A Ship Made of Paper

[7]

Suddenly, in the distance was a pop, and then a plume of iridescent smoke rose above the trees, a vivid tear in the dark silken sky.

“Someone’s got her,”Daniel said.“I just saw a flare.”

Hampton looked up.Only a small circle of sky was visible through the

trees.“What was a damn blind girl doing out here? Even with eyes you can’t make your way.”

“She was raised here,”Daniel said.“Her father was the caretaker.She came

back to look after him when he got sick.Smiley.”

“Smiley?What do you mean?”

“That’s what everyone called him.I used to see him in town whenIwas

akid.”

Hampton shook his head.“These people, they’re living in another cen-

tury.They got their old family retainers, their fox-hunting clubs, their ice boats, they play tennis with these tiny little wooden racquets, and NewYear’s Eve they put on the rusty tuxedos their grandfathers used to wear.”

“Just a small percentage,”Daniel said.“They can be pretty absurd, but it’s

okay, if you have a sense of humor about it.”

“That was the first thing Iris ever said about you, how you have this ter-

rific sense of humor.”

“Class clown,”said Daniel.“In my case, middle class.”

In the city, Hampton comes home to what used to be his and Iris’s apartment and which is now his alone.It’s four rooms in a high-rise down on Jane Street, in theVillage.On a block ofpicturesque town houses, most ofthem over150years old, the building is a twenty-five-story eyesore, but the saving grace is that once Hampton is inside he doesn’t have to see it, all he looks out on are tree-lined streets, and pastel blue, pink, gray, and cream brick Federal town houses, with their tiny backyards and steep tiled roofs and the crooked old chimneys right out ofMary Poppins.

He’s taken the subway home, the most efficient way uptown after work.A taxi fromWall Street to Jane Street would take an hour, whereas the subway gets him there in ten minutes.And the cost is a token, not the fourteen to twenty dollars a crawling, ticking taxi would cost.Hampton is becoming more and more careful about spending money.This creeping fiscal conservatism has nothing to do with how much he’s making, be-cause he’s making more money than ever before, and it has nothing to do with rising expenses, because his expenses are stable.It just seems that the older he gets, the more watchful he becomes about his expenditures.

He is still a long way from the miserly habits ofhis grandfather—who, ac-cording to family lore, held on to a dollar until the eagle grinned—and he will always disapprove ofhow his haughty, judging, acid-tongued mother would say things like“That Negro spends money like a nigger.”But lately it seems to Hampton a breach oftaste to squander money.When shop-ping, he counts his change carefully, increasingly certain he is about to be cheated.On the train up to Leyden he looks with contempt at the pas-sengers who have paid nearly double to ride in that dopeyAmtrak Busi-ness Class.For what?A bottle ofSaratoga water and the mandarin delight ofsitting in a seat that is exactly like every other seat on the train, except that the upholstery is blue rather than red.Yet even carefully monitoring his own expenditures leaves Hampton unsoothed and insecure.He wor-ries over his investments, suffers the manic fluctuations ofthe NASDAQ, the slow attrition ofsome poorly chosen mutual funds.But even more than he worries about the stock market, Hampton worries about Iris’s management oftheir household accounts.In his view, she remains a child with money, without impulse control, with no sense ofsobriety, or plan-ning, or self-denial.Sometimes in the middle ofthe day, like one ofthose mothers you read about who are suddenly certain that their son has just fallen on some battlefield halfway around the world, Hampton will look up from his work and practicallyfeelIris making some ill-advised pur-chase, an antique rug, a digital camera that will never be used, a halfgal-lon oforganic milk at twice the price ofregular milk, a full tank of premium gasoline, even though he has told her over and over that a friend who covers petrochemicals has assured him that the so-called high-grade gas doesn’t extend the life ofyour car’s engine by so much as an hour, nor does it protect the environment.

He is sitting in the L-shaped dining room, with its narrow window looking out onto Hudson Street.Rain is falling in sheets, it’s loud enough to drown out the usual sound oftraffic, the taxis bumping over the cob-blestone street.He flips through today’s mail—statements from Smith Barney and Citibank, two phone bills, a Con Ed bill, requests to sub-scribe to magazines, buy golfclubs, upgrade home security, vacation in Portugal, switch credit cards, purchase vitamins, support the United Ne-gro College Fund, and, on the bottom ofthe pile, an actualletter,with his name and address written in ink.

Eagerly he opens the envelope.The letter is from his old friend Brenda Morrison, now Morrison-Rosemont, sent fromAtlanta, where she and her husband, Clarence, are doctors—he’s an allergist and Brenda’s a pedi-atrician.The letter is written on Brenda’s professional stationery, at the top ofwhich the first and last letters ofher name seem to be toppling over, held upright only through the efforts oftwo hardworking teddy bears.She has sent along a snapshot, and Hampton notes that Brenda’s weight gain continues unabated.She is now two hundred pounds, with two chins and working on a third.Hampton has known Brenda since they were children and she was a wild and bony thing, with scouring-pad hair and furious eyes, and enough ofa survival sense to work her way into theWelles family fabric, first as Hampton’s sister’s best friend, and then as a kind ofhon-oraryWelles—Hampton’s parents ended up sending Brenda to college.In the snapshot, she sits next to Clarence, with his prim little mustache, good-natured smile, his baby-blue turtleneck, and, on either side ofthem, golden retrievers, Martha andTiconderoga, mother and son.The Post-it on the back ofthe picture explains:Tiwas the runt of Martha’s litter and we just didn’t have the heart to give him away.But now he’s nearly eighteen months and he still acts like he’s a baby.Except he think’sI’mhis mommy.

Hampton finds himself staring at the note.He is stuck on the fact that she has spelled“thinks”with an apostrophe.A sharp twist ofracial impa-tience goes through him, about how his people have had three hundred years to learn the language and here they are still misspelling the easy words.Dear Hampton!

Hampton looks up from the letter.Why in the world would she put an exclamation point after his name?

How are you?You wanted us to send you some material pertaining to Clarence and my idea for a business—helping patients collect what is due to them from their insurance companies.Well, we’ve been hard at work on a prospectus, and ifI do say so myselfwhat we’ve come up with is pretty damn impressive! Unfortunately, the computer design company we entrusted with our work was in the process ofmoving.I’m sure you would have advised me against doing business with family, but Clarence’s nephew is really amazing with computers and graphics and that whole world I feel so uncomfortable with.Unfortunately, he’s pretty disorganized.I think he’sADD or something, he just races from one thing to the next.I guess a lot ofcreative types have that problem.All this is to say, our work got lost in the shuffle.Clarence’s nephew was really upset and we all spent a whole weekend looking everywhere for the stuff.It was really heartbreaking and quite a pain in the butt, and it’ll set us back a couple of weeks.In the meanwhile, I didn’t want you to think I’d forgotten about you or this project.We’d still love to get this thing up and running and you are still our favorite investment banker.(All right, you’re the ONLY investment banker we know, but even ifwe knew others you’d still be our favorite!)

