For Love of Audrey Rose

1

February 3, 1975. 11:45 P.M.

It was dark. Bill tasted salt on his lips. Suddenly he became violently nauseous. Terrible images pulled at the back of his brain, grinning monsters who violated Ivy in sparkling space. There was a feeling of black pressure, of perpetually drowning.

Bill heard a deep gurgling, like water choked in a filled drain.

“Are you awake, Mr. Templeton?” said a soft voice.

The gurgle had been his own voice, disembodied, with a torpor thick as tar.

A pretty face moved into his field of vision. Soft brown eyes and short brunette hair swept up under a white cap. She smiled.

“Can you hear me, Mr. Templeton?”

A gentle hand and sponge wiped at his mouth and chest. Bill’s head was turned to the side and the breathing came more easily.

A small light went on, a soft amber that glowed against cold green walls. The sheets were stained from Bill’s nausea. He became conscious of the rhythmic breathing of his own chest, drawing, expelling, drawing, expelling.

“Janice,” he mumbled weakly.

“Your wife waited six hours,” the nurse said. “Then she was taken to a hotel. She’ll come back in the morning.”

Bill turned his head around. Now he knew where he was. The hospital ward had four beds in it, but his was the only one occupied. The others were freshly made and the screens pulled out of the way. It was abnormally quiet. Outside there seemed to be a black screen over the windows. Then he saw her watch. It was nearly midnight.

“Janice,” Bill repeated.

“Your wife is at the Darien Central Hotel.”

Bill groaned. His lips were so parched, they had cracked. The nurse dipped her finger in a glass of water and spread it across his lips, then helped him drink. The sensation of cold water going down into his body revived him.

Suddenly his eyes darted around the room. He stared at the nurse.

“Where’s Ivy?” Bill whispered.

The nurse hesitated. “There’s been an autopsy.”

Bill’s face slowly transformed into a dolorous mask, the kind that is sold hanging on sticks for Chinese New Year, a human face distended into curved lines of grief.

“I’m sorry,” the nurse said quietly.

Bill tried to move his limbs but all that happened was that his chest rose and his back arched away from the bed. The nurse mopped his forehead with a soft cloth.

Bill stared into the soft brown eyes. He had the wild, distraught face of a madman.

“I didn’t mean to,” he hissed. “The test was supposed to — to— Oh, God—” Bill fell back and began to weep.

The nurse discreetly pressed a small plastic button by the bed. After several minutes, a physician walked into the room. His eyes were red and he needed a shave. He had a barrel chest and short, beefy arms with white hair and a thick gold wrist watch.

The physician put a comforting hand on the nurse’s shoulder. She made room for him, and he sat down next to Bill.

“Listen to me, Mr. Templeton. Your wife waited here almost seven hours before we insisted that she get some rest. She was in a state of near-collapse.”

Bill’s mumbling ceased. Then his eyes narrowed. He faced the wall as though angry or afraid of the physician.

“Where’s Hoover?” Bill asked.

“Who?”

“Hoover, God damn it!”

The physician leaned forward and gently eased Bill back to face him.

“It was all my fault. My fault—!”

There was an awkward silence. Both the physician and the nurse felt a tremendous need to find something to say, not to let the accusatory silence mount up over the patient like an imprisoning wall. Bill’s eyes darted from one to the other guiltily. But neither could think of anything, though their minds raced, and suddenly the music became audible from the corridors, a ballad about love burning in one’s heart.

“Shut that damn thing off,” growled the physician.

The nurse left.

“Look, Mr. Templeton,” the physician said, licking his lips, “the court — er, ordered the test, legally. There is a mechanism of law that works through the judge and jury and the court officers. The hospital only acted as a tool of that legal apparatus.”

Bill realized the doctor was trying to exonerate the hospital.

“It was my idea,” he moaned. “I fed it to Velie. I helped him come up with it. Oh, my God…”

The nurse came back. Now the silence was complete. She had closed the doors and the air was still, smelling faintly of clean linens and antiseptic.

“I don’t like the way he’s responding,” she whispered.

“Some clown gave him fifteen cc’s. His system’s all junked up.”

“Is there somebody he could talk to?”

“Just the psychologist. Lipscomb. I sure wouldn’t bring him in here.”

Bill heard their words, discussing him as though he were not there. The words did not reach down into his brain. Nothing reached down. Several sheets of steel separated his brain from his body, or at least it felt that way. There were no connections anymore. The body parts had retreated as though to survive on their own as best they could. Brain in one place. Feelings in another. Eyesight registering. And grief. Grief and guilt, like a whole universe, radiated through him, flowed like electricity along every nerve fiber, obliterating each and every memory, each and every hope.

“I… meant…to save…to save…her….”

“You did everything you could, Mr. Templeton,” the physician said, squeezing Bill’s shoulder.

The physician conferred with the nurse, and then was gone. After a few minutes, the nurse left for other patients. Bill staggered to the closet, found his clothes, and dressed. Wobbly, he peered out into the corridor. When the desk nurse answered an emergency light, he walked, reeling, down the receding floor to the elevator, then heard steps, turned, and ran stumbling down the stairway.

Tears flowing from his eyes, he ran across the icy parking lot, clutching his thin coat around his chest. Overhead a dim break showed pale gray between the night clouds.

Suddenly he came upon the Darien Central Hotel. He recoiled. Had he escaped from the hospital to be with Janice? Or had he escaped to avoid seeing her later? Bill ducked into an alley. His shoes filled with icy slush, his socks were soaked, and he wandered among the garbage cans and parked buses of the Greyhound Bus depot.

Inside, people milled about the terminal, staring at him. Surely they knew that he had killed his own daughter. He was a figure of ridicule, pathetic and morbid, a creature of the hospital, morally deformed, who had concocted a wild scheme.

In the distance, the tall, dark silhouette of the hospital loomed. A few lurid yellow lights gleamed in long rows at the top floor. Bill wondered if that was where they stored the bodies.

His reflection in the dirty window looked abnormal. He looked like a murderer.

Behind his reflection, he saw a small, humpbacked clerk turn on a light. On the wall were arrival and departure schedules. Bill whirled around, saw two elderly women staring at him, and then he went quickly inside.

The two elderly women still looked at him through the window. They were certainly discussing him.

“May I help you?” said the clerk.

Startled, Bill turned. The clerk was a round-faced woman, her eyes squinty, with freckles over a tiny nose.

“You want to buy a ticket?”

“Yes — a ticket.”

“Where to?”

“What’s the next bus?”

“Southbound,” the clerk said. “Interstate to Baltimore.”

“When?”

“Should leave in an hour and thirty-five minutes. Depending on the roads.”

“I’ll take it.”

“One way?”

“Yes.”

“Twenty-five fifty, please.”

“Will you take a check?”

“Sorry. Not allowed to.”

“Credit card?”

“What kind?”

Bill showed her. The clerk frowned but retrieved a banged-up roller from under the shelf and filled out the credit card slips. Bill signed.

“No baggage?”

Bill shook his head. “I’ll wait outside by the buses.”

“It’s your frostbite.”

Outside, several giant buses stood in the blue shadows under a corrugated roof. Beyond the alleys and telephone poles, the west wing of the hospital rose high, cream colored, its windows reflecting the pale blankness of the snow.

Bill watched several cars pull up to the hospital parking lot by the wide revolving doors. A van without a rear window drove around to the back. A choking gasp coughed out of his lungs.

A bus driver looked up from a clipboard at Bill. “You okay, mister?”

“Which is the bus to Baltimore?”

“You’re leaning against it.”

“Mind if I get in?”

“No, go ahead. But we don’t leave till three.”

Bill stepped up into the cold bus, walked to the rear seat, and huddled for warmth. He saw the humpbacked clerk making conversation with the driver. Another light went on inside the station. Bill shivered and could not stop shivering. All he knew was that he had to get away from Darien.

At 2:59 the driver stepped in, turned on the engine, and then the passengers, dressed in heavy overcoats, got in. The baggage compartment slammed shut like a coffin lid and the bus drove away. Darien slid by on both sides, wet roads and dirty stores, cars smeared with heavy, muddy slush underneath, a general air of downtown poverty. The only modern edifice was the hospital.

Bill started to cry. When he stopped, they were rolling onto the broad Interstate, past flat white fields, in a thick, gentle snowstorm.

Six seats in front, a mother bounced a small blond girl on her knee, drew pictures on the frosted windows, and sang softly.

“This is the way to Grandmother’s house, Grandmother’s house,” the mother sang. “This is the way to Grandmother’s house, so early in the morning.”

It was a melody Bill had sung to Ivy. Ivy had loved the snow. Her blond hair and fair complexion had been a throwback to Scandinavian ancestors Bill had never known. She had learned to ice skate almost before she could walk. She was happiest when the fat white snowflakes came down like a blanket, obscuring everything but the trees.

“This is the way to Grandfather’s house, Grandfather’s house. This is the way to Grandfather’s house, so early in the evening.”

Bill covered his ears with his hands.

“Please stop!” he whispered hoarsely.

Then it was silent. The road hummed gruffly under the wheels. Bill realized that the passengers were staring at him.

“Why did that man say stop?” said a little girl’s voice.

“Shhhhhh,” her mother cautioned.

The bus detoured into a small town, with the familiar series of dismal streets, an occasional pedestrian wrapped in a winter coat. But here the streets were slick with ice, and icicles hung down from garages and telephone wires.

Bill stared at his hands. They were shaking like leaves in a storm. There was no feeling in them.

I am a murderer, he thought.

Deep down, he knew why he had supported the idea of the test. It had nothing to do with Ivy’s well-being. He wanted to crush Hoover. Torn to pieces by the strain of the trial, Bill had wanted to make sure that Hoover was destroyed. That was the real purpose of the test.

Bill’s hands rubbed, gouged at his eyes as though to eradicate the images of Ivy, beating at the mirrored glass. He moaned. This time the bus driver turned around.

“You feel okay, back there?”

Bill did not answer.

“We don’t allow drinking on here.”

Two hours passed. Bill dozed. Awoke. Dozed again. He had a dream. In the dream he was sitting on the witness stand, explaining to Janice why he had left the hospital. Suddenly, Gupta Pradesh rose, dressed in a fiery red swirling cloth, and held in his arms the body of dead Ivy. Gupta Pradesh reached down, touched her leg, and then contemptuously threw gray ash into Bill’s face.

“Ahhh—” Bill jerked awake.

As soon as he opened his eyes, the dream vanished. All that was left was a sensation of having wanted to explain things to Janice. His mind violently obliterated the dream.

Outside, the snow was streaked and dotted with patches of dark gray ice. Bare trees hugged the hills and hollows. Farms spread out, cold and isolated. Then there were electric transformers, auto garages, and a series of brick warehouses. The density of cars and people increased. After two stops, Bill recognized the Hudson River, troubled and turbulent, deep gray and rolling swiftly under the brown and white hills.

“We’ll be in New York in about fifteen minutes,” the bus driver called through a static-ridden microphone. “Stopover for breakfast, thirty-five minutes.”

Bill watched the tall buildings, the forbidding gray canyons, slush, taxi cabs, early morning pedestrians, the violent rhythm of the great city awakening around him. He became frightened, vulnerable.

At the bus terminal, twenty more passengers tried to get on but were told to wait for thirty-five minutes. The driver checked the passengers coming off, making sure they still had their tickets. Bill followed them out, stepped on an escalator, found a grill in the main hall, ate quickly without tasting, then wandered out through the main doors.

A smell of vomit reached him, mingled with roasted chestnuts and salt pretzels heated on a grill. Hundreds of people strolled in through the wide doors. New York always had a stony, murderous quality, and this time it had almost a physical taste.

Bill was lost. After walking several blocks, oblivious of the taxis which missed him by inches, the drivers hurling epithets, he found himself in Hell’s Kitchen. Even in the cold, there were crates of fruit slanted by the doors to attract buyers. Cold eyes watched him go by, suspicious eyes sizing him up.

Motion was the only cure for what Bill felt. He walked a mile uptown, a second mile backtracking, and lost any sense of direction. It was approaching the noon hour. Suddenly, he had an abnormal, almost infinite desire for alcohol.

Inside a pink, smoky bar full of laborers and Hispanics, Bill peeled off the last of his five-dollar bills. All that was left were four singles. Dark eyes scrutinized him, the expensive suit gone dirty with mud and slush, the handsome face now drawn in to resemble some kind of fleshy death’shead. Bill plastered down his hair with a shaking hand.

“Double whiskey,” he said.

Bill sat at the wet, stained bar. The bartender brought him a bottle of whiskey and a glass. Bill watched the liquid pour into the glass. He lifted the glass to his lips. I wish to die, was his thought as the burning liquid traveled quickly down to his stomach, etching its way into his body, promising deliverance.

He ordered a second drink.

His hands stopped trembling. Dream images of snow-driven landscapes occurred to him. In his reverie, he looked out of a dirty bus window and saw distant farms wheeling past in great perspectival arcs. Then he also saw, on the horizon, the clearly visible, long, dark-roofed shape of the hospital in Darien. He drank.

Then he saw Ivy behind the window glass, beating her fists at the mirror, frightened.

Bill lowered his head onto his arms and wept.

No one paid him any attention.

After half an hour, he walked out into the cold, bitter wind howling up from the Battery. His legs were numb, though whether it was from the whiskey or the cold, he no longer knew. New York roared around him in an angry maelstrom of murderous voices, dark accusations.

In horror, he saw Des Artistes loom in front of him.

By some innate homing instinct, he had walked back through Central Park, past the lakes, and had drifted over to Sixty-seventh Street.

Before he could retreat, Mario, the doorman, spotted him.

“Mr. Templeton…Wait…”

Bill ran back through the park, sweating, then cut south and east and finally ended up at the derelict warehouses among the concrete piers of the East River. Somehow the day had passed and it was night again. Several bums sat in the shadows of a bridge, cooking beans, and he wandered into their circle to keep out of the cold wind.

In that darkness, the smell of beans and grease filled the space that also glistened with tar leaking down from the bridge. Trucks rumbled overhead, gears switching, carrying tonnage out to the west or bringing foodstuffs into the city markets.

“Warmer by the fire than it is over there,” said a thin, coughing man with a greasy gray coat and an ascot stained with tar.

Bill approached the low fire, rubbing his hands. He declined sweet amber wine. They left him alone. As he looked into the fire, he felt a deathly chill spread out within his body, a chill that no fire could reach.

Outside the night, the lights of midtown gleamed; the Empire State Building rose high into the light clouds like a mirage of happier times.

One by one, the men drifted away. Bill watched them shuffle into the darkness on the roads. They were a kind of subterranean living species he had never talked with before. Now they were gone and he had no company but his thoughts.

Ivy bolted from the blue couch. She threw herself violently to the floor. Then she was running, running and screaming, down the length of the glass.

“Huh?” Bill said, startled.

A noise died in the darkness of distant stone, then there was a stealthy rustle.

“Who’s there?”

Bill quickly shoveled a burning ember onto a piece of cardboard and threw it into the darkness. There was a scamper. Then it was quiet as before. Rats, Bill thought. City rats. He listened. No sound.

“… daddydaddydaddydaddydaddydaddy—”

Suddenly Bill’s heart pounded. He covered his ears with his hands. I’m going mad, he thought. I’ve got to think. To reason.

But the fatigue made it difficult to think. Only images came, and the images were distorted. Snowy landscapes. The Greyhound station in Darien. The cold, long hospital. And Hoover, standing, shouting through the glass. Bill rubbed his eyes until red sparks danced.

Something became horribly clear: when it counted most, Hoover had had the presence of mind to smash the glass. Bill remembered only paralysis.

“Ivy,” he wept over and over.

Shivering, he dozed off, jerked awake, and went to the bridge support to urinate. While there, he saw the long lights of investigating policemen. Two men in uniform finally appeared at the rusted can, kicked the embers apart, dousing the coals, and left. Bill waited, then walked out onto the street.

Pools of water rippled under the brisk wind, throwing freezing spray over the broken pavements.

Far away, a truck pulled up at a deserted newsstand and a man tossed down a heavy bundle of papers.

When the truck roared away into the predawn darkness, Bill walked up and pulled out the top copy. It was a morning tabloid, and under a two-inch headline was Hoover’s picture.

REINCARNATION MAN PROVES CASE, the headline read. In smaller type, it read: SHOCKING DEATH OF DAUGHTER IN HOSPITAL CONVINCES JURY. Bill ripped open the newspaper to the continuation on page thirteen. The jury had not even been sent into deliberation, he read. Hoover was free. Bill started to crumple the newspaper in his fists when a final paragraph caught his attention.

A memorial service would be held at ten o’clock for Audrey Rose at Hompa Hongwanji Buddhist Temple, 14 Christopher Place, New York.

Bill’s eyes bulged in rage. For Audrey Rose?

Angrily, he tossed the newspaper into the gutter and stormed on into the heart of the still-dark city.

Number 14 Christopher Place was a small brick building that had served as an alternative school, a radical arts center, a vegetarian health information society, and now had been converted into an esoteric Buddhist place of worship. Bill peeked into the windows. One adolescent, wearing an orange robe, swept the worn wooden floor. Another in a blue shirt and white skirt set flowers at the front, where an altar of sorts had been constructed from doors and benches. On the wall were photographs of Gupta Pradesh.

Bill recoiled. He walked across the street and pretended to browse at leather crafts displayed on iron hooks in a boutique window. Time after time, as though drawn magnetically, he turned to stare at the self-styled temple.

Something was being sprinkled on the floor. Maybe holy water, Bill thought. Maybe sweeping compound. Rage filled his body, and he knew he was capable of murder.

An hour later, several more adolescents in orange robes walked up to the door, bowed, and entered. Through the window Bill saw incense lighted. At 9:45, Judge Langley walked to the door, checked the address, and hesitantly entered. Bill dashed for cover into a small supermarket. Over the avocadoes he saw Scott Velie drive up in a black Mercedes. Next came Hoover’s lawyer and Dr. Lipscomb. Then a taxi drove up, and Russ and Carole Federico, wan and red-eyed, stepped out. Uncertainly, they waited, then saw Scott Velie motioning them in from the window, and they went, arm in arm, into the temple. Janice would be next.

Bill ran up the alley, circled several blocks and found himself cutting back toward Washington Square. He changed direction, walked on and on, for two hours, and did not stop until he sat on a bench in Central Park.

By now Bill knew that he could run no more. His brain was whirling. His nervous system was on fire. He felt like an animal with one paw in the steel trap. By instinct, he got up, walked on through the park, past lanky teenagers throwing Frisbees, past couples necking on the cold grass, and crossed to Des Artistes, the one place he knew Janice would not be.

Mario stared at him, his eyes filled with sadness.

“My keys — I lost my keys, Mario—”

“Sure, Mr. Templeton. I’ll have Ernie take you up.”

Mario led him to Ernie, who opened the Templetons’ apartment with a passkey. Ernie brushed against Bill as the apartment door opened, and he felt the icy cold of the man’s hands.

“You going to be all right?” Ernie asked softly. “You want I should call a doctor?”

Bill croaked out a negative reply. Ernie stood, watched Bill collapse on a chair by the window, head slumped down, shivering. The radiator hissed, which meant he would be warm there, Ernie thought, and closed the door.

In the apartment, Bill sat alone, dimly conscious of the cold leaving his bones, but otherwise conscious only of sinking, waiting, and trying not to think.

“… daddydaddydaddydaddydaddy—”

“Ahhhhhh!”

Bill slammed his fist against the wall.

When it was late in the day, almost twilight, he heard the elevator door open in the distance. Janice’s footsteps came slowly over the carpeted hallway. Bill wanted to turn, to face her, to defend himself in a physical way, but his body no longer responded. He sat, slumped, his arms heavy as cast iron, and only the hair at the back of his neck stirred, prickling, when he heard the door slowly unlock.

2

Janice closed the door softly. Though Mario had told her that Bill was in the apartment, she was still surprised to see him, a silhouette against the stained-glass windows. It had been so long since she had seen him. Even his silhouette looked different. It belonged to a weary, broken man.

Janice took off her coat, then her hat.

Bill’s shadow, a bulk of darkness, followed her as she moved in the room.

“Is it over?” he whispered hoarsely.

“Yes.”

Overhead, the paintings on the ceiling were now lost in gloom, the dancers and dressed monkeys stilled, erased in twilight’s shade ahead.

“She will be…cremated.”

Bill bent over, crumpled, as though to avoid her. Janice now saw the shirt, once so white and freshly pressed, filthy, wrinkled, with streaks at the sides and shoulders.

“I didn’t mean to, Janice…it was an accident….”

Bill rose, raised his fist as though to strike it against the wall, but instead his hand opened up and he simply leaned, exhausted, against the wallpaper, head down, in the growing darkness.

“I didn’t mean to,” he repeated. “It was… an accident….”

Janice stepped farther into the room. Alone, she had had to bear the responsibility of dealing with the hospital, the court, and the representatives of the Mount Canaan Mausoleum in Valhalla, New York. She alone had signed the official papers. She alone had been at the autopsy. If it had not been for the support of the young Buddhists, and Scott Velie, and the Federicos, she would have collapsed.

With pained scrutiny, she examined the husband who was a stranger to her. His hair was wet, disheveled. The trousers had stains of slush and tar and were torn at the knees. The broad, athletic shoulders twitched from nervousness and lack of sleep.

“Janice!” he sobbed. “Is it possible?”

Janice wanted to go to him, to comfort him, but the words of comfort that she knew would have sent him into a frenzy. Their minds had become incompatible. Their beings had separated. Janice looked away from Bill, as though to avoid the sight of a destroyed relationship.

“I asked you a question,” he said coldly. Bill had turned. His eyes had an odd, burning quality, a shining feverish quality that frightened her. “Tell me, Janice,” he said.

“You saw with your own eyes,” she said simply.

“He bewitched her. Didn’t he? He bewitched all of us.”

“No, he did not bewitch her.”

Bill sighed wearily.

“I went to the temple, Janice… but I couldn’t go in. I wanted to, but I couldn’t….” His voice trailed away into a sibilant, meaningless whisper.

Janice wiped her eyes at the kitchen door.She found the light switch. The glow filled the dining area. Light sparkled from the china in the cabinet, off the Mexican vases. Bill stood immobile, in the center of the room.

“Please, Janice, forgive me,” he pleaded.

“Nobody’s blamed you, Bill.”

“Janice, I’m begging you.”

“In time. You’ll forgive me in time, too. But we need time.”

Janice turned, more to escape the sight of Bill’s manic, sleep-deprived stare. When she turned on the kitchen light, the sudden glare shocked her. The physical reality of stainless-steel sinks, water faucets, calendar on the wall, and plates and cups, restored a sense of gravity.

Janice found remnants of an old roast and cold potato salad. They ate in silence. She saw Bill’s hands tremble; the tears fell down from his face as she shoveled the food into his mouth.

He took a deep breath, washed his face at the faucet. The harsh light bounced off the yellow kitchen walls as though to bleach them both of each and every facade, to reveal each of them utterly naked to the other, all softness and illusion destroyed in a terrible finality.

Bill could not turn to face Janice. He tried, but a kind of magnetic pull prevented it. He wiped his face on a kitchen towel. When he finally spoke, the silence broke under the cruel, cold voice.

“It was because I approved the test,” Bill croaked. “It was all my fault.”

Time passed like a dark tide, scraping them, tossing them about in inchoate currents of bitter regrets and self-accusations. Janice remembered key words from the temple service, from Hoover’s crudely articulated philosophies, and they brought a kind of balm. A diffused substitute for serenity that outdid Dr. Kaplan’s Valium at any rate. Bill had nothing. He lay on the couch, eyes wide at the ceiling. From time to time, his arm jerked from nervous exhaustion.

Janice brought some scotch and water to him, but he ignored it.

In the morning, Janice dressed in a soft beige suit and a dark hat. Bill huddled in his dirty clothes on the couch.

“I can’t go,” he whispered hoarsely, breaking a night-long silence.

“No one will be there,” Janice said. “Only us. The Federicos.”

“I can’t — I can’t go—”

“Do you think it’s wise to stay home alone?”

“I won’t go and have them accuse me!”

Janice knew it was useless to argue. The cremation took place without him.

Flames roared from gas jets arranged in a semicircle around the entire wooden casket. It was so hot that the interior walls, cast iron, flaked off in large patches. Ivy, who had fled in panic from the fire, was consumed in an obliterating flame.

Only a few ounces of pebbly ash were left of the human body.

Steel instruments gathered the ashes into a brass urn. The urn was placed in a small varnished mahogany chest. A thin man with sober eyes lifted the chest into a compartment in a marble wall.

On the marble wall was a brass plate: IVY TEMPLETON— 1964–1975 No. 5693452. There was nothing else left.

Janice stood in the marbled hall. Ivy, she silently prayed, forgive us. Forgive and understand us. She prayed for the liberty of her child’s soul. Then she added a Catholic prayer that she remembered from her own youth. When she was through, a great silence filled the chamber.

She walked away on the arm of Russ Federico. Outside, the sun glinted on patches of snow on the small lawn. Running water glistened in the roads. It was Ivy’s kind of spring — a quick transition, full of clean snow, warmth, and icicles melting with musical drops into the muddy ground below. The crisp air breathed hope.

At the door of Des Artistes, Carole and Russ took their leave.

“Sure we can’t come up and sit with you?” Carole asked.

“Thank you, but Bill wants to be alone.”

Russ shook his head. “My father always said that grief is something you can’t work out on your own.”

“I know, Russ,” Janice answered, “but I think it’s better if we wait until tomorrow.”

