Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. Vol. 131, No. 1. Whole No. 797, January 2008

Joyce Carol Oates’s most recent book (Harcourt, August 2007) is The Museum of Dr. Moses: Tales of Mystery and Suspense. The collection received a starred review from Publishers Weekly, which said, “Powerful narratives, a singular imagination, and exquisite prose make this a collection to relish.” Three of the volume’s ten stories previously appeared in EQMM. Ms. Oates’s latest novel is The Gravedigger’s Daughter(Ecco).

1.

It began innocently: He was searching for his wife’s passport.

The Chases were planning their first trip to Italy together. To celebrate their tenth anniversary.

Leonard’s own much-worn passport was exactly where he always kept it, but Valerie’s less frequently used passport didn’t appear to be with it so Leonard looked through drawers designated as hers, bureau drawers, desk drawers, the single shallow drawer of the cherrywood table in a corner of their bedroom which Valerie sometimes used as a desk, and there, in a manila folder, with a facsimile of her birth certificate and other documents, he found the passport. And pushed to the back of the drawer, a packet of photographs held together with a frayed rubber band.

Polaroids. Judging by their slightly faded colors, old Polaroids.

Leonard shuffled through the photographs, like cards. He was staring at a young couple: Valerie and a man whom Leonard didn’t recognize. Here was Valerie astonishingly young, and more beautiful than Leonard had ever known her. Her hair was coppery-red and fell in a cascade to her bare shoulders, she was wearing a red bikini top, white shorts. The darkly handsome young man close beside her had slung a tanned arm around her shoulders in a playful intimate gesture, a gesture of blatant sexual possession. Very likely, this man was Valerie’s first husband, whom Leonard had never met. The young lovers were photographed seated at a white wrought-iron table in an outdoor cafe, or on the balcony of a hotel room. In several photos, you could see in the near distance a curving stretch of wide, white sand, a glimpse of aqua water. Beyond the couple on the terrace were royal court palm trees, crimson bougainvillea like flame. The sky was a vivid tropical blue. The five or six photographs must have been taken by a third party, a waiter or hotel employee perhaps. Leonard stared, transfixed.

The first husband. Here was the first husband. Yardman? — was that the name? Leonard felt a stab of sexual jealousy. Not wanting to think But I am the second husband.

On the reverse of one of the Polaroids, in Valerie’s handwriting, was Oliver & Val, Key West, December 1985.

Oliver. This was Yardman’s first name, Leonard vaguely remembered now. In 1985, Val had been twenty-two, nearly half her lifetime ago, and she hadn’t yet married Oliver Yardman, but would be marrying him in another year. At this time they were very possibly new lovers, this trip to Key West had been a kind of honeymoon. Such sensual, unabashed happiness in the lovers’ faces! Leonard was sure that Valerie had told him she hadn’t kept any photographs of her first husband.

“The least we can do with our mistakes,” Valerie had said, with a droll downturn of her mouth, “is not keep a record of them.”

Leonard, who’d met Valerie when she was thirty-one, several years after her divorce from Yardman, had been allowed to think that the first husband had been older than Valerie, not very attractive and not very interesting. Valerie claimed that she’d married “too young” and their divorce just five years later had been “amicable” for they had no children and had not shared much of a past. Yardman’s work had been with a family-owned business in a Denver suburb, “dull, money-grubbing work.” Valerie, who’d grown up in Rye, Connecticut, had not liked Colorado and spoke of that part of the country, and of that phase of her life, with an expression of distaste.

Yet here was glaring evidence that Valerie had been very happy with Oliver Yardman in December 1985. Clearly Yardman was no more than a few years older than Valerie and, far from being unattractive, Yardman was extremely attractive: dark, avid eyes, sharply defined features, something sulky and petulant about the mouth, the mouth of a spoiled child; the kind of child a woman might wish to spoil to see that mouth curve upward in pleasure. There was a revealing Polaroid in which Yardman pulled Valerie playfully toward him, a hand gripping her shoulder and the other hand beneath the table, very likely gripping her thigh. His hair was dark, thick, damply touseled. Faint stubble showed on his jaws. He wore a white T-shirt that fitted his muscled, solid torso tightly, and what appeared to be swimming trunks; his legs were thickly muscled, covered in dark hairs. He was barefoot, his toes curling upward in delight. So this was Oliver Yardman: the first husband. Not at all the man Valerie had suggested to Leonard.

He’d thought it was strange, but attributed it to Valerie’s natural reticence, that in the early months of their relationship Valerie had rarely asked Leonard about his past. She hadn’t even asked him if he had been married, Leonard had volunteered the information: No.

And no children, either. He’d been careful about that.

It had been something of a relief to meet a woman without a trace of sexual jealousy. Now Leonard saw that Valerie hadn’t wanted to be questioned about her own sexual past.

Leonard stared at the Polaroids. He supposed he should simply laugh and replace them in the drawer where he’d found them, taking care not to snap the frayed rubber band, for certainly he wasn’t the kind of man to riffle through his wife’s private things. Nor was he the kind of man who is prone to jealousy.

Of all the ignoble emotions, jealousy had to be the worst! And envy.

And yet: He brought the photos closer to the window, where a faint November sun glowered behind banks of clouds above the Hudson River, seeing how the table at which the young couple sat was crowded with glasses, a bottle of (red, dark) wine that appeared to be nearly depleted, napkins crumpled onto dirtied plates like discarded clothing. A ring on Valerie’s left hand, silver studs glittering in her earlobes that looked flushed, rosy. In several of the photos, Valerie was clutching at her energetic young lover as he was clutching at her, in playful possessiveness. You could see that Valerie was giddy from wine, and love. Here was an amorous couple who’d wakened late after a night of love, this heavy lunch with wine would be their first meal of the day; very likely, they’d return to bed, collapsing in one another’s arms for an afternoon siesta. In the most blatant photo, Valerie lay sprawled against Yardman, glossy coppery hair spilling across his chest, one of her arms around his waist and the other part hidden beneath the table, her hand very likely in Yardman’s lap. In Yardman’s groin. Valerie, who now disliked vulgarity, who stiffened if Leonard swore and claimed to hate “overly explicit” films, had been provocatively touching Yardman in the very presence of the third party with the camera. Her little-girl mock-innocent expression was familiar to Leonard: Not me! Not me! I’m not a naughty girl, not me!

Leonard stared, his heart beat in resentment. Here was a Valerie he hadn’t known: mouth swollen from being kissed, and from kissing; young, full breasts straining against the red fabric of the bikini top and in the crescent of shadowy flesh between her breasts something coin-sized gleaming like oily sweat; her skin suffused with a warm, sensual radiance. Leonard understood that this young woman must be contained within the other, the elder who was his wife: as a secret, rapturous memory, inaccessible to him, the merely second husband.

Leonard was forty-five. Young for his age, but that age wasn’t young.

When he’d been the age of Yardman in the photos, early or mid twenties, he hadn’t been young like Yardman, either. Painful to concede, but it was so.

If he, Leonard Chase, had approached the young woman in the photos, if he’d managed to enter Valerie’s life in 1985, Valerie would not have given him a second glance. Not as a man. Not as a sexual partner. He knew this.

