The Trouble With Eden

Nineteen

The rains came in the last week of July. Either July or August was apt to be a fairly wet month, but every few years wet weather struck the Delaware Valley with a vengeance. It was a region not much given to extremes. The heat of summer was always somewhat modulated by the rolling hills and valleys, while in winter the temperature rarely dropped below zero and snow was not often too deep or long-lasting. Rain, endless rain whipped along by high winds, was the greatest source of climatic peril.

By the fifth day of heavy rainfall, local wits made repeated allusions to the biblical precedent of forty days and forty nights. When the rain had continued another three days, the joke no longer seemed remotely humorous. Instead references were made to the summer of ’55, when the swollen Delaware overflowed its banks as if it were the Mississippi in the springtime. Residents with antediluvian memories dined out on anecdotes of the Great Flood, and local newspapers kept their memories alive with photographs of flood damage under headlines like CAN IT HAPPEN AGAIN? The answer to the question seemed to be that it could, and that it was damned well going to.

Recently planted vegetable gardens washed out of the ground. Tomato vines collapsed, their fruits splitting and rotting on the soil. Fruit trees lost the bulk of their ripening crops to the winds, while an excess of moisture in the earth caused them to drop their leaves. The remaining apples and pears cracked and died, and the trees, along with spring-flowering shrubs, went into an unseasonal second bloom. Other trees lost limbs or were uprooted completely. An ancient hickory fell across a secondary road outside of Upper Black Eddy, and the highway crew dispatched to deal with it skidded into a drainage ditch brimful of rushing water.

North of Lambertville, a young novelist and his English wife had invested the proceeds of a Hollywood sale in an almost baronial estate. They had moved in that spring and had devoted all of their time to remodeling and restoration. When the rains came, they discovered the special charm of a sheltered valley on the shores of a rushing stream. Day after day, the stream rushed into the house itself, bubbling up under the wide board pine floors. A tree collapsed onto the house, another upon the guest cottage. The timbers in the pool house, already weak with dry rot, gave up the job and floated downstream. A bridge washed out. An other, just constructed that spring, stayed majestically in place while the stream permanently diverted itself, so that the rugged redwood span now stopped abruptly in midair above the furious waters, resembling nothing so much as an old Roman road, still straight as an arrow and flat as a pancake but going from nowhere to nowhere. “We’ll fix this place up again,” the writer said to his wife. “Don’t worry about a thing. We’ll fix this place up perfectly, and then we’ll sell this fucking place, and we’ll move back to New York where we belong.”

Business in New Hope fell off sharply. The bulk of weekend trade consisted of visitors from Philadelphia and New York who came to spend a day or two or three walking along the town’s determinedly quaint streets and browsing its little shops. As neither of those activities was much suited to a downpour, those tourists remained in Philadelphia or New York. Others, who liked Bucks County as a stopping place between Washington and New England, tended to stay in their cars and keep on the road; if they did stay a night, the hotel bar would get all their trade.

There were a clutch of bright days in early August. Then the rains came again, and the winds took down electric lines faster than the power company could tack them back up again. A dairy farmer on the Titusville-Pennington Road in New Jersey shot to death his entire herd of milkers, several barn cats, his wife’s bantam hens, a collie-shepherd cross, two of his three sons (the third was in Vietnam), his wife, and himself. Acquaintances said he’d always been a trifle strange, but a majority of people held the weather at least partly accountable for his behavior. It was generally agreed that it was a hell of a shame about the cows, as they’d been one of the best Holstein herds in the county.

Times of tragedy draw people together, and if the Delaware had given up and overflowed its banks, this might well have been the case. But the interminable rain was not sufficiently dramatic a tragedy. The rain continued for a period of almost four full weeks, but each time it broke just long enough for the river to do its job of running off the water. The promise of catastrophe hung in the humid air, while on a day-to-day basis life was less tragic than inconvenient. People were not drawn together. Rather, they were kept apart, staying in their own houses and contending with the incessant parade of minor irritations in their own lives. Basements were pumped dry, fallen trees sectioned and stored for firewood, dollars stretched, and homeowners sat with pencil and paper working out ways to transform flood damage (uninsured) into wind damage (fully covered).

Until, late in August, the rain stopped. This, too, was less dramatic than it might have been. No dove returned bearing an olive branch. There was one day with a little rain, another day with less, and then a day when, although clouds blocked the sun, no rain fell at all. When a full week passed without anything falling from the skies but pollution, the valley realized that it was over. The rains had come and gone, the river had held, and a repetition of ’55 was postponed for at least another year.

“Well, it’s over and we got through it,” they said. “As bad a season as we’ve seen in years, and God willing we won’t see it as bad again for some years to come.” They said this and meant it, and thanked God it hadn’t been worse than it was. And yet there was an undercurrent to the words, never voiced but almost always present, a resentment after the fact that the level of catastrophe had never been quite attained. If the governors of two states had declared the valley a disaster area, this was small comfort; the residents knew what true disaster was supposed to look like, and they had fallen short of it. There would be few stories to tell of this summer, and few ears interested in hearing them. They had endured, to be sure, but endurance, if easier in present time, is less thrilling in retrospect than survival. What might have been a moment in their lives of triumph and heroism was to have been no more than discomfort. So they resented this, and felt guilty at their resentment, and stood outside in the warmth of the sun.

Twenty

She stood on the sidewalk in front of the Shithouse watching Hugh’s Buick until it took a right at the corner and vanished from her sight. She took a last puff on her cigarette and let it fall from her fingers to the pavement, then ground it underfoot. It was early, not yet midnight, and she did not feel like going to sleep. Nor did she feel like staying awake in the loneliness of her room. It seemed that there ought to be somewhere to go, someone to whom she would want to talk. But she could think of no logical destination and no suitable companion.

She was discontented, and wondered why. The evening had been a pleasant one. A good dinner at Tannhauser’s, a drive in the country, a walk in his woods where they had lazily undressed before making gentle love in soft grass. It was a perfect night for outdoor lovemaking and their bodies had worked together to match the mood of the evening. It had been good for her and good for him, and after it they had gone into his house for a drink and his daughter Karen had joined them. Then Karen went diplomatically and with little awkwardness to her room, and they might have made love again, she might even have stayed the night, but the discontent set in and she wound up pleading tiredness. She had asked to be taken home, and now she was home, and if she had felt tired before she was certainly not tired now.

“Linda?”

She started at her name, then recognized Tanya Leopold.

“You were just standing there staring,” the little actress said. “You okay?”

“I was just thinking about something.”

“What was it? Not to be prying but you had this really intense expression on your face, and I was wondering how it got there. This play I’m in, Veil, not the one I’m in now but the one we’re rehearsing, we’re doing it next week, and I’ve got this one scene where I’m supposed look pensive, and I don’t have it down yet. Looking pensive. And you know, the Method, all of that, I oughta be able to find something to use to look pensive, so thought, oh, but what makes you look pensive wouldn’t do me any good, would it?”

“I don’t really know.”

“The thing is to find something in my past that had me looking pensive, but I could go bananas trying to think of something. Unless that would work. Do you think so?”

“Do I think what would work?”

“Trying to think of something to use. Did I look pensive to you just then?”

“In a way.”

“I think the problem is I don’t think very much. It blows my mind that some people will just sit still for hours, and all that time they’re thinking, thoughts are running through their brains. Are you going upstairs now or what?”

“That’s what I was trying to decide. Whether to go up now or not.”

“You got that look on your face just from whether or not you’re going upstairs?”

“More or less.” She smiled suddenly. “That’s what it boils down to, anyway. In a very pensive way, evidently. Are you going up? I’ll walk with you.”

On the way up the stairs Tanya said, “You’re looking so good lately, Linda.”

“I am? Why, thank you.”

“I’m glad you’ve got somebody,” she went on, avoiding Linda’s eyes. “What I said that other time—”

“Oh, forget that, Tanya.”

“I felt awful afterward. I just jump in and say things before I think about them. Do you think you’ll move in with him?”

“Oh, I don’t know. He’s working on a book now, you know.”

“Bill’s always painting. At least he always was before the rain. Did the rain stop Hugh from writing?”

“I think it slowed him down some. It slowed every body down.”

“It stopped Bill cold. But even if he’s working, you know, he wants me with him. I couldn’t imagine not living with somebody.”

“I guess I’ve gotten used to it.”

“I don’t just mean the sex. It probably sounds as though I just mean the sex, huh?”

“Oh, I don’t—”

“But I mean having somebody to be with. But maybe getting used to it makes a difference. I hope I never have to find out, to tell you the truth.”

Tanya went on chattering as they climbed the stairs to their floor. The girl was just the sort of companion Linda needed at the moment, and she smiled at the discovery. It seemed paradoxical, as Tanya’s conversation centered on precisely those subjects Linda would have preferred not to think about, but she was able to bathe in the rushing stream of Tanya’s words so that they oddly took her mind off what Tanya was saying. The girl would never look pensive, Linda thought, because the girl could never hold a thought in her little head without marveling at the fact that she was thinking.

On impulse she asked Tanya to come in for coffee. “Well, if Billie wants to,” she said. “Unless you wouldn’t want him.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“I don’t know. He makes some people sort of nervous, not talking and all. I guess I talk enough to make up for it. I’ll ask him, okay?” She knocked on the door while Linda was fitting her key into her own lock. “That’s funny,” Tanya said. “He wouldn’t go to sleep so early. Bill?”

“Maybe he stepped out.”

“He hardly ever goes anywhere. But maybe he did. He’s been in this mood.”

“Do you have a key?”

“Yeah, in my purse somewhere. You go ahead, Linda. If he’s out I’ll leave a note and be over in minute.”

She opened her own door, switched on the light. Then Tanya’s scream cut through her like a sword.

She spun around. Across the hall Tanya was framed in the doorway, facing into the room. Over her shoulder Linda could see Bill Donatelli swinging on a rope from the overhead light fixture. His tongue, black and obscenely swollen, projected between enlarged purple lips.

His whole face was tones of blue and purple and his bulged from his head and his body swung in slow circles.

Tanya screamed and screamed.

Afterward she could never be certain of the sequence of things. Her memory would hold scenes and flashes of scenes, jumbled together like bits of intercut film. The room and hallway filled up with people. How they got there or the order of their coming she never knew.

Two men from the second floor stood arguing, one determined to right the chair overturned at Bill Donatelli’s feet so that he could climb on it and cut him down, the other insistent that nothing be touched or moved until the police arrived.

“He’s obviously dead, man. You can’t help him by cutting him down.”

“Well, forget the police, man. I mean that’s suicide, man. I mean forget television, I mean it’s suicide, that’s all it is, and what you do is you cut him down just in case and get that fucking rope off his fucking neck.”

“Man, how you gonna help a dead man?”

“You keep saying dead, but how do you know he’s dead? Like how many dead men did you ever see?”

“Man, the first spade I saw, I knew right in front he was black. Anything looks like that is fucking dead, baby.”

Linda’s own role was never in doubt. Throughout it all she stood holding Tanya in her arms, patting her back, holding her while she cried, listening to her when words spilled from her.

“It was the rain. He couldn’t paint because of the rain. He would sometimes say it was the light but it wasn’t the light, it was what the rain did to his head. He got so down. And then it stopped and I thought it would be all right but he said whenever he went to paint all he could see in his head was the rain, just rain coming down all the time. But I thought he was getting better. I should of known because he couldn’t ball. He would get excited and then we would start to do it and he would go soft and start crying and telling me that he couldn’t do anything anymore, but there’s no more rain, it’s all over, the rain, the rain is over, Bill is over, it’s all over. I never had that abortion but he wanted me to. He told me I had to have the abortion. He didn’t want a baby. I didn’t want one either, but I want one now, I wish I had his baby now. Oh, my God, his poor face. I hope he never knew what it would make him look like. He was so beautiful, and I try to see his face in my mind and all I see is the way he looks now, God, and I don’t have a single picture of him, not a single one....”

It was Clyde Herman, the night shift policeman, who cut the body down, George Perlmutter, the doctor, who examined the grotesque naked corpse and pronounced him officially dead. And it was Warren Ormont who somehow stepped into the center of things to take charge, dealing in turn with the policeman and the doctor and Tanya herself.

“Now Miss Leopold, I’m going to need a statement from you, and I know it’s a difficult situation for you right now, but if you could just—”

“It was that fucking rain.”

“The rain. Let me get this right, your name is Tina Leopold, now if you could spell that—”

“No, Tanya, but that’s a stage—”

“Clyde, for heaven’s sake stop doing your Joe Friday number, won’t you?”

“Look here, Warren—”

“Oh, look here yourself, for the love of God. The girl’s in no condition to talk and you’re barely in condition to listen. You’ll get her statement in the morning. You act as though you’ve never seen a suicide in your life.”

“Maybe it’s supposed to look like a suicide.”

“When all the time it’s an elaborate locked-room murder. And you’re Dr. Gideon Fell himself.”

“All the same, I’d be happier with a note.”

“He wasn’t a writer, Clyde.”

“Huh?”

“Writers leave notes. Then they wash sleeping pills down with booze, but not until they’ve done half a, dozen drafts of the note. Doctors shoot themselves. They have dozens of neat painless methods at their disposal and, invariably blow their brains out with revolvers. Painters take off all their clothes and hang themselves.”

“How do you know all this, Warren?”

“I’ve made a study of it. Self-destruction fascinated — I can’t imagine why anyone would hurry it, though, instead of carefully stretching it out over a lifetime.”

“How do actors do it?”

“In front of an audience. They call an ex-lover in the middle of the night and announce they’ve already taken pills, and after they hang up they actually take the pills. Or they excuse themselves, go to another room, and use a knife or a gun. It depends how they perceive their roles. Donatelli never used words in his life, Clyde. Not even in conversation. Anyway, there’s his note.”

He pointed to an easel, where an abstract canvas was quartered by a black X.

“That’s, a note? I get the point, but maybe that was his idea of how he wanted the picture to look.”

“I’ll pretend you didn’t even say that, Clyde. Why don’t you take some pictures and make some chalk marks on the floor? Miss Leopold will talk to you in the morning. And that will be on doctor’s orders as soon as I get the good doctor’s eye. George? Could you give your attention to one of the survivors for a moment? Miss Leopold is in something of a state, and I think you’ll agree with me that she doesn’t want to talk to any municipal employees right now. How would you like to supply a dreamy little sedative and we’ll tuck this poor child into bed. And not that bed, perish the thought. Could she stay with you, Linda?”

In her own room, Linda helped Tanya off with her clothes, got her into bed, and drew the covers over her. The doctor injected her with morphine. She kept talking, not even wincing at the needle’s jab, until her words abruptly trailed off and her eyes closed. George Perlmutter raised one of her eyelids, let it drop back in place. He turned to Linda and asked her if she wanted something to help her sleep. She said she didn’t. He offered a tranquilizer and she shook her head. He told her she was in light shock and a tranquilizer would help her to relax, but when she refused again he did not insist. Tanya, he said, would sleep for a minimum of eight hours.

After he had left, Warren cleared the hallway. “Now I know you’re all motivated solely by the desire to help,” he announced, “but some might mistake your interest for morbid curiosity. Please go home. Now.”

And they went. As the hallway emptied Warren moved to take Linda’s aim. He asked her where she would sleep. She blinked until he repeated the question.

“Oh,” she said. “Here, I guess.”

“You’re welcome to stay at my house. I can assure you it’s safe. Or I can get you a room at the Logan.”

“I want to be here when Tanya wakes up.”

“I was thinking that I would sit up with her myself.”

“No, I’ll stay. I don’t mind.”

He studied her thoughtfully. “That’s probably the best idea, if you’re sure you don’t mind. But you do need a tranquilizer, you know. George would have handed you a Miltown or Valium or some other mysterious chemical. My prescription would be along organic lines.”

“What do you mean?”

“Alcohol. Come to Sully’s with me.”

“I don’t—”

“She’ll be out for the next eight hours, and the bar will close long before then. I won’t let you stay here alone now, Linda, and I need a drink if you don’t. Come along.”

“I suppose a drink is a good idea,” she said.

“It generally is,” Warren said.

He was as smoothly capable at the Barge Inn as he had been earlier. He selected a remote table, ordered Cognac for both of them, and effortlessly got rid of any number of persons who wanted to join them. Some had heard about Bill Donatelli’s death and wanted to discuss it; others simply wanted conversation with Warren. He disposed of all of them easily and efficiently.

At one point she said, “I didn’t even know him. I think that’s the worst part.”

“I doubt anyone knew him. Or is that what you meant?”

“I think it is. He was the silent man across the hall who did nothing but paint strange pictures and watch television and sleep with Tanya. Peter and I used to joke about him. About them. Those jokes—”

“You can’t regret them after the fact. Everyone’s mortal and sooner or later you could never say anything vicious about anyone on the chance he or she might ultimately die.”

“I guess Tanya knew him.”

“Do you think so? I would suppose she knew him as completely as one could. I was going to say that they lived on the same level, but I’m sure that’s not true. They lived with each other on the same level.”

“Yes, I see what you mean.”

“But she’s so much better a person.”

“How can you know that?”

“Because she would never have done what he did.”

“No, I can’t imagine her committing suicide, but—”

He was shaking his head. “Nor can I, but neither of us can know that. But that’s not what I mean. He set things up so that she would walk in and find him like that That was the last picture he painted, and he let her have first look at it, so that every time she thinks of him for the rest of her life she’s going to visualize that squalid little tableau. Nothing on earth could make Tanya do that.”

“God, I didn’t think of that”

“I can think of little else. Which will make it rather difficult for me to shed tears for him.”

“Maybe he just didn’t think.”

“Even so. Even so. Tanya would have thought.”

“She was saying something tonight on the way upstairs. That some people can sit and think for hours and that she hardly ever thinks.”

“What brought that on?”

“Something about a role she’s rehearsing—”

“Oh, of course. She’s supposed to look pensive and she heard the word today for the first time. The ass of a director translated it as thoughtful, which of course is all wrong. Tanya could never look pensive, but she’s one of the most genuinely thoughtful people I know. And without thinking about it.”

“Yes.” She picked up her glass, drank. “God, it was awful. Everything.”

“Yes.”

“You were so perfect” He started. “You were. You... handled everything.”

“The actor in my soul.”

“No one else knew what to do.”

“So I leaped into the role. Far too great an opportunity to be missed.”

“Well, then it was a good performance.” She lowered her eyes. “You don’t have to do this, Warren.”

“How’s that?”

“I mean, I’m all right now.”

“Oh, I know that.” He flashed that peculiar sardonic smile of his. “You know, that’s the marvelous thing about being a nelly old aunt. One can behave chivalrously with beautiful women without worrying about the purity of one’s motives. And I cannot think offhand of a more powerful argument for homosexuality. Oh, there’s Peter Nicholas. You know him, don’t you? Of course you do, what am I thinking of? Peter! Come join us, why don’t you? And see if you can catch that trollop’s eye and order up another round.”

It was Peter who walked home with her. They left the Barge Inn together while Warren stayed behind, moving to join a crowd at the bar. The air outside was cool and fresh after the close atmosphere within. She walked along at Peter’s side, breathing deeply. She had had just the right amount to drink, enough to relax her but too little to make her the slightest bit drunk.

“The perfect tranquilizer,” she said aloud.

“What?”

“Oh, I was thinking out loud. The doctor offered me a tranquilizer but I wasn’t having any. Then Warren prescribed a few drinks, and he was right. God, it was awful. Were you there?”

“I ran upstairs to see what was happening, but I didn’t hang around.” They walked a little farther in silence before he said, “We haven’t really seen each other in a long time, have we?”

“No, we haven’t.”

“I’ve missed it.”

She didn’t say anything.

“I guess you have a good thing going. With Hugh Markarian.”

“I guess so.”

“I’m happy for you. Seriously.”

“I’m not sure if it’s that good a thing.”

“Oh? I’m sorry, I don’t mean to pry.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it. Right now it’s more a question of knowing what I want. Oh, Christ!”

All at once she was crying. He reached to comfort and she turned from him. “I’m all right. I was thinking. Tanya was the one person I know who really knew what she wanted and look what she got. Just look what she got!”

“She’ll be okay, Linda.”

“She will?”

“She’ll be living with someone else inside of a month.”

“That’s a hell of a thing to say. That is a hell of a thing to say.”

“Why is it? I almost didn’t say it for just that reason, but why not say it? I’m not saying it to her, for God’s sake. But why shouldn’t I be saying it to you? It’s what she needs; it’s the best thing for her. I don’t know if either of them loved the other but even if they did. Do you think she’s going to wear black? Do you think she should?”

“She was saying just tonight that she couldn’t imagine anyone living alone.”

“Well, I can. God, can I imagine living alone.” She shuddered at the bitterness in his voice. “But I can’t imagine Tanya living alone. Can you?”

“No, I can’t.”

“She’ll be all right. That’s all that matters.”

“Yes, it’s all that matters.”

They walked the rest of the way without speaking, entered the building, climbed the stairs. When they reached the floor where he and Gretchen and Robin lived, he hesitated only an instant before continuing up the stairs with her. She meant to say something but let the moment pass.

At her door he said, “I wish I could come in.”

“Tanya’s in there.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“We couldn’t talk with her in there. I didn’t think you meant—”

“Well, in a way I probably did, as far as that goes. I’m in a mood myself, Linda, or I wouldn’t be talking like this. Do you want to know something? That one night—”

“Peter, please let’s not talk about it.”

“Just let me say this. It was the best thing in my life. I’m serious, maybe I haven’t had so much of a life but it was the best thing in it—”

“Peter—”

“but sometimes I wish it never happened. I miss you, Linda.”

“Nothing’s changed.”

“Oh, shit. Come on. Everything’s changed.”

“I’m going inside now, Peter. I have to. I’m tired, and I want to be able to wake up when Tanya wakes up. I’m going inside now.”

“All right.”

“And you’d better go downstairs.”

“I don’t know which I want more. To go in there with you or to not go back downstairs. It’s getting so bad lately, Linda.”

“Oh, Peter.”

“Oh, hell. I really pick the perfect nights to lay my trips on other people.” He flashed a sudden brightening grin, then turned and was gone.

Tanya was sleeping soundly in the middle of the bed. Linda moved her over to one side and the girl did not even stir in her sleep. Linda got in beside her, her body rigid, thinking how bad everything was and how tense she felt. But then the tension began to drain from her and she realized that at this moment she felt nothing, nothing at all. It was all gone and she felt merely exhausted and empty, so empty, and within minutes she was asleep.

Twenty-one

Peter took the stairs quickly. But once he had reached his own floor his steps halted abruptly. It was just a few yards to the door of his apartment, but he took longer to traverse that distance than he had taken descending the stairs. And when he reached the door he stood for several long minutes in front of it.

He couldn’t get the image out of his head. He would open the door and she would be hanging there, her face hideously swollen and discolored. Bill Donatelli had used the Venetian blind cord, and he could see her standing on tiptoes to cut the cord with a kitchen knife, then climbing the rickety ladder-back chair, wrapping the cord first around the light fixture and then around her throat, then kicking the chair away and dangling in midair, feet dancing in midair. God, was her weight enough to strangle her? She was so thin, so fragile. God, she could dance there for an eternity while the cord grew tighter and tighter without every growing tight enough—

He made himself open the door.

For one impossible instant he saw her as he had envisioned her. The suggestion was that powerful. A scream rang in his head, a silent shriek, before his eyes caught hold of reality. There was no body swinging from the ceiling. She was where he always found her these days, sitting in their bed with her knees drawn up. Her skin shone in the dim light that came through the partially open bathroom door.

She said, “I’m sorry, Petey.”

“Sorry?”

“Sorry I’m not dead like the boy upstairs. The painter. Didn’t you paint a little picture of Gretchen dead? Oh, you did, Petey, I know you did. But I would never hang myself, baby. I would find a better way.”

“Gretchen, stop it.”

“Don’t be afraid, Petey. I didn’t do it.”

“Don’t even talk that way.” He stepped into the room, closed and bolted the door. His hands trembling and his heartbeat seemed almost audible.

“Or isn’t that what you’re afraid of? You were afraid I would be alive, Petey, and I am, I am. Poor Petey, coming back to his Gretchen and the bitch hasn’t had the simple decency to die.”

“Stop it,” he said. He closed his eyes, made fists of his hands. “Just stop it.”

And she surprised him by doing just that. “I’m sorry,” she said, in a child’s small voice this time. “I’ll go to sleep now, Petey. I was just waiting for you to come home to me is all. But I’m tired and I’ll go to sleep now.”

