Voice of our Shadow

1

India and Paul Tate were movie crazy, and we originally met at one of the few theaters in town that showed films in English. Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train was being revived, and I had done quite a bit of homework preparing for it. I had read Patricia Highsmith's Thomas Ripley books before I tackled the novel on which the movie was based. Then I read MacShane's biography of Raymond Chandler with the long section in it on the making of the classic.

In fact, I was finishing the biography while I sat in the theater lobby waiting for the show to begin. Some people sat down next to me. In a few seconds I realized they were speaking English.

«Come on, Paul, don't be a dodo. It's Raymond Chandler.»

«Nunnally Johnson.»

«Paul —»

"India, who was right about the Lubitsch film? Huh?"

"Stop dangling that dumb movie in my face. So what if you were right once in your life? P.S., who was right yesterday about Fielder Cook directing A Big Hand for the Little Lady?"

Normally that kind of argument between a couple is tacky and loud, but the tone of their voices assured you they were not really arguing; no lurking anger or bared fangs anywhere.

"Excuse me? Uh, do you speak English?"

I turned and nodded and saw India Tate for the first time. It was summer; she had on a lemon-yellow T-shirt and new dark blue jeans. Her smile was a challenge.

I nodded, inwardly delighted to be talking to such an attractive woman.

"Great. Do you know who wrote this movie? I don't mean the book, I mean the screenplay. I'm having a fight with my husband here about it." She shot her thumb in his direction as if she were hitchhiking.

"Well, I've just read a whole chapter on it in this book. It says Chandler wrote it and Hitchcock directed, but then they ended up hating each other when it was done." I tried to phrase it so both of them would feel that they had won the argument.

It didn't work. She turned to her husband and stuck her tongue out at him for a split second. He smiled and, reaching over her lap, offered me his hand. "You don't have to pay any attention to her. I'm Paul Tate, and the tongue here is my wife, India." He shook hands the way you should — strong and very much there.

"How do you do? I'm Joseph Lennox."

"You see, Paul? I knew I was right! I knew you were Joseph Lennox. I remember seeing your picture in Wiener magazine. That's why I made us sit here."

"Recognized for the first time in my life!"

I fell in love with her on the spot. I was already halfway gone once I'd seen her face and that wonderful yellow T-shirt, but then her knowing who I was. .

"Joseph Lennox. God, we saw The Voice of Our Shadow two times on Broadway and then once up in Massachusetts in summer stock. Paul even bought the O. Henry collection with 'Wooden Pajamas' in it."

Nervous now and unhappy that the recognition was due to the play, I fumbled with the Chandler biography and dropped it on the floor. India and I simultaneously bent over to pick it up, and I caught a faint scent of lemon and some kind of good sweet soap.

The usher walked by and said we could go in. Getting up, we made quick plans to go out for coffee afterward. Right away I noticed they moved ahead of me and sat in the first row. Who would want to sit there? Very little of the movie made sense to me because I spent most of my time either looking at the backs of their heads or wondering who these interesting people were.

"Are summers here always this humid, Joe? It feels as if a big dog is breathing on me. I wish we were back at my mother's apartment in New York."

"India, every time we're there in the summer you complain about the heat."

"Sure, Paul, but at least that's New York heat. There's a big difference."

She said no more. He looked at me and rolled his eyes. We were sitting at an outside table in front of the Cafй Landtmann. A red and white tram clacked by, and the colored fountains across the street in Rathaus Park shot their streams up through the thick night.

"It does get pretty hot here now. That's why all the Viennese go to their country houses in August."

She looked at me and shook her head. "It's nuts. Look, I don't know anything about this place yet, but isn't tourism supposed to be Austria's main source of income? Most tourists travel in August, right? So they get to Vienna and the whole joint is closed up for vacation. Tighter than anything in Italy or France, huh, Paul?"

We had been there half an hour. Already I'd noticed India did most of the talking, unless she egged Paul on to tell a particular anecdote or story. But they both listened carefully when the other spoke. I felt a hollow rush of jealousy when I noticed their complete mutual interest.

Some time later I asked Paul, who turned out to be a delightfully garrulous person away from his wife, why he clammed up when he was around her.

"I guess because she's so wonderfully strange, Joe. Don't you think? I mean, we've been married for years, and yet she still amazes me with all of the weird things she says! Usually I can't wait to hear what's going to come next. It's always been like that."

When there was a lull in the conversation that first night and everything was quiet, I asked how they had met.

"You tell him, Paul. I want to watch this tram go by."

We all watched it go by. After a few seconds, Paul sat forward and put his big hands on his knees.

"When I was in the Navy I went out and bought this screwy Hawaiian shirt when my ship docked in Honolulu. It was the most hideous piece of clothing that ever existed. Yellow with blue coconut trees and green monkeys."

"You stop lying, Paul! You loved every scrawny little palm tree on that shirt and you know it. I thought you were going to cry when it fell apart." She reached across the table and brushed her fingertips over his cheek. I looked away, embarrassed and jealous of her casual tenderness.

"Yes, I guess I did, but it's hard to admit it now."

"Yeah? Well, shut up, because you looked great in it! He really did, Joe. He was standing on this street corner in the middle of San Francisco waiting for a trolley. He looked like an ad for Bacardi rum. I walked up to him and told him he was the only guy I'd ever seen who actually looked good in one of those goony shirts."

"You didn't say I looked good, India — you said I looked too good. You made it sound as if I was one of those creeps who read science fiction novels and carry five million keys on their belt loop."

"Oh, sure, but I said that later — after we went out for the drink."

Paul turned to me and nodded. "That's right. The first thing she said was I looked good. We stood on the corner for a while and talked about Hawaii. She'd never been there and wanted to know if poi really tasted like wallpaper paste. I ended up asking her if she'd like to go someplace for a drink. She said yes and that was that. Bingo."

"What do you mean, 'that was that'? 'That was that,' except for the fact I didn't see you again for two years. 'Bingo,' my foot!"

Paul shrugged at her correction. It was unimportant to him. No one said anything, and the only sounds were cars passing on the Ringstrasse.

"See, Joe, I gave him my address and telephone number, right? But he never called, the rat. Ah, what did I care? I just wrote him off as some little twit in his ugly Hawaiian shirt and didn't think about him again until he called me two years later when I was living in Los Angeles."

"Two years? How come you waited two years, Paul?" I wouldn't have waited two seconds to claim India Tate.

"Hmm. I thought she was okay and all, but nothing to go nuts about."

"Thanks, mac!"

"You're welcome. I was still in the Navy and my boat put into San Francisco for Thanksgiving. We were given a couple of days' liberty. I thought it would be fun to call her up. She wasn't living in her old digs anymore, but I was able to trace her through a roommate to Los Angeles."

If it's possible, India was glaring and smiling at him at the same time. "Yeah, I was working at Walt Disney Studios. Doing fascinating things like drawing Mickey Mouse's ears. Neat, huh? I was bored, so when he called and asked if I would come up and spend the holiday with him, I said yes. Even if he was a twit in Hawaiian shirts. We ended up having a good time, and before he left he asked me to marry him."

"Just like that?"

They nodded together. "Yup, and I said yes just like that. You think I wanted to draw Scrooge McDuck for the rest of my life? He shipped out, and I didn't see him this time for two months. When I did we got married."

"You and Scrooge McDuck?"

"No, me and twit." She hitchhiked her thumb his way again. "We did it in New York."

"New York?"

"Right. In Manhattan. We got married and had dinner at the Four Seasons and then went to a movie."

"Dr. No," Paul piped up.

We had ordered more coffee despite the waiter's having made it clear to us by his curtness that it was closing time and he wanted us out.

"So, what are you working on now, Joe?"

"Oh, I've been poking around this one idea I've had for a while. It would be a kind of oral history of Vienna in World War II. So much has already been written about the battles and all that, but what interests me is recording the stories of the other people who were involved — especially the women, and others who were kids then. Can you imagine living through years of that? Their stories are just as incredible as the ones of the guys who fought. Really, you'd be knocked out if you heard what some of them went through."

I was getting excited because the project interested me and because I had told only a few people about it. Until that moment it had been one of those "gotta do that someday" dreams that never get done.

"Let me give you an example. There is a woman I know who worked for an insane asylum out in the Nineteenth District. The Nazis ordered her bosses to get the whole bunch of cuckoos out of there. This woman ended up carting them out of the city and up to an old Schloss on the Czech border, and amazingly they survived until the end of the war. It was straight out of that film King of Hearts."

India shifted in her chair and rubbed her slim bare arms. The night had grown suddenly cooler and it was getting late.

"Joe, do you mind if I ask you something?"

Thinking it would be about the new book, I was completely taken off guard by her question when it came.

"What did you think of The Voice of Our Shadow? Did you like it? The whole play is so different from your short story, isn't it?"

"Yes, you're right. And to tell you the deep, deep truth, I've never liked the play, even when I saw it with the original cast in New York. I know that's biting the hand that fed me, but everything was distorted so much. It's a good play, but it isn't my story, if you see what I mean."

"Did you grow up with guys like that? Were you a tough guy?"

"No. I was Charlie the Chicken. I didn't even know what a gang was until someone told me. No, my brother was tough and his best friend was a real juvenile delinquent, but I was the kind who hid under the bed most of the time when the going got tough."

"You're kidding."

"Absolutely not. I hated to fight, I hated to smoke, I hated to get drunk. . blood made me gag. ."

They were smiling, and I smiled with them. India took out a cigarette — unfiltered, I noticed — and Paul lit it for her.

"What is your brother like? Is he still a tough guy or does he sell insurance or something?"

"Well, you see, my brother is dead."

"Ooops, sorry about that." She dipped her shoulders and looked away.

"It's okay. He died when I was thirteen."

"Thirteen? Really? How old was he?"

"Sixteen. He was electrocuted."

"Electrocuted? How did that happen?"

"He fell on a third rail."

"God!"

"Yes. I was there. Uh, waiter, could we have the check?"

2

Paul turned out to be kind and witty and scatterbrained. He could listen to the most boring person talk for hours and still look as if he was fascinated. When the person left, he would usually say something funny or nasty about them, but if they happened to come back later, he would be the same open, thoughtful listener and confidant.

He was from the Midwest and had a friendly, slightly bewildered face that was prematurely jowly and made you think he was much older than his wife. The Tates were, however, exactly the same age.

He worked for one of the large international agencies in Vienna. He would never be specific about his job, but it had something to do with trade fairs in Communist countries. I often wondered if he was a spy, as are so many other "businessmen" in that town. Once, when I pressed him on it, he told me even the Czechs, Poles, and Rumanians had things they wanted to sell to the outside world, and that these fairs were where they got a chance to "strut their stuff."

India Tate resembled a character you see in 1930s or '40s movies played by either Joan Blondell or Ida Lupino: a pretty face, but a hard, tight pretty. On the surface she's a tough, no-nonsense gal, but one who becomes increasingly vulnerable the longer you know her. Like Paul, she was in her early forties, but it didn't show on either of their figures because they were manic about exercising and keeping fit. They once showed me the yoga they did together every morning for an hour. I tried some of it, but couldn't even lift myself off the ground. I knew they didn't like that, and a few days later Paul quietly suggested I start some kind of program that would put me back in shape. I did it for a while but quit when it started to bore me.

On learning they were being transferred to Vienna from London, India decided to take a year off from teaching and learn German. According to Paul, she was naturally adept at languages, and a month or two after her classes at the University of Vienna began, he told me, she was able to translate the German news on the radio for him. I didn't know how much of this was true because she refused to speak anything but English whenever the three of us went out together. Once, when absolutely pressed, she stuttered out a slow, frightened question to a train conductor. It sounded grammatically correct, but it also had a strong Oklahoma accent tied around it like a bow.

"India, how come you never speak German?"

"Because I sound like Andy Devine when I talk."

She was like that in so many ways. It was easy to see how talented and intelligent she was, and that there were a number of things she could have sculpted a life out of. But she was a perfectionist and avoided or played down almost anything she did that came out only "half good" as far as she was concerned.

For instance, there were her drawings. Besides the German course, she had decided that during her "free" year she would do something she had had in mind to do for years — she was going to illustrate her childhood. When they were living in London she had taught art at one of the international schools there. During her free periods she'd made over a hundred preliminary sketches, but getting her to show them to me was impossible at first. When she finally did, I was so impressed I didn't know what to say.

The Shadow was one of those humpbacked Art Deco radios with cozy round black dials and the names of a million exotic places on them that were supposedly at your beck and call. This radio was on a table set far back in the room toward the top of the drawing. Jutting out stiff and doll-like from the bottom were three pairs of legs set right next to one another — a man's, a child's (black patent-leather shoes and short white socks), and a woman's (bare with pointed, high-heel shoes). Nothing more of these people could be seen, but the most wonderful, eerie part of the work was that all three sets of legs were pointing toward the radio, giving you the impression the bottoms of their feet were watching the radio like a television set. I told that to India and she laughed. She said she had never thought of it that way before, but it made sense. In all her work, that one-quarter naive, one-quarter eerie quality came through again and again.

In another one, an empty gray room was totally bare except for a pillow in flight across the middle of the picture. The hand that had thrown it was there in the corner, but in its frozen openness it had lost all human qualities and was suddenly, disturbingly something else. She said she planned on calling the final version Pillow Fight.

Only one of her pictures was on actual display in their apartment. It was entitled Little Boy. It was a still life, painted in fragile, washed-out watercolors. On an oak table were a shiny black top hat (the type the Germans call a Zylinder) and a pair of spotless white gloves. That was all: tan wooden table, black hat, white gloves. Little Boy.

The first time I went to their home I stared at it for a while and then politely asked what the title meant. They looked at each other and then, as if on cue, laughed at the same time.

"That one's not from my childhood, Joe. Paul has this crazy thing he does sometimes —"

"Shh, India, don't say a word! Maybe we'll introduce the two of them sometime, huh?"

Her face lit up like a candle. She loved the idea. She laughed and laughed, but neither of them made any attempt to clue me in. Later she said she had painted the picture for Paul as an anniversary present. I had noticed there was an inscription in the lower-left-hand corner: To Mister from Missus — Promises to Keep.

They had lucked into a great big apartment in the Ninth District not far from the Danube Canal. But they spent little time there. Both of them said they felt compelled to be out and on the move as much as possible. Consequently, they were almost never home when I called.

"I don't understand why the two of you are always out. Your apartment is so nice and warm."

India shot Paul an intimate, secret smile that fled as soon as she looked back at me. "I guess we're afraid there will be something out there we'll miss if we stay home."

We met the first week in July, when they had been in town for over a month. They had seen the usual sights, but now I eagerly appointed myself their special guide and gave them every bit of Vienna I had accumulated (and hoarded) in the years I had lived there.

Those dreamy, warm days passed in a delightful blur. I would finish my writing as early as I could and then two or three times a week would meet them somewhere for lunch. Paul was on vacation until the end of July, so we moved slowly and sensually through those days as if they were a great meal we never wanted to finish. At least that's how I felt, and I could sometimes sense their happiness was growing too.

I began to feel as if I had been fueled with some fabulous high-octane gasoline. I wrote and did research like a mad machine in the morning, played with the Tates in the afternoon, and went home to bed at night feeling that my life couldn't possibly be much fuller than it was right at that moment. I had found the friends I'd been looking for all along.

On my twenty-fifth birthday, they put the cherry on top of the cake.

I was sitting at my desk on August 19, working on an interview I was doing on spec for a Swiss magazine. It was my birthday, and because birthdays almost always depressed the hell out of me, I was trying hard to work my way through this one with as few distractions as possible. I had had an early dinner at a neighborhood gasthaus, and instead of going to a cafй and reading for an hour, as I usually did, I raced home and restlessly pushed the sheets of typescript around my desk in a vain attempt to forget that no one in the world had tipped me a nod on my Day of Days.

