In the end, Patricia’s dependence brought things to a head in a way he would never have dreamed.She wanted him, and with his anger toward Eugene at a high during those few months following the altercation over Cutter, he wanted her right back.So they were careless.Rather than waiting until Eugene was out of town, John came home from work early one day, pointed Patricia toward the bedroom, and made love to her long and hard.
Eugene found them there.Whether it was coincidence or whether he’d begun to suspect something, John neverknew.Apparently, he had finished a meeting, learned that John had left for the day, and followed him home.
The look on his face when he opened the door and discovered what was taking place wasn’t quite what John would have expected.There was neither humiliation nor defeat.He stared at the two in the bed, John lounging with measured nonchalance while Patricia jumped up and frantically began adjusting the clothes she’d never completely removed, and his features twisted into open disgust.“How long has this been going on?”
“It’s not what you think,” Patricia cried as she pushed her skirt down from her waist and turned her back to return her breasts to her bra.“It’s not at all what you think.”
But he was looking at John.“How long?”
John shrugged.His heart was pounding far louder than it had earlier, at the moment of climax.“A while.”
“You scum.”
Fumbling now with the buttons of her blouse, Patricia tried again.“Gene, I can explain.I know this must look fishy—”
“If I’m scum,” John said, “what does that make you?”
“Nothing.No relation.I’ve had it.You’re out.”
“Don’tsaythat, Gene!John is crucial to the company.He wasn’t feeling well, that’s all, and—”
“I don’t want to hear it,” Eugene said.
He didn’t look at her once, but kept his eyes on John, who was beginning to worry.In all those times that he’d imagined the pleasure of telling his father that he was screwing his wife, it had never occurred to him that he’d end up on the street.But that was just what Eugene was saying.
“I want you out.Out of this house, out of my life.Today.”
“Gene, no—”
“I don’t think so,” John said, ignoring her to answer his father.He drew himself slowly up on the bed.“I’m the one who’s been holding things together both at the office and here, while you’ve been playing pool and poker with the guys up in Timiny Cove.You owe me.”
“Seems to me,” Eugene said with the briefest of glances at Patricia, “you’ve been paid.”
“Not enough.”
“John, explain it to him,” Patricia pleaded.
But John wasn’t listening to her.What was happening, what had happened, was between him and his father more than it had ever related to her.Wrapping the sheet around his waist, he rose from the bed.“I want more.If you want me out of this house, I’ll go.I’ll even resign from the company.But it’ll cost you.”
“You get nothing,” Eugene barked.
“It’ll cost you a lot.I want money.”
“You get shit.”
“If I leave, I’ll take most of the management with me.I haven’t been twiddling my thumbs all these years.You may have bent over backward to treat the miners like gold, but I’m the one who took the time to see that the movers and shakers around the office were greased.They’ll come with me.One word and you’ll lose them.There’s your chain”—he snapped his fingers—“broken in a minute.It’ll take you a while to get it fixed.”
“By God, you’re arrogant as ever.Well, it won’t work this time,” Eugene informed him, flushed with rage.“Ifanyone wants to leave, I’ll give him a push out the door.I place loyalty above lots of other things.If their loyalty’s to you, you can have them.”His jaw grew even tighter.“I’m going out now.By the time I get back, I want you gone.”
“Gene, you can’t—” Patricia began, running after him.
“It’s done!”
John didn’t move, couldn’t move, but listened while Patricia tried to stop Eugene.She followed him down the stairs, her voice growing frantic in a way that mirrored the feeling in John’s stomach.He heard the slamming of doors—once, twice, again—interspersed with Patricia’s pleas and Eugene’s terse replies.Still John didn’t move, not even when there was a final loud slam and then total silence.For an interminable time he stood there in his father’s bedroom wearing nothing but a sheet, fighting the panic that brought a cold sweat to his lip.
There was a feeling of déjà vu in it—the panic, the fear, the sense of having the floor knocked out from under his feet.He’d felt that way when his mother died, and he hadn’t intended ever to feel it again.But there it was.His future hung in a limbo that was the antithesis of the satisfaction he’d expected.
Stunned, he let the sheet slip to the floor and reached for his clothes.He was pulling on his pants when he heard the first of the sirens.Life in the city was filled with sirens, and since he was embroiled in an emergency of his own, he ignored them.