And she lay down and closed her eyes at once.

He undressed quickly, turned off the bathroom light; lay down in bed beside her. She did not move or say a word, and her breathing became deep and regular. He knew, though, that she was not asleep. She would feign sleep, but he could always tell her real sleep from the imitation she gave, and he knew that he always fell asleep before her these summer nights. And it would be so again this evening, for already he felt the powerful pull of sleep. He did not even want to sleep now. There were thoughts that he wanted to think, that he had to think, but in spite of them the impulse to sleep drew him like a small boat to a whirlpool.

She was right, of course. He had hoped to find her dead. The wish had fathered the thought, and it had been his desire that gave him that incredibly vivid sight of her hanging as Donatelli had hung, dead as Donatelli had died. He had not consciously realized this before but felt now as though he must somehow have known it all along.

The realization did not make sleep impossible now, did not even postpone its onset more than a matter of seconds. He had recently faced his desire for her death too many times to be overly upset by each new form it took. He wanted her to die not so much out of malice but because nothing but her death would so utterly solve his problems. And it would solve her problems in the bargain, and if anything hers were more blindingly unsolvable than his own. Donatelli’s suicide baffled him. Gretchen’s would seem no more than logical. She had no life at all, at least none worth living. She was constantly miserable with no way out. Why shouldn’t she kill herself — for everyone’s sake?

In the morning he awoke coming out of a dream, a dream that slipped from his memory even as he emerged from the shadow of sleep. At first he thought he had merely found his way from one dream to another. The blinds were drawn, sunlight flooding the room. There was a smell of bacon permeating the room. He looked around and saw that Robin’s bed was made and the piles of dirty clothes that customarily littered the floor had been put away.

When Gretchen emerged, hair combed, wearing a yellow blouse and red plaid skirt, he knew not only that he was dreaming but that the dream was one he did not want to wake up from.

“The coffee’s perking,” she said. “I thought fried eggs this morning, unless you’d rather have them scrambled.”

“Fried is fine,” he said automatically. He blinked, rubbed his eyes. He was awake. This was not a dream. This was happening. “Where’s Robin?”

“I gave her her breakfast and let her play outside with one of her friends. You were sleeping so nicely I didn’t have the heart to wake you. Let me get you some coffee.”

“Gretchen—”

“Just a second.”

She came back with a mug of coffee. “I’m all right now,” she said, her voice very matter-of-fact. “I know you’ve heard that before but this time it’s true. I woke up this morning, and everything was different. It was, you know, I don’t know how to put it. Like taking off sunglasses indoors. That’s not really good. I can’t think of a good way to put it. But it’s true, Petey. I’m all better.”

“Jesus.”

“I’m not even going to apologize. I don’t know what happened and I don’t know how you put up with me but it’s over.”

He got up, reached out a hand for her. He said, “I’ll help you make it, baby.”

“But I don’t need help,” she said. She smiled radiantly, and he tried to guess how long it had been since he had seen her face aglow like this. “I mean it,” went on. “I don’t need any help. I don’t know what was, but whatever it was, it’s all over now.”

“God, I hope so.”

“I know so.”

“It’s such a lightning thing.”

“I know. I went to sleep with something and it was gone when I woke up.” She frowned in thought. “I think it was the death.”

“Last night?”

“Whatever his name was. Something Italian.”

“Bill Donatelli.”

“That’s right. Donatelli. I’m sorry for him, except that I’m not really sorry, I never knew him, and I can’t be sorry about anything that snapped me out of it. I don’t know how it happened. I guess it took a death to bring something home to me. How important life is, maybe.” She thought about this for another moment, then shrugged. “Doesn’t matter what done dood it, does it? Thing is, it’s done. Christ, baby, I’m ravenous. I already ate and I’m gonna eat all over again. Eggs for you and another batch of eggs for Mama Gretch. And how would you feel about running down the street for some English muffins?”

“I think we have some.”

“I think we had some. Robin had one and I had three. Get some jelly, too. There’s a little left but I don’t intend it to last long. Get lots of things, come to think of it. I’ll eat anything you bring back. Look at me. I look like total hell.”

“You look beautiful.”

“I guess you still love me if you can say that. I look like a Vogue model who didn’t know when to quit. You know that line from ‘Cocaine Blues’? ‘Woke up this mornin’ and my nose was gone.’ Well I woke up this morning and my tits were gone. Among other flesh. These clothes are the closest I’ve got to the right size and there’s room for a couple of extra people in here. Go. Get food. Much food. Go!”

There had been other transformations, an endless parade of New Gretchens, but none had ever been like this. Each time she had pulled herself back together with an agonizing effort, fighting long odds, doing a little at a time in the attempt to overcome whatever it was that was dragging her down. Now there seemed to be no discernible struggle at all. She was simply herself again. She had taken time off to be someone else and now she was once again herself.

At first he had tried to make her take things a little at a time. That first morning she had insisted on going to her shop and straightening it up. “Give it a few days,” he advised her. “Get used to being you.”

“I’ve had years of experience being me,” she replied. “It’s like swimming or fucking, you don’t forget how. I’m not trying to be Wonder Woman, Petey. I know I must be weakened physically even if I don’t happen to feel it at the moment. I’m not going to try to do everything at once, but I’m not going to work up to normal life like a paraplegic learning to walk, because I just don’t have to.”

If she was capable of an overnight change, he himself was not. On the contrary, he was very cautious about changing the living pattern he had devised as insurance against her unreliability. He still left Robin at Raparound while he was at the theater. Gretchen knew why he did this; more surprisingly, she took no offense. “I wouldn’t trust me either,” she told him, winking. “I can know damn well I’m all right, but there’s no reason why you should buy the whole trip the first day out of port. I’ll let you believe it a little at a time, baby. No problem.”

He stopped at Raparound to inform Anne the first night he left Robin with Gretchen. The waitress seemed dubious.

“You haven’t seen her,” he insisted. “I can hardly believe it myself, but it’s real.”

“I could go over once or twice and look in on them.”

“She’d know why you were doing it.”

“Maybe I’d better not, then.”

“The thing is, I don’t think she’d mind. She really has herself together.”

Anne laid a hand on his arm. “I’m so happy for you, Pete.”

“Not as happy as I am,” he said.

But was he happy?

There were irritating moments when it seemed to him that he was not. He could not understand these moments, did not know what might be causing them.

And then he dreamed the dream.

It was more perfectly detailed than most of his dreams. In it, he returned home from an evening at the theater with Gretchen. She had come to watch the show while he lit it. They stopped for a bite of food on the way home, then returned to the apartment, dismissed the baby, sitter, and made sure that Robin was sound asleep.

Then he went into the kitchen and picked up a sharp knife. She asked him what the knife was for but he did not answer. Instead he used it to cut a length of cord from the Venetian blinds. She asked him what the cord was for, and again he made no response.

He positioned a chair beneath the lighting fixture and told her to take off all her clothes. She did so, asking him if he was going to make love to her. He did not answer. When she was naked he told her to stand on the chair. She asked why, and again he failed to answer, and she obediently mounted the chair.

As he wrapped the cord first around her neck and then around the fixture, she asked him very reasonably why he was going to kill her this way. This time he tried to answer but could not form the words. He got down from the chair, and she told him that it was all right, that she could understand the way he felt, that he should not feel bad about it. He tugged the chair out from under her and watched in fascination as she danced on air. The twitching of her legs slowed, then stopped. He turned from her, and in the open doorway stood everyone he had ever known in his life. Their fingers pointed at him, and just then the dream ended and he was awake.

The meaning of the dream was too hideously obvious to him. Dreams should form themselves in subtle symbols, he thought, so that one would not have to bear the brunt of their awful truth.

He wanted her dead. He had wanted her dead when she was insane, and now, although she had recovered, he still wished for the liberation her death would bring him. He did not love her, sane or mad; sane or mad he did not want her.

His immediate impulse was to leave. He loved the child, wanted to be close to the child, but with Gretchen sane and functioning as a capable mother he no longer had an overwhelming responsibility to the child. All he had to do was pack up and go, and surely it was a greater kindness to do that than to go on living with a woman you’d rather see dead.

But if he left, Gretchen would probably go mad again. He could not make himself believe otherwise. And so if he left, Robin would be without him and without an adequate mother at the same time, and—

And he realized, now, why it occasionally had seemed to him that he was not happy.

It was hard for him to know just when he began to suspect that she was not sane after all. More than that — it was impossible to know, because when the thoughts began to come, he brushed them impatiently away. Once again, he was sure, the wish had fathered the thought. It was unthinkable that he not love her if she were mentally healthy; therefore, he was attempting to convince himself that she was not.

But gradually the impressions built. He would glance at her and catch the shadow of an expression on her face that did not belong there. He would awaken at night and sense that she was feigning sleep, as she had done during her worst periods. And there were other little particles of inconsistency, none enormously significant in and of itself but all of them combining like dots in a pointillist landscape to present an image of madness.

He played with it and found it made sense to him. Her recovery had been total and instantaneous because it had been no recovery at all. Before she had been mad; now she was a madwoman feigning sanity as she feigned sleep. A true recovery would have had to be halting and tentative, as her attempts had been in the past. But a false recovery was something different. It came naturally to her because she had woven it to mesh with the fabric of her insanity, had made it a part of that insanity.

Or had she?

Or was he the madman, building his own fantasies, to fit the dimensions of his own delusion? How could you tell? How could you possibly tell?

Twenty-two

On the first Thursday after Labor Day, Linda sat at the desk in the Lemon Tree balancing her checkbook. There should have been nothing to it, as she had opened her account at the Solebury National Bank less than a month ago. This was the first statement she had received, and it contained the three checks she had thus far written. According to the bank, she had a balance of $142.58. According to her own records, her balance was $143.28. The ninety-cent difference seemed unimportant enough, but it galled her that she could not see where either she or the bank had gone wrong. She stopped to explain to a tight-faced woman that there was no public rest room, then went back to her calculations. She caught the error at last and of course it was her error and not the bank’s. She had assumed as much from the beginning and now made the appropriate corrections in her checkbook.

It was pleasant having a bank account. The convenience, so widely heralded in bank advertising, was not what pleased her most; it had been convenient enough for her to settle her accounts in cash, and postal money orders were easily obtained if she needed to send money through the mails. But the simple possession of a checkbook gave her a feeling of substance, as insubstantial as her own balance might be. More, it gave her a feeling of belonging to the community, a feeling that had grown over the recent months. Now the building on the northeast corner of Bridge and Main was not merely the bank. It was her bank.

She glanced at her watch. It was just past six and Olive McIntyre had not yet arrived. Olive had been due at six, and Linda could not remember the woman having been late more than half a dozen times, and never by more than a handful of minutes. Olive was almost invariably early, and often by as much as an hour. She would always offer to take over upon her arrival, and more often than not Linda would stay to keep her company. They both enjoyed the easy conversation that passed during their moments together at the shop.

She wondered how long Olive would be able to her working full time. Labor Day weekend, a maddeningly hectic four days, had come and gone, and with its passing the heaviest of the summer traffic was over for another year. According to Olive, the greatest reduction would be in human volume rather than dollar volume. Serious customers would be as numerous as ever during the fall months, while the number of casual browsers would drop sharply.

“How you do in the fall depends on the sort of business you’re in,” Olive had told her. “The ice-cream shop has a big decline in sales because their volume is tied directly to the number of clowns wandering the streets, not to mention that ice cream has less appeal in colder weather. The art galleries and antique shops drop on the ground and thank the Lord when Labor Day is over and done with. Once the gawkers are out of the way they have time to take care of their serious customers. We’re somewhere in the middle. We’ll sell fewer dollar and two-dollar items with less tourists to sell them to, but the big-ticket sales will stay about the same. And for a month before Christmas we’ll do our best business in the items running from ten dollars on up. Of course for three months after Christmas you can go all day without seeing anything but a stray dog on the streets.”

The phone rang. She picked it up, said, “Good evening, Lemon Tree.”

“Linda?”

“Yes?”

“It’s Olive, Linda.”

“Oh, I didn’t recognize your voice.” There was a pause, and she said, “Is everything all right?”

“No, everything’s not.” A pause. “It’s Clem. I’m calling from Doylestown General. The hospital.”

“He’s not—”

“No, he’s not.” Another pause, and a sigh. “He started hemorrhaging a little after eleven this morning. It’s his liver, of course. He’s all right now. He’s had transfusions all day, God knows how many pints of blood. He’s unconscious and he looks like pure hell but he’s going to make it.”

“Thank God.”

“I’ve been alternately thanking and cursing Him all afternoon. Clem will be staying in the hospital for at least another week, possibly as much as two weeks. They’re putting a second bed in his room and I’m staying with him.” She snorted. “They tried to tell me that would be against the rules. It’s nothing short of amazing the variety of horse manure people think they can get away with. I told them just what I would do and who I would call and they went into a huddle and decided the rule never existed in the first place. They told me they would have to charge me the same rates as if I were a patient. I said that was perfectly all right, that I would simply deduct the sum from my annual contribution. And I suggested they might like to look up my annual contribution just to put things in perspective. They’ve been so sweet ever since that I may vomit. Well, let me get to the point. I obviously won’t be around for at least a week. Just put all the mail somewhere in the back and ignore it. If anything comes up that needs handling, use your own judgment. It’s sure to be more reliable than mine for the time being. Work whatever hours you want, your regular hours and as much of mine as you feel like. Just keep a record so that you’ll know how much money you have coming to you. Are you short on money?”

“No.”

“You may be by the time I get around to writing you a check. If that happens, just pay yourself out of the cash drawer and leave a memo of what you took. I’ll be in touch when I can. I don’t have your home phone number with me — could you let me have it?”

She gave her number.

“Fine. Don’t feel you have to put in more hours than you want, Linda. I really don’t give an earthly damn how business goes just now. Arrange your hours to suit yourself. I meant to call you earlier today. I hope I didn’t keep you from an appointment?”

“Oh, no.”

“You can close up now if you want.”

“No, I think I’ll stay around for an hour or so.”

“Suit yourself.”

“Olive? I hope everything’s all right.”

“Well, George Perlmutter’s been around and says he’s out of the woods now. The other clowns say the same thing, but I wouldn’t trust them for a minute. I know George too well for him to lie to me. All Clem has to do is stop drinking for the rest of his life and he’s got nothing to worry about.”

“Oh, that’s good.”

“And all I have to do is grow wings and I can fly like an eagle. I have to go now, Linda. ’Bye.”

For the fifteen minutes following Olive’s call she sat in the little shop and thought about death. The hour from six to seven was always quiet. Most of the shops on the mall closed for dinner, so even if one stayed open, passersby were not likely to drop in. Olive normally devoted that hour to paper work and dusting. There was no paper work for Linda to do but there was always dusting. Instead she stayed seated and thought of death.

Clem would die. That seemed to be what Olive had been saying at the end. He had nothing to worry about if he stopped drinking for the rest of his life, but Olive would not grow wings like an eagle and Clement McIntyre would not stop drinking, and so he would die.

She thought back to the first time she had genuinely realized that she herself would someday die. It seemed incomprehensible in retrospect. She had known since childhood that everyone died sooner or later, but until not too many years ago this knowledge had held no personal meaning for her. Death was always something that happened to other people. Occasional family deaths — her grandparents, an uncle, a friend of her father’s — had left her untouched. And then one spring morning a donkey walked across her grave, and the shivers stayed with her for a full week.

She had been married then. Married to Alan, and although she could not recall the year she knew it must have been late in their brief marriage because they would not otherwise have bought the gerbils. Neither of them had quite voiced the thought, but they had bought the little rodents to hold their marriage together. It was starting to come unglued, starting to reveal itself as having been a gross error from the beginning, but had not yet reached the point where they could face the fact that there was nothing there worth saving. It had seemed a little extreme to have a child to save the marriage. Gerbils, allegedly silent and odorless and able to thrive on an occasional handful of sunflower seeds, seemed a more moderate and equally feasible solution.

They had purchased a male and female gerbil, and the gerbils had done what she and Alan had virtually ceased to do, and had done so without benefit of birth control. The female gerbil grew fatter than seemed possible ultimately producing a litter of five hairless and blind little creatures. The thrill of the birth had quite overwhelmed Linda, and for the next few days it seemed to her that she and Alan truly loved each other.

Then one day the mother gerbil died. They never learned how or why. The babies were about a week old; two had their eyes open already. They were a week old, and their mother was dead, and Alan ran around to veterinarians trying to get a formula for a gerbil milk substitute, then tried pet shops in the hope that a gerbil mother who had lost her young might be enlisted to wet-nurse the little things. In the end they warmed Similac to body temperature and tried to feed it to the babies with a tiny eyedropper from a child’s nurse kit. One by one the baby gerbils went cold and stiff. The first one died six hours after they found the mother dead. The fifth and last died around dawn the next day.

She and Alan had an apartment. There was no yard, so she took the little corpses to Central Park and buried them, digging tiny graves with a soup spoon. She wept over their graves as she had never wept in her life.

The next day Alan wanted to buy another female gerbil. “Oh, no,” she cried. “Never.”

“But Eddie will be lonely now,” Alan had said. They’d named the gerbils Eddie and Wallie, for the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. “The poor old guy can’t just sit alone for the rest of his life.”

And then it hit her — the realization that everything died, that everyone died, that she would die. It was a realization that had to come to everyone sooner or later, and that everyone got over, as she in time got over it herself. But from that moment on her marriage was finished. It would have been finished anyway, would have ended even if they had been up to their necks in thriving hopping odorless gerbils, but that was the point where she herself knew that she had to leave him. She did not do so at once. She waited for quite awhile, but waited with no hope whatsoever.

Eddie remained with Alan when she left. She wondered what had become of him. He had almost certainly died by now, she thought. Gerbils didn’t live very long.

She went out for a sandwich and a cup of coffee, picked up a magazine, and was back at the desk by seven. A few minutes before eight a voice spoke her name. She looked up from her magazine at Karen Markarian.

“I hope I’m not bugging you,” Karen said. “I was in town with nothing to do and I thought maybe you’d like company.”

“I’m glad you did.” She closed the magazine and put it aside. “There’s never anything to read in this anyway. I don’t know why I bought it. I was just looking at the ads.”

“If you’re sure you don’t mind.”

“Of course I’m sure. Pull up a chair. There’s one over there.”

“It’s all right to move the chair?”

“Well, sure.”

Karen brought the chair over and sat down alongside the desk. “I went to your apartment first,” she said. “Then when you weren’t there I thought maybe you were finishing up over here. I didn’t mean to interrupt your work.”

“There’s hardly any work to interrupt. Olive couldn’t come in this evening and I had no place better to go so I thought I’d stay open. Cigarette?”

“Thanks.” She inhaled deeply, blew out smoke. “Hugh’s working tonight. I didn’t feel like sitting around alone and I couldn’t think of anyone in town I wanted to see. And then I thought of you.”

“I’m glad you did.”

“He’s really spending tons of time in front of that typewriter. Sometimes I’ll just stand outside his door and listen. He’ll go full blast for like fifteen minutes at a clip, just stopping to change pages, and then other times he’ll sit there without a sound for an hour at a time.”

“It must be very difficult.”

“I don’t know how he does it.”

“Neither do I.”

“I really mean it. When I grew up, you know, he was a writer, but a kid doesn’t think anything about that. He went into a room and made noises on a machine, you know, so big deal. I mean, I don’t know, when you’re a kid you don’t see anything special about it.”

“That’s interesting. I never thought of that.”

“What does your father do?”

“He’s in real estate.”

“In Ohio somewhere, I think you said?”

“Dayton.”

“Real estate. So at least as a kid you could understand what it was that he does. Showing houses to people and that sort of thing. He went certain places and he did certain things; it was the sort of thing that made sense to a kid.”

“I suppose so, yes.”

“Are you very close to him?”

“No, I’m afraid not.”

“That’s sad,” Karen said. She thought for a moment. “But what I was saying. I used to take it for granted. He went in there and he wrote. But now I don’t know how he does it. As a matter of fact I don’t really know how anybody does anything. Not selling houses or like that, but I don’t know how a writer writes books or how a painter paints pictures. How you get the ideas and decide how to make them happen. Or a composer, that’s the most impossible thing of all to understand. Imagine sitting down to write a piece of classical music. Not just finding the tunes but fitting everything together so that it adds up to something. Figuring out what each instrument in the orchestra is going to do and how to put them all together to get the sound you have in mind. I wonder if it always works out right.”

“How do you mean?”

“Oh, Hugh was saying once that the book he writes is never quite as good as the book he had in mind. That sometimes parts of it will actually come out better than what he planned, but that it’s never exactly the way he intended it to be. And I was thinking about music and wondering if it’s the same. Say you’re composing a symphony, and you can hear a certain passage in your mind and you work it out with pencil and paper and then an orchestra performs it, and everybody says it’s terrific and all, but you’re the composer and you hear it performed and it’s not the way you expected it to sound. It may be better or it may be worse, but it’s not the way you expected it to be.”

“I never thought of that.”

“No, neither did I until just now. Oh, Jesus, Beethoven.”

“What about him?”

“Well, he was deaf, right?”

“Toward the end of his life, yes.”

“Well, see, that’s so far-out. He heard it all in his head and put it down, and then he never got to hear it performed, so it could have been miles away from what he figured on and he would never have any way of knowing.”

“That’s a very strange idea.”

“It is, isn’t it?”

Linda nodded. “It’s almost frightening.”

“You know what it is? It’s a stoned idea.”

She thought for a moment, remembering the special paths her mind had taken on grass. Then she nodded. “You see what I mean?”

“Yes. It’s a stoned idea.”

“And I’m not even stoned. You’re not, are you?”

“Me? No.”

“You said that as if it’s impossible. Don’t you even smoke?”

“Not recently. There was a time when I smoked quite frequently, but I can’t remember the last time now.”

“Didn’t you like it?”

“Sometimes I did. At first I always did.”

“Then what happened? Bummers?”

“Occasionally.”

“Some people I know who’ve done acid say you learn as much from the bummers as from the good trips.”

“I’ve never had acid.”

“Neither have I. Is that why you stopped? Bummers?”

“Not exactly. I guess I reached a point where I didn’t like being high. And I didn’t like being around people who were high all the time.”

“Oh, I can dig it. People who are constantly stoned are a down. I mean, they never do anything.”

She nodded, but thought that wasn’t exactly what she had meant. She had been thinking of Marc, and it was not so much that he didn’t do anything as that she had been unable to avoid the feeling that nobody was home, that Marc was permanently out to lunch. But perhaps that amounted to the same thing.

“I’d like to get stoned with you sometime,” Karen was saying. “Just slightly stoned. Sometime when you think you feel like it.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Yes I do. It’s that people can get to know each other better that way. Sometimes. Other times they just shut each other off. It depends on who they are and where their heads are at. I wish I knew you better.”

“We’re getting to know each other, Karen.”

“I suppose. It’s just—” She hesitated for a long moment, then changed course. “Have you read any of the new book?”

“Your father’s book? No. He doesn’t want me to read anything until it’s finished.”

“Same here. I thought maybe you might have read it. Does he talk about it with you?”

“Just in very general terms. He’ll say that he had a good day or a bad day. Or that he’s hung up on a scene, or got over being hung up on a scene, but he’s never said anything more specific than that.”

“He’ll tell me about certain problems but it’s always vague. I don’t know anything about what it’s about, really. Just the title.”

“What’s the title?”

“The Edge of Thought. He didn’t mention it? Well, anyway, it’s just a working title. That means he may change it later, or the publishers may want to change it, but he has to have a title typed on the first page or he can’t get started with the writing. I don’t know whether you would call it a superstition or what.”

“It’s not a bad title. The Edge of Thought.”

“It’s from a poem but I forget who by. Have you read Capital Reward?”

“That’s the newest one, isn’t it? I thought it wasn’t coming out until November.”

“A week before Thanksgiving. I read the galleys. That’s long sheets from the printer that you check to make sure the type is right before the book goes to press.”

“I know.”

“I did the proofreading. It’s harder to enjoy a book that way because you have to read so slowly, so first I read a copy of the manuscript straight through and then I went through the galleys and checked them against the manuscript. He hates to read galleys. Especially, he’s working on something else. Usually he just initials them and sends them back because the publisher’s proofreaders catch most of the mistakes, but I didn’t mind doing it. You know, something to do.”

“How’s the book?”

“Oh, I think it’s sensational, but I’m prejudiced. Of course I guess you’ll be getting an autographed copy as soon as it comes out.”

“That would be exciting.”

“Linda? What do you think of Hugh?”

