Pathology

MYP ATHOLOGY Copyright © 2001 by Lisa Tuttle. All rights reserved. ISBN: 1-930815-38-7 ElectricStory.com and the ES design are trademarks of ElectricStory.com, Inc. These stories are works of fiction. All characters, events, organizations, and locales are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously to convey a sense of realism. Cover art by and copyright © 2001 Cory and Catska Ench. eBook conversion by Lara Ballinger and Robert Kruger. eBook edition ofMy Pathology copyright © 2001 by ElectricStory.com. For our full catalog, visit our site at www.electricstory.com.

My Pathology By Lisa Tuttle

ElectricStory.com, Inc.

A CKNOWLEDGMENTS “My Pathology”: First published inDark Terrors 4 , ed. Stephen Jones and David Sutton, Gollancz 1998. “Bug House”: First published inThe Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction , Mercury Press 1980. “The Nest”: First published inThe Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction , Mercury Press 1983. “A Friend in Need”: First published inThe Twilight Zone Magazine , TZ Publications 1981. “The Other Mother”: First published inThe Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction , Mercury Press 1980. “Treading the Maze”: First published inThe Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction , Mercury Press 1981. “Flying to Byzantium”: First published inThe Twilight Zone Magazine , TZ Publications 1985. “Memories of the Body”: First published inInterzone , Winter 1987-88. “Skin Deep”: First published inDark Fantasies , ed. Chris Morgan, Legend 1989.

“Dead Television”: First published inZenith , ed. David Garnett, Orbit 1990. “Heart’s Desire”: First published inOther Edens III , ed. Christopher Evans and Robert Holdstock, Unwin 1989. “Lizard Lust”: First published inInterzone , September 1990. “Bits and Pieces”: First published inPulphouse No. 9, November 1990. “Honey, I’m Home!”: First published inIn Dreams , ed. Kim Newman and Paul McAuley, Gollancz 1992. “In Translation”: First published inZenith , ed. David Garnett, Sphere Books (UK) 1989. “Replacements”: First published inMetahorror , ed. Dennis Etchison, Dell 1992.

My Pathology It may not be a truth universally acknowledged, but people value more that which is not easily won. Challenge and difficulty add to the appeal. As I once said to Saskia, unavailable men are always more attractive. I’d never known Saskia to fall for a man who wasn’t already committed elsewhere—but she just said, “Ifthat’s your pathology.” Certainly it was hers. The way she ignored perfectly nice men in favor of bastards belonging to someone else . . . But love is a basic human need. Does it make sense to call it a disease? ***

Daniel and I were attracted to each other from the start, and there didn’t seem to be anything difficult or inherently unavailable about him. The one slight little hitch—that the woman he described as his ex-girlfriend hadn’tquite let him go—probably added to his attraction; I was touched by his tender concern for her feelings. As he explained it: “We were together for nearly three years. At one time I thought we’d get married. But . . . We had a major disagreement, one of those things where there can be no compromise. I won’t go into the details. Anyway, she knows it’s over, knows we don’t have a future together, and we’re not . . . not sleeping together, you know, but she’s afraid of being alone. She needs to know that I’m still her friend. I don’t love her anymore, but I feel responsible. She’s had a hard time lately.” He told me about her (Michele, her name was) before we’d actually become lovers, on an evening when the possibility was quivering between us, so I knew his intentions toward me must be serious. “Are you going to tell her about me?” “I’ve already told her I’ve met someone.” My heart leapt and I went to kiss him, this unknown woman’s man who was now mine. ***

Daniel worked in an office in central London, as did I, but he lived out in Metroland—nearest station,

Rayner’s Lane—where the dear old London underground emerges above ground, transformed into a suburban commuter train. The rails ran behind his house, so we were treated to a view of his back garden a good quarter hour before we could expect to arrive at the front door, on foot, from the station. Once, on his way home, Daniel had seen someone entering by the back door, and even though he phoned the police immediately on his mobile, the burglars managed to get away with the TV and VCR. These were easily replaced. Daniel kept little that he valued on the ground floor of his narrow, two-bedroomed turn-of-the-century terraced cottage. Practically everything that mattered to him was kept locked in his “workroom,” otherwise the spare bedroom. Daniel was a chartered accountant in his ordinary life, but in his workroom he was an alchemist. He told me this, as he’d told me about Michele, early in our relationship. It meant nothing to me then. If asked to define alchemy, I’d have said it was a sort of primitive, magical chemistry, bearing about the same relationship to modern chemistry as astrology did to astronomy. It seemed a very strange hobby for someone as sane and successful as Daniel, but I kept my mouth shut as he unlocked his workshop to show me the shelves filled with ancient, leather-bound volumes, sealed jars with Latin labels, beakers and retorts, a Bunsen burner, vessels of copper and of glass. The smells were what most struck me: half a dozen different odors lingering in the air. Sulphur, roses, hot metal, burnt sugar, tar, and something pricklingly acidic which made me cough. “What do you do here, exactly?” “Do you really want to know, ‘exactly’?” “Generally, then.” “Search. Explore. Study. Experiment. I’m looking for the Philosopher’s Stone—does that mean anything to you?” I shook my head apologetically. “Afraid not.” He kissed me. “Never mind. If you are interested, I can help you learn, but it doesn’t matter; we can’t share everything.” As I watched him lock the door to his workshop, I wondered if it would matter. Of course couples couldn’t share all their interests, but this hobby seemed less like stamp collecting, more like a religion. We didn’t talk about alchemy and we didn’t talk about Michele, and as the weeks and the months passed, and my love for Daniel became more deeply rooted, those two “untouchable” areas of his life became irritants, and I wondered if there was a connection. I finally asked him if Michele had shared his interest in alchemy. He tensed. “She pretended that she did, for a while, but she didn’t. It was my fault as much as hers. I let her know how important it was to me . . . but it’s not as important as honesty. If she’d just had faith in me, instead of pretending she understood. . . . She lied to me.” I held his hand. “I won’t lie to you. I won’t pretend. But I would like to know more about something so important to you. You said you could teach me. . . .” But the shutters were down; I was trespassing. He shook his head firmly. “No. I won’t make that mistake again. It’s better if you don’t know, and you won’t be put in an insidious position. If you don’t know anything about The Work, we can’t possibly argue about it.” I wished I’d never mentioned Michele. I began to hate the invisible woman who still hovered on the

periphery of my life, attached to my lover like a parasite, barring certain possibilities from me forever. It was harder for me now to leave those two sore subjects alone, but at least I didn’t speak to Daniel about them. I found a bookshop in Cecil Court which specialized in esoteric learning, and bought an armload of books about alchemy. On the evenings Daniel did his duty by his ex-girlfriend, I went back to my rented room and got into bed with his ancient philosophy. The fact that I was still shelling out money for a room of my own, although I scarcely spent any time there, was a sore point. I wanted to live with Daniel and found his arguments against it pretty feeble. If he really felt that his two-bedroomed house wasn’t big enough for the two of us, then he should sell it, and we could buy something else together. I’d been looking for something to buy when I met him, but I didn’t want to commit myself to mortgage payments on some tiny flat if there was any future in our relationship. We had been lovers for nearly nine months when I began to suspect I was pregnant. I’d been careless about contraception. The truth was, I wanted to have a baby; I wanted to force the issue of our relationship to a crisis, even if I hadn’t admitted it to myself. When my period didn’t arrive bang on time, my first response was an inward clutch of sheer joy. I was ready to change my life. I didn’t tell him straight away. When I got on the train for Rayner’s Lane one evening, two weeks later, I was still happy keeping my secret. I watched out the window for his house, as I always did. In the slanting, pre-dusk light and shade the view of row upon row of narrow back gardens was like the unspooling of a film, one I found inexhaustibly absorbing. Occasionally I saw people, either through windows or outside, children playing, men or women mowing their little carpet-strips of lawn or taking washing from a line, but more often there were no people to be seen, only the signs, ordinary and cryptic, of their invisible occupation. The back of Daniel’s house was normally almost exactly like its neighbors on either side, but not that evening. That evening there was something growing out of it. It was a pale, whitish blister, a sort of bubble, or a cocoon, the size of a small room. I sensed it was organic, something which had grown rather than been added on. It was as if Daniel’s house was a living organism, a body which could extrude a tissue-like substance. I was astonished, and then it was out of sight. My mind immediately set to work revising and editing the memory of what I’d seen. It must have been something else, something ordinary, like a sheet of plastic or PVC. If there’d been an accident, fire, or explosion (my throat tightened with the memory of those smells, those volatile substances locked in his workroom) or even a break-in, it might have been necessary to shroud the back of the house in some protective material. Alighting at the station, I ran practically the whole way back to his house, gulping and weeping in fearful suspense. If only Daniel were all right . . . Daniel opened the door to my hysterical pounding and I threw myself into his arms. “Thank God! Oh, Daniel, what happened? When I saw the back of your house—” “What are you talking about?” I broke away and hurried through to the kitchen. The window offered me an unobstructed view of the fig tree at the very bottom of the garden. The back door was locked and bolted, but I got the keys from the top of the fridge and let myself out.

I could find nothing out of the ordinary. No protrusion, no growth, only the weathered gray paint beginning to peel away from the wall in a few places. Everything looked exactly as it always had. I touched it to be sure. I listened to a bird singing, and the distant wind-rush of traffic. Another train rattled by, and when I looked up a few pale faces gazed at me blankly over the fence. It was obvious that none of them saw anything to get excited about. I started to feel like an idiot. Slowly I went back inside to offer Daniel some lame excuse for my excitement. “I thought I saw something. I don’t know what—a sort of hallucination, I guess it must have been. I don’t know why. . . .” He laid a cool hand caressingly on my hot face and looked at me very tenderly. “Excitement, maybe? Hormones?” I realized then that he must have known, or at least started to suspect, about the pregnancy as soon as I did. Even though we didn’t live together, we’d never spent more than a night or two apart. I started crying. Daniel wrapped his arms around me and held me close. He murmured his love in my ear. “When will you move in? This weekend?” I gaped, sobs shuddering to a halt. “But . . . if this place isn’t big enough for the two of us . . .” “But it’s not just the two of us anymore. Everything’s changed.” He smiled joyfully. “My workroom can be the nursery.” ***

I don’t like doctors, and I can’t stand hospitals. I don’t even like visiting people in them, and my one experience as a patient—after a burst appendix at the age of eight—was enough to put me off for life. I knew that even if I was to have a home birth (Daniel agreed that was best) I would still have to visit a doctor, but I kept putting it off, and somehow got through the whole of my first trimester, grimly putting up with the sickness and the pains, still avoiding the evil day. Daniel, who had become very protective—ensuring that alcohol, caffeine, French cheeses, and shellfish did not pass my lips, constantly querying my emotional, mental, and physical health—accepted my fear of hospitals and didn’t push. When I finally, with great reluctance, decided that I’d have to go register with the local GP, he shook his head. “Really, that’s not necessary. I know how you feel, Bess, so I’ve asked my mother to come ’round and have a look at you.” “Your mother?” He’d never mentioned this personage before; from the way he shrugged off my questions about his background I’d gathered only that he and his parents were not close. “Is she a doctor, then?” He looked oddly embarrassed. “Well, yes, of course. She’s a specialist in, you know . . . in private practice, of course, but she won’t charge us.” And, for me, she would make house calls. I was relieved. Her appearance surprised me. She had aquiline features very like Daniel’s, but she looked far too young to be his mother. Except for her hair, which was coarse and heavily streaked with gray, I’d have thought her not much older than I was. She seemed uncomfortable with her own attractiveness, dressed in a frumpy, ill-fitting suit and wearing heavy, dark-framed spectacles. She had a chilly, distant manner, never meeting my eyes, hardly even looking at me properly. Her examination of me seemed cursory; I didn’t even have to undress. She prodded my barely-showing “bump,” took my blood pressure, which she pronounced excellent, got me to stand on the scales, asked me a few medical questions, and announced her pleasure at learning that I was “giving Daniel a child.”

“Hang on,” I said. “It’s my baby. I’m not ‘giving’ anybody anything!” “It’s only a manner of speaking,” said Daniel. He was standing behind me, stroking my hair, and I hoped he was shooting poison with his eyes at his mother. “I’m sorry if I’ve disturbed you,” she said awkwardly. “I didn’t mean anything wrong by it. I’m sure you must understand how pleased I am that Daniel will be a father.” Well, fair enough. After all, I thought, she hardly knew me; why should she feel pleased that I was to be a mother? And she might have preferred someone else as her son’s partner. Yet I noticed she seemed almost as uncomfortable with Daniel as she was with me. Watching them as they stood, uneasily close, by the door, hesitating over whether and how to kiss goodbye, I wondered what had come between them. Daniel’s mother showed me how to take my own blood pressure, gave me some guidelines for monitoring my weight gain, and promised to send along a midwife in good time. Meanwhile, I read books about natural childbirth, drank herbal teas, and slept a lot. I was so tired all the time. Around about the sixth month I started suffering from backache in addition to everything else and decided to take my maternity leave earlier than planned. One good thing about not going out to work anymore was that I didn’t have to deal with seeing that thing on the back of the house so often. Because I hadn’t stopped seeing it. Maybe it was hormonal—at any rate, whether it was a trick of the eye or of the brain, it bothered me. I knew that Daniel didn’t see it, but another time I took Saskia with me on the train. I didn’t try to warn her or set her up; I just pointed out the house from the train window and waited, trembling with nerves, for her response. The thin, pale growth had become a huge bubble with the passage of time, inescapably strange, and I could hardly believe that I was the only person to see it. “Which one?” asked Saskia, peering out at the monstrosity. “Oh, there? With the red geranium in the kitchen window? My pot! Is that what you wanted me to see?” Saskia had made me a lovely blue pot when I’d told her I was pregnant. I couldn’t see it from the train; the whole of the kitchen window was blocked from my view by the sinister, gently bobbing growth. I knew there was nothing “really” there on the back of the house; what I saw came from within me. It was in me. I had nightmares about the baby. Usually, in my dreams, I gave birth to a perfectly normal, sweet, much wanted little baby . . . then I’d lose it by doing something criminally insane: I put it in the oven to keep it warm, and only realized what I’d done hours later; I wrapped it in newspaper and absent-mindedly dropped it in a bin; I left it on a tube train. But there were other dreams in which I gave birth to things which were not babies. Sometimes it was a deformed creature, armless and legless, or looking like a fetal pig; once it was a wizened, evil-looking old man who bit off my breast; another time it was an egg-shaped thing, glowing red-hot, the passage of which woke me screaming in pain. One night I dreamed that I was inside the cocoon, Daniel and his mother on either side of me, holding down my arms and shouting at me to push. The struggle to give birth was inextricably bound with the struggle to breathe properly, and as I inhaled, gasping, I became aware that I’d used up nearly all the air

in the room, and also that the soft, tissue-like walls were collapsing. They fell upon me (Daniel and his mother had vanished), enveloping me like vast sheets of cling film, incredibly strong, binding my limbs and closing off my mouth and nostrils, suffocating me. With a snort and gasp I woke. Heart pounding, I sat up, breathing deeply in and out. I was alone in bed. The room felt horribly close and hot. I rolled out of bed and staggered across to the window with the idea of opening it, but then I looked out, and froze. There below me, rising to just below the window ledge and ballooning out to fill nearly half the back garden, was that thing which before I had only seen from a distance, from the train window. Now, so close, I could appreciate its size and solidity. It gave off a glow; after a moment, I realized that the source of the glow was an inner light, and then I saw movement, like fish deep beneath murky water. I stared, concentrating so intensely that I forgot to breathe, until I was certain that the moving shapes I saw were human. I screamed for Daniel. Below, the two figures stopped moving. I stumbled across the room, calling his name, and out onto the landing. Light rose up from below, light from the kitchen, and as I started downstairs, leaning heavily on the rail, I saw the two of them: Daniel and a woman. She looked like his mother except for her hair, which was short, fair, and curly, and the fact that she was making no effort to hide the fact that she was young and attractive. All of a sudden I understood: I had never met Daniel’s mother, only Michele in disguise. The next thing I knew I was lying on the couch in the sitting room and Daniel was holding my hand. “Where is she?” “There’s no one here.” He told me I’d been dreaming. According to him, he’d been asleep in bed beside me when I started screaming his name. He’d been unable to stop me from stumbling downstairs, although he had managed to catch me when I collapsed at the bottom. I believed him. What I had seen had been “only” a dream. But that didn’t make it unimportant. One of the strongest memories I have from my childhood is also the memory of a dream; more real to me than much that “really” happened. I was eight years old, asleep in my bed, when a strange, high, buzzing sound awoke me. I sat up and looked over at my sister, peacefully sleeping in her matching bed. The noise seemed to be coming from directly below us, from the kitchen. I got up to investigate. As I came down the stairs I could hear my parents talking in the kitchen, but I couldn’t make out their words. The hall was dark, and I arrived at the kitchen door unnoticed. There was a strong light on at one end of the kitchen which cast my parents’ shadows on the wall. I had noticed the effect before, but this time it was different. This time the shadows on the wall did not correspond to the two familiar people. I could see my mother and father sitting at the table, but on the wall behind them were the shadows of monstrous insects. Mum turned her head and saw me. She didn’t seem surprised. She opened her arms. “Come here, darling.” I went to her, nervously watching the wall. Nightmares usually fled at the arrival of grown-ups, but the shadows didn’t change as I’d expected. The one behind my Mum moved, becoming three-dimensional, an inky-black, gigantic insect which emerged from the pale wall and came for me. I began to scream and

wriggle, trying to get away, but my mother held me tight, her face stiff, implacable. She held me fast as the shadow-creature’s long, black proboscis snaked out and struck my pajama-clad tummy. It pierced the cloth and then my skin, sinking deep into me. It hurt worse than anything I’d ever known. I screamed in agony before passing out. The cocoon-thing on the outside of the house belonged to the same level of reality as the shadow insects of my childhood. Lying awake beside Daniel for what remained of that night, I let myself think, for the first time, about all the things which can go wrong with a pregnancy, let myself recall, clearly, those sections of my pregnancy-and-childbirth books which I’d skimmed so nervously. Because there had been signs that all was not well—signs which Daniel and his mother (if she was his mother) had dismissed as unimportant. The pains. The occasional show of blood. The fact that I had yet to feel my baby move. I didn’t tell Daniel what I had decided. For once, I didn’t want him to soothe away my fears. In the morning, after he’d gone to work, I took the bus to Northwick Park Hospital. At the maternity unit there I was scolded for not coming in sooner, my fears—both about hospitals and about the baby—reassuringly brushed away. I was given forms to fill out, and taken along for an ultrasound scan. Although I was dry-mouthed and twitchy with nerves, I thought the end of the nightmare was in sight, but in fact it was only the beginning. There was no baby in my womb. It was a tumor. In a state of shock, I was whisked from Maternity to Oncology where a grave-faced physician informed me that although many, perhaps most, ovarian cysts were benign, the size of this one did not incline him to be optimistic. It would have to be removed in either case; if it proved malignant, a complete hysterectomy would follow. He invited me to return three days later, perhaps with my partner or another family member, to discuss the prognosis further. I had expected Daniel to be upset. What I did not expect was his rage. “What have you done?” His voice was a vicious, strangled whisper. He looked as if he would have killed as soon as touched me. My tears dried up, misery overwhelmed by baffled fear. I wished it could have been a dream, like the one in which my mother held me still to receive the insect-man’s terrifying attack. “I didn’t do anything, Daniel,” I said carefully. “I’m telling you what they said at the hospital—” He was in a fury. “Why did you go to the hospital? Why? Why? Why couldn’t you trust me? How could you do this to me?” “What are you talking about? Are you crazy? This is happening to me, if you hadn’t noticed! I had to go to the hospital—your bloody mother was no bloody use at all. She couldn’t tell a baby from a tumor. That’s what it is—a tumor, not a baby. And the doctor said it’s so big that it’s probably malignant, and if it is they’ll have to take out my whole womb, my ovaries, everything!” I began to weep again. “No they won’t,” said Daniel, relaxing a little. He no longer looked so angry. “I won’t let them. We won’t let them.” “But they’ll have to operate. Even if it’s not malignant—” “It’s not malignant.” “You can’t know that.” “I do know that.” His eyes drilled into mine with the intensity, the absolute certainty which I’d always

found irresistibly sexy. “I know what it is, and they don’t. They think it’s cancer. I know it’s not.” “What is it, then?” “It’s the Philosopher’s Stone.” ***

I wanted so much to believe him. Who would choose cancer, surgery, a possibly fatal illness, over magic? Daniel, impassioned, was a convincing advocate. The so-called Philosopher’s Stone, although sometimes identified with various gems or minerals, was also described as an elixir, a water, a dragon, and a “divine child.” I’d thought it a symbol for the knowledge sought by alchemists, but Daniel told me that although symbolic, it was also very real. It was the stuff of creation, a kind of super-DNA, created, replicated, by life itself. By us. Our union was the rare and perfect Alchemical Marriage; my womb was the alembic in which the dragon, stone, or divine child was now growing. When perfect it would be born, and I would be transformed in the process. “If you’ll think about it, you’ll realize your own transformation has already started,” he said. “You can see things other people can’t. The thing you saw on the back of the house—don’t you realize what that is? It’s an amniotic sac, indicating the impending mystical birth of knowledge.” He’d been transformed himself by his wonder and joy; there was no doubt that he believed everything he told me. How I struggled, to join him in his magical belief-system. For a little while, that evening, I managed to convince us both that I did believe—but the next day, alone in the house, the effort was too great, and I collapsed into dull despair. Daniel was the alchemist, not me. In my world, a lump in the womb couldn’t be both child and stone; it was one or the other, and I knew which mine was. As the days passed, I went on struggling to believe in Daniel’s reality while the horror of mine threatened to overwhelm me. I was too frightened to go back to the hospital, anyway. Daniel believed that all was well. He shared his books, his notes, his experiments and fantasies with me: finally, every secret corner of his life was revealed to me. I was his partner now in what he called The Great Work. I felt that I would burst with the secret and the stone inside me. Finally, I confessed all—or nearly all—to Saskia, who immediately arranged for me to see her own doctor. “I had a cyst five years ago the size of a large grapefruit. It turned out to be benign. Lots of women get them. I lost one ovary . . . but I’ve still got the otherand my womb, just in case.” She made a face. I knew already about the tipped cervix, the doctor who’d reckoned her chances of conceiving normally, without medical intervention, at less than ten percent, but the idea that she, too, had once carried a stone inside was new to me. “I never knew that!” “Sure you did. Remember, when I was in the hospital?” “Oh.” Ancient guilt swept over me. I was her best friend, but I’d never visited her in the hospital. “It’s all right; it was always all right.” Telepathic, she patted my arm. “I knew how you felt. I had enough visitors and enough chocolates—I was really grateful for the books you sent, a new one every day! Did I ever tell you what they found inside the cyst?” I shook my head. “Six tiny baby teeth, bits of bone and tissue, and a huge hair-ball. It was like a giant owl pellet!”

“Teeth?” “It sounds creepy, but my doctor said it’s not that unusual. The cyst is formed from ovarian cells gone wrong, and after all, that’s where babies come from, teeth and bone and hair and all.” I imagined our divine child a mass of skin and hair and bone and teeth all jumbled up together in the wrong order. What would Daniel say if he could see it? “Could I keep it, do you think? I mean, after they take it out, would they save it for me?” Saskia’s face revealed no horror or dismay at my suggestion. “I don’t see why not. It’s yours, after all.” ***

I told Daniel I was going to Lincolnshire to stay with my mother for a few days, and Saskia took me in to the hospital. She was with me nearly the whole time, comforting, advising, taking control when I couldn’t cope. “If I ever have a baby, Sask, I want you with me,” I said, gripping her hand just before I was wheeled into the operating room. “Of course you’ll have a baby. You’ll have as many as you want, and I’ll be godmother,” she promised. But Saskia was wrong. There would be no babies for me. The surgeon removed both ovaries, my fallopian tubes, my entire womb. I was left with nothing except the cyst I had asked them to save. It was a disgusting thing to have carried around inside me, to have imagined as a living child: a fleshy lump covered in hair. I cut it open with my Swiss army knife, balancing it on my bed tray. A foul-smelling semi-solid liquid dripped out, and I gagged, but kept on sawing. There was more hair inside, more disgusting pus, and soft, baby flesh. No teeth, no bones, but, right at the center, one hard, tiny nugget the size of a pea. I picked it out with my bare fingers and wiped it on a tissue. It was a deep, reddish brown in color and felt like stone. I rapped it against the bedside table and scraped at it with a fingernail. I felt a strong urge, which I resisted, to put it in my mouth and swallow it. Holding it tightly between the thumb and forefinger of one hand, I rang for the nurse with the other, to ask her to please get rid of the grisly, oozing thing on my tray. ***

I felt much weaker than I’d anticipated, and I knew I would not be able to deceive Daniel, or to face him. He would be angry, I knew; he would be furious, at first, but then, I hoped, he would get over his disappointment and understand. Eager for his forgiveness, for the enveloping love which I needed to help me recover, I sent Saskia to break the news to him. I thought it would be easier for her, and that he would hide his true feelings from a relative stranger. I was wrong. Afterward, when she told me about it, she was shaking. “He’s grieving. He’s like you’ve had an abortion. Didn’t you tell him you weren’t pregnant? Didn’t you tell him what it was?” “Of course I did!” “Well, you didn’t make him understand. The poor, sad man. . . . I explained about the cancer, but he couldn’t get the idea of a child out of his head, and the notion that you’d destroyed it. Oh, Bess!”

She looked at me with tears in her eyes and, horrified, I saw that she, like Daniel, blamed me. It was all my fault that I could only produce a malignant, hairy lump instead of a wanted child. “But I didn’t! I wanted a baby, too, as much as ever he did!” Saskia put her arms around me and, not for the first time or the last, we cried together. ***

When it came time for me to leave the hospital it turned out I had no home. Saskia took me by taxi to the house in Rayner’s Lane where I found that Daniel had changed the locks. Saskia was furious, but it was so over-the-top that I had to laugh. She took me to Muswell Hill to stay in her flat until something else could be sorted. Saskia went on being my intermediary with Daniel. He grudgingly agreed to meet me, to talk, and I spent hours hurling myself at his stony indifference. Saskia felt that as Daniel was so intransigent I should simply accept that the affair was over and get on with my own life. But I couldn’t do that. I’d lost far more than he had, and it was his fault. Guilt worked better on Daniel than reason; he could see what a state I was in, and he knew he owed me something. He tried to buy me off, but although I took his money I always let him know it wasn’t enough. Given time, I felt I could win him back, until the day he told me, over the phone, that he was “seeing” someone else. In a panic, I played my last card and told him I had the Philosopher’s Stone. “I found it inside the, the thing they cut out of me. I kept it.” “Why didn’t you tell me before?” For the first time since before the operation I felt the flutter of hope inside. “Well, you know, Daniel, you haven’t been very nice to me. If we’re not partners anymore, then what business is it of yours what I have?” “What does it look like?” When I described it, he said flatly, “That’s not very big.” “When Helvetius complained that a piece the size of a mustard-seed was too small to be of use he was given a piece only half that size, and used it to make several ounces of gold.” “What do you know about Helvetius?” He spoke as if he’d completely forgotten that he’d once shared the Great Work with me. “Daniel, are you interested or not?” No alchemist could have refused. I took the Metropolitan Line out to his house that very evening, for the first time since leaving the hospital. Although it was still light and I was looking out for it, I didn’t see his house on the journey. I realized why later: with the strange, shroud-like growth gone from the back of the house there was nothing to distinguish it from its neighbors. I wondered, had I dwindled back into the ordinary, too, now, my specialness cut out of me? Or would the tiny stone I kept clamped between finger and thumb redeem me? The ancient texts advised a variety of methods for testing the Stone, each more lengthy than the last. We opted for the quickest. I managed to shave off a bit of the stone with a razor-knife and introduced it into a pan containing twelve ounces of lead, which we melted down over one of the gas burners on the

kitchen cooker. Before morning dawned we had our result: two ounces of pure gold. For a moment I saw euphoria and greed mingled undisguised on Daniel’s face. “We’ve done it!” I cried, thinking,I’ve got you! But his face closed up at the sound of my voice. He shook his head. “Big deal. Two ounces of gold. Worth about three hundred dollars per ounce on today’s market.” “We can make more.” “Oh, yes. Atleast another six ounces.” “I can’t win, can I? The only reason you want me is to produce your precious Philosopher’s Stone, and when I do—at huge cost to myself!—you turn me away.” In a withering tone I finished, “It’s not big enough!” “You don’t understand anything,” he said fiercely. “It’s not to do with size, or with gold. It’s not the product, it’s the process. Our child wasn’t ready—and now we’ll never know what might have been because you let them cut it out. You let them kill it.” “It would have killed me!” “Oh, you know that, do you? If you believe everything they tell you, you’d have to believe that’s not real gold, that what we just did was impossible.” He sighed, becoming calmer. “Pregnancy is a journey fraught with danger. Women do still die in childbirth, but is that a justification for abortion? You wouldn’t have died, only changed, if you’d waited and let it be born.” “Daniel, that was not a child. I saw it, remember?” “You saw what they took out of you: themagna mater , the basic material of life, alive and growing until it was ripped from you. Oh, Bess.” He groaned. “It’s not about making gold—that’s just one aspect. What you had inside you—it could have been all knowledge; it could have been eternal life, a transformation for both of us. . . .” He looked stricken. “It’s my fault, isn’t it? My fault, not yours. If I’d been a proper teacher, if I’d made you understood the risks and the rewards, you’d never have gone near that hospital.” He began to weep as nakedly and helplessly as a child, and I put my arms around him and tried to give him comfort. Finally I realized that I was not the only victim in this. I recognized just how seriously I had hurt him. “Poor, poor,” I murmured, and stroked his head and kissed away his tears. For the first time in ages I began to feel aroused, and when his tears were gone, I unfastened his trousers and snaked a hand inside. He did nothing to encourage me. He stood very still, utterly passive, while in my hand he quickly grew hard. I pulled down his pants. Looking at his face I saw a familiar shy, boyish, slightly guilty smile quivering about his lips. In a rush of affection and desire I sank to my knees and sucked him, and when he came, I swallowed his semen. It was something I had never done before, but it felt right, a symbol of a new beginning, my new and utter commitment to him. I had let him down once, but would never do so again. I went off to the bathroom for a wash, debating whether to take the day off. I wondered what Daniel planned to do, and thought what a warm and welcome relief it would be to spend the day in bed with him. When I came out, I found he’d made a pot of coffee.

I smiled at him as he poured me a cup, but lost the smile when he put the lump of gold into my saucer. “Oh, no.” “It’s yours.” “Ours.” “Bess, it’s over.” “Oh, yeah? What was that just then?” “That was sex. And it was your idea.” I felt sick. “You’re saying you didn’t enjoy it?” “Enjoyment isn’t the point. One sexual . . . spasm . . . can’t revive a dead relationship.” “Are you so sure it’s dead?” “You’re the one who killed it.” He saw my face, and his own crumbled into grief. “Oh, Bess! I’m not blaming you.” “Like hell!” “It was my fault, too, I see that now. Naturally, you were afraid, you didn’t understand. How could you? The Work was still new to you. Never mind all that. Whatever happened, it’s over now.” “You hate me.” “No, of course not.” “Then why can’t we forget the past and start over?” “Because we can’t.” He closed his eyes briefly, then looked straight into mine. “Look, we can’t even communicate. We live in different worlds. Where I see something wonderful, you see something terrible. A tumor instead of the Philosopher’s Stone. It’s not your fault; I was wrong to try to change you.” “I will change.” I’d lost all shame, all sense of myself. I can’t explain it. I would be whatever he wanted. “It’s too late for that.” “Because you don’t love me anymore.” “No!” Tears rose to his eyes again; I felt I was looking through their clarity straight into his soul. He put out his hand and I gripped it. “I love you, Bess. God help me, I do. Forever. But I can’t give up The Work, not even for you. It would be like giving up my life.” “I’m not asking you to. I’ll help.” “You can’t.” He watched me warily as he pronounced my death sentence. “I know you mean well, but you’re no good to me without a womb. I must have a woman in my life, for The Work—a complete woman.” Strangely enough, I did understand. And accepted what I know many would find unacceptable. I had entered into his alchemical world far enough for that. I saw the impasse before me, but still I refused to

give up. I could not grow another womb, but there must still be a way to keep him. “We can still be friends,” I tried. “If—if you can bear it.” I would have to. “I can if you’ll be honest with me. You mustn’t try to protect me, or control me, by keeping secrets. This woman you’re seeing . . . ?” “It might not work out,” he said swiftly. “If it doesn’t, there’ll be someone else. You’ll need your other woman, for the physical side. She’ll be your crucible. I can accept that as long as I know that I’m your real partner, spiritually and intellectually. As long as you still love me, ours will be the real sacred marriage.” Was it love or hate that drove me down that road? My life seemed out of my own control. I was driven by a determination to cling to Daniel, for better or worse, to keep him as I had not been able to keep the fruit of my womb. But if he was my weakness, I was also his. He did love me, I’m sure of it. He had not expected to have a second chance, but that’s what I was offering, and he was grateful for it. When I said I must have my own key to his house he handed over the spare without a murmur, and I knew then that no new woman would be able to dislodge me from his life, no matter what. ***

My grandmother died that month, leaving me an inheritance which promised to change my life. Instead of the tiny flat I would have to scrimp and save to afford, I could look at houses. By great good fortune the house next door to Daniel’s—the end of the terrace—was up for sale. I made an offer straightaway and had it accepted. The mortgage would mean large monthly payments, but it would be worth it to live so close to Daniel. I imagined how someday we would knock down walls to make our two houses one from within, just as our apparently separate lives were joined already. While I waited for the survey and search to be completed, I divided my time between Saskia’s flat and Daniel’s house. We were still working out the boundaries of our new relationship; I knew I had to be careful not to push him too far, too fast, but to give him plenty of space. Things were a bit awkward with Saskia, too. Living together in her tiny flat had put a strain on our friendship. I sensed, too, that she disapproved of my clinging to Daniel after he’d treated me so badly, although she couldn’t point the finger, having fallen for yet another inappropriate, unavailable man. By unspoken agreement, we didn’t discuss our relationships. Sometimes, by prior arrangement, I spent the night at Daniel’s when he was out with his new girlfriend, so Saskia and I could both have a break. Daniel and I got together about twice a week. Usually, we would have a meal together, maybe go on to the pub, and I’d spend the night. We’d resumed a sexual relationship, although it was not as I would have liked. Frustratingly for me, Daniel found normal intercourse impossible. The thought of my missing womb, the idea that I was “not whole,” killed his sexual desire. He went limp every time. But I could usually arouse him with my mouth, so oral sex became usual for us. One day as I was going “home” to Saskia’s flat—the exchange of contracts still hovering mysteriously just out of reach—I took a detour to search out a corner shop and came back a different way. Usually I approached Saskia’s flat, which was on the second story of an old house, from the front, but this time my detour brought me out on the street immediately behind hers, and when I glanced up at the trees, which were just beginning to bud, I glimpsed through them a pale, translucent shimmering which was immediately and horrifyingly familiar to me.

Praying I was wrong, I began to dodge and shift about, desperate for a better view. I saw it plain: a growth, like the puffed throat of a frog, projected from the back wall of Saskia’s house. I knew at once what it meant, and only wondered how I could have been blind for so long. Daniel’s nameless “other” was Saskia, and Saskia’s guilty secret was Daniel. She didn’t try to deny it when I confronted her; she actually felt relieved. “He made me promise that I wouldn’t hurt you by telling—I never wanted to hurt you! And I guess I kind of thought—well, it’s so obvious that he loves you more than he cares about me, so I thought, what’s the point of putting you through hell for a little sexual fling. He’d only find someone else—he’s that sort, you know.” “Yes, yes,” I said impatiently. “I knew he had a girlfriend—I just didn’t know it was you. I feel such a fool—” “Oh, no, Bess, you mustn’t! I’m sorry, I really am. I do love Daniel—I can’t help how I feel—but you’re my dearest friend; you’re more important to me than he is. If you want me to, I’ll break it off with him. I’ll never see him again. All you have to do is ask.” I hoped she was lying. I didn’t like the idea that her feelings for him were so shallowly rooted. I shook my head, staring into her eyes. “Of course not. You can’t break it off with him now. You’re carrying his child.” ***

Saskia knew nothing about it, and didn’t believe me. She’d had her period only a week before, and besides . . . Yes, I knew about the single ovary, and the tipped cervix. But I had my own experience to go on, and I knew what I’d seen. “Did Daniel tell you I was p.g.? He’s got such a thing about wombs, and conception, and ‘proper’ sex with simultaneous orgasms. He fantasizes . . .” She was concerned about me; I’d gone very pale because I’d just realized what I’d done with my thoughtless outburst. Saskia didn’t know, and she mustn’t know; not, at least, until I’d been able to make some plans. “Bess, what is it? You’re so pale. Is this all too horrible for you? I’m so sorry. But I’m not pregnant, I’m sure I’m not—you certainly don’t have to worry that I’ll take Daniel away. I’m not a very likely candidate to bear him a child. . . .” “No, I know that,” I said, thinking of her cyst. “I got a bit hysterical, that’s all. It was when I suddenly realized that you and Daniel . . . But now that I’ve had a chance to think about it, I’m glad it’s you, Saskia, I really am.” “I’ll never take Daniel away from you, Bess. You do know that?” “Yes. I do know that.” ***

I told Daniel the next day, and warned him to be careful. “She’s not like me. She trusts her doctor; she’ll go for surgery at the first sign. You’ve got to act as soon as she tells you, or we’ll lose it.” “How? What can I do? I can’t talk to her about alchemy. You’re too right, she’s not like you. Oh, Bess, this was a mistake, I should never have let it happen.” His defeatism infuriated me. “The past is past. Stop moaning about it. We’ve got another chance now, both of us, through her.” “But how? She’ll want to be rid of it as soon as she knows.”