After lunch, the young couple would return to their hotel room and draw the blinds. Laughing and kissing, stumbling, like drunken dancers. They were naked together, beautiful smooth bodies coiled together, greedily kissing, caressing, thrusting together with the abandon of copulating animals. He saw them sprawled on the bed that would be a large jangly brass bed, and the room dimly lit, a fan turning indolently overhead, through slats in the blinds a glimpse of tropical sky, the graceful curve of a palm tree, a patch of bougainvillea moistly crimson as a woman’s mouth... Leonard felt an unwelcome sexual stirring, in his groin.

“She lied. That’s the insult.”

Misrepresenting the first husband, the first marriage. Why?

Leonard knew why: Yardman had been Valerie’s first serious love. Yardman was the standard of masculine sexuality in Valerie’s life. No love like your first. Was this so? (In Leonard’s case also, probably it was. But Leonard’s first love had not been a sexual love and his memory of the girl, the older sister of a school friend, had long since faded.) The cache of Polaroids was Valerie’s secret, a link to her private, erotic life.

Hurriedly he replaced the Polaroids in the drawer. The frayed rubber band had snapped, Leonard took no notice. He went away shaken, devastated. He thought, I’ve never existed for her. It has all been a farce.

In Salthill Landing on the Hudson River. Twenty miles north of New York City. In one of the old stone houses overlooking the river: “historic” — “landmark.” Expensive.

Early that evening as Valerie was preparing one of her gourmet meals in the kitchen there was Leonard leaning in the doorway, a drink in hand. Asking, “D’you ever hear of him, Val? What was his name, ‘Yardman’...” casually as one who has only been struck by a wayward thought, and Valerie, frowning at a recipe, murmured no, but in so distracted a way Leonard wasn’t sure that she’d heard, so he asked again, “D’you ever hear of Yardman? Or from him?” and now Valerie glanced over at Leonard with a faint, perplexed smile, “Yardman? No,” and Leonard said, “Really? Never? In all these years?” and Valerie said, “In all these years, darling, no.”

Valerie was peering at a recipe in a large, sumptuously illustrated cookbook propped up on a counter, pages clipped open. The cookbook was Caribbean Kitchen, an expensive book that had been a Christmas gift from friends in Salthill Landing with whom the Chases often dined, both in their homes and in selected restaurants in Manhattan. Valerie was preparing flank steak, to be marinated and stuffed with sausage, hard-boiled eggs, and vegetables, an ambitious meal that would involve an elaborate marinade, and a yet more elaborate stuffing, and at this moment involved the almost surgical “butterflying” of the blood-oozing slab of meat. This was a meal Valerie hoped to prepare for a dinner party later in the month; she was determined to perfect it. A coincidence, Leonard thought, that only a few hours after he’d discovered the secret cache of Polaroids, Valerie was preparing an exotic Caribbean meal of the kind she might have first sampled in Key West with the first husband twenty years ago, but Leonard, who was a reasonable man, a tax lawyer who specialized in litigation in federal appellate courts, knew it could only be a coincidence.

Asking, in a tone of mild inquiry, “What was Yardman’s first name, Val? — I don’t think you ever mentioned it,” and Valerie said, with an impatient little laugh, having taken up a steak knife to cut the meat horizontally, “What does it matter what the name is?” Leonard noted that, though he’d said was, Valerie had said is. The first husband was present to her, no time had passed. Leonard recalled an ominous remark of Freud’s that, in the unconscious, all time is present-tense and so what has come to dwell most powerfully in the unconscious is felt to be immortal, unkillable. Valerie added, as if in rebuke, “Of course I’ve mentioned his name, Leonard. Only just not in a long time.” She was having difficulty with the flank steak, skidding about on the wooden block, so Leonard quickly set down his drink and held it secure, while Valerie, biting her lower lip, pursing her face like Caravaggio’s Judith sawing off the head of the wicked king Holofernes, managed to insert the sharp blade, make the necessary incisions, complete the cut so that the meat could now be opened like the pages of a book. As Leonard watched, fascinated, yet with a sensation of revulsion, Valerie then covered the meat with a strip of plastic wrap and pounded at it with a meat mallet, short deft blows to reduce it to a uniform quarter-inch thickness. Leonard winced a little with the blows. He said, “Did he — I mean Yardman — ever re-marry?” and Valerie made an impatient gesture to signal that she didn’t want to be distracted, not just now. This was important! This was to be their dinner! Carefully she slid the butterflied steak into a large, shallow dish and poured the marinade (sherry vinegar, olive oil, fresh sage, cumin, garlic, salt, and fresh-ground black pepper) over it. Leonard saw that Valerie’s face had thickened, since she’d been Oliver Yardman’s lover; her body had thickened, gravity was tugging at her breasts, thighs. At the corners of her eyes and mouth were fine white lines and the coppery-red hair had faded, yet still Valerie was a striking woman, a rich man’s daughter whose sense of her self-worth shone in her eyes, in her lustrous teeth, in her sharp dismissive laughter like the sheen of the expensive kitchen utensils hanging overhead. There was something sensual and languorous in Valerie’s face when she concentrated on food, an almost childlike bliss, an air of happy expectation. Leonard thought, Food is Eros without the risk of heartbreak. Unlike a lover, food will never reject you.

Leonard asked another time if Yardman had remarried and Valerie said, “How would I know, darling?” in a tone of faint exasperation. Leonard said, “From mutual friends, you might have heard.” Valerie carried the steak in a covered dish to the refrigerator, where it would marinate for two hours. They never ate before 8:30 P.M., and sometimes later; it was the custom of their lives together for they’d never had children to necessitate early meals, the routines of a perfunctory American life. Valerie said, “‘Mutual friends.’” She laughed sharply. “We don’t have any.” Again Leonard noted the present tense: Don’t. “And you’ve never kept in touch,” he said, and Valerie said, “You know we didn’t.” She was frowning, uneasy. Or maybe she was annoyed. To flare up in anger was a sign of weakness; Valerie hid such weaknesses. A sign of vulnerability and Valerie was not vulnerable. Not any longer.

Leonard said, “Well. That seems rather sad, in a way.”

At the sink, which was designed to resemble a deep, old-fashioned kitchen sink of another era, Valerie vigorously washed her hands, stained with watery blood. She washed the ten-inch gleaming knife with the surgically sharpened blade, each of the utensils she’d been using. It was something of a fetish for Valerie, to keep her beautiful kitchen as spotless as she could while working in it. As she took care to remove her beautiful jewelry to set aside as she worked.

On her left hand, Valerie wore the diamond engagement ring and the matching wedding band Leonard had given her. On her right hand, Valerie wore a square-cut emerald in an antique setting, she’d said she’d inherited from her grandmother. Only now did Leonard wonder if the emerald ring wasn’t the engagement ring her first husband had given her, which she’d shifted to her right hand after their marriage had ended.

“Sad for who, Leonard? Sad for me? For you?”

That night, in their bed. A vast tundra of a bed. As if she’d sensed something in his manner, a subtle shift of tone, a quaver in his voice of withheld hurt, or anger, Valerie turned to him with a smile: “I’ve been missing you, darling.” Her meaning might have been literal, for Leonard had been traveling for his firm lately, working with Atlanta lawyers in preparation for an appeal in the federal court there, but there was another meaning, too. He thought, She wants to make amends. Their lovemaking was calm, measured, methodical, lasting perhaps eight minutes. It was their custom to make love at night, before sleep, the high-ceilinged bedroom lighted by just a single lamp. There was a fragrance here of the lavender sachets Valerie kept in her bureau drawers. Except for the November wind overhead in the trees, it was very quiet. Still as the grave, Leonard thought. He sought his wife’s smiling mouth with his mouth but could not find it. Shut his eyes and there suddenly was the brazen coppery-haired girl in the red bikini top waiting for him. Squirming in the darkly handsome young man’s arms but glancing at him. Oh! she was a bad girl, look at the bad girl! Her mouth was hungry and sucking as a pike’s mouth seeking the young man’s mouth, her hand dropped beneath the table top, to burrow in his lap. In his groin. Oh the bad girl!

