“Do you come here often?” Farrell asked Briseis. There was a crash in the living room, and McManus yelled, “Well, shit, don’t blame me for that!” Farrell went into the room in a crouching waddle, taking cover behind chairs. Suzy was halfway up the stair; but, as he watched, she paused, turned, and started slowly back down toward McManus, who was standing over the shards of a stoneware lamp. “No,” she said, astonishingly loudly. “No, why should I run from you?”
McManus, who had been steadying the gun with both hands, now let it fall to his side. For the first time, he suddenly looked drunk. He chewed his bleeding lip and sniffed, muttering, “Okay, okay, come on.” But Suzy shook her head, and to Farrell’s amazement she smiled.
“No,” she said again. “Go home, Dave. I’m not coming with you, and I’m not running away from you anymore. I just now realized I don’t have to. She showed me.”
“Bitch,” McManus whispered. “Bitch, bitch.” Farrell could hardly hear him; and indeed, the words seemed not to be addressed to Suzy at all, but to someone remembered or imagined. “She showed you. Blow her flicking head off, she showed you.” He raised his head and smiled suddenly, coldly in touch with his drunkenness again. “I love you, Suzy,” he said. “You know I love you. Look, I threw Mike out, I mean for good, like you wanted. I just said, ‘out, man, Suzy’s coming home.” Something in the little shrug and cavalier flip of his free hand—like a Chaplin back-kick—made Farrell see for a moment what Suzy might have loved.