A Ship Made of Paper

[9]

As far as Daniel was concerned, this was torture.It might be better just to come out with it, tell Hampton:I love Iris, and she seems to love me.We belong together.

We do feel bad.Oh shut up about feeling bad.Do you think he cares? He’d like you to have brain cancer, that would be the sort of suffering he’d like for you.

Whyare youoffering up your stricken conscience—to make him feel you’ve been punished sufficiently?Are you so afraid of him?And with that question, Daniel at last connected to the core of what had been plaguing him from the mo-ment he and Hampton set off together in search of Marie.It was not really about conscience, after all.He’d been wrestling with his conscience for months now, they were old sparring partners, sometimes he pinned it to the mat, sometimes it slammed him, it didn’t really amount to much, it was a show, like the wrestling on TV.And besides:theworstsort of remorse was preferable to what had preceded it, the infinitely greater agony of longing for Iris.Remorse was the payment due for the fulfillment of his great desire.And it was, finally, a payment he was willing to make.No, it was not his conscience that churned at the center of him, making him cringe inwardly when Hampton stepped too close to him.It was fear, physical fear.

Like many men who find love when they are no longer in the full bloom ofvigor and health, Daniel has made a promise to himself to get back in shape.For a couple ofnights, he tried doing calisthenics at home, but it seemed disrespectful to Kate to be grunting out sit-ups in the same room they conduct their wounded, slowly expiring relation-ship.Those exercises were a kind ofcelebratory dance ofhealth, and his workout wear ofbaggy cotton shorts and a baggier old grayT-shirt was in fact the uniform ofhis new devotion:they may as well have borne Iris’s name on the back.He is in training to be her lover.One day soon Kate will understand that the sexual Mount Everest Daniel is in training to scale has nothing to do with her, and when this grim domestic knowl-edge is complete Daniel does not want her to conjure a vision ofhim do-ing abdominal crunches on their bedroom floor.

As a less ostentatious form ofbody toning, Daniel decides to forego lunch and to spend the time vigorously walking through the village of Leyden, which now, nine days after the October snow, is just getting back to normal, with businesses long closed for lack ofelectrical power finally reopening, and employees finally able to show up for work.The mood ofthe town is festive, as ifat the victorious end ofa war.No one can get enough oftalking about what befell them during the storm and the blackout, what they learned, what they lost, how they coped.

Daniel’s great story ofthe October storm, however, cannot be told, and its necessary suppression has dampened his normally gregarious nature.

He is content to replay memories ofhis days and nights with Iris with-out any interruption as he walks the circumference ofthe town’s com-mercial center.The problem really is that walking doesn’t feel like exercise, and as soon as he makes it once around the village, he realizes that he looks halfmad speed-walking in his suit and street shoes, and also that he is too young for walking, speed or otherwise, to make much of an impact on him.On his second time through the village, he hears someone call his name, and though he has promised himself that he will ignore all distractions, he stops immediately and turns to face Bruce Mc-Fadden, an old friend from Daniel’s childhood days in Leyden.

“Hey, bro, what it is,”McFadden says in some vaguely self-mocking approximation ofblack street slang, putting his palm out for a little skin.

McFadden, a tall, flimsily knit-together man, with long, lustrous brown hair, bright-green eyes, and a pale face with hectic bursts ofcolor at the cheekbones, is about as black as a Highland fling, and normally he does not speak in anything approaching hip-hop patois.But a love ofblack cul-ture is the original cornerstone ofhis friendship with Daniel, and Bruce still likes to black it up.And because, right now, Bruce doesn’t happen to know any black people personally, saying“bro”and talking about Satchel Paige and Miles Davis, Chester Himes, HowlingWolf, AntonioVargas, Peaches and Herb, Sonny Rollins, Sonny Liston, Sonny BoyWilliamson, and all the other black Sonnys, is something he saves for his occasional meetings with Daniel.

Except for a few years inAlbany, where he went to medical school,

Bruce has never lived outside ofLeyden.He is a part ofa thriving med-ical group, but his personal life is conducted at the very pinnacle ofcir-cumspection—no one has any idea what he does when the sun goes down, ifhe drinks, or sits alone watching television, or whether or not he has a lover, and what the gender ofthat lover might be.Even Daniel, who loves Bruce, cannot say what the mysterious doctor has devised for getting through the nights.

“Why are you walking around like that?”Bruce asks Daniel, standing in front ofthe luncheonette, with a half-eaten tuna sandwich in one hand and a paper napkin in the other.

“Exercising,”says Daniel.

”You can’t get exercise walking around like that, man.You want exercise? I’ll teach you the greatest ofthe white man’s sports.”

With that in mind, Bruce convinces Daniel to meet after work at Marlowe College, where Bruce is going to teach Daniel how to play squash.

It’s Friday;Hampton is coming back to town, and Daniel is grateful for the diversion, the company.Rather than go home and get his Nikes, shorts, and aT-shirt, Daniel buys all these things new and arrives at the gym a few minutes before his five o’clock date with Bruce.He immedi-ately goes to the glass wall overlooking the college’s swimming pool, an immense turquoise parallelogram surrounded by red and white tiles—Iris is a swimmer and Daniel is hoping that luck is on his side.

But the pool is empty.An elderly man, probably a professor, with an enormous bald head, ears as large as fists, a barrel chest from which fur rises up in fifty separate geysers, sits in a wheelchair at the edge ofthe pool, grimacing at a young man with light olive skin and shoulder-length hair, probably his physical therapist.The sight ofthe old man fills Daniel’s heart with urgency:time passes, bodies decay, every day spent without love is lost forever, the time cannot be recaptured or made up for.The professor’s legs are as thin as a child’s.He wraps his trembling, chim-panzee arms around the young man’s neck and allows himself to be hoisted out ofthe chair and lowered into the deep end ofthe pool, just to the left ofthe double-decker diving boards.As soon as the old man is in the water, he disappears, and Daniel for a moment thinks he is the wit-ness to a tragedy.But then the old man emerges;he has swum to the cen-ter ofthe pool, and he continues to propel himself with breast strokes, expelling water from his mouth in a long arcing spew.

Bruce arrives, and Daniel follows him into the locker room.In the large, windowless room, with its industrial gray carpeting and the smell ofsweat and chlorine in the air, a dozen or so college students are in var-ious states ofundress.Their movements are nervous, they dress hur-riedly, with elaborate bashfulness about their young, fit bodies, slipping into their shorts while they keep a towel wrapped around their midsec-tions, showering in their bathing suits.The older men, the guys in their fifties and sixties, display without shame their deteriorated bodies, their flaccid bellies, hunched backs, saggy asses, and flamboyantly uneven testicular sacs.

