Far From the Sea

Friday

There were two shopping bags full of mail. They rested on the floor between him and Bessie. He had met her in the Emergency Room waiting room, as they’d arranged yesterday. He had known, even before he was fully awake this morning, that today would be the longest day. The two shopping bags full of mail somehow fortified his surmise.

“This is only the first-class,” Bessie said. “There’s more first-class at the building, but I couldn’t carry it all. And the other stuff, too. The packages.”

The clock on the wall read ten-thirty.

A man holding a bloodied handkerchief to his face was sitting on the leatherette couch opposite them. His T-shirt was slashed across the front and drenched with blood as well. David figured the man had been in a knife fight. The man watched with interest as David pulled some envelopes from the first shopping bag of mail. He seemed not to be in any pain. He kept the bloodied handkerchief pressed tightly to his face. No one had yet come to see what was the matter with him.

“A lot of this seems to be bills,” David said.

“Well, he was always sending away for things,” Bessie said. “Plates and stamps, other things.”

“What I thought we’d do,” David said, suddenly overwhelmed by the mass of envelopes stuffed in the shopping bags, “is just separate the letters from the rest...”

“Yes.”

“...and read him the ones he wants us to open.”

“That would be good,” Bessie said.

He began sorting through the mail, separating what were obviously bills or first-class mail offerings from what appeared to be personal letters. A nurse came from behind the counter.

“Mr. McGruder?” she asked.

“Yes?” the man with the bloodied handkerchief said.

“Will you come in now, please? Doctor will see you.” She looked at David and Bessie. “Are you with him?” she asked.

“No,” David said.

“This isn’t the public library,” she said.

“My father’s in Intensive Care,” David said.

“That’s on the third floor,” the nurse said.

“I know that. We thought...”

“There’s a waiting room up there. This is Emergency,” she said. “We can’t have you sitting here reading your mail.”

“It’s my father’s mail,” David said idiotically.

“Whoever’s,” the nurse said. “Mr. McGruder? Will you come with me, please?”

David picked up the mail he’d already sorted and placed it on top of the other envelopes in the first shopping bag. He picked up both shopping bags and followed Bessie through the labyrinth of corridors that led to the main lobby. They took the elevator up to the third floor. But instead of going directly to the Intensive Care waiting room, they settled instead on one of the leatherette couches just beyond the elevators and the third-floor nurses’ station.

It took him almost twenty minutes to go through the mail. Included among the envelopes he had separated as bills were several from doctors. He opened one of them. It contained a slip of paper and a return envelope. The slip of paper read:

The doctor’s name was Carlos Herrera. Apparently, he had been the anesthesiologist during the first operation. His fee was $1,175.00.

David opened another envelope. The enclosed statement for professional services was from three doctors who called themselves The Pulmonary Medical Group. The statement was a computer printout. It read:

Dear patient:

“You don’t have to pay any doctor bills,” Bessie said. “They try to get you to pay them direct, because sometimes Medicare takes a long time. Just forget about them. When my husband died, alav ha-sholom, I didn’t pay nothing. The doctors got their money direct from Medicare.”

She’s giving a lawyer advice, David thought, and said nothing. He put the statement back into the envelope and looked at his watch. It was five minutes to eleven.

“We’d better go in now,” he said.

The tube was still taped to his father’s mouth. The Cuban nurse had told David it was attached to a respirator, to help his father breathe a bit more easily. The respirator huffed and puffed beside the bed. The tube was still beaded with drops of moisture. His father’s eyes looked moist. There was a bewildered expression on his face. Bessie leaned over the bed and kissed his cheek.

“Hello, Morris,” she said, “how are you feeling today?”

His father lifted his hand and then let it drop onto the sheet. The bewildered expression remained on his face.

“We brought some mail for you,” David said. “Would you like me to read it to you?”

His father nodded.

“You tell me which ones you want me to open, okay?”

His father’s eyes closed and opened in assent, as if nodding were too tiring an effort.

David turned over the first of the small sheaf of envelopes in his hand and looked at the return address.

“This is from R. Zimmerman,” he said. “Do you know anybody by that name? In the Bronx?”

The eyes closed and opened again.

“Shall I read it to you?”

His father blinked permission. David opened the envelope and began reading the letter.

“My dear Morrie, I hope everything is well with you. Myself I feel fine. The weather is good here. I would love to know when you are coming to New York. I am anxious to see you. I miss you very much. Two ladies have called me up to find out if you were at my house. I told them you were supposed to come but I did not know when. I am supposed to go on a trip which is not important so please let me know when you are coming so I would know what to do. Keep well. Take care of yourself. Rose.”

He put the letter back into the envelope.

“Do you know someone named Rose Zimmerman?” he asked.

His father nodded.

“Were you planning to go up to New York again?”

Another nod.

“Well, you’d better hurry up and get out of here,” David said, smiling, and turned over the second envelope in his hand. The return address was printed on one of those stickers the veterans’ organizations sent when soliciting funds. “This is from Mrs. L. Di Marco,” he said. “Shall I read it to you?”

His father nodded.

The letter was dated May 16. It was written on lavender stationery with a small printed drawing of a butterfly in the lower right-hand corner.

“Dear Morris,” David read. “A few lines to let you know I was worried that you did not write to me. You can still write to my niece in Scarsdale, she will mail me your letter until I let you know where to send it. The doctor said I am OK but have a very bad case of arthritis in my right hand and I cannot use it yet. The pain is so terrible that I cry sometimes. Let me hear from you. I miss your letters. You are the only one I think about a lot. I am glad that you are OK. I will be by my cousin in Brooklyn for a few more days as my niece in Scarsdale works. I will let you know where I will be when my niece finds an apartment or house when I will go back to Scarsdale. But I will let you know where to send my mail. Love, Lucy.”

His father opened his eyes wide, as though in surprise. He brought his hand to his belly. He opened his mouth. It seemed he would scream out in pain. His mouth and his eyes remained wide open. His belly seemed to ripple under the sheet.

“Are you all right?” David said at once. “Shall I get a nurse?”

His father shook his head. His hand was resting flat on his belly. His eyes returned to what was now their normal look, moist and somewhat glazed, unfocused, bewildered.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” David said.

His father nodded.

David looked at the next envelope.

“This is from Mrs. Di Marco, too,” he said. “Shall I open it?”

His father nodded.

The same lavender stationery, the same printed butterfly drawing in the lower right-hand corner. The letter was dated May 17, the day after she’d written the one David had just read.

His father sighed.

“Are you all right?” David asked. “Are you sure you don’t want me to get a nurse?”

He nodded.

“This is the last one,” David said, and turned over the envelope. “From a Mrs. J. Klein in Brooklyn. Shall I open it?”

His father nodded and then lifted his hand. His forefinger moved.

“I don’t know what you’re trying to say, Pop.”

His father pointed at the letter. His finger made a jabbing motion.

“Do you want me to read it?”

His father nodded. In exasperation, he dropped his hand to the sheet again.

David opened the envelope. There was a Father’s Day card inside the envelope. He remembered all at once that Sunday would be Father’s Day and suddenly felt guilty for not yet having bought his father a present. He always sent him a box of good cigars on Father’s Day. I’m wise to you, Davey. You send the old man a box of cigars on his birthday, and you think that’s enough. There was a separate handwritten note folded into the card, but David first read the inscription on the card itself, “Dear Morrie,” and then the printed rhymed sentiment, and then the words “Love, Josie.”

His father lifted his hand. He jabbed at the air with his finger again.

“What?” David said, puzzled.

His father kept jabbing his finger at the card.

“Oh,” David said. “Is this the woman you were telling me about the other day? Josie?”

His father nodded slowly, patiently.

“The one whose address you wanted me to have?”

Another patient nod. His son the lawyer had finally understood. Four years of French, David could imagine him thinking, and he finally understands what I’m trying to tell him.

“I have her address now,” David said. “It’s on the back of the envelope. There’s a note here, too, shall I read the note?”

His father nodded.

“Dearest Morrie,” he read. “What happened to you? I did not hear from you since your postcard in April. I believe I wrote two letters to you explaining all that had been going on. To top it off, the Post Office lost some of my Hold mail and did I have more headaches and problems. Therefore I don’t know how much of my mail went astray. Nothing in this world is right anymore. God help us with all that is going on and no system anymore. You stated in your card that you would be up early in June. Where are you? I made one phone call to the number you gave me in March and I asked the lady who answered the phone if you were there. She said you did not come to New York yet. That’s it. Please write to me soon and let me know what’s going on. I miss you very much. Love, Josie.”

Bessie, who had been standing silently by the bed until now, cleared her throat and said, “You’d better hurry up and get well, Morris. All these ladies waiting for you.”

His father simply nodded.

“He is going to get well,” David said quickly. “Aren’t you, Pop?”

His father nodded.

The Cuban nurse appeared in the doorway.

“I’m sorry, swee’heart,” she said, “your visitors ha’ to go now.”

David looked up at the clock. It was eleven-fifteen. He went to the bed and kissed his father on the forehead. The same damp, hot flesh. “I’ll be back at two,” he said. “That’s less than three hours from now. Two o’clock, Pop, okay?”

His father nodded.

Bessie kissed him on the cheek.

“I’ll come later,” she said. “I’m not sure two o’clock.”

He looked up into her face. He seemed to want to say something to her. David wished he would not look so bewildered. At last, he simply nodded again.

In the corridor, waiting for the elevator, Bessie said, “This must have been happening a long time. Longer than we know. Could something like this happen overnight? Still, how long could it be? We had a party for him at the hotel, before he went up to see you in March. He was fine. Dancing, walking into doors — you know how he walks into a door and makes believe he broke his nose? He was fine. That was only in March, before his birthday, what could it be, three months ago? So who knows? All at once, he’s a very sick man, all at once he’s dying.” She sighed deeply. “The way he looks,” she said. “Such a change,” she said. “Such a change.”

Sitting in the delicatessen across the street from the hotel, chewing on a fatty pastrami sandwich on stale rye bread, he thought about what Bessie had said. Such a change, such a change. Referring to the way he looked, of course, and not to what he had become.

He could remember his father’s last visit north, in March. He usually timed his semiannual pilgrimages so that one of them fell in September (when it was too hot and muggy to breathe in Miami) and the other just before his birthday in March, the better to remind his “delinquent” son that he was getting on in years (as he often said with a sigh) and didn’t know how many more birthdays he’d be here on earth to enjoy. The trips north, David realized now, were less necessitated by a burning desire to see his son and daughter-in-law than they were by the more urgent need to visit all the Josies, Roses, Lucys, and God knew how many other women in the New York Chapter of his father’s harem. “Would it break your heart to come to Miami once in a while? I have a sofa bed in the living room, you and The Shiksa could sleep on it.” How? David wondered now. Where would your plates sleep?

His father’s visit in March might have been less difficult if Molly hadn’t been away for the weekend in Hempstead, visiting her own parents. He remembered wondering at the time if she hadn’t planned it that way. Did Molly find his father as big a pain in the ass as David himself did? Despite the way she could still twist him around her finger? If Molly had been there, things might have been different. Molly knew how to handle him. Whenever his father came up with any of his frequent and preposterous proclamations, Molly brushed them aside as though they’d never been uttered.

“You should never order anything but spaghetti and meatballs in an Italian restaurant,” his father said.

“Then that’s what you should order, Dad,” Molly answered gently, meanwhile ordering for herself the tortellini alla panna as an appetizer and the osso buco for the main course.

“How much veal can there be on a bone shank?” his father asked.

But he studied Molly throughout the meal, and maybe — just maybe — considered whether his lifelong habit of ordering spaghetti and meatballs (What does he order in a Chinese restaurant? David wondered. Chow mein?) wasn’t quite as sophisticated as he’d imagined.

Molly knew how to handle him.

David’s mother had handled him in much the same way when she was still alive. Whenever his father said anything stupid (It was odd that David had never recognized his inanities then), his mother would flatten him in a minute with a gentle, “Oh, be quiet, please, Morrie,” or, on occasion and with the same pleasant smile, “Don’t be such a dope, Morrie.” When he was a boy, David could not possibly conceive of his father as a “dope.” Each time his mother squelched him, he would feel fiercely protective and would sometimes whisper a discreet, “Mom, please,” which his mother would wave off with an airy smile.

The first glimpse he’d had of the man his father was to become — or perhaps the man he already was, although as yet unrecognized — was on the very day his mother died, when David went with him to the funeral home to select a casket. His father shopped the rows upon rows of coffins as though he were considering stock for a new store he might open and close in a wink. He finally settled on a simple pine box that cost him only a couple of hundred dollars. He explained away his choice with a solemn, “In keeping with the Orthodox tradition,” an excuse in direct contradiction to the fact that he hadn’t been inside a synagogue — Orthodox, Conservative, or Reform — for as long as David could remember. That was the first time David noticed how short he was. He had always thought of his father as a tall man; now, suddenly, he seemed short.

His mother had left all of her belongings to her “beloved husband, Morris,” with the exception of her jewelry, which she directed be divided equally between her two surviving sisters. But the language in the will (even though David himself had drawn it) was somewhat vague about the disposition of two full-length fur coats, a mink and an otter, which David’s trust money had enabled her to buy. The language read, and David had thought it perfectly adequate at the time, “As for any of my other possessions for which my husband, Morris, may have no use, it is my wish that they, too, be shared equally between my sisters Naomi Blatt and Ruth Epstein.” His father had no conceivable use for a pair of fur coats styled respectively in the years 1968 and 1969. He offered them to Molly, but Molly had a mink of her own, as well as a raccoon, and, besides, she told him she would feel funny wearing clothes that had belonged to her mother-in-law. She suggested to David’s father that he simply send the coats to the sisters, as directed in the will. David’s father said, “What for? They both live in Florida. What use can they have for fur coats in Florida?”

David advised him that by any reasonable reading of the will, the coats could be considered “other possessions for which my husband, Morris, may have no use,” but his father remained adamant. “I’ll find a use, don’t worry,” he said. David’s mother’s initials were stitched into the lining of each coat. With the dedication of a cat burglar trying to fence stolen goods, his father looked through the telephone directories for all five boroughs, searching for any female with the initials E.W., calling at random to ask the baffled woman on the other end of the line if she might be interested in buying a pair of mint-condition fur coats. David told him he was inviting a midnight visit from a burly intruder who would conk him on his bald head and steal the coats from him. His father said, “So what am I supposed to do with them? I have no use for them,” acknowledgment in itself of his wife’s codicil, the contradiction completely lost on him. He steadfastly refused to send the coats to his sisters-in-law and at last sold them to a furrier on Canal Street for almost exactly what the funeral had cost him. It was David’s later contention that his father had been enormously annoyed by his mother’s untimely heart attack and had been determined that she herself (or at least her coats) should bear the cost of her burial.