When the doorbell rang, I was frowning at the minuscule pile of pages I had done. I was wearing an old sweatshirt and a pair of blue jeans.

An old man in a seedy but still-elegant chauffeur's outfit was standing there with his cap in his hand. He wore black leather gloves that looked very expensive. He looked me over as if I were last week's lettuce and said in a nice hoch-deutsch accent that "the car" was downstairs and the lady and gentleman were waiting. Was I ready?

I smiled and asked what he was talking about.

"You are Mr. Lennox?"

"Yes."

"Then I have been told to come for you, sir."

"Who, uh, who sent you?"

"The lady and gentleman in the car, sir. I assume they hired the limousine."

"Limousine?" I squinted suspiciously and pushed him a little to one side so I could peek out the door into the hall. Paul liked to play tricks, and I was dubious of anything he had his finger in. No one was out there. "They're down in the car?"

"Yes, sir." He sighed and pulled one of the gloves farther up onto his hand.

I asked him to describe them, and he described Paul and India Tate in evening clothes.

"Evening? You mean formal? A tuxedo?"

"Yes, sir."

"Oh, God! Look, uh, look, you tell them I'll be down in ten minutes. Ten minutes, okay?"

"Yes, sir, ten minutes." He gave me one last tired look and marched off.

No shower. Rip the tuxedo off the hanger way in the back of the closet. I hadn't worn it in months, and it was full of creases. So what? Seconds of trouble buttoning the silk buttons with shaky, happy hands. What were those two up to? How great! Fabulous! They had known it was my birthday. They had even double-checked the date a few days before. Why had they hired a limousine? I took a fat glug of mouthwash and spat it loudly in the sink as I was turning out the light and heading for the door. At the last second I remembered to take my keys.

A silver Mercedes-Benz 450 was purring majestically in front of my apartment house. Inside I could see the chauffeur (with his cap on now — all business) lit by the calm yellow of the dashboard lights. I stepped over to look in the back seat and there they were, champagne glasses in hand, the bottle sticking out of a silver bucket on the darkly carpeted floor.

The window on my side zizzed down, and India's wonderful face peeped out of that rich inner gloom.

"What's up, Birthday Boy? Wanna go for a ride?"

"Hi! What are you doing here? What's with this silver chariot?"

"Joe Lennox, for once in your measly little life, don't ask any questions and get in the damned car!" Paul's voice rumbled out.

When I got in, India slid over so I could sit between them. Paul handed me a chilled glass of champagne and gave my knee a short, friendly squeeze.

"Happy birthday, Joey! Have we got some big plans for you tonight!"

"And how!" India clinked her glass to mine and kissed my cheek.

"Like what?"

"Like sit back and you'll see. You wanna spoil the surprise?"

India told the driver to go to the first place on their list.

The champagne lasted until the end of the ride, which turned out to be Schloss Greifenstein, a huge and wonderfully forbidding castle about half an hour out of Vienna. It is perched high on a hill overlooking a bend in the Danube. There's a splendid restaurant up there, and that's where we had my birthday dinner. When it was over, I really had to work hard to keep from crying. What special people. I had never had a surprise like that in my whole life.

"This. . this is some night for me."

"Joey, you're our boy. Do you know how much you helped us when we first got here? There's no way in the world we'd let you get away without a party tonight!"

India took my hand and held it. "Now, don't get all worked up about it. We've been planning to do it forever. Paul thought up the idea of coming here for dinner, but that's nothing. Wait till you see what I —"

"Pipe down, India, don't tell him! We'll just go."

They were already standing, and I hadn't even seen anyone pay the bill.

"What's going on? You mean there's more?"

"Damned right, buddy. This here's just the first course. Let's go — our big silver bullet's waiting."

More turned out to be three chocolate sundaes at McDonald's on Mariahilferstrasse, with the Mercedes waiting for us outside. India bought the driver a sundae, too. That was followed by a long coffee at the Cafй Museum across from the Opera, and then adjoining rooms for the night at the Imperial Hotel on the Ringstrasse. If you haven't been to Vienna, the Imperial is the place where the likes of Henry Kissinger stay when they're in town for a conference. The price of rooms begins at a hundred and forty dollars.

When we were properly installed (and the bellboy had given us all an angry, insulted look because we had no baggage), and we'd bounced on each of the beds, Paul opened the door and paraded into my room with a Monopoly game he said he'd bought fresh for the occasion. We finished the night playing Monopoly on the floor and eating a terrific sacher torte ordered from room service. At four in the morning Paul said he had to go to work that day and had to get at least a little sleep.

We were all ruffled, frazzled, and giddy as hell from no sleep, being silly, and laughter. I hugged the two of them when they went off to bed with a force I hoped told them how much the night and their friendship meant to me.

3

"What was your brother like? Like you?"

India and I were sitting on a bench in the Stadtpark, waiting for Paul to join us. The leaves had just begun to turn color, and the sharp, smoky smell of real autumn was in the air.

"No, we were incredibly different."

"In what way?" She had a brown paper cone of warm chestnuts in her lap, and she peeled the shell off each with the utmost care. I liked watching her do it. The chestnut surgeon.

"He was clever and cagey and sneaky. He would have made the world's greatest diplomat if he hadn't had such a bad temper." A pigeon walked over and snatched up a cigarette butt at our feet.

"How did you feel about him after he died?"

I wondered if I would ever be close enough to her to tell the real story. I wondered if I wanted to tell anyone the real story. What would it accomplish? Would it truly make things better? Would I feel less guilty after I'd given someone else the truth to hold with me? I looked hard at India and decided to test some of that truth on her.

"Do you want to know something? I felt worse when my mother was committed to the insane asylum. My brother, Ross, was bad, India. By the time he died he'd done so many mean things to me I felt like a punching bag. Sometimes I don't think he cared if he was my brother or not. He was that cruel, or sadistic, or whatever you want to call it. So in my heart of hearts I was glad I wasn't going to get hit anymore."

"What's so bad about that? It sounds right." She offered me a fat chestnut.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean just what I said — it sounds right. Joe, kids are little shits, I don't care what anyone says about how cute and sweet they are. They're greedy and egotistical and don't understand anything outside their own needs. You didn't feel bad when your brother died because he wasn't going to hit you anymore. It makes total sense. What's the problem? Were you a masochist?"

"No, but it also makes me sound terrible." I was half indignant.

"Hey, don't get me wrong — you were terrible. We were all terrible when we were little. Did you ever see how vicious and monstrous kids are to one another? And I'm not just talking about in the sandbox either, where they bang each other over the head with their trucks! Teenagers. . God, teach them for a while if you want to learn about mean. There is nothing in the world as small and malicious and self-centered as a fifteen-year-old. No, Joey, don't crucify yourself over it. People don't become human until they're around twenty-two years old, and then they're just beginning. Don't laugh, I'm completely serious."

"Okay, but I'm only twenty-five!"

"Who said you were human?" She ate the last chestnut and threw the shell at me.

An editor who was interested in my idea for the war book was coming over to the Frankfurt Book Fair and asked if I'd come up so we could talk about it. I readily agreed because it gave me a good excuse to take a train ride (which I love) and to meet some New York book people. I mentioned the trip to Paul only because the subject of train travel came up in conversation one day when we were having lunch together. We went on to reminisce about the great train trips we'd taken on the Super Chief, the Transalpin, the Blue Train from Paris to the Riviera. .

This was at the beginning of October, when the Tates were busy going to a month-long adventure-film festival at the Albertina museum in town. The night I left, I knew they were due to see a double feature they'd been talking about for weeks — North by Northwest and The Thirty-nine Steps. We had coffee together at the Landtmann in the late afternoon and said we would rendezvous somewhere as soon as I got back to town. Fine, see you then. When we separated, I stopped, turned, and watched them walk away. India was talking excitedly to Paul, as if she'd just met him after a long separation and had many new things to tell him. I smiled and thought of how quickly our relationship had blossomed. I smiled even more when I thought how great it was to have both Vienna and them to return to.

I've never been lonely in either an airport or a train station. The sounds and smells of travelers, dust, and huge metal; people rushing around in every direction; arrivals, departures, and expectations in their veins instead of blood. If I am ever traveling somewhere, I try to be in the station at least an hour before departure so I can sit somewhere and enjoy the bustle. You can always go to a train station and sit there and enjoy it, but it's better if you're on your way someplace or expecting someone.

The original Vienna Westbahnhof was destroyed in the war, and the building that replaced it is one of those modern boxy things with no character at all. What saves it in the end is that about eighty percent of the place is glass — windows everywhere — and no matter where you are, you have a panoramic view of that part of the city. It's wonderful to go in the afternoon and watch the sun drift through the windows and over everything. At night, climb the wide middle staircase, and once at the top, turn around quickly: the Cafй Westend across the street is full and bright, trams stream by in every direction, and the neon ads on the sides of the buildings splatter the dark with words and catch phrases that remind you that you're in a far country. Car insurance is Interunfall Versicherung, cars are Puch and Lada, Mercedes. Coca-Cola as well, only here Coke macht mehr draus!

I had a cup of coffee at one of the stand-up buffets and then started the long hike down the endless platform to the car with my reserved couchette. The lights in the train were off when I passed through the departure gate, but they suddenly clicked on all at once; street lamps at the end of dusk. A workman and a baggage porter, both dressed in different shades of blue, were leaning against a metal support post, talking and smoking. Since we were the only ones there, long appraising looks passed back and forth. This was their land until train time — what was I doing out there so early, trespassing? The porter looked at his watch, scowled, and flicked his cigarette away. The two of them separated without another word, and the workman walked over to the other side of the platform and climbed into a darkened first-class coach that said on a white and black sign that sometime deep in the night it would be going to Ostend, and then on to London.

Far up the tracks a single black engine scooted shrilly away and out of sight. I hefted my overnight bag and kept looking at the numbers on the sides of the cars. I wanted to be in my compartment. I wanted to be in my seat, eating the jumbo hero sandwich I'd made at home for dinner and watching the other people arrive.

The light was out in one compartment of my car. Climbing up the steep metal stairs, I made a silent bet with myself that it would be the light in mine. It would be broken, and if I wanted to do any reading before I went to sleep, I would have to walk ten cars back to find an empty seat. The light in the corridor was on, but sure enough, the dark one had my berth number on the door. The blue curtains were drawn across both windows. The Inner Sanctum. I reached down and pulled the door handle, but it didn't move. I put my bag down and pulled with both hands. Nothing happened. I looked up and down the corridor for anyone who could help, but it was empty. Cursing, I snatched at the damned thing again and pulled with all my might. Not an inch. I gave the door a kick.

Immediately the curtains began to slide aside. I took a startled step backward. A theme from Scheherezade came on faintly. A match flared and broke the inner dark. It moved slowly left and right, then stopped. It went out, and a dull yellow flashlight beam came on in its place.

Outside, I heard the chunk of railroad cars being coupled together. The lemony light held, motionless; then it moved over a white-gloved hand that held a black top hat. A second white hand joined it on the other side of the shiny brim, and for a moment the hat moved in time to the sultry music.

"Surprise!" The light blasted on, and India Tate stood with a bottle of champagne in her hand. Behind her, Paul had the top hat on his head at a rakish slant and was opening another bottle with his clown-white gloves. I remembered the painting on the wall of their apartment. So this was Little Boy.

"Jesus Christ, you guys!"

The door slid open, and she yanked me into the little hot room.

"Where're the cups, Paul?"

"What are you doing here? What happened to your movies?"

"Be quiet and take a glass of this. Don't you want any of your going-away champagne?"

I did, and she slopped so much into my cup that it foamed up and over the edge and onto the dirty floor.

"I hope you like this stuff, Joey. I think it's Albanian." Paul still had his gloves on when he held his cup out to be filled.

"But what's going on? Aren't you missing North by Northwest?"

"Yup, but we decided you deserved a proper send-off. So drink up and don't say anything else about it. Believe it or not, Lennox, we love you more than Gary Grant."

"Baloney."

"You're absolutely right — almost as much as Gary Grant. I would now like to propose a toast to the three of us. Comrades in arms." A man walked past in the narrow corridor behind me. I heard his footsteps. India held her cup up to him and said, "Prosit, pardner!" He kept walking. "Anyway, to get back to what I was saying, I would like to propose that we all drink to a truly wonderful life."

Paul echoed her words and nodded in total agreement. They turned to me and held their Dixie cups up to be toasted. I was afraid my heart would break.

Sometimes the mail in Austria is very slow; it can take three days for a letter to get from one side of Vienna to the other. I wasn't surprised when I received a Tate postcard from the town of Drosendorf in the Waldviertel section of the country a week after I'd returned from Frankfurt. That night on the train during our party they'd said they were going up there for a few days of rest and relaxation.

The card was written in India's extremely neat, almost too-tight, up-and-down script. Every time I saw it I was reminded of the sample of Frederick Rolfe's handwriting in A. J. A. Symons's fascinating biography, The Quest for Corvo. Rolfe, who called himself Baron Corvo and wrote Hadrian VII, was nutty as a fruitcake. As soon as I knew her well enough to be able to kid her, I'd made a point of pressing the book on India and instantly turning to the page to show her the amazingly similar scrawl. She was not thrilled by the comparison, although Paul said I had her dead to rights.

Dear Joey.

There is a big church here in the center of town. The big attraction inside the big church is a skeleton of a woman all dolled up in a wedding gown, I think. She's behind glass and has a bouquet of dead flowers on her.

Little hugs,

Mr. & Mrs. Little Boy

The postcard was interesting only because neither of them liked to talk about anything that had to do with death. Several weeks before, a man in Paul's office had keeled over dead at his desk from a cerebral hemorrhage. Apparently Paul was so shaken by it that he had to leave work for the day. He said he'd gone for a walk in the park, but his legs were shaking so much that after a few minutes he had to sit down.

Once, when I asked him if he ever saw himself growing old and dying, he said no. Instead, he said, he envisioned an old man with gray hair and wrinkles who was called Paul Tate but wasn't him.

"What do you mean? There'll be another you in your body?"

"Yes, don't look at me as if I'm goony. It's like working a shift in a factory, see? I'm working one of the middle ones — the thirty-five to forty-five shift, get it? Then some other man checks into my body and takes it from there. He'll know all about being old and arthritic and that sort of thing, so it won't bother him."

"He's got the old-age shift, huh?"

"Exactly! He comes in for the midnight-to-seven spot. It makes good sense, Joey, so don't laugh like that. Do you realize how many different beings you are in a lifetime? How all your hopes and opinions, everything, change every six or seven years? Aren't all the cells in our bodies supposed to be different every few years? It's just the same. Listen, there was a time when all India and I wanted was a saltbox house on the coast of Maine with lots of land around us. We wanted to raise dogs, can you believe it? Now just the thought of that kind of permanence makes me start to itch. Who's to say the little guys in our bodies who wanted to live in the house haven't been replaced by a whole new bunch who like to travel around and see new things? Apply that to who we are at the different times in our lives: You've got one crew that takes you from one to seven. Then they're replaced by the group that steers you through puberty and that whole mess. Joe, are you going to tell me you're the same Joe Lennox you were when your brother died?"

I shook my head emphatically. If he only knew. .

"No, no way. I hope to God I'm miles down the road from that me."

"All right, then, it just goes along with what I'm saying. That little-Joe shift checked out a while ago, and now there's a new bunch in you running things."

I looked to see if he was serious. He wasn't smiling, and his hands were unusually still.