“As you think best.”

Stepping alone onto the ninth floor was an eerie sensation. It seemed denuded, all the life sucked out of it by death. Janice plucked up her courage and stepped into the apartment. Bill had not moved from where she had left him that morning.

He moaned softly as she closed the door.

She tried to get him to eat but he refused. She brought fresh clothes from the bedroom and he slowly dressed. Throughout the day, she answered the telephone, calls from family and relatives, the parents of Ivy’s friends. A small delegation of Ernie, Dominick, Mario, and several members of the restaurant staff came to pay their respects.

Later that night, a massive bouquet of flowers arrived from the Hompa Hongwanji Buddhist Temple, with poems that expressed how the flower reincarnated the soul of the plant.

Bill began to bite his knuckles until they grew raw and bleeding. Janice slipped a crumbled Valium into his dinner but it had no effect. He paced through the apartment, restless as a caged panther, saying nothing.

Suddenly the wind blew and the pressure slammed the door of Ivy’s room.

Bill stopped, frightened, and stared up at the landing, at Ivy’s door. He put his hands over his ears as though to block out inaudible screams, the scurry of twisting, pattering feet.

At 10:30, two reporters came with questions, but Janice excused herself and closed the door. She instructed Dominick not to send up any reporters. Dominick apologized, saying they had passed themselves off as members of the family.

By 11:30, Bill fell asleep on the couch. Exhaustion showed plainly on his face. Janice worried about him. Even in his sleep his face twitched, grimaced. Janice took two Valium and slept alone. Beyond the wall was Ivy’s room, and a dark silence, as though waiting.

Five days after the cremation, Janice went to Ivy’s room and cleared away most of the clothes. These and the toys she sent to a relief agency in India. Many of the small mementos she kept: the aquarium with its fantailed Mexican shells, the picture albums, the panda bear, pages of her artwork, and the crude vase she had fashioned in a summer’s course of pottery in Central Park, things that were still alive with her creative spirit. The rest she hoped would find their use among children who also had but a brief time on the earth for happiness before the responsibilities of adulthood or poverty or death claimed them.

With the removal of each box of Ivy’s possessions, Bill sank deeper into guilt-ridden gloom, until he could no longer speak, but hung about the living room like a scarecrow, devoid of soul.

One afternoon, the young Buddhists appeared at Des Artistes but Janice asked them not to come up. Instead, she went down and they talked in the lobby. They told her that Hoover, after being acquitted, had stopped by to offer his prayers. They had a letter for her.

Janice opened a small yellow note and read the even, small handwriting that filled the page to the margins.

Dear Janice — My thoughts are with you and Bill now as they have been ever since the trial began. I pray that understanding has come, and with it the serenity to accept and bless what the divine universe has created. For destruction is but the beginning of further creation, as the falling seed is but the preparation for the growth of the milk pod. Please accept my prayers for you and for Ivy. I think I speak for Ivy in saying that the great struggle is at last over, and that her soul is now free to continue on its long, never-ending journey to perfection. Janice, may you find favor in life, and wisdom in your search for happiness, for love has spread its canopy over you and will bless you with profound peace, if you but let it.

I shall be returning to India, where I have friends, and where I can pray, and work, and find the solitude necessary to my meditations. But know that even in India I shall continue to pray for you and Ivy, and that my thoughts are ever with you. Yours in eternal prayer, Elliot Hoover.

Janice wiped away a tear, went back to the apartment and drafted a letter to the mausoleum. Ivy’s ashes would be sent to India, scattered there, and serenity would fill the emptiness the way that sunlight fills a rose garden, lending color to everything, filling the warm air with subtle perfume.

Several requests from magazines and newspapers came in the mail for articles and information. Janice threw them all away.

The steady flow of people into the apartment gradually diminished. Pel Simmons, the founder of the advertising agency in which Bill worked, made a discreet call. When he saw Bill seated, hollow-eyed, on the couch, he asked Janice if Bill needed medical attention.

“He needs a few more weeks, Mr. Simmons.”

“Of course, Janice. It’s not that. It’s just that he looks like death over there.”

“I’ll speak to Dr. Kaplan.”

Dr. Kaplan prescribed an antidepressant stronger than Valium. Janice slipped it into his lunch. She also hid the alcohol, even though Bill was not drinking. Just in case, because it would mix into a lethal combination with the drugs.

With the antidepressants, Bill became numbed, his limbs relaxed, and he grew rubbery, dazed, and incoherent. But he could not override the paralysis of grief and guilt.

“If I hadn’t left for Hawaii,” he mumbled. “That was the moment. When he came up here. Why did I go to Hawaii? I don’t remember anymore….”

By the second week, Bill had still not shaven. Janice changed his clothes, shaved him as best she could, combed his hair. But when Don Goetz, Bill’s assistant, called from Simmons Advertising, she had to plead for another few days. No hurry, Goetz replied. They were just expressing their support.

In the third week, Jack Belaver, senior partner to Simmons Advertising, came to visit. Shocked at the sight of Bill, he maintained his composure.

“Look, Bill,” he said softly, “I know what it’s like. When I lost Marianne, I thought the world had ended. Well, nobody’s blaming you. Nothing can ever change what’s happened, but—”

“Who’s blaming me?” Bill shot at him.

“Nobody. Bill, listen to me. You’ve got to march ahead. The grief will pass away, but it needs something to supplant it. It needs life, work, joy. You can’t cut yourself off from society.”

“You said somebody was blaming me.”

“I mean for staying inside, Bill. Look, it’s natural to want to be alone. Anyone would. But it’s time to come out of the cocoon. We’ll help you, Bill. We’re all pulling for you. Don Goetz has arranged the files and even set up two meetings for Monday. I’ll be there if it gets difficult. You’ve got to reenter, Bill.”

But Bill had retracted behind his wall of silent brooding.

Belaver sighed. “All right, Bill. Have it your way.”

At the door, he suggested to Janice that Bill see a psychiatrist.

“I’ve tried, Jack, but he won’t listen to me anymore. I can’t break through the barrier.”

Belaver nodded sympathetically.

“Simmons can wait a few more weeks,” he said. “Six weeks, eight. But sooner or later — we’re all very fond of Bill, but— It’s so damn competitive out there.”

“I understand, Jack.”

“That’s unofficial, Janice.”

“Yes. Thank you. I’ll try to get him to a psychiatrist.”

“Oh, by the way, is money a problem?”

“Not yet,” Janice said cautiously.

“Well, not to worry. Between Bill’s stock options and pension fund there’ll be plenty for a good long time.”

Dr. Manny Gleicher had read about the Templeton case. It had sparked his interest and now he was surprised to find the affair walking into his office. Mrs. Templeton was much younger and better educated than he had guessed from the newspapers.

It was a small, cluttered office, and Dr. Gleicher was a thin, nervous man in his early fifties, balding, with rapid, awkward gestures. He studied her quickly as she sat down.

“How long has it been, Mrs. Templeton?” he asked.

“Two months.”

“And in all that time, he has not left the apartment?”

“No.”

“Does he have friends over, speak on the telephone?”

“No.”

“Does he talk to you?”

“Rarely. Not at all in the last four days.”

“What kind of things did he say?”

“It’s always about Ivy. He blames himself for arranging the test. Nothing can shake it from him.”

Dr. Gleicher stroked his mustache and looked at Janice. She waited for his response, at his mercy.

“It would be natural for Bill to feel responsible,” Dr. Gleicher said. “But after a point, he should realize that the court was also responsible. The court and the hospital.”

There was a silence. Dr. Gleicher understood from Janice’s expression that logic and argument had ceased to penetrate Bill’s grief. He took out a small cigar, asked if Janice minded, then lit it, exhaling luxuriously over his head.

“I read,” he said slowly, “that there was a kind of meditation service. Did Bill go?”

“No.”

“Did he attend the cremation?”

“No.”

Dr. Gleicher’s eyes narrowed.

“Do you mind if I ask you about your relationship with this other man, this Mr. Hoover?”

“There was no relationship.”

“Yes, but according to the papers, you testified—”

“Dr. Gleicher, I felt, and still feel, that he was the only one who could have saved her. That was why I testified.”

“Your acceptance of Mr. Hoover’s, er, ideas, must have seemed a bitter betrayal to your husband.”

Janice looked down at her hands, folded in her lap.

“I’m sure he thought of it in that way,” she said softly. “I only meant to save Ivy. There was nothing between Mr. Hoover and myself.”

“Did Bill think there was?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think he would have put it so— so directly. He just felt that I had deserted him by testifying. By not trusting in him.”

“Perfectly natural.”

Dr. Gleicher paused, thought for a moment, then relit his cigar. All the while, his eyes scanned Janice’s face and body for hidden gestures, nonverbal clues to her emotions behind the words.

“Do you think Bill is still angry at you?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think he’s withdrawing as a way to punish you? To force you to attend to him?”

“No. I think he blames himself for Ivy’s death. I don’t think he knows I even exist anymore.”

Dr. Gleicher nodded sympathetically and then, satisfied with Janice’s answers, stubbed out his cigar and sat on a leather chair next to Janice.

“I don’t suppose you could convince your husband to come and see me?”

“No, Doctor.”

Dr. Gleicher sighed and simply smiled, a professional but warm smile.

“All right, I’ll go to him then.”

Dr. Gleicher stepped out of the elevator. Ernie watched him walk softly down the corridor and ring the Templetons’ bell.

Janice opened the door, smiled wanly, and Dr. Gleicher entered the apartment.

“Good evening, Mrs. Templeton. Hello, Bill.”

Bill looked up from where he sat opposite the couch. The way his collar was askew suggested that he had not dressed himself. The dark, hopeless eyes followed Dr. Gleicher into the room, and Bill looked frightened and withdrew into the chair.

Dr. Gleicher sat on the couch, affecting geniality, but in reality studying Bill’s every move.

“What a lovely apartment,” Dr. Gleicher said. “This place is rather famous, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Janice agreed. “Some well-known artists had lived here. They built it around huge studios and when the artists left, most of the suites were converted to duplex apartments.”

“Those ceilings. Italian, aren’t they?”

“Ersatz Fragonard.”

On the coffee table was a pewter pitcher of lemonade. Janice offered a little rum to mix with it, but Dr. Gleicher shook his head. He sipped for a while, relishing the cool air in the room, then sucked on the slice of lime perched on the edge of his glass.

“Bill,” he said gently, “do you know who I am?”

Bill said nothing, but his eyes showed that he appraised the stranger with apprehension.

“My name is Manny Gleicher. I am a practicing psychiatrist at the John C. Schreyer Clinic. Perhaps you’ve heard of it? On Thirty-fourth Street.”

Bill shook his head, an almost imperceptible gesture. A kind of deep weariness showed on his face, as though there were something intolerably oppressive about Dr. Gleicher, Janice, and every other intrusion into his solitude.

“Your wife has discussed with me your last two months here. Has she told you that?”

Bill’s eyes narrowed in suspicious hostility. He darted a glance at Janice.

“I explained everything,” Janice said softly.

“Well, in any case, I should like to speak privately with Bill.”

“Yes. Of course.”

Janice removed herself upstairs to the bedroom, closing the door. She tried to listen but could hear nothing. She opened the door a crack and saw Gleicher lean forward and touch Bill on the knee to get his attention. Bill started, as though awakened from a light sleep.

“Bill,” Dr. Gleicher asked. “Can you tell me who I am?”

Bill’s arm twitched, but he did not speak.

“I just told you my name and profession. Do you remember?”

“Haul ass.”

“Excuse me?”

“Get out.”

“Now, Bill, one does not play games—”

Suddenly, Bill lurched forward, grabbed the pewter pitcher, and threw the contents into Dr. Gleicher’s face. The pitcher bounced off the surprised man’s chin with a loud and painful crack.

“I said, get out!”

“Please listen to me, Bill. I am a doctor of psychiatry.”

Bill rose unsteadily to his feet. The effort of heaving the heavy pitcher — or rage — seemed to have exhausted him. His arms trembled, but his eyes narrowed in hatred.

“You can’t come here,” Bill stammered.

Dr. Gleicher instinctively rose to face Bill. He loosened his collar and gently daubed at the sticky lemonade running down his shirt.

“I can. Your wife invited me.”

Bill turned slowly to face the upstairs bedroom door. A cruel, ironic smile twisted his lips.

“It’s not the first time, Hoover!” he roared.

“Bill,” persisted Dr. Gleicher, “it is very important that we talk—”

“Wasn’t once enough?”

Janice, shaking, came from the bedroom and stood gazing down over the top of the banister.

“Bill,” she whispered, “I beg you. Listen to Dr. Gleicher.”

Bill tried to laugh crudely, but it came out a choked, hoarse crying sound. He stared upward at Janice as though trying to see through a pouring rain. He angrily wiped the sweat from his face.

“Get out!” he yelled, turning to Dr. Gleicher.

Dr. Gleicher stepped backward, feeling his way from the couch into the main part of the living room.

“No, Bill. I am going to talk to you.”

“Both of you! Get out!”

“Calm down, Bill!” Janice begged. “For God’s sake!”

Bill stared at Dr. Gleicher, who positioned himself at the end table like a French statuette, chest out and legs firm. Bill reached down and took up a heavy stone mask from Africa in the shape of a double monkey, with sharp ears coming to a point. Dr. Gleicher paled but did not retreat.

“I’m warning you,” Bill hissed.

“There’s no need for gestures, Bill.”

Bill advanced a step, saw no reaction, then raised the stone mask higher over his shoulder. Tears rolled from his eyes and he furiously brushed them away.

Janice came halfway down the stairs. She hardly recognized him now. Even the shape of his face had altered. His eyes rolled and the pupils were abnormally tiny.

Bill took another step, knocking over a lamp. Suddenly harsh shadows crossed over Dr. Gleicher. Janice gasped and came down into the living room.

“She was fine until you came here,” Bill whispered.

“Who was fine?” Dr. Gleicher shot in.

“Ivy, you bastard!”

“Who do you think I am, Bill?”

“I should have killed you,” Bill said softly. “That first night I saw you!”

“Put down that mask, Bill.”

Bill’s eyes suddenly bulged. The veins in his neck strained, and he threw himself forward with all his might. Dr. Gleicher gasped, fell, and ran toward the door. He opened it and threw himself into the corridor. Behind him, the stone mask smashed into the doorjamb, showering painted splinters in an arc over him.

“YOU BASTARD! YOU KILLED HER!”

Janice, in that instant, saw all the shadows reverse. Bill had caught his foot on a second lamp and had sent it crashing ahead of him. She fled, slamming the door behind her.

“YOU AND YOUR CASTRATED GOONS! YOU KILLED HER!”

Janice locked the door from the outside. There were violent sounds inside as Bill went into a frenzy, smashing ceramics, hurling ashtrays through the stained-glass windows, and heaving the desk off its legs, into the front door.

“IVY!!!”

Bill’s cry came in a long, drawn-out bellow. It was a cry of deep and obliterating pain, loneliness, and confusion. It became silent. Dr. Gleicher and Janice stepped nervously to the door and put their ears against the wood.

Inside, Janice heard a hoarse, labored breathing. It sounded drugged, coarse, unnatural. At the top of each breath, there was a tiny extra intake, as though Bill gasped for breath.

“Open the door,” Dr. Gleicher whispered to Janice.

Janice stared at him, took courage from his pointed gesture at the lock, and turned the key. Dr. Gleicher eased his way inside. It was nearly dark. Only the light from the landing fell onto the living room, a broad spotlight on the shambles below.

Glass and ceramic shards covered the floor and the fabrics. A wooden leg from the desk had lodged its way into the china cabinet. Warm, sultry night air came in through jagged holes in the long windows.

Against the couch, his right leg twisted up under him as he lay partially on the floor, his head on the couch itself, Bill knelt as though in a mockery of prayer. Dr. Gleicher gently eased his leg straight and moved Bill onto his back so he could breathe more easily. His forehead, furrowed in doubt and rage, glistened from sweat.

“He’s going to be very depressed when he wakes up,” Dr. Gleicher whispered. “The violence will turn inward.”

“You mean—”

“That’s what suicide is. Rage that turns inward.”

Janice knelt down at Bill’s side. She touched his forehead with a wet napkin. At her touch, his forehead trembled, and he moaned, as though fire roared through his nerves.

“Mrs. Templeton, you know that your husband needs intensive help.”

“Yes.”

“He needs to be removed from this apartment. From you.” She turned, startled. “He needs to go away, where he can recover at a guided pace.”

“I–I won’t allow it.”

“You have no choice, Mrs. Templeton. You’re not professionally trained.”

“No—”

“Mrs. Templeton,” Dr. Gleicher repeated, patiently, crouching down with her over Bill’s tormented face, “there’s a good clinic at Ossining. It’s up the Hudson, a bit east. A very good clinic.”

“No. I won’t do it. I can’t.”

“What’s best for Bill, Mrs. Templeton? To be left here where Ivy grew up? To be accused night and day by everything he sees, by everything he hears, by a thousand memories of her? You must see that you have no choice at all.”

Bill’s head turned away, against the pillows on the couch. He seemed to be trying to talk in his sleep. Janice leaned her ear close to his lips. She heard his thick, husky voice, sounding now like a death rattle.

“…Ivy… the glass…Ivy… the glass…”

In the morning, Dr. Gleicher telephoned the Eilenberg Clinic in Ossining and prepared Bill’s admission. Janice packed a small valise. At noon the clinic’s limousine arrived at Des Artistes. Heavily sedated, Bill rode beside Janice. His eyes blinked as though unused to the sunlight. Janice held his hand.

The clinic was a long, low building shaded by oak trees. Bill was taken to his room and then Dr. Geddes, the chief psychiatrist, introduced himself. He was slender, not much older than Janice, and combed his sandy brown hair sideways to cover a balding area.

Dr. Geddes explained the clinic. No drugs were used. No hypnosis. There were no guards, no hidden cameras. The only thing they requested was that Janice’s visits be on a regular schedule. Janice readily agreed. After the financial arrangements were concluded, Janice went into Bill’s room to say good-bye.

An impenetrable wall of silence surrounded him. Beyond his window, the shimmering meadow grass fluttered in brilliant, sun-rich waves. Janice adjusted his collar and pulled the shade to keep the sinking sun from his eyes.

She stepped to the door. Bill had made no response.

“I love you, Bill,” she whispered. “Remember that always.”

Dr. Geddes had business in town and drove Janice and Dr. Gleicher back to New York. They kept up a casual conversation, about Bill, about the changes in the city, about the changes in the country. Dr. Geddes had a youthful, intuitive manner, rather than Dr. Gleicher’s studied formality. There was a long, slow sunset, an air of tranquility, as they glided over the ramparts into the city. The purple twilight enclosed them in a misty, dreamlike atmosphere.

She thanked both doctors and stepped out at Des Artistes. For an instant, she felt the rising tide of panic, but then turned and resolutely stepped alone into the lobby.

The apartment loomed, dark and massive, around her. With Bill and Ivy gone, the living area seemed vast as a tomb.

She drank a long, cold glass of rum in limeade. Now that she was alone, the rumbles of distant plumbing, elevators, and electric appliances made a soothing symphony through the walls. The rum agreeably relaxed her. Gradually, her panic died.

There was nothing to fear, she thought. The past would die of its own momentum. What wouldn’t die could not harm her. She would move, alone, into the mysterious future and learn what she had to learn. That was how Ivy would have wanted it. And Bill, were he himself.

Janice opened the window in Ivy’s room. A warm night air wafted in, redolent with the smell of the distant river, and the summer dust. In her bed, which now had one pillow, Janice, for the first time in months, slipped into an untroubled sleep.

3

Breakfast alone, and the sunshine poured into Des Artistes. Janice drank Colombian coffee and ate muffins with jam beside an open window. It was a curious feeling, secure and quiet in the kitchen.

Time slowed to a crawl now that people stopped paying calls on account of Ivy. The mail decreased. The telephone rarely rang except for Carole Federico.

Carole and Janice walked together toward the Marina off Riverside Drive. It had been Ivy’s favorite place. With bittersweet memories, they watched yelling children crawl over the jungle gym.

“It seems so long ago,” Janice said quietly. “As though Ivy were here in a dream.”

Carole smiled sadly, took Janice’s arm, and they found an outdoor buffet where a fat man dispensed lemonade, pretzels and socialism at no extra cost. They leaned back against a picnic table, and they watched the glittering wakes of small pleasure craft on the Hudson River.

“I thought I would be crushed,” Janice said thoughtfully. “Being alone, I mean. But I’m not. I feel—”

“Independent is the word,” Carole said, with a suggestion of jealousy.

“Exactly,” Janice agreed. “I feel like I want a place in the world now. For me. Not as Ivy’s mother. Not as Bill’s wife. For me. Because I feel I have something to offer, even though I’m not sure exactly what.”

“You mean a job?”

“Well, yes. A job. I can’t just sit around the apartment all day. Besides, our money won’t last forever.”

Janice knew that her friend’s mind was already clicking through any leads, connections, or even wild rumors that might help. But Carole only shook her head regretfully.

“What about going back to school?” Carole asked. “Have you thought of that?”

“Lots of times. I’m too old for that. Besides, what would I do for money while I was in school?”

“You draw, don’t you?” Carole said. “You used to make the most beautiful decorations. And Christmas cards. And didn’t you design some theater programs for that Armenian church?”

Janice laughed again and crooked her arm in Carole’s elbow.

“You’re sweet, Carole, but that was years ago. Besides, being an art major in college and being a professional artist are two different propositions.”

“Nonsense. You’ve got a natural talent that could be parlayed into real success.”

Janice smiled, then rejected the idea.

“Well, how many Armenian churches can there be?” she said.

“The trouble with you is, you have no confidence. Let me ask Russ. A lot of people from the design trade come through his shop. They always hire extra staff.”

Janice was grateful for the support that Carole gave her. She began drawing again. She enrolled in an art class, was advanced to a higher level, and studied the figure with a famous designer from Italy. She worked hard. She needed to feel the pressure of schedules, pressure to execute assignments, to meet deadlines. To feel that vast, rumbling force that throbbed through the heart of the densest city in the world.

Janice felt on the edge of a teeming life, tantalizingly close, hungering for it. She began to feel, more and more, as her figure studies improved, that she really did have something to offer. An eye for color, an instinct for gesture. She knew how to work hard, to please the most exacting of tastes, and she wanted a chance.

Every Monday at 1:45, a train dropped her at Ossining. From there she took a short bus ride to the edge of the clinic grounds. Bill remained absolutely, heartbreakingly the same. She told him about looking for work, about the plays she had seen, about Shakespeare in the Park with the Federicos and their cousins from Miami.

Bill paid no attention. He seemed to be deep in thought, as though trying to figure what in the trial had gone wrong. Janice fought back the tears. He had sunk into a torpor far deeper than Dr. Geddes had at first realized.

Bill brought the past back to her, a past that she was determined to escape. She went to the heart of the city now, in earnest, with her portfolio. Everywhere she was told that her collections of sketches and pastels — which went back to her college days in Berkeley — were out-of-date, or not professional enough, or “simply wouldn’t do.” This last was usually accompanied by a crushing smile of condescension.

After four weeks of looking, Russ Federico invited her down for a late brandy.

“I don’t know why you want to work,” he said. “Frankly, I’d just as soon take long walks all day on the river.”

“What are you talking about, Russ?” Janice asked, suspecting she was being teased.

“You don’t know when you got it good, Janice,” he sighed, taking a folded note from his pocket.

“Come to the point, Russ.”

“The point is that Christine Daler, Ltd. — they’re fashions for women, you know — is going to expand. And it hasn’t been announced. They’re gonna need an army of assistant draftsmen — er, draftspeople…”

“Draftspersons,” Carole corrected, sipping brandy from a wide snifter.

Janice plucked the note from Russ’s hand and read an address on Lexington Avenue.

“Anyway,” Russ laughed, “I got it from the horse’s mouth. Elaine Romine. She’s head designer at Christine Daler. Well, to make a long story short, I mentioned you, and one thing led to the other, and—”

“And what, for God’s sake, Russ?” Janice asked.

“Well, I mean if you ain’t busy at 2:30 next Tuesday—”

“Oh, my God, suddenly I feel so nervous,” Janice said.

“They only need assistants. You know, people with brushes at the end of their arms. You don’t have to be Leonardo da Vinci.”

Janice, flabbergasted, could only blurt out her gratitude. That night, Janice furiously rearranged her portfolio seven times. She rejected five still lifes as too amateurish. Then she drew new sketches with a free-flowing hand until well past midnight. She was convinced that what she had done was no good, and went to bed downhearted, thinking she was unemployable.

Christine Daler, Ltd. — its logo was Big Ben with a decorative swirl of cloud that formed a CD — was located in a new building on Lexington Avenue. Janice paled at the wealth of the interior, the sculptures in the foyers, the collages by Paolozzi in the corridors. It was a high-pressure world, she realized immediately, like Simmons Advertising.

She waited several moments until the receptionist indicated for her to go to Ms. Romine’s office. Janice walked down a long carpeted corridor, clutching her portfolio like a lifesaver. On one side were offices with drafting tables and designers with sable brushes, bending down under brilliant fluorescent lights. On the other side, enormous windows looked out on the entire complex of midtown buildings.

She knocked hesitantly.

“Come in,” said a deep voice.

Elaine Romine was exactly as she had imagined her. A tall woman with light brown hair, she had the flat bust and long legs of a former model. Gold earrings dangled brightly, and she moved with devastating, almost aggressive self-confidence.