The man who sat opposite him at the restaurant table on that weekend visit in March fussed over everything. He ordered a sirloin steak and then complained to the waitress that it was too well done — “Is this shoe leather?” — and asked her to take it back and substitute the pork chops instead, big Orthodox Jew that he was. While eating the pork, he told David he shouldn’t be eating pork, it gave him heartburn, he could already feel shooting pains in his chest. When David asked him why he was eating pork if he shouldn’t be eating pork, his father said, “What am I supposed to eat? That shoe leather she tried to palm off on me?” David was eating a dozen clams on the half-shell, ordered as a main course, and drinking the remains of his Canadian and soda. His father said, “You shouldn’t mix clams and alcohol. Your Uncle Martin, my brother, alav ha-sholom, died of mixing clams and alcohol. They turned to rocks in his stomach.” As far as David knew, his uncle’s death had been caused by a fall from a ladder and a subsequent concussion. Mildly, he responded that he’d been mixing clams and alcohol for years now and to his knowledge still had no rocks in his stomach. “The rocks are in your head,” his father said, and then immediately, “Okay, I’ll clam up, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

After he had devoured the pork chops he said he shouldn’t have been eating, apparently forgetting his earlier fears of an imminent angina attack, he ordered coffee and dessert, and went off to the bathroom while the waitress, frightened by his imperious air, scurried out to the kitchen. When he came back to the table, he said, “There are no paper towels in the bathroom. I told them. I asked them what I was supposed to dry my hands on — my shirttails?” Sitting, he suddenly smiled and said, “Confucius say, ‘Woman who cook carrots and peas in same pot unsanitary.’ What’s taking her so long with that coffee?”

The sugar bowl contained little packets of sugar, each one imprinted with a different astrological sign. He looked through the bowl for his own sign, and then read aloud and with obvious delight the character analysis printed below the symbol. “Pisces is a water sign. You are endowed with charity, sympathy, and sensitivity. Your colors are sea blues or greens. Your stones are aquamarine or coral. Your plants are water lilies or ferns.” Nodding with pleasure, he began searching through the bowl for packets of sugar imprinted with the other eleven astrological signs.

“My friends’ll get a kick out of these,” he said, arranging them on the table before him. “The people I play cards with.” Then, to David’s astonishment, he began stuffing the packets of sugar into his jacket pocket.

“Pop!” David said, shocked.

“What is it?” his father said, looking up sharply, surprised by his tone.

“Don’t steal the sugar, huh, Pop?” David said, and tried a weak smile.

“Steal it?” his father said. “What?”

David was glancing nervously past his father’s shoulder toward the swinging kitchen doors, fearful that the waitress might reappear just as he was engaged in his act of petty larceny.

“Pop,” he said evenly, “you’re embarrassing me, really. Molly and I come here all the time. Please put that sugar back in the bowl.”

“We’re paying for this sugar,” his father said. “It’s included in the price of the meal.”

“Not a dozen packets of it.”

“Suppose I want to use a dozen packs in my coffee?”

“You drink your coffee without sugar or milk,” David said. His heart was pounding.

“What difference does that make?” his father said. “For every person who drinks it black, there’s another person who uses two, three, four packs of sugar. They figure on such things, David. It’s called shrinkage. When I was still in business, I...”

“Shrinkage is stealing,” David said.

“Baloney,” his father said, and did not return the packets to the sugar bowl. The waitress appeared a moment later with his coffee and dessert. He took one sip, looked up at her, said, “This is ice cold, bring me some hot coffee, will you, please? Do you know what the word hot means?”

He did not once mention Bessie on that trip in March.

The first David learned of her was when she called to tell him his father was in the hospital.

“I’m a good friend of his,” she said, “we play cards together, I give him dinner sometimes.”

The “friends” he described during dinner that night were a group of men and women approximately his own age, with whom he played cards every night. The games they played varied from bridge to penny-ante poker to gin rummy at a nickel a point. They played in various apartments and hotel rooms on the beach — but never in his father’s apartment. “Why should I have card players in?” he asked. “They spill drinks, they drop ashes on the carpet, who needs them making ashes of themselves?” he said, and smiled. He himself, David thought, scattered ashes as though they were the vestiges of countless cremated bodies. His vest — he almost always wore a vest — was a favorite target, but neither did he neglect his lap, or the tablecloth, or Molly’s prized Oriental rugs, or indeed anywhere or anyplace but an ashtray. He lighted a cigar now, blowing out puffs of noxious smoke that obliterated the table and almost suffocated David. “I’m smoking only good cigars these days,” he said, puffing out smoke. David could not remember what his “bad” cigars smelled like, but he suspected they must have been poisonous.

His father had become an expert on everything. That his expertise was based on a combination of folklore, pretense, and total ignorance seemed not to trouble him in the slightest. In the car on the way back to the apartment, a radio newscaster was talking about two New York City cops who’d been shot when they stopped a speeding automobile. “It was their own fault,” his father said. “They should have approached the car one on either side of it. That way, he wouldn’t have been able to shoot both of them.” He had no knowledge, of course, about whether the cops had flanked the suspect vehicle, or approached it head on, or indeed crawled into it through an open window. But here was the learned Scotland Yard inspector, holding forth on established police techniques as though he himself had prevented a thousand holdups in his time, oblivious to the didactic sound of his own voice, knowing only that he would have handled the situation differently and better.

In similar fashion, the moment they entered the apartment again, he advised David first that he ought to convince The Shiksa to paint the walls in different colors instead of the awful white they were now painted — “You’ll have to get permission from the landlord, you know” — even though David and Molly were perfectly content with the clean, expansive look of the place, and then suggested that they add on another guest room by dividing their large living room in half — “What would that cost you, another wall? Two, three thousand bucks at the most? I’ll let you have the money if you’re short.” (How generous you are with my money, David thought, and was immediately contrite afterward.) His father also informed him that the new wallpaper in the powder room was too quiet (“Couldn’t you find something a little jazzier?”), asked if he thought Molly would like him to send some coupons that would give her a ten-cent discount the next time she bought instant coffee, and wondered aloud if David ever said the kaddish on the anniversary of his mother’s death each year (“Do you ever even go to temple anymore? It isn’t right to become godless, you know” — this forty-five minutes after eating pork chops), his brown eyes misting over as they always did when he spoke of the dear departed wife whose mink and otter he’d refused to dispense with as per her wishes, sprinkling cigar ashes on the newly upholstered couch and stinking up the entire living room with his El Ropo fumes.

Comfortably seated, puffing smoke, his father explained his daily Miami Beach routine. He awakened at eight each morning, prepared himself a breakfast of orange juice, corn flakes with sliced bananas, a cup of coffee drunk black as always, and a toasted English muffin spread with strawberry jam and either cream cheese or butter. He then retired to his bathroom for his morning toilet. He shaved every other day, and he used to shower every day until he had to begin stacking his plates in the bathtub because all the closets were full. “You should see those plates, David, they’re beautiful.” He now took a sponge bath each and every day, he told David with some pride, as though he alone in a city of unwashed barbarians observed any sanitary rules at all. After breakfast, he went into the living room, spread out his correspondence on the table there, and methodically answered each and every letter he received from relatives and friends all over the United States. (He had surprised David on his visit last September by scanning the pages of the Bronx telephone directory to “see if there’s any Webers still living up there.”) He told David that he never wrote twice to anybody who didn’t immediately answer one of his letters. “Why should I waste time with delinquents?” he said.

At twelve noon, each and every day, his father took the elevator down from his fifth-floor apartment on Collins Avenue and Lincoln Road, bought the Miami Herald and the New York Daily News at the drugstore on the corner, and read both papers cover to cover while eating his lunch in a deli on Washington. He always ordered the same thing for lunch. A cheese omelet and a bottle of cream soda. “Too much coffee is no good for you,” he said, and then demonstrated the premise with trembling hands and a stuttering, “It m-m-m-makes you n-n-n-nervous.” He strolled up Collins Avenue after lunch each day — “It’s terrible now, full of Cuban prostitutes, even in broad daylight” — as far as Twenty-first Street, and then walked back to the apartment to take a nap before dinner and his nightly card game. He told David that he usually had dinner with one or another of the widows in his building. “I reciprocate, don’t worry,” he said. “I help them do their shopping, I buy them an ice cream cone every now and then. Listen, do you know what dinner out would cost me every night? Six or seven dollars a night, am I right? This way I’m ahead of the game.”

Elvira Brufani on the third floor prepared spaghetti and meatballs (his favorite Italian restaurant gourmet dish) every Tuesday and Thursday night. Elvira had been married to a barber who’d passed away last June. “The man was very wealthy, David, he owned a chain of shops all across Manhattan. She gets dividends on blue-chip stocks every month.” On Mondays and Wednesdays, his dinners were prepared by a woman named Shirley Levinson, whose husband had been “a wealthy garment manufacturer” and who cooked kreplach, borscht, perogin, boiled beef, knadls, “and a lot of other delicious stuff like your mother used to make, aleha ha-shalom.” On Fridays and Sundays, he ate in the apartment of a woman forbiddingly named Harriet Hammer — “No relation to the private eye,” he said, his eyes twinkling — who was a meat-and-potatoes, no-nonsense dame, the female equivalent, to hear him tell it, of Morris Weber himself.

In March, listening to his father, still not knowing that Bessie even existed, David suspected that Harriet Hammer was the sole recipient of his lingering sexual urges. “I spend a little time with her, you know, after dinner. The others, I usually go straight to my card game.” David also suspected, from little hints his father dropped, that Harriet was a black woman, and he could only guess at what down-home fare his father might be enjoying every Friday and Sunday night. In Harriet’s soul-food kitchen, did his father order chitlins, hominy grits, ham hocks, black-eyed peas, buttermilk, and a little shtup on the side?

Better than this rotten pastrami, for sure, David thought.

Such a change, such a change.

He wondered again when the change had taken place. He hadn’t been that way all along, had he? Surely not. Not with David’s mother there to restrain him. Then it must have happened after she died. He must have decided then and there to begin living the life he’d really wanted to live all along.

Clear out all this junk, and I could make a nice room for my sewing machine.

Esther, it’s my hobby!

His hobby, all of his hobbies, had overtaken his life.

David suddenly wondered how long he’d known all those women who were panting for his arrival in New York. Was one of them wearing a pair of diamond earrings that had cost four hundred and twenty-five dollars plus tax back in 1953? And how about all the women down here who wined and dined him on alternate nights? Was there also an obliging widow who fed him on Saturday? Bessie, maybe? Had Bessie known before this morning about the women in New York? Did she know about the women right here in Miami Beach? Jesus, he thought, what can any woman possibly find to love or even like about that meddling, miserly, opinionated, grasping, ungiving, unshaven, unwashed, unsightly, short little son of a — I don’t mean that, he thought.

Pop, I don’t mean that.

I’m sorry, Pop, I didn’t mean it.

Don’t die, Pop, he thought.

Please don’t die.

The waiting-room family was changing.

Mrs. Daniels and her fat daughter Louise were not there for the two o’clock visit. Neither was Mr. Di Salvo. Mrs. Horowitz was the only familiar face. Flushed and excited, she took a seat beside David and immediately lit a cigarette.

“So how’s your father?” she asked.

“All right, I suppose.”

“They did the operation?”

“Yes.”

“What did they find?”

“Nothing.”

“Doctors,” she said, and let out a stream of smoke. “I’ll tell you something, Mr. Weber, I never want to get as old as my mother is. The minute I can’t lift my own valise, that’s it. I’ll take a pill. Thirty seconds, it’ll be all over.”

“What kind of pill could you take?” a young woman across the room asked. She was a tall redhead wearing white slacks and a tight black sweater. She was very proud of her breasts. She kept toying with a strand of pearls dangling between her breasts. The woman sitting beside her, a few years older, David guessed, was also redheaded. She was wearing white shorts and a tomato-colored tube top. Her breasts were as spectacular as the other woman’s, but she had nothing dangling between them, nothing with which to toy. The Dolly Sisters, David thought. Ike and Mike.

“They have these pills,” Mrs. Horowitz said. “Like the Nazis had during the war. You bite on them, and it’s all over.”

“I wouldn’t want to bite on a pill,” one of the Dolly Sisters said.

“It would taste bitter,” the other one said.

“They have pills that aren’t bitter,” Mrs. Horowitz said.

“Where do you get these pills?”

“From your doctor. He’ll prescribe them. You tell him you can’t lift your own valise, he’ll prescribe a pill. Thirty seconds and good-bye.”

“I’d rather die in my sleep,” a man sitting near the television set said. He was short and fat and wearing a business suit and tie.

“Or on a tennis court,” one of the Dolly Sisters said.

“After a great serve,” the other one said.

“An ace,” the first one said.

“What’s an ace?” Mrs. Horowitz asked.

“When your opponent can’t even reach it,” one of the Dolly Sisters explained.

“A heart attack on a tennis court. That’s better than a bitter pill,” the other one said.

“Life is a bitter pill,” the man in the business suit said philosophically.

The real danger is living, David thought.

“Live to be like my mother in there?” Mrs. Horowitz asked. “What for? Hitting her own daughter? Telling me not to come see her anymore? What for?”

“My brother had a heart attack,” the man in the business suit said. “But not on a tennis court. And it didn’t kill him.”

“How old is he?” Mrs. Horowitz said.

“Seventy-eight.”

“Seventy-five is what I want,” Mrs. Horowitz said. “That’s enough. Who wants people carrying my valises? Twenty more years, that’s enough.”

“Wait till you’re seventy-five, though,” one of the Dolly Sisters said. “You won’t think it’s enough then.”

“You won’t think it’s nearly enough,” the other one said.

“There are very active people at seventy-five,” the man in the business suit said.

“We were on a cruise last year,” one of the Dolly Sisters said, “there were seventy-five-year-old sex fiends on it. Am I right, Helen?”

“Sex fiends,” her sister agreed, nodding.

“There are very active people at seventy-five,” the man in the business suit said again.

“English mostly,” Helen said. “The sex fiends. Am I right, Jean?”

“English,” her sister agreed, nodding.

“Where was this cruise?” Mrs. Horowitz asked.

“On the Rhine,” Jean said.

