Mothers and Daughters

Book Three Julia

The car Julia Regan bought in 1952 was an Alfa Romeo roadster.

Its appearance on the streets and roads of Talmadge, Connecticut caused no little comment. The town, indeed the nation, had not yet succumbed to the exotic siren call of the foreign car. They had been fascinated by the miniature charm of some of the foreign imports, had indulged their caprice to the extent of purchasing automobiles that seemed both novel and economical, but the indulgence had not yet become a trend, the fascination had not yet become a craze. The car Julia purchased startled the citizens of the town because it was the first such to appear in Talmadge and because it appeared in a burst of low-slung black elegance with red leather upholstery and white-wall tires and a Pinin Farina front end seemingly composed of peering head lamps and a smirking radiator grille. Julia Regan was forty-eight years old, and something Puritan in the lifeblood of the townsfolk rebelled at the concept of her driving such a flashy automobile.

At the same time, they were forced to admit that Julia’s beauty had miraculously withstood the ravages of time, and that she managed to bring an added grace to the clean, wide-canopied, prancing good looks of the automobile. Oh yes, she had thickened a bit about the waist, and her throat and neck were not as taut as they once had been, and the brown hair braided into a bun at the back of her head showed strands of gray here and there. But somehow, Julia was managing to avoid the anonymous abyss of middle age. They would have said she was aging gracefully if there were any question of her aging at all; but Julia seemed to have found a constant level somewhere between maturity and old age, and she clung to that unchangingly, effortlessly. There would, they knew, be no in-between years for Julia Regan, no subtle evolution from summer to autumn to winter. They would continue to see her for a long time as youthful, energetic, beautiful. And then one day they would raise their eyes and look at Julia, and she would be old. Suddenly, she would be old. In the meantime, they watched her with a sort of shocked awe, deploring the jazzy sports car but simultaneously respecting and rejoicing in the freedom of spirit that had led to its purchase.

At forty-eight, Julia still moved with graceful femininity. Her voice had deepened a bit, and she spoke rarely and softly, her large brown eyes emphasizing her every word. Her body was neither the ripe ornamental accident of a maiden nor the meticulously structured shell of a matron, but it was a womanly body that resisted every middle-age tendency toward squareness. There was an iron-hard quality to Julia, a stiffness of back, a purposefulness of stride, a thrust of head and chin, which did not invite casual relationships and which provided her with an aura of aloofness. But this was the core of the woman, and not the mold. The mold was soft and rounded. She did not look like a young girl, but neither was she a ridiculously pathetic older woman desperately digging into cosmetics jars for her lost beauty, draping her sagging body with the fripperies of youth. Julia Regan still had good legs and a firm bosom, and she walked with the slightest hint of unconscious suggestiveness, and, as she always had, she still looked desirable and just possibly available and yet totally respectable. The people of the town watched her and wondered about the secret of her youth, and were puzzled by the anachronism. She drove the Italian sports car over the roads of Talmadge with an annoying but fascinating disdain for the opinions of others. And even though her hair was caught securely at the nape of her neck, you could swear it was streaming over her shoulders in the wind.

As far as the people of Talmadge could see, there were only two things that interested Julia Regan. These were her son, David, and the property she had inherited from her late husband, Arthur. Her son was living in New York and, from what they had heard, was doing quite well in television. They always knew when he was coming up to Talmadge for the weekend because Julia seemed more friendly toward everyone just before his arrival. Her son didn’t have much to do with the people of the town, even though he’d grown up with most of the boys, but the town accepted that as the way of the Regans. Besides, with so much Talmadge real estate behind them, neither Julia nor David had to be friendly if they didn’t choose to be.

Julia had inherited two hundred acres of choice Talmadge land when her husband died. In all likelihood, her son David would fall heir to that property one day, and in a town that was as real-estate-oriented as Talmadge, this was a parcel to be reckoned with. There were two constant cries at town board meetings, and these were “Keep the developers out!” and “Stop the sand and gravel operations!” The cries were in perfect accord with the intent of the townspeople. Talmadge had been invented by ivory-tower scholars and discovered by Madison Avenue confectioners. The largest real-estate interest in town, of course, remained the university’s, and this seat of higher learning was not particularly interested in finding itself suddenly surrounded by a lot of belching factories. The gun factory on the far side of town was eyesore enough and stuck in the craw of scholar and commuter alike, but was fortunately close enough to the nearby town of Rattigan to be almost physically divorced from Talmadge itself. Nonetheless, it was a constant reminder of what could happen to the town, and so the zoning restrictions insisted upon by the university interests largely concerned industry, both heavy and light.

The university’s position was strengthened by the commuter attitude. The thing the commuters all loved about Talmadge was its woodsy, rural, dreamlike quality. Any industry introduced into the town would necessitate living facilities for the incoming workers. The moment the town allowed a factory to go up, the commuters were sure the housing developers would come panting in hotly with plans for tract upon tract of identical homes. No, sir, the people of Talmadge did not want to turn this carefully concocted dream into another Long Island housing slum. The zoning regulations prohibited the building of any private dwelling on less than three acres of land, and the going price for Talmadge property in 1952 was three thousand dollars an acre. This meant that a man needed nine thousand dollars before he could even think of breaking ground, and not many men — even in those days of postwar prosperity — had that kind of money to strew around the countryside. With zoning regulations against industry, with zoning regulations that prohibited building except by the rich or the near-rich, Talmadge seemed fairly well protected from invasion.

Julia Regan, the townsfolk estimated, was sitting pretty with her two hundred acres. From what they could figure, the land had probably cost Arthur Regan’s father something like fifty dollars an acre when he’d bought it in 1904. The economic spiral was continuing upward, they figured, and they could visualize a day not too far off when Talmadge land would be bringing anywhere from four to six thousand dollars an acre. A little arithmetic told them that Julia could net a cool six hundred thousand dollars if she decided to sell everything she owned right then and there, and six hundred thousand dollars, they further estimated, was just a little more than half a million dollars, and that was not strawberries. They could also imagine a day when the developers would finally invade Talmadge en masse, with or without industry. Most of the land closer to New York had already yielded to the bulldozers, and Talmadge had the added attraction of being midway between New York and New Haven. With a wild stretch of the imagination it could be called a distant suburb of either. If the developers were finally allowed to bring their housing tracts to Talmadge, there was no telling how much real estate would eventually be worth. Julia, the townsfolk estimated, was playing a shrewdly calculating waiting game with her two hundred acres. She might be dead and gone long before Talmadge ever admitted developers, but her son David would reap a huge profit whichever way the wind blew.

Their opinion of Julia’s business acumen was strongly bolstered by her choice of an attorney. Elliot Tulley was perhaps the shrewdest lawyer in Talmadge, the man who had defended the gun factory against the university’s violation-of-private-schooling-zone case, and won. He was outspoken about zoning regulations and openly stated wherever he could find an audience that “progress could not be legislated against.” Most people thought he was a cantankerous windbag, and most people thought Julia’s periodic visits to his office were concerned with her Talmadge real-estate holdings. Knowing Tulley’s stand on zoning, knowing he had already successfully defended one so-called zoning violation, tying this in with Julia’s standoffish attitude toward the town, assuming Julia had no real love for Talmadge or its woodsy, rural aspirations, they automatically concluded that she and Tulley were cooking up a scheme that would allow the great unwashed to descend upon Talmadge in unimaginable hordes. Two hundred acres were two hundred acres, and a widow who lived alone certainly didn’t need more than that big old house and maybe four or five acres to roam around in. So why else was she hanging onto the land, except in hope of a bigger profit? Why else did she go up to see Tulley once a month like clockwork?

Once a month, the black roadster would pull up in front of Tulley’s office, and the door on the driver’s side would open, and Julia would step out gracefully and close the door behind her. She would walk purposefully toward the steps leading to the upstairs office and then climb them, skirt riding a little, good calves and trim ankles showing, damned if that woman ever showed a sign of age! A half hour later, she would come down, enter her car, and drive off again.

The townspeople knew she discussed zoning on those monthly visits. They could imagine her and Tulley leaning over a Talmadge map and counting and recounting those two hundred acres, dividing them and subdividing them into builders’ plots, cackling as they anticipated the huge profit.

The townspeople, of course, did not know that Julia Regan was a woman living almost entirely in the past. They knew she had once been thirty-five years old and had gone abroad with her sister Millicent. They knew she had been to France and Switzerland and Italy. They did not know that day by day Julia lived and relived a time that had begun for her in August of 1938.

She and Millie ate brook trout amandine in Interlaken.

They sat outdoors and the evening was delightfully cool. Millie was huddled inside a hand-woven shawl she had purchased at one of the local shops. Julia wore a sweater over her blouse, her long brown hair trailing over her shoulders. The Jungfrau dominated the town. Wherever you walked, you could see the mountain in the distance, pristine and white, jutting into the sky. Looking at it, Julia understood why men went on climbing expeditions. The streams of Interlaken were incredibly blue and green, pellucid, as if they had been concocted on an artist’s palette and allowed to run wetly over a pad. The town felt enclosed and tight, and they sat outdoors in front of the sleepy hotel and ate trout caught that day in mountain streams, pan-broiled, crisp and brown on the outside, flaking off white on the fork, crumbling in the mouth. Two German officers were sitting at a table behind them. They talked in guttural whispers, laughing occasionally. Julia was sure they were talking about her and Millie, but she ate her fish and drank her beer in seeming disregard, and afterward asked the headwaiter if she might have the thick brown bottle to take home to her son.

They talked mostly about their impending drive through the Alps to Italy. It had been Millie’s idea to rent a car in Paris, an idea Julia strenuously opposed. Her sister was going abroad on her doctor’s orders, and Julia’s concept of the trip had been an air flight to Rome and then a train ride east to Aquila, where Millie would find the sunshine and mountain air she needed.

“I’ll probably come to Europe only once in my entire life,” Millie had said. “I won’t let you wrap me up like an invalid and ship me through the continent in a baggage car.”

“That’s not the point, Millie.”

“The point is we’re here, and I’m still alive, thank God, and I’d like to see a little of France and Switzerland and Italy before I end up on a porch in the sun. We’ll drive to Italy, Julia. That’s the way we’ll do it.”

Julia had dropped the argument. Millie was her older sister, and she’d never been able to win an argument with her, even when they were children. Besides, she had learned that spinsters were as stubborn as anything God had ever devised, and her sister was no exception. If Millie keeled over dead on the ride to Italy, even the death would bring pleasure if it was the result of an independently arrived-at conclusion. So Julia had stopped trying to convince her, and they had remained in Paris for four days, and rented a car from a French agency, and the matter had been settled. Or, at least, Julia thought it had been settled.

Now, sitting in midsummer silence at an outdoor restaurant in the cool shadow of the virgin mountain, Millie began to have qualms about the drive. “These are the Alps, you know,” she said. “These aren’t the Catskills, Julia. I’ve always been afraid of high places, and there’s nothing higher than the Alps, is there? I’ve heard the roads are bad, and sometimes slippery, and treacherous. Suppose we get killed up there in the Alps? I don’t care so much for myself, but what about you? With a husband and a child, a mere growing boy, back in Connecticut? Perhaps we should forget driving. Perhaps there’s another way.”

The maître d’, who could not help overhearing the conversation, assured them that Swiss roads were the best roads in the world. He went into the hotel and emerged seconds later with the concierge, who bolstered the maître d’s opinion of Swiss engineering skill. The concierge was a Frenchman, he claimed, and was therefore unbiased by patriotism. By this time, the two German officers — a colonel and a lieutenant — felt compelled to enter the discussion and give their own Teutonic assurances to the visiting ladies. As Julia and Millie listened in stunned fascination, the four men began deciding on the best route to take into Domodossola.

“Who will be doing the driving?” the German colonel asked.

“I will,” Julia said.

“Very well, Fräulein. It is not a dangerous drive. There are very good passes. From where did you come, please?”

“Lausanne,” Julia said.

“Ah, then you have driven through these mountains, and there is nothing between here and Italy which should frighten you.”

“How many passes are there?” Julia asked.

“Two. The Grimsel Pass, and later the Simplon. Neither will give you any trouble.”

“I think we should put the car on a train,” Millie said. “I understand we can do that.”

“Yes, Fräulein, but the closest place to do that would be at Kandersteg, and this would involve mountain driving over roads which are not too good. You would do well to take the Grimsel Pass and then drive down the valley to Brig. Then, if you do not feel like attempting the Simplon, you can put your car on the train in Brig.”

“Yes, that is good,” the concierge said. “That is what you should do. Here, I will mark it for you.”

“But the ladies are afraid of driving,” the lieutenant said.

“No, I’m not afraid,” Julia said.

“They would do better driving to Kandersteg,” the lieutenant said.

“Nonsense, there is nothing to be frightened of,” the colonel said, and Millie cringed a little at his tone of command. “You will drive directly out of Interlaken, and you will go through the Grimsel Pass. It is a lovely drive. There are goats. You will love it.”

“Yes,” the concierge said. “And then you will come down into the Rhone Valley. It is beautiful, beautiful.”

“Beautiful,” the colonel said.

“And into Brig,” the maître d’ said. “And at Brig you will put the car onto a train and go into Italy that way.”

“Yes, that is best,” the concierge said.

“Be sure to purchase first-class tickets,” the lieutenant said. “On the train. Be sure to ask for first class.”

“Write it down. On the edge of the map,” the colonel said. “First-class tickets. The ladies should not forget.”

“I will write it,” the concierge said. “And I will mark the route. You will love it. What are you driving?”

“A Simca,” Julia supplied.

“That is good for the mountains. You will have no trouble.”

“You will leave early in the morning,” the colonel said. “It will be a lovely trip. It is settled, is it not?”

“Why, yes, I suppose so,” Millie said.

“Very well. Bon voyage.” He clicked his heels, clapped his comrade on the shoulder, and led him back to their own table.

They awoke early the next day. They had breakfast on the small balcony overlooking the main street of the town with the mist-shrouded mountain in the distance. Occasionally, one of the town’s ancient carriages creaked by, but the streets were almost deserted. A man carrying a bundle of wood on his shoulders walked past, glanced up at them, waved briefly and continued down the street, his boots clattering on the empty pavement. They fueled the car and headed into the mountains toward Brienz, the first big town marked on their map. Millie insisted on filling a gallon bottle with water.

“It’s the radiator that causes all the trouble,” she said. “The radiator overheats.”

To Julia, sitting behind the wheel as town after town fell behind them, the mountains were a challenge. She could not have explained this accurately to Millie, but there was something terribly unwomanly about the act of putting the car on a train and allowing it to be carried into Italy. It was the feminine thing to do, perhaps, but not the womanly thing — and, to Julia, there was a difference. She was frightened. She would have been lying to herself if she’d pretended the narrow winding steep road did not frighten her. The road was cut into the side of the mountain, and she could not thoroughly understand the principle because she had always imagined that a road went completely around a mountain until it reached the top, instead of climbing it on one face in a succession of zigzagging stages. She learned very rapidly that every time the car completed one of the stages, it ended on the opposite side of the road, so that the trip up was a constant shifting from the side of the road that hugged the mountain itself and the side that hugged nothing but thin air. She felt fairly secure when she navigated the inboard stretches, but the rim of the road terrified her. It seemed to hang out over open space. Nothing separated the road from the surrounding mist except a series of very small, evenly spaced boulders. The boulders, perhaps a foot each in height and length, were painted white and placed on the outer rim of the road at six-foot intervals. She was sure the boulders were there only as guides; they certainly could not have prevented any automobile from hurtling over the edge. The higher they climbed, the steeper the drop became, and the thicker the mist, until finally they were driving in a blinding rain. The road seemed to slope in one direction and the surrounding mountains in another. She had the craziest feeling of being trapped in a Dali world of tilting geometric shapes with rain and mist obscuring vision and presenting a wiper-slashed dream effect. Millie began coughing the moment they hit the rain. She hunched against the door of the car, alternately on the inside of the road, alternately on the side that overhung the drop. She would not look down. She coughed into her handkerchief and she stared straight through the windshield as the wipers hacked at the rain. She did not say a word. Every time one of the buses let out its terrible horn blast, she jumped with a start, and then coughed again, and shrank deeper into the seat.

The buses combined with the road and the rain and the sharply sloping angles to lend a nightmare quality to the ride, adding sound to the landscape, a terrible alarming sound like the bleat of a wounded bull, strident on the mountain air, a sound that materialized from nowhere, a sound impossible to locate, ahead, behind, where? And then the bus itself would appear, either racing past on the opposite side of the road or coming suddenly from behind, swinging out past the driver’s side of the car, clearing the fenders by inches, the horn bleating every moment of the way, while Julia clung tightly to the wheel and prayed God she wouldn’t be sideswiped and sent hurtling through those puny boulders down the face of the mountain.

They began to see the goat signs. The signs were painted onto the rock walls of the mountain. They were painted in white, and there were no words, simply drawings, unmistakable pictures of goats. The signs frightened Julia because now, besides having to worry about the rain and the road and the buses, she also had to worry about animals suddenly crossing the road. She made up her mind that she would hit any goat that got in her path rather than swerve to avoid him. She was frightened, but she was also excited and exhilarated. Her hair had come loose and clung wetly to her forehead and her cheeks. Her face was flushed. She had unbuttoned the top button of her blouse, and she could feel drops of perspiration as they trickled past her throat and between her breasts. She had long ago down-shifted to second, and she drove in that gear constantly now, listening for the sound of the buses, beginning to know whether they were coming from ahead or behind. There was, too, she realized, at least a two-foot safety margin between her and the edge of the road when she was driving on the outside. She was beginning to get the feel of the auto, to know its width and its length, and the sound of its engine. The first goats they saw were huddled against the side of the road, protected from the rain by an overhanging rock ledge. Julia smiled when they passed them.

“Well, this isn’t so bad,” she said aloud, almost cheerfully.

Millie did not answer.

The closer they came to the top and the pass, the colder it got. Millie pulled her shawl around her and insisted that Julia put on a coat. Julia wanted nothing less than a coat. The turns were sharp and steep and closer together now, and she fought the wheel like a truck driver.

It was Millie who heard the sound first.

“What’s that?” she said. She sat erect on the seat and stared through the windshield.

“I don’t know,” Julia said.

“A rockslide!” Millie announced.

“No. No, it isn’t.”

“It sounds like—”

“Shh. Shhh, darling, it’s not a rockslide.”

They continued driving. She was not at all sure it wasn’t a rockslide. She kept listening to the sound over the steady clicking of the wipers.

“It’s water,” she said.

“Water? What kind of...?”

“I don’t know. I’m sure it’s all right, though.”

“What’s that?” Millie said, and again she leaned closer to the windshield. “Up there.”

“Oh. Oh, that’s it.”

“That’s what?”

“It’s a dam, Millie. Don’t you think so? Doesn’t it look like a dam?”

“How do I know what a damn dam looks like?” Millie said.

“Yes, it is,” Julia said. “And look, there’s a place to park in front of it. We can get out and stretch our legs.”

“I’m not getting out of this car,” Millie said.

“Well, I’d like to rest a bit. Do you mind?”

“Do what you like,” Millie said. “We should have put the car on a train.”

“Don’t be silly, darling. It’s been a wonderful ride so far.”

“So far,” Millie said ominously.

They parked in the area beside the cement wall fronting the dam. Another car was parked there, carrying French plates. A man and a woman were eating lunch inside the car. They smiled at Julia when she got out of the car and hastily shrugged into her trench coat.

“Bon jour,” the woman said.

“Bon jour, madame,” Julia answered, and then walked to the other side of the road and stood in the rain with her hands on her hips and the trench coat belted tight about her slender waist, the collar hugging the back of her neck, looking up at the dam and smiling. She heard the frightening sudden bleat of an approaching bus and ran across the road quickly, just as it rumbled past.

She rapped on the window of the car and shouted, “Come on out, Millie. The air is wonderful.”

“No, thank you,” Millie answered.

Julia shrugged and walked a little way up the road. She felt oddly fulfilled. She was still smiling when she got into the car again. She threw the trench coat into the back seat with the luggage and said, “There’s a sign out there, Millie. We’re very close to the top.”

“Thank God.”

“There’s something called Hospiz up there, which I gather is a rest station of some sort. Maybe we can get some tea.”

“I’d love some.”

“And then through the pass and down into the Rhone. The German officers said it was a beautiful drive.”

“The German officers said this was a beautiful drive, too.”

“Millie, stop being such a fuss-budget.”

“I’m cold.”

“We’ll stop for tea soon, dear,” Julia said. “It hasn’t been so bad. Really, Millie, it hasn’t.”

She started the car and backed away from the cement wall. The French couple waved again and shouted something, which Julia missed. She drove for a few yards in the lowest gear, snapped the gearshift lever into second, and left it there. She concentrated entirely on the curving road now, almost forgetting that anyone was in the car with her. The turns had become hairpin curves, a turn, a steep rising stretch, another turn, another sharp grade, another turn. She watched the road, heard Millie cough beside her, heard another cough, not Millie’s, realized it had come from the stuttering engine, reached for the gearshift lever and the brake simultaneously, rammed the lever down into first, but too late. The car stalled.

“Damn,” Julia said.

“What is it?”

“We’ve stalled. Don’t worry.”

She put the car in neutral and stepped on the starter. The engine whined, but did not turn over. She tried it again.

“What is it?” Millie asked.

“It won’t start. It’s probably flooded.”

“What are we going to do?”

“I want to get off this curve first,” Julia said.

“How are you going to do that?”

“I’ll back up.”

“Not with me in the car!” Millie said. She seemed ready to cry. Julia touched her arm gently and smiled.

“It would help me if you went around the curve and made sure I wasn’t backing into any buses.”

“In the rain?” Millie said.

“Millie, dear...”

“All right,” Millie answered, and nodded her head curtly. She opened the door on her side and stepped into the rain. Julia, behind the wheel, sighed heavily.

“Anyone coming?” she shouted.

“No, it’s clear,” Millie said. “Hurry up! And watch the edge of the road, Julia. You’ll be on the outside, once you back around the curve.”

“All right,” Julia shouted. “Here I come!”

She took a deep breath, put her foot on the brake pedal, and released the hand brake. Slowly, she raised her foot. The car began rolling backward.

“Turn!” Millie shouted. “You’re heading for the edge! Turn! Oh my God, Julia, turn!”

She yanked at the wheel sharply, her foot poised above the brake pedal, her neck craning out the window, trying to see the white boulders through the driving rain. When she heard the sound of the horn, her heart lurched and she felt suddenly ill.

“A bus!” Millie shouted. “Julia, a bus...”

She rammed her foot onto the brake and then realized she was in the center of the road. In the same instant, she knew that the bus was coming from Millie’s direction, around the curve, or Millie would not have seen it. She heard the rising wail of the bus horn as it approached, the warning bleat sounding over the sloping mountain road. Her first instinct was to get out of the car. The hell with it, she thought, we’re going to Italy! She took her foot off the brake and prayed the car would gain speed rapidly, prayed she would not roll over the edge, prayed she had not misjudged the turn. She rounded the curve and saw the bus bearing down on the opposite side of the road. She cut the wheel sharply and the bus went past on her right, its horn blasting in righteous outrage. She watched the white boulders, coming as close to them as she possibly dared, until the car was on the straightaway again. She pulled up the emergency brake, put the car in gear, and let out her breath. Millie came back to the car and collapsed heavily on the front seat.

They sat for ten minutes and then Julia tried to start the car again. The engine would not turn over.

“We’re so close to the top!” Julia said angrily. “Why did it have to stall?”

“I’m limp,” Millie said.

“I’ll try it again in a little while. I’m sure it’s only flooded.”

“What does that mean? When it’s flooded?”

Julia began laughing. “I don’t know. It’s what Arthur always says when the car won’t start.”

“Someone’s coming,” Millie said, turning.

“Who is it?”

“I don’t know. A man on a motorcycle. Maybe he’s a policeman.”

“In the Alps?”

“I’m sure there are policemen in the Alps, Julia.”

The motorcycle approached. The man on it was not a policeman. His bike bore military markings, and he wore a black helmet with an insignia painted into a white circle, and a wide black rubberized poncho. He stopped his motorcycle near the car, got off, and moved toward Millie’s window, seeming to float inside the wide-hanging black cape. The cape was wet and shining. The rain lashed about his face and shoulders. Millie rolled down the window, and he squinted through the rain at her.

“É successo qualche cosa?” he asked.

“I don’t speak Italian,” Millie said. She turned to her sister. “Julia?”

“Parlo solamente un poco,” Julia said hesitantly. “Parla inglese?”

“Si, un poco,” the soldier answered. He seemed thoughtful for a moment. His face beneath the black helmet was lean and tanned. His eyes were almost closed against the rain, but Julia could make out their color even from her side of the car, a startling blue against the burnished face. He could not have been older than twenty-four or twenty-five, but the helmet was deceiving, combining with the rain to cover his face with shifting shadow. “I speak English bad,” he said. “La macchina, che cosa...? He paused. “What... the car? What is wrong?”

“It won’t start,” Julia said.

The soldier rested his hands on the door of the car. They were large hands, brown and big-knuckled, a workman’s hands, or a farmer’s, with short blond hair curling along the fingers like narrow bronze wires.

“Forse potrei...” Again he paused and mentally translated. “I,” he said. He touched his chest. “I maybe help. To start.”

“If you’d like to try,” Julia said.

“Si, signorina, vorrei provare, se non le dispiace.”

Julia did not miss the “signorina.” She smiled briefly and said, “Signora.”

“Prego?”

“Signora,” she repeated.

“Ah, va bene,” the soldier said. “É sposata, married. Per piacere, signorina,” and his eyes twinkled as he repeated the “Miss” again. “La macchina, no?”

He came around to Julia’s side of the car.

“Be careful!” she said. “You’ll fall down the mountain.”

“No, no, non abbia paura,” he said. He opened the door, precariously close to the edge of the road. “Permesso,” he said to Julia, and he executed a short courtly bow, smiling at her. She moved over toward the middle of the seat. He climbed in, bringing the smell of the rain with him, and the smell of his rubber cape.

“Allora,” he said, and he grinned. “La chiave, ah?” He touched the ignition key. “La benzina?” He frowned, annoyed because he was speaking Italian. “Benzine?” he said. “Gasoline? Si, si, gasoline. You have gasoline?”

“The tank is half full,” Julia said.

“Si, vedo,” he shrugged. “Allora, adesso proviamo, eh? Roma non fu fatta in un’ora, vero?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand you,” Julia said. “My Italian is not very good.”

“Well, forget,” he said. “We try. É pronta?”

“Yes, I’m ready.”

“Julia, do you think this is all right?” Millie asked.

“Yes, darling. He’s trying to help us.”

“Cosa?” the soldier asked.

“Nothing,” Julia said, and she smiled.

“Ha paura?”

“Si. Un pochino,” Julia said.

“Do not be fear,” he said to Millie, and he smiled. “I am very good racer.” He looked at Julia. “That is right? Racer?”

“Driver,” Julia said.

“Si, signorina. Driver.”

“Signora,” she corrected again.

He smiled graciously, a slow lazy smile that came onto his face in sudden brilliance beneath the black helmet. “Ma tutte le donne sono signorine in fondo, non é vero? In the heart, all girls are maidens, is it not true?”

Julia smiled and did not answer.

“Dunque,” he said, and he twisted the ignition key.

The engine turned over immediately.

The soldier began laughing. “Sono un mago,” he said. “Un vero mago. Signorina, la tua automobile.”

He opened the door and stepped into the rain, and again he executed a small bow.

“Thank you,” Julia said. “Mille grazie.”

“Prego,” he answered. “It was pleasure.”

“Well, thank you.”

He smiled, came suddenly to attention, saluted the women, and went back to his motorcycle. He climbed onto the seat, started the bike, waved with one gloved hand, and turned the curve in the road, vanishing in the rain.

“He was nice,” Millie said.

“Yes,” Julia answered.

“Can we get our tea now? Please?”

“Yes, darling, of course,” Julia answered, and she put the car in motion.

They refueled in the town of Gletsch, a Swiss town set in a deep mountain-ringed pocket, a town gone suddenly German. Julia read hesitantly from the Esso translation booklet, telling the attendant what she wanted done to the car. The day still looked foreboding and gray. Millie did not budge from the front seat of the automobile. She kept peering up at the ring of mountains balefully. When Julia got into the car again, she asked, “More climbing?”

“Nope. All downhill from here.”

“Who said?”

“The attendant.”

“I didn’t know you spoke German.”

“I don’t. We used our hands. I pointed up and raised my eyebrows, and he pointed down and smiled. Complete understanding.”

“What are you so chipper about, Julia?”

“I don’t know,” Julia said, and she suddenly looked at her sister and seriously said, “I guess I’m very happy to be here. I guess that’s it.”

“Don’t you miss your family?”

“No,” Julia said. “Not yet.” She paused. “Is that a horrible thing to say?”

“Not if it’s the truth.” Millie wagged her sister away with her hands. “Don’t ask me. Listen, don’t ask me. Come on, let’s see this remarkable valley.”

They came out into sunshine. They came out into balmy warmth. They came out onto a rolling green vista of hills dotted with cottages, of streams rushing, cutting through the green, of slick-wet rocks, of air you could taste, a blue sky pinned to the edges of the world, bright white clouds hanging lazy overhead, the sound of chattering birds, the hush of unimaginable peace. A grin came onto her mouth. They rolled down the windows of the car, and the breeze touched their faces, a breeze that stirred memory inside her, brought it welling up into her throat. This was summertime. This was every summer she had ever known, every dreamed-of summer, imagined and real. There was a timelessness to the valley. A timelessness to the slow and lazy descent of the automobile effortlessly navigating the mountain curves, a timelessness to the sparkling fresh bounding water of the streams and the river and the grass beyond, the brightest grass she had ever seen in her life, storybook grass set against a storybook sky. She caught her breath. She held her breath and felt the sun touching her arm where it rested on the sill of the car, and the soft gentle breeze catching at her hair. She could feel her hair fluttering against her cheek. She wanted to stop the car and lie in the thick grass, suck juice from the thick stem of a blade of grass caught between her teeth, spread her hair behind her on luxuriant thickness, open her blouse, feel the kiss of the sun on her naked body. She knew this valley, oh she had been in this valley when the world was new, walked in it alone with the same sun shining overhead, and the same ancient streams, and the same idle smoke drifting from ancient chimneys, her valley. She said aloud, “It was worth it.”

She wished she were alone. She felt she was about to cry, and she wanted to be able to cry alone, without her sister there.

She drove slowly. She wanted to savor this time. She wanted to remember every curve, every curious twisting of rock, each rill, each sound, each painfully sweet assault of blue and green and white and sparkling silver. Sensuously, she opened herself to the valley, succumbing to it as to a lover.

