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Show •159 She shook her head and shut her pearly mouth. "I won't." "Well damn!" I said. I leaned on the sink and stared out the window at the garden without seeing it. Above me Adam's dried peppers, withered, evil, sexual, hung from their string like dark thoughts. Alice's iridescent mouth, that air of complacence and self-sufficiency, baffled and infuriated me. She was as self-contained as an egg and I wanted to hammer her till she cracked. I wanted to strangle that woman, sink my thumbs in her throat, watch her eyes pop and her face turn blue, shout "See! I'm right because I'm stronger. Where are all your fucking arguments now, Alice?" Something held me back: conventional wisdom, fear of making a fool of myself, maybe a primitive horror of touching my father's mistress. Because I had to do something or die I gave the kitchen table a hard shove and turned it over. The toaster and the teapot, the magazines, yesterday's newspaper and the portable TV flew briefly and fell to the floor. Alice jumped back. I looked at her more calmly and saw a middle-aged woman who had made a lousy life for herself. But she was my enemy. I aimed a kick at the toaster; it shot across the kitchen like a chromed football, scattering springs, screws and bits of friable plastic. I'd like to pretend that the demons of unreason had me in their grip-they did, but these were |