“In Germany,” Helen said.

“There were Englishmen going to Germany?”

“Tons of them.”

“After what the Nazis did?” Mrs. Horowitz said, shaking her head.

“The world forgets,” the man in the business suit said philosophically. “The world has a short memory.”

“Who’s your patient here?” Mrs. Horowitz asked the Dolly Sisters.

“Our mother,” they answered in unison.

“What’s wrong with her?”

“A stroke,” they said in unison.

“Can’t we go in now?” the man in the business suit said. “I’m running the store all alone with my brother sick. It’s almost two o’clock. Can’t we go in?”

The pink lady tore her attention from the television screen. She looked at the clock. “Just a few more minutes,” she said.

“A pill,” Mrs. Horowitz said. “Thirty seconds, and it’s all over.”

“How are you feeling, Pop?” he asked. “Are you feeling a little better?”

His father nodded weakly.

“I just had the worst pastrami sandwich I ever had in my life,” David said. “I thought you had good pastrami down here in Miami.”

His father looked at him blankly.

“Not that you want to hear me beefing about it,” David said.

His father raised his hand.

“Yes, Pop?”

He brought his hand to his mouth.

“You want some pastrami? You’re better off without it.”

His father shook his head impatiently. He touched his lips again.

“Some water? Something to drink?”

His father shook his head. He dropped his hand wearily.

“I’m sorry, Pop, I don’t understand. Shall I get the nurse?”

His father nodded. David went out into the corridor. The Vietnamese nurse was at the nurses’ station.

“My father wants something, but I don’t know what. Could you come in, please?” David said.

The nurse looked at him blankly. The Dragon Lady, David thought. Inscrutable. Without saying a word, she came from behind the counter and walked into his father’s room. David followed her.

“Did you want something, Mr. Weber?” she asked.

His father raised his hand to his lips again.

“He doesn’t want water, I already asked him,” David said.

“Some ice, Mr. Weber? Did you want some ice chips?”

His father nodded.

“I’ll get you some ice, Mr. Weber,” she said, and walked out.

“Is your mouth a little dry?” David asked.

His father nodded.

“You’re looking much better now than you did this morning,” David said. “Good color, good...” His voice trailed. “Plenty of plates you’ve got there in the apartment,” he said. “Those small boxes are plates, aren’t they?”

His father nodded.

“Plenty of them there. Lots of mail for you to look at, too, when you get out of here. It’ll just be a while now, Pop. Nothing to keep you from getting well now. Just a matter of...”

The Vietnamese nurse was back. He wondered if she had overheard him. He wondered if she knew the exploratory surgery had found nothing. He wondered if she knew he’d been lying to his father. She handed David a paper cup full of ice chips.

“Try to give him the smaller pieces,” she said, and left the room.

He went to the bed.

“Here’s your ice, Pop,” he said. “Do you want it now?”

His father nodded.

He took a small sliver of ice between his thumb and forefinger, placed it between his father’s lips.

“Here you go,” he said.

The ice slid between his father’s lips and into his mouth. His lips moved. A dribble of water worked its way down his chin. David pulled a Kleenex tissue from the box beside the bed and wiped his father’s chin.

“More?” he asked.

His father nodded.

David searched for another small sliver in the paper cup. He found one and held it to his father’s lips. The inside of his mouth looked red and raw. The sliver of ice disappeared. His father moved the ice around inside his mouth.

“Does that feel good?” David asked.

His father lowered his eyelids and raised them again.

“Do you want some more?”

His father shook his head.

“I’ll put it here on the windowsill, if you want more later,” David said.

A look of pain crossed his father’s face. Again, as he had done during this morning’s visit, he brought his hand to his belly. His belly rippled under the sheet. He kept his hand flat on the sheet. The wave subsided.

“Little pain?” David asked.

His father did nothing. No nod, no blink of the eyes, nothing. He seemed to be concentrating on his belly, on his hand spread flat on his belly.

“Have they been giving you anything for pain?”

Still, his father remained motionless, his hand on his belly. He lifted his hand from the sheet. The fingers widespread, he waggled his hand from side to side, the way one might signal “so-so” if you’d asked him how he was feeling.

“What does that mean, Pop?” David asked.

His father kept waggling his hand.

“Shall I get someone?”

His father nodded.

David went out into the corridor. A tall, strapping young man with muscles bulging in his green T-shirt was just passing the door. “Excuse me,” David said. “My father needs help.”

The muscular young man walked into his father’s room. The weight-lifter, David thought. The one his father had told him about. Allan? Alvin?

“Hello, Morrie,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

His father stared at him blankly.

“Not so good, huh, Morrie? Don’t worry, you’ll feel better.”

“His mouth looks very raw,” David said.

“That may be from all the medication,” the young man said. “Sometimes you get a yeast infection secondary to the use of antibiotics. What can I do for you, Morrie?”

His father lifted his hand and made the same wigwagging motion.

“Do you have to urinate, Morrie?”

His father nodded. There was apparently a sign language all the nurses began to understand after a while. If a man waggled his hand from side to side, it didn’t mean he was feeling only so-so, it meant he had to pee. A universal sign language spoken only by the sick and dying and understood by their keepers.

“There’s a tube in your penis,” the young man said. “It may give you an urge to urinate. You don’t have to worry about wetting the bed, Morrie. Just urinate whenever you want to, okay?”

His father sighed.

“Was there anything else, Morrie?”

His father shook his head.

“Now you get better, you hear me? We all want you to get better, Morrie.”

He patted the sheet covering his father’s legs and left the room. David remembered what his father had said about him. He used to lift weights. He picks me up like I’m a baby...

“It’s a hell of a thing to be eighty-two,” David said, “and have to worry about wetting the bed, isn’t it, Pop?”

His father nodded wearily. He lifted his hand again. His forefinger trembled. He made the letter M on the air.

“Molly?” David said. “She’s fine, Pop.”

His father’s finger snaked on the air. An S.

“Stephen?” David said.

His father nodded.

“He’s...”

He looked at his father.

“He’s fine, Pop,” he said. “Do you want more ice?”

His father nodded.

He took the paper cup from where he had left it on the sink counter. The cup was cold in his hand. He carried it to the bed. His father opened his mouth in anticipation. He saw the raw, mutilated-looking flesh inside his father’s mouth. He reached into the cup for a sliver of ice.

Last summer, they bought the Italian ices, he and Molly, from a roadside stand on the way from the airport to the hotel. Ices in a cup. Lemon ices for Molly. Chocolate ices for himself. The Sardinian sun was very hot, even so late in the afternoon. They sat in the parked Fiat eating the ices. Beyond, the green waters of the Costa Smeralda sparkled. They could hear the gentle murmur of the sea.

The villa near the hotel was magnificent.

Moorish in design, approached by a long dirt road lined with twisted cork trees, it sat in pristine isolated splendor on a point of land overlooking the bay below. A massive entrance archway framed a pair of thick oaken doors that opened onto a tiled living room, its windows shuttered against the fierce Mediterranean sun. A woodburning fireplace was on the far wall, flanked by a pair of arched doors. A clerestory ran around three sides of the living room. When they threw open the shutters, they saw a small garden in the center of which an orange tree was bursting with ripe fruit.

There was a tiled terrace at the back of the house. A flight of wooden steps led from the terrace to a private beach below, where a small blue rowboat bobbed on bluer water. A staff of three — housekeeper, gardener, and cook — stood by beaming and davening as Norman Rosen showed them through. Norman explained that they came with the house, and that their days off were Thursday and every other Sunday, just like in America. He hoped that David could be unpacked and ready for a meeting with the wops and himself by five-thirty that afternoon, and that he’d be ready to start work on the contracts first thing tomorrow morning.

“I’ll tell you the truth,” he said, “these Italian lawyers are giving me a pain in the ass. We’re ready to shoot a movie here, and all of a sudden they’re finding things wrong with papers they’ve had for two months already. I hope you work well under pressure, David, I sincerely mean that. Unpack, I’ll see you at the hotel in half an hour. You just drive around the cove, you know the way, huh? Molly, as beautiful as you are, I’ll have to ask that you busy yourself elsewhere while we’re in conference, okay? See you later, David,” he said, and left the house.

For the next three days, locked into a suite at the hotel, David wrangled with the Italian lawyers. None of them spoke English. Their interpreter was a twenty-four-year-old Italian girl named Arabella. She did not know how to translate “bottom line” into Italian, but she came to work each day dressed in a blouse slashed invitingly low over her naked breasts. Her dark eyes spoke to him. He had difficulty concentrating on the monumental tangle before him. The Italians had made an antipasto of the simple contracts David and his partner had labored over for months. Norman’s director and crew were scheduled to arrive at any moment. His stars would be here in a week. The Italians shook their heads vigorously each time Arabella translated David’s thoughts to them. Whenever she fumbled for a word, he patted her hand consolingly.

On the fourth day, he retired to the second bedroom of the villa, where he began revamping the contracts at a long table Giovanni the gardener moved in from the hallway. Molly had fallen into the habit of sunning or bathing topless on the small secluded beach below. When he mentioned to her that perhaps she ought to dress more decorously for the beach, she said, “Don’t be silly, this is Italy.” But she did agree to cover up whenever Giovanni was down there raking — much to the old man’s annoyance. The revisions were difficult. David kept losing track of what his notes had meant when he’d scribbled them. The director and crew would be arriving that night, but the co-financing Italians refused to part with a single lira until the contracts were altered to their satisfaction. David worked on them all that day while Molly sunbathed and swam below. He kept thinking about the Italian translator’s magnificent breasts.

Ralph Lonigan, the film’s director, was forty-eight years old, almost forty-nine, exactly David’s age that summer, but he nonetheless seemed like a mere callow youth, perhaps because he had an unruly crop of flaming red hair on his head and a galaxy of freckles all over his cherubic face. He cornered Molly that night at a table on the candlelit terrace and explained that as a director he was naturally concerned with more than surface appearances, which was why her contradictory Irish looks and Jewish roots were so fascinating to him.

“I could have fallen over dead when Norman told me you were Jewish,” he said. “But, after all, what are appearances, anyway? Is Irish Irish if Irish is really Jewish? Do you understand what I’m saying, Molly? In my job, I’m constantly forced to delve into personality, hoping to fathom seemingly inexplicable phenomena. When I’m directing a film, I have to be able to plumb the depths of a character so that he or she will become readily accessible to an audience.”

David was sitting within earshot with Norman and an executive from Cinécitta, whose studio facilities Norman would be leasing in Rome. He listened.

“Have you ever done any acting, Molly?” Lonigan asked.

“Me? No.”

“What do you do?”

“Well... I’m a housewife.” Molly shrugged. “That’s what I do.”

“Surely you’re more than that,” Lonigan said.

“I used to be a nurse.”

“Ah,” he said.

“But that was long ago.”

“It must have been a rewarding profession. Nursing,” he said.

“Well, I suppose,” Molly said shyly.

“Helping the sick.”

“Yes.”

“You were probably very good at it.”

“Well,” she said.

“But you’ve never done any acting?”

“No, no.”

“You’re so beautiful, I thought perhaps...”

“Thank you.”

“Beautiful expressive eyes. Green,” he said. “And a marvelous mouth. You must photograph wonderfully.”

“I don’t know, I guess so,” she said, and laughed huskily.

“How old are you, Molly?”

“You’re not supposed to ask a woman her age,” Molly said, and lowered her eyes.

“We’re both grown-ups, Molly. I’m forty-eight, does that make you feel any better? I’ll be forty-nine in September.”

“Well...” Molly said, and raised her eyes to meet his.

“How old are you? Tell me.”

“Forty-four,” she said.

“You’re joking! You look ten years younger!”

“I’ll be forty-five in September.”

“When in September?”

“The sixth.”

“My birthday is the tenth.”

“How about that?” she said, and laughed.

“We ought to have a party,” Lonigan said.

“We ought to.”

“You look much younger,” he said. “I’m amazed.”

“Oh, sure.”

“So young, so vital. Do you have any children, Molly?”

She hesitated. “No,” she said.

“That must account for it. Somehow, women who’ve never had any children seem to hang onto their youthfulness.”

Molly said nothing.

“God, that mouth!” Lonigan said. “What I could do with that mouth. On film,” he said.

Molly smiled.

“And that smile! God! You’re so very beautiful, Molly.”

Rising slowly from where he was sitting, David walked over to where Lonigan was leaning toward Molly to light her cigarette. Very pleasantly, he said, “Excuse me. Molly, it’s getting late. I think we’d better start back.”

“Oh, must we?” she said. “It’s such a lovely night.” She blew out a stream of smoke and said, “Thank you, Ralph.”

“I’ve got work to do tomorrow,” David said.

“Tomorrow’s Sunday.”

“Tell that to Norman.”

“May I just finish this last cigarette?”

“I’d really rather go, Molly. It’s almost two o’clock.”

“Is it that late already?” she said, and rose immediately, and immediately snuffed out the cigarette. “It was nice talking to you,” she said to Lonigan. “We’ll have to continue our conversation sometime.”

“Soon, I hope,” Lonigan said, and rose, and took her hand, and said, “Good night, Molly, it was a pleasure.”

“Good night,” she said. “I enjoyed it.”

Their handclasp lingered.

“Well, good night,” Lonigan said at last.

“Good night,” she said again — a trifle breathlessly, David thought. He was suddenly furious.

He led her off the terrace and over the small bridge and into the courtyard and held open the passenger-side door of the Fiat for her, and then slammed it when she was inside the car, and came around to the driver’s side, and opened the door there, and climbed in behind the wheel, and slammed that door, too.

“My, aren’t we noisy tonight,” she said.

“What was that all about?” he asked.

“What was what all about?”

“The tender love scene up there.”

“What tender love scene?”

“Why were you encouraging that jackass?”

“He’s not a jackass.”

“Why were you encouraging him?”

“I wasn’t.”

“Then what was that big operatic farewell? ‘We’ll have to continue our conversation sometime,’ ” he mimicked. “What the hell was that?”

“It was saying good night to someone who seemed to take a sincere interest in me.”

David stepped on the accelerator and went screeching out of the gravel driveway to the main road. At the stop sign he turned right without braking and began the drive to the villa, speeding around the curves, scarcely taking his foot off the gas pedal.

“Try not to get us killed, okay?” Molly said.

“I didn’t realize until tonight,” David said tightly, “that you were quite so susceptible to flattery.”

“Please watch the road,” she said.

“The man was sitting not three feet from where I could hear every word he was saying...”