“I thought the coal cellar. Yours, at a pinch, but mine would be better, if I get possession in time. It wouldn’t be so hard to soundproof, we wouldn’t have to worry about neighbors.” Luckily, I was able to exchange contracts only a week later, with vacant possession following the week after that. I was able to invest a full month in getting my house ready before Saskia came to see me with her news. She’d decided to tell me, but not Daniel. “It’s another cyst, and this one could be the big C. I just can’t cope with Daniel’s reactions. I’ll have to tell him afterward, of course. I know it’ll be the end of us—he was so weird about your operation, and he really loved you. I know he doesn’t really love me, not for myself. He’s got such strange ideas about women’s bodies! After the operation . . .” Although I didn’t expect to be successful, I had to try to talk her out of what she planned to do. “Maybe you won’t have to have an operation. Maybe, if you tell your doctor how important it is for you to be able to bear a child, he might suggest some alternative treatments first. You don’t know it’s malignant.” “He’s ahead of you on that,” Saskia said. “He’s done a biopsyin situ , and then, if it proves to be benign, we could leave it, while I tried to get pregnant: probably take some fertility drug, thenin vitro fertilization, followed by a heavily monitored pregnancy—I could spend up to five or six months in the hospital, you know, even before the Caesarean.Then they’d do the hysterectomy. All that stuff just to make my body produce a baby. And I’m not even sure that I want one.” “What? Of course you do!” She shook her head. “Come on, Saskia, I can remember when you were trying to get pregnant.” “That was long ago, and in another country, and besides, the wench is dead. Look, once upon a time I wanted to have a baby with a particular man. I don’t want to have a baby with Daniel.” “If you’re worried about taking him away from me . . .” She almost laughed. “Oh, Bess, I know you love him, but he’s not for me. I can see that now. I certainly don’t want his baby.” “Have you thought about whathe might want?” “Bess, I’m not pregnant, you know. And all this is hypothetical, dependent on the tumor being benign. If it’s not . . .” She made a little cutting motion across her stomach, and I felt sick. “What about Daniel?” “Daniel’s history. I thought you’d be pleased—I’ve finally come to my senses. I don’t love him. I think probably I never did. All the time what I felt for him wasn’t love, it was a kind of desperation. I was desperate to make him love me, value me for myself, and he just couldn’t. That’s my pathology, you know, to be hooked on men who are incapable of loving me, for whatever reason. Or at least it used to be. But now that I know . . . now Iam sick, I’m going to get it cut out of me, the whole mess.” “Let me make you a cup of tea,” I said. She commented on the taste—it was very sweet—and I told her that it was a special herbal mixture with

extra honey to help build up her immune system. She smiled gratefully. “Thanks, Bess. You’re with me in this? I mean, I don’t expect you to come to the hospital—” “I’m with you all the way.” ***

The sedative took effect quickly, and I called Daniel to come over and help me carry her down to the cellar, afraid that I might do her an injury if I tried to haul her down on my own. I’d decorated the low, windowless cellar to look as cozy and cheerful and as much to Saskia’s taste as possible, although I knew she’d be bound to see it as a prison. It was just too bad that she didn’t love Daniel, or me, enough to see things from our point of view. I’ll pass over the next months quickly. It should have been a happy time, and, of course, Daniel was anticipating the birth with joy, but Saskia couldn’t. She was angry and fearful at first, and after the pain began, it was even worse. My own pains began around the same time, about three months after the beginning of Saskia’s confinement: strong, sickening pains deep in my stomach. I remembered what I’d read about thecouvade , the sympathetic pregnancy suffered by men in some primitive societies. It occurred to me that since I no longer had a womb, this might be my way of sharing Saskia’s mystical pregnancy. Then I began to have trouble swallowing. What with one thing and another it became harder to function, to go out to work, even to take care of Saskia. I longed to give up and quit, to crawl into my bed and sleep, but I could not forget my responsibilities. I received notice of an appointment with my oncologist. Normally I would have tossed the letter in the bin, but I wasn’t feeling normal. I decided to go. It would mean a day off work and a chance to talk to someone who might be more sympathetic to my pain than either Daniel or Saskia. I got more than sympathy. I learned that there were tumors growing in my throat and stomach. What I was experiencing was notcouvade but the real thing. The cancer had spread so fast and so far that surgery wasn’t an option. The doctor spoke hesitantly about radiation and chemotherapy, but I was firmly against. “You can’t kill them,” I said, and he agreed, not understanding that I was stating my firm objection to any attempt to try to kill what I welcomed. If I shook, it was not from fear, but with ecstatic joy. I couldn’t wait to get home and share the news with Daniel. According to the doctor, I have about two months, maybe three, before the end. I am not afraid. The end of this bodily life will be a new beginning, a great and previously unknown transformation. Out of our bodies will come treasures which will have made our lives worthwhile.

Bug House The house was a wreck, resting like some storm-shattered ship on a weedy headland overlooking the ocean. Ellen felt her heart sink at the sight of it. “This it?” asked the taxi driver dubiously, squinting through his windshield and slowing the car.

“It must be,” Ellen said without conviction. She couldn’t believe her aunt—or anyone else—lived in this house. The house had been built, after the local custom, out of wood, and then set upon cement blocks that raised it three or four feet off the ground. But floods seemed far less dangerous to the house now than the winds, or simply time. The house was crumbling on its blocks. The boards were weather-beaten and scabbed with flecks of ancient gray paint. Uncurtained windows glared blankly, and one shutter hung at a crazy angle. Between the boards of the sagging, second-story balcony, Ellen could see daylight. “I’ll wait for you,” the driver said, pulling up at the end of an overgrown driveway. “In case there’s nobody here.” “Thanks,” Ellen said, getting out of the back seat and tugging her suitcase after her. She counted the fare out into his hand and glanced up at the house. No sign of life. Her shoulders slumped. “Just wait to be sure someone answers the door,” she told the driver. Trudging up the broken cement path to the front door, Ellen was startled by a glimpse of something moving beneath the house. She stopped short and peered ahead at the dark space. Had it been a dog? A child playing? Something large and dark, moving quickly—but it was gone now or in hiding. Behind her, Ellen could hear the taxi idling. For a brief moment she considered going back. Back to Danny. Back to all their problems. Back to his lies and promises. She walked forward again, and when she reached the porch she set her knuckles against the warped, gray door and rapped sharply, twice. An old, old woman, stick-thin and obviously ailing, opened the door. Ellen and the woman gazed at each other in silence. “Aunt May?” The old woman’s eyes cleared with recognition, and she nodded slightly. “Ellen, of course!” But when had her aunt grown so old? “Come in, dear.” The old woman stretched out a parchment claw. At her back, Ellen felt the wind. The house creaked, and for a moment Ellen thought she felt the porch floor give beneath her feet. She stumbled forward, into the house. The old woman—her aunt, she reminded herself—closed the door behind her. “Surely you don’t live here all alone,” Ellen began. “If I’d known—if Dad had known—we would have . . .” “If I’d needed help I would’ve asked for it,” Aunt May said with a sharpness that reminded Ellen of her father. “But this house,” Ellen said. “It’s too much for one person. It looks like it might fall down at any minute, and if something should happen to you here, all alone . . .” The old woman laughed, a dry, papery rustle. “Nonsense. This house will outlast me. And appearances can be deceiving. Look around you—I’m quite cozy here.” Ellen saw the hall for the first time. A wide, high-ceilinged room with a brass chandelier and a rich oriental carpet. The walls were painted cream, and the grand staircase looked in no danger of collapse.

“It does look a lot better inside,” Ellen said. “It looked deserted from the road. The taxi driver couldn’t believe anyone lived here.” “The inside is all that matters to me,” said the old woman. “I have let it all go rather badly. The house is honeycombed with dry rot and eaten by insects, but even so it’s in nowhere near as bad shape as I am. It will still be standing when I’m underground, and that’s enough for me.” “But, Aunt May . . .” Ellen took hold of her aunt’s bony shoulders. “Don’t talk like that. You’re not dying.” That laugh again. “My dear, look at me. I am. I’m long past saving. I’m all eaten up inside. There’s barely enough of me left to welcome you here.” Ellen looked into her aunt’s eyes, and what she saw there made her vision blur with tears. “But doctors . . .” “Doctors don’t know everything. There comes a time, my dear, for everyone. A time to leave this life for another one. Let’s go in and sit down. Would you like some lunch? You must be hungry after that long trip.” Feeling dazed, Ellen followed her aunt into the kitchen, a narrow room decorated in greens and gold. She sat at the table and stared at the wallpaper, a pattern of fish and frying pans. Her aunt was dying. It was totally unexpected. Her father’s older sister—but only eight years older, Ellen remembered. And her father was a vigorously healthy man, a man still in the prime of life. She looked at her aunt, saw her moving painfully slowly from cupboard to counter to shelf, preparing a lunch. Ellen rose. “Let me do it, Aunt May.” “No, no, dear. I know where everything is, you see. You don’t. I can still get around all right.” “Does Dad know about you? When was the last time you saw him?” “Oh, dear me, I didn’t want to burden him with my problems. We haven’t been close for years, you know. I suppose I last saw him—why, it was at your wedding, dear.” Ellen remembered. That had been the last time she had seen Aunt May. She could hardly believe that woman and the one speaking to her now were the same. What had happened to age her so in only three years? May set a plate on the table before Ellen. A pile of tuna and mayonnaise was surrounded by sesame crackers. “I don’t keep much fresh food on hand,” she said. “Mostly canned goods. I find it difficult to get out shopping much anymore, but then I haven’t much appetite lately, either. So it doesn’t much matter what I eat. Would you like some coffee? Or tea?” “Tea, please. Aunt May, shouldn’t you be in a hospital? Where someone would care for you?” “I can care for myself right here.” “I’m sure Dad and Mom would love to have you visit. . . .” May shook her head firmly.

“In a hospital they might be able to find a cure.” “There’s no cure for dying except death, Ellen.” The kettle began to whistle, and May poured boiling water over a teabag in a cup. Ellen leaned back in her chair, resting the right side of her head against the wall. She could hear a tiny, persistent, crunching sound from within the wall—termites? “Sugar in your tea?” “Please,” Ellen responded automatically. She had not touched her food, and felt no desire for anything to eat or drink. “Oh, dear,” sighed Aunt May. “I’m afraid you’ll just have to drink it plain. It must have been a very long time since I used this—there are more ants here than sugar grains.” Ellen watched her aunt drop the whole canister into the garbage can. “Aunt May, is money a problem? I mean, if you’re staying here because you can’t afford—” “Bless you, no.” May sat down at the table beside her niece. “I have some investments and enough money in the bank for my own needs. And this house is my own, too. I bought it when Victor retired, but he didn’t stay long enough to help me enjoy it.” In a sudden rush of sympathy, Ellen leaned over and would have taken her frail aunt in her arms, but May fluttered her hand in a go-away motion, and Ellen drew back. “With Victor dead, some of the joy went out of fixing it up. Which is why it still looks much the same old wreck it was when I bought it. This property was a real steal because nobody wanted the house. Nobody but me and Victor.” May cocked her head suddenly and smiled. “And maybe you? What would you say if I left this house to you when I die?” “Aunt May, please don’t—” “Nonsense. Who better? Unless you can’t stand the sight of it, but I’m telling you the property is worth something, at least. If the house is too far gone with bugs and rot you can pull it down and put up something you and Danny like better.” “It’s very generous of you, Aunt May. I just don’t like to hear you talk about dying.” “No? It doesn’t bother me. But if it disturbs you, then we’ll say no more about it. Shall I show you your room?” Leading the way slowly up the stairs, leaning heavily on the banister and pausing often in her climb, May explained, “I don’t go upstairs anymore. I moved my bedroom downstairs because the climb was too much trouble.” The second floor smelled strongly of sea-damp and mold. “This room has a nice view of the sea,” May said. “I thought you might like it.” She paused in the doorway, gesturing to Ellen to follow. “There are clean linens in the hall closet.” Ellen looked into the room. It was sparely furnished with bed, dressing table, and straight-backed chair. The walls were an institutional green and without decoration. The mattress was bare, and there were no

curtains at the French doors. “Don’t go out on the balcony—I’m afraid parts of it have quite rotted away,” May cautioned. “I noticed,” Ellen said. “Well, some parts go first, you know. I’ll leave you alone now, dear. I’m feeling a bit tired myself. Why don’t we both just nap until dinner time?” Ellen looked at her aunt and felt her heart twist with sorrow at the weariness on that pale, wrinkled face. The small exertion of climbing upstairs had told on her. Her arms trembled slightly, and she looked gray with weariness. Ellen hugged her. “Oh, Aunt May,” she said softly. “I’m going to be a help to you, I promise. You just take it easy. I’ll look after you.” May pulled away from her niece’s arms, nodding. “Yes, dear, it’s very nice to have you here. We welcome you.” She turned and walked away down the hall. Alone, Ellen suddenly realized her own exhaustion. She sank down on the bare mattress and surveyed her bleak little room, her mind a jumble of problems old and new. She had never known her Aunt May well enough to become close to her—this sudden visit was a move born of desperation. Wanting to get away from her husband for a while, wanting to punish him for a recently discovered infidelity, she had cast about for a place she could escape to—a place she could afford, and a place where Danny would not be able to find her. Aunt May’s lonely house on the coast had seemed the best possibility for a week’s hiding. She had expected peace, boredom, regret—but she had never expected to find a dying woman. It was a whole new problem that almost cast her problems with Danny into insignificance. Suddenly she felt very lonely. She wished Danny were with her, to comfort her. She wished she had not sworn to herself not to call him for at least a week. But she would call her father, she decided. Should she warn him against telling Danny? She wasn’t sure—she hated letting her parents know her marriage was in trouble. Still, if Danny tried to find her by calling them, they would know something was wrong. She’d call her father tonight. Definitely. He’d come out here to see his sister—he’d take charge, get her to a hospital, find a doctor with a miracle cure. She was certain of it. But right now she was suddenly, paralyzingly tired. She stretched out on the bare mattress. She would get the sheets and make it up properly later, but right now she would just close her eyes, just close her eyes and rest for a moment. . . . It was dark when Ellen woke, and she was hungry. She sat on the edge of the bed, feeling stiff and disoriented. The room was chilly and smelled of mildew. She wondered how long she had slept. Nothing happened when she hit the light switch on the wall. So she groped her way out of the room and along the dark passage toward the dimly perceived stairs. The steps creaked loudly beneath her feet. She could see a light at the bottom of the stairs, from the kitchen. “Aunt May?”

The kitchen was empty, the light a fluorescent tube above the stove. Ellen had the feeling that she was not alone. Someone was watching. Yet when she turned, there was nothing behind her but the undisturbed darkness of the hall. She listened for a moment to the creakings and moanings of the old house, and to the muffled sounds of sea and wind from outside. No human sound in all of that, yet the feeling persisted that if she listened hard enough, she would catch a voice. . . . She could make out another dim light from the other end of the hall, behind the stairs, and she walked toward it. Her shoes clacked loudly on the bare wooden floor of the back hall. It was a nightlight that had attracted her attention, and near it she saw that a door stood ajar. She reached out and pushed it farther open. She heard May’s voice, and she stepped into the room. “I can’t feel my legs at all,” May said. “No pain in them, no feeling at all. But they still work for me, somehow. I was afraid that once the feeling went they’d be useless to me. But it’s not like that at all. But you knew that; you told me it would be like this.” She coughed, and there was the sound in the dark room of a bed creaking. “Come here, there’s room.” “Aunt May?” Silence—Ellen could not even hear her aunt breathing. Finally May said, “Ellen? Is that you?” “Yes, of course. Who did you think it was?” “What? Oh, I expect I was dreaming.” The bed creaked again. “What was that you were saying about your legs?” More creaking sounds. “Hmmm? What’s that, dear?” The voice of a sleeper struggling to stay awake. “Never mind,” Ellen said. “I didn’t realize you’d gone to bed. I’ll talk to you in the morning. Good night.” “Good night, dear.” Ellen backed out of the dark, stifling bedroom, feeling confused. Aunt May must have been talking in her sleep. Or perhaps, sick and confused, she was hallucinating. But it made no sense to think—as Ellen, despite herself, was thinking—that Aunt May had been awake and had mistaken Ellen for someone else, someone she expected a visit from, someone else in the house. The sound of footsteps on the stairs, not far above her head, sent Ellen running forward. But the stairs were dark and empty, and straining her eyes toward the top, Ellen could see nothing. The sound must have been just another product of this dying house, she thought. Frowning, unsatisfied with her own explanation, Ellen went back into the kitchen. She found the pantry well stocked with canned goods and made herself some soup. It was while she was eating it that she heard the footsteps again—this time seemingly from the room above her head. Ellen stared up at the ceiling. If someone was really walking around up there, he was making no attempt to be cautious. But she couldn’t believe that the sound was anything but footsteps: someone was upstairs. Ellen set her spoon down, feeling cold. The weighty creaking continued. Suddenly the sounds overhead stopped. The silence was unnerving, giving Ellen a vision of a man

crouched down, his head pressed against the floor as he listened for some response from her. Ellen stood up, rewarding her listener with the sound of a chair scraping across the floor. She went to the cabinet on the wall beside the telephone—and there, on a shelf with the phone book, Band-Aids, and light bulbs was a flashlight, just as in her father’s house. The flashlight worked, and the steady beam of light cheered her. Remembering the darkness of her room, Ellen also took a light bulb before closing the cabinet and starting upstairs. Opening each door as she came to it, Ellen found a series of unfurnished rooms, bathrooms, and closets. She heard no more footsteps and found no sign of anyone or anything that could have made them. Gradually the tension drained out of her, and she returned to her own room after taking some sheets from the linen closet. After installing the light bulb and finding that it worked, Ellen closed the door and turned to make up the bed. Something on the pillow drew her attention: examining it more closely, she saw that it seemed to be a small pile of sawdust. Looking up the wall, she saw that a strip of wooden molding was riddled with tiny holes, leaking the dust. She wrinkled her nose in distaste: termites. She shook the pillow vigorously and stuffed it into a case, resolving to call her father first thing in the morning. May could not go on living in a place like this. ***

Sun streaming through the uncurtained window woke her early. She drifted toward consciousness to the cries of seagulls and the all-pervasive smell of the sea. She got up, shivering from the dampness which seemed to have crept into her bones, and dressed quickly. She found her aunt in the kitchen, sitting at the table sipping a cup of tea. “There’s hot water on the stove,” May said by way of greeting. Ellen poured herself a cup of tea and joined her aunt at the table. “I’ve ordered some groceries,” May said. “They should be here soon, and we can have toast and eggs for breakfast.” Ellen looked at her aunt and saw that a dying woman shared the room with her. In the face of that solemn, unarguable fact, she could think of nothing to say. So they sat in silence broken only by the sipping of tea, until the doorbell rang. “Would you let him in dear?” May asked. “Shall I pay him?” “Oh, no, he doesn’t ask for that. Just let him in.” Wondering, Ellen opened the door on a strongly built young man holding a brown paper grocery bag in his arms. She put out her arms rather hesitantly to receive it, but he ignored her and walked into the house. He set the bag down in the kitchen and began to unload it. Ellen stood in the doorway watching, noticing that he knew where everything went. He said nothing to May, who seemed scarcely aware of his presence, but when everything had been put away, he sat down at the table in Ellen’s place. He tilted his head on one side and eyed her. “You must be the niece,” he said. Ellen said nothing. She didn’t like the way he looked at her. His dark, nearly black eyes seemed to be

without pupils—hard eyes, without depths. And he ran those eyes up and down her body, judging her. He smiled now at her silence and turned to May. “A quiet one,” he said. May stood up, holding her empty cup. “Let me,” Ellen said quickly, stepping forward. May handed her the cup and sat down again, still without acknowledging the young man’s presence. “Would you like some breakfast?” Ellen asked. May shook her head. “You eat what you like, dear. I don’t feel much like eating . . . there doesn’t seem to be much point.” “Oh, Aunt May, you really should have something.” “A piece of toast, then.” “I’d like some eggs,” said the stranger. He stretched lazily in his chair. “I haven’t had my breakfast yet.” Ellen looked at May, wanting some clue. Was this presumptuous stranger her friend? A hired man? She didn’t want to be rude to him if May didn’t wish it. But May was looking into the middle distance, indifferent. Ellen looked at the man. “Are you waiting to be paid for the groceries?” The stranger smiled, a hard smile that revealed a set of even teeth. “I bring food to your aunt as a favor. So she won’t have to go to the trouble of getting it for herself, in her condition.” Ellen stared at him a moment longer, waiting in vain for a sign from her aunt, and then turned her back on them and went to the stove. She wondered why this man was helping her aunt—was she really not paying him? He didn’t strike her as the sort for disinterested favors. “Now that I’m here,” Ellen said, getting eggs and butter out of the refrigerator, “you don’t have to worry about my aunt. I can run errands for her.” “I’ll have two fried eggs,” he said. “I like the yolks runny.” Ellen glared at him, but realized he wasn’t likely to leave just because she refused to cook his eggs—he’d probably cook them himself. And hehad bought the food. But—her small revenge—she overcooked the eggs and gave him the slightly scorched piece of toast. When she sat down she looked at him challengingly. “I’m Ellen Morrow,” she said. He hesitated, then drawled, “You can call me Peter.” “Thanks a lot,” she said sarcastically. He smiled his unpleasant smile again, and Ellen felt him watching her eat. As soon as she could she excused herself, telling her aunt she was going to call her father. That drew the first response of the morning from May. She put out a hand, drawing it back just shy of touching Ellen. “Please don’t. There’s nothing he can do for me and I don’t want him charging down here for no good reason.” “But, Aunt May, you’re his only sister—I have to tell him, and of course he’ll want to do something for you.” “The only thing he can do for me now is to leave me alone.”

Unhappily, Ellen thought that her aunt was right—still, her father must be told. In order to be able to speak freely, she left the kitchen and went back to her aunt’s bedroom where she felt certain there would be an extension. There was, and she dialed her parents’ number. The ringing went on and on. She gave up, finally, and phoned her father’s office. The secretary told her he’d gone fishing, and would be unreachable for at least two days. She promised to give him a message if he called, or when he returned. So it had to wait. Ellen walked back toward the kitchen, her crêpe-soled shoes making almost no sound on the floor. She heard her aunt’s voice, “You didn’t come to me last night. I waited and waited. Why didn’t you come?” Ellen froze. “You said you would stay with me,” May continued. Her voice had a whining note that made Ellen uncomfortable. “You promised you would stay and look after me.” “The girl was in the house,” Peter said. “I didn’t know if I should.” “What does she matter? She doesn’t matter. Not while I’m here, she doesn’t. This is still my house and I . . . I belong to you, don’t I? Don’t I, dearest?” Then there was a silence. As quietly as she could, Ellen hurried away and left the house. The sea air, damp and warm though it was, was a relief after the smoldering closeness of the house. But Ellen, taking in deep breaths, still felt sick. They were lovers, her dying aunt and that awful young man. That muscular, hard-eyed, insolent stranger was sleeping with her frail, elderly aunt. The idea shocked and revolted her, but she had no doubt of it—the brief conversation, her aunt’s voice, could not have been more plain. Ellen ran down the sandy, weedy incline toward the narrow beach, wanting to lose her knowledge. She didn’t know how she could face her aunt now, how she could stay in a house where— She heard Danny’s voice, tired, contemptuous, yet still caring, “You’re so naïve about sex, Ellen. You think everything’s black and white. You’re such a child.” Ellen started to cry, thinking of Danny, wishing she had not run away from him. What would he say to her about this? That her aunt had a right to pleasure, too, and age was just another prejudice. But what abouthim ? Ellen wondered. What about Peter—what did he get out of it? He was using her aunt in some way, she was certain of it. Perhaps he was stealing from her—she thought of all the empty rooms upstairs and wondered. She found a piece of Kleenex in a pocket of her jeans and wiped away the tears. So much was explained by this, she thought. Now she knew why her aunt was so desperate not to leave this rotting hulk of a house, why she didn’t want her brother to come. “Hello, Ellen Morrow.” She raised her head, startled, and found him standing directly in her path, smiling his hard smile. She

briefly met, then glanced away from, his dark, ungiving eyes. “You’re not very friendly,” he said. “You left us so quickly. I didn’t get a chance to talk to you.” She glared at him and tried to walk away, but he fell into step with her. “You shouldn’t be so unfriendly,” he said. “You should try to get to know me.” She stopped walking and faced him. “Why? I don’t know who you are or what you’re doing in my aunt’s house.” “I think you have some idea. I look after your aunt. She was all alone out here before I came, with no family or friends. She was completely unprotected.You may find it shocking, but she’s grateful to me now. She wouldn’t approve of you trying to send me away.” “I’m here now,” Ellen said. “I’m a part of her family. And her brother will come . . . she won’t be left alone, at the mercy of strangers.” “But I’m not a stranger anymore. And she doesn’t want me to leave.” Ellen was silent for a moment. Then she said, “She’s a sick, lonely old woman—she needs someone. But what do you get out of it? Do you think she’s going to leave you her money when she dies?” He smiled contemptuously. “Your aunt doesn’t have any money. All she has is that wreck of a house—which she plans to leave to you. I give her what she needs, and she gives me what I need—which is something a lot more basic and important than money.” Afraid she was blushing, Ellen turned and began striding across the sand, back toward the house. She could feel him keeping pace with her, but she did not acknowledge his presence. Until he grabbed her arm—and she let out a gasp that embarrassed her as soon as she heard it. But Peter gave no sign that he had noticed. Having halted her, he directed her attention to something on the ground. Feeling foolish but still a little frightened she let him draw her down to a crouching position. A battle had drawn his attention, a fight for survival in a small, sandy arena. A spider, pale as the sand, danced warily on pipe-cleaner legs. Circling it, chitinous body gleaming darkly in the sunlight, was a deadly black dart of a wasp. There was something eerily fascinating in the way the tiny antagonists circled each other, feinting, freezing, drawing back, and darting forward. The spider on its delicate legs seemed nervous to Ellen, while the wasp was steady and single-minded. Although she liked neither spiders nor wasps, Ellen hoped that the spider would win. Suddenly the wasp shot forward; the spider rolled over, legs clenching and kicking like fingers from a fist, and the two seemed to wrestle for a moment. “Ah, now she’s got him,” murmured Ellen’s companion. Ellen saw that his face was intent, and he was absorbed by the deadly battle. Glancing down again, she saw that the spider was lying perfectly still, while the wasp circled it warily. “He killed him,” Ellen said. “Not he, she.” Peter corrected. “And the spider isn’t dead. Just paralyzed. The wasp is making sure that her sting has him completely under control before going on. She’ll dig a hole and pull the spider into it,

then lay her egg on his body. The spider won’t be able to do a thing but lie in the home of his enemy and wait for the egg to hatch and start eating him.” He smiled his unpleasant smile. Ellen stood up. “Of course, he can’t feel a thing,” Peter continued. “He’s alive, but only in the most superficial sense. That paralyzing poison the wasp filled him with has effectively deadened him. A more advanced creature might torment himself with fears about the future, the inevitability of his approaching death—but this is just a spider. And what does a spider know?” Ellen walked away, saying nothing. She expected him to follow her, but when she looked back she saw that he was still on his hands and knees, watching the wasp at her deadly work. Once inside the house, Ellen locked the front door behind her, then went around locking the other doors and checking the windows. Although she knew it was likely that her aunt had given Peter a key to the house, she didn’t want to be surprised by him again. She was locking the side door, close by her aunt’s room, when the feeble voice called, “Is that you, dear?” “It’s me, Aunt May,” Ellen said, wondering who that “dear” was meant for. Pity warred briefly with disgust, and then she entered the bedroom. From the bed, her aunt gave a weak smile. “I tire so easily now,” she said. “I think I may just spend the rest of the day in bed. What else is there for me to do, except wait?” “Aunt May, I could rent a car and take you to a doctor—or maybe we could find a doctor willing to come out here.” May turned her gray head back and forth on the pillow. “No. No. There’s nothing a doctor can do, no medicine in the world that can help me now.” “Something to make you feel better . . .” “My dear, I feel very little. No pain at all. Don’t worry about me. Please.” She looked so exhausted, Ellen thought. Almost all used up. And looking down at the small figure surrounded by bedclothes, Ellen felt her eyes fill with tears. Suddenly, she flung herself down beside the bed. “Aunt May, I don’twant you to die!” “Now, now,” the old woman said softly, making no other movement. “Now, don’t you fret. I felt the same way myself, once, but I’ve got over that. I’ve accepted what has happened, and so must you. So must you.” “No,” Ellen whispered, her face pressed against the bed. She wanted to hold her aunt, but she didn’t dare—the old woman’s stillness seemed to forbid it. Ellen wished her aunt would put out her hand or turn her face to be kissed: she could not make the first move herself. At last Ellen stopped crying and raised her head. She saw that her aunt had closed her eyes and was breathing slowly and peacefully, obviously asleep. Ellen stood up and backed out of the room. She longed for her father, for someone to share this sorrow with her. She spent the rest of the day reading and wandering aimlessly through the house, thinking now of Danny and then of her aunt and the unpleasant stranger called Peter, feeling frustrated because she could do nothing. The wind began to blow again, and the old house creaked, setting her nerves on edge. Feeling trapped in the moldering carcass of the house, Ellen walked out onto the front porch. There she leaned against the railing and stared out at the gray and white ocean. Out here she enjoyed the bite of the wind, and the creaking of the balcony above her head did not bother her.

Idly, her attention turned to the wooden railing beneath her hands, and she picked at a projecting splinter with one of her fingernails. To her surprise, more than just a splinter came away beneath her fingers: some square inches of the badly painted wood fell away, revealing an interior as soft and full of holes as a sponge. The wood seemed to be trembling, and after a moment of blankness, Ellen suddenly realized that the wood was infested with termites. With a small cry of disgust, Ellen backed away, staring at the interior world she had uncovered. Then she went back into the house, locking the door behind her. It grew dark, and Ellen began to think longingly of food and companionship. She realized she had heard nothing from her aunt’s room since she had left her sleeping there that morning. After checking the kitchen to see what sort of dinner could be made, Ellen went to wake her aunt. The room was dark and much too quiet. An apprehension stopped Ellen in the doorway where, listening, straining her ears for some sound, she suddenly realized the meaning of the silence: May was not breathing. Ellen turned on the light and hurried to the bed. “Aunt May, Aunt May,” she said, already hopeless. She grabbed hold of one cool hand, hoping for a pulse, and laid her head against her aunt’s chest, holding her own breath to listen for the heart. There was nothing. May was dead. Ellen drew back, crouching on her knees beside the bed, her aunt’s hand still held within her own. She stared at the empty face—the eyes were closed, but the mouth hung slightly open—and felt the sorrow building slowly inside her. At first she took it for a drop of blood. Dark and shining, it appeared on May’s lower lip and slipped slowly out of the corner of her mouth. Ellen stared, stupefied. As the droplet detached itself from May’s lip and moved, without leaving a trace behind, down her chin. Then Ellen saw what it was. It was a small, shiny black bug, no larger than the nail on her little finger. And, as Ellen watched, a second tiny insect crawled slowly out onto the shelf of May’s dead lip. Ellen scrambled away from the bed, backward, on her hands and knees. Her skin was crawling, her stomach churning, and there seemed to be a horrible smell in her nostrils. Somehow, she managed to get to her feet and out of the room without either vomiting or fainting. In the hallway she leaned against the wall and tried to gather her thoughts. May was dead. Into her mind came the vision of a stream of black insects bubbling out of the dead woman’s mouth. Ellen moaned and clamped her teeth together, and tried to think of something else.It hadn’t happened. She wouldn’t think about it. But May was dead, and that had to be dealt with. Ellen’s eyes filled with tears—then, suddenly impatient, she blinked them away. No time for that. Tears wouldn’t do any good. She had to think. Should she call a funeral home? No, a doctor first, surely, even if she was truly past saving. A doctor would tell her what had to be done, who had to be notified. She went into the kitchen and turned on the light, noticing as she did so how the darkness outside seemed to drop like a curtain against the window. In the cabinet near the phone she found the thin local phone book and looked up the listing for physicians. There were only a few of them. Ellen chose the first number and—hoping that a town this size had an answering service for its doctors—lifted the receiver.

There was no dialing tone. Puzzled, she pressed the button and released it. Still nothing. Yet she didn’t think the line was dead, because it wasn’t completely silent. She could hear what might have been a gentle breathing on the other end of the line, as if someone somewhere else in the house had picked up the phone and was listening to her. Jarred by the thought, Ellen slammed the receiver back into the cradle. There could be no one else in the house. But one of the other phones might be off the hook. She tried to remember if there was another phone upstairs, because she shrank at the thought of returning to her aunt’s room without a doctor, someone in authority, to go with her. But even if there were another phone upstairs, Ellen realized, she had not seen it or used it, and it was not likely to be causing the trouble. But the phone in her aunt’s room could have been left off the hook by either her aunt or herself. She would have to go and check. He was waiting for her in the hall. The breath backed up in her throat to choke her, and she couldn’t make a sound. She stepped back. He stepped forward, closing the space between them. Ellen managed to find her voice and, conquering for the moment her nearly instinctive fear of this man, said, “Peter, you must go get a doctor for my aunt.” “Your aunt has said she doesn’t want a doctor,” he said. His voice came almost as a relief after the ominous silence. “It’s not a matter of what my aunt wants anymore,” Ellen said. “She’s dead.” The silence buzzed around them. In the darkness of the hall Ellen could not be sure, but she thought that he smiled. “Will you go and get a doctor?” “No.” he said. Ellen backed away, and again he followed her. “Go and see her for yourself,” Ellen said. “If she’s dead,” he said, “she doesn’t need a doctor. And the morning will be soon enough to have her body disposed of.” Ellen kept backing away, afraid to turn her back on him. Once in the kitchen, she could try the phone again. But he didn’t let her. Before she could reach for the receiver, his hand shot out, and he wrenched the cord out of the wall. He had a peculiar smile on his face. Then he lifted the telephone, long cord dangling, into the air above his head, and as Ellen pulled nervously away, he threw the whole thing, with great force, at the floor. It crashed jarringly against the linoleum, inches from Ellen’s feet. Ellen stared at him in horror, unable to move or speak, trying frantically to think how to escape him. She thought of the darkness outside, and of the long, unpaved road with no one near, and the deserted beach. Then she thought of her aunt’s room, which had a heavy wooden door and a telephone which might still work.

He watched her all this time, making no move. Ellen had the odd idea that he was trying to hypnotize her, to keep her from running, or perhaps he was simply waiting for her to make the first move, watching for the telltale tension in her muscles that would signal her intentions. Finally, Ellen knew she had to do something—she could not keep waiting for him to act forever. Because he was so close to her, she didn’t dare to try to run past him. Instead, she feinted to the left, as if she would run around him and toward the front door, but instead she ran to the right. He caught her in his powerful arms before she had taken three steps. She screamed, and his mouth came down on hers, swallowing the scream. The feel of his mouth on hers terrified her more than anything else. Somehow, she had not thought of that—for all her fear of him, it had not occurred to her until now that he meant to rape her. She struggled frantically, feeling his arms crush her more tightly, pinning her arms to her sides and pressing the breath out of her. She tried to kick him or to bring a knee up into his crotch, but she could not raise her leg far enough, and her kicks were feeble little blows against his legs. He pulled his mouth away from hers and dragged her back into the darkness of the hall and pressed her to the floor, immobilizing her with the weight of his body. Ellen was grateful for her jeans, which were tight fitting. To get them off—but she wouldn’t let him take them off. As soon as he released her, even for a moment, she would go for his eyes, she decided. This thought was firmly in her mind as he rose off her, but he held her wrists in a crushing grip. She began to kick as soon as her legs were free of his weight, but her legs thrashed about his legs, her kicks doing no harm. Abruptly, he dropped her hands. She had scarcely become aware of it and hadn’t had time to do more than think of going for his eyes, when he, in one smooth, deceptively casual motion, punched her hard in the stomach. She couldn’t breathe. Quite involuntarily, she half doubled over, knowing nothing but the agonizing pain. He, meanwhile, skinned her jeans and underpants down to her knees, flipped her unresisting body over as if it were some piece of furniture, and set her down on her knees. While she trembled, dry-retched, and tried to draw a full breath of air, she was aware of his fumbling at her genitals as scarcely more than a minor distraction. Shortly thereafter she felt a new pain, dry and tearing, as he penetrated her. It was the last thing she felt. One moment of pain and helplessness, and then the numbness began. She felt—or rather, she ceased to feel—a numbing tide, like intense cold, flowing from her groin into her stomach and hips and down into her legs. Her ribs were numbed, and the blow he had given her no longer pained her. There was nothing—no pain, no messages of any kind from her abused body. She could still feel her lips, and she could open and close her eyes, but from below the chin she might as well have been dead. And besides the loss of feeling, there was loss of control. All at once she fell like a rag doll to the floor, cracking her chin painfully. She suspected she was still being raped, but she could not even raise her head and turn to see. Above her own labored breathing, Ellen became aware of another sound, a low, buzzing hum. From time to time her body rocked and flopped gently, presumably in response to whatever he was still doing to it.

Ellen closed her eyes and prayed to wake. Behind her shut lids, vivid images appeared. Again she saw the insect on her aunt’s dead lip, a bug as black, hard, and shiny as Peter’s eyes. The wasp in the sand dune, circling the paralyzed spider. Aunt May’s corpse covered with a glistening tide of insects, crawling over her, feasting on her. And when they had finished with her aunt, would they come and find her here on the floor, paralyzed and ready for them? She cried out at the thought and her eyes flew open. She saw Peter’s feet in front of her. So he had finished. She began to cry. “Don’t leave me like this,” she mumbled, her mind still swarming with fears. She heard his dry chuckle. “Leave? But this is my home.” And then she understood. Of course he would not leave. He would stay here with her as he had stayed with her aunt, looking after her as she grew weaker, until finally she died and spilled out the living cargo he had planted in her. “You won’t feel a thing,” he said.

The Nest We found the house on the third day of hunting. It was in the country outside Cheltenham, half a mile from a small village: a tall, solid house standing on its own in an expanse of flat, weedy lawn surrounded by hedge. I switched off the engine and we went on sitting in the car, staring up at the house, caught. The roof looked dilapidated, and the house had obviously stood empty for some time, but the yellow stone it was built of seemed to glow softly in the sunlight. “Imagine living here,” Sylvia said softly. “We could,” I said. “Remember how we used to play we were the Brontë sisters? In a lonely old house on the moor.” “You could go for long walks,” I said. “I’d have to be waiting for you by the fire when you came in.” She laughed, a brief, rich sound of uncomplicated pleasure. “Let’s go in,” I said, and we got out and followed the broken paving stones to the door. “How old do you suppose it is?” Sylvia asked. I shrugged. It was a simple, solid, stone box with a tile roof. For all I knew of architecture, it could have been twenty years old, or two hundred. “I hope it’s really old,” Sylvia said. “There’s something about an old house. . . .” The key turned stiffly in the lock, and we stepped into a narrow, rather dark entrance hall. Rooms opened to the left and right and a steep staircase rose directly ahead. My skin prickled. Sylvia touched my hand. “It feels . . .” she said, very softly.

I nodded, knowing what she meant. It felt inhabited, or only very recently vacated—not like a house which had long stood empty. That made me cautious, and I left the door open behind us as we entered on our tour. It was shockingly dirty. The two front rooms, large kitchen and tiny lavatory at the back; three bedrooms, and a bathroom upstairs were all filthy with litter. There were newspapers, empty cans, bottles, cigarette butts, contraceptives, food wrappers, indistinguishable scraps of clothing, dead leaves and twigs, and chunks of charred wood lying everywhere. But none of the windows were open or broken, there was no graffiti scrawled on the dirty walls, and no signs of a squatter’s rough habitation. It was all just rubbish dumped or abandoned there for some unknown reason. And yet I couldn’t lose the feeling that someone was living—or had been, until our arrival—amid all the mess. We were together at first, touring the house, but somewhere along the way I lost Sylvia. I retraced my steps but could not find her. Outside, clouds had moved across the sun and the rooms were full of shadows. Once I froze at the sound of paper rustling in a corner. My skin crawled at the idea of the vermin that might be lurking there. I called Sylvia’s name but there was no reply. I went outside, but she wasn’t waiting for me there; the garden was empty. A loud cawing drew my attention to the tall beech trees which stood close beside the house. Half a dozen rooks were perched low in one tree, but at my look they all flapped heavily away. “We’d have to get the roof fixed,” Sylvia said from behind me. I started and turned and saw her standing in the doorway. “Where were you?” “There’s a big hole in it. Somebody covered it with plastic, but it’s all shredded now—from the wind, I guess. Rain or anything could get in. The attic floor is all covered with—” “I didn’t know there was an attic.” “Oh, yeah.” “I didn’t see any stairs.” She walked down the path to join me. “There aren’t any stairs. The loft door is in the ceiling of my bedroom.” She giggled shyly. “Well, what could be my bedroom. There was a box there, so I used that to climb up on, and then hauled myself up. Old monkey Sylvia.” She flexed her arms. I could imagine Sylvia doing just that: seeing a trapdoor and pulling herself up through it without a thought for the consequences, without a fear. Headfirst into the unknown. It made me shiver, just to think of being in that dark, dank space beneath the roof. “I suppose it would cost a lot to fix a roof,” Sylvia said, staring up at the rapidly scudding clouds. “That’s probably why the price of the house is so low,” I said. “Is it?” I nodded. “It’s the cheapest of all the ones we’ve looked at.” “And the best.” “You know what it is,” I said. “It’s the house we always dreamed of, as kids. The big, old house in the English countryside.”