“As a writer?”

“Uh-huh. No, wait a minute, that’s not what I mean, I mean as a person.” She put her face in her hands. “Oh, wow,” she said. “Oh, wow, this is heavy.”

“Are you all right, Karen?”

“Me? Sure.” She fastened troubled eyes on Linda. “I mean how do you feel about him, that’s what I meant.”

“This is an odd conversation.”

“It’s heavy. If it’s too heavy I could split.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“This is so hard to handle. I’m not such a kid, but I keep feeling like one all of a sudden. This is realty weird. You don’t have to answer the question.”

“Why shouldn’t I answer it? I like your father very much. I don’t know if that’s the answer you—”

“What’s really weird is I keep saying Hugh and you keep saying your father.”

“Well, I—”

“Are you going to marry him?”

“Not before I’m asked.”

“He hasn’t asked you? I thought maybe he did. I think he will.”

“Well, I can’t really—”

“Suppose he does.”

The conversation had been faintly uncomfortable from the beginning and was getting more and more difficult for her. Why didn’t customers come in when you wanted them to? Not even customers — it would have been a pleasure just then to explain to some cretin that there was no public rest room in the Mall. At this point any interruption would be a deliverance.

“I’m sure he’ll ask you,” Karen was saying. “And I hope you’ll say yes.”

“Do you?”

“Oh, God, yes.”

“That surprises me.”

“It does? Maybe we’re not communicating at all. It’s my fault. I never should have gotten into all this.” She stood up suddenly. “I guess I’ll split.”

“Don’t go, Karen.”

But she had to; she was fighting back tears. “I just think you would be very good for each other,” she said. “That’s all. I think you could make each other happy. And what this is all about, what everything’s all about, is that I’m just trying to find a way to tell you that you don’t have to worry about me. Like I won’t be in the way or anything, that’s all, that’s the only thing I was trying to say.”

“Karen, sit down for a minute.”

“I’m going now.”

“Karen—”

“I’m all right, Linda.”

“I know you are.”

“I mean I’m all right, I’m not going to cry or anything. You don’t have to worry.”

“I wasn’t worried.”

“I didn’t mean to run a whole number on you like that. I got carried away.”

“It’s nothing.”

Those eyes, so much like Hugh’s, bored into hers. It was almost painful to meet the girl’s gaze.

“I’m not a child, Linda.”

“I know that.”

“I’m not a child. You make me act like one, but I’m not. I don’t know what it is. Look, I’m sorry.”

“It’s cool.”

“Thanks.”

Twenty-three

Melanie was upstairs watching television when the doorbell rang. She came down the staircase slowly, trying to guess who it might be and whether she ought to answer the bell at all. Salesmen and assorted door-to-door pests were creatures of the morning and afternoon and it was close to eight thirty; the program she was watching had gone on at eight o’clock and was more than half over.

It wouldn’t be Sully. He always used his key. But it might be some other man. There had been several over the past few weeks, one of them a door-to-door pest, an insurance snoop who had learned nothing from her about the couple next door but a great deal about horizontal pleasures. As well as she could determine, he was the only man she’d had sex with since Warren and Bert who knew her address. The others were all strangers who would have trouble tracking her down. Nor did it seem likely that the insurance snoop would risk turning up unannounced. She had attempted to ward off such a return visit with a story about her husband’s two strongest attributes: his rabid jealousy and his prowess with handguns.

It might be Warren, though. Or it might be any man who had heard her name mentioned and wanted to try his luck.

The bell sounded again. She did not want to see anyone tonight, but refusing to open the door would only postpone whatever problem might be in the offing. She went to the door, drew a quick breath, and opened it.

“Mrs. Jaeger?”

Not a man at all. A girl. The face was familiar, she had seen it before, and now she tried to place it.

“I don’t know if you remember me, but—”

Of course! “Why, of course I do,” she said, smiling brilliantly. “You’re Hugh Markarian’s daughter.”

“That’s right.”

“Of course I remember you, Linda.”

The girl’s eyes sparkled. “Far-out,” she said, thing is, you were Linda. I’m Karen.”

“I—”

“The thing is, I goofed by calling you Linda. But it’s not really important. Are you all right?”

“Yeah, I think so.” She swallowed. “Why don’t you come inside?”

“Thanks. This is a very nice house.”

“Thank you. I’m afraid my husband isn’t home right now.”

“I know.” Her eyes met Melanie’s. “I stopped at the Barge to check and I saw he was working.”

“Oh.”

“I hope I’m not keeping you from anything, Melanie. Is it all right to call you Melanie?”

“I don’t see why not. Better that than Linda. And no, you’re not keeping me from anything. I’m just going to run upstairs and turn off the TV. I wasn’t even looking at it, just something to do. Why don’t you have a seat, I’ll be right down, okay?”

But she stopped in the upstairs john to check her hair, splash cold water on her face, freshen her lipstick. What on earth did the girl want? To warn her away from her father? That seemed completely crazy unless the girl herself was off her nut, and she seemed sane enough. Besides, she was being as well mannered as could be.

To set up a date for her with Markarian? That seemed even less plausible. In the first place, she doubted Hugh wanted to see her again any more than she wanted to see him. It had been a pleasant enough means for her to a dramatically agreeable end, and for Markarian it had no doubt been better than solitary drinking, but after the embarrassment with Karen and her black boyfriend she couldn’t imagine him wanting to renew their acquaintance. They had passed on the street once or twice since then and neither had said hello. In short, it had turned out precisely as she had hoped it would, a one-night fling that had served its purpose without getting her involved in anything more extensive.

Then what in hell did Karen Markarian want from her young life?

She went downstairs, hoping she looked more poised and self-assured than she felt. Karen was sitting on the sofa, legs crossed, smoking a cigarette. The tight dungarees showed off her legs nicely, Melanie noticed, and there was obviously no bra under Karen’s tie-dyed T-shirt. Well, there was no bra under her own blouse, as far as that went, but Karen’s T-shirt was more revealing even if the younger girl had substantially less to reveal.

“Would you like some coffee, Karen?”

“Not now. It’s kind of warm for coffee.”

“A cold drink?”

“Maybe a Coke or something.”

“I think there’s Pepsi.”

“That would be great.” She fussed in the kitchen, filling two tall glasses with ice cubes, pouring the Pepsis. Returning, she said, “I decided to have one myself. It’s Diet Pepsi, actually. I figure why take on the extra calories when you can’t taste the difference anyway.”

“With a figure like yours you don’t have to worry.”

“I ought to lose a few pounds.”

“I don’t see where.” She could almost feel the girl’s eyes on her body. “Anyway, I don’t think I could hassle with that whole routine of watching weight. My mother is always on a diet and always gaining die weight back and I don’t see what good it does her. I’d rather be a few pounds overweight than go through all that.”

“You don’t have to worry.”

“I’m probably thinner than I ought to be, I guess.”

“Not too thin, though.” She put her glass down on the coffee table. “It gets harder when you get to be a few years older.”

“How old are you, Melanie?”

“Twenty-five. Why?”

“No reason. I was nineteen last month. Melanie? My father doesn’t know I’m here. Not that it’s any big deal, but just that it isn’t about him or anything.”

“Oh.”

“In case you were wondering.”

“Well, I guess I was.”

“I was in town with nothing to do and I sort of thought of you. I thought maybe you get lonely sitting here all night while your old man is working.”

“Sometimes I do.”

“I get lonely myself sometimes.”

“I see.”

“Do you?”

The girl’s stare, so open and so penetrating, was to meet and harder still to turn away from. The voice, so flat and frank and... and young, went through her like a pin fixing a butterfly to a board. She remembered discussing this girl with Sully, remembered teasing him with the thought that she might make love to Karen as she had made love to Hugh.

The idea had excited Sully. But it had excited her as well, both at the time and in retrospect. And after she had been with Bert and Warren, her mind had several times been intrigued by the thought of sex with another woman. Now and then her partner in her fantasy had been Karen.

Would she have ever thought to act on it? She could not deny the possibility, for she had already found herself capable of a variety of actions she would never have imagined herself taking.

But—

“It was funny, you calling me Linda. I just saw her a little while ago.”

“Linda?”

“Linda Robshaw. Hugh’s been going with her lately. He went out with her the first time the night before you were over at our house, that was why I made my brilliant foot-in-mouth play. She’s nice, I think. But I get very uptight being with her.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know exactly. I don’t think it’s anything that she does, but she makes me feel like a kid.”

“That’s funny.”

“What is?”

She started to moisten her lips with her tongue, then stopped herself when she realized what she was doing. “That she makes you feel like a kid. You make me feel like a kid.”

“How?”

“Hell, I don’t know. Maybe because you know what this is all about and I don’t.”

“Don’t you, Melanie?”

“No.” She reached for a cigarette, lit it. “Would you like some more Pepsi?”

“I still have some. What sign are you, Melanie?”

“Capricorn.”

“Sure, that figures.”

“It does? I don’t know much about it.”

“Tenacious, stubborn, honest, hardworking toward a goal. I don’t know much about it either but those are the main tendencies. I’m Virgo on the Leo cusp. Virgo is honest and direct and literal-minded and Leo is dramatic and sort of loud. It’s supposed to be kind of an interesting combination.”

“I guess it would be.”

“I’m also devious, though, and that doesn’t seem to fit in. Virgo and Capricorn are supposed to be compatible.”

“That’s interesting.”

“Yes, I think it’s very interesting. Why don’t you sit next to me, Melanie?”

She looked into those steady eyes and felt her own face softening, melting.

“Sit next to me.”

“I don’t know if I should.” She hardly recognized her own voice, so soft and liquid, so young.

“It’s not what you should do. It’s what you want to do.”

“I don’t know what I want.”

“Come over here.”

“Yes, all right. Maybe I should have a drink. Maybe we should both have a drink.”

“Afterward.”

“How pretty you are. Karen? Have you ever—”

“Yes.”

“I never have.”

“I knew that.”

“How can you tell?”

“I don’t know. I just can. You’re very beautiful.”

They kissed. She expected it to be strange and was struck by the familiarity of the experience, one she had never had before. It was not a feeling that she had done this before but that she had known all her life what it would be like. She felt the tips of Karen’s fingers trace a line down her cheek and across her shoulder, felt Karen’s hand close around her breast.

Not excitement but longing, yearning. How different. How utterly different.

“Kiss me some more, Melanie.”

“Oh, yes. Yes.”

‘You don’t need a drink now, do you?”

“No.”

“You need me. We need each other.”

“Yes.”

“You’re like silk here.”

“God, how that feels.”

“So soft and silky.”

“Someone once wanted me to shave it”

“A man?”

“Of course a man. I never—”

“God, don’t ever do it.”

“I won’t. Oh, Karen.”

“Can we go upstairs now?”

“Yes.”

She worried on the way to the bedroom that she would not know what to do, but it turned out that there was very little for her to do. Karen undressed her, positioned her on her back on the bed. Karen talked to her, talked gently, feeding her lines to which she could respond without thinking. Karen stripped and joined her on the bed, their bodies barely touching at first. Karen kissed her, long deep kisses, and Karen’s hands touched her body with the special knowledge male hands could not have. She had touched her own body in this fashion, with this same special knowledge, and Karen’s hands were like her own hands and yet they were not her own hands, they were Karen’s hands, and they worked magic upon her skin.

Karen’s mouth kissed her breasts, then burrowed downward, not too quickly, not too slowly. Karen knelt between her legs so that only Karen’s mouth touched her, Karen’s mouth upon her cunt and Karen’s soft girl’s cheeks like feathers against the insides of her thighs.

For a long time she held a portion of herself in reserve, kept part of her being from letting go. But Karen’s mouth kept assuring her in silent speech that there was no hurry, there was no rush, there was all the time in the world. There was no urgency in this. No one had to catch a train or keep a lunch date. There was time, worlds of time, and all you had to do was float on the wave, float on the wave—

Until without knowing it she let go, let go all the way, and she was there.

“Oh, how wonderful. How perfect.”

“You’re so fantastic, Melanie.”

“Me? All I did was lie there.”

“Oh, no. You don’t understand.”

“I mean, what did I do?”

“Never mind. You’re beautiful.”

“Am I?”

“Oh, come on. You can’t not know it.”

“I know I turn men on.”

“You turn girls on, too.” Karen touched her breast, stroked it not with passion but with admiration. “You must have had girls come on to you before.”

“I don’t think so. Not that I was ever aware of. I suppose I was never looking for it and might not have known. Is that possible?”

“It’s possible.” Karen curled up next to her. Melanie closed her eyes. She was almost asleep when she heard Karen speak her name. She opened her eyes.

“It’s your turn, Melanie.”

She had known this. The knowledge was what made sleep such a temptation. She rolled onto her side and covered her hesitation with a smile. “I suppose fair is fair, huh?”

“Oh, Melanie!”

“I was kidding, honey, I—”

Karen’s eyes were wide. The girl’s hands fastened on Melanie’s shoulders, drew their bodies close together.

“You don’t understand,” Karen said.

“Sure I do.”

“No, no you don’t. Oh, wow! I mean, doing it is the whole point. That’s what it’s about. The other part, you’ve had that before.”

“I told you I never—”

“I mean with a man.”

“It’s not the same. You must know that.

“It’s not the same, no, of course it’s not, but it’s the same idea. It’s the same act. But when you do it, you get to be on the other side of the mirror. You can’t do it for me, Melanie, baby. You have to do it for yourself.”

“I don’t know if it’ll work that way.”

“I know more about this than you do.”

“Yeah, I’ll buy that.”

“It’s better to give than to receive. Better because it feels better. That’s absolutely what it’s all about, just have to get into it.”

“But I don’t know how.”

“Just do what you like doing. Just start and See what happens. Do what you’d like if it was your body. As if both of us were you.”

“Oh.”

“Did I find the right words? Does that put it together for you?”

“Yes, of course it does.”

Afterward she felt a kind of peace she had never known before. She had found herself in Karen’s body and knew herself in a wholly new way. She remained still for an indeterminable period of time, curled up at Karen’s feet. Then she got up from the bed.

“Where are you going, Melanie?”

“I need a drink, and not a Pepsi. Can I get you something?”

“Do you have scotch?”

“I’m pretty sure all we have is applejack.”

“What’s that?”

“Brandy made from apples.”

“What do you mix it with? Does it go with soda?”

“It might, but we don’t have any. Water?”

“Sure.”

She poured the drinks, Karen’s with ice and water, her own neat. She drank hers straight down and poured herself another before returning to the bedroom.

Karen said, “I think I like this better than scotch. It has a cider taste along with a booze taste. What’s it like straight?”

“Try some.”

“It’s not bad. I’d have to get used to it.”

“Yeah, some things take getting used to.”

“And some people get used to certain things pretty quickly. You’re blushing, Melanie.”

“I know it and it’s crazy. I shouldn’t be able to blush in front of you. You’re my sister.”

“That’s what it’s like, isn’t it?”

“That’s exactly what it’s like.”

“You came, didn’t you?”

“God, did I ever! I never thought.”

“I knew you would. But I couldn’t tell you, I couldn’t, because you had to find your way there by yourself.”

“I never dreamed you could come from doing it.” “Don’t you with men?”

“Sometimes. Once in a while. Not like that, though. Karen?”

“I bet I know the question. How many girls have I done this with?”

“You don’t have to answer.”

“Why not? Two. Well, three. You’re the third.”

“Is that all?”

“Uh-huh. I’m mostly into guys. With a girl I have to have a special feeling. Well, with guys, too, but it’s a different feeling with girls. There aren’t as many girls that I have that feeling for.” She thought for a moment. “I didn’t know that I had it for you. You don’t have to believe it if you don’t want to, but I didn’t come with this in mind. Not consciously in mind, anyway. I really came over to talk with you.” A soft smile. “It didn’t take me long to get in the mood, did it?”

“Or me. I... thought about this before.”

“Before I made a pass? I know when you thought about it. I saw it in your face. When we were talking about being lonely.”

“You saw that? But I mean before tonight. I thought about making love to you. I don’t think I would have done anything. I just kept it in my mind. I never thought you would go for it.”

“That is really far-out.”

“Yeah.”

“It really is.”

“Could I ask you about the other two girls? Did they have experience?”

“The second one did.”

“Not the first? Jesus, how did either of you know what to do?”

“It was kind of funny. But, you know, we had both read things. Books. We knew what to do; it was a question of knowing how to get into it. We thought the best way would be sixty-nine, but it turned out to be a down. You can’t get into both things at the same time.”

“I was wondering about that.”

“It’s the same as with a man, you’re trying to hold two things in your mind at the same time. It’s easier to get it together behind grass but even then it’s better to take turns.”

“What’s it like with a nigger? I mean with somebody black.”

“One word’s as good as another, I guess.”

“I don’t really like that word. I say it sometimes; though. What’s it like?”

“Both of the girls were white.”

“I mean a black man.”

“I never made it with a spade. Oh, you mean the guy I brought home. I can’t think of his name.”

“Jeff.”

“You remembered and I didn’t. No, we didn’t make it. I was going to and I got uptight. Either because he was black or because I brought him home because he was black and that was dishonest and it bothered me. You never made that scene?”

“No. Sometimes I think I want to and sometimes I think I don’t.”

“I fooled around with some black guys at college. It never got past, you know, hand jobs. No particular reason. There’s not much difference. No, that’s bullshit, there’s a tremendous difference. At least for me, because you keep being conscious of the color. Not constantly but now you are and now you aren’t. For a minute you’ll be into the person and the color gets out of the way, and then it keeps fading back in on you. Maybe you get used to it. I didn’t, because I guess I turned out to be more hung up on race than I thought I was.”

“That’s very honest.”

“Well, Virgo.”

“I would never get past the color. I would keep hearing the word ‘nigger’ over and over in my head. If I got turned on that would be what turned me on. Don’t they have bigger cocks?”

“Not the ones I knew. Bigger when they were soft but about the same hard.”

“I’m only interested when they’re hard.”

“So am I.”

They giggled together. Then Melanie said, “Were both the girls at college with you?”

“Uh-huh. I learned a lot at college, but not what they wrote about in the catalog.”

Were you in love with either of them?”

“Both of them. I don’t like to ball if I’m not. Oh, I see. Sure, I’m in love with you, Melanie.”

“Jesus, don’t even say that!”

“And you’re in love with me. What’s wrong with that? Oh, wow, you’ve got more hangups than I thought. Do you really think you can only love one person?”

“Well, one person at a time.”

“Do you love your husband? Are you in love with him?”

“Yes, very much.”

“But you ball other guys.”

“There’s no love in it.”

“Isn’t that kind of sad?”

“Yeah. Maybe. I don’t know. I’d be afraid.”

“Isn’t it worse to ball them and not feel anything? I don’t mean in a moral way. I mean how you wind up feeling about yourself.”

She closed her eyes and thought about the question.

“You can always tell me to cool it with the questions, Melanie. Just because I’ll answer just about anything doesn’t mean you have to.”

“That’s not it. I’m just not sure of the answer.”

“Well, that’s cool. I can dig it. Hey, what time is it, do you happen to know?”

“Let me see. It says a quarter to ten but that clock’s a little fast. Do you have to be somewhere? I wish you would stay.”

“I was thinking about your old man.”

“Oh, he won’t be home for hours. Tonight’s Thursday? We have hours.”

“Because I was wondering what he would do if he walked in and found us like this.”

She couldn’t help laughing. Karen joined her, and when the laughter subsided the girl said, “I guess he’d have a fit.”

“Oh, no. Not Sully.”

“You mean he’d dig it? I’ve heard that. That it turns men on. And they don’t consider other chicks as a threat, not as if it was another man.”

“No, that’s only part of it.”

“Huh?”

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Do you want to know something? I’ve been going out of fucking mind lately.”

“What’s the matter?”

“I don’t know if I can tell you. I never told anyone. That’s what’s killing me, wanting to tell somebody and there’s nobody in the world to tell. I mean a woman, it’s nothing to talk about with a man. Or maybe it is but not in the same way.” She studied Karen thoughtfully. “What we said before about being sisters. I still feel that. But I couldn’t tell this to a sister, I mean a regular sister. I have this feeling that I could tell you.”

“I would never repeat anything.”

“Oh, I know that, you don’t have to tell me that. I have the feeling that I could tell you this and it wouldn’t shock you.”

“I was going to say nothing could shock me, but that’s bullshit. Some things shock me. But never the things you would expect. I think you better tell me before you explode, whatever it is. I guess it has to do with sex.”

“Yes, sure, what else.” She pointed to the pack of cigarettes. Karen passed her one, lit it for her. “I don’t know where to start.”

“Anyplace.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

It surprised her how easy it was to talk about it. The words flowed in a steady stream. She began with Sully’s first problems with impotence and worked her way straight through to the present. Karen never interrupted, never said a word. Sometimes Melanie averted her own gaze when she spoke about certain things, but when her eyes returned to Karen, the younger girl was always gazing straight into them, her expression one of total interest and total acceptance.

It was as if she were talking to herself, much as making love to Karen had had an autoerotic element to it. At the same time it was far more than talking to herself, even as their lovemaking had been worlds beyond simple masturbation. Karen’s ears gathered her words as Karen’s eyes gathered her own eyes, as Karen’s loins had gathered and drunk the reverse, unknown side of her womanhood.

“You get to be on the other side of the mirror.”

That had been Karen’s phrase, and Melanie had caught portions of its meaning when she heard the words but could not understand all of it until she had taken the looking-glass trip herself. She had reached the other side of the mirror in lovemaking. Now she was reaching it in speech. It seemed incredible to her that she had never done this before. It was so vital to do this. If you never looked through from the other side of the mirror then you never saw yourself plain. All you ever looked at was your reflection.

When she had finished talking, when the words ran out, she sat in silence. She was waiting, but not for Karen to speak. She was waiting to hear the echo of her own words. Then something within her that had been tight was suddenly loose, something that had been a knot untied herself. She sat perfectly still, silent, not sobbing, and tears fell out of her eyes.

When the tears stopped, she got up without a word and went down for fresh drinks. She did not wipe her tears away. When she was back in bed Karen wiped them with a touch as soft as petals.

Melanie said, “Well?”

“What a thing to keep inside you.”

“I couldn’t do it. You saw that I couldn’t.”

“What a string of changes to go through. It’s all so far-out. I’m sick of that expression but nothing else fits. It’s so completely far-out.”

“And I didn’t shock you?”

“Do I look shocked?”

“But what do you really think, Karen?”

“You probably know.”

“I have to hear it.”

“Right. Well, I think you have a beautiful thing. The thing is it works for you.”

“Sometimes I’m so disgusted with myself. And with him.”

“For putting up with it?”

“For wanting it.”

“Putting up with it might be sick. But not wanting it.”

“I know, but sometimes—”

“Sure.”

Later she said, “Karen? Could we?”

“You have to say you love me.”

“I don’t know if I can.”

“I love you, you know.”

“It’s the words, it’s getting the words out. Oh, God, what you do to me. The way you touch me. I love you. Was that what you want to hear?”

“I want to hear it a lot.”

“Oh, God, God, I do. I love you.”

And afterward, “Will you tell him about this, Melanie?”

“I was just thinking that.”

“It wouldn’t bother me.”

“I thought it would. It really wouldn’t? I think it would, but you won’t say so. You’re a Virgo but you’re devious. A Virgo on the Leo cusp. Cusp is a sexy word, isn’t it? No, I won’t tell him. Not tonight. Maybe someday. Not tonight.”

“Why?”

“Because I love you. Because this is ours. Do you know something? I am cheating on him for the first time. But it still isn’t cheating, is it? Will we see each other sometime?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have anybody else?”

“Not right now, but I will. You’re thinking that that will bother you. But it won’t.”

“I feel so strange.”

“I know.”

“So very strange.”

“I know.”

Twenty-four

Nude, Gretchen stepped onto the bathroom scale. It was new; Peter had bought it for her when she first began to gain weight. She noted now that she had only gained a pound since the last time she weighed herself. She was not sure just how long it had been, but it didn’t seem as though it could have been very long. She was always getting on that scale these days; it was something she found herself doing every time she had her clothes off.

She dressed now, humming softly to herself. This was the perfect afternoon for what she had to do. She had dropped a load of wash at the laundromat when she took Robin to play with some other children. The clothes would be ready to go in the dryer now, and on the way back she could stop at the Raparound for a cup of hot chocolate and a piece of crumb cake. Three tasks would be handled on one trip. She would be concerning herself with the business of maintaining her household, the business of gaining weight, and the business of guarding her flanks.