Without looking at Janice, Elaine untied the portfolio and examined her drawings. Janice had seen this kind of woman before, the goal-oriented woman of expensive tastes.

“Your pastels are weak,” Elaine said. “But your watercolors have good control.”

Elaine looked carefully at several more sketches. Janice heard her heart banging against her rib cage.

“The figures are not bad. The proportions are good. But the landscapes — these pastels — are really below standard. Have you ever used dry-brush? Don’t tell me you have, if you haven’t.”

“No,” Janice answered. “That is, I tried it a few times, but it didn’t work out.”

Elaine dropped the last of the pages back into the portfolio, thought a moment, then handed the portfolio back to Janice.

“Have you eaten lunch?” she asked.

“Not really — a little coffee—”

“Do you have time for a salad downstairs?”

“Why — yes, of course.”

Elaine’s smile was perfectly controlled, yet exuded a kind of warmth. Janice could not help but admire the woman’s poise, the elegance with which she dispensed people, ideas, careers.

“Downstairs” meant a prohibitively expensive luncheon bar. The clientele was dressed in a stunning array of trendy dresses, or, with the men, in pinstriped suits then coming back into fashion. A few of them saluted Elaine with nods or gestures of the hand. Janice was wearing her best business suit, one which had set her and Bill back a good deal, but now she suddenly felt shabbily dressed.

“I have five girls working under me,” Elaine said, digging into a small mountain of mushrooms, bean sprouts, avocado, and sundry other delicacies, smothered in a rich and creamy yogurt sauce. “One of them is good with dry-brush but a klutz with watercolor, so I’ll split the work between you two. I’ll give you the roughs, you’ll work them into sketches.”

Elaine studied Janice, who suddenly realized that an answer was expected.

“Yes. All right. I can do that.”

“Fine. How much were you expecting to earn?”

Janice choked on a long shredded bean sprout. She washed it down with water.

“I — er—”

“Come, come. We haven’t got all day.”

Janice panicked. She regained her composure but had to confess a most embarrassing truth.

“Miss Romine,” she whispered, “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“I was so nervous about the job, I didn’t think about it.”

Elaine stared at her, then burst out laughing, a sweet, musical laughter. She wiped her lips with a white napkin, looked at Janice, and started to laugh again.

“I’ll have to remember that,” Elaine said, her eyes twinkling. “Look. I’ll pay you five hundred dollars for the project. It’ll give you experience in knowing how to judge time if you ever get asked again.”

“All right. That sounds fair.”

“You should go to Quadrangle Art Supply House down the street, and tell Ralph — he’s the one with the earring— that you’re working for me. He’ll start you out with a few basic brushes and things. I want you to begin with clean tools.”

Janice had the sinking feeling that Ralph with the earring was about to stick her with a pretty fair-sized supply of expensive tools.

Elaine studied Janice with a different kind of eye.

“Would you like to be called Janice or Mrs. Templeton?”

“Janice, please.”

“Fine. I think things will work out well. You’re used to a little pressure?”

“Oh, certainly. Yes, of course.”

Elaine smiled. Her manner had none of the brittleness Janice had expected. There was nothing arch or aloof about Elaine Romine. She was direct and friendly, just frighteningly self-confident. She must be a genius, Janice thought.

“One more thing,” Elaine said.

“Yes?”

“My female employees do not make coffee for the male employees, get their mail, or laugh at their stupid jokes. None of that garbage around here. If anybody makes an uninvited pass at you, kick him in the teeth.”

Janice laughed and promised she would.

“I like men,” Elaine said, “but it’s a woman’s world on this floor. It’s that way because I prefer it. I want my staff to have boldness and integrity, and to make beautiful design.”

Janice nodded.

“So respect yourself, work hard, and you’ll learn a lot.”

“I will. And thank you. I’m very grateful.”

“Nonsense. Your work is competent. I didn’t hire you out of charity.”

On the way home Janice wanted to shout for joy. Instead, testing out her new station in life, she strolled down Lexington Avenue with her portfolio under her arm. She now had a place, at least for a while, in this mad whirl of New York. In a kind of daze, she wandered past the expensive shops, critically examining her wardrobe reflected in the windows, and she decided that Elaine was the most remarkable woman she had ever met.

With her first paycheck, she bought Bill an electric wrist watch, the kind that he had long admired. Dr. Geddes assured her that there were small signs — improved muscle tone, improved responses to being touched. Bill distinguished between friendly and neutral faces. To Janice, it seemed like no change at all. Bill was a man without a personality.

Janice worked long hours to make up for her lack of experience. It probably averaged out to less than the minimum wage. But on the last night of her first project, at 1:30 in the morning, with the floor littered with scraps of paper, and her fingers black with ink, she knew that she had passed the test. Elaine asked her to stay for a second project.

Now, with the first few months out of the way, there was a little time. Time to observe the energy and direction of Elaine’s changing creations. She was working on midwinter designs, and the pressure on her was intense.

Elaine was not married, and her views on men were not what Janice would have called conventional. For the first time, she felt a twinge of jealousy at Elaine’s free-wheeling ease with more than one male friend at a time, for her own evenings were long and lonely. She was often too tired to go out to a movie, and reading — mainly popular fiction— began to wear thin. Sometimes loneliness just mounted up. But for an occasional dinner with the Federicos, or a call from Dr. Geddes, her life was one long siege of ennui.

One particular evening, Dr. Geddes called with a bit of good news for a change.

“Bill is responding to words,” he chortled over the telephone.

“Really? Why, that’s marvelous.”

“Some words, anyway. Even a concept or two. Of course, it’s all still rudimentary. But quite frankly I’m very pleased.”

Janice heard his pleasant laughter on the other end of the line.

“Should I do anything different?” she asked. “Should I bring anything?”

“No, just come at the usual time,” he said. “I just wanted to share the good news with you.”

“I can’t tell you how pleased I am to hear this, Dr. Geddes.”

“We both could use some encouragement,” he chuckled musically. “It’s going to be a long haul, but there are signs. Damned good signs.”

After she put down the receiver, Janice felt peculiarly light-headed. Could it be that things were going to return to normal? At least, as normal as Des Artistes could be without Ivy. A new reality would be formed, around the two of them. Bill would return to work — if not at Simmons, then somewhere else. Maybe in time there could even be another child. As she looked around the apartment, a bit of the old magic, that happy combination of light, space, and sheer exuberance overflowed once again, filling the walls, and the ceilings danced as they had danced years before, with secretive lovers among the flower-draped arbors.

The summer was over, and the autumn had come with changes. But changes were not to be feared. They were to be welcomed. They were to be welcomed because they meant the end of fear, and the end of that sucking darkness, and together she and Bill would start again, sad but deeper, ever deeper in love, and cognizant of its most profound responsibilities.

4

Autumn came as an azure tribute to the fading summer, the deep blue sky warm and endless over the Eilenberg clinic. The low, cream-colored walls of the institution were dappled by the moving shadows of low-bending oak trees.

Janice was long familiar with the grounds. She nodded briefly to a nurse as she made her way to the clinic gardens. Bees still hovered around the faded flowers but there was a sensation of aridity, even sterility, and the dust rose upward, chalk white, as she walked into the garden.

Bill sat on an iron bench, a book on his lap. He had lost weight. His white shirt fluttered in the breeze. He was still very pale, and his red bedroom slippers looked like symbols of illness against the white dusty path. He looked up as he sensed her coming. As always, the direct contact of his eyes made her uneasy. He had become someone else, a broken-hearted, altered image of the man she had known and loved.

He smiled. The lips quivered.

“Hello, Bill,” Janice said gently, and kissed him on the forehead.

She sat down next to him and looked at the book in his lap. The type was small and she could not make out the words. It looked like stanzas of poetry. Bill fidgeted with the pages, as though he were very nervous.

“I feel much better,” he said, his voice husky. “But sometimes I get dizzy.”

Janice put her hand on his and smiled. She was gratified that he did not withdraw it.

“Oh, Bill,” she whispered. “It’s so wonderful to hear your voice!”

Bill’s hands trembled, like an old man’s. Janice wondered what powerful emotions surged through the thin frame. He looked up at the oak trees beyond the pink gravel driveway.

“Birds,” he said gruffly. “Like music.”

“Yes, Bill, I can hear them; oh, my, but it’s good to hear you speak.”

Suddenly embarrassed, he stood awkwardly, grasping his book. He looked as though he did not know whether to sit down or to walk down the garden path. Janice looked at the cover.

“John Keats,” she marveled. “Why, Bill, you never read poetry.”

Bill smiled. He had lost so much weight that his cheekbones were unnaturally prominent.

“Dr. Geddes makes me read,” he said hesitantly. “It feels good to read about some things.”

“Yes. Read to me, Bill. Let me hear your voice some more.”

Awkward, Bill licked his lips, and read:

“We are such forest trees that our fair boughs Have bred forth, not pale solitary doves But eagles golden-feathered, who do tower Above us in their beauty….”

Overcome, Bill closed the book, but kept his finger in it to mark the place.

“We did give birth to an eagle,” he said slowly. “You and I. Ivy was the most beautiful, the most courageous…”

He stopped. She tried to brush away the moisture from his eyes, but he pushed her hand aside. They rose, walked in silence, into the bright heat of the afternoon.

Janice felt his gait grow confused, like an old man’s. She led him as quickly as she could toward the entrance to the garden and signaled to a passing nurse. The nurse came quickly, put Bill’s left arm over her own shoulder, and assisted him to a bench in the shade of the clinic roof.

“I don’t know what happened,” Janice said, suddenly frightened. “All of a sudden, his knees began buckling.”

“He’s still in a kind of postshock syndrome,” the nurse said matter-of-factly. “Conversation actually takes a lot out of him.”

They set Bill down in front of the window to the lobby. He apologized weakly, coughed once, then blew his nose into a clean handkerchief. Janice suddenly realized that he looked like an old man, too.

“It’s quite normal,” the nurse assured her. “Every day he gains a bit more strength.”

“Right now I couldn’t lift a finger,” Bill whispered hoarsely. “Christ, I feel all sucked out.”

Janice sat down next to him. “Don’t speak, darling,” she said gently. “Would you like me to read to you?”

He nodded, then closed his eyes, settling his head against the window behind him. The nurse, who had picked up the book from the driveway, handed it to her. Janice nodded her thanks, then opened up to a well-worn passage:

“Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare; Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss, Though winning near the goal — yet do not grieve.”

Janice looked up at a strange sound. Bill’s lips were moving, and in a feathery whisper he completed the stanza with deep sorrow, tinged with a delicacy she had never seen in him before.

“She cannot fade,” Bill whispered, “though thou hast not thy bliss; Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair!”

Bill sighed deeply. The nurse and Janice watched him, for he smiled without opening his eyes.

“Do you believe that, Janice?” he asked softly. “That Ivy will be forever loved, and forever beautiful? I do. I’ll never forget the color of her eyes… the way she ran… never…”

“Nor I, Bill,” Janice whispered, leaning closer, squeezing his heavy hand.

Bill fell into a light sleep. When he awoke later, with an embarrassed jerk, he had no memory of reading poetry in the garden. Instead, he, Janice, and Dr. Geddes discussed the terms of his leaving the clinic. Tentatively, they arrived at a figure of about six weeks.

Privately, Dr. Geddes reminded Janice not to nurture false hopes. Bill was infinitely better, but only in spurts. He still needed time to grow a solid foundation for his thoughts.

“By the way,” Janice said, as she was leaving, “Bill said you encourage him to read poetry. Is that true? He asked me to bring him some.”

“Yes, a very good idea,” Dr. Geddes said. “Nothing explicit. Nothing violent. But the subject of death is all right. Lovely thoughts about it. Bit by bit, Bill is coming to terms with his emotions, releasing them, diffusing them.”

“Anything in particular?”

“A little of everything. The more variety, the better.”

Janice returned home on the 5:25 evening train. It was already twilight, though unseasonably warm. She stopped at the library, and without thinking much about what she was picking up, collected a small armful of verse that dealt in elegies, dramas of Shakespeare, and even farces translated from French. Anything that would stimulate Bill’s mind, so long fallow and destitute. Exhausted, she dropped the books in a heap on the couch at home and sat staring at her watercolor layouts.

“She cannot fade,” Janice quoted dreamily, remembering Bill, “though thou hast not her bliss, Forever wilt thou love, Bill, and Ivy be fair!”

She rose, suddenly remembering she had one book left from months ago, from Hoover. She found it in her desk drawer. It was the Bhagavad Gita, a slim blue volume, published in London in 1796. Opening it, Janice smiled. The poetry of Eastern resignation. Like honey, the words flowed, half insensible, often contradictory, in what must assuredly be a ludicrous translation, like Victorian English put through a meat grinder. She recognized a few suitable phrases of comfort.

Hesitating for a long while, Janice held it poised over the fallen pile of books on the couch. At long last, the room grown darker already with the onset of the dry night, the slim blue volume lay with the others, and Janice forgot about it.

On Friday evening, Bill telephoned. He sounded tired at first, then the confidence returned to his voice.

“This clinic has lousy central heating,” he said. “It’s cold all the time.”

“Could I bring you a sweater, darling?”

“I’d appreciate that,” Bill said. “And remember those slipper socks your mother sent me for my birthday? I could use those, too.”

“I will. Oh, Bill, how sweet of you to call.”

Bill’s voice changed, almost imperceptibly. Probably Janice was the only human being on the face of the earth who could have noticed it, or understood what it really meant.

“I’ve been missing you,” he said simply.

“I — Me, too, Bill. It’s been so long.”

“Not having you around is really the worst thing in the world. Dr. Geddes tells me that maybe I could start coming home — for a night, a weekend — something like that.”

“I’d like that, Bill. I can’t tell you how much I would.”

“It sure is good to hear you say that. After all we’ve been through, you know, I wasn’t sure. I mean, it must have been terrible for you — having to put up with all my…” His voice drifted.

Janice reassured him, but he began to repeat himself. His voice grew weaker, and he pulled himself together, only to wish her good-night. Then he hung up. The apartment rang with silence.

It was an apartment waiting for someone. But whether that someone would ever come, whether it could really start all over again, with even half a faith in living, remained to be seen. For the moment, Janice was content that Bill was coming home, and that Ivy had entered his thoughts once more, and that he was overcoming his guilt and fear.

The next time she saw him, he was in a large room converted by the clinic to a kind of gymnasium. He was dressed in woolen pants with a drawstring, white slippers, and a gray sweatshirt, and he was pressing weights upward in rhythmic concentration.

Slowly, he put the long barbell back into the iron slot, ducked under, ran to her and wrapped his arms around her.

“How are you, darling?” he said, kissing her. “I bet I smell real good, don’t I?”

“Just terrific, Bill.”

“Why don’t you keep me company while I shower?”

“Are you sure that’s allowed?”

Bill laughed infectiously, wiping the sweat from his red face.

“You’re probably right about that, Janice.”

Bill disappeared inside, then poked his head out.

“Back in fifteen,” he called.

She waved to him, then stepped slowly across the mats on the floor, over two dumbbells that clanked when she accidentally hit against them. Ropes were suspended from a rafter, and there was a kind of machine to sit in and row simultaneously.

Dr. Geddes came down in his jogging shorts and a blue-striped jacket. He seemed surprised to see her.

“I guess I shouldn’t be here,” Janice said.

“Well, in your case, we’ll bend the rules,” he said, smiling broadly, coming closer. “What do you think? I mean, about Bill?”

“It’s wonderful. You’ve done miracles. I can’t believe the changes.”

“Well, he’s got a tremendous desire to get back together. And this physical exercise improves concentration, promotes self-confidence.”

Janice stepped closer to Dr. Geddes. He caught the changed expression and listened closely.

“Bill telephoned last Friday,” she said. “He wants to come home. For a night or two.”

“I know. Is that all right with you?”

“I would like that,” she said, flushing slightly, “but I wasn’t sure it was a good idea for him to leave.”

Dr. Geddes considered for a moment.

“I think it should be tried,” he said. “Bill wants to leave, and I’d like to promote that. Gradually. He’s still a little dislocated.”

“I just wanted to hear you say that, I guess.”

Bill came from the far end of the makeshift gymnasium carrying his favorite sweater, a thin gray pullover that had holes under both arms and was unraveled in five places at the bottom.

“Are you two conspiring against me?” he asked genially.

Dr. Geddes opened his mouth to answer but Janice cut him off, saying, “We were just saying that you look so fine.”

Bill laughed, but it was a trifle forced, his eyes narrowed suspiciously.

“Come on,” he said, taking Janice’s arm. “Don’t keep staring at me. I’ve got a whole picnic planned.”

“A picnic?” Janice said, surprised and delighted.

Together, Janice and Bill went to his room, where Bill picked up a wicker basket heavy with wrapped sandwiches and a bottle of red wine, plates, and printed napkins. Bill stuffed in his blanket. Janice watched Bill working feverishly, pathetically determined to show her a good time.

He escorted her from the clinic and out to the grounds. They slipped under the wooden fence and walked up the long, hard meadow toward the crest of the hill, holding hands. A bitter wind blew into their faces; Janice wrapped her sweater around her throat, but Bill faced the dark, rolling clouds with only a white shirt, his sweater tucked into his belt, until they crested the hill.

Down below, Ossining was tucked into a series of hollows, dull gray trucks groveling up narrow roads, and a bank of century-old warehouses beyond a clump of nearly denuded trees.

Bill’s hand reached for hers and squeezed slowly, sadly. He smiled — a smile of deep, bitter resignation. He pulled her down slowly onto the blanket he had spread under two intertwined oak trees, shielded from the wind. They looked back down the brittle stalks of dead grass to where the clinic occupied a flat space beyond the fences.

“I love you, Janice,” Bill whispered, and kissed her gently on the lips.

“And I love you, Bill.”

Janice caressed his forehead, and, to her surprise, it was beaded with perspiration despite the chill wind. Bill leaned forward suddenly and began unpacking the wicker basket.

“I’m starving,” he exclaimed. “You must be famished. Hey — I forgot the silverware. No, here it is! Good old Bill — finally wired together.”

“Beaujolais!” Janice exclaimed. “Where did you get this?”

“Geddes,” Bill said, brightening. “He got it for me in Ossining. Great man, Geddes.”

“Delicious!” she said, biting into a chicken sandwich.

Janice poured the Beaujolais into two metal cups. They drank slowly, looking into one another’s eyes.

Then Bill poured another cup. He held it up to make a toast.

“I was going to say — to Ivy,” he said uncertainly, “but, well, to our next Ivy — whoever she is — or he is.”

“To us, Bill. To you and to me and to our being together all over again.”

The second cup warmed them more than the first. Bill replenished the cups, and soon the wind blew in vain against the oak trees. The rain fell in long slants far away over the town, almost as though a hand of God had torn the underbelly of a ragged blue cloud and dragged it downward, releasing its pent-up tons of water.

“I feel a little nervous,” Bill confessed. “Sometimes I know I say things a little abruptly. You have to forgive me.”

“Of course I do, darling.”

“Thank you, Janice. If you only knew what I’ve been through, where I’ve been down deep inside. Hey, did you bring me any books?”

“Of course,” Janice said, crawling toward her bag. “I’d almost forgotten. I brought you a whole library.”

Janice reached in and dumped a handful of volumes beside her plate. Bill picked up several. He examined the titles.

“Twelfth Night?” he asked.

“It’s Shakespeare. It’s about the varieties of love.”

“Sounds good and racy. What’s this? Sonnets from the Portuguese?”

“Elizabeth Barrett Browning.”

Bill laughed.

“You always were trying to get me to like her. What about that blue one?”

“Where?”

“By the picnic basket.”

Janice hesitated. Slowly she picked it up, opened a few pages. Then she closed it again.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have brought this one,” she said.

“Why not?”

Janice hesitated once more, then leaned closer to Bill.

“It was given to me by—” she began.

“Please,” he said. “Just read.”

Searching for the most comprehensible passage, Janice paged backward and forward through the thin volume. At last, and with misgivings, she began.

“‘If someone were to strike at the root of a large tree, it would bleed sap, but live. If he were to strike at its trunk, it would bleed sap, but live. If he were to strike at the topmost leaves, it would bleed sap, but live. Pervaded by the living substance, the tree would stand firm, drinking nourishment from the earth and the sun. Therefore, know this, that the body withers and yet the substance never dies.’”

Bill smiled.

“That’s like old what’s-his-name. John Keats. All that sentimental garbage. Read me some more.”

Bill closed his eyes, folded his arms behind his neck, and listened. Warming to her role, Janice read on with more expression, a soothing, almost maternal voice.

“‘Of what is not,’” she read, “‘there is no coming to be. Nor is there destruction of what is. Know, therefore, that all is indestructible, and pervaded by the imperishable.’”

Bill laughed gleefully.

“What wonderful bilge,” he chortled. “Go on, Janice. Let me dream away.”

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“It all sounds like bilge to me. But it sounds good. Go on.”

Paging ahead, Janice continued. “‘Bodies come to an end, Yet the eternal embodied soul of the universe, Is indestructible and unfathomable, Unborn, eternal, everlasting, that ancient soul, That is not slain when the body is slain.’”

Janice stopped reading. Bill’s silence unnerved her. She regretted having brought the book, and, having brought it, she regretted reading it now.

“You got that from those loonies in the orange robes, didn’t you?” he asked.

“Yes,” Janice lied.

“Well, I’m not afraid of them. Go on.”

“Bill, I’m terribly sorry. It was a bad mistake—”

“I said, read on. It’s only words.”

“Bill, are you really sure you want me to?” she asked plaintively.

“Sure. What the hell, Janice. I’ve learned a lot these last few weeks. I’ve learned it’s better to be alive than dead. It’s better to look up than down. So go ahead. I’m not afraid.”

Janice bit her lip, then gave in, and paged ahead to another section. She nestled in against Bill’s side, feeling his warmth and the expansion of his breathing. He moved and slid his left arm over her shoulder, still looking dreamily at the sky.

“‘Just as death is certain to one that is born, So birth is certain for one that has died. Therefore, the thing being unavoidable, One should not mourn.’”

She stopped.

“What’s wrong?” Bill asked.

“I don’t feel like reading anymore.”

“I thought you believed in all that stuff.”

“It doesn’t mean the same now,” Janice said, closing the book. “It makes me feel all — I don’t know, afraid inside.”

Bill turned to her.

“That’s all right, honey,” he said. “I know what you mean. Maybe we’ve had too much of all this gobbledygook. Why don’t we go back inside before the rain comes?”

“All right,” she said, trying to smile.

He kissed his finger and put the finger on her lips. She smiled, though she looked suddenly pale, and then the wind rushed into the trees, shaking down twirling trails of dead oak leaves.

Bill sprang to his feet.

“Here it comes!” he yelled. “Just throw it all in the blanket!”

Janice tossed the books and a fallen wine cup into the center of the blanket. Bill pulled the four corners together, and, like a hobo, slung it over his shoulder and grabbed her hand.

“Come on!” he shouted.

A dull, roaring boom echoed over the distant flatlands, and instantly the air grew even cooler, turned direction, and before they were halfway through the meadow the rain hit them like a cold wall. Laughing, hair bedraggled and matted, they dashed into the lobby, trailing water over the carpets.

Bill embraced her and the contents of the blanket spilled over the floor, knocked a potted palm against the window.

“Next Friday,” he whispered hoarsely. “I’ll come home next Friday.”

“For a day or two, Bill,” Janice cautioned. “Dr. Geddes said—”

“I know, I know. He’s right, of course. Oh, Janice, buy us some of that awful orange liqueur we like. You know, from Belgium. And get some flowers.”

“I will, I will.”

They kissed again, and a massive roar of thunder rattled the windows.

Janice rode home on the late afternoon train. The rain had given her a slight chill. At Des Artistes she took two aspirins, a hot bath, and lay in the suds, luxuriating. She thought again and again about Bill, and his body, and his eagerness, and she thought it would drive her insane.

She removed the aquarium from Ivy’s room. Outside, the rain lashed at New York, a peculiar blue rain that seemed to shed its darkness over the rooftops. If there were no children, she thought, Bill could use the room as a study. That aspect of it was still undecided in her mind. It still seemed a profanation to think of other children in Ivy’s room, and she closed the door quietly behind her as she left.

The next day Elaine beckoned for Janice to follow her into the large office studded with Elaine’s designs, calendars, and sketches for future projects.

“You don’t have the experience a lot of designers have,” Elaine said. “And maybe you’re a bit rusty on a few graphic techniques. But we get along awfully well, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Yes,” Janice agreed, her heart beginning to race.

“Then would you consider working here full time?”

“Would I? Oh, I’d love nothing better.”

“Now, I can’t pay you very much, but it would be a salary. You wouldn’t have to start worrying at the end of every project.”

Janice drew herself up proudly.

“Elaine,” she said, “there’s nothing in the world I’d rather do than work with you.”

Elaine laughed delightedly. “Splendid.”

At lunch, Elaine and Janice worked out the details of her job. Janice listened with a kind of rapture she had not known since the days when she first met Bill.

“And your husband?” Elaine asked after a while.

“What? What about my husband?”

“Is he going to mind your working full time?”

“No. He’ll be delighted.”

Elaine smiled enigmatically.

“You’ve never talked about your husband,” she said. “All I’m trying to do is to be fair about it. For some women, it becomes a problem.”

“I really and truly appreciate what you’re saying, Elaine, but I’m sure Bill will be very, very pleased. And the money will help.”

Elaine watched Janice growing slightly uncomfortable.

“You’ve never mentioned what your husband does,” she said.