“ChezCharlotte and Emily,” Sylvia said. “I’ll bet it’s cozy in a gale.” “It is a little isolated,” I said. That suited me, but Sylvia, I thought, liked parties and people, the bright lights of cities. “That’s what I want,” Sylvia said. “It’s perfect. I need a change. . . . I’m sick of cities, and city people. And I like England. I can see why you stayed here.” I smiled slightly. She had been here barely a week. “All right. Shall we hire someone to give us the bad news about the roof and the plumbing? Shall we make an offer?” “Yes,” said Sylvia. “Yes. Yes. Yes.” I want to make it clear that the house was Sylvia’s idea just as much as mine. At first she was even more enthusiastic than I was, impatient to get things moving to ensure that we had a house of our own by Christmas. She expressed no doubts, no serious reservations during all the negotiations. I did not bully her, or push her into something she did not want to do. Although I was the one who first suggested we take the money from the sale of our mother’s house and, instead of dividing it in two, use it to buy one shared house, Sylvia seized upon my suggestion eagerly. It was not I, but she who said—I remember it distinctly—how nice it would be to live together again, and how cozy we would be in our little nest in the country. I do not understand how it all went wrong. ***

We weren’t able to get the roof fixed right away, but the local carpenter and his brother rigged a tarpaulin over the hole to keep us snug and dry. Sylvia went up into the attic to supervise, despite my assurances that it was unnecessary and that the men should be left alone to their work. I stood outside in the rare, blessed sunshine and watched the activity on the roof. I couldn’t hear anything Sylvia said, but every now and then her clear laugh floated out on the breeze. I could hear the men, for all the good it did me. The heavy, foolish way the younger one was flirting with Sylvia made me prickle with embarrassment. Fortunately, stretching a tarp over a hole is no great job, and even though Sylvia invited them in for a cup of tea afterward, we didn’t have to endure their clumsy society for long. And yet, after they had gone, a stifling silence dropped, as if the tarpaulin had fallen in on us. “All cozy and snug now, aren’t we, Sylvia?” I said, forcing the cheer. She looked from the clutter of cups and saucers down to her hands in her lap and began to twist her ring. It was the mate to mine, a platinum band set with rubies. They had been our mother’s, the guard-rings she had worn on either side of her diamond wedding band. “What’s wrong?” I asked. She shook her head swiftly, then said in a rush, “Oh, Pam, what will Ido here?” I almost laughed. “Do? Why, whatever you want. This is our home now. There’s plenty for both of us to do, to fix it up, and in the spring we’ll plant a garden. We can grow our own vegetables.” “That’s not what I mean. We’re so much on our own out here. We don’t know anyone. How will we meet people?” “In the village,” I said. “At church, in the pub, in shops. People are friendlier in the country than they are in London—it will be easy. Or we could have people come to visit. The house is big enough for guests.” She still looked doubtful, brooding.

“Come on,” I said. “You’re not having second thoughts now. It’s too late for all that. The house is ours now. You’ll love it here—just give it a chance.” “It’s just . . . it’s such a change from what I’m used to. . . .” “But that’s what you said you wanted. And after mother died whatever you did would have been a big change. How do you think you’d like living all by yourself in Edison? That boyfriend of yours wouldn’t have been much help.” “Stop it,” she said. “I left him, didn’t I? That’s over.” “I’m just trying to point out that you could be a lot worse off than you are. Think how miserable you would have been if you’d let that affair drag on. What could he offer you? Nothing. He would never have left his wife, so you couldn’t hope for marriage, or any kind of security—” She glared at me. “I never wanted security from him. I knew what I was doing. I wasn’t trying to get him to marry me. It wasn’t security I wanted—he gave me something else. Adventure, a feeling of excitement.” “Oh, excitement,” I said. “That’ll do you a lot of good.” “I don’t expect you to understand. After mother died I felt I needed something else . . . he wasn’t enough. That’s why I came here. And it’s over, so why do you keep bringing it up?” She stood up, gathering the tea things together with a noisy clatter. As I watched her I wondered if she would ever, without me, have summoned the nerve to break up with her lover. I remembered how she had been at mother’s funeral, how dazed and helpless, sending me those blue-eyed looks that begged for rescue. In moments of crisis she always turned to her big sister for help, and was grateful for my advice. I remember, as clearly as if it had happened yesterday, an incident from our adolescence. We’d gone down to the drugstore as we often did, on an errand for our mother. Ready to leave, I had looked around for Sylvia. I found her at last in the shadow of a hulking, black-leather-jacketed boy. My immediate inclination was to go, and let Sylvia find her own way home. Boys, especially boys like that, made me uneasy. Usually they ignored me, but they were always hovering around my little sister, drawn to her blonde prettiness and easy charm. Then Sylvia caught sight of me, and the look she sent was an unmistakable cry for help. My heart beat faster as I approached, wondering what on earth I could do. As I reached her side she said, “Oh, gee, I’ve got to go—my sister’s waiting for me.” She took my arm and—I didn’t even have to speak to the monster—we were away. Outside, safe, she began giggling. She told me how awful he was and how nervous she had been until she saw me. “He’s dropped out of school, imagine! And he wanted to take me for a ride on his motorbike—I couldn’t think how to say no, how to get away without making him mad. Then, thank goodness,you were there to save me.” I basked in her praise, believing that Ihad saved her from some awful fate. But only a week later I saw the horrible black leather jacket again: Sylvia’s arms were tight around him as she sat on his motorcycle, and on her face was a look of blissful terror, beyond my saving. ***

On Christmas Eve I went looking for Sylvia. Upstairs all was dark, but still I called her name. “I’m in here.”

Surprised, I went forward and found her sitting in her bedroom. “All alone in the dark, Sylvia?” I switched on the bedside lamp. “Don’t.” She held up a shielding hand. I saw that she had been crying, and I sighed. There was a chair situated oddly in the center of the room. I moved it closer to the bed and sat down. “You’re not doing yourself any good, Sylvia, sitting alone and crying. Anyway, he’s not worth crying over.” “How would you know? You never met him.” “I know enough from what you told me. The facts speak for themselves: a married man, who couldn’t even be bothered to come to mother’s funeral, to be with you when he must have known how much you—” “God, I wish I’d never told you! Can’t you ever leave me alone, let me make my own mistakes?” “If you really want to go back to him, I won’t stop you.” “You know it’s too late.” She stared down at her lap, looking like a sullen child. “Anyway, I don’t want to. I wasn’t crying abouthim .” I felt embarrassed and full of remorse. Of course. It was Christmas Eve—her first not spent with mother. “Come on,” I said gently. “You’ll only make yourself feel worse, sitting up here alone. Come downstairs and help me decorate the tree. We always used to do that on Christmas Eve, remember? I’ve got a fire going and I thought I’d make some mulled wine. We’ll put theChristmas Oratorio on—would you like that?” “All right,” she said, her voice dreary. “But in a minute. Just give me a minute alone.” I hesitated, hating to leave her in such a mood. Her hand went out and switched off the light. “Sitting alone in the dark,” I said. “Well.” I stood up and moved uncertainly toward the door. “You always used to be afraid of the dark.” She gave a heavy sigh. “Not for years, Pam. And it never scared me half as much as it did you.” I left without answering. I was surprised, and a little shaken, to discover that she knew that about me. I had always been terrified of the dark. Even now a residual uneasiness lingered. But my own fear had always meant very little to me beside my obligation to protect my little sister. I had been her scout and protector, going ahead of her into darkened rooms to turn on the light and make certain no monsters lurked. I remembered the night my protectorate had ended, when Sylvia had turned on me, screaming, “Leave me alone! Leave me alone! You never let me do anything! I’m not a baby, I’m not scared!” To prove it, to free herself from my loving care, she had rushed headlong, alone, into the terrifying dark. ***

On Christmas Day Sylvia vanished. It was to be the first of many such disappearances, although I didn’t know that at the time. I had no particular reason for searching for her, but finding her room empty made me curious and I went on a circuit of the house. I hadn’t heard her go out, and looking out of the window I saw that the car was still parked in the drive, and there was no one in sight. I went upstairs again, thinking that somehow I had missed her, but still the rooms were empty. In her room I found a straight-backed chair in an odd position, almost blocking the door. I had my hands on it to move it when I happened to glance up. The loft door was directly overhead.

I stared up, wondering. “Sylvia,” I said loudly. “Sylvia?” Footsteps sounded, so close over my head that I winced. Then the door clattered open and Sylvia’s head, the fine hair all tangled rat-tails, swung out and smiled. “Hi.” “What are you doing up there?” “Cleaning.” “On Christmas Day?” “Sure, why not?” “Well, it doesn’t sound like much fun.” “I got bored with reading. Anyway, I thought I’d better get it cleaned up before the roofers come.” “There’s no rush. We won’t get anyone out to fix the roof until after the holidays.” “I know. I just felt like doing it. OK?” “I thought we could take a walk.” “Not right now.” “It’s lovely out.” “Great, you go for a walk. Maybe I’ll be finished when you get back. Have fun.” Her head swung up out of sight and the door—really nothing more than a flimsy piece of wood—came clattering down to close me out. Having suggested a walk, I now felt obligated to go for one, but I was not in a good mood as I set out. Sylvia wasn’t being fair, I thought. It was Christmas, after all: a special, family holiday. We should celebrate it by doing something together. Was that really asking too much of Sylvia? I argued it out with her in my imagination as I put on coat, hat, boots, and gloves, and by the time I had reached the road she had apologized and explained that cleaning out the attic was by way of being a present to me. It was a cold, clear day and the air tasted faintly of apples. Since the ground was not too muddy, I soon left the road and struck off across the fields. I was traveling to the east of the house, up a hill, and the exertion of climbing soon had me feeling warm and vigorous. When I reached the top of the hill I paused to catch my breath and survey the countryside. Our house was easily picked out because it stood away from the village, amid fields and farmland, and my eyes went to it at once. The sight of it made me smile, made me feel proud, as if it were something I had made and not merely bought. There were the yellow stones of my house; there the bright green patch of the untended garden; there the spiky winter trees standing close to the east wall, like guardians. I squinted and pressed my glasses farther up my nose, closer to my eyes, unable to believe what I saw. There was something large and black in one of the trees; something that reminded me horribly of a man crouching there, spying on the house. Absurd, it couldn’t be—but therewas something there, something much bigger than a rook or a cat. Something that did not belong; something dangerous. I fidgeted uneasily, aware that if I ran down the hill now I would lose sight of it. It might be gone by the time I reached the house, and I might never know what it had been. If only I could see it better, get a better view.

Perhaps it was only a black plastic rubbish bag tossed into the branches by the wind and caught there. As I thought that, the black thing rose out of the tree—rose flapping—and half-flew, half-floated toward the rooftop. And vanished. Lost against the dark tiles? Suddenly I wondered about that tarpaulin. How tightly was it fixed? How easily could it be lifted? Could something still get in through the hole in the roof? Something like that horrible, black, flapping thing? I thought of Sylvia alone in the attic, unsuspecting, unprotected. I moaned, and stumbled down the hill. I kept seeing things I didn’t want to see. Something horrible looming over Sylvia. Sylvia screaming and cowering before something big and black and shapeless; something with big black wings. I would be too late, no matter how fast I ran. Too late. As I ran across the empty winter fields toward the house the tears rolled down my cheeks and I could hardly catch my breath for sobbing. “Sylvia!” I could scarcely get her name out as I burst in the house. I felt as if I had been screaming it forever. “Sylvia!” I staggered up the stairs, catching hold of the flimsy rail and foolishly using it to haul myself upward. “Sylvia!” I could hear nothing but my own ragged breathing, my own voice, my own thundering feet. I stood in her room, too frightened to mount the chair and push open the door. “Sylvia!” Above me, the board clattered and was pulled away, and Sylvia looked out, flushed, angry, concerned. “What is it?” I caught the back of the chair and held it. Finally I managed to whisper, “Come down. Now. Please.” She frowned. “All right. But I wish you’d tell me. . . .” Her head drew back and her feet came down, flailed a moment, then found purchase on the chair seat. She let herself down and pulled the door shut after her. I caught her arm. “You’re all right?” “Yes, of course I’m all right. You look awful. What’s wrong?” “I saw something . . . from the hill . . . I was looking down at the house and I saw it. Something big and black, crouching in the tree where it shouldn’t have been. And then it flew toward the roof. And then I couldn’t see it anymore, and I thought it might have got in, through the hole, you know.” She regarded me uneasily. “What must have got in? What did you see? A bird?” I shook my head. “Something bigger. Much, much bigger. Like a man. It flew, but it wasn’t a bird. It couldn’t have been. Not an ordinary bird. It was huge and black and flapping. I was afraid. I knew you were up in the attic, and with that hole in the roof—you said yourself, anything could get in. Anything. I saw it. I was so afraid for you.” “I think you’d better sit down and rest,” Sylvia said. “I’ll make you some tea.” “You didn’t see anything? Nothing came into the attic?” “You can see I’m all right.” “You were alone? Nothing came in?” She led me out of the room and I followed her downstairs, desperate for reassurance, wanting to hear

her say that there had been nothing in the attic with her. Instead she said, “I don’t understand what you think happened. Tell me again what you saw.” I was silent, trying to remember. It was suddenly difficult to sort out fact from fantasy, the reality of what I had seen from the terrifying vision which had obsessed me while I struggled back to the house. Sylvia threatened; Sylvia engulfed or embraced by something, by someone. . . . “I don’t know,” I said at last. “I saw something. I don’t know what it was.” ***

The Monday after Christmas I went to Cheltenham to pick up some material for curtains—and went alone. Sylvia wasn’t interested in going, although I had planned the trip as a treat for her. “We could make a day of it,” I said. “Do some shopping, have a meal, see a film—whatever you like.” Sylvia only smiled and shook her head. “Why do you want to stay here alone? What will you do while I’m gone?” “What makes you think it will be anything different from what I do while you’re here?” I hadn’t meant that at all, but her words awakened suspicion. “Please come,” I said. “It’ll do you good to get out of the house.” She smiled. “I’ll take a walk. That’ll get me out of the house. It’s a nice day for it. I haven’t really explored the neighborhood yet.” And so I drove away on my own, feeling uneasy. Once in Cheltenham I had no urge to linger. I bought the material, filled the petrol tank, and drove back home without stopping for so much as a cup of coffee. The house did not feel empty when I came in. Sylvia might have gone out for a walk, I knew, but I went through the house quietly, looking for her. I was on the upstairs landing when I heard the sound; I’m sure it would not have been audible downstairs. The sound came from the attic, directly overhead. It was a rustling, scrabbling sort of sound, with the occasional small thump, as of something moving around. I stopped breathing and stood still, staring at the featureless white ceiling, so low I could almost have reached up and touched it, to feel the movements on the back of my hand. The scrabbling sound gradually retreated as I listened, and finally stopped. I bolted down the stairs and out of the front door. It would have to come out through the hole in the roof—I was sure of it. I might see it on the roof or in the high branches of the tree nearest the house. I would be able see what I had seen from the hill, and this time, perhaps, I would recognize it. It would have been a reward to see anything, even a rook, but although I circled the house, craning skyward, I saw nothing that moved against the dark roof or the pale sky. Finally I gave up and went into the house. Sylvia was in the hall. I wondered how she had managed to slip past me. She looked flushed and slightly out of breath. “Your shirttail’s out,” I said. She smiled vaguely and stuffed it back into her jeans. “Did you have a nice walk?” “Mmm, lovely.” She drifted away toward the kitchen. “I heard something just now. In the attic.”

She stopped and looked back at me. “When? I thought you just got back?” “I did just get back. I went upstairs to look for you and heard something moving in the attic. So I went outside to see if there was anything on the roof.” She went on looking at me. I shrugged, admitting defeat. “I didn’t see anything.” She turned away. “You want coffee or tea? I’m going to put the kettle on.” “Coffee. Thanks.” I watched her walk away from me. ***

It proved remarkably difficult to get someone to agree to come out and fix the roof before March. In this part of the world, it seemed, one booked roof repairs farther ahead than wedding receptions or holidays. I complained about it to Sylvia, who was indifferent. “So what? There’s no rush. There’s that tarp over the hole to keep the rain out.” “That was supposed to be a temporary thing,” I said. “And what if it’s got loose? We’ve had some windy nights. It might be flapping free, letting things in.” She looked at me with a little half-smile. “Do you want me to go up and check that it’s still in place?” “Up on the roof, you mean?” “I can see it from the attic. I can touch it, for that matter.” I shrugged. “Well, I could go up into the attic and see for myself.” “Of course you could.” She looked back down at her magazine, smiling to herself. She was curled up in one of the two matching armchairs I had arranged on either side of the wood-burning stove. The ruby chips on her finger glittered as she turned a page. “Do you know, I’ve never actually been into the attic?” I was certain, as I asked, that she knew. “Well, you’re not missing much,” she said calmly. She continued to read, and I paced the room, which I’d made comfortable and appealing with carefully selected furniture, dark brown curtains, and a beige carpet. I wondered if she knew that I was afraid of the attic—that dirty, dark place wheresomething might lurk. She seemed so cool. . . . But then maybe I was imagining things. Maybe she had nothing to hide. I should go up to the attic and see for myself, settle my mind and end these fantasies. But at the thought of climbing up there, poking my head up into the unknown darkness, my knees went weak and there was a tightness in my chest. No. There was no need to go up. If anything ever came into the attic, Sylvia would surely tell me, and ask for my help, just as she had at our mother’s grave, and a hundred times before. The gray winter days dragged slowly by. It seemed always to be raining, or to be about to rain. I drew up lists of the improvements we would make in our house, the things we needed to buy, the vegetables and flowers we would grow in our garden. Sylvia’s disappearances became more frequent. Sometimes she claimed to have been out for a walk—yes, even in the rain—and sometimes that she had been in the house all along. I had to be careful. She was suspicious of my questions, and I didn’t want to provoke her. Let her tell me all, in her own good time. I never mentioned the attic, or the sounds I heard at night. I pretended that I noticed nothing,

and I waited. And then one night I woke and knew that something was wrong. It was late: the moon was down and there was no light. The darkness lay on me like a weight. I got up, shivering, and wrapped myself in my dressing gown. As I stepped out of my room I could see that Sylvia’s door was shut and no light came from beneath it. She’s asleep, I thought.Don’t disturb her. But even as I cautioned myself I was shuffling forward, and my outstretched hand had grasped the doorknob. When the door was open I could see nothing in the blackness, and there was no sound. I reached for the light switch. Squinting in the harsh light, I saw that Sylvia’s bed was empty. I leaned against the doorframe, blinking miserably at the undisturbed bed. She hadn’t even slept in it. Then I heard the noise. There was someone in the attic. The sounds were soft but unmistakable, the sounds of movement. Floorboards creaked gently, rhythmically beneath a moving weight, and there was a jumble of softer sounds as well. I held my breath and listened, struggling to make sense of what I heard, trying to separate the sounds and identify them. I closed my eyes and held tightly to the doorframe. Above me, the soft sounds paused, continued, paused, continued. Was it: cloth against flesh, flesh against flesh, a struggle, an embrace, a sob, a breath, a voice? I snapped off the light and the loud click made me shudder. They might hear. I scuttled out of the room, back through darkness to my bed, terrified the whole way that I would hear the wooden slide of the trapdoor and the sound of something coming after me. The door to my room, like the doors to all the other rooms, had a keyhole but no key. I pushed my bedside table against the door, knowing it was no protection, and huddled on my bed, shaking. I wiped the tears off my face and listened. I could hear nothing now, but I did not know if that was because of the location of my room, or because there was nothing more to hear. I took the edge of the sheet into my mouth to keep from making a sound and tried not to think. I waited for morning. But it was some time before morning when I heard the motorbike on the road below the house. Listening to the approach, the pause, and then the sound of it roaring away again, it struck me that I had heard that same sequence of sounds outside the house more than once before. As I puzzled miserably over that, I heard the front door open. Fear and sorrow drained away, leaving me empty, as cold as ice. I heard Sylvia climbing the stairs. I knew that labored, guilty tread well, having heard it many nights when she was in high school, sneaking home late from her dates. I met her on the landing. “Pam!” Her face whitened, and she moved a little backwards, hand clutching the stair rail as if she would retreat downstairs. “We’ll have to get that roof fixed,” I said calmly. “No more excuses. It can’t wait. I don’t care what it costs, if we have to get someone to come all the way from London, whatever it takes, we can’t go another day with that hole in the roof.” “What?”

“Anything could get in,” I said. “You said so yourself. Anything could get in. Or get out. Come and go, day or night. It’s an easy climb from the roof down that big beech tree.” Sylvia gave me a cautious, measuring look, and took my arm. “Pam, you’ve been dreaming. I’m sorry I woke you. I was trying to be quiet. Now go on back to bed.” I pulled away. “I didn’t dream those sounds. You can’t fool me. I didn’t dream your empty bed. What were you doing up there?” She exhaled noisily. “I was out.” “Yes, I heard you come in. That’s always your excuse when you disappear—you were out. Out for a walk, even in the middle of the night. I know where you really went, and I’m sick of your stories. I want the truth. I want to know what’s going on up there.” Sylvia’s face was hard. “I don’t care what you want. I don’t care what you think. I don’t have to tell you anything. I don’t have to explain myself to you.” She pushed past me, into her room, and closed the door. I said, “You think I’m afraid to go up there, don’t you? You thought I’d never find out. Well, you were wrong.” She did not answer, although I waited, and finally I went back to my room. Through the wall I heard the faint sounds of Sylvia moving about, then the snapping of a light switch, and then only silence. I listened for the rest of the night, but she didn’t move again. Only her bed creaked occasionally, as she turned in her sleep. When the sky turned pale and gray morning lit the room I dressed myself in jeans, pullover, and boots. As an afterthought I pulled on a pair of heavy gloves and hefted a flashlight in my hand like a weapon. I knew that if I thought about what I was going to do I would be too frightened to go on. I had to do it, not for myself, but for Sylvia. She didn’t stir when I entered her room. I stood for a moment, looking at her sleeping shape humped beneath blankets, remembering her anger. All our lives I had helped her, and she had rarely been grateful. But I didn’t need her gratitude. I wanted her safety. There was no way to enter the attic other than headfirst, and with difficulty. I set the chair below the door and hesitated, sweat trickling down my back at the prospect of pulling myself up, defenseless, into the unknown. Finally I went ahead and did it, climbing onto the chair, lifting aside the lightweight board that served as a door, and then, wriggling and straining, hauling myself up through the opening as quickly as I could. I found myself in a low, dim, dusty space piled with litter. Covering the floorboards thickly were leaves, twigs, fragments of board and brick, scraps of paper, dust, soil, and dead insects. Just the sort of place I hated most. If Sylvia had cleaned up, I could see no sign of her work. I switched on the flashlight and pointed it around, wishing the light had a purifying as well as illuminating power. I played it on a huge heap of rubbish which must have piled up and remained untouched for ages. Bits and pieces of it were recognizable within the mess as fragments of newspaper, food wrappings, and cloth. There was so much of it that I wondered dazedly if the previous owners of the house could have been so far gone as to use their own attic as a rubbish dump. A rubbish dump. That’s what I thought, shining the light at it. Bits and pieces blown in through the hole in the roof or deliberately left by tenants. Bits of newspaper, cloth, wood, and cardboard plastered together

with mud and hay, twigs and leaves, and bits of string to form a coherent whole. Rather like a nest. But it washuge . It couldn’t be. Why, it was nearly as tall as I was, and wider than my bed. What kind of animal— Ridiculous. And yet, now that I had thought of it, I could not stop seeing the big pile as a nest, a shelter of some kind. There was a pattern to it: it was a deliberate construction, not a random pile at all. Something or someone had built it. Feeling sick at the thought, I stepped closer, holding my light before me. I was hoping that if I saw it more clearly, or from some other angle, that the illusion of structure would collapse. I began to circle it. Then I found the entrance. My attention was drawn by a white cloth, the brightness of it startling against the mottled gray-brown of everything else. As I bent down to take a closer look, I saw that it was lying half-in, half-out of a narrow, molded entranceway. My light showed me a short, narrow crawl-space which took a sudden, sharp turn, cutting off visual access to the interior. It was big enough for me to enter on hands and knees, but the idea was too horrible to consider. Feeling like a coward, but unable to force myself on, I grabbed hold of the white cloth and pulled it free. I looked down at what I held in my hands. It was one of Sylvia’s nightgowns. Somehow, I got down out of the attic. I stood in Sylvia’s room, my heart pounding hard enough to make me sick, and I watched her sleep, and I did not scream. ***

The pest control man agreed to come out that very day. I suspect he pegged me as an hysterical woman, but at least he was willing to drive out to the house with his full arsenal of traps and poisons and see what might live in the attic. He was a big, beefy, red-faced, no-nonsense sort of man, and I wondered how his composure would stand up to the sight of that nest in the attic. He stared, stolid and faintly contemptuous, and I struggled to describe what I had seen. “What sort of thing would build such a nest? And in an attic? What could be living up there?” I asked him. He only shrugged. “I’m sure I couldn’t say. I’ll have a look.” I had roused Sylvia before his arrival. Now she stood by and said nothing as this solid, sensible man climbed into the attic. My nerves were singing; I couldn’t bear to be so close to her. Abruptly I turned and went away downstairs where I could sit and shake without having to explain myself. I had wadded up Sylvia’s nightgown and thrown it on the floor while she still slept. I had not been able to confront her with it, and she had not mentioned it to me. When the man came down out of the attic his manner was unchanged and he gave his ponderous, practical report. “You do have mice, and spiders. An old house like this, with the fields so close, it stands to reason. You might want to get a cat. Good company they are, too, cats. I saw no sign of rats, so you can be easy on that. You want to get that roof fixed, of course, and clear up all that mess. I can put down poison and traps. . . .”

“I don’t care about mice,” I said sharply. “What made that nest, that’s what I want to know. You’re not telling me it was built by mice?” “Stands to reason they’d nest there,” he said. “I’m sure it does. But what built that huge nest in the first place?” He looked a shade uncertain. “Maybe you’d like to come up and point it out to me. Maybe I don’t know which nest you mean. Maybe I missed it.” “You can’t possibly have missed it! It’s huge—I’ve never seen anything like it. Five feet tall, at least, and made of twigs and straw and mud and bits of old newspaper and—” “You mean that heap of rubbish? Shocking the way it’s piled up, isn’t it? It’s because of that you’ve got the spiders and the wood-lice and everything.” “It’s not just a rubbish heap,” I said patiently. “It’s a nest.The nest. If you’d looked at it properly you would have seen that it didn’t just grow, it was put together as a shelter, with an entranceway and everything. If you were doing your job, you should have seen that. You just left it?” He gave me a blank, steady look. “It’s not my job to clean up other people’s rubbish. Not very pleasant sorting through it to see what might live there, but I poked my stick in and turned it over and stirred it around. That’s how I know about the mice and all. It’s no wonder you’ve got them, a mess like that. You need to get it cleaned up. Hire someone, if you don’t fancy tackling it yourself. Once you’ve got that lot cleared away and the roof fixed you won’t have any trouble.” I recognized the sort of man he was. If he couldn’t understand something, then for him it did not exist. There was probably no way I could get him to see what I had seen. Well, it didn’t matter, and I agreed with his advice. “Could you recommend someone to clear it away for me?” “I do have a nephew who does the odd job,” he said. “Since you ask.” The nephew came out that same afternoon to do his work, as did a team of roof menders for a preliminary survey. Getting the roof mended took a full week and more. It could be done no faster, no matter how I stressed the need, no matter what bonuses I promised. Winter days were short. They told me they would do the best they could. During this period, when the house was always full of workmen, Sylvia and I barely communicated. She went out, most days, and did not tell me where she went. But these were not like her previous disappearances, and so they did not worry me. I saw her go out through the front door every time, and saw her walk down the road and turn toward the village. She did not return until after dark, when the house was empty and still again. I saw those days as a precarious interval: once I had made the house safe there would be time to talk, opportunity to mend the rift that had come between us. Finally it was done. The roof was fixed and the house was whole again. Sylvia and I sat in the warm front room that evening, each in an armchair with a book. I couldn’t concentrate on mine; I looked around, admiring the harmony of the room, the warm conjunction of colors and furnishings, all so carefully chosen. Sylvia said, “You’re happy here.” I smiled. “Of course. Aren’t you?” She didn’t answer and I wished I hadn’t asked. “You will be,” I said. “Give it time.” I hesitated, and then

added, very low, “I did it for you.” “I know how much this house means to you,” Sylvia said. “And you’re happy here. This is your place. I wouldn’t expect you to give it up just because I . . . you wouldn’t have to pay me back, even though it was half my money.” “What are you talking about?” “I mean if I was to go away.” “But why should you?” She shrugged and shifted in her chair. “If I . . . stopped wanting to live here.” “Have you?” “If I was to get married. You wouldn’t want my husband to move in here with us?” “No, of course not.” The idea made me tense. “But why talk about that now? It’s not likely to happen for years. Is it? There’s not someone now . . . someone you want to marry?” She sighed and fidgeted and then suddenly glared at me. “No. There isn’t anyone I want to marry. But someday, maybe, I’ll meet a man I do want to marry. And then I’ll want to go away and live with him. That fantasy we had as children would never work, you know. We’re not going to marry two brothers and all live together in one house! Someday I’ll want a house of my own—” “Then what’s this?” I demanded. “Thisis your house. You can’t go on waiting for your life to start with your husband. You’re not a child, you’re grown up and you made the decision to come live here with me. This isour home; we have an equal responsibility for it. If you’re not happy here, then we can sell it and move somewhere else. We’re not trapped. Only a child would talk about leaving like that, as if the only choice you can see is between running away and staying. Just tell me what you want, and we’ll work together for it.” “Maybe I want something you can’t give me.” “Oh? And what’s that? Excitement? True love? What is it you want?” “I don’t know,” she muttered, suddenly unable to meet my eyes. “Well, if you don’t know,I certainly don’t. You can’t go through your life expecting other people to solve your problems for you, and give you what you want, you know. You’ve got to accept responsibility for your own life at some point.” “I’m trying to,” she said softly, staring into her lap. “Sylvia, please tell me about it. I’ll try to understand, but you must give me the chance. Don’t blame me too much—I was trying to help. I wanted to save you.” She stared at me. “What are you talking about?” I wanted to scrape that fake innocence off her face with a knife. I wanted to slap her, to hurt her into honesty. These lies, the unspoken words kept us apart. If she would only confess we could begin again, start clean. “The attic,” I said, watching her like a hawk. I cleared my throat and began again. “Now that the roof has

been fixed, and all that garbage cleared out, we could use the attic as another room. You could buy some paints and make it your studio.” “Why do you keep going on about that?” she cried. “Going on about what?” “About my painting! As if I did!” “You used to. You were very good.” “I never did.” “Now, Sylvia, you know—” “All I ever did was take an art class when I was fourteen. Because I had to dosomething , everyone did, and if I didn’t find something of my own I’d have had to take dancing classes withyou . That’s all it ever was.” I’d let her evade the real issue long enough. “But what about the attic?” She threw herself out of her chair. “Oh, do what you like with it! I don’t care. Just don’t fool yourself that you’re doing it for me.” She was on her way out of the room as she spoke. “Sylvia, wait, can’t we talk?” “No, I don’t think we can.” She didn’t look back. Later that night, after I had gone to bed, I heard Sylvia moving around restlessly in her room. Then I heard the soft, unmistakable clatter of the attic door. I held my breath. She was safe; I knew she was safe. The attic was clean and bare and utterly empty, and the roof was intact. But I had to know what she was doing up there. Since she wouldn’t tell me, I would have to find out for myself. I rose from my bed and went onto the landing, where I could hear. I heard her footsteps, light and unshod, making the softest of sounds against the wood floor. She was walking back and forth. Pacing. First slowly, then more quickly, almost in a frenzy. She began to cry: I heard her ragged, sobbing exhalations. She said something—perhaps called out a name—but I could hear only the sounds, not the sense of them. The cold air on the landing made me shiver, but I worried more about Sylvia, barefoot and in her thin nightdress in the unheated attic. I longed to go and comfort her, but I knew she would reject me. She needed time to adjust, time to accept what I had done for her. Finally I went back to bed, leaving her to her lonely sorrow. It was mid-morning when I awoke, and the room was filled with sunlight. My heart lifted with pleasure. It would be a beautiful day for a long drive in the car. There was a ruined castle not far away that Sylvia would love. We could take a picnic lunch with us. When I had dressed I went to her room and flung open the door. “Wake up, sleepyhead!” The words rang embarrassingly in the empty room. I saw that the bed had not been slept in. My heart thudded sickeningly and I tasted something bitter. If, after all my care— Then I had a sudden, sane vision of Sylvia, exhausted and sleeping alone on the floor of the attic, worn out with crying. I went up to fetch her.

But the attic was empty. Or nearly. Something glittered on the bare boards and I saw that it was Sylvia’s ring, her half of the pair our mother had left us. I knew how much Sylvia had cherished it. She would never have lost it, never left it behind carelessly. But there it was, and Sylvia was gone. I searched the house and found that she had taken away a bag of clothes. She had left no note. The day passed and faded into night, but Sylvia did not return or call. Had she been seduced away, kidnapped? She hadn’t said anything about leaving. She must mean to come back, she must. As the days blended one into the other in the still, silent house, I asked myself again and again why she had gone. I asked myself how I could have prevented it, and I found a hard answer. By trying to keep her, I had forced her to go. I had been too severe, too self-centered. I had held her too tightly, refusing to let her have any life of her own. She was a woman, not a child, and her rebellion was natural. I had driven her away. “Maybe I want something you can’t give me,” she had said. But what she wanted was so horrible! The memory of that dark, filthy den in the attic, her discarded nightgown shimmering whitely against it, still sent a shudder through me. I would not, could not, follow her there. Our childhood fantasy of marrying brothers had never seemed more impossible. But why couldn’t we both have what we wanted? Why did I have to live without her? Understanding more now, I was willing to give more, even to share her, if she would only come back. I would no longer try to change or bind her; I would leave the attic, and her life up there, strictly alone. She could bring her husband, or whatever he was, to the house and I would not interfere. If only I could tell her so. If only she would give me another chance. One day I went up to the attic with the toolkit and set to work on the roof. The hammer did no good at all, and I broke my knife and screwdriver against it. Finally I went down to the village and bought an axe. I was soaking with sweat and rain and my hands were bleeding before I was through, but I got it done at last. The new hole was even bigger than the old; quite big enough for anything to get through. I stuck my head out, scaring off a couple of rooks who had come to examine my work, and I looked around at the heavy gray sky and the bare trees, searching for something large and black flapping on the horizon. I saw nothing like that. The rain ran into my eyes and I retreated. We hadn’t been in the house long enough to acquire much in the way of rubbish, but I took the old newspapers and magazines we’d been saving to recycle, and the bag of garbage from the kitchen, and carried it all up to the attic. Working fast in the gathering dark and cold rain, I raked up a sackful of dead leaves and twigs from the garden, and picked up broken branches from beneath the trees. Still it wasn’t enough, so I took the axe to a couple of chairs, tore the stuffing out of my pillows, and scissored up a few old clothes. It’s a start, anyway. A sign of my goodwill. All I can do now is wait. And so I do, lying in Sylvia’s bed every night, listening for noises from above.

A Friend in Need Photographs lie, like people, like memories. What would it prove if I found Jane’s face and mine caught together in a picture snapped nearly twenty years ago? What does it mean that I can’t find such a photograph? I keep looking. My early life is so well documented by my father’s industrious camera work that Jane’s

absence seems impossible. She was, after all, my best friend; and all my other friends—including one or two I can’t, at this distance, identify—are there in black and white as they run, sit, stand, scowl, cry, laugh, grimace, and play around me. Page after page of birthday parties, dressing-up games, bicycle riding, ice-cream eating, of me and my friends Shelly, Mary, Betty, Carl, Julie, Howard, Bubba, and Pam. But not Jane, who is there in all my memories. Was she ever really there? Did I imagine her into existence? That’s what I thought for twelve years, but I don’t believe that anymore. I saw her in the Houston airport today and I recognized her, although not consciously. What I saw was a small woman of about my own age with dark, curly hair. Something about her drew my attention. We were both waiting for a Braniff flight from New York, already five minutes late. A tired-looking man in uniform went behind the counter, made a throat-clearing noise into the microphone, and announced that the flight would be an hour late. I swore and heard another voice beside me, like an echo. I turned my head and met her eyes. We laughed together. “Are you meeting someone?” she asked. “My mother.” “What a coincidence,” she said flatly. “We’ve both got mothers coming to visit.” “No, actually my mother lives here. She went to New York on business. Your mother lives there?” “LongIsland,” she said. It came out as one word; I recognized the New Yorker’s pronunciation. “That’s where you’re from?” “Never west of the Hudson until two years ago.” Her sharp eyes caught my change of expression. “You’re surprised?” “No.” I smiled and shrugged because the feeling of familiarity was becoming stronger. “I thought I knew you, that’s all. Like from a long time ago, grade school?” “I’m Jane Renzo,” she said, thrusting out her hand. “Graduate of Gertrude Folwell Elementary School and Elmont High, class of ’73.” Jane, Jane Renzo, I thought. Had I known someone by that name? There were distant resonances, but I could not catch them. “Cecily Cloud,” I said, taking her hand. “What a great name!” Our hands unclasped and fell apart. She was grinning; there was a hint of a joke in her eyes, but also something serious. “But it doesn’t ring any bells?” I asked. “Oh, it does, it definitely does. Sets the bells a-ringing. It’s the name I always wanted. A name like a poem. I hated always being plain Jane.” She made a face. “Better than Silly Cecily,” I said. “The kids used to call me Silly until I got so used to it that it sounded like my real name. But I always hated it. I used to wish my parents had given me a strong, sensible name

that couldn’t be mispronounced or misspelled or made fun of—like Jane.” Jane.Memory stirred, but it was like something deep in a forest. I couldn’t get a clear sight of it. “We all have our own miseries, I guess,” she said. She looked at her watch and then at me, a straightforward, friendly look. “We’ve got time to kill before this flight gets here. You want to go and sit down somewhere and have some coffee?” The rush of pleasure I felt at her suggestion was absurdly intense, inappropriate, as if she were a long-lost friend, returned to me when I had nearly given up hope of seeing her again. Trying to understand it, I said, “Are you sure we haven’t met before?” She laughed—a sharp, defensive sound. Hastily, afraid of losing our easy rapport, I said, “It’s only that I feel I know you. Or you remind me of someone. You never came to Houston when you were a kid?” She shook her head. “College?” “Montclair State.” We had begun to walk together in search of a coffee shop, down the long, windowless, carpeted, white-lit corridor. It was like being inside a spaceship, I thought, or in an underground city of the distant, sterile future. We were in Houston, but we might as easily have been in New York, Los Angeles, or Atlanta for all the cues our surroundings gave us. It was a place set apart from the real world, untouched by time or season, unfettered by the laws of nature. “It’s like the future,” I said. Jane looked at the curving walls and indirect lighting and gave me an appreciative smile. “It is kind ofStar Treky ,” she said. We came to rest in a small, dim, overpriced restaurant which was almost empty, in contrast to the bar on one side and the fast-food cafeteria on the other. I saw by my watch that it was too late for lunch and too early for dinner. We ordered coffee, causing the middle-aged waitress to sigh heavily and stump away. “Actually, I’d rather have a shot of Tullamore Dew,” said Jane. “Or a large snifter of brandy.” “Did you want—” She shook her head. “No, no. Better not. It’s just that the thought of seeing my mother again has me wanting reinforcement. But I’d be less capable of dealing with her drunk than I am sober.” I looked at her curiously because she had struck me from the first as a capable, almost fearless person. “You don’t get along with your mother?” “Something like that. I moved out here to get away from her, and she still won’t let me be. She calls me every night. Sometimes she cries. She won’t believe that I’m grown up and that I have my own life to live, a life I’ve chosen. She’s still waiting for me to give up this silliness and move back home. My sisters got away because they got married. But in her eyes I’m still a child.” The waitress returned, setting our coffees down before us with unnecessary emphasis. I watched the dark brown liquid slide over the rim of my cup, to be caught in the shallow white bowl of the saucer. “You’re lucky if you and your mother can relate to each other as people,” Jane said.

