A Ship Made of Paper

[12]

“I think we’ve already been here,”Hampton said.

“Really?What makes you think so?”

It was too dark to see Hampton’s face, but Daniel could tell from the quality

of the silence that Hampton was glaring at him.Even friends would have begun to get irritated with each other by now.Being lost brought out the sort of fear that dovetails into rage.

“What makes me think so?”asked Hampton.His voice seemed completely un-

connected to his feelings;even in anger, it was melodious.Or maybe there was a connection, but Daniel didn’t know him well enough to make it.

“I think we’re making progress,”Daniel said. “Well, we’re not, we’re going in circles.” “Hampton.I’ve been following you.All right?” “We’re going in circles.” “Well, you’ve been taking us there.” “Daniel?” “What?” “Can I make a suggestion?” “Sure.What?” “Go fuck yourself.” There was a rock nearby, embedded deeply into the forest floor, covered with

moss and lichen.Hampton thought to scale it, hoping to see a break in the woods,

but the soles of his shoes were slippery, and as soon as he stood on the rock he slipped and fell hard onto his hands and knees, and just stayed there, with his head down, for several moments.

Daniel went to his side, touched him softly on the shoulder.

Hampton glanced up at Daniel.“Damn,”he said.

”Here,”Daniel said.He put out his hand.Hampton’s fingers were hard and

cold;he grasped Daniel’s hand like a statue come to life.Daniel stepped back and pulled Hampton to his feet.It was strange to be touching this man who had once had, and was now losing, everything.

Weeks pass.Anxiety.Cunning.Lies.Daniel and Iris meet whenever and wherever they can.The danger is, ofcourse, an aphrodisiac—

anAfro-disiac, Daniel thinks, but does not say it.Iris has made it clear that she is not going to be his Black Girlfriend.She has also made it clear that she is not ready to tell the truth to Hampton, which means Daniel must somehow make certain that Kate doesn’t speak to Hampton herself.And so when Kate wants to make love he makes love with her, and when she insists that they begin to repair their relationship by seeing a therapist he must acquiesce to that, as well.

And now it isTuesday, two days beforeThanksgiving, three in the afternoon, and Daniel and Kate are in the waiting room oftheWindsor Family Counseling Center.Daniel picks up an old, well-worn copy of Redbook,just for something to do with his hands and eyes, opens it up to a picture ofa delirious golden retriever bounding up to its human fam-ily in an open field, an ad for canine arthritis medicine.

They are going to talk to a therapist on Kate’s insistence, but they have come to this specific office on Daniel’s recommendation.Daniel asked the shrink who worked down the hall from his law office for a name and was told that the best person for that sort ofthing was Brian Fox.But getting the referral didn’t complete Daniel’s manly reparations, nothing could.“You call him, this mess is your doing, you make the ap-pointment,”she said, and rather than argue the matter, Daniel found it simpler to make the call.Now they are here, and Kate seems appalled by the informality ofthe place, already in some agony over what they have come to discuss, already feeling that her privacy is being invaded, her dignity compromised, her wounded pride put on display.

Daniel stretches his feet out before him, looks at the tips ofhis shoes, places his hands on his knees.He must gather himself, think ofwhat he will say, what he will not say, when Dr.Fox brings them in for their two-fifteen.He closes his eyes.

A couple ofdays ago, after making love to Iris in her bedroom, they were both covered in perspiration, and Iris pulled from her closet a small tan-and-blue rotating fan.She plugged it in, placed it on top ofher dresser, and then grabbed his hand to pull him out ofbed and stood with him in front ofthe cooling, drying breeze.“This is better than a shower,”

she said.“I don’t want you to just wash me offyou.”

He tries to rivet his attention on the magazine.He looks again at the ad for canine arthritis medicine and thinks about Scarecrow, poor Crow, slowing down week by week, day by day, tottering around Iris’s house and yard exuding beneficence.Daniel has never known such a perfect dog in his life, though he realizes that his virtually worshipful attitude toward the dog is consistent with his virtually worshipful attitude toward everything in Iris’s house, the orderliness ofher spice rack, the scent ofher hand soap, the clarity ofthe ice cubes, the amusing nature ofher computer’s screen-saver (kangaroos in sunglasses),the silkTurkish carpet her brother brought back from Istanbul, the black-and-white photographs ofNelson in their austere wooden frames, pictures Iris took and printed herself during the briefperiod she was interested in photography.

A door next to the receptionist’s window opens and Dr.Fox emerges, wearing a dark-blue suit, a white shirt, a blue-and-white tie.With his close-cropped hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and elegant goatee, he looks like a diplomat from a small Marxist nation.“Katherine? Daniel?”he in-quires softly, with a kindly smile.

Kate stares at Fox with palpable amazement and then, despite herself, she begins to laugh.Daniel, who himself was not expecting a black man, understands that Kate is feeling the irony oftheir having made an appointment with anAfrican-American to discuss their domestic diffi-culties, but he nevertheless feels she is behaving badly.

IfDr.Fox senses some racial content in Kate’s laughter, he gives no evidence ofit, and he ushers them into his office, a small, dimly lit room filled with books, green glass lamps, a small collection ofantique type-writers.His window looks out onto an old apple tree that was split in two by the October storm.When they are all seated—Kate and Daniel in khaki director’s chairs, Fox in a tufted burgundy leather seat—the re-lationships counselor begins the session by asking them their names, their ages, what insurance they carry.His voice is steady, at once emo-tionless and insistent, it’s like being pulled over by a highway patrolman.

“We’re here because Daniel has been seeing another woman,”Kate suddenly says, no longer patient enough to allow Fox to collect the stan-dard data.

Daniel is surprised at how raw this sounds.Every scoundrel he knows complains about being quoted out ofcontext, but having his behavior re-duced to the simple act ofinfidelity strikes him now not only as inaccu-rate but unjust.What about all the pointlessly lonely nights that led up to it?What about never having known passion?

“How have you come to this knowledge?”Fox asks, with funereal tact.

”It was quite obvious,”says Kate.

”I told her,”Daniel adds softly.

”Well, then,”Fox says, taking a deep breath.He pinches the skin around hisAdam’s apple, purses his lips.“So let me begin with you, Katherine—and Daniel, you’ll have your chance to speak, too, but I want to begin with Katherine, ifthat’s all right with both ofyou.Katherine, this situation you find yourselfin, how would you like to see it resolved?”

Kate’s face colors, and the sight ofit stabs through Daniel.She is nervous to be here, humiliated, and she who is so deft with words seems tongue-tied.

“I want to save what amounts to my marriage,”she says, her voice barely more than a whisper.She clears her throat.“We may not have any official documents, but this relationship means a great deal to me.Cer-tainly more than my actual marriage, which was just…crap.More than anything, I guess.And I miss my old life, I miss the way things were before all this chaos.Ifwe could go back to that, back to that nice life, I think I would be willing to forget everything that’s happened since October.”

Daniel feels he is being lured into what a man in his position must never do:looking into the heart ofthe person he is leaving.He thinks for a moment that maybe he ought to get out ofhis chair and leave.He can-not offer her hope, nor solace.IfKate is here to protect herself, or to heal her wounds, then he should not be here.He is the cause ofher pain, he is the source, that churning in her stomach, he put it there, that sense ofexclusion and exile—it comes from him.But what can he do? He can-not be for himself and for her, too.Their interests are in collision.There is no middle ground.What he wants is what is tearing Kate apart, and he cannot and will not stop wanting Iris, Iris is the most real thing.