“Did you hear the news about those kids who broke out ofStar of Bethlehem?”Bruce asks.

“What happened?”Daniel cannot hear any mention ofthem without a feeling ofanxiety and remorse.

“Fucking crime spree, baby.All up and down the river.”Bruce smiles, shakes his head, it’s hard to say ifhe means to be rueful or admiring.

“I guess they’ll catch them sooner or later,”Daniel says.

”I wouldn’t bet on it.Cops up here are not used to anyone giving them any resistance.”

Daniel and Bruce begin to undress and Bruce asks the inevitable question:“Where were you during the storm?”

“Actually, I was trapped in someone else’s house for the first day ofit.”

“Oh my God, I would hate that,”Bruce says.He tosses his loafers into the locker.

Daniel glances around the locker room to see ifanyone is within earshot.Several lockers to the right, a skinny, gloomy-looking man in his late fifties, breathing heavily, bathed in sweat, unfastens a complicated knee brace.

“I was at Iris Davenport’s house.I ended up spending the night there.”

Daniel has promised himself never to mention this, but now he can’t quite recall why it’s so important to keep the secrecy intact.

“Iris Davenport?What a fox.She looks a little likeWhitney Houston, don’t you think?”

“Not really.”

“She’s been to my office.Confidentially? I tested her for glaucoma.It runs in her family.”

“When?”

“Months ago.She’s a pretty girl,”Bruce says in a distant voice, as ifhe were piecing together his memory ofher as he speaks.“Her eyes are fine, by the way.”

“Yes,”says Daniel.“I could walk into her eyes and never come back.”

Bruce glances away, clears his throat.“Whatever,”he says.Then he adds,“What’s she like, anyhow? I found her sort ofhard to get a read on.”

“She’s honest, she’s steady, she’s always present.She’s pure without being a puritan.She’s liberated without being a libertine.”

“All right.Now you’re starting to frighten me.”

Daniel blushes;in the company ofanother man, the pitch ofhis own ardor seems suddenly absurd.“I’m being undone by this whole thing,”he murmurs.“I’m totally in lovewith her, Bruce.”The reliefoffinally being able to say this to another person has upset his balance, the way you would lose strength in your legs and stumble forward after finally being relieved ofa load offirewood.

“Oh dear,”Bruce says.His sneakers are laced;he stands up and puts his hand on Daniel’s shoulder and gives it a comradely pat.“It’ll pass,”he says, as ifto comfort Daniel.“Let’s not even talk about it.”

The squash courts are on the second floor ofthe gym, a row offive white rooms with hardwood floors, the back wall ofeach made ofshat-terproofglass so that the games may be observed.All ofthe courts are empty when Daniel and Bruce arrive;they take court number one and Bruce teaches Daniel the rudiments ofthe game, beginning, as is the masculine custom, with the rules.Bruce seems fixated on the rules, rat-tling them offin a stern fashion, as ifsuspecting that Daniel might be try-ing to figure a way around them.When they finally begin to hit the ball, Daniel is confused by how little it bounces, how its hollowness and soft-ness render it practically inert, and he wonders how this game will ever provide him with exercise.But the ball becomes livelier as it heats up, and after twenty minutes on the court Daniel is breathing heavily and feels the first trickle ofsweat going down his spine.

They hear the thump ofa ball being hit on an adjoining court;another game is in progress.

“You’re a good beginner,”Bruce says.“Want to get a drink ofwater?”

They open the glass door and walk out into the broad corridor, at the end ofwhich is a water cooler.The first thing Daniel sees is Iris sitting on one ofthe brightly colored red-and-black benches in the hall.His heart flaps like a toucan in a cage.Iris sits there, with Nelson draped lan-guidly on her lap.She wears a copper-colored down vest, a Baltimore Orioles cap, jeans, and rubber boots.She glances at Daniel, and then looks away.Surely she has known all along that he is here, they all must have seen him through the glass on their way to court two.Is this really her strategy?That they should ignore each other? It doesn’t seem wise.

And he is, ofcourse, incapable ofcarrying it out.

“Iris!”he calls out, as ifseeing her here were one oflife’s funny little surprises.He grasps Bruce by the elbow and steers him over toward Iris.

”I believe you two know each other,”Daniel says.He feels hot breath on his leg and looks down.It’s Scarecrow, hitched to a dark-blue leash, wag-ging her tailless hindquarters and panting excitedly.Daniel is unreason-ably happy to see her, as ifthe old dog had risen from the dead.

”Scarecrow!Are you a member ofthe gym?”

“Hello, Iris,”Bruce says.Noticing the confusion in her face, he adds,

“It’s Dr.McFadden.”

“Oh yes, I’m sorry.I…”

“I’m out ofcontext.”He gestures toward his long legs.“You never saw me in shorts.”

Daniel chooses to take this remark as somehow scaling the pinnacle ofwit.In the midst ofhis laughter, he notices that Nelson is scowling openly at him, an exaggerated grimace, completely unencumbered by any sense ofsocial grace.He is like a bad actor miming displeasure in a silent movie.Quickly, Daniel diverts his own attention to the squash game taking place in court two.

Hampton is playing against his younger brother, James.JamesWelles has his brother’s—and, indeed, his entire family’s—light copper com-plexion, but his appearance is far from Hampton’s carefully groomed, businesslike image.While Hampton wears tennis whites, James is dressed as ifto go fishing with a bamboo pole:in cutoffjeans, a faded rustT-shirt torn at the shoulder, black sneakers splattered with paint, and no socks at all.He has the merry and defiant eyes ofa boy who always knew he was his mother’s favorite, no matter what sort oftrouble he caused.He has recently grown a little scraggly beard—hardly a beard, really, just three sprouts ofwhisker, a kind ofFu Manchu fountain springing from the center ofhis chin.His long hair is a complex nest of braids, culminating in a thick, glistening ponytail.

Daniel stands behind the glass wall and watches transfixed.James moves around the court as ifscarcely subject to the laws ofgravity, bounding and whirling, airborne, his braids flapping, his shoelaces flapping as well, letting out little yelps ofpure animal joy, his youthful, handsome face alight with the bliss ofhis own physicality.The ball hits against the back wall, and James runs after it with the antic, spendthrift energy ofa pup, in fact he overruns it, but no matter—he returns the ball by hitting it through his wide-open skinny legs, punctuating the cir-cus shot with a whoop and a raised fist.