The idea intrigued me. If only the Joe-Lennox-who-killed-his-brother crew had left. I'd be clean. A whole new me who had had nothing to do with that day. .

"I'll tell you, all you have to do is look at my wife if you want proof of my theory. She hates to think about dying. Christ, she doesn't even like to admit she's sick. But you know what? She loves to read about diseases, especially really rare ones that kill you, like lupus or progeria. And her favorite films in all the world are horror movies. The bloodier the better. Give her a Peter Straub novel and she's in seventh heaven. Now, you cannot tell me the same crew's working inside her. Not unless they're all schizo."

I giggled. "You mean there's different guys in there doing all different things too? Like a football team? You go out for a pass, you block. ."

"No doubt about it, Joe. Absolutely."

Neither of us said anything for a while, and then I slowly nodded my head. "Maybe you're right. I think my mother was like that."

"What do you mean?"

"She changed all the time. She was a peacock's tail of emotion."

"And you're not like that at all?"

"No, not a tad. I've never been very emotional or flamboyant. Neither has my father."

He winked and smiled devilishly. "You've never done anything out of the ordinary? No disturbing the universe?"

The moment froze like film in a broken projector. It almost started to burn from the middle outward. Paul Tate knew nothing about what had happened with Ross, but suddenly I had the feeling that he did, and it scared me.

"Yes, well sure, sure, I've, uh, I've done some strange things, but —"

"You're beginning to look a wee bit cornered, Joey. It sounds to me as if you've got some dark trunks stored down in your basement." He leered, delighted to know it.

"Uh, Paul, don't get your hopes up too high on that. I ain't no Attila the Hun!"

"That's too bad. Didn't you ever read Dorian Gray? Listen to this: 'The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.' Amen, brother. I bet you Attila the Hun died a happy man."

"Come on, Paul —"

"Don't play footsie, Joe. You know exactly what I mean. There isn't a person on earth who isn't up to their elbows in badness. Why don't you drop the damned facade and admit it?"

"Because I think it's better to move away from it! Get on to other things! And hope we'll be able to do better next time, if we're given a next time." I was getting too excited and had to turn my volume down.

"Joe, you are what you've done. You are what you're doing. Okay, we're all trying to do better, but it just isn't that easy, you know. Maybe it'd be better if we just looked what we've done smack in the face and started dealing with it. Maybe instead of always looking forward to tomorrow, trying to ignore what we did yesterday or today, it'd be better if we squared off with our past actions —" He stopped in mid-sentence and looked at me queerly. His face was bloodless, but what really struck me was a kind of terrible stillness in his eyes and on his lips. It was gone in an instant, but it left his face looking drawn and blurred, as if something important had gone out of him, leaving him only half filled. Ironically, no sooner had I gone to sleep that night than I started dreaming about Ross. As far as I can remember, nothing much happened, yet something scared me awake; it was a long time before I could sleep again. In the dark I looked toward the ceiling and remembered the time he had poured syrup on me. How do you square off with your past actions when you don't know if they were right or wrong?

"Who's that?"

"Us, dummy! Can't you tell?"

I sat forward and looked more carefully at the picture on the screen. The people were holding on to the edge of a swimming pool, their hair slicked back and wet from the water. They looked young and exhausted. It really didn't look like either Paul or India. India put the bowl of popcorn on my lap. It was almost empty. We'd been popping and eating it all night.

"Are you bored, Joey? I hate looking at other people's slides. They're about as interesting as looking in someone's mouth."

"No! I love pictures and home movies. It lets you catch up on the part of people's lives you missed."

"Joe Lennox, career diplomat."

Paul pressed the button, and a shot of India came on. It must have been taken shortly after the last one, because she was still in the same swimsuit and her hair was wet-flat on her head. She was smiling to beat the band, and there was no mistaking her loveliness now. She must have been five years younger, but she was the same delightful woman.

"This next one is my father. The only person he ever liked besides my mother was Paul."

"Aw shucks, India."

"Shut up. That's no big compliment. He did not like me, his one and only daughter. He thought I was stuck up, which I am, but so what? Next slide, Professor."

"That's when, India? Was I going to Morocco?"

"I don't remember. Great shot though. I forgot all about that picture, Paul. You look good. Very Foreign Correspondent-y." She reached back and caressed his knee. I saw him touch her hand in the dark and hold it. How I envied them their love.

The next slide came on, and I blinked in amazement. India and I were standing very close together, her arm through mine, and we were looking intently up at the Ferris wheel at the Prater.

"Me and my spy camera!" Paul reached over and took a handful of popcorn. "I bet neither of you knew I'd taken that one!"

"No, no, you only showed it to me twelve times after you got it back! Next slide."

"Could I have a print of it, Paul?"

"Sure, Joey, no problem."

The painful thought crossed my mind that someday, somewhere far away, the Tates would be showing these same slides to someone else and that someone would ask in an uninterested voice who the guy standing with India was. I know the Buddhists say all transient things suffer, and there were times when that didn't bother me at all. But when it came to Paul and India I wondered, truly, what I would do without them in my life. I knew it would all go on as usual, but I was reminded of people with bad hearts who are told to stop using salt in their diet. Inevitably after a while they come boasting to you that they've given it up completely and don't miss it. So what? Anyone can survive; the purpose of life, however, is not only to survive but to get a little enjoyment out of it while you're at it. I could "live" without salt too, but I wouldn't be happy. Every time I looked at a steak I'd know how much better it would taste if I could only shake a little salt on. The same held with the Tates: life would toodle on okay, but they traveled so easily and joyously through the days, you couldn't help being swept up along with them. It made everything much richer and fuller.

After what had happened in my life, I was torn between being highly suspicious of love and longing for it at the same time. In the short time I had known them, the Tates had unknowingly stormed the walls of my heart and made me run the red flag of love up as high as it would go. When I asked myself if I loved them singly or only as Paul and India/India and Paul, I didn't know. I didn't care, because it wasn't important. I loved them, and that was enough for me.

4

One day out of the blue Paul called and said he was going on a business trip to Hungary and Poland for two weeks. He hated the whole idea but it was necessary, so that was that.

"Joey, the point is that I try to avoid these damned trips because sometimes India gets nervous and down when I'm gone for more than a few days at a shot. You know what I mean? It doesn't always happen, but once in a while she gets, well, skittery. ." His voice trailed back down into the phone, and there was no sound for several seconds.

"Paul, it's no problem. We'll hang around a lot together. Don't even think about it. What did you think I was going to do, abandon her?"

He sighed, and his voice leaped back up to full strength again — tough and sturdy. "Joey, that's great. You're the kid. I don't even know why I was worried in the first place. I knew you'd take care of her for me."

"Hey, vuoi un pugno?"

"What?"

"That's Italian for 'Do you want a punch in the nose?' What kind of friend did you think I was?"

"I know, I know, I'm a dope. But take really good care of her, Joey. She's my jewel."

When I hung up, I kept my hand on the back of the receiver. He was off that afternoon, and suddenly I had me a dinner date. I wondered what I should wear. My brand spanking new, hideously expensive Gianni Versace pants. Only the best for India Tate.

The thought crossed my mind while I was dressing that wherever we went for the next two weeks people would think we were a couple. India and Joe. She wore a wedding ring, and if someone saw it they would naturally assume I had given it to her. India and Joseph Lennox. I smiled and looked at myself in the mirror. I began to warble an old James Taylor tune.

India wore cavalry tweed slacks the color of golden fall leaves and a maroon turtleneck sweater. She held my arm wherever we went, and was funny and elegant and better than ever. From the beginning she almost never mentioned Paul, and after a while neither did I.

We ended the first night in a snack bar near Grinzing, where a bunch of punky motorcyle riders kept shooting us murderous looks because we were laughing and having a great time. We made no attempt to conceal our delight. One boy with a shaved head and a dark safety pin through his earlobe looked at me with a thousand pounds of either disgust or envy — I couldn't decipher which. How could anyone as square as me be having so much fun? It was wrong, unfair. After a while the gang strutted out. On the way, the girls all combed their hair and the boys slid gigantic fish-tank helmets over their heads with careful, loving slowness.

Later we stood on a street corner across from the cafй and waited in the fall cold for a tram to take us back downtown. I was freezing in no time at all. Bad circulation. Seeing me shake, India rubbed my arms through my coat. It was a familiar, intimate gesture, and I wondered if she would have done it if Paul had been there. What a ridiculous, small thing to think. It was insulting both to India and to Paul. I was ashamed.

Luckily she started singing, and after a while I got over my guilt and cautiously joined her. We sang "Love Is a Simple Thing" and "Summertime" and "Penny Candy." Feeling pretty sure of myself, I piped up with "Under the Boardwalk," but she said she didn't know that one. Didn't know "Under the Boardwalk"? She looked at me, smiled, and shrugged. I told her it was one of the all-time greats, but she only shrugged again and tried to blow a smoke ring with her warm breath. I told her she had to have it in her repertoire, and that tomorrow night I would cook us dinner and play all my old Drifters records for her. She said that sounded good. In my enthusiasm I didn't realize what I'd done. I had invited her to my apartment alone. Alone. As soon as it hit me, the night suddenly seemed ten degrees colder. When she looked down the track for the tram, I let my teeth chatter. Alone. I stuck my hands deep into my pockets and felt as stretched as a rubber band wrapped around a thousand fat playing cards.

Why was I so scared to have her over alone? Nothing happened the next night. We ate spaghetti carbonara and drank Chianti and listened to the Joseph Lennox Golden Oldies Hit Parade of records. Everything was very honorable and aboveboard, and I ended up feeling a bit blue afterward. Since my relationship with the two of them had deepened, my initial desire for India had dwindled, but after she left my apartment that night, I looked at my hands and knew that I would have made love to her in a second if the right situation had come up. I felt like a shit and an A-prime betrayer for thinking that, but, Christ, who says no to an India Tate? Eunuchs, madmen, or saints. None of the above being me.

I didn't see her the next day, although we talked for a long time over the phone. She was going to the opera with some friends and kept telling me how much she liked Mahler's The Three Pintos. I wanted to tell her before we hung up how disappointed I was that I wouldn't be seeing her that day, but I didn't.

Something very strange and almost more intimate than sex happened the next day. How it happened is so utterly ludicrous I'm embarrassed to explain. India later said it was a great scene out of a bad movie, but I still felt it was the worst kind of corn.

It was Saturday night; she was cooking dinner for us at their apartment. While she moved around her kitchen cutting and chopping and stirring, I started singing. She joined in, and we went through "Camelot." "Yesterday," and "Guess Who I Saw Today, My Dear?" So far, so good. She was still cutting and chopping; I had my arms behind my head, looking at the ceiling and feeling warm and content. When we finished "He Loves and She Loves," I waited a few seconds to see if she was going to volunteer one. When she didn't, I sang the first few bars of "Once Upon a Time." Why that song I still don't know, because it usually surfaces only when I'm depressed or sad. She had a nice high voice that reminded me of light blue. She could also move it around mine and do some lovely harmonizing. It made me feel about a hundred times more musical than I was, so long as I stayed on my notes.

We got three quarters of the way through the song, but then the end loomed up. If you don't know the tune, I should tell you that the end is very sad; I always stop singing before I get there. This time I'd arrived, but because she was there with me, I decided to mumble my way through to the finish. It did no good, because she dropped off too, and we were stuck out there in space with nowhere to go. All of a sudden I felt sad and full of tired echoes, and my eyes filled with tears. I knew I would start crying if I didn't think of something fast. Here I was in my friends' warm kitchen, the man of her house for a few hours. Something I had wanted for years but had never been able to find. There had been women before — deer and mice and lions. There had been moments when I was sure — but they weren't. Or they'd been convinced, but I wasn't. . and it was never simple or good. What it boiled down to was being alone — particularly alone — in Vienna in the middle of my twenties and, worst of all, growing used to it.

My eyes were stuck on the ceiling while the black silence honked its horn, but I knew I would have to look at her soon. Steeling myself, I blinked three or four times against the tears and slowly brought my scared eyes down. She was leaning against a counter and had both hands in her pants pockets. She'd held nothing back, and although she was crying, she looked at me with a grave, loving stare.

She walked over and sat down on my knee. Putting her long arms around my neck, she hugged me tightly. When I returned the embrace — tentatively and light with fear — she spoke into my neck.

"Sometimes in the middle of everything I get so sad."

I nodded and began rocking us back and forth in the chair. A father and his scared child.

"Oh, Joe, I just get so spooked."

"Of what? You want to talk?"

"Of nothing. Everything. Getting old, knowing nothing. Never being on the cover of Time magazine."

I laughed and squeezed her harder. I knew exactly what she meant.

"The beans are burning."

"I know. I don't care. Keep hugging me. It's better than beans."

"You wanna go out for hamburgers?"

She pulled back and smiled at me. Her face was all tears. She sniffled and rubbed her nose. "Can we?"

"Yes, honey, and you can have a milkshake too, if you want."

"Joey, you're breaking my heart. You're a good fellow."

"You did that to me once, so we're even now."

"Did what?" She let go and started to get up.

"Broke my heart." I kissed her on the top of the head and smelled that fine clean India smell again.

The next morning we had breakfast at a brass and marble Konditorei on Porzellangasse, near their apartment. Then, because the day was bright and clear, we decided to drive up along the Danube and stop when we saw a nice place. Both of us felt full of life and were definitely in the mood for a long walk. We found a spot near Tulln, a dirt path that ran parallel to the river and wound in and out of the forest. She held my hand the whole way, and we walked and ran and waved at the crew of a Rumanian barge that was slowly working its way upstream. When someone on board saw us and tooted the horn, we looked at each other wonderingly, as if we had accomplished something magical. It was the kind of day that, in retrospect, is almost cheapened by its cliches, but that, when you're experiencing it, has an innocence and clarity that can't ever be matched in your more rational times.

We drove back to town under a plum and orange sunset and had an early dinner at a Greek restaurant near the university. The food was terrible, but the company was something special.

The two weeks Paul was gone went by like that. I didn't do a lick of work because we were constantly together. We cooked, went for walks in remote districts of town where no one ever went, much less sightseers. The fact that we were probably the only people who had ever gone there to sight-see pleased us no end. We went to a couple of movies in German, and on the spur of the moment to hear Alfred Brendel playing Brahms at the Konzerthaus.

One night we decided to see what Vienna offered in the way of night life. We must have gone to twenty places and had thirty cups of coffee, ten glasses of wine, and a Coke here and there. At two in the morning we were in the Cafй Hawelka looking at all the phonies when India turned to me and said, "Joey, you're the most fun man I've been with since Paul. Why can't I marry both of you?"

Paul was due in on Saturday night; the two of us planned to go down to the train station to meet him. I didn't want to tell her, but for the first time since I had known him, I wasn't looking forward to seeing Paul all that much. Call it greed or possessiveness or whatever, I had grown used to squiring India around town on my arm, and it was going to be damned hard and sad to have to give it up.

"Hi ya, kids!"

We watched him zoom down the platform toward us, arms full of bags and packages, a great beaming smile on his face. He hugged India and then me. He had a thousand stories to tell about "the Commies" and insisted we go to a cafй so he could have a real cup of coffee for the first time in two weeks. He let me carry one of his suitcases, which seemed to be light as air. I didn't know if it was empty or because adrenaline was pumping through my body a mile a minute. I didn't know how I felt anymore. India walked between us, holding us each by the arm. She looked completely happy.

"That crumb."

"India, take it easy."

"No! That dirty crumb. How do you like that? He actually asked."

"What exactly did he say?"

"He asked me if we'd slept together."

Big Ben tolled in the middle of my stomach. Half because of indignation, half because with one question Paul had put his finger right on the button. Had I wanted to sleep with India? Yes. Did I still want to sleep with India, my one best friend who was married to my other best friend? Yes.