Fox strokes his goatee, and his deep, almond-shaped eyes seem to soften, which Daniel notes, as iftrying to assess a juror’s sympathies.

”Can you say more about that?”Fox asks.

Daniel sits back in his chair, waiting for the sharp sting ofKate’s reply.He knows her well enough to imagine how irritating Fox’s insipid in-vitation must be to her.

But Kate tries to do what Fox has asked.“I’m very angry, and very hurt,”she says.“As Daniel knows.The atmosphere at home is obviously tense.Very tense.Practically unbearable.We’re all walking on eggshells.

We’re waiting to see what Daniel will do.I think even Daniel is waiting to see what he’ll do.He’s a decent man and very kind and he’s terrific with my daughter.I’m sure this whole situation is killing him.”

Fox turns briefly toward Daniel, not to elicit a response or any further clarification ofKate’s remarks but, it seems, just to see the expres-sion on his face.

“And you say you were previously married,”Fox says.

“Yes, to a man whom I wasn’t in love with.And about whom I rarely think.He has no relationship with my daughter, he lives in Hawaii on a little bit offamily money, and he is completely irresponsible.”

“Which brings us to Daniel,”says Fox.

”I’ve asked him to stop seeing this woman.”

“I see,”says Fox.“And has he stopped seeing her?”

They’re talking about me as if I weren’t actually here,thinks Daniel.

”I don’t think so,”she says.

In fact, he has seen her this morning, their parting is just three hours old, and he feels, as usual, halfmad from either having just seen her or from being about to see her.Today, he accompanied her to an immense su-permarket twenty miles south ofLeyden and followed her up and down the aisles while she shopped for her family’sThanksgiving dinner.Despite everything, Iris was excited about the holiday, which was her favorite of all the holidays—a fact that confounded Daniel, who would have ranked it close to the bottom, rivaled only by Christmas in the categories of forced jollity, depressing cuisine, and awakened feelings ofemptiness, isolation, and loneliness.Iris’s parents were coming in, as well as her sis-ter, Carol, and her brother, Andrew, with his wife and two children.

Hampton’s parents would be there, too, along with his aunt Margaret, his sisterVictoria, with her family, and his brother James, and the prospect of housing them all, the improvisation ofbeds and bedrooms, the finessing ofsmall privacies, the worries over laundry, water pressure, the orches-tration ofbathroom times, Aunt Margaret’s sudden allergies to pecans and oysters, without which a properThanksgiving dinner was unimagin-able to Iris, all these and a dozen more domestic preoccupations were ab-sorbing Iris as she filled her cart with bags ofcranberries, cartons ofbeer, gigantic bottles ofseltzer and Coke, three pounds ofbutter, bags of marshmallows, a ten-pound bag ofsugar, a twelve-pack oftoilet paper.

Listening to her as he tagged along made Daniel ache with envy ofall those people who were to be the recipient ofher care.Imagine! Pressed into this marathon ofhousewifery and to somehow keep her enthusiasm and her love offamily intact.She was an emotional genius.Ifonly he could somehow escape the frozen Butterball turkey sitting sullenly in his own refrigerator, somehow be spirited away from the embattled dinner that waits to be served at his table at home, ifonly all the laws oflogic and propriety could be suspended and he could find himself at Iris’s house for that meal, with Ruby at his side, and Hampton not only vanished but completely forgotten, gone like a puffofsmoke.

“Daniel?”Fox is saying.“This is a heavy time for you, isn’t it.”

“Yes,”says Daniel, though not quite certain to what he is agreeing.

”I hear you.”

“Yes,”says Daniel automatically.“Thank you.”

“Is there something you’d like to say to Katherine right now? Let’s imagine we are in a little circle ofsafety, and we can say whatever it was that was in our hearts and there will be no blame, no blame at all.What would you like to say in the circle ofsafety?”

“I’m sorry.”

“That’s good, Daniel, but you’re looking at me.”

He turns to face Kate.“I’m sorry.”

“We’re not really in a circle ofsafety, Dr.Fox,”Kate says.“We’re more like in a circle ofhell.”

Daniel’s heart floods with fondness for Kate, a strangely nostalgic outpouring ofremembered love, as ifshe were long departed.Wouldn’t it be nice ifIris said biting and sophisticated things like that? But wit is not the source ofIris’s allure.Hers is a different sort ofgrace, unadorned and total, the grace ofthe sea, the grace ofangels, and sex.

And as for Kate:she is suffering, but how can he protect her from it, how can he even soothe her when he himself is misery’s messenger?The unmentionable truth is that he has moved on.No.Worse.He has moved up.He has entered a higher plane offeeling, a higher plane ofdevotion, and a higher plane ofpleasure.How can he make Kate understand this? He is not only leaving her, he is leaving himself, leaving everything familiar be-hind, he is slipping over the border with only the clothes on his back.

“I didn’t think we’d have to talk about a certain aspect ofthis whole thing,”Kate says, crossing her legs,“but since we’re here and…you’re here.”She gestures elegantly toward Dr.Fox.“It seems worth mention-ing.The woman Daniel was, or maybe we should say,isseeing is black.”

“How is that relevant?”Daniel says, much more insistently than intended.

“Oh please, Daniel.It’s completely relevant.You always wanted to be black, and now you’ve figured out a way to be black by proxy.”

Daniel hazards a glance at Fox, whose brief, black eyebrows have raised up practically to his hairline.“Is this true?”Fox asks.

“About the woman beingAfrican-American?Yes.But, I’m sorry, I think there’s something a little bit racist in what Kate’s saying.”

“Daniel,”says Fox,“you’re looking at me.”

“I know.”

“Do you want to say this to Kate?”

“She heard me.”

“And she won’t dignify it with a reply,”Kate says.

”She’s practically making a living out ofwriting articles about O.J.

Simpson,”Daniel says to Fox, as ifappealing to him, forging some sort ofbond, and instantly feeling the folly ofit as the therapist shifts in his seat.

“Are you still seeing her or not?”Kate says, her voice level, composed.She cocks her head as she looks at Daniel, somehow creating the impression that whatever he answers will come as a reliefto her.

But he’s not convinced.It seems entirely likely to him that ifhe tells Kate he is still actively in love with Iris, and he sees her whenever possi-ble, then Kate will not only suffer but she will retaliate.

He wishes that Iris would tell Hampton herself.Soon,she has said.I

can’t,she has also said.She fears him, fears the pain it will cause her, and is exhausted to contemplate the mess that will ensue.She worries about losing custody ofNelson—though surely Hampton could not delude himself into believing he was set up or temperamentally suitable to take care ofthe boy.

Ifit were up to Daniel, Hampton would already know.Then he would simply stay in NewYork, and those unbearable conjugal visits could cease.But Iris is more than reluctant to tell him, she seems terrified of the possibility, which makes him wonder ifshe fears Hampton will do some violence to her, that he will pummel her, that beneath that golden-brown exterior ofaffluence and elegance, family roots, princely entitle-ments, and fraternity-boy competitiveness lurks the narcissistic, sexually preening, and ultimately predatory black man who prowls, sulks, and rages through Kate’s articles on O.J.

“Well, are you or not?”Kate asks, her voice a little wobblier this time, like a tightrope walker working without a net who’s made the mistake of looking down.

Ifhe tells her the truth, he will pay for it.She will try to put a wedge between him and Ruby.She will make his life hell.