Hampton’s reply to his younger brother’s showboating is to return the ball in the most rudimentary, formal, and correct way possible.In fact, all ofHampton’s moves on the court could be used in an instructional video, the way he cocks the racquet over his head before each stroke, the way he bends his knees, his short, punchy follow-through, his return to the center ofthe court after every stroke.His movements are dogged, mechanized, and tireless.The only emotion he shows is a slight reddening around the ears and throat when James makes a particularly unorthodox shot, since these are met with squeals and cheers from Nelson.

“Don’t cheer against Daddy,”Iris whispers to her boy.

”Uncle James is funny,”Nelson says.

Bruce catches Daniel’s eyes.Let’s go,he mouths.Daniel shakes his head and Bruce sighs impatiently.

Daniel forces himself to turn away from the game, though by now it feels as ifthe fate ofhis love affair with Irisrequiresthat Hampton be van-quished.“How are you doing?”he asks Iris.

“I’m all right.Nelson’s Uncle James is visiting us.”

“I see that,”Daniel says.Daniel has always been moved by the quality ofIris’s mothering;her kindness and her aptness around Nelson have ap-pealed to Daniel so deeply that it is practically an erotic experience to see her with her boy, but just now Daniel wishes that she would speak only tohim.

Still, he goes along with it.“Are you pretty excited to see your Uncle James?”he asks, directing his question to Nelson, who at first seems not to have heard him, and who then leers at him, first pursing his lips and then showing his little milky teeth.Of course, now he hates me.He doesn’t quite understand what he saw, but he’ll never forgive finding me in his mother’s bed.“And how about you, Scarecrow?”Daniel says, squatting down to the dog’s level.“Everything copasetic?”By way ofan answer, the dog launches herselftoward Daniel, ramming his eye with her wet nose.

“What’s the score?”Nelson screams at his father and uncle.He squirms out ofIris’s lap and hits his hard little hands against the glass wall.“Who’s winning?”

“I am,”James says, flipping his racquet up and then catching it by the handle.“I’m on fire, I’m unconscious, I can’t be stopped.”

Nelson doesn’t shout in triumph, but he squeezes his hands into fists, goes rigid, and whispers to himself:“Yes.”Nelson’s expressions are ex-aggerated, feverishly intense;it’s difficult to say whether these grimaces and gestures come from some molten, unmediated part ofhim, or if they are deliberately theatrical and insincere.Whatever their source, there is something troubling about them.

Hampton, in the meanwhile, has hit the ball in a slow, lazy arc over James’s head, who then bats it wildly, with an equally wild accompany-ing whoop.The ball sails across the court, barely reaching the front wall, which it grazes, before dropping dead and unplayable, another point for the younger brother, who celebrates by spinning around on one foot with his arms outstretched.

James, having won the point, serves, and Hampton makes his usual methodical return—it’s art versus science.James returns the shot with a dazzling and picturesque behind-the-back stroke, but from that mo-ment on Hampton proceeds to dismantle him, wearing him down with his own refusal to lose.Hampton rallies to win the game9‒7.

Nelson has retreated to Iris’s lap, and he sits awkwardly on her, his legs dangling, his arms folded over his chest, outraged over some shady business.Bruce, uncomfortable with standing there in light ofwhat Daniel has told him, and also anxious to use his workout time, has gone back to court one, where he hits the ball to himself.Daniel, however, is powerless to move.He must see the match out to its bitter end.He has been crouched a few feet from Iris, as ifhe were a squash scout studying the game, looking for new prospects.He doesn’t dare say anything to Iris, though he continually looks at her reflection in the squash court’s glass wall.She glances at him and it seems as ifher eyes are asking,What are you doing?but he cannot move.

At last, Hampton and James emerge.All ofthe levity and grace and joyousness and even youthfulness seems to have been beaten out of James, while Hampton, in victory, seems not noticeably different than he was in the beginning ofthe game, when he was losing.His long slender legs are bright with perspiration, his shirt has dark circles at the armpits, a long ragged icicle-shaped sweat stain down the middle, and his scalp glistens in the overhead light.

“You lost!”Nelson cries accusingly, jabbing his finger at the air between him and his uncle, as ifto create a shock wave that would knock James to the ground.

“Sorry, O Great Leader,”James says.His voice is weak, exhausted.

“Your daddy’s too much for me.”

Pleased to hear this, Hampton smiles at James.

James slumps onto the bench next to Iris.“I feel sorry foryou,”he says to her.“The man is tireless.”

Daniel is offended by James’s little joke.It is unbearable to think about Hampton’s untiring ardor, the sexual machinery going on and on.

“He rinses his cottage cheese to take out the last one percent ofmilk fat,”Iris says.“What do you expect?”

“Hello, Daniel,”Hampton says.He opens his gym bag and pulls out a small white terry cloth towel with which he carefully dries, first his fore-head, then the wings ofhis nose, then his chin.

“I was watching you play,”Daniel says.“I’m just learning.”He is acutely aware that everything he says could very well be subject to mul-tiple interpretations, and that one day if—no,when—Hampton learns the truth, then it will all be remembered, ransacked for meaning.

Nelson has scrambled offIris’s lap.He takes the racquet from his uncle’s hands and grabs the ball and hits it.It bounces and then rolls down the long hall, and then over the ledge, where it falls to the ground floor.

Hampton snaps his fingers and points in Nelson’s face.

“Get it,”Hampton says.“Now.”

Nelson doesn’t say anything, but the skin on his face is suddenly drawn, mottled, he looks like someone who has been in the freezing cold.

“Take it easy, Hampton,”Iris says.“That doesn’t work with him.”She turns to the boy.“Go on, Nellie, do as your father says.”

“No!!”Nelson screams.“You get it.”

The vehemence startles Iris and she lets go ofthe leash.Scarecrow goes straight for Daniel.After bounding up on Daniel and uncoiling her long tongue in the direction ofhis face, she suddenly lies down before him, resting her chin on her forepaws.Then, with a couple sharp barks, she rolls onto her back, exposing the bare pink-and-black skin ofher belly, her eyes glazed with adoration.

“Scarecrow!!”Iris calls out, her voice sharp, nervous.“What are youdoing?”

Hampton has folded his long arms over his hard, flat chest.“Seems like you’ve gone and won my doggie’s heart,”Hampton fairly drawls.

Meanwhile, on court number one, Bruce is hitting the ball to himself, harder and harder, until it sounds like gunshots.

“Do you mind ifI sit next to you for a minute or two?”