Leonard had the idea that Valerie’s eyes were shut tight, too. Valerie was seeing the young couple, too.

“I found your passport, Valerie. I found these Polaroids, too. Recognize them?”

Spreading them on the table. Better yet, across the bed.

“Only just curious, Val. Why you lied about him.”

She would stare, her smile fading. Her fleshy lips would go slack as if, taken wholly unaware, she’d been slapped.

“...why you continue to lie. All these years.”

Of course, Leonard would be laughing. To indicate that he didn’t take any of this seriously, why should he? It had happened so long ago, it was past.

Except: Maybe “lie” was too strong a word. The rich man’s daughter wasn’t accustomed to being spoken to in such a way, any more than Leonard was. “Lie” would have the force of a physical blow. “Lie” would cause Valerie to flinch as if she’d been struck and the rich man’s daughter would file for divorce at once if she were struck.

Maybe it wasn’t a good idea, then. To confront her.

A litigator is a strategist plotting moves. A skilled litigator always knows how his opponent will respond to a move. Like chess, you must foresee the opponent’s moves. Each blow can provoke a counter-blow. Valerie was a woman who disliked weakness in men. A woman with a steely will, yet she presented herself as uncertain, even hesitant, socially; she knew the value of seeming vulnerable. Her sexuality had become a matter of will, she delighted in exerting her will, even as she held herself apart, detached. In all public places as in her beautifully furnished home she was perfectly groomed, not a hair of her sleek razor-cut hair out of place. Her voice was calm, modulated. It was a voice that could provoke others to be cutting but was never less than calm itself. Leonard had witnessed Valerie riling her sister, her mother. She had a way of laughing with her eyes, mocking laughter not uttered aloud. She was a shrewd judge of others. If Leonard confronted her with the Polaroids, the gesture might backfire on him. She might detect in his voice a quaver of hurt, she might detect in his eyes a pang of male anguish. He was sometimes impotent, to his chagrin. He blamed distractions: the pressure of his work, which remained, even for those of his generation who had not been winnowed out by competition, competitive. The pressure of a man’s expectations to “perform.” The (literal) pressure of his blood, for which he took blood-pressure pills twice daily. And his back, that ached sometimes mysteriously, he’d attribute to tennis, golf. In fact, out of nowhere such phantom aches emerged. And so, in the vigorous act of love, Leonard might begin to lose his concentration, his erection. Like his life’s blood leaking out of his veins. And Valerie knew, of course she knew, the terrible intimacy of the act precluded any secrets, yet she never commented, never said a word only just held him, her husband of only nine years, her middle-aged flabby-waisted panting and sweating second husband, held him as if to comfort him, as a mother might hold a stricken child, with sympathy, unless it was with pity.

Darling, we won’t speak of it. Our secret.

Yet, if Leonard confronted her over the Polaroids that were her cherished sexual secret, she might turn upon him, cruelly. She had that power. She might laugh at him. Valerie’s high-pitched mocking laughter like icicles being shattered. She would chide him for looking through her things, what right had he to look through her things, what if she searched through his desk drawers would she discover soft-core porn magazines, ridiculous soft-core videos with titles like Girls’ Night Out, Girls at Play, Sex-Addict Holiday, she would expose him to their friends at the next Salthill Landing dinner party, dryly she would dissect him like an insect wriggling on a pin, at the very least she might slap the Polaroids out of his hand. How ridiculous he was being, over a trifle. How pitiable.

Leonard shuddered. A rivulet of icy sweat ran down the side of his cheek like a tear.

So, no. He would not confront her. Not just yet. For the fact was, Leonard had the advantage: He knew of Valerie’s secret attachment to the first husband, and Valerie had no idea he knew.

Smiling to think: Like a boa constrictor swallowing its living prey paralyzed by terror his secret would encompass Valerie’s secret and would, in time, digest it.

The anniversary trip to Italy, scheduled for March, was to be postponed.

“It isn’t a practical time after all. My work...”

And this was true. The Atlanta case had swerved in an unforeseen and perilous direction. There were obligations in Valerie’s life, too. “...not a practical time. But, later...”

He saw in her eyes regret, yet also relief.

Doesn’t want to be alone with me. Comparing me with him isn’t she!

“...a reservation for four, at L’Heure Bleu. If we arrive by six, maybe a little before six, we won’t have to leave until quarter to eight, Lincoln Center is just across the street. But if you and Harold prefer the Tokyo Pavilion, I know you’ve been wanting to check it out after the review in the Times, and Leonard and I have, too...”

In fact, Leonard disliked Japanese food. Hated sushi that was so much raw flesh, uneatable.

This passion for gourmet food, wine! Expensive restaurants!

Where love has gone, he thought bitterly.

Listening to Valerie’s maddeningly calm voice as she descended the stairs speaking on a cordless phone to a friend. It was nearly two weeks after he’d discovered the Polaroids, he’d vowed not to look at them again. Yet he was approaching the cherrywood table, pulling open the drawer that stuck a little, groping another time for the packet of Polaroids that seemed to be in exactly the place he’d left it and he cursed his wife for being so careless, for not having taken time to hide her secret more securely.

(His small cache of soft-core porn, pulpy magazines, X-rated videos, evidence of a minor, minimal interest in porn and hardly a consuming passion, he’d taken care to secrete away deep in one of the locked drawers of his filing cabinet downstairs amid documents of stultifying dullness pertaining to IRS payments, stock holdings. His secret he was sure Valerie would never discover!)

“‘Oliver and Val, Key West, December 1985.’”

With what childish pride Valerie had felt the need to identify the lovers!

At a window overlooking a snowy slope to the river and the glowering winter sky he examined the photographs eagerly. He had seen them several times by now and had more or less memorized them and so they were both familiar and yet retained an air of the exotic and treacherous. One of the less faded Polaroids he brought close to his face, that he might squint at the ring worn by the coppery-haired girl — was it the emerald? Valerie was wearing it on her right hand even then, which might only mean that, though Oliver Yardman had given it to her, it hadn’t yet acquired the status of an engagement ring. In another photo, Leonard discovered what he’d somehow overlooked, the faintest suggestion of a bruise on Valerie’s neck, or a shadow that very much resembled a bruise. And Oliver Yardman’s smooth-skinned face wasn’t really so smooth, in fact it looked coarse in certain of the photos. And that smug, petulant mouth, the fleshy lips, Leonard would have liked to smash with his fist. And there was Yardman wriggling his stubby yet long toes, wasn’t there a correlation between the size of a man’s toes and the size of...

Hurriedly Leonard shoved the Polaroids into the drawer and fled the room.

“The time for children is past.”

Years ago. Should have known the woman hadn’t loved him if she had not wanted children with him.