“I’ve already answered this question,”he says.

”Answer it again,”says Kate.

He shakes his head no, thinking that in some malignantly petty way this silent No can be taken to mean that he isn’t seeing Iris anymore, or it could also mean that he doesn’t want to“answer it again.”He knows he is losing his honor with these infantile games with the truth, but, then, ifhe’s willing to lose his family why not jettison honor, as well?

“What do you think about that?”Dr.Fox asks Kate.

”About what? He hasn’t answered me.He shook his head, that could mean anything.”

“I’m not seeing her,”Daniel blurts out.“I’m not seeing Iris.Okay?”

Telling this lie isn’t as sickening as he’d anticipated, he was so close to it anyhow, it wasn’t difficult, he just let himself drift into it.

“What do you think about what Daniel has said?”Fox asks again.

Kate shakes her head.“I don’t know.I’d like to believe him.”

“You don’t believe me?”asks Daniel, as ifincredulous.

”No.I don’t.”

“Then have me followed.Hire a private detective.”

“I have.”

Daniel’s first thought is ofthis morning, after he and Iris left the supermarket and drove north back toward Leyden—wasn’t there a car fol-

lowing close behind, a nondescript sedan, just the sort to be driven by some professional snoop?A mile into the drive they pulled intoWindsor Motors;Iris wanted to check out the newVolvos, and Daniel would have gone anywhere for a few extra minutes with her.Had the sedan followed them in?They walked around the lot, a light snow fell for a few moments and then stopped.A salesman descended upon them.Iris pointed to a car she liked and the next thing they knew the salesman had slapped a pair ofdealer plates on it and he was waving so long to them as Iris steered the new car out ofthe lot for a test drive, with Daniel in the passenger seat.Her eyes were brimming with tears.What’s wrong,he asked her.She shook her head, pulled out into traffic, started driving a little too fast.

He saw a tear roll down her cheek, he stopped it with his fingertip—re-membering Kate once saying that human tears were filled with bodily waste, more toxic than piss—and then licked his finger clean.You’re cry-ing,he whispered.He just gave us the car,Iris said.He didn’t ask for identi-fication, a credit card, nothing.“Here’s the keys, see you in a while, drive safely.”

She sniffed back what remained ofher first response to this novel situa-tion, and then looked at Daniel with something utterly wild, something practically feral in her expression, as ifshe had just entered a realm in which more was permissible than she had ever dreamed.

“Look at his face,”Kate says to Dr.Fox.“You must be somewhat ofan expert on the faces men make when they are totally fucking busted.”

Fox’s clock is digital so there isn’t even a ticking, all that can be heard is the longshhhhhofthe white-noise machine, like the sound ofan enor-mous punctured balloon.And then, from another ofthe center’s offices, the sound ofa muffled male voice crying out,“Not at meal time, that’s all I’m asking.Not at meal time!”

“What’s that?”Kate asks.

”Somebody else’s misery,”Daniel answers.

”Not that.That.”

“It’s the white-noise machine,”Fox says.

”Ah,”says Kate, smiling.“Then shouldn’t it be whining?”She starts tolaugh.

“I can’t believe you hired someone to follow me around,”says Daniel.

”Well, I didn’t.But I’m never going to forget the look on your face when you thought I had.”

“All right,”says Fox.“I’d like to try something here, ifthat’s okay with you two.”

“He still hasn’t answered my question about whether he’s seeing her or not.”

“What I’d like to try…,”saysFox.

”Just a second, Dr.Fox.Please?There’s no point going forward with this little session, ifDaniel’s not willing to answer my question.”

“He did answer your question,”Fox says, his voice rising with alarm, which Daniel notes with relieffor himself and a feeling ofsome pity for Kate—poor Kate, fifteen minutes into therapy and she’s alienating thedoctor.

“Let me tell you something about Daniel, Dr.Fox.He’s not terribly straightforward.He’d rather lie than hurt someone.He’s a negotiator.

No, here’s what he is.”She uncrosses her legs and then recrosses them in the opposite direction.“He’s like an orphan.He’s always covering his ass, making sure he doesn’t get sent back to the home.He doesn’t feel as if he belongs anywhere.He moves back to his hometown—and moves me back with him, by the way.He has no idea why.His parents cut him out oftheir stupid little will? He barely reacts.He wants something big to happen to him, something to tell him who he is, or make him something.

There must be a name for that, he must be a type, or something.He can tell you anything.He may end up saying that he’s black.I wouldn’t be surprised.People like him can never tell the truth, because they don’t know the truth.He’s a sweet guy, and a good man, and despite his be-havior he’s really pretty ethical.But Daniel’s been spinning his own feel-ings for so long they’re a mystery even to him.”

Fox nods, somewhat sagely, but when he strokes his goatee, his fingers are trembling.He clears his throat and murmurs something about

”trust issues,”and something further about that most unfortunate“circle ofsafety.”

Abruptly, Kate reaches over and squeezes Daniel’s knee as hard as she can.She speaks to him through curled lips and clenched teeth.

”Saysomething.”

“Do you love me, Kate?”he asks, his voice soft, almost sleepy.The pressure she exerts on the muscles right above his knee is vaguely painful, but relaxing, too.The physical punishment seems to siphon off some ofthe other, more persistent agonies.

“That’s really not the issue here,”Kate says.“Anyway, ofcourse I do.”

“I’ll take that as a no,”he says.

”You see? I can’t win.”

“All right, then let me ask you this…”

“It’s better to just express your own feelings,”Fox says.“And not askquestions.”

“I agree,”says Daniel.“But let me get these questions out ofthe wayfirst.”

“He said no questions, Daniel,”Kate says.

”You’ve had your chance to cross-examine me.Now it’s time for thedefense.”

“The whole idea ofcouples counseling,”Fox says,“is to keep youout

ofcourt.”

“Have you ever felt the kind oflove for me,”Daniel says to Kate,“that you’d rather die than live without me?”

“What do you want me to do?Audition?”

“I’ll make it easier for you.I don’t think you ever have, at least not toward me.And I think it’s a sad life, and a waste ofheart.We are capa-ble ofit.IfI am, then you are…”He points to Dr.Fox, who seems to be staring at him with alarm.“And you are, too.We all are.It’s in our wiring, in our DNA, it’s the poetry that we all are capable ofwriting, if we can find the goddamned courage.”

“I think you have lost your mind,”Kate says, slowly taking her hand away from him.“Who are you?The fucking JohnnyAppleseed ofLove? How can you say these things to me?”She looks for a moment as ifshe is going to be furious, as ifshe is going to scream at him, smack him, rake him with her fingernails, but then her face crumples and she begins to cry.She takes a handkerchiefout ofher handbag and covers her eyes.

Ifshe thinks what he says is awful, she should hear what he does not say.He is here trying to mollify Kate, when what he might really be in-terested in is shaking her until she sees how he has changed, that he is no longer the emotionally anemic man she somehow chose.He wants to ask her:Have you ever made love for six hours barely stopping? Have you ever had nine orgasms in a night? Have you ever seen me weep from the sight of your beauty?When was the last time we slept in each other’s arms? Have you ever seen my savage side? Have you ever known me to be absolutely helpless with passion? Has anyone ever stuck their tongue up your ass? Have you risked disgrace for me? Have you made a double life and been willing to hurt another person for the love of me? Have you ever been willing to give up everything for another person?You wouldn’t even do that for Ruby.

