Page 59 of Fox
“While you—“ He breaks down again briefly. “While you have been—the fig tree?—“
“I am aware of the fig tree.”
“You’ve been watering the fig tree and giving her the”—he makes a gesture I can somehow hear—“the whole performance, the whole?—”
“Percy.” I lean back in my chair. “Are you finished?”
“I genuinely don’t know.” He takes a breath as a short laugh escapes again. “Fox. She is playing you.”
“Yes.”
“She’s been watching you this whole time.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re not going to tell her you know.”
“No.”
A pause. A different quality of pause—the one Percy uses when he is shifting from amusement into actual engagement. “What are you going to do?”
I look out the window. From the fourteenth floor, facing west, the city is going about its late morning. The dogwoods are past their bloom now, moved on, the trees in their ordinary green.
“I’m going to woo my wife,” I announce. “And wait for her to tell me the truth.”
Percy is quiet for a moment.
“And what are you going to do if she doesn’t come clean?”
“That I haven’t figured out...but I’m going to make sure she is…going to come clean to me, that is.”
“You’re very confident about that.”
“I know my wife. The guilt has got to be killing her.”
Percy lets out a chuckle. “You’re a pair—you both are.”
“I love her.”
“You’ve loved her for a while.”
“Yes.”
“What’s step one?”
“We’re going to a barbecue,” I say cryptically.
He makes an assenting sound. “Well, I say the Memphis dry rub is the way to go.”
22
THE DRY RUB
FOX
The Vidals like a good barbecue. I know this from the ones I’ve attended with Lucy.
Unlike how I feel about my parents—the dead one and the one who is alive, who I haven’t spoken to since she tried to fuck with my wife—Lucy talks about her parents and their hospitality with the warmth she reserves for things that are entirely uncomplicated in their goodness.