Kate is sitting in the back pew ofSaint Christopher’s Church, which is eight miles outside ofLeyden, on a curving dirt road, surrounded by open fields, where the dried remains ofthe harvested corn stalks rise and fall with the undulations ofthe land, in neat rows like markers in a cemetery.Startled by the soft, questioning voice, she turns to see the young priest next to her, tall, narrow, with an ascetic face and prema-turely gray hair.He is the sort ofman people say looks like a priest, even ifhe happens to be selling dress shirts in a department store, or walking in his baggy plaid bathing trunks on the beach.

“I didn’t hear you sit down,”Kate says.

”I’m sorry.Did I startle you?Were you praying?”

“I was really just closing my eyes.I’m collecting my thoughts.”

“I see you come in here from time to time,”the priest says.“I thought it was time we met.”

“My name’s Katherine Ellis.I’m not Catholic.”She extends her hand.

”I’m Father Joseph Sidlowski.And IamCatholic.”He takes her hand, shakes it.His touch is spectral, she could be dreaming him.

“I go to a lot ofchurches,”Kate says.“But this one is just so lovely, it’s one ofthe nicest in the area, I think.”

Father Sidlowski looks up at the planked ceiling, the simple blue-andyellow stained glass windows.“It really is,”he says, as ifthe beauty ofthe place had never occurred to him before.“Do you know its history?”

“No.”

“The farm right behind us and all the land around us, about four hundred acres, used to be owned by the Bailey family.Does that name mean anything to you?”

“I know Bailey Road.”

“We’re on Bailey Road, and there’s the Bailey Building right in the village.The patriarch ofthe Bailey family was named Peter Bailey.He outlived three wives and ten ofhis thirteen children.In his seventies—this was in about1880—he converted to Catholicism and built this church for himself and his family.There were no other Catholic churches nearby.It has something ofthe barn about it, don’t you think?Anyway, he died in his nineties and he left an endowment to the archdiocese to keep Saint Christopher’s open for one hundred years.The churchyard is filled with the remains ofBaileys, as well as the graves ofthe priests who have worked here.Part ofmy own pastoral duties is to make certain those graves are well kept.The Bailey family is scattered now, and most ofthe priests who are buried here have no family to speak of.I think sometime in the next few years we’ll see the doors to this chapel closed for the last time.We have a modest congregation and I suspect that when the hundred years are up and there is no income to support Saint Christopher’s, they’ll turn this place into an antiques shop.”

“Just what the world needs.”

Sidlowski shows his teeth in a slow approximation ofa smile.“May I ask what brings you to Saint Christopher’s?”His voice is low, confiden-tial, though there is no one else in the church.

“It’s very peaceful here,”Kate says.She looks around the small church—the dark, heavily varnished painting ofthe dying Jesus recum-bent in his stricken mother’s lap, a few votive candles twinkling in their red glass holders, the simple wooden cross, unusually austere.“I’ve been thinking a lot about…things, and it’s easier for me to have my thoughts in a church than it is at home.”

“May I show you something?”Father Sidlowski asks Kate.“It’ll only take a moment.”

Kate follows the priest through the church.Their footsteps echo in the stillness and she wonders how he could have sat next to her without her hearing his approach.He leads her through a small doorway offthe nave ofthe church and into his office.It’s a small, windowless room, with books and magazines piled in every corner.A banged-up metal desk and a swivel chair are the only furniture.The fax machine on the edge of the desk is receiving a transmission as they walk in;Kate sneaks a peek at what’s coming in—it seems to be from a travel agency, she sees a drawing ofan airplane and the words“ChristmasTravel Bargains.”The walls are bare, except for one old painting in an ornate gilt frame.The image on the canvas is ofa dark-haired woman in a modest brown robe, on her knees before a child’s crib.Her hands are clasped prayerfully and blood drips from them.The crib is suffused with golden light.

“That’s Saint Mary Frances,”Sidlowski says, his voice suddenly intimate, suffused with gentleness, as ifthis were upsetting news he must break to her.“She died at the end ofthe eighteenth century and was can-onized about sixty years after her death.”

“I never heard ofher,”Kate says.“I don’t really know very much about saints.As I said, I’m not—”

“Catholic,”Sidlowski cuts in.“I realize that.But she’s a lovely saint, one ofmy favorites.Not very well known here, but greatly loved in Naples.But do you see why I wanted you to see this painting?”

Kate redirects her attention to the image.The canvas is old, the paint is muddy, and the surface veneer is cracked into a thousand little jigsaw sections.

“She looks so much like you,”Sidlowski says.“Don’t you see the resemblance?”

Kate shakes her head.She sees nothing ofherselfin the face ofMary Frances.All there is in common is the dark-brown hair, brown eyes; everything else about Mary Frances seems merely average, even generic: average height, average weight.Oh, maybe a little something in the mouth, after all, that thin, broad upper lip, and maybe, also, a certain boyishness ofchin.And the shoulders.

“I still think ofmyselfas having blonde hair,”Kate says.“Though I haven’t since I was ten years old.But it was such a part ofmy identity, and such a part ofmy parents’celebration ofme.The picture ofmyselfthat I carry within me will always be ofsome pink little girl with white-blonde hair.Oh my God, how my parents suffered when my hair went dark.”

“It’s not just the coloring,”says Sidlowski.Whatever tact he had when first pointing the saint out to Kate is falling away now.His voice is eager, insistent.“It’s the face, the shape ofthe head, and something else, some-thing ineffable.”

“I don’t really see it,”Kate says apologetically.“But thank you, I guess.

I don’t relate to saints, Father.I don’t really believe in them.”

“But it’s a matter ofhistorical record.And this is her birthday month.

She was born October6.October6was the day ofthe storm,”Sidlowski says.“It made me think ofher.”

“Why is that?”Kate is uneasy with any mention ofthat unexpected, chaos-inducing snow.The storm has come to mean two things to her:her narrow escape from the roaming Star ofBethlehem boys, and Daniel spending the night with Iris, a night that, the more she thinks about it, al-most certainly became the occasion for Daniel’s long desire to finally find consummation.Kate cannot see a broken tree—and there are still thou-sands inWindsor County—without pain in her chest.

“Are you all right?”Father Sidlowski asks.

“Tell me about her,”Kate says, gesturing toward the painting.“What’s wrong with her hands?Why is she bleeding?”

“She was called Mary Frances ofthe FiveWounds.”He waits to see if Kate understands those wounds refer to the five stabs ofthe Roman spears in Jesus’crucified body.“She had a very difficult life.Even after she joined an order, her father, who detested her, and, ifyou ask me, har-bored and perhaps even acted upon incestuous feelings toward her, in-sisted she continue to live in his house as a servant.When Mary Frances’s father was done with her, he passed her along to a local priest, a fanatic in the Jansenist tradition, who continued Mary’s ill treatment.She re-mained the priest’s personal servant for the rest ofher life, thirty-eight more years.Yet even in the midst ofher degradation, Mary insisted on caring for others.She practiced regular personal mortifications, many of them quite painful, asking God to place in her own soul the suffering ofall those trapped in Purgatory, and asking, as well, to share the pain of her sick neighbors, most ofwhom treated her with contempt.”