They ate lunch in the town of Brig. Everyone spoke German. The ladies’ room was filthy. There was one towel on the roller mechanism, and it had been used repeatedly, and fat women in flowered house dresses rolled the towel and dried their hands on the same smudged material over and over again. There were young men singing and marching in the streets, knapsacks on their backs. They loaded the car onto the train, and made certain they asked for first-class tickets. The ride was fairly comfortable. A man sitting next to them was eating bread and cheese, and for the first time in her life, Julia felt like an American. The man knew what she was, and his knowledge touched something inside her, so that being an American suddenly became something of which to be very proud. She was a tourist, true, and she had heard all about the terrible Tourist and the impression he created abroad, the fat Texas oil millionaire with his Leica camera around his neck and his cigar in his mouth, desecrating the cathedrals of the old world, treating Europeans like foreigners on their own soil, generally playing the stereotyped role of the fat American capitalist boor. She had heard the stories, and she was a tourist, yes, but she felt completely and utterly American, and the feeling was a good one. She did not know whether the man sitting across the aisle eating bread and cheese liked Americans or disliked them or was indifferent to them. Nor did she particularly care. Being American was enough. She had never been farther west than Pennsylvania nor farther north than Massachusetts, nor farther south than Washington, D.C. But sitting in a first-class coach on a train racing through tunnels toward the Italian border, she suddenly felt the overwhelming geographic length and breadth of her country, was suddenly intimate with grain fields and mountains and seashores and deserts and canyons and cities and towns. All of America, all of its people and places, suddenly surged into her and became a part of her, giving her an existence separate from her own — and yet indistinguishable from it. She was an American. The title gave her pleasure.

She wondered all at once if she were getting homesick.

Domodossola lay in intense sunshine, a town carved out of the base of a mountain, a town of white walls and tiled roofs, a border town with a temporary border feel. The train had stopped at Berisal on the Swiss side, and the Swiss customs officials had come through and made a cursory check of passports, and then the train had stopped again at a small depot just over the Italian border. The Italian customs men had marched through the compartments with a greater sense of duty and purpose, asking Millie to open one of her bags, which embarrassed her because she had packed all her underclothing on top, never expecting a thorough customs inspection, spoiled by the French and Swiss border men. The Italian who’d been eating his lunch got into a voluble argument concerning his passport, which, from what Julia could gather, had not been properly stamped or validated or something, and the Italian customs officials in their green uniforms with their revolvers strapped to their sides seemed in favor of shooting the man on the spot if it would facilitate getting the train into Domodossola. They finally straightened it out. When the customs men left, the lunch eater muttered “Fetenti!” under his breath, and Julia smiled and looked through the window as the train picked up speed again and came into the broiling border town.

DOMODOSSOLA, the signs read.

Domodossola.

She rolled the name on her tongue, savoring it. She knew instantly that she would love Italy. She tried her Italian on one of the trainmen, asking him where the car would be unloaded, and the man pointed across the tracks to where a lone shed stood in the sunshine. He told her to wait there. The flatcars carrying the automobiles would be uncoupled, he said, and attached to another engine, and then brought to the unloading platform near the shed. She understood perhaps one-third of his monologue, but she understood his pointing finger completely, and she and Millie went through the station and walked to the shed. Two men and a woman were already standing there, waiting for their cars. There was no shade anywhere. There was no overhang on the roof of the shed, and the shadow it cast was a meager one, adequate if one were sitting — but unfortunately, there was nothing to sit on. The sun was intense. A leaking water spout trickled drops onto a flat shining rock. The sun glistened along the railroad tracks, gleamed from the harsh white walls of the buildings.

“I wonder how long this will take,” Millie said.

Julia wiped perspiration from her upper lip and nodded briefly. The Italians had struck up a conversation with each other. She eavesdropped, trying to catch the flow of language, trying to adapt her ear to the sound. She had learned Italian a long time ago, in college, and she’d been only a fairly good student. But she was certain she would learn to speak it fluently now that she was here. Already, she was beginning to pick up the musical cadence.

The wait became interminable. The waterdrops ticked off time on the flat rock. No one seemed to know what had happened to the flat-cars carrying the automobiles. Every time a new engine appeared in the distance, one of the Italians would say “Eccola!” and a feeling of relief would sweep over the small band standing in the sunshine near the shed. But the engine was never the one hauling the flat-cars, and the relief was instantly followed by disappointment, and finally by suspicion. From what Julia could gather, one of the Italians was certain the cars had been sent back to Switzerland. “Queste porche ferrovie!” he muttered darkly, and she gathered his opinion of Italy’s railroads was not very high, despite il Duce’s ability to get trains in and out of stations on time. The flatcars did not appear until an hour later. When the engine pulled into view, a spontaneous cheer went up from the little group. The Italians began nodding and smiling. One of the men, standing in his shirt sleeves, was perspiring profusely, giant wet blots under his arms and across his chest. He fanned himself with a straw hat and turned his free hand to Julia in a gesture of helplessness and apology, nodding his head. Julia smiled. The train pulled in, and a platform man yanked the chocks out from under the wheels of the automobiles and adjusted the unloading platform to meet the deck of the flatcar. The three Italians unloaded their automobiles first. Julia drove the Simca off the platform and Millie got into the car and sighed deeply.

“Thank God,” she said. “I’m exhausted.”

Julia looked through the windshield. A border official in a green uniform was stopping each car. The owners of the automobiles were showing him some sort of identification. Passports, she supposed, and watched as the cars ahead of her were waved on. As she approached the official, he shouted “Alt!” and she put on the brake and waited for him to come over to the window on her side.

“Carnet,” he said. He extended one gloved hand, palm up.

“What is it you want?” Julia asked, and then quickly translated in halting Italian, “Che cosa vuole?”

“Carnet,” the man said. His hand remained extended.

“What does he want, Julia?” Millie said.

“I don’t know. My driver’s license, I suppose.” She opened her bag, found her wallet, took out her Connecticut driver’s license and handed it through the window.

The man shook his head. “Carnet, carnet,” he said.

“He must want the registration,” Millie said. “All the papers are in the glove compartment, Julia. Give him those.”

Julia sighed, opened the glove compartment, took out the papers the Paris auto rental agency had given them, and handed them through the window. The border official leafed through the various papers, shaking his head as he studied each one. Then he handed them back to Julia.

“Per entrare in Italia,” he said, “deve avere il carnet. Nessuno di questi documenti é un carnet.”

“What in hell is a carnet?” Julia asked Millie.

“I’m sure I don’t know. Tell him we’ll get it in Stresa, whatever it is. Tell him we’re in a hurry, Julia.”

“Non teniamo una carnet,” Julia said. “Lo prendiamo a Stresa. Per piacere, abbiamo fretta.”

The border official shook his head. “Lo deve ottenere qui. Non a Stresa. Non potete lasciare Domodossola senza il carnet.”

“Ma dove lo potere avere?” Julia asked.

“Seguitemi,” the man said. He motioned with his hand, directing Julia to pull the car to the side of the road, where she saw one sign hanging over a customs office and another sign for the Italian military police. She drove to a place marked DIVIETO MACCHINE CTVILI and parked the car alongside a motorcycle.

“Stay here with the luggage, Millie,” she said. “They won’t let us leave Domodossola until we get this carnet, whatever it is.”

She stepped out of the car. The official was waiting for her.

“Venite,” he said, and he led her into the customs office. A man sitting behind an old desk looked up when they entered. The office was dim and cool. The shutters on the single window set in the stone wall were closed, blocking the rays of the sun. The men held a conversation in rapid Italian, the only word of which Julia caught was carnet. The man behind the desk kept nodding his head. The other went on at interminable length about the carnet. It seemed they would never get it settled.

Finally, the man behind the desk said, “Si, va bene. Portatela all’ Automobile Club.”

“Do either of you speak English?” Julia asked.

The man behind the desk looked up and smiled. The smile was evil, Julia thought, a horrid evil smile. “In Italia,” he said slowly, “parliamo italiano.”

She knew he understood English, because he had answered her question. Slowly, precisely, controlling her anger, she said in English, “And in Italy you have apparently forgotten whatever manners you ever had. How do I get this carnet?”

The man behind the desk continued smiling. He did not answer Julia. The other man said, “Seguite,” and she followed him out into the sunshine again. A tall blond man in an army uniform was coming out of the military-police barracks next door. He smiled at Julia and said, “Ah, buon giorno, signorina.”

She did not recognize him at first. Somehow, she’d thought the soldier on the mountain was an officer, but she saw quite clearly now the corporal’s stripes on his sleeves and was a little disappointed, though she couldn’t understand why. Too, the man on the mountain had seemed heavier inside his rubberized poncho, and this man who walked toward her now, smiling, was rather thin, and somewhat older than she’d originally estimated, thirty-three or thirty-four, perhaps even her own age. His hair was a muddied blond and this, too, came as a surprise because he’d been wearing the black helmet on the mountain, and yet surely she had noticed that his eyebrows were blond too and that his eyes... the eyes. The eyes were the same. Blue, an intense blue, smiling with the rest of his tanned face. It was a face she knew. She turned to him desperately and said in rapid English, “Oh, hello, how are you? Can you help me, please? I seem to need a carnet, but no one will tell me what it is, and they’ve been leading me from place to—”

The soldier held out his hand. “Piano, piano,” he said. “My English is not good.”

She explained again, slowly this time. He listened intently, his head cocked to one side. He pushed a strand of hair off his forehead, revealing a white streak of flesh that the sun had not touched. She kept talking, fascinated by the suddenly exposed skin, as if she had stumbled upon a secret vulnerable corner of the man. The border official seemed weary of the exchange. He leaned against the whitewashed wall with the black FORBIDDEN TO CIVILIAN CARS lettered boldly on it, one hand resting on the butt of the pistol at his waist. The corporal nodded as Julia spoke, making his laborious mental translation. Then he said, “A carnet is a paper, it tells, descrivere, describes? si, your automobile, and that you are not bring to Italy for to sell. Capisce?”

“Yes, si, but no one told us about it. The Paris agency...”

“Si, ma é necessario. Is need. It is law.” He shrugged.

“Si,” she said, and she nodded, distressed.

“Si, but is easy. To get this. The Automobile Club... ah... come si dice rilasciare? Issues? Fixes? They fix for you.”

“But where is the Automobile Club?”

“In città. In town. He will take.” He pointed to the border man.

“Could...?” Julia hesitated. “Are you very busy now?”

“Signorina?”

“Well... are you stationed here?”

“Pardon?”

“Well... could you come with us? To the Automobile Club? I’ll never be able to explain all this in Italian.”

The corporal nodded. “Ahhh,” he said. “Ahhhh.”

“Could you?”

“Cosa?” the border man asked.

The corporal translated Julia’s request.

“Allora, andiamo,” the border man said. “Stiamo sciupando tutto il pomeriggio.”

“Will you come?” Julia asked.

“Si, signorina. Al suo servizio!” He snapped a salute at her, and then smiled, and the three began walking down the street together. From the car, Millie called, “Julia! Where are they taking you?”

“To the Automobile Club,” Julia called back over her shoulder.

“The what? What did you say?”

“It’s all right, Millie. I’ll be right back.”

There was something comical about the procession, and she could not resist smiling. She walked between the two uniformed men, trying to match her strides with their own. The border man walked with a stiff precise cadence, as if he were leading her to a wall to execute her. The notion delighted her. When they raised their rifles, she would say, “To hell with the blindfold!” The corporal, walking with a rather lazy lope, noticed her smile, but said nothing. There was a curious air of inactivity to the town. No one seemed to be employed, the entire town seemed to be out in the main street, idling, gossiping, the men standing in dark trousers and intensely white shirts, or the green army uniforms with their funny tasseled hats, the women barefoot most of them, but wearing brightly colored dresses as if they had got ready for a ball and forgotten to put on their heels. Here and there, a few of Mussolini’s Black Shirts lounged against the walls. The sunshine caught the town in its lazy posture, caught motion suspended, caught bicycles leaning against walls, reflected from silvered spokes, caught water running in the gutter, caught wrought-iron balconies overhanging the main street, caught the brightly colored cart of the ices peddler, and the young soldiers standing beside it in green, and the two adolescent girls in bright skirts and white blouses, barefoot, giggling, the town had been frozen by sunshine. The boots of the border man and the corporal thudded on the cobbled street, bracketed the feminine chatter of Julia’s heels.

“My name is Renato,” the corporal said suddenly, in Italian. “Renato Cristo.”

“How do you do?” Julia said in English. “I’m Mrs. Arthur Regan.” She paused. “Julia Regan.”

Renato smiled his slow smile. In Italian, he said, “You spoke our language very well earlier. It would be a shame, now that you are in Italy, if you returned home exactly as you arrived.”

“How do you mean?” Julia asked in English.

“It might be good to practice your Italian,” Renato said. He would not speak English now. He spoke Italian, slowly, deliberately, carefully, so that she would understand him. But he would not speak English, and she sensed a challenge in his choice of language, and she responded to the challenge by answering him in English, refusing to give ground.

“I’ll have ample opportunity to practice my Italian,” she said.

“Why not begin now?” he asked in Italian. “You could learn very easily. You understand me perfectly well, do you not?”

“Yes,” Julia said in English. “I understand you very well.”

“Then why won’t you answer me in Italian?”

“Why won’t you ask me in English?”

“I am the man,” he said simply.

She looked into his eyes suddenly. His face was very serious. All at once, she was frightened. She put her hand to her mouth, and then looked away. Renato smiled.

In deliberate Italian, he said, “Your Italian is very good. I have lived here in Italy all my life. I am, after all, an expert on the Italian language. I say your Italian is quite good.” He paused. “Do you agree?”

“No,” she said, still not looking at him.

“But yes.”

“All right then, yes,” she said in English, an annoyed tone in her voice. She turned to look at him again. “My Italian is very good, all right? Yes.”

He stopped suddenly. The border official kept walking, unaware that Renato had stopped, unaware that Julia had stopped beside him.

“Would it pain you to say ‘yes’ in Italian?” he asked quietly.

“No. I suppose not.”

“Then say it.”

“Yes,” Julia said. In Italian.

Renato smiled. “Good. We will speak only Italian from now on. It will be easier for us.”

“Please, please hurry!” the border man said impatiently. He stood in the center of the street waiting for them, his hands on his hips. “I have other things to do.”

They caught up to him and walked the rest of the way in silence. Julia was suddenly aware that the top button of her blouse was unfastened. She moved her hand to it surreptitiously, buttoned it, and then glanced at Renato to see if he had noticed. The street seemed very hot all at once. When they reached the Automobile Club, an old man was out front, rolling down a corrugated-metal door upon which were painted the letters RACI.

“What are you doing?” Renato asked him.

“I am going home,” the man said. “Today is a feast day. I have stayed open later than I should have.”

“This lady needs a carnet,” Renato said.

“She will have to come back tomorrow.”

“She cannot come back tomorrow. She is leaving here this afternoon.”

“That is impossible,” the Automobile Club man said. “She cannot leave Domodossola without a carnet, therefore she cannot leave this afternoon, therefore she will come back tomorrow.”

“No,” Renato said. “Open your door, professor. You will give the lady her carnet now.”

The Automobile Club man looked at the border official. The border official shrugged.

“I must go to the post office to mail a letter,” the old man said. “I will come back in a half hour. I should go home. This is a feast day. You soldiers are all brigands. You will not let a man enjoy his feast day.”

“The lady is in Italy on holiday.”

“No one asked her to come to Italy without a carnet,” the old man said, “on holiday or otherwise. This is my holiday. There are few enough feast days.”

“Yes, professor, but you are a kind man who would not turn away a lady so beautiful as this one.”

The old man studied Julia with a practiced eye. For a moment, she thought she would blush. The border official looked at her, too. Renato stood by with an air of proprietorship, like a cattle breeder exhibiting a choice head of beef. She was somewhat annoyed by his attitude. The men continued to study her solemnly, as though her beauty or lack of it would be the deciding factor in whether or not she got the carnet.

“Well, she is pretty,” the old man said grudgingly. “I’ll go to the post office and return. It will be a half hour. If you wish to wait, fine. If not, tell me, and I’ll go home to my family and enjoy a well-deserved rest on this scarce feast day.”

“We’ll wait,” Renato said.

“Will you take care of the lady?” the border official asked him.

“Yes. I’ll take care of the lady,” Renato said.

“Very well. When you have the carnet, please return to the office.”

“I will,” Julia said. “Would you please tell my sister I’ll be a little while?”

“Yes, madam,” the border official said. He nodded curtly and walked away.

“I’ll be back,” the old man said. He tested the padlock on the rolled-down metal door, and shuffled off up the street.

“Well,” Renato said, and he began laughing. “Welcome to Italy!”

His teeth were very white. When he laughed, his lips pulled back to reveal them, adding visual impetus to the laugh, inviting contagion. She found herself laughing with him.

“Is it always this way?” she asked. “How do you get anything done?”

“Oh, we get things done,” Renato said, and he shrugged. “It’s hot today. Do you find it hot?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Would you like some ices? Do you like ices?”

“I’d love some, thank you.”

They walked to the cart. “Two lemons,” he said to the ices man. “Do you like lemon? Of course you like lemon. That is the only kind of ices to have on a hot day.”

“Yes, I like lemon,” she said softly.

“Good. How old are you?”

“What?”

“How old are you?”

“Why do you ask?”

He shrugged. “Why, because I want to know.”

“I’m thirty-five,” she said unflinchingly.

“That’s good.” He nodded.

“Why?”

“Is it not good?” he asked. He opened his eyes wide in surprise.

“Well, thirty is better. And seventeen is even better than that.”

“Thirty is a bridge,” Renato said, “and seventeen is a cradle. You are a good age.”

“Thank you.”

“Here. Be careful, the cup sometimes drips. You would not want to stain your pretty blouse,” he said, and from the way he glanced at her she knew he’d noticed the unfastened button earlier.

“How old are you?” she asked.

“Thirty-three.” He grinned. “I’m a boy yet.”

“Yes, you are.”

“But not too young for il Duce’s magnificent army, eh?”

“I take it you don’t like the army.”

“Oh, I love the army,” he said broadly. “How else would I be able to afford travel? They send me all over Europe with important secret dispatches. I climb onto my motorbike and deliver messages to generals of all nations. Very important documents. I carried one to Switzerland that said, ‘I will meet you for a drink in Geneva on Tuesday.’ Highly important, highly official, very secret.”

Julia laughed. “Where are you stationed?” she asked.

“Rome. Isn’t everyone? Rome is where il Duce is. He likes to look out over his balcony and see uniforms, many uniforms. So that’s where I’m stationed.”

“And where do you live?”

“I live nowhere,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“I was born in Naples, but my father took me from there when I was very young because he wanted to farm, and he had heard of a strip of land just outside Rome. It is rare for Italians to leave the town of their birth, but my father wanted to go, so we went. When my parents died, my sister and I sold the farm. I suppose I live with her now, in Rome.”

“I see.”

There was a pause in the conversation. They had walked back to the Automobile Club and were leaning against the metal door now.

Renato said, “Will you be going to Rome?”

“Yes. Well, outside of Rome actually. The Abruzzi. I’m taking my sister to Aquila.”

“That’s not far from Rome,” he said. “Only a few hours’ drive.”

“My sister is ill,” Julia said.

“Aquila is pleasant,” he said. “Especially if you are ill.” His smile widened. “Perhaps only if you are ill.” He paused. “Will you be staying long?”

“Not too long.”

“How long?”

“Why?”

“You always say ‘why.’ I ask questions because I want to know the answers. It’s not necessary to say ‘why.’ How long will you be staying?”

“Several months.”

“Perhaps you may stay longer.”

“No.”

“How can you tell?”

“I have a husband and a son at home.”

“Yes, and they will miss you.”

“Yes.”

“Yes, I know.”

He was silent again.

“Aquila will be good for your sister,” he said at last. “The air is clean.”

“Yes, that’s what we were told.”

“Where will you be staying in Aquila?”

“We’ve rented a villa.”

“How much are you paying?”

Julia laughed suddenly. “You ask very funny questions,” she said.

“I want to make sure you’re not being cheated.”

“A travel agent arranged the rental for us.”

“There are thieves among travel agents, too.”

“Yes, but that applies to everyone, and I would rather trust people, wouldn’t you?”

“No, I don’t care to trust people,” he said. “Nor they me. It doesn’t matter. How much are you paying?”

“Two thousand lire a month.”

“That’s high.”

“It’s a beautiful villa.”

“Will you have a car?”

“Yes.”

“Will you come into Rome sometimes?”

“I suppose so.”

“Yes or no?”

“Yes, there are things I want to see in Rome.”

“I know an excellent guide,” Renato said.

“Who?” she asked.

She watched him intently, slightly frightened by what was happening and yet totally free of any feeling of guilt, and the guiltlessness frightened her even more. She knew where this was leading, and yet she felt powerless to stop it. He had said, “I know an excellent guide,” and she had said, “Who?” and she knew what his answer would be. She knew he would say, “Me.” She was certain he would say, “Me,” and she waited somewhat breathlessly for his reply, not sure what her reaction would be when it came, not sure whether she would end whatever was happening then and there, smile pleasantly but aloofly and say, “Thank you, that’s very kind, but I don’t think so,” not sure at all what she would say when he made his offer.

He did not answer at once.

“Who?” she said again, and waited.

“A woman named Maria Scalza,” he said.

“What?” She stared at him, surprised.

“Yes. She is a fine guide. If you like, I will give you her number.”

“I... thank you, but...”

“Ahhh,” Renato said, “the professor returns.” He looked at his wrist watch. “He said a half hour, and a half hour it is. Il Duce should send him a medal. He should send us all medals.” He raised his arm in greeting. “Ah, professor!” he called. Then he winked at Julia and said, “You’re late, professor,” and burst into laughter when the old man exploded in rage.

She brought the carnet to the customs office afterward. Renato waited until they had stamped it and returned it to her, and then he walked her to the car. Millie had fallen asleep on the front seat.

“Where do you go now?” Renato asked.

“Stresa. Just overnight.”

“You will like Stresa,” he said. “Are you staying at the Grand Borromées?”

“Yes. Have you ever stayed there?”

“Me?” He began laughing. “Cara mia, I’m a farmer,” he said. “But it’s pretty on the outside.” He paused. “Like you.” He opened the car door for her. “Arrivederci. Have a good trip.”

“I... thank you for your help. You were very kind.”

“It was my pleasure, believe me.”

“Thank you again.”

“Prego.”

“Goodbye.”

“Goodbye,” he said.

She first saw the paintings in one of the palaces where she had gone with her sister Millie in a gondola. It had been a misty day in Venice, the sky spread overhead like a taut translucent skin, gray-white, the sun behind it evenly illuminating the canopy and creating a shimmering glare on the water and the buildings. It seemed as if the sun would break through at any moment. Instead, as the morning lengthened into afternoon, the sky turned ominously gray. When they stepped out of the gondola, it began raining. They ran for the shelter of the building. A bronze urchin stood in the entrance arch, a lovely statue in an angelic pose, his genitals rubbed shining bright by luck-seeking tourists. He stood grinning at them with his small shining penis as if inordinately proud of its glow, and she smiled as she passed it and noticed that Millie turned back for a second puzzled look.

The paintings were on the third floor, a series that showed men and women alike wearing white masks that covered their faces. At first she thought the paintings depicted some sort of masquerade ball, some fourteenth-century Mardi gras. And then she thought perhaps the plague had visited Venice at one time and the masks were a protection against the disease. Their guide explained the meaning of the masks, an explanation she never quite believed, but which nonetheless planted an idea in her mind. The guide told Julia and Millie that in those days there was great intrigue in Venice, and it was not uncommon to find noblemen with slit throats floating in the canals on any given morning. In order to protect themselves from homicide and assorted mayhem, the noblemen took to sending their servants out dressed in their clothes and wearing white masks that covered their features. The point of the masquerade, then, was to confuse would-be assassins. No one wanted to run a dagger across the throat of a supposed Count only to discover it was his own brother-in-law who worked in the Count’s kitchen. But, as with many another measure originally conceived of necessity, the masks became quite popular and enjoyed a sort of curious vogue. The women began wearing them as part of their everyday dress, and the masks became more ornate, decorated with pearls and jewels, dominos hid the eyes and the nose, the city was suddenly filled with faceless citizens.

The concept of the masks intrigued Julia.

For the first time in her life, she began wondering exactly who she was, began wondering who was the noblewoman and who was the scullery maid in disguise, began indeed to wonder whether the mask hid the true face or whether the mask was the face itself.

She had never questioned herself along these lines. She had long ago dismissed soul-searching as a particularly obnoxious fictional device, had long ago in fact stopped reading fiction of any sort, because she felt it added nothing to her understanding of herself as a wife and a mother. There were things Julia accepted, and things she refused to accept, and she had always believed that her own freedom of choice was the very fabric of her life. But now she began wondering if her freedom wasn’t simply the security of a jungle animal in captivity. She felt undeniably different in Italy. She could not honestly say she had changed in any way, because there was no tangible change she could see, and really no essential inner change she could feel. She seemed to move in exactly the same way, and think in exactly the same way — and yet there was a difference. A mask had been lowered, or perhaps a mask had been raised. She did not know which, and the uncertainty was puzzling. To Julia, there had always been things that were true and things that were false. She had always known exactly which was which, and she had governed her life accordingly, sure of their constancy. Now, she wondered.

She knew she was attractive. There was no doubt whatever in her mind about that. She had known it even when she was a little girl who seriously studied her own face in the big ornately carved mirror in her mother’s bedroom. She would look into the glass and touch her button nose and the edges of her eyes, the thick-fringed lashes, the long silken brown hair. Grownups enjoyed looking at her, Julia Stark knew that, too. She would play games with her own childish beauty. She would sometimes get all messy on purpose, so that she could come in with smudges on her face and on her clothes, the incongruous grime heightening the visual impact of her delicately boned face and body. When she matured, providence was again on her side. At first, she was terribly frightened by the sudden pucker of her chest. She would stare at her tentative buds in the big mirror and touch them exploringly, frightened to death, fascinated too, fascinated the way she was with the steady, slow growth of the four-o’clocks she’d planted in her mother’s garden. The fear and fascination gave way to pleasure and gratitude. She would examine herself critically now, pulling back her shoulders and marveling at the new ripe slope of her chest. And sometimes at night in the privacy of her bed, she would seize herself in delight and whisper fervent thanks for her bounty. The other girls in the sixth grade were not quite as enthusiastically grateful for the blossoming flower in their midst. She was pretty enough to begin with. She did not need any unnecessary and totally unfair embellishments. The hardest thing Julia had to bear was their hidden envy and their open scorn. She didn’t mind the stares of the boys. She clouted one when he tried to touch her, but she connected no thoughts of sexuality to the boy’s understandable curiosity. Her breasts were simply a new part of her body, and she didn’t like anyone touching her, no matter how scientifically probing the attitude. She asked her mother to take her into Talmadge to Mr. Kannen’s clothing store, and her mother helped her in picking out a suitable brassière. She could still remember it. It had been white, and made of cotton, and she found it difficult reaching behind her back to clasp and unclasp it.

She knew she was attractive, yes. This was one of the indisputable and governing facts in Julia’s life. She used her beauty unconsciously, the way most beautiful women do, but she used it nonetheless. She learned in her teens that a pretty girl can get away with a great many more things than her unattractive counterpart. But she never used her good looks flagrantly, never played the outrageous flirt — until she met Arthur Regan. With other boys, she maintained a sort of cool dignity that was sometimes maddening. She was, quite naturally, one of the most popular girls at Talmadge High, and from the time she was sixteen and permitted to date, she never lacked male company on any weekend night. There was about Julia a touch of recklessness, a tinge of heresy, an abandon beneath that pristine exterior, which promised adventure. When she chose to kiss a boy — and she did not choose to very often — she kissed him with an ardor that curled his toes. This, to Julia Stark, was another of the facts of life. If you wanted to kiss someone, you kissed him because you enjoyed it, and you kissed him as if you were enjoying it. Otherwise, you didn’t kiss him at all. She never felt guilty about leaving a date on her doorstep with a handshake and a smile. She felt she owed nothing more than her undoubtedly pleasant company to anyone who took her out. Whatever else they reaped in the way of residual benefits was something Julia and Julia alone would decide. If anyone got silly about it, if any boy decided he would try to wrestle his way into her favor, Julia instantly hit him. She found that an openhanded slap had a remarkably quieting effect. Most boys would not risk Julia’s wrath. They dated her because she was really very pleasant to be with, and to be seen with. And if she chose not to kiss them, there was always the hope — and hope had surely nurtured less ambitious projects — that one day, oh perhaps one day, Julia would offer her mouth, one day Julia would allow her blouse to be opened, her skirt to be pulled back, one day Julia...

The hopes were mostly the stuff of which dreams are made.

Kiss you she would, yes, they knew that. Reports of her kisses were passed around like international secrets among the chosen few. Her lips, they said, did you ever feel softer lips? Her mouth, they said, she kissed you with all of her mouth. Her teeth, they said, she nibbles at your lips, she nibbles at your tongue, she drives you nuts, they said. But more than that they could not discuss, because there never was more than that. The boys of Talmadge had run headlong into another of Julia’s incontrovertible facts of life. She was not easy, and she was not promiscuous, and she knew without the slightest hesitation or doubt that the man who married her would be the first and only man ever to possess her.

Arthur Regan, she knew from the very beginning, was destined to become a very important fact in her life. There was nothing outstanding about Arthur, it seemed, except his artistic ability. He was, in his sophomore year, the art editor of the school magazine, and a cartoonist for the school paper. He had also had several cartoons accepted for publication by the Talmadge Courier, the town’s bona fide newspaper, and he was something of a celebrity at school, well aware of his own talents and calmly accepting everyone’s prediction that he would one day really amount to something. He was not a good-looking boy at all. Julia had certainly dated handsomer boys. His hair was sandy-colored and straight. He seemed to wear a perpetual frown over his mud-colored eyes, and his nose was a little too large for his narrow face. But he fascinated Julia the moment she laid eyes on him, and for the first time in her life she actively began to plan the seduction of a male animal.

The word “seduction,” of course, never once entered her mind. Nor would she even admit to herself that she was planning anything at all for the art editor of the school magazine. She preferred to believe that whatever was happening was happening by circumstance and chance alone. And after a while, these carefully schemed accidents became more of Julia’s “facts,” and she forgot completely that she had lain awake nights thinking up new plots to insure the ensnarement of young Arthur.

Their preliminary skirmishes served only to make Arthur more aware of her. He was not a good-looking boy, and perhaps he knew it, but his renown had brought with it an attitude of extreme confidence, so that he walked and talked and sounded and felt as if he were handsome, as if those who preferred believing instead the evidence of their own eyes were surely candidates for the booby hatch. He knew that Julia Stark was possibly the prettiest girl in that entire high school, and he knew that for some absurdly fantastic reason she was making a big play for him. And whereas he knew for certain that he was one day going places, the only place he wanted to be right now was alone with Julia.

Like two chess players who had finally decided on their opening moves for the game, after studying the board and each other for a long time, Julia and Arthur came to grips. Pawn to King’s four, Knight to King’s Bishop three, the pieces stared at each other in perfect symmetry across the board — the opening play they had independently and simultaneously chosen was Arthur’s ability as an artist.