I nodded, although I had never given the matter any thought; I’d simply taken it for granted. “We have disagreements, but we’re pretty polite about them,” I said. This made Jane laugh. “Polite,” she said. “Oh, my.” She peeled the foil top off a plastic container of coffee whitener. “You’re so lucky . . . to have had a happy childhood and a mother who knows how to let go.” It seemed at first acceptable, the way she so calmly passed judgment on my life, as if she knew it; then, suddenly strange. “I think I had a fairly normal childhood,” I said. “Very ordinary. At least, it always seemed that way to me.” It had been suburban, middle-class, and sheltered. I saw my experiences reflected in the lives of my friends, and I found it hard to believe that Jane had come from a background terribly dissimilar. “You were unhappy as a child?” Jane hesitated, stirring her coffee from black to brown. Then she said, “I don’t remember.” “What do you mean?” “Just that. I don’t remember my childhood. Most of it, anyway. It’s as if I went to sleep when I was five and didn’t wake up until I was twelve. The years in between are a blank.” I stared at her, trying to understand. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t doubt that I had forgotten much of my own childhood, but there remained a satisfyingly large jumble of memories that I could rummage around in when the need arose. Some of the things that had happened to me remained as vivid in my imagination as if they had just happened: the day I had broken my bride doll, a rabbit-shaped cake my mother had baked one Easter, the taste of water warm from the garden hose at the height of summer, the Christmas when I had been ill, games of hide-and-seek, classroom embarrassments. . . . I had only to let down the barriers to be flooded by memories, most of them far more intense than the recollections of anything that had happened to me as an adult. To be without such memories was to be without a childhood, to lack a certain identity. “I can remember a few things from when I was very young,” Jane said into my stunned silence. “None of them pleasant. And my sisters have told me things . . . it’s just as well I don’t remember. The things I’ve forgotten can’t hurt me.” “But why? What happened to you? What was so terrible?” “I’m sure other kids survived a lot worse. In fact, I know that for certain. There’s no telling what will make one kid break and another survive, or what kind of defense mechanisms are needed. I work with emotionally disturbed children, and some of them have every right to be, given their backgrounds, while others come from loving families and just . . . crack over things that other kids take in their stride. All I can say about the things that happened to me—well, I had my way of dealing with them, whether it was a good way or not. Forgetting, blotting it out, was part of it.” She sounded defensive and apologetic. I tried to look reassuring. “You don’t have to. If it makes you uncomfortable, don’t talk about it.” “No, that’s it, Ido want to talk about it. But I don’t want to bore you. I don’t want to burden you with my old stories.” “I don’t mind at all,” I said. “I’m happy to listen, if it helps you to talk.” “I think it might help. Well . . .” She cleared her throat and took a sip of coffee, looking at me

self-consciously over the cup. “One of my earliest memories is when I was about four. My mother was forty-nine and menopausal. She was crazy that year, more than usual. Any little thing could set her off, and when she got angry, she got violent. I can’t remember what it was I did, but it was probably something as minor as interrupting her while she was thinking—I got swatted for that more than once. At any rate, she started screaming. We were in the kitchen. She grabbed the carving knife and came for me, yelling that she’d cut off my hands so I couldn’t make any more trouble.” “Jane!” She shrugged, smiling wryly. “I’m sure I remember the knife as bigger than it really was. And maybe she wouldn’t have hurt me at all. But what did I know? I was a little kid. And when somebody comes at you with a knife, the instinct is to get the hell away. She chased me all through the house. I finally hid in a cabinet and listened to her looking for me. One of my sisters got my father, and he managed to calm her down. But nobody knew where I was, and I was afraid to come out. I crouched there in the dark, beneath the bathroom sink, for hours, until I decided it was safe to come out. I hadn’t heard her screaming for a long time, but I was afraid that she might be tricking me and that I’d open the door to find her on the other side, the knife in her hand and a horrible smile on her face.” “Was she insane?” I asked quietly. “No.” The denial came too quickly. Jane paused and shrugged. “I don’t know. Define the term. Generally, she could cope. Was she really over the edge, or just trying to scare me into being good? It’s hard to decide even now. She was very unhappy at that time in her life, and she’s always been a very self-dramatizing person. We all have our own ways of dealing with life. What’s insane?” “I don’t know,” I said, although I thought I did. “Was she violent toward you most of the time? Did you go in fear of your life?” “Sometimes. It was hard to know where you stood with her. That’s the worst thing for a kid. I couldn’t count on her, I didn’t know how to get the right responses. Sometimes she would be very loving, sometimes what I did would make her laugh. At other times the same thing would have her screaming at me. But more often she turned her anger against herself. She must have tried to kill herself—or at least she pretended to—half a dozen times. I remember her lying on the floor in the living room with an empty bottle of pills and a half-full bottle of vodka. She told us she was going to die, and she forbade us to call for help. We were supposed to sit there and watch her die, so that she could die looking at the faces she loved most. We didn’t dare move. Finally she seemed to have passed out, and Sue, my oldest sister, tried to call Dad. But the second her hand touched the telephone, my mother sat up and started screaming at her for being a disobedient bastard.” “Lord,” I said, when Jane paused to sip coffee. I tried to imagine it, but could not quite achieve the child’s point of view. “How did you survive?” “Well, I blotted it out, mostly. I had my imaginary life.” She smiled. “How do you mean?” “When you were a kid, weren’t there some things which seemed just as real to you as real life, although you knew they were different? The things you didn’t tell grown-ups about, although they were every bit as real and important—if not more so—as life at school and at home?” “You mean like pretend games?” I asked. “I used to pretend—” And suddenly I remembered. “Of course! That’s who you remind me of.” I laughed, feeling silly. “Jane. I had an imaginary friend named Jane.”

Jane’s smile was somewhat wistful. “What was she like?” “Oh, she was everything I wanted to be and wasn’t. Practical and neat instead of dreamy and disorganized. Her hair was dark and curly instead of straight and mousy. She read a lot, like me, and knew all kinds of wonderful games. She had my favorite name, of course.” I shrugged and then laughed. “She was like a real person. She didn’t have any magical powers—except, of course, that she disappeared from time to time. She was actually rather like you, I guess. Isn’t that funny, that my imaginary friend should remind me of you?” ***

Jane didn’t look as if she found it particularly odd or amusing. She said, “I had imaginary friends, too. Except, at the time, they weren’t in the least imaginary to me. The life I made up for myself was more important to me than my real life. It was my escape. It was how I survived the childhood I don’t remember—the things thatreally happened to me.” She paused to sip her coffee and then went on. “I was six years old. I was wearing a brand-new brown velvet dress with a white lace collar. I’m not sure why, but I think I was going to a party later in the afternoon. I was feeling very special and happy, and I was sitting at the dining room table eating my lunch. My mother sat next to me and nagged me. She kept warning me to be careful. She kept telling me how expensive the dress was, and how difficult it would be to clean if I got it dirty. She told me not to be as clumsy as I usually was, and she warned me that I’d better not spill anything on myself. So of course, I did. I slopped a little bit of milk onto my dress. At that, she grabbed me and pulled me up out of my chair, screaming at me that I was messy, disobedient, and a complete disgrace. I didn’t deserve to have nice clothes. I was an animal. I ate like a clumsy pig and I didn’t deserve the nice meals she fixed for me. I should never have been born. Nobody could stand to be around me. I should be kept in a cage where I could spill my food all over me to my heart’s content. Screaming all the way, she dragged me up to the attic and left me there to meditate on my sins.” My stomach clenched with sympathy at Jane’s level, matter-of-fact tone. “But the odd thing,” Jane went on, “the odd thing was that Iliked the attic. I always had liked it. Being taken up there and left was no punishment at all. I was always begging to be allowed to play up there, but she would never let me. I could only go up there when my father went, to help him clean, or to get out the Christmas ornaments, or to store old clothes away. I suppose I liked the attic so much because it was outside her domain. She would send my father up for things instead of going herself. It was the only place in the house that didn’t belong to her. “And that was where she left me. Where I couldn’t mess up any of her things. I was left all alone up there under the roof. It was cold and quiet and filled with cardboard boxes. I was very far away from the rest of the house. I couldn’t hear my family downstairs—for all I knew, they might have gone out, or just disappeared. And I knew my mother couldn’t hear me or see me, either. I could do anything I wanted and not be punished for it. I could think or say whatever I liked. For the first time in my life, it seemed, I was completely free. “So I pretended that my family didn’t exist—or at least that I didn’t belong to it. I made up a family I liked a lot better. My new mother was pretty and young and understanding. She never lost her temper and she never shouted at me. I could talk to her. My new father was younger, too, and spent more time at home with us. My real sisters were so much older than me that they sometimes seemed to live in another world, so my new sisters, in my made-up family, were closer to my age. I had a younger sister who would look up to me and ask me for advice, and I had a sister exactly at my age who would be my best friend. She was good at all the things I wasn’t. And instead of being ugly, with kinky hair like mine, she was pretty with long, straight hair that she would let me braid and put up for her.” She stopped short, as if on the verge of saying something else. Instead, she sipped her coffee. I waited, not saying a word.

“I know I invented them,” she said. “I know it was all a game. But still it seemed—it still seems—that I didn’t make them up but found them somewhere, and found a way of reaching them in that faraway, warm place where they lived. I lived with them for a long time—nearly seven years. When I remember my childhood, it’s the time I spent with my make-believe family that I remember. Those people.” I wanted to ask her their names, but I said nothing, almost afraid to interrupt her. Jane was looking at me, but I don’t think she saw me. “I sat all alone in that cold, dusty attic, and I could feel the house changing below me. I was in the attic of another house. I could hear the voices of my new family drifting up to me. I could imagine every room, how each one was furnished. When I had it all clear in my mind, I went downstairs to see for myself. It was the same size as my real house, but completely different. There was a small chord organ in the living room that my make-believe mother played in the evenings, all of us gathered around to sing old-fashioned songs. The family room had a cork floor with woven Indian rugs on it. There was a deer head over the television set; my make-believe father liked to hunt. The wallpaper in the kitchen was gold and brown, and the cookie jar was shaped like a rabbit dressed in overalls. There was a big oak tree in the back yard that was perfect for climbing, perfect for playing pretend games in. It could be a pirate ship, or—” My skin was crawling. It was my house she was describing. My parents. My childhood. “What about the front yard?” I asked. “Another oak tree. We had lots of acorns in the fall. There was a magnolia tree on one side, and a big brick planter box built out of the front of the house. It was great to play in. I’m amazed those blue flowers managed to grow with us stomping on them all the time. Your mother—” “It was you,” I said. She shut up and looked down into her coffee. “Why didn’t you say?” I asked. “Why this game? Why pretend you didn’t know me? Did you think I’d forgotten? Jane?” She gave me a wary look. “Of course I thought you’d forgotten. I wasn’t sure myself that any of it had happened. I never thought I’d see you again. I thought I’d made you up.” “Made me up!” I laughed uneasily. “Come on, Jane! What are you talking about? What’s the point of this whole story?” “It’s not a story,” she said. Her voice was high and stubborn, like a child’s. “I knew you wouldn’t believe it.” “What is it you want me to believe? We were friends when we were children. We both remember that. But if you tell me that you grew up in New York, and I know that—” “Why did you say you had animaginary friend called Jane?” “Because I thought—” And I stopped and stared, feeling the little hairs prickling all over me as I remembered. “Because you disappeared,” I said softly. “Whenever you left to go home, you just vanished. I saw you come and go out of nowhere, and I knew that real people didn’t do that.” I was afraid that I was sitting at a table with a ghost. ***

As if she read my thoughts, Jane reached across the table and gripped my hand. There was a sullen, challenging look on her face. Her hand was warm and firm and slightly damp. I remembered that, as a

child, too, she had been solid and real. Once her firm grasp, just in time, had kept me from falling out of a tree. We had tickled each other and played tag and helped each other into dressing-up clothes. She had liked to braid my hair. Jane took her hand away to look at her wristwatch. “We’d better go,” she said. I thought of the first time I had seen her, coming down the attic stairs. I was surprised to find a stranger in my house, but she had looked back at me, perfectly at ease, and asked me if I wanted to play. We were friends in that instant—although I couldn’t remember, now, what we had said to each other or what we played. Only that first moment of surprise remains hard and clear and whole in my mind, like the last time I saw her disappear. Usually when Jane left she simply walked away and I did not see where she went. She was different from my other friends in that I never walked her home and we never played at her house. I didn’t even know where her house was; I knew only, from things she had said, that it was in a different neighborhood. But that last day, I remember, we had been playing Parcheesi on the floor of my bedroom. Jane said goodbye and walked out. A few seconds later I thought of something I had meant to ask or tell her, and I scrambled to my feet and went after her. She was just ahead of me in the hallway, and I saw her go into the living room. She was just ahead of me, in plain sight, in daylight—and then she wasn’t. She was gone. I looked all through the living room, although I knew she hadn’t hidden from me; there hadn’t been time. I couldn’t believe what I had seen. Things like that didn’t happen, except onThe Twilight Zone . I was eleven-and-a-half years old, too old to have imaginary friends. I never saw Jane again. Until today. And now she was standing, preparing to leave me. Hastily I stood up, pushing my chair away from the table. “I don’t get it,” I said. “I don’t understand what you’re saying.” She looked at me and shrugged. “Why do you think I know? I thought I’d imagined you, and here you are. But I grew up in New York, you grew up in Texas. Wecouldn’t have known each other as kids. But that’s what we both remember.” “And now what?” She smiled at me ironically. “And now the plane is coming in. Let’s go.” We walked together through the featureless corridors in silence. It felt right and familiar for me to be at her side, as if we’d never been apart, as if we’d walked together many times before. “I wish she wasn’t coming,” Jane said suddenly. “I wish I could have told her no. I wish I didn’t have to deal with her. Will I be running away from my mother all my life?” I touched her arm. She was real. She was there. I felt very close to her, and yet I knew, sadly, that she must be lying to me, or crazy. One of us must be. I said, “You’ll be all right. You’re strong. You’re grown up now and you’ve got your own life. Just tell yourself that. Your mother’s just another woman. She can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do.” She looked at me. “You always thought I was braver than I really was. It’s funny, but your thinking that made me try to live up to it. In order to be as brave and strong as you thought I was, I did things that terrified me. Like the time I climbed from a tree up onto the roof of the house—”

“I was terrified!” I said. Her words brought it back vividly, those moments when, from my own precarious treetop perch, I had seen her thin, small figure drop to the dark shingles of the roof, the breath catching in my throat as if I were the one in danger. “So was I,” she said. “But it was worth it for the way you looked at me. I’d always been a quiet little coward, but to you I was wild and daring.” Through the big window we saw a bright orange plane land and roll along the runway. “Thank you,” said Jane. “I needed a friend today.” “Not just today,” I said. “Now that we’ve found each other, we’ll get together again, often.” She smiled and looked away. I followed her gaze and saw the plane docking. “That’s ours,” I said, turning my head to look at her. She was gone. I whirled away from the window, scanning the crowds for her dark hair, her white blouse, her particular way of moving. She was nowhere to be seen. There hadn’t been time. I had turned my head only for a moment. She had been right beside me; I could feel her presence. From one second to the next, she had simply vanished. Feeling dizzy, I moved indecisively a few steps this way, a few steps that. There was no point in searching for her. I already knew I wouldn’t find her. I wondered what airport she might be waiting in; I realized she had never said where she lived. Was she able to find me because our lives briefly intersected in the bland, anonymous limbo of an airport, or could she have come to me wherever I was, because of her need? I am waiting, wondering if I will ever see her again. Jane is real; she exists; I know I didn’t imagine her. But did she imagine me?

The Other Mother Across the lake, on the other shore, something moved: pale-white, glimmering. Tall as a person. Sara looked up from her work, refocusing her eyes. She realized how dark it had become. It had been too dark, in the rapidly deepening twilight, to paint for the last half-hour, but she had been reluctant to admit it, give up, and go in. There, again. A woman in a white gown? Gone again. Sara frowned, vexed, and concentrated on the brushy land across the narrow expanse of dark water. She waited, listening to the crickets and frogs, and she stared so intently that the growing shadows merged, reforming in strange shapes. What had she really seen? Had that pale glimmer been a trick of the fading light? Why did she feel as if there was a stranger lurking on the other shore, a woman watching her who would let herself be seen only in glimpses? Sara realized she was tired. She arched her back and exercised her aching arms. She still watched the other shore, but casually now, hoping to lure the stranger out by seeming inattentiveness. But she saw nothing more and at last she shrugged and began to tighten lids on tubes of paint, putting her supplies away. She deliberately avoided looking at the painting she had been working on. Already she

disliked it, and was annoyed with herself for failing again. The house was stifling after the balmy evening air, and it reeked of the pizza she had given the children for dinner. They had left chunks of it uneaten on the coffee table and were now sprawled on the floor in front of the television set, absorbed in a noisy situation comedy. “Hello, sweethearts,” Sara said. Michael gave a squirming shrug and twitched his mouth in what might have been a greeting; Melanie did not move. Her mouth hung open, and her eyes followed the tiny moving images intently. Sara put her painting and supplies back in her bedroom and then began to clean up the leftover pizza and soft drinks, wanting to turn off the set and reclaim her children, but too aware of the tantrums that would ensue if she interrupted a program. At the next commercial, to catch their attention, Sara said, “I just saw a ghost across the lake.” Michael sat up and turned to his mother, his expression intrigued but wary. “Really?” “Well, it looked like a ghost,” Sara said. “You want to come with me and see if she’s still there?” “Notshe , ghosts aren’t girls,” Michael said. But he scrambled to his feet. Melanie was still watching the set: a domestic squabble over coffee. “Why can’t ghosts be girls?” Sara asked. “Come on, Melanie. We’re going outside to look for a ghost.” “They just can’t be,” Michael said. “Comeon .” Sara took hold of Melanie’s sticky little hand and led her outside after Michael. Outdoors, Michael suddenly halted and looked around. “Did youreally see a ghost?” “I saw something,” Sara said. She felt relieved to be outside again, away from the stale, noisy house. “I saw a pale white figure which glided past. When I looked more closely, it was gone. Vanished, just like that.” “Sounds like a ghost,” said Michael. “They float around, and they’re all white, and they disappear. Did it make a noise?” “Not that I noticed. What sort of noise does a ghost make?” Michael began to produce a low moaning sound, gradually building in intensity and volume. “Mommy, make him stop!” Melanie said suddenly. “That’s enough, Michael.” They had reached the water’s edge and they were quiet as they looked across the dark water. Almost nothing could be seen now of the opposite shore. “Did you really see a ghost?” Michael asked, yet again. Sara felt his hand touching her blue-jeaned hip. She put an arm around his shoulder and hugged him close. “Maybe I imagined it. Maybe it was an animal of some kind. I just saw something from the corner of my eye, and I had the impression that it was, well, a woman in a long white gown, moving more quickly and quietly than any living person should. I felt she wasn’t ready to let me really see her yet. So when I tried to find her, she had disappeared.”

Sara felt the hairs on the back of her neck prickle and was suddenly ashamed of herself. If she had made herself nervous, what must the children be feeling? Melanie began to whimper for the light. “She can’t turn the light on here—we’re outside, stupid,” Michael said. Sara suspected a quaver in his voice. “Come on, kids. There’s nothing out here. Let’s go inside and I’ll tell you a story before you go to bed.” Michael broke into a run toward the safe harbor of the lighted house, and Melanie let go of her mother’s hand to chase him. Sara turned to follow her children but then paused, feeling that she was being watched. She turned and looked back across the lake. But even if someone were standing on the opposite shore, it was now much too dark to see. After the children had bathed and were in their pajamas, Sara told a story about a tricycle-riding bear, a character both the children loved, but which Michael was beginning to outgrow. Melanie was good about going to bed, snuggling sleepily under the bedclothes and raising her round, sweet face for a good-night kiss. “Now a butterfly kiss,” Melanie commanded, after exchanging several smacking kisses with her mother. Sara, kneeling by the bed, bent her head and fluttered her eyelashes against her daughter’s downy cheek. The sound of Melanie’s sleepy giggle, her warmth, the good, clean smell of her inspired a rush of love, and Sara wanted to grab her daughter and hug her suffocatingly tight. But she only whispered, soft as a breath, “I love you, sweetie,” before she drew away. Michael was waiting for her in his room with a deck of cards. They played two games of Go Fish and one of Crazy Eights before his uncontrollable yawns gave him away. He agreed to go to bed, but insisted upon hearing a story first. “A short one,” Sara said. “A ghost story,” he responded, nodding impatiently. “Oh, Michael,” Sara sighed, envisioning nightmares and demands for comfort later. “Yes. A ghost story. About that ghost you saw across the lake today.” Had she frightened him? Sara couldn’t be sure. But this was her opportunity to make up for what she’d done, to remove the menace and the mystery of that unseen figure. She tucked him under the covers and settled herself at the end of his bed, and then, in a low voice, began to weave a comforting sort of ghost story. The ghost was a sad but friendly figure, a mother eternally searching for her children. They had run off into the wilderness one day without telling her and had become lost, and she had been looking for them ever since. The story had the moral that children shouldn’t disobey their mothers or run and hide without telling her where they were going. Michael was still too young to protest against stories with morals; he accepted what he was told, smiling sleepily, and gave his mother a warm hug and kiss good-night.

But if Sara had protected Michael against nightmares, she was unable to protect herself. That night Sara dreamed of a woman in white, gliding along the lakeshore, heading toward the house. She was not a ghost; neither was she human. Her eyes were large, round, and protruding, like huge, milk-white marbles. The skin of her face was grayish, her mouth narrow, her nose almost nonexistent. She wore a long, hooded, all-enveloping gown. Sara saw then that Michael and Melanie were playing in the yard, unaware of the ghastly figure gliding steadily toward them. Where is their mother?Sara wondered.Where am I?She could only watch helplessly, powerless to interfere, certain that she was about to see her children murdered before her eyes. Dreaming, Sara sweated and twitched and finally cried out, waking herself. She sat up in the dark, hot room, feeling her heart pounding. Only a dream. But she was still frightened. Somewhere in the darkness those dead white eyes might be staring at her. Sara turned on the light, wishing for comfort. She wanted a lover, or even her ex-husband, some male figure whose solid, sleeping presence would comfort her. What a baby I am, she thought, getting up and putting on her robe.To be so frightened by a dream. To have to make the rounds of the house to be sure everything is normal. Michael was sleeping on his back, the covers kicked away, breathing through his mouth. Sara found his snores endearing and paused to pull the sheet up to his waist. As she reached the doorway to Melanie’s room, something white flashed by the window. Sara stopped breathing, feeling cold to the bone. Then she saw the bird. It was just a white bird, resting on the window ledge. A second later it had flown away. Sara felt weak with relief and annoyed with herself for overreacting. Just a bird at the window, a white bird. Melanie was sleeping soundly, curled into a ball, her fists beneath her chin. Sara stood beside the bed looking down at her for a long time. How infinitely precious she was. The next morning the children were particularly obnoxious. They were up early, spilling milk and cereal on the floor, slapping each other, fighting over television programs, complaining of boredom and asking questions without pausing to hear the answers. Their high-pitched voices repeating childish demands affected Sara like a cloud of stinging insects. Her skin itched. She felt raw and old, almost worn out with the effort of keeping a lid on her anger. Sara suggested new games and answered questions in a level voice. She cleaned up their messes and promised the children ice-cream cones at Baskin-Robbins if they were good and quiet in the car and in the grocery store. They were neither good nor quiet, but she bought them the ice cream anyway, to avert a worse outburst. She longed for Thursday, when a neighbor would take Michael into town for a birthday party, and looked toward Sunday—when the children’s father would have them both all day—as to her hope of heaven. After lunch Melanie blessedly fell asleep, and Michael occupied himself quietly with his plastic dinosaurs. Almost holding her breath for fear the spell of peace would be broken, Sara went to get her canvas. But at the sight of it her tentatively building spirits plunged. The painting she had spent so much time on the previous day was dreadful, labored, flat, and uninspired. She had done better in high school. There was nothing to be done about it, Sara decided. She had done too much to it already. She would wait for

it to dry and paint over it with gesso. She felt despairing of all the time she had wasted—not only yesterday, but all the years before that in which she had not found time to paint. Perhaps it was too late now; perhaps she had lost whatever talent she once had. But she would lose this afternoon, too, if she didn’t snap out of it. Sara turned the canvas to the wall and looked around. Watercolors, perhaps. Something quick and simple, something to loosen her up. She had been too stiff, intimidated by the oils and canvas. She would have to work up to them. “Can we go to a movie tonight?” Michael asked as she emerged from her room with the big, spiral-bound pad of heavy paper and her box of watercolors. He was marching a blue dinosaur across the kitchen table and through the fruit bowl. “We’ll see,” Sara said absently. “What does that mean? Does that mean yes?” “It means we’ll see when the time comes.” “What will we see? Will we see a movie?” He followed her outside. “Michael, don’t pester me.” “What’sthat ?” There was a new tone to his voice. Sara turned to look. He was staring in the direction of the lake, astonished. “Is that the ghost?” Recalling her dream, Sara felt a chill. Shading her eyes against the sun, she peered across the lake. She saw a large white animal walking on the farther shore, too oddly shaped to be a dog, too small for a cow. “It’s a pig,” Sara said. She had never seen such a large, white pig before, and she wondered where it had come from. What was somebody’s prize pig doing loose? The pig had stopped its purposeful walk and turned toward the water to face them. Now it stood still and seemed to watch them. Sara took an involuntary step backward, her arm moving down and to the side as if to shield Michael. “It sees us,” he said. Sara couldn’t tell from his voice if he was frightened, pleased, or merely commenting. “It can’t get to us,” Sara said. “There’s all that water in between.” She spoke to comfort herself. She had never heard that pigs were dangerous, but it was a very large animal, and there was something uncanny about it, about the way it stood watching them. Then, just as abruptly as it had come, the pig turned away from the water and began to trot away, following the shoreline until it was out of sight. Sara was relieved to see it go. ***

That night, Sara painted. She got out her oils and a new canvas; she felt inspired. She was excited; she hadn’t felt like this in years. The picture had come to her, a vision she felt bound to paint. She was in no mood for sketches or exercises, or “loosening up” with watercolors. This was her real work, and she needed no more training.

The main figures in the painting would be a large white pig and a shrouded human figure. Sara hoped to express some of the terror she’d felt during her nightmare, and to recapture in the painting the unease she had felt upon seeing the pig on the shore in the midday sun. She planned to keep the robed figure’s face hidden, fearful of painting something merely grotesque instead of terrifying. She worked for hours, late into the night, until she realized that weariness was throwing off her sight and coordination. Then, pleased, exhausted, and looking forward to the next day’s work, she went to bed. The children let her sleep no later than they ever did in the morning, but Sara didn’t mind. The hours spent painting seemed to have invigorated her, enabling her to thrive on less sleep. When Mary Alice arrived to pick up Michael, she offered to take Melanie for the day, too, as company for her youngest. Sara gazed at her in mute gratitude, seeing her blonde, smiling friend as a beneficent goddess, the personification of good fortune. With both the children gone, she would be able to work. “Oh! Mary Alice, that would be wonderful! Are you sure you don’t mind having her along?” “What’s one more kid? Chrissie needs someone to play with. And besides,” she patted Sara’s shoulder, “it will give you some time to paint. Are you working on anything right now?” It had been Mary Alice, with her ready sympathy and praise, who had encouraged Sara to take up painting again. Sara smiled. “I started something new last night. It’s different. I’ll show you what I’ve done when you get back.” But despite her words and easy manner, Sara felt her stomach fluttering nervously when she went to bring out the uncompleted painting after the others had left. She was afraid of what she would find; afraid it would be clumsy or stiff or silly, and not at all what she remembered working on. To her own surprise she was pleased by the sight of it. She felt a rising excitement and a deep satisfaction at the thought of having uninterrupted hours to work on it. The pig and the shrouded woman stood on a misty shore. Nearby was a bush in which nested a large white bird. Sara painted all day with an easy authority she had not known in years. She felt light and free and intensely alive. She didn’t have to think about what she was doing; the work had its own existence. “Unusual.” Sara turned with a start to see Mary Alice. She felt as if she had been abruptly awakened. The children—her own, and Mary Alice’s three—were roaring through the house like a hurricane. She looked back at the painting and saw that it was finished. “Would you like some wine?” Sara asked. “Please.” Mary Alice slumped into the old armchair and continued to study the canvas. “I’ve never seen you do anything remotely like this. The White Goddess, right?” In the kitchen, pouring wine, Sara frowned. “What do you mean?” She brought two glasses into the family room. “Well, it reminds me of Welsh mythology,” Mary Alice said, accepting her wine. “Thanks. You know,

the pig, the bird, the hawthorn bush. The hooded figure would be Cerridwen—white goddess of death and creation.” Sara shivered and looked around. It was as if a door had been opened and shut quickly, letting in a chill wind. “I don’t know about any of that,” Sara said. “I never heard of . . . what’s-her-name. But I had a dream about this terrifying white figure, and then I saw this huge pig across the lake. I just . . . they fit together into a painting, somehow. The bird’s just there to balance out the composition.” “A dream,” said Mary Alice. She glanced at her watch and stood up. “I suppose you don’t have to know what a symbol means, to pick up on it.” Sara also stood. “Look, why don’t you and the kids stay for dinner? It’s just spaghetti, but there’s lots of it.” “Thanks, but Bill’s expecting me back. He hates having to fend for himself.” “Some other time, then,” Sara said, feeling oddly bereft. She wanted adult conversation, adult companionship. It had been so long since she had eaten a leisurely meal with other adults. Mary Alice touched Sara’s arm and said, “You’ll have to come over for dinner some night soon—a late meal, after the kids have been put to bed. There’s a friend of Bill’s from the university that I’ve been wanting you to meet, and I could cook something really elaborate and make a party of it.” “That sounds marvelous,” Sara said. She glanced at the painting again, then away, oddly disturbed. “You know, I had no problems with this painting. I never had to stop and think, and I’ve never worked so fast and surely in my life. It was odd, coming right after so much discouragement. For months I haven’t been able to finish anything I liked.” “The muse takes her own time,” Mary Alice said. “She’s the White Goddess, too, you know—at least for poets.” She raised her voice to call her children. Company gone, Michael and Melanie buzzed around Sara, tugging at her arms and reciting unintelligible stories about the adventures of the day. They were tired and hungry but keyed up to such a pitch by the events of the day that Sara knew she would have a hard time calming them. She put her completed but still wet painting back in her bedroom, out of reach of flailing arms and flying toys, and resigned herself to being a mother again. ***

On Sunday morning Sara rose even before the children. She felt as if she’d been in hibernation for the past forty-eight hours, dozing as she tended her children, cleaned the house, and ran errands, and only now was she awake again. In a few hours the children’s father would come for them and Sara would be free to paint and live her own life until Monday morning. She had found a few moments to sketch, and she was bursting with the urge to take up brush and paints and turn her gray preliminaries into color. Not even pausing for her usual cup of tea, Sara pulled on a bathing suit and rushed outside. The air was a blessing on her bare skin and smelled of honeysuckle. The grass was cool and slippery beneath her feet and there was a special taste in the air that exhilarated her. She began to run, her thoughts streaming out behind her until she knew nothing but sensation. She plunged into the water as she had plunged into the morning and began swimming vigorously toward

the other shore. She was panting so hard she felt dizzy when she arrived, but she grinned with delight. “Come on out, oh Pig or Ghost or whatever you are!” she called as she walked ashore. “I’m not afraid of you—show yourself!” She began to shake herself like a dog, simply to feel the droplets of water flying off her. Then, somehow, she was dancing: a wild, primitive, arm-waving dance. Finally, tired, she dropped to the rocky beach and rested. She gazed northward to where the narrow lake began to widen. Then she looked across the short stretch of water to her own house and to the others like it which dotted the shore. This early on a Sunday all was still and quiet. Sara drank it all in: the sun, the clean, warm air with the scent of cedar in it, the songs of the birds, the solitude. Everything was as it should be. She was cheerful when she returned, telling the kids funny stories and making blueberry-and-banana pancakes for breakfast. It was a special morning; even the children felt it. “You’re our good mommy, aren’t you?” said Melanie, hugging Sara’s bare legs. “Of course I am, sweetie.” She put the butter and syrup on the table and dropped a kiss on her daughter’s head. Feeling the promise in the air, Michael said, “Could we maybe rent a sailboat and go sailing today like you said maybe we could someday?” “That will be up to your father,” Sara said blithely. “Did you forget he’s picking you up this morning? I’m going to stay home and paint.” Michael’s face was comical as he absorbed this: the conflict between the pleasure of going out with his father and disappointment that he couldn’t make use of his mother’s good mood was clearly written there. Sara laughed and hugged him. After breakfast had been eaten and the dishes washed, Sara began to feel impatient. Where was Bruce? He always liked to get an early start, and the children were ready to go. The telephone rang. “Sara, I’m not going to be able to make it today. Something’s come up.” “What do you mean you’re not going to be able to make it? Sunday’s your day—you know that. We agreed.” “Well, I can’t make it today.” Already, annoyance had sharpened his tone. Sara clenched one hand into a fist, wishing she had him in front of her. “And why not? One day a week isn’t so much. The kids have been counting on seeing you.” “I haven’t missed a week yet and you know it. Be reasonable, Sara. I just can’t make it.” “Why? Why can’t you make it? What’s so important on a Sunday? You’ve got a date? Fine, bring her along. I don’t care. Just come and take the kids like you’re supposed to.” “Look, put the kids on and I’ll explain it to them.”

“Explain it tome , damn it!” A silence. Then he said, “I’m in Dallas.” Sara was too angry to speak. “Tell the kids I’m sorry and I’ll try to make it up to them next week.” “Sorry! Youknew —why’d you wait until now to call?” “I don’t have to explain myself to you. I’ll be by to pick up the kids next Sunday, nine A.M. ” He hung up. Sara held on to the phone, still facing the wall. There were tears of frustration in her eyes, and her back and shoulders ached as if she’d been beaten. When she had regained some control she went to look for her children. They were outside on the driveway, eager to catch the first glimpse of their father’s car. “Sweethearts,” Sara said. Her throat hurt. “Your father just called. He’s . . . he’s not going to be able to come today after all.” They stared at her. Melanie began to whine. “Why?” Michael asked. “Why?” “He’s in Dallas. He couldn’t get back in time. He said you’d all do something extra-special next weekend to make up for missing this one.” “Oh,” said Michael. He was silent for a moment, and Sara wondered if he would cry. But then the moment passed and he said, “Can we go sailing, then?” Sara sighed. “Not today. But why don’t you two put on your bathing suits and we’ll go for a swim?” To Sara’s relief they accepted the change of plans without fuss. For the next hour Michael showed off his skills in the water while Sara gave Melanie another swimming lesson. Afterward, she got them started playing a board game and went off to her room to be by herself. She felt exhausted, the euphoria of the early morning faded into the distant past. She sat on the bed and paged through her sketchbook, wondering why she had been so excited and just what she had intended to make of these rather mediocre sketches of a woman’s face and details of tree branches. With a part of her mind she was still arguing with her ex-husband, this time scoring points with withering remarks which left him speechless. Finally she stood up and took out her paints and the fresh canvas. As she set up the work in the bedroom, she could hear the children running in and out of the house, laughing, talking, and occasionally slamming the screen door. They seemed occupied and might not bother her until they grew hungry for lunch. After that, with luck, she might still have the afternoon to paint while Melanie napped and Michael played quietly by himself. She’d had such days before. But it didn’t matter: Sara didn’t know what to paint. She was afraid to make a start, so sure was she that she would ruin another canvas. Her earlier certainty was gone. She stared at the blank white surface and tried without success to visualize something there. Then, from the other room, Melanie screamed.

It wasn’t a play scream, and it didn’t end. Melanie was screaming in terror. Sara went cold with dread and ran into the family room. She saw Melanie cowering against a wall while Michael shouted and leaped around. At first Sara could not make out what was happening. Then she heard the mad fluttering of wings and saw a pale blur in the air: a bird had somehow blundered inside and was now flying madly around the room. Poor thing, thought Sara.It can’t find the way out again. Her relief that the crisis was nothing more dangerous than a confused bird turned her fear into irritation with the children. Why were they being so stupid, carrying on so and making matters worse? “Calm down,” she shouted. “Just shut up and keep out of the way. You’re scaring it.” She gave Michael a firm push and then opened the door, keeping it open by lodging the iron, dachshund-shaped foot-scraper against it. “Melanie, be quiet! You’re making things worse,” Sara said in a loud whisper. Melanie’s screams trailed away into noisy sobs. She was still cowering in a corner, head down and hands protecting it. The bird flew three more times around the room, finally breaking out of that maddened, fluttering pattern to soar smoothly and surely out of the open door. Sara gazed after it, smiling. Then she turned to her children. “Oh, Melanie, what is the matter? It was only a bird and it’s gone now.” Annoyed but obligated, Sara crossed the room to crouch beside her younger child. “Now, what’s all this about?” Gently she raised Melanie’s face away from her hands and the tangle of her hair, and saw that she was covered with blood. “My God! Oh, sweetheart.” Sara hurried the little girl down the passage to the bathroom. So much blood . . . was her eye hurt? She’d never forgive herself if . . . A wet flannel, carefully used, revealed no great damage. There were two small cuts, one just above Melanie’s left eye and the other on her left cheek. Melanie snuffled and breathed jerkily. She was obviously content to have her mother fuss over her. Michael peeked around the doorframe as Sara was applying Band-Aids to Melanie’s face. “That bird tried to kill Melanie,” he said in a tone of gleeful horror. “He tried to peck her eyes out!” “Michael,really .” Sara sighed in exasperation. Melanie would be nervous enough about birds without his stories. “It was an accident,” she said firmly. “Birds aren’t mean or dangerous—they don’t try to hurt people. But that bird was frightened—it was in a strange place. Unfortunately, Melanie got in the way while it was trying to get out. If you’d both been more sensible, instead of jumping around like that—” “It flew right at her,” Michael said. “I saw it. It tried to get me next, but I wouldn’t let it—I kept waving my hands around over my head so it couldn’t get at my face like it wanted.” He sounded very self-important and pleased with himself, which annoyed Sara still more. “It was an accident. The bird felt trapped and didn’t know how to respond. It’s not something you have to worry about because it’s not likely ever to happen again. Now I don’t want to hear any more about it.” She hugged Melanie and lifted her down from the sink ledge. “Feel better?”