“...a kind of madness has come over parents, today. Not just the expense: private schools, private tutors, college. Therapists! But you must subordinate your life to your children. My husband—” Valerie’s voice dipped, this was a hypothetical, it was Leonard to whom she spoke so earnestly, “would be working in the city five days a week and wouldn’t be home until evening and — can you see me as a ‘soccer mom’ driving children to — wherever! Living through it all again and this time knowing what’s to come, my God it would be so raw.”

Valerie laughed, there was fear in her eyes.

Leonard was astonished, this poised, beautiful woman was speaking so intimately to him! Of course he comforted her, gripping her cold hands. Kissed her hair where she’d leaned toward him, trembling.

“Valerie, of course. I feel the same way.”

He did! In that instant, Leonard did.

They’d been introduced by mutual friends. Leonard was a highly paid litigator attached to the legal department of the most distinguished architectural firm in New York City, its headquarters in lower Manhattan on Rector Street. Leonard’s specialty was tax law and within that specialty he prepared and argued cases in federal appeals courts. He was one of a team. There were enormous penalties for missteps, sometimes in the hundreds of millions of dollars. And there were enormous rewards when things went well.

“A litigator goes for the jugular.”

Valerie wasn’t one to flatter, you could see. Her admiration was sincere.

Leonard had laughed, blushing with pleasure. In his heart thinking he was one in a frantic swarm of piranha fish and not the swiftest, most deadly, or even, at thirty-four, as he’d been at the time, among the youngest.

The poised, beautiful young woman was Valerie Fairfax. Her maiden name: crisp, clear, Anglo, unambiguous. (Not a hint of “Yardman.”) At CitiBank headquarters in Manhattan, Valerie had the title of Vice-president of Human Resources. How serious she was about her work! She wore Armani suits in subdued tones: oatmeal, powder-gray, charcoal. She wore pencil-thin skirts and she wore trousers with sharp creases. She wore trim little jackets with slightly padded shoulders. Her hair was stylishly razor-cut to frame her face, to suggest delicacy where there was in fact solidity. Her fragrance was discreet, faintly astringent. Her handshake was firm and yet, in certain circumstances, yielding. She displayed little interest in speaking of the past though she spoke animatedly on a variety of subjects. She thought well of herself and wished to think well of Leonard and so had a way of making Leonard more interesting to himself, more mysterious.

The first full night they spent together, in the apartment on East 79th Street where Leonard was living at the time, a flush of excitement had come into Valerie’s face as, after several glasses of wine, she confessed how at CitiBank she was the vice-president of her department elected to firing people because she was so good at it.

“I never let sentiment interfere with my sense of justice. It’s in my genes, I think.”

Now, you didn’t say fired. You said downsized.

You might say dismissed, terminated. You might say, of vanished colleagues, gone.

Leonard typed into his laptop a private message to himself: Not me. Not this season. They can’t!

Another time, in fact many times, he’d typed Yardman into his computer. (At the office, not at home. He and Valerie shared a computer at home. Leonard knew that, in cyberspace, nothing is ever erased though it might be subsequently regretted and so at home he never typed into the computer anything he might not wish his wife to discover in some ghost-remnant way.) Hundreds of citations for Yardman but none for Oliver Yardman so far.

He meant to keep looking.

“...first husband.”

Like an abscessed tooth secretly rotting in his jaw.

In his office on the twenty-ninth floor at Rector Street. On the 7:10 A.M. Amtrak into Penn Station and on the 6:55 P.M. Amtrak out of Penn Station returning to Salthill Landing. In the interstices of his relations with others: colleagues, clients, fellow commuters, social acquaintances, friends. In the cracks of a densely scheduled life the obsession with Oliver Yardman grew the way the hardiest weeds will flourish in soil scarcely hospitable to plant life.

Sure he knows. Knows of me: second husband. What he must remember! Of her.

Had to wonder how often Valerie glanced through the Polaroids in the desk drawer. How frequently, even when they’d been newly lovers, she’d shut her eyes to summon back the first husband, the sulky, spoiled mouth, the brazen hands, the hard stiff penis thrumming with blood that would never flag, even as she was breathless and panting in Leonard’s arms declaring she loved him.

Since the discovery weeks ago in November he’d looked for other photos. Not in the photo album Valerie maintained with seeming sincerity and wifely pride but in Valerie’s drawers, closets. In the most remote regions of the large house where things were stored away in boxes. Shrewdly thinking that because he hadn’t found anything did not mean that there was nothing to be found.

“Len Chase!”

A bright female voice, a Salthill Landing neighbor leaning over his seat. (Where was he? On the Amtrak? Headed home? Judging by the murky haze above the river, early evening, had to be headed home.) Leonard’s laptop was opened before him and his fingers were poised over the flat keyboard but he’d been staring out the window for some minutes without moving. “...thought that was you, Len, and how is Valerie? Haven’t seen you since, has it been Christmas, or...”

Leonard smiled politely at the woman. His opened laptop, his document bag and overcoat in the seat beside him, these were clear signals he didn’t want to be interrupted, which the woman surely knew, but had come to an age when she’d decided not to see such signals, in cheerful denial of their meaning Please leave me alone, you are not of interest to me, not as a woman, not as an individual, you are nothing but a minor annoyance. Melanie Roberts was Valerie’s age, and her frosted hair was razor-cut in Valerie’s style. Very likely Melanie was a rich man’s daughter as well as a rich man’s wife but the advantage she’d held as a younger woman had mysteriously faded, even so. Melanie seemed to think that her neighbor Leonard Chase might wish to know that she’d had lunch with friends in the city and gone to see the Rauschenberg exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum and then she’d dropped by to visit her niece at Barnard. Melanie was watching Leonard with sparkly expectant eyes in which dwelled some uneasiness, a fear of seeing in Leonard’s face exactly what he was thinking. He had to concede, he saw in Melanie Roberts’s face that he might still be perceived as an attractive man, in his seated position he appeared moderately tall, with a head of moderately thick hair, graying, but attractively graying; his skin tone was slightly sallow, but perhaps that was just the flickering Amtrak lighting; his face was dented in odd places, and loosely jowly in others; his nostrils looked enlarged, like pits opening into his skull; his eyes behind wire-rimmed bifocal glasses were shadowed and smudged; yet he would seem to this yearning woman more attractive than paunchy near-bald Sam Roberts, as others’ spouses invariably seem more attractive, since more mysterious, than our own. For intimacy is the enemy of romance. The dailyness of marriage is the enemy of immortality. Who would wish to be immortal, if it’s a matter of reliving just the past week?

Melanie Roberts’s smile was fading. Amid her chatter, Leonard must have interrupted. “...hear you, Len? It’s so noisy in this...”

The car was swaying drunkenly. The lights flickered. With a nervous laugh Melanie gripped the back of the seat to steady herself. Another eight minutes to Salthill Landing, why was the woman hanging over his seat! He yearned to be touched, his numbed body caressed in love, so desperately he yearned for this touch that would be the awakening from a curse, but he shrank from intimacy with this woman who was his neighbor in Salthill Landing. On his opened laptop screen was a column of e-mail messages he hadn’t answered, in fact hadn’t read, as he hadn’t for most of that day returned phone messages, for a terrible gravity pulled his mind elsewhere. The first husband. You cannot be first. Melanie was saying brightly that she would call Valerie and maybe this weekend they could go out together to dinner, that new seafood restaurant in Nyack everyone has been talking about, and Leonard laughed, with a nod toward the window beside his seat where some distance below the oily-dark sprawl of the Hudson River was lapsing into dusk, “Ever think, Melanie, that river is like a gigantic boa constrictor? It’s like time, eventually to swallow and digest us all?”

