the oven. "Another privileged member of the patriarchy, lording it over the manor."

Christ, he thought, where did women come up with this crap?

He finished the sandwich and rubbed the crumbs off his hands. The wall clock said 9:15. Susan went to sleep early. Apparently she wasn’t coming down to make up. She usually didn’t. It was his job to make up.

He was the peacemaker. He opened a carton of milk and drank from it, then put it back on the wire shelf. He closed the door. Darkness again.

He walked over to the sink, washed his hands, and dried them on a dish towel. Having eaten a little, he wasn’t so angry anymore. Fatigue crept over him. He looked out the window and through the trees and saw the lights of a ferry, heading west toward Bremerton. One of the things he liked about this house was that it was relatively isolated. It had some land around it. It was good for the kids. Kids should grow up with a place to run and play.

He yawned. She definitely wasn’t coming down. It’d have to wait until morning. He knew how it would go: he’d get up first, fix her a cup of coffee, and take it to her in bed. Then he’d say he was sorry, and she would reply that she was sorry, too. They’d hug, and he would go get dressed for work. And that would be it.

He went back up the dark stairs to the second floor, and opened the door to the bedroom. He could hear the quiet rhythms of Susan’s breathing.

He slipped into bed, and rolled over on his side. And then he went to sleep.

TUESDAY

t rained in the morning, hard sheets of drumming downpour that slashed across the windows of the ferry. Sanders stood in line to get his coffee, thinking about the day to come. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Dave Benedict coming toward him, and quickly turned away, but it was too late. Benedict waved, "Hey, guy." Sanders didn’t want to talk about DigiCom this morning.

At the last moment, he was saved by a call: the phone in his pocket went off: He turned away to answer it.

"Fucking A, Tommy boy." It was Eddie Larson in Austin.

"What is it, Eddie?"

"You know that bean counter Cupertino sent down? Well, get this: there’s eight of ’em here now. Independent accounting firm of Jenkins, McKay, out of Dallas. They’re going over all the books, like a swarm of roaches. And I mean everything: receivables, payables, A and L’s, year to date, everything. And now they’re going back through every year to ‘eighty-nine."

"Yeah? Disrupting everything?"

"Better believe it. The gals don’t even have a place to sit down and answer the phone. Plus, everything from ‘ninety-one back is in storage, downtown. We’ve got it on fiche here, but they say they want original documents. They want the damned paper. And they get all squinty and paranoid when they order us around. Treating us like we’re thieves or something trying to pull a fast one. It’s insulting."

"Well," Sanders said, "hang in there. You’ve got to do what they ask."