Fox finally releases them, and they hurry out ofhis office, angry and ashamed, with their eyes down, their faces closed.They have made an ap-pointment for nextWednesday, but they both know they will not keep it.

Neither ofthem ever wants to be in this place again.The medicine here cannot cure them.

The November sky is the color ofa cellar sink;a cold wind blows through the parking lot as Daniel follows at a safe distance behind Kate on the way to her car.She lets herselfin and he waits there for a moment, giving her a chance to pull away without him, ifthat’s what she wants to do.His car is at his office, a ten-minute walk, which he would prefer to being in cramped space with Kate.Yet he cannot bolt out ofthe parking lot and make a run for it;despite the danger, he feels the logic oflife, the rules ofdecorum insist that he get into the passenger seat, close the door behind him, strap on his safety belt.The car’s engine turns over.The radio comes on, a blur ofexcited talk that Kate instantly switches off.

“Ready?”she says.And then, without waiting for his answer—he was about to say sure, fire away—she throws her car into reverse and backs it quickly and without hesitation across the center’s small parking lot, straight into the front end ofa blood-redToyota.Daniel is hardly dis-lodged from his seated position, but Kate, lighter, has pitched forward and banged her forehead against the steering wheel.She barely reacts to this, not so much as touching the oozing welt with her fingers.She throws the car into drive, her car extricates itselffrom theToyota, and she drives it headlong into a gray Honda parked on the other side ofthe lot.By the time the center empties out—no one inside has failed to hear the twisting metal and shattering glass—Kate’s car is immobile and she and Daniel are screaming at each other.

The next morning, desperate to see Iris and to tell her what has hap-pened at the counseling center, Daniel brings Ruby to My LittleWooden Shoe at the normal time, but to his ravishing disappointment Nelson is already there.As he helps Ruby out ofher jacket, Daniel’s eyes search the suddenly grim and airless little day care center in case he has some-how overlooked her presence, in case she is talking to a teacher, or maybe helping out in the kitchen.Stiffwith unhappiness, his fingers fum-ble with the buttons, and Ruby looks up at him with dismay.

Nelson, seeing Ruby, comes to her side and tugs at the sleeve ofher shirt.“Come on,”he commands her.Generally, Ruby is compliant around Nelson, but today she resists.She raises her little square hands to-ward Daniel and puckers for a good-bye kiss, while Nelson glowers at them both.

“Okay, you guys, have a great day,”Daniel says.

”I don’t even like you,”Nelson replies, raising his eyebrows, extending his lower lip, shrugging.

Ruby is appalled by what Nelson says.Her cheeks blaze as ifslapped.

“Yes you do!”she fairly cries.“He’s my dad.”

“No he’s not,”says Nelson.He smiles as ifRuby has walked into his trap.

Tocomplete his mastery ofher, he takes Ruby’s arm and pulls her away.

Daniel drives away from My LittleWooden Shoe, with no destination in mind, only vaguely aware oftraffic and the fact that he is in charge of a heavy moving machine.His mind is not so much processing informa-tion as pinned beneath it, pierced on one end by the absence ofIris and on the other by the fact that Nelson is harboring a great malevolence for him.At the end ofthe winding, residential road that the day care center shares with a scatter ofone-story houses, where Daniel would normally turn right to head toward the village and his office, he instead turns left, which brings him to Chaucer Street, which in turn empties out onto the state highway leading six miles north to Marlowe College.He presses the power button on his cell phone to tell SheilaAlvarez he’ll be in an hour or so late, but the battery has worn down and the phone remains dark.

I’ll call my office when I get there,he thinks.

But get where?All he knows is that there’s a good chance that Iris is at the college, and a good chance that ifhe drives over to Marlowe there is hope offinding her.

Life, it seems, can be really very simple:you feel where you want to go, and you go there.You let your legs take you.At least the body, dog that it is, tells the truth.

Seventy years ago, Marlowe College was a sleepy, mediocre Episcopalian school with an enrollment offive hundred young men.Now, it is nondenominational, with four thousand students, twenty-four hundred ofthem women.The original old buildings still exist—ivy-covered, gray stone buildings, with leaded windows and burgundy slate roofs—but they are now overwhelmed by the modernist additions, the glass-and-steel fitness center, the broken geometry ofthe art center, the Bauhaus-ian dorms.The campus has grown, but it is still only thirty acres, with one north-south road winding through it, and another going east to west, and now Daniel is navigating his car, driving slowly as students stroll across the road without so much as a cautious glance.The air, cold and humid, is like a soaking sheet.A couple ofvery large crows land on a power line and swivel their heads toward each other as the wire sinks beneath their weight.

Daniel finds Iris’s car in the parking lot between the gym and the stu-

dent center, and he decides she’s more likely in the center and tries there first, where he immediately spots her, in the cafeteria, seated at a small wooden table in the company ofa prematurely gray, olive-complexioned man in his late thirties.He wears a silk shirt and a long, luxurious scarf, and he holds a pen as ifit were a cigarette as he leans toward Iris.Iris is dressed in a smart black skirt and a dark-green chenille sweater, with a silver bracelet and matching earrings.Daniel, struck by the sight ofher, and then further struck by seeing her in conversation with the handsome man at her table, freezes in his tracks.A steady stream ofyoung students flows past, parting ways to walk around him.Daniel is fixed to his spot, suddenly gravely dubious about having come here, and feeling a sick stir-ring ofjealousy at the sight ofIris seated with another man.Within mo-ments, however, Iris happens to look in his direction and gestures for him to come and sit with her.She doesn’t ask what he is doing here, and, of course, gives no indication that they are anything but two people whose children go to the same preschool.She introduces him to JohnArdiz-zone, who, it turns out, is her newly appointed thesis advisor in the American Studies Department.Daniel, though unasked to account for his sudden appearance, says that he has come to use the college’s library to check up on some local history as a part ofhis research about Eight Chimneys, but as soon as he is embarked on this unnecessary fiction he regrets it and simply lets it trail off.Ardizzone quickly excuses himself, saying he has a departmental meeting.He taps his pen a couple oftimes, as ifdislodging an ash from its tip, and, before hurrying off, he tells Iris that he likes her new ideas for her thesis and he hopes she can have a draft ofit before the end ofthe spring semester.

“You have a new thesis?”Daniel asks, as soon asArdizzone is safely away.

”Yes.So, what are you doing here?”

“I don’t know.I think I’m stalking you.I’m sorry.”

“It’s strange seeing you here.”Her voice drops to a whisper.“It’s strange seeing you with your clothes on.”

“Don’t excite me,”he says.

“You missed a spot shaving,”Iris says, touching his upper lip.Her short hair glistens and her fingers smell ofthe oil she has rubbed into her scalp.“Are you having trouble facing yourselfin the mirror?”

“No.”

“I am.”

“I’ve given myselfover to a higher power,”Daniel says, smiling.“And you’re it.”

“Sounds convenient.”

“It’s a lot ofthings, but ifconvenient is on the list, I haven’t noticed.”

“It’s okay,”Iris says.“I’m not trying to hassle you.But I’m finding this verydifficult.”

“I’m sorry, Iris.I don’t know what to do.”

“You want to know the truth? I’m miserable, frightened, guilty, sleepless, I feel like a criminal, and I think I’m getting a flu or something, and I’m happy, happier than I’ve ever been.”She looks over her shoulder.

”Oh shit, here she comes, perfect timing.”