"And you said?"

"What do you think I said? No! He's never done that before." She was fuming. A few more degrees and smoke would have come out of her ears.

"India?"

"What?"

"Never mind."

"What? Say it. I hate that. Tell me now."

"It's nothing."

"Joe, if you don't tell me, I'll kill you!"

"I wanted to."

"Wanted to what?"

"Go to bed with you."

"Uh oh."

"I told you, you should forget it."

"I'm not uh-ohing because of that." She clapped her hands together and held them tight against her stomach. "The night we went to the cafйs together I wanted you so much I thought I was going to die."

"Uh oh."

"You said it, brother. Now what?"

We talked and talked and talked and talked, until we were exhausted. She suggested we go out and do some shopping. I followed her around the market, my knees shaking the whole time. Once in a while, weighing a grapefruit or choosing eggs, she threw me a look that sent me reeling. This was bad. The whole thing was bad. Black. Wrong. What could you do?

She picked up a triangle of Brie cheese. "Are you thinking?"

"Too much. My head's going to blow a fuse."

"Mine too. You like Brie?"

"Huh?"

Paul called that night around seven and asked if I wanted to go to a horror film with them. It was exactly what I didn't want to do, and I begged off. When I hung up, I wondered if my refusal would make him suspicious. He knew India and I got together once in a while during the day. We would rendezvous when she was through painting or after one of her German classes at the university. What would happen now? He was so kind and generous; I'd never thought of Pad as a jealous or suspicious man. Was this a glimpse of that side of him?

"Joe?"

"India? What time is it, for Christ's sake?" I tried to make out the numbers on the clock next to the bed, but my eyes were too fogged over from sleep.

"It's after three. Were you asleep?"

"Uh, yes. Where are you?"

"Out walking around. Paul and I had a fight."

"Uh oh. Why are you walking around?" I sat up in bed. The blanket slipped down my chest, and I felt the cold of the room.

"Because I don't want to be home. You wanna have a cup of coffee or something?"

"Well. . uh. . okay. Um, or would you like to come over here? Is that okay?"

"Sure. I'm right at the corner of your street. You know that phone booth?"

I smiled and shook my head. "Should I turn the light on and off three times to signal when the coast is clear?"

I heard the zazzy sound of a Brooklyn raspberry come through the phone before she hung up on me.

"Where'd you get that robe? You look like Margaret Rutherford."

"India, it's three o'clock in the morning. Shouldn't you call Paul?"

"Why? He's not around. He took off."

I was heading toward the kitchen, but that stopped me fast enough. "Took off where?"

"How should I know? He went one way, and I went the other."

"You mean he hasn't actually gone anywhere —"

"Joe, shut up. What are we going to do?"

"About this? About you and me? I don't know."

"You really want to go to bed with me?"

"Yes."

She sighed loudly and dramatically. I wanted to look at her, but I couldn't. All my courage had fled with her question.

"Well, Joey, me too, so I guess we got big problems, huh?"

"I guess."

The phone rang. I looked at her and pointed to it. She shook her head. "I ain't answering that, the creep. If it's him, tell him I'm not here. No, no! Tell him I'm in bed with you and can't be disturbed. Ha! That's it! Give it to him!"

"Hello?"

"Joe? Is India there?" His voice said he knew she was but was asking just to be polite.

I wasn't taking any chances with my answer. "Yes, Paul. She just got here. One second."

This time I held the receiver out to her, and after a dirty look, she snatched it out of my hand. "What, stinko? Huh? Yes, you're damned right! What? Yes. All right. . What?. . I said all right, Paul. Okay." She hung up. "Ratface."

"Well?"

"Well, he said he was sorry and wants to apologize. I don't know if I should let him." She said it while she buttoned up her coat. She stopped when her hands got to the last one, and then she looked me long and hard in the eyes. "Joe, I'm going home and listen to my husband apologize. He said he even wants to apologize to you. Christ! This thing's going to happen and we both know it and I'm going home to listen to him apologize to me for being suspicious. Is it bad, Joe? Are we really this bad?"

We looked at each other, and it was a long time before I realized my teeth were actually chattering.

"You're scared, huh, Joe?"

"Yes."

"Me too. Me too. Good night."

Two weeks later I turned her wet face to me and kissed her. It was exactly, exactly the way I'd envisioned India Tate kissing: gently, simply, but with a delicious intensity.

She took my hand and led me into the bedroom. The big goose-down comforter was folded neatly across the foot of my double bed. It was coral pink; the bottom sheet was white and without wrinkles. The glass lamps on the side tables gave off a muted, intimate glow. She walked to the other side of the bed and began unbuttoning her shirt. In a minute I saw she was wearing no bra, which must have embarrassed her, because she turned away and finished with her back to me.

"Joe, can I turn out the light?"

In bed I discovered that her breasts were larger than I'd thought; her skin was tight and firm everywhere. In the dark it was a dancer's body, very warm against the fresh, icy sheets.

I don't know if sex is a reflection of a person's true spirit or personality, although I've heard it said often enough. India was very good — very fluid and active. She knew how to prolong both of our orgasms without making it feel as if she was manipulating or trying to remember some page out of The Joy of Sex. She said she wanted to feel me as deep inside her as possible, and when I was there, she rewarded me with words and shivers that made me want to plunge even deeper and rattle every object on her shelves.

We moved quickly through the first and then the less shrill, less desperate second. That, however, was nothing new: for me the first time with any woman has inevitably been more to prove it's actually happening than to enjoy. Once you've passed that barrier, you become human and fallible and tender again.

A street lamp threw its harsh, cheap light across the bed. India came back into the room holding two small glasses of the wine I had bought that afternoon. She was still naked, and when she sat down next to me on the edge of the bed, the light moved up her side and stopped just below her breasts.

"It's very cold. I took a big sip in the kitchen and it gave me one of those ice-cream headaches." She handed me one, and after I sat up, we touched glasses in a quiet, unspoken toast.

"Aren't you cold?"

"No, I'm fine."

"That's right — neither of you — oops." I was so embarrassed I closed my eyes. The last thing I wanted was to bring Paul into the room.

"Joey, it's okay. He's not here." She drank her wine and looked out the window. "I'm still glad we did it, and that's supposed to be the big test, isn't it? I mean, after you've zipped through the passion and are back where you started? I wanted you, it happened, and now we're here and still happy, right? I don't want to think about anything else. I have to tell you something even though it doesn't mean a thing. I've never done this with anyone since Paul, okay? It doesn't matter, but I wanted you to know."

She reached out and ran her still-warm palm down my chest. She caught the top of the blanket with her fingers and pulled it down: past my stomach, past my penis, which was blooming again like an African violet. She straddled me and, licking her fingertips, reached down and spread the wetness over the head. Then she took hold of it, strongly — like a gun — and slid it into her. Halfway there she stopped, and I was afraid it had hurt her, but I saw she was only trying to hold the moment until she was ready to own it again.

One day in bed we had a conversation about my "type" of woman.

"I bet you I'm not your kind, am I?"

"What do you mean?" I pulled the pillow under my head.

"I mean, I'm not your type of girl. Woman."

"India, you must be or else we wouldn't be here, would we?" I patted the bed between us.

"Oh, yeah, sure, I'm good-looking and all, but I'm not your kind of girl. No, no, you don't have to say anything. Sssh, wait a minute — let me try and guess."

"India —"

"No, shut up. I want to try this. Knowing you. . you probably like big blondes or redheads with tiny fannies and big boobs."

"Wrong! Don't be so smirky, smart aleck. I do like blondes, but I've never been a big-breast man. If you really want to know the truth, I like beautiful legs. You have beautiful legs, you know."

"Yeah, they're okay. Are you sure about that breast thing? I would've sworn you were a tight-sweater lad."

"Nope, I like long sleek legs. Most of all, I'm crazy for a woman who's at ease with her looks, if you know what I mean. She doesn't wear much makeup because it doesn't mean anything to her. If she's attractive she knows it, and that's enough. She doesn't feel the need to show off what she's got."

"And she bakes her own bread, believes in natural childbirth, and eats three bowls of granola a day."

"India, you asked. You're making me sound stupid."

"Sorry." She slid over in bed and put one of those long legs over mine. "Besides looks, what else do you like about me?"

She was serious, so I answered seriously. "You're unpredictable. You're good-looking too, but behind those looks are all these different women, and I like that very much. Everyone has different qualities if they're at all interesting, but in your case it's as if there's no one India Tate. I think it's amazing. When I'm with you, I feel as if I'm with ten women."

She tickled me. "Sometimes you get so serious, Joey. You look as if I just asked you a question in biochemistry. Come over here and give me a big smooch."

I did, and we lay quietly in each other's arms.

"Can I tell you something crazy, India? Part of me always looks forward to seeing Paul. Is that nuts?"

She kissed my forehead. "Not at all. He's your friend. Why shouldn't you like seeing him? I think it's nice."

"Yes, but it's like that old story about why murderers put out their victims' eyes after they've killed them."

She pushed me away, and her voice was testy. "What are you talking about?"

"You see, there's this old superstition that the last thing a dead person sees is the guy who's done him in, if he was killed from in front, see? So some people used to think that since that was so, the image would register on the dead man's eyeballs like a photograph. Look at the guy's eyes and you'll see who did it." I stopped and tried to smile at her; only it turned out to be a forlorn, useless smile. "I keep thinking that one day Paul is going to look in my eyes and see you there."

"You're saying I murdered you?" Her face showed nothing: it was only pale and delicate. Her voice was as distant as the moon. I wanted to touch her, but I didn't.

"No, India, that's not what I'm saying at all."

In those first days of our affair, I kept watching her as intently when we made love as a prospector looking at a geiger counter, but there was nothing in her expression I hadn't already seen. I think I was hoping that, in the midst of that full but simple passion that took place every time we pulled down the sheets, there would be a hint or a clue as to what was happening between her and Paul. And I didn't even know what I was hoping for. Did I want everything to be the way it had always been? Or did I secretly, selfishly, wish she was disenchanted with her husband and would end up wanting me?

How long would it be before he found out? When it came to trysts, rendezvous, and love messages written in invisible ink, I wasn't very subtle or capable. It had happened once or twice in the past. My way of dealing with it then had been to let the woman decide when and where and how; I would go along with it no matter how urgently I felt I needed to be with her. As far as that was concerned, I knew my limits and knew if I ever tried to run the affair I'd botch everything in two seconds flat.

Paul was good old Paul and treated me no differently. India was the same too; only once in a while she would wink or give my foot a tiny tap under the table. I was the only one who was different; I was "on" every time we were together. But they both affected not to notice.

In the meantime, India continued to come over, and we had our slivers of time when the world was only as big as my bed. When she was there I tried to put everything out of my mind and seize the part of the day she could give me. It was not a difficult time either, but I was often surprised by how exhausted I was at night. I would often fall into bed with a hunger for sleep I'd never known before. One day, when I asked India if the same thing had been happening to her, she was already asleep on my arm; it was only ten o'clock in the morning.

Around the beginning of November, guilt began to whistle a familiar tune. Hard as I tried, I couldn't stop it. I knew a great part stemmed from my ambivalent feelings toward India. Did I love her? No, I didn't. When we made love she often said things like "Love-yes! Love-oh!" and even then I felt uncomfortable, because I knew I didn't love her. As far as I was concerned that was all right, because I cared for her, wanted her, and needed her in many different, ever-increasing ways. I had long ago given up on the possibility of finding someone I could love totally and endlessly. Sometimes I tried to convince myself that what I felt for India was the only kind of love Joseph Lennox could ever feel, but I knew I was lying. But what more did I want? What ingredient was missing? I had no idea, except that where there should have been magic and blue sparks, there was "only" great sleight-of-hand or a brilliant trick I loved but knew was done with little hidden mirrors.

5

Holding a bouquet of flowers in front of me like a delicate shield, I waited for someone to open the door.

India appeared and smiled at the cluster of red and pink roses. "Well, Joey, that's mighty neighborly of you." She took them and gave me a buss on the cheek. I started through the door and suddenly felt a bitter little pinch in the middle of my back. India loved to pinch. "You look great tonight, sporty. If Paul wasn't here, I'd throw you down on the floor and ravish you."

That was enough to shoot me forward into their living room. I wasn't in the mood to live dangerously. Paul was nowhere to be seen, so I assumed he was in the kitchen preparing his part of the dinner. They liked to do it that way — Paul was soup and salad chef, India main course and dessert. The room was warm and hummed with an apricot light. I sat on the couch and put my nervous hands on my nervous knees.

"What are you drinking, Joey?" Paul came out of the kitchen with a bottle of vinegar in one hand and a beer in the other.

"That beer looks good."

"Beer? You don't drink beer."

"No, well, once in a while." I laughed and tried to sound like a debonair character out of a 1930s movie. Herbert Marshall. Ha ha — very suave.

"Okay, beer it is. I also want you to know, bub, that this meal tonight is going to outdo Paul Bocuse. Beginning with salad nigoise, no less. Fresh anchovies too; none of them little tinned babies!" He went back to the kitchen and left me to ponder slim gray anchovies. Ross had once made me eat two big tins of them, which didn't increase my appreciation any. It was either that or he'd tell Bobby Hanley about my misuse of his sister. Now my hands wilted on my knees as I wondered what I could do to keep the damned things in my stomach once they'd arrived.

"I'll eat lots of bread."

"Huh?" India came into the room with the flowers in a yellow vase full of water. She placed it in the middle of the table and stood back to admire them. "Where did you get roses at this time of the year? They must have cost you a fortune!"

I was still working on anchovy digestion and didn't answer.

"Paul is really putting on the dog for you tonight, Joe."

He stuck his head out of the kitchen. "You're damned right. We owe him for about nine meals. Christ, he had to take care of you for two weeks! That'd be enough to drive Sister Teresa around the bend. India wanted to have fried chicken and mashed potatoes."

"Shut up, Paul. Joe likes fried chicken."

"Low level, India, very low level. Wait till he sees what I've got for him." He started counting off on his fingers. "Salad niзoise. Coq au vin. Pineapple upside-down cake."

I had to stop myself from physically recoiling into the couch. I detested every one of those things. I hadn't eaten any of them, thank God, since my mother had gone away so many years before. In fact, Ross and I had once made lists of our most unfavorite of her dishes, and Paul's menu for tonight had about half of mine. I managed — just — to put an idiotic lip-smackin' smile on my face that pleased him.

India and I made small talk while he banged away in the other room. She looked so different. She wore her hair up, accentuating the high patrician lines of her face. She moved gracefully around the room, sure and at ease in her surroundings. I felt like Jekyll and Hyde here. On this couch I'd had long talks with Paul. Over by the window I had once slipped my hands into the back pockets of India's blue jeans and pulled her close to me. At the dining table, now set with pinks and tropical green, we'd sat and had coffee in the middle of an afternoon and talked. The window, the table — the room was full of ghosts so recent I could almost reach out and touch them. Yet in a part of my heart I felt smug and content because they were half mine.

"Soup's on!" Paul staggered playfully out of the kitchen with a big wooden salad bowl. Two wooden forks stuck up from either side like brown rabbit ears.

I tried to talk straight through each course. I avoided looking down at my plate as much as possible. It reminded me of a time I had climbed a small mountain and discovered halfway up that I was petrified of heights. A friend who had come along told me everything would be all right so long as I didn't look down. That advice had gotten me through more than one scrape in my life, not all of them associated with mountains.

Miraculously, there were only a few suspicious smudges of pineapple on my plate when I finally peeked; the worst was over, and I could put my tired fork down with a clear conscience.