“You shouldn’t have been listening.”

“But that didn’t stop him from making the most blatant overtures, which you encouraged...”

“I did nothing of the kind.”

“...when you must have known he was trying to get in your pants!”

“Yes, I’m sure everyone in the world is just dying to get in my pants.”

“Molly, he was coming on with you, and you know it!”

“I didn’t detect it.”

“No? ‘God, that mouth!’ ” he mimicked. “ ‘What I could do with that mouth.’ ”

“On film,” Molly said.

“I’m glad you remember every word he said.”

“I found him interesting.”

“You must have,” David said tightly. “Giggling and cooing and batting your lashes and holding hands and generally behaving like a cheap middle-aged cunt!”

Molly blinked at him. Wordlessly, she opened the door on her side of the car, stepped out into the road, slammed the door behind her, and began walking back in the direction of the hotel.

“Do you want some more of this, Pop?” he asked.

His father nodded.

“I’ll try to find another small piece for you, okay? The smaller pieces are easier for you, aren’t they?”

Another nod. The bewildered look. The goddamn persistent bewildered look.

She did not return to the villa until four in the morning. He looked at the bedside clock when he heard the front door opening and closing, and then he rolled over on his side and pretended he was asleep. She did not put on a light. She undressed in the dark and then got into bed. He imagined he smelled the aftermusk of intercourse on her. She fell asleep almost at once. He lay awake for the next hour, and finally fell asleep himself.

He awakened shortly after nine to the persistent purring of a turtledove in the garden. He made his own breakfast — this was Sunday and the help’s day off — and lingered over it, hoping Molly would wake up and join him. His anger was gone now. But more than that, he recognized the cause of it. All Jews are guilt-ridden, Molly was fond of saying. This time, she was right. Would he have flared up at her so violently if he hadn’t felt guilty over his own flirtation with that goddamn nubile translator in the come-hither blouse? Not to mention — but that was another story.

No, he thought, that’s the same story. The same old story for the past four years.

He went to the stove, took the kettle from it, and poured himself another cup of coffee. He sat at the table and listened. The house was silent. Molly was still sound asleep. Was it possible she had really gone to bed with Lonigan last night? This innocent middle-aged housewife, Your Honor? I’ll be forty-jive in September. Can any of you possibly imagine this honest, forebearing, loving wife and bereaved mother breaking the sacred vows of a marriage that had endured since 1959? Almost twenty-two years, ladies and gentlemen of the jury! Would this admittedly still beautiful woman endanger such a lasting union? Sure, David thought. Why not? And who could blame her? Well, come on, he thought, get off it, will you? What’s done is done.

And what had they been, after all, those minor excursions of his? A black court stenographer whose skirt kept riding up recklessly over her knees as she worked her Steno-tab machine and flirted wildly with her eyes. Twenty-seven years old. It had lasted for two months. A woman attorney in Philadelphia, where he’d gone to settle a claim made against one of his clients by a daughter who’d moved there from New York. The lawyer had been a redhead. She kept calling him “Counselor” in bed. Come fuck me again, Counselor. Shades of Molly Regen before the accident. Looking at himself in the bathroom mirror that night in Philadelphia, mildly drunk on the bottle of champagne he had shared with his learned adversary, he had said out loud, “You’re a damn fool, Counselor.” Perhaps he was. The half-dozen other women over the past four years since Stephen’s death. Well, perhaps a dozen. Perhaps more. Who the hell was counting? What really counted was that he was still doing it, never mind what’s done is done. If the Italian translator had given him the slightest sign of encouragement, he’d have laid her on the spot while the Italian lawyers protested the favored-nations clause.

Everything used to be so perfect, he thought. Why did it have to change? Why us?

He finished his breakfast and went into the room where his papers were spread out on the long table. Molly did not get up until almost eleven. She went directly into the bathroom, where he heard her showering, and then into the kitchen, where he heard her padding around barefooted. In a little while, she appeared on the beach below the window where he was working. She took off her bikini top and stretched out languidly on a towel, her face turned toward the sun, her arms at her sides, palms upward. A white speedboat came churning in over the water. The pilot cut the engine, threw an anchor over the side, and then stepped over the gunnels into shallow water, his red hair glowing in the sun. Lonigan.

“Molly!” he called, as though surprised to find her there.

She rolled over in response to his voice, propped herself on one elbow, and turned to face him.

“Hello, Ralph,” she said. “Good morning.”

“It’s afternoon already,” he said, and sat on the towel beside her.

Bare-breasted, as casually as if she were the vicar’s wife entertaining one of the local gentry who’d dropped in for afternoon tea, she sat in conversation with him, exchanging words David could not hear. He watched them from the window above. In a little while, they both rose from the towel. Molly was still bare-breasted. She made no effort to retrieve her discarded top. Instead, she walked together with him to the boat. He helped her to climb into it, offering his hand. He got in himself and started the engine. He pulled in the anchor. He came back to the wheel. The boat backed away from the beach and then roared forward around the point of land, out of sight.

They did not return until almost two hours later. Lonigan dropped anchor again, and they both waded ashore and stood chatting at the water’s edge for another ten minutes. Lonigan took her hand at last, said his farewells, waded back to the boat, pulled in the anchor, and then gunned the engine and backed out of the cove.

David was ready to kill her.

He kept waiting for her to come in to apologize. She did not. At a quarter to five, he packed the pages he’d revised — only three of them, small wonder considering his anger — and went out to the living room. She had put on a hooded caftan she’d bought in one of the Porto Cervo boutiques. She looked cool and sleek in the white cotton; pale horse, pale rider dressed like an Arabian princess, all shrouded and secret after parading naked for a stranger! She was reading. A paperback. He could not make out the title from where he loomed large and menacing in the arched doorway. Her legs were crossed under her, hidden by the voluminous folds of the caftan. Only her bright painted toenails showed at the hemline. The hood was up over her head, partially hiding her face. The ceiling fan rotated idly. There was the sound of buzzing flies in the room. She turned a page.

“Well, well,” David said, “look who’s here.”

Molly looked up. She said nothing.

“How was your boat ride?” he said. “Have a nice little boat ride?”

“Very nice, thank you,” she said.

“How do you compare getting laid in a boat...”

“I didn’t get laid in a boat.”

“...with getting laid on a roller coaster, for example?”

“I’ve never tried either.”

“What did you try? A little deserted beach someplace?”

“I don’t want to talk to you,” Molly said, and went back to the book again.

“If you don’t mind...”

“I do mind.”

“Put down the book, Molly.”

She slammed down the book.

“Where’d you go?” he asked.

“What business is that of yours?” she said.

“Where’d you go with him?”

“I am not in the habit of being called a cheap cunt,” she said coldly, “a cheap middle-aged cunt, no less, by anyone in the world, and especially not by someone who’s supposed to love me so terribly much he won’t let me breathe!”

“Where’d he take you in that boat?”

“None of your business,” she said, and rose suddenly and went into the bedroom. He heard her opening and closing drawers in there. He stood in the living room for a moment, and then he followed her. An open suitcase was on the bed. She was throwing underwear and blouses into it haphazardly, packing blindly. Turning to the dresser, she took a hairbrush from its top and then stared at it as if forgetting why she had picked it up.

“You going someplace?” he asked.

“Away from here, that’s for sure,” she said.

“What the hell are you so angry about?” he asked. “You’re the one who went off naked in a boat...”

“Oh, big deal. I had my top off. This is Italy! Half the women in the world walk around here without...”

“That’s not the point!”

“Well, what is the point, because I seem to be missing the point! What was I supposed to do when he came driving up in the boat? Jump up like a dumb virgin and reach for my towel and start shrieking? If you want to know something, that would’ve been worse than just sitting there without my top on. You goddamn jackass, don’t you think I know the difference between teasing a man and just sitting there in the sunshine? I’ll tell you what this gets down to, if you want to know what it gets down to. You’re a guilt-ridden Jew who...”

“It gets down to you sending out signals!” David said.

“I did not send out any signals!”

“Then why did he come here today?”

“Because he wanted to talk to me, as peculiar as that may sound. He really had an interest in knowing who the person Molly Regen...”

“You’re not Molly Regen anymore.”

“I wish I was!”

“You’re not twenty-two anymore, either. ‘So young, so vital!’ I’m surprised he didn’t jump on you right at the table last night. I’m surprised he waited for...”

“Jesus, you’re infuriating!” she shouted, and hurled the hairbrush to the tiled floor, shattering its plastic handle. “Don’t you think I have anything to say about it? Don’t you think it’s my business who I choose to, who I, who I, you bastard, you’ve got me stuttering! This is my body,” she said, cupping her breasts fiercely, “and I’ve got a mind up here,” she said, bringing her right hand up and hitting her forehead with her open palm, the slap smacking home the word, “and if you think that you or anyone else...”

“Tell it to Betty Friedan,” he said.

“Sure.”

“Or Gloria Steinem.”

“Sure, you prick.”

“Or Erica Jong. Why don’t you go tell Erica Jong?”

“Why don’t you go fuck yourself?”

“If you goddamn women libbers think being faithful to someone is the same as being owned...”

“I am faithful to you,” she said coldly.

“Are you?”

“No,” she said. “Okay?”

“What?”

“Are you?” she said.

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“You did go to bed with him, didn’t you?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Then what...?”

“No more lies,” she said, “I’m tired of all the lies. You know what you’ve been doing, I know what I’ve been doing, let’s stop the lies! For God’s sake, let’s stop them!”

“I haven’t been doing anything,” he said.

“Stop it,” she said.

“I haven’t.”

“She called from Philadelphia.”

“What? Who called from...?”

“Your lawyer friend.”

“Molly, I swear to God...”

“Jesus, stop it! I’m about to walk out of here, can’t you please stop lying?”

“A dumb call from Philadelphia...”

“And others. You’ve been sleeping around, David, okay? Ever since...”

“No, I haven’t.”

“Shit,” she said, “must you keep lying?”

“I’m telling you I haven’t.”

“Well, I have, okay?”

“No, you haven’t, Molly.”

“What did you expect, David?”

They looked at each other.

“All right,” he said.

“All right,” she said.

“Do you want to know why?”

“No.”

“Because after the accident...”

“I said no!”

“...you became a different person, Molly. You stopped...”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“When will you want to talk about it?”

“Never,” she said.

“Molly...”

“Never!”

Drained, they stared at each other.

“So,” he said, “what now?”

“You tell me.”

“Are you really leaving?”

“Do you want me to leave?”

“Do what you want to do,” he said.

“Fine, then. I’ll finish packing...”

“Don’t forget your diaphragm,” he said, and was immediately sorry.

“Oh, don’t worry,” she said. “My clothes, my diaphragm, my passport...”

“Your diaphragm is your passport.”

“Thank you, you prick. I’ll use it at the airport with the first man I see, or on the ferry, or however I get off this fucking...”

He caught her by the wrist.

“Let go of me,” she said.

“Tell me who.”

“Let go of me, damn it!”

“Who?”

“What difference does it make? Oh, Jesus, what difference does it make anymore?” she said, and burst into tears. He let go of her wrist. He watched her helplessly, standing there in the white caftan, her shoulders heaving, her hands covering her face. He went to her. He took her in his arms.

“Molly, Molly,” he said, stroking her hair.

“I’m not a cheap cunt,” she said, sobbing.

“I know you’re not,” he said gently.

“You said I was.”

“Molly, I’m sorry.”

“I’m a person,” she said.

“I know, darling.”

He stood holding her trembling in his arms. He held her close. He touched her face, he stroked her hair, he wiped the tears from her eyes.

“I love you, Molly,” he said.

“I love you, too,” she said, sobbing.

“I loved you from the minute I met you.”

“You didn’t,” she said, sobbing. “Please don’t lie.”

“I did.”

“No.” She shook her head. “Valentine’s Day,” she said.

“I loved you long before then.”

“Then why didn’t you tell me?” she said, and burst into violent tears again.

They made love that night the way they once had, long ago, when they were very young. In the villa next door, someone was playing a mandolin. A dog barked. There was the sound of a speedboat out on the water. Moonlight glanced through the open arched window. On the beach below, they could hear waves lapping the shore.

They left Italy a week later.

Before a month had gone by, it was as if Italy had never happened. Hello, kiddo, I’m back. Not that simple, it was never that simple. Nor did he even know who was to blame this time. Had Molly tirelessly labored over his cock one night, her mouth fruitlessly beseeching while his thoughts were on another blonde, another time, another place? Had he reached around her one night, his cock hard against her ass, his hand exploring, only to find her tight and dry? He knew only that before the end of August, he called the black stenographer one morning and spent four frantic hours in bed with her that afternoon. It had become habit by then. Nothing had changed, everything had changed. They all were Molly, none of them were Molly. Whatever they had known together had effectively ended on the day Stephen died, and there was no going back.

He brought roses home that afternoon. He arranged them in a vase in the living room. When she came in shortly before the dinner hour, she scarcely glanced at them.

“Did you see the roses?” he asked.

“Nice,” she said.

The clock on the wall of his father’s room read two-fifteen.

David carried the paper cup to the sink, kissed his father on the forehead, and left the hospital.

He should not have walked the four blocks from the hospital to the hotel. He had told himself he needed the exercise, but the heat and the humidity were intolerable, and he was soaked with perspiration before he’d walked a block. He showered the moment he got back to his room. It was two-thirty when he ordered the drink from room service. He put on a robe when the waiter knocked on the door. He signed the check and added a tip to it. The moment the waiter was gone, he took off the robe, sat naked in the easy chair facing the blank television screen, picked up the drink and sipped at it.

His mother’s letter was still in the pocket of his jacket. He went to the closet and took the letter from his pocket. He looked at the envelope. He sipped at the drink. He walked to the window and looked down at the pool area. The South American party had not yet arrived. The pool looked empty and deserted. He sat down again. He drank a bit more. Then he looked at the envelope again. To Mom, with love, David. Why had his father put the letter in an envelope that had David’s handwriting on it? So that it would immediately catch David’s eye? Had he wanted him to find the letter? Why had he saved it at all?

He opened the envelope.

His mother’s small delicate hand. The pages browning around the edges, the ink fading. He kept staring at the letter in his hand. Then he began reading.

He stopped reading exactly where he had stopped yesterday morning, in his father’s apartment. Did he really want to know? Was it really important that he know? He picked up the glass, took a long swallow of whiskey. He put down the glass. He looked at the letter again. He began reading again.

