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“Honey—”
“A week, Bastien.”
“I wasn’t going to go,” he says, as though that settles it, as though that is the part I am pissed about. “So, there was nothing to tell you. Lincoln Preston wins it. He has won it five years running and he will win a sixth. They love him. He tells them exactly what they want to hear and they write him a very large check and everybody claps. Me being a finalist is a formality. It is a line for a CV I have no job to attach to.”
“That’s not a reason not to tell me you were a finalist. Why would you deny me the right to celebrate my own husband?”
He doesn’t answer that. He looks at the stack of mail like it might.
I stand there feeling stupid. I know what to do about an ambush. I know what to do about a man bleeding out. I don’t know what to do about a locked door with somebody I love on the other side of it, being polite.
Alison’s box is still behind the passenger seat of my truck, where I shoved it.
So I do the only thing I have got, which is push forward.
“We’re going.”
He looks up, startled. “Levi!”
“You made finalist. You wrote a book. We’re going to put on nice suits, and we are going to walk in there and let those people look at us.”
“Like zoo animals, then?” he says.
“Like ordinary people who love each other!” I shout. “This shouldn’t be a news flash to you, but don’t think I haven’t noticed that when we go to the grocery store, you hide your head when people recognize you. You can’t pretend we don’t know each other forever, Bastien.”
He takes a deep breath. “It’s not you. I’m not ashamed of you.”
“But you are ashamed. So why isn’t it of me?”
“It’s just…It won’t be the night you think it is.” He says it gently. “It’s a room full of people who have known each other, and who know me, by reputation first. It could be…awkward. And for what? It will be genuinely dull.”
“Oh, I see. I’ll be bored out of my mind and we should stay home.”
“Exactly!”
“No! No, Bastien! I don’t care if it’s boring. You can’t keep locking me out of this part of your life because you wish you hadn’t married me. You did.”
“Levi, I’ve never thought that. It’s not like that. Really. It’s…going to be tense.”
“I’ve had tense!” I shout. “I’ve had a hell of a lot worse than tense! Jesus Christ, Bastien, what can they do, launch a tactical assault from behind the podium? In which case, I’m your guy.”
I was trying to make that a joke, but he takes a deep breath and stares at me. He looks at me a second longer than the answer needs. “Okay,” he says. “Okay. We’ll go.”
“Great.”
He picks the flowers out of the jug and starts trimming the ends with the kitchen scissors so they will drink better.
He is a man who knows how to make a cheap thing last. Even when the cheap thing is me.
Chapter forty-three
Bastien
The next morning, I tell Levi I am going to the Fairhaven Public Library on Cotton Street, which is a good lie because it is boring and checkable and slightly pathetic, because this is the sort of place that a man like me can spend countless hours and forget the time.
“I’d like to get a cooking skills book,” I say. “Now that I’m a househusband.” The word sits awkwardly between us.
He looks at me blankly. “Not for long. Your new green card will come through soon. Then you can work any job you like. Please don’t go and work at the bowling alley. Things are not that desperate yet.”