Amateur hour.Does she really expect him to raise money for her little cottage industry? Hampton senses her nervousness coming right through her handwriting.Just as he could once detect the hesitations, the soul-stammers ofdesire back in the days ofcourting and conquering women, so now, too, in these moneyed days ofhis early middle age, can Hampton radar out the slightest tremor ofanxiety before someone de-livers a pitch.That this fumble for poise should come from Brenda is sad, in a way—she’s like family and she doesn’t even need the money.But it also gives him the grim, burnt comfort ofthriving in a world that is, for the most part, brutal and uninhabitable.He spends the best part of nearly every day surrounded by people who make money, only money, not houses, or soup, not steel, not songs, only money, and who quite openly will do anything for financial gain, anything legal, and a few things a little less than legal, too.But Hampton’s proximity to this school of sharks is more than physical, he has made analliancewith these squan-dered souls, these are his people, his teammates, and among them he feels the pride ofthe damned.His friends are the guys who will fly halfway around the world to convince someone to take a quarter ofa percent less on a deal.Everyone else is a civilian, all those fruits and dreamers who do not live and die by that ceaseless stream offractions and deals that is the secret life ofthe world, that reality inside reality, the molten core ofprofit and loss that burns at the center ofhistory and which everything else—temples, stadiums, concert halls,everything—has been built to hide.

Clarence and I hope to be up in NewYork for a Conference ofAfricanAmerican Physicians Meeting from December2–5.Clarence calls it the Funference ofAfrican-American Positions.We’d love it ifyou could join us for dinner or a show or anything on any ofthose days.Ifyou could talk Iris into coming into Manhattan then we could make it a foursome.I hope you can tear her away from her school work.Maybe she can give us that Harlem Renaissance tour she’s been promising.Is her thesis still on the Harlem Renaissance—or has she changed her mind?

Hampton stops reading.The rain continues to lash at the windows.

Thunder booms like an avalanche ofboulders.He knew Brenda couldn’t get through a letter without a dig at Iris.Brenda couldn’t possibly care what Iris is doing to fulfill the requirements ofher Ph.D.What’s Brenda, with her intellectual curiosity measuring something like2on the intel-lectual Richter scale, planning to do? Go to some college library and read Iris’s monograph?

Yet.His heart feels queer, as ifit is suddenly circulating blood that is a little oily and a little cold.Hampton is vulnerable to the suggestion that Iris might not be in possession ofa first-class mind.There is a vagueness to her, a lack ofprecision.Sometimes, he thinks this is a result ofher pro-foundly feminine nature, yet in his line ofwork he meets dozens of women whose minds are scientific, logical, calculating, aggressive.Iris’s is not.Both she and Hampton have been explaining her long career in graduate school to themselves and to the world at large as somehow a re-sult ofan excess ofintellectual curiosity, an unwillingness to be pigeon-holed, and the demands ofmotherhood, and Hampton is perfectly willing to stay within the confines ofthis official explanation.What he is not will-ing to say, except to himself, is that Iris is still in grad school, and no closer to the end than she had been last year, or the year before, or the year be-fore that, because she is simply too confused to complete her work;that, in other words, the machinery ofher mind is not quite up to the task.Did he consider her hisinferior?No, not necessarily—in fact, not at all.She is a little abstract.Yet she is perceptive, she can see right through him to his tender, undefended deeper nature.She is the center ofhis emotional life.

Sex with her has more than once moved him to tears.She slows him down in ways he needs slowing down, helps him to see the fragile, transitory beauty ofthe world.He has sat with her in their house in Leyden, on the floor in front ofthe fireplace, in complete silence, watching the fire for an hour, two hours, enjoying a stillness and simplicity he could never have imagined without her.No, these are not the gifts ofa second-rate mind, yet, sad to say, he has to admit they are not the characteristics ofa mind on its way to academic achievement, either.

Hampton places Brenda’s letter and picture back into the envelope.It occurs to him that Brenda might be the stupid one.True, she somehow made it through medical school—but in pediatrics, often considered the bottom ofthe medical barrel.

He stares at the rain and then thinks ifthe weather is this bad in the city it’s probably worse up north.It gives him a reason to call Iris.He leans back in his Eames chair, dials the number with the same hand with which he holds the phone, his fingers moving as ifhe were playing theaccordion.

On the sixth ring, Nelson answers.“Hello?”he cries, his voice vehement and obviously unnerved, yet distant, too.He’s speaking into the wrong end ofthe phone.

“Hey, Nels, it’s me.”Hampton must speak loudly to be heard.

”We don’t have any lights,”Nelson says.

”Turn the phone around, Nels.You’re talking in the wrong end.”

“We do not have lights,”Nelson repeats, after turning the phone around.“Ruby is kissing me.”His pronunciation and rhythm are robotic, every syllable separate, patterned after a Saturday cartoon android.

Ruby?

”Where are you, son?”

“We are in the playroom.”

“Where’s your mother?”As soon as he asks, Iris picks up the extension.

”Hello?”

Nelson hangs up the upstairs phone, hard.

”Iris, it’s me.”

“Hampton!”She sounds just the slightest bit startled.

”What’s happening?”he says.Those were the first two words he ever said to her, uttered in what seems now a distant, sunlit country.Atlanta 1991.Iris had been sitting in a cruddy fifties theme restaurant called Blueberry Hill, with an economics professor who was her boyfriend for twenty minutes or so, they were quarreling, he grabbed her wrist, she yelped as ifbranded, a sugar shaker slid from the Formica table, she had never been manhandled in her whole life, never been slapped, spanked, no one had ever raised his voice to her, and here was this huge, temperamental guy, a two-hundred-and-twenty-pound Malaysian with a military brush cut and a flamboyant Hawaiian shirt he wore like a muumuu over his massive belly, squeezing her wrist, offering up a per-fect opportunity for gallant intervention.Hampton had come quickly to their table and uttered the two-word question that became somehow the touchstone oftheir intimacy:What’s happening? a question he has asked a hundred times since, each time conjuring a memory ofBlueberry Hill and the beginnings oflove.

“Nothing,”Iris says.

Nothing isneverthe answer.

”Is the electricity out?”Hampton asks.

”Yes.We just lost it, twenty minutes ago.”

Justlost it, twenty minutes ago?There’s a bit ofdisarray in that sentence and Hampton senses it, the way you can enter your house and know something is wrong, some small thing has been slightly moved.

”That’s really pitiful.You’d think the infrastructure could cope with a lit-tle rain.”

“It’s snowing, that’s what’s doing it, the snow, it’s been pouring snow for hours.”

“Snowing?”

“And the leaves are still on the trees so they can’t take the weight of it.It’s so awful.Those poor trees.They tear the power lines down as they fall.There’s sirens going all over the place.It’s total chaos out there, it’s like a war, except there’s no enemy, just the snow.It’s really strange to realize how easy it is to scramble everything.When you get here you’ll see.Everything is broken, everything.”

She is making no effort to keep the alarm out ofher voice, in fact, she seems to be hyping it, letting him know that things are bad, maybe even out ofcontrol.Iris’s way has usually been to keep him cool, to pre-vent him from overreacting, but now she is deliberately creating a sense ofimpending emergency, and Hampton wonders why.

“But the phone is working fine,”he says.

“The phone lines are buried.But there’s no lights, no heat.”

“Then why not…”The words caught in his throat.“Why not go to a hotel?”Iris is particularly extravagant in hotels, and watching her raid the minibar is an advanced exercise in forbearance.

“You don’t understand.We’re snowed in.The roads are closed.It’s dangerous out there.We couldn’t go anywhere ifwe wanted to.”

If we wanted to,that is an odd thing to say.Why wouldn’t she want to leave a house that has no heat, no water, no lights?

“I’m worried about you,”he says.

”We’re safe in here.It’s just a little claustrophobic, knowing you can’t go out.And it might not be better tomorrow and I’m supposed to be at Marlowe for a thesis conference with Professor Shafer.”

“Professor Shafer?”Her thesis advisorwasan old Berkeley radical named Steven Pearlstein.That she is scheduled to meet someone else means she has once again abandoned her topic for a new one.

“He’s great.He’s new.”

I’ll bet he is.“Who’s there with you?”