He thought that was the end of the letter. He had been putting the handwritten pages one behind the other as he’d finished reading them, and her signature seemed to indicate an end. There was yet another page, he realized. It began without a P.S., as though his mother had not quite concluded her thoughts and, despite her closing signature, felt compelled to add to them, to make herself finally and irrevocably clear.

She did not sign the final page. He looked over the letter again. There were three pages in all, each headed with a Roman numeral. I, II, III. He folded the letter. He felt his eyes misting with tears. He put the letter back into the envelope. His mother’s constant sniping at his father. She’d known he’d never stopped lying and cheating, and had decided to live with it. No wonder it was a heart attack that finally killed her.

He carried the letter back to the closet and put it in his jacket pocket again. He was starting back toward where he’d left his drink when the telephone rang.

He’s dead, he thought.

It always comes on the telephone, he thought.

He picked up the receiver.

“Hello?” he said.

“David? Hi, it’s Hillary.”

“Hello,” he said.

“I’ve been trying to reach you.”

“I was at the hospital.”

“How is he?”

“Well, not so hot.”

“I’m sorry.”

He said nothing. There was a long silence on the line.

“You’d had quite a bit to drink last night, hadn’t you?” she said.

“A little.”

“I suspected as much.” She paused. “Do you remember phoning me?”

“Yes.”

“Do you remember what you asked?”

“Vaguely.” He remembered completely.

“Why’d you want to know what I was wearing?”

“I really don’t know,” he said.

“Did you want to have sex?” she asked. “On the phone?”

“I suppose,” he said. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Might have been interesting,” she said. She paused again. “I’m here at the pool,” she said. “It’s like a mausoleum. Why don’t you come join me for a drink and some sun?”

“I have to be back at the hospital at four.”

“That gives us at least an hour.”

“Well...”

“Do come,” she said, and hung up.

He went to the window. He looked down at the pool. He could see her walking from the telephone to one of the lounge chairs. She was wearing a white string bikini and high-heeled sandals. She had become very tan in the past several days. She took off the sandals, smoothed the towel on the lounge, and stretched out on her belly. He saw her reaching behind her to untie the strap of the bikini top.

He looked at his watch, and then went into the bathroom, where his swimming trunks were draped over the shower-curtain rod. He thought suddenly of the enema bag in his father’s apartment. How long had he been struggling alone with what he’d called his “blockage?” How many secret enemas had he taken in that overflowing apartment? He’s a man dying because he couldn’t shit, David thought. He filled his apartment with shit, he lived his life wallowing in shit, and now he’s dying because he couldn’t shit. He looked at his watch again. He did not want to go back to that hospital at four o’clock. He did not want to continue this senseless vigil. Die already, he thought. For Christ’s sake, die!

He looked into the mirror.

“Die,” he said aloud, and then he put on his trunks and went downstairs to join Hillary.

“I lied to you,” she said.

No more lies, he thought. Molly’s words last summer. But the lies persisted.

“You told me,” he said. “You’re not really twenty-nine.”

“That, yes,” she said. “But about being divorced as well.”

They were stretched out on lounges side by side. They were drinking gin-tonics. Gin and quinine, she called them. He was on his back, his eyes squinted against the strong glare of the sun. She was on her belly, the bikini strap untied, her blond hair loose. Her arms were dangling over the end of the lounge. The drink was on the tiles before her. She kept toying with the straw. She smelled of coconut oil.

“Matter of fact,” she said, “I’ve never been married.”

A cloud passed over the sun, bringing temporary relief.

“It was easier to lie,” she said.

No more lies, he thought. Please.

The cloud passed, the sun blinked on again. He squinted his eyes against it. In England, he remembered, a person with a “squint” was cross-eyed. Language barrier, he thought. He waited.

“You see, I’ve just ended a rather long-term relationship,” she said. “With a man, of course. These days, one feels compelled to clarify. I’m not that way, though on occasion I’ve been sorely tempted.”

She turned her face to him and smiled. Her eyes were intensely green in the sun. She looked away and began toying with the straw again.

“We were supposed to have gone to Marbella together,” she said. “Actually, I lied about that, too. My firm didn’t really have to sack anyone down here, I volunteered to come. So I wouldn’t have to go on holiday with him. I’m quite good at lying, I’ve had a great deal of practice over the years. He’s married, you see.”

She reached behind her to tie the bra strap. She rolled over and then sat up cross-legged, Indian fashion. Remembering her drink, she reached behind her for the plastic cup. Her breasts threatened the skimpy string top. She sipped at the drink and then began toying with the straw again.

“He’s quite a bit older than I am,” she said. “Older than you, actually. Twice my own age. Sixty.”

“Uh-huh,” David said. English mostly, one of the Dolly Sisters had said. The sex fiends.

“I met him when I was nineteen. I was still living in London, working for a small lingerie shop in Mayfair. Nineteen years old and still a virgin, can you believe it?”

What’s left to believe? David thought. Lies?

“He came in looking for a pair of panties. Knickers, do you prefer? Panties, actually. He bought a rather nice pair, very sexy, pale blue and lace-edged. Cost him six pounds. He asked me if I’d care to model them for him one night. I was utterly shocked! I thought he was a dirty old man, and I told him so. Actually, he was only forty-nine at the time — this was, after all, eleven years ago. Just your age, come to think of it. That’s odd, don’t you think?”

“So what happened? Did you model them for him?”

“Oh, of course I did. The very next night, in fact. His wife was away in Sussex, it was one of those dreary November weekends, rainy and gray, we spent the entire time in bed. Well, not the entire time. We did pause to eat, and we went to two movies, but mostly we made love. Which is what we’ve been doing — mostly — for the past eleven years, I suppose. Nineteen when I met him, can you imagine?” She shook her head again. “Until, finally — three weeks ago, actually — I decided I’d had enough. Quite enough, thanks. I plan on seeing a psychiatrist when I get back to Oxford, the university has hordes of them, you know. See if I can’t get my head together somehow. Eleven years! When I think of it!”

She sipped at her drink again.

“So,” she said. “Story of my life. Tedious, isn’t it?”

“No,” he said. “In fact...”

“I had to have been out of my mind,” she said. “Running down to London whenever his wife was away — this was after I’d made the move to Oxford, actually my first attempt at breaking away from him. Six years ago, I was twenty-four. Impossible, of course, I simply had to keep seeing him. All those places I’ve been to on the continent were with him. Idyllic, in a way. Love with the proper stranger and all that. None of the bother of having to live together, of having to really know a person. Anyway, I’ve ended it. Or at least I hope I have.” She shrugged. “You’ve caught me at a good time, David.”

“Have I?”

“Indeed. You have no idea how long it took me to fall asleep after you rang me last night. There you were in your narrow bed, contemplating all sorts of kinky sex, and there I was alone in mine, staring up at the ceiling in a perfect dither. Should I ring him back, or should I not? Will he think me brazen if I do? Will he think me hopelessly prudish if I don’t? I must have visited the loo a dozen times after your call. Eventually, of course, I ended up doing what we should have done together. Am I shocking you? Don’t tell me,” she said. “You’re happily married, and you wouldn’t dream of compromising your integrity.” Her eyes met his. “Are you?” she asked.

He did not answer.

“Forgive me,” she said, “I know this is a difficult time for you, and I’ve no desire to make it any more difficult. But I haven’t stopped thinking about you since I first saw you sitting alone in that vast crimson room.”

“I don’t understand that,” he said.

“Nor do I. But take it for a fact.”

“I’m flattered.”

“You needn’t be, you’re a quite attractive man.” She paused. “And you?” she said, arching her brows. “Have you been thinking of me?”

“If not you, then someone who was once very much like you.”

“Was?”

“A long time ago.”

“Who?”

“Someone.”

“Did you love her?”

“With all my heart.”

“Then love me,” she said.

He sensed the air of tension the moment he stepped into the waiting room. He had lingered too long by the pool with Hillary and had arrived at the hospital at six minutes to four. By the time he’d taken the elevator to the third floor and walked down the corridor to the waiting room, it was close to four o’clock. But there was none of the minutes-before restlessness among the people gathered there. The clock on the wall read two minutes to four. The minute hand lurched visibly as he glanced at the clock. A minute to four. But no one was standing. Something was wrong. He looked around at the faces. The Dolly Sisters. The fat man in the business suit. Another man, a newcomer he had not seen before. Mrs. Horowitz. He saw reflected on all the faces an unnatural calm that shrieked panic.

“There’s an emergency inside,” Mrs. Horowitz said. “They won’t let us in.”

“Until it’s resolved,” the pink lady said.

She was the same bossy woman who’d been training the new volunteer yesterday. David wondered what “resolved” meant in her vocabulary. Dead? He took a seat beside Mrs. Horowitz and lit a cigarette. She was already smoking. Her face looked more flushed and excited than he had ever seen it.

“Do they know who it is?” he whispered.

“They won’t tell us anything,” she said, loud enough for the bossy pink lady to hear. “It could be anybody.”

It’s my father, David thought. Who else could be dying in there?

“It’s my mother,” Mrs. Horowitz said. “I know it is.”

“You don’t know that,” one of the Dolly Sisters said. Helen, was it?

“My brother looked fine this morning,” the fat man said.

“Does this happen a lot here?” the newcomer asked. “These emergencies?”

“Excuse me, sir,” the pink lady said, “but do you have a patient here?”

“My father,” he said.

“His name?”

“Arthur Henley.”

“And you say you’re his son?”

“If he’s my father, I’m his son,” Henley said.

Good for you, David thought.

“What happens if this isn’t settled by the time visiting is up?” Henley said. “Will they let us in no matter what time it is?”

“That’s up to the head nurse,” the pink lady said. “Right now, they have their hands full.”

“What’s happening in there?” Mrs. Horowitz asked. “Do you know what the emergency is?”

“I have no idea,” the pink lady said.

“Can you find out?”

“The sign on the door says ‘No Admission,’ ” the pink lady said. “That means me, too.”

“Well, can you make a call in there?” the fat man said. “Find out who’s in trouble?”

“They have their hands full,” the pink lady said. “Excuse me, sir, but do you have a patient here?”

“Yes, I have a patient here. I was here yesterday, nobody asked me did I have a patient here. Why do you think I’m here if I haven’t got a patient here? You think I like hospitals?”

“What is your patient’s name?” the pink lady asked, unruffled.

“Carmine Bastiglio.”

“Would you spell that, please?” she said, looking at her clipboard.

“It starts with a B, look under your B’s. Bastiglio.”

“Oh, yes,” she said, finding the name. “Are you a relative of the patient, sir?”

“I’m his brother,” Bastiglio said.

“I’m sure this will be resolved in no time at all,” the pink lady said. “Would anyone like coffee?”

No one answered.

“If no one wants coffee,” she said, “I’ll have to wash out the pot and lock up the coffee maker. I have to leave no later than four-fifteen. I have to take the keys down to Mrs. Thorpe in the Volunteer Section and then catch the hospital jitney to the bus stop. That takes time,” she said. She looked at her watch. “Last call,” she said cheerfully. “Anyone for coffee?”

“Without coffee,” Bastiglio said philosophically, “the entire system would collapse.”

“Would you care for some coffee, Mr....?” She consulted her clipboard, seemed about to try pronouncing his name, gave it up, and said, “Sir?”

“No coffee, thank you,” Bastiglio said. “I never got in the habit. If my brother hadn’t got in the habit, he wouldn’t be here now with a heart attack.”

“No coffee?” the pink lady said. “Anyone? Are you sure?”

“No coffee already,” Mrs. Horowitz said testily.

“I’ll wash out the pot then,” the pink lady said, as though ready to carry out a dire threat.

“My mother’s dying in there,” Mrs. Horowitz whispered, “and she’s hocking us about coffee.”

“You don’t know it’s your mother,” one of the Dolly Sisters said. The younger one. Jean.

“She looked terrible today,” Mrs. Horowitz said.

“In there, they all look terrible,” Bastiglio said philosophically.

“It’s no picnic in there,” Helen said.

“Really,” Jean said.

“I haven’t even seen him yet,” Henley said. “My father. He was operated on this morning. What if it’s him dying, and I don’t even get to see him?”

“An emergency doesn’t necessarily mean someone is dying,” the pink lady said from the sink, where she was washing out the coffee pot.

“No, it means somebody’s dancing up and down the aisles in there,” Mrs. Horowitz said, and everyone laughed.

The laughter broke the tension, but only for a moment.

“I hope I get to see him before he dies,” Henley said.

“How long is this going to take in there?” Helen asked.

“As long as it takes to resolve,” the pink lady said, and carried the pot to the cabinet and then locked the entire coffee maker inside it. She looked up at the clock. Everyone looked up at the clock. It was a quarter past four.

“It’s taking forever,” Bastiglio said.

“I have to leave now,” the pink lady said.

“Alevai,” Mrs. Horowitz said.

“I happen to understand Yiddish,” the pink lady said, and started out of the room. At the door, she turned and said, “Please don’t try to go in until they take the sign down.”

As she turned in the doorway again, the Cuban nurse materialized in the corridor outside. It’s my father, David thought. They’ve sent the Cuban nurse to tell me my father is dead. The pink lady sidled past her quickly, as though she wanted no part of this. The Cuban nurse hesitated in the door frame, her eyes searching the room. They came to rest on Mrs. Horowitz.

“Missis Horiwiss?” she said.

“Oh my God,” Mrs. Horowitz said.

“Could I please speak to you for a moment?”

“Oh my God!” she said. She threw herself into David’s arms. “It’s my mother,” she said. “Oh, Mr. Weber, it’s my mother!”

He held her close, patting her shoulder, murmuring words of comfort. In the doorway, the Cuban nurse stood with solemn, sad brown eyes. She nodded confirmation to him. The emergency had been resolved. Mrs. Horowitz’s mother was dead. David kept holding her. She wept against his shoulder. He was surprised to find that he himself was weeping. At last, she drew away from him. She looked into his face, saw the tears in his eyes, and registered a small puzzled look. She nodded her gratitude to him, and patted his hand, and took a tiny lace-edged handkerchief from her handbag. She blew her nose, and dried her eyes, and went out to join the Cuban nurse in the corridor. David sat where he was. He could hear them whispering outside, near the window streaming sunlight. In a moment, the Cuban nurse came back to the waiting-room door.

“You ca’ go in now,” she said.

Mrs. Horowitz was still standing by the window streaming sunlight, her head bent, her back to the corridor, weeping softly as David passed her and went into the unit and into his father’s room.

His father was sleeping peacefully.