“Hungry,” said Melanie. “Glad you mentioned it. Let’s go and eat lunch.” ***

On Monday morning Sara took her children to play with Mary Alice’s children. It was a beautiful day but already stiflingly hot. Sara felt lethargic and faintly sad. After Michael and Melanie had joined the other children in the safely fenced-in yard, she lingered to drink iced tea and talk with Mary Alice. “I hope you got a lot of work done yesterday,” Mary Alice said, settling onto a brightly cushioned wicker couch. Sara shook her head. “Bruce copped out. He called at the last minute and said he couldn’t come—he was in Dallas.” Mary Alice’s eyes went wide. “That . . . creep,” she said at last. Sara gave a short laugh. “I’ve called him worse than that. But I should know by now that he’s not to be counted on. The kids are starting to learn that about him, too. The worst thing about it is what I lost—or what I felt I lost. I woke up feeling great—I was ready to conquer the world, at least to paint it. I felt so alive . I felt—I don’t know if I can explain how I felt. I think of it as my ‘creative’ feeling, and I haven’t had such a strong one since Michael was born—or maybe even since I married Bruce. It’s a mood in which everything has meaning, everything is alive, everything is possible.” “There’s a girl who sits for us sometimes,” Mary Alice said hesitantly. “She’s very young, but responsible, and she doesn’t charge much. You could have her over some afternoons to take care of the kids while you . . .” Sara shook her head, discarding the suggestion impatiently. “They’d still be around. They’d still be—oh, calling to me, somehow. I don’t know how to explain it. Sometimes I feel I’m just looking for excuses not to paint, but . . . there’s just something about being both a motherand an artist. I don’t know if I can manage it, not even with all the good examples of other women, or all the babysitters in the world. “Art has never been a part-time thing for me. Art was all I cared about in school, and up until I met Bruce. Then the part of me that was an artist got submerged. For the past five years I’ve been a full-time mother. Now I’m trying to learn how to be a part-time artist and a part-time mother, and I don’t think I can. I know that’s very all-or-nothing of me, but it’s how I feel.” The two women sat quietly in the bright, sunlit room. The high-pitched voices of their children, playing outside, floated up to them. “Maybe it’s just too early,” Mary Alice ventured at last. “In the fall, Michael will be in school. You could put Melanie in a nursery, at least during the mornings. Then you could count on having a certain amount of time to yourself every day.” “Maybe,” Sara said. She did not sound hopeful. “But even when the children aren’t around, the pull is there. I think about them, worry about them, have to plan for them. And my art makes as many demands as a child—I can’t divide myself between them. I don’t think it can ever be the same—I’ll never have all my energy and thoughts and commitment to give to my art. There are always the children pulling at me.” She sighed and rubbed her face. “Sometimes . . . I wish I had it to do all over again. And I think that, much as I love them, I would never have chosen to have children. I would never have married.” Silence fell again and Sara wondered if she had shocked Mary Alice. She was rousing herself to say something else about her love for her children, to find the words that would modify the wish she had just

made, when the clamor of children filled the house, the sound of the kitchen door opening and slamming, the clatter of many feet on hardwood floors, and voices raised, calling. Sara and Mary Alice both leaped to their feet as the children rushed in. Melanie and Chrissie were crying; the boys were excited and talking all at once. “It was the same bird!” Michael cried, tugging at Sara’s arm as she knelt to comfort Melanie. “It came and tried to kill us again—it tried to peck her eyes out, but we ran!” Melanie seemed unhurt; gradually, bathed in her mother’s attention, her sobs subsided. The children all agreed with Michael’s story: there had been a white bird which had suddenly swooped down on Melanie, pecking at her head. “Why does that bird want to hurt us?” Michael asked. “Oh, Michael, I don’t think it does. Maybe you were near its nest; maybe it was attracted by Melanie’s hair.” Helpless to explain and trying not to feel frightened herself, Sara hugged her daughter. “Me go home,” Melanie muttered into Sara’s blouse. Sara looked up. “Michael, do you want to go home now, or do you want to keep on playing here?” “You kids can all go and play in Barry’s room,” Mary Alice said. The other children ran off. Sara stood up, still holding Melanie and staggering slightly under her weight. “I’ll take this one home,” she said. “You can send Michael by himself when he’s ready, unless . . . unless he wants me to come and get him.” Mary Alice nodded, her face concerned and puzzled. “What’s this about the bird?” Sara didn’t want to talk about it. As lightly as she could she said, “Oh, a bird got trapped in the house yesterday and scared the kids. I don’t know what happened outside just now, but naturally Michael and Melanie are a little spooked about birds.” She set Melanie down. “Come on, sweetie, I’m not going to carry you all the way home.” Keeping her head down as if she feared another attack, Melanie left the house with her mother and walked the half-mile home staying close by her side. At home, Sara settled Melanie in her room with her dolls, and then, feeling depressed, went back to her own bedroom and stretched out on the bed. She closed her eyes and tried to comfort herself with thoughts of the children at school, a babysitter, a silent house, and time to work. It was wrong to blame the children, she thought. She could be painting now—it was her own fault if she didn’t. Thinking about what she would paint next, she visualized a pale, blonde woman. Her skin was unnaturally white, suggesting sickness or the pallor of death. Her lips were as red as blood, and her long hair was like silvery corn silk. The White Goddess, thought Sara. The woman drew a veil over her face. Then, slowly, began to draw it back. Sara felt a quickening of dread. Although she had just seen her face, she was afraid that another, different face would now be revealed. And then the veil was removed, and she saw the gray face with dead-white, staring eyes.

Sara woke with a start. She felt as if she had dozed off for less than a minute, but she saw from the bedside clock that she had been asleep for nearly an hour. She sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed her eyes. Her mouth was dry. She heard voices, one of them Michael’s, coming from outside. She stood up and walked to the window and pulled back the heavy curtains, curious to see who Michael was talking to. Michael was standing on the edge of the lawn near the driveway with a strange woman. Although there was something faintly familiar about her, Sara could not identify her as any of the neighbors. She was a brassy blonde, heavily made-up—even at this distance her lips seemed garishly red against an unnaturally pale face. Something about the way they stood together and spoke so intently made Sara want to intrude. But by the time she got outside, Michael was alone. “Hi,” he said, walking toward her. “Where’d she go?” Sara asked, looking around. “Who?” “That woman you were just talking to—who was she?” “Who?” “You know who,” Sara began, then stopped abruptly, confused. She had just realized why the woman seemed familiar to her; she’d seen her first in a dream. Perhaps she had dreamed the whole incident? She shook her head, bent to kiss Michael, and went with him into the house. ***

In the middle of the night Sara started up in bed, wide awake and frightened. The children? She couldn’t pinpoint her anxiety, but her automatic reaction was to check on their safety. In the hall, on the way to their rooms, she heard the sound of a muffled giggle coming from the family room. There she saw Michael and Melanie standing before the window, curtains opened wide, gazing into the garden. Sara walked slowly toward the window, vaguely dreading what she would see. There was a white pig on the lawn, almost shining in the moonlight. It stood very still, looking up at them. Sara put her hand on Melanie’s shoulders and the little girl leaped away, letting out a small scream. “Melanie!” Sara said sharply. Both children stood still and quiet, looking at her. There was a wariness in their gaze that Sara did not like. They looked as if they were expecting punishment. What had they done? Sara wondered. “Both of you, go to bed. You shouldn’t be up and roaming around at this hour.” “Look, she’s dancing,” Michael said softly. Sara turned and looked out of the window. The pig was romping on the lawn in what was surely an unnatural fashion, capering in circles that took it gradually away from the house and toward the lake. It wasn’t trotting or running or walking—it was, as Michael had said, dancing. On the shore of the lake it stopped. To Sara’s eyes the figure of the pig seemed to become dim and

blurred—she blinked, wondering if a cloud had passed across the moon. The whiteness that had been a pig now seemed to flow and swirl like a dense fog, finally settling in the shape of a tall, pale woman in a silver-white gown. Sara shivered and rubbed her bare arms with her hands. She wanted to hide. She wanted to turn her gaze away but could not move. It’s not possible, she thought.I’m dreaming. The harsh, unmistakable sound of the bolt being drawn on the door brought her out of her daze, and she turned in time to see Michael opening the door, Melanie close behind him. “No!” She rushed to pull the children away and to push the door shut again. She snapped the bolt to and stood in front of the door, blocking it from the children. She was trembling. The children began to weep. They stood with their arms half-outstretched as if begging for an embrace from someone just out of their reach. Sara walked past her weeping children to the window and looked out. There was nothing unusual to be seen in the moonlit garden—no white pig or ghostly woman. Nothing that should not have been there amid the shadows. Across the lake she saw a sudden pale blur, as if a white bird had risen into the air. But that might have been moonlight on the leaves. “Go back to bed,” Sara said wearily. “She’s gone—it’s all over now.” Watching them shuffle away, sniffing and rubbing their faces, Sara remembered the story she had told Michael on the first night she had caught a glimpse of the woman. It seemed bitterly ironic now, that story of a ghostly mother searching for her children. “You can’t have them,” Sara whispered to the empty night. “I’ll never let you hurt them.” ***

Sara woke in the morning feeling as if she had been painting all night: tired, yet satisfied and hopeful. The picture was there, just behind her eyes, and she could hardly wait to get started. The children were quiet and sullen, not talking to her and with only enough energy to stare at the television set. Sara diagnosed it as lack of sleep and thought that it was just as well—she had no time for their questions or games today. She made them breakfast but let the dishes and other housework go and hurried to set up her canvas and paints outside in the clear morning sunlight. Another cool nighttime painting, all swirling grays, blue, and cold white. A metamorphosis: pale-colored pig transforming into a pale-faced, blue-gowned woman who shifts into a bird, flying away. The new creation absorbed her utterly and she worked all day, with only a brief pause when the children demanded lunch. At a little before six she decided to stop for the day. She was tired, pleased with herself, and utterly ravenous. She found the children sitting before the television, and wondered if they had been there, just like that, all day. After putting her unfinished painting safely away and cleaning her brushes, she marched decisively to the television set and turned it off. Michael and Melanie began a deprived wailing. “Oh, come on!” Sara scoffed. “All that fuss about the news? You’ve watched enough of that pap for one day. How would you like to go for a swim before dinner?”

Michael shrugged. Melanie hugged her knees and muttered, “I want to watch.” “If you want to swim, say so and I’ll go out with you. If you don’t, I’m going to start cooking.” They didn’t respond, so Sara shrugged and went into the kitchen. She was feeling too good to be annoyed by their moodiness. The children didn’t turn the television back on, and Sara heard no further sound from the family room until, the chicken cooking and a potato salad under construction, she heard the screen door open and close. She smiled and, as she was going to check on the chicken, paused to look out of the window. What she saw froze her with terror. The children were running toward the lake, silently, their bare arms and legs flashing in the twilight. Michael was in the lead because Melanie ran clumsily and sometimes fell. Across the lake on the other shore stood the pale woman in white; on her shoulder, the white bird; and at her side, the pig. The woman raised her head slightly and looked past the children, directly at Sara. Her blood-red lips parted in a gleaming smile. Sara cried out incoherently and ran for the door. Ahead of her she saw Michael leap into the lake with all his clothes on. She caught up with Melanie on the shore and grabbed her. “Go back to the house,” she said, shaking the girl slightly for emphasis. “Go on back and stay there. You are not to go into the water, understand?” Then, kicking off her sandals, Sara dived in and swam after her son. She had nearly reached him when she heard a splashing behind her, and her courage failed: Melanie. But she couldn’t let herself be distracted by her worries about Melanie’s abilities as a swimmer. She caught hold of her son in a lifesaver’s neck-grip. He struggled grimly and silently against her, but he didn’t have a chance. Sara knew she could get him across to the other shore if only she didn’t have to try to save Melanie as well. “Michael,” Sara gasped. “Honey, listen to me. It’s not safe. You must go back. Michael, please! This is very dangerous—she’ll kill you. She’s the one who sent the bird!” Michael continued to thrash, kick, and choke. Sara wondered if he even heard her. She looked around and saw Melanie paddling slowly in their direction. And on the other shore the White Goddess stood, making no sound or motion. “Michael, please,” Sara whispered close to his ear. “Don’t fight me. Relax, and we’ll all be safe.” With great difficulty, Sara managed to pull him back toward the home shore. Melanie swam with single-minded concentration and was within Sara’s grasp before she could try to avoid her. She thrashed about in Sara’s armlock, but not as wild nor as strongly as her brother. Sara had them both, now, but how was she to swim? She was treading water, just holding her own against the children’s struggles and hoping they would soon tire when she felt a rush of air against her cheek, and Melanie shrieked. It was the bird again. Sara caught sight of it just as it was diving for Michael’s head. The sharp beak gashed his face below one eye. Michael screamed, and the bright blood streamed down his cheek.

Trying to help him, Sara relaxed her stranglehold. At once he swam away, kicking and plunging below the water. “Michael, go back to the house—you’ll be safe there!” She swallowed a mouthful of lake water as she spoke, and choked on it. Letting go of Melanie, she managed to catch hold of Michael’s flailing legs and pull him back close to her. Melanie, trying to avoid the bird which was still flapping around, screamed and cried, barely managing to keep herself afloat. Sara had no trouble catching her again. Shouting at the bird, longing for a spare hand to strike at it, Sara pulled her children close to her, pressing their faces tightly against her breast. They struggled still to get away, but they were tiring and their struggles grew weaker. Sara knew she would win—she would save them from the bird and from the goddess; she would protect them with her own body. Finally, the bird flew away. In the sudden calm, Sara realized that her children were much too quiet, much too still. She relaxed her tight hold, and their bodies slipped farther into the water. She stared down at them, slow to understand. Their eyes were open, looking up through a film of water, but they did not see her. She looked up from their sweet, empty faces and across the silver water to where the white-faced figure still stood, her pale eyes staring out at death, her favorite offering. Sara saw it all as a painting. The pale figure on the shore glowed against the deep blue twilight, and the water gave off its own shimmering light. The woman in the water, also dressed in white, was a terrible, pitiable figure with her two drowned children beside her, their hair floating out around their heads like fuzzy halos; an innocent murderess. I was the one they were afraid of, thought Sara. She threw back her head and howled her anguish to the empty world.

Treading the Maze We had seen the bed and breakfast sign from the road, and although it was still daylight and there was no hurry to settle, we had liked the look of the large, well-kept house amid the farmlands, and the name on the sign: The Old Vicarage. Phil parked the Mini on the curving gravel drive. “No need for you to get out,” he said. “I’ll just pop in and ask.” I got out anyway, just to stretch my legs and feel the warmth of the late, slanting sun rays on my bare arms. It was a beautiful afternoon. There was a smell of manure on the air, but it wasn’t unpleasant, mingling with the other country smells. I walked toward the hedge which divided the garden from the fields beyond. There was a low stone wall along the drive, and I climbed onto it to look over the hedge and into the field. There was a man standing there, all alone in the middle of the field. He was too far away for me to make out his features, but something about the sight of that still figure gave me a chill. I was suddenly afraid he would turn his head and see me watching him, and I clambered down hastily. “Amy?” Phil was striding toward me, his long face alight. “It’s a lovely room—come and see.”

The room was upstairs, with a huge soft bed, an immense wooden wardrobe, and a big, deep-set window which I cranked open. I stood looking out over the fields. There was no sign of the man I had just seen, and I couldn’t imagine where he had vanished to so quickly. “Shall we plan to have dinner in Glastonbury?” Phil asked, combing his hair before the mirror inside the wardrobe door. “There should still be enough of the day left to see the Abbey.” I looked at the position of the sun in the sky. “And we can climb the tor tomorrow.” “Youcan climb the tor tomorrow morning. I’ve had about enough of all this climbing of ancient hills and monuments—Tintagel, St. Michael’s Mount, Cadbury Castle, Silbury Hill—” “We didn’t climb Silbury Hill. Silbury Hill had a fence around it.” “And a good thing, too, or you’d have made me climb it.” He came up behind me and hugged me fiercely. I relaxed against him, feeling as if my bones were melting. Keeping my voice brisk, mock-scolding, I said, “I didn’t complain about showing you all the wonders of America last year. So the least you can do now is return the favor with ancient wonders of Britain. I know you grew up with all this stuff, but I didn’t. We don’t have anything like Silbury Hill or Glastonbury Tor where I come from.” “If you did, if there was a Glastonbury Tor in America, they’d have a lift up the side of it,” he said. “Or at least a drive-through window.” We both began laughing helplessly. I think of us standing there in that room, by the open window, holding each other and laughing—I think of us standing there like that forever. Dinner was a mixed grill in a Glastonbury café. Our stroll through the Abbey grounds took longer than we’d thought, and we were late, arriving at the café just as the proprietress was about to close up. Phil teased and charmed her into staying open and cooking for two last customers. Gray-haired, fat, and nearly toothless, she lingered by our table throughout our meal to continue her flirtation with Phil. He obliged, grinning and joking and flattering, but every time her back was turned, he winked at me or grabbed my leg beneath the table, making coherent conversation impossible on my part. When we got back to The Old Vicarage, we were roped into having tea with the couple who ran the place and the other guests. That late in the summer there were only two others, an elderly couple from Belgium. The electric fire was on and the lounge was much too warm. The heat made it seem even smaller than it was. I drank my sweet milky tea, stroked the old white dog who lay near my feet, and gazed admiringly at Phil, who kept up one end of a conversation about the weather, the countryside, and World War II. Finally the last of the tea was consumed, the biscuit tin had made the rounds three times, and we could escape to the cool, empty sanctuary of our room. There we stripped off our clothes, climbed into the big soft bed, talked quietly of private things, and made love. I hadn’t been asleep long before I came awake, aware that I was alone in the bed. We hadn’t bothered to draw the curtains, and the moonlight was enough to show me Phil was sitting on the wide window

ledge smoking a cigarette. I sat up. “Can’t you sleep?” “Just my filthy habit.” He waved the lit cigarette; I didn’t see, but could imagine, the sheepish expression on his face. “I didn’t want to disturb you.” He took one last, long drag and stubbed the cigarette out in an ashtray. He rose, and I saw that he was wearing his woolen pullover, which hung to his hips, just long enough for modesty, but leaving his long, skinny legs bare. I giggled. “What’s that?” “You without your trousers.” “That’s right, make fun. Do I laugh at you when you wear a dress?” He turned away toward the window, leaning forward to open it a little more. “It’s a beautiful night. . . . Cor!” He straightened up in surprise. “What?” “Out there—people. I don’t know what they’re doing. They seem to be dancing, out in the field.” Half-suspecting a joke, despite the apparently genuine note of surprise in his voice, I got up and joined him at the window, wrapping my arms around myself against the cold. Looking out where he was gazing, I saw them. They were indisputably human figures—five, or perhaps six or seven, of them, all moving about in a shifting spiral, like some sort of children’s game or country dance. And then I saw it. It was like suddenly comprehending an optical illusion. One moment, bewilderment; but, the next, the pattern was clear. “It’s a maze,” I said. “Look at it, it’s marked out in the grass.” “A turf-maze,” Phil said, wondering. Among the people walking that ancient, ritual path, one suddenly paused and looked up, seemingly directly at us. In the pale moonlight and at that distance I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. It was just a dark figure with a pale face turned up toward us. I remembered then that I had seen someone standing in that very field, perhaps in that same spot, earlier in the day, and I shivered. Phil put his arm around me and drew me close. “What are they doing?” I asked. “There are remnants of traditions about dancing or running through mazes all over the country,” Phil said. “Most of the old turf-mazes have vanished—people stopped keeping them up before this century. They’re called troy-towns, or mizmazes. . . . No one knows when or why they began, or if treading the maze was game or ritual, or what the purpose was.” Another figure now paused beside the one who stood still, and laid hold of that one’s arm, and seemed to say something. And then the two figures fell back into the slow circular dance.

“I’m cold,” I said. I was shivering uncontrollably, although it was not with any physical chill. I gave up the comfort of Phil’s arm and ran for the bed. “They might be witches,” Phil said. “Hippies from Glastonbury, trying to revive an old custom. Glastonbury does attract some odd types.” I had burrowed under the bedclothes, only the top part of my face left uncovered, and was waiting for my teeth to stop chattering and for the warmth to penetrate my muscles. “I could go out and ask them who they are,” Phil said. His voice sounded odd. “I’d like to know who they are. I feel as if Ishould know.” I stared at his back, alarmed. “Phil, you’re not going out there!” “Why not? This isn’t New York City. I’d be perfectly safe.” I sat up, letting the covers fall. “Phil, don’t.” He turned away from the window to face me. “What’s the matter?” I couldn’t speak. “Amy . . . you’re not crying?” His voice was puzzled and gentle. He came to the bed and held me. “Don’t leave me,” I whispered against the rough weave of his sweater. “ ’Course I won’t,” he said, stroking my hair and kissing me. “ ’Course I won’t.” But of course he did, less than two months later, in a way neither of us could have guessed then. But even then, watching the dancers in the maze, even then he was dying. In the morning, as we were settling our bill, Phil mentioned the people we had seen dancing in the field during the night. The landlord was flatly disbelieving. “Sure you weren’t dreaming?” “Quite sure,” said Phil. “I wondered if it was some local custom. . . .” He snorted. “Some custom! Dancing around a field in the dead of night!” “There’s a turf-maze out there,” Phil began. But the man was shaking his head. “No, not in that field. Not a maze!” Phil was patient. “I don’t mean one with hedges, like in Hampton Court. Just a turf-maze, a pattern made in the soil years ago. It’s hardly noticeable now, although it can’t have been too many years since it was allowed to grow back. I’ve seen them other places and read about them, and in the past there were local customs of running the maze, or dancing through it, or playing games. I thought some such custom might have been revived locally.” The man shrugged. “I wouldn’t know about that,” he said. We had learned the night before that the man and his wife were “foreigners,” having only settled here, from the north of England, some twenty years before. Obviously, he wasn’t going to be much help with information on local traditions. After we had loaded our bags into the car, Phil hesitated, looking toward the hedge. “I’d quite like to

have a look at that maze close-to,” he said. My heart sank, but I could think of no rational reason to stop him. Feebly I tried, “We shouldn’t trespass on somebody else’s property. . . .” “Walking across a field isn’t trespassing!” He began to walk along the hedge, toward the road. Because I didn’t want him to go alone, I hurried after. There was a gate a few yards along the road by which we entered the field. But once there, I wondered how we would find the maze. Without an overview such as our window had provided, the high grass looked all the same, and from this level, in ordinary daylight, slight alterations in ground level wouldn’t be obvious to the eye. Phil looked back at the house, getting in alignment with the window, then turned and looked across the field, his eyes narrowed as he tried to calculate distance. Then he began walking slowly, looking down often at the ground. I hung back, following him at a distance and not myself looking for the maze. I didn’t want to find it. Although I couldn’t have explained my reaction, the maze frightened me, and I wanted to be away, back on the road again, alone together in the little car, eating apples, gazing at the passing scenery, talking. “Ah!” I stopped still at Phil’s triumphant cry and watched as he hopped from one foot to the other. One foot was clearly on higher ground. He began to walk in a curious, up-down fashion. “I think this is it,” he called. “I think I’ve found it. If the land continues to dip . . . yes, yes, this is it!” He stopped walking and looked back at me, beaming. “Great,” I said. “The grass has grown back where once it was kept cleared, but you can still feel the place where the swathe was cut,” he said, rocking back and forth to demonstrate the confines of the shallow ditch. “Come and see.” “I’ll take your word for it,” I said. He cocked his head. “I thought you’d be interested. I thought something like this would be right up your alley. The funny folkways of the ancient Brits.” I shrugged, unable to explain my unease. “We’ve plenty of time, love,” he said. “I promise we’ll climb Glastonbury Tor before we push on. But we’re here now, and I’d like to get the feel of this.” He stretched his hand toward me. “Come tread the maze with me.” It would have been so easy to take his hand and do just that. But overriding my desire to be with him, to take this as just another lark, was the fearful, wordless conviction that there was danger here. And if I refused to join him, perhaps he would give up the idea and come away with me. He might sulk in the car, but he would get over it, and at least we would be away. “Let’s go now,” I said, my arms stiff at my sides. Displeasure clouded his face, and he turned away from me with a shrug. “Give me just a minute, then,” he said. And as I watched, he began to tread the maze. He didn’t attempt that curious, skipping dance we had seen the others do the night before; he simply walked, and none too quickly, with a careful, measured step. He didn’t look at me as he walked,

although the pattern of the maze brought him circling around again and again to face in my direction—he kept his gaze on the ground. I felt, as I watched, that he was being drawn farther away from me with every step. I wrapped my arms around myself and told myself not to be a fool. I could feel the little hairs standing up all along my arms and back, and I had to fight the urge to break and run like hell. I felt, too, as if someone watched us, but when I looked around, the field was as empty as ever. Phil had stopped, and I assumed he had reached the center. He stood very still and gazed off into the distance, his profile toward me. I remembered the man I had seen standing in the field—perhaps in that very spot, the center of the maze—when we had first arrived at The Old Vicarage. Then, breaking the spell, Phil came bounding toward me, cutting across the path of the maze, and caught me in a bear hug. “Not mad?” I relaxed a little. It was over, and all was well. I managed a small laugh. “No, of course not.” “Good. Let’s go, then. Phil’s had his little treat.” We walked arm in arm back toward the road. We didn’t mention it again. ***

In the months to come those golden days, the two weeks we had spent wandering around southwest England, often came to mind. Those thoughts were an antidote to more recent memories: to those last days in the hospital, with Phil in pain, and then Phil dead. I moved back to the States—it was home, after all, where my family and most of my friends lived. I had lived in England for less than two years, and without Phil there was little reason to stay. I found an apartment in the neighborhood where I had lived just after college, and got a job teaching, and, although painfully and rustily, began to go through the motions of making a new life for myself. I didn’t stop missing Phil, and the pain grew no less with the passage of time, but I adjusted to it. I was coping. In the spring of my second year alone I began to think of going back to England. In June I went for a vacation, planning to spend a week in London, a few days in Cambridge with Phil’s sister, and a few days visiting friends in St. Ives. When I left London in a rented car and headed for St. Ives, I did not plan to retrace the well-remembered route of that last vacation, but that is what I found myself doing, with each town and village a bittersweet experience, recalling pleasant memories and prodding the deep sadness in me wider awake. I lingered in Glastonbury, wandering the peaceful Abbey ruins and remembering Phil’s funny, disrespectful remarks about the sacred throne and King Arthur’s bones. I looked for, but could not find, the café where we’d had dinner, and settled for fish and chips. Driving out of Glastonbury with the sun setting, I came upon The Old Vicarage and pulled into that familiar drive. There were more cars there, and the house was almost full up this time. There was a room available, but not the one I had hoped for. Although a part of me, steeped in sadness, was beginning to regret this obsessional pilgrimage, another part of me longed for the same room, the same bed, the same view from the window, in order to conjure Phil’s ghost. Instead, I was given a much smaller room on the other side of the house. I retired early, skipping tea with the other guests, but sleep would not come. When I closed my eyes I could see Phil, sitting on the window ledge with a cigarette in one hand, narrowing his eyes to look at me through the smoke. But when I opened my eyes it was the wrong room, with a window too small to sit in, a room Phil had never seen. The narrowness of the bed made it impossible to imagine that he slept beside me still. I wished I had gone straight to St. Ives instead of dawdling and stopping along the way—this was pure torture. I couldn’t recapture the past—every moment that I spent here reminded me of how utterly Phil was gone.

Finally I got up and pulled on a sweater and a pair of jeans. The moon was full, lighting the night, but my watch had stopped and I had no idea what time it was. The big old house was silent. I left by the front door, hoping that no one would come along after me to relock the door. A walk in the fresh air might tire me enough to let me sleep, I thought. I walked along the gravel drive, past all the parked cars, toward the road, and entered the next field by the same gate that Phil and I had used in daylight in another lifetime. I scarcely thought of where I was going, or why, as I made my way to the turf-maze which had fascinated Phil and frightened me. More than once I had regretted not taking Phil’s hand and treading the maze with him when he had asked. Not that it would have made any difference in the long run, but all the less-than-perfect moments of our time together had returned to haunt me and given rise to regrets since Phil’s death—all the opportunities missed, now gone forever; all the things I should have said or done, or done differently. There was someone standing in the field. I stopped short, staring, my heart pounding. Someone standing there, where the center of the maze must be. He was turned away, and I could not tell who he was, but something about the way he stood made me certain that I had seen him before, that I knew him. I ran forward and—I must have blinked—suddenly the figure was gone again, if he had ever existed. The moonlight was deceptive, and the tall grass swaying in the wind, and the swiftly moving clouds overhead cast strange shadows. “Come tread the maze with me.” Had I heard those words, or merely remembered them? I looked down at my feet and then around, confused. Was I standing in the maze already? I took a tentative step forward and back, and it did seem that I was standing in a shallow depression. The memory flooded back: Phil standing in the sunlit field, rocking back and forth and saying, “I think this is it.” The open, intense look on his face. “Phil,” I whispered, my eyes filling with tears. Through the tears I saw some motion, but when I blinked them away, again there was nothing. I looked around the dark, empty field, and began to walk the path laid out long before. I did not walk as slowly as Phil had done, but more quickly, almost skipping, hitting the sides of the maze path with my feet to be certain of keeping it, since I could not see it. And as I walked, it seemed to me that I was not alone, that people were moving ahead of me, somehow just out of my sight (beyond another turn in the winding path I might catch them up), or behind. I could hear their footsteps. The thought that others were behind me, following me, unnerved me, and I stopped and turned around to look. I saw no one, but I was now facing in the direction of The Old Vicarage, and my gaze went on to the house. I could see the upper window, the very window where Phil and I had stood together looking out, the point from which we had seen the dancers in the maze. The curtains were not drawn across that dark square of glass this night, either. And as I watched, a figure appeared at the window. A tall shape, a pale face looking out. And after a moment, as I still stared, confused, a second figure joined the first. Someone smaller—a woman. The man put his arm around her. I could see—perhaps I shouldn’t have been able to see this at such a distance, with no light on in the room—but I could see that the man was wearing a sweater, and the woman was naked. And I could see the man’s face. It was Phil. And the woman was me. There we were. Still together, still safe from what time would bring. I could almost feel the chill that had shaken me then, and the comfort of Phil’s protecting arm. And yet I was not there. Not now. Now I was

out in the field, alone, a premonition to my earlier self. I felt someone come up beside me. Something as thin and light and hard as a bird’s claw took hold of my arm. Slowly I turned away from the window and turned to see who held me. A young man was standing beside me, smiling at me. I thought I recognized him. “He’s waiting for you at the center,” he said. “You mustn’t stop now.” Into my mind came a vivid picture of Phil in daylight, standing still in the center of the maze, caught there by something, standing there forever. Time was not the same in the maze, and Phil could still be standing where he had once stood. I could be with him again, for a moment or forever. I resumed the weaving, skipping steps of the dance with my new companion. I was eager now, impatient to reach the center. Ahead of me I could see other figures, dim and shifting as the moonlight, winking in and out of view as they trod the maze on other nights, in other centuries. The view from the corner of my eyes was more disturbing. I caught fleeting glimpses of my partner in this dance, and he did not look the same as when I had seen him face to face. He had looked so young, and yet that light, hard grasp on my arm did not seem that of a young man’s hand. A hand like a bird’s claw. . . . My eyes glanced down my side to my arm. The hand lying lightly on my solid flesh was nothing but bones, the flesh all rotted and dropped away years before. Those peripheral, sideways glimpses I’d had of my dancing partner were the truth—sights of something long dead and yet still animate. I stopped short and pulled my arm away from that horror. I closed my eyes, afraid to turn to face it. I heard the rustle and clatter of dry bones. I felt a cold wind against my face and smelled something rotten. A voice—it might have been Phil’s—whispered my name in sorrow and fear. What waited for me at the center? And what would I become, and for how long would I be trapped in this monotonous dance if ever I reached the end? I turned around blindly, seeking the way out. I opened my eyes and began to move, then checked myself—some strong, instinctual aversion kept me from cutting across the maze paths and leaping them as if they were only so many shallow, meaningless furrows. Instead, I turned around (I glimpsed pale figures watching me, flickering in my peripheral vision) and began to run back the way I had come, following the course of the maze backwards, away from the center, back out into the world alone.

Flying to Byzantium The steady noise and pressurized atmosphere inside the plane made everything seem slightly unreal. Was she really going back to Texas? She thought of flat, coastal plains, mosquitoes whining in the humid night air, dirty white plumes of smoke rising from industrial stacks, her mother’s house, and the dreary brightness of the Woolco, and a familiar misery possessed her. No.Her hands clenched in her lap. She was going back to Texas, but not to the stagnant little town on the Gulf Coast where she had grown up; she was flying to Byzantium. The name of the town made her smile: how the dreams of the pioneers became the lies of property

developers! She didn’t know Byzantium. She had never heard of it before the invitation to spend the weekend as a guest of honor at a science fiction convention held there. According to the map, Byzantium was more than five hundred miles west of the southeastern swamp where she had grown up. West Texas to her meant deserts and dust, cowboys and rattlesnakes, rugged mountains etched against postcard sunsets: it was the empty space between Houston and Los Angeles, traversed by air. She lived in Hollywood now, and Texas was no longer home. She was Sheila Stoller, author of Moonlight Under the Mountain , and her fans were paying for the privilege of meeting her. Sheila pulled her traveling case from beneath the seat and took out her notebook, thinking of Damon. He had been impressed by her invitation to Byzantium, more than she was herself. But then he was an actor. Public appearances were something he understood, a sign of success. It had never occurred to him that Sheila might not accept—perhaps that was why she had. Away from him, though, she felt her confidence flag. She knew nothing about science fiction. Wouldn’t the others at the convention see her as a fraud? She had written a speech in her notebook, the story of how she had writtenMoonlight Under the Mountain, but the speech was a fraud, too, a carefully constructed fiction. She stared down at the page wondering if she would have the nerve to read it. The notebook had been a gift from Damon. “For your next novel,” he had said, giving it to her with his famous, flashing smile. And she had taken it, unable to tell him that there would not be a next novel. Ordinary people had ordinary jobs in Hollywood, as they did everywhere else, as sales assistants, as waiters, as secretaries and caretakers, but in Hollywood the jobs were always temporary; the people in them werereally actors, directors, dancers, singers, producers, writers waiting for the main chance. Damon had been an actor working as a waiter until his pilot took off: now he had a minor but regular role in a weekly comedy series. He was the wisecracking roommate’s best friend. Viewing figures and audience response were both good, and he was on his way up. He thought that Sheila was on her way up, too. It was true she made her living doing temporary secretarial work, but she’d had one novel published, and surely it was only a matter of time until she was well-paid and famous: all she had to do was to keep on writing. But Sheila didn’t write anymore. She no longer felt the need. Writing, for Sheila, had always been a means of escape. It took her out of herself, away from loneliness, dull school classes, and the tedium of working behind a counter at the local Woolco. When she was writing she could forget that she wasn’t pretty, didn’t have a boyfriend or an interesting job, had no talents and no future. She’d had no friends because she never tried to cultivate any. Girls her own age thought she was a weird, stuck-up bookworm—she thought they were boring, and didn’t bother to hide her opinions. Her quirky intelligence made her reject most of the people and things around her, but did not make her special enough to be forgiven. Despite her reading, she was an indifferent student, lazy in the classroom and inept at sports. She tried to write for the school magazine and newspaper, but after several cool rejections she learned to keep her writing to herself. She wrote another world into existence. It was a fairy-tale world full of monsters and treasures, simpler, starker, and more beautiful than the reality she felt suffocating her, and she escaped into it whenever she could. Her universe contained a vast and dangerous wasteland spotted with small, isolated villages. One of the settlements had a mountain rising from its center, towering over everything, dominating the landscape and the lives of those who lived there. For beneath the mountain was a series of maze-like tunnels where dwelt the evil, powerful grenofen. They kept the townspeople in terror until a young girl, Kayli, won her way through a series of adventures, battles, and enchantments to triumph over the grenofen and steal their sacred treasure for herself.