“Here? In the house? Daniel and Ruby.They came over afterWooden Shoe shut down.”She pauses, lets it hang there, like a dancer stopping all movement, standing stock still while the beat goes on.“The whole town’s shut down.”

“What are they going to do?”

“I don’t know.Stay here, I guess.”

He hears a sound, a man’s voice, distant and indistinct.

”What was that?”

“That was Daniel.He says hi.”

“When’s he going home?”

Iris turns away, says to Daniel,“Hampton says hello.”

“Is he going to spend the night?”

“I don’t really know.”

The possibility ofIris spending a night in that house alone with Daniel Emerson renders Hampton, for the moment, mute.

“Don’t do this, Iris,”he finally says.

“What?”

Can she not hear him?Without quite meaning to, Hampton jabs his thumb onto the offbutton, breaking the connection.He had been stand-ing during the conversation, but now he feels weak and must sit.He sits there clutching the phone.He thinks about racing up to Penn Station, getting on a train, and making it to Leyden before anything happens.

How long would it take? It’s halfpast six now.He has committed the train schedule to memory—his memory, which is like a shark looking for new things to eat, has long ago devoured it.The next train is at twenty past seven.The trip to Leyden is one hour and fifty minutes.That would make it ten past nine when he’d arrive.Ten minutes for a cab to come, ten more minutes to reach his house.Nine-thirty.Nelson doesn’t go to bed until nine.That would give Iris and Daniel just a halfhour be-fore Hampton arrived.They would probably not have gone beyond long-ing looks, perhaps a kiss or two.

Yet as soon as he mentally goes through the paces ofthrowing a few belongings in a bag, flagging down a taxi in the rain, sitting on theAm-trak all the way up toWindsor County, making the trek to his house, and then having to do it all in reverse first thing in the morning in order to be back at work, his will to defend his wife against her own vulnerabil-ity to her desires, or from her weakness, all ofa sudden is subsumed by a vast entropy.

This is not the first time he has sat in these rooms wondering ifIris is betraying him.He recognizes his own jealous nature, knows he could not trust the truest Desdemona, can recall with a measure ofgood-natured self-mocking that he was suspicious ofIris even when she was pregnant—he thought she had a crush on her obstetrician, a silver-haired Pakistani whom she would telephone for advice at the slightest physical provoca-tion.Before going to his office for her regular appointments, Iris would spend two hours in the bathroom, showering, sprinkling herselfwith baby powder, polishing her nails, oiling her hair—and she’d wear some-thing dark and vertically striped for the slimming effect, as ifshe wanted to camouflage her pregnancy.He saw how unlikely it was.Yet marriage to Iris made his impulse toward jealousy practically hair-trigger, his heart is like a bank that has been outfitted with an alarm system that is far too sen-sitive, one that can be tripped by a little footstep.

Though Hampton looks back at some ofhis former suspicions and realizes they were silly and unjust, he must nevertheless continue to live with the degrading agonies ofjealousy, and during these last months in NewYork part ofhis strategy for survival has been to commit small acts ofunfaithfulness himself.He’s not sure how he came upon this plan, but the fact is he can tolerate the idea ofIris’s being touched by another man only ifhe can prove and re-prove to himself that mere physical intimacy is a matter ofrelatively small importance—he must, in fact, degrade the very thing he wishes to exalt.The adultery Hampton commits is highly controlled:he spends two or three hours a month with one oftwo pros-titutes who, for $150 an hour, come to his apartment, spread lotion over his body, massage him, and masturbate him to a quick milky climax, the vehemence ofwhich pleasantly surprises him every time.He has settled on these two particular women, after responding to several advertise-ments in the free weekly newspapers that carry in their back pages list-ings for escort services and unlicensed masseuses.He has seen ten different prostitutes in all and has had actual intercourse with none of them—though intercourse is available for an extra charge.He has come close to intercourse a couple oftimes—particularly with Mia, the Chi-nese girl, whose feathery touch up and down his buttocks, combined with the blank, stoned-out expression on her unhappy face, has proved particularly arousing—but he has, to this point, hung on to his resolve to not risk picking up a disease, and when Mia says“You wanna put it in me now?”he can, his mouth parched with desire, shake his head no.

The other woman he hires to arouse and release him is anAfricanAmerican calling herselfAnyuh—she has given him an engraved business card with her name and cell phone number, which he daringly keeps in his wallet.Anyuh—buxom, large-hipped, with a little girlie laugh, big smutty eyes, and long peach fingernails—also costs $150 for a massage and a hand job and twice that for real sex.At those prices, most ofher clients are white.What this means is that she treats Hampton with an excess of familiarity that he finds off-putting;he does not want to be her one black client, her brotherly confidant, with whom she prattles on about her fi-nancial woes.Anyuh makes no attempt at coquetry, eschewing seduction for yawns and cabbagey little burps;while she works over his body, she places her cell phone right next to his pillow, where it continually chirps right into his ear as other clients pursue her far into the night.

He knows Mia’s number by heart and he dials it quickly.Her voice on the phone sounds sad, a bit bronchial, but he chooses to ignore that and feels somehow that things are suddenly going his way when she says she can be over in twenty minutes.

Mia is never early for their appointments and the rainstorm will probably make her even later than usual.Nevertheless, Hampton hurries to prepare himself for her.He goes into his bedroom and as he strips offhis dark-gray suit, his white shirt and striped tie, he also removes the framed photographs ofIris and Nelson from his bedside table, puts them in the closet, along with his clothes.Naked, he sits on the side ofthe modest double bed—the bed that he and Iris first made love in.A vision ofIris in this very bed—on her hands and knees, looking back at him over her shoulder.Oh, the pain ofthat.

From where he sits he can see himself in the wall mirror.He sits up straighter, sucks in what little gut he has, regards himself with some entirely personal mixture ofadmiration and disgust.He lifts his arm, smells himself.

The workday leaves him acrid.He walks quickly into the bathroom, turns on the shower, makes it as hot as he can bear.When Mia arrives, he wants her to smell only the peppermint-scented antibacterial soap, the honey and almond shampoo.He opens his mouth, lets the steaming water rush in.It occurs to him for a moment that he is drowning himself;he turns his back to the shower, bends slightly, purifying his anus.The thought that Mia might pick up a whiffofsomething offensive while she works him over is intolerable.

Kate sits in Ruby’s room, listening to her red radio.It amazes her that there are stations playing music, it seems unforgivable, like Nero’s fiddling.With increasing impatience, she races through the dial, search-ing for news.She wants to be sure there are people out there who know that disaster has struck, who are putting it into some sort ofcon-text.How many people are trapped? How many houses are without electricity? How many roads are closed? She wants numbers.At last, she finds a news reader, a woman with a stainless-steel voice.Kate crouches forward in Ruby’s dark little room, touches the radio as ifit were a friend.

The newscaster is reporting new developments in the O.J.Simpson murder trial, now in its tenth month.Today’s story is not so much about the case as it is about the reporting ofthe case—a reporter from one of the weekly magazines was heard calling Simpson a nigger (news radio said the reporter used“a racial epithet”but everyone knew what that meant) and now the reporter’s employers have weighed in on the sub-ject, releasing a statement to the effect that the writer’s contract with the magazine has been terminated“by mutual consent.”

After a couple more stories and a few noisy advertising spots, the national news switches to the local reports.Now a man, presumably close by, is reading the news.An estimated seventy thousand homes are with-out electricity.All major roadways are closed.County officials have no idea when things will be back to normal.The U.S.Weather Service says there may be as much as another foot ofsnow falling in the next eight hours.There have been eleven fatalities so far.“And in Leyden, there’s a report that the power outage has disabled the security system at a local lockup for wayward boys, Star ofBethlehem.According to Star ofBeth-lehem officials, six ofthe youths have left the facility and are somewhere in the area.”He pauses and then adds,“Wow.”