David moved a chair beside the bed and sat. He put his hand on the side railing of the bed, and rested his forehead on it, and closed his eyes. He did not awaken his father. He sat for the next fifteen minutes with his eyes closed, his forehead resting on his hand. When he left the room at last, he was surprised to realize he’d been praying.

The phone was ringing as he unlocked the door to his room. He threw the key on the dresser and picked up the receiver.

“Hello?” he said.

“David, it’s me,” Molly said.

“Hi.”

“How is he?”

“I just got back from the hospital this minute. He seems okay. He was sleeping when I left him.”

“What does the doctor say?”

“I haven’t spoken to him today.”

“Well, why haven’t...?”

“I planned to call him in a few minutes. I just got back to the room, Molly.”

She detected the edge to his voice. She was silent for several seconds.

“Have you called Uncle Max?” she asked.

“Not yet. He’s on my list, too.”

“Did you enjoy yesterday?” she asked.

“What?”

“Your lunch. Your swim. Your long walk on the beach.”

“Yes,” he said.

“You didn’t call this morning.”

“There was nothing to call about.”

“Well... let me know what happens, will you?”

“I will.”

There was a long silence.

“How’s the weather up there?” he asked.

“Hot,” she said.

“Here, too,” he said.

Another silence.

“When will you be coming home?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m supposed to check out on Sunday, but I guess... I just don’t know.”

“Jerry called this morning,” she said.

“I’ve been expecting that.”

“He said to tell you things are piling up at the office. He’s hoping you’ll be back by Tuesday.”

“Sooner than that, I hope.”

“I wish you’d talk to the doctor.”

“I will,” he said. “I’ll call him as soon as we’re finished here.”

“Get some sort of prognosis,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Well, all right then,” she said. “Call me.”

“I will.”

She hung up. He pressed the receiver rest button, got a dial tone, and dialed room service. He got the same waiter he’d spoken to on his first day here at the hotel. At least it sounded like the same waiter. He did not want to go through the Canadian club soda routine again.

“This is Mr. Weber in room fifteen twenty-nine,” he said. “Please send me two scotch whiskeys and water, please.”

“Ri’ away, sir,” the waiter said. “Fi’ minutes.”

The drinks did not arrive until fifteen minutes after he had placed the order. Close, he thought, but no guitar. He looked at his watch. It was a little past five o’clock. He would wait another five minutes and then call Kaplan. Sitting on the edge of the bed, sipping at the scotch, he dialed information and got numbers in New Jersey for both his Uncle Max’s delicatessen and his home. He had finished the first of the drinks when he called Kaplan. He got the answering service. The woman there told him she would have the doctor call back as soon as possible.

“How soon will that be?” he asked.

“He should be calling in soon, sir,” she said.

“Thank you,” David said.

He debated calling his uncle, decided he would keep the line free until Kaplan returned his call. When the phone rang at five-thirty, he thought it was Kaplan calling back.

“Hello, David?” Bessie said.

“Bessie,” he said, surprised. “How are you?”

“No use complaining,” she said. “Did you see your father?”

“Yes, he’s all right.”

“What does the doctor say?”

“I haven’t spoken to him yet. I’m waiting to hear from him now, in fact.”

“So I’ll get off the phone,” Bessie said, but she did not get off the phone. There was a small silence. “Do you know the ring your father has?” she said. “The one he wears on his pinky all the time?”

“Yes?” David said.

“I have it here,” she said. “With the other things he gave me to hold when I went with him to the hospital. His wallet, his eyeglasses, his address book. I don’t know what’s in the wallet, I didn’t look. But I’m worried about the ring. He’ll never talk to me again if I lose that ring. I never seen him without that ring on his finger.”

“His mother gave it to him,” David said.

“I know, him and his two brothers, they all got the same rings. So what I’ll do — you’ll be at the hospital tonight?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll bring it tonight. His wallet, too, all the other stuff. His keys you already have. This way, it’ll be off my mind. I’m a little worried carrying it on the bus, the crime down here, they’ll break your head for a nickel. But I’ll make sure I keep my hands on my pocketbook. So I’ll see you seven o’clock.”

“Good-bye, Bessie,” he said.

“Good-bye,” she said.

He put down the receiver. The phone rang again almost at once. He picked up the receiver again.

“Hello?” he said.

“Mr. Weber?”

“Yes, Dr. Kaplan, how are you?”

“Fine, thanks,” Kaplan said. “Have you seen your father today?”

“Just a little while ago. He was asleep.”

“Yes,” Kaplan said.

“Have you seen him?”

“I’m at the hospital now.”

“How is he?”

“More lethargic than he was yesterday. Not quite as alert. His temperature’s dropped a little...”

“To what?”

“Just under a hundred.”

“That’s a good sign, isn’t it?”

“The change isn’t appreciable. His lungs are clear now...”

“Good,” David said.

“But I’m frankly worried about his kidneys, Mr. Weber. We can maintain his blood pressure with medication, but if his kidneys continue...”

“Why? What’s wrong with his blood pressure?” David said.

“It’s dropped to fifty.”

“Is that low?”

“Very low. Well below the normal range.”

“Well... what does that mean? His blood pressure dropping?”

“The blood pressure indicates how well the heart is pumping. We’ve already begun medication, we’ve put him on Dopamine to support the blood pressure. But, as I said, if his kidneys continue failing...”

“Are they failing?”

“I’m afraid they are.”

“Yes, what then?”

“He might need dialysis.”

“What’s that?”

“A kidney machine.”

“To do what?”

“To purify his blood.” Kaplan paused. “Would you be in favor of that?”

“I’m not sure.”

“In any case, I’d like to do a tracheotomy in the morning,” Kaplan said. “We don’t like to leave a respirator tube in the throat longer than forty-eight hours.”

“Is that what a tracheotomy is? Removing the respirator tube?”

“No, no. We’d open his throat surgically and clamp a tube there. In the trachea. It’s a very simple procedure, we can do it in his room. It wouldn’t take more than ten or fifteen minutes at most. He’d be a lot more comfortable afterward.”

“When does he stop being himself?” David asked.

“I’m sorry, what...?”

“When does his body become just a... a middleman for all those machines?”

“Well, that’s what you’ve got to start thinking about, Mr. Weber.”

“What do you mean?”

“Dialysis. Whether or not you want us to put him on a kidney machine.”

“Can I withhold permission if I choose?”

“You can.”

“What happens then?”

“If his kidneys fail and he has no dialytic support?”

“Yes.”

“He’ll die,” Kaplan said.

“When will I have to make this decision?”

“We’re watching him very closely,” Kaplan said. “I assume you have no objections to the tracheotomy.”

“Not if it’ll make him more comfortable.”

“It will.”

“Fine then.”

“I’ll do it first thing tomorrow morning.”

“If he’s still alive,” David said, and sighed.

“Well,” Kaplan said, “let’s hope he is.”

“Yes,” David said.

“Good night, Mr. Weber.”

“Good night,” David said.

He went to where he’d left his drink, took a long swallow, and then set the glass down again. He went to the bed, picked up the slip of paper on which he’d scribbled his uncle’s numbers, and dialed the one at the delicatessen.

“Max’s Deli,” a man said.

“Uncle Max?”

“You want Max Weber?” the man said.

“Yes, please.”

“You can get him at home,” the man said. “You want the number?”

“I’ve got it,” David said. “Thank you.”

He hung up, waited for another dial tone, and then dialed the second number on the sheet of paper.

“Hello?” a voice said.

“Hello, Uncle Max,” David said, smiling. “This is David.”

“Who?” the voice said.

“Is this Max Weber?” David said.

“This is Max Weber, who’s this?”

“David.”

“David who?”

“Your nephew,” David said.

“Ha-ha,” his uncle said.

“Uncle Max, this is David. Your nephew.”

“Ha-ha,” his uncle said again. “What is this, some kind of joke?”

“Uncle Max, it’s me, David. Your nephew.”

“What nephew? Some joke, very comical. Ha-ha.”

“Is Aunt Rachel there?” David said.

“No, she’s not here. Who’s this?”

“Uncle Max, can I please speak to Aunt Rachel?”

“I told you she’s not here. What are you, a comedian?”

“Uncle Max, your brother is dying,” David said. “Morris is...”

“What brother? Ha-ha, very comical,” his uncle said.

“Uncle Max... please...”

“What do you want, funnyman? You like telling jokes? Very comical. Ha-ha.”

“Okay, Uncle Max,” David said, and hung up.

He sat with his hand on the telephone receiver for a very long time. He’s senile, he thought. Jesus Christ! Dashing Uncle Max with his flashy Studebaker and his dark-haired, dark-eyed beauties. Uncle Max with his little silver mustache comb. Oh my God, he’s senile! Tears rushed to his eyes. He hit the dial of the phone with his bunched fist, and then stood up abruptly and went to where he’d left his drink. He drained the glass. The phone rang.

Here it is, he thought.

The phone kept ringing.

I don’t want to answer it, he thought.

He went to the phone. He lifted the receiver.

“Hello?” he said, and took a deep breath.

“David?”

He let out his breath.

“Hello, Hillary,” he said.

“I’ve been trying to reach you, your line’s been engaged.”

“Yes, I’m sorry. How are you?” he said.

“Fine. Are we still on for tonight?”

“Tonight?”

“Dinner,” she said. “Or have I frightened you off?”

“I’m not sure about tonight,” he said. “My father’s... I’m just not sure about him.”

“Oh, David, I’m so sorry.”

“I think I may just stay here in the room. In case anyone tries to reach me.”

“You do have to eat, David.”

“I can always get something from room service.”

“Of course, whatever you say.” She paused. “Will you be going to the hospital again?”

“At seven o’clock.”

“Would you care to join me for a drink before then?”

He looked at his watch.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “I’ve had two already, and I... I may have some decisions to make later on.”

“What sort of decisions?” she asked.

He did not know if he felt like discussing this with her.

“Well,” he said, “really, it...”

“Please tell me, David.”

“Whether or not to keep him alive,” he said.

“Oh, David,” she said, “how awful for you. Will you call me when you get back from the hospital? I’ll be here. However late it is. Please promise you’ll call.”

“I promise.”

“I hope everything goes well for him.”

“I hope so, too,” he said.

There was an air of gaiety in the waiting room tonight.

The Dolly Sisters were dressed to the nines. Helen, the older one, was wearing a shimmering green silk dress with matching heels. The shoes had ankle straps. When David was a boy, he and his friends used to call them “whore shoes.” They pronounced it “hoo-er shoes.” The dress was very low-cut. Her breasts swelled in the scoop top. She fiddled with a string of green beads nestling in her cleavage. Her sister Jean was wearing a silver dress with silver shoes. They looked like Christmas, the Dolly Sisters.

“We’re going to a wedding reception,” Helen said.

“Our cousin got married this afternoon,” Jean said.

“Our mother’s doing much better,” Helen said.

“She looked terrific this afternoon.”

“Maybe I’ll come with you,” Bastiglio said. He was wearing the same suit he’d had on during the four o’clock visit.

“Sure, come along,” Helen said.

“More the merrier,” Jean said.

Bastiglio was very happy. He told everyone in the waiting room that they’d be transferring his brother to a private room in the morning. The pink lady was a plump, jovial black woman who offered coffee to everyone in the waiting room. She made it seem as if she were pouring champagne. Arthur Henley, the newcomer who’d been worried that he wouldn’t get to see his father before he died, smacked his lips when he tasted the coffee.

“This is very good coffee,” he said to the black pink lady.

“My husband says I should open a restaurant,” she answered, grinning.

Henley smacked his lips again. “You should, you should,” he said.

David thought the coffee was very good, too. He asked Bessie if she was sure she didn’t want a cup. Bessie shook her head. Of everyone in the waiting room, only Bessie looked glum. She sat with her head bent, her hands in her lap, in the same attitude of prayer as this morning.

“It looks as if the old man’s going to make it,” Henley said. “I talked to his doctor, he told me he’s going to be fine. Few more days in Intensive Care, they’ll be moving him to his own room.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Bastiglio said, and lifted his coffee cup as though in a toast.

“How’s your patient doing?” Helen asked David.

“His condition is stable,” David said. It was odd how quickly you picked up the hospital jargon. Stable. His mother used to call the room in which his father kept all his junk a stable. His father’s apartment this morning had looked like a stable.

“They sometimes rally very quickly,” Jean said.

“I’ve seen miracles happen here,” the pink lady said solemnly.

That’s what it’s going to take, David thought. A miracle.

His father looked wonderful.

The bewildered look was no longer on his face. His eyes had lost their unfocused, glazed appearance. They darted brightly in his head.

“How are you doing?” David asked.

His father nodded. Even the nod seemed more vigorous.

“You look good, Morris,” Bessie said. “Did you rest this afternoon?”

His father nodded again.

“I brought your ring and your wallet,” Bessie said, “all your other stuff, too. To give to David. So I wouldn’t have to worry about them, okay?”

His father nodded again.

“Do you remember those summers out on the Island?” David asked. “When Grandma used to yell not to go in the water with your rings on? You, and Uncle Martin, and Uncle Max?”

His father’s eyes smiled. The respirator tube was still in his throat, but Kaplan would remove that in the morning. He’d be more comfortable. He was going to beat this damn thing, after all. He smiled around the respirator tube. He was going to be all right.

“Well, it looks like there’s been some mail for you,” David said. “I picked it up at the nurses’ station. Do you think they’re happy with their station in life?” he asked, and again his father smiled around the tube. David reached into his jacket pocket. He had bought his father a Father’s Day card in the hotel gift shop. He had written his father’s name and address on the envelope. In the upper right-hand corner, he had drawn a stamp and then had inked what he hoped would look like cancellation marks across it. He flashed the envelope briefly and then ripped open the flap.

“Well, well,” he said, “I wonder who this is from.”

His father already knew. His eyes were twinkling in anticipation.

“To Dad,” David read from the card. “Shall I read the poem?”

His father nodded. His eyes and his mouth were still smiling.

“There are many fathers in this world of ours,” David read from the card, “and most of them are fine. But there’s only one who’s best of all, and that’s the one who’s mine.” He paused. “Guess who signed it?” David said.

His father nodded, smiling.

“David and Molly,” David said.

His father nodded again.

“That’s nice, Morris,” Bessie said.

“And you’ll have a big box of cigars waiting for you when you get out of here,” David said.

His father’s hand came up from the sheet. He extended his forefinger. On the air, he made the letter “S.” He was asking about Stephen again. He was wondering whether Stephen had sent a card as well.