“He worked for Simmons Advertising. He was the third vice-president. But he’s not been well. He suffered a nervous breakdown, and is hospitalized.”

“I’m sorry,” Elaine said. “I didn’t mean to pry.”

“That’s all right,” Janice assured her. “It’s been a long haul, but he’s much improved now.”

Janice splurged recklessly and treated herself to a new raincoat, designed by Bill Blass, with a cape that extended out over her shoulders and left the arms free. The October chill was in the air, and the driving rain everywhere glimmered in the gloom, catching stray headlights beaming like lurid eyes out of the gutters.

That night Bill telephoned.

“Honey,” he said, “guess what? I’ve got a fever of a hundred and two degrees. Courtesy of that damned picnic.”

“Oh, Bill, what a shame.”

“The clinic doctor has been tapping on my chest and feeding me big yellow pills and I can’t stop throwing up.”

“Oh, Bill!”

Bill moved from the receiver to cough. It was a long, hacking cough that sounded painful.

“To make a long story short,” he said, a bit out of breath, “I won’t be there on Friday unless I can shake this.”

Janice sank down in her chair, the weight of disappointment nearly a physical sensation.

“It’s probably because you’d exercised that day,” she said.

“Yeah, you’re probably right. I loved seeing you again. And thanks for the books. I really mean that.”

Janice, staring, brooding at the black windows, watched the long dribbles of gleaming water-drops, each trailing a splattered light out of the void.

“Although, if you stop to think about it,” Bill continued, “it doesn’t all add up.”

“What? What doesn’t?”

“That stuff you read to me. From the Bhagavad Gita, wasn’t it?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Well, it doesn’t quite add up.”

Janice licked her lips. She sat up, partially out of the chair, on its edge, and held the receiver carefully.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

“Look. All that twaddle about the eternal soul going on and on, and all that. Even when the body dies.”

Janice closed her eyes. For a split second, a headache threatened to form, then it receded, more by an act of will than anything else. She almost wanted to hang up.

“Bill, I really don’t like talking about it.”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” he complained. “It’s loony. If there’s one great eternal soul, like a universal spirit, then what the hell happened to Ivy? Know what I mean? It could all have just flowed back, or whatever. Instead of that conflict—”

“Bill, please, I beg you—”

“I mean,” he added in a softer voice, “she sure as hell didn’t have to go through what she did. Christ, when I remember how she suffered—”

“Bill!” Janice yelled.

“What? What are you yelling for?”

“I’m sorry. I’m not yelling. I only was trying to say that — that it’s still not easy for me — to remember.”

There was a long silence.

“Frankly,” Bill said, “I’m surprised. You had a lot of time to work it out. More than I had, that’s for damn sure.”

“Yes, but it’s all so distant, so confused, I mean. Bill, I can’t think about it anymore. I tried. I tried for the longest time and never made sense.”

“Okay, okay,” Bill conceded. “I shouldn’t have said anything. This fever’s baked my brain anyway. But you got to admit that the Bhagavad Gita is a little naive after what happened to us.”

“All right, Bill. I’ll admit it. But tell me about your chest. You sound absolutely dreadful.”

“I always did have weak lungs. I think I’m out of commission for a while. Listen, honey, could you do me a favor?”

Janice smiled, tucked her feet up under her as she sat back into the soft folds of the chair.

“Anything, darling,” she said.

“This library here is pretty puny. All they’ve got are some encyclopedias and the Guinness Book of Records. Could you make a run to the library for me?”

“Sure. I’d love to.”

Holding the receiver against her collarbone with her chin, she reached into a drawer and coaxed a pencil and a note pad from it.

“What kind of books would you like?” she asked.

“Well, as I said, this Hindu stuff is pretty weak dishwater, from what I can gather. Now listen closely. There’s an older religion. It’s called Jainism. It goes back to even before the Hindus knew how to cross their legs and scratch themselves.”

Janice put the pencil and pad down on her lap.

“Bill,” she whispered. “Don’t—”

“Jainism,” Bill said. “You want me to spell that?”

“No, it’s not necessary.”

“Great. I really need this help on the outside. Right now, I feel like somebody pumped up a balloon inside my head. Are you there, Janice?”

“I’m here.”

“Okay. And if I’m not up to seeing you next week, just mail the books here, will you?”

“Yes,” she said without enthusiasm.

“Wonderful. Now take care of yourself. Keep warm. It’s really miserable all over the East Coast tonight.”

“I will,” she said dully. “And Bill—”

“Yes?”

“Be careful. And get your rest. Do what Dr. Geddes says.”

Bill chuckled, a familiar, warm kind of laugh that came from deep within his throat.

“I’ll be a model patient, sweetheart,” he said. “I love you. Now be a good girl and we’ll be together soon. I promise.”

She sensed he was about to hang up. There was so much more she wanted to say, to warn him in some obscure way, but none of it came to her.

“I love you, too,” she said softly. “Good-bye, darling.”

He hung up. Janice wrote the word Jainism on the pad, tore off the top sheet, and stuffed it into her purse. She threw the pad and pencil back into the drawer and slammed it shut. Outside, the night seemed to belch forth a cold, hard rain from its blackest interior.

Janice put off her trip to the library as long as possible. Finally, she went to the New York Public Library, asked for assistance, and found that the Jains occupied so small a segment of religious thought that they hardly merited a single book to themselves. With the librarian’s help, Janice plucked three volumes which seemed to have the most information, and she checked them out.

The books hung together on a shelf in the kitchen, casting a small, gloomy shadow when the light was on. When the light was off, they melded into the general darkness.

When she saw him next, Bill was dressed in his robe; a tray of orange juice, several small bottles of capsules, and several discarded magazines were at his side. He looked impatient when she came into the room.

“Did you bring the books?” he asked, his eyes slightly bright, as though the fever which had wracked his body for several days had not entirely dissipated.

“Right here,” Janice said, drawing them from her purse. “Aren’t you even going to say hello?”

“I’m sorry,” Bill said, grinning. “You look just fabulous, Janice. I just ran out of reading material, lying here like King Tut. A guy could scream from boredom.”

He took the books from her, casually flipped through them, and put them on the night table next to his pillow. He pulled her down and let her kiss him.

“I’m all right,” he said. “Really, I am. They thought it had blossomed into a walking pneumonia, which is why they kept me here. But it was really a kind of bronchitis. That’s all.”

“Are you sure?” Janice asked. “I was so worried when you called.”

“Positive. Could you open the window a half inch? A little fresh air would do wonders.”

Janice went to the window. She heard him stretch over, and when she turned back, he was paging through the top book, his back to her.

“Thanks a lot, honey,” he murmured. “These look just fine.”

“If you really have to read them now…”

Bill turned and smiled guiltily.

“Poor Janice,” he said. “You come all this way to watch your addled husband reading in bed. Come on. Let’s mosey out of here.”

Bill slipped from bed, modestly turned from her, and dressed. Janice was shocked to see how much weight he had lost. His hip bones almost protruded from his flat stomach. Even his legs looked thin. When he was dressed fully, he turned and escorted her from his room. First, however, he slipped the topmost book into his jacket pocket.

“Depressing little place, isn’t it?” he confessed as they walked up the corridor. “I just can’t wait to get out of here. Dr. Geddes means well, but— Here, let’s duck into the library. At least it’s comfortable in there.”

Bill opened a door and they entered a large room containing long shelves of books, globes on stands, a few antique brass lamps, some geographer’s maps on the walls, and tall, clean windows with maroon curtains.

“Pretty fancy, isn’t it?” Bill said. “The clinic buys this stuff from auctions. All the one-room schoolhouses that are disappearing. Well, this is where they disappear to.”

Bill turned away slightly from her, looking out the window, peering into the mist that rolled inward from the rain, blotting out the hill where he had caught his fever. There was a long silence. A horse, more silhouette than substance, walked slowly out of the mist, like a harbinger from a mysterious landscape.

Turning back to Janice, Bill studied her curiously.

“What have you got in your handbag?”

“What do you mean?”

“Come on. I see something with ribbon on it.”

Janice smiled, then reached down to her purse and pulled out a glass jar. Inside were round, milky-white balls. Janice held out the jar to him, enjoying his puzzled expression.

“Go on, coward,” she insisted. “Try one.”

“They look like marbles.”

Frowning, Bill unscrewed the lid, reached in, and popped a candy into his mouth. Nothing happened, so he bit into it. Suddenly, his expression changed.

“Holy shit,” he marveled.

“They’re filled with Calvados cognac,” Janice said. “Aren’t they great?”

Bill helped himself to another.

“Crazy. Where’d you find them?”

“From Elaine Romine.”

“Yeah? Well, thank her for me. Jesus, I haven’t had strong stuff since… since… since the trial. No, in New York…I don’t remember.”

Bill bit into another candy, savoring the hot, stinging sensation of delicate apple cognac. Janice guessed now that he remembered everything that had ever happened, and it broke some barrier between them. Possibly the last barrier, she thought hopefully.

As they calmly ate, two more horses came out of the mist, rubbing shoulders, gazing quizzically into the library windows.

Janice leaned back into the extraordinary comfort of the dark red chair, watching the horses, absorbing the tranquility of the ceaselessly moving yet ever-unchanging mist out over the meadow. There was really no sense of time at all, like the rainy days on Sunday afternoons when all motion at Des Artistes stopped, and the floor was littered with the New York Times, and the breakfast dishes were still on the dining room table. Bill caught her looking fondly at him, wistfully.

“Do you remember how it was at home? Sunday afternoons? We’d just all sort of lounge around, listening to the rain? Sometimes Ivy would go play with Bettina. And we’d make love… before a crackling fire. God, how beautiful it was.”

Janice nodded, startled by the coincidence of their thoughts.

“Hard to believe, isn’t it?” Bill asked reflectively. “But she’s gone. Our Ivy.”

Janice watched him. There were no signs of agitation on his face, only a tired and bittersweet resignation. Bill reached out to the window and traced a heart with his finger. He put an arrow through the heart and then the initials I.T. and B.T. He winked at Janice.

“Remember?” he whispered. “She used to put those on the windows. Ivy Templeton loves Bill Templeton. I’ll never forget.”

Janice squeezed his hand warmly as they sat in the two heavy chairs, listening to the calm, steady drizzle outside. Janice felt the drowsy atmosphere taking hold of her. She sighed and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, Bill was browsing through the book on Jainism.

“It says here that a seal was found dating back to at least fifteen hundred B.C.,” Bill said. “On it is a cross-legged figure wearing a horned headdress, three faces, and surrounded by jungle animals. It’s a proto-Yoga figure.”

“Bill,” Janice said, trying to smile and keep her voice calm, “what is this sudden interest in all this?”

“No sudden interest. It just seems weird.”

Janice turned away to look out the window. The heart with the initials had melted downward into a grotesque, slumped form. Janice wiped out the lines with the palm of her hand.

“Listen to this, Janice,” Bill insisted. “Jainism goes back before the Hindus. To a non-Aryan antiquity, that predated the sacred writings.”

“Bill, please. I’m really not interested.”

“All right. Sorry. Let’s just look out the window and count raindrops.”

“Why are you angry? I just said—”

“Right. You did say that. Well, maybe you’re right. Why should you care? All this garbage.”

For an instant, Janice could only watch the strange expression on his flushed face, a mixture of determination and confusion. He put the book under his right thigh, as if to guard against anyone’s taking it away.

“I don’t feel too well,” Bill said softly. “I think it’s the fever.”

“You look a bit flushed. Maybe we should get you back in bed.”

Together they walked out of the library, down to Bill’s room, which had been made up in their absence, and Bill undressed and slipped under the covers, clutching his book. Janice knew by the warmth of his forehead that he was running a high fever again. His cheeks were flushed.

Bill took her hand and kissed it.

“Was I sharp with you?” he asked softly. “I didn’t mean to be.”

“No. No, Bill, you weren’t. But I think you’d better close your eyes now. You don’t look at all well.”

“Kiss me, Janice.”

She kissed him on his closed eyes. As she left, she saw him wave weakly to her. She knew that as soon as she closed the door behind her, he would start reading again.

She found Dr. Geddes sipping coffee in the clinic dining hall. He looked up from a journal, sensing her footsteps. Immediately, he pulled aside a second red metal chair for her. As she sat down, his smile faded.

“Dr. Geddes,” Janice said, “are you aware that Bill has developed a fixation about certain subjects?”

“No. Frankly, I was not aware. What kind of subjects?”

“Well, at first it was the poetry you had him read. Keats. It was innocuous enough. Then he passed on to Eastern verses—”

“What Eastern verses?”

Janice blushed.

“I brought him a stack of books, as you suggested. About consolation and endurance. One of them was a collection from the Bhagavad Gita.”

Dr. Geddes frowned, slid his journal away from his coffee mug, and lit a cigarette.

“The Bhagavad Gita,” Dr. Geddes said. “That’s the sacred writings of the Hindus. What’s wrong with that?”

“He keeps rereading it.”

“He’s probably read Keats again, too. It’s just what any man would do who’s coming out of an experience like Bill’s.”

“Then I’m not getting through to you,” she protested. “He’s not only memorized half of it, he told me to bring him some more.”

“On Hinduism?”

“A sect called the Jains.”

Dr. Geddes shrugged, then scratched his head.

“I frankly don’t know what to make of it,” he admitted, “only it doesn’t seem like something to worry about.”

“How can you say that?” Janice spluttered. “Bill never cared for that sort of thing. in fact, it made him sick!”

“I’ll tell you quite frankly what I think,” Dr. Geddes said thoughtfully, “but you’ll have to calm down first.”

“All right,” Janice conceded. “I’m sorry if I—”

“The reason that Bill broke down and you didn’t,” Dr. Geddes said, “was that you had support. Whether you really believed in these religious ideas—”

“I don’t know what I believed. I was too confused.”

“Please let me finish. During the trial, and in the hospital, you gave at least partial credence to a viewpoint that allowed you to accept what in fact finally happened. Do you follow? And after, as you explained to me, you attended several services — Buddhist or whatever — which amplified that support. Bill had nothing. He just cracked open like an eggshell and fell to pieces. Now he wants some support, too.”

“So that’s why he’s reading all this?”

“I’ll bet my state license on it. You were helped over a rough spell. Now he wants the same help. It worked with you. Why shouldn’t it work with Bill?”

Janice stared out of the cafeteria window.

“There’s a second reason why you shouldn’t worry,” Dr. Geddes continued. “Bill needs to develop his thinking muscles. His memory. Actually, I’m very glad to see him develop an outside interest.”

Janice said nothing.

“If Bill seems a little edgy on the subject,” he said, “it’s because he’s trying so desperately hard to organize his thinking. You see what I mean? His mind is still fragile.”

“Maybe I jumped the gun,” she said. “I’m probably the edgy one.”

Dr. Geddes laughed, but added seriously, “I think you’ve hit the nail on the head.”

She smiled, embarrassed, all defenses melted away.

Wearily, Janice took the long train back, once again, to New York. She could hardly keep awake. The trips to the clinic were draining her, and she was frightened to realize just how much.

5

At 9:30 the following night, Bill telephoned.

“Hello, darling,” he said brightly.

“Bill?” Janice questioned worriedly. “Are you feeling all right?”

“A bit better. They’ve given me some antibiotics, so I’m still woozy from it. How are you?”

“Dragging. It’s so miserable being here alone. The weather is creepy. As long as you asked.”

Bill laughed pleasantly. “New York has a patent on gloom sometimes, doesn’t it? Listen, I have a small favor to ask of you.”

“What’s that?”

“Could you get some more books for me?”

Janice paused. For a while she wanted not even to answer.

“The same kind of books?” she finally asked.

“Well, not exactly,” Bill conceded. “Let me explain. The Jains do not believe in God, at least not as you and I were taught. They don’t even believe in a universal soul. According to them, there is a countless number of souls, all—”

“Bill, darling, I don’t mean to be unresponsive, but…”

“But what?”

“It — it just gives me the creeps, somehow. Being here alone. In this apartment. Hearing what you’re talking about.”

There was a pause at the other end. She heard him sigh, though whether in resignation or anger, she did not know.

“Look, Janice,” he said in a voice slightly strained. “I’m trying to explain that there’s nothing creepy about it. Didn’t I just say they don’t believe in a universal soul and all that malarky?”

“Yes. All right, Bill. You did say that.”

“It’s a very old sect. According to them, everything has a soul. Rocks, trees, people, animals. And the whole universe goes through these incredible long cycles—”

“Bill, please.”

“And each soul in it, according to the cycle, transmigrates; that is, it moves on to another animal, or tree or person, and—”

Janice pulled the receiver away from her ear.

“Are you there, Janice?” Bill demanded.

“Yes, I’m here.”

“So this doesn’t hold water at all,” Bill explained feverishly. “Aren’t you listening at all? Have you gone deaf?”

“Bill, you’re so angry. Why?”

“I’m sorry. I’m just trying to explain a few very simple facts. Now, if that girl — you know — the daughter of…”

“Audrey Rose.”

“If she — I mean, if there was a problem, she could have come back as a rock. Or a television set. Or a pair of spectacles. Who the hell knows? You get what I mean? Well, we know that’s not true.”

Janice paused a long time, trying to think of a way of luring Bill to some other topic of conversation. But he pursued his line of questioning relentlessly, almost as though he were talking to himself.

“If there was a question of her returning in our Ivy — I guess I’m not being clear. I’m just trying to say that, good as these Jains are, it’s not right, Janice. It doesn’t explain anything!”

Bill’s last words were shouted in hysterical anger and frustration.

“Calm down, Bill,” Janice said. “Nothing has to explain anything.”

“I need to know, Janice! I can’t live like this!”

It was a heartbreaking voice, vulnerable and barely articulate, conscious of its own weakness, of grappling with things it might never truly understand. Bill was clutching, and he expected Janice to pull him up out of the quicksand.

“All right, Bill,” she said quietly. “Tell me what you want me to bring you.”

“Well, there’s an even older religion. It exists in the mountains of Tibet.”

“Tibet?”

“Yeah. It’s a part of Buddhism now, but it goes back to the time when human beings first learned how to talk.”

“All right. If that’s what you need. Just Tibetan Buddhism?”

“Yeah,” Bill said, already cooling off. “I’d — I’d really appreciate that, Janice.”

“Bill.”

“What is it, honey?”

“Does Dr. Geddes know you’re reading all this sort of thing?”

“Dr. Geddes? Why should he know? I mean, sure, he knows everything I do. That doesn’t mean I have to go tell him every time I pee, does it?”

“No, I suppose not.”

“Then you’ll get me a few books? I wouldn’t ask you, Janice, except that I’ve got nobody in the whole world. Nobody else in the world out there.”

Janice softened.

“I do truly understand, darling,” she said softly. “And I’m glad you’re feeling better. Get your rest and I’ll do as you ask.”

“Thanks, darling. I knew I could depend on you.”

After hanging up, Janice stared into the apartment, listening to the cold wind throwing itself at the long windows. Jainism, Hinduism, and now what? Northern Buddhism. Mountain style. It was all so sad, Janice thought. Bill was so confused, so fanatically looking for explanations, for expedients. It did not seem right to her. It had made her calm, once, after Ivy’s death, and now the same ideas were agitating Bill.

Maybe he was just having trouble getting a grip on the concepts. Maybe he was fighting it. Maybe, after roaming the world’s religions for solace, he would circle right back around and find comfort in the eternal grace and benediction of Jesus Christ. Janice sat for a very long time, listening to the wind. Poor Bill, she kept thinking, over and over again. But for the first time, she felt she was an accomplice on his road to recovery, she hoped, and not simply watching him through an invisible partition while he struggled for sanity.

She set the alarm, determined to be at the New York Public Library when it opened. If there was such a thing as Northern Buddhism, if only one hairless old monk with one tooth was still alive and practiced it, she would find out about it and bring it to Bill. It was their way of communication now. He need never know that it ripped open seams in her memory that were unendurable.

That night, during a troubled sleep, the past came back to assail her with a vengeance.

The voice suddenly rose to a shriek, reverberating, piercing all the corridors into Janice’s ears. She covered them with her hands and heard, through the screams, the rush of blood and the pounding of her own heart.

“Daddydaddydaddydaddydaddydaddyhothothothot!!”

Rebounding, filling the hall with madness and terror, lashing out at Janice with shattering impact, Ivy rushed to the stairs. Her face was hideously distended, and deep red.

“HOTHOTHOTHOTHOTHOTHOTHOT” she sobbed, the words running together into a single blast of pain.

“Oh God! No!” Janice pleaded.

But the force of the girl was uncanny. Ivy ripped from her grasp, fell headlong down the stairs, and bolted, bleeding, across the living room.

“Ivy—!” Janice wept.

“HOTHOTHOTHOTHOTHOTHOTHOT” came the scream, further away now, as Ivy threw herself at the long, dark windows, frosted, glinting with the cold. Again and again, she beat her bandaged hands at the cold glass, looking for escape, until the blood dappled the patterns of the windows.

“Daddydaddydaddydaddydaddy—” she shrieked.

But Bill was gone, escaped to Hawaii, and the screams escalated into a single, incoherent, note of hysterical terror. From far away, as in a dream, Janice was conscious of the red light blinking on the house telephone, and without sensing her own feet, found herself picking up the receiver.

“Miz Templeton,” Dominick’s voice said. “There’s a Mr. Hoover down here in the lobby.”

“Send him up!” Janice cried, dropping the phone.

When Hoover arrived, she opened the door. Immediately he sensed the situation. He walked slowly into the apartment, unsure of his steps in the darkness. His tall, athletic body seemed to bend forward as though ready for anything. His thinning, blond hair gleamed in the light from above. Janice, fascinated, saw his pale blue eyes narrow, concentrating on the image of the whirling bundle of cloth, flesh, hair, and panic across the room.

“Audrey Rose!” he called. “It’s Daddy! I’m here!”

“DADDYDADDYDADDYDADDY!!”

“HERE, AUDREY ROSE! DADDY IS HERE, DARLING!”

Slowly, as he called her by that name, that name that was now as much a part of the apartment as anything else, Hoover stepped carefully toward the dark windows. Over and over he called to her, until she heard. Lips quivering, she looked blindly for the sound.

“Here, darling,” he whispered, “I’m here! It’s Daddy!”

Exhausted, looking for him, touching his coat as he came within reach, Ivy seemed unable to believe it. Then she scampered into his arms, sobbing against his chest. Hoover rocked her back and forth. Janice stepped slowly through the quiet apartment. All she heard was Ivy’s gentle, rhythmic breathing.

Hoover lifted Ivy’s arm and softly redressed the burnt hand. Then he washed her forehead, caressed her cheek, and carried her up to her bedroom. Janice followed in a daze. For a long time, he stood there, looking down at Ivy. The room was dark, and quiet, and Janice suddenly felt the aftershock of the violence. She sat down abruptly on the bed.

“Don’t you see what we’re dealing with here?” he asked, his eyes avoiding hers. “We’re dealing with something far greater than Ivy’s physical welfare. We’re dealing with her soul, the selfsame soul of my daughter, Audrey Rose. That’s what we must help and try to save.”

A peculiar buzz ran through Janice’s head, as though she had not slept for a week. All she wanted was for him to stop talking.

“It’s a soul in such pain and torment that it will push Ivy back to that moment of death, back to the fire and smoke, if we don’t help…”

Shut it out, her brain screamed. Don’t listen!

“I–I don’t know what you’re saying,” she managed to blurt.

He looked at her.

“I’m saying that Audrey Rose came back too soon,” he said simply. “Out of fear, horror, she returned too soon, and now seeks to escape this earth-life. This is the meaning of Ivy’s nightmares.”

“No!” she shouted. “You’re crazy. My husband says you belong in the nuthouse and he’s right!”

Hoover’s jaw clenched. Mastering himself, he swallowed and relaxed, but his eyes blinked rapidly as though humiliated that she still did not understand him.

“That’s your fear talking, Mrs. Templeton,” he whispered.

“No, damn it. It’s me talking. Now get out of here!”

Hoover came suddenly closer, leaning over her, until his face was only inches from her, his breath warm and sweet. Janice looked into the depths of his pale blue eyes and found an intolerable gentleness there.

“Will you open your heart and try at least to understand what I’ve been saying?” he entreated.

“I don’t know,” she said, her voice weak. “I don’t know what you want of me.”

Hoover sensed contact with her. He smiled. His eyes became bright. The words poured out in a silver rush.

“We must form a bond, Mrs. Templeton, you and I, so filled with love that we can mend her, so that the soul of Audrey Rose can find its rest. We’re the only ones who can help her. You and I.”

Janice felt a hypnotic power in his voice, a lulling, tugging seductiveness that weakened her. Yet she felt secure with him; his presence meant Ivy was safe.

“Don’t shut the door on me, Mrs. Templeton,” he breathed. “Allow me to come into your life. Allow me to serve you, and Ivy, and Audrey Rose. This is the meaning of my life. All those years of searching, hoping, doubting—”

He drew Janice closer to him. He saw that her eyes now darted over his face, examining him for signs, clues, some symbol of what reality had become.

“Can you just throw me aside?” he whispered heatedly. “Can you?”

“No,” Janice cried weakly, feeling the wet of her own tears on her face.

“Thank you,” Hoover exhaled, grateful.

He stood up, and it seemed now that he possessed the bedroom, the apartment, and all that was in it, as well as the two living beings there. He looked back at Ivy, who turned comfortably in a pleasant sleep.

“We are connected,” he said with finality. “You and I, Mrs. Templeton. All three of us. We have come together by a miracle and now we are inseparable.”

He turned, a dark look suddenly flashing across his eyes.