It was simply a matter of organization, of using time properly. Of course you had to be very intelligent to manage it and you had to possess an iron will. But none of what she was doing would be possible without an iron will.

There were times when it seemed that gaining weight was the hardest part of all. Eating was no problem. Here was where will came into play. The ordinary person ate when he was hungry and confined himself to food he enjoyed eating. But this would not do in her case. She was never hungry; she could never abide the taste of food. So she rose above herself and ate anyway, pretending to enjoy every bite she swallowed. And it was working. She was still thin but she was gaining weight.

But so slowly! Of course it was all part of the plan. They never made it easy for you. If you were overweight, then even a starvation diet brought little weight loss, while the least bit of eating shot your weight up again. If you were underweight, you had to gorge yourself put any weight on your bones, and if you relaxed vigil the pounds melted away before you knew it. It was doubly hard for her because she had to concentrate so hard. The concentration burned off valuable calories, but she didn’t dare relax her concentration for a moment.

Anything was possible if you concentrated. Anything. She could gain weight, she could manage the household, she could cook meals, she could be loving with Robin, and she could be precisely the person Peter wanted her to be. She could stay away from pills and alcohol. She could even stay away from cigarettes but had decided it might be too abrupt for her to quit smoking.

The hardest part was sleeping, but even that could be achieved by concentration. By mind over matter, or was it more accurate to call it mind over mind?

No never mind, she thought. No matter. No mind matter. No matter mind.

She had to choke back a giggle. She was alone, of course, and she might have treated herself to a giggle, but it was vital to maintain discipline. If you did so while alone, it was all the more easy to do so in company.

And how could you ever be absolutely certain you were alone? They could go anywhere; they could take all sorts of forms. You might well be alone but could not be sure of it, so you had to behave all the time as if they were watching. Even in sleep, even when Peter and Robin were themselves asleep.

She couldn’t steal his soul anymore while he slept. It was unsafe. But it was also unnecessary, for she had stolen back her sleep. Not always; there were nights when her most intense concentration would not make sleep come. But she was getting better and better at it, and soon she would have the knack mastered.

She left the building and walked quickly to the laundromat. The sun was glaring down, but all she had to do was tell herself not to feel the heat and it ceased to bother her. Everything was simple when you knew what to do.

She transferred the load of clothes to the dryer, put in three dimes for thirty minutes, and walked back through the heat (which she did not feel) to the Raparound. The fat swarthy waitress was the only one on duty, which suited her plans perfectly. She glanced around, recognized two people whom she knew, and greeted them perfectly — a quick word, a pleasant smile, enough enthusiasm but not too much. Then she took a table by herself, selecting one as far from the couple she knew as possible.

When the waitress came over Gretchen beamed at her. “Why, hello, Anne,” she said. “I’d like a piece of crumb cake and a cup of hot chocolate.”

“Hot chocolate? In this weather?”

“Oh, I don’t mind the heat,” she said. While she waited for her food she smoked a cigarette and considered the cleverness of the girl. Oh, she was clever; she’d been well prepared. Hot chocolate in this weather? Not clever enough, though. Not nearly clever enough.

Her order came quickly, another mark of Anne’s cleverness. “Why, thank you,” Gretchen told her. “Won’t you sit for a moment?”

“Well, I shouldn’t.”

“I’d appreciate it. And I purposely came at a time when you wouldn’t be too busy.”

“You did?”

You did? A neat trap, that one, designed to lead her down conversational detours. But she was good enough at dodging such traps.

“I’ve been wanting to tell you how much I appreciate everything you’ve done for us, Anne.”

“I really didn’t do anything.”

“Of course that little bit of difficulty is over now.”

“Oh, I know, and I’m so pleased for you.”

“For me?”

“Yes, I think it’s wonderful.”

“You perspire a great deal, don’t you, Anne?” The girl colored under her olive skin.

“It’s this heat. I don’t know what I’m gonna do if it keeps up. I almost liked the rain better.”

“Just look at you.” She smiled warmly and matched the smile with the warmth of her voice. “Sweat stains under your arms. Filthy nauseating stains under your arms.

“I—”

“Don’t you use a deodorant?”

“I’m allergic. But I don’t—”

“And your skin is so dark. Are you part nigger, Anne? That would explain a lot of things.”

The girl’s face was a study, mouth hanging open like a ruptured cow. She was on the ropes now. All that was necessary was to keep up the pressure.

“You must have nigger blood, Anne. Your last name is Tedesco, isn’t it? That means ‘German’ in Italian. That’s a very clever ruse. I’m one of the few people likely to see through it. But it’s all so hopeless, isn’t it?” The smile again, and she let the poor stupid thing gape and babble while she took a large bite of crumb cake and washed it down with a sip of hot chocolate. As hard as she was concentrating on Anne, she was still able to get the food down without noticing any taste whatsoever. It was all a matter of concentration and discipline. When you had that, nothing on earth could stop you.

Now the final touch.

“Absolutely hopeless. Peter would never have anything to do with a sweating nigger. They fooled you into thinking so, they’re clever, but you must know better. You don’t have the slightest chance. You see, I know everything.” She squared her shoulders, beaming benevolently in triumph. “And I have the final trump card. If you ever came close to getting Robin, I would kill her. Just kill her. After all, she’s the Devil’s daughter, or didn’t they tell you that?”

She paused, deliberately offering the opportunity for a rejoinder. But Anne wasn’t capable of one. She was utterly defeated.

“So there’s no way you can win. You’d better tell them you don’t want to try anymore. For your own sake. You’d better leave my table now before we’re noticed. I’ll go as soon as I’ve finished my cake and coffee. I’ll pay you now. Here’s a dollar. You may keep the change. You see, I don’t hold it against you, Anne. You were misinformed. It’s not really your fault.”

She took just the right amount of time finishing her snack. There was no point in arousing suspicions. And this way her timing would be perfect; she would get back to the laundromat just as the dryer finished its thirty minute cycle.

A wave of pride lifted her. She gave herself a moment to relish it, then pushed it carefully aside. Pride was said to precede a fall, and she had no intention of falling. Ever.

Anne Tedesco did not see Gretchen leave. She had gone directly from Gretchen’s table to the employees’ lavatory and was still there when Gretchen departed. Even so, she barely reached the little room in time. Perspiration gushed from her skin. It seemed as though every pore she owned had opened to its fullest diameter. She was nauseous and almost too dizzy to stay upright. She leaned over the toilet bowl, retching uncontrollably. Nothing came up, nothing would come up, but the nausea took forever to abate.

When she was finally able to leave the lavatory, Danny caught her on her way back through the kitchen. He said, “What the hell took you so long? I thought you... hey, Annie, you all right?”

“No.”

“You look like hell. You want to lie down upstairs?”

“I can’t,” she said. She took off her apron, mopped her face with it, set it on the counter. “I can’t hack it today,” she said. “I’ll be in tomorrow.”

“You go straight home and get in bed. Listen, maybe you better see a doctor.”

“No.”

“Straight home. And don’t worry about tomorrow, you understand?”

But she did not walk home. She walked to the corner and stood there, trying to focus her thoughts. Another wave of nausea struck her as she reviewed what Gretchen had said. It was not just the words. It was the way they combined with that beaming face, that charming voice.

She crossed the street and walked to the theater.

Twenty-five

When the evening performance ended Peter stayed at the board and looked at his watch. Two minutes, he thought.

But it was less than a minute and a half before Tony Bartholomew burst in on him. Peter focused his gaze on the producer’s white linen ascot and let the words go past him. He caught disjointed phrases: “Worst fucking display... absolute incompetence... abysmal... throwing actors off-stride... ruin every fucking effect...”

When Tony stopped for breath, Peter said, “I know just how bad it was, Tony. I know better than you do, and you don’t have to tell me about it.”

“I want an explanation, you insolent son of a bitch?!”

“Well, we all have our hangups, Tony.”

“Who do you think you’re talking to, you little cock-sucker?”

“I gave that up a long time ago.” He almost grinned at the man’s blank stare, but he could no more manage a grin than he could change the flat level deadness of his voice. “It’s a waste of breath giving me hell, Tony. I got enough of it already.”

“Personal problems are one thing—”

“They certainly are. Look, punch me out if you want, I can’t stop you, but don’t yell at me. You can’t fire me.”

“Who said anything about firing you?”

“Because I quit.”

“The hell you quit. The fucking hell you quit. Did you ever hear an expression called ‘The show must go on’? I don’t suppose you did. I don’t suppose—”

“Yeah, I heard it. That’s why I didn’t cut out this afternoon when I wanted to. That expression never made any sense in the first place but I didn’t want to fuck everybody up. Well, a blind chimpanzee would have done the show more good than I did. Good-bye, Tony.”

“Wait a minute!”

“Fuck you.”

“What?”

“I said go fuck yourself. You’re a fatass cocksucker and your mother eats pig prick. You’re a thief and a liar and a disgrace to the theater, Tony. Fuck you. Drop dead.” The words were without meaning to him and he spoke them without venom. They achieved their purpose. Tony Bartholomew fell back as if kicked, and Peter wasted no time in getting past him and out the door. On his way through the parking lot he heard people calling his name but didn’t stop to see who they were. He walked on as if he heard nothing, nothing at all. He just kept walking without paying any attention to where he was going. At one point, as he crossed a street in mid-block, a driver hit his brakes hard and swerved to miss him. He kept walking, heading away from the driver’s curses, walking as if nothing had happened.

It didn’t matter where he went because there was no place to go. There was never any place to go, so it didn’t matter where you went. It hardly mattered whether or not you kept moving, but it was easier than standing still.

When Warren finally found him he was leaning against the cannon with his hands in his pockets and his head tilted up toward the stars.

“How did you happen to know that Tony Bart’s mother eats pig prick? It’s supposed to be a closely guarded secret, and now absolutely everybody knows.”

“Is that what I said?”

“Among other bon mots.”

“I don’t even remember.”

“What really struck home was when you called him a thief and a liar and a disgrace to the performing arts. He’s all those things and knows it, but it still troubles him to have it brought to his attention. I’ve been looking all over hell and gone for you, you know.”

“I guess I’ve been waiting for you to find me.”

“We ought to establish a secret rendezvous spot for just such contingencies. And a less public one than that which you’ve chosen this time. My car’s across the street. We can go to my house or drive around. I’d vote for driving around.”

“Sure.”

“And you can tell Aunt Warren all about it.”

“What good will it do?”

“Bloody little, probably. But you’ve nothing better to do than talk, and I’ve nothing better to do than listen.”

But he didn’t start talking until Warren had driven for half a dozen blocks. He put his head back on the seat and closed his eyes and reeled off everything that Anne had told him.

“You haven’t seen Gretchen since then?”

“No.”

“You’ve just had Anne Tedesco’s word, and she was in a state at the time.”

“She was hysterical, Warren, and I don’t blame her. But she wasn’t crazy.”

“But you didn’t go back to see Gretchen.”

“I couldn’t.”

“I see. And until Anne reported to you, you had no reason to doubt that Gretchen was completely recovered?”

“You sound like a lawyer, Warren.”

“I am trying to sound like a lawyer, Peter, for precisely the reason that lawyers try to sound like lawyers. Answer the question.”

“Now you sound like the judge. When does my lawyer get a chance to object?”

“Please don’t stall.”

“I don’t know if I had reason to doubt or not. But I doubted. From about the third or fourth day on.”

“I never heard you say a thing to that effect.”

“I didn’t dare.” He explained the hints he had put together, the clues that had been enough to convince him, explained too his fear that his suspicions were a form of wish fulfillment. “And what Anne said fit in perfectly. It was just what I would figure her to do, just what she would come up with if the whole thing’s an act.”

“Oh, hell,” Warren said.

“Yeah, that’s what it is, and I got the warmest chair.”

“You know that she has to be committed.”

“How could I commit her when she’s acting sane for the first time in her life?”

“Do you think she could fool a trained psychiatrist?”

“I think she could fool God and Perry Mason.”

“That does complicate things. And neither of us are relative, and we can’t produce a psychiatrist who’s familiar with her case. Peter, I’m very concerned.”

“So am I.”

“Let me think for a minute. Christ, I wish she’d hanged herself so I’d be obliged merely to comfort you and disperse a crowd or two. I’m better equipped that sort of thing. No, there’s no question about it. The woman has to be committed. I’m not a psychiatrist, but sometimes I think I ought to have been one. So many lives I could have led. It’s hell being limited to just one of them. Of course you know what’s wrong with her.”

“Yeah, she’s out of her fucking tree.”

“That’s probably as valid as the clinical terminology. She’s a paranoiac schizophrenic with delusions of grandeur, Peterkin, which is idiot talk for a combination of split personality, persecution complex and a tendency to confuse oneself with God.” He inhaled through clenched teeth. “This is not a thumbnail diagnosis. She showed symptoms of all of that months ago, and her little Main Street performance would have drawn that diagnosis from any halfway-bright premed major at Whitewater State.”

“So why is it so much more serious now?”

“Because before she was weak and now she’s strong. She was passive before, and dangerous only to herself. And now she’s active.”

“And dangerous to others?”

“She could be. Sooner or later she’ll almost have to be. Right now she’s busy playing a role and fooling the world. She can’t play it forever. Sooner or later she has to break. In fact she’s broken already. Not in front of you; that was just the mask glimpsed from an angle, that combined with your own sensitivity to the woman. But she certainly broke in front of Anne. Anne hardly knows her at all but knew she was face to face with a maniac.”

“She couldn’t help knowing.”

“Obviously. The point is that Gretchen doesn’t know she took her mask off. She thought she was still in her role and never realized the script didn’t make any sense. The danger is that she’ll slip and know it. Oh, I don’t have the clinical background for this, and anyway not even the best shrinks can agree on anything, let alone just what a person in her condition might do. Or when she might decide to do it.”

“Robin’s with her now.”

“I know.” “Well?”

“No, I wouldn’t worry about it. Peter, I have to think. I have a lot of scraps and shreds that I have to put into some semblance of order. I’m going to drive around for a little while. I’ll be talking to myself. It’s a useful mechanism but considered antisocial. I’ll say any number of things and you’re not to comment or interrupt. I want to be able to pretend you’re not here at all. Do you understand?”

“No, but I’ll shut up, if that’s what you mean.”

“It is. Not another word... I should have been a psychiatrist. And a lawyer, and a judge, and Hamlet’s father’s ghost. Not Prince Hamlet nor was meant to be... I should have been a pair of ragged claws... Or a criminal, a master criminal. A con man, an illusionist... Had to be an actor. Other men have to live one life all the way to the grave. Actor lives a thousand lives and never has one of his own... Brave man never tastes of death but once... Hi-diddly-dee, an actor’s life for me... We’ll go to Paradise Island, Peternocchio, and let our noses grow, and we won’t be back for donkey’s years... You can’t kid a kidder, but God never made an actress who couldn’t be upstaged. Or upstaged an actress who couldn’t be made... What it comes down to is illusion, one against the other. Not what you know but who you look like... Turn it around and look at it backwards. Suppose the place was a Mooreeffoc, and Dickens got tricked into thinking it was a coffee room? Never would have been the wiser, Bud. Older Budweiser... I grow stout, I shall wear the bottom of my trousers out... In the room the women belch and fart, talking of Jean-Paul Sartre... It’s the morality of it that’s the sticking point. You can’t play God unless you’re Charlton Heston... Damned sight easier on the stage...”

At last he was silent for a long time. Peter sensed he was finished, but many of his silences had been almost as long, and he did not want to interrupt. Ultimately Warren said, “Game’s over, lad. If I ever hear any of that gibberish repeated I’ll stop loving you forever.”

“Some of it sounded really great. Did it mean anything in particular?”

“Think of it as background music. Would you mind awfully if I went and looked in on Gretchen?”

“Now?”

“Yes. If for no other reason, to supply her with a useful explanation for your absence. I gather you don’t want to play the dutiful lover right at the moment.”

“Or ever.”

“That’s understandable, but it might shatter her if you stay out all night without a word.”

“Christ, I never even thought—”

“I’ll find a thing to tell her. And I want to look at her myself. I believe you, Peter. And I believe Anne. But I believe my own eyes more.”

“And you think you’ll be able to tell?”

“I know I will.”

He waited in Warren’s car. It took Warren less than ten minutes. He came back wearing an expression Peter had not seen before. His face was pale, with spots of color in his cheeks that looked like rouge hastily applied. And there was the trace of a smile on his lips.

“Well?”

“Yes, of course. I found just what I expected to find. Just what you and Anne described.”

“What happened?”

“Why, nothing at all.” He turned the ignition key, pulled away from the curb. “She played her part perfectly. I told her you’d had trouble at the theater. Tony Bart attacked you for no reason at all. She wasn’t surprised, it meshed perfectly with her paranoia. I explained I was organizing a committee to get you rehired, and failing that, I might be able to find you something better. She said not to worry about her and she’ll let you sleep late in the morning.”

“Where did she slip up?”

“She didn’t.” Warren ran his hand over his forehead. “She showed me the same face she’s shown you and the rest of the world. She was the old Gretchen, fully recovered, calm and collected and sensitive and aware. She met me head on with the mask perfectly in place.”

“Then how did you know it was a mask?”

“Because I’ve known her since you were in diapers, Peter. And there never was an old Gretchen. She was never like that in her life. She greeted me as if I were her dearest friend on earth. And she has hated me consistently for more years than I care to remember. That was really all I had to see.”

“Why does she hate you?”

“I’m taking you to my house,” Warren went on. “I told Gretchen we’d be there and I want you to be able to receive any phone calls she might think to make. And I have some calls of my own to make. I worked something out before. It’s shocking. It will surely be the worst thing I’ve ever done in my life and I doubt I’ll outdo myself in the years remaining to me. But I also think it will work, and I can’t think of anything else that has a shadow of a chance.”

“What is it?”

“In due time. You’ll have a part in it. You played some walk-ons before you inherited the light board, didn’t you? Were you any good?”

“I was never onstage long enough to tell.”

“Did you live those roles?”

“There was nothing to live.”

“Then you’ve answered my question. You’re not an actor.”

“I never said I was.”

“No, but you’re going to have to be one for... perhaps two days. Can you play a part, Peter?”

“I’ve been playing one for weeks.”

“But you weren’t absolutely sure it was a role. And now you are. Can you act the same as you did?”

“I think so.”

“And can you lie?”

“I guess so.”

“You won’t have lines to learn. Strictly improv. The curtain goes up tomorrow morning and the last act ends probably on Sunday.”

“I can try, Warren.”

“You may not want to. Even if you’re able, you may not be willing. We have to create an illusion, we have to write a script her part won’t play against. I had to see her face to face before I could talk myself into it.”

“Warren?”

“When we get there. Not now. I’m going to need a drink first.” “Something else. I asked you a question before.”

“I know you did.”

“You never answered it.”

“No, I didn’t. Why does she hate me? Oh, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t know. It’s common knowledge; you’d have heard it yourself except it happened — too long ago to be interesting. We were lovers once.”

“You and Gretch?”

“Is it all that hard to imagine? Yes, she and I.”

“When I was still in diapers.”

“When you weren’t long out of them. She was very beautiful then, and utterly damned. The madness was always there. It was less sharply defined but it was always there. I think I sensed it. Perhaps I did, perhaps that’s hindsight. I left her for... oh, for a man.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t say it so heavily. I had come out long before that. And I had gone through heterosexual phases before Gretchen. None after her, though. Not really.” A pause. “I had to leave her. It seemed less disloyal to leave her for a man than for another woman. I’m afraid she never saw it that way.”

“You and Gretchen.”

“She and I. The Odd Couple — we could each have played either part.”

“You still love her.”

“Yes, of course. I never stopped loving her and she never stopped hating me. There are two sorts of people in the world, those who go on loving and those who hate. It’s always seemed to me that the former half tend to be male and the latter half female, but perhaps that’s just my own special perspective coming to bear.”

“I never would have guessed any of this.”

“Probably not. And neither she nor I ever dreamed of telling you, which is something worth consideration when we have world enough and time. We have neither at the moment, thank God. We have arrived. You’ve never been here, have you? That’s Bert’s piano. It’s only a shame he can’t be here to play it for you.”

“When will he be home?”

“Tomorrow night, I think. Tonight, actually. It’s already Saturday morning. He went to New York some eighteen hours ago on a secret mission. I’m supposed to believe that an aunt of his is critically ill. I hope you can lie better than B. R. LeGrand, Peter, or our mission is doomed in advance. He’s as opaque as a broken window, and I’ll have the job of pretending shock and dismay when he comes home and announces he’s leaving me. Don’t be downcast. It falls miles short of tragedy. And don’t worry that this is all a scheme to put your fair white body next to mine.”

“Christ, Warren. I never thought that.”

“I know. Well, your virtue’s safe. All you can lose tonight is your immortal soul.”

Twenty-six

By five o’clock Saturday morning Peter was in bed at Gretchen’s side. She had not stirred when he entered the room, nor had she made any response when he stood at her side and spoke her name. He had done so on the chance that she was awake, hoping that even so she would pretend to be sleeping. After a few minutes in bed with her he relaxed. This time she was genuinely asleep. He had learned to tell the difference.

He would not sleep himself. He was keyed so tightly that sleep might have been impossible in any case, and the fifteen-milligram spansule of Dexedrine he had swallowed an hour earlier had eliminated any possibility of sleep. He felt the speed working within him now. His mind was working with the clarity that nothing else on earth could supply. He was so much smarter now, so much more capable. And that, of course, was the drug’s blessing and its curse. You could not function so perfectly without wanting that perfection to last forever, and so you piled speed on speed until your system over-amped and your mind’s legs ran out from under you.

Warren had given him a handful of the pills. They’d been discussing the role he had to play, had spent hours putting the details together and fitting them in place, until Peter mentioned that, in his few appearances onstage, he had always felt more competent and surer of himself when he was behind a little speed.

“Then by all means drop some,” Warren had said. “We need all the help we can get.”

“The thing is, I was into it pretty heavily at one time. It took a long time to crash completely. What I’m getting at is I’m a little afraid of it.”

“Can you get hooked in thirty-six hours? I really don’t think you can. I don’t doubt it will improve your performance. It would do that much if it merely increased your confidence. And it does boost IQ by around ten points in test situations.”

“I’ve heard that.”

“It also comes closer than anything else to duplicating the symptoms of schizophrenia. Have you heard that?”

“No. That explains why total speed freaks are such terrific company, wouldn’t it? That’s just what we need. I’ll turn into a temporary Gretchen.”

“Not in the dosage you’ll get. But consider the part you’ll be playing. If it gives you just the slightest nudge in that direction, you’ll be more convincing, and you’ll also be more sensitive to Gretchen herself.”

“Right. I can dig it.”

He would also be awake until it was over. He was already exhausted, running on nerves, and the drug would keep him running. It was worth it. He did not want to be asleep while Gretchen was awake. If she flipped, he wanted to be able to handle it.

Assuming that he could handle it. He was slight, and by no means strong. She was not strong herself; the weight she had put on was a great improvement over the way she had been, but she was still in far from perfect physical shape. She would have the strength of madness, and Warren had assured him that this was no myth. She would not hold back, she would act flat out with nothing held in reserve, and this would make her faster and stronger and more deadly.

Well, at least he would be awake. The drug in his bloodstream would see to that, and when it began to wear off another pill would reinforce it. And it would give him a little bit of an edge if he needed it; he, too, would be a little faster, a little stronger, a little deadlier.

But he knew he would feel better once Robin was out of her reach.

At daybreak Clem McIntyre spoke his wife’s name. She woke instantly in the bed across the room from him.

She said, “I’m right here, darling.”

“You ought to be at home, baby.”

“We both ought to be at home. It won’t be much longer. How do you feel?”

“A little better.”

“We’ll be out of here in a few days, darling. Because you’re getting better.”

He was silent for a few minutes. She eased her legs over the side of the hospital bed and got to her feet. She stood at his bedside looking down at him, then seated herself in the chair at the side of his bed.

He said, “We’ve never played games with each other, Olive. This is no time to start.”

“I thought you’d gone back to sleep.”

“Just ran out of words. I’m not getting better. I know what cirrhosis is. You don’t have to be a doctor to know what it’s all about. Every alcoholic knows the prognosis and it ain’t good. When the liver goes it’s time to make reservations at the boneyard.”

“I’ll make you a deal.”

“What?”

“I won’t talk about getting better if you won’t talk about getting worse.”

“You’re some woman.”

“Deal?”

“Deal.”

“And you’ve got a hell of a nerve anyway, Clem. Saying we never played games with each other. We played a game the first day we met.”