Sheila shared her world with no one, and never thought of publication, except as a vague fantasy. It was her mother who brought it about, indirectly. Sheila knew she was a disappointment to her mother—she almost took pleasure in it. Something in her seemed to compel contradiction, and as long as her mother nagged her about her appearance Sheila would eat too much, forget to wash her hair, and dress in unattractive, poorly fitting clothes. Her mother thought scribbling in notebooks was a waste of time, and it was her disparaging comment on a “writers’ weekend” being held at a local college which made Sheila consider attending. And it was there that Sheila met the editor who ultimately publishedMoonlight Under the Mountain . She didn’t make a lot of money from the book—the reality wasn’t like her fantasy—but it gave her enough to leave Texas, to fly to Los Angeles and buy a used car and find her own apartment before she had to look for work. On the West Coast, in the sunshine, far from her mother’s nagging, Sheila blossomed. She took an interest in the way she looked, bought fashionable clothes, joined a health spa, had her hair permed, and exchanged her heavy, smudged glasses for a pair of tinted contact lenses. Damon met her while she was temping in his agent’s office. He admired her clear, emerald eyes, her smooth, tanned skin, and slim figure, but those things were the norm in California—it was her book which caught his attention. He admired writers, and liked the idea of dating one so much that Sheila didn’t know how to tell him the truth. She had written a book, but that didn’t make her a writer in the way that he was an actor. Writing was one of the things—like baby fat, acne, and bad manners—she had left behind her in Texas. ***

They were like ghosts of her past, standing there waiting for her in the Campbell County Airport. Sheila knew them at once, without any doubt, and knew she had been wrong to come. “Sheila Stoller?” They knew her, too, and that was another bad sign; like calling to like. She wished she could deny her name, but she nodded stiffly, walking toward them. There were two of them: a fat one swathed in purple, and a thin one in a lime-green polyester trouser suit and teased, bleached-blonde hair. She knew them—they were the unwanted. They were the sort of people she had been lumped in with at school, always the last to be chosen for teams or dances. Her mother had pushed them on her, inviting them to parties, but Sheila had preferred loneliness to their company. She always shunned them rather than admit that she was like them. “How do you do,” said the thin one. “I’m Victoria Walcek, and this is Grace Baxter.” Victoria would be smart. Sheila knew. Too smart for her own good. A bookworm with a sharp tongue and too many opinions, no one would like her, but she would exert a special influence over one or two followers; dull, timid outcasts like her fat friend. “Your plane was late,” said Victoria. The tone was reproving and before she could catch herself Sheila said, “I’m sorry.” Victoria smiled. “That’s all right. We didn’t mind waiting. Do you have much luggage coming?” “Only this.” She indicated the small case. Victoria gave a dainty shriek. “That’sall ? How do you manage? I couldn’t possibly . . . my hot-curlers and makeup would just about fill that little bag. I always need a big garment bag whenever I go anywhere. I suppose I worry too much about the way I look. . . . I like to have everything just right. It’s

much more sensible to travel light and just not think about that.” “Sheila looks very nice,” said Grace with so much emphasis that it sounded like a lie. Sheila tried not to mind, but she wished Grace hadn’t felt obliged to defend her. She knew how she looked: more fashionable and far more comfortable in her pink and gray tracksuit than Victoria in her ugly green polyester and high-necked ruffled blouse. “Of course she does,” said Victoria. “I didn’t mean to imply otherwise! Only with that little bag . . . well, there can’t be more than one change of clothes in there.” “I’m only staying the weekend.” “Oh,” said Grace, sounding surprised. “We thought you’d want to stay . . . being from Texas, and all.” “I only came for the convention. I can’t afford—I need to get back.” “To your writing?” asked Grace. The lie came easily. “Yes, I’ve started a new book.” “Oh, please tell us about it!” “Wait until we get to the car,” said Victoria—her sharpness might have been directed at either of them or both. “We’ve still got a long way to go.” She turned with a twitch of her narrow shoulders which said she didn’t care if she was followed or not, and Sheila felt trapped into hurrying after. “How far are we from Byzantium?” “Fifty miles,” said Grace, huffing and puffing beside her. “Fifty! I had no idea—” Victoria glanced over her shoulder. “I thought you came from Texas?” “Not this part.” Victoria exhaled sharply. It sounded like disbelief, but Sheila couldn’t imagine why. Outside, the darkness and heat disoriented Sheila, who remembered the cool, blue Los Angeles evening she had so recently left. She knew nothing about this place, she thought as Victoria steered the big car away from the lights and out into the unrelieved blackness of the vast country night. There was nothing on which she could focus but the stars winking in the distance, or the bright, white line down the center of the highway. “Now tell us about your new book,” said Grace from behind her. “Is it a sequel toMoonlight Under the Mountain ? I loved that book so much!” “No, how could it be? Kayli escapes at the end—she’s found the secret of the grenofen and can travel. She’s free at last. How could there be a sequel?” “Well, she might have to go back. Maybe there could be a friend she wants to rescue. Or she could be kidnapped . . . most of the grenofen are still under the mountain.” “It would just be boring to send her back,” said Sheila. “The new book will be something completely different.”

“Grace writes too,” said Victoria. “Maybe you would be kind enough, while you are visiting here, to read something of hers and critique it.” Sheila stared into the blackness, wondering what sort of landscape the night concealed. Suddenly the headlights swept across a small herd of jackrabbits by the side of the road. One of them was sitting up on his haunches and gazing, with dazzled eyes, directly at her. A thrill of strangeness made her smile. Here was something to tell Damon! “Of course I will, if Grace wants me to. How about you Victoria—do you write, too?” “Oh, no. My talents lie in another direction,” said Victoria primly. “In my own small way I am something of an artist. My interests are in painting, sketching, and in fashion and costume design. You’ll see my latest efforts at the convention.” “Wait’ll you see!” cried Grace, bouncing hard on the back seat. “Sit still!” Grace subsided as if bludgeoned. Sheila felt sorry for her, and yet contemptuous, for she invited such treatment by allowing it. As mile after dark mile passed and Sheila felt civilization—even if only represented by the Campbell County airport—growing more distant, she realized that she was even more dependent upon Victoria’s goodwill than Grace was. She could be trapped here in this strange desert, with no car, no money, no friends, no knowledge of her surroundings if Victoria decided Sheila wasn’t deserving of her attention. It was a crazy notion, sheer paranoia, and yet she knew nothing about these people. Why had they invited her? Why had she come? Out of the darkness came the familiar, cheery glow of a Ramada Inn sign, and Sheila felt a rush of relief that made her smile. Whatever was out there in the darkness, whoever these two people were, she knew, now, where she was. The clock above the registration desk showed nearly midnight, and Sheila yawned reflexively, reminding herself that it was an hour earlier in Los Angeles, and wondering what Damon was doing. Was he thinking of her? Victoria’s melodramatic shriek sliced into her thoughts. “I did,” said Grace in a high, terrified voice. “I did reserve a room, honestly I did!” “Yes, I know,” said the desk clerk. “And I’m really sorry. But we couldn’t keep it for you. Our check-in time is sevenP.M. It’s the same all over the country. You can request us to hold the room for as many hours after that as you like, but unless the request is made, after seven P.M. we assume the registered guest is a no-show, and we give the room to someone else. And all our rooms are taken tonight.” “But I didn’t know,” Grace wailed. “It’s not my fault that I didn’t know.” “It is your fault,” said Victoria in arctic tones. “I gave you the responsibility of reserving the room, and that includes finding out check-in times.” Sheila had the feeling that they would go on arguing whose fault it was all night, and she would still be without a place to sleep. “Isn’t there some other hotel?” she asked. “Are you kidding?” said Victoria. “There’s one over by Taylor,” said the desk clerk. “It’s a Holiday Inn, but I’d be happy to make a phone

call to check if they’ve got a room for you.” “No,” said Victoria sharply. “Taylor’s thirty miles from here. I’m not driving all that way there and back. You can stay with me tonight. Luckily, I have two beds in my room. I know it won’t be as nice for you, and I’m sorry about this. I apologize for Grace’s stupidity—shut up, Grace. You won’t mind sharing a room with me, will you?” “Well, I don’t think I really have a choice, do I?” said Sheila. She knew she was being ungracious and forced herself to sound grateful. “It’s very nice of you to offer. Thank you.” The town of Byzantium was four miles farther down the highway, and in the darkness Sheila received no clear impression of it. A yellow bug-light on the porch revealed Victoria’s house as an ordinary, one-story, white-painted frame house of the sort she’d often seen elsewhere. There was nothing special or unusual about it. But the moment she stepped inside she broke into a sweat of fear. It was only Victoria’s physical presence at her back which kept her from bolting, and after another moment she realized that it was the smell of the house she had responded to so powerfully. It was the smell of her mother’s house, as if she had fallen back in time. But there was nothing mysterious or even unlikely about it—just an unfortunate combination of a particular brand of furniture polish, air freshener, and a whiff of bacon grease. “Keep quiet,” Victoria breathed at her ear. “Just follow me. Mom’s asleep.” Still shaken by the physical force of memory, Sheila obeyed. Victoria had told her in the car that she lived with her widowed mother. “Welcome to my sanctum sanctorum,” said Victoria, and closed the bedroom door. Sheila was not usually bothered by claustrophobia, but as the door closed she felt her throat tighten and she began to have trouble breathing. The room was so crowded with books, furniture, and clutter that it felt more like a storage closet than a place to live. Sheila looked around, trying to relax by taking in details. There was a fussy, pink and white dressing table with a lighted mirror; narrow twin beds separated by a chest of drawers; a slant-topped, professional drawing table and adjustable chair; and bookshelves covering two walls, overstuffed with books and seeming to strain at their moorings. Sheila looked at one of the beds and at the burdened shelves above it, and hoped that nothing would fall on her in the night. Where there was wall space not covered with books, paintings and photographs had been mounted. Sheila recognized various famous movie and television stars in customary poses, but the paintings were uninspired: landscapes in unlikely colors, and stiff, mannered depictions of dragons, unicorns, and strangely dressed people. “Most of the art is mine,” said Victoria. “But I won’t bore you with my creations right now.” She giggled: “Oh, it’s so exciting, having a real, live author in my very own room!” Sheila realized suddenly that the bossy Victoria wasn’t as self-confident as she pretended—that she was actually shy—but the understanding didn’t change her feelings. Of course, it wasn’t Victoria’s fault that this house reminded her of her own past, or that in Victoria’s nagging and bossing of Grace Sheila heard her mother’s disappointment:Would it kill you to show a little interest? To be friendly? Yes, she thought now, itwould have killed her. If she had made friends and found contentment in the life her mother wanted for her it would have killed her soul. She would never have written. She would have felt no need to escape. She looked at Victoria’s pinched, sourly hopeful face. Victoria was trapped, even if she didn’t know it, but Sheila had escaped. She could afford to show a little kindness.

“It’s a very nice room,” she said. “You’ll have to show me your designs in the morning . . . not right now because I’m too tired to appreciate anything but bed.” “Oh, silly me! Of course you’re tired—I forgot how late it is. It’s just that I’m so excited.” Sheila decided she liked Victoria even less when she was giggly and excited, but there was no escape from her now except into silence and herself: the same old thing. “It’s like being a kid again, having someone spend the night,” Victoria said in the darkness. “Didn’t you used to love going to slumber parties?” Sheila had been to only one slumber party, attending under pressure from her mother. She did now what she had done then and pretended to sleep. But she lay awake for what seemed hours, listening to Victoria’s adenoidal breathing and hearing, behind it, her mother’s voice:Think you’re better than all the other girls? Too good to talk to them? You think you’re different? She knew she was different. She knew she was better. The hard part was to hang on to that knowledge, and resist all those who tried to make her ordinary. ***

Sheila woke feeling as exhausted as if she had been struggling rather than sleeping all night, and when she saw herself in the bathroom mirror it was clear that she had lost the struggle. There were days when she liked her face, but this was not one of them. Makeup didn’t really help, and her hair was hopeless. Confronted with the change in atmosphere and the dry, gritty wind of West Texas, it seemed the permanent had given up, leaving her with a lank, lifeless, mousy brown mop. Her clothes, which had looked so fresh and fashionable in California, now looked drab and badly cut. They were wrinkled from having been packed, and they no longer fitted: the fabric of the skirt stretched unattractively tight across stomach and hips, while the blouse simply hung on her. Sheila had the eerie feeling that she had changed shape overnight. She sucked in her stomach as hard as she could and turned away from the mirror, not ready to face Byzantium, but having no other choice. Daylight revealed what had been hidden by the night: towering above ordinary frame houses and scrubby trees was a vast, looming presence, a rugged brown peak. “What’s that?” Victoria smiled disbelievingly. “What do you think? It’s the mountain.” She was finding it hard to breathe—probably the effect of holding in her stomach, but it felt as if she was afraid. Of the mountain? That was silly. “I just didn’t realize there would be a mountain here.” “Oh, come on!” “No, really. I thought this part of Texas was all flat.” Another hard look from Victoria. “But it’s the most famous thing about Byzantium, our mountain.” That made Sheila laugh, despite her unease. “Look, no offense, but ‘famous’ is not a word I’d use about Byzantium! I’d never even heard of your town until you wrote me.” “Really? And you’ve never been here before?” “Never.”

“Well. That is a surprise. I’d better show you why. We’ll go up where you can see it all . . . why don’t you close your eyes until I tell you to look? It’ll be more impressive that way.” Most of the drive was a gradual ascent—too gentle to be up the mountain, and it seemed to Sheila that the car was traveling away from the peak. It was not long before the car pulled to a stop and Victoria said, “You can open your eyes now.” They were outside of town, up on a ridge, in a roadside parking area created especially for the view: there were coin-operated telescopes there, and a map mounted behind plastic, with the state highway department seal on it. Sheila took in the view mechanically, eyes scanning the distance, the hazy blue sky and a line of faraway mountains, then, just below, on the flat valley floor, the town of Byzantium, buildings clustered around the single peak rising like some rough, hunched beast furred brown and green. And then she saw what she was seeing. She knew this landscape—she had been here many times before. She had invented the town, the mountain, and the wasteland beyond. She had written it into existence. “You see?” said Victoria. “You had to come here.” ***

The Ramada Inn had what they called a conference center, and it was there—a detached, windowless, concrete building on the other side of the swimming pool that the First Byzantium Science Fiction Convention was held. When Sheila and Victoria arrived, they found Grace sitting behind a table near the door, with a cashbox and a list of names. “We’ve had fifteen people so far,” she said, looking apprehensively up at Victoria. “I think that’s pretty good for the first hour.” “How many are you expecting?” Sheila asked. “A lot,” said Victoria. “Science fiction is big business these days, and there’s never been a convention in this part of the state. I’m sure it’ll be a big success. Here, put this nametag on. I designed it especially, so people can pick you out as the Guest of Honor.” “What am I supposed to do?” “This evening you’ll judge the costume contest. Until then, just enjoy yourself. Give the fans a chance to talk to you. Be friendly.” Sheila felt tired and uncertain of herself. She wanted to retreat, having seldom felt less like talking to strangers. But she had agreed to come and must make an effort. She moved away from the registration desk to begin her tour of the convention. The conference center consisted of the small reception area where Grace sat, three small seminar rooms, and one big hall. In one seminar room Sheila found four boys and two girls huddled in a circle with dice and notebooks, playing Dungeons and Dragons. They didn’t even look up when she entered, too involved with their fantasy to notice her. The next seminar room contained eight or ten dark shapes gazing at a large television screen upon which flickered an episode ofThe Prisoner . The main hall had a podium and microphone set up at the far end, unused. At the near end several tables

had been set up and people were selling used paperbacks, comics, posters, little clay and metal figurines, and other paraphernalia. Some artwork was displayed, and Sheila recognized the paintings as Victoria’s work. People of both sexes, most of them apparently in their teens or early twenties, milled around the room. Sheila noticed a very fat man in a kilt, with a plastic sword belted at his side, and a skinny young woman in a black knitted minidress, who might have been attractive beneath the layer of green paint she wore over all exposed flesh. But even the people not in costume—the boy reading a paperback novel on the floor, frowning in fierce concentration; the acned young man whose shirt-pocket bulged with different colored pens; the girl talking into a tape-recorder—seemed to exist in some other, private universe, and even if she had found any of them the slightest bit attractive, Sheila could not have approached without feeling herself an intruder. “Excuse me, are you Sheila Stoller?” Sheila turned to see an ordinary-looking teenager, a girl in blue jeans and a pink T-shirt, holding up a copy ofMoonlight Under the Mountain in much the way that people in horror films presented crosses to vampires. She smiled with relief and pleasure. This was what she was here for, after all: to be the author. “Yes, I am.” “Oh!” The girl sounded surprised. “I thought—I don’t know—I thought you’d look more—like a writer.” “How is that? With thick glasses and a typewriter tucked under my arm?” “No, I thought you’d be more glamorous. Well, would you sign my book? Make it out to Lori.” Sheila did as she was told. “Did you like it?” “Oh, I haven’t read it yet. I bought it because somebody told me it was sort of like Anne McCaffrey. I love Anne McCaffrey. I’ve read everything she’s ever written. I was hoping they could get her to come here, but . . . Thanks for the autograph. It was nice meeting you.” She slouched away, leaving Sheila bemused. Was that it? Was that why she was here, to disappoint Anne McCaffrey fans and sign unread books? She went back to the registration area to find Victoria and Grace, and was discouraged to find that even they were no longer interested in her. It was an effort to make them talk, and as she struggled she wondered why she was bothering. “So . . . Victoria, you’re interested in art. Do you plan to study it professionally, go to art school, or . . . were you an art major in college?” Victoria looked at her coldly. “I didn’tgo to college. As I told you last night. It wasn’t possible. We couldn’t afford it and mother couldn’t really do without me. Mother has problems with her health. As I told you.” Sheila felt herself getting hot. She didn’t know how to apologize without making things worse. She should have been paying attention instead of daydreaming, as usual. “I’m sorry . . . I was tired last night, and . . .” “You were probably thinking ofme ,” Grace said. “Iwent to college.”

“And much good it did you,” said Victoria. “You can’t get a job with your history degree now, can you? I’ve got a job in cosmetics, at Eckard’s Drugs. I get a discount on all my perfume and makeup. It’s a good deal. And it’s a pretty creative job, sometimes. It calls for someone like me with taste and a good eye for color to tell the ladies what lipstick would suit them, and how to put on blusher to make the most of their own features. You should have seen the makeover I did for Grace! I don’t know why she doesn’t fix herself up like that all the time. It would only take a half hour in the morning, and it makes all the difference in the world.” Grace was getting steadily redder, and glaring at her feet. Sheila tried to feel some sympathy for her, but was too repelled. Did she have to be so fat and her hair so greasy? Makeup would probably only aggravate her skin problems, but surely she could makesome effort. “It might even help you get a job,” Victoria went on. “If you looked more . . .” “Don’t want a job,” Grace mumbled. She raised her head defiantly. “I need time to write.” She looked at Sheila. “Don’t you? Don’t you need time to write?” Before Sheila could think of how to answer, Victoria spoke for her. “But you also need to earn a living,” she said. “You can’t sponge off your parents forever. You’re twenty-four.” “So? They don’t mind.” “But for how long? And how long before you actually finish your novel? You’re too comfortable; you think you’ve got all the time in the world. How many years have you been working on it? Three? Four?” Sheila was beginning to feel Grace’s discomfort as her own, as if Victoria’s jabs had been aimed at her. This was a familiar, old quarrel, but it was nothing to do with her. She wouldn’t even try to break it up. She only wanted to get away and leave them to it. Looking at her watch, Sheila said, “Maybe I should check into my room now. There doesn’t seem to be too much going on, and I’d like a chance to put my things away and maybe have a shower.” Victoria and Grace looked at each other in a way that made Sheila’s heart sink. “I’m not saying this is your fault,” said Victoria carefully. “Don’t get me wrong. But we haven’t had as many people register for the convention as we had hoped for.” “How could that bemy fault?” “Well, a big-name guest will draw more people . . . but I’m not saying it is your fault, you understand. If people didn’t come to see you, it’s our fault for assuming that everybody would likeMoonlight Under the Mountain as much as us . . . but that’s probably not the reason, anyway. Grace probably didn’t coordinate the publicity and press releases well enough—never mind, Grace, I’m not blaming you.” “I don’t understand. If you don’t think it’s my fault, why are you telling me?” “Well, of course it’s not your fault! And no matterhow much money we lose on this, Grace and I will feel that it was worth it to get you to come here. I knew when I wrote out the check for your airplane ticket that I probably wasn’t going to get my money back, and that isn’t important. The thing is, we just don’t have that much money left over . . . for non-essentials. And since I’ve got a spare bed anyway . . .” Sheila just stared at her, refusing to give in. Victoria sighed. “We just can’t afford to pay for your hotel room. I’m sorry about that. But you are more

than welcome to go on sharing my room. Like last night. You didn’t mind sharing, did you?” She couldn’t answer honestly; she was trapped. Sheila bowed her head, giving in. She was doing figures in her head, furiously, but she already knew she couldn’t afford to rent her own hotel room. She thought, longingly, of Damon, wondering how he would handle the situation. But Damon would never be in such a situation, she felt certain. His agent would have arranged everything better than she had been able to do for herself. “Excuse me for a few minutes,” she said. “I have to make a phone call. . . . I have to let my boyfriend know where I’ll be.” But Damon wasn’t in. Of course, it was silly of her to have expected him to be sitting at home in the middle of the day, but that made no difference to her disappointment. She hung around the lobby for another twenty minutes, unwilling to return to the convention, leaning against the wall by the telephone as if waiting for a call. She wondered if she was expecting too much of Damon. She thought of them as a couple—an awareness of him and what he would think informed all her actions—but to him, she thought reasonably, she was probably just another girlfriend. They had made no promises to each other. She knew it wasn’t fair to blame him for anything—for this trip to Texas, for not being in when she needed him—that was like Victoria, always apportioning blame. But although she fought against it, that was the way she felt. ***

“We’ll take you out for a nice dinner,” Victoria said. “Our treat.” It wasn’t Sheila’s idea of a treat: a drive to Byzantium to feast, far inland, in a Long John Silver Seafood Shoppe. The fried fish and potatoes were almost tasteless, but Sheila covered them with ketchup and ate her way steadily through the meal. It was a way of not thinking, of not caring that Victoria and Grace could chatter away about private concerns as if she were not there. She was still thinking, painfully, of Damon, and finally, when the food was gone and they lingered over large paper cups of iced tea, she couldn’t keep it to herself any longer. She told them about Damon. She didn’t say a word about her doubts: she wanted to impress them. It was such a joy to speak of him possessively, casually, and to see the dim, faint envy on their faces. Any boyfriend at all was good, but Damon was a TV star. They knew how handsome he was, how desirable. She was explaining how they had first met when Victoria interrupted. “Come on, girls, we’ve got things to do. We’ve got to get back to the Ramada. We’ll stop at the Dunkin’ Donuts on the way for our dessert.” Sheila was irritated at being cut off, but knowing Victoria’s jealousy must be responsible made it easier to bear. She had proven just how different her life was from the lonely existence Victoria and Grace had to suffer, and Victoria couldn’t like the reminder. At the convention, Sheila was left alone with the box of donuts while Victoria and Grace went off to prepare for the costume contest. Sheila was the judge, but she didn’t feel burdened: nothing was really at stake. The only prize was a scroll hand-decorated by Victoria. There were only eight entries, and two of them were jokes more than costumes: an Invisible Man, and a Time Traveler in Authentic Costume of the 1980s. Sheila leaned on the podium in the darkened hall, unable to see the audience for the glare of the spotlights, and watched the contestants parade slowly past: a mangy Wookie, a scantily clad Amazon, a Vulcan couple who performed a pretend marriage ceremony, and the green-painted girl she had noticed earlier, now wearing a diaphanous gown and huge,

painted cardboard wings. Victoria and Grace came last, and when they emerged from darkness into light Sheila did not recognize them. She saw, not strangers, but two characters she knew very well, her own creations come to life. She saw Kayli, triumphant in red velvet, brandishing a gleaming sword, leading a hunch-backed, shaggy, conquered grenofen on a leash. Her heart threatened to choke her, and she leaned forward, nearly dislodging the microphone, to peer against the dazzle of the spotlights, trying to see through the illusion. Fake fur and a papier-mâché head could disguise Grace, but how on earth had the unattractive Victoria been transformed to Kayli, as noble, heroic, and beautiful as Sheila had always known her to be. Was it possible that Kayli wasreal ? That she wasn’t an invention, but a real person, a resident of Byzantium, and Victoria had found her? What magic was this? But it was all illusion, even if she couldn’t penetrate it. Of course Kayli and the grenofen were only Victoria and Grace, revealed when they came forward to accept their prize. Later, sharing the few remaining donuts and listening to Grace’s delight at having won, Sheila could hardly take her eyes from Victoria. The glamour of Kayli clung to her still, making her eyes shine and her cheeks glow, giving her plain, sharp features a beauty Sheila envied. “Weren’t the costumes just perfect?” Grace demanded again. “Weren’t they just exactly how you imagined they would look when you were writing the book, Sheila?” Sick at heart, yet she could not deny it, Sheila pretended her mouth was too full to speak, and nodded. She knew her denial would have made no difference: Victoria had triumphed, and they both knew it. Now Victoria smiled graciously. “It’s nice of you to say so, Sheila. Of course, this prize should beyours just as much as ours, because without you . . . well, without you there wouldn’t be a Kayli. You created her first, in your book. And then I was fortunate enough to be able to bring her to another kind of life.” You stole her from me, Sheila wanted to say.Kayli was mine, Kayli was me—you took her away and you had no right. But although that was what she felt, Sheila knew well enough how it would sound. She could say nothing. OnceMoonlight Under the Mountain had been published, anyone could know Kayli. There might even be someone, like Victoria, who had more claim on Kayli now than Sheila did. Sheila, after all, had scarcely thought of Kayli since she sent her in her book out into the world. She had not thought of her as a real person until she saw her in Victoria. It wasn’t until later, after they had dropped off Grace at her house and driven back to Victoria’s, that Sheila realized she had been robbed of something more concrete than a fictional character. “My suitcase!” “What?” “My overnight bag,” Sheila said, twisting feverishly around in the seat. “Do you remember what I did with it? Did we put it in the trunk?” Even as she asked she could remember only too well how she had slung it into the back seat, and she could see that it was not there. “You didn’t say anything about it to me. Why on earth did you bring it? Why didn’t you just leave it here at home?”

“Because I thought I would be staying in the hotel.” “Oh, Sheila,” said Victoria in the weary tone she used so often with Grace. “You don’t mean to tell me you left it in my car all day—unlocked!” “It’syour car. I thought you’d lock it!” “Don’t shout at me. If you’d said anything, I would have suggested we lock it in the trunk. I never imagined you’d leave something valuable in the car.” “It wasn’t valuable. It was just my clothes, my notebook—” the magnitude of her loss struck her and she stopped, struggling against tears. All lost. Everything she had owned in this desolate place. “Now, don’t cry,” said Victoria. “That’ll only make you feel worse. Things will look better in the morning. Let’s go to bed.” She let Victoria lead her to the house but balked at the bedroom door. “I want to use the phone.” “At this hour!” “It’s earlier in California. Please. I have to. It’s important. The operator can bill me.” “I do not think this is a good idea,” said Victoria in a tight, disapproving voice. “But if you insist, the phone is in the kitchen. Try not to wake mother, please.” Damon would be able to put everything into perspective. She knew that if she could only hear his voice things would be better. She would realize that she hadn’t lost everything, only a few material possessions. She could buy herself new clothes, and Damon would give her another notebook. But she needed to hear him say so. His service picked up the call. No, he wasn’t in; no, he had left no message for her; no, she really couldn’t say when he would be back. Sheila left her name with Victoria’s phone number. “Tell him to call me whatever time it is, morning or night. Tell him it’s urgent.” She didn’t care if the ringing of the phone woke the whole house. The most important thing was to make contact again with her life in California, to convince herself that it was real and this place the fantasy. The sound of Damon saying her name would wake her from this nightmare of loss and confusion. She tried not to think of what would happen if Damon didn’t phone back. She told herself that she was over-tired and that things would look better in the morning, even if it was Victoria who had said so. Things looked different in the morning, but not better. It began when Sheila lost a contact lens down the drain. In three years she’d had no problems, but after one moment of sleepy carelessness in a strange bathroom she had no choice but to put on her old glasses. Then she saw herself—really saw herself—in the big bathroom mirror, and she wanted to scream in protest. She was not, she refused to be, the person she saw in the mirror. That was the old Sheila blinking through thick, smudged lenses, the self she had outgrown, with lank, greasy hair, dandruff, and pimples. That Sheila was so fat she could scarcely fasten her skirt, despite the fact that it had fitted the day before. Sheila reached out, and the creature in the mirror reached, too, until they were touching. They were the same. She didn’t want to believe it, but she had no choice. She was trapped in that hateful body again, as if she had never been different.

Victoria’s voice came through the door. “Hurry up in there, we’ve got to get moving! Your guest-of-honor speech is scheduled for an hour from now!” Her speech was inside the lost notebook. Sheila began to tremble. She had no idea what she had written, what the words said. She knew she couldn’t give a speech without that text. She unlocked the door and told Victoria. Victoria, dressed like a Victorian governess in a high-necked white blouse and a long gray skirt, her face made up like a doll’s with smears of blue eye-shadow and rosy blusher, did not hesitate. “You’ll give the speech. I don’t care what you say. But you will give the speech.” “You can’t make me.” Victoria settled her glasses. She didn’t look angry. There was the hint of a smile about her mouth. “We paid to bring you here, and people have paid to hear your speech. Those people aren’t going to be let down. Somebody is going to give Sheila Stoller’s speech, even if it has to be me.” Sheila felt her mouth go dry. “I can talk about your book as well as you can, probably better,” Victoria went on. “I’ve read it four times; Iknow it. You saw how I was as Kayli. I could be the author ofMoonlight Under the Mountain just as easily. I can tell them what they want to hear—better than you could.” Sheila believed her. She shook her head. “Oh, yes,” said Victoria. “If you don’t believe me—” “I’ll give the speech.” Victoria’s smile settled and hardened. “I know you will.” “I need to make a phone call,” Sheila said. “Who?” “My boyfriend.” She clung to that last, fragile hope. Even though he had not returned her call, he had to be in now—it was a Sunday morning—and as soon as he picked up the phone and heard who it was, his voice would go warm and teasing. Her fears would all vanish in the sunshine of his love. “Damon,” she said, savoring his name. “I told you about him yesterday—” “Oh, come off it, Sheila! Nobody believes you. It’s childish to pretend you know Damon Greene.” “I’m not pretending!” She tried to laugh, but it sound more like a sob. “Oh, no? And did you have a nice little conversation with him last night?” “I couldn’t get through to him last night.” “Well, I’m glad you’re still in touch with reality to that extent.” Sheila was shaking. She wished it was with anger, but it felt like fear. “Look,” she said. “I’m not lying to you, and I’m not crazy. I’m in love with Damon Greene, and—” “Oh, yes, I’m not questioningyour feelings. But that doesn’t mean you can phone him up, or that you have any special privileges, you know.” Victoria’s hands fastened claw-like on Sheila’s shoulders and

she steered her down the passage, into the bedroom. “I’m going to show you something. Look there on the wall.” She hadn’t noticed it before—individual photographs tended to get lost among the many taped and tacked up around the room—but now she saw the picture which had appeared inPeople Magazine , the posed shot of Damon and three of his costars from the new series. Her heart beat faster at his familiar smile. “Oh, yes, I know that picture—” But already Victoria was turning her away from it, allowing her no comfort, turning her toward the frilly dressing table with its makeup mirror. “Now look at that. Look at yourself. Do you expect me to believe that Damon Greene would even consider going out with something that looks likethat ?” But that’s notme,Sheila wanted to protest.That’s not the Sheila Damon knows; that’s not who I am in California, in my real life. It’s this place which has changed me. “What really disgusts me,” said Victoria, “is the way you don’t even make an effort. You could try to make something of yourself, the way I do. Learn to use makeup and how to do your hair, eat sensibly, and follow my advice on clothes. But, no, you’d rather stuff your face with food and sit around all day imagining that television stars are in love with you. You’ll never change, and I don’t know why I knock myself out trying to help you.” Staring at the horror in the mirror, Sheila began to cry. The great, wrenching sobs reddened her face, making her even uglier, and she felt the button on her skirt pop, and cried even harder at the hopelessness of her life. ***

“Your own mother wouldn’t know you,” said Victoria, satisfied, and Sheila gazed into the mirror thinking that she wouldn’t have known herself, either. Victoria had made up her face, covering the spots and making her eyes look bigger; her hair was hidden beneath a brightly patterned scarf, and her body in a tent-like yellow dress borrowed from Grace. She felt uneasy with her new image, but at least it was an improvement on the old one. When they reached the convention they found between twenty and thirty people gathered in the main hall, waiting for Sheila’s speech—about half the number who had registered. “Now, don’t be afraid,” said Victoria. “They’re just ordinary people, like you. Say anything you want to them.” “Anything,” said Sheila dazedly. “What . . .” “Tell them how you wrote your book.” “I don’t . . . I can’t remember . . . what can I say?” Victoria stared at her. “Do you want me to give the speech?” Sheila backed away, shaking her head. She couldn’t remember why, but she knew she must do this herself. She must not give Victoria the chance to . . . what? “What are you waiting for?” demanded Victoria. “Go on, they’re waiting.” Sheila stumbled toward the podium. In the large room the sound of applause was feeble and sporadic. As it died away, she stared at them, her audience. Who were they? They all wore glasses; most of them looked adolescent. She was reminded, horribly, of the time her mother had pressured her into trying for

the debating society, and how she had gone utterly blank in front of them all, without a word in her head. Just like now. The silence stretched. The sound of her own breathing was horribly loud. Her hands clenched, and she realized she was holding something. When she looked down, her own name blazed up at her in yellow letters. It was her book, a copy ofMoonlight Under the Mountain. With shaking fingers she opened it and began to read. Gradually the familiar words, the well-known story, Kayli’s presence, all soothed her, and she was dreaming aloud, the audience forgotten. At the end of a chapter she looked up, pausing because her throat was dry, and was startled by the burst of applause. She thought it would be all right to leave then, but as she turned Victoria blocked her way. Her face was grim and Sheila backed away, feeling threatened. “I’m sure we all enjoyed that very much,” said Victoria. “And now, perhaps you’ll say a few words about how you came to write what you’ve just read us?” Sheila shook her head, incapable of speech. But Victoria seemed to have expected that, and scarcely paused. “Questions from the audience, then. Does anyone have a question they’d like to ask Sheila Stoller? No? Well, I’ll start the old ball rolling, then. About the setting of your novel, Sheila . . . what made you choose Byzantium?” “I didn’t—I didn’t choose it!” “Itchose you?” The audience laughed at Victoria’s inflection and Sheila felt herself blushing. Victoria said kindly, “I suppose it was a natural affinity. You felt a connection to this place and so you wrote about it. Writers do that all the time, turning their lives into fiction. And what about Kayli? What can you tell us about her? Is she based on someone real?” It went on, with Victoria asking questions Sheila could not answer, and then answering them herself. Sheila no longer knew if she agreed or disagreed with the things Victoria was saying; she hardly knew what she was talking about, whose book or life they were discussing. ***

It ended, finally; not only the interrogation but the whole convention, and Sheila went with Victoria and Grace for lunch in the coffee shop. She was glad that they talked to each other and left her alone to eat, but when the meal was over she glanced at her watch and fidgeted, working up the courage to say, finally, “Isn’t it getting kind of late?” “Late for what? Was there something on TV—you-know-who isn’t on tonight, is he?” Sheila felt herself blushing. She wasn’t going to talk about Damon; she would pretend she hadn’t heard. “I just don’t want to miss my plane,” she said. Victoria stared in disbelief, and Sheila’s certainty crumbled. “It . . . is tonight, isn’t it? Not tomorrow?” She couldn’t spend another night with Victoria; another night and she might never get away, she thought. “What are you babbling about, Sheila?” said Victoria, as wearily as if this was an old, old question. Sheila dug in her bag for the ticket, praying that it had not been stolen, too. But there it was; she pulled it out, seeing the stiff blue folder enclosing the flimsy ticket, but when she looked at it more closely, she froze. It was a one-way ticket. There could be no mistake, yet she stared, willing herself to be wrong,

reading it again and again. Had it changed in the same way and for the same occult reasons as she had herself? Why hadn’t she noticed before? She was certain that she would not have left Los Angeles with only a one-way ticket in her hand—not a one-way ticket to Texas, and no money for her return. “I can’t stay here,” she said. “I have to go back.” “Where would you go back?” “Home. Los Angeles.” “That’s not your home. What’s in Los Angeles? Damon Greene? Your imaginary boyfriend? You really think he’ll notice if you’re in Los Angeles or in Texas?” “But I live there—I have an apartment and a job—” “You don’t. You’ve been making things up again. People like you don’t live in Hollywood. You wouldn’t fit in. You’re much better off here, where you belong. You can stay in my room, and I might even be able to wangle you a job at Eckard’s. It’s not a bad place to work. You’ll have time to write. You’ll settle down.” She wanted to argue, but everything she thought she knew had slipped away. What could she give as proof? Damon? The apartment? The series of temporary jobs in glamorous locations? All those things felt unreal now, as if she had only seen them on television. “I won’t stay here . . . you can’t make me.” “How ungrateful!” said Grace, and Sheila looked at her, really for the first time since she had met her. She was shocked by the envy and hatred she saw on the fat, white face. “She doesn’t mean to be rude,” said Victoria. “She just doesn’t understand.” “Oh, yes I do,” said Sheila, although she didn’t. “I’m not stupid, I can see what you’re doing to me. Changing me, confusing me, trapping me. All right, you’ve got me now, but not forever. Maybe I can’t afford to leave now, with twenty dollars in my purse, but it won’t take me long to get out of here. I’m not like you. I got away once before. It’s not just dreaming. I had another life—the life I wanted. A life you’ll never know. I wrote a book and had it published.” “You think that makes you special?” “I know it does. I’m different from you.” Victoria adjusted her glasses, checked the top button on her blouse, and moistened her lips. “You may be different,” she said in her thin, colorless voice, “but you need us. Don’t blame us for that. We didn’t trick you into coming here; nobody forced you to use that ticket. You wanted to come back, so we helped you. Hollywood was no good for you. You couldn’t measure up, and you couldn’t write anymore. You wanted to escape but you didn’t know where or how. So we helped you. You’re safe here, and you can stay just as long as you like.” She looked down at her empty plate, wiped her mouth with a folded napkin, and said, “I think we might as well go home now, don’t you?” Not my home, thought Sheila, but she followed them out to the car. During the dark, familiar drive back to Byzantium she was thinking furiously, planning her escape. Money was the most important thing, so she would get a job, even if it meant working in a drugstore with Victoria. She didn’t have to pay attention to her. And she would go on a diet and start exercising to lose this flab; get a facial scrub and do something about her hair, buy herself some more clothes, and when she was herself again she’d fly back to Los Angeles and take up her real life.

Sheila leaned back against the seat, feeling something inside her unknot. With all that out of the way, she could think about something more interesting. It was as easy as dreaming. Kayli was under the mountain again, although Sheila wasn’t sure exactly why. Kayli didn’t know, either. Her mind was cloudy with drugs, and someone had tied her hands behind her and left her in this dark turning of one of the tunnels. She didn’t know where she was or what she had to do, but she would triumph. Despite her confusion, despite the constraints, her will was unbroken. All through the night she planned her escape.