“Say yes, Mrs. Templeton. Please!”

“Yes,” Janice wept, and she felt that she was about to fall.

Early the next morning, drugged from lack of sleep, Janice trudged to the library, selected several Tibetan books, and mailed them to Bill, resolving to think no more about it.

That night Janice found herself working into the wee hours with Elaine, trying to complete two separate sets of layouts before the spring deadline.

Two Tensor lamps cast bright cones onto their adjacent work tables. The rest of the suite was lost in the night, where bits of red and yellow lights gleamed inward from the city skyscrapers.

Together they prepared the outlines and marked out instructions for the staff in the morning. Wearily, Janice stood, rubbed her eyes, and stretched, yawning with a deadly fatigue. It was 2:30 in the morning, but Janice didn’t mind. She was gratified that Elaine depended on her professional collaboration in these all-night sessions.

“It is late,” Elaine yawned. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right,” she said. “I’m in no rush to go home to an empty apartment!”

They worked in silence for several minutes.

“But you do have a daughter?”

Janice licked her lips. A nightmarish, queasy sensation invaded her, as though this one moment of perfect friendship, this island of hard work and steady hopes, might also break apart.

“What makes you say that?” Janice asked.

“Do you remember when we worked on that series of sporting outfits for pre-teens? You drew those very well. In fact, I pointed that out, and you made some joke about an artist’s eyes being different from a mother’s. Do you remember?”

Janice said nothing. She turned away from Elaine and listened to the subterranean rumble of the city that never died, not even at 2:30 in the morning.

“Her name was Ivy,” Janice said softly. “She died eight months ago. It was an accident.”

There was a long space of silence. Then Elaine said softly, “I’m so very sorry to know that.”

“I should have told you long ago,” Janice said. “That’s why Bill isn’t home. It was Ivy’s death that caused his breakdown.”

“It’s been difficult for you. I can tell.”

Janice inhaled deeply.

“It was,” Janice said slowly. “I’ve never told anybody just how horrible it really was.”

In a slow, even voice, as though she had rehearsed it for months, Janice began to tell Elaine about what it was like when she first realized that a man was shadowing Ivy. What it was like watching Ivy bend and twist, scream, and suffocate with fear, not once, not twice, but many times, until there was no remembering when it all began. It was so hard to explain what it was like, seeing a presence— Hoover’s — gradually insinuate itself into your apartment, your life, your child — into your own soul.

For hours she spoke, until the dawn spread its frigid, pale glow through the slatted blinds, and Janice, hoarse from the ordeal, groped for her coffee cup.

Elaine, divining her need, pushed it across to her. “Of course. I remember it all. The papers were full of it.” Then, in a small, amazed voice: “So you’re that Templeton.”

Janice’s eyes lowered. “Yes, I’m that Templeton.”

Elaine looked away, in a seeming quandary.

“All this Buddhist stuff, or Hindu,” she said. “Did you actually believe it?”

“I believed one thing. My daughter was in serious trouble and Elliot Hoover was the only person who could get her out of it.”

“It must have been painful testifying against your own husband, like that.”

Janice smiled bitterly.

“I had no choice. I would have signed a pact with the devil.”

“And now?”

“Now? Now, I try not to think about it. It’s actually a lot of hard work sometimes, not thinking about it.”

“That’s why Bill just stopped thinking at all?”

Janice stood up. She looked out at the gray, cold dawn on the stone streets. For a long time, she just looked out.

“Elaine,” she said slowly, “Bill has started to read Hindu tracts. Buddhist texts.”

Elaine stared at her in surprise. Janice turned to look at her. “I don’t know what to make of it. He’s become so damned obsessive about it. I can’t stand to be with him when he talks about it. But what can I do? Shut him up? Only a few weeks ago, he wasn’t even speaking. I can’t very well reject him now!”

“Maybe he needs to — to understand,” Elaine offered. “Just wants to review what happened.”

Janice raised her voice.

“But I don’t want to hear about it!” she said. “I don’t want to go through it again! It’s like a madhouse, a thousand crooked mirrors screaming at you, each one of them saying Buddha, and Karma, and transmigration, making you hear it all over again, and I don’t want to listen!”

Janice paused and lowered her voice.

“I can’t go through it again, Elaine. To feel myself slipping into it like quicksand — astral planes and holy cycles — getting closer and closer to believing it. It’s like going insane. Slowly, but surely. Just like going insane.”

6

Janice skipped lunch that day. Instead, she lay down on the couch, closed her eyes, and sank into the oblivion of total fatigue. Just as dream images began to form, Elaine tapped her on the shoulder.

“Telephone,” Elaine said. “Sounds official.”

Janice rose quickly, swayed, caught herself, then walked calmly to her work desk. She picked up the receiver and pressed her exchange button.

“Hello?”

“Mrs. Templeton, Dr. Geddes here.”

“Is everything all right?”

“I tried calling you at home, but there was no answer.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Let me say first that Bill’s all right. Just a few scratches. There was a kind of altercation.”

Janice sat down slowly. Elaine came in, saw the look on her face, and discreetly left again, closing the door.

“Altercation? Bill?”

“Yes, with another patient, named Borofsky. Apparently, Bill had inveigled him into doing some kind of research. Borofsky was connected to the bookstore at Gimbels, or something like that. They had a falling out, Borofsky came to his room, and Bill thought he was trying to steal his notes.”

“Notes? What notes?”

Dr. Geddes started over again, more slowly.

“Bill’s been studying. Studying a lot more than we’d guessed. Newspaper clippings. Old lectures he conned out of a library in Albany. Books — you name it. And I guess he was possessive about it, and when Borofsky came down, Bill hit him with an old brass lamp from the library. Borofsky seems to be all right. He’s been X-rayed and there’s no fracture.”

“I can’t believe Bill would do something like that.”

“Mrs. Templeton, can you come to the clinic today?”

“Today? It would be very difficult.”

“It’s quite important. Bill’s a bit delirious. He thinks we sent Borofsky to spy on him. You have to come and help us reestablish his trust. Before his attitude hardens.”

“All right. I’ll try.”

When Janice explained things to Elaine, a visible disappointment surfaced on Elaine’s face.

“You don’t really have a choice, do you?”

“Believe me, I’d rather not, but—”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll manage.”

Janice caught the 12:45 northbound to Ossining. She slept the entire trip.

She stumbled wearily through the cascading rain, caught in the cone of the taxi headlights, entered the clinic, and found Bill in the infirmary. Three long red scratches trailed vividly down his face and he gazed blankly at the door where she stood.

“He’s a bit sedated,” Dr. Geddes whispered behind her, closing the door.

Janice walked quickly to the bed. Bill’s face turned to follow her, but it was not his face. Something had taken over. His forehead was damp with perspiration and he looked warily around the room.

“Bill?” she whispered, “can you hear me?”

“Of course I can hear you, Janice,” he said quickly. “Do I look dead?”

“But, darling…I don’t understand. What happened?”

Bill laughed derisively. Dr. Geddes sauntered closer to the bed. It was a small infirmary, and the other two beds were still freshly made.

Bill turned away.

“Nobody knew you were taking those notes,” Dr. Geddes said, as kindly as he could, “so how could we be spying on you?”

“The old man told you, of course.”

“You know there’s no covert supervision here, Bill.”

“That’s what you say, Geddes. I saw him in my room. I didn’t invite him.”

“But I don’t understand,” Janice persisted. “Why did you hit him?”

Bill whirled around, glaring at her, his eyes a lurid deep black, pinpoints of brightness flashing in the depths of the pupils.

“Because he had no business there!” he hissed.

“But what’s so important about—”

“That’s for me to say! Not you! Not Geddes! Just me!”

Dr. Geddes exchanged glances with Janice. Bill saw them looking at one another and withdrew into his pillow. One of the long scratches reopened and a thin trail of crim son dripped down onto the collar of his pajamas.

“Is he all right?” Bill asked, softer.

“Just a bad headache. No fracture.”

“Well, he shouldn’t have done it. It’s his own god-damn fault.”

“Bill, I want you to listen to Janice,” Dr. Geddes said. “You know when she lies and when she tells the truth. Will you do that for me? Just listen to somebody besides yourself for two minutes.”

After staring at Bill, who lowered his eyes, Dr. Geddes walked slowly out of the infirmary. A nurse tried to come in, but Dr. Geddes blocked her way with an arm and closed the door firmly behind him. Janice gently tried to touch the bleeding line down Bill’s cheek but he drew her hand away.

“What’s gotten into you, Bill?” she asked heatedly.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? You practically killed an old man last night! Is that normal?”

“I just tapped him.”

“Bill, listen to me. You do that again and they’ll— they’ll start giving you medicine, drugs. They’ll give you electric shock.”

Bill laughed.

“There’s no shock machine here.”

“Then they’ll ship you someplace where there is! What do you think you’re playing around with?”

Worried, Bill raised himself higher against his pillows. Janice leaned closer, her face nearly white with worry.

“Bill, listen to me,” she whispered. “Whatever’s going through your head now, throw it out, because if they transfer you to some other place, some place where they’re used to violent cases — Jesus, Bill, you’ll never see the light of day!”

She broke down crying, leaned against his chest. Over and over she said, “Don’t you understand that, Bill? Never… Never… Never…”

Bill swallowed hard, and his hand gently held her around her shoulder. He squeezed softly.

“Okay, Janice,” he whispered hoarsely. “I got the message.”

Clumsily, he moved away from under her, struggled to the other edge of the bed, and sat up. He slipped into his trousers and pulled on a green checkered shirt.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“Give me a hand, will you, honey? They shot me full of shit.”

Janice ran to his side, lifted his arm over her shoulder, and eased him to a standing position.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I’m okay now. I can walk.”

Gradually, he shuffled his way to the door. He paused and, with a gesture of his head, beckoned for her to open it.

“Come on,” he whispered, “I’ve got something to show you.”

Stumbling, Bill led her as quickly as he could, swaying into the side walls, holding his hands out as though feeling for invisible barriers, toward his room. Inside, it looked as though the fight had broken apart the bedroom walls. The edge of the desk tilted at a crazy angle. Books, chairs, pillows, and blankets were strewn violently over the floor, and everywhere were handfuls of paper, note cards, spiralbound notebooks.

Janice stumbled forward, her shoes stepping on the paper. She bent down, picked up several sheets and tried to discern them in the dark. Bill’s tight handwriting was illegible. But at the sides of the sheets were diagrams. The human body with dotted triangles emanating from the head, thorax, and groin.

“Bill, what is all this?”

“I’ve discovered things, Janice,” he said. “It’s time I told you about them.”

“What kind of things?”

“Sit down. I have to go through these things in order. So you understand.”

Janice felt for the bed, sat down slowly, still watching Bill. He was moving restlessly, and outside the rain now turned to sleet, growing so violent that it smashed into splinters around his head behind the glass, like a tortured halo.

“I’ve been studying for a long time, Janice,” he said in that chilling, moody tone that sent shivers into her back. “I played dumb. But I was studying. Now I know too much.”

He rubbed his mouth nervously and jumped at the sound of a truck passing slowly over the hill.

“I have to explain these things,” he said quickly, “because then I have to ask you some things, Janice. So just listen.”

“All right,” she said gently. “I’m listening.”

Bill licked his lips, then removed himself as far from her as he could, to the broken desk near the windows. His voice trailed coldly from him.

“It’s because of Ivy, you know,” he said, “that I started reading. Well, I found that this idea you and Hoover had— you know what I’m talking about — well, it all started before there were any Hindus. All of Hoover’s ideas about the yogis and the river Ganges and reincarnation were half-baked. I know that now. That much is plain. Hoover was right about some things. But he was confused. He didn’t get it all right!”

Bill began pacing and turning, back and forth, in front of the window.

“Now, if you look at this analytically,” he said, “if you really pore over it day and night for as long as I have, you begin to discover a few things.”

Bill paused, then straightened his back, as though in pain. His hand kneaded the back of his neck.

“Before there were any writings,” he said softly, his voice oddly in rhythm with the swaying plants and undulating grass outside. “Before there were any temples and all that. There was a belief, by the people of the plains, that when you died, you passed into a heaven. But if you were really good, if you were successful, you could go up to the chief of the heavens, and there you could be with the father of all the gods, who was Yama. Now listen to me, Janice. It was called going up to the world of light. Light. You got to remember that. And if you passed upward into that light, you could unite in some way with Yama, and drink with the gods under leafy trees, and there was constant singing all around, and lutes played, and your body was young and vigorous, without imperfection or weakness. If you passed into the light.”

Bill paused, savoring the recollection of what he had read. He imagined the picture, the metaphors of what he now repeated. Bill waited for a response.

“All right, Bill,” Janice said. “The light.”

“Yes. The light. Now that doesn’t help us much with Ivy, does it? So I kept reading. And the prophets, after two thousand years, went deeper into death. And they put it differently.”

Bill stared dreamily out of the window.

“The departed soul,” he continued softly, “rises to the moon. If it passes on, it goes to the world of fire, and wind, and sky, and the gods. And it is dressed in exquisite robes and garlands, and perfumed with soft ointments. It goes to a lake and an ageless river, and crosses, and shakes off evil deeds. And it comes to a celestial city, Janice. A kind of palace with a long hall. A shining throne. Bathed in light. You see? The light! And when it sees the light, the body is truly dead, and the Creator God asks — he asks: ‘Who are you?’”

Bill’s voice trailed away. The dripping eaves made a steady sound behind him. Janice watched as his silhouette rubbed his eyes, but whether in fatigue or for tears, she could not tell.

“And you say something like — something that translates like—‘I am real,’” Bill concluded. “It’s like that, Janice. Are you listening?”

“I am. Of course I am.”

“Good. Because if you don’t pass on to that light, that shining light, you falter. You fumble. You find yourself back on the earth. And like a caterpillar that goes from one blade of grass to the next, you live all over again, trying to become a beautiful form. So you can pass into the light. The light of oblivion.”

Bill slumped wearily, sitting against the windowsill. He breathed heavily, then smoothed his hair down with his right hand. He looked at Janice, his own face reduced to the two pinpoints of his eyes, gleaming softly at her.

“Well, that could help,” he said gently. “That could lead us somewhere. I mean, if you’re really trying to understand what happened. Maybe somehow Ivy — I mean the earlier child, Audrey — There was a false continuation, but it doesn’t quite make sense. Does it?”

“I–I don’t know, Bill.”

“I mean, you accepted all that. What do you think now?”

“I’m prepared to believe that something like that might have happened,” Janice said sincerely, faltering. “But the details—”

“Exactly, Janice. The details. The details will never make sense to people like us, will they? I mean, we believe in reason, in analyzing, as best we can, and then — but that’s what I thought until — now listen closely, Janice. Follow what I’m saying.”

Bill began pacing again, talking to the storm, yet listening, trying to sense Janice’s responses. Then he picked up a long, heavy book from the floor and began slowly paging through it, looking for something, even while he spoke.

“Two things stuck in my mind,” he said quietly. “First, Hoover said that Audrey Rose came back and there was only one reason. Why did she come back? She came back because her death was untimely. Isn’t that it? What else was going on, it all happened because she was caught in that car. Dead before her time. And of all the books I read, all the incomprehensible poems and prayers and voodoo and parables and Christ knows what, nobody ever mentioned an untimely death. All the Hindus cared about, all the Jains cared about, all anybody cared about was what happened at the end of a long quiet life.”

Bill licked his lips. Evidently he had found his place. He peered down at the book, squinted, then backed against the window to catch some light from the low floodlights outside.

“So I had to keep looking. And then I found the Clear Light of Death,” he whispered. “I found it in the bardo t’ odro, the Book of Death.”

“What are you talking about, Bill?”

“Those books you gave me about Tibet. Things that Borofsky got for me. Did you know that for thousands of years the Tibetans were isolated from the rest of the world? That they perfected the science of death? I’ve read these verses over and over again, Janice, until I can recite them by heart! And I have to explain them to you because they make sense. They make sense the way nothing else in this evil-infested world ever did!”

Bill whipped the book upward to his chest, looking feverishly for his place. Janice found herself shivering. She unconsciously pulled the blanket from the top of the bed and gathered it around her.

“You see,” he whispered, “the great fear of the Tibetans was an untimely death! So they analyzed the death process. They found that there is a point of no return, a sinking down past recovery. There is a feeling of being unable to maintain one’s human form. A person panics. He feels as though he is falling. Dissolving. His bodily strength has slipped away. His cognition grows clouded.”

Bill read directly from the volume in his hands. As he moved into the light from the driveway, Janice read the title: The Tibetan Book of the Dead.

“All right,” Bill continued. “The next step. The warmth of the body fades. The eyes turn inward. The limbs tremble.”

“Bill, please! I don’t want to listen!”

“It’s what happened to Ivy, isn’t it? Listen, Janice. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Afterward, the cognition inverts, turns into miragelike flashes, and things come unreal, just the reverse of being born: the blood slows; this is called ‘the black path’ because the heart is dying. It’s the point of the worst panic. Vision is cut off. Memory dies. Breath is cut off. Now listen. ‘The mind that rides upon the wind leaves the central channel.’”

Bill looked up, triumphant.

“Do you understand that? ‘The mind that rides upon the wind’—the soul, Janice—‘leaves the channel of the body.’ Now follow what happens next!”

Janice, in spite of herself, was hypnotized by the rhythmic voice in front of her. Bill weaved slowly back and forth, his finger picking out phrases in the light of the rain and sleet behind him.

“‘Awareness,’” he read very slowly, “‘passes into the Clear Light of Death’!”

He looked up at her, frightened, yet gaining confidence when she offered no objection. He laughed hideously, uncertainly.

“‘The Clear Light of Death’! There it is! It’s mentioned everywhere, but here it is! Analyzed! And if the soul can pass into the light of emptiness, without fear, if it reaches a firm communion with the emptiness — that is, Nirvana — then it has embraced bliss! There is no return, no more return. It’s all oblivion… and peace…”

Slowly, as he spoke, Bill calmed down. The fire left his eyes. He became aware of the cold and shivered. The mania was gone.

“But if there is panic,” he said with a dull finality, glazed, “if there is no acceptance, then there must be a return, another life… who knows, a hundred more lives…”

Bill came forward, sat at the edge of the bed, and put his arm on Janice’s shoulder. He was sweating, his shirt damp, his hair moist over his brows. He looked into her face.

“In an untimely death,” he said simply, “there can be no acceptance.”

Janice moved slightly back, but his hand firmly held her shoulder.

“Even for somebody trained all his life like a priest, it’s almost impossibly difficult. But for somebody like Ivy—”

A hand went slowly to Janice’s mouth. “Or like Audrey Rose!” she whispered hoarsely.

He nodded slowly. “Did Ivy have a chance to prepare for death?” he asked simply. “No! It was too sudden. You saw what I saw, Janice. She was in a state of panic!”

Bill wearily stood. He seemed not to have the strength to move anymore. Dismally he watched the lessening rain, dripping with monotonous regularity in thin silver streaks at the window.

“Ivy could not have passed through,” he said gently. “She could not have passed through into the radiance… dissolving… into a circle of pure light.” Then, softly: “Hoover was wrong, Janice. Our daughter’s soul is not at peace. She’s back. Ivy’s come back.”

Just then the main room light suddenly went on, hurting their eyes, and Dr. Geddes stood at the door. He studied them both for a few seconds.

“How are you feeling, Bill?” Dr. Geddes asked.

“Oh, better. Much better. Listen, I feel pretty rotten about what happened. I promise it won’t happen again.”

“I hope not, Bill. It really wasn’t like you.”

Dr. Geddes smiled awkwardly, sensing he had broken something between Janice and Bill, but not certain just what.

“Would you like me to call down to the gate for a taxi, Janice?”

“Yes, please—”

When Geddes left, there was a momentary impasse. Bill made a few desultory efforts at cleaning the debris from the floor. Janice joined him by carefully, timidly, scraping together the sheets and note cards into neat piles.

“I’m going to need your help,” he whispered.

She stopped. “What kind of help?”

“I’ll call you at home. Now just keep picking up these papers. I don’t want Dr. Geddes to get wind of anything.”

They worked in silence until she saw the headlights of a taxi moving up the driveway.

“It’s the cab,” she said. “I’d better go.”

“Okay. Good. I won’t call you tonight. They listen to your calls around here, no matter what they tell you. I’ll find a way to call you in a couple of days.”

They heard Dr. Geddes’s footsteps coming. Janice stood up.

“I’d like to discuss your prescriptions,” Dr. Geddes said. “I mean, with your wife. So she’ll understand.”

“Sure, doctor,” Bill said, eager to restore a working relationship with Dr. Geddes. Janice embraced Bill. “I’ll call you. I’ll need your help,” he whispered in her ear.

Then he separated from her and smiled broadly.

“Good night, darling,” he said just a trifle loudly. “And thanks a million for coming down. I don’t know what happened. I just — just flipped out—”

Dr. Geddes drew Janice discreetly off toward the lobby.

“This episode with Mr. Borofsky,” he said uncertainly, “it worries me a great deal. I think you’ll agree that a visit home is out of the question.”

Janice said nothing. She turned slowly and looked casually over her shoulder at Bill through the open door of his room. He caught her looking at him and smiled.

“I think he knows he’s in trouble,” Dr. Geddes continued quickly. “I really can’t countenance a departure from observation at this time. Do you disagree?”

The sudden cancellation of Bill’s visit seemed to push the boulder back in front of Bill’s tomb. Janice felt an overpowering sense of relief.

“No,” she said, trying not to sound eager. “You’re right.” She hurried out of the building, over the slippery gravel, and into the taxi.

The train ride back into the city flashed by like a jagged nightmare, whispering voices, hissing insinuations, and the people waiting at the stations loomed like twisted piles of flesh, already decomposing.

7

During the next weeks, Bill telephoned almost daily. He wanted books. He read Janice the titles of pamphlets he needed. He wanted her to write letters to several authorities in New York, and to a psychiatrist in Berlin. Impatient for her replies, he began to call her at work.

He needed copies of articles from the encyclopedias of religion at the New York Public Library. Mailed special delivery to the clinic. When she visited him, he cross-examined her ruthlessly. He tried to trip her up to see if she had really made the telephone calls, really written the letters. Exhausted, she shoved the written replies in his face and he mumbled an apology.

Finally, at work, Bill called and demanded that during her lunch break she visit the Temple where Hoover had last been seen.

“I can’t go there, Bill,” she whispered into the telephone, her fingers angrily toying with her paintbrush on the drafting table.

“Why the hell not?”

“It’s where I went to the service for Ivy. I–I just don’t want to go back there.”

“I’ve got to know the answers!” he said loudly.

She held the receiver away from her ear.

“I’m sorry I yelled,” he said. “Look, just a few questions. I’m going crazy here. Geddes won’t let me out for another month.”

“All right, Bill,” she said, reaching for a pencil and note pad. “Read me your questions.”

Bill slowly and distinctly read several technical questions. They involved the time delay in return of the soul. Whether time functioned in a different mode between death and the new life. Whether one could rely on earth clocks and calendars in computations.

“What do you mean, computations?” Janice asked warily.

“Never mind. Just go there. Ask the high priest or whatever he’s called. And call me back when you’ve found out.”

“Well, I can’t go today.”

There was a suspicious silence at the other end.

“Why not?”

“Because I’ve already had my lunch break and this will take at least an hour—”

“Then say you’re sick.”

“I won’t say I’m sick, Bill. I’m not going to cut out of work for this.”

“But you have to, Janice. I’m depending on you!”

“I’m happy to do the favor for you,” she said, trying to hold her temper. “But I’m not going to risk my job!”

“All right. Don’t get sore. Call me when you can.”

He hung up without saying good-bye.

The next day, Janice gulped a sandwich while riding to Greenwich Village in a taxi. She remembered the Hompa Hongwanji Temple all too well: the murmurs and chants, the smell of incense. She remembered a white-haired priest, called, simply, the Master.

The front of the Temple had been defaced by vandals, black spray paint over the door spelling out a code for the street gangs. Inside, several thin youths sat on a bench improbably donated by a neighboring church, and seemed to stare vacantly at where the altar should have been. Only there was no altar — simply a mass of flowers in white stone basins, sticks of burning incense and, nearly buried under the bright foliage, a faded color photograph of a yogi in cross-legged position.

It all seemed familiar, yet frightening. She clutched the list of questions in her hand.

“Excuse me,” she whispered, disturbing the tranquility of a short, young man with rimless glasses. “Is the Master in?”

“He’s in meditation.”

“Will he be through soon?”

“Not likely. Can I help you?”

She smiled. “I had some questions—”

“Yes, of course. We all do. Do you want a cup of tea? We can talk about them on the bench at the back of the room.”

“All right. Thank you.”

From a low table he picked up a small pot of tea, poured it into two perpetually stained cups, and offered her one. He waited patiently.

Nervously, she referred to her list of questions.

“My, er, husband,” she said, “would like to know some details about time. That is, time as it exists after death.”

The youth smiled.

“Your husband sent you here instead of coming himself?”

“He’s not well.”

“I see. I’m sorry. Please, sit down.”

They sat under a poster of the Taj Mahal, donated by the India Tourist Board. It too had faded in the sunlight from the windows, and the famous white walls looked surprisingly blue green.

“Time as it exists after death is the same as time during life. Time is like an enormous field on which the game of life is played. It does not change if a person dies.”

Janice briefly noted the answer with a pencil. It was a peculiar sensation, asking the questions. Once she would have needed to know the answers. Now she was asking for Bill, and she tried to remain detached. Yet something deep within her listened hard to every nuance of the disciple’s words.

