He laughed. It was Madeleine, it was the woman he loved. The sound of her voice, the feel of her hair under his fingers.
Her hair.
And now suddenly her hair was sticky with orange juice. But a moment ago it hadn't been. His hand froze in place.
She looked into his eyes. "What?" she said. "What?"
He turned his face away. He thought of Lizzy. He thought of the false image of her, walking up to the townhouse that was rented to nobody.
He pushed her away and walked to the wall where the glass had fallen. He bent down and picked up a shard of glass and drew it along the wall. A scratch appeared in the wallpaper. Suddenly, without planning it, without knowing he was going to do it until he did, he jabbed the glass into the skin of his abdomen. Jabbed twice, three times. Only then did the pain come. He doubled over, it was so bad. Fell to one knee. But he knew it was a lie. He looked down at his belly. Blood was coming out, but there wasn't enough of it.
And then, suddenly, there was more. Too much. He hadn't hit an artery. There wasn't anything there that could bleed so much. In fact, he knew that there was no wound there to bleed. Nothing. No reason for pain. There wasn't even a piece of glass in his hand.
He still held the shard in his fingers.
Hadn't Lizzy told him he was stronger than most people? Why couldn't he fight off these illusions of hers?
On one knee, he sliced through the skin of the other. Sliced deeper and deeper. The glass cut deep. But all he could think of, all he let himself think of, was dissecting a frog in science class. The musculature of the leg when he peeled back the formaldehyde-soaked skin. And for the moment he thought of that, his leg was also a frog's leg. He peeled the skin off just as he had the frog's leg.
"No!" cried Madeleine.
There was no wound in his leg at all. No shard of glass in his hand. No stab wound in his belly. The orange juice glass lay on the floor where he must have dropped it when Madeleine made him think she had taken it out of his hand.
On all fours, he moved to the spot where she had been standing when he poured the orange juice over her head. There it was, a single puddle, spattered, but only one stream of juice had fallen, uninterrupted by a human body. He had recovered reality.
Which meant that he had lost her again.
"Madeleine," he whispered.
From the couch, her voice sounded cold and angry. "I'm still here."
He recoiled, fell back onto the carpet, looked at her. She was on the couch primping her hair, looking into a small vanity mirror. "So your dead sister told you that you were strong," said Madeleine. "Bully for you."
"Who are you really?" he said. "Just be honest with me, can't you? Who are you and why did you pick me?"
"I'm Madeleine Cryer Fears," she said. "I'm your wife."
"You don't exist and you never did."
"Oh? Then who have you been making love to in beds all over America?"
"A lie," he said. "I've been loving a lie."
"Wrong answer, Quentin," she said. "I am the truth. I am the deepest truth in the most secret places in your heart. I am all your dreams come true."
"What do you want from me?"
"What every wife wants. Someone to love. Someone who'll love me. Trust. Faith. A future. Your babies."
"Shut up!"
"Do I take it this means you've changed your mind about children? Men are like that, so changeable. But I can wait. I won't trick you—no babies till you're ready to be a daddy."
"You never let up, do you?"
She leaned forward until she was spread like a lizard on the couch, leaning over the arm so they were nearly face to face. "Let me tell you a secret, my darling," she whispered. "I'm as real as any wife. What do you think marriage is? It's all pretense. Your mother pretending that your father's temper doesn't scare her. Your father pretending that he doesn't hate it when she gets him all riled up about something and then suddenly can't understand why he's upset. Pretending to be happy with each other when they're both so desperately lonely because along about week three of their marriage they realized that they didn't really know each other and they never would, they'd be strangers together for the rest of their lives. But they couldn't live with that, nobody can, I've seen thousands of marriages and they can't face it that they're paired up with a stranger and so the decent ones, the ones who want to be good, they pretend to be whatever they think their partner wants them to be, and then they pretend that they believe in their partner's pretense. The only difference between them and me is that I'm so good at it. When I pretend to be exactly the wife you really want, I am that wife. I am. It is my whole existence. And when I pretend to love you exactly as you are, I do. I'm totally focused on you, I'm witty when you want witty, sexy when you want sexy, weepy when you want sentimental, beautiful when you want to show me off. I am your true wife."
"You don't know anything," said Quentin.
"I know you."
"You know how to get power over me. And it worked, yeah, you had me dancing. Eating out of your hand. Give the boy exactly what he dreams of and he'll sit up and beg."
"I'm the one who's begging now," she said.
"You're the one who doesn't leave footprints in the snow," he said. "You're the one that orange juice pours right through."
"You think you don't believe in me."
"I don't."
"Then why am I still here?"
"You're not," he said.
He got to his feet. At first, for just a moment, he limped on the leg he had carved with the shard of glass. Except he hadn't cut it, there was no injury; he forced himself to walk without a limp.
"Even when you aren't looking at me, I'm here," she said.
She followed him as he walked through the doorway to his bedroom. He slammed it and it passed right through her. She stood there on the inside of the slammed door.
"I don't like it when you do that," she said.
"Slam doors?"
"I think that on the whole I've been pretty decent about this."
"You!" He climbed back under his sheets. "You're an indecency."
"I didn't have to come to you with love, you know."
He looked away from her, leaned over and switched off the light. Now only the faint light slanting in through the mostly-closed blinds illuminated the room.
"I can find other things in your mind," she said.
Suddenly he threw the bedclothes off him. A half-dozen huge shiny spiders were skittering rapidly along the sheet, over his legs. He flung himself off the bed onto the floor.
"I know those spiders aren't real," he said, panting.
A man's voice answered him, a bleak-sounding whisper. "What is reality?" And then a vast hand clamped him around the throat and picked him up and flung him back onto the bed. As he sprawled on his back, the huge, white, slimy figure with a pus-filled wound for a face raised its other hand and smashed it down into his groin. Quentin screamed in agony until the monster squeezed his throat shut.
This isn't happening, he told himself. The trouble was believing it.
If I believe it, he thought, she can kill me with my own fear. I have to stop fighting it because it isn't there. Like the broken glass wasn't there. Like the wounds in my leg. My throat is shut by my own panic, not by any hand because there is no hand.
Breathe slowly, let the air out a little, then bring in a little. There's nothing in the room with me. I'm alone here on my bed.
He opened his eyes. The monster was gone.