“I hear you draw pretty well,” Julia said.

“I do,” Arthur admitted.

“Would you like to draw me sometime?”

“Why should I?”

“I just thought you might like to.”

“Well, maybe,” Arthur said cautiously.

“Don’t you think I’d make a good model?” Julia asked, and she smiled a bit coyly.

“You might,” Arthur said. “It’s very difficult to hold a pose for any considerable amount of time.”

“I’d like to try sometime,” she said shamelessly. “If you’d let me.”

“Well, I’ll think it over,” Arthur said, slightly bored.

“Well, I guess I’ll see you around,” Julia said.

“I guess so,” Arthur said airily, and when he left her his heart was pounding.

She posed for him on the Thursday of the following week. It was springtime, and the air of Talmadge was afloat in a thousand crosscurrents of aroma. Breezes flirted in the treetops, carrying murmurs of far-off Cathay, clouds were billowy with the juices of romance, she was sixteen and he was seventeen, and the world was turning green, the world was opening, it was good to breathe, and good to look, and good to touch. They went to the bird sanctuary at the end of town, and lifted the unlocked catch on the cyclone fence and walked in past the caretaker’s shack, and onto one of the hidden paths, crossing freshly unbound streams over rough wooden footbridges, seeing a scarlet tanager suddenly darting through the foliage in a burst of fire, hearing a chatter that went still all at once as they moved deeper into the woods. They found a hidden glade, an oval of grass surrounded by pines. They could hear the wind in the treetops, a gentle soughing wind, a sigh, the exhalation of spring. They felt shy in the presence of nature, they were silent, they moved slowly, unwilling to disturb the calm, they averted their eyes as if in the presence of divinity. She sat on a low flat rock. She put down her books, and she tucked her skirts around her and lifted her chin. Her brown hair trailing down her back, she looked at him as he sat opposite her with his pad open in his lap, his pencil poised.

“Well,” she said. “Begin.”

“I’m trying to find the best place to start.”

“Are there different places with different people?”

“Well, I like to find a key to the face and then take it from there.”

“And what’s the key to my face, Arthur?”

“Your mouth,” he said. Quickly, he added, “Or maybe your eyes.”

“Or maybe my nose?”

“Well, maybe.”

He began sketching rapidly. His sketches were not really too good. He managed to capture each of her features separately, but they did not combine to form the face of Julia Stark.

“They’re beautiful,” she said. “Arthur, you’re really very very good.”

“I can do much better. They’re not you at all, Julia.”

“How do you see me, Arthur?”

He was hesitant at first. He did not want to talk about her beauty because this was old stuff to her, but surely he couldn’t lie, surely the evidence was hers to see, she knew she was beautiful. And suddenly, in the tick of an instant, their relationship reached honesty. And in that instant, Julia Stark fell in love with Arthur Regan. She barely listened to what he was saying, because she knew the words, the words were part of a familiar litany. But he raised his head slowly, and he found her eyes, and he debated in that instant with himself, and the debate showed on his face — the lie or the truth? And he decided in favor of the truth, and he said very softly, “You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen in my life, Julia.”

She did not prompt him, she did not turn coy or flirtatious, she did not say, “Beautiful? How am I beautiful?” She returned his honest stare and said, “Thank you, Arthur,” and he got up slowly from the grass, the world was moving in adolescent slow motion that day, and he walked toward her slowly, and he reached out with one slender hand and cupped her chin, and brought his face down slowly to meet hers, his lips to meet hers. Gently, softly, he kissed her on the mouth.

There was no passion in the kiss. It was a physical act stripped of physicality. It was less a kiss than an exchange of faith, a seal of trust. It shook them both to their roots. They backed away from each other in the same absurd slow motion. They seemed to have achieved a sharpness of focus in the touching of lips, they stood out in vivid clarity against the landscape, the world seemed to shimmer as their mouths parted and they moved from each other and looked at each other and said nothing. Sound would have destroyed the crystal, sound would have shattered spring and trampled youth. They had exchanged an honest kiss, and they were too young to appreciate its rarity, but they knew that something very special had happened to them both, and that it might never happen again as long as they lived.

In time, she forgot that day completely. There were other things to occupy her. There was all this business of loving and being loved, there was this machine of romance, constantly needing lubrication and new parts. There were plans, so many plans. Arthur going off to New York and Cooper Union, she herself going to the University of Connecticut, timetables to synchronize, where would they meet and when, the announcement of their engagement, and finally their marriage, and Arthur’s first job, and a rented house in Talmadge, oh she forgot that day. There was no need for remembering it, really. She loved Arthur and his quiet ways, and the gradual tempering of his ego, and the forceful efficiency and imagination he brought to his work, and the fervent way he discussed art and his role in advertising. She enjoyed the house they moved into, the old Regan heirloom that became theirs when his mother died, a huge sprawling old house with thousands upon thousands of rooms to discover and a wide springy lawn, and wild laurel filling the horizon with subtle pink-and-white each year. You could see the university spires from the old Regan house. Sometimes she would sit out back alone, and her eye would follow the slope of the hill, the town laid out at her feet, the hazy outlines of the college buildings in the distance, and she would feel very much at peace with herself and the life she had made with Arthur.

The birth of David did not change the steady rhythm of her existence at all. The child was another fact to be stored into the catalogue of accepted realities. There were things she believed and things she refused to believe. Arthur, David, her own beauty, the house, Arthur’s frenzied work, the child’s steady growth, the town, all these were realities. She refused to believe in death. When Arthur’s mother died and the house and two hundred acres of land became the property of the newlyweds, she refused to associate the sudden bonanza with the event that had brought it their way. She simply refused to accept the death. In much the same way, she refused to acknowledge the Spanish Civil War or Adolph Hitler. She knew these things had happened or were happening, she saw the headlines, she understood the meaning of events, but in her mind they refused to become factual; they remained instead intrusions from a fantasy world, vague shapes that did not belong in the ordered life of Julia Regan. She did not believe in infidelity and would not listen to town gossip concerning the peccadilloes of this or that citizen. She believed she was Arthur’s sole reason for existence — he had told her so often enough — and she accepted this knowledge without a feeling of superiority over him; this was simply the way things were. She herself was the nucleus of a life governed by a selected group of rock-bottom facts, the sole arbiter, the sole censor, the sole judge of what was real and what was not. There was room for only so much in her life, she felt — so much giving, taking, loving, accepting of love, believing. There wasn’t time or space for more. She thought herself incapable of more.

And now she was in Italy.

And now, suddenly, she found herself responding in a way she never had — oh yes, perhaps once, perhaps, a silent glade and sunshine, the twitter of a solitary bird, the smell of pine, the memory was indistinct.

Nor was this simply an awareness of her surroundings. This was, instead, a yearning to absorb every sight and smell and sound. Something had happened to her on the drive through the Alps and the magnificent descent through the Rhone Valley to Brig. The same Julia Regan got off that train in Domodossola, but it was a Julia Regan who had been purged somehow. A film had been removed from her eyes, her ears had been unstoppered, her tongue thrilled to new tastes, her fingers explored surfaces, the earth was suddenly thronged with exciting possibilities she had never before considered. She tried to file them away as facts, but there were too many to record, and the strict dividing line between reality and fantasy, the staunch wall of disbelief began to crumble. Everything was real, everything was believable, everything was new for her to discover and hoard. Except, paradoxically, the never-before-questioned foundations of her normal existence. The only unrealities to Julia now seemed to be the things she had earlier accepted as basic facts: her life in Talmadge, her husband, her son.

She felt no guilt.

She had been born again with shining eyes and smooth skin and questioning hands. She heard new sounds and spoke a new melodic tongue, and everything, everything was a delight.

The Venetian doctor was a part of this make-believe world that had suddenly donned the believable garments of reality. In another time, in another place, the doctor would have been summarily rejected, flatly refused as a figment of her imagination. But he swept into the hotel room now as if he had always existed, and despite her nausea and her fever, Julia felt a new thrill of delight, something new was happening, her eyes shone in her pale face. She caught her breath and waited.

Her ailment, she knew, was the usual tourist’s complaint. She should not have drunk the water, should not have sampled so generously the new foods that tempted her eye and her tongue. She tried to tell Millie this was nothing to worry about, but Millie — whose life had been lived in the constant presence of medical men — insisted on calling a doctor, and the hotel had promised to send one within a half hour.

And here he was, and Julia held her breath as he came into the room, the secret delight reaching for her face, setting her eyes aglow. He was a tall thin man with a balding head. He wore a gray silk suit and an outrageous summer tie. He carried a small black bag in his right hand, and he clicked his heels and bowed the moment he was inside the door, first to Millie, and then to Julia, who lay on the bed with the sheet to her throat.

His eyes searched her face. And then his head fell to one side as if it had been suddenly robbed of its supporting bones and muscles; a look of utter tragedy turned down the corners of his eyes, his eyebrows, the ends of his mouth; he hunched his shoulders slightly, he bent one arm at the elbow, the hand opened in mute supplication as he approached the bed. His tragic pose was complete. Julia fully expected him to begin weeping.

“Oh, madama!” he said in English, his voice breaking as he moved swiftly to the bed, lifted Julia’s hand to his lips, and quickly kissed it. He clung to her hand, pulling a chair from behind him with his free hand, sitting beside the bed, leaning over her, his face still wearing the tragic mask, every muscle in his body conveying sympathy and grief and continental courtesy. “Oh, madama, I am so sorry, you do not feel good?” he asked.

“Well...”

“Ah, madama,” he said understandingly, and stuck a thermometer into her mouth. Julia stifled a giggle. Millie looked at her reprimandingly and the doctor rose suddenly from the side of the bed and walked to where she was standing and asked, “She has been sick long?”

“Since this morning,” Millie said.

“Tch, tch, tch,” the doctor said, casting a baleful eye at Julia and then turning his sympathetic attention back to Millie. “She has vomit?”

“Yes.”

“She has evacuate?”

“Yes.”

“Tch, tch, tch,” he said and whirled again to the bed. With the skill of a swordsman drawing a rapier, he swept the thermometer from Julia’s mouth, studied it, sighed deeply, cocked his head to one side, put the thermometer back into its case, back into his bag, put the bag down beside the chair, sat in the chair, suddenly pulled the sheet off Julia, and picked up her hand by the wrist. For a moment, Millie looked shocked. Then she realized that Julia was wearing a cotton gown that covered her to the shins, and the doctor was only taking her pulse beat. Julia, at the same time, wondered why it had been necessary to pull down the sheet in order to pick up her wrist, but she watched the doctor with a mixture of anticipation and delight, like a child watching a magician, and she would not have halted the proceedings for her life.

“We’re supposed to go on to Bologna tomorrow,” Millie said.

“Tch, tch, tch,” the doctor said, and he shook his head, and dropped Julia’s wrist, and then suddenly reached for the hem of her gown and pulled it clear up over her naked breasts. Julia was too startled to speak. Millie made a small stifled animal sound and then stood watching him with her mouth open, motionless. Swiftly, efficiently, the doctor put his head on Julia’s chest and began listening. She realized all at once that the man was his own stethoscope, and she almost burst out laughing. He kept his balding head cushioned on her left breast for at least a full minute, and all the while she fought to control her laughter, afraid her strenuous preventive efforts would lead him into thinking she was a convulsive. He pulled back his head quickly, drew her gown down in one short snapping motion of his wrist, barely looking at her, and then he lifted her hand again, holding it like a loving uncle, and a look of utter serenity crossed his face, the sweetest look Julia had ever seen on a man’s face, consoling, strengthening, sympathetic, assuring, the look angels surely wore. “Madama,” he said, “you will be okay,” and he dropped her hand abruptly and began writing a prescription.

“What is it?” Millie asked. “What’s wrong with her?”

“Un disturbo di stomaco,” the doctor said. “She eat, she drink...” He shrugged. “She will be okay. I promise!” He nodded his head in emphasis.

“Can we go to Bologna tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow, no. The day after tomorrow. I promise!”

“But...”

“I promise!” He turned back to the bed again. “Ah, madama, I am so sorry. But you will be okay.” He sat by the bed again and picked up her hand. The tragic mask returned. He said, “Oh, poor madama, my poor madama, you feel bad? You feel no good? Tch, tch, tch,” and Julia fought desperately to keep the laughter from overflowing, biting her lip, her abdomen aching with the effort. The doctor rose. “I will leave this at the desk for to fill.” He waved the prescription in the air to dry the ink. “One pill every three hours!” He clicked his heels and bowed to the bed and to Julia. He clicked his heels and bowed to Millie. Then he came to attention and waited.

“Ah, how much is that?” Millie asked.

“A hundred and seventy lire,” he said airily. “That is all.”

Millie signed a traveler’s check for ten dollars, and the doctor bowed again, walked to the door, paused, and said, “If you are trouble some more, call me. But you will be okay. One pill every three hours. It is on the bottle.” He clicked his heels again. “Madama!” he said sharply. Then he smiled briefly, semitragically, opened the door, and was gone.

Julia fell into a fit of convulsive laughter the moment the door closed.

“What...?” Millie said. “Julia, he was a madman!”

“Oh, Millie, he was marvelous!” Julia said. “Oh, Millie, I have to go to the bathroom! Oh, Millie, I’m so very very happy.”

They ate at the Pappagallo in Bologna, a restaurant that had been heavily touted to them before they left the States. The walls of the room were lined with photographs of American celebrities; apparently every movie queen who’d ever crossed the continent had stopped here to sample the food and pose with the chef. Julia had been advised by the doctor — who had visited her once more in Venice and whose name, as it turned out, was Guidobuono — not to take anything but beverages and very light food for the next few days. She ordered clear broth, spaghetti with butter sauce, and a cup of tea. The waiter looked at her quizzically.

“Yes,” she said, “that’s all.”

The waiter did not shrug his shoulders, but his face clearly indicated that he was shrugging mentally. Three Italian women at the next table turned to look at Julia and her sister, and then went back to their meal. The ladies obviously represented three generations of Italian gourmands. The grandmother was a stout woman with a wide bosom and gray hair tightly wound into a bun at the back of her head. She was dressed in black and was at the moment demolishing a huge bowl of minestrone. The mother was a plumpish woman in her late thirties, wearing her black hair loose, no make-up, a large diamond ring on her left hand. She was struggling to loosen what appeared to be two dozen clams from their shells. The daughter was a girl of sixteen following in the classic footsteps of her grandmother, either clinging to her baby fat or working up a whole new layer of adult adipose. She wore a cotton frock and a bow in her long black hair. She ate with all the finesse of a truck driver, disemboweling the trout on her plate and then stuffing it into her mouth as if she expected il Duce to declare a famine that Sunday. These ladies were eaters, Julia calculated. These ladies had come from a long line of eaters, and their intent was to continue the line indefinitely. They barely spoke to each other. Their eyes were fastened to the diminishing supply of food on their plates, their hands worked busily, their jaws ground, their teeth ripped, their gullets bobbed. Occasionally, they glanced at Julia suspiciously. When the waiter brought Julia’s broth and set it down before her, the three stopped chewing simultaneously. Grandmother, mother, and daughter turned their heads at the same time and looked at Julia’s plate. Then, as one, they turned to the pasta dishes that had been put before them and continued to eat with renewed vigor, as if the sight of Julia’s pathetic fare had strengthened some core of mutual resolve in each of them.

The suspicious glances turned almost hostile as the meal progressed. Julia could feel their hot brown eyes burning across the distance that separated the two tables. The sounds of gluttony continued to rise from the table with the three Italian ladies. Julia, at her own table, barely touched the spaghetti, and then sipped only sparingly at her tea. Her sister, who had ordered a complete lunch, was worried about Julia and did not do justice to the food set before her. The Italian ladies were troubled by Millie’s wastefulness, but they were thoroughly agitated by Julia’s timidity. Didn’t she know where she was? Didn’t she know this was one of the best restaurants in Europe? How could she so ignore its culinary offerings? What were these American women made of, anyway?

They began grumbling among themselves as they ate their pastry and drank their espresso. They grumbled with much raising of eyebrows and pulling of mouths and twirling of expressive fingers. Julia could not hear everything they said, but from what she did hear she understood she herself was the topic of discussion. The hell with them, she thought. There’s no Italian law that states that a recuperating woman has to gorge herself, no matter where she’s eating. When she rose from the table to go to the ladies’ room, she threw a frigid glance at the adjoining table. The Italian ladies followed her progression across the restaurant, deciding she was far too thin because she ate like a bird, shaking their heads in concerted agreement on the paucity of her buttocks.

When she came back to the table, the Italian ladies, all three generations, were beaming at her. Surprised, Julia returned their smiles. The ladies nodded their heads, the smiles widened, bright white teeth showed in their faces, grandmother, mother, daughter, all grinned bright approval.

As they walked to the car, Julia said, “What brought on the change, Millie?”

“What change?”

“At the next table.”

“Oh. They were concerned about you, Julia. Because you weren’t eating.”

“Yes, I know that.”

“So they asked the waiter to inquire. He spoke a little English, and I told him you’d got sick in Venice. Stomach trouble.”

“Did he understand you?”

“Oh yes, very well. I used my hands, of course, but he understood. And he translated into Italian for the ladies. He told them you’d got incinta in Venice. Then they began nodding and smiling. The old lady especially. She’d had trouble with her stomach there, too, apparently.”

“Well, good,” Julia said. “I’m glad we passed local inspec—” She stopped suddenly. “I got what in Venice?”

“Incinta. Isn’t that the correct pronunciation? I’m sure that’s what he told them. He patted his belly and said incinta. Yes, Julia.”

“Oh, Millie,” Julia said.

“What is it, darling?”

“Oh, Millie,” she said laughing. “He told them I got pregnant in Venice!”

“Well,” Millie said philosophically, “then so did the old lady.”

She did not see Renato Cristo again until the third time she drove to Rome. He was sitting at a table in the Piazza Barberini, sipping at a vermouth, his cap pulled through his shoulder epaulet, staring off across the square, the sunlight touching his hair, his big hands on the table in front of him. She came down the Via Sistina, walking with a rather jaunty swing, and at first he thought only that she was a pretty girl, her figure in silhouette against the sun. Then he realized she was an American, the sunglasses, the clothing, the regal walk, the erect posture, which all American women brought to Europe. He saw her face and recognized her, and watched her as she came down the street, still unaware of his presence. His secret observation pleased him. He sat with his hands on the table, watching her, enjoying the way her legs carried her body, enjoying the quick female motion of her head as she turned to look at the buildings, a sightseer, a tourist, and yet magically more than that. A small smile touched his mouth.

He did not call out to her until she was almost upon his table. She would not have seen him if he had not called. She walked with an intensity of concentration, determined to absorb each and every landmark on the route to an obviously predetermined goal. But there was nothing unique about this sidewalk café, a bar unfrequented by tourists, a gathering place for natives, where the drinks were generous and the food was prepared without regard for the foreign palate, and she was ready to pass it by without so much as a sidelong glance when he said her name.

“Julia,” he called, very softly.

She stopped and turned, surprised. She looked at the wrong table first, trying to locate the voice, her mouth turned upward in an expectant, puzzled smile. But she saw no one she knew.

“Julia,” he said again, and he shoved back his chair and rose.

She located the table this time. She turned her head slightly and saw him at once, and then took off her sunglasses in a quick motion of her hand, and shook out her brown hair. He made a small gesture with his hand, inviting her to the table. She hesitated. He saw the hesitation in her eyes. It seemed for a moment as if she would simply wave in greeting, put on the sunglasses again, and then walk on. A questioning look crossed his face. She nodded swiftly and came to the table. He was pleased when she addressed him in Italian.

“Hello,” she said. “What a surprise!”

“Yes. Won’t you sit down?”

“Well, I... I’m in sort of a hurry.”

“You have time for a drink.”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

He pulled back a chair for her. Again, she seemed hesitant. Then she sat and took off her gloves, and he watched while she performed the operation, not looking at him, pulling off the gloves finger by finger, and then placing them on the table alongside her purse and the sunglasses. She was wearing a white linen suit, her hair trailing down her back. She wore no make-up. Her nose was shining, her cheeks were flushed, her lips were bare.

“You’ve forgotten my name,” he said.

“No. No, I haven’t. Renato.” She smiled.

“And Julia.”

“Yes. And Julia.”

“What would you like, Julia?”

“I’m sorry, what...?”

“To drink.”

“Oh. Whatever you’re having.”

“Some vermouth?”

“Yes, that would be fine.”

“Have you had lunch yet?”

“No. I thought I’d—”

“Good, then we shall eat together.”

“No, I couldn’t,” Julia said.

“Why not?”

“I want to get to the Colosseum.”

“Cara,” he said, “the Colosseum has been there for two thousand years. It will still be there after lunch. We will eat together.” He snapped his fingers for the waiter and ordered a vermouth. Julia sat with her hands on the table, silent.

“Is something wrong?” he asked.

“No.”

“You seem...” He shrugged. “Distressed.”

“No.”

“Would you prefer not having lunch with me?”

“Yes,” she said honestly.

“But that would be foolish.”

“I don’t know you,” she said. “We met on a mountain.”

“And again in Domodossola. You mustn’t forget Domodossola.” He smiled suddenly.

“No. I won’t ever forget Domodossola,” she answered. She looked down at her hands again.

“So you see, it’s all very proper. Our having lunch together. We’re almost old friends.”

“Yes, we are. But I don’t know you.”

“And if we waited to know each other before having lunch together, we’d both be old and incapable of enjoying good food.” He laughed. “Americans always insist on knowing people. What does it do, this knowledge?”

“I guess Americans are...”

“Besides, knowing another person is an impossibility.”

“I don’t think so.”

“An impossibility,” he said flatly.

“All you’re saying is that you yourself refuse to be known.”

Renato looked at her appreciatively. “Perhaps so.” He grinned. “See how well you know me already?”

“No, not at all.”

“Well, we will know each other better.”

She did not answer. The waiter brought her drink. She lifted the glass and sipped at it.

“Mmmm, that feels good.”

“You’re not wearing lipstick,” he said, studying her mouth.

“No. Does it look terrible?”

“It looks very natural.”

“Roman women don’t use much make-up. I felt a little conspicuous.”

“When in Rome,” he said, and he smiled again.

“You’re always laughing at me, aren’t you?”

“Laughing?” His eyebrows quirked upward suddenly. “Cara, laughing at you?”

“Yes.” She nodded. “I get the feeling you think I’m very stupid and... and dazed, I guess, and you find me very amusing. That’s the feeling you give me.”

“Well, I must explain. It’s my face.”

“Your face?”

“Yes, it’s given me trouble ever since I was a boy. Do you see my eyes?”

“Yes.”

“They slant upward. In fact, there’s some suspicion that my father was a Chinese.”

“You’re joking.”

“Yes, I am. But my eyes slant upward, nonetheless. And my mouth turns slightly upward too. So you see, in combination they give my face a look of constant amusement, even when I’m most serious. It’s a terrible thing, believe me. Men strike me, women avoid me, all because they think I’m smirking at them. I apologize for my stupid face, but there’s really nothing I can do about it.” He laughed suddenly, the blue eyes slanting, the mouth turning up at the edges.

She watched, and laughed with him, and then said, “No, it’s not your face. It’s something else, something inside. Be honest with me, Renato.”

“All right,” he said. “I’ll be perfectly honest. I’m not amused by you. Not in the slightest. I’m delighted by you, and my delight shows on my face, and I can’t help smiling when I’m in your presence. That is the truth.”

Julia nodded and lowered her eyes again.

“And as usual,” Renato said, “the truth when asked for is instantly embarrassing when delivered.”

“Yes, I’m embarrassed,” she admitted.

“Why should you be?”

“Because... because what you said pleased me.”

“And so you become embarrassed? Americans, Americans.”

“You sound as if you know a great many Americans.”

“No, only a few.”

“Women?” she asked, and was immediately sorry.

The smile dropped from his face. He looked at her silently for what seemed like a very long time. Then he said, “Julia, I don’t want to play the American game. I don’t want the disguised question, and the guarded answer. There is enough falseness in Rome. Let’s not add to it.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. She would not raise her eyes. “I... I guess I’m frightened.”

“Of me?” he asked.

She nodded.

“I’m a simple man,” he said quietly.

She kept her eyes fastened to the table top. In a hushed voice, she said, “I looked for you. This is my third time in Rome. Each time, I looked for you.”

“You do not have to look any more,” he said.

A city is only wood and stone and glass until you are loved there. Julia Regan, in 1938, felt a oneness with Rome that she had never felt for any other place.

Everything about the city was romantic to her, yes, the obvious romance traps like the fountain of Trevi and the Spanish Steps and the church of Santa Maria Maggiore where it reportedly snowed through the open roof in the middle of summer, and the majesty of the Sistine Chapel, and the flamboyant severity of the Victor Emmanuel Monument, all these tried-and-true tourist delights seemed to have been invented and constructed for Julia’s pleasure alone, but more than these, there was romance everywhere in the city. And Renato, like a lover to woman and city both, showed off one to the other and unfailingly flattered both.

The cats.

Surely, she told herself, there is nothing at all romantic about the notion of cats or the presence of cats or the habits of cats. But one day Renato mentioned to her that there were more cats in the city of Rome than any other place in the world, and suddenly the discovery of each new cat became a momentous occasion charged with the excitement only a secret can possess. The cats of Rome were their secret. They found cats everywhere, the real cats prowling every cobbled alley, nosing into every uncovered garbage can, squatting contentedly on the hoods of the black taxicabs, stalking the banks of the snaking Tiber, howling to the moon in the triangular square formed by the junction of the Via Sistina and the angling Viale Trinità dei Monti, parading down the steps and through the Via Condotti like shopping dowagers, striped cats, and fat orange cats, and Persian cats, and black cats to be avoided, and a Siamese cat sitting in the window of a jewelry shop beside a clock with an ornately carved jade face, and an emaciated cat on the Via Giovanni who sat up and begged when Renato offered him a thin slice of salami, real cats of every shape and size, appearing as if by magic whenever they turned a corner or crossed a street. Sculptured cats in the frieze-work of buildings, cats in paintings at the galleries they went to, a lap cat carried by Violetta in the outdoor production of La Traviata which they saw at the Baths of Caracalla, the fat Angora suddenly joining the soprano in her aria, wailing to the stars and the crescent moon above, her song more forlorn than the singer’s, convulsing the Italian audience, sending them into gales of unrepressed laughter until the diva finally walked to the edge of the stage and stamped her foot and stopped the orchestra and silenced the audience with a glare colder than the September Roman night.

The cats of Rome, and the color of Rome, color in the long flat steps gleaming like narrow bars of gold in the musky yellow reflection of the sky’s muzzle, the rust red of huddled Roman buildings with crumbling bricks that stained the fingers, the bold reds and blues of the international traffic markers, the bright exploding greens of the trolley cars, the shining wet gray of the fountains and the liquid yellow-green taint upon the stone, color punctuated by the black shirts in evidence everywhere, the blue-black garments of the traffic policemen and the white of their shoulder straps and belts, and the deep jeweled black of the taxis, and the white of high-heeled pumps, and the radiance of yellow cotton on young girls, and the olive green of Renato’s army uniform.

The cats, and the color, and life bursting from the city like seeds spilling from a lush ripe melon, the Via del Babuino and the side street just off it teeming with grocery stores and butchers’ shops, the butchers presiding at the rear of each shop behind high counters resembling judges’ benches, the meat swarming with the lingering flies of September, the bicycles darting through the narrow street, skirts flapping wildly about strong sun-tanned legs, the smell of garlic suddenly assailing them from the open door of a shop, salamis flaked with white and green on long strings, pepperoni like Christmas lights, provolone like the breasts of a statue carved in yellow marble, mozzarella soaking in white enamel basins, the man who sold strips of coconut at a curbside cart, the chunky brown-encrusted wedges of white sprinkled with water from a miniature fountain on the cart, the hurrying girls in their thin frocks, white and yellow and the subtlest of blue pastels, the serious-looking young men in their soldier suits, the fluttering flags, the flat-footed stamp of leather-thonged sandals, the Tiber like a golden snake in the setting sun’s merciless glare, and, far beyond, the dome of St. Peter’s dominating the city.

The Borghese Gardens, the paths his father had taught him when he was a boy, secret paths through sun-dappled stretches of woods, memory, memory nudged, slipped, an oval of grass. “See how the sun catches each separate blade?” Renato said.

She sat beside him. She kissed his hands and the hard line of his jaw. “I feel nothing but love for you,” she said. “Nothing else. No guilt, nothing. Only love for you.”

And yet the memory was there, an innocent kiss somewhere, someplace, some time, the memory held for just an instant, Renato’s mouth turned to hers suddenly a fierce devouring mouth, which could be so gentle, his hands on her shoulders, her hair spread brown on grass as green as green as her skirt she stained her skirt that day the white skirt with the pleats the sun was so hot and her skirt became wrinkled and stained with grass his hand under her skirt one thick brown hand rubbing at the stain and the other hand beneath her skirt the knuckles pressing hard against her thigh she had stained her skirt and she twitched with new desire he could smell in the golden hot sunshine he kissed her again.

The room was in a side street off the Via Arenula, overlooking the river and the island of Tiberina. There was a bed in the room, and a dresser, and a naked light bulb over which they hung a colored paper bag. In September, the room was comfortably cool. Later, in the winter, they bought a kerosene heater, and they put it very close to the bed and huddled together under two heavy quilts. But in September, the room was delightfully cool. They kept the wooden shutters on the single window closed against the sun. The room was usually in shadow. She would remember it as a secret pocket, shadowy, moving with shadows. She would remember it, too, as suddenly bursting with light, Renato opening the shutters and the golden sun limning his naked body, and then splashing over the bed where she lay watching him. She would remember this room as an essential part of her life, and the memory of it would continue to amaze her forever. There was nothing distinctive about the room except the fact that she shared it with Renato. A bed, a dresser, and a paper-covered light bulb. A shabby room transformed by Renato until there was no room at all surrounding them, no four walls enclosing them. The room itself was essentially meaningless, and yet whatever they did in that room, whatever they whispered to each other, whatever they laughed about or fought about, seemed to be the only meaningful and important things. The room was small, and it enclosed them tightly, but it did not contain them. Instead, it closed out the rest of the world. The walls did not exist for Julia and Renato.