Kate picks up Ruby’s radio and walks out with it, into the candlelit hall.These candles were Daniel’s purchase, scented ones, and Kate is re-pelledby their smell.She walks through the living room, where one candle burns, and into the kitchen, where she has lit a dozen votive candles.They send their plaintive light through beaded glass holders.

She turns the radio off, preserving the batteries, and sets it on the kitchen table.The temperature in the house is dropping, degree by degree, and in the place ofhomely warmth comes dampness and a growing sense ofdisorder.She wants something to drink, something to warm her.Some-thing nonalcoholic.Tea.The stove is gas, so it doesn’t matter ifthere’s no electricity.She brings the kettle to the faucet, but the water pump runs on electricity and when she turns on the cold water, the pipes bang and only a faint unwholesome drool comes out.

Suddenly, she sees a flicker ofmotion from the corner ofher eye.She turns quickly toward the window.At first all she can see is her own re-flection.But then she sees it again:something wishing not to be seen.

She reaches for the flashlight, shines it through the window, but it throws its own shining face back at her.Kate then opens the window, let-ting precious heat escape, letting in a whoosh ofsnow that sweeps in like the tail ofa comet.Now she shines the flashlight into the blizzard.Noth-ing.Nothing.But then she sees them.Footprints.Cratered into the snow, several pairs, stopping thirty feet from her house.

She feels a fear beyond any she has ever experienced, and she makes it worse by asking herself,What if they come into the house?The problem with the question is the answer—They will rape me.

Her heart pounding, and her stomach, too, like a second, sour heart,

Kate pulls the window closed, locks it.She locks the back door, too, and as she does, she reaches for the phone.She pushes the on button—but there is no dial tone.It’s a cordless phone, it works offelectricity.She needs the phone upstairs in her study, the only old-style phone in the house.She is not certain whom she is about to call.Surely the police have too much on their hands to respond to some woman seven miles outside oftown who is pretty sure she saw some footprints in the snow.Even if she were to tell them she has seen the escaped Star ofBethlehem kids—what would the police do?Whatcanthey do?They can’t drive out in their cars, and even ifthey had helicopters, they couldn’t fly them in this weather.So?Will they all jump onto their crime-buster snowmobiles?

She sweeps the flashlight back and forth as she walks through the house, an oar oflight that rows through the sea ofdarkness.She realizes the only person she can call, the only person she wants to call is Daniel.

Iris will probably answer the phone, and then hand it over to him.As Kate makes her way up the steps, there is a nerve-shattering death ofa maple tree not fifty feet from the house, a noble old tree that seems ac-tually to scream as it falls, as ifits pulp were flesh.Kate hollers in fear—not that high, blood-curdling scream ofthe horror show damsel in distress, but the wavering, angry, monotone cry ofreal fear.She drops her flashlight, it rolls down the staircase, turning the house end over end until the flashlight hits the bottom and goes dark.

Kate is still making noise—a soft, stunned“oh-oh-oh.”And then she gathers herselfand shouts out,“Daniel!”She grips the banister, turns around.She wants to retrieve the flashlight.But no.Why walk back into that darkness?There are candles burning upstairs and the phone is there, too.She turns around again, stops.She remembers she still has not locked the front door, and so once again she turns around.She is turn-ing around and around.And in the midst ofall that turning she realizes that she is wet and clammy and there is a smell ofurine in the air.Fuck-ing tree.Fucking snow.Fucking gang bangers out there staring at her windows.Fucking Daniel, so far out there, so far away from her.

She clutches at her stomach, presses her hand against the wall to stop herselffrom tumbling down the stairs.She sits, feels along the side ofher pants.Just a little dampness, not so bad.Her underwear, however, is soaked.Okay, that settles it.Upstairs, for a change ofclothes.She starts to rise, but then sits again;there’s still the matter ofthat unlocked front door.

She cannot get up because she cannot decide ifit would be better to con-tinue upstairs or hurry downstairs, and the more she thinks, the more un-likely it seems that she will ever be able to make up her mind.She closes her eyes.The darkness within makes the darkness ofthe house seem like an ice cream parlor.She reaches up, grips the banister, pulls herselfup.She sways, and with every bit ofher will she forces a decision.She turns around and heads upstairs, where there are clean clothes and a working phone.

By the time she reaches the top ofthe stairs she hears the urgent knocking at her door.She knows it’s them, the boys, the boys with noth-ing to lose.All she can think to do is pretend she does not hear it.

The bedroom has always been the coldest room in the house.She opens her dresser drawer, her undergarments feel cold and slippery in her hand.Then she finds a pair ofjeans in the closet.She sits on the edge ofthe bed, undressing, dressing again, and through the noise ofthe storm she hears the pounding ofthe boys’fists against the front door.All she can think ofby way ofstrategy is that ifshe ignores them they will eventually go away.

Dressed, dry, but still cold, she waits for the boys to give up.She places a votive candle on the bedspread and then holds her hands above it, warming her palms over the tiny flame.She holds her breath so that the sound ofher respiration won’t interfere with her trying to hear ifthe boys are still trying to get in.She hears nothing but the wind and the tor-tured groaning oftrees, their canopies filled with ice and snow, any one ofthem liable to snap in two.Yet beneath the sounds ofthe storm, she can make out the urgent knocking ofthe boys’fists against her heavy front door.Gun gun gun.And then, suddenly, the knocking stops.

Kate pulls the phone offher bedside table and sits with it on her lap, her hand on the receiver.Ifshe hears footsteps in the house, she will call the police.But she doesn’t hear footsteps, she doesn’t hear anything—all she has is asensethat those boys have found their way into her house.

She cannot sit there wondering.She goes down the stairs to see, and when she is halfway between the first and second floor landings she stops.Fresh snow is swirling in the foyer and still more is blowing in.

As quietly as she can, Kate backs up the stairs, and when she is at the top ofthe landing she turns and walks quickly to her bedroom.There is no lock on the door;she swats a pile offolded laundry offan upholstered chair, drags the chair across the room, and jams it beneath the porcelain door handle.Then she blows out the votive candle and the freestanding candle on the marble-topped dresser and the room slips into darkness.

She sits on the end ofthe bed, folds her hands onto her lap, and breathes as quietly as she can.She feels absolutely and without question that her life hangs now in the balance, that one stupid move, haste, panic, impatience, curiosity, anything but the most profound and disciplined stillness will lead to her death.Her fear—no longer relevant, no longer useful—seems to have been superseded by an exquisite clarity.

The fear remains in abeyance, even as she feels someone coming up the stairs.It is part ofthe house’s idiosyncrasy that a footstep on the fifth stair vibrates along the master-bedroom floor.At night, she could always hear Daniel’s gloomy trudge upstairs, and by day she could hear Ruby coming up to rouse her.That creaky step, and its harmonic convergence with the house’s inner bone structure, is her distant early warning sys-tem;normally, it cues her to feign sleep, to pull the covers up over her chin, maybe place a pillow over her head.But tonight, all she can do is hold her breath.

The footsteps are in the hall, heading in her direction.

She cannot think ofwhat to ask God.Asking for protection is like asking for a pair ofskates.Ifhe doesn’t want you to die, then you’re not going to die.Ifhe does, you’re certainly not going to talk him out ofit at the last second.You don’t pray for your safety, you don’t pray for a home run, you don’t pray that your next book is a Book ofthe Month Club selection.The only plausible prayer is for serenity ofmind, for faith and acceptance, and Kate finds she has these things right now.