“A game?” He closed his eyes for a moment. His color was better today, she noticed. Not good, but better. “Yes, I guess you would have to call that a game. We both knew the rules right from the beginning.”

“And we both won.”

“And we both won. That was a good day, wasn’t it?”

“They’re all good days,” said Olive McIntyre.

When Gretchen got out of bed Peter was instantly wide awake. Until then he had coasted in a waking dream, running Warren’s plan through his mind, hearing voices speak the various lines until what he was going through was closer to dream than thought. Her movements snapped him out of all that, and he was alert.

It was a temptation to pretend to be asleep, to squeeze out an extra hour before he had to step onto the stage. He knew better. He was not at all certain that he could act the part of a sleeper well enough to fool Gretchen, and the most important thing he could do was make sure his own mask stayed in place.

He got out of bed just as she was emerging from the bathroom. He met her in the middle of the room and took her in his arms and kissed her. He had thought this would be difficult. The ease of it surprised him.

“You’re up early. I was creeping like a mouse. I thought I would let you sleep.”

“I’m surprised I slept as long as I did.”

“How long was that?”

“What time is it now? Seven thirty? It was around five when I got home, so what does that make it? Two and a half hours.”

“Christ, Petey. You want to crawl back in bed?”

“No, I couldn’t.”

“I mean, less than three hours.”

“I’m all right, though.”

“Warren told me that something went wrong at the Playhouse. Is that why you can’t sleep? Shit, baby, it’s just a job.”

“Something went wrong, all right.” He lowered his eyes and let anxiety show on his face. “Something went wrong. And it’s a lot more than a job.”

“What do you mean?”

He hesitated. “Warren and I were up the whole night,” he said. “Gretchen, it wasn’t an accident that I was fired.”

“I don’t—”

“I have to tell you this. And I’m not sure I know how.”

“You can tell me anything.”

“I know that.”

“I’m myself again, baby. I’m a very strong person, stronger than I ever knew.”

“I know you are, Gretch.” He drew a breath, “There’s a plot against us. That’s why I lost the job last night. That’s why a lot of things have happened There’s a plot and we’re the ones it’s aimed at.”

“Oh my God.”

“I just found out last night. That’s why I’m a little shaky. You’ve known all along, haven’t you?”

“For a long time, yes.”

“I wish I could have known earlier.”

She bit her lip. “I tried to tell you. But I was afraid. That you would think—”

“That it was part of what was wrong with you before?”

“Yes. And in a way it was. They made me the way was, until I learned discipline and concentration. Discipline and concentration bring control, you know.”

“I know.”

“Oh, God, Petey, I’m so relieved. I can’t tell you how relieved I am. I thought — I can’t even say it.”

“That I was in on it.”

She nodded furiously. “Yes, yes, yes. I couldn’t make myself believe that, though. I knew it was what they wanted me to believe and I knew you loved me. But I thought they might have found a way to turn you against me. They’re very clever. I thought they might have duped you.”

“They almost did.”

“We have so much to talk about now. Christ, I haven’t been able to relax in ages.” Her face clouded for a moment. “I still can’t relax, can I? That’s what they wait for. But at least there’s one person on earth I can trust. Oh, we have so much to tell each other.”

“You know more than I do. And I’ll want to hear all of it. But it had better wait. I think Robin’s waking up.”

“You don’t mean—”

“No. God, no. She’s part of their scheme, though. In fact I think it’s aimed at her almost more than at either of us.”

“The thoughts they’ve made me have about her—”

“But we can control our thoughts now, can’t we?” She nodded, beaming, and he felt like a pupil who had come up with the right answer. He took hold of her and kissed her again, and she clung to him with a fierce grip.

He said, “We’d better not talk right now. For Robin’s sake.”

“You’re right. Are you hungry, Petey?”

If he could have had an appetite, the Dexedrine had banished it. “I’m starving,” he said, and read her face just in time. He glanced toward the window, cupped a hand to his ear, put his forefinger to his lips. Then he put his arm around her waist and led her into the bathroom, closed the door, turned on the sink taps and the shower.

He whispered, “I have no appetite but I didn’t want to say it.”

“I should have thought of that. Sometimes it’s almost impossible to think of everything.”

“Well, at least there are two of us working on it now.”

“You’ll be able to eat. It’s a matter of will.”

“I know.”

“That’s the most important thing.”

“The will?”

“Eating. That’s how they get to you. They starved me to death. It’s taking forever for me to get weight back. But there’s a trick. If you concentrate, you don’t even taste the food. It goes right down and you don’t have to taste it.”

“It’s the taste that’s so awful.”

“I know. But you’ll get past that in no time, Petey, Trust me.”

“I do.”

He washed his face and brushed his teeth before turning off the sink and shower. They left the bathroom together. Robin was standing by the side of her bed rubbing sleep from her eyes. “Breakfast time!” Gretchen sang out gaily. “Hungry, Robin baby?”

“Uh-huh.”

“So’s Mommy. Mommy could eat a horse,” she said, winking at Peter.

Robin said, “Eat a horse!” and burst into giggles.

For breakfast, Peter and Gretchen between them ate nine eggs, five pancakes with syrup, a half pound of bacon, and three English muffins with butter and jam. They drank several cups of coffee with cream and sugar.

David Loewenstein took as much time cleaning his pipe as it had taken him to smoke it. He separated the bowl and stem, knocked the dottle into an ashtray, twisted pipe cleaners into various shapes and employed them in various stages of the operation. Warren watched, fascinated. It was a shame, in a way, that Loewenstein’s most obvious idiosyncrasy was one any fourth-rate actor would have invented on his own; all psychiatrists smoked pipes and they all made a ritual of it.

Loewenstein was a tall man, a little taller and a little leaner than Warren. His dark-brown beard was bushy, his hair neatly combed but shaggy in the back. Pipe ashes had burned several holes in his shirt and tie.

When he was done with the pipe he said, “I have to tell you I don’t like a single bit of this.”

“I know what you have to tell me, David.”

“A figure of speech. I am serious, Warren. I disapprove.”

“It’s not your approval I require, David.”

“Merely my cooperation.”

“I rather prefer acquiescence.”

“And I in turn could prefer a phrase like accessory before the fact. Cooperation seemed a neutral meeting place. You require my cooperation. I don’t see how I can give it.”

“Will it work, David?”

The psychiatrist made a tent of his fingertips. “Yes, of course it will work,” he said at length. “Your objective is so easily attained. It is criminally easy.” He smiled without humor. “What you are planning to do, that too is criminal.”

“It was criminal for us to make love, David.”

“You must know that there is a limit to what you can draw from that particular account.”

“I wasn’t doing that. I was merely putting the concept of criminality into some perspective.”

“And perhaps telling me at the same time that I am not a stickler for the law?”

“You’ve always been too clever for me, David.”

“Oh? And for so many years I’ve thought it was the other way around. Let it go. I grant that laws do not demand devotion. Laws are one thing. Ethics another.”

Warren rolled his eyes.

“I am not scoring debating points, my good friend. I take ethics seriously.”

“I’m not asking you to violate them.”

“But that is precisely what—”

“Merely to bend them.”

“I am afraid they are not that flexible.”

“Oh?” He noted that he’d unconsciously given the word the same inflection Loewenstein used. “Bend them and they snap?”

“I am afraid so.”

“David, there is no place for ethics in relations between friends. Don’t look at me like that. You know it’s true. Ethics exist to codify behavior between persons who are otherwise not obligated to one another. And I am not asking you to violate the Hippocratic oath. I am merely — what is it?”

“I was remembering the language of the oath. Let me think a moment. You know, I believe you are correct.”

“I know I am. I read the oath last night after I spoke with you.”

He went on, making points, countering objections, taking more time than he wanted to take. The psychiatric liked to take arguments apart with the same thoroughness with which he cleaned his pipes.

Finally Warren broke in. “David, let’s shorten this. There’s only one question that applies. Is there another way of doing what has to be done?”

“Speaking as a psychiatrist—”

“No. Speak as yourself.”

“I am a psychiatrist. It’s difficult not to speak as one.”

“It’s easier if you don’t attach that preface to your speech.”

“Hell. Shit. I could commit her.”

“With no firsthand knowledge of the case?”

“Yes. It is improper but I would go that far with you. It would not stand up. But it would not have to stand up. Once she’s in there long enough for them to look at her—”

“Your colleagues are not universally competent. I’m only repeating what you’ve said to me. And simply committing her leaves too many loose ends. We have been over them, David. You are stalling.”

Loewenstein picked up his pipe, took it apart, put it back together again.

Warren said, “It’s a lovely briar, David.”

“Mmmm. Hell.” He put the-pipe down and glared at it, then heaved a sigh. “Go over it again,” he said. “Not the situation. Just what you expect of me.” And after Warren had finished he said, “Not my car.”

“You could report it as stolen.”

“In the first place, no. In the second place, the whole idea is excessively dramatic, it risks more than it seeks to safeguard, it’s an antiballistic missile system built to protect a dog kennel. In the—”

“You have a talent for metaphor.”

“And you for obfuscation. In the third place, no again.”

“Then the license plates.”

“I do not want to be connected with this, Warren, and you seem to fail to understand that. No one will check your license plates.”

“Swear to it?”

“Damn you. How am I to drive around without plates? And I intend to drive my whole family to Philadelphia and spend the entire day in the company of friends.”

“I was going to suggest that.”

“Well?”

“I’ll switch plates with you.”

“And if I’m stopped? And if the plates do not match with the registration?”

“You left your registration at home.”

“I want my plates back on my car by Monday morning.”

“Certainly. And drive carefully, David.”

“Go to hell.”

“David? Don’t you have a second car? Couldn’t you use one car while I use the plates of—” He let the sentence trail off, entranced at the furious scowl that etched itself into his friend’s features. Then, before the scowl had a chance to fade, the psychiatrist erupted in laughter fiercer than the scowl. He roared.

“Schemes,” he said finally. “Plans, mechanisms, fucking clevernesses. The wise men of Chelm who could tell the horses apart because the black one was an inch and a half taller than the white one.”

“Drive carefully just the same,” Warren said.

“Peter? There’s one thing that bothers me.”

“What’s that, love?”

“Warren Ormont.”

“He was the one who explained the plot to me, Gretchen. We can trust him.”

“He might have had a reason. They’re unbelievably devious, you know.”

“I know, but not Warren.”

“I’ve known him longer than you, Peter. I’ve had my bitter experiences with Warren Ormont.”

He worked on it for a minute, then said, “I know about all that, Gretch.”

“You do?”

“Yes.”

“He told you?”

“Last night he had to. I’m almost afraid to tell you the rest of it.”

“I want to know, Petey.”

“All right. When Warren stopped seeing you, it wasn’t because he wanted to.” Her eyes were wide, her mouth half-open. “He was being used.”

“You don’t mean—”

“I’m afraid so. They turned him against you, Gretch.”

“But that was years ago. That was so long ago. You mean it’s been going on that long? It was going on for years before I had any idea. They must have known about Robin ages before she was born. My God, how can you fight them when they have resources like that?”

“But we’re learning more and more about them, Gretch.”

“Yes!” Her forefinger stabbed the air. “Yes! That’s right! We’re growing stronger and they’re beginning to weaken.” Her expression softened. “But poor Warren. He must have just found out. I’ve been hateful to him for years. It’s all so awful.”

“You drew strength from that hatred through the years.”

“That’s very true.”

“And now he’s on our side.”

“Oh, thank God for Warren,” she said.

At twenty minutes after eleven Sully Jaeger got up from the table and yawned. He said, “I feel like the end of the day and it’s just the beginning.”

“If you weren’t a sex maniac you wouldn’t be tired in the mornings.”

“Yeah, and if you weren’t a sex maniac, I wouldn’t be a sex maniac. And if it’s a choice between that and being wide awake in the mornings then the hell with being wide awake in the mornings.” He yawned. “I guess I’ll get over there. Saturday it starts early. Everybody has to be good and drunk before it’s Sunday. You got any plans for the day?”

“No, why?”

“Just curious.”

“No plans for the day. I was thinking I might go for a ride this evening.”

“I was wondering if you might.”

“You sound pleased.”

“I’m always pleased.”

“But with something else mixed in usually.”

“Not today.” He yawned again, stretching his arms high overhead. “What is it the kids say? I’m getting my head straight. That what they say?”

“I think so.”

“So it’s nuts to hate something and love it at the same time, and if you can’t stop loving it and loving it makes you feel better than hating it, the thing to do is stop hating it, am I right or am I right?”

“You’re right.”

“See? I’m just a big kid getting his head straight. I’ll be up when you come home. In more ways than one. You better have a good story.”

“I’ll take notes.”

“I just thought what I’m going to buy you. What’s open tomorrow? Major’s? I think I’ll take a run up to Major’s tomorrow.”

“What for?”

“No, I’m not telling. The idea just came to me and if you can’t figure it out you’ll have to wait until tomorrow to find out.”

“Fucker.”

“Cunt. Give me a kiss good-bye, cunt.”

“Gretch, I’m worried about Robin. The next few days are going to make the difference. The plan Warren and I worked out is our one chance of ending this thing once and for all. And you know what that means.”

“It means we can start to live for the first time in our lives.”

“It also means they’re going to get desperate. And where will they strike?”

“Oh, God. Maybe I shouldn’t have let her play with those children. What defense can a child’s mind have against them?”

“She’s not safe here, either. And we’re going to have to have freedom of movement, and we can’t risk bringing her with us.”

“Let me think, Petey.”

“There is one answer,” he said. He put his finger his lips and got pencil and paper. He wrote: “Warren’s house. They can’t penetrate it.”

She snatched the pencil and wrote: “But who will stay with her?”

“Anne Tedesco.”

“She’s one of them! Just yesterday.”

He took the pencil from her. “I know about that,” he said aloud. He wrote: “She told me what happened. You handled her perfectly. She was a minor dupe just as you thought, and you brought her to her senses.”

She read this and said, “You would have been proud of me, baby.”

“I’m damn proud of you,” he said, while he wrote: “Anne wants to make up for what she did. She will watch Robin at Warren’s. I will take her to Anne now. It’s all arranged.”

She took this in and frowned in concentration. She reached for the pencil but he shook his head. He was going bananas already with the fucking pencil, his hand felt as though it had been tied in knots, and she was having so much fun playing counterspy she would probably go on passing notes all day.

He pointed to the window, indicating that what he was going to say was for the benefit of other ears. He said, “You know what I think I’ll do? I’ll go over to the Raparound for a bite. I’m still hungry.” She nodded approval at that one. “Maybe I’ll see if Robin wants to keep me company. And then maybe I’ll see Tony and find out if I can get my job back.”

A few more exchanges and he was on his way out of there. She called him just as he was drawing the door, shut. She was at the table writing furiously.

“I just wanted to kiss you good-bye,” she said. They kissed, and then she showed him what she had written: “While you’re gone I’ll burn this and flush the ashes down the toilet.”

It was a relief to be out of the apartment, a further relief to be out of the building. But it was not until he had picked up Robin and turned her over to Warren and Anne that he felt the tension drain off. Only then did he realize what a strain he had been under.

And the extraordinary thing was that it had not seemed such a strain at the time. There was something almost enjoyable about it. And that, of course, was the most horrible part of all.

It was a game. Gretchen played it like a game with the deadly seriousness of a child at play, played it like a game despite the absolute reality it held for her. And he, too, played it as a game and did so with the same intensity. It was real for him, too, but their two realities had nothing in common. She at least could devote herself completely to the world she lived in. He had to match her commitment to that fantasy world in a way that would never arouse her suspicions — and suspicion was a way of life to her — and while he did so he had to keep in touch with reality.

Whatever in hell reality was.

His mind began to play little games with him. Paranoia was tempting; he had never before realized how seductive it could be. Once you bought the first premise you could fit absolutely anything into your theory. The villains could be anyone — the Communists, the Elders of Zion, the Martians, anyone at all. People who did one thing were villains or dupes. People who did the opposite were playing along in order to deceive you. It had been startlingly easy for him to revise her fantasies along the lines he wanted to. And he had not by any means anticipated all her questions and reservations. She’d been throwing him curves all morning, and he’d gotten wood on every last one of them.

It scared him that he was able to do this. Did his mind work that much like hers?

And it upset him that everything he did worked primarily not because of any brilliance of his, but because of her trust in him. She trusted him. He fought his way out of those thoughts. It was the speed talking, he knew. There was some truth in there that he could worry about later, but the speed was turning things in on themselves, and that was no good.

He heard the noon whistle. The spansules were supposed to deliver a balanced dose of speed over an eight-hour period. He had taken one at four, so it was time to take another. Of course the eight-hour thing was approximate. And if you took them too closely together, they could jam up on you, and if you waited too long, they could drop you and leave you strung out.

He swallowed a pill. Twelve o’clock, the end of the longest morning of his life. He could kill an hour now, maybe a little more than that. He could explain that long an absence in any of a hundred plausible ways.

But there was no way to make an hour last forever. Sooner or later he would have to climb those stairs and be with her again, and he wasn’t sure he could do it.

Twenty-seven

When the nurse came to give Clem his bath, Olive excused herself. “I don’t know if I dare leave the two of you alone,” she said, “but there’s a call I have to make.” She turned, a smile on her lips, and left the hospital room.

A young nurse’s aide passed her in the corridor and almost dropped her bedpan. What she witnessed was transformation that looked like a camera trick worked by means of time-lapse photography. An attractive middle-aged woman emerged from a room, shoulders squared, eyes bright, face radiant. In an instant she changed into a hopeless old woman. Her shoulders slumped, her eyes were vacant and dull, her face was lined with grief, and she walked wearily as if with great effort.

At the pay telephone Olive brought herself back to life again. She dropped a coin into the slot, dialed a number. An operator asked for more money, and she deposited another coin.

When Linda answered, she said briskly, “Olive, Linda. How’s business?”

Business, it seemed, was going well enough. “Then I won’t keep you,” she said. “I’m still at Doylestown General. He’s coming along nicely, but I’ll be here another week at the least. Just carry on in your usual capable fashion. Oh, there is one thing. Don’t sell any of Clem’s paintings.”

“It’s good you told me. Someone almost bought one about an hour ago. He was going to bring his wife back after dinner, but I’ll tell him it’s not for sale.”

“No, don’t do that. That’s not what I meant.” Her voice almost broke; she stopped herself in time and waited for a moment. “Not what I meant at all. I want you to give them away.”

“Pardon me?”

“Whenever anyone admires one, give it away free of charge. Only if the admiration is serious. Take the tags off, and if anyone asks the price find out if they’re really interested, and then make them a gift of whatever it is. Just one to a customer, though.”

“I think I understand. Just the ones on the wall or the ones in back as well?”

“All of them. There are only a few in back.” She chuckled. “At these prices they ought to move quickly. There’s a key to my house in the lockbox in back. Could you do me a favor? If you start to run out of canvases, take a run over to my place and replenish the supply. Start with the unframed canvases in the little room off the kitchen. Those should last out the week, but if they don’t, you can help yourself to the ones on the walls downstairs.”

“Won’t you want to keep some of them?”

“My favorites are upstairs on the second floor. I’d like to see the others given the widest possible exposure.”

“Olive—”

“I can’t talk anymore, Linda. You’ll do that for me, won’t you? Thank you.”

Her hand shook as she replaced the receiver. She walked back down the corridor as she had walked to the phone, slowly, wearily, a picture of resignation. But another transformation occurred before she reached the door of their room, and it was as if the film the nurse’s aide had seen were run in reverse. She entered smiling and had already thought of a bright and cheerful opening line.

Warren folded the piece of paper and tucked it into the inside breast pocket of his jacket. He drank some coffee, checked his watch, looked across the table at Peter.

“You had no trouble getting it?”

“She got the point right away. If they had Robin’s birth certificate we were in deep trouble. I’m glad she didn’t ask why. I guess I would have come up with something but God knows what.”

Warren nodded.

“Then she couldn’t find it. She was looking in the wrong drawer and she figured out that they already had the fucking thing and was sure we were going to be completely shafted. You want to hear something crazy? She had me terrified. I was dreaming up all kinds of shit — that they really had it and there really was a conspiracy—”

“Good grief.”

“I don’t think I ever really believed that. I was just afraid I was going to start believing it any minute. And I also thought she saw through everything and was stringing me along and purposely not finding the birth certificate. I may be more paranoid than she is.”

“But she did find it. That’s a blessing. Robin is quite content to be with Anne. A remarkably agreeable girl.”

“Well, she knows Anne. That helps.”

“I was speaking of Anne, though Robin is agreeable, too, I’ll admit. Anne’s rather extraordinary. I’ve told her everything, by the way. I saw no reason to keep any of it back. As far as Danny’s concerned, she went to her doctor, and he sent her to a clinic for tests, and I gave her a ride there in my car. So there are four of us who know about this. You and I and Anne and the good Dr. Loewenstein.”

“Will anyone else have to know?”

“I sincerely hope not. It would simplify my life enormously if Tony could know, but nothing on earth would persuade me to tell him. Instead he simply thinks the world’s gone mad. Your performance last night, and now I’m missing rehearsal. And I never miss rehearsals. I simply gave no explanation at all. They can put anyone up here to read my lines off a script. It’s no great hardship.” He grimaced. “But I can’t miss tonight’s performance. Thank all Gods there’s no matinee tomorrow.” He checked his watch again. “I think I’ll go see how the girls are getting along. And closet myself in my bedroom to practice my couchside manner. You’re holding up well, aren’t you?”

“Am I? I guess I am.”

“It gets easier as it goes along. Like sodomy. Pay for my coffee, will you? I’m off.”

She was wrapping a painting when she saw Tanya outside in the hallway. The young actress was walking arm in arm with a tall boy with long hair and a Zapata mustache. Linda had seen them together before.

The painting’s new owner was reluctant to leave. She kept saying how willing she would have been to pay for it. “I feel so guilty,” she kept saying. “Could I buy one of the others? This is my favorite, but there are others I like as well.”

Linda explained that she couldn’t take money for any of them and that they were one to a customer. The woman assured her that she hadn’t been trying to make off with another free one and ultimately left saying that she would donate the price of the painting to charity.

The shop was empty of customers, and Linda was grateful. She sat down and put her head in her hand. She thought she knew why Olive wanted her to give the paintings away and only wished it were not so depressing. It would have been bad enough if people would just take the things and be grateful, but they always wanted to talk about it and she couldn’t bring herself to explain the situation.

On a better day she would have invented a story. But this was not one of her better days. There had been few enough of those lately. Everything got to her.

Tanya, for example. Tanya had a boyfriend, and that almost certainly meant that Tanya had a lover; the girl was hardly the sort given to long courtship or platonic relationships. Bill Donatelli had been replaced while his body was still warm.

Well, she admitted, that was not quite true. And Tanya was not yet living with the new one. She was still sleeping nights in her room at the Shithouse. She had moved back in after that one night in Linda’s bed — and how she could have managed that was another thing Linda did not understand. In a while Tanya might move in with her new lover, or he might move in with her, but for the time being Tanya slept alone.

But why did this bother her? A new love was just what Tanya needed, and it was healthy that she was able to accept it. Linda had no loyalty to Bill Donatelli’s memory. So why should she find the sight of the two of them, arm in arm and obviously delighted with one other, so personally disturbing?

She thought of Tanya and Bill and Olive and Clem. She thought of love and death and how the two seemed to go together in a hideous progression. Love and Death walked arm in arm, as obviously delighted with each other as Tanya and the boy with the mustache.

The phone rang. Hugh. He had just finished work for the day. The book was going well; it was going better than that; he was just pages from the end and would finish it tomorrow. And a premature celebration was just what he was in the mood for, and would she have dinner with him?

“I can’t,” she said; “I have to work tonight.”

Well, how about a late dinner? Or just a few drinks after she closed for the night?

“I’m exhausted already. I wouldn’t be good company.”

But there was something he wanted to discuss with her, something that wouldn’t work at all over the phone. Couldn’t he just see her for half an hour? He could even come to the shop if she wanted.

She gritted her teeth. People just wouldn’t leave you alone. Over the telephone, face to face, anywhere. They wouldn’t leave you alone. You couldn’t give them free paintings and shove them out the door. You couldn’t turn down a dinner or a drink or a marriage proposal, couldn’t get them off the phone.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice firmer than she had intended. “Not tonight. It’s impossible; everything is impossible.”

She broke the connection before he could force any more words into her head. There were too many words there already. She couldn’t handle the ones she had.

She didn’t want to marry him. She didn’t want to be his wife or Karen’s mother. She didn’t want to be anybody’s anything.