Melanie laughed sharply as if not hearing this, or hearing enough to know that she didn’t really want to hear more of it. Promising she’d tell Sam hello from him, and she’d call Valerie very soon, with a faint, forced smile lurching away somewhere behind Leonard Chase to her seat.

He would track down the first husband, he would erase the man from consciousness. He would erase the man’s memory in which his own wife existed. Except he was a civilized human being, a decent human being, except he feared being apprehended and punished, that was what he would do.

Early November when he’d discovered the Key West photos. Late February when his CEO called him into his office in the “tower.”

The meeting was brief. One or two others had been taken to lunch first, which had not been a good idea; Leonard was grateful to be spared lunch. Through a roaring in his ears he heard. Watched the man’s piranha mouth. Steely eyes through bifocal glasses like his own.

Downsized. Stock options. Severance pay. Any questions?

He had no legal grounds to object. Possibly he had moral grounds but wouldn’t contest it. He knew the company’s financial situation. Since 9/11, they’d been in a tailspin. These were facts you might read in the Wall Street Journal. Then came the terrible blow, unexpected, at least Leonard believed it to be unexpected, the ruling in Atlanta: A federal court judge upheld a crushing $33 million award to a hotel-chain plaintiff plus $8 million punitive damages. The architectural firm for which he’d worked for the past seven years was hard hit. Conceding yes, he understood. Failure was a sickness that burned like fever in the eyes of the afflicted. No disguising that fever, like jaundice-yellow eyes.

Soon to be forty-six. Burnt-out. The battlefield is strewn with burnt-out litigators. His fingers shook, cold as a corpse’s, yet he would shake the CEO’s hand in parting, he would meet the man’s gaze with something like dignity.

He had the use of his office for several more weeks. And the stock options and severance pay were generous. And Valerie wouldn’t need to know exactly what had happened, possibly ever.

“...seem distracted lately, Leonard. I hope it isn’t...”

They were undressing for bed. That night in their large beautifully furnished bedroom. Gusts of wind rattled the windows, that were leaded windows, inset with wavy glass in mimicry of the old glass that had once been, when the original house had been built in 1791.

“...anything serious? Your health...”

From his corner of the room Leonard called over, in a voice meant to comfort, of course he was fine, his health was fine. Of course.

“Damned wind! It’s been like this all day.”

Valerie spoke fretfully as if someone were to blame.

Neither had brought up the subject of the trip to Italy in some time. Postponed to March, but no specific plans had been made. The tenth anniversary had come and gone.

In her corner of their bedroom, an alcove with a built-in dresser and closets with mirrors affixed to their doors, Valerie was undressing as, in his corner of the bedroom, a smaller alcove with but a single mirrored door, Leonard was undressing. As if casually Leonard called over to her, “Did you ever love me, Valerie? When you first married me, I mean.” Through his mirror Leonard could see just a blurred glimmer of one of Valerie’s mirrors. She seemed not to have heard his question. The wind buffeting the house was so very loud. “For a while? In the beginning? Was there a time?” Not knowing if his voice was pleading, or threatening. If, if this woman heard, like the frightened woman on the train she would laugh nervously and wish to escape him.

“Maybe I should murder us both, Valerie. ‘Downsize.’ It could end very quickly.”

He didn’t own a gun. Had no access to a gun. Rifle? Could you go into a sporting goods store and buy a rifle? A shotgun? Not a handgun, he knew that was more difficult in New York State. You had to apply for a license, there was a background check, paperwork. The thought made his head ache.

“...that sound, what is it? I’m frightened.”

In her corner of the room Valerie stood very still. How like an avalanche the wind was sounding! There had been warnings over the years that the hundred-foot cliff above Salthill Landing might one day collapse after a heavy rainstorm and there had been small landslides from time to time and now it began to sound as if the cliff might be disintegrating, a slide of rock, rubble, uprooted trees rushing toward the house, about to collapse the roof... In his corner of the room Leonard stood as if transfixed, his shirt partly unbuttoned, in his stocking feet, waiting.

They would die together, in the debris. How quickly then, the end would come!

No avalanche, only the wind. Valerie shut the door of her bathroom firmly behind her, Leonard continued undressing and climbed into bed. It was a vast tundra of a bed, with a hard mattress. By morning the terrible wind would subside. Another dawn! Mists on the river, a white wintry sun behind layers of cloud. Another day Leonard Chase would endure with dignity, he was certain.

2.

“ ‘Dwayne Ducharme,’ eh? Welcome to Denver.”

There came Mitchell Oliver Yardman to shake Leonard’s hand in a crushing grip. He was “Mitch” Yardman, realtor and insurance agent and he appeared to be the only person on duty at Yardman Realty & Insurance this afternoon.

“...not that this is Denver, eh? Makeville is what this is here, you wouldn’t call it a suburb of anyplace. Used to be a mining town, see. Probably you never heard of Makeville back East, and this kind of scenery, prob’ly you’re thinking ain’t what you’d expect of the West, eh? Well, see, Dwayne Ducharme, like I warned you on the phone: This is east Colorado. ‘High desert plain.’ The Rockies is in the other direction.”

Yardman’s smile was wide and toothy yet somehow grudging, as if he resented the effort such a smile required. Here was a man who’d been selling real estate for a long time, you could see. Even as he spoke in his grating mock-Western drawl Yardman’s shrewd eyes were rapidly appraising his prospective client “Dwayne Ducharme” who’d made an appointment to see small ranch properties within commuting distance of Denver.

So this was Oliver Yardman! Twenty-one years after the Key West idyll, the man had thickened, grown coarser, yet there was the unmistakable sexual swagger, the sulky spoiled-boy mouth.

Yardman was shorter than Leonard had expected, burly and solid-built as a fire hydrant. He had a rucked forehead and a fleshy nose riddled with small broken veins and his breath was meaty, sour. He wore a leathery-looking cowboy hat, an expensive-looking rumpled suede jacket, lime-green shirt with a black string tie looped around his neck, rumpled khakis, badly scuffed leather boots. He seemed impatient, edgy. His hands, that were busily gesticulating, in twitchy swoops like the gestures of a deranged magician, were noticeably large, with stubby fingers, and on the smallest finger of his left hand he wore a showy gold signet ring with a heraldic crest.

The first husband. Leonard’s heart kicked in his chest; he was in the presence of his enemy.

In the office that was hardly more than a storefront, and smelled of stale cigarette smoke, Yardman showed Leonard photographs of “ranch-type” properties within “easy commuting distance” of downtown Denver. In his aggressive, mock-friendly yet grudging voice Yardman kept up a continual banter, peppering Leonard with facts, figures, statistics, punctuating his words with Eh? It was a verbal tic of which Yardman seemed unaware or was helpless to control and Leonard steeled himself waiting to hear it, dry-mouthed with apprehension that Yardman was suspicious of him, eyeing him so intimately, “...tight schedule, eh? Goin’ back tomorrow, you said? Said your firm’s ‘relocating’? Some kinda computer parts, eh? There’s a lot of that in Denver, ‘lectronics, ‘chips,’ theseare boom times for some, eh? Demographics’re movin’ west, for sure. Population shift. Back East, billion-dollar companies goin’ down the toilet, you hear.” Yardman laughed heartily, amused by the spectacle of companies going down a toilet.

