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“Winnie . . .”
“I mean it, James. We have a child. You have responsibilities. Where the hell, and I really want to know this, where the hell do you and Clay get the idea that you can run around and act like six-year-olds? Do you see Veronica and me going out and drinking and doing drugs and staying up until four in the morning? How would you like it? How would you like it if I went out and stuck my hand down guys’ pants and did drugs with them in the bathroom and God knows what else? Maybe I’m going to do that some night. Because you know what, James, I don’t care anymore. I’ve had it.”
“Winnie?”
“And this business about chimpanzees and alpha males. I’m beginning to think you’ve lost it. Wake up, James. It’s the millennium. Men and women are equal. Get it? So why don’t you think about how I feel? Do you think I like taking care of you all the time? What about me? I’d like to be taken care of I’d like to have a husband who could at least pay . . . all the rent. You’re a burden, James. I’m tired of doing eighty percent of the work and reaping twenty percent of the profits. I’m tired of—”
“Winnie?”
“Shut up, James. It’s my turn. I’ve had to listen to your bullshit all evening. I’ve been sitting here for the last five hours wondering where you were and what you were up to. I’m so sick of you, James. You’re no better than Evie. Does she think we didn’t see her hiding in the limo? Hiding! She’s thirty-five! She’s obviously trying to sleep with Clay. And God knows what she’s trying to do with Tanner.”
“Clay?” James says.
“Yes. Clay. A ma
rried man.”
“Winnie, I—”
“What?”
“I . . . I . . .”
“Spit it out.”
“Winnie, I think I’m having a heart attack. I’m going to die. Winnie. I think I’m dying.”
“Oh James. You’re such a loser.” Winnie puts her head in her hands. “You can’t even do coke right.”
IV
JAMES SAYS NO
James wants to be nursed and coddled. (Like when he was a little boy. Like when he was sick. His mother would make a bed for him on the couch and let him watch TV all day. His father would call him on the phone. “Hey sport,” he’d say. “How’s the sport?”) He wants Winnie to say, “Oh James, you poor sweet baby.” (He wants Winnie to be like his mother. Or at least motherly.)
Instead she says, “They said you’re fine.”
I’m not fine, he wants to scream. He wishes Winnie would go away. He wishes he could tell her to go away. He can’t now. He can’t ever. “I know,” he says.
“You can leave now.”
“I know,” he says. He pushes the buttons on the remote control, changing the channels on the TV above his head.
“So. Can we go?” she says. “James. I’ve got to get back to my office.”
“I need my clothes.”
“They’re right here,” Winnie says. She picks up his clothes from the chair and dumps them on the hospital bed.
James looks at his shirt, his sweatshirt (with the logo of Winnie’s magazine on it), his jeans, socks, and white briefs. His clothes look tainted. “I need clean clothes,” he says.
“Haven’t you embarrassed yourself enough?” Winnie says in a stage whisper. (She doesn’t want to be overheard by the old man in the next bed, who is practically dead. Who has a scab-covered leg sticking out from under the covers.)
“I’m not going home,” James says. “I’m going to a press conference.” He paws through his clothes. He still doesn’t feel quite . . . normal. (He feels high. Probably from all the cocaine he consumed the night before, combined with the shot of Demerol they gave him in the hospital last night. Or rather, early this morning. When he thought he was having the heart attack. From cocaine. Other people have done worse. They’ve shot up heroin. But they aren’t married to Winnie.)
“Do you have a notebook I can borrow?” he says.
“I want you to go home.”