“Who?”

“Kalilah Childs.This girl, this kid, I keep running into her in the library.She keeps trying to get me to join the Black StudentAlliance.”

“Maybe ifwe start necking she’ll go away.”

“Too late,”Iris says.

Moments later, Kalilah Childs is at their table, a dark, fleshy nineteen-year-old girl in faded denim overalls and work boots, wide-eyed, cornrowed, wearing a multitude ofrings, bracelets, and necklaces.

The jewelry is, for the most part, African, though she also wears a pearl necklace given to her by her parents when she graduated first in her class from her Quaker high school in Philadelphia.A scent ofsandalwood is on her clothing.Rarely serene—she is acknowledged as a genius at Mar-lowe, and the pressure is immense—Kalilah now is particularly agitated.

She looms over Iris and looks as ifshe might pounce upon her.

“Have you heard what happened toAlysha?”Kalilah says.She doesn’t acknowledge Daniel’s presence.“Three guys jumped her at that pizza place out on Route One Hundred, and one ofthem kicked her in theear.”

“Oh no,”Daniel says, though as soon as his expression ofshock is uttered, he realizes that in this particular situation he is meant to be quiet.

“Is she all right?”Iris asks.

”She had to go to the hospital.Now she’s in her dorm.Her mother’s coming up from Brooklyn to take her home.”

Iris nods, taking it in.“Actually,”she says,“I don’t think I know Alysha?”She says the name uncertainly.

“You would ifyou ever came to a meeting,”Kalilah says.The finger she shakes at Iris has three rings on it.

Iris presents Kalilah with a slow, composed smile, one that would have stopped Kalilah in her tracks ifshe were two years older or ten per-cent more perceptive.

“When am I supposed to go to a meeting, Kalilah?”Iris says.“I’m trying to get my work done and raise a family.And going to school when you’re older is really difficult.You can’t understand.You’ve got a supple young brain, and all this fire and certainty and sense ofpurpose.I’m struggling just to get through, and don’t have anything left to go to any damn meeting.”

“You’re not old!”Kalilah says, her voice rising—it’s hard to say ifit’s out ofconviction or discomfort.“And we need every one ofus.Look at what happened toAlysha.”

“I’m sorry for what happened to her.”Iris puts particular emphasis on the final pronoun.

“Well it could have been you, or me, or any one ofus,”Kalilah says.

“That’s why we need the Black StudentAlliance, and that’s why you need it, too.”As Kalilah says this, she turns slowly and lets her eyes fall to rest on Daniel.

“You know what, Kalilah?”Iris says.“I don’t join clubs, or groups, or any ofthat stuff.Okay? Oh, sorry.Kalilah Childs?This is Daniel Emerson.”

“Nice to meet you,”Daniel says, halfrising from his chair.

”Hello,”Kalilah says, her face pleasant, a little placid.

Daniel thinks this would be as good a time as any to leave.Iris senses his thought and places her hand on his wrist.

“What ifmy friend Daniel wanted to join your club?”Iris says.

“Would that be all right?”

“No, and anyhow I bet he’s not even a student here.”

“Well, let’s say he was.Then could he join?”

“Come on.It’s forAfrican-Americans only, students and faculty.”

“Well, I would never join that kind ofthing.I don’t think I could be friends with Daniel ifI joined a club that excluded him.How do you think I’d feel ifDaniel belonged to an organization that didn’t allow African-Americans? Do you think that would be all right with me?You think that wouldn’t be grounds for ending the friendship?”

“Well, he does belong to a group that excludes you,”Kalilah says.“It’s called the white race.I presume you’ve heard ofit.Try joining it.”

“Daniel didn’t join it,”Iris says.

”Well, he’s in it.”

“Actually, I resigned,”Daniel says, at last able to speak.“But it’s like the Mafia, you know, they keep pulling me back in.”

“That’s pretty funny,”Kalilah says.

Iris looks at her watch.“I’ve got class,”she says.She picks up her briefcase, zippers it shut.A tremble goes through her hands and Daniel realizes just how angry she is.“You know, Kalilah,”she says.“You’ve got a great future ahead ofyou in politics, ifthat’s what you choose.”

“That sounds like a put-down, coming from you,”Kalilah says.

”You just don’t take no for an answer, and maybe that’s good.But it doesn’t work with me.You think you’re the first person who’s ever told me I need to be doing this or that for my people?You think I haven’t heard it from both sides ofmy family?And both sides ofmy husband’s family, too? I’ll tell you the same thing I say to them.You believe in free-dom? Great.Then let me be free.Is that so hard? I’ve got one little life to live, that’s all, that’s the whole thing.Don’t I have the right to live it the way I choose?Why do I have to do what you want me to do?Why do I have to join your group, and say you’re like me and I’m like you and we’re all together? It’s really shit.You know that, Kalilah? It’s total shit.

And ifyou want to talk about racism, let’s think about this—you look at me and all you see is brown skin.You don’t know what I’m going through in my life.You don’t know what kind ofresponsibilities I’m dealing with, or what the pressures are, or anything else.You don’t know what I eat, or where I live, or what I want, you don’t know ifI sleep on my back, or ifI’m wanted for murder inTennessee.All you’re registering is the pig-mentation.So how are you different from some white racist?”

“You don’t give us a chance to know you,”Kalilah says.

By now, Iris is standing.“That’s what I’m doing now,”she says.She kisses her fingertips and touches them against Daniel’s cheek.Then, be-fore another word can be said, she turns and walks quickly away.

Daniel and Kalilah watch her cross the cafeteria, and then are left with each other and the silence between them.

Thanksgiving arrives.Daniel and Kate are fleetingly bound together as they collaborate on a story to explain the bandage on Kate’s forehead, as well as her black eye, as they sit at the dutifully laden table with Ruby, and with Carl and Julia Emerson.

The Emersons are amazed but not inquisitive as they listen to the story ofKate’s car’s jammed accelerator, and Daniel, to lend some verisimilitude to the tale, hints darkly that a very serious lawsuit may be in the offing and that Kate may be living on easy street by next year.“And I’m going to get my beak wet on this one, as well,”he says, uncorking the wine, walking nervously around the table and filling glasses.

Carl and Julia look as ifthey have recently graduated at the head of their class in the Prussian PostureAcademy.With their shoulders squared, their backbones straight as pool cues, they surreptitiously warm their hands, rubbing and squeezing them under the cover ofthe starched linen tablecloth.When the turkey is brought steaming and fragrant to the table, they follow it carefully with their eyes but make no comment, no ooohofpleasure, noahhhofanticipation.Their faces show no gaiety;in fact, they came close to not showing up at Kate and Daniel’s house at all.

After more than seventyThanksgivings, the thought ofmissing one struck them as being something less than tragic, and, further, they both suspected that somewhere during the long, gluttonous, tryptophane-infused afternoon there was a very real chance that their son would fi-nally vent his rage over being eased out oftheir will.

Daniel, for his part, has no such plan.He is glad his parents are here, glad he and Kate and Ruby do not have to face this holiday feast on theirown.

Kate, too, is glad for the Emersons’presence.Though she does not find them altogether agreeable company, and, more important, she is quite sure they don’t care for her—her southernness makes her seem alien to them, her life as a writer seems vain, her single-motherhood was bad planning, and they also suspect she is a lush—they are, nevertheless, family, and right now the idea offamily seems important to Kate.