People never left you alone.

“Wasn’t that a dynamite dinner, Petey?”

“Just sensational.”

“I’m still a little hungry, though. Maybe we could go out for a milk shake. Would you like that?”

“Well—”

“A milk shake’s just what I want.”

A milk shake was not just what he wanted. What he wanted, what he really wanted, was to go somewhere private and vomit up the mountain of food he had just finished stuffing down his throat. It would be such an overwhelming sensual pleasure to vomit. He had never before appreciated the potential enjoyment of nausea.

“Then milk shakes are what we’re going to have,” he said. “Let’s go someplace good.”

Someplace with a men’s room. If he could get to it first, he could make room for the milk shake.

Karen came down the stairs and pulled up short when she saw her father. He was sitting in the living room with the telephone receiver in one hand, and he looked as though he had been sitting in that position for some time.

She said, “Daddy?”

He looked up, his eyes blank for a moment. “Oh,” he said. “Hello there.”

“Hello. Is something the matter?”

“Just lost in thought. Brown-study time.” He became aware that he was holding the telephone receiver, looked at it, hung it up. “Maybe something is the matter. I don’t know. I was talking to Linda and I didn’t like the way she sounded.”

She listened as he recounted the conversation.

“I’m a little worried about her,” he added. “She didn’t sound right at all. She seemed very troubled. I wonder if I shouldn’t drive over there and make sure she’s all right.”

“From what she said—”

“She said not to, I know, but it might be right for me to ignore that. Sometimes people say things in the hope that they’ll be ignored.”

“I don’t know if I should say anything or not.”

“What do you mean, kitten?”

“I don’t know. If it’s my place to say anything.”

“Please do.”

She hesitated, working things out in her mind first. She said, “Well, I dropped in on Linda awhile ago. I stop in and see her every once in awhile when I’m in the neighborhood. And we got to talking.”

“And?”

“She told me not to say anything. What it is, she likes you very much. But she doesn’t want to get serious. She didn’t say it that way but that was what she was saying, if that makes any sense.”

“It makes a lot of sense.”

“She doesn’t want to be rushed. She isn’t ready for it.”

“She said that when I first started seeing her.”

“And she... well, she’s also seeing somebody else. She didn’t come right out and say it but that’s what’s happening.”

“Oh.”

“I don’t think she’s serious about him or anything. I think she’s seeing him mostly because she doesn’t want to be seeing just one man. I’m just guessing, but... I guess I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“Well, I’m glad you did. I’m very buoyant right now because of the book and it’s made it hard for me to judge things properly in other areas.” He picked his pipe off the table. “I’ll be finishing it tomorrow.”

“Hey, that’s terrific!”

He brightened. “It is, isn’t it? I could have been done a long time ago, you know. I usually just get a first draft done and go back to it later. But this time I kept thinking of things I wanted to change and reworking earlier stuff.”

“I can’t wait to read it.”

“You won’t have long to wait. Hey, you know something, kitten? I still feel like a premature celebration. How about if you put on something beautiful and I’ll buy you a fancy dinner?”

“I had a sandwich while you were working.”

“Understandable. So let me have a sandwich myself and we’ll go out and do the town. What there is of it.”

She chewed her lip. “Well, I sort of have a date.”

“Just sort of?”

“There’s this girl, I was going to go over to her house for a few hours. Oh, there’s no reason not to say it. It’s Melanie Jaeger.”

“I didn’t know you were friendly with her.”

“I run into her in town now and then, and lately we’ve gotten to talking. She’s sort of interesting. Now that the summer people are gone there aren’t that many fascinating heads in town.” She hesitated. “I could call her up and tell her to make it some other time, I suppose.”

“No, don’t do that.”

“The thing is, I’d rather celebrate after you finish the book. And after I read it.”

“You may not feel like celebrating then.” He got to his feet. “But I’ll hold you to it,” he said. “You can read the book tomorrow afternoon and tomorrow night we’ll go out for dinner. Deal?”

“Will it be done by then?”

“I’m going to finish it tonight,” he said. “I’m not going to be able to unwind unless I drink too much, and I don’t feel like it. The only way I’ll get the book out of my head is by finishing it. Is there arty coffee?”

“I’ll make some. I’ll bring it to you.”

Hours later she got out of Melanie’s bed and took a shower. She toweled herself dry, then called out, “Hey, is it okay to use your toothbrush?”

Melanie burst out laughing.

“I’m hip, it’s a terrible question. Which one is yours?”

“The yellow one.”

As she was dressing, Melanie said, “I’m not going to brush my teeth. I want him to taste you on me.”

“Wow, that’s kinky. But you weren’t going to tell him about us.”

“Oh.”

“I mean, do what you want.”

“No, I’ll have to make up something.”

“Look, tell him the whole thing but make me some stranger you picked up in a gay bar in Trenton or something. Describe me and everything, but make me someone you don’t know and never saw before or since. You let me pick you up and you brought me back here and we made it in your bed, the whole trip just the way it happened.”

“And then you used my toothbrush.”

“Right.”

“You are devious,” Melanie said.

“I’m more devious than I used to think. It almost scares me how devious I am.”

Warren drove directly home from the theater, brushing off several cast members who wanted him to join them for a drink. By the time he got to his house Robin had been sleeping for hours and Anne Tedesco was yawning. He talked to her long enough to learn that everything was all right, then sent her off to bed.

So Bert’s entrance, fifteen minutes later, could not have been better timed. He was sitting in a corner of the living room when Bert walked in, and after one glance he knew that his assumption had been correct; Bert was leaving him, and with any encouragement whatsoever Bert would tell him so tonight.

“The prodigal returns,” he said. “I hope Aunt Elizabeth is feeling better.”

“She’s going to be all right.”

“It must be quite a change for her, though.” Bert looked puzzled. “A whole identity crisis,” he explained. “Her name was Aunt Harriet the last time we discussed her.”

“That’s sneaky, Warren.”

“That’s sneaky? Physician, heal thyself.”

“I was going to tell you. I need a drink.”

“You can fill my glass while you’re at it. Unless they taught you at women’s lib to stop waiting on men.”

“You don’t have to be a bitch, Warren.”

“I know. We can be civilized.”

“It’s not what you think.”

“Oh?”

“Not entirely what you think.”

Warren let him tell it. A week ago an agent from New York had heard him play at the Inn. The agent had told him he was wasting himself, that he could be playing decent clubs in New York, making better money and being heard by influential people. And of course Bert had given him an unequivocal no at first, but after some thought he had realized that his career was vitally important to him and that he did not want to spend the rest of his life playing music for Bucks County drunks to talk over.

“I gather there’s a qualitative difference between Bucks County drunks and Manhattan drunks,” Warren said. “No, don’t let me interrupt you. Carry on.”

So he had called the agent, and the agent had arranged auditions Friday afternoon and evening and this afternoon, and he already had one booking and the promise of a second. And he knew how Warren felt about New York, and of course he couldn’t possibly commute, and their relationship had about run its course anyway, and—

“So it’s not another man,” Warren said.

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

“You didn’t ball anybody in New York.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“I assume your new agent is a woman.”

“No, a man. What has that got—”

“A heterosexual man, however.”

“Cut the shit, will you. Warren?”

He stared moodily into his glass. Without looking up, he said, “When are you moving?”

“I was thinking of leaving tomorrow.”

“Why, that’s a rush engagement, isn’t it? Audition one day and start work the next. Your agent’s a whiz.”

“I have to get an apartment, I have to get settled.”

“One must get settled. You’ll be leaving your present employers high and dry, won’t you? Maybe you could call them now and let them know.”

“Well, I—”

“Because they won’t be open tomorrow.”

“Goddamn you, Warren.”

“When did you give notice? The night your nelly agent propositioned you?”

“The next day.”

“That’s splendid. And I have a splendid idea. Why don’t you pack a few things and fly away? I’ll ship the rest as soon as I have an address for you. Or do you already have an address?”

“No, I’ll be living alone.”

“Poor thing. Is there a place you can stay tonight?”

“You cocksucker. Yes, there’s a place where I can stay tonight. And I don’t have to pack a few things because I had the foresight to pack a few things yesterday because it occurred to me that you might pull this sort of shit. It’s just as easy for things to end pleasantly, Warren, but you never forget you’re an actor. You always have to play to an audience even when you’re all by yourself in an empty theater.”

“Wait a minute.”

“What for?”

“For nothing, I suppose. I don’t know. I’m sorry, Bert. It hurts a bit so I try to hurt back. Childish.”

“I’m sorry, too.”

“I’ll tell you what. Let’s neither of us be sorry. It was fun while it lasted, and I’ll always settle for that as an epitaph. For a life or for a love affair. It was fun while it lasted. There’s just one problem. Where do you drop the curtain?”

“You just lost me.”

“We’ve already established that, silly. No, it goes back to what you said about my weakness for the dramatic. The charge is true enough. But don’t you see, it’s so much more awkward to part on good terms. Neither party ever knows when to get off the stage. Much simpler with a lot of door slamming and name calling. Still, we ought to be able to work something out. I think I have it. You play the piano. And sing, I do want to hear you sing. I’ll miss that. You play and sing, and I’ll sit in a dark corner listening to you. Before you quite finish I’ll have gone upstairs, and when you finish you may steal off into the night.”

Bert started to say something, then changed his mind. He seated himself at the piano and studied the keys. Softly he said, “What would you like to hear?”

“Oh, are you taking requests tonight?”

“Just so long as it’s not ‘Melancholy Baby.’”

“Lord. No, you’re better far than I at matching songs with moods. Something that achieves sorrow without reaching slush.”

“Smiling through tears? That effect?”

“Winking through tears.”

He knew it from the first bars of the introduction and thought that Bert had chosen wisely. “Just One of Those Things.” Yes, that was right, every line in it was right. It described a romance that burned itself out quickly, and theirs had been neither that intense nor that brief, and yet the song was singularly appropriate.

As the bridge ended, he got to his feet and slipped silently from the room. He waited out of sight on the stairs and listened to the song’s last verse:

He stood motionless on the staircase until he heard the front door drawn quietly shut. The Volkswagen engine caught, and he listened to Bert driving off. Then he climbed the stairs and went to his room.

He had wanted to make sure Bert did not stay the night. Had he done so, he would have learned that Anne and Robin were there. While his knowledge would have been dangerous only in the sense that any unnecessary complication was a hazard, that had been reason enough to make the break an immediate one.

And so he had pretended pain and bitterness that he had not felt at all. It was not a lack of feeling for Bert, he knew. It was simply that he was under too much other pressure to feel much.

Of course he had shed tears during the song. A statue could not have done less. It was fun while it lasted; and it was just one of those things. They both did nicely as epitaphs. For a love affair or for a life.

Hugh sat looking at the typewriter. There was only one more page to write, and he knew precisely what it would say. He had written it dozens of times in his head in the course of the past few months, had mentally edited and shaped it over and over. Now all he had to do was put the words on the page.

When he began to type, the words came slowly. He measured each phrase. He wanted to get it just right, and at the same time he was reluctant to write the words at all, because once they were written the book would be finished. He wanted to be finished and yet he did not want to be finished. He had thought in the past that it was not unlike sex — you wanted to come, but you didn’t want to come right away. He wrote:

And so it was over. A man had died, and living men had opened the earth for him and closed it over him. A life which had begun at one specific point in time had ended now at another specific point in time. Lives, like books, have beginnings and endings, first chapters and last chapters.

But the endings of human lives lack the precision of the endings of books. If death is a last chapter, there is still an epilogue to come.

For even physical death is a gradual process. The body itself dies piecemeal. Hair and fingernails continue to grow for a time, their functions like the reflexive twitching of a headless snake. Until they too are done.

A man had died, and was dead. But two women had known him, each in her particular way. Neither knew him as he had known himself. Perhaps their knowledge of him had great gaps in it. Perhaps in certain ways it exceeded his knowledge of himself.

But all that matters is that they did know him. And as long as either of them is alive, the man will not be utterly dead. It is not merely that he will live metaphorically in memory. His life — and now the event of his death — is a fundamental component of each of these two women. The man he had been is a part of all that they are or will be. Their lives are his epilogue.

Of course the converse is just as true. Now that the man is dead, neither the wife nor the daughter will ever be wholly alive.

He took the final page from the typewriter and read it through. It did not seem quite right, but he knew that it would not have seemed quite right no matter how he had done it.

He looked at his watch. He decided that it was not too late to call Linda and was reaching for the telephone when he remembered that it was either far too late or far too early to call Linda Robshaw. She had seemed quite important to him for quite some time, but now that he had finished the book he was unsure if her importance had been more than temporary.

He fixed himself a drink. He had finished the book, and he ought to be able to tell someone as much. He wanted to talk to someone but there was no one he wanted to talk to. Mary Fradin would be glad to know that the book was done, but there was no earthly reason to call her in the middle of the night. Karen was at Melanie Jaeger’s house and he did not want to call her there. And who else was there? Anita? There had been times, shortly after the divorce, when he had had to fight the desire to call her. He had outgrown the urge long ago, and she came to mind only to complete the list.

The women in his life. And did they know him as the dead man had been known by his wife and daughter? No, he was not going to think about such things now. There were many personal truths in this book, truths he had not known until he wrote them into his consciousness, and he had carefully held them on the edge of thought while the book evolved. The Edge of Thought. Yes, he liked that title, liked it far more now than before.

He was working on a second drink when Karen came home. Her enthusiasm took the edge off his own depression. She insisted on reading the manuscript immediately, wouldn’t wait until morning.

“It’s not that late,” she said. “I’m not the least bit sleepy. I couldn’t sleep now, not knowing it’s done and just waiting to be read.”

She had a drink with him first. He told her she could read in the study where the light was good.

“I was never allowed in there,” she said. She kissed him suddenly, her arms tight around his neck. “I’m so proud of you.”

“Will you still be proud if the book’s lousy?”

“I know it’s not.”

“Well, I’m going to bed,” he said.

She closed herself in the study and he made one more drink and took it upstairs. He did not want to go to sleep. He wanted to sit downstairs and wait while she read the book. His mind was full of thoughts, rolling in and falling back like waves.

His mind was also exhausted, weary at the end of a half year’s labor. Its hyperactivity now was an illusion, like the growth of hair and fingernails after death.

He finished his drink and got into bed, and it was not long before the thoughts softened into dreams.

Twenty-eight

On Sunday morning the sun rose into a cloudless blue sky. Shortly thereafter, Mrs. Kleinschmidt left her small apartment and cooked herself a light breakfast in Hugh Markarian’s kitchen. She did not prepare breakfast for the mister or little Karen; neither had stirred by the time her son arrived to drive her to church.

While Mrs. Kleinschmidt ate her light breakfast, Peter and Gretchen were devouring a huge one. Gretchen had slept poorly. Peter had not slept at all, and he went to the bathroom during the meal and swallowed a spansule, first chewing a few of the bitter time-release grains of Dexedrine to put them more immediately to work. He had two spansules left, and they would last the day.

Warren slept longer than the others, waking to the sound of Robin amusing herself at Bert’s piano. For a brief moment he thought that it was Bert he was hearing and that something had gone horribly wrong with Bert’s musical ability. He reminded himself that Bert was gone and ultimately guessed the source of the cacophony. Robin had an uncanny ability to strike precisely those chords which made his head vibrate, and his head was vibrating badly enough as it was. He dropped two Alka-Seltzer tablets into a glass of water, waited interminably for them to dissolve, and used them to wash down two Excedrins.

A glance out the window told him that it was a beautiful day. He couldn’t imagine why it should be. When his headache began to recede he picked up the telephone and placed a long-distance call.

Linda Robshaw was looking at her own telephone while Warren was using his. She had just awakened for the third time. Twice before she had drawn the bedsheet up over her and burrowed back to sleep. Now she was more completely awake, and it seemed as though she ought to get up and do something. She glanced at the phone and remembered her conversation the day before with Hugh, frowning at the memory of her own part in it. She had been purposely unkind, and in a way that was difficult to understand after the fact. She ought to call him now. There ought to be something she could say.

Ah, but it was easier to remain in bed, easier to close her eyes against the light, easier to make a cocoon of the bedsheet and huddle in the womblike warmth of her own body heat. Soon it would be time to get up, to dress, to eat, to open the shop, time to give away paintings. In the meantime her bed was warm and secure.

Gretchen said, “I wish I understood more of the plan. Oh, you don’t have to tell me. We can’t talk about it now.”

“And it’s easier if you don’t know the details, Gretch.”

“It sounds as though you don’t trust me.”

“You know that’s not it.”

“I know.” She chewed a fingernail. “You and Warren will be with me. That will make it easier, won’t it? I don’t think any power on earth can stop the three of us together.”

“Not as long as we stick together, Gretch.”

“I wonder what’s keeping him.” She went to the window, eased the shade aside a few inches and squinted. “I don’t see his car.”

“He’ll honk the horn when he’s here. You remember the signal.”

“A long, three shorts, and a Jong.”

“That’s it.”

“Dah-dit-dit-dit-dah.” “Right.”

“I wouldn’t forget that, Petey.”

When the horn sounded she took his arm, and he led her out of the room and down the stairs. Warren was parked in front with the motor running. Peter held the door for her and sat beside her. They all rode in front with Gretchen in the middle, and in-obedience to the finger at Warren’s lips they did not speak until they had cleared the outskirts of town.

Then Warren let his features relax in a smile. “We can talk now,” he said. “We’re out of their range.”

“Warren, you look so different. Your hair! And when did you grow that beard?”

He did look very different, so much so that Peter would have had difficulty recognizing him. His wig and neatly trimmed brown beard completely altered the shape of his face. Heavy horn-rimmed glasses replaced his usual rimless ones.

“I am ze master of ze disguise,” he said. With one hand he removed the beard. “You see? A few bits of adhesive tape hold it in place. Here beneath it all is the Warren you know and love, and now” — he fixed the beard in place once again — “we are disguised once more. You’ll excuse me if I don’t remove the wig, I trust.”

“What a perfect disguise. Petey didn’t even mention it. Isn’t it super, baby?”

He agreed that it was super. Warren went on driving, heading south and east, keeping up a running conversation with Gretchen. In a burlesque Viennese accent he told her he was Dr. David Loewenstein, the famous Austrian mystic and psychic medium. Gretchen played along, mimicking his accent, while Peter gratefully let the two of them handle the conversation. It was a pleasure to put his mind in neutral and coast for awhile. It would have been an even greater pleasure not to be in the car at all, and he had tried to find reasons not to go along. Warren could have taken her by himself, he had told himself from time to time. But he had never managed to make himself believe this and had not even attempted to sell it to Warren. No, he had to be there. He just hoped he would be able to handle it.

At least he was past the periodic touches of mania that had afflicted him the previous afternoon. Unwelcome thoughts still came to him, questions occurred that would have troubled him, but he was having less difficulty pushing them aside now. He was growing accustomed to the drug, remembering from earlier times how to use it and how to coast with it. And he was growing similarly accustomed to the role he was playing, managing at once to fit it comfortably while holding a portion of his mind apart from it.

On the edge, of course, there was the specter of what they were doing. This would not go away. On the contrary, it drew closer with every turn of the car’s wheels. He dealt with it by keeping himself strictly in present time and banishing thoughts of the future.

It was all as Gretchen said, a matter of will and concentration.

Warren stopped the car at a gas station. He told attendant to fill the tank, then excused himself to go the lavatory.

First, though, he placed a telephone call. When he’d been connected to the person he had spoken to earlier, he said, “This is Dr. David Loewenstein. I’m about ten minutes from you at the moment. My patient is presently cooperative.” His voice was neither his own nor the comic-opera voice he’d used with Gretchen, but was quite similar in pitch and inflection to the psychiatrist’s.

“Her delusion is being supported and she does not know our true destination,” he went on. “I wanted to make sure you would have restraint available. In light of her history I can’t overemphasize that.”

He listened for a few moments, then rang off. In the washroom he took off the false beard, peeled off the bits of adhesive tape, and fixed the beard properly in place with spirit gum. He swallowed two more Excedrins before returning to the car.

“Well, this is it,” Warren said. He swung the car through the iron gates and along the narrow macadam road. “We have arrived.”

Peter heard the words and looked at his own hands, surprised at their steadiness. Warren had spoken in a voice brimming with cheer and anticipation, but Peter heard them echo in his mind in another tone entirely, one of bitter resignation. Well, this is it. We have arrived.

It was not what he had expected. No guards on the gate, none of the stark gloom he had pictured. The general feel of the place was that of a college campus.

There had been a sign, though, and Gretchen had seen it. Now, as they passed between tall trees, she said, “This is the State Hospital.”

“Of course it is. And ze internationally famous Dr. Loewenstein is expected at any moment. Everything’s right on schedule, Gretchen.”

“But why are we here?”

“Just think about it,” he said. “How can they possibly get to us here?”

She thought about it, and Peter read the uncertainty in her face. The car reached the end of the narrow road, and he looked out at a broad expanse of asphalt surrounded by a rolling lawn. At the far end of the parking lot were the buildings, uniform piles of darkened red brick. He tried to keep from noticing the iron grillwork on all of the windows.

“I don’t like this place,” Gretchen said.

“Of course not,” Warren said. “I knew you would sense it.”

“Sense what?”

“The feeling of the place. It’s just right, isn’t it?” He swung the car into a parking spot reserved for physicians and hospital personnel. “Just come with me,” he said. “They’re expecting us.”

“Warren, I don’t want to go. Petey, tell him I don’t want to go.”

“You can do it, Gretch. You just have to concentrate.”

“But this is crazy, Petey! I don’t want to get out of the car. I’m afraid.”

He said, “Warren, would it be all right if we stayed in the car while you made the arrangements?” He put his arm around her, drew her close. Over her shoulder he saw Warren give him a quick nod, then get out of the car.

She burrowed in his arms for a moment. Then she said, “That was fast thinking, Petey. I knew we should never trust that man. Now we can—” Her jaw fell. “Petey! He took the keys!”

“So?”

She spun around to face him. “Don’t you see? This was Warren’s plan, wasn’t it? He dreamed it up. And he’s managed to fool you. Oh, I should have known this. Oh, my God!”

“Wait, Gretchen. Hang on.”

“Maybe we can run.”

“That would be the worst thing we could do. Don’t you see?”

“I suppose so. But—”

“You’re wrong about Warren. You’ll see.”

He held onto her, trying to calm her. “Just stay perfectly still,” he said. “If it is a trap, all we have to do is be absolutely quiet.”

He saw the doors open. Warren came through them, flanked by a stoop-shouldered doctor and a nurse with a clipboard. Behind them were two middle-aged women in white, both with prominent jaws. Warren held a pipe in one hand and was gesturing with the other as he spoke. Even his walk was different, Peter noticed.

“They’re coming,” he told Gretchen. “Don’t be afraid. Don’t ever be afraid.”

“This is Mrs. Vann,” Warren said now. “Mrs. Vann, there are some people here who want to meet you. They’re going to help you.”

“Warren, I want to go home.”

“Just come out for a moment. Then we can go.”

She looked at Peter. “Go ahead,” he said softly. “We’ll be able to handle this.”

And she trusted him. She got out of the car, crawling past the steering wheel, while Peter let himself out the other side. He walked around the car to stand beside her.

“Mrs. Gretchen Vann,” Warren was saying. “Mrs. Vann, this is Dr. Moeloth. He’s going to—”

“Why are you talking like that, Warren?”

“Try to concentrate, Mrs. Vann. I am Dr. Loewenstein. We went for a ride in the country, you and I and Robin, and now we are—”

“Dr. Moeloth?” She smiled perfectly, the panic and confusion gone from her voice now. “There’s been a rather horrible mistake and I’m sure you’ll straighten it out for us in no time at all.” The doctor was nodding with interest. “This man is not a doctor,” she went on calmly. “He’s an actor named Warren Ormont. He managed to win the confidence of Peter and myself and now he’s trying to dupe you.” A sudden intake of breath, and she spun to face Warren.

“What did you say about Robin? Peter, we trusted this man. What has he done with Robin?”

Dr. Moeloth said, “Tell me about Robin, Mrs. Vann. Just be calm now.”

“I’m perfectly calm. Robin is my little girl.”

“Your little girl.”

“My daughter. He’s kidnapped her. First he posed as my friend and now he’s posing as a doctor. I think this is a matter for the police, Dr. Moeloth.”

Moeloth nodded encouragement. “Very interesting,” he said. “And this young man with you, Mrs. Vann. Could you tell me who this young man is?”

“This is the only person on my side.”