Paul asked who was for coffee and disappeared again into the kitchen. India was sitting on my right; she gave me a little jab in the hand with her dessert fork.

"You look as if you just ate a tire."

"Sssh! I hate anchovies."

"Why didn't you say so?"

"Sssh, India!"

She shook her head. "You're such a dope."

"India, stop! I'm not a dope. If he'd gone to all that trouble to cook —"

The lights went out, and a table with candles on each of the four corners came gliding in from the kitchen. They illuminated Paul's face; I saw he was wearing his Little Boy top hat.

A trumpet fanfare and a blasting drum roll followed.

"Ladies and gentlemen, for your after-dinner enjoyment, the Hapsburg Room would like to present the Amazing Little Boy and his bag, or should I say hat, full of tricks!"

Paul remained deadpan throughout the introduction. When it was over (I assumed it came from a tape recorder in the other room), he bowed deeply and reached behind him. The lights in the room came on again, and at the same instant the candles went out. Poof! Just like that.

"Hey, Paul, that's a great trick!"

He nodded, but put a finger to his lips for silence. He had on the familiar white gloves from India's Little Boy painting and a cutaway jacket over a white T-shirt. Taking off the hat, he placed it rim up on the table directly in front of him. I looked at India, but she was watching the performance.

From inside his jacket he took out a large silver key. He held it up for us to see and then dropped it into the silk hat. A burst of flame shot upward, and I jumped in my seat. He smiled and, picking up the hat, turned it so we could see down into it. A small black bird swooped out and winged over to our table. It landed on India's dessert plate and pecked at a piece of cake. Paul tapped the table twice; the bird flew obediently back to him. Placing the hat over it, Paul made a loud kissing noise and pulled the hat up again. Twenty or thirty silver keys fell out of it with a metallic clatter.

India began clapping furiously. I joined right in.

"Bravo, Boy!"

"Paul, my God, that's fantastic!" I'd had no idea he was so talented. "But where's the bird?"

He slowly shook his head and put his finger again to his lips. I felt like the bad seven-year-old at the second-grade puppet show.

"Do your mind reading, Boy!"

Although I didn't believe in it, just the idea of Paul reading my mind at that point made me uncomfortable. I wanted to give India a belt in the mouth to keep her quiet.

"Little Boy is not reading minds tonight. Return another time and he will tell all, including Joseph Lennox's vast unhappiness with tonight's dinner!"

"No, come on, Paul —"

"Another time!" He moved his arm through the air as if he were pushing a curtain across an invisible window.

One white hand stopped above the rim of the silk hat. Paul made the kissing sound again, and the blade of orange flame burst up for the second time that night. It disappeared in an instant, and the hat toppled over on its side. There was a tinny, clinkety-clink sound, and out hopped a large toy tin bird. It was black, with a yellow beak and black wings, and a big red key in its back. It slowly goose-stepped to the edge of the table and stopped. Paul snapped his fingers, but nothing happened. He snapped them again. The toy rose off the table and began to fly. It flapped its wings too slowly and cautiously: an old man getting into a cold swimming pool. That didn't matter, because slow or not, it glided up and off the table and flew in a loud putter around the room.

"Jesus Christ! Amazing!"

"Yay, Little Boy!"

The bird was at the window, hovering at the Venetian blinds in a way that made it look as if it was having a look outside. Paul tapped the table. The bird turned reluctantly and flew back to him. When it landed, Paul once again covered it with the hat. I started to clap, but India touched my arm and shook her head — there was more, the trick wasn't over. Paul smiled and turned the hat rim up again. He gave it the familiar two taps; the flame shot up for the third time. This time it didn't stop. Instead, Paul turned the hat over, and out tumbled a screeching, burning, live bird — a small package of fire that kept trying to stand up or fly. . I was so aghast I didn't know what to do.

"Paul, stop!"

"My name is Little Boy!"

"Paul, for godsake!"

India grabbed my arm so hard it hurt. "Boy! Call him Little Boy or he'll never stop!"

"Little Boy! Little Boy! Stop it! What the hell are you trying to do?"

The bird continued to screech. I gaped at Paul, he smiled back. He casually picked up the hat and placed it over the staggering flame. He tapped the top and pulled the whole thing up and away. Nothing. No bird, no smoke, smell, ashes. . Nothing.

I realized after some seconds that India was clapping.

"Bra-vo, Boy! Won-derful!"

I looked at her. She was having the time of her life.

Little Boy reappeared on Thanksgiving Day. I hadn't had turkey or cranberry sauce in years, so when India discovered that the Vienna Hilton served a special Thanksgiving dinner in one of its innumerable restaurants, we all agreed to go.

Paul had the day off and wanted to take full advantage of it. I would write until noon; then we would meet for coffee at the Hotel Europa.

After that we'd ramble around the First District and look at the fancy store windows. Then slowly we'd make our way over to the Hilton for a drink at the Klimt bar, and on to the big meal.

I got there a little late; they were standing in front of the hotel. They both had on light spring jackets that looked ridiculous in the midst of other people's fur coats, gloves, and an insistent winter wind. Both were dressed casually, except that Paul was holding the big leather briefcase he took to work. I assumed he'd been to his office for something that morning.

The Graben and Kдrntner strasse were alive with well-dressed, well-to-do people promenading from store to store. Everything in that part of town costs more than it should, but the Viennese love prestige and you often see the most surprising people wearing Missoni clothes or carrying Louis Vuitton handbags.

"There he is, Shoeless Joe from Hannibal, Mo."

"Hi! Have you been waiting long?"

Paul shook his head no, India nodded yes. They looked at each other and smiled.

"I'm sorry, but I got all caught up with work."

"Yeah? Well, let's get caught up on some coffee. My stomach's beginning to hiss." India marched off, leaving the two of us in the dust. She did that sometimes. I once saw them from afar walking "together." It was ludicrous; she was at least three feet ahead of him, striding and looking straight ahead like a serious military cadet. Paul stayed within a few feet of her wake, but he swiveled his head from side to side, taking in everything and in no hurry whatsoever. I followed them for a few blocks, feeling wonderfully voyeuristic, anxious to see when India would turn around and give him a blast to get going. She never did. She marched, he dawdled.

Our coffee went well. Paul had been to the airport the day before and described the passengers disembarking from a charter flight from New York. He said he could immediately tell who was who because all the Austrian women were dressed to the nines in chic new designer clothes, while their men favored tight new jeans and cowboy boots that ranged in color from sand to plum with black fleur-de-lis designs. All of them came down the ramp fast and assured, smiling because they knew the territory.

In contrast, the Americans on the flight were dressed in drably practical shoes with thick crepe bottoms and drip-dry clothes so stiff and unyielding that they made the people look as if they were all walking between sandwich-board advertisements. They came into the airport slowly, with dismayed or angry looks. Suspicious eighty-year-olds who had just landed on the moon.

Some stores on the Graben had already begun their Christmas push and I wondered when the men would come in from the country farms with Christmas trees for sale. The Austrian tradition is not to decorate your tree until Christmas Eve, but they are for sale weeks before.

"What do you do at Christmas, Joey?"

"It depends. I've stayed around here. Once I went over to Salzburg to see how they'd done it up. It's something you two should see if you haven't already — That town at Christmastime is something."

They glanced at each other, and India shrugged indifferently. I wondered if she was mad at me for some reason. After coffee, we walked toward St. Stephen's Cathedral; I put my gloves on. I was sure it was getting colder, but neither of them showed any sign of it. They were dressed for a day in late spring.

The restaurant was surprisingly full. Paul nodded to people at several tables while the hostess led us to ours. It was close to a large picture window that gave a full view of the Stadtpark and the purple puff clouds that hung, unmoving, over it.

"The reason why I asked before about what you're doing over the holidays, Joey, is because we're going to Italy for five days and wanted to know if you'd like to come with us?"

I zapped a look at India, but her face said nothing. Where had this come from? Whose idea was it? I didn't know what the hell I was supposed to say. I opened my mouth twice like a hungry fish, but nothing came out.

"Is that supposed to mean yes?"

"Yes, I guess. . Sure, yes!" I fiddled with my napkin. It fell on the floor. When I bent down to get it, I pulled a muscle in my back. It hurt. I tried to get my mind to race into every corner at once to find out what was going on here. India sure wasn't helping much.

"That's great. Well, now that we've got that settled, you kids'll have to excuse me for a minute. I'll be back in two shakes." Paul got up, briefcase in hand, and headed out of the room.

I watched until I heard the crunch of celery in my ear. I turned to see India pointing a long green stalk at me.

"Don't you dare ask me how it happened, Joe. The whole thing was his idea. He woke up this morning in a big lather and wanted to know what I thought of it. What could I say? No? Maybe he thinks he's doing penance or something for being suspicious of you before."

"I don't know. It gives me the willies."

"You and me both, Joe. But I don't want to talk about it today. It's far away, and a lot can happen. Let's eat lots of turkey now and be happy."

"That might be a little difficult." I nervously wiped my mouth with my napkin.

"Quiet! I want you to tell me what the Lennox family used to do for Thanksgiving. Did you guys eat turkey?"

"No, as a matter of fact. My brother, Ross, didn't like it, so we had goose instead."

"Goose? Whoever heard of eating goose on Thanksgiving? That Ross sounds like a real weirdo, Joe."

"Weirdo? It's not the right word for him. He. . Do you know you ask about him a lot, India?"

"Yep. Does it bother you? You want to know why? Because he sounds like an interesting demon." She smiled and plucked an olive off my plate.

"Do you like demons?"

"Only if they're interesting." She took another olive off my plate. "Do you know that line from Isak Dinesen: 'It is a moving thing to work together with a demon'?"

The waiter brought the salad, which cut off the rest of whatever else she was going to say. We ate for a while, and then she put down her fork and continued.

"Paul was a little demon when we first met. It's amazing, huh? It's true though. He had hundreds of unpaid traffic tickets, and he used to shoplift with the coolest expression on his face you ever saw."

"Paul? Steal?"

"That's right."

"I can't believe it. My brother used to shoplift too. He once stole all our presents for Christmas."

"Really? How marvelous! See, he was interesting! I'll tell you something else too — you describe him with the most mixed emotions I've ever heard. One day he sounds like your hero, and the next you make him out to be Jack the Ripper."

We talked about it. The main course came, and the waiter asked if he should serve Paul's too or wait until he returned. I looked at my watch and with a jolt realized how long he had been gone. I looked at India to see if she was worried. She pushed the turkey around her plate for a few seconds, then looked at me.

"Joe, it's silly, but would you go to the bathroom and take a look? Everything is okay, I'm sure, but do it for me, would you?"

I put my napkin down and hastily brushed some crumbs off the front of my pants. "Sure! Don't, uh, don't let the waiter eat my turkey, okay?" I said it lightly, hoping she'd smile. But the look on her face was a kind of limbo between concern and exaggerated ease.

I was up, but I didn't want to go. I didn't want to move from the spot. I would have stood there happily in the middle of the restaurant, in front of all those people, for the rest of the day. Dread has no dignity.

Admittedly, since my brother's death terror was as much a part of me as anything else. I was forever quick to jump to conclusions, and often imagined the most awful thing that could occur in any given situation. That was because if I was wrong and it turned out to be nothing, then I would be delighted. If I was right (which was rarely), then the horror could no longer strike me with as much force as it had when Ross died.

I tried not to walk too quickly, both for India's peace of mind (if she happened to be watching) and so as not to draw the eyes of anyone around us. I stared straight ahead, but saw nothing. The thousand clanks of forks on plates and knives on spoons was louder and more alarming than I had ever realized. It drowned out the slip of my feet crossing the carpet and all the noises I make and am so aware of when I'm frightened and am moving toward whatever it is that's frightening me.

At the last minute I stumbled on a bumpy part of the carpet and only just regained my balance. The men's room was directly across from the restaurant in a darkened alcove lit only by a green HERREN sign above the door. I touched the cold metal knob and closed my eyes. I took a gigantic breath and pushed it open. I looked down the line of glistening white urinals. Paul wasn't there. I let out the breath. The room was unnaturally bright and smelled strongly of pine disinfectant. Three gray toilet stalls faced a line of white sinks on the far side of the urinals.

I called his name while I walked toward them. There was no answer. A dismal fear began to take hold of me again, although rationally I knew he could be in any of a hundred different places: making a long telephone call, browsing by the magazine rack. .

"Paul?"

I saw something move beneath the door of the middle stall and, without thinking, fell to my knees to see what it was.

For a moment I was sure I recognized his beat-up black loafers, but then the legs rose slowly up and out of view — as if whoever was in there had pulled them to his chest for some bizarre reason. The thought rushed in and out of my mind that I should slide closer to the stall so I could see, but a remnant of the saner me prevailed and wailed that I should get the hell out of there and stop looking under toilet doors.

"Everybody out there has to sit down!"

"Paul?"

"No Paul! Little Boy is here! If you want to stay for the show, you have to play with Little Boy!"

I didn't know what to do. I was down on my knees looking up at the toilet door. A black top hat rose from behind it. Then Paul's face, framed by his two open hands (palms facing outward, thumbs under his chin). He was wearing his Little Boy gloves.

"We have called you all here today to find the answer to the Big Question: Why is Joseph Lennox fucking India Tate?" He looked down at me sweetly. I closed my eyes and saw the blood beating fast behind the lids.

"No one wants to answer? Aw, come on, gang. Boy puts on a whole magic show for you, and you won't answer his one little teeny question?"

I mustered the courage to look at him again. His eyes were closed, but his mouth still moved, talking silently.

Then, "Ha! If no one's going to volunteer, I'll just have to call on you, that's all. Joseph Lennox in the third row! Will you tell us why Joseph Lennox is fucking Paul Tate's wife?"

"Paul —"

"Not Paul! Little Boy! Paul isn't with us tonight. He's out somewhere going crazy."

The outside door whooshed open; a man in a gray suit came in. Paul ducked down into the stall, and I stupidly pretended to be tying my shoe. The man ignored me after a fast glance. He tucked in his shirt, straightened his tie, and went out. I watched him leave. When I turned back, Paul was there again, smiling down at me. This time he was resting his elbows on top of the metal door, his chin propped on his crossed white hands. In any other situation he would have looked cute. His head began to move from side to side, slowly and exactly, like a metronome pendulum to the beat.

"In-dia and Joe, sittin' in a tree

K-I-S-S-I-N-G!"

He said it two or three times. I didn't know what to do, where to go. What was I supposed to do? The smile fell away, and he pursed his lips. "Joey, I'd never have done it to you." His voice was soft as a prayer in church. "Never! Goddamn you! Get out! Get out of my fucking life! Bastard. You'd have gone with us to Italy! You'd've fucked her there, too! Get out!"

I think he was crying. I couldn't look. I ran.

6

Two miserable days later I was still trying to figure out what to do when the telephone rang. I looked at it for three full rings before I picked it up.

"Joe?" It was India. Her voice was scared, haunted.

"India? Hi."

"Joe, Paul's dead."

"Dead? What? What are you talking about?"

"He's dead, goddamn it! What do you think I mean? The ambulance men just came and took him away. He's gone. He's dead!" She started crying. Big, startling sobs, broken only by gasps for breath.

"Oh, my God! How? What happened?"

"His heart. He had a heart attack. He was doing his exercises and he just fell on the floor. I thought he was kidding. But he's dead, Joe. Oh, my God, what am I going to do? Joe, you're the only person I could call. What am I going to do?"

"I'll be there in half an hour. Less. India, don't do anything until I get there."