They spoke only Italian in that room. She said things alien to her native tongue, and somehow alien to the person she had always thought of as Julia Regan. She learned vulgar Italian with remarkable facility. She learned in that room that Renato was truly a farmer who could possess a farmer’s crude big hands and a farmer’s vocabulary when he wanted to. His language excited her. She never knew when his facile charm would turn to brutish obscenity, when his gently stroking hands would turn suddenly fierce. He taught her to say things she never would have said in English, and she found these more descriptive somehow of the love they made. Perhaps she would have blushed in English — in Italian, the words she whispered, the words she sometimes shouted urgently, only stimulated her the more. She felt like a slut sometimes, but there was nothing shameful about the feeling. Oddly, and dispassionately, she began to understand that her love for Renato, and his love for her, was something that prompted and perhaps nourished their love-making, but that really had very little to do with their real physical enjoyment of each other. She accepted the fact that she loved him and would not have been in bed with him otherwise. But she proceeded from that premise to bring a newly discovered harlot’s skill and a gutter wastrel’s language to their embraces. There was no need for her to say, “Love me,” when she meant something quite different, something quite more basic. She knew that he loved her, and the euphemism would have demanded something he supplied with his every glance. Nor did she choose to say, “Make love to me,” because this implied to her a fabrication, a construction, the phrase “fare a l’amore” meant to make love, to build love, there was no need for its use; and it implied besides a selfishness, make love to me, rather than a sharing, a mutual giving of love. No, she preferred a word she and Renato coined, a word based on an expression he had learned from the troops. There was nothing poetic about the expression. It was perhaps common and coarse, based on the word “chiavare,” to key, used in the vulgar sense to express a key entering a lock, “Si sono fatti una bella chiavata.” But they turned its usage into poetry, they took the verb and used it the way no Italian would ever use it, “Chiaviamoci,” they said, key me, enter me, let us unlock each other.

Unlocked, locked in each other’s arms, they would talk later in whispers. Entered, the key turned and twisted in the lock, opened, unlocked, love found a voice afterward, not in flowery images of romance but in seemingly inconsequential and meaningless exchanges of thought and feeling and memory, understood immediately, shared instantly, confiscated at once until more than bodies lay entwined, until mind touched mind and in the touching was rewarded and enriched. The accepted premise in that small dark room was that they would make love and enjoy it — but the richest thing they shared was the exchange of what was most important to both of them, the things they would never tell another living soul.

She learned eventually how important the concept of family was to Renato, and perhaps to all Italian men, though she never equated him with the faceless Italians she passed in the street. He was Renato, inimitably himself, impossibly, miraculously her own to touch and see and hear. He would lie back against the pillow with his hands clasped behind his head, and tell her of his boyhood with such unrestrained joy of memory that once she kissed him in the middle of a sentence, and he stopped speaking and stared at her, and said only, “Why?”

“Because I love you.”

“No. Tell me why.”

“Because I suddenly loved your cousin Mario, too. And your sister Francesca. Will you take me to meet Francesca? She lives in Rome, you said. May I meet her?”

“You are a strange woman.”

“Am I strange to you?”

“No, not at all. I meant curious.”

“Oh yes, I am curious,” she said. “I want to learn all about you. I want to learn you everywhere.”

“Tesoro, stop that,” he protested, laughing. “I only meant that you are unusual.”

“Yes, tell me more.”

“There is no more to tell. You are a very unusual woman.”

“Yes, how?” Julia asked. “I won’t let you go until you tell me how.”

“Then I’ll never tell you.”

“Tell me, cocciuto.”

“You are responsive, inventive, passionate, exciting, beautiful, and totally satisfying.”

“And American,” she said.

“Yes. And American.”

“That’s important to you, isn’t it?”

“It’s important to me.”

“Why should it be? Suppose I were Russian? Or Armenian?”

“I want you to be American. Which is what you are.”

“So you can tell your soldier friends you slept with an American?” she asked jokingly.

“Yes, that’s why. They’ll make me sergeant if I tell them that.”

“Only sergeant? I should think an American would be worth more than that.”

“Lieutenant then. Or captain. Or perhaps, with an American like you...”

“Yes, yes, tell me about an American like me,” she said, grinning.

He began laughing. “You are a very vain creature, Julia.”

“I know. Does that annoy you?” she asked seriously.

“No. You’re only vain because you’re beautiful. I’ve never yet met an ugly vain—”

“And you’re beautiful, too,” she said.

“Oh, yes.”

“Look at how beautiful you are. Bello, bellissimo, look, Renato.”

“I was telling you about my cousin Mario.”

“Never mind your cousin Mario. He’s not this beautiful. No one is, this beautiful. Look, you’re made of stone, you’re a marble statue.”

“My cousin Mario—”

“Do you want to talk about your cousin Mario?”

“Yes. I’m very fond of Mario.”

“I am, too. Do you want to talk about him?”

“Yes.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t, do you?”

“I do.”

“Oh, I know you don’t.”

“Julia, when I say—”

“Now tell me, do you?”

“Julia...”

“Renato?”

“Yes, darling?”

“Chiaviamoci,” she whispered.

The Piazza Venezia was thronged with thousands of people carrying crude caricatures and hand-lettered banners. Men in Black Shirt uniforms walked in tight groups down the center of the Corso Umberto toward the square. The students of Rome University had left their classrooms and combined in noisy groups, parading through the city, marching past the United States Consulate on the Via Vittorio Veneto, picking up the frenzy that had begun in the Chamber of Deputies the day before, demanding Italian rights to Corsica, and Nice, and Savoy, and Tunisia. Black-shirted, black-tunicked, their bright silk scarves flapping about their throats, they surrounded the French Embassy and pushed against the restraining lines of the carabinieri, and then converged on the square where il Duce’s balcony was hung with the Italian flag and the Fascist flag, where Renato and Julia tried to find space for themselves against the crush of people.

She glanced up at the balcony, caught in the press of sweating humans, saw the microphone awaiting il Duce, felt an electric excitement in the air, something quite apart from the excitement she ordinarily felt with Renato. There were men in shabby suits and caps, women in house dresses with sweaters thrown over them, students in their brightly colored Pied Piper hats covered with insignia, “Il Gruppo Universitario Fascista,” Renato explained, and men selling ices, and over it all the current in the air. It could have been this way when Caesar spoke to the people of ancient Rome, she thought, it could have been this.

“Duce! Duce! Duce! Duce!” the crowd began to chant.

They carried banners with il Duce’s image, the familiar black-and-white drawing that stared down from every vacant wall in the nation, the leader in his black eagled helmet, wearing epaulets on his shoulder, the strong jaw, the eyes in deep shadow beneath the helmet, the mouth firm and sensuous, the words CREDERE, OBBEDIRE, COMBATTERE beneath the drawing. They milled noisily in the square, and those in the black shirts began clapping, and the applause spread to the rest of the crowd as they turned their eyes and their faces toward the balcony, applauding the microphone there. “Duce, Duce, Duce, Duce,” they chanted, and suddenly he appeared! A tumultuous welcome went up from the crowd, the applause rose wildly. The cheering deafened Julia. She put both hands over her ears, lowered them only when it seemed he was ready to speak. He was wearing the uniform of a corporal of honor in the Black Shirt Militia. A field hat was tilted at a rakish angle over his forehead. He raised his arms and the crowd fell silent.

“Duce! Duce!” a lone Black Shirt voice cried, and then was still.

“Officers,” he began, “noncommissioned officers, soldiers, Black Shirts, and people of Rome,” and his voice was drowned out by renewed shouting.

“Tunisia!” a group of students yelled.

“Corsica!” from across the square.

“Savoia!”

Il Duce held up his hands, and the square was silent again. He leaned into the microphone. “Tomorrow,” he said, “on the plains of Volturara, before His Majesty, Victor Emmanuel, King of Italy and Emperor of Ethiopia, will pass more than sixty thousand men, two hundred tanks, four hundred pieces of heavy artillery, three thousand machine guns, and twenty-eight hundred armored cars. This aggregation of men and means is imposing, but it represents, at most, a modest and almost insignificant total compared with the total of men and means on which Italy can surely count.

“I invite Italians to take absolutely to heart this declaration of mine. Not despite the African war, but as a consequence of the African war, all the armed forces of Italy today are more efficient than ever. At any time, in the course of a few hours and after a simple order, we can mobilize eight million men. The Italian people should know that their internal peace will be protected and with it the peace of the world.”

The students and the Black Shirts were restless. They had come here for amplification of Ciano’s statement, had come here to learn whether or not Italy truly attempted to press claims on French lands, of whether the uproar yesterday had all been staged. So far, il Duce had told them nothing they did not already know.

“With the most crushing of victories,” il Duce said, “in one of the most just wars, Italy’s with war in Africa, has acquired an immense, rich, imperial territory where for many decades she will be able to carry out the achievements of her labors and of her creative ability. For this reason, but only for this reason, will we reject the absurdity of eternal peace, which is foreign to our creed and to our temperament.”

“Bravo!” a voice shouted. It was joined by another. “Bravo!” and then another. “Bravo! Bravo! Bravo!” until the square rang again with frenzied cheering and applause. Julia looked around her, suddenly frightened. She took Renato’s arm and whispered, “He’s just said there will be war.” There was a questioning tone in her voice. Renato, smiling thinly, did not answer her. He touched her hand where it clutched his arm.

“We desire to live a long time at peace with all,” il Duce said. “We are determined to offer our lasting, concrete contribution to the project of collaboration among peoples. But after the catastrophic failure of the disarmament conference, in the face of an armaments race already under way and irresistible from this time on, and in the face of certain political situations which now are in the course of uncertain development, the order of the day for Italians...”

His voice rose. He clenched one fist and shook it at the microphone.

“... the order of the day for Italians, for Fascist Italians, can be only this: We must be strong! We must be always stronger! We must be so strong that we can face any eventualities and look directly in the eye whatever may befall! To this supreme principle must be subordinated and will be subordinated all the life of the nation!”

The shout began as a low murmur of approval in the throat of the crowd. It gained in volume and momentum, thundered into the square, rose to the balcony. The flags and banners were waved, the people began to applaud, il Duce grinned and put his hands on his hips, thrusting his chin out characteristically.

“Let’s go,” Renato said.

He took her arm. They pushed their way through the crowd silently. There was a troubled look on his face. She glanced at him nervously, and her hand tightened on his arm again. Behind them, they could still hear il Duce’s voice, “... spirit of the Black Shirt revolution, the spirit of this Italy, the spirit of this populous Italy, warlike and vigilant on sea, on land, and in the heavens!”

“Porca miseria,” Renato muttered.

“... how many events, how much history has passed in these twelve months! They have been rich in events the influence of which is felt today, but will be felt still more in the course of time.”

“I’m frightened, Renato,” she whispered.

“No. Hold my arm.”

“I ask you,” il Duce shouted into the microphone, “were old accounts settled?”

“Yes!” the crowd shouted. “Yes! Yes!”

“And have we marched straight ahead up to now?”

“Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!”

“I tell you,” he bellowed into the microphone, “I promise you, we shall do likewise tomorrow and always!”

He lay on the bed with his hands clasped behind his head, the trouble still in his eyes. She watched him, wanting to touch him, aware of his trouble and disturbed by it, and still frightened by what she had seen and heard from the balcony of the Palazzo Venezia.

“My grandfather was a tailor in Naples,” Renato said, “when I was a little boy, before we moved to Rome.” He did not turn to look at her. He kept his hands clasped behind his head, his eyes on the ceiling, troubled. The thin smile was on his mouth, not a smile of remembrance, not the smile he usually wore when talking of his family.

“He was a very tall man with white hair and a white mustache, very respected in the city, a good tailor. He would always wear a suit to work each morning. He lived just outside the Via Roma in a terrible slum, but he was a proud man and when he walked to work each morning, the people in the streets would say, ‘Buon giorno, Signor Cristo,’ never Giovanni, but always Signor, always Mister Cristo. He was greatly respected, Julia, and I loved him a great deal. I can remember how hurt he was when my father told him he did not want to be a tailor, he wanted to leave Naples to work the earth. I can remember the pain in my grandfather’s eyes. Tailoring was an art to him, a very noble profession. He made all my clothes when I was a boy. I was the best-dressed boy in all Naples, though I lived in a slum.

“He would walk to work each morning and be gone until lunch time when he returned home. My grandmother, Cristina, would have lunch ready for him, and then there would be a little nap, you know, it is still the same today. Then he would go back to the tailor shop and not return home until eight at night, sometimes later, and they would have a small meal, the noontime meal is the big Italian meal, you know that. My grandmother was a very superstitious woman, and she would sometimes do the malocchio for the women of the neighborhood. You don’t know what this means? Favorita, my grandmother would put water into a dish, and into the water she would put a drop of oil, and she could tell by the way the oil divided whether or not someone in the neighborhood had put an evil eye on a sick child or caused a man to lose his job. Nonsense, yes. All nonsense. But she practiced it like a witch — and always when my grandfather was away at his shop.

“She would also perform feats with il tavolo a tre gambe, the three-legged table. This, too, was a fake, Julia. She used the table to call up the dead, you see. A number of women would sit around the table, and my grandmother would mutter her incantations and then call upon a dead person, and he would answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to her questions by causing the table to knock on the floor either once or twice. It was considered a sin to call upon the dead, but my grandmother was not a very religious woman, and she used the table quite often, even though my grandfather finally heard about it and warned her to stop. You see, the table gave my grandmother a certain notoriety in the slum behind the Via Roma, a popularity — in fact, I suppose, a sense of power. The women would go to her because they hoped to solve their current ills by consulting with the dead, who were beyond feeling or pain, and my grandmother was the one with the answers, my grandmother could work the table.

“Well, one day, my grandfather could not get home for lunch because he was working on a rush order of army uniforms, very important work, and so he ate a little bread and cheese at the shop and sent a boy home to tell Cristina he expected a big supper that night. He did not get home until nine P.M., starving, and hoping to find supper on the table. There was no supper on the table. Instead, there were three women and Cristina sitting around the table with their hands touching, and at least two dozen other women standing around the room, listening to my grandmother as she recited the words to summon the dead. My grandfather stopped in the doorway of the apartment, unseen by any of the women, and listened. He was really a little curious at first. It wasn’t until later that he got angry. Standing in the doorway, he could see his supper boiling in a huge pot on the wood stove. He was very hungry, but he stood in the doorway and listened to my grandmother’s incantation and then heard her say, ‘Can you hear us, Carlo Stefano? If you can hear us, will you knock once?’

“Well, the table knocked once, and a large ‘ahhhhhh’ of approval went up from the assembled ladies, all except one who said to my grandmother, ‘How do we know this is really Carlo Stefano knocking the table, and not you or one of the other ladies sitting around it?’ This pleased my grandfather immensely because it was exactly what he was thinking as he stood in the doorway. But Cristina had handled scoffers before, and was ready to deal with this one.

“‘Carlo Stefano,’ she said to the table, ‘will you give us some sign that you are truly Carlo Stefano?’ The table knocked once, signifying that Carlo, wherever he was, had answered positively. ‘Will you let your presence be known?’ my grandmother asked, and again the table knocked once. ‘Will you give us a sign through something in the room?’ Cristina asked and the table answered ‘yes’ with a single knock.

“My grandfather was beginning to get a little impatient. He was also beginning to hope the food on the stove would not burn. He folded his arms and leaned against the doorjamb, the smell of cooking food in his nostrils, his stomach beginning to make noises. My grandmother said to the table, ‘Will you give us a sign through the broom?’ The table knocked twice. No. ‘Will you give us a sign through the curtains?’ Knock-knock, the table said. No again. ‘Through the pitcher?’ No. ‘Through the ladle?’ No. My grandmother was beginning to run out of objects when her eye fell upon Fidelio. Fidelio was a mangy alley cat my grandfather had found in Naples outside his tailor shop. He had put a string around her neck and walked her home one evening, and the cat had become a common fixture around the house, usually asleep on the mantel of the fireplace, which is where she was when my grandmother spied her.

“‘Will you give us a sign through Fidelio the cat?’ she asked, and every eye in the room swung toward that lazy creature asleep on the mantel. There was a long silence. The table would not answer yes or no. My grandfather waited. Every woman in the room waited. Impatiently, Cristina said, more firmly this time, ‘Will you give us a sign through Fidelio the cat, who is asleep on the mantel?’

“Again there was a silence. And then the table knocked. Once. Yes, the table had answered! Yes, Carlo Stefano had answered! The eyes were riveted to the cat. And then suddenly, whether something alarmed her in her sleep, whether she was bitten by an insect, whether she lost her balance, whatever it was, the cat suddenly let out a horrible shrieking sound and leaped into the air, and scrambled to the floor, her back bristling, her tail fat, and Julia, my darling, that was only the beginning. The women had got the sign they were looking for. Carlo Stefano had spoken, dramatically and emphatically, and now the ones at the table leaped up from their chairs, knocking over the table, rushing into the ones who lined the room, screaming at the tops of their lungs and finally, finally in their mad confusion to get out of that room, which was suddenly filled with the presence of death, finally to my grandfather’s horror as he stood in the doorway, one of those screaming rushing hysterical women banged into the stove and knocked the big pot of supper to the floor!

“‘Stupide!’ my grandfather shouted from the doorway. He stamped into the room and walked directly to the fireplace. He picked up the ax and marched back to the three-legged table and fell upon it with such anger and such fury that my grandmother could only stand by speechless while the wood splinters flew around her. He demolished that table completely. He was a gentle man, and a tailor, but he destroyed that table as if he had been felling trees all his life. And he told my grandmother that if she bought another three-legged table, if those screaming women were ever inside his house again, if he ever came home in the evening and found his supper still on the stove, he would take the ax to her, and do to her what he had done to the table.”

Renato turned to her. He took one hand from behind his head and cupped her chin, and he looked into her face very seriously and said, “You see, my darling Julia, we have a person in Italy now who plays with a three-legged table, calling upon the dead legions of Caesar, muttering his own incantations to the gullible old women. But there are no longer any tall men with axes, Julia. And even if there were... Julia, Julia darling, my grandfather destroyed the table too late, don’t you see? His supper had already been knocked to the floor. His supper had already been knocked to the floor.”

She knew almost immediately after that day il Duce spoke in the Piazza Venezia. All the signs were there, all the symptoms. She knew exactly what they meant. She read them correctly and told herself, No, this cannot be, but she recognized the truth nonetheless, and nonetheless refused to face it. Il Duce’s speech had been made on November 31, she had looked at the calendar before leaving the villa in Aquila to join Renato. And this was December 5, and all the doubt, all the fear, seemed to crystallize in the letter from Arthur, and the news that he and David were coming to Italy for Christmas. He will know, she thought. He will look, and he will see, and then my world will crumble. He is sure to see. He is sure to know what I know, what I only suspected in November but what I know for certain now. He is not a stupid man. He will know.

She did not want to leave Italy.

But if Arthur read the signs correctly, and he was not a stupid man, what would he demand, what would he ask of her? She could not leave Italy, she could not leave Renato, not now, not yet. And afterward, when it was over, when it came to an end as it inevitably and always did, what then? And where?

Oh Renato, Renato, she cried out to him alone, but she did not tell him of her doubts or fears. There is time, she thought. There is always time.

They came to the villa in Aquila two days before Christmas. She was waiting in the garden for them. She was wearing a yellow dress and a wide-brimmed straw hat, and a sweater was thrown over her shoulders. Her eyes filled with tears when she first saw them. Not because she felt she knew them, not really, there was another world for her now, and it did not include Arthur Regan, it did not include her fourteen-year-old son who embraced her clumsily, lean and awkward, his face festering with pimples. “David, you’re getting to be a man,” she said, and he blushed and said, “I tried out for the handball team in school, Mom,” and she hugged him to her and wept.

But only because he was a stranger. Only because two strangers had entered her garden in the villa, and she greeted them with the fabricated affection of a wife and mother, but she felt nothing because there was a new life for her now, a new life.

“Hello, Julia,” Arthur said. He seemed embarrassed. Arrivals and departures always embarrassed him. He hugged her close, and she felt nothing for him, yes, a sympathy because he was embarrassed by this meeting, but nothing beyond that. Awkwardly, he said, “You’re as round as a partridge, Julia. Rome agrees with you,” and only then did she see the happiness beneath his embarrassment. She looked more closely at his face. She felt an extreme sense of loss for everything they had ever known together and shared together, somehow nullified by Renato and her love for him, and she thought it sad that love was so exclusive, that love nourished and at the same time killed. She almost said this aloud to Arthur. She almost, through habit, through years of living with a man she had known since girlhood, almost-voiced her thoughts and waited for the tilting of his head and the contemplative look in his eyes and the slow, considered answer. She almost confided to him a world that did not belong to him.

“Have you been eating well?” she asked.

“Yes. You look well, Julia.”

“Who’s been taking care of you, my darling?” she asked. She wanted to know. She touched his face tenderly. She was confused in that moment, confused by an affection different from what she felt for Renato, and yet unmistakably warm.

“We’ve had Mrs. Donovan.”

“She’s a good cook.”

“Yes.”

“Mom, will we go to Rome?” David asked.

“Yes, darling.”

“Mom, there was a player from the New York Yankees on the boat coming over!”

“That’s wonderful. Was the trip good? Did you have any trouble?”

“It was a long trip, Julia,” Arthur said.

“Come inside,” she said. “Won’t you come inside?”

She had not known whether or not Millie suspected anything about Renato until the day Arthur and David arrived. And then she knew instantly. She had not fooled her sister. The frequent trips to Rome had not gone undetected. Millie knew, but had apparently made a tacit bargain with herself. She would watch Julia and listen to Julia and take her cues from Julia; she would offer nothing of her own volition. They sat in the large terrazzo-tiled living room that night as the lights on the mountain winked out. David had gone to bed amid much fussing-over by the help, and the three adults sat and watched the lights go out and sipped espresso, and Arthur said, “How do you feel, Millie?”

“Much better,” she answered. She looked at Julia quickly, as if for approval.

“The air is wonderful here, Arthur,” Julia said. “Haven’t you noticed the difference?”

“Yes,” he said, “it’s wonderful.” He smiled. “When do you suppose... it’s December already, you know.”

“Yes,” Julia said, “but...”

“We’d planned on staying until—” Millie started.

“Until April,” Julia cut in quickly.

“April?” Arthur frowned. “I’d planned to take you back when we left, Julia. You said January. I thought...”

“Darling, Millie’s doing so well. It would be a shame to take her back to Connecticut in the dead of winter.”

“Well, this isn’t exactly a tropical climate right here, Julia. In fact, it’s damned cold. I mean, I can see—”

“Arthur, can we discuss this later, please?” Julia said.

“I’m going to bed, anyway,” Millie said. She took Arthur’s hand. “It’s good to see you, Arthur. Sleep as late as you like in the morning. I’ll ask Lucia to hold breakfast.”

“Thank you, Millie.”

They waited until she was gone.

“I’d like to kiss you, Julia,” Arthur said.

“I’d like you to,” she answered.

He went to the sofa and took her in his arms. He kissed her passionately and thrust his hand under her skirt.

“Arthur,” she said, “not here, please. The servants...”

“Let’s go upstairs,” he said.

“All right.”

“Aren’t you glad to see me?”

“Why, of course I’m glad to see you.” She took his hand. “Come.”

“I... I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Is something wrong, Julia? Is there something you haven’t told me?”

“No,” she said, “nothing’s wrong.” She thought, Is there something I haven’t told you, Arthur? Is there anything I have told you?

“Millie is all right, isn’t she?” he asked.

She hesitated for a moment, He had provided her with the lie, and she waited before accepting it. Something within her resisted its acceptance, something reacted to his innocence, his trust, something inside her suddenly felt rotten and foul-smelling. She considered the lie, she paused over it, she closed her eyes tightly.

“What is it Julia? I can tell it’s something.”

She sighed heavily. “Yes, yes,” she said.

“What?”

“Millie.”

The lie was hard coming. She did not want to lie. She closed her eyes again and shook her head, and he misunderstood the gesture and took her into his arms, the last thing she wanted. Don’t comfort me, she thought, don’t comfort your whore wife.

“What about Millie?”

“She... she’s worse, Arthur,” Julia said. “I’ve... I’ve spoken to her doctor. I haven’t told her, of course, there’s no need to upset her. He... he thinks we shouldn’t go back yet. He wants her to... to stay until... until April at least.”

The lie was, out, the lie, was told, she felt herself relaxing in his arms. She was covered with a cold sweat.

“And must you stay with her?” Arthur asked.

“Yes,” she said quietly.

“Your son.” He made a meaningless gesture with his hands. “He misses you.”

“And I miss him,” she said. “And you. But what can I do, Arthur?”

“Julia, it’s so empty at home without you. I don’t feel alive without you, Julia. I don’t feel as if I’m really living.”

“But what can I do, Arthur? Can I take her home against the doctor’s orders? Can I leave her here alone and sick? What can I do? Tell me, and I’ll do it.”

It was easier now. She marveled at how much easier it was. The lie had almost assumed a veneer of truth. She was beginning to believe it herself.

“We’ll discuss it later,” he said. He put his arm around her waist and they began climbing the steps, “There doesn’t seem to be much you can do. I only wish...”

“Arthur,” she said, “there’s nothing I want more than to be home with David and you.”

She choked down the lie.

The biggest lie was waiting for her upstairs, in the bedroom.

He did not seem to know, nor did he seem to suspect, that there was anything different about her. He saw no change, and yet the change was apparent to her, she looked different, she felt like a different person, she knew she even walked in a different way, she was sure he could tell this was not the Julia Regan who had left Talmadge in August. But he did not know, and perhaps the difference did not show to anyone but herself.

Only once did he say something that could have been interpreted as an expression of suspicion, but even then she wasn’t sure — he might have been joking. They had entered the church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin and walked through the portico where they found the Bocca della Verità — the Mouth of Truth. The carving was a marble disk representing a human face, an old man’s face with accusing eyes, and a beard, and a mustache hanging over an open mouth. The mask dated back to the twelfth century, and the legend concerning it was that in medieval times a suspected person was required, in taking an oath, to place his hand in the mask’s mouth. If the suspect was swearing falsely, legend held, the mouth would close upon his hand.

Arthur studied the mask and then took Julia’s hand and gently placed it inside the marble mouth.

“And have you been faithful to me?” he asked.

She pulled back her hand suddenly, not because she expected the mouth to clamp shut, but only because his question had startled her. Arthur raised his eyebrows.

“Well, now,” he said.

Calmly, smiling at him, she put her hand into the marble mouth again. In an exaggerated attitude of piety, she intoned, “I have been faithful to you, dear husband,” and they both laughed, but her secret ached inside her.

She showed them around Rome like a paid guide. The tour was painful to her because, perversely, she took them to all the secret places she had shared with Renato. In a side street off the Piazza Navona and the Bernini fountain facing the church, she led them to a pair of huge doors, which were opened to her when the caretaker recognized her. At the far end of the enclosed courtyard was an arch over a long passageway floored with tile and lined with columns. At the distant end of the long passageway was a large statue.

“Let’s walk to the statue,” she said.

They started for the arch, and she knew both David and Arthur were expecting a lengthy walk between the columns. She watched their faces for the first signs of recognition, pleased when it came almost at once. The corridor leading to the statue, the columns lining the corridor, the tiles flooring it, the statue itself, were all a magnificent trick, a masterpiece of trompe l’oeil. The corridor was perhaps eight feet long, but it seemed more like fifty. The arch was slanted to give an illusion of perspective, the columns grew progressively shorter, the tiles progressively smaller, as one walked through the arch and down the corridor. The statue, which seemed immense when viewed from the opposite end of the arch, was no more than three feet high. She could remember her own reaction to the optical illusion when Renato first showed it to her, and she was pleased now by the reactions of her husband and her son — and yet annoyed somehow.

She took them to the monastery of the Knights of Malta on the Aventine, where the keyhole was set in the massive entrance doors. She asked David to lean down and peek through the keyhole, and when he did he saw a path lined with poplars, and in the distance the dome of St. Peter’s, perfectly framed, centered exactly, like a precious miniature. Arthur bent and looked, smiling, holding her hand as he looked through the keyhole. Chiaviamoci, she suddenly thought, and her heart lurched; she had not seen him for a week.

Christmas was upon them before they realized it. They had brought her gifts from the States, and she had shopped Rome for days before their arrival. They exchanged their gifts in the villa while the servants beamed and murmured, “Buon Natale.” The present she had bought for David was far too young for a boy his age. The days after Christmas seemed to move very slowly for her. She saw happiness on the faces of her husband and her son, but she could not share it. She could only think of their departure. She went through the mechanical motions of showing them the city, but the city was her secret, and she could not really unlock it for them. Time was suspended. She had not seen Renato for eleven days, and she longed for him. But she lived out her lie, and her sister watched the play-acting, expressing neither approval nor censure, moving silently about the villa with her shawl around her shoulders. On New Year’s Eve, she and Arthur went to a night club in Rome. They stayed until two in the morning, and he toasted her eyes and toasted her mouth and said there were too damn many black shirts in this damn place and he wanted to go home to make love to her. They were both tipsy on the drive back to Aquila. In bed he told her drunkenly, “If anything should happen to us, Julia, I would kill myself.” She brought some measure of passion to her love-making that night, but only because she too was drunk.

On January 4, David and Arthur kissed her goodbye and went back to Talmadge, Connecticut.

The townspeople, of course, did not know that Julia Regan was a woman living almost entirely in the past. They knew she had once been thirty-five years old and had gone abroad with her sister Millicent. They knew she had been to France and Switzerland and Italy. They did not know that day by day Julia lived and relived a time that had begun for her in August of 1938.

They did not know.

Matthew was not in the mood for a Talmadge cocktail party, and he told Amanda so the moment he got into the car at the station.

“Neither am I,” she said. “I’ve been shopping all day. But I promised.”

“Amanda, I’m exhausted,” he said. “And I’m cold. Isn’t it cold for November? It wasn’t this cold last November.”

“I promised we would go, Matthew,” she said.

“Who’s staying with Bobby and Kate?”

“I got Mrs. Arondo.”

“That decrepit sack?”

“She’s a very capable sitter.”

“I hate Talmadge parties,” Matthew said.

“Matthew, please, let’s not argue about it.”

“I’m not arguing. I’m stating a fact. I dislike Talmadge parties, and I dislike most Talmadge people.”

He nodded once, briefly, and fell into a sullen silence, which lasted all the way into the noisy living room of a sumptuous house set on twelve lovely acres of land. The houses in Talmadge, or at least the ones to which he and Amanda received invitations, were somewhere in the forty- to seventy-five-thousand-dollar bracket. Some had swimming pools, some had ponds, all had at least six acres of choice Connecticut countryside. There was still a shortage of capable household help in 1952, but the citizens of Talmadge managed very well with thrice-weekly cleaning girls, and gardeners who kept their spacious grounds immaculately landscaped. There was a chicken in every pot and, in addition to that, two cars in every garage, and Matthew had learned very quickly that Talmadge was what might be called a moneyed town. None of the Talmadge men discussed their salaries openly, of course. But then, Matthew had never heard of any men anywhere discussing their salaries openly, except perhaps on the Malay Archipelago where they were paid in amulets and betel nuts. The men of Talmadge were paid in good hard United States currency, and they didn’t have to discuss how much they were paid at all. Those cleaning girls and gardeners hadn’t come free with the house. Those Cadillacs in the two-car garages hadn’t been acquired with soap coupons and a letter of twenty-five words or less. The Talmadge women dressed to the teeth, and they didn’t do it on the income of ditch-digger husbands. However much these men earned, Matthew knew it was plenty. He didn’t begrudge them a cent of it. He simply wished they had a lot of legal problems and would take them to Bridges, Benson, Summers and Stang.