“Stephen?” David said.

His father nodded.

David hesitated a moment. The only other thing he had in his jacket pocket was the envelope containing his mother’s letter. He took the envelope from his pocket.

“Stephen’s written you a letter,” he said.

His father nodded.

David opened the envelope. He took his mother’s letter from it. He looked at the letter. He drew in a short, sharp breath.

“Dear Grandpa,” he said, and hesitated again. The words in his mother’s handwriting read Dear Morrie, I am writing this because when I talk I get too excited and of course it stands to reason. I honestly was giving you a fair chance but I guess you did not want it as you are still lying to me. “Dear Grandpa,” he said again. “What are you doing in the hospital? Mom and Dad tell me you weren’t feeling so good, but that you’re feeling much better now.”

His father nodded.

Bessie was watching David.

“I want you to get better real fast, Grandpa,” David said, glancing up from the letter. “I want you to be the way you were, Grandpa. I want you to come visit us as soon as possible. I want to light your cigar for you, Grandpa. I want you to put a cigar band on my finger. I want to hear you say, ‘And now for the lighter side of the news.’

His father smiled around the tube.

“I miss you very much, Grandpa,” David said. His voice broke. “I love you very much, Grandpa.”

He folded the letter. He put it back in the envelope.

“You see, Morris?” Bessie said. “Everyone misses you and loves you.”

His father raised his hand again. He looked across at the wall. His forefinger traced a circle on the air.

“No, don’t worry about those shelves,” David said.

“Don’t worry about nothing but getting better,” Bessie said.

His father nodded.

“I can’t get over the way you look, Pop,” David said.

“He looks wonderful,” Bessie said. “Next time I come, I’ll bring the scissors, I’ll trim your nails.”

“Many man swallow, but fu man chew,” David said, and again his father smiled.

The Vietnamese nurse appeared in the doorway.

“Time’s up,” she said.

Bessie went to the bed. She kissed his father on the cheek.

“I’ll be here tomorrow morning,” she said. “Sleep well, Morris.”

He touched her arm. Gently.

“Yes, Morris?”

His eyes met hers.

“Yes, honey,” she said. “You’re going to be fine.”

She moved away from the bed. David took his father’s hand in his own. He leaned over the bed.

“I’ll see you in the morning,” he said.

His father nodded.

He kissed his father on the forehead.

He hesitated.

“I love you, Pop,” he said, and wondered if he meant it this time.

In the corridor outside, he said, “He really looked good, didn’t he?”

“He looked terriffic!” Bessie said. “I didn’t see him look so good since he first came in here, I mean it.”

“I think he’s going to make it,” David said.

“I think so, too.”

“I’m not kidding myself, am I?” David said. “I mean, he really did look good, didn’t he?”

“Marvelous,” Bessie said.

“He’s going to fool us all,” David said.

“God willing.”

“I think he will, I really do.”

“I think so, too.”

“Boy, he looked good.”

“His eyes so bright!”

“And the smiles? Did you see him smiling?”

“Of course I seen him!”

“Boy!” David said.

“Listen, let me give you his things,” Bessie said, “before I forget.”

She unclasped her handbag. She took out a small paper bag. “I was so nervous on the bus, you got no idea.”

He accepted the bag.

“I wrapped his ring in a little tissue,” Bessie said.

“Thank you,” he said. “I’ll take good care of it.”

“For when he gets out of here.”

“Soon, I hope,” David said.

“Alevai,” Bessie said.

He called Hillary the moment he got back to the room.

“David!” she said. “How’s your father?”

“Much better. Do you know a good Italian restaurant down here?”

“Are we on for dinner then?”

“If you’re still available.”

“I’m available,” she said.

“Quarter to eight?” he said. “In the lobby.”

“Super,” she said, and hung up.

He was whistling when he went into the shower.

Well, he thought, he’s really going to pull through, the old bastard. He really is. Surprise us all. Still a few tricks in the old bastard’s bag. Jesus, he really looked good! I’ll have to call Molly, tell her to stop worrying, he’ll be okay. He started singing in the shower. Gene Kelly. He soaped himself and sang “Singin’ in the Rain.” He let the water pour down on him. He stayed under the water for a long time. He turned the water to icy cold just before he got out of the shower. The water beat down on his shoulders and head. He was shivering when he got out of the shower, but he felt better than he had in a long time.

He was toweling himself when the phone rang.

Molly, he thought.

Good. Get that over with.

He picked up the receiver.

“Hello?” he said.

“Mr. Weber?”

“Yes, Dr. Kaplan?” he said.

“How are you?”

“Fine, thanks,” David said. “I just got back from the hospital, my father looked terrific.”

“Well,” Kaplan said, and the single word struck an ominous note. David waited. “His condition is still grave,” Kaplan said. It was the first time he had ever used the word “grave.”

“He didn’t look that way to me,” David said. “There seemed to be a big difference between when I saw him at four o’clock...”

“It’s really too early to expect any appreciable change,” Kaplan said. “I don’t think it’s possible to expect any change just yet.”

“But his eyes were...”

“It would be a good week at least before we could see any real change for the better,” Kaplan said.

Why the hell did he sound so down?

“Each day he maintains his status is encouraging, of course,” Kaplan said.

Then why do you sound so down? David wondered.

“But... Mr. Weber,” Kaplan said, “I must be frank with you.”

“Please,” David said.

“I’m very concerned about his condition. We’re all concerned. His condition is grave. Very grave. We’re supporting his blood pressure with medication...”

“Yes, but that was this afternoon,” David said. Why are we going over all the same shit you gave me this afternoon? he thought. I just came back from seeing him, he looked fine. “I just saw him,” he said aloud. “He looked fine, really. If you’re going back to the hospital again, why don’t you take a look for your...?”

“I won’t be going back to the hospital tonight,” Kaplan said.

“Well, in the morning then. When you go there in the morning, you’ll see...”

“Mr. Weber,” Kaplan said, “if he makes it through the night, I’ll be very much surprised.”

“What?” David said.

“I’m sorry,” Kaplan said again.

Well, don’t be so sorry, David thought. Go over to the hospital and see for yourself. You’re the doctor, go take a look at him.

“Mr. Weber,” Kaplan said, “how do you feel about autopsy?”

“He’s not dead yet,” David said sharply.

“In the event,” Kaplan said.

“I don’t know how I’d feel about autopsy. I don’t want to talk about autopsy. I just got back from the hospital, my father looked fine. If you went over there and took a look at him, you wouldn’t be asking me about autopsy.”

“I’m in constant touch with the physicians on duty,” Kaplan said.

“I didn’t mean to imply...”

“I know this is a difficult time for you.”

Yes, it’s a difficult time for me, David thought. I’m being jerked from pillar to post, yes, it’s a very difficult time. So don’t ask me about autopsy, damn it!

“I don’t want to discuss autopsy,” he said aloud.

“I can understand that. But a postmortem diagnosis...”

“If you can’t find what’s wrong while...”

“...might allow us to...”

“...he’s still alive...”

They both fell silent.

“I’m sorry,” David said.

“This inability to heal,” Kaplan said.

One more time, David thought. Just tell me one more time how baffling it all is.

Kaplan said nothing.

“Well, let’s see what happens in the morning,” David said.

“It’s in God’s hands,” Kaplan said, and hung up.

Terrific, David thought. Leave it to God. Dumb sons of bitches can’t find what’s wrong, so leave it to God, right, let God take care of it. Call in the Supreme Surgeon, let Him diagnose the case. I’m in constant touch with the physicians on duty. Good, you stay in touch. Run around with your finger up your ass and stay in touch with all the other busy little assholes who don’t know any more than you do. Carve him up afterward. Take out his liver and his spleen, weigh his lungs and his heart, and then shake your goddamn head and tell me it’s all very baffling.

The phone rang.

He lifted the receiver.

“Hello!” he said sharply.

“David?” Molly said. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” he said.

“You sound...”

“I just had a long talk with Kaplan. I saw my father a half-hour ago, he looked terrific. So that stupid bastard starts asking me about autopsy.”

“I’ve been wondering when you’d get angry.”

“I’m not angry, I just wish they’d make up their minds.”

“Who, David?”

“All of them! The doctors, my father...”

His voice trailed.

“David?”

“If he’s going to die, I wish he’d hurry up and do it.”

Molly said nothing.

“Or get better,” David said. “Either way.”

Still, she said nothing.

“I was going to call you,” he said.

“I thought you might have gone out to dinner.”

“No, I haven’t eaten yet. I just got out of the shower.”

“Will you be going out?” she said.

“Yes.” He paused. “How about you?”

“I’ve already eaten. I may go to a movie.”

“Well, I’ll call you in the morning then.”

“Yes, all right,” she said.

“Good night,” he said.

“Good night,” she said.

How very accommodating we’ve both become, he thought. How very adept we are at understanding each other’s shorthand. We will not speak to each other until tomorrow morning because neither of us wants any surprises tonight. What surprises? he wondered. There are no more surprises. Our marriage is as predictable as death.

But my father may yet survive the night, he thought.

“Sorry i took so long,” the waiter said. “Slight emergency in the kitchen.”

“Oh? What sort?” Hillary asked. “Not a fire or anything, I hope.”

“The Cubans are arguing,” the waiter said.

“The Cubans?” David said.

“The chef and his assistant.”

“They’re Cubans?” David said.

“Yes, but they know how to cook Italian.”

“I’m sure,” Hillary said, and arched her eyebrows.

“Anyway, here’s the wine, sir,” the waiter said. He showed the label to David. “Would you like me to open it now, sir?”

“Please,” David said.

The waiter pulled the cork. He poured a little of the wine into David’s glass. David sniffed at the wine and then tasted it. “Yes, that’s fine,” he said.

The waiter filled Hillary’s glass, and then David’s.

“Enjoy it,” he said.

Hillary lifted her glass. They clinked glasses and drank.

“It’s quite open-nosed, don’t you think?” David said, playing the game he used to play with Molly.

“Yes, very much so,” Hillary said, picking up on it at once.

“Woodsy,” he said.

“Bad beginning, though,” she said.

“Good middle, however.”

“Explosive end,” she said. “But don’t you find it the tiniest bit acidic?”

“Metallic, I might have said.”

“Quite. Altogether a very nervous wine.”

“Virtually neurotic,” he said, and they both laughed.

She was wearing white again. Her tan was magnificent against it. Jade earrings dangled from her ears, echoing the color of her eyes. Her lipstick was very red. She smelled of mimosa.

“Do you think the Cubans will know how to make a piccata?” she asked.

“A piñata might be more their style,” David said.

“I suppose we can always find a Cuban restaurant with an Italian chef.”

The food was surprisingly good. They both kept marveling over it. It was only nine o’clock when they finished the meal. There was a little more wine left in the bottle. They finished that as well and decided they would skip coffee.

It was still very hot in the street outside.

“Shall we walk back?” he asked.

“Yes, of course. Exercise away some of the weight I’m sure I gained in there. That really was remarkably good, wasn’t it?”

“Considering.”

“Is what I meant. Cuban chefs. God, it’s hot!”

“We can take a taxi if you...”

“No, don’t be silly.”

They walked in silence for a while.

“I’m glad you didn’t lie to me,” she said. He turned to her, puzzled. “About being married, I mean.”

“Oh.”

“Besides, you are wearing a wedding band, you realize.”

“Am I? I hardly notice it anymore.”

“You will take it off, won’t you?” she said. “Later?”

“If you like.”

“Yes, I would.”

They continued walking.

Her stride matched his.

Long legs. High-heeled sandals clicking on the deserted sidewalk.

“What’s your wife’s name?” she asked.

“Why do you want to know?”

“Forgive me, I’m far too curious.”

“It’s Molly,” he said.

“Good Irish name,” she said. “Is she Irish?”

“Jewish,” David said.

“And you? Are you Jewish as well?”

“Yes.”

“I thought you might be. The name,” she said.

“And the nose,” he said.

“Is there something wrong with your nose?”

“I’ve never particularly liked it.”

“Looks fine to me,” she said, and took his hand.

She was still holding his hand when they walked into the hotel. He went to the front desk for his key. “Fifteen twenty-nine,” he said to the clerk. The clerk looked at Hillary.

“Yes, sir,” he said, and handed David the key.

The clerk watched them as they walked to the elevator. The elevator stopped on the twelfth floor, as it always did. The doors closed. She kissed him on the mouth. They clung together. The doors opened again on the fifteenth floor. They stepped into the corridor and kissed again. Wordlessly, they walked to his room. He had difficulty unlocking the door. At last, he turned the key, and swung the door wide and snapped on the light. She stepped into the room.

“Nice,” she said. “Much nicer than mine. And I’m a travel rep.”

He closed and locked the door. He remembered the Do Not Disturb sign. He unlocked the door and opened it again. He hung the sign on the knob.

“How clever you are,” she said, and went into his arms the moment he had closed and locked the door again. He pulled her close to him. She pressed against him. They kissed fiercely. His hands found her ass. She ground against him. His hands tightened on her.

“Would you like to fuck me now?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“Mmm, yes,” she said.

They broke away from each other. She glanced down at him.

“My, my,” she said, smiling, and rolled her eyes. “Is this the loo? I shan’t be a moment.”

He watched her as she went into the bathroom. She turned to smile at him and then gently closed the door behind her. He heard the sink tap running. He turned off the lights, and went to the bed and sat on the edge of it. Behind him, the window cast a reflected glow into the room. He could hear the sound of the sea. He took off his shoes and socks. In the bathroom, the water stopped running. There was a long silence. The bathroom door opened a crack. She peeked around the edge of the door. He saw her naked shoulder.

“Should I leave anything on?” she asked.

“Whatever you like,” he said.

“Whatever you like,” she said. “I’m down to panties and heels.”

“Fine,” he said.

She opened the door wide and stepped into the room. The bathroom light was on behind her. She stepped out of sunlight. Long blond hair. Dangling green earrings. Breasts spattered with freckles. Gossamer white bikini panties. High-heeled white sandals. She paused in the wedge of light spilling from the bathroom.

“Do I suit you?” she asked.

“Very much,” he said.

She came to the bed and sat beside him.

“But you’re still dressed,” she whispered.

She unbuttoned his shirt and ran her hand over his chest.

“Take off your wedding band,” she whispered.

He took off the ring and placed it gently on the phone table.

“Was she Molly, this woman you loved to death?”

“Yes,” he said.

Her hand found him.

“And are you going to love me to death?”

“Yes,” he said.

