Fat Tuesday(22)

She rolled her lips inward and paused to regroup emotionally."I'm trying to build a life without Kev. I tell myself that he's lost to me.

Forever. And that I can live with knowing that. Just when I'm almost convinced, you show up and ..." Tears overflowed her eyes. She dug into her pocket for a tissue."See what I mean?"

"Yeah, I see what you mean." He didn't even try to disguise the bitterness in his voice."It hurts you to serve coffee to the man who made you a widow."

"I didn't say that."

"You didn't have to." He brushed past her and went through the door.

"Burke, please understand," she called after him."Please."

He stopped on the walk and turned back. But when he saw her tortured expression, his anger evaporated. How could he be mad? She hadn't made this decision to hurt him. This wasn't about him, it was about her.

It was for her self-preservation that she'd asked him not to return.

"Hell of it is, Nancy, I do understand. In your situation, I'd feel exactly the same way."

"You know what you've meant to me and to the boys. We know what you meant to Kev. But I "

He held up both hands."Don't lay a guilt trip on yourself over this.

Okay? You're right. It'll be best this way."

She sniffed and blotted her nose with the tissue."Thanks for understanding, Burke."

"Tell the boys ..." He tried to think of something she could tell them to explain why he, like their father, was abruptly disappearing from their lives.

A sob shuddered up through her chest."I'll handle it. They're amazingly resilient." She gave him a watery smile."After all you've done for us, I hate the thought of hurting you. If it makes you feel any better, this is very difficult for me. I feel like I'm severing my own right arm in order to save my life. You've been a good friend."

"I still am. Always." Softly she said, "I can't move away from it until I let it go, Burke."

"I understand."

"The same should go for you. When are you going to let it go?" Several seconds ticked by. Then he said, "If you ever need anything, you know where to find me."

barbara's car was in the driveway when he reached home. She would be pleased that, for once, he was home on time, even early. Guiltily, he had hoped that the volleyball tournament or some other activity would have kept her at school for a while. He needed some down time, some solitude.

The day had begun with Pat's double-barreled bad news. Then Nancy Stuart told him, essentially, to get lost and stay that way. Today, even a mild argument with Barbara would be too much to handle. A minor disagreement, one cross word, might upset some delicate balance within him. He feared that on his present emotional yardstick, there would be only a hair's breadth between irritation and outrage.

He entered through the back door, calling her name. She wasn't in the kitchen or in the forward rooms of the house, so he went upstairs.

When he reached the landing, he heard the TV set in the bedroom. Water was running in the shower.

But when he went into the bedroom, he saw that he was only half correct The shower was running. But the voices he'd heard weren't coming from the television set.

Crossing the bedroom, he went through the connecting door into the bathroom. It was foggy with steam. Burke yanked open the glass door of the shower.

Barbara was against the tile wall, eyes closed, mouth open, legs wrapped around the furiously pumping hips of the short, stocky boys' football coach from the middle school.

With a surge of feral fury, Burke grabbed the guy with both hands and jerked him from the shower stall. The coach lost his footing on the slippery, soapy tile and would have fallen had Burke not been holding him by the neck.

Barbara uttered a sharp scream, then clamped her hands over her mouth as she watched her husband slam her lover against the bathroom wall several times before starting to pummel him with his fists. Working like pistons, they hammered into the man's flesh, making slapping sounds against his wet skin.

He was younger than Burke by fifteen years, well muscled and perfectly conditioned, but Burke had the element of surprise on his side.

Even so, he didn't fight with any particular stratagem. He was maddened by a need to cause pain, to spread some of the suffering around, to make this rutting son of a bitch hurt as much as he was hurting. There was satisfaction in the crunch of cartilage and the splitting of skin and the giving of soft tissue against his ramming fists.

He had reduced the guy to a quivering, blubbering, begging mass before delivering the coup de grace. He kneed him in the balls with the impetus of a locomotive, which caused the coach to scream in agony and slide down the wall to the floor, where he lay cradling his injured manhood between his hands and weeping. His battered face streamed mucus and blood and tears.

Breathing hard, Burke bent over the sink. After washing his hands and sluicing his face with cold water, he came upright and saw Barbara's reflection in the foggy mirror over the basin. She had put on a robe, exhibiting some semblance of shame, but she hadn't shown any concern for her wounded lover, which surprised Burke. Didn't she care for him at all? Maybe not. Maybe she'd taken a lover just to get his attention. And maybe he was flattering himself.

"Feel better now?" she asked, heavy on the sarcasm.