The footsteps stop before they reach the bedroom door.She hears another door close.Where did he go?The bathroom?

Silence.She counts it out to herselfto keep from losing her mind, the numbers create a kind ofpathway, bread crumbs in the forest.When she gets to thirty, she hears a voice shouting from the downstairs.It’s the voice ofa young man, someone she’d describe as obviously black.There is a foghorn quality to his voice, something to be heard over constant noise.

“Come on, Kenny, let’s go.”

“Lemme alone,”a voice answers from the bathroom.Kenny.His voice is sharp, high, full ofcomplaint.

“What are you doin’up there?”

“Taking a shit.”

“Come on.Someone’s gonna come in and find us here.”

“I’m not shitting outside.”

Kate leans back and gropes for the telephone in the darkness.She is not just going to sit here like some poor animal in a trap.She picks the receiver up, pressing her thumb onto the earpiece so that the hum ofthe dial tone won’t carry.

She dials911and waits for one ofthe emergency police operators to pickup, onering, tworings, three…

“Hey, Cyril,”another voice is saying downstairs,“there’s a bathroom by the kitchen.”This kid pronounces it“baff-room,”just the way Kate’s father did when he did his imitation ofhis one black patient who always said,“I still wishin’I could go to the baff-room mo’.”That he might use the bathroom in Dr.Ellis’s office was a subject ofjoke-camouflaged anx-iety—“lock da baff-room,”and“git some bleach fo’da baff-room”were typical ofthe remarks Kate’s father made.

Her call to911has yet to be answered.How many rings has it been?

Fifteen?Twenty? Fucking hell, what is wrong with those people?

The husky-voiced boy calls up again.“This place is fucked.It’s darker in here than outside.We’re leaving!”

And not a moment after he says this, the maple tree that stands in front ofthe house, the proud, gnarled, forty-foot tree that as much as any other thing made Kate want to buy this house, suddenly cracks in two from the weight ofthe snow.The crown ofthe tree hits the roof, im-mediately tearing down the gutters;branches, halffrozen, covered in snow, thrust themselves like monstrous arms through the windows on the east side ofthe house.One long branch smashes through the bed-room window;the branches at the end are cold and thin and they brush roughly against Kate’s face.Wind and snow rush in.

Kate falls offthe bed, onto her side, and rolls over on her stomach, covering her face.She uses her elbows and knees to push herselfbeneath the bed.And while she is there—hiding—she hears the boys leaving her house, screaming crazily, halfin terror, halfin excitement.

Daniel stands next to Iris in the guest bedroom, holding a flashlight for her while she makes up the sofa bed.

“You don’t have to do this,”he finally says.“I’m perfectly capable of making a bed.”He nervously continues.“In fact, I used to make beds for a living.In college, or in the summers, actually, two years running I worked in a hotel in Delaware.I was a chambermaid.”

“You were?”

“Or a chamberman, or maybe a chamber pot.I made beds, that’s all I know.”

“You can make the bed when I’m snowed in at your house,”she says.

She speaks softly, as ifcalming an excited animal.

And then, because he cannot let anything stand with her, nothing is enough, he says,“We’re not really snowed in, we’retreedin.”

But she doesn’t volley back, she ends the exchange with a smile, brief, insubstantial, that could be weighed but wouldn’t register on any scale.She finishes her work.She has strong, useful hands;she smoothes her palm over the sheet and every wrinkle disappears.

“I don’t even know what time it is,”Daniel says.He tilts the flashlight beam toward his watch;a circle ofbright golden light appears on hiswrist.

“It’s too cold to stay awake,”she says.“Anyhow, when Nelson goes to sleep, as far as I’m concerned the night’s over.”

As best as he can make out, the sheets she has placed on his bed are dark blue.Surely, as in most households, these sheets have traveled from bed to bed, surely, then, Iris and Hampton have lain upon them in their own bedroom down the hall.He imagines Iris and Hampton on those sheets, their beautiful dark skin on the deep evening blue.

Iris steps back from the sofa bed and lays two fingers on Daniel’s wrist.The tenderness ofthis gesture overwhelms him, it is as ifshe has kissed him.But all she is doing is redirecting the beam ofthe flashlight.

She points it at the closet, where she finds extra blankets.“You’re going to be nice and cozy,”she says, dropping the blankets at the foot ofthe bed, and the proclamation, delivered in a throaty, good-natured voice, devastates him.He takes her to mean:Stay in your own bed.Don’t come creeping into my room.You are here, these are your blankets and stay be-neath them, be a good boy, nice doggie, stay.

“Do you have enough blankets in your room?”Daniel asks, bleating it, as ifasking for mercy.

“Yes, I’m fine.”

There are so many possibilities for speech or action;he could take her wrist, he could pull her toward him, he could say,“No, I want to sleep with you,”he could sigh, he could say,“I think we both know what’s going on here,”he could play it cool and just say good night, he could place his hand over his heart, he could—somehow this, too, seems possible—burst into tears, yes, yes, he could try to boo-hoo her into bed.It’s been done, what hasn’t happened in the history ofseduction? But finally Daniel can do nothing.He watches her as she moves toward the door.Then, a miracle.The bingo parlor ofhis mind comes up with a clear thought.

“I’ll light your way,”he says.

”Okay,”she says.“You can be like a watchman, those guys who carried a lantern and saw people home.”

“Useful work,”Daniel says, with a kind ofmanic encouragement in his voice, one that borders on hysteria, and then to himself:Shut the fuck up.

He points the beam up and the light bounces offthe ceiling and casts a pale gray glow.He walks behind her;her silhouette has put him into a kind offugue state.

They have arrived at their destination:the master bedroom.He waits at the threshold, shining the light into the bedroom while Iris goes to the night table, opens a drawer, finds a book ofmatches, and lights a bedside candle.

He can no longer wait there for the impossible to occur.She is not going to ask him to lie with her in that bed.In fact, the quality ofher si-lence now is pushing him away.She seems to have regained her balance.

The drug ofthe storm is wearing off, she is coming to.

“Why don’t I leave this flashlight with you,”he says.

”It’s okay.I’ve got one in here.”

He forces himself to smile, not certain she can see his face.“Sleep well, Iris.”

Here he is, standing practically in her bedroom, saying good night to her.It’s enough,he tells himself.He’s saidSleep well, Iris,he’s always wanted to say that.

But lying in that sofa bed, pinioned by the cold and the darkness, he finds that the miracle ofsaying good night to Iris isnotenough.Desire blooms in the darkness, he is choking on its scent.He is tormented by her nearness—how can he be letting this chance go by? He tries to force himself to sleep, but sleep gets further from him the more desperately he pursues it.Sleep has never eluded him as maddeningly since the months directly preceding his fall down the stairs, an assault that left him with a whole new vocabulary ofpain—searing, metallic, throbbing, dizzying, freezing, burning, electric—and an enduring dependence on painkillers.Percocet and Lortab didn’t really kill the pain, or signifi-cantly lessen it, but seemed to create a little chemical pavilion within his consciousness, a semipleasant place to which he could retreat and let the pain go on without him.It had not taken him long to increase his con-sumption from four pills a day to sixteen, and the number could have in-creased from there had he not, in a burst ofself-preservation, stopped taking them altogether, leaving his body not only without its customary supply ofsynthetic endorphins but unable to recall how to make its own, as ifthe supply ofopiates had lulled his body into a state ofmetabolic amnesia.At first, parts ofhis body that were not even injured began to throb and ache;he felt as ifhe had been dragged out ofsome weightless chamber and condemned to suffer the agonies ofgravity.Then the wrist, the jaw, the ankles, the back—which never really got better—and throughout it all he was unable to sleep.

