Chapter 15

Al had cried like her heart had shattered, and I'd cried out of a heart that was in shards. Finally we were both quiet, drained, worn out from the violent emotion. I sat up on the bed, almost reaching for Al's hand and then pulling back. I couldn't hold her hand now.

"I told you I couldn't be your wife anymore," she said in a weary voice.

"And maybe you were right," I said, and my own voice sounded dead in my ears. "But I can't bear that thought..."

"Can you bear the thought that your wife is pregnant with another man's child, and that she doesn't know who the father was, and that he paid her to sleep with her?" It was her turn for the cruel question, complete with vulgar word.

"No..."

Darvin came from wherever he'd been during the storm, and sat down on the other side of the bed. "You two are facing a tough road," he said.

"An impossible road," I told him.

"No, not impossible. Other couples have survived adultery."

"And how many couples do you know of where the adultery was three years of prostitution?"

"None. I admit that. But I believe it's possible. If I didn't, I'd never have brought y'all back together."

"Did you know she was pregnant?"

"No. She doesn't show yet, and I'm sure she wasn't walking up to PIs on the street and announcing it."

We were talking about Al almost as though she weren't there, but she was, and I was acutely conscious of her. She was still lying on her back, with her arms now at her sides and her hands loosely together at her waist. I looked at her, and no, she didn't show. Her stomach was flat, as it had always been, and the low waistband of her shorts let me see the beginning of protruding hip bones. She was so skinny...

"No, I don't suppose she was," I said.

"But I'd have brought you here anyway if I had known."

"Why?"

Darvin looked at me, and for a moment I faced the coldness that had sent Bennie away the day we'd taken Al away from Central, and that had caused a prostitute to vanish an hour or so before. Then his face relaxed, and he just looked sad. "Because she's your wife, and she needs out of here, and you love her."

"I loved her."

"You love her. If you didn't, you wouldn't be here. If you didn't, this wouldn't be grinding your soul into hamburger."

"This has killed my love for her. This woman ran away, and sold herself to who knows how many men over the past three years, and now she's pregnant with some yahoo's kid. How can I love that woman?"

Darvin took in a big breath and let it back out. "We've got to talk, all three of us. And the hotel will be a better place than here."

"Fine, we'll go to the hotel." My voice was still dead, but there was a faint tinge of irritation in it now. "But I can't see what we have to talk about."

There was nothing in the room Al wanted, so we tossed the key on the bed and walked out. I was too heart-weary to wonder if that was the proper way to do it, or to care. We stopped on the way and bought Al a couple of pairs of jeans and a couple of blouses. When we got to the hotel room she went into the bathroom and changed, and tossed her prostitute's outfit in the trash can when she emerged.

Darvin and I were sitting silent in a couple of the room's chairs, and she sat on the bed, crossing her legs. She looked at me and then at Darvin. "What happens to me now?"

Darvin stirred. "You go back to Albuquerque, and learn how to be Alan's wife again."

"No." I didn't sound quite so dead now – there was some energy in my denial.

Darvin looked at me. "Why not?"

"Because my wife—" I gave the word a harsh emphasis "—has proved that she'd rather sleep with someone else, and get someone else's baby, than sleep with me and have my child."

"Your wife," said Darvin, his emphasis a reminder rather than a condemnation, "did the only thing she knew how to do. Do you blame her for never having learned how to do anything else?"

"I don't know," I said after several silent seconds.

"Then how do you condemn her?"

"I condemn her because I'm the one she betrayed."

Darvin nodded. "Now we come to the point." He turned to Al. "You did betray your husband."

"I know." Her voice was quiet, as dead as mine had been back at the motel.

"Would you like to say something about that?"

Al's shoulders lifted as she took a breath. "I guess you know what happened ... you found me, after all. I won't go into that. I'll just say I was scared, terrified. I was so scared that I couldn't see, I couldn't think. The only thing in my mind was to get out, to get away from Bennie. The idea of being in a room all night, hour after hour, taking every man who had the money..." Tears began flowing down her face. "Alan, you can't begin to understand how that frightened me. You've never been where I've been. I don't want you to ever be there, or to know what I know. I know things, by experience, that no one should ever know. That knowledge drove me away – not from you, but from Bennie."

She brushed at her cheeks, smearing her heavy prostitute's makeup, which she hadn't wiped off when she'd changed clothes. Darvin grabbed the box of Kleenex from the table and handed it to her. "Thank you," she said, and pulled out a couple of Kleenex and began wiping tears and makeup away. "I went back into prostitution because I knew that life – and I didn't know anything else. Alan, I've never had a job in my life. I don't know how to type or clean rooms or do anything, except cook a little, which I learned from you, and have sex." The verb she actually used was vulgar. "That's all I know. It's the only way I know to get some money, to buy some food, to keep me alive so I can go out the next night..."