As befitted men of means, there was plenty of liquor at Talmadge parties. Vodka had not yet assumed consumer proportions bordering on the epidemic, but there were fifths and fifths of Scotch, rye, bourbon, and gin, with a smaller play on rum, wherever Matthew went. The liquor wasn’t ostentatiously displayed; you simply knew instinctively that when a bottle ran dry there would be a closetful of new bottles from which to replace it. The replacement was effected quite often. The people of Talmadge drank fast and they drank hard. Matthew was amazed by the number of empty bottles he lined up alongside the trash barrel after a night of even small-scale revelry. He was amazed because Talmadge parties were always full of social chatter and pleasant music and well-groomed men and dazzling women who seemed to be conducting themselves in a perfectly sober and civilized manner, but apparently all these socially civilized sophisticates were belting away at the bottle at a surprisingly rapid clip. Nor did they ever show any of the apparent effects of steady alcohol consumption; not once did Matthew see anyone, man or woman, who he could say with certainty was drunk. There was no falling down at Talmadge parties. Nor was there any stumbling or staggering.

The bottles were set up in a row alongside the ice bucket, and the host served the first drink and refilled the glass when that was gone, and the standing rule was that everyone was on his own after that. Everyone accepted the rule and made the requisite trips back and forth between the conversation groups and the bar whenever his glass was empty. His glass seemed to be empty every five minutes or so. There was the drinking of whiskey before dinner — rarely was there a party given in Talmadge that did not include dinner, usually a buffet — and the drinking of wine during dinner, and the taking of brandy or liqueur after dinner, and then the hard drinking began again as soon as the cordials had calmed the stomach, and continued until the early hours of the morning when the patty broke up. People got warmer and happier as the evening wore on. New friends became old friends. No one ever got drunk, but the steady consumption of alcohol did much to contribute to a lessening of rigidity, a feeling of warmth and relaxation.

There was always music going at a Talmadge party. The host generally started the hi-fi a half hour before his guests arrived, warming up the set with Scheherazade, a classical introduction that set the tone for an evening of civilized intercourse. He would set up his bottles and his glasses and his soda and his water and his tonic and his ice cubes while Rimsky-Korsakov flowed from twin speakers and his wife yelled from the kitchen, where she was putting the finishing touches to beef Stroganoff for twenty, to turn that thing down, she couldn’t hear herself think. The host would shrug a little, wondering what the sense was in having a hi-fi if you couldn’t play the records loud. But he’d turn the volume down and then pour himself a little Canadian-and-soda, and sit in an easy chair, and look out at his garden or his fields or his favorite tree, and in a little while his wife would come in from the kitchen wearing a long hostess gown with a sequined party apron over it, and he would pour her a drink, and they would await their guests together, slightly expectant, slightly excited, but enjoying these last few moments of peace and silence accompanied by musical visions of harem maids in filmy baggy pants. By the time the first guests arrived, Scheherdzade had given way to the LP directly above it, an album of Tommy Dorsey classics, and “Song of India” bastardized the harem girls into musical visions of Lindy-hopping bobby-soxers, and suddenly the Talmadge ritual was set in motion.

“Hi.”

“Hi, Joe. How are you?”

“How are you, Frank?”

“Fine, thanks. Good to see you.”

“Hi” being a contraction of “How are you,” it was perhaps redundant to use both at the same time, but this was nonetheless the ritualistic form of greeting in Talmadge. The “Good to see you” was mandatory, and used at every social function even if the people shaking hands had seen each other at another cocktail party only an hour before. Only the men shook hands in Talmadge. Women kissed other women on the cheek, and men used this same form of greeting with other men’s wives. Talmadge was a very friendly and tolerant town. The invitations usually designated eight o’clock as the time of arrival. But no one ever showed up before nine or nine-thirty or even ten, depending on how many other parties there were that same night, except the people traveling from New York or New Haven, who usually arrived on the dot. These people were promptly made to feel like exactly what they were: outsiders. Within ten minutes, the Talmadge natives had gathered into tight tribal conclaves and begun discussing the latest town affairs while the outsiders breathed deeply of the bracing country air and muttered, “What the hell, let’s get drunk.”

The dancing did not begin until after dinner some time, when everyone had consumed enough liquor, wine, and cordials to keep the Stork Club open and running for a week. The small talk had run out by this time, the violent arguments about the new novels and plays and motion pictures had been fought, the latest Madison Avenue jokes had all been told, the latest travel experiences had been related, and everyone had been apprised of who was currently pregnant, cheating, or getting a divorce. The party would be settling into a gelatinous stupor threatening solidification, a yawn would be stifled here or there, when suddenly the all-observant host would rise and turn up the record player, the signal for an adventurous couple to break the ice and set the party into its next phase. This phase was labeled by Matthew, who favored short descriptive titles, the Touch-and-Go Phase. He recognized a variation of his More-or-Less Principle as the driving force behind the Touch-and-Go Phase, the person who was most bored being the first to start dancing, the person who was least bored being the last to join the throng circling the living room. Matthew, who never liked doing anything on a given signal, least of all dancing, managed to stay on the sidelines at Talmadge parties, watching the behavior of the natives. They certainly seemed restless, but restless in a totally relaxed way, a paradox that was difficult for him to grasp at first.

It took him a little while to realize that most of the early dancing was being done by husband-and-wife teams, nice ballroom dancing, which they had practiced together since they were teen-agers, every nuance of husbandly pressure on the small of the back instantly picked up by the wife, each trick-step specialty executed with precision and aplomb, slightly idiotic grins on the faces of mates, it was Prom Time again in lovely, woodsy Talmadge. Then the record changed, or everyone suddenly needed a fresh drink, and then the couples on the floor were no longer husband-wife teams, or at least no longer this-husband-belongs-to-this-wife teams, everyone seemed to have changed partners again at a signal, a magician had waved a magic wand and whooossssssssh, the swirling couples were mismatched.

Talmadge was a friendly town, and everyone danced close here, and cheek to cheek here. If a man in the New York subway had stood this close to a Talmadge woman, she’d have clobbered him with her umbrella. But this was Talmadge, and this was the town where everyone was concerned with how you were, and where it was always good to see you, and where men shook hands with other men but kissed the women on the cheek, so it was all right to dance close here. No one minded it. It was the proper, friendly, social thing to do. It never got unfriendly, or unsocial, or improper. It got damn close to being all of those things, but it never crossed the unchalked line, never broke the unwritten code. A great many male thighs were very very close to a great many female thighs, and a great many male hands reached clear around a female back to that first soft swell of an unfamiliar breast, a soft cheek was flushed and feverish against a bearded one, lips almost touched when their owners pulled back their heads to murmur a word or two, the dipping was sometimes a little personal, a tiny bit intimate, especially during the summer months when clothing was habitually lighter. But all this touching and near touching seemed to reach a prearranged, quasi-climactic point when the female would say, “I think we’d better rest a little,” or the male would say, “Let’s have another drink, shall we?” With these words, or a variation of them, the touching of this particular partner had reached its apogee; there was nothing further to do but go. So they went. Touch-and-Go, and whoooosssssh, the magician waved his wand again, everybody changed partners again, the carousel was in motion once more, different horses, new riders, the same old jazz.

Matthew hated it.

He hated it because it was an outrageous lie, and he didn’t like lies or liars. He hated it, too, because it was a game of musical wives that had no obvious destination, a game that was a deception, an inspired delusion, a medieval sort of orgy-cum-fantasy in modern dress with self-imposed limits, time-consuming, energy-depleting, and totally frustrating. He hated it. He decided definitely and emphatically to avoid it. If he had to get stone-cold drunk and pass out on the richly carpeted floors of every home in Talmadge, he would manage to avoid this juvenile nonsense.

For however fanciful Matthew’s theories, however speculative his ideas, he had never once in the six years of his marriage broken the contract he’d made with Amanda. If he ever did break that contract — and he had considered it, he was a man, and vain, and egotistical, and he had considered it — if ever he did break that contract, he was going to do it in spades and not by rubbing bellies with a Talmadge matron who had already borne three children and was corresponding secretary of the P.T.A.

The Talmadge party that November night was exactly the same as every other Talmadge party he’d ever attended.

Except for Julia Regan.

He didn’t meet her until eleven o’clock. He was fairly crocked by that time, so that the inane chatter and the blasting hi-fi unit and the cavorting couples blended into a sort of alcohol-misted din behind him. He was sitting in the dark on the patio, his jacket collar raised on the back of his, neck, the lapels pulled closed across his chest in defense against the cold. The door opened suddenly, and a tall woman with an upswept hairdo stepped onto the patio, pulled her stole around her, sighed deeply, and reached into her bag for a cigarette. He saw her face briefly in the flaring match, fine-lined, patrician. She sucked in on the cigarette. The match flared again and died. She began walking toward the edge of the patio. Her heels clicked on the slate in the darkness. He had always liked the sound of high-heeled pumps. He listened to the clicking. She has good legs, he thought. He could tell from the sound of her walk.

“You’re not alone,” he said suddenly

The woman turned. “I know.” She walked toward him. “I thought you were asleep. I didn’t want to disturb you.”

Her voice was the voice of an older woman. Forty? Forty-five?

“Had enough in there?” he asked. “Ooooops, I should know better. You may be the hostess, for all I know.”

“I’m not.” She paused. “May I sit with you?”

“Please.” He rose and offered her his chair with an elaborate bow. He pulled over another chair, took a cigarette from his pocket, and lighted it. Julia looked at his face in the flare of the match.

“Oh,” she said, “it’s you.”

“That’s who it is, all rights,” Matthew answered. He held the match close to her face. “And it’s you, too.”

“That’s right.” Julia smiled. Matthew shook out the match.

“Who?” Matthew said.

“Julia Regan.” She extended her hand.

He took it. “Matthew Bridges.”

“Yes, I know. We were introduced earlier tonight.”

“Impossible,” Matthew said. “I’d have remembered.”

“You weren’t paying much attention. You seemed extremely bored.”

“I’m never bored at Talmadge parties.”

“You seemed to be.”

“Never.”

There was a silence.

“I thought we could talk,” Julia said.

“Aren’t we?”

“Not if you’re going to be facetious.”

“Okay, I was bored. I’m also a little drunk, and I was trying to be cute. Okay? What are you, a district attorney?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

“Nothing;”

“Everybody’s something.”

“All right, I’m a widow.”

“And that’s all?”

“What would you like to know? I’m forty-eight years old, I have a son named David who’s almost your age, and I live in a big old house right here in Talmadge.”

“There’s more,” Matthew said.

“No, that’s all.”

“Uh-uh,” Matthew said. “There’s more.”

“You’re right,” she said quickly. “I don’t collect blood for the Red Cross, I don’t belong to the National Democratic Committee, and I despise Little Leaguers. I drive an Alfa Romeo, I shower twice daily, and I don’t keep pets. Thumbnail sketch of Julia Regan.”

“I’ll bet your son is nowhere near my age.”

“How old are you?”

“I was thirty-five in February.”

“David will be twenty-nine in October.”

“That’s... just a second, I was never very good at arithmetic... that’s a difference of six years.”

“Yes. See?”

“I see. You and I are generations apart.”

“At least one generation.”

“No, no, countless generations,” Matthew insisted.

Julia smiled. “We’re closer than you think, Mr. Bridges.”

The patio was silent for a moment. The sky was clear. Matthew took a deep breath of air.

“Which one is your wife?” Julia asked. “The blond girl?”

“Yes. Amanda.”

“Yes, we met. She’s lovely.”

“Thank you.”

“Do you have any children?”

“I have a daughter almost as old as you are,” Matthew said, smiling.

“Really? How old is she?”

“She was just ten.” His grin widened. “And I have a son named Bobby who—”

“You didn’t tell me your daughter’s name.”

“Kate.”

“That’s a nice name.”

“Yes,” Matthew said, and he nodded. “Bobby was three in July.”

“No dogs? Cats? Elephants?”

“A dog. A cocker spaniel. Present to Kate on her last birthday.”

“And what’s his name?”

“His name is Beverly.”

“Oh, excuse me.”

“Apologize to the dog, not me. Besides, she’s been spayed, so your descriptive pronoun is partially accurate.”

“And the elephant?”

“No elephants, tigers or rhinoceroses. Rhinoceri.” He nodded. “What gives you the most trouble when you’re drunk?”

“I don’t get drunk.”

“Everybody gets drunk.”

“I’m not everybody. I’m Julia Regan.”

“Well, Julia Regan, the thing that gives me trouble when I’m drunk is endings.”

“Not beginnings?”

“I mean the endings of words. The plurals. Like mooses and mouses and desks.”

“Why desks?”

“That’s a very hard word to say even sober. There’s a sort of echo on that word. Say it. Desks. Do you hear the echo?”

“Desks,” Julia said. “No, I don’t hear anything.”

“Desks,” Matthew said. “Try it again.”

“Desks.”

“Listen.”

“Desks. Why, yes,” Julia said. “A sort of sss-kkk echo. How did you ever notice a thing like that?”

“I’m a very observant fellow. Why is it that you don’t get drunk, Julia Regan?”

“I don’t have to.”

“I have to. At these parties, I have to.”

“Are you very drunk now?”

“No. Not very. Only somewhat. Why did you tell me you were fifty-eight years old?”

“Forty-eight, please!”

“That’s right, forty-eight. Same thing.”

“Because that’s my age.”

“Uh-uh,” Matthew said, shaking his head.

“Then why did I tell you that, Mr. Bridges?”

“To make things clear from the beginning, right?”

“What sort of things?”

“You know,” Matthew said. “You know.”

“Yes, I do. I’m sorry. Did I sound discouraging?”

“Well, when you drag out your crutches and your wheel chair and your eighty-year-old son, I can only assume...”

“I didn’t mean to be discouraging. If you want to make a pass, go ahead and make it.”

“Huh?”

“I think you heard me.”

“You said...”

“I said if you feel like kissing me or touching me, I wish you would and get it over with.”

“Well!” Matthew said.

“Well?”

“Well, that’s putting it on the line, all right.”

“Yes, it is.”

“I must be drunker than I thought.”

“Why?”

“I don’t feel like kissing you right now.”

“All right. If you ever do feel like it, then kiss me. Quickly, and once and for all.”

Matthew shook his head in amazement.

“What’s going on inside your head?” she asked.

“That’s a line from Room Service. ‘There’s just one thing I want to know, Gribble. What the hell goes on inside that head of yours?’ That was a very funny show.”

“Don’t change the subject, Mr. Bridges.”

“Was I changing it?”

“You were.”

“Okay. What do you want?”

“I asked you what you were thinking.”

“I was thinking I don’t understand you.”

“What’s so puzzling, Mr. Bridges?”

“Are you propositioning me?” Matthew asked.

There was such a tone of bewilderment in his voice that Julia burst out laughing.

“Well now, what’s so funny about that?”

“You’re very funny,” she said. “You’re like a little boy, Mr. Bridges.”

“Call me Matthew,” he said angrily. “And don’t ever say that again!”

“Which?”

“The little-boy baloney. There’s nothing infuriates a man more.”

“I’ll remember.”

“Okay, remember.”

“Why are you angry?”

“Because I think you’re playing games.”

“No, I’m not,” she said seriously.

“Then what are you doing?”

“Not playing games. Anything but that. I’m trying to be perfectly honest with you because I like you and want to be your friend.”

“So you ask me to hop into bed.”

“I didn’t ask you that, Matthew. I’m sorry. Perhaps I overestimated you.”

“Yeah, perhaps you did. It sounded very much to me like—”

“Damn it, keep still a moment!”

“Listen, don’t tell me—”

“Keep still!”

“I don’t like to be told—”

“Neither do I!” Julia snapped.

They were silent.

“Boy, we get along just fine, don’t we?” Matthew said.

“We do. And we will.”

“What do you want from me?”

“Nothing.”

“That’s a lie, Julia.”

“All right, then. Everything.”

“I can’t give you that.”

“Only a fool would expect it,” Julia said.

“I thought we weren’t going to play games.”

“We’re not. We’re talking.”

“Very small talk.”

“You’re not very perceptive, are you?” Julia asked.

“You’re pretty insulting, aren’t you?” Matthew asked.

“I only insult people I like.”

“Better to be your enemy, then.”

“No. Better to be my friend.”

“Oh, the hell with it,” Matthew said, and again the patio was silent.

“Do you know why we’re fighting?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because now I want to kiss you.”

“That’s right,” Julia said.

“Is that your point?”

“That’s exactly my point.”

“Okay.” He nodded. He approached her awkwardly, clumsily cupped her chin in his hand. He lowered his mouth. “I’m going to,” he said.

“Please.”

Their lips met. Her mouth was very soft. She kissed well.

“All right?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said grudgingly.

“Did you enjoy kissing me?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, and I enjoyed you.” She paused. “Do you want to touch me now?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I like kissing my wife better than I like kissing you,” Matthew said, surprised when the words found voice.

“Yes, that’s good,” Julia said. She smiled. “Would you give me a cigarette now?”

He shook one free from the package and lighted it for her. She smiled at him over the match.

“I feel a little foolish,” he said.

“No, please,” she said, “you mustn’t. Besides, I don’t expect this to happen again, do you?”

“No. I honestly don’t.”

“But I’m glad it happened here and now. I’m glad it’s done.”

“I am, too.”

“And are we friends now?” she asked.

“I guess so. It’s been a hell of a long way around the mulberry bush, but I guess so.”

They laughed in the darkness.

“Listen,” he said.

“Yes?”

“You’re an exciting woman.”

“Am I?”

“Yes. So don’t... I don’t ever want to start anything, Julia.”

“Neither do I.”

“So don’t ever—”

“I won’t.”

“Okay.”

They were silent.

“Because I’m only human,” Matthew said.

“Yes, we all are. But if...” She stopped and shook her head. “No, I won’t say it.”

“Say it.”

“No.”

“You’re starting wrong, Julia.”

“Of course, forgive me. I was going to say, if you ever need me, come to me. I didn’t want to say it because... I didn’t want you to think...”

“That’s not what I’m thinking.”

“Good, then.”

“Well,” he, said, and he sighed. “I feel pretty good.”

“So do I.” She paused. “Someone inside said you were a lawyer. Are you a good lawyer?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me what it’s like.”

“What can I tell you?”

“You seem like a lawyer,” Julia said.

“How do lawyers seem?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Legal and...” She shrugged.

“Say it. Pompous.”

“You’re not at all pompous.”

“I’m not?” Matthew said.

“Certainly not. Whatever gave you that idea?”

“I don’t know. I guess I feel a little stuffy sometimes. No, not that. I guess I feel I should be a little stuffy. There’s a difference.”

“Why should you want to be stuffy?”

“Because I’m a lawyer, and a husband, and a father, and sometimes I don’t feel like any of the three.”

“How do you feel?”

“Sometimes?”

“Yes.”

“Like seventeen,” Matthew said. “Sometimes my kids will have their friends over to play, and I’ll look at them and wonder why any parents in their right minds would entrust the safety of their children to me, an imitation father who is only seventeen years old.”

“I see. And how old do you feel right now?”

“Are you going to tell me you’re forty-eight again?”

“No, never again. We’re past that now, aren’t we?”

“Yes, we are.”

“So tell me how you feel now.”

“With you?”

“Yes. With me.”

“I feel like your son,” Matthew said.

He went to see her for the first time a week later. It was a Saturday, and he was driving into town to do some errands when he passed the Regan house and suddenly decided to stop. He pulled the car to the curb, got out, and walked to the front door. At first, there was no answer. He rang again.

“Just a moment,” Julia called from somewhere inside.

He waited on the front step feeling somewhat foolish. The events at the party seemed like such a long time ago, seemed almost unreal. He wondered what he would say to her now, wondered if their so-called friendship had not been the result of his alcoholic haze.

She was wearing a robe when she answered the door. Her hair was in curlers. He could see them under the scarf she had hastily thrown over her head.

“Matthew,” she said. “How nice! Come in!”

He followed her into the house.

“I was just making some coffee,” she said. “Will you join me?”

“Yes, thank you. I’d like some.”

They went into the kitchen. She poured the coffee and then turned on the radio to see what the weather would be like. There was something very natural and very familiar about the scene, Julia sitting at the table in her robe and curlers, Matthew in dungarees and a woolen sports shirt, the radio behind them giving the news and weather. He felt totally relaxed and comfortable as he sipped his coffee. They began chatting later, easily, without innuendo, without guile. Before he realized it, he was telling her about Kate and the difficulties they were experiencing with the adoption.

“Ordinarily, it might have been a routine thing, although adoption laws are the most confusing in the world. With Kate, it’s become more complicated because two states are involved, Minnesota and Connecticut.”

“I see,” Julia said.

“We had to make application in Minnesota, you understand. And the law there states that any person who’s resided in the state for more than a year may apply for adoption. Naturally, we can’t establish residency in Minnesota. But happily, the law says this provision may be waived by the court. Well, we applied for the waiver, and it was refused, so we appealed, and the waiver was finally granted, but that was only the beginning.”

“Have some more coffee, Matthew.”

“Thank you, I will. There’s a matter of consent involved, too, Julia. Usually, the parents’ consent is required, except when the child is over fourteen, in which case her consent is required, too. Well, Kate’s real father is dead, and her mother... well...” He hesitated.

“You can tell me, Matthew,” she said gently.

“Her mother is institutionalized, Julia. And since she’s been adjudged incompetent, we then needed the consent of the Director of Social Welfare, but this too could have been waived by the court. Well, the court wouldn’t waive, so we’ve been waiting for the results of the investigation. There’s got to be an investigation and report by the director, you see, after six months of residence in the proposed home. And then, when he finally decides it’s all right for us to keep Kate, and to love Kate, the proceedings to adopt will be held in a Minnesota juvenile court in the county of residence of Kate’s real mother. Ordinarily, the place of venue would have been the adopting parents’ county, but here again we run into the Minnesota-Connecticut confusion. Believe me, it’s been annoying and frustrating.”

“But does it look as if it’ll go through?”

“Yes, I think so. At last. I’d hazard a guess and say Kate’ll be ours within the next six months.”

“Well, that’s good, Matthew.”

“Yes.” He smiled. The radio was playing music now. The November wind lashed under the eaves of the old house. The house felt warm and secure and snug. He finished his second cup of coffee, stayed a few moments longer, and then put on his coat and got ready to leave. Before he left, he kissed her on the cheek.

He stopped by to see her regularly after that. He was always welcomed and he never had to call beforehand. Sometimes he dropped in on the way home from work, and Julia would mix a Martini for him, and he would sit in the living room with her and sip at his drink, and tell her some of the things that had happened at the office, or simply discuss Talmadge affairs, or sometimes discuss nothing at all, sometimes just sit quietly with her and sip at his drink. Once, sitting opposite her, he said, “I want to kiss you, Julia.”

“Please,” she said.

He went to her, and she tilted her head.

“I need to,” he said.

“Please.”

But that was the last time, and he felt better afterward, knowing it would not happen again. He went to her house without guilt, openly, with no attempt to deceive or to hide. He parked his car blatantly in her driveway, with a total disregard for the opinion of the Talmadge townsfolk. He told Amanda that Julia Regan was his friend, and perhaps she was. He did not question his relationship with her too closely. He knew only that he found something in her home, something he had not known for a very long time. He did not ask himself what this something was. He knew it had to do with a relaxed feeling of irresponsibility. He owed this woman nothing. Nothing, really, was demanded of him. He could come to her or not come as he desired. He could talk or remain silent. He could arrive in a sulk and rant in her living room for a half hour before leaving. He could tell jokes if he chose to, but no demand for entertainment was ever made. He could think sometimes of taking her to bed, knowing full well he would never take her to bed. She gave, she gave to him out of her merciful bounty, and he took, he took with both hands.

Once, he was moved to the point of tears. He had brought her a gift for Christmas. There was a large decorated tree in the living room, and Julia was standing on a ladder when he came into the house, putting a star on the top of the tree. He came into the house and stamped snow from his feet, and then blew on his hands, and then looked into the living room, and saw her standing on the ladder, reaching for the tip of the tree, and stood suddenly transfixed in the doorway, silent, watching her.

“Oh, hello, Matthew,” she said. “Is it cold enough out there?”

It seemed to him he had walked into this same room long ago, in Glen City. He nodded dumbly. She came down off the ladder and said, “Come, I’ll make you some tea,” and embraced him and took him into the kitchen. He was very silent that day. He kept watching her silently, as if discovering her for the first time. They drank their tea in the living room. The grandfather clock ticked off time in a rigid solid voice. The clock, too, seemed familiar. He finished his tea, and got into his coat again. She was sitting in a large mohair chair, facing the clock. She seemed older that day. He suddenly realized how old she was. His eyes had misted over. He felt he wanted to cry, but he did not, he would not let the tears come.

“Merry Christmas, Julia,” he said.

“Merry Christmas, Matthew,” she answered.

He went out of the house quietly. Julia sat quite still in the living room and listened to the voice of the clock.

Time.

Past and present merged in the mind of Julia Regan. October, November, and now December, now January, a new year. They set off the air-raid siren on the roof of the firehouse to welcome 1953. She went to a party at the Bridges’ house, and she listened to Matthew tell her about his progress in the adoption proceedings, apparently the investigation had been made and adoption had been recommended, and now it was a question of making the requisite trip to Minnesota.

He was slightly drunk. He put his hand on her knee and said, “It takes such a damn long time, Julia. I love that kid. She’s my daughter, do you know what I mean? Really, Julia. She’s my daughter. But it takes such a goddamn long time.”

Time.

1939 in Rome. The long wait.

And the threat of war hovering everywhere, Renato gone more and more frequently, Millie on the edge of hysteria, “Julia, we’ve got to get out of here. I don’t care what—”

“You know that’s impossible.”

“I’m frightened. Julia, if war breaks out...”

“There’s nothing we can do, Millie.”

“Well then, I’ll go home. Alone.”

“You can’t do that, Millie.”

“Why did you get yourself into this? You’re a grown woman! I always thought—”

“There were a lot of things I always thought, too, Millie.”

“You make me want to cry. Seeing you like this, helpless, just helpless. You make me want to cry.”

“I’m not helpless.”

“If war comes...”

“Millie, please, please...”

April approaching. Spring in Rome. She had promised Arthur she’d be back in April. She sent him a cable stating that Millie was ill and unable to travel. She knew the war was coming, but her following letter said: “... Everyone here seems convinced that Hitler is bluffing. In any case, there does not seem to be a climate of preparation for war, no matter what you felt at Christmastime. I know this is foremost in your mind, Arthur, but believe me, darling, Millie and I are in no immediate danger.” Lies. Lies all through May, the promise that she would be home soon, the dangling carrot, I will be home soon, I will be home soon, and knowing it was impossible for her to leave Italy.

Time.

Past and present flowing together, the memory of those months in Rome overshadowing the real spring of 1953 in Talmadge, the opening of buds everywhere around her, how quickly the winter had gone, how quickly it was spring again, how quickly the months went by, and the years, how long ago had it been, how long ago to July 26, 1939, to that day when Renato held her, trembling and sweating in the small room, “Ti voglio bene,” he said, “tesorino, non dimenticarlo mai.” The crying. She would not forget the crying. July 26. The end was near. It was odd how the beginning was the end. It was odd how time folded in upon itself, how Rome had been the beginning of a life and the end of a life, the pattern was endless, and present merged with past so that sometimes she could not tell which was now and which was then.

Surely she was in the here and now. The Julia Regan who opened the house at the lake again in the summer of 1953 was a flesh-and-blood person who cleaned out bathtubs and straightened cupboards and aired mattresses. I am growing old, she thought, where is 1939? Where is the girl who was born in 1939? Memory is too cruel, she thought. I would abolish years. I would trample time. I want to be in Rome again. I want to be alive again. I want to be loved.

Oh, all I want is to be loved.

The lake held no menace.

David sat on the back porch of the summer house, his hands folded on his naked chest, and looked out over the still water. August sunshine caught at his yellow swimming trunks, reflected from the signet ring on the pinkie of his right hand. A man in a rowboat was fishing in the middle of the lake. He watched the man sleepily, half dozing. The pines were almost motionless. A faint breeze stirred the midsummer air. He could hear his mother inside the house, preparing lunch.

Saturday, he thought. Lake Abundance.

All the Saturdays of his early life, all the summer Saturdays at Lake Abundance, and that Saturday in September — he felt no pain. He sat watching the calm surface of the killer lake, and he felt no real pain, only an inestimable sense of loss. Something more than his father had died on that day in 1939. Something more. I seem to lose people, he thought. I seem to have a knack for losing people.

He listened to his mother humming inside the house.

A screen door opened. He turned his head.

The people next door. He had met them last weekend. Cocktails in his mother’s living room. “This is my son, David.”

“How do you do, Mr. Bridges? Mrs. Bridges?”

“Matthew and Amanda,” the man corrected. Tall, grinning, mustached. David did not trust men with mustaches. The woman — how old? Thirty? Blond, sun-tanned, restless somehow, she tucked her skirts around her too efficiently, she smoked too much.

“This is their first summer at the lake,” his mother said. “I talked them into it.”

“You’ll like it here,” David said.

“We’ve been going up to the Vineyard,” Matthew told him.

“That’s a long haul, isn’t it?”

“Well, not so bad. There’s plane service, you know.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Yes. The trip’s not bad at all. I didn’t enjoy the people very much, though.”

“Oh? Why not?”

“Well, it’s a strange crowd,” Matthew said. “Everyone performs.”

“Matthew doesn’t like people,” Amanda said. “That’s his trouble.” She smiled at David. She lighted another cigarette.

“I didn’t like those people, that’s for sure,” Matthew said. “I hate people who ask ‘What do you do?’ That annoys me. Everyone there did something. Everyone had a label and a profession. I’m a sculptor, I’m a photographer, I write children’s books, I composed the music for this-and-this Broadway hit, what do you do? I always felt I should recite a brief or something. Everyone performed. It was like an out-of-town tryout for autumn conversation.”

“Oh, Matthew, it wasn’t that bad,” Amanda said.

“It was, honey. You went to a party, and the party was divided into the entertainers and the appreciators. The entertainers played bongo drums badly, or Spanish guitar, or sang songs they wrote in 1920, or recited their newest poem for the Atlantic Monthly, or told dialect jokes, or exhibited the latest piece of sculpture with holes in it. And the appreciators were supposed to applaud and make noises of approval. I guess I’m not the appreciative type. I guess I just hate people who ask ‘What do you do?’”

“What do you do?” David asked, and Matthew burst out laughing.

“I’m a lawyer,” he said. “How about you?”

“Television.”

“Acting?”

“Producing.”

“That must be exciting work,” Amanda said.

“I like it,” David answered.

Cocktails and small talk in July. The new lake-front neighbors, Matthew and Amanda Bridges. The visiting son from the city. Julia cool in blue cotton. Matthew in dungarees and a T shirt, powerful arms and chest. Amanda in slacks and a full white blouse. July and small talk.

The screen door clattered shut.

August.

“Hi!” she called.

“Hello,” he answered. He lifted his arm and waved.

“Have you been in yet?”

“No.”