Memories of the Body As she plunged the long-bladed butcher’s knife into her husband’s chest, Cerise realized she had wanted to kill him for years. She had always kept her anger hidden, not only from others, but from herself as well. She deplored violence, and believed hers was a peaceful nature. She had tried to understand her husband’s changing moods and needs, and when he left her she had wept, and gone on loving. Now, however, her long-denied anger was as real as the knife in her hand, and she hated him. Murder was wonderful. Patrick let out a little moan when she stabbed him, and she echoed his sound as she sometimes did in bed, to encourage him. She pulled the knife out and gazed at his thin, naked body, loved for so long. She wanted to cut it to pieces, to stab him in a hundred places. She bared her teeth and swung at him. He tried to stop her, grabbing hold of the blade. He cried out. Blood stained his pale hands. “Stupid!” she said. With a hard, impatient turn of her wrist she freed the knife from his grasp and severed two of his fingers. “What’ll I cut off next?” she asked. She was breathing hard and her body tingled, as aroused as she had ever been by lovemaking. “Why don’t you try to get away? Turn around, I’ll stab you in the back.” He stared down at his ruined hand and took one stumbling step backwards. She went after him, cutting him twice, opening his stomach. “I bet you never thought I could do this. You thought you could get away with anything. You thought I was weak, I bet. Thought I’d kill myself sooner than hurt you. Stand still, damn you.” With the next stab, the knife sank deep into his abdomen, buried to the hilt, slipping in her grasp. “Cerise . . .” Blood bubbled on his lips as he spoke. There was blood everywhere, and a terrible, sweet smell. In sudden silence, Patrick fell to his knees, then toppled forward, onto the knife, and lay still. She felt a surge of disappointment. She wasn’t ready for it to be over. She crouched down and tried to lift him, but the body was a dead weight. “Pat?” she said. Her smile lost its shape, and she began to pant, the smell of death so thick she could hardly breathe. She gagged, and then vomited, and then wept. Later, she stared through a blur of tears at the little bald spot on the back of his head. She wished she could apologize to him. The hate was all gone now. She hadn’t always hated him. “Oh, Pat,” she said softly. “I loved you. I really, really did.” Cerise continued to crouch beside the body while the clock above the bed clicked away the seconds, still

dazed with discovery, astonished by her own emotions. ***

The murder had been Hewitt’s idea—she had agreed to it under pressure, only to please him. He would go on feeling threatened by her ex-husband forever, it seemed, unless she would agree to kill him. But even when she went down to that fancy kitchenware shop in the new mall and picked out the scariest-looking knife she could find, she wasn’t really planning on using it. She was sure that when it came right down to it she would chicken out. Self-defense would be hard enough, but to strike first, to kill in cold blood. . . . And to kill someone she had loved! She wasn’t an aggressive person. She didn’t even like competitive sports, and she hated arguments. That was how she’d agreed to this, in fact. To stop the arguments she and Hewitt were having about love. She had told herself she was only doing it for Hewitt, but from the moment she had seen Patrick again, Hewitt had been nowhere in her thoughts. Cerise rose on shaky legs and went into the bathroom to wash off the blood, glancing at the button beside the light switch. If she pushed it, a member of the Timber Oaks staff would be with her within seconds. She decided she wanted to be clean, dressed, and made-up, back in control before anyone saw her. She was sure that was how Hewitt would have done it when he murdered his wife. Still naked, Cerise leaned through the doorway to look at the clock. Without her lenses, she had to squint to make out the time. It was almost four, much later in the afternoon than she had imagined. They had told her she could stay the night if she wanted, or even for a couple of days. But Hewitt was expecting her for dinner. He obviously didn’t think murder should take very long. She wondered how Hewitt had killed his wife, and imagined that he had dispatched her with great efficiency. He’d probably walked in, said her name, shot her with one of his guns, fired again to make sure, and then drove back to the office to finalize a couple of deals. Hewitt had offered to show her a videotape of the murder, but Cerise, disliking violence, had refused. Cerise tried to estimate how long it would take her to drive back to town, and thought about rush-hour traffic. She would be late, but she really had to wash her hair. There might be blood in it, or something else. She wished she wasn’t having dinner with Hewitt tonight. He was going to take one look at her and know that she’d had sex with Patrick before she killed him. The sex hadn’t been part of the deal. Not that anything had been said, but she knew Hewitt’s attitude. The murder might have been for Hewitt, but there was no way she could pretend the sex had been. She turned the shower on hard and stepped under it, wishing she could wash away her guilt as easily as the blood. I shouldn’t have had sex with him, she thought. Then said aloud, “It.” It, not him. That wasn’t Patrick’s body lying on the bedroom floor; it never had been Patrick. She had to remind herself now of what she had willingly—willfuly—forgotten during the past few hours. It was only a machine she’d murdered, a sophisticated facsimile of Patrick; not a person, only a fax. On her senior trip in high school Cerise had met a fax of the President. So far as she knew, that was the only one, until the Patrick-fax, but from Hewitt she knew that more and more of the rich and powerful were having facsimiles made to act as decoys, and to be held in reserve against the day when medical science made possible, and age or illness made desirable, a full-body transplant. Hewitt didn’t have his own—yet. He said he was waiting until they’d been perfected. He said they were still only machines, not much better than animated dolls. He was particularly contemptuous of people who had sex with faxes. He claimed to find it an inexplicable perversion. But it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t the make-believe that Cerise had imagined—neither the murder nor the sex. From the moment she saw him, when his eyes met hers and he smiled with delighted recognition, she

could not believe it wasn’t her own Patrick, brought to this place by some trick or miracle. And when he kissed her—oh, she could never resist him when he kissed her like that. So they had made love. For hours. And it was wonderful—more like her best fantasies than anything she’d ever had with her husband in reality. Everything was perfect. And then . . . Then the inevitable, fatal quarrel. She couldn’t remember how it had started, or even what it had been about. It had been everything they’d ever disagreed about, the worst fight they’d ever had. None of her attempts to placate him had worked. All the old weapons had come out, and all the old hurts, and then Cerise had stopped backing down. When tears choked her throat and the words would not come, instead of giving in and crying she went for the knife. She had shut him up forever. She had killed him. Cerise turned off the shower and leaned against the wall, almost too weak to go on standing. I really killed him, she thought.I really did it. She just made it across the room to press the button before she slid down the wall and passed out on the wet tiles. Cerise spent the night at Timber Oaks after all—the night, and the following day. Someone phoned Hewitt to postpone her dinner date. They took care of everything; that was part of the deal. Not all of its services were strictly legal—nevertheless, Timber Oaks was a registered clinic, with trained psychiatrists on staff. They recognized the guilt and anguish Cerise was suffering, and they knew how to deal with it. Their main effort, at first, was to get her to accept that there had been no real murder. There was no victim. No one had been hurt. She had simply acted out her aggressions on a machine programmed for that very purpose. Shown the body of the fax, shown the software, shown how it worked and was neither living nor dead, Cerise could not lose the feeling that she had done wrong, and that someone had been hurt. “Maybe it’s true that nobody is dead, but I didn’t know that—I really meant to kill him when I stabbed him; I really wanted him to die.” “That was the Patrick in your head,” said the psychiatrist. “The real Patrick is still alive; it’s onlyyour Patrick who is dead. You killed the Patrick in your head; you programmed the fax from your memories, and then you killed what you had created. You murdered an illusion. Do you really think that’s the same as killing a person? You know the faxes don’t feel anything—they don’t think—it’s all programming, not life.” “I know,” said Cerise. “Of course it’s not the same as if I really killed Patrick—I know that. But Icould have killed Patrick; I would have if he’d been there. That’s what’s so scary. I never thought I’d be able to kill. Not only am I able to, but I could glory in it—I’d never felt like that before! What’s to stop me from doing it again?” “The same things that have always stopped you. We all have unacceptable emotions inside us . . . we learn ways of dealing with them. Yours aren’t out of control—they never were. Don’t forget, you knew that wasn’t really Patrick. Even as you thought you were killing him, a part of you knew perfectly well it was only a fax, and that you had permission to act out your aggressions on it. You’re still in touch with reality; I very much doubt you would ever confuse what happened here at Timber Oaks with what happens outside.” Cerise listened, and argued, and gradually let herself be convinced. It was time to leave this place, go home, see Hewitt, and try to come to terms with what she had learned about herself. She tucked the videotape they gave her—hard proof of what she’d done—away in her bag, wondering if she would ever

be able to watch it. The next evening, as she gazed at Hewitt across a table in one of the city’s most expensive restaurants, Cerise saw for the first time how much he was like Patrick, and was surprised that she had never noticed before. Both were rather thin, pale-skinned men with fair, wispy hair. Hewitt didn’t appear to be going bald, but Cerise remembered a patch of hair with a slightly different texture than the rest, and she suspected a transplant. Both men had charming smiles, disarmingly innocent faces, and self-righteous natures. If Hewitt was better tempered than Patrick, Cerise now thought that was only because he had enough money to smooth his way, and Patrick, although not poor, was always struggling. The waiter filled their glasses with champagne and went away. “Well,” said Hewitt, raising his glass in a toast to her. “Was it a success?” “That depends on how you define success.” “How do you feel about your ex-husband now?” She had woken that morning feeling a great weight gone. There was a burden she no longer had to bear. An old wound had finally healed. “I feel . . . relieved,” she said. “Accepting. It’s over. As if he died a long time ago. He doesn’t matter anymore.” Hewitt smiled. “You still think the murder was only for my benefit?” “Maybe I feel better about Patrick but worse about myself,” Cerise said. “I’m not sure it was worth it if the only way I could get free of Patrick was to murder him.” “We all have violent impulses,” said Hewitt. “Isn’t it better to face up to them and get them out in the open instead of repressing them and pretending they aren’t there?” “Yes, yes, I talked to the shrink, too.” Cerise looked away from Hewitt’s eyes—the same color as Patrick’s—at the bubbles in her champagne. “It was so real,” she said. “That’s what makes it so hard. I really didn’t know it was going to be like that.” “If it wasn’t real, there wouldn’t be much point,” Hewitt said. “You have to believe in it, or it isn’t any good. I didn’t just want you to kill some doll. . . . I wanted you to get rid of your husband, once and for all . . . the image that you were still carrying around inside you. That’s what I was jealous of—not the real man.” “You don’t have to be jealous anymore,” said Cerise wearily. “I know. And I’m grateful. I know it couldn’t have been easy for you. This isn’t a thank-you present,” he said, putting a small black velvet box on the table. “It’s because I love you.” She knew what it was, and she wished she didn’t. She didn’t move to pick it up. She looked at him. “I want you to marry me,” he said. “Oh, Hew,” she said, shaking her head. “I wish you wouldn’t. I—it’s too soon.” “Am I being insensitive? Do you need time to mourn your husband?” His voice was still gentle, but there was a brittle edge to the words.

“Well, maybe I do,” she said, although she’d already realized that her mourning for Patrick was, finally, over. “I just think I need some more time, to be sure.” “You’ve been divorced for more than a year, and you’ve known me for nearly six months. How long does it take? I know how I feel about you.” Just then the waiter arrived with their appetizers. Hewitt frowned down at his plate. “What is this? Frozen? Or fresh?” “I’m sure it’s fresh, sir.” “That’s what the menu said, but I doubt it. Just a minute.” Hewitt took a small taste and shook his head. “That’s not fresh. Take it back.” “Of course. I’m sorry you didn’t like it, sir.” “I don’t like second best,” said Hewitt. “Frozen is second best. I only eat the real thing.” Cerise looked down at her own plate, not seeing what was on it, knowing that she would be making the worst mistake of her life if she married Hewitt Price. After the waiter had gone Hewitt looked at her and shrugged. “I’m not going to push,” he said. “I’m willing to wait. If you need time, take your time. Keep the ring.” “No, I can’t. It wouldn’t be right.” “I’m not going to take it back to the store,” he said. “And I’m not going to want to give it to anybody else.” She shook her head. He gave her a look that said she was being unreasonable, but put the little box back in his pocket. Gradually, somehow, the evening got back on keel. Marriage wasn’t mentioned again. They talked about a planned skiing trip, and mutual friends, and a book Hewitt was reading. She felt that he had forgiven her, and although she had wanted to be alone, at the end of the evening, when he assumed she was coming home with him, she couldn’t say no. She was a little tense when they made love, but she didn’t think he noticed—he was drunk, and fell asleep quickly. Despite her dissatisfaction and misgivings, so did she. It was late morning when she woke, the big house was quiet around her, and Hewitt was gone. He had left her a note, suggesting a place to meet for dinner, the key to one of the cars, and a Gold American Express card in her name “in case you want to do some shopping.” She closed her eyes, feeling a tug of purely material desire. “I will not marry you for your money,” she said aloud, but the conviction she had felt the previous evening was lacking. She went into the bathroom to take a shower, and tried to remember what it was like making love with Hewitt. Instead, she kept remembering how it had been with Patrick before she killed him. She was aroused, and thought of looking at her tape, to remember it better. How could she have been so happy one moment, so violently angry the next? Just as well as the sex, she remembered what it had been like to kill. If she married Hewitt, would she someday be wanting to murder him? It seemed all too likely. But she doubted whether Hewitt would be willing to buy her a Hewitt-fax. Far more likely that he would order his own Cerise-fax, and kill her. She wondered what he was like as a murderer.

Cerise emerged from the shower, dried off, and then wrapped herself in a huge, soft towel, although she knew she was alone, and the house was warm. The video library was downstairs, but she didn’t think he would keep such a personal tape with all the others. She was right. She found it—the Timber Oaks logo on the back marked it out at once—among the small selection of pornography Hewitt kept on the shelf behind the bedroom video system. She felt like a spy, fearful of being caught as she slid the cassette into the player. It didn’t help at all to remind herself that Hewitt had once offered to show it to her. He wasn’t with her now, and she had different reasons for wanting to see it. Wiping sweaty hands on the towel, blinking eyes that suddenly felt too dry, she sank onto the bed, staring at the screen. She recognized the bland good taste of a Timber Oaks bedroom at once. A pretty young woman with red-gold hair, wearing a dark blue silk kimono, was standing beside the bed, looking apprehensive, when the door opened and Hewitt came in. “You wanted to see me?” said Hewitt. He was wearing a salmon-colored suit—the height of fashion three years ago—and holding a square black leather case in one hand. “Oh, darlin’, I’ve missed you so,” said the woman, whom Cerise guessed to be a fax of Hewitt’s ex-wife, Penny. Her voice was soft and slightly husky with a distinctive East Texas twang. “Missed me, or missed my money?” “Oh, Hewitt, how can you even ask? I’ve missed you. Let me show you how I’ve missed you.” As she spoke, she opened her kimono and shrugged out of it. It dropped with a silken whisper to the floor. Cerise tucked her towel more firmly closed. She wondered if Hewitt thought her breasts were too small. Hewitt put his case down on a chair. Now, thought Cerise. Now the gun, or the knife, would come out, now he would kill her. But he left the case where it was, went to the naked woman, and began to kiss her breasts and neck while she sighed and seemed to melt against him. After about a minute he lifted her in his arms and carried her to the bed. She put up a small show of resistance. “Let me . . . you get undressed, too,” she said. “No hurry,” he said. “Plenty of time.” He pushed her back, and knelt before her, between her legs. Shocked, Cerise managed to lurch off the bed and across to the video, to punch the fast-forward button. So Hewitt had his dark secret, too—sex with a fax! She felt too embarrassed to watch. But even at top speed the sex seemed to go on and on: every time she stopped it, there was some new pornographic position to be flinched away from. When she saw the gun, she returned the tape to normal speed. The gun, a small, snub-nosed, silver pistol, was in Hewitt’s right hand, carefully pointed away from the woman, who was watching him apprehensively. They were both naked, sitting on the bed. “You said you’d do anything for me,” said Hewitt. “How can I believe you?” “I would—I would do anything for you. Almost. But you can’t ask me to kill myself!” “Can’t I?” “You wouldn’t if you loved me. People don’t. Oh, Hew, I’d die happily if it would save your life, but I’m

not going to kill myself. Ask me something else to prove I love you.” “All right,” he said. He gazed at her steadily. “It’s a real sacrifice I’m going to ask you for, Penny.” She nodded eagerly. “Would you give up other men for me?” “Of course!” “Would you give up your beauty?” Something flickered in her eyes. “You wouldn’t love me if I was ugly.” “Is that what you think? You’re wrong. Maybe I fell in love with the way you looked, but now I love you. . . . I’ll love you no matter what, as long as you’re alive. That’s my problem. That, and not being able to believe you really love me. I need proof, Penny.” Penny closed her eyes and said, “All right.” Then she opened them. “What do you want me to do?” “I want you to scar yourself. I want you to mark your face to prove you’re mine.” He leaned away from her, toward the bedside table. He came back with a razor blade held delicately between thumb and forefinger of the hand without the gun. “Use this. Just one little cut. On your face.” With the pistol, he traced a line on his own cheek. “Show me you mean it.” Penny straightened up, and took the blade from him with her right hand. Staring straight ahead at nothing, as if into a mirror, she raised her hand to her right cheekbone, placed the cutting edge of the razor there, and then drew it down in a curving sweep to the corner of her mouth: it was the delicate, assured gesture of a woman applying makeup. When she took her hand away red blossomed in tiny dots, which formed a crescent and then began to run. Within seconds half of her face was awash with blood, dripping onto her neck and shoulders. “Again,” said Hewitt. “The other side.” Obediently she lifted her hand, then stopped and hurled the blade away from her. “It hurts,” she said plaintively. “It stings. Is there some spray or something in the bathroom to make it stop hurting?” “Go and get the razor. You’re not finished.” She frowned. “Oh, yes I am. That’s enough.” “It’s not enough,” he said. “It’ll never be enough.” “It’ll have to be,” she said. “I’m through.” “Oh, yes,” he said. “You’re through.” He raised his hand and squeezed the trigger. Penny’s face exploded. Cerise choked on a scream and backed away, her towel falling off and making her feel even more vulnerable. As she scrambled to find her clothes she heard two more gunshots from the television, and then the sound of Hewitt weeping. Hypocrite, she thought.Murderer. Murderer!

Hewitt hadn’t destroyed a fax; he had killed his wife. She recalled his stubborn determination to have only the best, never to settle for something which wasn’t “real” and knew that Hewitt wouldn’t have been content with a make-believe murder. He was rich enough to buy whatever he wanted—apparently even his wife’s death. Cerise wondered if Timber Oaks was behind it. Had they helped him replace the real woman with a fax? Or had he pulled a switch and fooled them, too? Although she had never met Hewitt’s ex-wife, Cerise knew some of Hewitt’s friends were still in touch with her. After her own experience at Timber Oaks, she did not doubt that a fax could deceive even Penny’s most intimate friends. She dressed as quickly as she could. The feeling of possessing dangerous knowledge made her too nervous to linger any longer in Hewitt’s house than she absolutely must. She took one of Hewitt’s cars because her own was on the other side of town, and drove to a nearby service station to use the telephone. There was a listing for a Penny K. Price, and Cerise dialed the number without stopping to think what she would say. “Could I speak to Penny, please?” “This is she.” The back of her neck prickled at those familiar East Texas vowels. “I’m . . . uh, my name is Cerise Duval, and I wondered . . . I wondered if I could come visit you.” A brief silence, while Cerise cursed herself for rushing into this without some plausible lie, and then the voice said, “You’re Hewitt’s girlfriend.” “That’s right.” “Is Hewitt with you?” “No. I’m by myself. I wondered if I could just drive over now . . . if you’re not too busy.” “I’m not busy. You want to see me?” Cerise bit her lip. “Yes.” “Oh, well, why not. Come on over.” She gave directions to her house. At Timber Oaks, Cerise had been shown the easiest way to tell a fax from a human being. There was a slot in the back of the neck—covered by a flap of fax-flesh—for the insertion of software, and there were sockets (also covered by fax-flesh) at the base of the spine and just under the heart. Unless Penny wore a bikini to receive visitors, Cerise wouldn’t have the opportunity to check for power points, but it shouldn’t be too hard to find the software slot. The Penny who opened the door to her looked exactly like the woman on the tape. It had been more than three years since her murder, but she hadn’t aged a single day. “Cerise?” “Yes. I hope you don’t mind my coming over like this?” Penny shook her head. “That’s fine. I wasn’t doing anything special. . . . Would you like some coffee? Or a diet soda?” “Coffee would be nice, if it isn’t any trouble.”

“No trouble at all. I was just about to put some on for myself.” They both had fallen into the rituals of politeness, and Cerise wondered how they would ever get out. She followed the other woman into a large, light kitchen and hovered in the doorway, watching Penny take coffee pot and filters from a cupboard.She’s not real , she told herself. Why wait? It was never going to be any less embarrassing, any more possible. Penny’s back was to her.Now. Cerise moved swiftly across the floor, reaching for the back of Penny’s neck. Penny yelped, and dropped the box of paper filters, but she didn’t pull away. Instead, after the first seconds of tensed surprise she relaxed and stood still, even inclining her head slightly to make it easier for Cerise. There was nothing beneath her hair but warm, soft flesh, and no matter how Cerise prodded and pulled at it, that flesh did not give way, or part, or pull up. In a swelter of embarrassment, she withdrew. “I’m sorry, I hope I didn’t hurt you, I just . . .” There was no way she was going to be able to think of an acceptable explanation. Not turning around, not looking at her, Penny said, “There isn’t a software slot because there isn’t any software. Just my brain.” “I’m sorry,” Cerise said again, helplessly. “You must think I’m horrible. The thing is, I saw a tape. . . .” Penny turned around. She didn’t look angry or surprised. “And you thought that Hewitt had murdered me and replaced me with a fax. The perfect crime.” “Look, I know about Timber Oaks,” Cerise said. “I went there to murder my husband—a fax of him, I mean, of course. But I know Hewitt—and I just didn’t believe he would have been satisfied with a make-believe murder.” Penny nodded. “You’re right. You do know Hewitt. Do you still want that coffee?” “Oh, yes, please.” She watched Penny pick up the filters and, with a quick sideways glance, go to the sink to fill a kettle. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to grab you and try to find your sockets.” “If you’ll just wait till we’ve had our coffee I’ll take my clothes off and show them to you.” “Look, I’m sorry, I really am. It was stupid of me.” “It wasn’t stupid,” Penny said, stopping and looking directly at her. “And I wasn’t joking.” “What do you mean?” “I’ve still got my brain, so I’m still me, right?” said Penny. “That’s what Hewitt said. That’s what I tell myself. But this . . .” She gave herself a thump, flat-handed, on the breastbone. “Hewitt bought this for me. It’s not the body I was born with. It’s a fax. But I’m not. Supposedly.” “Your whole body,” said Cerise slowly. “Your whole body’s a replacement?” Penny nodded. “I’ve heard about the others they did that to. . . . There’s one man they’ve kept alive for five or six years now, isn’t there?” “ ‘Kept alive,’ ” Penny repeated with a particular emphasis.

“Well, that’s how they say it, that’s how they talk about it on the news, you know.” “Like they had him in a machine. Like this was an iron lung.” Again, Penny patted her breastbone. “Still, he was dying. I wasn’t. I was the first young, healthy subject, so far as I know. There are more than the ones you hear about on the news. Rich old men who don’t want to die. But they have to be convinced they’re dying, first—they don’t want to make the switch too soon, in case it goes wrong, in case it doesn’t work; or in case it’s not really what they’ve been told. In case it isn’t really like life.” “Is it like life?” “Oh, yes, it’s like life.” Penny extended her arm. “Here. Feel. Can you tell any difference?” A little reluctantly, Cerise did as she was asked. Warm, human flesh. But she knew that already, more intimately. She shook her head. “I mean for you. Is it the same for you? Is it really just like life?” “It’s like life,” said Penny. “It’s like life.” She was shaking her head as she spoke. “Hewitt explained it to me. You don’t feel things with your body, you know. The feeling is in your head. You touch my hand, but I don’t feel it with my hand. The nerves in my hand send a message to my brain, and my brain decides what it feels like, and what I feel about it. It’s all in the brain. If I was in a coma, the things that were done to my body wouldn’t register. They wouldn’t matter. I wouldn’t feel them unless my brain knew about them. So this body works just like my old body. It all works perfectly well, and in some ways it’s better. It’s in better shape.” Cerise watched Penny pour boiling water, and the fragrance of fresh coffee rose gently between them. “Why did you do it?” Cerise asked. Penny sighed. “I did it for Hewitt.” She looked down, then directly at Cerise. “And maybe for the money. Partly that, but mostly it was for him. Hewitt thinks he bought me. He thought I married him for his money. . . . Well, of course the money was part of it. If he’d been some broke college kid, the marriage probably wouldn’t have happened. But everybody thought he was such a great catch, and I really wanted to get away from home, and get married, and I thought it would be so great to be his wife, to be Mrs. Hewitt Price. It was OK for a while, and then . . . then it wasn’t. I don’t know what happened. It was like I couldn’t believe in it anymore; I was just going through the motions. Everything looked OK on the surface; Hewitt thought everything was fine. But there wasn’t anything underneath. Maybe I stopped loving him—or maybe I just grew up and realized I never had loved him, and a beautiful house full of expensive things couldn’t make up for that. That was when I told Hewitt I wanted out.” She poured the coffee into blue mugs and put them on the kitchen table. They both sat. Cerise put her hands around the mug, holding the warmth, and waited for Penny to go on. “Hewitt just went crazy. He was sure there was somebody else. There wasn’t. I guess it’s a good thing there wasn’t, because I think Hewitt would have killed him, really killed him. He always had this thing about other men—I don’t know why, since I’m sure I never gave him any cause to be jealous. “I felt horribly guilty, of course. After all, it wasn’t Hewitt’s fault I wasn’t happy. He gave me everything. He didn’t drink, he never hit me . . . but I wanted out. I couldn’t go on like I was, just to make Hewitt happy. Hewitt seemed to think I should, and I guess I thought he was right—I had made a promise, after all, when we married, and he’d kepthis promise. So I was in the wrong, and I owed Hewitt something. We both believed that. He’d fulfilled his part of the bargain, and I hadn’t. I owed him something. So . . . I gave him what he wanted. I gave him my body.” Cerise blew on her coffee, thinking of Hewitt’s jealousy. She remembered how he had questioned her about her marriage, and how he had wanted her to kill Patrick. She had been shocked at first, but he was

persuasive, and he wanted it so much. It was something she was doing for him, not for herself, and so she had let him talk her into it. Cerise no longer believed in such altruism. People couldn’t talk you into things you really didn’t want to do. She said to Penny, “How much did he pay you?” Penny smiled ruefully. “A lot. He made it worth my while. If I left him, he let me know I’d have nothing: no money, no job, nobody to take care of me. Just my freedom, whatever that meant. But if I let him kill me, he’d make sure I was comfortable. A nice place to live, a steady income, a car . . . and this perfect body. This body won’t get sick or fat or old. At the time, that seemed really important. I’d always been terrified of getting old and falling apart physically, afraid of being ugly, and having nobody love me. And the money . . . I’d never had to support myself, you see. I never had a job; I didn’t even finish college. He was offering me the perfect way out, I thought. I could buy my future with my body. That was the same thing I did when I got married. I guess I should have realized that. I guess I only got what I deserved.” “What’s that?” “This pretty surface. It’s like my marriage. All the parts are there, but they don’t add up. There’s something missing. I don’t know what, and I don’t know how to change it. I could get out of my marriage. I don’t know how to get out ofthis .” “Wait a minute—I thought you said it was just like life?” “That’s it,” said Penny. “Likelife. Not life itself. It looks perfect from the outside, but it’s not.” “Didn’t you just tell me—” “Everything works,” Penny said. “All the nerves and senses. But they’re not mine. I’m the only one who knows that I’m not living anymore. That I can’t live. I can only remember.” She gestured at her coffee, still untouched on the table before her. “I know what coffee tastes like. I drink it, and I think I’m tasting that cup, but really I’m remembering coffee I’ve had in the past. If you dumped salt in it without me seeing, I wouldn’t know it, I wouldn’t taste any difference.” “That sounds like something wrong with your sense of taste,” Cerise said. “No, you don’t understand; that’s a bad example. It’s hard to explain. But life is change. . . . And I can’t change anymore; I can’t have new experiences. I don’t have a future, just a past. It’s all fake, memories of life, recycled to make me think I’m still living. I had a boyfriend for a while, but then I realized that I was responding to him, to everything he did or said, as beinglike Hewitt, orlike Mark, orlike Johnny or somebody else I used to know. I could never knowhim .” “But you’ve never metme before. How about that? Do I remind you of someone you already know? And what about this conversation?” “Oh, I can see you,” said Penny, sounding very tired. “You don’t understand. I can hear you, touch you. . . . The information still comes in. It’s like watching television. . . . But watching television isn’t life. It can tell you about life, but it also gets in the way. Ever since the transplant, there’s always something between me and life. This body. It works for me, but it isn’t me. I thought I was trapped before. I didn’t know what it meant to be trapped.” Cerise couldn’t understand what Penny was talking about. She was reminded of Hewitt’s claims to supersensitivity, the way he would take two things she thought were basically the same and call one superior and the other worthless.

“What do you do all day?” Cerise asked. “How do you live?” “There’s the money from Hewitt, so I—oh, you mean how do I spend my time? Well, two days a week I have my volunteer work at the hospital. I see people socially, go to parties. . . . There’s the bridge club. I go shopping. I like to read, and I watch a lot of television. Except that I’m living by myself, it’s not that much different from how I spent my time when I was married to Hewitt.” “Maybe that’s what’s wrong. Maybe it wasn’t Hewitt who trapped you, but a whole way of life. You left him, but you didn’t change anything else. You need to change your life, do something totally different, to make you feel alive again. Move to another city, travel, find a new lover, get yourself a job. . . .” She shrugged, impatient because it seemed so obvious. But Penny was shaking her head, rejecting what Cerise said even before she finished. “You don’t understand,” she said again. “I can’t change my life. It’s too late for that. I can’t make myself feel alive because I’mnot alive.” “Then Hewitt might as well have killed you,” Cerise said. “He might as well have done what I thought he did and killed you and put a fax here in your place. . . . A fax would probably do a better job of it than you; a fax would probably think it was happy!” “He might as well have killed me,” Penny agreed, apparently deaf to the other woman’s irritation. “He took my life away. . . . He might as well have killed my brain, too. Sometimes I wonder if Ican die now, or if I’ll just go on living in this body forever. . . . Sometimes I think he took my death away from me as well as my life. I died, and I didn’t even get to experience it. My own death . . . Hewitt sent me a tape—the same tape you saw—of him killing me. At first I thought it was horrible, I thought it was horribly cruel of him to show me what he’d done. But now I’m glad I have seen it. I’m glad I know. It’s the only evidence I have, I watch it a lot. I look at myself again and again. . . . I watch myself die, and I try to imagine what it was like. I try tofeel it.” She gave Cerise a wistful smile. “It’s the only death I have. . . .” Cerise felt the hairs prickle on the back of her neck.My brain is telling my body to do that because of what Penny is telling me , she thought. She wondered if Penny was crazy. She sounded like a hypochondriac, inventing problems where there were none. And yet . . . what could it be like to lose your whole body, every part of it except the brain, and not die, to go on living in an altered, artificial form? It was impossible to imagine, so maybe it was impossible to explain. Whatever it was, whether it was Penny’s madness or Hewitt’s crime, Cerise realized she’d had enough of it. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I really am sorry you’re not happy. But I have to go now. Thank you for the coffee.” “You’re welcome,” Penny said. “I’ll show you out. . . . It was very nice meeting you. . . . I’m so glad you decided to call. Please, do come again.” Her ordinary, unthinking politeness struck Cerise as surreal, but it took a positive effort to stop herself from joining in with the expected response. Filling in the gap left by the other woman’s silence Penny went on, “Anytime . . . it would be so nice to see you again. And why don’t you bring Hewitt next time?” Cerise stopped by the door and turned to give Penny a hard look. “You don’t mean that. Do you?” “Why, of course.”

“You actually want to see Hewitt again? After what he did to you? Why?” “He won’t see me,” Penny said. “As far as he’s concerned, I’m dead. He killed me, and he paid me for the privilege. I’ve tried to call him. . . . His lawyer told me if I make any more attempts to contact him he’ll stop my monthly payments. But I thought maybe if you said something to him . . . you could tell him that you phoned me; I didn’t get in touch with you; he couldn’t blame me.” “I just don’t understand why you want to see him.” “I don’t either. I probably shouldn’t be saying this to you, of all people, but I’d go back to him if he’d have me. I think about him all the time. Sometimes he seems like the only thing in the world, the only real thing, the only one I care about. If we could get back together, I think maybe we could work things out, maybe it would be all right; he could make it all right.” Cerise felt sick. There was no doubting Penny’s sincerity. “But he’s the one who killed you—I mean, did this to you, made you like this.” Penny nodded. “That’s why. He destroyed me, so he’s the one who can save me. It makes sense, don’t you see?” “No. No it doesn’t. You can’t go back. You’re not the same person who married Hewitt. You’ve got to stop living in the past. You’renot dead, unless you decide to be. Stop remembering—do something new; live .” “If I stop remembering, I will die,” Penny said. “Remembering is all I have. But I can’t expect you to understand that. You’ve still got your life. You’ve got Hewitt.” “You didn’t have to let him kill you,” Cerise said. They looked at each other as if across a great divide. Cerise felt she didn’t breathe again until she was outside the house, alone on the quiet, suburban street. Then, the sense of freedom she felt was intoxicating. She took the videotape they had given her at Timber Oaks out of her bag, threw it to the ground and stamped on it until the plastic broke, then pulled the tape free of its protective casing. No one would ever watch this tape; she would not be able to send it to Patrick now. She wished her own memories could be destroyed as easily, but at least she knew they belonged to the past, like Hewitt. She could cope with the past because she still had a future. She put the keys in the ignition, closed the car door, and walked away from it.

Skin Deep Danny stood on the balcony, rubbing his chest absently and staring into a stranger’s room, loneliness a hunger inside him. On the brown and white speckled floor he saw a black canvas espadrille. It looked tiny, more like a child’s shoe than a woman’s. He could see a chair, and the end of the bed. Slung on a wire hanger something white—a vest or sleeveless shirt—was drying in the still, warm air of the courtyard, blocking part of his view into the room opposite. He waited, but there was no sound from the room, and no one appeared. After a while he went back inside, pulling the glass doors to and bolting them shut. He had been in Bordeaux four days and nothing had happened. He was alone. Left alone, he thought. He still couldn’t believe it. Every time he entered the apartment he knew he was an intruder. Molly, who had

given him the keys, had told him it belonged to Jake and Emma Lowry, friends of her parents from North Texas. Danny had believed her until he arrived and saw how it was furnished; saw the French books and records, the suits hanging in the wardrobe. In the bedroom, in a small wooden box which held cufflinks, keys, coins, and a religious medal, Danny had found a photograph of Molly. It was her passport picture; he had a copy in his billfold. He should have gone right then, and checked into a hotel—maybe even the one across the courtyard, the one with the room he had just been staring into. But he hadn’t come to France to stay in a hotel and be by himself. He wasn’t entirely sure why hehad come to France, after Molly left, but now that he was here he wanted to stay where she would be able to find him, in case she changed her mind again. It had been so sudden, so crazy, the way she had gone off to California with some other guy, leaving Danny with the plane tickets, the keys to a borrowed apartment, a French-English phrase book, and a letter which explained nothing at all. Danny had already sublet his apartment in Austin, and it was too late to register for the university’s summer session anyway. He could have gone back to stay with his parents in Plano, and maybe found a job for three months, but that would have been too humiliating. They hadn’t approved of his plans for the summer; they thought that Molly was leading him around by the nose—that was the phrase his father used in his mother’s presence, anyway. So Danny had had to make a big deal about how much he wanted to go to Europe, how this was a chance he had to take, and a wonderful educational experience. He pointed out that he needed a language to get his degree, and that the best way to learn was by living in a foreign country where he would be forced to speak it regularly. “But you took Spanish in high school,” his mother objected. “That doesn’t mean I can speak it. Anyway, I’m sure I’d like French better. I love all those French movies.” “It’s that girl.” Danny shrugged his big shoulders uneasily. “Of course I’d rather be with her,” he said. “Maybe I wouldn’t have thought of going to France without her, but it makes sense. She’s really good at French, so she’ll help me. It always helps to have somebody to study with, so I’m bound to learn more. But it’s not just Molly. I could stay here and work construction like last year, but why should I, except for the money? I’ve never been anywhere. Travel is an educational experience. Everybody says so. Don’t you think I should do different things, see the world, while I can?” “We’re not giving you any extra money,” said his father. “I know that. I’m not asking you to. I’ve got enough. And we’ve got a free place to live. That’s another good reason for going with Molly. We can live really cheap. Her parents have these friends who have a place in Bordeaux that they’re going to let us use for free.” Danny hadn’t told his parents when Molly left him. They would be relieved, and smug, and sorry for him, and he couldn’t stand that. He’d shrugged it off to his friends, saying that he’d have a lot more fun in France without a steady girlfriend tying him down, and most of them, he thought, had bought it. After all, they knew that before Molly he had gone out with a different girl practically every weekend. For Danny, there were always plenty to choose from. They didn’t know, most of them, that Molly was different. The plane ticket was already paid for, so he might as well go to France. Maybe it would be an educational experience, like he’d told his parents. And maybe Molly would change her mind again. He knew that, without her, he was going to feel lonely wherever he was. What he hadn’t realized was just how lonely he would feel, alone in a foreign country. He missed not only Molly, but all sorts of things he had always taken for granted: the availability of uncomplicated companionship, people he could sit

around with and talk about football or music; stuff on television; the old familiar places for hanging out. And it was always easy to meet girls in Texas—you just started talking to them wherever you saw them: in the supermarket, behind the counter at the Burger King, sitting on the rim of the campus fountain, their pretty faces turned up to the sun. But here, here he was frozen, unable to make a move because he did not speak their language. Danny put on a clean shirt and went out for dinner. He was already in the habit of going to the same place every night, a cheap, comfortable, family restaurant on the Quai de la Monnaie. Molly would never have let him get away with that, but Danny liked the sense of continuity it gave him. He liked the way the fat, homely waitress beamed with pleasure when she recognized him. For variety, Danny traveled a different route every time. He never worried about getting lost—he had a strong sense of direction, and this was a port city. Despite the ancient, weirdly twisting streets, it was never difficult to untangle the way to the waterfront. He thought of this as sightseeing, a way of getting to know this foreign place, and he didn’t enjoy it much. Walking through narrow back streets, many of them cobbled, trying to avoid the traffic and the dog turds, was a tortuous and tiring experience. He guessed the old buildings ought to be interesting, but he didn’t like to draw attention to himself by stopping and staring too obviously. He knew that his clothes, his attitude, even his size, marked him out as a foreigner. He couldn’t help that, but he didn’t want to look like a stupid tourist, so he always walked as if he knew exactly where he was going, and was expected somewhere at a specific time. His roundabout walk took him a little longer than usual that evening, and for the first time all the tables were occupied when he arrived. Danny hovered uneasily in the doorway, but before he could do more than think about going away, the waitress had spotted him and steered him, with a rambling, incomprehensible speech, to a seat at a table with two women. “Um,excusez-moi ,” said Danny. He felt very large, looming between two petite, blonde females. “You’re American?” Danny smiled broadly, relief cheering him even more than the first glass of wine always did. “Yes! You too?” He looked at his companions now with open interest. The prettier one had to be at least thirty, but the one with glasses was probably closer to his own age. “Good heavens, no,” said the older one. “English. I’m Abigail, and this is Tommie.” “Abigail. Tommie. I’m Danny. It’s good to meet you.” Tommie and Abigail looked at each other, almost smiling. “Have you been here long?” asked Danny. “You probably come over to France a lot from England, right?” “Right,” said Abigail. “Business as well as pleasure. Right now, we’re on a wine-buying trip.” “Youare,” said Tommie. “I’m just along for the ride.” She looked at Danny. “This is my first time in Bordeaux.” No beauty, but she was kind of cute, he thought, admiring the fit of her scoop-necked T-shirt. “Me too,” he said. “In fact, this is my first time to France . . . my first time to Europe . . . my first timeanywhere outside America.” “And what do you think of it?”