“But if a person dies, the soul is on its own—” She faltered and began again. “If there is a time — I mean, space— between one life and the next—”

“An interval.”

“Yes. An interval. Is that experienced as an infinity of time? Or measured in weeks, months, and years? Or is there no sensation of time at all?”

“It is not measured in weeks, months, and years, because there is no ego to measure. It is experienced as infinite: neither infinitely long nor infinitely short, simply an unbounded expression of the void; only temporal, not spatial.”

Absolutely lost, Janice nevertheless dutifully copied down the answer.

“But if there is a return?”

“There is always a return,” he said, smiling gently. “Unless the soul has reached the final extinguishing: Nirvana. And that happens very rarely.”

“Yes, when there is a return to life”—the words echoed weirdly in Janice’s ears, a kind of thrill of blasphemy to be saying them, horrifying, yet suddenly obsessive—“can you reckon the return in weeks, months, and years?”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“If a person dies on December the tenth, can you predict when the soul returns?”

The boy paused. His hand patted down on his head, where the blond hair was thinning. He frowned. He seemed upset by Janice’s question.

“I don’t know,” he said.

Surprised, Janice did not know how to respond. For a few seconds she thought he was going to walk abruptly away, his feelings hurt.

“You’d have to ask the Master,” he said brusquely.

“When will he be free?”

“It varies. Usually about midafternoon.”

“I see. But I have to go back to work.”

“If you leave me your name, I’ll present your question to him. If you come back tomorrow, I’ll try to give you his answer.”

“That’s very kind of you.”

She wrote down the question, along with several more from Bill. She even added one of her own. It was a fantasy she’d had from her own Catholic upbringing: Do the dead perceive, or even, in some way, “watch” events on earth? Janice felt silly writing it down; a child’s question, and yet she was curious what the Temple taught on the subject. She promised to come back tomorrow, midafternoon.

When she returned to the studio, there were three telephone slips. Bill had called three times.

“You didn’t get much out of them, did you?” he complained when she called him back.

“The Master was in meditation.”

“Listen. Go back there and speak directly with the old man. Don’t mess around with these small fry.”

“He seemed a perfectly sweet and reasonable young man—”

“Was he American or Indian?”

“American.”

“Forget him. He’s some wipe-out from too much dope. Get hold of the horse’s mouth.”

“All right, Bill,” she sighed.

Bill hung up, barely murmuring good-bye.

The next day, Janice grabbed a lunch at her work desk, and when 3:30 came around, slipped out to the Temple. This time the Master was sitting cross-legged among the flowers at the front of the room. He was evidently not meditating, because his eyes followed her as she hesitantly walked into the room, and he smiled politely.

He stood up and slowly, gracefully, pattered in his sandals to where she stood. With his white hair glistening, his skin looked darker by comparison, making his blue gray eyes almost transparent in contrast. He wore an orange robe draped loosely over his shoulder and tucked into itself at the waist.

“You are Mrs. Templeton?” he asked in a silvery-smooth voice.

“Yes. I was here yesterday.”

“So I was told. I’m sorry I was not available to answer your questions.”

“It was my own fault. I did not know your schedule.”

As he escorted her from the main room, she sensed the obedient eyes of the five or six disciples following them protectively, intensely. Alone with him in the cool of the garden, where, even as she watched, dead leaves fell from stunted trees by a leaning stone wall, she suddenly grew afraid of him. It was a vague similarity to the fear she had always felt in the presence of Hoover, even when Hoover was surrounded by cops and lawyers.

“It is more conducive to explanation in the garden,” he said, neither eager to push his doctrine, nor yet indifferent to her need to know. “You know that many branches of one religion can differ on some points, so what I can explain to you is only our own interpretation.”

“I understand that, your…”

“My name is Sri Parutha,” he said, sensing her awkwardness. “I am called the Master. It is not that I am a master over them”—gesturing toward the disciples inside—“but rather that I have mastered myself.”

Janice visibly relaxed in the face of his modesty. He reminded her of an uncle she had known as a child, an uncle who had brought her tales of far-off Paris in a smooth, inwardly vibrant voice.

“The question as to prediction of the return is a division point among a number of sects within our philosophy. I myself maintain that there is a general limitation — let us say, two generations — within which the soul returns. Others maintain that the instant of death produces an instant of life.”

Janice jotted down the answer. The Master answered several more, and amplified his disciple’s answers of the previous day.

“And as to whether the dead observe, in some way, life on earth, I must say I am not in sympathy with this idea. It is natural for the bereaved to feel it is so, and no harm is done by imagining it, but the condition of the soul after death is so vastly different from earthly existence that to speak of ‘observation,’ implying eyes and ears, and an independent mind, would be to fabricate a whole mythology.”

“I see,” Janice said, feeling, much to her own surprise, a sense of disappointment, as though the child within her had been deceived by the priests and nuns of her old parochial school.

The Master smiled softly, neither with mirth nor yet with an irony.

“You have come out of a sense of grief,” he observed.

“Yes, how did you know?”

“One can tell after many years of observing human beings. Was it a child?”

“It was.”

“And if memory does not fail me, you were here once before. Almost a year ago.”

Janice blushed and said nothing. The Master himself seemed deeply moved by the memory. He was silent. For a long time the only sound was the rustle of dead leaves in the trees of the garden.

“But you have never come back since then,” the Master said.

“I found it too painful.”

He nodded sympathetically. “I am not offended. But I was told that now it is your husband who has become interested.”

She grew silent. Bill’s obsession seemed to have an unhealthy quality, nothing like the Master’s calm recitation of doctrine.

“It’s been very sudden,” she confessed.

“Very well. We are pleased to help in any way.”

“Thank you. You’ve been most kind.”

The Master wished to chat on about the garden for a few moments. He seemed to find a delight and a tranquility in observing the small changes, day by day, as the garden prepared for the hard, cruel winter.

“One does not fear death,” he observed, “if one knows that life returns.”

Janice smiled and let him accompany her to the door.

“Do I — that is, can I make a contribution?” she asked awkwardly.

“Not necessary,” he said, his eyes twinkling ironically. “Good-bye, Mrs. Templeton. Come whenever you like.”

She left, buoyed up by the Master’s gentle but irresistible optimism. She did not even mind the slips on her desk, saying that Bill had called twice. She did not even mind his displeasure at the Master’s vague answer to the question of time.

But gradually, as the climate turned colder, and the leaves clustered at the base of the buildings, and the rain began to break with fury over the cold stone, Bill’s attitude began to weigh down on her. He called five times, six times a day. He called at home. He needed magazines; some had to be ordered from London or Delhi, and he needed them now. And she had to disguise them as Newsweeks and Times to keep Dr. Geddes in the dark.

Janice went to the Temple five more times, until she felt she was studying for some cosmic final examination. Like a robot, she wandered for the thousandth time into the religion sector of the public library, looking into obscure journals with unreadable print. She felt like a marionette, with Bill jerking the strings with unforgiving violence, impatient and angry.

And yet the search, at some subliminal level, was having its effect on her. She knew too much. She refused to believe, and yet she was no longer simply a go-between. The concepts traveled around with her, a perpetual resonance from another world.

She slept alone at Des Artistes, the nights a heavy weight to endure. She neither feared the night nor yet looked forward to the dawn. Sleepless, driven by Bill, she went to work only half conscious of the exhaustion that was sapping her will to resist.

Bill called, excited. He was making discoveries, he claimed. Now he needed to know the specifics of signs.

“Signs?” Janice asked.

“Yes, the signs of reincarnation!”

“Bill, I’m exhausted. I can’t do this much longer.”

“Just a few more questions, honey. A few more answers. Then we’ll be all set.”

“Set for what, Bill?”

“Never you mind. Just get to the old geezer and pop him these questions.”

Janice wearily watched her hand write down more questions on the note pad. She avoided Elaine as she sneaked out for what seemed like the hundredth time at 3:30, and headed down to the Temple.

“So, Bill sends you back again,” the Master said.

“Yes, it’s — it’s the signs he wants to know about,” Janice said, entering onto the slanted wooden floor. “It seemed very urgent to him.”

The master closed the door behind them.

“Signs?” he asked, his eyes twinkling as they always did; but somehow they never denoted humor, only a steady, ice-cool concentration that was almost lyrical in its purity.

He turned, ushered her into his cold office. He lit a small stove with newspapers, shoved in sticks — the table legs of cast-off furniture — and rubbed his hands, blowing on them. Setting a battered tin pot on the stove, he went to a small basin, turned the tap for water, and made preparations for tea.

“The signs of reincarnation,” Janice said fearfully.

The Master nodded slowly, as though he had heard the question, urgently demanded, a hundred, a thousand times before, but did not answer at once.

Janice thought he was merely waiting for the tea water to boil. It was his custom to begin indirectly, to make oblique references to the matter at hand to induce serenity. That was why words made perfect sense here, and didn’t quite when she relayed them to Bill.

“Things have changed so much,” he said softly.

“What do you mean?”

“When I came here, there were a thousand young people clamoring at our door. And such enthusiasm. Reading and chatting and real, sincere worship. And now we are down to five students.”

Janice nodded awkwardly, surprised at the realistic attitude the Master displayed.

“Fashions change,” she said softly.

“Yes. Fashions. But when I came from India ten years ago, it was no fashion. At least, it seemed to be real. But now we are no longer respected.”

Unaccustomed to his downcast mood, Janice said nothing. She watched him walk to the stove where he fed more paper and sticks into the stove. He stood over the water, pushing back the long, orange sleeves of his robe. Now, in the soft, Vermeer light of the shabby office, he looked indeed no older than fifty, handsome in a masculine, Western way, the white hair a subtle shock over the brown skin.

“This may be the last time the Temple will be open to you,” he said.

“What? Why? Have I done something wrong?”

He smiled sadly. “Of course not. But the rent here, Mrs. Templeton. Do you have any idea what it costs to be in Greenwich Village? And now, with almost nobody left, our revenues…”

“I’m sorry, Sri Parutha. I didn’t realize it was that bad.”

The water boiled. Using an aged towel, the Master cautiously lifted the pot and with deft, long-practiced motions, filled two delicate ceramic cups.

“We will be talking about it this afternoon,” he said. “I think we shall disband the Temple.”

“I don’t know how to express my sympathy,” Janice said. “I feel very bad for you.”

The Master smiled again, an enigmatic expression in his eyes. He handed Janice a cup of tea. The aroma twirled upward with the steam; a jasmine scent that, like the gentle light coming in from the frosted windows, obscured all terror, soothed all doubt, and brought a subtle tranquility down to the marrow of the bones.

“There is a phrase by one of the English poets,” the Master said. “The ‘inconstant lover.’ Let us just say that the Americans are inconstant lovers.”

Janice drank slowly, waiting for the brew to cool. She knew the Master had not forgotten why she had come, but she also knew that the realities of what he called the external world had inexplicably intruded and even destroyed his beloved sanctuary.

“Well, then, your husband needs to know the signs of reincarnation?”

The Master removed several books, fat with bookmarkers in them, and several broken brass candleholders. They sat down.

“Basically, the signs can be categorized according to the physical, the psychological, or the religious. Physical signs include birthmarks, wounds — which can reappear in modified forms — or certain congenital abnormalities. A clubfoot, for example, is repeated. Or a claw hand comes back as unexplained scars on a healthy hand. These are really so common that nobody in India would be particularly astonished if you showed up with, let us say, a dead uncle’s deformity of toes, or his laughter, or his manner of expression. Is all this clear, Mrs. Templeton?”

“Perfectly,” she answered, writing quickly onto a spiral-bound notebook.

“Psychologically, if a child has peculiar memories of a place, of people, of events that he or she has never seen. If suddenly, his mood and behavior change, with no warning but in a consistent manner. Like your own daughter, Mrs. Templeton.”

“Yes.”

“Quite often a person feels a sudden desire to travel to a part of the world he has never been to before. And when he goes, he finds that he knows how to get around, he never gets lost, and he knows the names of people he meets. Quite often there is an aspect of violence involved.”

“Violence?”

“Yes. For example, a man is compelled to travel into Madras, and there, not knowing why, he is compelled to wield an axe and he murders a distantly related uncle. It is because, several generations before, he was robbed of his inheritance by the previous incarnation of that uncle. In fact, I know of several cases in which the accused were exonerated on just such grounds.”

Janice nodded quickly, trying to cram her handwriting into the narrow-ruled pages.

“I see. And is it the same in Tibet?”

The Master paused, suddenly uncomfortable. He temporized by pouring fresh hot water into their cups.

“Tibet,” he said softly, “is a very old form of Buddhism. They do things very differently in the mountains. I realize that your husband is particularly interested in these forms of religion?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it is much more elaborate. The Dalai Lama, for example, the highest of the priests, is the latest in a long line of reincarnated men, and often it takes many months of searching the caves and farms to find the infant with the proper markings. I find, quite frankly, that there is something too intense about this form. The divinations, for example, take weeks in the bitter cold, and the mandalas are extremely sexual and violent.”

“Are they really?” Janice asked, perturbed.

The Master waved a vague hand, as though to dismiss them, evil thoughts, back into the cold air.

“Copulating skeletons. Drifting among death. Fire that eats out the body and films the eyelids. You see, it goes back to a very, very ancient time. Long before the Indo-Europeans came down to the plains of India.”

Janice finished with her notes, and the Master sighed, rubbed his eyes, and shivered.

“Before I go,” Janice said gently, “I must ask you one more thing.”

“I will answer it if I can.”

“If there is a reincarnation — I mean, when there is a reincarnation — is it possible to know where the soul will return?”

The Master smiled gently. “The physical location?”

Janice nodded.

“The soul seeks the locus of its growth and its greatest happiness. That normally means very close to where it left the previous body.”

“So if a person died in New York City—”

“One must assume that it will reappear in the area. You see, it is like a gravitational field. The soul drifts and, faster and faster, as it approaches life again, it falls toward its previous origin.”

Janice paled, but said nothing. For a while, she thought of not writing down that answer. Then she put her pencil to paper. Then, confused, she put the pencil and paper away, discouraged.

“Perhaps I should go now,” she said.

“As you wish.”

The Master, in the Western manner, rose from his orange crate and escorted her to the door. Feeling lonely, or disturbed about something, he accompanied her down the dark stairwell, into the white garden. The snow was falling, smaller, colder, a bitter screen of textured dots over the fat stone walls where old basins of stained wood had been brought from temples in India.

“If you could impress upon your husband,” he said delicately, “not to dwell too rashly in these ideas….”

“Why not? Is it dangerous?”

“Not dangerous, exactly. But I have seen too many young people who also suffered mentally as does your husband. They seized upon Hinduism and Buddhism, like drowning men clutch at the air. And in the end they misunderstood everything, and were no better off than before.”

“Yes. I’ll tell him. Perhaps, in time, his enthusiasm will die down.”

“Clarity of mind,” the Master said, leading her back through the empty Temple, where only one disciple looked up from sorting a few prayer books along the wall, jealous of Janice’s proximity to the Master. “If the mind is unclear… like a distorting pool… the doctrine becomes warped.”

Janice left the Temple. As usual, the visits to Sri Parutha left her strangely energized, eager to face the rest of the day, yet with a lingering sensation of doubt. And as the day wore on, the doubt always grew stronger. Until, finally, when the tranquility of the old Brahmin had faded sufficiently, a kind of bleak terror invaded her very body, and she took to mixing Scotch with soda as a more durable, if less spiritual, antidote to the conflicts within her.

Back at Des Artistes, the telephone rang. Janice tried to ignore it, wielding the ink brush as quickly as she could manage. But the ringing never stopped. She conceded, and picked it up.

“Janice,” Bill exclaimed. “Where the hell were you?”

“I just came in as the phone was ringing.”

“Did you see the priest at the Temple?”

“Yes. We had a very nice talk.”

“Good. Very good. Listen, I’ve got something I want you to do.”

“No, Bill.”

“Janice, you have to go downtown to the—”

“We agreed this was the last time.”

“Janice,” he pleaded. “I’m begging you!”

“No. I’ve got work of my own, Bill. Be reasonable.”

“But we’re running out of time.”

“We’ve got plenty of time, darling. Now I have to jot down some ideas Elaine gave me, and—”

“Then I’ll do it myself.”

Janice decided Bill was not fooling.

“I’m telling you, Janice,” he said darkly. “If I have to, I’ll bust out of this place and do it myself.”

“Don’t talk like that, Bill. It frightens me.”

“It has to be done and it doesn’t matter who does it.”

“What, Bill? What has to be done?”

“Somebody has to go down to the Hall of Records. And see who was born the same minute Ivy died.”

“Bill, this is all nonsense. Sri Parutha said not to be rash, and here you are—”

“Screw Sri Parutha. Listen to me, God damn it, Janice! Somebody has to go down and look at those records!”

“This is crazy! I won’t do it! It’s one thing to bring you books, and — and go visit the Temple, but this is impossible!”

Bill said nothing for a while, yet she heard him breathing at the other end.

“All right,” he said angrily. “At least I know where you stand.”

He hung up. Janice clicked the receiver button again and again, but the line was irretrievably dead. Miserable, she resumed her work at her table, where the designs lay in sketched form under the lamp by the windows. After ten minutes, an uneasy feeling grew to where she could no longer think straight.

She called the clinic back.

“Mr. William Templeton, please,” she said.

After ten minutes, during which Janice was afraid they would not find him, Bill came to the telephone.

“Yes?” he said.

“All right. You win. I’ll go. But please, that’s got to be all. You’re chasing crazy will-o’-the-wisps.”

“Let me be the judge of that. You know what you’re looking for?”

“I think so.”

“Tell me.”

“February 3, 1975. 10:53 in the morning.”

“10:43!” Bill shrieked. “10:43 in the morning — a mistake like that could be fatal!”

“All right—10:43—I’ll look it up for you.”

“Okay. And bring me notes on what the priest told you today. Okay? Will you do that?”

“Bill.”

“What?”

“Why New York? Why not Baltimore? Or Chicago? Or even Pittsburgh or Hong Kong? Why would she come back to New York? She could be any place at all!”

“Because the soul seeks the locus of its greatest happiness. It’s like a gravitational field, Janice. Picture a meteor falling through space. Suddenly it gets caught up in a force field and it starts to accelerate downward. Well, it’s like that. Back to where the soul developed.”

Janice bit her lip. Bill had answered, almost word for word, as the Master had. Evidently Bill’s expertise was reaching startling proportions. Janice began to be afraid of him in the way that she had once been afraid of Hoover. There was too much knowledge at the other end of the line.

8

The Hall of Records stood recessed from the streets, its upper reaches in the slanted sunlight, but off the ledges of the first floor icicles melted slowly in shadow. Long windows, crisscrossed with a protective wire inside, gave off no light. The steps to the main doors were unscraped, covered with sprinkles of salt and brown dirt. Around the building rose higher structures, sleek, expressive of the supernational organization of the twentieth century, while the massive Hall, like a throwback to gray stone and marble, huddled in their shadows, a monument to weight and ornamented facade.

Janice walked the long hall, past voices behind doors, electric typewriters, obscure silences, and she looked around at the blank, dirty white ceilings, the old scrollwork nearly obliterated with curls of dust.

A young woman with short blond hair looked up.

“May I help you?”

“Am I in the birth registration department?”

“Sure are, ma’am.”

“Could you… That is, are these open to the public?”

The girl nodded. “Sign the register,” she said, turning a massive book around and handing Janice a black pen attached to the book by a beaded chain.

Janice quickly scrawled her name and the date and the girl swiveled the book back, squinting at the penmanship.

“What’s the name?”

“Templeton. Mrs. Janice Templeton.”

“Not you. The infant.”

“That’s the problem. I don’t know the infant’s name. Just the moment of birth.”

The girl raised an eyebrow, sighed, and came out from behind her tiny desk.

“That doesn’t make it easy, you know,” she said.

“I’m prepared to do all the work myself,” Janice said quickly. “If you could just show me how—”

“What year?”

“Nineteen Seventy-five.”

“You’re in luck. Anything before Nineteen Seventy-three and you’d have had to go down to the crypts. That’s the storage facility underground.”

“You mean this whole room is just for—?”

“That’s right. These are the births since January, Nineteen Seventy-three. New York is a very fertile place. Follow me. Nineteen Seventy-five is at the end of the hall.”

As they passed into the far end of the corridor, a wing opened up to view, and along the entire wall were ceiling-high metal cabinets, gray and green, with stepladders available in front. Janice paused. The vista was depressing, even overwhelming. If each cabinet was full, Janice reasoned, then the accumulated total of births would have to exceed a hundred thousand.

“Well, grab yourself a bunch of patience. This is Nineteen Seventy-five. What month was the infant born?”

“February.”

The girl strolled to the western bank of cabinets, where the front labels read “February.”

“What day?”

“The 3rd.”

“Okay, that’s your drawer up there. Get yourself a ladder. What it is, is a cross-index to registration number; you can go to the main bank behind my desk and look up the infant.”

Janice stared upward at the huge files, the dusty metal still showing where old tape had been affixed, torn away, and never washed. “How many numbers are in one drawer?”

“Never counted. I would imagine quite a few thousand. Like I said. New York must be a busy place at night. Good luck.”

The girl walked slowly back up the corridor, leaving Janice to wonder whether she was supposed to remove the drawer or take a note pad up to it. The answer was solved for her when it became clear that the drawer was permanently attached to its runners. Janice climbed back down, retrieved a pen and note pad from her purse, and climbed back up the stepladder. Perusing through the cards to find the beginning of the February 3 entries, she discovered to her dismay that each card was coated with scores of registrations, all entered in the most minuscule type she had ever seen. Worse, the entries had been accumulated in order of registration number and not time of birth, so that she would have to go through what conservatively looked like at least four thousand different numbers.

“Jesus Christ, Bill,” she moaned aloud.

After each number was the sex of the child, the exact time of delivery, family name, and two cross-reference numbers that made no sense to her.

With a deep intake of breath, Janice leaned forward, peered into the first card and began. The numbers were so small, the type so cramped, that though she squinted, it began to blur into a mass of tangled lines. It helped for her to close one eye.

After ten minutes, Janice found it easier simply to run her finger down the “Time” column, and if it read “10” on the hour, she stopped. Then she checked the AM or PM symbol behind it. If it was AM, she carefully examined the minute column. In this way, she rapidly dispensed with hundreds of numbers.

She rested her eyes. Shifting weight, she began again, with a new burst of enthusiasm. Half an hour went by, close to eight hundred registrations, until water film began forming like tears in her eyelids, but the closest she came to Ivy’s death instant was 10:50 in the morning.

“Big job,” commented the girl below her.

“What?”

The girl held up two mugs of steaming coffee.

“Take a break. Have some coffee. Then I’ll give you a hand. My name is Cathy.”

“That’s awfully kind of you,” Janice said.

She stepped gratefully down from the ladder and accepted a mug. Cathy smiled.

“I had no idea it would be like this,” Janice confessed. “I imagined it would be like checking a book out in a library.”

“It’s a real labyrinth here,” Cathy admitted.

Now Janice became aware of the extraordinary dimensions of the combined halls, and the fact that they were the only two people in it, dwarfed by tons of records.

“You looking for somebody you know?” Cathy asked.

“Not exactly.”

“Lots of mothers, they come here, looking for the kids they’ve given to adoption.”

“It’s not my own child I’m looking for.”

“You sure? Cause it’s not my business and I’d be fired for saying this, but that sort of thing just gets ugly and there’s no way it can succeed.”

“Well, I promise you, that’s not what I’m here for,” Janice said.

“Lots of times we have people from NYU or Columbia doing research. You a college person?”

“No.”

“Writer?”

“Not that, either.”

“Well, I got to admit, you got me really curious.”

Janice laughed, but she became uncomfortable under Cathy’s scrutiny.

“Let’s just say it’s a kind of coincidence I’m looking for,” Janice finally said.

Cathy shrugged. “Well, nothing else makes sense around here, either.”

By a mutual signal, they began. Cathy pulled a second stepladder to the file and, referring to the time that Janice wrote on a slip of paper, began to search through the rear files of the spacious drawer. They worked quickly, flipping cards back with mechanical monotony, pausing now and then to refresh their eyes.

In ten minutes, Cathy found a 10:43 and noted down the registration number. Janice peered over at the card to verify it. Her heart began to race. Somehow the number jumped upward from the mass of numbers and letters as though it belonged to her personally.

Fifteen minutes later, Janice came across another 10:43, but a peculiar symbol followed it. Cathy stopped to look at it.

“I think that means deceased,” Cathy said. “Copy the number and we’ll check it in the main bank.”

When they were through, fingers sore, backs twisted, they stepped down to the main floor. Cathy slammed the drawer shut, and it was like an explosion that burst over their ears.

Janice had a premonition that the other baby did, in fact, die at or before childbirth. Leaving exactly one child born at the minute Ivy’s vital functions permanently ceased. It would have been better, Janice thought, if there had been a thousand possibilities. Or none. Either way, there would have been no way to trace. Reluctantly, she followed the girl back up the corridor. They edged past the desk and went to a squat, black bin divided into internal ridges, labels affixed in poor handwriting to the outside.

Cathy checked one of the registration numbers, rolled through a hundred circular containers of microfilm, and finally pulled out a loose-wrapped strip of black film. While Janice watched, she fitted it into a machine, pulled the blinds shut, and turned on the machine light. Wheeling rapidly, Cathy came to the number.

Henderson, no name. Father: James McAlister Henderson. Mother: Marcia Elise Hinton Henderson. Hospital: Columbia University Medical. Time: 10:43 AM. February 3, 1975. Signature of presiding doctor, James E. Kindermann.