Her hand tightened. “Fuck me to death?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, my pussy, my mouth...”

“Yes.”

“Everywhere, yes,” she whispered.

He undressed in the glow of the light from the window. She took off one earring, tilted her head, took off the other. She placed both earrings on the phone table. She lay back on the bed then, watching him. They’re all Molly, he thought. None of them are Molly, he thought. Never quite Molly. She cupped her breasts with her hands. She squeezed the nipples. “My nipples are so hard,” she whispered. She dropped one hand to her crotch. She began stroking herself. “Pussy’s so wet,” she whispered. He draped his clothes over the chair near the window. He could still hear the sound of the sea. “Look at that prick,” she whispered.

He went to the bed.

Her hand found him again.

“Will you fuck me now?” she whispered.

“Yes,” he said.

“Mmm, yes,” she said.

The telephone rang.

He flinched from its sound as though someone had struck him in the face with a clenched fist.

“Let it ring,” she whispered.

He looked at the telephone.

“Don’t answer it,” she whispered.

The phone kept ringing.

“Come fuck me,” she whispered.

He picked up the receiver.

“Hello?” he said.

“Mr. Weber?” Kaplan said.

So here I am, he thought. Alone at last. Son dead, mother dead, father dead, marriage dead. Little Orphan Annie. Do orphanages take fifty-year-old men? Forty-nine, excuse me. Can they find a good home for a forty-nine-year-old orphan going on fifty?

He had ordered two martinis the moment Hillary left the room. The martinis were gone now. He debated ordering a third one. All gone, see? His mother spooning bread and milk into his mouth when he was still in his high chair. All gone, David, see? All gone, he thought. It is amazing how quickly a long-legged English girl in bikini knickers and heels can get dressed when the telephone rings and a doctor tells you your father is dead. Call me later, David. Scrambling into her clothes. I’ll be in my room, please call me. Breasts jiggling into her bra, blond hair disappearing into the folds of the white dress, head reappearing, dress sliding down over white lace bra and white lace panties, call me later. Amazing how fast a cock can shrivel when someone tells you your father is dead. The tube in my father’s penis.

I have to call Bessie, he thought. Molly first, then Bessie.

He dialed the New York apartment. Molly’s voice came on the line. I’m sorry, we can’t come to the phone just now. Will you leave a message when you hear the beep? Well, she’d said she was going to a movie. Second movie this week. Big movie-goer, my Molly. Had it really been a movie? Or was the “movie” tall and blond and blue-eyed? Younger than Molly perhaps. Did the “movie” leave on his undershorts and shoes? Black shoes and black socks? Where did she go to fuck this “movie” of hers? His place? Your place or mine? he thought. I have no place, he thought. I guess I’ll call Bessie. I’d call Uncle Max, but he’d only think it’s funny that my father died. Ha-ha, very comical. Will Uncle Max even come to the funeral? What arrangements will I have to make this time? Ship his body up north, how do you do that? Is there a service that ships bodies? Come on, Molly, he thought, get finished with your goddamn movie! My father is dead!

He picked up the phone and dialed room service. There was no answer. He looked at his watch. Twenty after ten. Room service closed at nine-thirty. All gone, he thought, everyone gone. He suddenly felt like talking to the Cuban nurse. He wanted to ask the Cuban nurse how it had been at the very last. Kaplan had told him on the phone that his father had died quietly at ten minutes past eight. That would have been just about when he and Hillary had been pretending to be wine mavens. Bad beginning, though. Good middle, however. Explosive end. Not at all explosive, David thought; nothing spectacular, no fireworks. Kaplan had said he’d died a quiet death. But what the hell did Kaplan know? It was all very baffling to Kaplan. Maybe the Cuban nurse could amplify. I’d ask for amplification, Davey, you know what I mean? He supposed he would have to call Sidney, too. Tell him his services as a chauffeur were no longer required. Tell him his son’s debt had been canceled by death. How do you like that one, Pop? Debt? Death? You call Sidney, he was your pal. Call him from the great beyond, wherever that might be, far from the sea someplace, give him a ring, Pop. Tell him, Hi, this is your cousin Morrie, I died tonight at ten minutes past eight, quietly, my heart just began beating slower and slower and slower, and then it stopped. Check it out with Dr. Kaplan, he’ll tell you.

I’ll bet the Cuban nurse could tell me more, though, David thought. She was probably there when it happened, whispering reassuring “swee’hearts” in my father’s ear. I don’t even know her name, he thought. I have to call Bessie. He pulled the telephone directory from under the phone table. What had Bessie told the bossy nurse that day? Wednesday? Thursday? Who remembered? All the days were the same. I’m his sister. Goldblum, was it? He opened the telephone book and began searching under the g’s. He had trouble reading the small print. Get to be fifty, he thought, you can’t even read the phone book. He found a listing for a Goldblum, B. on Fourth Street. Long trip to the hospital every day, he thought. All the way from Fourth Street. By bus, no less. He wrote the number on the hotel pad near the phone. She’s probably asleep, he thought, it can wait till morning. His father’s words when he’d called to tell him his mother was dead. It can wait till morning. Well, no, he thought, it can’t wait till morning. Too damn many things have been waiting till morning, Morning never comes, don’t you know that? Morning is like those South Americans who never arrive. Where the hell are all those South Americans? Call her, he thought. Get it over with.

He dialed the number.

“Hello?” she said. She had been asleep.

“Bessie,” he said, “this is David.”

“Oh,” she said. She already knew. The tone of his voice had already told her.

“Bessie,” he said, “I’m sorry to have to...”

“Oh,” she said again.

“My father died tonight,” he said.

“Oh.” The pain in that single word.

“I thought you might want to know.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“He died quietly,” David said.

“Thank you,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

She was silent for a very long time. He wondered if she was crying on the other end of the line. Then she said, “He was my best friend I ever had.”

Another silence.

“Well, good night,” David said.

“Good night,” she said. “Thank you.”

He put the receiver back on the cradle. The little paper bag with his father’s belongings in it was on the dresser across the room, where he’d left it. He went to the dresser and opened the bag. His father’s wallet, his eyeglass case, his address book, his ring wrapped in a Kleenex. He unwrapped the tissue. He held the ring between his thumb and forefinger. The initials M.W. twined into the heavy gold. The small diamond chip. Boys! Yoo-hoo! Don’t go in the water with your rings! All that gold, the diamonds, the diamonds! His grandmother’s heavily accented voice ringing out over the sea where her three sons were swimming. His father wanted The Shiksa to have his ring. I want Molly to have it, do you hear me? Come on, Molly, he thought, finish with your damn movie already, will you? Don’t you want to know about the ring? Don’t you want to know my father left you his ring?

He went back to the telephone.

He dialed New York again.

The answering machine again.

I’m sorry, we can’t come to the phone just now. Will you leave a message when you hear the beep?

So go to hell, he thought, and slammed down the receiver. The phone rang almost at once. He picked up the receiver again.

“Hello?” he said.

“David, it’s me. Hillary. Are you all right?”

“So-so,” he said, and thought of his father waggling his hand at the male nurse.

“I’m worried about you,” she said.

“No, don’t be.”

“I just wanted you to know I’ll be here if you need me.”

“Thank you,” he said.

“I’ll be here,” she said, and hung up.

He put the receiver back on the cradle. It was nice to know that Hillary would be there if he needed her. Poor honest mixed-up Hillary with her married lover in Marbella, poor Hillary on the rebound and trying to find, in an alien land in an off-season, between the sheets with a total stranger, whatever it was she thought she’d lost. Poor Hillary, he thought, poor all of us. I’m drunk, he thought, and I’d like to get even drunker. I’d like to go downstairs to the bar, and pick up two martinis and carry them up to room 1712 to share with Hillary Watkins, who has offered me comfort. Women who will offer you their comfort, he thought. Weber v. Martini. I’ve been accepting the comfort of all the Hillarys in the world for the past five years, so what difference will it make tonight?

Molly, where are you? he thought. You’re the one I need!

He picked up the receiver. He dialed New York again.

“Hello?”

Thank God, he thought.

“Molly,” he said, “it’s David. I’ve been trying to reach you.”

“I just got in this minute. What is it?”

“He’s dead.”

Silence.

Will all you men whose mothers are still living...

“Molly?”

“Yes, I’m here.”

“He died at a little past eight. Ten past eight.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“We’ll have to make arrangements,” he said.

“Yes.”

“I’ll have to find out how to ship the body up. He has a funeral plot in the Bronx. Next to my mother’s.”

“Yes.”

“I suppose there are people who do that sort of thing.”

“Yes.”

“We’ll have to call all the relatives, too.”

“Yes.”

“Arrange for a service, a funeral home, all of it. Will we have to sit shiva? I suppose he would have wanted that.”

“Yes.”

“Molly, are you just going to keep saying ‘yes’?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Can’t we please talk about this?”

She said nothing.

“Molly,” he said, “my father just died. Can’t you please say something?”

“I’m not good at this,” she said.

“I know that. But Molly...”

“I’m not good at it.”

“Molly...”

“I loved him, too,” she said. “I have to hang up now. I can’t talk anymore, I really can’t. I have to go now.”

There was a click on the line. She was gone.

Well, he thought, she’s been gone for a long time now, so how is this night different from all other nights? He thought of Hillary in room 1712. I’ll be here. He went to the dresser where he had left his father’s ring. He picked up the ring. He tried it on his pinky. It slipped onto his finger easily. It fit perfectly. Like father, like son, he thought. Ike and Mike, we look alike. He spread his fingers wide and admired the ring. He turned his hand this way and that. The gold gleamed, the diamond glistened. Like father, like son, he thought again. He went to the telephone. I would like to accept whatever comfort you have to offer, he would say. The way his father had been accepting the comfort of strangers for the better part of his life.

He picked up the receiver.

I am asking you please to sit down and ask yourself if you must continue this lying and cheating...

He reached for the dial.

You said last night that what you do is none of my business...

He dialed the numeral one.

Oh please I’m asking you in God’s name, if this is what you really want from life...

He dialed the numeral seven.

So please I beg of you please...

He dialed another one, and then a two.

Answer this and tell me what it is you want...

“Hello?” Hillary said.

He said nothing.

“Hello?”

He still said nothing. The receiver was trembling in his hand.

“Is that you, David?”

He put the receiver back on the cradle.

Yes, he thought, it’s me. David.

I’m not him.

I never was him.

And suddenly he burst into tears.

He stood in the empty bedroom, facing the window with its outside glow, and listened to the sound of the sea and remembered all those stained-glass summers, floating in the circle of his father’s arms, the smooth shining sea. All so simple then. All that gold, the diamonds, the diamonds. The gentle swell of the ocean. All so smooth and soft and simple. It doesn’t stay simple, he thought. It gets complicated, he thought. The real danger is living. His father had stopped facing that danger a long, long time ago. David’s mother had been right; his entire life had been a hobby.

He looked at the ring again.

He took it off his finger. It came off as easily as it had gone on.

“Good-bye, Pop,” he said aloud, and burst into fresh tears.

He wept bitterly for a long time, and then he dried his eyes and sighed heavily and went to the telephone. He let the phone ring at least a dozen times. At last, she picked up on the other end.

“Hello?” she said. Her voice sounded mechanical, like her own answering machine.

“Molly,” he said, “please don’t hang up. We have to talk.”

“What about, David?”

“Everything, Molly.”

“Haven’t we said everything a hundred times? A thousand times?”

“No, we haven’t.”

“What’s left to...?”

“Stephen,” he said.

“No,” she said.

“We have to.”

“We don’t have to.”

“Molly, if we’re going to survive...”

“We’re surviving.”

“We’re not. Molly, listen to me. Please listen.”

“I’m listening.”

“After the accident...”

“I don’t want to hear about the accident.”

“We changed, Molly. I’m not blaming you, Molly, we both...”

“My son died!” she said fiercely.

“My son died, too,” he said quietly.

“I’m going to hang up,” she said.

“No, don’t! Please don’t, Molly!”

There was a long silence.

“I can’t talk about this,” she said. “You know I can’t.”

“Try, Molly. Please, for the love of God...”

“I still hurt too much,” she said. It was the first time she had ever uttered these words to him.

“I hurt, too,” he said.

“I miss him too much,” she said.

“I miss him with all my heart.”

“Then don’t... please let’s not talk about...” She could not say the name. “I can’t talk about it,” she said. “Please let me go, David. Let me get off the phone.”

“Not yet. Molly, please. Please listen to me. If we don’t... if we can’t even talk about it...”

“What difference will it make?” she said. “Don’t you know what we’ve become?”

“I know what we’ve become.”

“So what difference will it make?”

“We can go back to what...”

“How?” she said. “Oh God, how?” And suddenly she burst into tears.

He listened helplessly to her sobs. He gripped the telephone receiver tightly. He wanted to reach out across the miles that separated them, the years that separated them, hold her close, tell her...

“I hate him,” she said, sobbing.

Her words did not register for a moment.

“I hate the little bastard.”

He caught his breath.

“I hate what he did to us! Why did he have to die?” she said, sobbing. “He didn’t even have a license, why did he... Oh God, forgive me,” she said.

“Molly...”

“I hate him,” she said. “God forgive me, I hate him.”

She cried for a long time. Her sobs were deep and racking; he thought she would never stop crying. He thought of that day in her First Avenue apartment, when she was moving, her tears then. He thought of the way he had filled her new apartment with roses. He thought of filling her life with roses if only she would stop crying. At last the sobs subsided. He heard her blowing her nose.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and began crying again.

He waited. She seemed to want nothing more from him now than the assurance that he was still there, on the other end of the line. He did not cry with her. He had wept all his tears. She cried for both of them. She cried for his father. She cried for their son. She cried for what had been and for what might lie ahead. And at last the sobs ended, and when she said again, “I’m sorry,” her voice was steady, and he knew that it was over.

“Molly,” he said, and hesitated. There were so many things to say, so many things to ask. “Do you love me?” he said.

“What...”

Her voice caught. He thought she might begin crying again. He waited.

“What business is that of yours?” she asked.

He smiled.

“Molly,” he said, “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” she said.

He realized there was nothing more either of them could say for now. It would, after all, have to wait till morning.

“Please come home soon,” she said.

“I will,” he said.

“I want you to,” she said, and hung up.

He replaced the receiver gently on the cradle. He went to the window and looked out at the ocean for a very long while and listened to the waves rushing in against the shore.

Before closing the drapes, he opened the window a little, so that he could hear the gentle sound of the sea while he slept.