No one ever gets used to death. Soldiers, doctors, morticians see it continually and grow accustomed to a part or a facet of it, but not the whole thing. I don't think anyone could. To me, being told of the death of someone I knew well is like walking down a familiar staircase in the dark. You know from a million times on it just how many steps there are to the bottom, but then your foot moves to touch the next one. . and it's not there. Stumbling, you can't believe it. And you will often stumble there from now on because, as with all things you know by habit, you've used that lost step so many times the two of you are inseparable.

Rushing down the staircase of my building, I kept testing (or was it tasting?) the words, like an actor trying to get his new lines straight. "Paul's dead?" "Paul Tate is dead." "Paul's dead." Nothing sounded right — they were sentences from an alien, out-of-this-world language. Words which, until that day, I had never imagined could exist together.

Right outside the door was a flower stand, and for an instant I wondered whether I should buy some for India. The vendor saw me looking and enthusiastically said the roses were especially nice today. The image of those red flowers brought me around fast and sent me dashing down the street in search of a cab.

The driver had on a monstrous black-and-yellow-plaid golf cap with a fuzzy black pompon on it. It was so bad-looking that I had a desperate urge to knock it off his head and say, "How can you wear that when my friend just died?" There was a miniature soccer ball hanging by a string from the rearview mirror. I kept my eyes shut for the rest of the trip so I wouldn't have to see these things.

"Wiedersehen!" he chirped over his shoulder, and the cab pulled away from the curb. I turned to face their building. It looked new and had the familiar plaque on the wall saying the original building that had been there was destroyed in the war. This one had been put up in the 1950s.

I pressed the button in the call box and was disconcerted by how quickly her answer came. I wondered if she had been sitting by the buzzer since our phone conversation.

"Joe, is that you?"

"Yes, India. Before I come up, would you like me to go to the store or anything for you? You want some wine?"

"No, come up."

Their apartment was freezing cold, but she stood in the doorway wearing my favorite yellow T-shirt and a white linen skirt that looked as if it should have been worn in the dog days of August. Her feet were bare, too. Both the Tates seemed completely oblivious to the cold. I gave up being bewildered once I realized it made total sense in a way: both of them had so much bubbling, steaming life-energy that some of it inevitably ended up being turned into thermal units. This thought made so much sense to me that I had to test it out. Once, when we were waiting for a tram on a mean, godawful, cold, foggy night in October, I "accidentally" touched Paul's hand. It was as warm as a coffeepot. But that was all over now.

Their apartment was ominously clean. I guess I half expected it to be turned upside down for some reason, but it wasn't. Magazines were carefully fanned out across the bamboo coffee table, silk pillows upright and undented on the couch. . The worst thing of all was that their table was still set for two. Everything — place mats, wineglasses, silverware. It gave the illusion that dinner was due to arrive at any moment.

"Do you want a cup of coffee, Joe? I just made a pot."

I didn't, but it was easy to see she wanted to be up and moving, doing something with her hands and body.

"Yes, that'd be great."

She brought out a tray jammed with big coffee mugs, a heavy porcelain sugar and cream set, a plate of sliced pound cake, and two linen napkins. She fooled around with the coffee and cake as long as she could, but finally her spring ran down and she was still.

Her empty hands began to fiddle and crawl up and over each other, while at the same time she tried to give me a comfortable, uncomplicated smile. I put the warm mug down and rubbed my mouth with my fingers.

"I'm a widow, Joe. A widow. What a fucking strange word."

"Will you tell me what happened? Can you?"

"Yes." She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. "He always does his exercises — those exercises before dinner. He said they relaxed him and made him hungry. I was in the kitchen making —" She threw her head back and groaned. Covering her face with her hands, she slid off the couch and onto the floor. Curled into a fetal position, she wept and wept until there was nothing left. When I thought she was done, I slipped down beside her and put my hand on her back. The touch started her off again, and she crawled, still crying, into my lap. It was a long time before silence returned.

He had been doing sit-ups. They had a little joke where he always counted them off loudly so she could hear how good he was at them. She didn't pay attention when his voice stopped. She thought he was either tired or out of breath. When she came into the room he was lying on his back, hands clenched tightly over his upper chest. She thought he was kidding. She went to the table and arranged the silverware. From time to time she looked over at him, and when he didn't stop, she got mad. She told him to stop kidding around. When nothing changed she swept angrily around the table, preparing to tickle him into submission. She bent over him, fingers out and ready to attack. Then for the first time she saw that the very tip of his tongue stuck out from between his lips and there was blood around it.

The coffee tasted like cold acid in my mouth. She finished the story sitting at the other end of the couch, looking straight ahead at the wall.

"He had high blood pressure. A couple of years ago a doctor told him he should start exercising if he wanted to be safe." She turned to me, a hard metal line of smile on her lips. "You know what? The last time he went to a doctor they said his blood pressure was way down."

"India, did he tell you what happened at the Hilton that day?"

She nodded. "Little Boy?"

"Yes."

"You think his finding out about us did this to him?"

"I don't know, India."

"Me neither, Joe."

Paul was buried three days later in a small cemetery that fronted one of the vineyards in Heiligenstadt. He had discovered the place while on a Sunday walk and had made India promise that if he died in Vienna, she would try to have him buried there. He said he liked the view — ornate stone and cast-iron markers with a backdrop of hills and grapevines. Way at the top, Schloss Leopoldsberg and the green beginnings of the Wienerwald.

I knew some of the people at the service. A big bear of a man from Yugoslavia named Amir who loved to cook and who had the Tates over to dinner at least once a month. A few people from Paul's office, and a handsome black teacher from one of the international schools who pulled up in a bright-orange Porsche convertible. But I was surprised there weren't more. I kept looking at India to see if she was fully aware of the meager turnout. She wore no hat, and her hair blew light and free in the wind. Her face showed nothing but a kind of closed harmony. She later told me she was aware only of her grief and the last moments with her husband.

The weather was fine and sunny; for a few moments the sun cheerfully reflected off a polished gravestone nearby. Except for an occasional car and the crunch of gravel underfoot, it was quiet. A stillness you were hesitant to upset because, when you did, the glass around the moment might shatter and Paul Tate would truly and forever be gone, and we would soon be leaving him.

That's what I'd thought the two previous times I'd been to funerals — how you leave and "they" stay. Like someone seeing you off at the train. As it's pulling out of the station and you're waving goodbye to them from the window, inevitably they seem to diminish in size. Not only because you're moving and the physical distance is shrinking them, but because they're still there. You're bigger because you're off and away to something new, while they're shrinking because now they'll go home to the same lunches, television shows, dog, ink, and view from the living room window.

I turned from thoughts of Paul to how India was taking it. She was holding her purse to her chest and looking up at the sky. What did she see there? I wondered if she was looking for heaven. Then she closed her eyes and lowered her head slowly. She hadn't cried at all that day, but how long could she hold out? I took a step toward her; she must have heard my feet on the gravel, because she turned and looked at me. Simultaneously, two very strange things happened. First, instead of seeming on the verge of tears or some kind of violent emotion, she looked, well, bored. That in itself was disconcerting, but then, an instant later, her face broke into a glorious smile, the kind that comes only when something wonderful happens to you for no reason at all. It was good I didn't have to say anything, because I would have been speechless.

The minister from the English church finished his "ashes-to-ashes" litany. I had no idea what connection he had to the Tates. He evidently hadn't known Paul, because he spoke in a professionally sympathetic voice that had neither warmth nor sadness in it. The interesting thing to me was that he had the same name as the priest in my hometown — the man who'd delivered the funeral services for both Ross and my mother.

When everything was done, I waited while the people said their last words to India. She looked fine; once again I had to admire how strong and sure she was, notwithstanding the smile of a few minutes before. She was not the kind of woman who would self-indulgently fall into her sadness and never reemerge. Death was forever and horrible, but its force didn't own her as it did so many others in the same situation. I knew the difference, too, because I had seen Ross's death drown my mother in its undertow. Now, watching India walk toward me, I could see that would never happen to her.

"Take me home, Joe?" The wind gusted, and a drift of her hair blew across her face. Although I had expected her to ask, I still felt touched and honored that she wanted me with her then. I took her arm, and she pulled it tight to her side. For a moment I felt the curve and hardness of one of her ribs on the back of my hand.

"I thought it was an okay service. Didn't you? At least it was harmless."

"Yes, you're right. I think those Diane Wakoski poems were lovely."

"Yeah, well, she was Paul's favorite."

The Yugoslav passed and asked if we wanted a ride into town. India said thanks but she wanted to walk for a while, we'd catch the tram a few blocks away. I'd assumed she'd want to go by cab, but I said nothing. When he was gone, we were the only ones left in the cemetery.

"Do you know how they bury people in Vienna, Joe?" She stopped on the gravel path and turned so she was looking down one of the short, orderly rows of grave markers.

"How do you mean?"

"It's not like in America, see? I'm a big expert on it now. Ask me anything. In the States you buy yourself a little plot of ground — your very own piece, right? — and it's yours forevermore. Not here, baby. You know what happens in merry old Wien? You rent a place for ten years. That's right, no kidding! You rent a plot in the cemetery for ten years, and then you have to pay on it again when the time's up or else they'll exhume you. Dig you right back up. One of the guys here told me some graveyards are so popular that even if you keep making your rent payments, they still dig you up after about forty years so someone else can rest in peace for a while. Oh, shit!"

I looked at her; she looked sick and tired of the world. I squeezed her arm and accidentally bumped into the softness of her breast. She didn't seem to notice.

"I know what I'll do, Joe." She started crying and wouldn't look at me. Staring straight ahead, she kept walking. "After ten years here, you and I will get Paul and we'll move him to a brand-new graveyard! A new place in the sun. Maybe we'll get a mobile home and have it fitted out for him. Move him around all the time. He'll be the best-traveled body in town." She shook her head; the tears flew away from her face. The only sounds in the world were her high heels hitting the pavement and the short gasps for breath.

All the way home on the tram she held my hand tightly and looked at the floor. The crying had flushed her face, but it had begun to pale again by the time we reached her stop. I tugged gently on her arm. For the first time she looked from the floor to me.

"Are we here? Would you mind sticking around, Joe? Do you mind coming home with me for a while?"

"Selbstverstдndlich."

"Joey, I hate to tell you this, but you speak German like Colonel Klink on Hogan's Heroes."

"Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah. Come on, let's get out of here."

The tram glided to a stop. We descended the steep metal steps to the street. I took her arm again, and she pulled it to her side. I remembered the time I'd watched the Tates walk away from me at the Cafй Landtmann. She had held Paul's arm that way, too.

"How did you feel after your brother's death?"

I swallowed and bit my lip. "Do you want to know the truth?"

She stopped and drilled me with one of her looks. "Will you tell me the truth?"

"Of course, India. How did I feel? Good and bad. Bad because he was gone and because he had been so much a part of my life up to that point. Big brothers really are important to you when you're young."

"I believe you. So where did you get off feeling good? Where did that come from?"

"Because kids are omnivorous in their greed. You said so yourself, remember? Yes, I was sorry he was gone, but now I could have his room and his desk, his football and the Albanian flag I'd always coveted."

"Were you really like that? I don't believe it. I thought you said you were such a good little kid."

"India, I don't think I was any different from most boys or girls that age. Ross had been bad for so long that he owned almost all of my parents' attention. Now all of a sudden I was about to get that attention. It's terrible to say, but you said you wanted to hear the truth."

"Do you think it was bad to feel that way?"

We reached the door to her building, and she went digging around in her pocketbook for her keys. I ran my hand lightly down the row of plastic buzzers.

"Was I bad? Sure, I was a nasty little rat. But I think that's the way most kids are. People are so indifferent to them so much of the time, because they're kids, they just naturally grab for whatever they can get. People pay attention to children the way they do to dogs — once in a while they kiss and hug and smother them with a thousand presents, but it's all over in two seconds, and then the grownups want them out of there."

"Don't you think parents love their kids?" She turned the key in the lock and pushed the heavy glass door open.

"If I were to generalize, I'd say they love them but wish they'd stay at a good distance. Once in a while they want them around so they can giggle and laugh and have fun with them, but never for very long."

"Seems as if all you're saying is kids are dull."

"Yes, India, I'd agree to that."

"Were you a dull kid?" She turned to me and dropped the keys into her purse in one movement.

"Compared to my brother I was. I was dull and good. Ross was interesting and bad. But really bad. Even evil sometimes."

She reached over and took a thread off my coat. "Maybe that's why your parents paid more attention to him than to you."

"Because he was a bad boy?"

"No, because you were dull."

The stairwell was damp and dark after our having been outside in the sun for so long. I decided to say nothing to India's mean remark. She went ahead of me. I watched her legs climb the stairs. They were so nice.

The apartment was a mess. It was the first time I'd been back there since the day Paul died. Cardboard boxes on the floor, the couch, and the windowsill. Men's clothes and shoes unceremoniously dumped into them; some were already brimming over with socks, ties, and underwear. Over in a corner three boxes were sealed with shiny brown tape and stacked out of the way. There was no writing on any of them.

"Are these Paul's things?"

"Yes. Doesn't it look as if we're in the midst of a fire sale? I got so uncomfortable opening closets and drawers and seeing his things everywhere I decided to lump it all together and give it away."

She walked into the bedroom and closed the door. I sat down on the edge of the couch and shyly peered into an open box on the floor near my foot. I recognized a green sport shirt Paul had often worn. It was ironed and, unlike the other clothes in there, folded neatly and placed on top of some brown tweed pants I'd never seen before. I reached into the box and, after a quick glance at their bedroom door, took the shirt out and ran my hands across it. I looked at the door again and brought the shirt up to my nose to smell. There was nothing — no Paul Tate left in it after its washing. I put it back and unthinkingly brushed my hands off on my pants.

"I'll be out in a minute, Joe!"

"Take your time. I'm fine out here."

I was about to get up and look in some of the other boxes when I heard the door open. She stuck her head out, and I caught a second's flash of black underwear before I met her eyes.

"Joe, would you mind waiting a little longer? I feel all dirty and gritty from this morning and I'd like to take a quick shower. Is that okay?"

A picture of her standing naked in the shower, shining wet, made me hesitate before I answered. "Sure, of course. Go ahead."

I thought of the film Summer of '42, where the beautiful young woman seduces the boy after she's learned her husband has been killed in the war. I heard the first spit of the shower and felt a full erection growing thick and randy down the inside of my thigh. It made me feel perverse and guilty.

I stepped over to a smaller box filled with all sorts of letters and bills, an empty green checkbook, and a number of fountain pens. I picked up a handful. Paul would only use fountain pens, and holding them, I realized I wanted one as a keepsake — don't ask me why. Then a strange thing happened: I was afraid if I asked India she would say no, so I decided to just take one and say nothing about it. I'm not really a thief by nature, but this time I did it without hesitation. There was a fat black and gold one. It looked old and sedate, and on the cap it said Montblanc Meisterstьck No. 149. There were two others like it in the box, so I assumed that even if India was planning on keeping them she'd never miss this one. I slid it into my pocket and walked over to the window.

The shower stopped, and I listened carefully to the small distant sounds that followed. I tried to imagine what India was doing: toweling her hair dry or dusting powder onto her arms, her shoulders, her breasts.

A woman in a window across the courtyard saw me and waved. I waved back; she waved again. I wondered if she thought I was Paul. What a chilling, uneasy thought. She kept waving slowly like a sea fan under water. I didn't know what to do, so I turned around and went back to the couch.

"Joe, I thought of what I want to do."

"Okay."

"You're going to hate it."

I looked at the closed door and wondered if she could do anything I would hate.