“I’ll bet it’s freezing.”

She was wearing a green tank-suit, a soft round girl who walked quickly to the dock before the cottage, as if she would dive instantly into the lake. He watched her appreciatively. She moved in a beautifully fluid, totally female way, and she was pleasant to watch. She shook her head suddenly, walked back the length of the dock and abandoned it, stepping onto the mud bank and walking gingerly to the waterfront, apparently having decided to enter the lake in slow progressive stages. She went into the water delicately and gently, holding her hands up near the full globes of her breasts, shrieking girlishly when the icy water touched the first mound of her body beneath the green tank-suit. The screen door opened and clattered shut again. Matthew.

“Hi, David. Going in?”

“Not just yet.”

“It’s freeeeeezing!” Amanda called to him. She was standing in water to her waist, slightly bent, delicately dipping her fingers into the lake the way David had seen it done by grandmothers and little girls.

He decided he liked Amanda Bridges.

The sounds on the lake were good sounds, summer sounds. Matthew grinned and ran past Amanda, plunging into the water recklessly. He surfaced instantly and said “Wow!” and then plunged beneath the surface again. There was a sudden silence during which the distant sound of the spillway seemed very close, all the whispering sounds of summer seemed very close and very loud, the soughing sad song of the mild breeze high in the tops of the lakeside pines and oaks, the languid rustle of heavy leaves against a heat-pale sky, and carried on the stifled breeze, echoing down the rolling bank from the Bridges’ cottage, the laughter of ten-year-old Kate playing with her younger brother, and Matthew suddenly surfacing and advancing on his wife, “Matthew, don’t! Don’t you daaaaare!” the words hanging on the water and the sky, the near buzz of yellow jackets in the close-cropped clover, the lap of the water against the dock pilings, the creak of oarlocks on the rowboats, the boats bobbing near the dock, yellow, red, yellow, and a telephone ringing someplace on the lake, the sounds of summer, sticky-slow and dreamlike, far away the hum of automobile tires on a road that rushed against the belly of the lazy countryside.

Amanda darted a frightened happy excited glance at her approaching husband and then dove into the water and broke into a powerful crawl for the raft. She climbed aboard, panting. Matthew followed her, and they both laughed short little laughs of contentment and lay back against the canvas. The lake was still again. David could hear the laughter of the children in the cottage. “No,” Kate said in her clear childish voice, “you’re supposed to be the milkman, Bobby.” He closed his eyes. The sun was hot. He began to doze.

Crackling.

A strange crackling sound.

His eyelids flickered, closed again.

Smell. Thick. Nostrils and throat. The crackle. What...

He turned on the chair, hot sunshine covered his right shoulder, his throat felt raw, the smell was thick in his nostrils, heat and the smell of...

He sat upright suddenly.

Smoke!

He looked out over the lake first, blinking. They were asleep on the raft, both of them. He turned his head to the right, saw the smoke drifting on the air, heard the crackling sound again, coming from the rear of the Bridges’ cottage, the children in the house, fire, he thought, Fire, he thought, “FIRE!” he shouted.

He leaped to his feet. His shoes. Where were his shoes?

“Fire!” he yelled again, and then ran toward the cottage, across the separating stretch of stone-strewn ground, where the hell are my shoes? he thought, children in the house, oh Jesus, “Fire!” he shouted, turned the corner of the cottage, stopped dead in his tracks when he saw the blaze.

He had fought fires in boot camp, fought raging oil fires, held the spray nozzle and suffocated the flames as thick black smoke poured from the open hatchway and heat mushroomed into his face. But in boot camp there had been experienced fire fighters teaching the embryo sailors, there was a feeling of absolute control, there was the knowledge that nothing could go terribly wrong.

There was no such assurance here. His mind seemed to be ticking in stop images. The flames. The pump room. The gasoline water pump. He rushed to the open door, backed away from the flames. I’m in my swimming shorts, he thought, Jesus, what... Jesus... the flames... how? He saw the gasoline can resting against the pump’s exhaust, saw gasoline spilling from the open spout of the can, feeding the fire. He reached into the flames. He grasped the charred hot handle of the gas can and pulled it out of the flames in one sweeping motion, a straight-armed motion that swept the can out of the fire and brought it back past his near-naked body. A sheet of flame followed the open spout as he swung the can in a backward arc. He could feel the heat passing his face, saw the sudden charred sooty streak appear on the wooden door of the pump room. He let go of the handle, the can fell into the bushes, immediately igniting them.

Oh, Jesus, he thought.

A hose. Water.

He turned his head in short jerks. Where was Matthew? What the hell was taking him so long to get off that raft?

“David, what is it?” his mother yelled from the porch next door.

“Fire!” he shouted. “Get Matthew!”

He saw the coiled hose at the back of the house. He ran for it. Kate stuck her head out of the upstairs window.

“What’s the matter, Mr. Regan?” she asked.

“Get out of the house!” he said. He began unwinding the hose.

“What?”

“Get out of the house!”

“What? What?”

“The house is on fire! Get out of there!”

He ran back to the pump room with the hose. Which? he thought. The bushes? The pump room? Which first? The whole lake front’ll go up. The bushes first. First the bushes. He swung the nozzle of the hose. No water. No...? I didn’t turn it on! He dropped the hose and ran back to the faucet attachment. He turned the wheel and then ran back to the house again. No water was coming from the nozzle. Come on! he thought. He twisted it. Which way? I’m turning it the wrong way! He finally opened the nozzle, sprayed water at the bushes, watched the flames turn to white smoke, and swung back toward the pump room. The flames had reached the ceiling of the room. They’ll go through, he thought. They’ll get into the house. Was Kate out? Would she have sense enough to take her brother with her? He looked up, saw only the empty window, and then shot the stream of water at the pump.

He saw the cans then. Cans of paint stacked behind the pump. He saw a gallon bottle of kerosene. He saw a can marked “Shellac.” This whole damn thing’ll explode in my face, he thought. This isn’t my house, he thought. I’m crazy, he thought. But he kept the hose on the flames. Go out! Goddamn it, go out! He leaned closer into the fire. He heard a crackling crisp sound, smelled the terrifying aroma of singed hair, my chest, he thought, and backed away from the flames. A pair of flaming overalls was hanging over the buckets of paint. He reached into the small room, a coffin set on end, a tiny room with a blazing pump and piles of explosive material. He grabbed the overalls and flung them back over his shoulder onto the ground, turned the hose on them immediately and saw Matthew, wet, panting, what had taken him so long? He did not realize he had been fighting the fire no longer than three minutes.

“The kids,” he said. “Upstairs.”

“Have you got this?”

“I’ve got it. Get the kids.”

Matthew was gone. He could feel his heart beating against his naked chest. He was beginning to control the flames, but a new fear leaped into his mind. The water. Suppose the water gave out? This was the pump room. The gasoline pump had to be started whenever the water pressure got too low. It was the pump that provided water, and he was using water by the gallon, and the pump was on fire, what would he do when the water gave out, don’t give out, he thought, stay with me, we’re getting it, we’re controlling it. He turned the hose up against the ceiling, the flames retreated, no, they had taken too secure a hold, the water was beginning to come from the nozzle in a weaker stream now, hold on, he thought, the paint, it’s going to explode in my face, get out of here, he thought, leave it, get out, get out, but he stayed.

He stayed leaning into the flames, sweating, covered with soot, stinking of singed hair, his face streaked, his arms black, the smoldering overalls on the path behind him, the staring labels on the cans and bottles, paint, paint thinner, shellac, kerosene, the water giving out, only a trickle now, he threw away the hose. The flames rallied instantly. He pulled a burning shovel from the wooden wall of the narrow room, dropped the hot handle, swore, scraped earth with his bare hands, tossed it onto the shovel handle, and then picked up the shovel again, still hot, but manageable. He was shoveling fresh earth into the room when Matthew came down again. The children were screaming. Amanda was carrying two kitchen-size fire extinguishers, small cans. She handed them to David wordlessly, he pulled the levers mechanically, the cans were exhausted immediately, Matthew was suddenly at his side with a second shovel.

“I’ll take it,” he said.

They worked together, taking turns in the narrow doorway, tossing shovel after shovelful of earth into the diminishing flames. Amanda soothed the children, holding them to the wet front of her bathing suit. Julia was there now, wide-eyed, there were other people now, someone brought a real fire extinguisher, the danger was almost past. A man in hip-length boots walked into the narrow room and stamped out the glowing embers, smothered charred wood with earth, and then sprayed the fire extinguisher over everything once again.

The fire was out.

The men stood together in their swimming trunks. It was over. They stood breathing hard, weary. David was beginning to feel the aftermath of shock now. He listened to the voices around him and felt somewhat dazed, felt as if he would fall to the ground. He did not speak. They asked questions, but he only nodded or shook his head in return.

The child Kate suddenly broke from her mother’s arms. She went to David and threw her arms around his neck and then kissed him on his sooty cheek.

Everyone smiled.

“I’m still a little shaken,” he said to his mother. “Is there any brandy in the house?”

“Yes, I’ll get you some.”

“Please. My hands are shaking, would you believe it?”

Julia brought him the brandy in a large snifter. He took a big gulp and then sipped at it slowly, sitting smoke-stained in the big armchair near the window overlooking the lake.

“Do you believe in God?” he asked.

“Yes. Don’t you?”

“I do,” he answered. “But so many things happen by chance.”

“Yes, a great many,” Julia said. She sat in the chair opposite him, looking through the window. Her face, in profile, was calm and reposed.

“If there’s a God, why does He...?” David stopped and shrugged. “They could have been killed,” he said. “I was only there by luck. It makes me wish...”

He stopped suddenly. He looked at Julia quickly and then took another swallow of brandy, and then turned his attention to the lake outside, silent.

“What does it make you wish, David?”

“Nothing.”

“Your father,” she said softly.

“No.”

“Yes,” she insisted.

“Yes, it makes me wish I’d been in that boat with him!”

“Why?”

“To help, to... to tell him his foot was caught in the line, to... to jump in after him... to help... to save him.”

“He didn’t want anyone in the boat with him.”

“How do you know?”

“I asked if I could go along.”

“No, you didn’t,” David said.

“I remember,” Julia said.

“No, Mom. I was taking your picture. And you asked him to get in the picture, and he said no, he wanted to take the boat out.”

“Yes, but I said I wanted to go with him.”

“No, you didn’t. He just walked down to the lake and got into the boat, and I watched him through the binoculars, I...” He cut himself short and pulled at the brandy snifter. The glass was empty. He rose, walked into the other room, and poured another from the decanter. His mother was still sitting in the chair, unmoving, when he returned to the living room.

“It wouldn’t have mattered,” she said suddenly.

“What?”

“If one of us had been with him...”

“If we’d gone along...”

“It wouldn’t have mattered,” Julia said.

The room was silent. He could hear the wind in the high trees outside.

“It would only have happened another time,” Julia said, almost in a whisper.

“That’s silly. He caught his foot in the—”

“He killed himself,” Julia said.

David stood in his grimy bathing trunks with the brandy glass in his hands, staring at his mother’s profile, staring at the unflinching set of her face, the strong August sun limning her nose and her jaw, the wrinkles smoothed by the flat even reflected light of the lake, she could have been the same woman whose picture he had taken that day years ago, she could have been that woman, time was being very kind to Julia Regan.

“What?” he said.

“He killed himself.”

“What?” he said again, but she did not repeat the words, and he stood staring at her dumbly, and then said, “You don’t know that. How could you know that?”

“He told me he was going to kill himself.”

He put down the brandy glass and walked to where she was sitting. His mother did not turn from the window.

“He told you?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“When I...” Julia paused. “A few days before.”

“He said those words? He said he was going to kill himself?”

“Yes.”

“Look at me.”

Julia turned slowly.

“When did he tell you this?”

“I told you. A few days before... before he drowned.”

“And you did nothing to stop him?”

“I tried to stop him.”

“Tried? He killed himself, how the hell did you try?”

“I talked to him. I tried to show him I loved him.”

“Didn’t he already know that?” David shouted.

The question startled Julia. She looked up into her son’s face and said, “He knew it.”

“Then how was that going to help?”

“Nothing was going to help. He’d made up his mind. He wanted to kill himself.”

“Why?” David said.

The question hung on the air.

“Why?” he repeated.

“I don’t know why,” Julia said.

“He talked to you. You said he talked to you.”

“Yes, but he didn’t...”

“Why did he want to kill himself?”

“I don’t know.”

David seized his mother’s shoulders. “Don’t lie to me,” he said.

“You know all there is to know.”

“There’s more. Tell me what it is!”

“Why?”

“I spent four goddamn years in prison because—”

“What? What?”

“Tell me why he died!”

“He died because he wanted to die.”

“Why did he want to die?” David said slowly and evenly.

Julia’s eyes held his steadily. Her voice came as slowly and as evenly as his own. “I don’t know why,” she said. “He never told me why.” She paused. “Perhaps he was just tired, David. Perhaps he was suddenly too tired.”

David stood by the chair and looked down at her. “I don’t believe you,” he said.

Julia made no sign that she had heard him.

“But I don’t suppose that matters a hell of a lot to you.”

“It matters, son.”

“Sure, Sure, it does. The way it mattered that I was in California waiting for you to...” He shook his head violently. “Forget it!”

“I came to see you,” Julia said quietly.

“Once! In four years, you came once!”

“Some get nothing,” Julia said, almost in a whisper.

“What?”

“Nothing,” she said. “Nothing.”

He stared at her for a moment, and then picked up his brandy glass and went into the next room. He took the decanter from the sideboard, and then went upstairs.

He had left the house drunk, and she lay in bed wondering where he was and whether he was all right, and telling herself, He is twenty-eight years old, he can take care of himself, and yet thinking it was her fault that he’d drunk so much brandy, her fault that he was somewhere in the night now probably drinking himself into a stupor, I shouldn’t have told him.

She could not sleep.

She threw back the covers and went to the telephone. She dialed, and then waited. He is a grown man, she told herself. She could hear the telephone ringing at the cottage next door. It’s almost midnight, she thought. I shouldn’t be doing this.

“Hello?” the voice said.

“Amanda?”

“Yes?”

“This is Julia.”

“Oh, hullo, Julia.” Amanda’s voice was edged with sleep. “Is something wrong?”

“Did I wake you?”

“No, no, that’s all right. What is it?”

“Could I speak to Matthew, please?”

“Yes, just a moment.” She heard Amanda’s voice recede. “Matthew, it’s Julia,” and she heard Matthew answer, “What’s the matter?”

“I don’t know. Take the phone.”

“Hello?”

“Matthew?”

“Yes, what’s wrong?”

“I’m sorry to be calling at this hour...”

“Don’t be foolish. What is it, Julia?”

“David left here drunk. I’m worried about him.”

“Where did he go?”

“I don’t know.”

“You want me to look for him?”

“Would you? He took the Alfa, and I’m just afraid he might...”

“I’ll get dressed,” Matthew said.

“Thank you, Matthew. I appreciate...”

“I’ll call you later,” Matthew said, and he hung up.

“What did she want?” Amanda asked.

Matthew took his trousers from the chair. “David’s crocked and on the town. She wants me to find him.”

“He’s not a child,” Amanda said. “Really, I think—”

“I know he’s not. But he’s Julia’s son, and she’s worried about him.”

“And that’s enough to drag you out of bed in the middle of the night?”

“I suppose it is. Julia’s our friend, Amanda. For God’s sake, David put out a fire in this house today, the least I can...”

“Yes,” Amanda said.

“So?”

Amanda did not answer. As he went out of the house, she said, “Be careful.”

He found David in the third bar he tried. The bar was a wood cabin set some fifty feet off the state highway between Lake Abundance and Talmadge. A few dozen automobiles were parked in the gravel parking lot. A neon sign smothered with moths blinked in the summer night, advertising the name of the place, and the single legend DANCING. A cocktail glass fizzing with bubbles decorated one corner of the sign. From within the roadhouse, Matthew could hear a jukebox oozing a Frank Sinatra tune. He opened the door and stepped into the smoky room. There were booths on one side of the table, and a long bar on the other side, stretching from just inside the entrance door to the far wall, which held, in sequence, the door to the kitchen, a telephone booth, the ladies’ room, and the men’s room. David was sitting on a stool close to the entrance door. Matthew climbed onto the stool next to his.

“Hi,” Matthew said.

David turned and studied Matthew with the careful scrutiny of a man who is unwilling to commit himself.

“Ain’t nothing lasts from here to eternity,” he said.

“Maybe not,” Matthew answered.

“No maybes about it,” David said, and he nodded his head exaggeratedly. “Nothing. The world is ephemeral.”

“Listen, how would you like to go home?” Matthew said.

“What for?”

“Your mother’s worried about you.”

“Oh, yeah?” David began laughing. “She’s too late. She should’ve worried about me a long time ago.”

“Yeah, well come on, finish your drink and—”

“Listen, go take a walk, Matthew.”

“Let’s take a walk together.”

“No, listen, you go take a walk all by yourself. I’m pretty happy right where I am. Go on, go take a walk.”

“No, I’ll stay with you!”

“I don’t trust guys with mustaches.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t. You need a shave.” David paused. “That’s just what he said to me. ‘You need a haircut, Regan. And shine those shoes.’”

“Who said that?”

“A friend of mine,” David answered. “Long time ago. Nineteen... forty-three?” He opened his eyes wide in amazement. “You know that’s ten years ago? You know that?”

“That’s right.” Matthew signaled the bartender and said, “A bourbon on the rocks.”

“You going to join me?”

“If I can’t fight you, I might as well.”

“Mister, you can’t fight it,” David said.

“I guess not.”

“What the hell’re you agreeing with me? You don’t even know what I’m talking about, and you’re agreeing.”

“All right, what is it you can’t fight?”

“The pattern, the design.”

The bartender brought Matthew’s drink, and he picked it up.

“Cheers,” David said.

“Cheers,” Matthew said, and he drank.

“That’s right, the pattern,” David said. “The same design. There ain’t nothing you can do to change it. It’s a big cycle.”

“That’s right,” Matthew said.

“You’re agreeing again, and you still don’t know what the hell I mean.”

“You mean life is a cycle, don’t you? There’s a certain pattern to it, an over-all design.”

“That’s right,” David said, nodding.

“And it’s difficult to break away from the pattern.”

“Not difficult, impossible. Because nothing lasts.”

“Some things last.”

“Nothing. Listen, did she last, huh?”

“Did who last?”

“What’s her name? You know.”

“No, I don’t know.”

“Gillian,” David said. “That’s right. Gillian.”

“I knew a Gillian once.”

“There’s only one Gillian in the world, so it must have been her. Gillian Burke. That the one?”

“That’s the one,” Matthew said.

“Right! Nothing lasts, and the world is rotten.”

“That’s a pretty cynical attitude, David.”

“Hey, how come you know my name?”

“We’ve met before,” Matthew said, and he smiled.

David leaned closer to him. “Oh, yeah. That’s right. Why don’t you shave off that mustache? Jesus!”

“My wife likes it,” Matthew said.

“You married? Oh, yeah, Amanda, that’s right. Beautiful girl. Congratulations.”

“Thank you.”

“That’s who makes the pattern,” David said. “Girls. Women.”

“I guess so.”

“Who else gives birth to babies, huh? That’s what does it, right? Putting people on earth, right? So that’s where it starts.”

“Right,” Matthew said.

“So why should it also finish it?”

“I don’t think I follow you.”

“Why do they kill us?”

“I’m not sure they do.”

“No? Oh, no?” David’s voice lowered menacingly. “Then who killed him, huh? Who was it killed him, huh? If it wasn’t her, who was it, then? Would you mind telling me?”

“I don’t know,” Matthew said.

“Have another drink.”

“No, I think I’ll—”

“Bartender, bring my friend here another whatever-the-hell-it-is.”

“Bourbon?” the bartender said. “One bourbon, right.”

“Okay,” Matthew answered, and he shrugged.

“And another brandy on the rocks,” David said. “You know who killed him?”

“Who?”

“She did. You know where she went?”

“Where?”

“Bidili. In the Bahamas.”

“Bimini, you mean.”

“I said Bidili, diddle I?” David said, and burst out laughing. “That’s a joke. I set you up for that one. Where’s my drink?” He looked at the bar and said, “Oh, there you are, you little bastard.” He picked up the glass. “Left me dead, went off to Bimini. Now that’s an example. I was born with her.”

“Who?”

“Gillian. Born. Absolutely. No question about it. And then what? She killed me. That’s the cycle, buddy. You’re born, and you die.”

“That’s for sure,” Matthew said.

“Cheers. Did I say cheers already?”

“No.”

“Well, cheers.” Both men drank from their fresh drinks. “Now that’s what’s funny about it, Matthew. It’s funny that the same thing that gives life could also kill. I think that’s pretty funny.”

“I don’t think it’s funny at all,” Matthew said.

“No?” David looked surprised. “Well, I think it’s pretty mystifying.”

Matthew drained his glass and said, “Women are only women, David. There’s nothing mystifying about that.”

“I think having a baby is very mystifying. Can you have a baby?”

“No.”

“Neither can I.” David shrugged. “That’s the goddamn mystery of the century, ain’t it? I think it’s pretty spooky, to tell the truth.”

“Well, yes, but—”

“Now, look, I’m going to tell you something. There’s life and death right there, buddy. In one person. It’s like she eats her young, I’m telling you. Life and death.”

“You sound as if you don’t like women,” Matthew said.

“I love women.”

“Then why are you saying they’re murderers?”

“Who’s saying that? I’m saying that’s life, brother, life. Look, have another drink, will you?”

“All right,” Matthew said. He signaled the bartender and pointed to his empty glass.

“Give and take, Jekyll and Hyde, that’s life,” David said. “A man is one thing. Period. But a woman is a lot of things, and that’s why she’s so mystifying.”

“A woman is a woman,” Matthew said emphatically. “That’s one thing. A woman. And it ain’t... it isn’t mystifying at all. A woman. Period.”

“Right. But she’s a lot of things.”

“No.”

“Yes. Look, she’s a daughter, right?”

“Well, she’s got to be a daughter,” Matthew said. “She can’t be a son.”

“That’s right. That’s right, Matthew! And then when she grows up, what does she do?”

“What does she do?”

“She turns around and becomes a mother.”

“Well, that’s only natural.”

“Sure, but it says what I’m trying to say.”

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

“I’m trying to say there’s the whole secret of life.”

“Listen, I don’t see the secret,” Matthew said.

“Are you a father?”

“Sure, I am.”

“Were you a son?”

“Sure, I was.”

“Okay.”

David nodded and fell silent, as if he had proved his point. He picked up his glass and sipped at it. The silence lengthened.

“Okay what?” Matthew said.

“That’s life,” David said. “Life is a pattern.”

“Life is a fountain,” Matthew said, and he burst out laughing.

“Come on, be serious,” David said. “You think God is a man?”

“Absolutely,” Matthew said.

“Sure, He would have to be,” David said, and nodded solemnly.

“But love is a woman,” Matthew said, equally as solemn. “And life is love. They’re the love givers, don’t you ever forget that, David. It’s the women who give the love. It’s the women who invented it.”

“One woman,” David said.

“Eve.”

“No. Gillian.”

“More than one woman,” Matthew said. “All women.”

“Look, if you took all the women in the world—”

“Listen,” Matthew said, laughing, “if you laid all the Radcliffe girls end to end, I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“Come on, be serious,” David said.

“I’m serious. All women,” Matthew said. “What does a man need, David, can you tell me that?” He did not wait for David’s answer. “Love,” he said. “He needs a mother, and a wife, and a daughter. For love. Because they give love. They’re the love bringers.”

“Mothers,” David said, and he pulled a sour face.

“Listen, you need a mother.”

“Only until you grow up,” David said.

“And that’s the secret,” Matthew said.

“What’s the secret?”

“Love.”

“The secret is that women are a secret, that’s the secret.”

“The secret is love,” Matthew insisted.

“Listen, would you like to pick up some girls?” David asked.

“Can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I’m an honorable man.”

“So?”

“Married.”

“So?”

“Couldn’t do that to Amanda.”

“Matthew,” David said sincerely, clapping him on the shoulder, “Matthew, drop your scruples.”

“Nope. Can’t do it.”

“Matthew, go home then.”

“Got to take you back.”

“I’m going to pick up a lady.”

“Your mother’s worried.”

“Tell her to go to... go on, Matthew, go home and tell her not to worry. Tell her I can take care of myself and her silly automobile, go ahead, Matthew.”

“Nope.”

“Aw, come on, Matthew, be a good guy.”

“You want to crash into a pole, huh?”

“Nossir.”

“Okay. Come on. I’ll follow you home in my car and see that nothing happens to you.”

“That’s awfully decent of you, Matthew,” David said.

“Don’t mention it.”

“You’re an awfully decent guy, Matthew.”

They paid the bartender and staggered away from the bar. Outside, David said, “What’s the sense, anyway? Picking up a girl. What’s the sense? You know how many girls I’ve picked up in the last few years?”

“How many?”

“A million.”

“That’s a lot of girls,” Matthew said.

“That sure is a lot of girls, Matthew. And you know something, Matthew? If you put all those girls together, you get one woman, just one single woman.”

“That’s a very shrewd observation, David.”

“Thank you. Will you follow me, or shall I follow you?”

“We’ll follow each other,” Matthew said, and he giggled.

“No, no,” David said. “After you.” He executed a low bow.

“No, no,” Matthew said.

“I’ll choose you,” David said. “What do you take? Odds or evens?”

“Odds,” Matthew said. He clenched his fist.

“Evens,” David said.

They faced each other in the darkness of the parking lot, their fists clenched, watching each other shrewdly, staggering a bit.

“Once, twice, three, shoot!” Matthew said. He threw out his hand just as David threw out his.

“I can’t see the fingers,” David said.

“It’s mine,” Matthew said. “Ready? Once, twice, three, shoot!” He looked at the extended fingers. “Yours. Ready? Once, twice, three, shoot!” He looked again at the fingers. “What did I have? Odds or evens?”

“Who knows? Listen, Matthew, I’ll follow you, okay?”

“Good. That settles it.”

“Good night, Matthew.”

“Good night, David. Give my love, okay?”

“Okay.”

“That’s the secret,” Matthew said, and he walked into the night.

David watched him a moment, and then waved into the darkness and walked to the Alfa. Love, he thought. That’s no secret at all.

“Are you drunk?” Amanda asked.

“Who? Who, me?” Matthew said.

“Oh, Matthew, how did you manage to...?”

“Nobody’s drank,” he said, “so shhh, shhh, shhhh, you’ll wake the kiddies.”

“Did you find David?”

“I found David.”

“Did you take him home?”

“No. I left him to wallow in sin and corruption.”

“Matthew, Julia asked you to take him home.”

“I took him home. I took him home.”

“What are you doing there?”

“I’m trying to take off my pants, that’s what I’m doing. What does it look like I’m doing?”

“Let me help you,” Amanda said. She got out of bed and walked to where he was hopping on one foot.

“Hey, leggo,” he said.

“Matthew, stop being so silly. I hate it when you’re drunk.”

“So who’s drunk?”

“You are.”

“I can certainly lower my own zipper.”

“Move your hand.”

“Amanda, do you love me?” he asked seriously.

“Yes. Sit down, Matthew, I’ll take off your shoes.”

“I want to die with my boots on,” he said, and threw himself across the bed.

“Was David as drunk as you are?”

“He was as sober as I am,” Matthew said with dignity.

“Who drove?”

“We both drove.”

“Where did you find him?”

“In a bar.”

“Which bar?”

“Who knows? The Bar X.”

“Matthew!”

“The Bar Sinister, who knows?” Matthew said, and he laughed. “Iron bars do not a prism make.” He laughed again.

Amanda sighed and went to the closet with his trousers. Carefully, she folded them over a hanger. When she turned back to the bed, Matthew was nearly asleep. She went to the bed and took off his socks. Struggling with his long legs, she finally got him under the covers.

“The big brass bed,” Matthew mumbled.

“What?”

“Love,” he mumbled and rolled over, suddenly opening his eyes. “Hey, he knows Gillian.”

“Matthew, will you please...?”

“David knows Gillian,” he said firmly, nodding.

Amanda looked at him in silence for a moment. Then she said, “Where is she?”

“Didn’t say.”

“Is she in New York?”

“Didn’t say.”

“Well, Matthew, why didn’t you ask him?”

“Because she killed the poor bastard.”

“What?”

“Oh, Amanda, would you please shut up?”

“I wonder where she is,” Amanda said thoughtfully.

“Asleep, probably, which is... where... any... sensible...” and his voice trailed off.

I wonder where she is, Amanda thought, and a sudden pang touched her. She looked at Matthew asleep on the bed, his arm twisted around the pillow. She stood by the bed in her nightgown, and she thought of Gillian, and wondered again where she was, and felt suddenly empty, and thought, You have everything, Amanda, you have a husband and two children and a beautiful house, you have everything. And remembered suddenly a day when her mother had asked her, “Do you have the talent, Amanda?”

She got into bed beside Matthew and lay staring into the darkness for a long time before sleep finally claimed her.

She had heard the Alfa pull into the driveway, had heard her son slamming the door of the car, and then swearing as he stumbled over something in the darkness. She had listened to his noisy progress to the front door, heard him fumbling with his key until he realized the door was unlocked, and then heard more swearing as he made his way to his room. She lay in bed now with the night noises all around her, the sound of the lake, and the sound of a thousand crickets, and she thought, I shouldn’t have told him, it does not pay to tell them, I shouldn’t have told him.

She had told Arthur in the bedroom of the Talmadge house as they were dressing to go out. She had been sitting before the mirror in her slip when Arthur came in from the bathroom, wearing a robe and drying his head with a towel. She watched him in the mirror as she brushed her hair, counting the strokes, thirty-one, thirty-two, watching Arthur as he hummed and rubbed his head briskly, thirty-three, thirty-four, a smile on his face, throwing the towel onto the bed, turning to look at Julia. She felt a sudden chill in that room. She suddenly knew what was coming. Thirty-six, she put down the brush.

Arthur watched her with his head cocked to one side, humming. She picked up her bottle of nail polish, unscrewed the top, wiped the excess polish on the lip of the bottle, and applied the brush to her left thumb.

“How does it feel to be home?” Arthur asked.

“Wonderful,” she answered.

Her hand was trembling. She smeared polish onto her cuticle, wiped it off with a piece of cotton, and then picked up the brush again. She had no reason to believe this would turn into anything more than a normal discussion, and yet she sensed that it would. And sensing it, perhaps willed it. Or perhaps willing it, only then assumed she sensed something out of the ordinary. If only it were over and done with, she thought. If only the duplicity were finished. She should not have come back at all. The boy, the boy, David, ah yes, a mother cannot simply vanish. She sighed and concentrated on her nails, steadily applying the blood-red polish in a smooth even coat.

Arthur walked to the dressing table. He watched her in the mirror.

“You smell good,” he said. “I forgot what you smelled like. I’d know you were back in the house again, Julia, if only by the scent of your perfume and cosmetics. Even if I couldn’t see you. Even if I couldn’t touch you.” He raised his hands and put them on her naked shoulders, lightly, gently.