Leonard said, in Dwayne Ducharme’s earnest voice, “Mr. Yardman, I’ve been very—”

“‘Mitch.’ Call me ‘Mitch,’ eh?”

“—‘Mitch.’ I’ve been very lucky to be transferred to our Denver branch. My company has been ‘downsized,’ but—”

“Tell me about it, man! ‘Downsize.’ ‘Cut back.’ Ain’t that the story of these United States lately, eh?” Yardman was suddenly vehement, incensed. His pronunciation was savage: Yoo-nited States.

Leonard said, with an air of stubborn naiveté, “Mr. Yardman, my wife and I think of this as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. To ‘relocate’ to the West from the crowded East. We’re Methodist Evangelicals and the church is flourishing in Colorado and we have a twelve-year-old boy dying to raise horses and my wife thinks—”

“That is so interesting, Dwayne Ducharme,” Yardman interrupted, with a rude smirk, “—you are one of a new ‘pioneer breed’ relocating to our ‘wide open spaces’ and relaxed way of life and lower taxes. Seems to me I have just the property for you: six-acre ranch, four-bedroom house for the growin’ family, barn in good repair, creek runs through the property, fences, shade trees, aspens, in kinda a valley where there’s deer and antelope to hunt. Just went on the market a few days ago, Dwayne Ducharme, thisis serendip’ty, eh?”

Yardman locked up the office. Pulled down a sign on the front door: CLOSED. When he wasn’t facing Leonard, his sulky mouth yet retained its fixed smile.

Outside, the men had a disagreement: Yardman wanted to drive his prospective client to the ranch, which was approximately sixteen miles away, and Dwayne Ducharme insisted upon driving his rental car. Yardman said, “Why’n hell we need two vehicles, eh? Save gas. Keep each other company. It’s the usual procedure, see.” Yardman’s vehicle was a new-model Suburban with smoke-tinted windows, bumper stickers featuring the American flag, and a dented right rear door. It was both gleaming-black and splattered with mud like coarse lace. Inside, a dog was barking excitedly, throwing itself against the window nearest Leonard and slobbering the glass. “That’s Kaspar. Spelled with a ‘K.’ Bark’s worse’n his bite. Kaspar ain’t goin’ to bite you, Dwayne Ducharme, I guarantee.” Yardman slammed the flat of his hand against the window commanding the dog to “settle down.” Kaspar was an Airedale, pure-bred, Yardman said. Damn good breed, but needs discipline. “You buy this pretty li’l property out at Mineral Springs for your family, you’ll want a dog. ‘Man’s best friend’ is no bullshit.”

But Leonard didn’t want to ride with Yardman and Kaspar; Leonard would drive his own car. Yardman stared at him, baffled. Clearly, Yardman was a man not accustomed to being contradicted or thwarted in the smallest matters. He said, barely troubling to disguise his contempt, “Well, Dwayne Ducharme, you do that. You in your li’l Volva, Volvo, Vulva, you do that. Kaspar and me will drive ahead, see you don’t get lost.”

In a procession of two vehicles they drove through the small town of Makeville in the traffic of early Saturday afternoon, in late March. It was a windy day, tasting of snow. Overhead were massive clouds like galleons. What a relief, to be free of Yardman’s overpowering personality! Leonard hadn’t slept well the night before, nor the night before that, his nerves were strung tight. In his compact rental car he followed the military-looking black Suburban through blocks of undistinguished storefronts, stucco apartment buildings, taverns, X-rated video stores, opening onto a state highway crowded with the usual fast-food restaurants, discount outlets, gas stations, strip malls. All that seemed to remain of Makeville’s mining-town past were The Gold Strike Go-Go, Strike-It-Rich Lounge, Silver Lining Barbecue. Beyond the highway was a mesa landscape of small stunted trees, rocks. To get to Yardman Realty & Insurance at 661 Main Street, Makeville, Leonard had had a forty-minute drive from the Denver airport through a dispiriting clog of traffic and air hazier than the air of Manhattan on most days.

He thought, Can he guess? Any idea who I am?

He was excited, edgy. No one knew where Leonard Chase was.

Outside town, where the speed limit was fifty-five miles an hour, Yardman pushed the Suburban toward seventy, leaving Leonard behind. It was to punish him, Leonard knew: Yardman allowed other vehicles to come between him and Leonard, then pulled off onto the shoulder of the road to allow Leonard to catch up. In a gesture of genial contempt, Yardman signaled to him, and pulled out onto the highway before him, fast. In the rear window of the Suburban was an American flag. On the rear bumper were stickers: BUSH CHENEY USA. KEEP HONKING, I’M RELOADING.

Yardman’s family must have been rich at one time. Yardman had been sent east to college. Though he played the yokel, it was clear that the man was shrewd, calculating. Something had happened in his personal life and in his professional life, possibly a succession of things. He’d had money, but not now. Valerie would never have married Yardman otherwise. Wouldn’t have kept the lewd Polaroids for more than two decades.

If he guessed. What?

The Suburban was pulling away again, passing an eighteen-rig truck. Leonard could turn off at any time, drive back to the airport and take a flight back to Chicago. He’d told Valerie that he would be in Chicago for a few days on business and this was true: Leonard had a job interview with a Chicago firm needing a tax litigator with federal court experience. He hadn’t told Valerie that he’d been severed from the Rector Street firm and was sure that there could be no way she might know. He’d been commuting into the city five days a week, schedule unaltered. His CEO had seen to it, he’d been treated with courtesy: allowed the use of his office for several weeks while he searched for a new job. Except for one or two unfortunate episodes, he got along well with his old colleagues. Once or twice he showed up unshaven, disheveled, most of the time he seemed unchanged. White cotton shirt, striped tie, dark pinstripe suit. He continued to have his shoes shined in Penn Station. In his office, door shut, he stared out the window. Or clicked through the Internet. So few law firms were interested in him, at forty-six: “downsized.” But he’d tracked down Yardman in this way. And the interview in Chicago was genuine. Leonard Chase’s impressive resumé, the “strong, supportive” recommendation his CEO had promised, were genuine.

Valerie had ceased touching his arm, his cheek. Valerie had ceased asking in a concerned voice, Is anything wrong, darling?

This faint excitement, edginess. He’d been in high-altitude terrain before. Beautiful Aspen, where they’d gone skiing just once. Also Santa Fe. Denver was a mile above sea level and Leonard’s breath was coming quickly and shallowly in the wake of Yardman’s vehicle. His pulse was fast, elated. He knew that after a day, the sensation of excitement would shift to a dull throbbing pain behind his eyes. But he hoped to be gone from Colorado by then.

Mineral Springs. This part of the area certainly didn’t look prosperous. Obviously there were wealthy Denver suburbs and outlying towns but this wasn’t one of them. The land continued flat and monotonous and its predominant hue was the hue of dried manure. At least, Leonard had expected mountains. In the other direction, Yardman had said with a smirk — but where? The jagged skyline of Denver, behind Leonard, to his right, was lost in a soupy brown haze.

The Suburban turned off onto a potholed road. United Church of Christ in a weathered wood-frame building, a mobile-home park, small asphalt-sided houses set back in scrubby lots in sudden and unexpected proximity to Quail Ridge Acres, a “custom-built” — “luxury home” — housing development sprawling out of sight. There began to be more open land, “ranches” with grazing cattle, horses close beside the road lifting their long heads as Leonard passed by. The sudden beauty of a horse can take your breath away, Leonard had forgotten. He felt a pang of loss, he had no son. No one to move west with him, raise horses in Colorado.