As for Ruby:everyone’s voice seems too loud.The food smells like medicine.Her patent leather shoes, unworn for months, feel full of sand.She feels continually as ifshe has to go to the toilet, but when she does nothing comes out.Her stomach has hurt her all day, and the day before that, and the day before that, too.She cannot stop wondering what everybody would do ifshe pounded her fists on the table and screamed.

Three hours later, Carl and Julia, exhausted by the meal, by the concertina-wire tension in the house, Ruby and her constantly imploring them to get down on the floor with her and watch her play with her Le-gos, or to read to her, leave.They leave what is left ofthe fifteen-pound turkey, leave bowls ofstuffing, quivering masses ofcranberry sauce, a casserole ofyams and Brussels sprouts, two pies, pumpkin and pecan, they leave a spatter ofcandle wax on the heirloom white ofthe table-cloth, bowls ofnuts, wine glasses blurred by greasy fingerprints.In the end, not very much food has been consumed, and even less ofit has been enjoyed, but the meal is registered in the Great Book ofHolidays, and Daniel’s parents, much to his surprise, give him a last-minute embrace as they are making their way out the door—a little eruption ofaffection that he believes to be expressive oftheir boundless reliefto be finally getting out ofthere.“Stay in touch!”Carl shouts over his shoulder, as they scam-per toward their car.The sky is a flat chalky black, the murkiness ofwater in which a paintbrush has been swirled.

Daniel closes the door, turns to survey the conditions ofhis house arrest.He cannot see the dining room, but he can hear the angry clatter of dishes being cleared;nor can he see the little den in which they keep theirTV, but that, too, he can hear.Ruby is watchingLittle House on the Prairie,her favorite show.It seems to be aThanksgiving special, she wants to watch make-believe people enjoy the holiday.Daniel will wait a few moments before going in to join Kate on cleanup—right now, he is sure she is slugging back the wine people have left in their glasses, and he doesn’t want to walk in on it, doesn’t want to have to react.He checks his watch.It is only a few minutes past eight o’clock and he stands at the edge ofwhat remains ofthe night, feeling hopeless and beset, as ifpeer-ing across a river too broad to cross.He imagines the dinner over on Ju-niper, probably in all the confusion and conviviality ofa large family gathering they are just sitting down to eat.He imagines the laughter, the little side comments, the well-worn repartee ofbrothers and sisters.

Daniel forces himself into the dining room.Sure enough, the wine glasses are all empty.They are all four on their side and placed around the turkey carcass on the great white platter, which Kate has just lifted offthe table.Daniel collects the two bottles ofChilean cabernet and, as he suspected, they are both empty, not even a little tannic slosh at their base.He hates to calculate, but the math ofthis is inevitable.Two bottles equals twelve nice glasses ofwine.He himself has had two, his father one, his mother her usual festive zero, leaving nine for Kate.Nine glasses ofred wine do not a lost weekend make, but nevertheless:it’s still nine glasses.But wait!There’d beencocktailsbefore the first bottle had been uncorked.A dish ofolives and a little platter ofsmoked salmon, both of which Daniel had picked up himself that morning at one ofLeyden’s new gourmet shops, obligingly openThanksgiving morning.The little appe-

tizers had been laid out and Kate had asked,“Who wants a drink?”No-body really did, but Daniel, thinking he was somehow covering for her, said he’d have one, too, and she brought out a quart ofone ofthe Nordic vodkas and poured a neat one for Daniel and one for herself, and now that he thinks ofit she drank it down with nary a shudder, so the chances are it was not her first little taste ofthe day.

Daniel is unable to help himself from making a bit ofa show ofputting the empties in the recycling sack.“Poor old soldiers,”he mutters over their socially responsible grave, and when Kate fails to react to that he pushes the matter.“That was pretty decent wine, wasn’t it?”Kate is at the sink, with her back to him.The scalding water rushes out ofthe tap—he’s got to remember to turn down the temperature on the hot-water heater, while he is still on hand—and a cloud ofsteam rises from the basin.She is motionless;the plates and glasses remain on the counter next to the sink, and Daniel figures that she is waiting for him to do some real work here, something a little more useful than checking the empty wine bottles.He joins her at the sink—he will rinse and she can put things into the dishwasher, the pots and pans can soak until morning.But as soon as he is next to her, or, really, a few seconds after that, because it takes a few beats to come up with the courage to glance at her, he sees that her face is a deep sorrowful pink, her eyes are shut, and her hollow, downy cheeks are slick with tears.He places a hand on her shoulder.

“Get your fucking hand offofme,”she says in a whisper.

He lifts his hand slowly, lets it hover in midair for a moment, and then brings it to his side.

“What do you want me to do, Kate?”

“I want you to die.”

He sighs, shakes his head, and says,“Short ofthat.”He can scarcely believe he’s said something so glib, he tries to cover it quickly.“Why don’t I clean up here?You did most ofthe cooking.”

She picks up the five dinner plates and drops them into the sink.They land with a crash, yet somehow none ofthem break.Then she goes for the platter upon which the turkey still stands, but Daniel stops her before she drops that, too.He slowly wrests the platter from her.At first she resists, but then she seems to lose interest in creating any further havoc.She puts her hands up, steps back, like a criminal who has just been disarmed.

“You want to do the dishes? Do the fucking dishes,”she says.

He is so imprisoned by the grisly emotional logic ofa love affair at its end point that he almost shouts, No, goddamnit, he willnotbe doing the dishes.True, Kate cooked the turkey but he, always the more domestic one in their sinking domestic partnership, was responsible for the cran-berry sauce, the vegetables, the salad.And what is there to cooking a turkey?You put it in the oven, deck it out in some sort ofReynoldsWrap biohazard suit, peek in on it every hour or so, and in the meanwhile you can be sneaking little pulls on the oldAbsolut.But then, sanity and self-interest, not always boon companions, do a little synchronized swim-ming across his brainpan and he realizes that his relieving Kate ofall household duties would be the very best thing he could do right now.

“Fine,”he says,“I’ll be glad to.You should get some rest.”

She looks him up and down, wanting to quarrel but too exhausted and too full ofwine to bother speaking.She is wearing flowing black trousers, a white satin blouse, she has braided her hair up in a little deft twist, but all her beauty has fallen into a heap.She drags her feet as she trudges across the kitchen, the little squared heels ofher black pumps scrape and bang against the floor;they are the noisy, tottering footsteps ofa little girl wearing her mother’s shoes.Daniel doesn’t say anything more, he is afraid to look at her.He doesn’t want to do anything to im-pede the progress ofher retreat.All he wants her to do is go upstairs, lie down, and then pass out, dressed, undressed, makes no difference.

He rinses the dishes, the glasses, the silverware, sticks everything that fits into the dishwasher, and then, thinking that ifKate is really going to pass out she will have done so by now, he creeps up the steps and looks into their bedroom, where, sure enough, she is not only in bed but un-der the covers, with the lights out.A little exhausted sigh oflight from the hallways casts its pale dull depressive patina into the bedroom; Daniel can make out what seems to be Kate’s white blouse and the tips ofher shoes on the floor.So:she has undressed.Meaning:she is not nap-ping, she is turning in for the night;this is not a pit stop, this is a crash.