Which brought him to a couple ofmonths ofnightly sleeping pills and which bring him right now to remembering that Iris has sleeping pills, though ofthe over-the-counter variety.Daniel slips out ofbed, steps through the darkness ofthe guest bedroom, and his foot lands on something furry and alive.He jumps back, frightened.He hears a low groan, and he turns on the flashlight.Scarecrow.She has been curled next to him all this time.She rubs against his legs, and when he bends to pat her she wiggles her hindquarters.

He finds his way to the bathroom.It’s small.Cold.White-walled, tiled, strictly utilitarian.Tub, toilet, sink.He is as careful and quiet as possible.To the right ofthe sink is one ofthose novelty gift mirrors meant to look like the cover ofTimemagazine, with the wordsHAMPTON WELLESMANOFTHEYEARembossed on the glass.To the left ofthe sink, a toothbrush holder affixed to the wall, with two brushes in it.A large and a small.He pulls out the one that is clearly Iris’s.It has a zebra-striped handle, pigeon-pink rubber gum massager at the end, unusually full head ofbristles.He touches it against his lips.

Daniel props the flashlight onto the side ofthe sink and opens the medicine chest.Hampton’s shaving gear, four different kinds ofchil-dren’s cough medicine, liquid aspirin.Sominex.He pries offthe cap, only to find the foil safety seal still intact.He peels it back without really considering the audacity ofwhat he is doing.He shakes two tablets out and then realizes he must take them without water.Fine, whatever.

Just then, the ring ofa telephone.He switches offthe flashlight, holds his breath, as ifhe were not an overnight guest making a trip to the john but a thiefabout to be discovered.A second ring.And then he hears Iris’s voice.

“Hello?”

Daniel grips the edge ofthe sink for stability.

”I was asleep,”Iris says.

In the darkness and stillness ofthe house, her voice is everywhere, it is close, it is right next to him.“You know more about it than I do and I’m right here,”Iris says.And then, a little later, she says,“Okay, ifthe power’s still not on, we’ll get to the train station and come and stay with you down there.”And then, finally,“Me too, bye.”

Daniel knows what“me too”means.

Iris hangs the phone up and a moment later Daniel sees the glow from her flashlight as she comes out ofher bedroom and down the hall.

Her footsteps are silent;the only way he can gauge her approach is by the brightening ofthe light.Should he pretend he was having a pee, quickly stand over the toilet? But what about the door—how can he be doing that with the door wide open? He could be washing his hands—but what sort oflunatic would be washing his hands in the middle ofthe night? Not to mention there is no electricity, no pump, no water.

Iris walks into the bathroom and captures him in the beam ofher flashlight.She is wearing sweatpants and a turtleneck sweater, slipper socks, and a brightly colored Egyptian cap.“Are you all right?”she says.

She reaches down to ruffle her fingers through the fur on top ofScare-crow’s upturned head.

“Yes.I’m fine,”Daniel says.

”I heard you in here,”she says.

”I’m okay.”

“I was going to check on the kids,”she says.A little exhaust comes out ofher mouth as she speaks.

He steps into the corridor and they walk to Nelson’s room.Daniel turns offhis flashlight, relying on hers.He is right behind her, with the dog at his side.The dog loves him, he feels this working in his favor.

Iris stops short, forcing contact.They collide softly, his toes on her heel, his chest against her shoulder blades.

She doesn’t so much step back as shift her weight slightly toward him, increasing the contact.Contact displaces the still water between them, and in the splash ofit intimacy rises in the wake.

Daniel lowers his forehead so it touches the back ofher head.They are still.He breathes her in.She notches backward.His lips find her nape.She lifts her chin, exhales.He wraps his arms around her.

They have crossed a line, but it seems to him they have not ventured too far, not yet, they can still go back, no one will be the wiser.

Iris takes a step forward and Daniel releases her.They go to Nelson’s room.Nelson is in the upper bunk;he has flung offthe covers, his legs stick out over the side ofthe mattress.Ruby is on the bottom, a slowly dimming flashlight poking from the bedclothes and casting upon her sleeping face a cold white light, like the shine ofa dying moon.

“I want to tell you something,”Iris says, barely whispering.It’s as if she is willing to wake the children.

“Let’s go,”Daniel says, pulling softly on her.“We don’t want to wakethem.”

In the hallway, she pulls the door to Nelson’s room three-quarters closed.“They’re really sleeping deeply,”she says.“They’re so cold, the poor babies.”

“Ruby always sleeps soundly.”

“I can’t sleep at all,”she says.“I never can.I doze, I go in and out.I think sleep is too much ofa commitment for me.”She laughs.

“Maybe you have too much on your mind,”he says.Is that it?She is suddenly exotic to him, opaque and unknown.No, that’s not it.He just doesn’tgether, he lacks that little snap ofinstant understanding.He must concentrate, she is something he mustworkat.

Daniel remains silent.It is like sitting quietly in the woods, things come to you, the life ofthe forest forgets about you and resumes.After a few moments, his silence draws her out, she comes softly to the edge ofit like a deer.

“I’m going to tell you the truth right now,”she says.

She sees alarm in his eyes and she places a comforting hand on the side ofhis face.

“I’m not going to say anythingbad.”

“Okay.”

She is puzzled, she tilts her head, regards this strange creature.

”When I first saw you,”Iris says,“I liked you so much.I mean right away.It was a very strange experience.You seemed perfect.”

“That’s me, all right.”

“I’m serious.It was sort offrightening.First ofall, you were taken and so was I.”

She’s talking about it in the past tense,thinks Daniel.As if now we were free.

”And second, I mean the thing that was even more frightening was sensing that ifwe were to get together and something happened, ifyou turned out not to even like me, or ifyou took advantage ofme, I would never recover from it.I just knew from the start it would be fatal.”

“I would never hurtyou,”he says.He hears his voice in the strange dead air ofthat house.

“You wouldn’t mean to,”she says.She moves her hand away from him, but he catches her, presses his lips against her palm.The kiss goes to the pit ofher stomach.

Ruby awakens.Their voices have found her in her sleep, carried her toward them.She calls for Daniel, her voice dry, cracked, and low.

Daniel goes back into the children’s bedroom, sits on the edge ofher bed.He feels something poking at him, at his ear, the side ofhis head.He realizes it’s Nelson’s foot, waving back and forth, though Nelson is still asleep.

“Are you all right?”Daniel whispers to Ruby.

”Yes,”she says.“I have to go to the bathroom.”She raises her arms, as ifit’s a matter ofcourse that he will lift her, carry her.

When Ruby is finished, Daniel carries her back to Nelson’s bedroom.

Daniel carefully places Ruby onto the bed, she is practically asleep, but somehow the touch ofthe cold pillow awakens her.Her eyes are sud-denly large, curious.

“We’re staying here all night.Right?”

“That’s right, Monkey,”he says.

She is silent.A minute passes;he imagines her asleep.But then her cold fingers come to rest on the top ofhis hand.“I love you the most of everyone,”she says.

Daniel lies next to her, and Iris cannot sleep.Her thoughts skip like stones over water.Nelson, the storm, a Japanese maple her father planted in their front yard, which she was always convinced irritated the white neighbors with its unseasonable purple leaves…Irishas never been able to fall asleep next to someone with whom she was in bed for the first time;choosing someone always meant giving up a night’s sleep.

Making love as a teenager was easier—she had to end up in her own bed, alone, and she could sink into sleep as ifit were a kind ofinnocence.