She came out of the bedroom a few minutes later wearing a hooded gray sweatshirt, old Levi's, and a pair of sneakers. She wanted to go jogging down by the river. She said I didn't have to go with her unless I wanted to — she felt better now. She wanted to "clean a few miles" out of her system. It made perfect sense, and I told her I'd go to keep her company. We walked from their place down to the path beside the Danube Canal, which was long and straight and perfect for running. I had a book with me, and I sat down on a wooden bench while she padded off. There were scattered mobs of seagulls diving and floating over the fast-flowing water. A few old men were fishing from the banks; once in a while a couple with a baby carriage walked slowly past. All of us were playing hooky from the day.

I knew India would probably be gone for at least half an hour, so I looked at the water and wondered what was going to happen now. How long would she remain in Vienna? If she left, would she want me to go with her? Would I want to go with her?

Until I'd met the Tates I'd been so comfortable here. I didn't know exactly how happy I was, but by the time I had adjusted my rhythm and pace to that of the city, I fully realized how lucky I was to have that.

In a couple of months what would she want to do? Where would she want to go? As appealing as she was, India was a restless woman, and her sense of wonder needed constant refueling from new stimuli for her to be happy. What if she wanted me with her, but in Morocco or Milan? Would I go? Would I pack up my life and move it at her whim?

I chided myself for being so sure of things. Also, the way I had already dismissed Paul from both our lives was obscene.

I reached into my pocket and brought out his fountain pen. I held it up in front of me. If I'd dusted it for fingerprints, his would be on it somewhere. All of his left thumb perhaps, or the right-hand pinkie. I held it up to the paling sun and saw ink in it. Ink he'd put in. Dear Paul — A few days after you fill this pen you'll be dead. I undid the cap and frowned at the ornately engraved gold and silver point. How old was this thing? Had I stupidly taken an antique that was worth a fortune? I knew nothing about pens. Guiltily I screwed the cap back on and closed my hand over it, hiding it from the world.

The tapping of India's sneakers came up on one side; I had just enough time to put the pen away before she was there. Her face was flushed, and she was breathing hard through her mouth. I turned to meet her and was surprised when she came right up to me and put both hands on my shoulders.

"How long was that?"

I looked at my watch and told her twenty-three minutes.

"Good. I don't feel any better, but at least I'm exhausted now, and that helps."

She looked at the sky, putting her hands on her hips. She walked off a little and stood panting. "Joey? I know we're probably thinking about the same things now, right? But could we please not talk about anything for a while at least?"

"India, there's no hurry."

"I know, and you know, but tell the little gremlin inside me who keeps saying I've got to get everything together now and settled now so I can start right in on a new life. Tell him that. It's ridiculous, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"I know. I'm going to try and ignore it the best I can. Hey, why should I care if things are settled? What am I, crazy? My husband just died! Here I am, trying to make everything right again on the same day they buried him!"

She turned halfway around and ran one hand through her hair. I felt totally helpless.

7

After it snows in the mountains, the roads are in charge. There is nothing you can do about this but follow their whim. You drive slowly and hope the next turn will be friendly — that the trucks will already have passed through and there will be gravel spread over the surface like cinnamon or chocolate sprinkles on a cone. But this is wishful thinking; too often the snow glistens and is packed tight — it's been waiting for you in its nastiest mood. The car begins to slip and drift in a slow dream of danger.

Although I was trying to drive well and carefully, I was petrified. India had been giggling only a moment before.

"What are you laughing at?"

"I like this, Joey. I like driving on these roads with you."

"What? This stuff is dangerous as hell!"

"I know, but I like that, too. I like it when we whish back and forth."

"Whish, huh?" I turned and looked at her as if she was nuts. She laughed.

We were twenty kilometers from our gasthaus, and the sun that had been so bright and friendly that morning when we'd gone out for the drive had dropped behind the mountains. It had taken its yellow cheer with it, and in a moment things everywhere were a sudden, melancholy blue.

What if we broke down out here? The last person we'd seen was a child standing with a sled by the side of the road. He stared stupidly at us as if he'd never seen a car before. He probably hadn't. They probably didn't have cars this far out in the hinterlands.

She reached over and squeezed my knee. "Are you really all that worried?"

"No, of course not. I just don't know where we are, and I'm hungry, and these damned roads give me the willies."

Still smiling, she stretched luxuriously and yawned.

We passed a road sign that said BIMPLITZ — 4 KILOMETERS. It looked tiny against the backdrop of the mountains. I silently wished we were staying in Bimplitz, no matter how ghastly it was.

"Did I ever tell you about the time we saw the bear in Yugoslavia?"

Something quieted in me for the first time in minutes. I loved India's stories.

"Paul and I were driving way off in the country somewhere. Just driving around. Anyway, we came over this rise, and out of nowhere this goddamned bear loomed up in the middle of the road. At first I thought it was some crazy guy in a gorilla suit or something, but it was a bear all right."

"What did Paul do?" We passed through Bimplitz and it was ghastly all right.

"Oh, he loved it. Slammed on the brakes and pulled up next to it as if he were going to ask for directions."

"What'd he think it was, a safari park?"

"I don't know. You know what Paul was like. Stanley and Livingstone personified."

"What happened?"

"So he pulled up next to it, but by then these two guys had appeared out of nowhere and were standing next to the thing. One of them was holding a big thick chain that was attached to a brass ring through the bear's nose. Both guys started screaming out, 'Pho-to! Pho-to!' and the bear did a little dance."

"That's what they were there for? They stopped cars so you could take a picture of yourself with their bear?"

"Sure, that's how they made their living. The problem was, they were out there in the middle of cloud-cuckooland, and I don't know how many cars went down that road every day, much less tourists."

I knew the answer to my next question, but I asked anyway. "Did Paul do it?"

"Do it? He loved it! Didn't you ever see the picture on the living room wall? He showed it to everybody fifteen times. Mr. Big Game Hunter. Frank Buck."

Why did India like me? The stories she told about her dead husband made him sound like the perfect companion — witty, adventurous, thoughtful, loving. If I had seen a bear in the road I would have run all the way home. The five o'clock blues seeped through my pores; even her presence didn't help.

"Look, Joey, that's the name of our town, isn't it? It's only ten kilometers."

The car did another squiggle on the ice, but seeing the sign made me feel a little better. Maybe the owners of the gasthaus would lend me a gun so I could go out and shoot myself before dinner. I reached over and turned on the radio. A disco tune leaped out of the dashboard, strange and out of place in these surroundings. India turned it up and started singing along. She knew every word.

"Do just what you have to do,

but don't tell me no lie.

Soon the time is here again,

Sundays in the sky."

It was a good song that made you want to hop around and dance, but I was surprised she knew every verse. She was still humming the tune when we arrived.

Our gasthaus was set back from the road and up a small hill, which the car gladly climbed, knowing its job was over for the day. I got out and stretched out of my neck the tension cramps that had been gathering all afternoon. The air was silent and full of the smell of woodsmoke and pine. Standing there, waiting for India to gather her things from the back seat, I looked at the mountains that swept the horizon. I was filled with a contentment that brought tears to my eyes. It had been a long time since I had felt that way. The night we'd be spending together smiled at me with white teeth and diamonds in its hands. We would go up to a room with white-and-red-flowered curtains, wood floors that rose and fell under your bare feet as you crossed to the bed, and a small green balcony that made you stand close together if you wanted to be out there at the same time. I had been to the place by myself several times and had vowed to take India there when the snows came and the area was at its most beautiful.

"Joey, don't forget the radio."

Her arms were full of coats and her hiking boots. She smiled so knowingly I almost thought she'd read my mind.

We walked up to the gasthaus; the clack of her wooden clogs on hard ground was the only sound.

An attractive woman in a loden and velvet suit was behind the reception desk and seemed genuinely glad to see us. Without thinking, I signed us in as Joseph and India Lennox. There was a section on the registration form that asked for our ages, but I left it blank. India was looking over my shoulder as I put the pen down. She gave me a nudge and told me to fill that part in, too.

"Just write at the bottom you like older women."

She walked up the wide wooden staircase. I followed, watching her lovely body move from side to side in a comfortable slow sway.

The woman let us into our room and before leaving said dinner would be served in an hour.

"You done us good, Joe. I like it very much." She touched the curtains and opened one of the balcony doors. "Paul and I were once in Zermatt, but there were too many damned people around. I kept trying to see the Matterhorn, but some jerk was always blocking my view. What town did you say this was?"

"Edlach." I came up behind her. I kept my hands in my pockets, not knowing if she wanted to be touched.

Paul had been dead a month. In that time of pain and forced readjustment, I'd circled her warily and tried to be there if she needed me, gone when she gave even the slightest indication that she wanted to be alone. Often it was hard to tell how she was taking things, because she moved cautiously through that time, her volume turned way down, and a kind of dulled expression owned her face. We hadn't made love since Paul's death.

India folded her arms over her chest and leaned against the balcony railing.

"Do you know what today is, Joe?"

"No. Should I?"

"A month ago today Paul was buried."

I had a coin in my hand and realized I was squeezing it with all my might. "How do you feel?"

She turned to me; her cheeks were red. From the cold? Sadness?

"How do I feel? I feel as if I'm very glad we're here. I'm glad Joey brought me to the mountains."

"Are you really?"

"Yes, pal. Vienna was beginning to make me sad."

"Sad? How?"

"Oh, you know. Do I really have to explain?"

She put her hands on the balcony railing and looked out over the sweep of snow-covered land. "I'm still trying to put all my blocks back in their right places. Sometimes I pick one up and look at it as if I've never seen it before. It makes me nervous. Vienna is always reminding me of something else, of another block I can't find the hole for."

The dining room was decorated like a mountain hut. Enormous exposed beams, a floor-to-ceiling porcelain stove in one corner, and rough Bauern furniture that must have been around since the 1700s. The food was heavy, steaming, and good. Whenever we dined together I marveled at how much India ate. She had the appetite of a lumberjack. This time was no exception. Sad or not, she tucked into it with glee.

We finished with ice cream and coffee, then sat across the table from each other, both looking sheepishly at the exhausted battlefield of empty plates in front of us. Just as things were getting a little too quiet, I felt a bare foot going up my leg.

India looked at me, her face a castle of innocence. "What's the matter, bub, you nervous or something?"

"I'm not used to cuddling under the table."

"Who's cuddling? I'm giving you an extended knee rub. They've very therapeutic."

As she spoke, her foot kept moving up my leg. No one was in the room, and after a quick scan around, she slid down in her seat; her foot went higher. She looked me squarely in the eye the whole time.

"Are you trying to torture me?"

"Is this torture, Joey?"

"Extreme."

"Then let's go upstairs."

I looked at her as hard as I could, searching for truth behind her very naughty expression.

"India, are you sure?"

"Yup." She wiggled her toes.

"Tonight?"

"Joe, are you going to play Twenty Questions or are you going to take me up on my offer?"

I shrugged. She stood up and walked to the door. "Come when you're ready." She went out. I listened to her clog resolutely down the hall and up the stairs to our room.

Because I was alone in the restaurant, things became preternaturally still the moment she left. I looked at the empty bottle of wine and wondered if I should fly to my feet or get up slowly and then run up to the room.

I could hear all of the sounds coming from the kitchen: the plink and clank of plates and silverware, a radio that had been playing since we'd first sat down. As I got up to leave, the song about Sundays in the sky that India had been accompanying earlier in the car came on the radio and I stopped at the door to listen. It seemed a good portent of things to come. When it ended this time, something clicked in me: I knew it had just taken its place in my mind forever. Whenever I heard it again, I would think of India and this time together in the mountains.

When I opened the door to our room, it was a blast of blazing white light after the darkness of the hall. India was in bed with the covers pulled up to her chin. She had opened both balcony doors and the place was an ice palace.

"Are we trying out for the Eskimo Pie team in here? What's with the windows?"

"It's good, pulcino. Smell the air."

" 'Little chicken'? I didn't know you spoke Italian, India."

"Ten and a half words."

"Pulcino. That's a nice nickname." I walked over to the balcony and took a few deep breaths. She was right. It smelled the way air should. When I turned to look at her, she had her hands behind her head and was smiling at me. Her arms were bare and soft peach in that sea of white colors. They framed brown hair that flowed across the pillow in all directions.

"India, you look absolutely beautiful."

"Thank you, pal. I feel like a little queen."

With more courage than I usually had, I pulled the covers down to see what she was wearing. She had on an old gray sweatshirt of mine with the sleeves pulled up. It made me feel even better: she had taken it out of my suitcase, and that small but entirely intimate gesture told me she really was ready to begin our physical relationship again.

"I feel like a banana being unpeeled."

"Is that so bad?" I untied a shoelace.

"No — very tropical."

No matter how willing both of us were, I was still nervous; my hands trembled as I took off my clothes. To make matters worse, she watched my every move with a smile and half-closed Jeanne Moreau eyes. Try to be calm when you're playing to an audience like that.

Before I got into bed I wanted to close the window to shut off the arctic flow, but she asked that I leave it open for a little while longer, and I wasn't about to argue. She turned off the bedside lamp. I slid in beside her and took her in my arms. She smelled of clean clothes and the coffee from dinner.

We lay there unmoving, the cold air sweeping through the room like an icy hand searching for something in the dark, not necessarily us.

She put a warm palm on my stomach and began to move it slowly down.

"It's been a long time, pardner."

"I was beginning to forget what it felt like."

Her hand kept moving, but when I tried to turn to face her, she pushed gently with the hand to keep me from doing it. "Wait, Joey. I want this all slow."

Far, far away a train crawled across the night; in my mind I saw the staccato blur of its yellow lights and the match-stick heads at the windows.

I was about to grab her when her hand closed on my stomach like a pair of pliers. I jerked from the pain.

"Hey!"

"Joey! Oh, my God, the window!"

As I turned to look, I heard the sounds. Clink-a-tank. Clink-a-tank. Metal wings. Metal wings flapping slowly but loudly enough to fill the room with an evil tin racket.

"Joe, Paul's birds! His trick! Little Boy!"

The same toy blackbird Paul had used in his Little Boy trick that night at their house. But now there were three of them perched on the balcony railing. When the first slash of fear passed, I realized they were all facing us in a perfect row, their wings beating in sharp unison like tin soldiers on the march.

The room was blue-black, but somehow the birds glowed from within; every detail of their bodies was easy to see. There was no mistaking what they were and whom they belonged to.

"Oh, Paul, Paul, Paul —" India's chant was slow and sexual, as if she were peaking to some kind of horrific orgasm.

The birds leapt from their perch and flew into the room. They were suddenly ten times faster: giant houseflies careening through the kitchen window in the middle of the summer. They zagged and dropped, flapped in a madness of flight. Bang, ka-chang, flank — it sounded like some maniac throwing tin ashtrays at invisible targets.

"Stop them, Joe! Stop!" Her voice was low and hoarse, emptied by fear.

What could I do? What powers did she think I had?

I started to get out of bed, and from different parts of the room the three of them came at me at impossible speeds. I ducked and threw my hands up to protect my head. Their beaks cut into my arms, my back, one across my scalp. I struck out and hit one, but it did no good — there was just another deep gash on my forearm as a result.

Then it stopped. I looked up and saw they were once again on the balcony railing in perfect order, facing us. My hands were up near my face, a failed boxer ready to be hit again.

One by one they turned and flew back out into the night. When they were ten or fifteen feet away, they sparked into blue and orange and grass-green flames. Familiar flames — colors I'd seen before in Paul Tate's living room the night the real bird danced and screamed in its small burning agony.

Ross believed in ghosts, but I didn't. He even beat me up once after we'd gone to a horror movie because I refused to believe anyone could be scared to death by anything as dumb as ghosts. I did an article for a travel magazine in America on a haunted castle in Upper Austria, but it was rejected because the only thing I could say was I stayed up all night in the hauntedest room of all, reading, and never once heard a peep or growl from the previous tenants.