He looks at Kate, sees her pained expression, and lowers his voice, almost to a murmur.

“You said you were going from church to church.Would you mind my asking why?”

“I’m being treated with contempt, too, Father,”Kate says.She steps toward him.The floor is soft, it seems as ifher feet are sinking in through the wood.A sudden dizziness, the world spins, once, twice.What’s hap-pening to me?She grabs Sidlowski’s arm to keep her balance.

Daniel is wracked with jealousy now that it is the weekend and Hamp-ton is home.He suspects that there is no one in the world who would sympathize with his agony, not even Iris.And what puts him even further from sympathy’s comforting embrace is that he is harming other people.

He is lying to Kate, though he tells himself that he would tell her the truth and take the necessary steps to separate their lives ifonly he hadn’t promised Iris not to make any precipitous moves.The fact is that Iris’s swearing him to silence fits in with his own reluctance to say the terrible thing to Kate.He is betraying Hampton, who is not really a friend or a man toward whom Daniel has ever had warm feelings, but who is, at least, a fellow human being, and worthy ofrespect and decent treat-ment.And he is betraying Iris—he has slept with Kate as a way ofkeep-ing a modicum ofdomestic peace, simply a matter ofslapping up some wallpaper to cover the cracks in the plaster.

His only comfort is theWindsor Bistro, which he discovered a couple ofweeks ago quite by accident.Before the storm, theWindsor Bistro seemed well on its way to being a losing proposition, a small, pleasant place, with a little gas fireplace and a Colonial chandelier, but there were never more than six or eight people eating at the same time.The owner and cook, Doris Snyder, a shy, frugal woman with a starburst birthmark on her forehead, stocked as little fresh food as possible, afraid, as she was, that most ofit would end up in the garbage.By the time ofthe Oc-tober snow, theWindsor Bistro was beginning to have that doomed air of a fighter looking for a place to fall.But then the storm hit, and the Bistro was the first place in Leyden to reopen, and anyone who was brave or restless enough to leave home gathered there for companionship.Doris’s confidence grew each time the door opened, and soon she was greeting everyone personally, serving free drinks and complimentary desserts.

After a couple ofnights, she convinced her boyfriend, a mentally unsta-ble but handsome man named Curtis, who had not left their house in six months, to bring his guitar in and sing his repertoire ofNeilYoung, Jim Croce, and Jackson Browne songs.

Daniel has become a regular.The place is crowded tonight and it is only his position as one ofthe original, favored customers that allows him to oc-cupy a table all to himself.The owner’s boyfriend has not come in;his place on the stool to the side ofthe bar is taken by an old grade-school friend of Daniel’s, a bushy-browed man named Chris Kiley, who accompanies him-selfon a littleYamaha keyboard while he sings sultry rhythm and blues songs about marital chaos, such as“Me and Mrs.Jones”and“Who’s Mak-ing Love toYour Old Lady (WhileYou’re Out Making Love).”These songs feel like anthems in the confines ofthe Bistro, which, aside from being the only place in Leyden open past midnight, seems to have become a refuge for people whose deepest impulses have brought them into conflict with what society expects ofthem.There at the bar sits the principal ofthe high school with the new second-grade teacher fresh from college in Colorado.

There at the table next to Daniel’s sits Clive Mason, whose wife is dying of breast cancer, with his arm around Mary Gallagher, whose husband is a state patrolman serving three years in prison for grand larceny.And now they are joined by Ethan Cohen, who owns a women’s clothing shop next to the GeorgeWashington Inn, and Shane Chilowitcz, who teaches per-formance art over at the college, where he lives with his Polish wife, who is at home minding their six children.

Got no one to turn to Tired of being alone Feel like breaking up Somebody’s home.

Ah, truer words were never sung,Daniel thinks.He looks up from his book, habitually scanning the place for Iris.Though in the week he has been coming here every night, he has yet to see her, he continually expects her to walk in at any moment.It’s maddening to be constantly on the look-out for her, but it gives him a gambler’s fervid hope that something trans-forming is just about to happen.

The singer sways behind his keyboard, surrounded by customers, who are also swaying to the music—a few are singing along.It has be-come even more crowded around the bar.There are people standing three deep, talking, laughing with piercing animation, signaling the newly hired bartender for drinks.

Standing near the bar is Mercy, Ruby’s baby-sitter.She is dressed to look older than her age—plenty ofmakeup, a tailored brown jacket over a black scoop-necked blouse, ironed jeans, heels.She looks like one of the young women at the bank—sobriety and trustworthiness mixed with a kind ofsingles-bar brassiness.She has been trying to get Daniel’s attention, and now that he has finally seen her she smiles and walks over to his table.

“Hello, Mr.Emerson,”she says.She has put so much color on her lashes it seems a struggle to keep her eyes open.She holds a glass ofbeer with a thin slice oflime floating in its amber.

“Hello, Mercy,”he says.He almost asks,What are you doing here?But, the custom ofthe Bistro prevents such snoopiness.

She takes his smile as an invitation to sit.She arranges herselfcarefully in the bentwood chair, as ifshe were taking her place on a jury.The rim ofher glass is faintly red from her lipstick.“I’ve been thinking about that stuffyou told me,”she says.Her voice drops to a whisper.“About becoming an emancipated minor?”

“It’s a big step, Mercy.It’s basically a desperation move.”

“I really have to get out ofthere,”she replies, and as she says it the man with whom she arrived at the Bistro strides from the bar to Daniel’s table.He is more than twice her age.His name is Sam Holland, he is one ofthe area’s writers, not the most celebrated but possibly the richest, and he is someone Daniel knows.A couple ofyears ago, just when Daniel, Kate, and Ruby were moving back to Leyden, Holland’s teenage son had gotten himself into a lot oftrouble, and Sam had talked to Daniel about handling the kid’s defense.

Whatever chagrin Sam might feel about being away from his wife, or from being seen with a girl two years younger than his son, is nowhere in evidence as he thrusts his hand out and grasps Daniel with a manly grip.

“Hello, Danny,”Sam says.He is wearing a blazer, a white shirt, and blue jeans;his thick, suddenly pewter hair is swept straight back.“How’d your house make it through the storm?”

Daniel thinks about this for a moment.“We took a couple ofhits,”

hesays.