Yardman was turning the Suburban onto a long bumpy lane. Here was the Flying S Ranch. A pair of badly worn steer horns hung crooked on the opened front gate, in greeting. Leonard pulled up behind Yardman and parked. A sensation of acute loneliness and yearning swept over him. If we could live here! Begin over again! Except he needed to be younger, and Valerie needed to be a different woman. Here was a possible home: a long flat-roofed wood-and-stucco ranch house with a slapdash charm, needing repair, repainting, new shutters, probably a new roof. You could see a woman’s touches: stone urns in the shape of swans flanking the front door, the remains of a rock garden in the front yard. Beyond the house were several outbuildings, a silo. In a shed, a left-behind tractor. Mounds of rotted hay, dried manure. Fences in varying stages of dereliction. Yet, there was a striking view of a sweeping, sloping plain and a hilly terrain — a mesa? — in the distance. Pierced with sunshine the sky was beautiful, a hard, glassy blue behind clouds like gigantic sculpted figures. Leonard saw that, from the rear of the ranch house, you’d have a view of the hills, marred only by what looked like the start of a housing development far to the right. Almost, if you stared straight ahead, you might not notice the intrusion.

As Leonard approached the Suburban, he saw that Yardman was leaning against the side of the vehicle, speaking tersely into a cell phone. His face was a knot of flesh. Kaspar the purebred Airedale was loose, trotting excitedly about, sniffing at the rock garden and lifting his leg. When he sighted Leonard he rushed at him barking frantically and baring his teeth. Yardman shouted, “Back off, Kaspar! Damn dog, obey!” When Leonard shrank back, shielding himself with his arms, Yardman scolded him, too: “Kaspar is all damn bark and no bite, din’t I tell you? Eh? C’mon, boy. Sit. Now.” With a show of reluctance Kaspar obeyed his red-faced master. Leonard hadn’t known that Airedales were so large. This one had a wiry, coarse tan-and-black coat, a grizzled snout of a muzzle, and moist dark vehement eyes like his master. Yardman shut off the cell phone and tried to arrange his face into a pleasant smile. As he unlocked the front door and led Leonard into the house he said, in his salesman’s genial-blustery voice, “...churches, eh? You seen ’em? On the way out here? This is strong Christian soil. Earliest settlers. Prots’ant stock. There’s a Mormon population, too. Those folks are serious.” Yardman sucked his fleshy mouth, considering the Mormons. There was something to be acknowledged about those folks, maybe money.

The ranch house looked as if it hadn’t been occupied in some time. Leonard, looking about with a vague, polite smile, as a prospective buyer might, halfway wondered if something, a small creature perhaps, had crawled beneath the house and died. Yardman forestalled any question from his client by telling a joke: “...punishment for bigamy? Eh? ‘Two wives.’” His laughter was loud and meant to be infectious.

Leonard smiled at the thought of Valerie stepping into such a house. Not very likely! The woman’s sensitive soul would be bruised in proximity to what Yardman described as the “remodeled” kitchen with the “fantastic view of the hills” and, in the living room, an unexpected spectacle of left-behind furniture: a long, L-shaped sofa in a nubby butterscotch fabric, a large showy glass-topped coffee table with a spiderweb crack in the glass, deep-piled wall-to-wall stained beige carpeting. Two steps down into a family room with a large fireplace and another “fantastic view of the hills” and stamped-cardboard rock walls. Seeing the startled expression on Leonard’s face Yardman said with a grim smile, “Hey sure, a new homeowner might wish to remodel here, some. ‘Renovate.’ They got their taste, you got yours. Like Einstein said, ‘There’s no free lunch in the universe.’”

Yardman was standing close to Leonard, as if daring him to object. Leonard said in a voice meant to be quizzical, “‘No free lunch in the universe’? — I don’t understand, Mr. Yardman.”

“Means you get what you pay for, see. What you don’t pay for, you don’t get. Phil’sphy of life, eh?” Yardman must have been drinking in the Suburban, his breath smelled of whiskey and his words were slightly slurred.

As if to placate the realtor, Leonard said of course he understood, any new property he bought, he’d likely have to put some money into. “All our married lives it’s been my wife’s and my dream to purchase some land and this is our opportunity. My wife has just inherited a little money, not much but a little,” Dwayne Ducharme’s voice quavered, in fear this might sound inadvertently boastful, “and we would use this.” Such naive enthusiasm drew from Yardman a wary predator smile. Leonard could almost hear the realtor thinking, Here is a fool, too good to be true. Yardman murmured, “Wise, Dwayne Ducharme. Very wise.”

Yardman led Leonard into the “master” bedroom where a grotesque pink-toned mirror covered one of the walls and in this mirror, garishly reflected, the men loomed over-large as if magnified. Yardman laughed as if taken by surprise and Leonard looked quickly away, shocked that he’d shaved so carelessly that morning: Graying stubble showed on the left side of his face and there was a moist red nick in the cleft of his chin. His eyes were set in hollows like ill-fitting sockets in a skull and his clothes, a tweed sport coat, a candy-striped shirt, looked rumpled and damp as if he’d been sleeping in them as perhaps he had been, intermittently, on the long flight from New York to Chicago to Denver.

Luckily, the master bedroom had a plate-glass sliding door that Yardman managed to open, and the men stepped quickly out into fresh air. Almost immediately there came rushing at Leonard the frantically barking Airedale who would certainly have bitten him except Yardman intervened. This time he not only shouted at the dog but struck him on the snout, on the head, dragged him away from Leonard by his collar, cursed and kicked him until the dog cowered whimpering at his feet, its stubby tail wagging. “Damn asshole, you blew it. Busted now.” Flush-faced, deeply shamed by the dog’s behavior, Yardman dragged the whimpering Airedale around the house to the driveway where the Suburban was parked. Leonard pressed his hands over his ears not wanting to hear Yardman’s furious cursing and the dog’s broken-hearted whimpering as Yardman must have forced him back inside the vehicle, to lock him in. He thought, That dog is his only friend. He might kill that dog.

Leonard walked quickly away from the house, as if eager to look at the silo, which was partly collapsed in a sprawl of what looked like fossilized corncobs and mortar, and a barn the size of a three-car garage with a slumping roof and a strong odor of manure and rotted hay, pleasurable in his nostrils. In a manure pile a pitchfork was stuck upright as if someone had abruptly decided that he’d had enough of ranch life and had departed. Leonard felt a thrill of excitement, unless it was a thrill of dread. He had no clear idea why he was here, being shown the derelict Flying S Ranch in Mineral Springs, Colorado. Why he’d sought out “Mitch” Yardman. The first husband Oliver Yardman. If his middle-aged wife cherished erotic memories of this man as he’d been twenty years before, what was that to Leonard? He was staring at his hands, lifted before him, palms up in a gesture of honest bewilderment. He wore gloves, that seemed to steady his hands. He’d been noticing lately, these past several months, his hands sometimes shook.

Just outside the barn, Yardman had paused to make another call on his cell phone. He was leaving a message, his voice low-pitched, threatening and yet seductive. “Hey babe. ‘Sme. Where the hell are ya, babe. Call me. I’m here.” He broke the connection, cursing under his breath.