Even in college—and why why why did she allow her parents to talk her into attending Spelman, more than ninety percent black, a hundred per-cent female, a vast poaching ground for the men ofMorehouse, brother-sister schools conceived, it seemed, for conception—even at college she developed a small reputation as the girl who always had to end up in her own safe little bed, the girl who says she has to get home because her teddy bear misses her.

It’s been years since she has slept with anyone but Hampton.She has a moment ofintense pining for him as ifhe were oceans away, irretrievable, dead.She misses the ease and comfort ofbeing with a man who has seen her body week after week, year after year, and who is, as far as she can tell, blind to its small deteriorations.It has all happened gradually, and he has failed to notice.Hampton’s criticisms ofher are intellectual, spiritual, practical;he is more distressed by her forgetfulness than by her having grown older.He would rather her finish her doctorate—or junk it—than get a boob job.Even when it seems to her that Hampton holds her in con-tempt, his voraciousness for her body seldom varies.I love your body,he has said over and over, so many times and with such suddenness and dis-regard for her mood ofthe moment or what has been passing between them that she has come to find it an affront.It’s all he seems to praise, his entire celebration ofher is confined to that simple statement.He does not sayI need your adviceand he doesn’t sayYou fascinate me,he surely doesn’t ask her what is on her mind.He has little interest in her thoughts and sometimes she can barely blame him.But ifher life is a little dull, then she sees no reason why that must be held against her, this life and her role in it is, after all, something they both made, it’s a joint project.And when she has the emotional energy to refuse to be silenced, to speak up no matter what, she can see himpretendingto pay attention, while it is heart-freezingly, face-slappingly clear that his thoughts are elsewhere.

And after so disrespecting her, for him to look up and say how beautiful she is, how fucking hot she makes him:he may as well be saying,Too bad you’re not operating on my level.Too bad you’re an idiot.

Daniel seems to want to know everything about her.It’s his nature, there is nothing he can do about it.He will want to know ifshe has ever been unfaithful to Hampton before, and ifshe tells him she has, then it’s her guess that he will eventually want to know with whom, when, where, the reasons, and the results, and even ifshe says no, he will ask why not.

He will ask her what she dreams, how the day was spent, what she had for lunch, where she buys her clothes, the names ofher relatives, the route she takes from her house to school.He will devour her with love bites, he will lick the surface ofher as ifshe were a scoop ofice cream until she gets smaller and smaller, until she disappears.

Iris reaches over Daniel’s sprawled body, with its deep sonorous buzz and smell ofsleep, and she gropes for the flashlight on the night table.But it’s been knocked over in the commotion, it has tumbled onto the carpet, rolled onto the bare floor.She finally finds it, halfway under the bed.She hurries back to the nest ofquilts and blankets, willing to awaken Daniel with the bounce ofthe mattress, but he sleeps through it all.

She switches on the flashlight.She puts her hand over its broad face to cut down on the silvery glare, and she points the beam oflight at Daniel to inspect what she can see ofhis naked body.

The most puzzling thing is that he is naked at all.She wonders at the thermodynamics ofthis, how such white skin, which she imagines to be porous, diaphanous, and through which would pass all heat and light, how such pigmentless tissue could conceivably hold enough heat to al-low him to sleep.

She moves the beam closer to him.A circle oflight illuminates his chest.A sleek dark wave ofhair rushes between his pectoral muscles.

That ivory-white skin and that dark body hair.She stares at it, struck at how barbaric it looks.It makes her think ofthe stooped figures in school-books, emigrating across ancient tundra two steps ahead ofthe glaciers.

How strange that whites ever compared black folk with apes, when it’s the whites who are covered in hair.Once, in college, Iris had entertained the idea of becoming a doctor;the notion—like so many ofher inspired plans—had a short life span:byApril she was bored with it, and by the end ofthe semester she could barely pass her finals.Still, she remembers:the der-mis, the epidermis, subcutaneous tissue, dermal papilla, adipose tissue, the subpapillary network, and good old Meissner’s corpuscle, the name ofwhich she could never forget and the function ofwhich she could never learn.Back then, she thought ofall the components ofhuman skin that are absolutely identical forAfricans, Japanese, Europeans, and how we are all so similar beneath those topmost layers.But now, in bed with a Caucasian for the first time in her life, what strikes her is the differ-ence, stranger and more unsettling than she would have expected.She rubs her fingertip across an inch or two ofDaniel’s skin, along the shoul-der where the skin is bare, and cool to the touch, with little bumps, a kind ofcottony grit.Without entirely meaning to, she slips a finger un-der his arm, feels the long silky hair, startling in its angora softness.A film ofperspiration is on her fingertip now, she rubs it against her thumb, brings it to her nose, finds Daniel’s smell within the bitterness of failed deodorant like the meat ofa pecan surrounded by its broken shell.

She places her hand over the face ofthe flashlight more tightly so only a faint light escapes as she points it toward his face.His bushy brows, his long, somehow unsturdy-looking nose, his thin lips, the dark growth of whiskers on his chin, as ifsomeone had rubbed iron filings onto his jaw.

His hair rises in clumps in different directions.He looks slightly mad, pleasantly ruined.

She had been thinking about him in this way for months.How had it begun?What first drew her? She cannot remember.The quality ofhis at-tention as he listened to her?The gentle seriousness, the way an angel would hear you, not necessarily able to grant your wishes but able to know exactly why you’ve made them.Talking to him was like running a handful ofriverbed stones through one ofthose tumblers, the kind that turn pebbles into shining things, almost jewels.

Her first time in bed with a white man.How the sweat poured offhim, how he whimpered, how the breath broke in his throat like something frozen that’s been stepped on, the copious, almost surreal amounts ofsemen that came out ofhim, the tireless frenzy ofhis fucks, his eyes staring at her, memorizing her, conquering her and surrendering at the same time.

Iris lifts the blanket and shines the flashlight further down Daniel’s body.Am I really going to do this?But she doesn’t stop herself, lets the light settle on his penis.Who was it who referred to every white man’s penis as Pete Rose?Was that her father? No, impossible that something so naughty would come out ofhis pursed, prim mouth, a man who said sug-arplums instead ofshit.Her brothers? But they were so courtly around her—more dedicated than her parents to the exhausting, irritating proj-ect ofkeeping her the baby ofthe family.Yet someone had said it, and whenever she sees a picture ofPete Rose, with his schoolboy haircut and theWho Me? expression on his face, she invariably thinks:dick.Yet here, at last, is an actual white man’s penis and she stares at it, flaccid and pink, looking so unprotected, vulnerable, raw, and unsheathed, like something that belongs inside the body, its own body, that is, something you are not meant to see.Like the real Pete Rose, this particular member does not seem as ifhe’s going to make it into the Hall ofFame.

Yet he has pleased her, Pete Rose or not Pete Rose.He slipped in, and somehow the gentleness ofthe entrance, the unassuming, gracious, perfect guest aspect ofhis sexual presence caused in her an explosion ofpleasure.

Suddenly, she remembers who calls the white penis Pete Rose.Hampton.

The thought ofhim creates a guilty nausea in her:he must never know.