Where there were spaces for more information, Dr. Kindermann had scrawled in: surgical delivery — malformed central nervous system: medulla. Time of death: February 10, 1975. See City of New York Certificate #348689682.

“Poor thing,” Cathy said softly.

“That leaves only one other possibility.”

“I’ll get it for you now.”

Janice watched the microfilm blur in the bright rectangle of the machine’s projection frame. Cathy whipped the microfilm into a roll, clipped it, and replaced it. In a few seconds, she returned with a second clip. Transfixed, Janice leaned forward as the birth certificates in negative tones raced by, streaks of white jumping through the viewing rectangle, and then Cathy slowed and the columns began to be discernible, moving slower and slower into the oblivion of the cutoff. At last Cathy stopped.

“There she is.”

Janice bent forward even farther.

Hernandez, Juanita Flores Ynez. Father: Patrizio Gomez y Ruiz Hernandez. Mother: Rosa Hernandez. Hospital: Bronx General. Time: 10:43 AM. February 3, 1975. Signature of presiding doctor, Herbert M. Weissberg. Weight: 5 lbs. 11 oz. Slight jaundice. Religion: Roman Catholic. 385 118th Street, New York City, New York. Stamped: Office of the clerk of the City of New York. There was more, the mother’s maiden name, and so forth, but Janice only saw the infant’s name. And the address. There was even a reproduction of a scrollwork over the certificate, an imitation banner with furled ends, an obsolete vestige of generations of custom that somehow the city had not exterminated.

As she scrawled the information, Janice realized that the little girl already had two connections to her. The instant of birth and her religion. Janice smiled. Apart from that, it was all part of permutations and probabilities.

“Tell me honestly,” Cathy demanded, smiling, “what are you going to do with that?”

“This address? I’ll tell you, Cathy, I don’t know.”

Puzzled, Cathy could not help but laugh.

Janice turned to go, but Cathy objected.

“You have to sign the register,” she said, smiling.

“Sorry.”

Janice initialed the last column after her name, where Cathy had written in the time.

“You have good security here,” Janice observed.

“That’s right. Nobody comes in or goes out without signing. In person. City rules.”

With profuse thanks, Janice left the department and returned to Des Artistes. She entered the restaurant bar, sat down, and ordered a split of Mouton Cadet. Then, hungry, she added a sandwich. Outside, the storm threatened but never came. Dense clouds swirled over the buildings, lit up from below by floodlights or red neon, like an angry, cosmic storm.

It was in this restaurant bar, she thought, that they had first met Hoover over a year ago. He had expounded his theory of rebirth, and Bill had practically landed him a punch across the table. Now Bill was in an asylum and Hoover was gone into some distant countryside where the water stank and white cows with long horns were sacred.

She ordered a second wine. She thought about the birth certificate. Juanita — Juanita Hernandez. It evoked an image of a tiny, tan-skinned infant, with black curly hair, eyes shut with crying. The one infant in all of New York born at precisely the wrong moment. Mercifully, she began to feel the effect of the second glass.

As Janice wearily entered the apartment, the telephone was ringing.

“No, not at this hour,” she pleaded to the dark rooms. “Please, Bill…”

Turning on a lamp, she picked up the receiver.

“Glad I caught you,” Bill said. “What did you find?”

“Nothing, Bill.”

“Nothing? What the hell do you mean, nothing?”

“It’s a manual system, Bill. And there was nobody to help.”

“God damn all hell, anyway.” Bill threw something across his room that shattered. “Look,” he said, barely controlling himself. “When can you go back there?”

“Not for a while, Bill. We’re swamped at the studio.”

“Janice, I need you to go tomorrow.”

“Not tomorrow, Bill.”

“Well, then by Wednesday. Okay?”

“I’ll try, darling.”

“Try? You’ve got to do more than just try! I’m sorry— please, honey, how long is this going to take?”

Janice wondered how long she could string him along.

“Perhaps a few weeks,” she said. “Maybe longer.”

Bill groaned.

“I’m doing what I can, Bill, but it’s going to take time.”

“Right. Christ, I’m glad I’ve got you out there. You don’t know what it’s like in this chamber of horrors. By the way, I forgot to write down what the Master said. About the signs.”

Janice explained, reading from her notes, what the Master had said about the signs: Physical, Psychological, and Religious.

“Well, screw the psychological,” Bill said in disgust. “Any kid born in February, 1975 is less than a year old. What about the physical signs? I don’t remember a damned thing wrong with Ivy, do you? I mean, did she have a rash or something when she was born? It was all normal, wasn’t it?”

“She was a perfect little child, Bill,” Janice lied, remembering a tiny scar just below the nape of Ivy’s smooth, white neck.

“Think, God damn it!”

Janice held the receiver a foot from her ear.

“Sorry,” he mumbled. “But there’s got to be a sign. Did she have any marks at all?”

“None that I can remember.”

“All right, all right,” he said angrily. “Let me work on it. Meanwhile, you get on back to the Hall of Records.”

“When I can, Bill.”

Janice stalled a week.

The next time she visited Bill, he folded his arms, listening patiently to her explanations as to why the Hall of Records took so long to yield up its secrets. He studied her eyes intensely, examining them for the slightest flicker, the smallest indication of a lie. While in her mind she heard: Juanita Hernandez. 118th Street. Birth: normal. 10:43. February 3, 1975.

“When you went to Westport,” Bill asked, “did Ivy look any different?”

Confused, Janice said nothing.

“The night you ran away from New York,” he said calmly, “you ran off to the beach with Ivy. Did she look any different?”

“No, I don’t think so — I don’t remember.”

“Was she in pain?”

“No. I’m sure she felt fine. She loved the beach.”

“Were her eyes clouded?”

“Of course not.”

“Were her senses unclear?”

“Bill, I don’t understand what you’re asking!”

Bill, flustered, referred back to The Tibetan Book of the Dead, which now lay permanently open on his desk, like a small altar.

“Those are the signs of deliverance to the Lord of

Death,” Bill said somberly. “You say you saw none of them?”

“None, Bill. I’m quite sure.”

“What about fear of holy persons? That’s a very strong sign.”

“No. In fact, we saw some nuns and the children of the girls’ school, and Ivy became very happy.”

Bill looked at her carefully, a strange mixture of triumph and fear in his eyes.

“Then the death was untimely, Janice.”

Bill looked pale. He looked exhausted. Janice realized now that there was utterly no chance that stringing out the Hall of Records ordeal would lessen his passion one iota. His finger jabbed at The Book of the Dead.

“If you had known in Westport,” he said. “If you had had some inkling…”

“What are you talking about?”

“Janice,” he said in a voice which did not sound familiar, “on the fifteenth of the month, if there had been a clear sky and no wind—”

“There was a storm blowing.”

“Ivy could have stretched out her arms, cast her shadow onto the sand.”

Bill spread his arms, mimicking, but his body trembled with an unusual tension, and he closed his eyes until tears formed.

“And where her heart would be, in the shadow, carve the letter A. And Ivy would stare into it, unblinking, for seven minutes. And seven times the holy benediction would be uttered….”

“Please, darling, stop it!”

Bill leaned back, arched his spine, and called upward, to the heavens, beyond the heavens, in a voice deep from his diaphragm.

“Om ayuse samharakesvare hum phat!”

Janice covered her ears with her hands.

“Om ayuse samharakesvare hum phat!”

Bill’s eyes glazed triumphantly. He stood up straight again.

“And then Ivy would look up into the sky and see her after-image. If it was pale and white, she would not die. But if it was black, she was being consumed.”

Bill paused. His words came now curiously dry, abstract, devoid of emotion. In a desultory way, he riffled through the pages of The Book of the Dead, listless.

“But you didn’t know that, Janice,” he said.

“And what if I had known, Bill?”

He smiled, but only shrugged.

“In that case,” he said, “if it was black, there would have been counter-rituals. There are certain kinds of flasks. Reading from the texts. Crashing of the cymbals, drums, and lutes, and the sending away of the demons. You see, Janice, we could have ameliorated her fear, circumvented her untimely return.”

He turned slowly back to her. His smile remained, but now it was sad and demonic.

“The cycle would have stopped,” he said. “Now it only continues.”

A name, a date, and an address flashed through Janice’s mind. She turned away. She did not want to think what Bill would do if he ever found Juanita. She believed him capable of anything. Yet, she could not bring herself to confide in Dr. Geddes. Bill would crumble one final time, and forever, if she betrayed him.

The next day was Saturday, and Janice took the bus up Riverside Drive. She crossed to the northeast, just past the park, until she was in Spanish Harlem. Though it was cold, the day was ferociously bright, and it hurt her eyes to look down the crowded streets. Radios blared music out of the pawnshops. There was not another white person in view.

On 118th Street were a series of small grocery stores, a laundromat, and a Pentecostal church. Opposite them was an enormous block of public housing. Janice looked in vain for the numbers. If there was a 385, the house number had long ago been ripped from the door.

She crossed the street and went into the first entrance. A tattered sign read 200–300. The hall stank of mildew. Overhead were harsh, rubbery sounds, as though a child were ramming a wheeled toy repeatedly over a linoleum floor. Graffiti everywhere denoted death and crude love for whites. Janice walked slowly to a door down the hall and listened. A radio played disco music inside, the announcer speaking excitedly in a liquid Spanish.

She knocked.

When the door opened, a slight man with a pencil-thin mustache stood before her in his undershirt. He retreated, embarrassed before her, and then defiantly stood his ground.

“Is Mrs. Hernandez here?” she asked hesitantly.

He shook his head and prepared to close the door.

“Upstairs?” she asked.

He glared blankly at her.

“Um, donde es Senora Hernandez?”

The man shrugged, smiled politely but firmly, and gently closed the door.

Just then, two boys, aged fifteen or sixteen, came up from the basement, carrying lead pipes. They stopped and stared at her.

To ease the awkwardness of being stared at, Janice asked, “Do you speak English?”

The taller of the two stepped closer, his hand fingering the rusted edges of the pipe.

“I’m looking for the Hernandez family,” Janice said.

The boys continued to stare at her, as though wondering what had brought her to this block of flats. The shorter of the two looked her up and down until she felt self-conscious.

“Hernandez,” Janice repeated.

“Upstairs,” said the tall one.

“What?”

“Upstairs. We take you.”

Janice did not like the way he said it, nor the way his friend or brother kept looking at her. The taller one pointed to the stairs and smiled.

“Come on,” he said. “We go upstairs.”

“Could you just tell me which floor?”

“No. You go. We go. We show you.”

“Yes,” seconded the other boy. “Hernandez family is upstairs.”

“No,” Janice said slowly. “I’ll go there myself.”

The taller boy stepped forward, a bit angry. “Luis. Go help the lady. Bring Mrs. Hernandez down.”

“Really,” she protested, “it’s not necessary.”

But the other boy was already climbing the stairs, two at a time. While Janice waited, curious, she noticed that the tall boy kept smiling at her.

“Luis bring Mrs. Hernandez,” he confided.

“I’m very grateful.”

After several minutes, two pairs of footsteps circled down the stairwell, coming down from at least the third floor. Luis appeared, casting an ambivalent glance at Janice, and behind him was a tall, black-haired woman, wiping her hands on a towel. The woman’s hair was so black, it gleamed an almost blue. She studied Janice closely, then braced herself.

“Yes? What you want?” she asked in an even voice.

“Are you Mrs. Hernandez?”

“What you want with my sister?” the woman asked suspiciously.

“I’d like to see Juanita.”

The woman’s features softened, then immediately hardened again.

“You’re from Welfare?” she said, casting anxious glances at Janice’s face, hands, and clothes.

“No, I’m a friend. That is, I’d like to be a friend.”

“I no understand.”

Janice smiled, and a small laugh of frustration escaped her.

“If I could explain, I would,” she said. Then, more slowly, “I want very much to see Juanita. It has to do with my own daughter.”

Puzzled, the woman wiped her hands, though they were certainly dry. She shrugged.

“You work for the city?” she asked, once again.

“No. I’m a writer,” she lied.

“Well, if you want to come up, follow me.”

The four of them went into the stairwell. The plaster showed in rough oblongs along the wall, where sharp implements had gouged holes and then enlarged them. At the first floor the two boys left, running down the corridor. Janice followed the woman into a narrower, darker stairwell.

“My sister not feel so well,” the woman said. “So you not stay a long time. Okay?”

“Yes, okay.”

On the fourth floor, the woman walked quickly, but soundlessly, down the cluttered corridor. A far door with a cracked glass window let in a gray, dirty light over the tricycle and boxes of woolen cloth left for unknown reasons in the middle of the hall. Crayon marks left long trails where a child had run the length of the corridor with first one color and then another.

Janice followed the woman into the doorway of a small apartment. They stood in the kitchen. On the stove an enormous aluminum pot bubbled with a thick sauce. Small laundry hung from white cord that led into the tiny living room. A crucifix hung on the wall.

“Rosa!”

A short woman, gray twined neatly into her black hair, came into the kitchen, shuffling on bedroom slippers. She stopped when she saw Janice.

For a long time, Janice looked at her, as though there might be some common bond between them. Then she realized it was foolish, and she smiled, extending her hand.

Rosa Hernandez looked at her sister, who shrugged; then, she took Janice’s hand and smiled back. The woman had uncommonly pretty features, Janice thought, diminutive, oval-shaped, and her eyes were brilliant and black.

“She come to see Juanita,” the sister put in.

“Juanita? But why? She’s fine.”

“No, no, Mrs. Hernandez. It’s not like that. I want to see her for myself. For my own sake.”

Mrs. Hernandez smiled, confused. The sister hovered at the stove protectively, stirring the sauce.

“Juanita is sleeping,” Mrs. Hernandez said. “Maybe you sit down and tell me why you come.”

Janice sat at a small, wobbling table with a brown vinyl cloth cover. Mrs. Hernandez folded her hands opposite her and waited patiently.

“Why you want to see Juanita?” she asked again.

“I’m writing an article for a magazine. About growing up in this building.”

Mrs. Hernandez laughed.

“It’s not very interesting here. Why you don’t write about other people?”

“Well, you’re curious about other people, aren’t you? Other people are curious about you.”

“I don’t believe it.”

Mrs. Hernandez spoke more out of modesty than objection. Janice marveled at the simplicity of life in the broad stone building, where suspicion flourished, but trust did, too. It would never occur to Mrs. Hernandez to ask for credentials, for the name of the mythical newspaper Janice wrote for, or anything else. Janice came from the great outer world, and therefore, what she said could not be questioned.

“But it’s true, Mrs. Hernandez,” Janice said. “Haven’t you read the articles on the Lithuanians in New York City? It’s part of the same series.”

Mrs. Hernandez laughed, a modest, embarrassed laughter.

“What’s your name?” Mrs. Hernandez asked.

“Janice Templeton.”

The name meant nothing to Mrs. Hernandez. Nevertheless, she held Janice to be a celebrity of sorts, and found it difficult to hold her own in conversation. In the next room, the sister turned the television on softly.

“Well, what you want to know about Juanita?”

“We could start from the beginning. Was she born here?”

“I was in the hospital. But yes, I was living here.”

“And the birth was normal?”

“What you mean?”

“There were no problems? She was a normal baby?”

Mrs. Hernandez thought, picturing what she remembered of the delivery room. She shrugged.

“I think she was a little — yellow — in the skin.”

“Jaundice?”

“Yes. The doctor said it was nothing to worry about.”

“And she’s not been sick since then?”

“Oh, no. Juanita is a fine girl.”

In the living room, the sister turned up the volume of the television set. Mrs. Hernandez brought a plate of a flat bread, not quite a tortilla, with a sugary coating.

“And she’s lived here all this time?” Janice asked.

“Yes.”

Janice leaned forward slightly.

“Does she ever — change? Ever seem to become different—?”

“Juanita? No. Always the same.”

“She never cries for no reason?”

Mrs. Hernandez laughed. “All babies cry for no reason.”

There was a slight stirring sound beyond the living room. Mrs. Hernandez looked up brightly.

“She’s waking up. You like to see her?”

“Yes. Yes, I would.”

Smiling, Mrs. Hernandez stood up, and Janice followed her over the linoleum floor into the living room, past the sister who leaned around them to see the television screen, and into a bedroom where the shades were drawn. It was dark, dank with the smell of the baby, and the large bed beyond was still unmade.

In the crib a small girl lay. The ears were already pierced with two shining brass studs, though she could not have been old enough to more than crawl awkwardly on the floor. The tousled black hair was exactly as Janice had imagined. But the eyes were filmy, dark but not black, more a kind of deep gray that was almost brown in the gloom of the room. Janice stepped slowly to the crib and peered down.

“She’s very quiet baby,” Mrs. Hernandez whispered.

The infant looked upward at Janice. The tiny eyes seemed familiar, a spark of recognition leaped outward. Janice recoiled.

“Pick her up,” Mrs. Hernandez said.

“What?”

“Go ahead. She no cry.”

Hesitantly, Janice edged her hands and arms under Juanita and brought the child up out of the crib. The filmy eyes closed for an instant and then opened. Janice slowly removed the white blanket from the soft, small neck.

“Is something wrong?” Mrs. Hernandez asked.

“No. I was looking for something.”

“She seems to know you. Look. Her hands grab for your hair.”

The small hands curled and uncurled, delicately, tenderly, twining into the black hair at Janice’s temple. Janice looked again at the smooth neck. There was no scar.

“She’s so light,” Janice said, smiling. “My own daughter was much heavier.”

“I think, because she was born small,” Mrs. Hernandez said, taking pleasure in watching Janice warm to the girl.

Janice gently lowered the girl and tucked the blankets back around her neck. The girl was lively, displaying a kind of quick intelligence that absorbed things instantly.

“You say she was born small?” Janice said.

“Yes. Five pounds. Just under.”

“Was she premature?”

“Two weeks.”

Janice turned slowly. “Two weeks?”

“Si. Suddenly, Juanita wanted to come, so I had my labor.”

“She wanted to come?”

“All of a sudden. A bad day in February. I had to take the bus with my sister and the bus got stuck in the snow. It was a very easy thing to have her. I wasn’t sick, I no fall down. And she come.”

Janice felt perspiration forming on her forehead. She looked down again at Juanita. The child appeared to be looking back into her eyes, looking into her, into the thunderous thoughts of her own brain.

On an impulse, Janice slowly removed the blanket and gently picked her up once again, her eyes exploring the soft, perfect neck and chest.

Juanita’s small hands went to her throat.

“What — what is she doing?” Janice asked, turning quickly.

“She do that all the time. Try to touch her throat.”

“It’s like she’s choking—”

“No. I take her to the doctor. He look at her and say, ‘this is one fine girl, Mrs. Hernandez.’”

Juanita twisted and turned, trying to get out of Janice’s arms. Again and again, the tiny fingers clutched at her own throat, and the tiny legs kicked futilely against the blankets.

Mrs. Hernandez laughed pleasantly.

“I take her now,” she said.

In Mrs. Hernandez’s arms, the girl became subdued; the kicking stopped; the small hands relaxed. Janice grew dizzy.

“I–I think I should be going, Mrs. Hernandez—”

“Yes?”

“I’m very glad to have come today. I’ll come back again.”

“Any time. I don’t go out much.”

Mrs. Hernandez followed her back through the living room, into the kitchen, where they said good-bye.

9

Janice walked down the flight of stairs, faster down the next flight, faster, until she practically ran from the housing block. She stumbled across 118th Street and waited for the bus. It finally came, and she took one last look at the building, and at the third floor where Juanita lay in the security of her mother’s arms.

Riverside Drive, its broad pavement snaking down by the river, looked more real as the bus took her down into the better parts of town. Des Artistes rose like a haven on Sixty-seventh Street, though Janice no longer believed in havens.

She went to the bar and did not stop until the fourth glass of white wine. Then she felt sick and went upstairs, slept until the late night and awoke with a start on the couch. Sounds were stirring, cruel sounds. Were they in her head? She rose. Upstairs on the landing, Ivy’s door had drifted open. Inside, a soft echo of tiny feet, scampering in pain. Was she truly hearing a mouselike voice, twittering in horror and an insatiable need to escape, calling on her mother instead of her father? Janice shook her head violently. She felt as fragile as glass.

Juanita couldn’t be Ivy! Surely it was all roaring delusions and guilts — a premature birth, clutching the throat— It meant nothing, nothing! she repeated to herself. Having gone to the Hernandez apartment was an act of madness, and it had the predictable results. Gradually, but surely, she was being drawn into the nightmare world of Bill’s sickness. She resolved not to let it happen. She would fight it, maintain her balance, her sense of reason. And somehow strive to divert Bill from the final, horrible destination his research was inexorably leading him toward.

The next day, Janice called the Hall of Records, Department of Births Registrations. Cathy recognized her voice.

“Cathy, I need to know,” Janice said. “Do you give information over the telephone?”

“I don’t get you.”

“Well, if a man should call. If he asked the same kind of question I did, would you go look it up?”

“No, Mrs. Templeton, it’s against the rules.”

“Are you absolutely, completely certain?”

“Of course I am. We don’t run a reference library here. Anybody who wants information has to come in person. And sign the register.”

“Thank God. I mean, thank you, Cathy.”

Janice hung up relieved, but the visit to the Hernandez apartment weighed on Janice. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw little Juanita kick and struggle, reach for her throat. And the dateline, February 3, 1975—10:43 AM., floated like a diseased snake through the image.

That night it snowed again, huge flakes blanketing the city.

Janice entered the apartment just as the telephone was ringing.

“Yes, Bill?”

“No. It’s uh, Dr. Geddes here. I’m, uh, sorry to disturb you.”

“That’s quite all right, Dr. Geddes. Is everything all right?”

“You, um, haven’t seen Bill, have you?”

“Bill? Not since last Friday. Why? What’s wrong?”

“Well, as you know, Bill and several other patients had permission to leave the immediate grounds. Walks to Ossining, supervised, of course.”

“Yes?”

“To be quick about it, Mrs. Templeton, Bill left early this morning and hasn’t returned. We’ve notified the Highway Police and Ossining authorities.”

“Oh, my God.”

“But he’s completely rational and dressed for the cold. I wouldn’t worry about him in that sense. It’s just that we thought he might simply have wanted to visit you.”

Janice tried to shake free from the dread which gripped her.

“No, he hasn’t been here.”

“It’s quite common for patients to do this sort of thing. I regret he didn’t feel he could simply come to us and talk about it.”

“Yes, I — Oh, God, there’s more to it, Dr. Geddes.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s searching! He’s — he’s searching for Ivy! He’s not rational, doctor.”

There was a long pause at the other end. She could practically hear him thinking. At length he cleared his throat and when he spoke his voice seemed changed. Once again, he was the stern, formidable figure of authority at the clinic.

“What do you mean, searching?” he asked.

“This last month he’s been crazy, studying books and making contact with authorities—”

“What kind of authorities, Mrs. Templeton?”

“Authorities on reincarnation. I’ve spent dozens of afternoons running errands for him, gathering information from Sri Parutha at the Temple in Greenwich Village.”

“What else have you been doing for Bill?”

“Sending him books, writing to people for him.”

There was a long pause.

“This is a very serious matter, Mrs. Templeton,” he said slowly, without friendliness.

“I know. I was afraid to tell you. I couldn’t betray Bill, but now…”

“But now, what?”

Janice took a deep breath and tried to gain control of her voice again. Talking to Dr. Geddes was a much harder thing than she would ever have guessed. It was like talking to a judge.

“We’ve found a child, born on the same day that Ivy died. The same minute, in fact.”

“Oh, Christ,” Dr. Geddes cursed. “You’ve been sprinkling gasoline on a fire, Mrs. Templeton. You’ve encouraged his every delusion.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

“Never mind that now. Listen to me. I can’t get into the city tonight. A foot of snow’s expected. So stay where you are and try to keep calm. The main thing is to locate Bill. My guess is that he needs to see you. And if he does come to your apartment…”

“Yes?”

“Try to calm him. No more enthusiasm for his pet project.”

“I’ll try.”

“You’ve got to do more than try. He’s hanging on to reality by a thread.”

Janice agreed to keep in touch. She slipped her heavy wool coat over her shoulders and paced outside the building. Bill never showed up. She warmed herself inside the lobby, waiting. No one came. She went upstairs, left the door to the apartment unlocked in case Bill should sneak up the rear steps and find himself without a key.

Waiting on the couch, still wrapped in her coat, she fell asleep.

By morning, there was still no sign of Bill. Nor had the snowstorm let up. The papers were proclaiming it another blizzard of’48.

During the day, Janice interrupted work seven times to telephone the desk at Des Artistes.

“No sign of him, Mrs. Templeton,” Ernie said sympathetically.

“Thank you, Ernie. If he should come—”

“I’ll give you a call. We have your number.”

Slowly, Janice depressed the cradle, then dialed the Hall of Records, Department of Birth Registrations.

“Hello?” said a strange male voice. “Room One thirty-one.”

“Is Cathy there?”

“She’s on vacation. Can I help you?”

Janice’s hand went involuntarily to her mouth. She swiveled in her chair, but there was no hiding from the curious stare of the assistant at the next desk.

“How — How long has she been gone?” Janice stammered.

“Since today. Is this a personal call?”

“No, I — Has a man called? A man called about a birth registration?”

The voice at the other end chuckled with self-importance.

“We get a lot of inquiries,” he said. “I couldn’t possibly tell you—”

“February 3, 1975.”

“No, we’ve received no inquiries for that date.”