My father once told me having children was like discovering new and amazing rooms in a house you've lived in all your life. Without children you don't necessarily miss these rooms; but once they're there, your house (and world) becomes a different place. I think I could have somehow rationalized the night of the birds if it had been the only incident of its kind in my life, but after what happened the next day, I knew that my "house" had grown too, only in a terrible, unbelievable way.

On our way back to Vienna the next morning, India slept with her head against the window on the passenger's side. We had talked until daylight and then tried to sleep, but it was impossible. When I suggested we go back to town, she quickly agreed.

A few kilometers before the turn onto the Sudautobahn, I stopped at a traffic light in the middle of nowhere. The sides of the road were marble-patterned with snow and black earth, but the road itself was dry and flat. I was so tired I didn't realize the light had changed until I heard a car honk behind me. I moved forward, but not fast enough for him, because he flashed his lights at me to get going. I paid no attention, because Austrian drivers are silly and childish; if the guy wanted to pass that badly, he had all the room in the world. There were no cars coming from the opposite direction. But he kept flashing and that, combined with leftover fear and fatigue from the night before, made me want to get out and bust the fool in the jaw.

For the first time I looked in the rearview mirror to see who the hell it was and what kind of car they were driving. From behind the wheel of a white BMW, Paul tipped his black top hat. Seated beside and behind him were four other Pauls, all tipping their hats too and looking directly at me. My feet came wrenching off the clutch and brake pedals. The car jerked forward twice and stalled. India murmured in her sleep but didn't wake up. I kept looking in the mirror and watching as the other car pulled out from behind and moved forward. When it was alongside I looked, and all five Paul Tates, all five Little Boys, with their prim white gloves on, waved and smiled. All of them out for a Sunday drive. The BMW accelerated and was gone.

8

Hell will undoubtedly turn out to be a big waiting room full of old magazines and uncomfortable orange chairs. Plastic airport chairs. All of us will sit there, waiting for the door to open at the other end of the room and our names to be called out in a bored voice. We'll all know there is some kind of excruciating pain waiting for us on the other side of that door. The ultimate dentist's office.

We waited for Paul to do something more, but he didn't. We didn't see each other for a week, and our only communication was by phone once a day. Nothing happened, so I carefully suggested we try having coffee somewhere very public, very open, and very unintimate.

When India came into the restaurant she marched right over and kissed me on the forehead. I tried not to cringe.

"Joey, I got it figured out."

"What?"

"Why Paul's here, why he's come back." She swished her hand through her hair and smiled as if she owned the world.

"Do you love me, Joey?"

"What?"

"Just answer the question. Do you love me?"

"Huh, well, yes. Yes. Why?"

"Don't make it sound so passionate or I'll fall into a swoon. Hmmm. Mr. Lovebug. Anyway, Paul thinks you double-crossed him. We were all three great friends, right? Did everything together, all for one and all that stuff. It was okay because he trusted you and even asked you to take care of me when he went away. Trust, Joe. When he got around to discovering how we'd stepped all over that trust, it broke him in half. Snap!" She looked closely at me, then away. I could sense she was about to say something either hurtful or uncomfortable. "I think it was part of what killed him. There's no way to avoid it."

"Oh, India!" I feigned indignation, but I'd thought about the same thing a hundred times.

"Look, let's not start playing games with each other, okay? Paul died two days after your clinky scene in that men's room. Well, Joe, you should have seen what he was like those last two days before he died."

"Was he that bad?" It was my turn to look away.

"Yeah, it was bad. One night he started crying. I asked him what was the matter, and he tried to slough it off and everything, but, God, it was so completely obvious."

"India, how did he find out about us?"

"It's funny you've waited so long to ask." Her voice was all accusation.

"I was too embarrassed before. I was afraid you'd —"

"Forget it. The truth is, I told him. No, wait and hear me out before you say anything! I am the world's worst liar, Joe. I can never fib, because my face shows everything. Besides, Paul knew me better than anyone. You know that. He knew something was up the minute he got back from his trip, even though we hadn't gone to bed then. Will you stop looking at me like that, Joe? I'm telling you the truth.

"One time he asked if I wanted to make love. I said okay, but when we were ready he couldn't get hard. Not at all. That was no big deal, but when he knew it wasn't going to work, he blew up. All of a sudden he was asking me if I'd done it with you and if you were any good. All these shitty questions."

"Paul asked you if I was good?"

"You didn't know that side of him, Joe. He could be a totally mean son-of-a-bitch. The worst was, sometimes he'd really flip out and say these crazy, crazy things. Little Boy was Little Lulu compared to him then." She shook her head. "It doesn't matter anymore. The important thing is this time I've been telling you about. He kept at me and at me until I couldn't stand it. Like a little monster I ended up saying, Yes, yes, we'd done it all right." She stopped, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. "And because I'm such a shit, I couldn't help throwing in that you were really good, too. Nice, huh? Nice woman."

I picked up a magazine and opened it to a spread on the Austrian actress Senta Berger. Senta on television, Senta with her children, Senta in the kitchen. "Senta's in the kitchen with Dinah, Senta's in the kitchen I know-o-o-o, Senta's in the kitch —"

"Shut up, Joe."

I dropped the magazine. "I feel as if my head is going to crack open. All right, India, so you told him about us. What is your idea now? Why has he come back?"

"You're mad, huh? Joe, he would have found out sooner or later —"

"I am not mad. I'm tired and scared and. . scared. No, I realize you had to tell him. It's not that. Ever since he died I've known how much to blame I was. Partly to blame? Totally? Seven eighths? Who the hell knows.

"But the fact you and I slept together, India, had nothing to do with him. India, I loved Paul! I've never had a better friend in my life. I —" None of it was coming out the right way. I had to stop or else I would end up banging my head on the table in frustration.

She waited a beat, then ran her fingers down my cheek. "You mean you loved him and you loved me, but you ended up loving me different 'cause I'm a woman, right?"

"Yes, exactly." The words came out sounding so bleak and gray.

"Okay, but what you're saying only fits in with what I'm saying too. Listen to me carefully. Paul loved you too. He said it a million times, and I know he meant it. That's what hurt him all the more, see? He thinks you and I got together because you wanted to screw me and because I wasn't satisfied with him. That's all. Period."

"Part of that is true, India."

"Don't interrupt me. I've got it all straight in my mind and I don't want to get confused. Yes, part of that is true, Joe, but only part. We went to bed partly because we wanted each other, sure, but also because we just plain like each other; partly because we're good friends, partly because we're attracted. . Do you see what I mean? Paul thinks we jumped at the first chance we had to get a little fuck in. As far as he's concerned, we stabbed him in the back after he'd been so willing to trust us. We were willing to throw all of that great love and friendship out the window just so long as we could get it off a few times. Understand?"

"Yes, but what's the point?"

"Joe, the point is, if we can somehow reach him and tell him, show him it happened because we love each other, then maybe he'll understand and not be so hurt and vengeful. Yes, it will still be bad in his mind, but put yourself in his place. You find your wife waltzing around with your best friend. Bang — you go crazy 'cause you think they're dumping everything good just for a few hours in the hay. But then somehow you find out — God forbid — it wasn't like that at all. Those two are in love. It would change everything, don't you see? You've still been betrayed and bitten, but there's not so much venom because it wasn't just sex, it was the real thing!"

"India, that would be a hundred times worse! Having sex is one thing — it's pleasant and great — but love? I would much rather hear my wife was having a fling than about to take off with my best friend because they're in love. Flings are emotional and temporary, they're all skin and senses. But love? With a fling she still loves you and everything will probably be okay again in a while, when she comes back down to earth. But there's so little hope when she's in love."

"That's true with most people, Joe, but not with Paul."

"What isn't true?"

"Joe, I was married to the man for more than ten years. I know this is how he's feeling now. You'll have to trust me. I know him, believe me. I know him."

"Yes, you knew him, India, but the man is dead. It's a whole new ball game."

"Oh, is he dead? I hadn't noticed. I'm so glad you told me."

While I fumed she ignored me and ordered a bowl of soup from a passing waiter.

"Please, India, I don't want to fight with you. Especially now. I just want to know how you can be so sure of things when it's all so bizarre."

"It's bizarre all right, but I'll tell you something. The way Paul's going about it isn't bizarre at all. It's my husband, Joe. I'd know his brand ten miles away."

I wanted to trust her judgment, but I couldn't, no matter how hard I tried. In the end I was right.

Whenever they were bored, Ross and Bobby played a game that inevitably drove me crazy.

"Hey, Ross?"

"Yeah?"

"I think we should tell Joe the seeeeecret!"

"The secret? Are you out of your mind, man? No one hears the secret. The secret is a seeeeeeecret!"

"You guys don't have any damned secret," I'd lisp, desperately hoping this time they would tell it to me. I was three quarters convinced there wasn't one, but I had to be sure, and they always knew when to nudge me when my belief was waning.

"Seeeecret!"

"The seeeeecret!"

"We got the secret and little Joe doesn't. You want me to tell it to you, Joe?"

"No! You guys are stupid."

"Stupid guys but not-so-stupid secret!"

This kind of bull-baiting went on endlessly until I would start either screaming or crying. Or if I was really in control of myself that day, I would walk regally out of the room to a chorus of "seeeeeecret!" behind me.

To this day I love to hear and be part-owner of any secret. It was easy to see India had attics full of them and that some of the most tantalizing had to do with Paul. But after the discussion in the restaurant she wouldn't say another word about why she was so sure of Paul's behavior. I constantly asked questions, but she wouldn't give an inch. She just knew.

Nor did she want us to have much contact until she had figured out the best way of reaching her husband. In the meantime, I went to all the English bookstores in Vienna and bought everything I could find on the occult. I made pages of notes and felt like a graduate student preparing for his doctoral thesis. Seances, Aleister Crowley, and Madame Blavatsky filled those days. Meetings with Remarkable Men, Lo! and The Tibetan Book of the Dead filled my head. At times I felt as if I had entered a room full of strange and threatening people to whom I had to be nice in order to get what I needed.

It was a land of quacks and yowls, flying objects and great cruelty. I knew there were thousands of people "out there" who molded their lives around these things, and that alone gave me the chills.

Whenever I thought I had something interesting, I called India and told her what I had found. Once I burst out laughing in the middle of one of these conversations when I thought of how shocked any sane person who had been listening would be.

About the same time, I received a letter from my father. I hadn't heard from him in months. His letter was long and chatty and talked familiarly about his world. He still lived in the same town, although he had sold our old house and moved his new family to a modern apartment complex in the ritzy part of town over by the country club.

He is a calm and pleasant man, but his letters always betray a bit of the ace reporter hot for an exclusive scoop. For some reason he often talks in them about things like who's died or who's been arrested. These gory tidbits are inevitably prefaced by phrases like "I don't know if you remember. ." or "Remember the girl who had all her teeth knocked out by her boyfriend? Judy Shea? Well. ." and then his zinger follows — she eloped with a convict or put her child in a mailbox.

This one was no different.

Joe, I was going to tell you about this a long time ago, but you know me and how I forget to get around to things. Anyway, our old friend Bobby Hanley is dead.

I heard the whole thing, interestingly enough, on the radio. It was the first time I'd heard about him in years. I knew he'd been caught robbing a store a few years back and that they sent him off to prison for it. I guess he got out, because this time the dumbbell tried to kidnap some local girl. The police got wind of it and came. There was a big gun battle right up on Ashford Avenue by the hospital, if you can imagine that.

It happened last June, and I'm sorry I didn't tell you about it then. Not that it's the kind of news anyone wants to hear. It certainly is the end of something though, isn't it?

The letter went on, but I put it down. Bobby Hanley was dead. He had been dead for six months. Six months ago he was in a shootout, and I. . I was a million miles away about to meet the Tates. Ross and my mother, Bobby Hanley, and now Paul. Dead.

"Where do you want to eat dinner?"

"I don't care. How about the Brioni?"

"Fine."

The Vienna winter had come, announcing its arrival with thirty straight hours of sleety rain and fog that painted everything dark and coldly smooth.

I kept the windshield wipers on full tilt and drove slowly through slick streets. Neither of us said anything. I was eager to be in a warmly lit place, eating good food, safe for a while from everything out there.

Three or four blocks before the restaurant I turned down a small side street. It was narrow; the buildings on either side were so high that a mountainous clump of fog hung down the length of it, trapped like a tired, lost cloud.

We were halfway through it when I hit the child. No forewarning. A soft, heartbreaking thud and a high scream only a child's voice could have made. In slow motion a small formless thing in a shiny yellow child's raincoat glided up and over the hood of the car. India screamed. Before it reached the windshield, the raincoat slid over the side of the hood and disappeared. India wept into her hands, and I put my head on the steering wheel, trying impossibly to fill my lungs with air.

"Get out, Joe! Get out and see if it's all right, for god-sake!"

I did what I was told, but what did it have to do with me? Joseph Lennox hit a child? A yellow raincoat, a small hand crabbed in pain, another death?

It lay face down on the black street, all limbs and pointed hood splayed out, looking like an enormous starfish.

It made no sound, and without thinking, I reached down and gently turned it over. The hand fell off. I hardly noticed because I'd seen the face. The wood was split through one of the eyes, but the head remained whole. Whoever had carved it had done it quickly, indifferently. The kind of doll you often see for sale in stores, advertised wistfully as "primitive art." Pinned to the raincoat was a little note. It had been done in thick black kindergarten crayon. Play with Little Boy, Joey.

The waiter came and went three times before we were able to order. When the food came, neither of us made a move toward it. It looked magnificent — vanillen Rostbraten mit Bratkartoffeln. I think I ate one tomato from my salad and drank three straight Viertels of red wine.

"Joe, even before this happened I was thinking about what we should do. I came to a conclusion, and I want you to hear me out before you say anything.

"We both see that Paul isn't going to leave us alone. I don't know how much it will accomplish, but I think the best thing you could do now is go away for a while. I'll tell you why. Everything has happened so fast that I haven't been able to think straight for one minute. Either I'm scared or I'm turned on, or else I'm lonely for one of you, and I don't even know which one. Maybe if you go away for a month or two, Paul will come and talk to me. I know, I know, it's dangerous. It scares the hell out of me, but it has to happen sooner or later, or else we'll both go crazy, won't we? You and I can't begin to figure out our relationship until he lets us alone and stops these grisly stunts of his. I haven't told you, but he's done a few things to me when I was alone; they were the worst.

"Another thing is, if you do go away, we'll be able to think more clearly about what we want from each other and whether or not we really want to try and make this relationship work for us. I think I do, and you said you do too, but who knows now? The whole thing is distorted. Every day is so full of tornadoes; I can't see straight anymore. Can you?

"If you're gone for a couple of months, maybe when you come back Paul will have decided to go away. Or maybe we won't even want our relationship anymore. . I don't know."

I put my hands on my knees and looked down at my feet. Why did I wear such solemn shoes? One look at my feet told the world I was forever on my way to Sunday school. Who else wore black shoes every day of the year? I didn't even have a pair of scruffy sneakers in my closet at home; only another pair of black oxfords that were this pair's twin brother.

"Okay, India."

"Okay what?"

I looked at her and tried to hold down the tremor in my voice. "Okay-I-think-you're-right. I knew it was the only thing to do, too, but I've been afraid to recommend it. I was scared you'd think I was a coward. But there isn't anything I can do here, is there? Isn't it obvious? He despises me, and whatever I try to do is going to be futile." I was squeezing my hands together so hard it hurt. "I'd do anything for you, India. I'm scared to death now, but I would stay and help you fight forever if I thought it would do any good."

She nodded, and I could see she was crying. I left a few minutes later without having touched her goodbye.