But what was Hampton doing talking about Caucasian sex organs? She can’t remember.Surely some rant, some long riffofdisparagement.Hamp-ton, materially so well-off, so light complexioned, so privileged, seethes against the white world as ifhe were particularly oppressed, as ifthe indig-nities visited upon him had some greater resonance because they were hap-pening to a man ofhis high quality.Even the gross misdeeds committed against less fortunate folk—the jailings, the beatings—were assaults against him, who perceived them so starkly and felt them so keenly.And so he feeds this disdain for whites into the furnace ofhimself, as ifwithout it he would cease to be fully alive.His sense ofwhite people is full ofthe feelings ofin-justice—how easy life is for them, how their power contradicts Darwin, for surely they are not the fittest—but without any great passion for justice: Hampton admires white hegemony, envies it, and he wishes it were the other way around, he wishes that the privileges were all his, and that to be born into a black family, a special black family, that is, one like his, would be-stow on you the kind ofbirthright that the spoiled white brats took for granted.Inasmuch as possible, Hampton has chosen to live in that sort of world.The people he likes to be around, the people he does business with, drinks with, jogs around the Central Park reservoir with, areAfrican-American strivers like himself, who feel all the proper respect for Hamp-ton’s pedigree—a lineage ofaccomplishment and gentility that no white person would even recognize, with fortunes based on such peculiarly Negro enterprises, such as cosmetics for dark-skinned women, Cadillac dealer-ships, weekly newspapers servicing the folks in Newark and the South Side ofChicago, radio stations at the back end ofthe dial.Wherever Hampton travels, from D.C.to Boston to Detroit to San Francisco, there are people like him, more than willing to pay their respects not only to Hampton but to his lineage, because to celebrate what it means to be aWelles, they also af-firm the importance oftheir own family names, the majesty oftheir schools and clubs and summer resorts.They bow to one another as a way ofgenu-flecting to themselves;they kiss each other like smooching with a mirror.

Daniel murmurs something in his sleep, and Iris clicks offthe flashlight.

She lies back in bed, rearranges her pillows, and recalls with a kind of thrilled griefthe sounds he made while they were making love, the pigeon warble ofmounting excitement, the sweet undefended cry ofsurrender.

The night has ended, the snow has finally stopped.Vast mountain ranges of vapor have been heaved up by the storm, but between the clouds and the horizon colors appear—pale blue, slate gray, and yellow.Inside the house it is light enough to read, light enough to lift yourselfup on your elbows and look around the room and see the scatter ofclothing on the floor.

Their noses are cold, their foreheads, their feet, the tips oftheir fingers.The furnace is still dead, the digital clocks are black.

“Good morning,”Daniel says.“Did you even sleep for one second?”

“I’m not much ofa sleeper anyhow,”she says.

”I don’t think I slept, it was more like passing out.”

“It seemed,”she says.

”Did I snore?”

She shakes her head no.

”So, let me ask you,”he says.He presses himself against her.“Has the myth ofCaucasian sexual prowess been put into clearer perspective?”

“Yes,”she says.“It has.”

Daniel’s smile slowly fades.He looks, in fact, unnerved.A little crack ofcold air opens up between them as he shrinks back from her.

“You were wonderful,”Iris says.“Youarewonderful.I can’t tell you how impressed I am.Seriously.Did your parents send you to sex camp?”

“Sex camp?”

“Don’t white folks have all these different camps for their kids—

baseball camp, weight loss camp, computer camp.”

He rolls next to her, gathering her closer.He is powerless not to.He has waited too long to lie next to her, he has yet to get his fill.

“I’m sore,”she says, removing his hand.

”You are?”he says, smiling.

”Aren’t you?”

It dawns on him.He reaches behind him, feels the small ofhis back.

“My back doesn’t hurt, which is a sort ofClass B miracle.As for Mr.

Johnson, he’s been waiting for this his whole life.”

She laughs, though she doesn’t find it all that funny—what amuses her is his intention to amuse her.

She places her hands on Daniel’s shoulder, as ifto give him a little shove.But the feel ofhis flesh fascinates her, derails her impulse to rough him up a little.She squeezes his arm and then kisses his shoulder, touches her tongue against his skin—he tastes like a wooden countertop upon which someone has not quite cleaned up a spill ofmolasses.

He wants to make declarations.He wants to tell her how long he has dreamed oflying next to her, and he wants to tell her how the reality of actually being with her has exceeded his most fervid imaginings—but he has already said these things.He has discovered little imperfections in her body—brackish breath as she grew tired, a kind ofabdominal fullness that suggests one day she will have a belly—but, ofcourse, in the state he is in, these things have only made her more desirable:they have made her real, they have made herhis.He wants to tell her she is beautiful, but how many times can you say that in twelve hours without it becoming suspect?Yet, he must declare something.Is he, for instance, meant to go home now and pretend none ofthis has happened?

She seems to have gotten there before him.She looks at him with great seriousness and says,“Say something to me.Tell me what I want to hear.”

His first instinct is to declare his love, but something tells him not to.

”I’ll tell you this,”he says.“I’m not going to crowd you.I know your life is complicated.”

“It is,”she says softly.

”More than mine.IfI lost everything, it wouldn’t be that much.I’m not married.I don’t have a kid.”

“You have Ruby.”

“She’s not really mine.”

“Yes she is, the way you love her.And ifanything happened, you might never see her again.That would be so terrible.”

“It’s not like you.You have a good life.You have your son, school, your life, everything.I don’t want to be a problem.”

“So what do you think ofme?What do you think ofa woman who’d fuck some guy in her husband’s bed?”

“I don’t know.Maybe she should be taken out and stoned to death in front ofa vast crowd.”

He smiles to let her know he’s kidding, but she doesn’t find it funny, and the timing irritates her.

“Well, nobody needs to know, do they,”she says.

”What are we supposed to do?”he asks.

”You think I’m going to change my whole life because you slept in this bed last night?”she says.Her voice is a little sharp, which she regrets.

But, really.

“Yes, I think I do,”he says.“I’m sorry.I’m going to figure out a better way to feel.And in the meanwhile, I promise to behave.”

She makes a silencing gesture.She thinks she hears something, a noise from down the hall.

“Nobody’s awake yet,”Daniel says.

She listens again.He’s right;the house is silent.She hears the distant whine ofa snowmobile, powering through the white enameled stillness ofthe world like a dentist’s drill.She kisses him.

“You’d better go back to the guest room,”Iris says.“Nelson could walk in here any second.”

“All right.”He leans out ofthe bed, as ifout ofa life raft, reaching down for what is left ofthe night’s wreckage—his shirt, his underwear, his pants.

She feels a sudden gust ofdesperation at the sight ofhim beginning to leave.What ifthis never can happen again? He looks at her over his shoulder as he gets out ofbed.His reddish, slightly wrinkled little be-hind.She dives across the bed, grabs his hips, he makes it easy for her to pull him back into bed.When they have stopped rolling around, he has ended up below her, his head between her legs, his mouth kissing her opening as ifthey were the lips on her face.At this point, it is barely ex-citing, it’s comforting, it feels warm and kind and devoted.

Footsteps.Have they been getting closer all the while? In a panic, Iris lifts herselfup and twists away from Daniel.Her pubic bone bangs against his teeth.He looks bewildered, but she doesn’t have to tell him to get up, he knows what’s happening.There is apat pat patoffootsteps getting closer.He rolls out ofbed, grabs the clothes he gathered minutes before, makes a vain attempt to cover himself.Iris pulls the covers up to her chin.

It’s Scarecrow.The old dog waddles in, head cocked, her long lilac tongue out, a good-natured glint in her blue eyes.

“Thank you, Jesus!”Daniel says.

They are so relieved, they share the hysterical laughter ofthe near miss.Iris does something she hasn’t done since she was a little girl:she covers her mouth while she laughs her gummy laugh.And Daniel pre-tends to have a heart attack, grabbing his chest, staggering, falling back into the bed.Iris strokes his long, soft hair.She leans over, kisses the taste ofherselfoffhis mouth.

Nelson’s footsteps are softer than the dog’s.He is right next to the bed before they notice him.

“I’m cold,”he says, staring intently at Daniel.