Kate rarely mentions her briefhusband, but more than once she has told Daniel that Ross loved to fuck her when she was passed out loaded.Al-cohol was like cement blocks tethered to her sleeping brain, sinking it twenty fathoms deep, rendering her impervious to human voices, bark-ing dogs, sanitation trucks, phones, alarm clocks, light, cold, heat, shaken shoulders, kissed lips, fingers up her vagina, and, from time to time, full copulation.Every so often, however, she would be briefly aroused from her stupor and come streaming up to the surface ofcon-sciousness like a scuba diver swimming up through a thick red velvet ocean ofwine, and catch Ross at it.She would either tell him to stop it, or she would not—both responses had their dark satisfactions.

The result ofone ofthose sneaky copulations was Ruby, and now Daniel slips out ofthe bedroom and goes downstairs to check on the little girl, who has dozed offin front oftheTV.Some nitwit in charge ofpro-gramming has decided to showPlatoonon Thanksgivingnight.TheSamuel BarberAdagio for Strings is on the soundtrack, its piercing melody ac-companying the men as they kill and die in the lush jungle.Daniel digs be-neath the sofa cushions and finds the remote, mutes the sound, hoping to protect Ruby, but the sudden absence ofsound awakens her.

“Hey, Monkey,”Daniel whispers, hoping she will remain drowsy.

”What’s this?”she says, looking at the screen.

”Nothing,”he says, hitting the offbutton.“It’s time for bed.”

“What was that?”

“A movie.”

“Can I watch it?”

“You won’t like it, honey.It’s not for kids.”He sits next to her.“Are you feeling okay?”

She hates to admit it—mainly because she doesn’t want him to use it as an argument against her watching theTV.Nevertheless, she would like some sympathy, the occasional magic ofan adult’s commiserating voice.

”My stomach hurts.”

“Still?”he asks.

She nods.She detects alarm in his voice and it brings tears to her eyes—the strange kind, the kind she knows will not be shed.

“Where does it hurt?”

“My stomach.”

“But where?”

She moves her hand in an indistinct circle around her abdomen, as if waxing a tabletop.

“Does it feel more throw-uppy, or more poopy?”

She shrugs, looks away, suddenly delicate.He has the feeling ofhaving misspoken on a date.

“How long have you had it?”he asks.“Since dinner?”

“Every day,”she says.She reaches for the remote control;Daniel pulls it away from her, but she persists, and he gives it to her.She presses the on button and the set comes on just as one ofthe soldiers inPlatoon catches a bullet in the back.Her face is so impassive, Daniel can’t tell if she has registered the image.She begins to scroll through the channels, one after the next, looking for a station showing cartoons.

“Where’s Cartoon Network?”she asks.

They have had a satellite receiver on their rooffor months now, but with hundreds ofchannels to choose from, Daniel is still the only one who knows where the various networks and cable stations are on the scroll.

Even Kate, a hard-core aficionado ofCNN, often asks Daniel for her show’s three-digit address.He is the one who brings the groceries home, who lugs them from the car, he is the one who mows the lawn, rakes the leaves, shovels the snow, salts the icy sidewalk, carries the firewood in from the shed and stacks it next to the hearth, he is the one who opens the flue in November and yanks it shut again in May, he is the one who pushes the reset button on the boiler when it inexplicably shuts down, who sets the Havahart traps for the squirrels in the kitchen, who traps the milk snakes in the dirt-floor cellar, who opens the windows so that the occa-sional bat can escape, he is the one who changes the batteries in the smoke detectors—what in the world will they do without him?

“It’s too late for cartoons,”he says to Ruby.

”What time is it?”A note ofdesperation in her voice—she knows what’s coming.

“Almost ten,”he answers, yawning.

”Where’s Mom?”she asks.

”She’s sleeping, too.Come on.”Daniel stands.He grips her by her armpits, the heat comes straight through the fabric ofher cotton turtle-neck.He lifts her, she grips his ribs with her knees.What ifthis is the last time he ever lifts her into his arms? Ofcourse it’s not, he tells himself.

But he also knows that day will come.In the end, she may come to love him again, but first there will be hurdles to jump in a long steeplechase ofhate.

The usual bedtime ritual for Ruby—the washing, the brushing, the stories, the back scratching—usually runs close to an hour, but tonight she allows herselfto be put to sleep in twenty minutes, after which Daniel checks in on Kate again, and after that he goes downstairs, puts on his overcoat, and leaves.The night air is cold and tastes ofwood smoke.The stars pulsate like wounds.He slides into his car, starts the en-gine, and backs away from the house without putting on his headlights.

When he is safely away from the house he switches on his lights and sur-prises two deer who have been standing on the side ofthe road.He won-ders ifhe is making a terrible mistake—the kind you can never live down, the kind that defines your life, that creates a before and an after—byleaving Ruby alone in the house with her mother.But he comforts himself:Isn’t that how the world goes?Aren’t there at this very moment millions ofkids in their little beds, with their drunken parents right down the hall?

When he has put that proverbial country mile between himself and his house, Daniel realizes that once again he has no destination.The Bistro is closed for the holiday—though surely halfits clientele could use a place to repair to—and he neither wishes nor dares to drive by Iris’s house.He finds his cell phone in the glove compartment and dials her number.One ofDaniel’s clients, a postmarital stalker, from whom Daniel has unconsciously learned certain desperate techniques ofinfor-mation gathering and track covering, has told Daniel that ifyou want to make a phone call and don’t want your number to show up on caller-identification hardware, or to have your number retrievable by the re-cipient’s pressing*69,then you can block your number from coming up bydialing*67before making the call, which Daniel does now before di-aling Iris’s number.His plan:IfIris answers, ask her to meet him at his office;ifanyone else picks up, simply terminate the call.

The call is answered on the second ring.A man’s voice.Hampton.

Fucking hell.Daniel hits the offbutton on his phone, tosses it aside, and steps on the accelerator, plunging the car deeper into the night.

Guided only by the logic and habits ofdriving, he speeds through the village and turns onto a little two-block stretch offrame houses, given the grandiose nameVanderbilt Drive;from there, he takes a left onto Hammersmith, to his office.IrmaThomas is playing on his tape deck:It’s raining so hard I can scarcely catch my breath…He pulls into the driveway that leads to the parking area behind the building, which is just an un-lighted patch ofblacktop, with amateurishly drawn yellow lines indicat-ing the parking space for each ofthe building’s clients, and he doesn’t notice Iris’s car until he is turning into his own slot and the outer edge ofhis headlights sweeps against the side doors ofher blueVolvo.

He bangs his fist against the steering wheel, rocks back in his seat.

Iris has gotten out ofher car, she is walking toward him.He opens the door.He hurries toward her, takes her in his arms.

“It’s you,”he says, talking and kissing her at the same time.

”I was just going to leave,”she says.

”Do you have time?”

She shakes her head no.“Do you?”

“Kate’s asleep.Passed out, actually.”It strikes him as a terrible thing to say, but even as he realizes that he proceeds to make it worse.“I actu-ally feel nervous leaving Ruby alone with her.”

“You should go back.We both should.”

“How did you know I’d be here?”Daniel asks.

“I didn’t.I just had to get out ofthe house and I decided to come here.Hampton’s brothers Jordan and James—”

“I met James,”Daniel interjects.

”And his sisterVictoria are completely obsessed with this fucking video game James brought over.All that brotherly competition, it’s re-ally exhausting.And they’ve got Nelson all gooned up over it.It’s the worst kind ofviolent fantasy game for a kid like Nelson, but try telling that to Hampton.He just laughs, like there’s something cute and naïve about my concerns.”

“Leave him then, live with me.”