“Don’t.”

He did not answer. He met her eyes in the mirror. She lowered them quickly.

“I’m polishing my nails. I don’t want to smear them.”

He did not remove his hands from her shoulders. She ignored him studiously, but she could feel the weight of his hands on her, even though he exerted no pressure, even though they rested there so lightly, she could feel their weight. She concentrated on her nails, refusing to meet his eyes in the mirror, refusing to acknowledge the weight of his hands on her shoulders. He stood behind her silently, unmoving, as if challenging her to reject him, as if waiting silently and stiffly for her to say “Don’t!” once more.

“Aren’t you going to dress?” she asked casually.

“It’s only seven-thirty,” Arthur said. “We’re not due for an hour.”

“Have you shaved already?”

“Yes.”

“Still, don’t you think...”

“I can be ready in five minutes.”

“It’ll take me much longer than that.”

“I’ve seen you dress very quickly when you wanted to,” Arthur said. His hands were still on her shoulders.

“Yes, but this is the first time I’ve seen the McGregors in a year. I think I should—”

“We have plenty of time,” Arthur said. “In fact, Julia, I don’t even know why we’re going.”

“They’re our friends,” Julia said.

“Yes, I know that.”

“And I haven’t seen them since—”

“Yes, and you haven’t seen me since last Christmas.”

“That’s right.”

“You’ve been home for a week, Julia.”

The hand holding the brush had begun trembling again. She did not answer him. She held out her painted hand and looked at the finger tips.

“Aren’t you glad to be home, Julia?”

“Why, Arthur, of course I am.”

“Aren’t you glad to see me?”

“I’m delighted to see you, Arthur.”

She turned her shoulders slightly, trying to dislodge his hands without seeming to. But his hands remained where they were, following the motion of her shoulders, and she said, “Please, Arthur.”

“What the hell is wrong, Julia?”

“I’m trying to do my nails.”

“I’m not talking about your nails. I want to know what’s wrong. I’m your husband, Julia. We’ve been apart since—”

“Arthur,” she said, and this time she shrugged his hands away with a very definite forceful shrug. “There are certain natural female functions over which I have no—”

“You’ve been home for a week, Julia. I may be a poor mathematician, but you’ve been home for a full week.”

“That’s right,” she said calmly.

“That’s right, Julia.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

She thought for an instant how stupid they both sounded, and she fought for control of the silence that had descended on the room, and she knew that the next words had to be hers, that the conversation had moved to an impasse, and she wondered suddenly why he was forcing the issue. She turned slowly on the dressing stool.

Slowly, her words evenly spaced, she said, “What is it you want, Arthur?” as if she were delivering a slap.

He did not answer, and she respected his silence. There was a strength in his silence and the set of his jaw. She respected him, but she would not let it go.

“Do you want me to take off my clothes, Arthur?”

He still would not answer.

“Well, I’m sorry,” she said, and she turned back to the mirror and picked up an emery board.

“All right, tell me,” Arthur said.

“We’re going to be late. I hate walking into a—”

“The hell with the goddamn dinner party, Julia! Tell me.”

“Tell you what, Arthur? Just what do you want me to tell you?”

“What happened in Aquila?”

“Nothing.”

“Then what happened in Rome?”

“Nothing.”

“Then where did it happen, Julia?”

“Where did what happen?” She turned on the stool angrily, her eyes flashing, furious because he had guessed, and wanting him to know, yet enraged because he already knew, and refusing to tell him, and feeling hopelessly embroiled in a stupid situation that he alone had provoked. “Just what do you imagine happened?” She looked up into his face defiantly.

“I... I don’t know,” Arthur said hesitantly.

“Then stop accusing me!” She stood up suddenly and walked to the closet. Angrily, she pulled a dress from one of the hangers.

“I... I wasn’t accusing you, Julia. I simply felt—”

“You simply felt that because I didn’t want—”

“Julia, Julia...”

“I suppose that whenever you get the damn—”

“No, but, Julia...”

“Then let it go, damn it!” She turned on him, the dress in one hand, her eyes blazing, and she saw the sudden embarrassment on his face. He’s going to back down, she thought. He only wanted assurance. He only wanted to know I still love him. Tell him, she thought. Tell him you love him. Tell him you want him. Tell him.

Her eyes narrowed.

“Yes,” she said. “It happened in Rome.”

He didn’t answer for a moment. He looked at her, puzzled, and he shook his head slightly, not understanding, or not willing to understand.

“In Rome,” she repeated.

“What are you...?”

“With an Italian soldier.”

“Don’t, Julia.” He turned away.

“Whom I loved,” she said.

“Don’t.”

“Whom I still love.”

“Don’t.”

“Who’s waiting for me to—”

He turned swiftly and sharply, like a prisoner who has withstood the flailing of his torturer for too long, who regardless of consequence would proclaim his manhood, proclaim his humanity, state that there is still dignity here in this destroyed heap of flesh, he turned swiftly and sharply and said, “Don’t!” again, like a defiant whimper, and lashed out at her with his right hand, slapping her face.

She did not raise her hand to block the blow. She did not touch her stinging face after the blow was delivered. She stared at him in the silence of the room, and she said, “Yes.”

Arthur sighed. His hand dropped slowly.

“Yes, I deserved that,” she said.

The room was silent.

“But it doesn’t change anything,” she said. “It’s too late to change anything,” and she told it all then, told everything while he sat foolishly on her dressing-table stool with his head bent, and his hands clasped and hanging between his knees, almost touching the floor, told him all of it, while he sat listening and not listening, told him what had happened and what was yet to happen, while he listened soundlessly with his eyes squeezed shut.

“I’m going back to Rome as soon as the war is over,” she said.

She paused.

“I’m taking David with me,” she said.

“Yes, leave nothing,” he answered. “Take everything, and leave nothing. Total up seventeen years of marriage with a zero.”

“I’m sorry. A woman needs her children.”

“Yes, certainly. And that does it. I’m sorry. That explains everything. I’m sorry. Forgive me for killing you. This is what separates men from animals. The two words ‘I’m sorry.’ This is what gives men the nobility our novelists are always trying to express, the wonderful nobility of man, I’m sorry. Yes, be very sorry, Julia. You should be.”

She said nothing.

“I wish I could curse you. I wish I could say...” He shook his head. “You don’t seem like a slut,” he said almost to himself. He wiped his hand over his eyes, and then passed the hand downward over his face, disguising the action. He was silent for a very long time. Then he lifted his head, and looked directly into her eyes, and very quietly said, “Stay.”

She did not answer.

“Stay, Julia. If not for me, then for—”

“No.”

“—your son.”

“My child,” she said.

“David,” he answered. “Your son.”

“I’m going back to Rome. I have to. You know I have to.”

“And me? What about me, Julia?”

“I... I can’t... I can’t think about that, Arthur.”

“No, don’t think about it. Do you know what will happen to me, Julia?” He paused. “I’ll die.”

“No.”

“Yes, Julia. I swear to you, Julia. I’ll die, or I’ll kill myself, I can’t—”

“Please,” she said. “Please don’t make this any harder than—”

“Please? Please? Who? Who is pleading? How can you look at a corpse and say, ‘Please, please, don’t let me realize I killed you’? What do you want, Julia? A clean conscience besides?”

He did not bother to wipe at his eyes again. The tears ran down his face. He sniffed and said, “No, don’t ask me for that, Julia. Not absolution. You’re taking my life, and that’s enough.”

“I won’t ask you for anything,” she said. “And you won’t do anything foolish, either.”

“It won’t be foolish, Julia. You killed me when you said, ‘Yes, it happened in Rome.’ That was death. The rest is only ritual.” He sniffed and said, “I haven’t cried in all the time we’ve been married, have I?”

“No,” she said.

He nodded. “Because I wanted your respect.” He sniffed. “I’m sorry.” He searched for a handkerchief in the pocket of his robe, found none. “Well,” he said. He gave a curious shrug. “Well, you’ll have the boy.”

“Thank you, Arthur.”

“Yes.” He nodded. “You’ll have the boy.”

There was something more in his words, unspoken, yet how could she have really known, there was so much confusion that day. “You’ll have the boy” sounded like a promise, not a threat, and yet he had said, “I’ll die, or I’ll kill myself.” Still, how could she have known? And at the lake, the look in his eyes, did she know then, did she know what he was about to do in that rowboat, did she even suspect? She tried to remember, but that day too was confused in her memory. Perhaps she had known that day at Lake Abundance when the shutter clicked and the boat edged away from the dock, known she was sending her husband to his death, and let him go because this was the only thing left to him. Perhaps she didn’t stop him because she had taken everything else, robbed him of everything else, and now she couldn’t steal from him the one thing left, the one thing he could still do with a measure of dignity and pride. Perhaps she didn’t stop him because she wasn’t that big a bitch yet.

She listened to David snoring in the room next door, listened to the impersonal lake outside lapping at the dock pilings. The night was so still.

She lay alone in the night.

Alone.

The letter had come a few days before Memorial Day in 1943. Her son was in a naval prison, and she was waiting for the war to end, and the letter came in its hesitant Italian hand. She had turned it over to look at the flap, and had seen the name Francesca Cristo, his sister. Hastily, she had ripped open the envelope. The letter spoke of Renato, the letter told what had happened during an Allied bombing attack on the seaplane base at Lido di Roma, fifteen miles southwest of Rome.

“Mi dispiace che tocca a me di dirtelo, sorella mia, ma egli é morto.”

I am sorry that it falls on me to have to tell you, my sister, but he is dead.

It was a lovely day, the kind of day David appreciated. Standing by the window in his office, he looked down the twelve floors to the street, saw newspapers sweeping along the gutters on Madison Avenue, the only falling leaves south of Central Park, saw topcoats whipping about the legs of people who rushed into the wind with their heads ducked. There was a pace to the city now that fall was here. Summer died slowly, gins-and-tonics dulled the senses, languid winds lulled the flesh, but in the fall something changed. He smiled and turned away from the window. The New York Times, Herald Tribune, News, and Mirror were stacked on his desk. He glanced at the headlines only cursorily, PRESIDENT INVOKES TAFT ACT IN MOVE TO END PIER STRIKE; SEE PIER STRIKE END BY T-H BAN, and then turned to the television sections and read the reviews of last night’s show. Not too bad. Gould and Crosby had liked it, even if...

“David?”

He looked up. “Yes, Martha?”

“You’ve got an appointment at ten with Mr. Harrigan. You haven’t forgotten that, have you?”

“No, I haven’t...”

“Good. On those calls...”

“Yes, how’d you make out with MCA?”

“We really did leave that name off the crawl, David.”

“How’d that happen?”

“I’m checking it now.”

“Well, there isn’t much we can do about it, anyway.”

“No, but I can send them the cockroach letter.”

“Okay, what about that judge?”

“David, he’s merely a municipal court judge, you know that, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Do you think he’ll be okay?”

“Sure, he’s only window dressing, anyway. It’s a strong enough show without him.”

“Should we offer him money?”

“Why not?”

“It might offend him.”

“Not if we offer enough.”

“Well, whatever you say,” Martha said dubiously. “Let me see. Was there anything else?”

“Benton and Bowles.”

“Oh, yes. They want to consider the package a little longer, David. They have the feeling a live show would be better for this particular product.”

“What’s live or filmed got to do with it, would you mind telling me?”

“I’m only repeating what they—”

“Get me MacAllister. No, never mind, it’s almost ten. Listen, I don’t want to spend more than a half hour with this Harrigan. Come in at ten-thirty and remind me of a meeting, will you?”

“There is a meeting at eleven,” Martha said. “In Mr. Sonderman’s office. And you’ve got a screening this afternoon at four. You haven’t forgotten that, have you?”

“And I’d hoped to catch an early train!”

“Are you going up to Talmadge this weekend?”

“Yep. It’s my birthday.”

“No! When’s your birthday? The fourteenth is your birthday.”

“The fourth, Martha. Sunday.”

“Oh, for hell’s sake... Oh, that’s awful. Really, David, that’s awful. Why didn’t you say something?”

“I took a full page in Variety. You mean you didn’t see it?”

“Now what shall I do?” Martha said. “I haven’t anything to give you. I thought it was the fourteenth.”

“You can give me a great big kiss,” David said.

“All right,” Martha answered, smiling. “Your place or mine?”

“Mine, I guess.”

“Now or later?”

“Later. I think I heard someone outside.”

“Mr. Harrigan, probably. Shall I send him right in?”

“Just give me a few minutes to clear my desk.”

“Okay. Happy birthday, stinker. You could have said something.”

She walked out of the office, and he watched her, smiling, thinking how much he liked her and how fortunate he was to have rescued her from the typing pool. Martha Wilkins was a woman in her early thirties, married to an architect, a plain girl who wore her simplicity with such distinction that she created an impression of offbeat glamour. Her dark hair was straight and long in a time when most other women were clipping off their locks with wild boyish abandon. She never wore lipstick to the office, and some of the Sonderman wags claimed she kept her mouth cosmetics-free in order to facilitate the grabbing of a quick kiss by the water cooler. David had never tested the validity of this theory — and he never would. Their working relationship was too good, a quick give-and-take, which he found rare, an understanding, a communication that bordered on linguistic and mental shorthand. The cockroach letter, he thought, and then smiled as he remembered the joke that had provoked the Regan-Wilkins label.

The joke involved a man who was flying on a major airline when a cockroach crawled up the side of his seat and onto his hand. The man indignantly sent a letter to the airline the moment he landed in San Francisco. A few days later, he received a letter from the president of the firm, assuring him that the pilot and copilot on that particular flight had been suspended pending a full investigation, that the stewardesses had been fired without further ado, and that the caterers who provided food for the airline had been notified that their contract would not be renewed when it expired.

“We are distressed about that cockroach, sir,” the letter went on. “It is the first one ever reported in the long history of our company. We are doing everything in our power to see that responsible and effective action in the future prevents any such vermin from being carried aboard our airplanes or remaining there. I sincerely hope you will overlook whatever embarrassment or discomfort the incident may have caused you, and continue to fly with us in safety whenever your needs so dictate. Sincerely yours, J. Abernathy Michaelson, President.”

The passenger, naturally, was very pleased when he finished reading the letter from the president of the airline. Beaming, he figured he had wrongly judged that fine company, and he was determined to fly with no one else in the future. But as he was putting the president’s letter back into the envelope, a small slip of paper fluttered to the floor. He picked it up. It was a memorandum from the president, obviously intended for his secretary. It read: SEND THIS SON OF A BITCH THE COCKROACH LETTER.

David and Martha had heard the story together and roared convulsively when the punch line was delivered. And from that day on, any conciliatory letter, any letter of placation or apology, any letter designed to smooth the ruffled feathers of anyone Out There, was immediately referred to by both of them as The Cockroach Letter. MCA, who had complained about last night’s credit crawl, would receive a cockroach letter in the morning. David smiled again. Your place or mine? he thought. Now or later? Martha Wilkins. He liked her.

A knock sounded on his door.

“Come in,” he said.

Martha entered first, swinging the door wide.

“Mr. Harrigan is here, sir,” she said.

“Thank you, Martha,” David answered, and he rose and walked around his desk, extending his hand to the bulky man who entered the office.

“Mr. Regan?” the man said, taking his hand.

“Yes, sir. How do you do?”

“Fine, thank you.”

Martha winked at David as she went out of the office. David indicated a chair alongside his desk, and Harrigan sat in it. He was a heavy-set man in his middle fifties with gray hair and dark-blue eyes. He wore a pencil-stripe suit, double-breasted, and he carried a dark-gray topcoat over his arm, a black Homburg in his left hand. He sat as soon as the chair was offered, pulling his trousers up slightly as he bent to sit, preserving the creases. He was from California, and his voice showed it.

“I hope you had a nice trip,” David said.

“I did,” Harrigan answered.

“Did you fly in?”

“I don’t trust airplanes,” Harrigan said. “I took the train.”

“That’s a long trip.”

“Yes, it is.”

“What brings you to New York, Mr. Harrigan?”

Harrigan looked surprised. He put his Homburg down. “You,” he said.

“Me?”

“At least I understand you’re the man who produces our show,” Harrigan said.

“Yes, I am,” David answered, puzzled.

He had received a call from the advertising agency the day before, telling him that Mr. Harrigan would be in New York and would like to see David, and would David please extend every courtesy to him since Harrigan did represent the company who sponsored the Thursday-night hour-long dramatic show. David had no idea what sort of courtesies were expected of him. In some cases, “every courtesy” meant dinner, tickets to a show, and a little discreet female companionship. But the agency had been somewhat vague about Harrigan’s visit, and now it seemed he had come to New York specifically to see David, and this puzzled him, and also worried him a bit. The show they packaged for Thursday-night viewing was a big one. It had been sponsored by Harrigan’s firm ever since it went on the air the season before. David produced the show, and the ratings were high, and he’d thought the sponsor was pleased with what he was doing. But if that was the case, why would Harrigan... now, wait a minute, he told himself. Let’s not push the panic button. He offered Harrigan a cigarette.

“Thank you,” Harrigan said. “I don’t smoke.”

“Mind if I do?”

“It’s your funeral.”

David lighted a cigarette, mulling over Harrigan’s last words, beginning to get even more worried. “You said you’d come to New York to see me, Mr. Harrigan?”

“Yes. About our show.”

“We’ve been getting some very high ratings,” David said casually. “Last night, we even outpulled—”

“Yes, the ratings are fine,” Harrigan said. “We’re very pleased.”

David smiled a trifle uneasily. If the ratings pleased Harrigan, then what was it that bothered him? He took a deep breath and said, “I think the quality of the show, as a whole—”

“Well, quality is a very nice thing to have,” Harrigan said, “but not unless it sells tickets.”

“It’s selling tickets for you people,” David said, grinning. “I understand sales are up some fifteen per cent since the show went—”

“Yes, that’s true. And we want to keep selling tickets. I’ve heard a theory about television shows, Mr. Regan. I’ve heard that when a show is too good, when the people are too absorbed in what’s happening on that screen, they resent the intrusion of the sponsor’s message, actually build up a resistance to the product. This theory holds that the duller the show is, the better it is for the product.”

“Well, I don’t know how valid—”

“Naturally, we’re not interested in dull shows,” Harrigan said. “It’s the business of the advertising agency we hire to make our commercials interesting enough to compete with the liveliest dramatic presentation.”

“And they’ve been doing a fine job,” David said, figuring a plug for the ad agency wouldn’t hurt at all.

“Yes, and they’re happy with the package you’re giving them, too.”

“Then I guess everyone’s happy all around,” David said, beginning to relax a little. “We’ve got a good show, with a Trendex topping—”

“Yes, and we want to stay happy,” Harrigan said. “As you know, it’s not our policy to interfere in the selection of dramatic material for the show.”

“You’ve certainly given us all the latitude—”

“Yes, we usually see only a synopsis of the script, and aside from certain very minor objections, we’ve been very tolerant of your choice of material and your manner of presentation. I think you’re a bunch of smart creative people up here at Sonderman, Mr. Regan. We are, in fact, thinking of asking you to work up another package for us.”

“That’s very kind of you, sir.”

“Yes, but that’s all in the future, and what we’ve got to talk about now is a script called ‘The Brothers.’”

“‘The Bro—’ oh, yes. That’s two weeks away, sir. Goes into rehearsal next Friday.”

“Yes, I know. I saw a synopsis of the script a little while ago, and I asked our advertising agency to get me a copy of the completed teleplay, and they sent me one last week, and that was when I decided I had better come to New York.”

“We’re getting a judge to introduce that show, you know. We think it’ll add another dimension to it, and point up the allegory.”

“Yes, that’s very interesting. It’s always good to do allegories, especially if they’re clear. And this happens to be an unusually fine script, Mr. Regan, make no mistake about it. I’d like you to get more material from this same writer in the future.”

“That’s easy enough,” David said, smiling.

“Yes, the allegory is very plain, and very fine, especially in these trying days of world tension. A wonderful script. I understand you’ve got two excellent actors for the parts.”

“We were very lucky, Mr. Harrigan. A Broadway show folded last week, and the actors—”

“Yes, and I understand you’ll be doing a chase scene right on the streets, by remote pickup, is that right?”

“That’s right, sir.”

“Yes, it sounds wonderful. A magnificent show.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“But we can’t do it, of course.”

“Sir?”

“I said we can’t do it.”

“You said...” David hesitated. He stubbed out his cigarette. “What did you say, sir?”

“Impossible, Mr. Regan. Believe me, I’ve gone over it thoroughly. I’ve even considered a rewrite, but the entire framework is based on—”

“I don’t understand,” David said. “Why can’t we do it?”

“Tickets,” Harrigan said.

“But it’s a good show. You just said—”

“Yes, but one man in the show is a lawbreaker, and the other is a policeman who actually condones his lawlessness.”

“He doesn’t do that at all,” David said. “He understands it. The whole point of the show is... is... it’s a plea for understanding. Why, even the title of the show is ‘The Brothers.’ Don’t you see what—?”

“Oh, yes, I see, Mr. Regan. And you see. But will our viewers see?”

“Of course they will.”

“We think not. We think they will associate our product with an attitude which seems to condone lawlessness.”

“That’s nonsense,” David said.

Harrigan stiffened slightly in his chair. “Yes, of course it’s nonsense. But if our product becomes associated with—”

“The possibility is extremely remote,” David said, “if not nonexistent. We’re not dealing with a bunch of boobs, Mr. Harrigan. The message is as clear as—”

“Mr. Regan, if we allow this show to be done, and if it is misunderstood, we will never sell another ticket as long as we’re in business.”

“How can anyone misunderstand it?”

“The show seems to condone murder.”

“The murder has nothing at all to do with it! If it’s the murder that bothers you, we’ll change it. We’ll—”

“To what? To another crime? How would that be any different? Mr. Regan, I have gone over this quite thoroughly, believe me.”

“Look, it’s a good show,” David said, a surprised tone in his voice. “It’s a really good show. Now look, we’ve... look, we’ve got two big stars, you couldn’t ask for bigger names, they’ll play beautifully together. Look, Mr. Harrigan, we’ve got one of the best directors in television. And those remote pickups’ll knock the viewer right on his—”

“I’m sorry, we’ll have to substitute another show for it.”

“We’ve already paid for the script,” David said in desperation. “We’ve signed contracts with the actors. The network—”

“We will honor whatever commitments you have made,” Harrigan said, “but we will not do this show.”

“What are you afraid of? The network’s continuity section has approved it already. A judge has read it and is willing to introduce it. I don’t see what you’re worried—”

“None of those people have to sell tickets, Mr. Regan.”

“Your own advertising agency approved it!”

“Yes, and I’ll be talking to them as soon as I leave this office.”

“Really, Mr. Harrigan, this is silly. With all due respect, sir, I think you’re being overly sensitive.”

“Yes, and with all due respect, I really feel the decision is ours to make, and not yours.”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t agree with you.”

“Then I suppose I shall have to talk to Mr. Sonderman himself.”

“If you think that’s...” David paused. “Why does he have to be brought in? This is my show.”

“This is his company.”

“I have full authority over any show I handle.”

“Yes, but apparently you’re refusing to exercise it.”

“You’re asking me to kill a good show! You’re telling me our viewers are morons! That they won’t understand what we’re driving at, that they’ll come away thinking we’re asking them to go out and shoot people. Well, damn it, I disagree. They will understand it, they will know what we mean, and they’ll applaud us for our stand. Look, the hell with it. Go see Curt. Let him handle it.”

“Very well. Is Mr. Sonderman in now?”

“I think so. I’ll have my secretary buzz him.” David reached for the phone.

“I’m sorry this is causing so much trouble,” Harrigan said. He glanced at his watch. “I had hoped it would be a simple matter.”

“It’s a simple matter of knowing what’s good for your product,” David said. “This would get your product talked about. It’s a good show, Mr. Harrigan!”

“Would you call Mr. Sonderman’s office, please?” Harrigan said.

David picked up the phone.

“I’m sure he will see this my way,” Harrigan said.

David hesitated.

“And while I’m in there,” Harrigan said, “I might as well discuss that new package with him.”

David buzzed Martha. “It’s a good show,” he said to Harrigan, his voice low.

“Ah, but I know it is, Mr. Regan. You misunderstand me completely.”

Martha’s voice came onto the line.

“Yes, David?” she asked.

“Martha, would you...” He paused. He looked at Harrigan.

“Yes?” Martha said.

“Nothing,” he said. “Never mind.” He put the phone gently into its cradle. He stared at his hand covering the receiver. “We’ve got a script being rewritten,” he said. “It’s about a second honeymoon. We’d planned it for three weeks from now. I suppose I can speed up the writer.”

“I suppose you can.”

“There may be casting problems. We may not be able to get a star on such short notice.”

“I’m sure you will surmount whatever problems may arise, Mr. Regan.” Harrigan rose and extended his hand. “I’m not a stupid man, Mr. Regan. I know what’s good for our company, and I know what’s bad.” He paused. “The same way you know what’s good or bad for yours.” He shook hands briefly and firmly. “Good day. I’m glad we were able to work this out.”

David nodded and walked Harrigan to the door.

“Goodbye,” he said.

Then he closed the door and walked back to the window and looked down at the street where autumn raced.

His decision annoyed him all that afternoon.

It seemed to him that he had broken faith with a great many people by agreeing to cancel the show. He had certainly broken faith with the writers and the actors, and possibly Curt, too. He tried to visualize the scene in Curt’s office, Harrigan indignantly marching down the corridor to the end of the hall, stamping into Curt’s paneled sanctuary, and stating, “I have just had a discussion with Mr. Regan about canceling our Thursday-night show two weeks hence. Mr. Regan disagrees with me. I would like you to handle the matter personally.”

What would Curt’s reaction have been?

Would he have politely but positively told Mr. Harrigan to go to hell? Would he have reminded him that Mr. Regan was a full-fledged producer with full authority over his own shows and that the final decision would have to be his alone? And would he have also told Mr. Harrigan that he, Curt Sonderman, believed in this particular script and would back Mr. Regan all the way on whatever decision he finally made?

Sure, he would.

The president of Sonderman Enterprises, Inc., would have listened to Harrigan and nodded his fat head and thought about the new package deal being dangled before his eyes, and then he would have gone out to shoot his own grandmother if Harrigan suggested it. And then Martha would have buzzed David and said very quietly, “Mr. Sonderman wants to see you,” and David would have gone down that long hall and into the paneled office, and had his ear chewed off about client-producer relationships and the importance of maintaining a cordial liaison with the sponsor. But would that have been the end of it? Possibly, and possibly not.

He had always thought the stories about Madison Avenue head-rolling and back-stabbing were slightly exaggerated until he found himself in a spacious corner office at Sonderman Enterprises, Inc., on Madison Avenue, until he found the word PRODUCER discreetly lettered in gold on his door, and then suddenly knew that if success rarely arrived overnight, it almost always departed that way. Too many familiar faces, too many men and women vanished from the scene, if not the industry, as soon as they committed the single error too many. Antagonizing Harrigan would have been a monumental error. For all David knew, even his initial reluctance to cancel might still bring repercussions. No, defending a single unimportant — well, it was important to somebody, it was important to the man who’d written it, and the director who’d pulled it apart line by line, and the actors who were already studying their parts — still, defending a single unimportant show in a successful continuing series would have been taking the silliest sort of risk. Yes, he had done the right thing.

Then why did he feel so lousy?

“What time is that screening?” he asked Martha.

“Four o’clock.”

“It’s almost that now. Why didn’t you give me a warning? I’ve still got a dozen calls to make.”

“I told you this morning, David.”

“How am I supposed to remember something you told me this—”

“Hey, take it easy, birthday boy. This is me, Martha Washington. Tony’s on the line. Wants to know whether it’s true the show has been canceled.”

“Tell him yes, the show has been canceled.”

“It was a good show, David.”

“Are you starting on me, too?”

“I only said—”

“I heard what you said. Where’s the screening?”

“In 1204.”

“I’ll be there if you need me.”

“All right. Do you want me to make those calls for you?”

“I’ll handle them myself when I get back. You’ve got a run.”

“What?” Martha glanced at her nylons. “Oh, damn it,” she said, “goddamn it,” and she seemed on the verge of tears over something as simple as a run in her stocking.

The agent’s name was Ed Goff. He was waiting in room 1204 when David got there. He rose and extended his hand.

“Goff,” he said. “I think we’ve spoken on the phone.”

“How do you do?” David said. “What have you got for me?”

“A pilot. We thought Sonderman, Inc., might be interested in handling it for us. It’s pretty good, if I say so myself.”

“Why bring it to us? If you’ve already laid out thirty to forty grand to shoot a pilot—”

“No, no, nothing like that. This was part of a deal for an anthology. My clients—”

“Who?”

“Ralph Mordkin and Dave Katz. You know them?”

“I’ve heard of them.”

“Sure, well they produced five out of thirty-nine shows for this anthology. Filmed stuff, you understand. They thought this particular one would make a good series. So we added titles and some theme music and we’re showing it as a pilot. I think you’ll like it. It’s pretty good, if I say so myself.”

“You already said so yourself.”

“What?” Goff blinked. “Oh, yeah.”

“What kind of a show is it?”

“Private eye.”

“Another ‘Man Against Crime’?”

“Yeah, exactly like it, only different. This is pretty good if I—” Goff cut himself short. “Why don’t we run it, huh? You can see for yourself.”

“What kind of deal did you have in mind, Goff?”

“Well, we can talk about that after we see the show, huh?”

“Let’s talk now, and maybe save a half hour of each other’s time.”

“You had a rough day, Mr. Regan?”

“Are you my doctor, Mr. Goff?”

“No, but I want a fair showing. If you’re not feeling so hot, let’s call it off until another time.”

“I’m feeling hot enough,” David said. “I asked what kind of deal you had in mind.”

“Fifty-fifty?” Goff asked tentatively.

“We wouldn’t consider anything less than sixty-forty. If it’s good. If it’s what it sounds like, our cut would have to be even—”

“What do you mean, what it sounds like? I haven’t even given you the title of the thing. How do you know what it sounds like?”

“You said it was private eye, didn’t you?”

“So what’s wrong with that?”

“Television needs another private eye like a hole in the head. This is 1953, Goff. Private eyes are on their way out. Television’s growing up.”

“Look, take a peek at it, will you? It’s a good show. Quality.”

“Private eyes are trash.”

“Yeah, but this is quality trash. Look, can we run it?”

“All right, let’s run it,” David said.

They turned out the lights and sat in the leather-upholstered chairs facing the mock television set at the front of the screening room. The movie projector inside the set began to whir, and the film flashed onto the fake television tube, just the way it would be seen in a viewer’s living room. David made himself comfortable. The leader flashed six, five, four, three, two, one onto the screen. The theme music started.