Dazed, she slowly hung up. For a long time, she stared at the wall. When she telephoned Dr. Geddes, he advised her to go home and wait for Bill. They discussed alerting the New York City Police, but in the end, decided to hold off.

Slogging through the snowdrifts in the direction of Des Artistes, Janice kept her eyes open for taxis. None came. She stopped in a bar to escape the bitter weather. Warming in the humid entrance, she peeked over the heads of the burly men crowded around the long bar and saw the television perched high on a shelf.

“For New York, it looks like Christmas will be more than white,” the announcer said somberly. “Forecasts range from fifteen to twenty inches and winds are expected to reach thirty to thirty-five miles per hour.”

A chorus of ribald shouts greeted the report, all epithets of New Yorkers who knew exactly what a storm of that dimension would do to their city.

Janice left the bar. Miserably, she trudged to the next intersection. Still no taxis. Ruefully, she considered that a horse-drawn carriage from the gates of Central Park stood a better chance of making it home than a four-wheeled vehicle.

Gradually, a raw premonition made itself felt. From a corner phone booth, she called the Hall of Records just as it was closing.

“Hello?” she said, breathing hard from the cold. “I called earlier today.”

“I’m sorry,” said the unctuous voice. “We get many calls.”

“February 3, 1975.”

“Oh, yes. There was an inquiry. A man… let’s see… Name of William Templeton. He left about an hour ago.”

Janice gasped. “Did you — did you show him the birth registrations on that date?”

“Yes, of course. We’re legally obligated—”

Janice slammed the receiver down, fighting tears. Urgently, she turned back into a world of swirling white.

Through the downcoming particles, she saw the gleaming windows of a city bus, like a whale from some macabre cartoon, its huge headlights on, unblinking like morbid eyes, staring into the twilight. She ran to the open door, mounted the steps.

“How far north do you go?” she asked the driver.

“Top of the park, then east.”

Janice paid, then sat down. She could feel the wheels of the bus squirming for traction underneath, grinding, groaning against the road. At every stop, she held her breath, not knowing whether the enormous mass of the bus could be held by the brakes. The windshield wipers, working furiously, clotted with wet snow.

“This is the worst goddamn snowfall I ever seen,” the driver said, wiping off his window with a white cloth.

“They say there’s another foot on the way,” a passenger chimed in.

“I tell you one thing. This city is shutting down. Ain’t nobody gonna drive out in weather like this.”

Ahead of them, another taxi, trying to make the light, applied its brakes without result. The wheels curved, but the taxi kept on in a straight line, digging huge tracks right through the intersection.

“Lucky bastard,” commented the driver.

This time the bus refused to move. The rear wheels ground out a plainsong of high-pitched protest, until it sounded like a scream. Janice held her hands over her ears.

“That’s it,” the driver said. “Everybody out.”

“But I—” Janice began.

“You want to sleep here? I’ve got instructions not to drive when there’s no traction!”

Dismally, the passengers filed out, looking in vain down the deserted streets. Janice crossed the avenue, found herself at the north edge of Central Park, went quickly across to Park Avenue, cut over, and waded through the snow under bare trees hanging down with the weight of long spears of ice.

As she crossed into 110th Street, she saw clusters of blue-coated patrolmen slogging through snowdrifts, heading north, where two long shafts of light cut across the clouds.

At 115th Street, she saw two police cars edging cautiously behind a snow-sweeping machine. The orange lights bounced luridly off the dark buildings, gleamed from the windows. A few boys threw snowballs at her, taunting her.

She followed the police cars, the only secure footing on the road, until she reached 118th Street. To her horror, she knew by now where the cars were going. Dim shouts rose in the distance, a sound of far-away bullhorns, and taxi horns from congested lanes of traffic.

A fire truck blocked access to the main blocks of public housing.

“I have to go through!” Janice protested.

“Do you live here?”

“No, but—”

“Then beat it!”

The traffic cop turned away, angrily motioning a pickup truck out of the lane, backward, to where the snow was churned up by countless vehicles turning around in the grimy mud.

Janice ducked under the cross guard and ran toward the dense group of officers in front of the probing spotlights. Their silhouettes had matted together into a single obstruction; only their helmets, denoting different ranks, gleamed in the awesome blue white light.

Janice turned. From the top window, where the spotlights crossed, she heard a woman screaming. The words were run together, a litany of Spanish and English, waving her arms. Behind her, shivering on a landing, a group of neighbors stood, looking upward at the roof. But Janice could see nothing there, only the rolling clouds cut by the spotlights, and the falling snow.

“Please,” she whispered to an officer who held steaming coffee in a tin mug, “I have to talk to the officer in charge.”

“The officer in charge?” he said, smiling. “I don’t think so. The chief is busy right now trying to keep that guy on the roof.”

“But you don’t understand, I’m his—”

“Now I suggest you get back behind the barrier with the rest of the gawkers.”

Drinking coffee with one hand, guiding her with the other, he steered her back to the fire truck, the turning yellow light gleaming rhythmically off his cup.

Janice struggled free from his grasp.

“Ask the woman up there!” she yelled. “Mrs. Hernandez! Ask her who I am!”

The officer glared at her angrily, yet uncertain now.

“Exactly who are you, ma’am?” he said wearily.

“I’m Mrs. Janice Templeton. And the woman knows me!”

“Now you get back across that barrier before I lose my temper.”

“I’m Mrs. Janice Templeton!” she wept. “And that man up there is my husband!”

Janice buried her face in her hands. The officer paused, nonplussed and suspicious.

“I’ll let you tell your story to the chief,” he said tautly, “but if you’re playing games, you’re going to feel very bad in the morning.”

She mumbled her thanks, and felt him holding her up as her feet slipped sideways on the ice. As they passed the patrol cars, she heard bursts of static and STILL UNIDENTIFIED … THE GIRL SEEMS ALL RIGHT … WRAPPED IN BLANKET … REPEAT, THE GIRL STILL ALIVE AND IN GOOD HEALTH… Soon she was among the blue patrol cars and clusters of uniformed men, many of whom held long guns in their gloved hands, waiting for orders, sipping hot drinks.

When a patrolman offered her a plastic cup, she tried to drink. But her shaking hands spattered steaming liquid into the snow.

Now Janice saw a news team aiming its video cameras upward, at the roof of 385 118th Street. Directional microphones were pointed at the top window, trying to catch Mrs. Hernandez’s incoherent screams.

“My God! He’s got my baby! Oh, my God! He’s going to kill her!”

Evidently, the police had given up trying to calm her down, since they only watched over her head, past the iron guardrail and a rusted fire escape platform. Janice peered

into the darkness but saw nothing, only the low cloud covers. The snow had stopped falling. A bitter, calm cold froze everything and everybody. Mrs. Hernandez fainted at the window, her last shriek grown dismal and strained. Janice saw her sister gently pull her back into the apartment.

A tall man in a yellow slicker walked up quickly behind the officer.

“The chief’s got other things to do,” he said. “My name is Wilkins. I’m in charge. Now, who are you?”

“I’m Janice Templeton,” she said, intimidated. “And my husband is the man up there.”

“You sure?”

“I know it’s Bill.”

“How do you know it’s Bill?”

“Because I know what he’s looking for.”

The officer and Wilkins exchanged glances. Puzzled, angry, suspicious, they were also frustrated by the cold, the hostile crowd that had gathered around, throwing ice balls, and now this woman who had come forward acting important.

“What is he looking for?” the officer asked as patiently as he could, rubbing his gloved hands for warmth.

Janice accepted another cup of hot coffee, this time able to keep from spilling.

“He’s looking for a girl he believes to be his daughter,” she said.

“What’s he, drunk?” Wilkins shouted. “A psycho?”

“He’s been in a sanitarium. He escaped yesterday.”

The officer leaned forward again, remaining polite.

“What sanitarium is that, ma’am?” he asked.

“The Eilenberg Clinic. In Ossining.”

“And what is the doctor’s name?”

“Dr. Geddes. Ask him to describe me. He’ll know who I am.”

“Check it out, Cooper,” Wilkins ordered.

Snatches of radio broadcast suddenly increased in volume: MOVING TO THE UPPER PLATFORM … GIRL VISIBLE … UP ON THE HIGH ROOF … RIFLES MOVE INTO POSITION …

Wilkins reached into the patrol car and picked up the radio phone.

“Wilkins here,” he said gruffly. “No rifles. Can’t see your ass from your front end up there. Let’s get the kid alive, all right?”

He replaced the radio phone, just as Cooper came back quickly slipping on the ice, then grabbing hold of the patrol car bumper. He nodded to Wilkins. His words came rushing out.

“There is a man escaped from the Eilenberg Clinic,” he said. “Name’s Templeton.”

“Dangerous?”

“No record of violence.”

“All right, miss,” Wilkins said to Janice. “You’re on. Think you can talk to this husband of yours?”

“I can try.”

Janice followed Wilkins through the cordon of police. Now she saw, far overhead, weirdly foreshortened by the towering perspective, a man’s form, the white shirt bright against the winter clouds. The face was lost in darkness, but against the chest was a large bundle.

“Bill!” she shouted.

No answer, but the crowd sensed something and grew silent.

Wilkins and Janice went into the main door, now brightly lit with portable lamps and flashlights as well as the main corridor lights. Swinging arcs of the news team followed her, making their shadows leap and swarm. Wilkins angrily slammed the door shut.

“Scavengers,” he hissed.

Wilkins led her up the floors, at each of which was a patrolman, armed with a long rifle. Wilkins knocked at the Hernandez door and then forced it open. Two policemen looked up. Huddled against the corner were Mrs. Hernandez, her sister, and two young men Janice had never seen before.

Mrs. Hernandez turned to Janice, her face swollen and red, the tracks of tears down her cheeks and around to her lower lip, making the once pretty face grotesque.

“Mrs. Templeton?” she whispered, puzzled.

“He’s my husband, Mrs. Hernandez. I’ve come to help. If I can—”

“But why he do this? He say he from Welfare. I open the door. He start talking funny. I try to close the door. And look — my head. He push me down and hurt my head. Then he take my Juanita.”

“He’s not well,” Janice said. “He’s sick, up here, but he won’t hurt Juanita.”

“He’s a dead man if he does,” snarled one of the young men.

“Let’s try the window,” Wilkins said to one of the patrolmen.

The patrolman led the way to the living room, rammed the window open as far as it would go, and stuck his head out. He drew back in.

“It’s a bad angle, sir. Especially since he moved back.”

Wilkins poked his head out and bellowed. “Templeton! Listen to me! That girl is not yours! You bring her back and we’ll get you some proper help! Hear me?”

They listened. There was only the soft sound below of cold men stepping on new-fallen snow; that, and a derisive crowd hooting from far away. Wilkins turned to Janice.

“You try.”

Janice leaned so far out the window that Wilkins braced himself and held on to her.

“Bill!” she yelled. “Listen to me, Bill! The girl’s name is Juanita! She doesn’t belong to us! Bill! Bring her back!”

Wilkins pulled her back in.

“Gorman! There’s a fire escape platform that goes up to the roof. See if you can find a way to get up there.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Don’t go up there. Just let me know what it looks like.”

“Yes, sir.”

Mrs. Hernandez burst into wailing, a keening sound as though already mourning the loss of Juanita.

“Is he — is he gonna jump?” one of the young men asked.

“I don’t know what the hell he’s going to do, kid,” Wilkins said. “Listen, Mrs. Templeton. Is he religious?”

“Not exactly.”

“No priest or anybody he would listen to?”

Janice thought a moment. Wilkins’s face was only inches in front of her, waiting aggressively, staring at her as though he had trouble with his eyes. They were all watching her and they sensed her sudden uneasiness.

“Maybe there is somebody,” she said softly.

“Well, who, God damn it?”

“His name is Sri Parutha. He’s Master of the Hompa Hongwanji Buddhist Temple in Greenwich Village.”

Wilkins raised a gray tuft of an eyebrow.

“I might have known,” he muttered. “You, uh, wouldn’t know the telephone number?”

“Yes. It’s 555-2024.”

“Okay, Cooper. You know how to use the telephone.”

While Cooper ran down to the telephone booth, Wilkins paced around and around. They sensed when Bill was moving by the “ooohs” and “ahhhhs” of the crowd down below. Mrs. Hernandez rocked back and forth, refusing all comfort, as though she herself had passed the brink of death.

Wilkins checked his watch.

“I don’t like this,” he murmured. “That girl’s going to get real sick out in the cold like this.”

Janice touched his sleeve. Surprised, he turned.

“Let me go up to the roof,” she said. “If he saw me, he’d become himself again.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes. I know it. He’s a good man. He’s just frightened.”

“All right. Let’s take a look at that fire escape.”

As they went outside into the corridor, Borman came up to Wilkins, who snapped:

“What about that fire escape?”

“It’s solid up to the roof. The top step is missing. Pretty bad ice, sir.”

“Can we get Mrs. Templeton on the roof?”

“I’m not sure, sir.”

“I wasn’t really asking, Borman. I want her up there.”

“Yes, sir.”

Borman, Wilkins, and Janice hurriedly walked to the end of the hall. A thin vertical bar gave them purchase, but the ribbed metal stairs were slippery to the touch. Below was the gaping crowd, unaware as yet of what was happening.

“Goddamn fire traps,” Wilkins growled.

Borman swung out into the air, supported by his two arms, his legs then grabbing firmly against the step. Bit by bit, the noise of the crowd solidified and rose, jeering, offering encouragement. Borman extended his hand. Janice grabbed it and swung upward onto the step.

“Keep your head down until you can verify he’s unarmed,” Wilkins ordered.

“Will do, sir.”

Borman, one step ahead of Janice, pulled her, steadied her on the treacherous steps. The frigid wind whipped through her hair. Her hands burned on the cold metal rails. Twice she thought she was falling until Borman tilted her face upward to face the clouds, and not the ground.

“I’m going to stay just below,” he whispered to Janice. “It’s best he not know I’m here.”

“I understand.”

“Say whatever you want. Just bring him down.”

“I’ll do what I can.”

Borman paused. “Because, I have to tell you. I’ve been on a few of these. They’re going to choose between him and the girl, Mrs. Templeton, and it’s not going to be him. It’s too cold for her to be out any longer. Do you know what I’m saying?”

Janice nodded, feeling the bitter wind bite into her cheeks.

“Now you go on over the top. He won’t see you for a few seconds. He’s facing the street below.”

Janice felt a steady pressure at her elbow, then at her hip, then her foot, and she felt the roof slide under her, and the hiss of the crowd and the glare of the arc lamps swinging madly, trying to catch her, until she knelt, then stood cautiously on the hard, icy roof.

Bill turned.

He was twenty yards from her, across the roof, partially obscured by a series of small chimneys, broken bottles, icy cardboard boxes stacked against one another. His face was unnaturally white, his hair wildly disheveled.

In his arms, clutched closely to his chest, in blankets, was Juanita. She must have been tired of crying. She only whimpered. For a hideous second, Janice thought the girl had gone into convulsions, but then she saw that Juanita breathed easily enough. Bill clutched her tighter to his chest and edged away along the guardrails of the roof.

Janice watched him.

“Leave me alone!” he barked.

She stopped. Now he had hidden himself behind the main chimney. Frantically, the searchlights pawed the darkness for him, then settled on the red brick of the chimney.

“Bill. Our child is cold. Bring her inside.”

Bill wrapped Juanita tightly in blankets, even draping his own sweater over her. He was wearing only a sweater. Somehow, he must have lost his coat. He shivered, and his lips looked abnormally dark.

“She’s cold, Bill darling. Let’s go home where it’s warm.”

“Leave me alone!”

“Bill! Look at her! It’s below freezing!”

Bill rocked her gently in his arms, edging ever backward. Suddenly, Janice realized there was no railing behind him. She stopped, petrified.

“Bill, if she gets sick, an untimely death. Remember? Is that what you want?”

“Go away,” he repeated, but weaker.

“When does it all end?” she pleaded. “Can you do to her what Hoover did to Ivy? Let her live, Bill! In peace!”

“She’s mine,” he growled.

“Of course, darling, but—”

“Then go away.”

Frustrated, Janice shivered as the wind picked up again. She heard whispers below, behind her, on the fire escape. She thought she heard Wilkins issuing fresh orders. She stepped forward.

“Bill, there isn’t much time. Bring her inside. I’m begging you.”

Bill retreated, saw the danger at the last moment, slipped, and nearly fell the other way. A bottle soared downward out of sight. Seconds later, they heard it crash. Screams rose from the street crowd.

Bill turned to Janice, a hideous grimace on his face.

“A little more time, just a little more time. That’s what you said. And all the while, you were leading me on. You knew three weeks ago.”

“I did it for you, Bill!”

Bill laughed, tucking the blankets closer around Juanita. He rocked her back and forth, comforting her, while his haggard eyes glared at Janice.

“You’ve done nothing for me!” he snarled. “Not since the day Hoover came into our lives!”

Janice paled. She had never seen him spit such venom at anyone, much less herself. It had all backfired, she knew.

He stood upright, pointed a finger at her, “You knew… and you kept it from me!”

“I had to, Bill, for your sake!”

“Go away!”

Janice turned. She heard the patrolman hissing to her. She backed closer to the fire escape platform where Borman and Wilkins sat, revolvers drawn.

“Listen, Mrs. Templeton,” Wilkins whispered, “we’ve located this holy man, but in this weather, it’ll be a while before we can get him here. We can’t get nets around the whole building and we think he’s gonna jump. Now, I want you to get his attention. Get him to lower the child.”

“No,” Janice said. “I won’t— You can’t shoot him.”

“Get in position, Borman.”

“No!”

Janice ran halfway across the roof, then saw Bill back away. The gasps rose, from unseen mouths, below. He glared ominously at her.

“Bill,” she pleaded. “There’s a priest coming. The priest of the Temple. You’ll let him talk to you?”

“I got nothing to say to anybody.”

“But he’s a holy man, Bill. He — he’ll know the signs. The real signs. Bill, you could be wrong!”

Bill stared at her, unable to say anything. He clutched Juanita closer.

“Will you let him come?” Janice asked as gently as she could. “Let him make the determination?”

Bill said nothing, yet seemed to acquiesce. He settled himself miserably in the crook formed by the chimney and two guy wires. He turned his back to her, protecting himself as best he could from the wind.

Janice inched back to the fire escape and knelt down. Cooper’s red face jerked, surprised to see her. Below Cooper was Wilkins.

“He’s agreed to see the priest,” she whispered. “That means he’ll listen to reason.”

Cooper and Wilkins looked at each other. Wilkins shrugged.

“Okay. Let’s wait for His Highness,” Wilkins said. “Mrs. Templeton, you better stay up there. Engage his attention, keep talking, keep him calm.”

Janice went back to the corner of the roof. As she circled the guardrails, Bill’s eyes followed her, but not his body, so that he remained hunched under the guy wires. Juanita seemed to sleep peacefully in his arms.

Janice settled to a spot about ten yards in front of him, at a ventilator shaft. There they stared at each other, as though across a no-man’s-land, Bill’s face changing from grief to hostility to guilt, but never saying a word.

He relaxed enough to lower his head, a sign of exhaustion. Then he jerked awake, scrambled to his knees, and stared feverishly into the darkness. He did not seem to know exactly where he was. Snow fell on his hair, stuck to his eyelids. He kissed Juanita’s cheek gently and brushed the snow from her curly hair.

Down below the fire escape, a fresh commotion broke out as Mrs. Hernandez became hysterical with the waiting and had to be restrained.

Suddenly, jeers rose from the crowd. It was like an echo of jackals, reverberating among the alleys and the bricks. The news teams poked one another and shifted their video lenses. Bill pulled himself to his feet, and looked around as the snow began to fall heavily again, obscuring his vision.

“What?” he called. “Who’s there?”

Up onto the roof, wearing black boots under his orange robe, the Master emerged. The wind whipped his robe around in a violent flutter. He blinked nervously, recognized Janice in the forms of snow and shadow among the debris. Then he followed her gaze to where Bill stood, clutching the infant.

The spotlights suddenly crisscrossed over the Master’s body, like an incandescent lamp. He threw himself forward, arms outstretched, his yellow scarf billowing outward in the freezing wind: “Om ayuse samharakesvare hum phat.”

Bill visibly paled, trembled at the words.

The Master stepped closer, out of the swirling snowstorm, and pointed directly at the girl in Bill’s arms: “Om ayuse samharakesvare hum phat!!”

Bill retreated, until snow slipped off the near edge of the roof. The Master hesitated.

“I am Master Sri Parutha,” he whispered rapidly. “Give me the girl!”

“No,” Bill protested, shaking his head, afraid of the Master. “I won’t! She’s mine!”

“Have you passed the ninth circle of initiation?”

“What?”

“Have you?”

“No, I—”

“Then you are unqualified to judge her! It is for a holy man to say!”

Janice did not know whether the Master was making it up or whether, in fact, he was genuinely quoting doctrine. Bill too seemed puzzled. The Master leaned forward but was afraid to take a step.

Bill’s left foot was already slipping on the ice at the edge of the roof.

“Give her to me!” the Master shouted.

“No. Please, don’t make me—”

“Hand her to me,” the Master said, softer now, almost friendly, “and let me make the determination.”

Reluctantly, Bill, blinking back the tears and the snow from his eyes, took a single step and gently transferred the girl to the Master’s arms. In that instant, a shot rang out, red drops flew upward from Bill’s shirt, and he was flung backward onto the roof.

Janice screamed from where she stood at the ventilator, and Borman climbed over the ledge, revolver drawn. Wilkins rapidly followed; the Master, face white, fell to his knees, though whether to protect Juanita or out of sheer terror even he did not know.

“Bill!” Janice shouted, and ran over the snow.

Her interposed body made it impossible for Borman to aim. Bill groaned, his legs kicking out, throwing clouds of snow into the night. He gritted his teeth in pain. As she clutched him, she saw a five-inch tear in his shirt, and flesh in his shoulder mixed with welling pools of blood.

“Bitch! Bitch!” Bill groaned.

“Bill! I meant to save you!” Janice wept.

He tried to shove her away, but she clung to him, crying; the pain finally overcame him, and he moaned, his chest heaving up and down. Janice whirled around.

“He’s dying!” she yelled. “Can’t you help him?”

“He ain’t dying,” Wilkins said, still crouching, but his revolver lowering. “It’s just his shoulder.”

Wilkins furiously hand-signaled to patrolmen in the street, pointed to an ambulance waiting at the barricade, then took Juanita from the Master’s arms, felt her pulse and peered into her eyes.

“She’s okay,” he said. “Let’s get her inside.”

Two more patrolmen swarmed onto the roof. One of them took the girl carefully in his arms and, with the help of yet another patrolman, eased her down the steps and into the corridor below. Cheers, mingled with hoots, rose from the audience below, and applause, some derisive, resounded over the cleared intersection.

“You bitch!” Bill yelled, kicking futilely as Borman and Wilkins eased him to a sitting position, tore open his sweater and shirt. Soon a patrolman brought some cotton cloth and bandages, Bill was read his legal rights, and they pushed him to a standing position.

Janice recoiled. Around Bill’s head was an aureole of drifting snow, like an oblong halo; and his face, grimacing in pain, looked like Christ’s as she had always imagined it — in agony, yet proud, and humble, but in Bill, unforgiving.

“Bill,” she protested, shaking, a blanket draped over her shoulder by unknown hands. “I–I love you.”

“Bitch!” he snarled.

“That’s enough of the dramatics, friend,” Wilkins said. “Let’s go.”

As they led him away, he resisted, so they hoisted him partially by the belt and partly under the good shoulder. As they approached the fire escape, more hands reached out, evidently afraid that he would try to throw himself off the roof.

“You knew!” he suddenly yelled.

A rough hand pushed his head down. Then he was gone.

On the roof, dazed, Janice walked unsteadily over the snow. Her feet cut cleanly toward the Master, himself badly shaken, readjusting his orange robe, gazing down the sheer drop to the streets below.

“Dear God,” Janice whispered, “what have I done?”

“You did the only thing you could,” the Master said as comfortingly as he could.

As he brushed the snow from her hair and shoulders, she swayed, grabbing his arm. He bent to support her, and then she shook her head violently, as though she were about to become ill. But she only looked dismally at the roof, the scuffles and streaks all over the snow, and a small red oval where Bill had fallen.

“Would you talk to him?” Janice asked. “Help him?”

The Master looked away. Over the neighboring roofs a pink light broke through from the adjacent city, making huge swirls of strange light around them.

“I’m not sure,” he said evasively.

“Why not? You helped tonight.”

“Yes, but — that was before I held the girl.”

Janice stared at him. For a moment, she thought her heart had stopped.

“What?” she faltered.

“One senses these things. One has training. My perceptions, after the holy utterance, were heightened.”

He backed away, but she grabbed his sleeve.

“What — what in heaven’s name are you trying to say?”

“I–I’m not really sure, Mrs. Templeton. As I told you, I’m not completely versed in Tibetan Buddhism, their techniques. One has to go by impressions, purified by a life of training, of course. Strong impressions in the divination process…”

“Are you trying to say—?”

“It’s not for me to say,” the Master said quickly. “I think we’d better go.”

“But, Master—”

“Please, Mrs. Templeton. Let me go.”

The Master reached the fire escape, slipped, but found his footing and climbed down and inside. Janice went in after him, but he was quickly lost in the crowd in the dark. All she saw was a group of policemen gathered near the stairwell, and all she heard was Mrs. Hernandez weeping again, and the sound of the weeping reverberated throughout the hallway until Janice thought she would go mad.