“I see. And his name?”

“Peter Nicholas.”

“Yes, of course, Mrs. Vann. And his relationship with you?”

She hesitated. “Well, it’s no secret. We live together.”

“You live together.”

“We are lovers. I’m not ashamed of it. We are lovers and the whole world is against us.”

Warren took a slip of paper from his pocket and passed it to Moeloth. The doctor unfolded it and studied. He read aloud, “Robin Vann, parents Harold and Gretchen, born November 17, 19—”

“That’s my daughter’s birth certificate, Dr. Moeloth. Petey, why did you give it to Warren? That’s my daughter’s certificate, Doctor.”

“Yes, of course. And your daughter is how old, Mrs. Vann?”

“She’ll be four years old in November. That’s what it says November 17th.”

“Yes, of course. November 17, 1949. What year is it now, Mrs. Vann?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Sex — male. This is the birth certificate of your son, Mrs. Vann.”

“I don’t have a son.”

“I see.”

“Only God has sons. Daughters belong to the Devil. Everyone knows that.” She fought the panic in her voice. “He’s an actor, Dr. Moeloth. He doesn’t even have a beard. He looks like Benjamin Franklin. Look!”

She pulled Warren’s beard. He drew back after one fierce tug, and the two heavyset women in white moved easily to take hold of her arms.

“Oh, God,” she said. “Oh, my God.”

He walked to her, saying that it was all right, that it would be all right. She said, “Oh, Petey, tell them. For God’s sake tell them!”

He reached her and took her hand. “Don’t worry.”

“Petey—”

“I’m Robin. It’s all right, Mom. Everything’s going to be all right.”

And he did not turn his eyes from hers. He let her hold his gaze, and his own expression did not change. That was the hardest part of all.

Warren was chatting easily with Moeloth. “An interesting personal mythology,” he was saying. “I only wish it would have been possible to persuade her to undergo therapy. But her refusal was consistent with her particular paranoia.” There were terms Peter did not understand; then Warren said, “There are names that will recur. Warren and Peter seem to have been former lovers of Mrs. Vann’s, but it’s unclear whether they existed other than in fantasy. They constitute a dualism for her, innocence, youth and age, good and evil — the poles seem to vary...”

Peter looked at Gretchen. She was standing a few yards away. The matrons were holding her arms but she was offering no resistance. She had fought them for a moment, fury dancing madly in her eyes, and then had suddenly gone completely acquiescent.

The nurse presented Peter with the clipboard. He signed the involuntary commitment papers, signing his name as Robin Vann and his relationship as son. The nurse moved off. Warren was still talking with Moeloth but Peter did not pay any attention. He let his eyes play around the area. Sunday was visitors’ day, and groups of people moved around the lawn. It was impossible to tell the patients from their relatives.

“Little firsthand experience with psychotics,” he heard Warren saying. “Occasional menopause psychosis and the usual run of neurotics.”

“I envy you,” Moeloth said.

“Oh? And I thought it was I who ought to envy you. It’s a rare day when I feel I’ve accomplished a thing. My patients improve or don’t and I can’t always convince myself that I’ve had any effect either way. I could as well have been a dermatologist.”

Moeloth chuckled. “Neurosis and dermatology. No one dies; no one ever gets well. Do you think we do much better? I like to think so but I couldn’t make much of a case for what we do. We keep them safe; we keep them comfortable; we keep them where they can’t do any harm. When their conditions are temporary we provide a place for them to recover. We release some who ought to stay and others who probably should not have been here in the first place. You know there’s little chance that we’ll help her at all.”

“Yes, I know that.”

“Does the boy know?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re absolutely set against shock? Both insulin and ETS?”

“Yes.”

“Despite your lack of experience with psychotics? But I’m riot trying to argue you out of it. We find it useful. It’s valuable on an institutional basis. It controls. At times perhaps it disciplines. One does not want to admit as much, but it is so.”

No shock treatments, Peter thought. Definitely not that. They had agreed on that point at the beginning.

The nurse said something to Moeloth, who turned to Peter. “Robin, your mother would like to talk to you before they show her to her quarters.”

To her cell, he thought. He looked at Gretchen. She was smiling at him.

He walked toward her.

“Oh, Robin,” she said. “It’s all so difficult. I’ve been so bad.”

“It’s all right,” he heard himself say.

“I’ve been a bad mother.”

“You’re a wonderful mother.”

“My poor baby.” She turned to one of the matrons. “Let me say good-bye to my son,” she said.

Warren was saying something cautionary. The matrons still held her arms. But Peter could not walk away, could not deny her this.

He said, “It’s all right. Please let her go, please give us a minute.” The matrons dropped their grip and moved just a few yards away. “Please,” he said to them. “Let us have some room.”

He did not know what she would do. It did not matter what she would do. He walked to her and she held out both her hands. He took them in his.

“Oh, my son,” she said, and moved to embrace him. She whispered quickly in his ear. They spoke in whispers until she released him and held his hands again. Her expression became maternal. “Mother loves you,” she said. “Always remember that, Robin.” Then she turned from him and went to join the matrons.

“How are you holding up, Peter?”

They had been driving in absolute silence for about ten minutes. He did not answer immediately and Warren had to repeat the question.

“I’m all right,” he said.

“It’s over now.”

“Yeah.”

“She even acknowledged you as her son. I wondered if she wouldn’t try that. She used it to convince them of her sanity, and all it did was reinforce the illusion.”

“That’s not why she did it.”

“It’s not?”

“No. She wanted to be able to say good-bye to me. She had something she wanted to tell me. She—”

He broke then. Warren slowed the car, pulled onto the shoulder. He reached a hand toward Peter, then withdrew it without touching him. Peter said, “You might as well drive. I’m all right.” He wiped his eyes and took a deep breath. “She said — I don’t know if I can say this—”

“You don’t have to.”

“She said she was sorry she lost control, but she didn’t realize it was all part of the plan, and that we couldn’t tell her in advance because it would have ruined her performance. She said she understood, and she begged me to forgive her for the one moment when she stopped trusting me. And to tell you she was sorry. She was sorry.”

Warren didn’t say anything.

“She said it was wonderful of me to lead them away from Robin. That I should be very careful not to put myself in danger while I was playing the part of Robin. I don’t remember everything she said. Let me think. She’s going to keep on eating. That’s part of it. She knows she’ll be strong as long as she keeps on eating. And nothing will ever break her will. She kept saying that she was strong, and that I would have to be strong, too.”

“And you’re positive none of this was an act.”

“No, absolutely not. I didn’t realize she loved me that completely.” His voice cracked but he checked it. “It’s all so awful. She’s in there and she’ll never get out. She won’t, will she?”

“Dr. Loewenstein would offer hope. No, she’ll never get out.”

“That fucking place. Anybody could put anybody else away. You sign a slip of paper and two dykes from a ladies’ football team take her away. It shouldn’t be that easy.”

“It’s not. Give me a cigarette, will you? Thank you. It’s not that easy. I had to show identification. They were very apologetic but explained it was procedure. And then when I filled out certain forms I forgot a detail and had my nurse called at her home. Anne supplied the missing details.”

“What happens if they call the real Dr. Loewenstein?”

“He’ll have to say the right things. What possible choice does he have? David knew that when he agreed. He also knows there’s little likelihood of it. I made it clear to Moeloth that she was not to be regarded as my patient. No, it was a good charade, Peter. There was never a point this afternoon when I was worried.”

“I thought they’d see the birth certificate was phony.”

“The only changes were two numbers and a letter. The actual certificate is a mess, but the alterations don’t show on the photostat I showed Moeloth.”

“I didn’t know it was a stat. The other thing that got me was when she grabbed your beard. I kept seeing it coming off in her hand.”

“But we talked about that!”

“I know.”

“You knew I attached it properly when we stopped for gas. That was the whole idea, to have her grab it like that.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“But you forgot?”

He shook his head. “No, I was afraid you forgot. All the way there I wasn’t sure if you remembered or not, and when she grabbed it—”

“That would have been something.” He started to laugh, stopping just short of hysteria. “They would have kept all three of us,” he said. “They never would have let us out of there.”

And later: “There was something you said to that doctor. About the two of us being opposite poles in her life.”

“The two of us? Oh, the concepts of Warren and Peter, the dualism. What of it?”

“I don’t know exactly. I was just thinking. I guess we were the two men in her life she loved.”

“And the two who loved her.”

“And the two who did this to her.”

“No one else could have done it.”

“Right. You can’t be betrayed by your enemies, can you?”

“Is it betrayal? I think I did it for her, not to her. Admittedly it’s always a comfort to see things that way. I think we should declare a moratorium on the soul-searching, Peter. For the sake of our own sanity, such as it is.” He sighed heavily. “It ended well. I hadn’t even dared to hope for that.” He smiled, as if at a memory. “You left her with a kiss.”

“Yeah, me and Judas.”

“Oh, stop that, Peter. Just stop that.”

Twenty-nine

Hugh said, “You know what the trouble is? The trouble is it’s Sunday.”

“Is that bad?”

“Well, I’ll say it is. In Pennsylvania it is. You can’t get a drink in Pennsylvania on a Sunday. And if you don’t think that’s trouble—”

She giggled. “But we just got a drink,” she said. “Drinks. One for each of us.”

“Quite true. The Markarian liquor cabinet does not recognize the blue laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. But Trude Hofmeister does.”

“Trude Whatmeister?”

“Not Whatmeister. Hofmeister. At Tannhauser’s.”

“Oh, right.”

“Which means that either we have dinner without wine or we go somewhere in New Jersey.”

“So?”

“So this is a celebration. The greatest author in the world and the most beautiful girl in the world are celebrating the completion of the finest novel in the world. For that we need good food and good wine. And you can’t get wine in Pennsylvania, and you can’t get a decent meal in New Jersey, and that’s all because it’s Sunday.” He raised his forefinger. “Make a note of that, Miss Markarian.”

“Yes, sir.”

“In the future, significant works of fiction are not to be completed on Saturday night.”

She wrote on the palm of her hand with her fingertip. “Not to be completed on Saturday night,” she echoed. “I shall never forget that, sir.”

“I sincerely hope not.”

“Never ever. Which’ll we do?”

“Which which?”

“Go to Tannhauser’s or go someplace in New Jersey?”

“Ah, that which. A demanding decision, Miss Markarian. I don’t think I can make a decision like that on an empty glass.”

“I’ll fill it up for you.” She walked a few steps, then turned. “You’re happy, aren’t you?”

“How in the world can you tell?”

“Because you’re so silly.”

“‘You silly Daddy.’ You used to call me that when I would joke with you.”

“I remember.”

“Yes, I’m happy, kitten. Deliriously happy. Do you know something? I have never been so happy in my life.”

This was true. There was always happiness in completing a book, always a measure of pride and satisfaction and pleasure, but in the past it had always been qualified by a feeling of loss, a vague discontent. He had often compared it to postpartum depression; a mother feels joy in having brought a living being into the world but cannot always escape the feeling of having given up a part of herself. He had come to recognize in himself that particular sensation, an empty feeling within him where there had previously been substance.

He had felt aspects of that the night before. This morning, when he awoke, he felt nothing so much as the agony of impatience. He’d gone downstairs hoping to find Karen, anxious to know what she thought of the book, and found instead that she was still asleep. The manuscript was on his desk, neatly arranged as he had left it. He assumed she had read it but could find no certain proof. And he had thought then of the mindless tricks of embryonic writers who would submit manuscripts with an occasional page inverted so that they could determine, after having been rejected, whether they had at least been read. “I always leave those pages inverted,” an editor told him once. “Let ’em hate me.”

So he had had the day’s first drink while he waited for her to wake up and come downstairs. The desire for a morning drink surprised him but did not disturb him greatly. If it was not his custom, neither was it something he had passed a personal law against. He was jittery, impatient, and a drink would sand off the sharp edges. It would have been foolish to pass it up and have coffee instead.

And then, after he had finished his drink and washed out his glass, he heard her moving around upstairs. He made himself wait for her in the kitchen, busying himself by preparing their breakfast. As she burst into the kitchen, he turned around, almost afraid to see her reaction.

And she said it was the best thing she had ever read in her life.

“I read it all the way through. I’m a fast reader but I didn’t want to miss a word, and sometimes I would go back and read something over because there was so much to it that I wanted to absorb a second time. And when I finished I wanted to wake you. Then I was afraid I would sleep too long and I was going to leave you a note to wake me first thing in the morning. And then I set my alarm clock for the first time in ages and went to bed and thought maybe the clock would go off before you were ready to get up so I shut off the alarm. There must be a thousand parts of it I want to ask you about. Is it all right to ask things about it? Is that all right?”

It wasn’t just that she loved the book. It was that she liked it for all the right reasons. There were things he had done not knowing whether they would work or not. Some bits and pieces were important to him but would have no individual impact on readers. A book was always quite different for the person who wrote it. Its most perceptive reader could not see it in the same way. He was certain it was the same with the product of anyone’s labor; the fruit tasted differently to the man who planted the tree.

But how close she had come to reading the book through his own eyes.

They talked the day away. Much of the talk concerned The Edge of Thought. She discussed its characters as if they existed, as they did in fact exist for him and for her. Years ago, Anita had read his books with the same single-minded enthusiasm. But Karen read them differently. Anita had always been the critic; she had assumed the role with One If by Land and had always felt comfortable in it. She had been a valuable critic, a sensitive one, but a critic could never satisfy you as a fan could. Even if a critic responded with wholehearted unequivocal approval, it was still an outside view, an objective view, and the success he wanted was of a subjective sort.

So they talked a great deal about the book, but they talked of other things as well. He had felt close to her in all the months since she had moved into his house, had treasured this closeness as he treasured little else, and today he felt far closer to her than ever before. They talked through breakfast, talked over coffee, talked in the garden and in the woods. And when they returned to the house and went to the living room to talk some more she asked him if it was too early for the first drink of the day.

“I already had the first drink of the day,” he had said, and told her how keyed up he’d been waiting for her reaction.

“Then it can’t be too early. I’ll make them. I want to propose a toast. How do you propose a toast?”

“You just go ahead and do it.”

“To The Edge of Thought,” she said. They touched glasses and drank. “Now are we supposed to throw them in the fireplace?”

“Mrs. Kleinschmidt wouldn’t approve.”

She started to giggle. He asked her what was funny, but she kept laughing and couldn’t stop. He laughed along with her without having the slightest idea what he was laughing at.

She said, “I was going to say... oh, this is so silly!”

“Will you for Christ’s sake tell me what we’re both hysterical about?”

“It’s so far-out. I thought about saying, ‘Well, screw Mrs. Kleinschmidt,’ and I thought of you saying, ‘Who in hell wants to screw Mrs. Kleinschmidt?’ and I just—”

“Well, who the hell would?”

She laughed again, spun around and pitched her glass into the fireplace. He hurled his after it.

“Screw Mrs. Kleinschmidt!” he said.

They drank their second toast to Mrs. Kleinschmidt, and this time they did not smash the glasses. Instead she filled them again and he said something about calling Mary Fradin in the morning. She said Mary Fradin would love the book, too, and he said it didn’t much matter if she did or not as long as she sold it properly.

“Then screw Mary Fradin,” she said.

“I’ll drink to that.”

“Why? Were you planning to screw Mary Fradin?”

“I already did,” he said.

He told her that story, and then she told him a story about Anita’s husband and one of her girlfriends, and he told another story and she told another story, and then he observed that it was Sunday and that one should never finish a book on Saturday night. Happy? No man on earth had ever been so happy.

When they returned from dinner she automatically made drinks while he filled a pipe. They had both been reasonably drunk when they left for dinner, but their euphoria was so great that the alcohol did not slow them down. He felt that he could drink all night without getting tired or thick-tongued. All the liquor did was heighten their mood.

“We should have had wine,” he said.

“It was a dynamite dinner.”

“Uh-huh. Would have been better with wine, though.”

She considered. “You know what would have been great? Better than wine? Grass.”

“At Tannhauser’s? I can just see Trude passing around joints. What’s the matter?”

“I was picturing it. Offering them around in that apple strudel accent. No, not with dinner. Before dinner. It really does fantastic things for the taste of food.”

“I never heard that.”

“Oh, sure. It makes you more aware. Even with rotten food. I mean like school cafeteria food. Not all the time, but if you happened to be into a food thing. Like one time I had this salmon croquette. They always had things like that, salmon croquettes, stuffed beef heart, all this glop, and I was really wrecked one day and I got into this salmon croquette with this goopy yellow sauce all over it, and I could taste like all the different things that were happening there. And at the same time I was aware that it was cruddy. I kept thinking, wow, this is delicious, and wouldn’t it be great if I was eating something I liked?”

“I remember it works that way with music,” he said. “I never thought of it in connection with food.”

“It’s the same idea. Getting right down into things.”

“I guess that makes sense.”

“Oh, wow!”

“What?”

“What you said. Do you smoke?”

“Before you were born,” he said. “But not since.”

“Really?”

He nodded. “Ages ago. After the war, when I was living in the Village. Just two or three times. At parties.”

“I didn’t realize people were into grass in those days.”

“‘Those days.’ Yes, back before the Flood.”

“I mean—”

“It was part of the Bohemian scene, although that word was beginning to die out by then. And I was never that much of a Bohemian. I never knew anyone who smoked very frequently. It was hard to get unless you had friends who were jazz musicians or unless you knew people in Harlem.”

“And you never smoked after that.”

“No. It wasn’t really a part of my life. And no one talked about it.”

“Did you dig it?”

He sipped his drink. “I’m trying to remember. My recollection is pretty vague. I didn’t get high the first time, I remember that. The other times I did, and I think I remember what it was like. I believe I enjoyed it well enough.”

“Would you try it again ever?”

“I wonder,” he said. “I suppose I might. You know, I’ve never really thought about this, but it’s surprising I haven’t tried it again in all these years. At least since, oh, at least in the past few years.”

“Since the divorce? Is that what you were going to say? Anita smokes.”

“Your mother?”

“That’s weird, isn’t it? All their friends do, which is probably why she does. But I’m not supposed to.” She told him of the conversation they had had on the subject. He laughed, thinking how typical it was of Anita in recent years. He supposed it was typical parental hypocrisy and was oddly pleased that he was not hypocritical in that sort of way.

“Daddy? Would you like to get stoned?”

“Why, I suppose I’d try it again,” he said. “Why not?”

“’Cause I could really dig smoking together. The two of us, I could dig that.”

“I’m afraid I don’t have a connection in the area. Is that word still current? I could probably get some in New York.”

“You wouldn’t have to go that far.”

“I gather there’s some in New Hope, but I wouldn’t know who to ask.”

“Oh, you could say there’s some in New Hope. If Mechanic Street ever caught fire, the whole county would be stoned for a week.” She drank some more of her drink. Her face was thoughtful. At length she said, “You wouldn’t have to leave the house.”

“Ah, so.”

“Well, I have this one jay that somebody laid on me a while ago. I didn’t know how you would react so I never said anything about it. I could get it.”

“How does it mix with liquor?”

“I don’t know. I never used to drink. One joint between the two of us can’t do too much anyway. Should I get it?”

He grinned. “Mrs. Kleinschmidt wouldn’t approve,” he said.

“I’ll be back in a minute.”

He had not been able to remember the feeling. But now he was able to recognize it, just as he had recognized the smell the instant she lit the misshapen little cigarette. And he remembered the elaborate ritual of dumping half the tobacco from a regular cigarette and dropping the roach in so that not a crumb of the marijuana would be wasted. They had called it tea then, and the cigarettes were called reefers, or sticks if you were especially hep. He couldn’t remember any special name for the butts. A roach, in those years, was something that crawled around the bathroom.

He sat back on the couch and closed his eyes. Yes, he remembered the feeling. How could he have forgotten the feeling? For that matter, how could he have gone smugly without it all these years? It did feel nice. There was no getting away from it — it felt very nice indeed.

“Daddy?” Her voice was so soft and lazy. “How are you feeling?”

“Far-out,” he said, and laughed.

“Let me look at your face. That’s such good dope. Oh, you’re so stoned!”

“Far-out.” “Oh, wow.”

“Where are you going?”

“Get more drinks. Throat’s dry.”

“You didn’t take the glasses.”

“How can I get the drinks without glasses?”

“That’s what I said.”

“So did I.”

“So did you what?”

“Huh?”

They both started to giggle. It was funny, he thought. You would get into a sentence and your mind was doing such interesting things and doing them so quickly that you forgot what the sentence was about before you could get to the end of it. He pursued this thought, considering all its implications, following them through to wherever they led him and then trying to remember what he had just thought of. One connection in particular struck him as meaningful, and he decided to tell Karen about it when she got back. Then he realized she was sitting beside him.

“I thought you were going to get the drinks.”

“Oh, man, are you wrecked!”

“Huh?”

“What have you got in your hand?”

He looked. He had a glass of scotch in his hand and no idea on earth how it got there.

He said, “I’m not stoned at all.”

“Right.”

“It’s a magic trick. A power I have. Whenever I want a drink I just wish for it and a glass turns up in my hand.”

“You silly Daddy.”

Later she said, “I’ve been wanting to ask all day. I read the, uh, the dedication page.”

“And you don’t want it dedicated to you.”

“Don’t even say it. I guess I was wondering what made you decide to dedicate it to me.”

He put his hand on her knee, squeezed. The disorientation of the marijuana high had abated now. He was still stoned, but in a way that did not interfere with linear thought. He just felt very good, very happy, utterly relaxed.

He said, “Do you remember when I was stuck on the book and then in the middle of a conversation with you I went in there and started writing like a maniac?”

“Of course I remember. I brought you coffee and you didn’t even know I was there.”

“Well, that same day I typed out the dedication page. You gave me the help I needed. I don’t even remember what it was you said, what we were talking about, but before then the book was all from the wife’s viewpoint.”

“And you got the idea from me of bringing in the daughter?”

“She would have been a character anyway. But now it’s a whole different book.” He explained to her some of the ways the book had developed. “I shouldn’t be telling you all this,” he added.

“You mean like trade secrets?”

“Hardly. No, I mean a reader should be able to think that a book happened in one particular way because it couldn’t have happened in any other way.”

“It couldn’t have.”

He had just been thinking that himself. In this book, more than any other he had written, the characters had insisted upon speaking their own lines.

“So that’s why you dedicated it to me. I was wondering.”

“Why did you think?”

“I don’t know.”

“It would have wound up dedicated to you anyway. The way it turned out.”

“It’s about me, isn’t it?”

“Did you feel that?”

“Only on every fucking page. It was almost scary.”

“She’s not precisely you.”

“An awful lot of her is. To me, anyway.”

“Yes, a great deal of her. The relationship.”

“Right.”

“Having you here has taught me a lot about fathers and daughters, Karen. Any honest book has to grow out of what a man knows.”

“I was so proud of her.”

“Were you? So was I.”

“I was so proud that you, that you felt, that the way you think of me — I don’t know how to say it.”

He put his arm around her. Her head settled on his shoulder.

At one point he stacked some, records on the record player. At another point he went into the-kitchen and came back with bottles of scotch and soda and a bowl of ice cubes. “It’s the running around that gets to you,” he said then. “A person can stand a long night of drinking, but all that walking back and forth is bad for the legs.”

And it was shaping up as a long night of drinking. They were talking less now that the music was playing, frequently lapsing into long silences with her head on his shoulder and his arm around her. He would think now and then that it was late, that they had already done more than enough drinking, that they ought to go to sleep. But it was too perfect a night to end, and neither of them ever suggested ending it.

Eventually they were talking again about the book. He said that he would have to proofread it soon, and how he hated proofreading. She offered to do it for him.

“I’ll have to do it myself,” he said. “So I can see what has to be revised.”

“Nothing has to be revised.”

“Well, I’ll have to go through it anyway and make sure.”

“But I’ll proofread the galleys,” she said.

“Oh, that won’t be for almost a year. That’s a long ways off.” She stiffened. “Kitten? What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

“Did I say something?”

“No,” she said. But her face was troubled. “I just—”

“Tell me.”

“You mean I won’t be here then.”

“I didn’t mean that.”

“But I won’t, will I?”

“Where are you off to?”

“Do you mean I can stay?”

“Of course you can stay. This is—”

“I’m not in the way?” There were tears in her eyes. “I just don’t want to go anywhere,” she said. “I just feel so good here. I feel guilty about it.”

“Guilty?”

“I just love being with you,” she said. “I don’t ever want to go away.”

“Oh, kitten.”