“We were decimated,”Sam says, with a wide, radiant smile.He has dragged a chair over and sits close to Mercy.Daniel imagines their knees are touching.“Were you home for it?”Sam asks.

“Not in the beginning.”

“At least I was home,”Sam says.“That made it semimanageable.

Where were you?”he asks Mercy.

“At my girlfriend’s.They let us out ofschool early and like ten ofus walked over to her house.”

“Party time,”says Sam.

”Kind of, ifyou call not being able to watchTV or wash your hands a party.”

“That’s exactly what I call a party,”he says.“That’s the trouble with your generation, you don’t know a goddamned party when you see one.”

He turns back toward Daniel.“So where were you when the storm hit?”

“I was at HamptonWelles and Iris Davenport’s house,”Daniel says.

”My girlfriend baby-sits their kid,”Mercy says.“He hit her on the head with like a toy truck.She had to get twenty stitches on her scalp, but you can’t see them because the hair’s grown back.”

“That’s a lot to endure for three-fifty an hour,”Sam says.

”Try eight,”Mercy says.

”Well, for eight dollars an hour I might take getting hit by a truck—

you did say it was atoytruck, didn’t you?”He looks at Daniel, as ifhe, at least, would understand the joke:the ways we disfigure ourselves in or-der to put bread on the table.

“No one wants to baby-sit that kid,”Mercy says.“He’s like really really mean.”

“He’s not even five years old,”Daniel says.“Maybe your friends are reacting to something else.”

Mercy, having no wish to antagonize Daniel, and, in fact, wanting only to keep him on her side, lowers her eyes.

“I have to go to the ladies’room,”she says.

As soon as she is safely away, Sam leans closer to Daniel.

”I’m helping her with her homework,”he says, deadpan.

”Take her home, Sam,”Daniel says.“You really have to stop seeing her.Her father’s crazy and a cop, it’s going to end very badly.”

“I know,”Sam says.

“Don’t you worry about her, Sam? Do you know what happens to those girls?They end up dancing in a cage with spangles on their nipples.

You know what I mean?”

“Look, it’s not that simple.I could end up dancing in a cage somewhere, too.”

“You could end up in jail, is where you could end up.She’s a kid.”

“I love her.I’m drawn to her, and I don’t have a list ofreasons why.

It just happened.You think I wanted this? My whole life is in the process ofgoing down the drain.”

“Then do something about it.”

“I tried.Do you have any idea how foolish I feel, being here with…

with someone so inappropriate,”he says.“But the thing is, I can’t help it, I literally cannot help it.Everyone thinks being with a young girl is like finding the fountain ofyouth.The truth is, it’s just the opposite.First of all, I can barely concentrate on sex because I’m so busy sucking in my stomach.And then, when I get out ofbed and I make these little groans, you know, the way a man does, the knee hurts, the back, a little sore shoulder, whatever.You groan, after forty-five you get out ofbed and you make a little noise, I don’t care ifyou’re Peter Pan.So I get up, straighten myselfout, and Mercy’s all breathless, panicked.‘What’s wrong, what’s wrong?’she’s asking.‘Nothing,’I tell her,‘absolutely nothing.’And she says,‘But you were making these noises.’And I have to tell her,‘Honey, that’s what you do when you wake up in the morning.You groan.’And she nods, trying to be a good sport about it, but I swear to God, Daniel, I have never felt so fucking old in my entire life.These guys who think they’re going to get a second at bat in the youth league by hanging out with some young girl, they’ve got it exactly wrong.You want to feel young, find yourselfsome old broad and run circles around her.”

Tonight’s singer is finishing up;the applause sounds like rain on a tin roof.Daniel’s eyes habitually scan the room;he cannot let go ofthe dream ofIris suddenly appearing.He imagines her sashaying through this convivial throng, her sitting next to him, a tilted, slightly apprehensive look ofarrival and surrender on her face, her bony knee knocking against him, her night voice an octave lower, cracked with fatigue, the whites ofher eyes creamy, like French vanilla.

Through the pack ofpeople comes Ferguson Richmond, grinning maniacally, wearing a pair ofcatastrophic brown pants, his hair slicked back.On his arm is the blind girl, MarieThorne, who, though her eyes are secreted behind dark glasses, looks festive and in high spirits.

Ferguson greets him like an old friend, and Marie, too, is effusive.It makes Daniel think that the two ofthem have been talking about him, speculating about his having spent the night at Iris’s, and that now, seeing him here, at the nocturnal headquarters for the town’s transgressors, their hypothesis is proved.Without waiting to be asked, Ferguson drags two more chairs over to Daniel’s table.He sits Marie next to Daniel and then squeezes himself between Sam and Mercy.As he sits, he seems to notice for the first time how young Mercy is—in fact, he does an almost comic double take.

And then, with no apparent provocation, Ferguson reaches across the table and takes Marie’s hand and brings it to his lips, and he kisses her with loud, smacking sounds, almost in a burlesque ofaffection.The ges-ture is shocking and everyone at the table laughs, including Daniel, though the sight ofFerguson’s fantastically uncivilized behavior makes Daniel’s longing for Iris all the more excruciating.

Ferguson sees the dismay in Daniel’s face.“Seen much ofthe lovely Iris Davenport lately?”he asks.

“No,”Daniel says, in a voice not quite able to bear the weight ofeven a one-word answer.

“Old Daniel found himself at her house the first night ofthe storm,”

Ferguson explains to the rest ofthem, curling his fingers into quotation marks when he says“found himself.”

“So he tells us,”says Sam.

At home that night, Kate sips her way through a bottle ofzinfandel and talks on the phone to Lorraine DelVecchio, whom she thinks ofas her best friend, though now that Kate has moved out ofNewYork City, they rarely see each other, and their phone calls, which even a year ago were daily, now take place only two or three times a month, though what they have come to lack in frequency they have made up for in duration.Ex-cept for her undergraduate years spent across the country at Reed Col-lege, where she studied Plato and abused amphetamines, Lorraine has never lived anywhere but Manhattan.When Kate first met her, Lorraine was an editor atCosmopolitan;Lorraine had read Kate’s novel,Peaches and Cream,and had fought to have it excerpted inCosmo,only to be overruled at the eleventh hour by the editor-in-chief.

