When Marissa started snoring slightly, Johnny knew he could kill them all right now. Put one in Marissa’s head, then kill her parents; it could be all over in five minutes, ten tops. But if he killed them tonight all he’d get was the money and the jewelry in the house. He had a better idea- a way to get all of Adam Bloom’s money, plus his cars, his house, and everything else.
The only downside was he wouldn’t be able to kill them all tonight. No, to make this thing work he’d have to kill them off one by one.
sixteen
Dana was in the bathroom, looking in the mirror, putting on moisturizing cream, when Adam came in and said, “Listen to them in there, it’s ridiculous.” “It’s not that bad,” Dana said.
“Oh, come on,” Adam said. “This is just more of her acting out, and I find it extremely inappropriate and passive- aggressive.”
“I don’t think you’re being fair,” Dana said.
“Really? So this is my fault?”
“It’s not her fault either. She isn’t making the noise, he is. What exactly is she doing wrong?”
Adam thought about this, then said, “What’s the matter with him anyway? Why does he have to be so loud?”
“Maybe he thinks the walls are thicker than they are, or maybe he, I don’t know, can’t control himself. But I really think you’ve been too hard on her lately. You said you wanted to meet her boyfriends before you let them sleep over, and you met her boyfriend. What more can she do?”
“There are some things a father shouldn’t have to hear,” Adam said.
“Just try to ignore it.”
“How can I ignore it when I feel like I’m in the room with them?”
Dana was rubbing cream into the deep wrinkles in her forehead, thinking she might have to give in soon and get Botox.
“She’s a beautiful twenty- two- year- old girl,” she said. “You can’t stop her from having sex.”
“Oh, yes I can.”
“Oh, really? What’re you going to do, make her wear a chastity belt?”
“I don’t have to allow her to have sex in our house anymore, that’s what I can do.”
“Listen to you, allow her. So what do you want her to do, have sex in cars? In hotel rooms?”
Xan was grunting wildly.
“This is ridiculous,” Adam said and stormed out of the bathroom.
After Dana finished up with her moisturizing, she entered the bedroom, where Adam was pacing. They could still hear Xan’s grunting and moaning.
“I feel like knocking on her door.”
“You can’t embarrass her like that.”
“So I’m just supposed to listen to this all night?”
“Sleep downstairs or turn on Jay Leno if you don’t want to hear it.”
“Why should I have to drown out the noise of my daughter having sex?”
“In the morning, we’ll talk to her and ask her if she could talk to him about keeping it down from now on, but there’s nothing we can do about it tonight. I mean, it’s probably extremely awkward for her right now. What is she supposed to say to him? And I’m sure Xan isn’t aware of how loud he’s being, and after she talks to him about it everything’ll be fine. You like Xan a lot, don’t you?”
Adam stopped pacing, breathed deeply, as if he hated to admit it, then said, “Yeah, I think he’s a great guy.”
“Well, I like him, too,” Dana said. “I think he’s incredibly nice and charming and attractive, so I don’t think we should complain. She could do a lot worse.”
Dana noticed Adam was staring at her in an odd way, squinting, like he was trying to figure something out.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, and he said, “Nothing,” then turned on the TV to The Tonight Show, Leno doing his monologue. The TV didn’t drown out Xan completely, but it helped.
Adam sat at the foot of the bed, looking at the TV blankly. Dana, as she had several times during the past week or so, couldn’t help feeling paranoid. Whenever Adam seemed particularly distant or gave her a funny look or acted in any way unusual, she couldn’t help wondering if he’d somehow found out about her and Tony, or was at least suspicious.
“I just think it’s… interesting,” he said.
“What’s interesting?” Her heart was pounding.
“The way you described Xan. I haven’t heard you talk like that in a long time, calling another man attractive.”
“What’re you talking about?” Dana said, acting shocked, probably overdoing it. “I was just commenting about him, that’s all. He’s a good- looking guy. He looks a lot like Johnny Depp, don’t you think?”
“He was flirting with you a lot.”
“He was not.” She knew he had been; she just didn’t want to get into it.
“Come on, it was so obvious.”
“I noticed he was paying attention to me, yes, but I wouldn’t call it flirting. Come on, he’s Marissa’s boyfriend, for God’s sake.”
“I was just making an observation, that’s all, and wanted to let you know how it made me feel. It made me feel uncomfortable. It made me feel jealous.”
Adam was still in an annoying phase where he was constantly announcing his feelings, talking in I-statements. It was getting seriously wearing.
“I’m sorry you felt that way,” Dana said. Then, wanting to change the subject, she said, “I still don’t think you should be so hard on Marissa. You can’t give her rule after rule after rule. At some point you just have to back off and let her live her life.”
As if on cue, they could hear Xan in the other room, practically screaming.
“I’m going out to take a walk,” Adam said and left the bedroom.
Dana got into bed and shut off the light. It was so strange for Adam to get jealous; she hoped that there wasn’t more to it, that he wasn’t catching on. She thought she’d been acting pretty normal lately, not nearly as depressed as she’d been after ending the fling with Tony, but maybe he’d picked up on something and was projecting it on to her. Oh, God, what was happening to her? She’d been listening to so much of his psychobabble lately that she was starting to think like him now.
Although Dana hadn’t spoken to Tony since the night she left his apartment, she’d been missing him a lot, and it was hard to not have any contact with him. He’d texted her several times and had called her and left messages on her cell, and a few times she almost gave in and called him back. Yes, things had been better with Adam lately, but she wasn’t sure what “better” meant anymore. Better than what? Better than when she’d been miserable? Maybe being in a marriage that’s slightly better than miserable was good enough for some women, but not her. She felt trapped with Adam, and the idea of staying in the same distant marriage, having the same fights over and over again for the rest of her life, seemed almost unbearable.
While she appreciated that Adam was making an effort to change, she didn’t feel like it was a serious, heartfelt effort. Did he take her out to a nice dinner, or maybe surprise her with a weekend getaway? No, he brought home a cheerleader’s costume. The psychologist, the so- called expert on marital conflict, tries to save his marriage by trying to encourage his wife to reenact a scene from Debbie Does Dallas? Was that really the best he could come up with? It was pathetic with a capital P. The irony was that, while she’d told him she felt ridiculous putting on the outfit, the truth was she felt uncomfortable putting it on for him. During her fling with Tony, she’d dressed up many times- as a schoolgirl, a maid, a stewardess, and, yes, even one time as a cheerleader- but somehow living out her sex fantasies with a young sex object like Tony seemed much more normal than doing it with her middle- aged psychologist husband. And it definitely wasn’t the magic pill that would resolve their marriage problems.
But the only alternative to staying with Adam was divorcing him and the thought of being single again was terrifying. She knew a few women in the neighborhood who’d recently gotten divorces, and they were all miserable and lonely. What was she going to do, start dating again? She didn’t remember how to date. Where did people meet nowadays anyway, on the Internet? What would she do, post some picture of herself, retouched, in the perfect light, where she looked ten years younger, only to see the guys’ disappointment and disgust when she met them? Her ego wouldn’t be able to handle that. She seemed to get new wrinkles every day, and there was no way she could compete with women in their twenties and thirties who’d be interested in the same men. Then, in a few years, when she was in her fifties, it would get even harder to find someone. If she got very lucky, if she got incredibly lucky, then someday, maybe five or ten years from now, when she was pushing sixty, she’d have a chance to settle for someone who- at best- would be exactly like Adam, a decent enough guy with some very annoying qualities. What was the point of going through all of that pain, probably chopping years off her life because of all the stress, for the outside chance of winding up exactly where she was right now?