David recognized the legs. He told himself it was impossible to recognize a person by her legs alone, but he knew those legs in an instant, knew them the moment they flashed onto the screen, the moment the camera panned up that long sweeping Beverly Hills staircase to catch the girl’s legs on the first landing, knew instantly from the walk, knew from the way one foot followed the other, the narrowness of ankle, the curve of her calf, even the thighs beneath the black skirt, he knew those legs. He watched the girl come down the steps, watched her legs as if they provided all the suspense, a suspense more exciting than the quality trash Mordkin and Katz, Kin-Kat Productions, had assembled out of a trunkful of 1930 Black Mask novelettes. The girl was walking into a medium shot, legs giving way to hips and waist and bosom. David wiped his hand across his mouth. The camera was pulling in tight on the girl’s face, she was walking directly into another close shot, that mouth, the green eyes, color leaped from the black-and-white screen, he could see russet hair in black-and-white, the same bangs, the same sleek mane brushed to the nape of her neck, the same defiant thrust of lip and nose and...

“Gillian Burke,” Goff whispered beside him. “Maybe you know her from that underwater series she did.”

“I know her,” David said. His voice came in a whisper. He was suddenly covered with sweat.

He sat watching her. He listened to her voice. She sounded much the same, that same wonderful voice that was Gillian’s alone, he almost began to weep when she said the word “marrr-velous,” rolling her r’s like an Irish washerwoman, she seemed to have lost a little weight, there was a good sparkle in her eyes, he watched her and listened to her. She was the only person on the screen. She pranced through the inanities of the script like a pro in a high-school senior play, she moved through that empty charade like a queen, and his eyes never left her for a moment. And while she worked hell out of a witless script, he watched another drama unfolding in his mind’s eye, the drama that had been Gillian and him, and he felt an empty sadness because the real Gillian was as far away from him as was the celluloid Gillian whose image was cast on the blank glass square resembling a television tube. He wanted to speak to her, wanted to say, “How have you been, Gilly? What have you been doing? Are you in love, Gilly? Have you found someone else?” but the girl on the screen was named Bess Carter, his Gillian in a Bess Carter costume, and the girl mouthed absurd clichés, played the private eye’s superglossed secretary, the wisecracking playmate of the hard-drinking, two-fisted, fast-shooting, quick-thinking Johnny Thunder. And yet Gillian showed through, the warmth of Gillian, and the incredible beauty of Gillian, and Bess Carter came alive because of her, Bess Carter romped through the insipid dialogue and the ridiculous action but she was warm and alive and sympathetic and lovable because Bess Carter was only a part pulled over the head of Gillian Burke.

The reel came to an end. The blank glass face in the phony television set was blank again. The lights snapped on.

“How’d you like it?” Goff asked.

“I liked the girl.”

“Burke. Great girl. We’ve already signed her for the series.”

“If you sell the pilot.”

“Naturally. There’s no series unless we sell the pilot.” Goff paused. “What do you think, Mr. Regan?”

He thought too many things in the few moments before he answered. He thought, It’s a crummy pilot, but maybe we can place it. He thought, I would probably get to see Gillian again, I’d have to if Sonderman were packaging the thing. I’d have to fly out to the Coast once or twice, wouldn’t I? I’d have to meet the people in the show, I’d have to watch some of the shooting. It’s a crummy pilot, he thought.

What’s the use? he thought.

What the hell is the goddamn use? What’s the use, because the world always closes in on you. The world is full of people like George Devereaux and Mike Arretti and Mr. Harrigan from California who takes the train in, I don’t trust airplanes, and who puts his foot on the back of your neck and squeezes you thin like a cockroach, send this son of a bitch the cockroach letter, what’s the use? The world was full of spoilers, yes, and some of them were named David Regan, at least one of them was named David Regan, what’s the use? You could see Gillian again maybe, you could okay this quality trash, you could commit your firm to a year’s option and you could break your back trying to sell the pilot to a network and an agency, you’d be giving Gillian a break, but it’s a lousy show.

Yes, let’s start worrying about lousy shows and good shows. The Sam Martin spectacle was certainly a terrific show, and you were its chief office boy and bottle washer, that was a magnificent show. As was the science fiction presentation every Wednesday night at 7:30 P.M. on a channel featuring wrestling, assistant to the producer, David Regan, that was a tremendous little show, so let’s start worrying about what’s lousy and what’s good. The afternoon live soap opera was wonderful, too, associate producer, David Regan, and so was the first real show you produced, the half-hour filmed Monday-night thing, that really was a masterpiece, so let’s turn up our noses at a private-eye show that has already signed the only girl who ever meant anything to you in your life, let’s turn arty and, it is good, my Thursday night show is good, yes, but what did Harrigan do to you this morning, what did Harrigan force you to do, so let’s get arty, right? You stepped on a good story, you knuckled under to the money, so now let’s suddenly find scruples when it involves a continuing series for Gillian, David Regan, with the neat gold-lettered PRODUCER on the door.

Yes, who squashed a good script this morning.

Producer.

With scruples. Big-scrupled producer. Go on, take the pilot. Tell Goff you’ll handle it on a 65–35 split and he’ll kiss both your feet and buy his clients a magnum of champagne. Tell him the girl stays, tell him the girl whose image filled that screen, the girl who came back like a ghost walking down that Beverly Hills staircase in a walk remembered, a walk familiar, her face, her eyes, her mouth, tell him the girl stays, tell him we’ll sell the pilot, I’ll see her again.

If.

If, of course, nothing has changed. If, of course, this is still the David Regan who entered that Sixth Avenue loft on November 20, 1947, oh yes, that was the date, if this was the same David Regan flinching from the world, unchanged, who found the girl with the big brass bed. Yes, the same David Regan. Exactly the same. Nothing changed. Yes. Certainly. And the same Gillian. The same Gillian, open and innocent and wanting only to be loved, and standing still while I slapped her open-handed across that wonderful face and the skyrockets exploded over Long Island Sound, slapped her with words as effectively as if I’d used my hands. Will you marry me, David? Slapped her with no after no after no, and left her feeling cheap and foolish, assuming she is the same girl, not destroyed, not thrown away and discarded by David Regan, television producer extraordinaire who blew it completely on the Fourth of July, 1949.

Four years.

More than four years.

And one day look at yourself, simply look at yourself in the mirror one day, startle yourself with the image staring back at you, and then ask yourself where the kid who stamped books disappeared to. Ask. He disappeared somewhere, yes, we know that, he vanished someplace, the way the buffalo and the bison vanished, and on Sunday I’ll be twenty-nine years old, happy birthday to you, make a birthday wish.

I wish I could run out into a street covered with snow, holding Gillian by the hand.

I wish the world were still and white.

But it isn’t.

“It’s a piece of cheese,” he told Goff. “I’m sorry, but it’s not for us.”

The law offices of Bridges, Benson, Summers and Stang were located in an impressive forty-story structure on Wall Street, nor had the location been chosen by caprice. The firm dealt mostly with criminal law, and the Criminal Courts Building was on Centre Street, not five city blocks from Matthew’s office.

Amanda Soames Bridges, who enjoyed the unbending logic of music, could appreciate the mathematics that made proximity to the criminal courts desirable. She could appreciate it, but she found it increasingly difficult to enjoy, especially on days like this when she was forced to make the long haul from the midtown shopping area to Matthew’s office. She had never liked driving, and she loathed driving in city traffic. The streets seemed more congested than ever, with more taxicabs and more buses, and bigger automobiles, would Detroit never stop making their cars bigger and shinier, were Americans determined to have the absolute biggest of everything in the whole world? The streets, too, were cold and bitter. She could hear the wind whistling over the hood of the car, rattling at the windows, so cold for October.

She pulled into the parking lot on Chambers Street, put the claim ticket into her bag, and began walking swiftly toward Matthew’s office building. The sun at four-thirty was almost gone. The wind knifed through the concrete alleyways, cutting through her skirt. I should have worn a coat, she thought. This stole is for a true autumn, but there won’t be any damn autumn this year. She was grateful for the lobby of the building. She took the elevator to the twelfth floor, stopped in the ladies’ room at the end of the hall to comb her hair and repair her lipstick, and then walked down to Matthew’s office, pausing just outside the entrance door. She always thought of it as Matthew’s office even though there were four names on the door, even though Benson and Stang were the senior partners of the firm. The fact that Matthew’s name headed the listing was a tribute to his powers of persuasion, as was the décor of the office itself.

“Look,” he had said to his new partners, “it doesn’t make a bit of difference to me. You can stick my name on the bottom of the door in letters usually reserved for escape clauses. The door can read Benson, Stang, Summers and Bridges, just the way you want it to. I’m the junior partner, and I really have no business suggesting anything radical.”

Stang, fifty-seven years old and sporting a potbelly and a bright checked vest, had tweaked his nose and said, “Matthew, you are the biggest bull thrower in New York City. Say what’s on your mind.”

“Okay. The sound of Bridges, Benson, Summers and Stang is cleaner. That’s what’s on my mind. It reads simpler and swifter, and it’s easier to remember. It creates a corporate image that is good for our purposes.”

“What are our purposes?” Benson asked. Sniffing at a nose inhaler, his long thin legs propped on a hassock, he looked at Matthew sourly and then shook his head as if he were dealing with a maniac.

“To get clients,” Matthew said. “To become the biggest law firm in the city.”

“We’ve been doing all right so far,” Benson said.

“We’re going to do better.”

“Sometimes I wonder why we took you in.”

“Stop wondering, Harry. I’m just what this creaking combination needs. I’ve lost only two cases in the past two years. That’s right, I’m pretty damn good. And I’ve got some ideas about how we should decorate the new office, too.”

“He’s not a lawyer,” Benson said dryly. “He’s an interior decorator.”

“No, I like his ideas,” Summers, the fourth partner, said tentatively. He was blond and strapping, a man of forty-two who sweated a great deal. He offered his opinion, and then shrugged.

“Thanks, Len,” Matthew said. “I don’t think the new place should look like this one.”

“What’s the matter with this one?” Stang asked.

“It’s dusty, it’s dingy, it looks dirty and creaking and old.”

“My wife decorated this office,” Stang said.

“And it may have been great in nineteen-twenty, but time marches on.”

“Now he’s a news commentator,” Benson said.

“How do you think we should decorate?” Stang had asked, leaning forward.

That had been a long time ago.

The name on the door was Bridges, Benson, Summers and Stang. Amanda smiled and twisted the knob.

The reception room started just inside the door with ten feet of gray carpeting flowing back spaciously from the entrance to two low modern couches, which shared a marble coffee table and a double-bullet wall fixture. A single abstract painting hung on the wall opposite the couches. Beyond the couches, there was more carpeting, which stretched to the reception desk and the girl behind it. Beyond that, and hidden from the reception room, were the filing cabinets, the four separate private offices of the firm’s partners, and a conference room. The firm’s law library was shelved on glass-enclosed bookcases hanging free on the wall above the filing cabinets. The scheme throughout was clean, almost austere. If it denied a dusty, tradition-filled interpretation of the law, it created instead an atmosphere that was dynamic and businesslike, and not without a subtle beauty of its own. The girl behind the reception desk seemed to echo the aesthetics of the office. She looked up when Amanda entered, smiled, and said, “Hello, Mrs. Bridges.”

Her smile was a carefully calculated instrument of greeting, a warm welcome which flashed suddenly on a face that could have belonged to a teen-age model. Annie Ford, at twenty-seven, looked more like seventeen, with tiny bones and compact breasts, her long black hair worn in a page-boy, her brown eyes sparkling with a curious combination of naïveté and worldliness. The top of her desk was covered with legal forms, but it looked scrupulously ordered nonetheless, as if she had already straightened it for the evening before putting the cover back on her typewriter and heading home.

“Hello, Annie,” Amanda said. “Mr. Bridges is expecting me.”

“I’ll tell him you’re here.” Annie picked up the receiver, pressed a button in the phone’s base, and smiled again at Amanda.

“Is he busy?” Amanda asked.

“He has someone with him,” Annie answered, “but I don’t think he’ll be very... hello? Mr. Bridges, your wife is here. Yes, sir, I will.” She replaced the phone, smiled again at Amanda, and said, “Would you mind waiting, please, Mrs. Bridges? He’ll be about ten minutes.”

“Thank you,” Amanda said. She walked toward the nearest couch, sat, and picked up a copy of Life. She began thumbing through it uneasily. She always felt a little strange in Matthew’s office, the unwanted visitor who somehow managed to upset a carefully rehearsed business routine. The telephone rang. Annie Ford lifted the receiver.

“Bridges, Benson, Summers and Stang,” she said, “good afternoon.” She listened and then said, “Oh, hello, Mr. Cohen. Just a moment, I’ll see.” She pressed a stud in the base of the telephone, waited. “Mr. Stang, it’s Arthur Cohen, on six.” She replaced the phone in its cradle, smiled briefly at Amanda, and walked to one of the filing cabinets.

Watching her, Amanda felt a sudden envy.

She knew the envy was foolish. Annie Ford was twenty-seven years old, a bachelor girl who lived in a furnished apartment on Seventy-second Street, who earned eighty dollars a week as a receptionist, who probably dreamed of a husband, and a family, and a home in the country, who probably wished for all the things Amanda already had.

But Annie got up each morning and dressed to go someplace.

Annie came into the heart of the most exciting city in the world, and she talked to people on the telephone about matters slightly more important than a United Parcel pickup. She personally greeted people who were concerned with more than a few chalk marks on a new garage door. Annie Ford was part of a successful law office, and she knew what she was supposed to do there, and she did it efficiently and quietly, and she no doubt derived a great deal of pleasure from the knowledge that she was doing it well.

She did not have to wake up each morning and wonder how she would occupy her time for the rest of the day. She did not have to sit through inane luncheons, or serve on meaningless half-witted committees, or shuttle children around the countryside, or doubt the worth of a musical composition that seemed less and less important each day. No! More important! More important to me than anything else in my life!

Now, Amanda.

Now, Amanda dear.

She sat quite still and watched Annie as she filed her legal forms, watched the quick movement of her fingers, the studied concentration on her face.

Oh my God, Amanda thought, I wish I didn’t have a mind.

I wish I weren’t a woman in this day and age, part of the giant female convalescent ward, we sit around doing water colors or dabbling in oils or baking ceramic ash trays or weaving baskets or arranging flowers, busy, busy with our hands, doing anything, anything to stop us from realizing we are really useless human beings. Doing anything, and doing nothing.

The only thing I ever created in my life was my son Bobby, she thought.

The telephone on Annie’s desk buzzed. She looked up from the filing cabinet, smiled, walked quickly to the desk, and picked up the receiver.

“Yes?” she said. “Oh, yes, just a moment.” She turned to Amanda. “Mrs. Bridges? Would you mind taking the phone, please?”

Amanda put the receiver to her ear. “Hello?”

“Amanda, this is Matthew. Honey, this is going to take a little longer than I expected. Do you think we could meet at the restaurant? Can you keep yourself busy for a little while?”

“I suppose so,” Amanda said.

“I’m sorry, but...”

“I understand,” Amanda said. “What time? Where?”

“Let’s see, it’s almost five now. Can we make it six-thirty?”

“The stores close at six,” Amanda said absent-mindedly.

“What?”

“Nothing. I’ll meet you at six-thirty. Tell me where.”

The bookshop was on Sixth Avenue, in the Forties, a tiny shop set between a locksmith and a hamburger joint. She wandered into it because it seemed to invite browsing, and because she had more than an hour to kill before meeting Matthew at the restaurant. The shop was long and narrow, its walls lined with bookcases and dusty volumes, its center aisle cluttered with open stalls of remainders. She wished it were not October and cold. A shop like this cried out for a rainy day in April. She could remember cuddling up in the armchair before the fireplace in the Minnesota house, could remember reading Parnassus on Wheels and The Haunted Bookshop, and later Where the Blue Begins, which portrayed dogs as humans and which raised some serious questions about God. She had felt sacrilegious just reading the book. When she’d read one of the passages aloud to her father and then asked him if she should continue with the book, he had nodded in rare wisdom and said, “I really don’t think it can hurt you to hear another fellow’s viewpoint, Amanda.” She’d read only two more chapters, and then closed the book of her own accord.

There was the smell of dust in the shop. The shop was almost empty. An old woman with a flowered hat was picking through the stalls searching for a bargain. A bald-headed man in a tweed overcoat was at the far end of the shop, taking a book down from the shelves, replacing it, taking another book down. The proprietor sat behind a high counter just inside the entrance door, reading Dostoevski. Amanda browsed idly. She looked at her watch. It was only five thirty-five. Slowly, she worked her way toward the back of the shop. She found a battered old copy of a Nancy Drew mystery. Excited by her find, she decided to buy it for Kate, and then realized Kate had outgrown Nancy Drew. Reluctantly, she put it back on the stall.

“I used to read Bomba the Jungle Boy,” the bald-headed man said.

“Yes, weren’t they fun?” she answered, almost without turning, smiling at the man in an idle reminiscent way, and then moving past him to the other side of the stall.

“And Tom Swift,” the man said.

Amanda glanced at him, smiled in polite dismissal, and began walking toward the front of the shop.

“Amanda?” the man said.

She stopped. Puzzled, she turned.

“It is Amanda?”

“Yes,” she said, “but...?”

She looked at the man more closely. He had a round face, and a bald head, and the collar of his tweed coat was pulled high on the back of his neck. He looked very sad, a chubby man wearing a very sad face.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Morton,” he answered. “Morton Yardley.”

For a moment, the name meant nothing to her. And then the man made a curiously embarrassed gesture, pulling the coat collar higher on his neck, as if he wanted to pull it completely over his bald head, and all at once she remembered Morton Yardley and his hooded Mackinaw. A smile broke on her face. She rushed into his arms spontaneously and hugged him.

“Morton!” she said. “No! Morton, is it you?”

“Hullo, Amanda,” he said, and he hugged her with great embarrassment, grinning, awkward.

“What are you doing here?” She pulled away from him and looked into his face. “Of course it’s Morton! Oh, how good to see you!” She laughed, still unable to believe it, and then they fell silent and stood staring at each other somewhat curiously. The hugging was over and done with, the surprise was past, the first rush of honest emotion was gone. Now two strangers looked at each other in the cluttered aisle of a musty bookshop, each taking the measure of the other. Amanda touched her hair unconsciously, fluffing it.

“How have you been, Amanda?”

“Fine, thank you.”

“Are you married now?”

“Yes. Yes, I have two children.”

“How wonderful for you.”

Don’t let us be this way, she thought. I liked you so much, Morton. Don’t let us end as strangers talking about the weather.

“Are you married?” she asked.

“No. No, I never married, Amanda.”

“Is your parish here in New York?”

“My...? Oh, well, I sort of changed plans.” He nodded. “I gave up my ideas about the ministry, you see.” He shrugged. “I work in a bank now. I’m an assistant manager. Manufacturer’s Trust, do you know it?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, well, that’s where I work.”

There was a long pause. Morton wet his lips nervously. He really has lost all his hair, she thought, but he still looks so sweet, he is still a very sweet person.

“Do you live in New York?” he asked.

“No, we live in Talmadge.”

“Really? Near the school?”

“Well, fairly near. On Congress.”

“Oh, yes.” Morton nodded. “You didn’t marry a professor, did you?”

“No, a lawyer.”

“I thought because...” He nodded. “Well, a lawyer, that’s good. Gee, it must be... how many years?” He nodded again, and then was silent.

The silence lengthened. There seemed to be nothing more to say. After all these years, there was nothing to say but How are you? Are you married? Where do you work? Where do you live? She didn’t want it to be this way. She wanted to know about Morton, and she wanted to tell him about herself. She had liked Morton too much, had shared too much with him, had touched his life with her own, and been touched in return, had really known Morton too well to allow this to happen. You can destroy a place, she thought, you can come to it with all the tricks and veneer of living, come to it with cynical eyes and destroy the memory of innocence, but you cannot do that with people. I won’t let it happen with people.

“Could we have a drink together?” she asked. She smiled gently. “I don’t have to meet my husband until six-thirty.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Morton said. “I’m sorry, but I can’t, Amanda.”

“Oh.” Her face fell. Maybe you can do it with people, she thought. Maybe life is simply a matter of learning that the present has nothing whatever to do with the past or the future.

“I’m going over to the museum,” he said. “I have to see this movie.” He paused. “Would you like to come with me?”

She almost said no. This was going badly, this was awkward, this was stupid and disenchanting, and she almost said no. She shook her head, not in reply, but as if to clear it.

“I would like to come, Morton,” she said.

“Good. Gee, that’s... well, good, Amanda. Good.” He grinned.

“Is it far?”

“Fifty-third.”

“Let’s walk,” she said. “Then we can talk to each other.”

Morton let out his breath. “I was hoping we could talk,” he said.

October dusk had settled on the city. The subway-bound office workers rushed along the streets with their heads bent against the strong wind, their hands thrust into their pockets. The sidewalks echoed with the clatter of high-heeled shoes, the streets with the empty bellow of bus horns. The sky was a mottled deep blue, not yet black, no moon showing as yet, no stars.

“I like this time of day best,” Morton said. “Everybody going home. I feel very good at this time of day.”

“I do, too.”

“Are you warm enough with just that little thing?”

“No, I’m freezing,” Amanda admitted.

“It’s very pretty. What is that? Mink or something?”

“Yes.”

Morton nodded. She had the impression this was the first time he had ever had a close look at mink. There was something very naïve and boyish about him, as if he had learned none of the... the tricks of living, as if there were no guile in that entirely open face.

“I’m glad we got out of that shop, Amanda,” he said. “You know what I thought? I thought we would shuffle our feet around a little more, and then say goodbye. That would have been sinful, I think. Don’t you think so?”

“Yes,” Amanda said, smiling. “Absolutely sinful.”

“Are you kidding?” He turned to her, his eyebrows raised.

“No. I’m serious.”

He smiled. “Good.”

“May I take your arm? I’m very cold.”

“Sure. Here. Do you want my coat, Amanda? Let me give you my coat.”

“No. Thank you, Morton.”

“Come on, I don’t need it. Look at you. You’re shaking.”

“I’ll be all right.” She smiled at him and hugged his arm. “I’m glad we ran into each other, Morton.”

“Yes, I am, too. You’ll like this picture, Amanda. A friend of mine made it. I don’t know what it cost him, thirty cents or something. Anyway, it was very cheap, and it’s received all sorts of praise. Do you know you look exactly the same? You haven’t changed a bit. Not a bit.”

“You haven’t either.”

“Amanda, I’m all bald!” he said, laughing, as if surprised by the knowledge but willing to share it with her.

“But you look the same.”

“But you didn’t recognize me,” he said.

“No, I didn’t.”

“I wasn’t sure it was you, either. Not because you’ve changed, though. Only because... well, who expected to meet you in a little run-down bookstore on Sixth Avenue?”

“We didn’t even buy anything,” Amanda said, and she laughed. “Morton, I’m freezing.”

“We’re almost there. We can get some hot chocolate in the cafeteria. The picture doesn’t go on until six.”

“Why did you leave the ministry, Morton?”

“Oh, that’s a long story. I was in the stockade, you know.”

“The what?”

“In the army. Jail. They call it the stockade. Which is sensible since it was designed for cattle and not men. I had a chance to do a lot of thinking there.”

“About what, Morton? Ooooo, Morton, do you know where I’m really cold?”

“Where?”

“My feet.”

“That’s why you’re cold all over. That’s a known fact.”

“You’re a mine of information,” she said, smiling.

“You mean you didn’t know that? Anyway, I was locked up there for about six months, here, put your hand in my pocket... how’s that? Is that better? and then they sent me overseas as a corpsman, you know, noncombatant, the red cross on my arm, the whole business. And then I saw it, Amanda. I saw what people can do to each other.” He shook his head. “And I began thinking some more. I’ll tell you, Amanda, a funny thing happened. I was out there without any weapon, you know, and... and... I wished I had a gun! But not for self-protection, Amanda, not for that. I wished I had a gun so I could kill the people who were leaving those broken bodies all over the place. That’s right, I wanted to kill. Now, remember the reason I’d objected in the first place. Now, remember that, Amanda. And here I was wanting to kill, and ready to kill. Now, that can make you wonder about yourself a little bit, believe me.” He shook his head.

“But you were at war, Morton. You had to expect...”

“Oh, I know, I know. But I looked into myself, and I asked myself, What’s all this God stuff, and did I really believe it? Did I really back out of the war because I didn’t want to kill anybody, or only because I was afraid of getting killed myself? And if that was my reason, and how could it be otherwise when there I was ready to kill, why then I’d only used religion as an excuse. I suppose I could have decided then and there, Amanda. I suppose I could have asked for a gun. I didn’t. But I did decide the ministry wasn’t for me. Are you happy, Amanda?”

He asked the question so unexpectedly that he startled her.

“Why...” She squinted her eyes against the wind and looked into his face. There was honesty there and openness, Morton Yardley had not changed at all, Morton Yardley had acquired none of the shellac. And his face demanded an honest answer, no, not demanded because he was not one of those who forced their will. His face simply asked quietly for honesty. And asked for so gently, honesty could not be denied. “I don’t know, Morton,” she said.

“You look happy.”

“Do I?”

“Yes. Here’s the museum. You’re still very beautiful, Amanda,” he said as he pushed open the door, said it into the raised collar of his coat, as if not expecting her to hear it, and yet hoping she would.

“Thank you,” she said, because she wanted him to know she had heard.

They drank hot chocolates in the cafeteria off the garden. The garden was deserted. The modern statues defied the cold, bronze and stone standing erect against the wind. The whipped cream dissolved in their cups, and they sat facing each other discussing old times at the university, and she realized all at once that there was a smile on her face, and that perhaps it had been there from the moment they left the bookshop. She felt completely at ease with Morton, completely without façade. There was no need for stupid fencing with him, no need for the clever answer, the provocative question. She felt honest and somehow exuberant. And curiously, she felt more like a woman than she could ever remember.

“Do you get into New York often?” he asked, and she looked into his eyes because she had heard this approach often at Talmadge parties, had heard it whispered in her ear as she danced, had heard it dropped casually as she sat alongside a polished attractive man on a living-room couch sipping a Martini, she had heard it often, and she knew the intent, and she knew the answer, she knew the game. But Morton Yardley did not play games.

“Yes,” she said. “I do.”

“Good,” Morton said. “Because I’d like to see you again.”

“Why, Morton?”

“Well... I guess because I loved you, Amanda.”

The words startled her. Not because she hadn’t suspected. But only because they were spoken in utter simplicity.

“That’s very sweet, Morton,” she said, and instantly thought, I don’t mean that, it’s not what I mean. I’m not parrying, Morton, I’m not giving the cocktail-party answer to the standard proposition. Believe me, please. I don’t mean what that sounds like. “Morton, you’re very sweet,” she said. “You have a very sweet face.”

He looked at her curiously, as if her words had embarrassed him.

“You make me feel very good,” she said softly. “You make me feel like a woman.”

She thought all at once, How easy it would be. Truly, how very easy. Without guilt, without soul-searching, because this was not the fantasy of the grand amour, this was not the excitement of the pale dark stranger, the secret meetings in hotel rooms, the swell of clandestine passion, this was nothing at all like that. Morton was hardly a glamorous figure, hardly the dashing lover, and yet she thought, How easy it would be, and thought, It would be something, I would be giving, I would be giving, and looked into Morton’s eyes and back to a time when it could have been uncomplicated, and thought, It could be uncomplicated now, and suddenly thought of herself in bed with him. Surprisingly, the thought did not shock her or disgust her. She accepted it calmly, continuing to look at Morton and continuing to feel this strange sort of pulsing warmth that seemed to hover over the table, not a sexuality at all, although she imagined him touching her, but rather a feeling of ease, of emotion without pretense, the thought was exciting. And she knew it could be that, she knew the discovery of another person was always exciting, and she knew she could find in Morton a total adoration, she could see that in his eyes now, not lust and not passion, she knew that somewhere in this strangely naïve man who sat across from her there was still the little boy. There was still trust, there was still hope, there was still, yes, romance. How easy it would be. How easy to turn a doorknob and open a new world, how easy to say, “Yes, let’s have lunch sometime,” how easy to accept the love of this man, “Well... I guess because I loved you, Amanda,” and to know that a love could be returned, a different love than she had ever given, returned with fierce purpose, the love of a woman trying to find meaning in a world that seemed oddly and stubbornly unreceptive. How easy.

How easy to find something with him, something she had already found with him on the short walk from the bookshop, and over hot chocolates already gone, staining the thick white mugs with a residue of brown, something sheltered from the noisy October wind outside and the statues standing defiant in the garden, sheltered. I could love this man, she thought. I could take off my clothing for him unashamed and eager, I could allow him to caress me, I think I would feel rather rich. And savage. And pure. She looked at his thick hands around the thick white mug. How easy it would be. Yes, and excitement, the excitement of somewhere to go, and someone to meet, a purpose, a life, how easy.

“Hey, the picture’s going to start,” Morton said. “Come on.”

He took her arm and they walked through the museum, and she kept watching him, puzzled because she had not yet made her decision, puzzled because she even considered making a decision, and feeling no guilt at all, she was not betraying Matthew nor her children, she was betraying no one by her consideration of something she had always thought of as betrayal, “keep you alone unto him as long as you both shall live.”

They sat together in the darkened theater. She took his hand and held it. Thousands upon thousands of stop-action photos flashed upon the screen, spliced together to show the blooming process of a plant from tightly closed bud to extended flower. She thought, That’s the way it was, that’s the way you get married, and then she shoved the thought aside because she did not wish to defile a memory that was no longer even that, a blur instead, something that had happened very long ago to a very young and innocent girl.

But that was how it had been, she knew. Photo upon photo flashed in rapid succession upon a screen, no single photo important in itself, the change imperceptible from one still shot to the next, and yet each separate shot essential to the steadily unfolding sequence, each barely discernible change combining to form an overwhelmingly dramatic change, the juxtaposition of a remembered closed bud against a sudden bloom touched by morning sun. That is the way people get married, she thought.

Six-thirty was not very far away. Six-thirty was a heart tick away when they came out into the cold again, when the sudden cold attacked their faces and their eyes, six-thirty was so very near. They stood on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Fifty-third Street. The street lamps were on, the department-store windows were lighted, they beckoned like potbellied stoves. The taxicabs rushed along the street. Amanda and Morton stood on the street corner with the wind lashing at them. They seemed like lovers. To the passer-by, to the casual passer-by intent on the cracks in the pavement, they looked like secret lovers, and perhaps they were.

“Do you think we can have lunch sometime?” Morton asked hesitantly.

She searched his face, open and sweet, he has such a sweet face, she thought. She reached up and touched his mouth with one ungloved hand.

“I don’t think so, Morton,” she said.

He smiled. He nodded. He seemed pleased somehow.

“Goodbye, Amanda,” he said. He took her hand. He would have been content with a handshake. She leaned close to him suddenly and kissed him on the cheek, and then awkwardly said, “I’ve got lipstick on you,” and rubbed at the stain with her gloved hand, and then squeezed his hand and said, “Goodbye, Morton,” and turned away from him quickly and walked across the avenue against a light, and knew that he watched her until she was out of sight, and told herself the tears in her eyes were caused by the wind.