She’s on the couch in the sitting room, marking papers by the light of a single lamp when she hears his key.
“Leland.”
It’s more than twenty-four hours after the funeral. There’s no greeting, just that silent menacing shamble toward her. She can smell it on him, just like the day she arrived. “Don’t say it was a lovely service.”
“Okay. I won’t.”
“Don’t say anything.” And he slouches into the little kitchen, which he has thoughtfully stocked for her: prepackaged Sainsbury dinners for the microwave, fresh milk and fruit and bread. A bottle of wine. Without looking at her, he pours himself a glass of single malt. She steps behind him and reaches into the fridge for the wine. She can feel his eyes on her back, sense the lunge and, though she tries to spin out of his grasp, the room’s too small to get past him. The wine bottle drops from her hand but doesn’t break, just spins on the floor, striking her ankle; he grabs her by the shoulders, shoving her into the sitting room, toward the couch.
“Leland, you listen to me, dammit — ”
He pushes her over the armrest and she falls onto her back, but rolls off before he can pin her. She scrambles to her feet, and stands, poised, with the easy chair between them. She’s sober, and he’s far from it.
“I will not let you . . . rape me again. Do you hear?”
He stops at this, then swings himself with feline laziness to a sitting position on the couch, regards her with a blandly cruel smile: “Odd word to use. You seemed to like it well enough two days ago.”
“For god’s sake, you used me!”
“‘Like’ isn’t the right word, now that I think about it. You loved it. Or was that somebody else moaning like a hot bitch?” and he springs off the couch at her, but stumbles over the table. “Shit!”
She dodges. “I am not some . . . receptacle.”
This stops him. His face twists, an ugly parody: “Oh I see.”
Jay stands speechless, staring at this unrecognizable creature.
He goes on, raging, “That’s how it’s done out where you live, is it? What does Oprah recommend? So what we’ll do now is hold hands and I’ll share my feelings and then we’ll both have a nice little cry and feel so much better? Look, Jay, I don’t want to talk to you. I want to fuck you. Do you have any questions about that? I mean, if you weren’t so bloody stupid you’d have figured out all by yourself that there is absolutely not one word to say in this matter that’ll make the slightest bit of difference.”
She is terrified, reeling. “You’re a writer, asshole! Well, aren’t you? So find the words. Don’t be such a fucking coward.” She can hardly hear her own voice for the panic rising in her chest.
He comes at her, slamming his hand on the easy chair, making it spin crazily, then just as suddenly storms back to the kitchen. She hears the glass, the ice cubes, the whiskey gulping from the neck of the bottle into the tumbler.
“I’m — ” she begins. Too faint, too shaky. “I’m a writer too, you know. It’s terrible beyond words, what’s happened, but you have to say it anyway. You know that, don’t you?”
“You don’t know a damn thing about me.”
“You’re right.”