“Look at me, I’m shaking. I’m all funny inside. Oh, please hold me.” He said, “Easy, baby. Easy now.” He held her close and stroked her hair while she wept against his shirt. “Easy,” he said, touching her hair, rubbing the back of her neck. “Oh, stay forever,” he said. “Don’t ever go. Don’t ever leave me.”

“Oh—”

He tipped up her chin and kissed her. He kissed her, and she was his daughter, his flesh, and he loved her. He kissed her and she was every woman he had ever wanted, all he had ever wanted, and her arms were around his neck and her lips were parted and he was kissing her now with his heart pounding and his tongue in her mouth and his hands on her back, feeling her, caressing her, and her flesh trembled in response, and—

He broke the kiss. He stared at her and saw himself reflected in her eyes. Her eyes bored into his for a long moment during which he was conscious of nothing else. Then, without breaking the stare, she nodded her head.

He could not move.

“Yes,” she said.

He could not close his eyes. He could not move.

“Yes.”

It was very like a dream. He had the sort of awareness one has in dreams when one wants to change his course but is powerless to do so. He took her clothes off piece by piece. He kissed her and stroked her body. He removed his own clothing and lay full length on the couch with her and felt her flesh against his own.

He seemed to know her body. His hands knew how and where to touch her, and he sensed what her responses would be before she could make them. As if this were not merely a dream but one he had dreamed before.

When he entered her, she reached orgasm immediately. Her parts rippled in climax before he was fully inside of her. Her eyes were closed at that moment, but then she opened them and did not close them again.

He moved in and out of her slowly, lazily, entering her and leaving her in long liquid strokes, as if to make this last forever as he had wished to make the night last forever. He was lost, lost, drowned in her eyes, her mouth, her young warmth.

Until at last he came, and all his being spurted into all of hers.

Walking, pacing, his hand a vise on his forehead, pacing back and forth.

How? How?

“Daddy!”

How could this have happened? How could he have allowed this to happen?

“Daddy—”

How could he have done this to her?

“Daddy, look at me. Daddy, please, look at me.”

But he couldn’t. He felt her hands on his arm and he stopped but could not make himself look down at her. She put her arms around his waist and hugged him and his body went cold and stiff.

“Daddy, don’t hate me.”

He stared at her.

“Please,” she said.

“Hate you?”

“Please don’t.”

He stood there.

“I was the one who wanted it. I said yes.”

“Karen—”

“I knew what I was saying. I said it twice. Don’t you understand? I wanted it to happen.”

A wave of dizziness struck him. He got to a chair and collapsed into it. She stood at the side of the chair looking down at him and all he could think of was how beautiful she was. He had never seen her look so beautiful. He had never seen anyone look so beautiful.

“Daddy, I wanted this to happen. Oh, God. Not just tonight. I’ve always wanted it. I didn’t know it. I swear I didn’t know it. It was in my mind and I didn’t know it was there. It was out there on—” her voice broke — “on the edge of thought.”

Out on the edge of thought. And had he wanted it all along as well? And was that what the book was about? Had he written into it yearnings for her that he had not known he possessed?

God.

She said, “I’m going to have some coffee. Do you want some?”

“Coffee?”

“Don’t you want any?”

“All right.”

While she made the coffee he did not move from the chair. He thought of putting his clothes on but it did not seem worth the effort.

She had wanted him and he had wanted her. He could try to blame the liquor, the marijuana, the mad exhilaration of the mood they had shared. He could blame all these things, but none of them could alter the simple fact that both of them had wanted this to happen. She brought two cups of coffee. They sat in separate chairs and drank it.

“Can I say something?”

He nodded.

“Look, it happened. But what did we do? I mean it, what did we do? We love each other, and we made love. We didn’t hurt anybody. We didn’t do anything to anybody. We just made love.”

He tried a smile. “It’s supposed to be a sin.”

“Why?”

“Sins don’t have reasons. I don’t know why it’s a sin. I know I’m ashamed of myself.”

“I’m not.”

“There’s no reason for you to be. But I—”

“You keep acting as though you’re the one who did it. We both did it, and I was the one who—”

“I was the one who should have been able not to do it, kitten.”

She thought it over, shrugged. “Well, the thing is, I don’t think we have to put out our eyes and break our legs or anything.”

“‘Put out our—’ Oh, Oedipus. It was ankles, not legs.”

“Whatever it was. It happened. That’s all.”

He looked at her sharply. “Are you still—”

“Taking the pill? Is that what you were going to ask? Yes, I am.” She walked across the room and stood in front of him. “And do you want to know something? Do you really want to know something? I wish I stopped taking the pills. I really wish that. I wish I was pregnant, that’s how I feel about what we did.”

He drew her down to him. She sat in his lap with her arms around his neck and she wept, and he held her as he had held her before and stroked her hair and told her that it was all right, that everything was going to be all right. They both were still naked, and she was still the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in his life, but he held her now with no passion whatsoever. He laughed, and she asked why.

“The glass in the fireplace. I was just looking at it. Once again Mrs. Kleinschmidt wouldn’t approve.”

“Screw Mrs. Kleinschmidt.”

He held her close as they laughed together, held her now with no passion at all, but with all the love he had in the world.

There had been passion, but there would not be passion between them again. Mrs. Kleinschmidt would not approve, but Mrs. Kleinschmidt would not know, nor would anyone else. He did not have to put out his eyes.

Thirty

On the ninth day following his admission, Clement McIntyre was discharged from Doylestown General. Olive wrote a check while he sat in a wheelchair grumbling that he could walk as well as the next man.

“It’s a regulation,” the nurse’s aide said.

“Silly damned regulation,” he said. “She was a patient, too. Paid full rates for the privilege of lying in one of your lumpy beds and listening to me use a bedpan. Doesn’t she rate a wheelchair ride?”

“Don’t mind him,” Olive advised. “He doesn’t mean anything by it. He’s sad to be leaving and this is his way of masking his sentiment.”

“Who would have guessed years ago that you’d turn out to be such a sarcastic bitch?”

“You see? That’s his way of telling me he loves me. You sit back and enjoy your ride, Clem. Enjoy the luxury. You won’t be pampered this way at home.”

She drove home and parked the car in the driveway. He got out unassisted and walked into the house and up the stairs without her help. He was short of breath by the time he reached their bedroom, and his face was pale.

“Sit down,” she said. “You’ll be more comfortable in bed, darling. Do you want help with your clothes?”

“Don’t need it.”

“I’ll get your pajamas.”

He sat up in bed, propped up with three pillows. He said, “It’s a hell of a thing. A man’s a man all his life and then he’s barely got enough of himself to walk a flight of stairs.”

“Climbing is hard exercise. I understand it’s more tiring than sawing wood.”

“What a mine of information you are.”

“Remarkable, isn’t it?”

“It truly is. But what I was saying. It’s a hell of a life when a man can’t live the way he’s used to living. You hear about these people they keep alive in hospitals for months or years, machines hooked up to them and tubes running in and out of them. Can’t make ’em better and won’t let ’em die, and what sense is there in that?”

“Some people just want to go on.”

“Some people don’t.”

She walked to the window. “It’s so close in here,” she said. “I should have told the Robshaw girl to open a window while she was here. It feels like rain, doesn’t it? We could use a little rain. This summer I never thought I’d hear myself say that again. The silver maple’s starting to turn. It’s early this year. Does that mean a hard winter or a mild one?”

“I can never remember. I think it means an early winter, doesn’t it?”

“That sounds right.”

“Never did like winter. Didn’t mind the cold. Always the damned inconvenience of it. Slopping around through snow and slush, shoveling cars loose, skidding around on the roads. Cold never bothered me because I always had enough antifreeze in my radiator. A man would sure feel the cold without it.”

“Can I get you anything, Clem?”

“Well, that depends. Do we put on an act for each other or don’t we?”

“It’s a little late in life for that.”

“Yes, it’s late in life, and I never did like winter. You know what I want, Olive.”

She went downstairs. There were blank spots on some of the walls. She looked at each spot and remembered immediately the picture that had hung there.

She came upstairs with a bottle and a glass. He filled the glass to the brim and held it to the light, admiring its color. “All due success to temperance,” he pronounced.

“I wonder how long you’ve been saying that.”

“Seems as good a toast as any.” He drained the glass in two long swallows. “Well, I needed that,” he said. “They can poke all the needles in the world into you and it’s not the same thing. By God I needed that. I was cold sober for over a week and I can’t remember the last time I could have made that statement. You rarely saw me drunk but did you ever see me sober? Well, once or twice, I suppose.”

“Nobody’s perfect.”

He poured another drink but sipped this one. “You know, I’ve got to be the luckiest son of a bitch who ever drew breath. Never been much good at or for anything—”

“I could dispute that.”

“Oh, maybe I was all right at that, but not much else. But what did I ever do to deserve you? All the hours I’ve spent sitting around and wondering about that.”

“If I have to listen to much more of this I’ll have to start drinking myself.”

“It’s nothing but true.”

“Try to make me out a saint and I’ll take your bottle away,” she said. “Understand?”

He grinned. “But God knows you’re an ornery bitch under it all.”

“That’s better,” she said.

On good days they would go out in the garden together. He would sit in a canvas chair with a glass in his hand while she readied the flower beds for winter, pulling the late weeds, cutting back roses and perennials, spreading a mulch of peat moss. Often they would go for hours without either of them speaking a word.

On other days, when the weather was bad or when he was not feeling well enough to go downstairs, she spent long hours in the bedroom with him. Sometimes she read poetry to him. He liked to sit with his eyes closed and hear her read poems he had read long ago. Sometimes they talked. Sometimes they merely sat together.

Just before dawn on November’s first Thursday she awoke to hear him coughing beside her. She switched on the light. He was lying on his side and his pillow was dark with blood.

He said, “This is it, kid. No, don’t call anyone. They can’t do anything now and if they could I wouldn’t go through all of that again. Just give me your hand.”

“Oh, my darling.”

“What a good month this was. Best one of my life. I wanted to last until Halloween. Always liked Halloween. Never cared much about Christmas but I always liked Halloween. Wonder why that is... ‘It’s coming along nicely.’ First words you ever said to me.”

“I remember.”

“ ‘It’s coming along nicely. Is it for sale?’ I thought, by God, that’s a woman, and I never met one before... It hurts but not so bad now... I never gave you enough.”

“You gave me everything.”

“Took and took and gave you nothing. Always loved you, though. Hope you get a better one next time round... I want to hold your hand. I can’t feel your hand, I want to hold it...”

But she was holding his hand.

The funeral was far better attended than she had thought it would be. She hadn’t realized how many friends Clem had had. She remained dry-eyed throughout the service and the burial, accepting sympathy gracefully however awkwardly it was extended. After the service was concluded she managed to get rid of the minster’s company without offending him. She went home and sat in the living room until it was late enough o go to bed.

Three days after the funeral she called Henry Biedemeyer. She had seen him at the services and he had said then what a good man Clem had been. Now he made the same little speech. It was tiresome enough hearing that sort of thing once, but she heard him out politely.

“I’ll want to have a new will drawn,” she said. “Do you think you could see me today?”

He said that he could, and offered to come to her house.

“No, I’d as soon get out of the house myself. An hour from now? Will that be all right?”

An hour later she was sitting in his office. Her will was a simple one, essentially the same document Oscar Biedemeyer had drawn shortly after her marriage. All of her estate was to be placed in trust, with the entire income payable to her husband. Upon his decease the principal was to be divided among various charitable institutions. The only changes she had seen fit to make over the years had been related to the ultimate bequests.

“This should be simple enough,” Henry said. “We’ll just eliminate the trust and make the dispersal immediate. Unless you had other changes in mind?”

“Nothing earthshaking. Just let me look at that list now and see who I’m mad at. I used to drive your father crazy. There was a time when I was in this office every few months cutting off one outfit and adding another. Let’s see now. These look all right. Doylestown General. How do I feel about Doylestown General? Oh, I guess we can leave them in. Hold on, now. Why in pure hell is the March of Dimes still here? Didn’t Salk put them out of business?”

“They’re working on other crippling diseases now.”

“Might have known they wouldn’t put a going operation like that on the shelf. No, let’s cross them out of there. Now there’s an organization dedicated to saving wild horses and ponies from extinction, here’s a circular I got from them, and they can have the March of Dimes share.”

“You seriously want to give that much money to wild horses and ponies?”

“If I didn’t know some fool would contest it, I’d be strongly tempted to give the whole shooting match to wild horses and ponies.”

“Well, you’re the boss.”

And don’t forget it, she thought. She said, “One other thing. There’s a young girl who works for me, Linda Robshaw. She’s been a great help to me all year and I know she’s at loose ends. I think it would do her good to have the shop, and I’d like to see the Lemon Tree stay in operation after I’m gone. God knows it’s little enough in the way of a monument. Can you add a codicil to that effect?”

“That’s easy enough. I can also make it contingent upon her operating the business for a specified length of time.”

“Oh, the hell with that. I don’t put strings on things, Henry. She won’t have a problem with inheritance tax, will she?”

“On the shop and the inventory? You rent the store, so all that’s involved is fixtures and stock. What’s that worth?”

“Damn near nothing.”

“Under fifty thousand dollars?”

“So far under you couldn’t see it from there.”

“Then you can forget inheritance taxes.”

“She might need money for cash flow, though. I wonder if I shouldn’t give her a few thousand dollars free and clear?”

“You could,” he said. “There’s an easier way. Just set a higher balance in the Lemon Tree checking account You’ll lose a few dollars’ interest every year but that’s no hardship in your position. And it simplifies things.”

“I should have thought of that myself.” They went over a few details and were finished. She got to her feet “When can you have that for me, Henry?”

“Let me see. Today is Wednesday. How would Monday be?”

“Monday?”

“Monday, Tuesday at the latest. I’ll give you a call.”

“I’m certainly glad we simplified things.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I think you’re stalling me, Henry, and I think I know why you’re stalling me. And I don’t think I like it”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“I’m sure you do.”

“These things take time, Olive. Even a relatively simple matter—”

“You could dictate the whole damned document in fifteen minutes and we both know it, and even in this day and age it shouldn’t take your girl the better part of a week to type it. You’re implying something and I do not care for it.”

He sighed heavily. “Force of habit,” he said.

“I still don’t like it”

“It’s not what you think. I know you well enough, I know you wouldn’t — we do this frequently, Olive. People can change their minds. And signing a will is a depressing thing, and—”

“It’s a sight more depressing to know you have a will in force that’s not as you want it. I expect to live a good many years, Henry, and I’ll get off to a better start when I know my property will go where I want it to go. It’s eleven o’clock. I’ll be back at four this afternoon to sign it. I hope it will be ready.”

“Oh, it’ll be ready.”

“Is something funny?”

“I was just thinking of something my dad used to say. Excuse the language, but he said you’ve got more balls than a bowling alley.”

“He told me as much to my face once. I always took it a compliment.”

“You were right to. That’s how he meant it.”

She crossed the street to the bank. Standing in line she thought about Oscar Biedemeyer. How long had it been since she’d gone to his funeral? Ten years in the spring, and it didn’t seem that long. He had been a good man. Well, Henry was a good man himself. A decent lawyer always tried to tug you along on a leash. You couldn’t hold it against him. But you had to know how to stand up to him.

She transferred six thousand dollars from her personal account to the Lemon Tree account. She filled out some forms and was given a signature card to take along with her. On her way out the bank manager headed her way, obviously intent on expressing his feelings for her loss. She pretended not to notice him and managed to dodge the encounter.

It had been raining off and on all morning. Now it was clear and the sun was shining as she walked down Main to the Mall. “I may be taking a trip,” she told Linda. “A couple of weeks away from here would probably do me good. I haven’t made any plans yet, but I’ve arranged with the bank so that you can pay any bills that start to pile up. They need to have your signature on file.”

She returned the signed card to her purse, lit a cigarette, walked idly around the little shop. She said, “I don’t suppose I have to tell you you’ve been a godsend to me. I’d have just closed up. I’d close now if I didn’t have you to run it for me.” She picked a poorly carved giraffe from a shelf, clucked at it, put it down again. “But you enjoy it, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do.”

“And you like the town.”

“Yes, I do like it here. I’m just beginning to realize how much I like it here. As a matter of fact, I was thinking about finding an apartment.”

“It’s pointless to stay in that tenement for any length of time.”

“It is, and I’m willing to commit myself to a lease. To the idea of spending the next year here.”

“And not getting married in the meantime?”

“Oh, that’s over. That’s been over for awhile.”

“I think that’s as well.”

“Do you?”

“I think a woman’s better off waiting for the right one. Even if he never comes along.”

“And he wasn’t the right one?”

“No. Or you wouldn’t be looking for an apartment, would you?”

She lunched on a sandwich and a cup of coffee. It was raining when she left the lunchroom, a soft and tentative rain. She walked quickly to George Perlmutter’s house on Ferry Street. There were patients in his waiting room but he took her ahead of them.

“I could have waited,” she said. “It’s nothing all that urgent.”

“I never thought it was. Does the others good to wait a little longer. Improves my image. What can I do for you, Olive?”

“I haven’t slept well since Clem went to the hospital. I haven’t slept at all since he died.”

“I see. Well, that’s one thing we’ve got a cure for.” He looked at her thoughtfully. “Don’t tell the AMA I brought it up, but have you tried any of the nonprescription items? They work for most people, and I like to stay away from the stronger drugs when I can avoid it.”

She said, “I went through the same sort of thing when my father died. I had to take Seconal every day for a month and it worked like a charm.”

“Yes, if does that. I gather you’d like me to prescribe Seconal.”

“Please.”

“Simple enough. Every case should be so simple.” He wrote rapidly on a pad of prescription blanks, tore off the top sheet and handed it to her. “Anything else troubling you? Headaches? Depression?”

“No headaches. Depression? Well, I haven’t been doing handsprings.”

“But nothing you can’t handle on your own?”

“No. George, I’ve never understood why doctors can’t write like everyone else. It’s incomprehensible to me. I can make out your numbers, though. I’m sure it will be more than a week before I can sleep without help.”

“No point in buying more pills than you need.”

“And when these are used up?”

“Just call me and I’ll renew the prescription.”

“That seems like a nuisance.”

“Does it?”

“I’d say so.”

“You’re still a young woman, Olive. You’re attractive, you’re healthy, you have no financial worries—”

“And I’m in good spirits. Four excellent reasons why you can prescribe a larger quantity of sleeping pills with a clear conscience.”

He got to his feet and paced back and forth between his desk and the window. He said, “We’re talking about something without mentioning it, aren’t we, Olive?”

“Then shall I mention it? We’re talking about suicide.”

“Yes, we are. And that’s not the only reason for giving you Seconal in small amounts. It’s a dangerous drug to possess in lethal quantities. It’s very possible to take pills and forget you’ve taken them; that sort of mental haziness is an effect of the drug. There have been so many cases of genuinely involuntary overdoses—”

“I can promise you I won’t take an involuntary overdose, George.”

“Well, that spells it out, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, it does.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “I sent a check a few months ago to an abortion reform movement. Their main argument is that a woman should have the right to do as she wishes with her own body. I see no reason why that right is the exclusive province of pregnant women.”

“I’m not sure how much of that I agree with. In any event, there’s a difference between acknowledging your right and—”

“And making it less of an ordeal for me? Oh, I’m not going to do away with myself, George. There — I’ve stated that categorically. But if I were, do you seriously think you could stop me? I could go to a half dozen doctors and take their prescriptions to a half dozen pharmacists.”

“I could make that difficult for you.”

“But not impossible. I could take these seven pills you’ve prescribed and wash them down with a quart of iron. That’s supposed to do the job. I could put my head in the gas oven. If I made up my mind to do what I’ve been talking about, I could hardly be prevented, but I would want to do it with the least pain and fuss and aggravation.”

“I’m supposed to prolong life, Olive, and you’re asking me to help shorten it.”

“You’ve done that before.”

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I’ll forget you ever said it.”

“I could name names. I could mention a man who took an overdose of chloral hydrate. He got out of bed and walked to the medicine chest for it, I understand, and I also understand that was the first he’d walked in almost three years.”

“Is there anything that happens in this town that you don’t know? That was a terminal case, we couldn’t even reduce the pain anymore.”

“Oh, is that so. And don’t you recognize a terminal case when you see one, George Perlmutter? And do you think you can do anything about my pain? Do you think you can do anything on earth about my pain?”

At four o’clock she signed her will. She did not walk directly home. Instead she wandered slowly around town, taking her time. Autumn was beautiful here, here in this town to which she so completely belonged. Spring has a joy, an affirmation, a rebirth, but autumn had a slendor that no other season could match. Never did like winter.

You didn’t have to wait for winter. You could make it come to you on your own terms. You had that right.

Clem had had the right. He had had a decision to make, and he made it and she never considered interfering with it. She happened to feel it was the correct decision, but even if she had felt otherwise she would have acted no differently. She had never dictated the terms of his life; she could hardly have presumed to dictate the terms of his death.

She walked to her house almost without realizing it. She looked at it from the outside, walked up the driveway to the backyard. The garden was not at its best now. The mums were in bloom and did not look as good this year as they usually did. Someone ought to divide and reset them in the spring.

And no doubt someone would. The house had long ago been bequeathed to her church, and the minister who conducted her funeral service would probably take it over as a rectory; it was a better and more spacious house than he presently occupied. And his wife was a responsible gardener.

Should she have left the house to Linda? She had not even considered it, but now she found herself wondering. It would surely have complicated things for Henry Biedemeyer, but that was not what decided her against it. No, you could not force another person into your own life. The shop, yes, but not the house as well.

She went inside, wandered through the rooms of the large old house. She locked the outside doors. George Perlmutter would call her in the morning. When she did not answer he would grow apprehensive and come over to make sure she was all right. She had left a key under the mat for him.

He hadn’t liked that. No, he hadn’t liked that at all, but that was just too bad. No law said he had to like it. No law said she had to care what he liked or didn’t like.

She sat for an hour or so in the living room, thinking some thoughts in silence and saying others aloud. People who lived alone generally talked to themselves, she knew. Well, she would never be an old lady who talked to herself. Nor was she talking to herself now.

She said, “Well, I guess it’s time, darling. Do you know something? I always hoped you would be the first of us to go. Always. Of the two of us I thought I would be better at getting on. But I’m not so damned great at it, after all, am I?”

She climbed the stairs. She said, “Strange to be doing things for the last time. The last look at the garden, the last trip up the stairs. What’s strange is the knowledge. Do you remember the last time we made love? I can’t remember it. Every time merges into one. We made love once, and it lasted all our lives.”

In their bedroom she undressed and hung up her clothes. She put on a nightgown and went to the bathroom and filled a glass with water and swallowed thirty-six Seconal capsules. After she had swallowed first handful she stopped and studied herself in the mirror. If she was going to change her mind, now was the time. If she felt the slightest hesitation, now was the time to realize it.

“Not for a minute,” she said aloud. “Not for an instant.”

She carried the empty glass back into the bedroom. A half-finished bottle of whiskey was on his bedside table. She poured herself a strong drink and sniffed it.

“I never could abide the smell,” she said. “I always wondered how you managed to like it. All due success to temperance.”

She drank the glass down. She felt a rush of warmth in her middle but nothing else.

“Nope,” she said, “I can’t see I missed anything all these years. Never knew what you saw in it, but then I never knew what you saw in me, either.”

She sat down on the edge of the bed. “George Perlmutter says I’m young and attractive and healthy and rich. Somehow I wasn’t moved. Oh, darling, it’s no good when it’s no fun anymore. It was always so damned fascinating to watch how things turned out. And to laugh at all the fools. I don’t know how to laugh, Clem. I can’t do it anymore.”

She looked at the blank canvas hung over the bed. It was the only picture remaining in the house.

“Now there’s an example,” she said. “That’s going to be hanging on that wall after I’m gone, and no one alive will have the slightest idea why it’s there, and sooner or later some damn fool will take it out of here and some other damn fool will think it’s a blank canvas and paint some damn fool picture on it. Now that’s as funny a thing as I’ve thought of in I don’t know how long, Clem, and I ought to be laughing. But I’m not. I’m not laughing at all.”

The pills were starting to work. She could feel her tongue thickening in her mouth, could sense the beginnings of fuzziness in her mind. She pulled back the covers and got into bed. She lay on her side of the bed and turned toward his side.

“Now isn’t that better? Oh, of course it is. Do you remember, Clem? Oh, I wanted you to be the first but I wish you were with me now. How I wish you were with me now. Hold my hand, Clem. Hold my hand. Yes, that’s right. Oh, that’s right. I’m all right now, Clem. I’m all right.”