Without any particular change ofexpression, the look offrustration and anger on her face changes to melancholy, it’s like moving a radio dial the breadth ofone cricket leg and hearing completely different music.

”Don’t,”she says.“It’s not funny.”

“Am I laughing?Am I even smiling?”

“Where were you all my life?”she says.“Why weren’t you there when it was time to get married?Where were you?What were you doing?”

“I don’t remember,”he says, pulling her close.“Let’s go upstairs,”he murmurs into her ear.

They have already been at each other a few times in his office;they have made love on the floor, with Iris on Daniel’s lap and Daniel in his chair, with Iris naked and bent over the desk, propped up on her elbows, her hands clasped as ifin prayer, or with her arms outstretched and her hands grasping onto the edge ofthe desk for traction while Daniel emp-ties himself into her from behind.As they walk in tonight, and Daniel turns on a floor lamp and then steps behind Iris to help her offwith her coat, they both realize that more than any other single room, this utili-tarian space, with its sense ofgrievance and redress in the glassed-in bookshelves, with its evidence oftime wasted and time standing still in the standard-issue magazines on the low table in the waiting room, and the tax-deductible elegance in the blue-and-gold weave oftheTurkish rug Daniel bought at an auction at a Holiday Inn across the river, this two-room suite, this place ofbusiness, this professional outpost ofa man who willfully jettisoned his main chance to make any kind ofname for himself in his field, this is as close as anything they have to call their own.

Where in the world can they go?They have used her house, going from room to room, trying to find a bed in which they don’t feel criminal, they have parked like teenagers along various dirt roads and woodland paths, and they have been together at the Catskill Motel, the Bittersweet, the Stuyvesant Motor Lodge, a Sheraton, a Motel6,the Flying Dutch-man, and in Cabin3ofa squalid scatter oftiny tourist cabins calling it-selfthe MorpheusArms, always checking in under assumed names and paying in cash, sometimes only able to stay for a halfhour, and never re-turning anywhere a second time.

“Where does everyone think you are?”he asks her, hanging her coat on the coatrack, and then putting his own over hers.

“Hampton’s mother wants some Pepto and I said I’d find someplace open and get it for her.”She glances at her watch, shrugs.“We actually have some in the house—Pepto-Bismol is to theWelles family what chicken soup is to Jews—but I just hid it in my purse so I could have an excuse to get out ofthere.”She takes an unopened bottle ofthe lurid pink liquid out ofher pocketbook and shows it to Daniel.

He is thrilled by her cunning.Its dishonest, calculating nature doesn’t disturb him at all.

“Kind oflow, isn’t it?”she says, dropping the medicine back into her bag.

“I think when people love each other, they’ll do anything to be together,”Daniel says.“Everything that is in the way has to get either shoved to one side or beaten into dust.You do whatever is necessary.”

“Great.Let’s go on a killing spree.”

Daniel gestures toward the oak file cabinets.“Most ofmy cases, there’s not much passion behind them, but now and then I have to rep-resent someone who’s driven by some desire—for another person, for money, whatever—and I never understood how someone could risk wrecking their life, or ruining the lives ofpeople around them, or actu-ally hurting someone, just to get what they want.But I think that’s be-

cause I never really wanted anything myself, I mean really wanted it, the way I wanted you.”

“You mean you don’t anymore?”

“Now more than ever.It’s the only real thing.”

“There’s no place in the world for us, Daniel.Nothing will ever come ofthis.Just memories, fantastically painful memories.”

“That doesn’t have to be true.”

“Too much is against us,”Iris says.“Do you see how people look at us when we’re in public?”

“Fuck them.”

“Well, one day we’re going to be tired ofbeing in a freak show.”

“That’s because we’re here inTinyTown.We could go to a city.”

“Where could we go?”

“Anywhere.New York.”

“NewYork?That belongs to Hampton.I could never.Where could we go?We couldn’t stay here.OrWashington, Atlanta, San Francisco, Chicago.He’s got family in so many places.Where could we live?”

“Anywhere.London.Hong Kong.Amsterdam.Oslo.What difference does it make? I would go anywhere.And I’d do anything.I’d crawl through broken glass ifI could just be sure that at the end ofthe day I’d be getting into bed next to you.”

“You’re too focused on what you want, Daniel.”

“I can’t help it.I think I was hardwired to be with you.I’m telling you, Iris, nothing else matters.To me.”He has grabbed her elbows and is pulling her closer to him, but she turns her face away.

“I love being with you,”she says.“I love what you see in me, and I like who I am around you.”She looks at him, with such sudden seriousness it almost makes him laugh.“It’s the greatest freedom I’ve ever known,”she says.He is about to say something but she stops him.“But what are we going to do?”she says.“IfI ever tried to leave Hampton, it would be like a war.”

“Fifty percent ofmarriages end in divorce,”Daniel says.

”Not fifty percent ofHampton’s marriages, or anyone else in his fam-

ily.With them, every wedding is a royal wedding, part ofsome grand al-liance.They’re all demonstrating some idea they have ofperfect family life, and I can guarantee you one thing, he would make my life hell.He’d be merciless.In terms offinances…”

“Who cares about that?”

“I do, Daniel.Come on, be realistic here.This is my life we’re talking about.And Nelson’s, too.He’d go for custody, Hampton would, he would try to hurt me in any way he could.”

“He could try for custody.That doesn’t mean he’s going to get it.He won’t.The courts are used to these guys who suddenly are Father ofthe Year.Hampton’s not set up to raise a kid.And he’s not that great with Nelson.He bullies him.”

“You know, these family court judges,”Iris says.

”Idiots,”says Daniel.

”Yes, well, a lot ofthem areAfrican-American.African-American women.I think they’d give Hampton whatever he asked for.They would, wouldn’t they?Tell me I’m wrong.Please.I wish you would.But you can’t! I’m not going to lose my son!”

“Iris…”

“And I’ll tell you another thing,”Iris says.“IfHampton thought I was leaving him for a white guy, that would make it all the worse.”

“I’m not all that white.”

“I’m being serious, Daniel.”

“Sorry.But he’s not all that black, that’s for sure.”

“What are you talking about? He’s not all that black?You don’t really know what you’re talking about.Hampton is a black man, he feels it, his world is based on it, his social life, his business, his identity, he may be light-skinned and think like a banker, but I can promise you ifhe ever found out I was fucking some white guy, he’d be Louis Farrakhan before the day was out.It would be the ultimate betrayal.”

“Is this what you came here to talk about?”Daniel says.He lets go of her, and, just as he feared, his touch was all that was keeping her close.

She drifts away from him, stands at the window.Drops ofmoisture—rain? snow?—are forming on the black glass.

“No.I wanted to come someplace where you might be, or at least somewhere that belongs to you.I’m just so crazy about you, it’s ridiculous.”

The phone on his desk rings with a sound as sudden as a rock through a window.Daniel thinks,This is either a wrong number or trouble.The an-swering machine picks up, SheilaAlvarez’s soothing voice.After the tone, Kate’s voice:“I just called you on your cell phone but you’re not answering, so I’ll leave this happy holiday message for you at your office, Asshole.I woke up from the little nap you so considerately convinced me to take, and guess what I found?An unattended child and a sink full of dirty dishes.So, Asshole, are you having fun?”

Daniel finally rouses himself and turns the volume offon the machine, so the only evidence ofKate’s continuing diatribe is the light—as red as a pinprick ofblood—blinking offand on.