By the time the deal had fallen through, Lorraine and Kate had already established a telephone rapport.Lorraine loved Kate’s acerbic style, her pitilessness that didn’t stop with the skewering ofsubsidiary characters but also included the novel’s narrator, who was, Lorraine as-sumed, a stand-in for the author herself.But what Lorraine particularly loved about the novel was its depiction ofthe beauty business as a world ofharpies from which intelligent girls must rescue themselves—in fact, it was precisely the novel’s send-up ofdermatology, and its underlying fury at a world that attached such value to appearance, that prevented Lorraine from buying it for her magazine, where halfthe articles and nearly all the advertising were meant to encourage young women to be ceaselessly fretful about their appearance.When running a portion of Peaches and Creamwas torpedoed at the last minute, Lorraine called Kate personally to break the bad news, and she sounded so distressed that Kate agreed to meet her for lunch at the end ofthe week.

Daniel had warned Kate about Lorraine.He didn’t know Lorraine, but he was getting a sense ofthe women who became Kate’s most passionate readers, and he had duly noted the expressions on their faces when they fi-nally met Kate and realized that she, unlike her heroine or themselves, was quite beautiful.Like the heroine, Kate had been entered into Beautiful Baby contests when she was an infant, and her parentsdidopenly grieve when her hair turned from blonde to brown, and they did give her Clairol rinses when she was nine years old and send her to bed with her hair wrapped in a scarfsoaked in lemon juice, and when, at thirteen, a birdshot spray ofpimples appeared on her forehead, her father, a doctor himself, sent her to a dermatologist inWashington, D.C.—but not, as it occurred in the novel, all the way to Zurich.The other indignities visited upon the novel’s teenage narrator—how she wakes up one day with virtually a full mustache, the involvement with a Santeria cult, her entire body being en-cased in defoliating wax, the liposuction performed at midnight like a backstreet abortion—were entirely fictional, as was the section in which the mother’s bridge club accidentally drops the narrator’s diet pills into their coffee, having gotten them confused with saccharin tablets, and the subsequent freak-out, during which the ladies go after each other like wildcats and one ofthem ends up dying ofa heart attack.

“You’ve struck a chord with all women with unfortunate looks,”

Daniel said.“And when they see you they feel ripped off, like you’ve tricked them into believing you’re one ofthem.”

To Kate’s immense relief, the woman she found waiting for her at the RussianTea Room was completely presentable, in fact, great-looking—with short black hair, bright-green dramatic eyes, the serene, commanding face and ample bust ofa figurehead carved into the prow ofa whaling ship.

”Oh, look at you,”Lorraine exclaimed upon first seeing Kate.“You’re gor-geous, you bum.”She clutched her heart.“How could you do this to me?”

The accusation was made humorously and it might have been meant to flatter Kate.Yet she felt she had just been slapped in the face, and de-spite the fact that their rapport soon moved beyond what Kate consid-ered the hallucinogenic stage—a kind ofjokey alternative reality in which Lorraine pretended Kate was ravishing and she herselfwas homely and doomed—and onto a truer rapport, that first remark cre-ated a shadow presence in their friendship.This shadow presence insisted that Kate was the fortunate one and Lorraine, despite her well-paying job, numerous sexual adventures, supportive family, and brownstone apartment with a fireplace and two skylights, was the hard-luck case.It meant that Kate was somehow beholden to equalize things between them, by deferring to Lorraine.

Tonight, Lorraine has a cold, and she uses the first part oftheir phone time complaining about it.Lately, Lorraine has become a little screwy about her health.As she approaches thirty-eight, the age her own mother died of cervical cancer, Lorraine is more and more putting herselfin the care ofnot only doctors but also an acupuncturist, a masseuse, an aromatherapist, two nutritionists, and even a psychic whose specialty is disease.

“I spent the day in bed,”she says.

”For a cold?”Kate asks, hoping her disapproval isn’t apparent.

”Yes, for a cold.And I was in a major O.J.mood.I really wanted to watch the trial in the privacy ofmy own home.Watching it at the office sucks, so many interruptions.”

“So? Did anything happen?”Kate could not watch today’s proceedings because, oddly enough, she was too busy finishing an article about the trial—an article that Lorraine herselfhad commissioned.

“I just had this wild premonition that he was going to crack, and stand up in the middle ofthe court and confess.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“I realize that.How’s the article going?”

“I should be done in a couple more days.”Kate feels the subtle change, she is suddenly in her writer-fending-off-an-editor mode.“Three at the most.”

“It’s not going to do us any good ifthe trial’s over.”

“The trial has got months to go.”

“Not ifhe confesses.What about Daniel?What’s his take on this whole thing? I mean, doesn’t he see it as a kind ofindictment ofthe le-gal profession, this guy who has so obviously assassinated his poor wife and now he’s just dragging out the proceedings, thanks to the efforts of a team ofhigh-priced lawyers, all ofwhom have probably entered into pacts with Satan.”

Kate is silent for a moment.“Daniel’s starting to make noises as ifhe believes O.J.is innocent.”

“You’re kidding.”

“He thinks racist cops might have tampered with the evidence.The Fuhrman thing.He thinks all sorts ofthings.”

“He actually thinks O.J.is innocent?”

“I don’t know.”Here is the hard part.“Let me take a sip ofwine and tell you what I really think.”

“Sip away.”

Kate finishes the entire glass, dabs her palm against her chin, where a single red drop clings, and then refills her glass.

“He has a wicked crush on this black woman and I think he’s tailoring his O.J.opinions to suit her fashion.”

“Oh, Kate, are you sure?”Lorraine’s voice sounds warm, motherly.

Lorraine’s compassion always comes as a sort ofpleasant surprise, though she never fails to show it.

“No, not really.But…I’m pretty sure.”

“Who’s the woman?”

“Oh, just some local mom, a perpetual grad student, with an absentee husband.”

“I’m not getting a clear picture.”

“Her name’s Iris.I really feel like killing her with my bare hands, I feel like O.J.-ing her.She’s reasonably attractive, in a freckly sort ofway.

She hasAdored Daughter Syndrome, she just sort ofsits there and ex-pects all this attention.She has some demented kid who Ruby likes, so there’s all these occasions to get together, Daniel and Iris.You should see them together.Daniel’s entire body becomes one big boner.”

“And you?”Lorraine asks.

”What do you mean?What about me?”

“Are you going to let this temptress take your boyfriend away?”

Lorraine is being far too lighthearted about this, and as a way of telling her so Kate lets that last remark hang in the air for a few extra moments.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do, Lorraine.When I first started noticing how fixated on this woman he was getting, I thought to myself: Oh well, who cares, live and let live, screw and let screw, whatever.”

“And now?”

“It’s getting to me.It’s having a perverse effect.”

“Oh yes, I know how that works.You’re starting to fall in love with him again, right?”

“Something like that.I don’t require a lot ofcare and feeding, you know.I don’t need to be adored, or ravished, I don’t need little poems slipped under my pillow, or a rose on my breakfast tray.But, I really do notwant him to leave me.That really doesn’t work for me.”