At the rear of the barn, looking out at the hills, Yardman caught up with Leonard. The late-afternoon sky was still vivid with light, massive clouds in oddly vertical sculpted columnar shapes. Leonard was staring at these shapes, flexing his fingers in his leather gloves. Yardman swatted at his shoulder as if they were new friends linked in a common enterprise; his breath smelled of fresh whiskey. “Quite a place, eh? Makes a man dream, eh? ‘Big sky country.’ That’s the West, see. I lived awhile in the East, freakin’ hemmed-in. No place for a man. Always wanted a neat li’l ranch like this. Decent life for a man, raise horses, not damn rat-race ‘real estate’... Any questions for me, Dwayne? Like, is the list price ‘negotiable’? Or—”

“Did you always live in Makeville, Mr. Yardman — Mitch?” Dwayne Ducharme had a way of speaking bluntly yet politely. “Just curious!”

Yardman said, tilting his leathery cowboy hat to look his client frankly in the face, “Hell, no. The Yardmans is all over at Littleton. Makeville is just me. And that’s tem’pry.”

“‘Yardman Realty & Insurance’ is a family business, is it?”

“Well, sure. Used to be. Now, just me mostly.”

Yardman spoke with an air of vaguely shamed regret. Burnt out Leonard was thinking. Yardman’s sulky mouth seemed about to admit more, then pursed shut.

“You said you lived in the East, Mitch...”

“Not long.”

“Ever travel to, well — Florida? Key West?”

Yardman squinted at Leonard, as if trying to decide whether to be bemused or annoyed by him. “Yah, I guess. Long time ago. Why’re you askin’, friend?”

“It’s just, you look familiar. Like someone I saw, might have seen, once, I think it was Key West...” Leonard was smiling, a roaring came up in his ears. As, in court, he had sometimes to pause, to get his bearings. “Do you have a family? — I mean, wife, children...”

“Man, I know what you mean,” Yardman laughed sourly. “Some of us got just as much ‘family’ as we need, eh? See what I’m sayin’?”

“I’m afraid that I—”

“Means my ‘private life’ is off-limits, friend.”

Yardman laughed. His face crinkled. He swatted Leonard on the shoulder. “Hey, man: just joking. A wife’s a wife, eh? Kid’s a kid? Been there, done that. Three times, Dwayne Ducharme. ‘Three strikes you’re out.’”

It was risky for Dwayne Ducharme to say, with a provocative smile, “‘No love like your first.’ They say.”

“‘No fuck like your first.’ But that’s debatable.”

Now Yardman meant to turn the conversation back to real estate. He had another appointment back at the agency that afternoon, he’d have to speed things up here. In his hand was a swath of fact sheets, did Dwayne Ducharme have any questions about this property? Or some others, they could visit right now? “‘Specially about mortgages, int’rest rates. There’s where Mitch Yardman can help you.”

Leonard said, pointing, “Those hills over there? Is that area being developed? I noticed some new houses, ‘Quail Ridge Acres,’ on our way here.”

Yardman said, shading his eyes, “Seems like there’s something going on there, you’re right about that. But the rest of the valley through there, and your own sweet little creek running through it, see? — that’s in pristine shape.”

“But maybe that will be developed too? Is that possible, Mr. — Mitch?”

Yardman sucked his teeth as if this were a serious question to be pondered. He said, “Frankly, Dwayne, I doubt it. What I’ve heard, it’s just that property there. For sure I’d know if there was more development planned. See, there’s just six acres in your property here, of how many hundreds the previous owner sold off, land around here in prox’mity to Denver is rising in value, with your six acres you’re plenty protected, and the tax situation ain’t so stressful. These six acres is a buffer for you and your family, also an investment sure to grow in value, in time. Eh?”

Yardman swatted Leonard’s shoulder companionably as he turned to re-enter the barn, to lead his client through the barn and back to the driveway. His patience with Dwayne Ducharme was wearing thin. He’d uttered his last words in a cheery rush like memorized words he had to get through on his way to somewhere better.

The pitchfork was in Leonard’s hands. The leather gloves gripped tight. He’d managed to lift the heavy pronged thing out of the manure pile and without a word of warning as Yardman was about to step outside, Leonard came up swiftly behind him and shoved the prongs against his upper back, knocking him forward, off-balance, and as Yardman turned in astonishment, trying to grab hold of the prongs, Leonard shoved the pitchfork a second time, at the man’s unprotected throat.

What happened next, Leonard would not clearly recall.

There was Yardman suddenly on his knees, Yardman fallen and flailing on the filthy floor of the barn, straw and dirt floating in swirls of dark blood. Yardman was fighting to live, bleeding badly, trying to scream, whimpering in terror as Leonard stood grim-faced above him positioning the pitchfork to strike again. With the force and weight of his shoulders he drove the prongs, dulled with rust, yet sharp enough still to pierce a man’s skin, into Yardman’s already lacerated neck, Yardman’s jaws, Yardman’s uplifted and still astonished face. A few feet away the leathery cowboy hat lay, thrown clear.

Leonard stood over him furious, panting. His words were choked and incoherent: “Now you know. Know what it’s like. Murderer! You.”

Emerging then from the barn, staggering. For he was very tired now. He’d last slept — couldn’t remember. Except jolting and unsatisfying sleep on the plane. And if he called home, the phone would ring in the empty house in Salthill Landing and if he called Valerie’s cell phone there would be no answer, not even a ring.

In the driveway, he stopped dead. There was the Suburban parked where Yardman had left it, the Airedale at the rear window barking hysterically. The heavy pitchfork was still in his hands, he’d known there was more to be done. His hands ached, throbbed as if the bones had cracked and very likely some of the bones in his hands had cracked, but he had no choice, there was more to be done for Yardman’s dog was a witness, Yardman’s dog would identify him. Cautiously he approached the Suburban. The Airedale was furious, frantic. Leonard managed to open one of the rear doors, called to the dog in Yardman’s way, commanding, cajoling, but the vehicle was built so high off the ground it was difficult to lean inside, almost impossible to maneuver the clumsy pitchfork, to stab at the dog. Leonard glanced down at himself, saw in horror that his trouser legs were splattered with blood. His shoes, his socks! The maddened dog was smelling blood. His master’s blood. He knows. Something was pounding violently inside Leonard’s ribcage. Had to think clearly: had to overcome the faintness gathering in his brain. Calling “Kaspar! Come here!” but the wily dog scrambled into the front seat. Awkwardly Leonard climbed into the rear of the vehicle, tried to position the pitchfork to strike at the dog, thrusting the implement but catching only the back of the leather seat in the prongs as the furious barking seemed to grow even louder. Leaning over the front seat trying to lunge at the dog, cursing the dog as Yardman had cursed the dog half-sobbing in frustration, rage, despair as somehow, in an instant, the dog managed to sink his teeth into Leonard’s wrist and Leonard cried out in surprise and pain and hurriedly climbed out of the Suburban dragging the pitchfork with him. In the driveway that seemed to be tilting beneath him he stared confounded at his torn and bleeding flesh, that throbbed with pain — a dog bite? Had someone’s dog attacked him?

Glanced up to see a pickup approaching on the bumpy lane. A man wearing a cowboy hat in the driver’s seat, a woman beside him. Their quizzical smiles had turned into stares, as they took in the pitchfork in Leonard’s hands. A man’s voice called, “Mister? You in need of help?”

(c)2007 by Joyce Carol Oates