“We’re such idiots.”

“It’s not as ifI felloutoflove with Daniel.”

“I know.”

“I’m used to him, with all the good and bad that implies.Anyhow, we had sort ofan arrangement.We’re both moderates, you know what I mean?We hate excess, neither ofus even likesRomeo and Juliet.I feel be-trayed in that way, too.Suddenly, I sense this willingness in him to be crucified on passion’s cross.Ugh.He’s becoming a different person.”

“And then there’s the small matter ofRuby,”says Lorraine.“I thought he was so devoted to her.”

“I’m not even thinking about that.He’s not going toleaveme.He would never do anything to upset Ruby.He worships her.”

“What’s the café-au-lait absentee husband like?”

“His name is Hampton.”

“Oh God, they have the best names.Hampton what?”

“Welles.He’s Ivy League, Wall Street, so bourgeois he makes Martha Stewart seem like Karen Finley.”

“And does he think O.J.is innocent, too? It would be interesting to find out.”

“I don’t know.O.J.may be a little dark for Hampton’s taste.”

Just then, Kate hears wracking coughs coming from Ruby’s bedroom.She has been in and out ofrespiratory sickness ever since the storm—the ride home on the snowmobile did her in.

“Can you hold on for a minute?”Kate asks.

”Did you get another call? Don’t take it.”

“No, Ruby’s coughing her brains out.I better look in on her.”

“Where’s Danny boy?”

“Out.I’m not actually sure where.”As soon as Kate says this, two things occur:Ruby’s coughing stops, and a heavy, soggy sense ofemo-tional panic settles over Kate.“Oh good,”she says,“false alarm,”while in fact she is just now feeling her first intimations ofreal alarm.

“He’s out and you have no idea where?”Lorraine says.“That’s not likehim.”

“Well, lately it has been.”

“There’s nothing to do up there, nowhere to go.Where does he go?”

“There’s this place in town, a bar.Lately he’s been going there.”

“A bar?”Lorraine’s voice is full ofthe kind ofscorn that tries to masquerade as incredulity.

“It’s not that extraordinary, is it?”Kate tries to sound bemused, but her blood has begun to race.She has an impulse to simply slam the phone down and get in the car, surprise the little fucker right in his new night-time haunt.Yet just as she is about to hang up, she realizes the reason she has called Lorraine in the first place.“We had this monster snowstorm,”

she says.

“I know, I saw it on Fox.Weird.”

“We didn’t have electricity for four days, no heat, no water, nothing.

And we were trapped here, no cars were moving, every road was closed.”

“You should really move back to NewYork.”

“Last year a water main exploded under your street and your entire apartment was filled with mud.”

“True, but at least I had heat.I had lights, I could read.And I could leave, I could go to my health club, I could have a watercress-and-goat-cheese salad at Cafe Luxembourg.”

“It was sort offun, getting back to basics, the three ofus camping out.

And when the snow stopped the sun came out and it was sort ofmild.”

“I don’t ever want to be in a position where I’m glad the sun cameout.”

“But for the first day I was here alone, andthatwas a little weird.”

“Where were Daniel and Ruby?”

“At Iris’s.”

“You’re fucking kidding.”

“And while I was here alone, some boys broke into the house.”

“What are you talking about?”

“There’s a home for delinquent boys, mostly black kids from the city.

Some escaped during the power outage and they ended up here.”

“Oh my God.Are you all right?”

“Yes, I’m fine.They never even saw me.They came in to use the facilities.”

“They shit in your house?”

“In the toilet.”

“Well, that was civilized.”

Kate is about to say something and realizes her voice is suddenly not available to her, it seems submerged.

“Were you hiding?”Lorraine asks.“Where were you?”

Kate takes a deep breath.Okay,she thinks.Steady.“I was pretty scared,”she says.“These were not nice boys.”

“They could have raped you, killed you.”

“I suppose.A tree hit the house and they ran like hell.”

“A tree.”Lorraine snorts contemptuously.“And Daniel was at Iris’shouse.”

“That could not be helped.He couldn’t get home.”

“The poor lamb.Listen to me, Kate.Okay?”

“No, please.Don’t be smarter than me about this, don’t open my eyes to the obvious, I don’t want to be pummeled with your insight.”

“I’m just—”

“I know.I’m just not ready.Anyhow, I’m getting out ofhere.”

“Where are you going?”

“To that bar Daniel’s been hanging out at.Windsor Bistro.”

“Good.And ifhe’s there with her—”

“He’s not.”

“Just remember, ifO.J.can get away with it, so can you.”

After hanging the phone up, Kate sits in her chair and finishes her glass ofwine, waiting for her pulse to stop pounding.She goes to the window at the front ofthe house—the repairman who replaced the panes did a sloppy job and there are smears ofputty on the mullions—and looks out at the night.The sky is a steep dome ofbright stars.The moon is pale and wafer-thin;it casts its light down on the split and top-pled trees around the house;a little patch ofbrightness reflects on the chrome ofher car’s back bumper.

She remembers:Ruby, with a kind ofstart, the way you do when you drive away from the house and suddenly remember you’ve left the stove on.How can she go to theWindsor Bistro and leave Ruby all alone? How far away is it?Ten minutes, okay that’s twenty minutes round-trip.Let’s call it twenty-five, allowing for petty delays.And all she would need is fifteen minutes at the Bistro.That’s forty minutes altogether, and possi-bly a lot less.

She walks into Ruby’s bedroom.The room is softly visible through the glow ofa fairy princess night-light.Kate stands over her daugh-ter’s—her captor’s—bed and gazes down at her.She sleeps on her back, with the satin border ofthe blanket drawn up to her chin.Her skin is creamy, her brows dark and sensuous.Deep childish breaths, with a lit-tle bronchial burr at the end ofeach one.Ruby is a deep sleeper, she plunges down through the barely lit terrain ofher own inner life, one hundred fathoms deep, dreaming ofgigantic doors and talking animals.

She almost never wakes during the night—even those wracking coughs left her sleep undisturbed.Forty-five minutes,thinks Kate.She’ll never know the difference.Yet a moment later anxiety takes its customary spot in Kate’s consciousness, sits with the authority ofan old fortune-teller and turns the cards over one by one:here is the child waking, she is calling your name, here is the furnace leaking noxious fumes, here is an invisi-ble frayed wire festering in the wall, here is a thief, here is a kidnapper, and this card is five black boys coming back for who knows what.What are you thinking?What could possibly be in your mind?You are staying in this house.And he knows it.