“Well. It’s certainly very . . . French.” Danny was enjoying himself more than he had in what seemed like a very long time. It was so easy, no effort at all to make Tommie giggle and respond—at first with his words, but soon simply by a look or a smile. He had to be more careful with Abigail. She wasn’t so easy, and he didn’t want her to feel like the odd one out. If he was to have a chance with Tommie alone, he couldn’t risk getting on the wrong side of her friend. At the end of the meal—eaten at the leisurely pace of the French—Danny felt they were all good friends, and was confident of agreement when he suggested they move on to a sidewalk café for a brandy. “What a very good idea,” said Tommie. “That’s my favorite part of France: sitting in cafés, drinking, watching the world go by. . . . I could spend hours like that. But I’m a night owl, Abby’s not. She’ll want to go back to the hotel and have an early night.” “I would like a brandy,” said Abigail. “Oh, well, all right; just one, then,” said Tommie. Danny would have stopped at the first café he saw, but the women insisted they must make some token gesture to exercise after their meal, and so, avoiding the dark back streets, they wandered along the avenues for a quarter of an hour until Tommie called a halt by seating herself at a small, round metal table in front of a well-lit café calling itselfDes Arts . “We’ll wait here till Hem comes by,” she said. “I’d rather see Gertie,” said Abigail. “Youwould. ” “Who?” They looked at him. “Quite right,” said Abigail. “This isn’t Paris. If any dead author came by here it would be Mauriac.” “He’s not my idea of good company. Don’t offer him a drink if hedoes show up.” Conversation had been easy in the restaurant, but now Danny felt out of his depth. He was relieved to see the waiter arriving with their drinks. “What are y’all doing tomorrow?” Danny asked. “I mean . . . did y’all have plans?” “Y’all . . . I love that,” said Abigail. “It sounds so much nicer thanyou-all —I thought that was what Southerners were supposed to say. You-all. Y’all. But what’s the proper response? Should I saywe’ll —not we-all, surely—do folks in Texas saywe’ll instead ofwe ?” “Of course they don’t,” said Tommie. “Really, Abby, you are too silly.We is already plural. But English doesn’thave a plural form ofyou , or it didn’t until the Texans kindly invented one.” “Thereis no plural form ofme ,” said Abigail. “But I suppose they must teach grammar differently in Texas. I love, you love, y’all love; he, she, and it love. . . .” “What I meant,” said Danny, looking at Tommie, “was that maybe, if you didn’t have any plans, we could—”

“We’ll be in St. Emilion tomorrow,” said Abigail. “I will, anyway . . . Tommie may want to change her mind.” “I’m not missing my favorite wine,” said Tommie with a vigorous shake of her head. “So . . . you’re leaving Bordeaux?” Tommie looked at him. She reached across the table and briefly touched his hand. “It’s just a day trip. We’ll be back.” “Maybe we could have dinner then? I mean, all three of us?” “Maybe,” said Tommie. “Tell me where you’re staying, and I’ll be in touch.” “It’s not a hotel; it’s an apartment, on the Rue St-François. And there’s a telephone.” He tore the order form out of the back of hisFrench for Travelers book, and wrote down the address and telephone number for her. “Tomorrow?” “Maybe. If we’re back in time. Don’t wait for us, though.” “I’m sure we’ll run into each other again,” Abigail said. “We’ll be traveling a lot, but Bordeaux is our base.” Tommie knocked back her brandy. “We’d better go,” she said. “This stuff is going to take effect in a few minutes, and I want to be near a bed when it does.” She smiled at Danny. “Thanks for the drink. It was a lovely evening.” “Yes, we’ve enjoyed sharing a table with you,” said Abigail. “We must do it again sometime.” “Wait, I—” “No, no, don’t get up. The night is young. There’s no reason for you to turn in just because we are. Besides, we’re not going in your direction. Stay and have another drink. We’ll meet again.” “Au revoir,”said Tommie. “Au revoir,”he echoed. He felt lonely as soon as they had gone, out of place by himself at the small table. He ordered one more brandy, and, as he swirled the heavy liquid around the bowl of the glass, dreamed of Tommie’s voice on the phone; of seeing her face light with pleasure at the sight of him; of walking alone with her through the twisting streets of Bordeaux. When her face became Molly’s, he decided it was time to turn in for the night. Entering the dark bedroom, Danny saw that there was a light on in the room across the courtyard. Without stopping to think about it, Danny opened the doors and stepped onto the balcony. And, suddenly, there she was, a tall, slender figure half in shadow, half illuminated, like something from a dream. The breath caught in his throat at the sight; he thought he had never seen anything more beautiful. She looked back at him, unsmiling. She must have seen him, a dark figure on a dark balcony. There was nothing but air between them. Danny knew he should speak, but he was struck dumb. The simplest French words had gone out of his head, and he could not speak to her in English. Not only did it seem rude, but the scope for misunderstanding seemed horrifying. If onlyshe would speak first; say some word to identify herself or acknowledge him—

A blink, and she vanished. Had she ducked down, or calmly moved aside? Danny couldn’t tell. He waited, hoping for her return. The light from her room went out. In the sudden, enveloping darkness, Danny’s skin crawled. He stepped backwards, into the room, closed the doors, locked them, and drew the curtains across to shut out the night. As he lay in bed, waiting for sleep, he tried to remember what the woman in the hotel room had looked like. All he could recall was an impression of great, and strange, beauty. She had been exotic, not ordinary, but he could not recall what had given him that impression. Was she Asian? Her hair, he thought, had been dark. . . . But as he fell into sleep even those few, physical details were forgotten. In his dreams she and Tommie and Molly were one. Yet the next time he saw her, he recognized her immediately. It was late morning the next day. He’d had his coffee and croissants in a café by himself, and was already feeling bored with the day and his plan to visit the Galerie des Beaux Arts, about which Abigail had been so enthusiastic. He was wandering along the Cours Victor Hugo when he saw the woman seated alone at a sidewalk table. His heart began to race. “Bonjour,”he called, approaching, smiling.“Bonjour, Mademoiselle.” She looked at him with fathomless black eyes, and he could not tell if she had recognized him or was seeing him for the first time, but—“Bonjour,” she said. “Puis-je—?”he gestured at the table. But she gave no indication of understanding. He fumbled in his pocket for the English-French phrase book and finally found out how to ask if he could join her.“Me permettez-vous de m’asseoir ici?” She shrugged, then nodded. It was not a warm invitation, but he took permission eagerly, gratefully, scraping a chair up to the little round table and gazing at her, wanting nothing else in the world but to be allowed to look at her. Already, he was certain he could never grow tired of looking at her, or accustomed to her beauty. Of what did that beauty consist? Her eyes were so dark they could only be called black; he could see no division between pupil and iris. They were not exactly oriental eyes, but neither were they occidental. Her lips were thin rather than full, her nose rather flat. Her hair, black and shining, was short, cut sleekly against the outline of her skull. Her skin had a warm, coppery-golden glow. Danny looked at her arm lying on the cold white enamel surface of the table and he struggled against the desire to touch it, to test the warmth and smoothness he could almost feel against his tongue. It was a relief when the waiter came and Danny could look away. He ordered two coffees. “Parlez-vous anglais?”Danny asked the woman. “Non.” His heart sank, but Danny drew a deep breath and turned again to his phrase book. There was a section called “Making Friends.” He looked at the limited selection of conversational openings, feeling frustrated before he began. He was never going to find out what he wanted to know. He wanted to know everything. He decided to start with her nationality. “D’où êtes-vous?”he asked. She said something he couldn’t quite hear.

“Pardon?” She repeated it: a single word, but one he didn’t understand. “Je ne comprends pas.” She shrugged. “C’est une ville? Une ville française?” She shook her head.“C’est mon pays.” Her country.“Quelle est votre nationalité?” She said something, maybe the same word, Danny wasn’t sure. He didn’t recognize it as the name of any country he knew. He looked through the list in his phrase book, where the names of continents and countries were given in both French and English, and he offered it to her. She glanced at the page for barely a second, shrugged and looked away. Maybe she couldn’t read. He asked her name:“Comment vous appelez-vous?” She turned her head and gave him a sideways look. It was, somehow, an intimate look; almost as if she had touched him. “Je m’appelle Shesha,”she said. “Shesha? Shesha,” he said. And then again, tasting it. “Shesha.” She smiled at him, and he smiled back. He patted his chest. “Danny,” he explained.“Je m’appelle Danny.” “Danny,” she said. He had never heard his name sound foreign before. She smiled again, and this time he saw the quick movement of tongue between her lips. Without thinking, he reached for her. It was only his hand on hers, but at the contact the expression froze on her face, and she pulled away. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I mean, uh,pardon, excusez-moi , I didn’t mean anything by it, just—” “Au revoir,”she said, standing and leaving him in a single, smooth, graceful motion. “Wait—please—Shesha—” But he was clumsy and slow. She had taken him by surprise; he had to pay for the coffee before he could run after her, and then he found that she had vanished down some twisting alley and was gone. Danny cursed himself in a low, bitter voice, using the foulest expressions he knew. Then he calmed himself, and continued on his way to the city art gallery. It wasn’t the end of the world. She was shy and he had been clumsy, but he would see her again, and he could repair the damage. He would study his phrase book carefully over lunch, and work out some sort of apology that she would understand. Maybe they didn’t speak the same language, but they would work out a way to communicate. He was certain he had not misunderstood her smile; it was just that his timing was a little off. He went home in the late afternoon, and then, although bored, restless, and hungry, waited several hours before going out to dinner, hoping for a glimpse of the woman across the courtyard, and hoping, also, that Tommie would call. But the telephone did not ring, and there was no sign of life in the hotel room. He

went out, finally, had a meal by himself in the usual place, and then proceeded to the café where he had said goodbye to Abigail and Tommie and sat there sipping brandy and staring at passers-by. He was on his third brandy when he saw the two Englishwomen. His heart lifted, and he sat up straighter in his chair, hoping that he wasn’t drunk. He wanted to call to them, but decided to wait until they were closer. They were walking toward the café and would probably see him in a minute anyway. Abigail was talking, head down, concentrating on her words and not her surroundings. Tommie might or might not have been listening to her companion; her head was up and her eyes glanced around, her attention quick and changeable. Then she saw him. Danny was sure of it. Their eyes met across the distance. He grinned, waiting for her answering smile. It never came. She turned her head and said something to Abigail, touching her arm, turning her away. They crossed the street without another glance in his direction. Danny couldn’t believe it. What the hell was going on? Women didn’t run away from him—they never had, until Molly. But since Molly . . . had her desertion marked him in some way? Did he seem desperate? And Tommie, that plain, plump little girl, who did she think she was? Who did she thinkhe was, to treat him like a social leper? Anger boiled up inside him, but it couldn’t disguise the fact that, more than anger, he felt hurt and loneliness. Tommie and her rudeness mattered even less than the nameless, black-eyed beauty who had abandoned him earlier that day, and both of them were nothing compared to Molly. Molly, who had said that she loved him. Molly, who had left him, for reasons she couldn’t explain or he understand. He didn’t want to think about Molly. He ordered another brandy. As he was making his drunken, wavering way home, he saw a figure waiting for him in the shadows on the corner nearest his apartment building. He recognized the slim figure instantly. He knew he had something to say to her when they met again, but he could not recall the words now. He turned his head away. He would have his meaningless, drunken revenge now by elaborately and obviously ignoring her. But Shesha did not let him pass. She grabbed his arm with a grip a wrestler might have envied. “Excusez-moi,”she said. “Danny.Je suis désolée . . . s’il vous plaît, Danny . . .” There was more, which he did not understand. But out of the rush and stumble of words he understood two things. One, that she was apologizing for having run away from him earlier; and two, that French was no more her language than it was his. “It’s OK,” he said, his words cutting across the hard work of hers. He wanted to reassure her in French, too, but couldn’t remember how. “It’s all right. I forgive you. Hey, don’t you speak any English at all?” She looked blank. “OK,” he said loudly. “OK.Comprends, OK?” He stared at her until she read the meaning in his face. Her anxious expression relaxed, and she nodded. He looked down to where she still gripped his arm, painfully hard. She let go. They looked at each other, strangely shadowed in the sodium glow of the street-lamps. He thought again how beautiful she was, although it was memory and fantasy rather than sight which told him this.

She smiled at him. Her eyes and her mouth glinted softly out of the darkness. “Danny.” He thought he knew what that meant, but when he moved to kiss her, she slipped out of his grasp and would not be held. “Shesha, please.S’il vous plaît. ” She shook her head and stayed teasingly out of reach. He stared at her, dizzy with drink and desire. “Come home with me.” “Hmmm?” “Chez moi.”He suddenly remembered the words of an old song.“Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?” She took a step back, but still smiled.“Pas encore.” “Not yet?” That was hopeful, at least. “When?Quand? ” Her shoulders rippled and she looked up, making a gesture at the sky. Danny put his head back and saw a thin slice of moon floating above the city. “Pas encore . . . pas ce soir,”she said. Not yet, not tonight. What did that mean? He tried to touch her, but she evaded him easily. “Just one kiss,” he said pleadingly. He held up a finger, and touched it to his lips. “Just one.” She shook her head.“Pas encore.” “When, then?” He remembered the word for tomorrow. “Demain?” She hesitated.“Demain,” she said, and paused. Then, more firmly,“Demain, demain.” “Tomorrow,” said Danny. “Well, I probably am too drunk to be much good to you tonight, you’re right. But tomorrow. I’ll hold you to that, you know; I can find you.” “Demain, demain,”she said again. Then:“Au revoir.” She slipped away on the word, around the corner, and vanished into the shadows. He did not pursue her. He listened to the sound of her heels against the stone. He inhaled deeply, then wrinkled his nose at the familiar whiff of drains. His body was tingling. He looked up at the moon again. “Demain,” he said to the empty street, and he made his way home. As he was undressing for bed, Danny found that Shesha’s grip on his arm had left a mark, a thin, reddish weal such as might be left by the impress of a rubber band. He rubbed at it and, to his relief, it soon faded. They were sitting in a café, at a round metal table, and staring into each other’s eyes. Danny suddenly realized that he couldn’t look away from her, no matter how he tried. She might have hypnotized him. Then she blinked, and the spell was broken, and Danny woke, heart pounding hard with fright. There had been something wrong about the way she blinked her eyes, something not normal. And he had the feeling that it wasn’t just in the dream, that it was something he had noticed about her earlier and was

just now remembering, just now making sense of. That was what was so frightening about it. That it was real, and not normal. Just before he fell back to sleep, Danny understood what it was: she had closed her eyes from bottom to top. In the morning (it’sdemain, he thought) Danny realized no definite rendezvous had been arranged with Shesha. He decided to wander around the city as usual, see a couple of churches, do some shopping, sit in cafés writing postcards home, and let her find him. She could find him if she wanted to, he thought. But the day passed and there was no sign of her. At five o’clock, Danny went back to his apartment, planning to have a shower and change before going out to dinner. He went out onto the balcony and looked across the courtyard. The shutters had been closed that morning, but they were open now, and he could see Shesha. She was wearing an extra-large T-shirt, pacing the floor and rubbing her bare arms as if she were cold. She moved in and out of his line of sight, apparently unaware of him. He stared, and tried to will her to look his way, but she never turned her head. Her face was as still as a mask, eyes fixed on something he couldn’t imagine. Watching her, Danny felt both fear and desire. He remembered the dream—if it had been a dream—and felt again the strength of her fingers encircling his arm. He remembered the tip of her tongue, glinting between her lips. Her beauty was a power he didn’t understand. He wanted to kiss her and to hold her, to feel her tongue in his mouth and her arms and legs wrapped fiercely around him. He didn’t even pause to close the balcony door as he went out. There were small sounds of movement from within, but they stopped as soon as he knocked.“C’est moi,” he said. “It’s Danny.” He waited, listening to the silence, and then he knocked again. After a very long time she opened the door. She looked at him without expression. He saw fine lines around her eyes, and wondered if she was older than he had thought. Maybe it was just dry skin: it looked duller today, lacking the marvelous golden glow he remembered. The T-shirt, which fell almost to her knees, was white. Big black letters across the front spelledSUCCESS . “Bonjour,”he said. She said nothing. He had the weird feeling that she didn’t remember him. He kept a friendly expression on his face.“Voulez-vous sortir avec moi?” Do you want to go out with me? She shook her head again. Danny reminded himself that this was not her language, either.“Para manger,” he said, uncertain if that was right. He mimed eating and drinking. “Food. Dinner. Yes?” She shook her head again. Still he didn’t get mad.“Pourquoi?” Shesha sighed, and made a strange, writhing motion with one hand.“Je ne pas prête.” “Prête?”He remembered that meant “ready”. “Oh, you mean you’re not dressed. That’s OK; I’ll wait. Je restez . . . vous . . . vous . . .” Awkwardly he mimed putting on clothes.

“Demain,”she said. “Demain . . .dammit, itis demain, it’sdemain now,aujourd’hui, today!” “Demain,”she repeated with no more expression or emphasis than before. “Pourquoi demain?” She made the motion, with her hand again. What did it mean? What was she trying to mime? He thought of a fish, or a snake, or an eel swimming.“Demain . . . je change . . . je change ma peau.” “Change? Change what? How?Pourquoi no aujourd’hui? ” Frustrated by his lack of words he moved toward her, into the room, but she held up a hand like a traffic cop, stopping him. “Pas encore. Demain.” He was sick of being turned away, refused, and ignored for reasons which were never explained. He grabbed hold of her arm, hardly knowing whether he meant to push her aside or pull her to him, but rough with the intention of hurting, of showing her that he meant it. She hissed. Beneath his fingers, the flesh of her arm split open, the skin bursting beneath the pressure and tearing like desiccated rubber. Something dark and wet glistened beneath the brittle, broken skin. Danny recoiled. He was shaking. She wasn’t. She cradled the injured arm to her breast and looked at him, almost smiling. “Demain,”she said.“Demain, ma peau . . .” with her other hand she made a sweeping, slicing gesture from forehead to crotch, and then she did smile, and showed him the tip of her tongue. “Pardon,”said Danny hoarsely, backing away down the hall.“Je suis désolé . . . excusez-moi, pardon.” “Au revoir,Danny,” she said.“A demain.” “No way,” Danny muttered to himself, halfway down the stairs. He was never going to see her again if he could help it. It made no difference how beautiful she was, or how lonely he was—there was something seriouslywrong with her. Wrong mentally, he didn’t doubt, as well as physically. The worst thing was that, despite his revulsion, he was still aroused. He decided it was time to leave Bordeaux, time to give up the fantasy that Molly would come back to him. In the morning he would take a train to Paris, and after a week there maybe he would go to London. At least the people there would speak English. When he ran out of money, he would fly back to Texas. He didn’t have to explain his decision to anyone. After dinner in a new restaurant, Danny walked down to the train station to check the schedule and buy himself a one-way ticket to Paris. He felt more at ease with that settled, and stopped in a bar for one farewell cognac before going home to bed. As soon as he stepped through the door, Danny knew something was wrong. His body, tensed to run or fight, knew even before his brain figured it out. There was a lamp glowing gently in one corner. And there she was, glowing in the light of it, standing in the bedroom doorway, naked as the day she was born. She was impossibly beautiful. Her skin had a silvery sheen, unlike anything he’d ever seen.She was unlike anything he’d ever seen. He could have gone on looking at her forever.

“Bonsoir,Danny.Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?” He did, oh, how he did. She was his dream come true. And he was terrified. Danny shook his head. He fumbled for the words that would make her leave.“Laissez-moi tranquille,” he said. Leave me alone. She laughed at him. “Danny,” she said, caressingly, and then something else which he didn’t understand. She beckoned, and the movement made her arm shimmer. He saw that the skin was loose, about to fall off. “Dépêchez-vous,”she said. Hurry up. She smiled at him and backed into the bedroom, naked, shimmering, desirable, terrifying. Sweating, he took a few steps forward. It had to be a joke, a trick of some kind. That couldn’t really be her skin coming off. She had wrapped herself in plastic, or painted herself with glue. He could hear her in the bedroom, chanting in what he took to be her own language. If snakes could sing, would they sound like that? Reaching the door, he closed his eyes and pulled it shut. It was a big, heavy door with an old-fashioned skeleton key which worked from either side. His hands shook like an old man’s as he locked her out of his sight. Out of sight, but not out of hearing. As the tumblers in the lock clicked heavily home, Danny heard her voice soar high in surprise or sorrow. He waited, sweating, for what came next. Surely she would assault the door, or plead with him in her primitive French. But nothing happened. Silence now on the other side of the door. Danny sat heavily down on the couch. His passport, money, clothes were all in the other room with her, and that meant he was trapped. He couldn’t leave. He couldn’t do anything but wait for her to make the next move. He woke with a start to find himself sitting on the couch. Wondering, he stood up and began taking off his shirt as he walked toward the bedroom. When he saw the locked door he remembered. He touched the wood. “Shesha?” Nothing. Perhaps he had dreamed the whole thing? He leaned against the door, pressing his ear against it, and listened. He thought he heard a rustling noise, and the sound of irregular breathing, but those might have been the sounds he made himself. Danny felt weak and exhausted, and he remembered the fear he had felt earlier. He remembered how the skin had hung on her, and the sight of her tongue between her lips, and knew that no matter how crazy it was, he was not ready to open that door. Finally, he stumbled back to the couch and lay down. His heart was beating so hard he was sure he would never fall asleep, but when he opened his eyes the room was light. Somehow the night had passed. He sat up and looked around the room. Everything was ordinary. His legs were cramped from the way he had been lying. He looked at the locked door and listened to the silence, beginning to feel ashamed of himself. If she was still in there— I won’t say anything, he told himself.I won’t kiss her. I won’t let her touch me. I’ll just get my things together and go.

The key made a very loud noise when he turned it, and Danny winced. “Shesha?” She was lying on the bed. The sight of her body outlined by the window-light aroused such a mixture of emotions—relief, shame, desire—that even if he’d had words to express them he would have been too choked to speak. It was only as he was standing over her, hand descending toward her naked shoulder to wake her gently, that he realized it was not a woman on the bed, but merely the shell of one. An almost perfect shell. A fine line bisected her from scalp to crotch, showing where the outer casing had split open. What had come out of it? Danny whirled, scanning the floor. His skin crawled, but he forced himself to bend low enough to see under the bed. There was nothing there but a few dust-balls. The balcony doors were open. Whatever she was, whatever she had been, she was gone. He looked at what she had left behind. The skin was translucent, not transparent, and if he didn’t look too closely he could almost believe it held solid flesh. It had the same dusky golden skin-tone he had admired in life. He touched it gently, but his fingertips told him nothing. Cautiously he lifted her, gathering her into his arms, and then he couldn’t help himself: he pressed his lips to hers as if he could breathe life back into the hollow shell and kiss her awake. At the first, moist touch of his lips, hers dissolved. He cried out, and her face crumbled before the blast. At the same time the pressure of his embrace, gentle though it was, shattered the illusion of wholeness, and the woman-shell disintegrated. Ash, skin fragments, dust, covered him and the bed, clung to his body and clothes, drifted to the floor to be carried off by the passing breeze. Soon he would have nothing left of her, not even the certain memory that she had ever existed. Danny sat alone on the bed and told himself that he was safe.

Dead Television P ersonally, I blame Thomas Alva Edison. I know most people hold Marcus Vandergaard responsible, but Marcus, though he could never admit it, was only the dead inventor’s tool. Yes, of course I’m prejudiced—I can’t deny that I loved Marcus—but I’m alsoright . Check this, from Edison’s 1920 diary: “If what we call personality exists after death, and that personality is anxious to communicate with those of us who are still in the flesh on this earth, there are two or three kinds of apparatus which should make communication very easy. I am engaged in the construction of one such apparatus now, and I hope to be able to finish it before very many months pass.” Marcus always liked being compared to Edison. He, too, was a brilliant, eccentric maverick with a wide-ranging, startlingly creative intelligence and a talent for making money. He was too easily bored and too quirky to make a good team-worker, and he couldn’t limit himself enough to be a specialist. He liked to follow his ideas wherever they took him, and to go there by himself.

But unlike Edison, Marcus had no mystical leanings. He was a solid, skeptical materialist, and I’m sure he had no sympathy with Edison’s weird theory about memory consisting of subparticles which traveled through space and lodged, in swarms, in human brains, creating intelligence. After death, Edison thought, the swarm might disperse, or stay together until they found a new host for the original personality. I’m certain Marcus never believed in reincarnation, nor in the survival of the personality after death—until, of course, we allhad to believe it. So why should his genius lead him in that direction? I am no scientist. But I have my own talent—I might even say genius, if that didn’t sound immodest. But others have called me genius, and surely not all the critical acclaim can be put down to the novelty value of a serious composer and orchestral conductor who is also a fairly attractive young woman. The work survives. At least, I hope it will. Anyway, having my own talent, I understand what drove Marcus. Even without understanding what he did, I know how the work can take over, demanding expression. Maybe, for Marcus, dead television began as a joke, or as something else entirely. Maybe it was unintentional. I once sat down to write a song for my niece’s birthday; three weeks later it was a chamber opera. I used to think I was most myself when I was composing, which may seem odd because there is also the sense at those times of beingtaken over by inspiration, of being inhabited by some other force, greater than oneself. It can’t be forced or willed, that divine gift, that possession. I miss it, sometimes, but I won’t let it happen again. The possible results are too terrifying. Composing isn’t just a matter of inspiration, of course. There’s the work that follows. The construction. The fooling around. The hard slog. The mistakes. The testing and discarding, the reluctant compromises, the agony, frustration, dreariness, boredom, and depression of writing music, leading to the ultimate, always qualified and partial, satisfaction. And I miss the work just as much as I miss the divine gift. Neither means anything alone—they have to go together. It was Edison (again!) who composed the formula my high-school music teacher used to write on the blackboard: “Genius is one percent inspiration, and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” What I’m saying is, that one percent in Marcus Vandergaard may have been Edison, swarming around the cosmos for years as a disincarnate entity, desperate for a chance to make himself real again. Everybody remembers where they were when it first happened, and I am no exception. I was the second person in the world to have the experience. Naturally, I didn’t understand what it meant at the time. I’d just come back from a two-week tour with the orchestra. The air in the house was stale and dusty and it felt deserted, but when I saw all the cups and coffee mugs—every single one in the house—piled unwashed in the sink, and the empty McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken wrappers spilling out of the bin, I suspected I’d find Marcus out back in his workshop. As I passed through the living room again I noticed that the TV was missing, but because the VCR and CD player were still in place I suspected Marcus rather than a burglar. I was right. He was in his workshop, watching television. “Hello, darling,” I said. “Working hard?” He gave me a brief, distracted glance. “Isn’t it amazing?” I stood beside him and looked at the screen. On it was an actor dressed in a 1920s-style, three-piece, cream-colored suit, lecturing vigorously about the uselessness of the public school system. The actor looked like the elderly Thomas Edison, but the picture—in color—was obviously not a film. It was either live television or good quality tape, and the reception was clear and vivid, much better than I’d ever seen on that particular set. “You fixed the picture?” I guessed.

Marcus was too absorbed to reply. To be polite, and because I had missed him, I went on watching for a few minutes more in silence. But it was a remarkably boring production. The actor just went on and on in a crotchety, opinionated sort of way about teachers, the school system, and kids today. It was probably an accurate representation of Edison, I thought, but who cared? And there was nothing else, no setting, just a black backcloth behind him. Finally I got tired of waiting for Marcus to explain what was so interesting about it. “Are you picking this up on the dish, or is it local?” “It’s Edison.” “I can see that, but what’s the play? Who’s doing it?” Finally he looked at me. “Oh, you’re back. Aren’t you early?” “No, it’s been two weeks.” “Oh. Well, I’m glad you’re back.” He didn’t ask about the tour, which was usual, or kiss me, which wasn’t. His attention was still on the screen, and that struck me as strange. This was a man who never watched television: his boredom threshold was too low, his other interests too demanding. It had to be something technical that interested him—was the reception really that remarkable? “Can’t you switch it to something better?” I asked. “There’s only the one channel. I suppose somebody else might come through later, but Edison is just who I was hoping to see. It couldn’t be better.” “What do you mean? Marcus, whatis this?” “It’s Thomas Alva Edison. Out of the flesh. I’ve invented dead television.” IfI had ever thought of trying to construct an “apparatus” for communicating with the dead it would surely have been a telephone, not television. A telephone implies reciprocity, two-way communication, individuals taking turns talking and listening. With television, the message travels one way only, and the viewer is forced into the role of passive receiver. You don’thave to listen; you can turn it off, or switch to something else, but talking back to your television set is a futile exercise. So many of the modern dead—including Edison—have been preserved on film and tape that it can’t have been the desire simply to see and hear his heroes that led Marcus to convert our television set for their use. He acted on Edison’s inspiration, but he had his own reasons and his own methods. Television, and not telephone, because he didn’t want to talk to the dead—Marcus found it enough of a chore talking to the living. Once I began living with him it became my responsibility to maintain the few non-professional relationships in his life. He seldom answered the phone, or even listened to the messages that piled up on the answering machine tape, which meant—since he never made phone calls unless they involved some absolutely vital transfer of information—that whenever I was away from home I was effectively cut off from him. I’m sure it was psychologically easier for him to construct a receiver which might never receive than attempt to initiate a conversation with the dead. It seems impossible now, but Marcus didn’t believe in existence after death. He offered the dead a channel like some cable-TV magnate giving one free to a minority group as a tax write-off—but never expected them actually to use it. Marcus himself never knew why he did it—the idea simply took him over, as others had done before—but it was certainly no reflection of his personal belief. Quite the contrary. And it was his very

lack of belief which allowed him to succeed, which made his success so deadly. The dead have always had their channels to the living. Psychics, mediums, “channellers,” priests, shamans, all the different names for the possessed believers. Because in the past, belief was a necessary component. If you didn’t believe in them, the dead wouldn’t speak to you—they couldn’t. What Marcus did, by his very lack of belief, was to remove belief as a necessary factor. He gave them technology, which works whether you believe in it or not. Once they had converted from spiritual to electronic power, there was no stopping them. For a genius, Marcus could be awfully stupid. It never occurred to him that what he was doing might be undesirable, even dangerous. To be fair to him, even if he had thought of it, why should it have seemed a bad thing? It is hard to believe now, but there was a time not long ago when people thought communication with the dead was too good rather than too bad to be true. At first, the dead appeared only on sets which Marcus specially converted, and at first they were all scientists. Thomas Edison would talk for hours, without stumble or pause, but when he faltered he would flicker and vanish from the screen, replaced immediately by some other chatty spirit. I recall Alexander Graham Bell, Michael Faraday, Albert Einstein, Rosalind Franklin, Enrico Fermi, and Marie Curie, but there were plenty more who were unrecognizable, and many who did not speak English. News of “the Vandergaard effect,” or dead television, spread rapidly, of course. Even when reporters sneered and punned, newsreaders twitched ironic eyebrows, or frankly disbelieved, they still reported “the news,” and taped the dead speakers off the small screen of our television set, allowing satellite technology to transmit the information, with sound and pictures, all across the world. A lot of people didn’t believe it, of course: they called it a hoax, or mass hysteria. But belief was no longer the issue, as I have said. It didn’t make any difference whether or not you believed the dead could speak as long as you saw them posturing or heard their weirdly uninflected voices on the evening news. Within a matter of weeks the dead were appearing on television sets throughout the world; on ordinary television sets unconverted by Marcus. And it wasn’t only dead scientists who could come back. Information was the key now, not belief, and anyone who knew the dead could appear on television might turn on the set and discover their late great-grandmother on screen reciting her recipe for sweet potato pie, or see Marilyn Monroe pouting sadly and whispering breathily. For the most part, the apparitions were relatives or ancestors or famous dead people with whom the viewers felt some affinity. For example, artists appeared to artists and art-lovers; dead presidents, kings, and queens appeared to historians, chief executive officers, and habitual readers of popular biography; and dead film stars were absolutely everywhere. If natives deep in the Brazilian jungle weren’t haunted by the dead it was only because they hadn’t heard the news yet because they didn’t have the technology. I mention Brazil because I’m pretty sure that’s where Marcus went when he disappeared. I imagine him in the middle of whatever few acres are left of the Brazilian rainforest, beyond the reach of the information network which his obsessive tinkering took away from us, the living, and delivered into the power of the dead. Is there such a place left in the world? If so, I think it won’t be safe for very long. Poor Marcus. He was as much a victim as the rest of us. He didn’t know what he was unleashing. How could he know that the dead would prove not passive consumers, content with their one channel, but even more greedy and expansionist than the living. There are so many of them, you see. And they all have something to say, and they all want to say it—to everybody.

They may be dead, but they’re not stupid. Once they had the use of technology they used it in a big way, until there was nothing left for the rest of us. Not just one channel, but all channels. Not just television, but radio. And then they managed to tap into telephone lines. At first they broke in on conversations, a babble of unknown, distorted voices erupting into any pause. Then they learned direct dialing, and all over the world telephones began ringing, unceasingly. Nobody else could get through; only the dead had the time and the numbers to overload every line. My first phone call was from Ethel Smyth. I thought this was unlucky, because, although I was bound to feel a certain sympathy for her as one of the very few women who ever managed to make her name as a composer, I have never thought much of her music, and I knew from my reading that she had been notoriously deaf and egotistical and a non-stop talker, even in life. As in life, so in death: I couldn’t get a word in edgewise, and when, finally, in desperation, I hung up, she rang back immediately and went ranting on about the general lack of appreciation for her music. The next caller was Erik Satie, which thrilled me. But although I do speak French, and had always imagined we would have a lot to say to each other, it was soon obvious that he couldn’t hear a word I said. It was like listening to someone talking in his sleep. Whatever I said made no difference, and what he said only occasionally made sense. I soon realized that, for the dead, the telephone was no different from television or radio. It was a one-way system, a means for transmission, not reception, and maybe that was the way they wanted it. After so many years of listening to our broadcasts and our lives, unable to participate, they had finally found a way to interrupt, to erupt back into the living world, and a little would never be enough. At first, they came at us through the electronic media—remote, distorted, unreal, irritating but ignorable. They couldn’t stand being ignored: they insisted upon being heard, and sought other ways of imposing their voices on us. Once the first barrier was breached, how quickly they all crumbled! New films, tapes, recordings of any kind could not be made without the faces and voices of the dead appearing, overwhelming and replacing those of the living. Their words burst through and conquered ours in new books, magazines, and newspapers as computers and electronic typesetters responded to their impulses. As for old-fashioned means of communication, like pen and paper—well, the dead, too, had their old-fashioned instruments: people. Some count it an honor to be possessed, to let another soul speak through them, to live in reflected glory. If they have nothing original to contribute themselves they might welcome the chance to make it possible for Rembrandt or Picasso to paint another picture, for Colette or Dickens to write another novel, for Beethoven to compose another symphony. But the dead are insatiable. There can never be enough willing victims. And so, as belief was no longer necessary, willingness was no longer a requirement. We are all in danger of being taken over by the dead. It’s not just an audience they want, but hosts. I’m having dead people’s dreams now—Kafka and Strindberg, at a guess. Or am I overreacting and imagining things? It’s difficult to know where influence stops and possession begins. I’ve had to give up composing. I no longer know where the music in my head comes from, I can’t trust any inspiration as my own. I hardly know who I am anymore, but I know I want to do my own work, or nothing. I won’t let the dead compose their music through me. Is it horribly selfish, even precious, of me to worry about something like that in this time of crisis and

destruction, when civilization has broken down around us? Even if I dared try to compose, I don’t have the leisure: all my time is spent on just getting by, on survival. Even if I did manage to write something new, who, besides myself, would care? Who would even know? How could I transmit it? Would it ever be performed? In the long, dark hours I think a lot about Marcus—at least I know those memories are my own—and I wonder what he’s doing now. How is life in his distant jungle? Is he still tinkering, still managing to invent things in a stone-age culture? As soon as he disappeared, the rumors began that Marcus was dead, but I know that can’t be true. If he were dead I would have heard from him by now. And not just me. If he were dead he’d be everywhere, seen and heard by millions. After all, there could hardly be a more famous dead person in the world today than Marcus Vandergaard. Fame is what immortality is all about. Edison explained his concept of personality as memories, and it appears that the dead have a chance of survival only if they are remembered by the living. I wonder what happened to the anonymous legions of dead who never did anything when they were alive, not even produce a descendant to remember them and give them another shot at life—did their subparticles disperse? Were they absorbed by their more powerful companions? Did they simply wink out of existence, or linger to combine with other subparticles until they gradually reached critical mass and could be reborn as a wholly new personality? Maybe that’s what I am, someone wholly original, able, therefore, to bring more new creations into the world . . . if only I had the chance. It’s so unfair. I’ve lost everything that made life worth living . . . everything, indeed, that made me myself. The mere struggle for existence isn’t life. What is life without the chance to create? Maybe it is time to go over to the other side. Not to give up, but to desert the living and join the winners. Dead, I might have a better chance of survival. My name is still known. I have some small measure of fame as a musician; more, the notoriety of being the woman who lived with Marcus Vandergaard. The living have no time or space for music anymore. As time passes, I’ll be forgotten. If no one remembers me, I won’t be able to come back. The dead have shown us the importance of fame. Memory is the only immortality there is. I’m not going to miss my chance. If I can’t live this life, I’ll have another. I’m looking forward to talking to Marcus. There is so much I want to say to him.

Heart’s Desire Idon’t know how it happened, or even what. I try to remember, and when I can’t remember, I tell myself stories, to try to understand. ***

There was a yellow plastic cup. I couldn’t have been more than two years old; I may have been less. I have forgotten so much from that time, but I remember this. I remember the cup. It was mine. Now it was somewhere I had not put it, on the seat of a ladder-backed chair, one of a set my mother had rescued from some junk shop, stripped, and painted a glossy white. Paintbrush in her hand, she was decorating the chair, painting a circle of tiny red roses in the center of the top slat. She was close enough to touch, but she wasn’t looking at me. I reached for the cup and drank.

I don’t remember the taste. I remember the yellow plastic cup. I remember how my hand closed on it, and then the feel of the ridged rim against my lower lip as I poured the liquid into my mouth and swallowed automatically. Then: the gasping noise my mother made, sucking in hard, as she stared, as if seeing me for the first time. Then a barely controlled flurry of activity. She was holding me tight, talking desperately into the telephone. She was giving me something to drink, horrible yuck. She was holding me over the sink, pushing my head down, telling me to throw up. She was pleading with me, and coaxing, and calming me—although I don’t remember feeling alarmed—and asking me, again and again, the question I could not answer, then or ever: “Why? Why did you drink? What made you swallow?” ***

Jill went, one warm, wet summer’s evening, with her friend Harriet on the Northern Line from Clapham to Leicester Square, and from there on the Piccadilly Line to Finsbury Park. Simon lived there; Simon, whom Harriet had loved. Jill had not met him, although she’d had an affair with him, vicariously, through Harriet. “Why, why, why are they all like that? He’s the same age I am—a year older—and he’s never been married. Why doesn’t that bother him? Why doesn’t he want to settle down? How can men and women be so different? It doesn’t make sense. They’re like children. Short attention span. Constantly wanting to be amused. Unwilling to give, terrified of commitment . . . He actually talked abouthimself in those terms. ‘Afraid of love,’ he said, ‘unable to commit’—God, it was like one of those books:Women Who Love Men Who Won’t or whatever. I mean, whoisn’t afraid, and so what? Is he going to stay a lonely, single coward all his life?” “Probably,” said Jill. Harriet slumped a little in her seat. “You’re supposed to be providing moral support.” “I am. You know you’re doing the right thing. Simon’s not going to change. You’re better off without him.” “I know.” She sounded unconvinced. “But maybe, this evening, when we see each other . . .” “Same song, second verse?” They looked at each other and both sighed. “I know it’s not enough, but when he looks at me, when he touches me . . .” “Then I won’t leave you alone with him. Unless you really, really want me to.” It was both relief and disappointment to discover that Simon was not at home. He’d left a note taped to the door saying that if he hadn’t returned by the time Harriet was ready to leave, would she please push the keys back in through the letter-slot. “Coward,” said Harriet wistfully. “Let’s not hang about,” said Jill. “Need a hand with the packing? Tell me what to do.” “I didn’t leave much here. A few clothes. I’ll get them. You can, well, why don’t you just have a look around?” She vanished into the bedroom. Licensed to prowl, Jill wandered into the sitting room. It was decorated in shades of brown and beige and sparsely furnished, but each piece was a good one. Jill was attracted particularly to a many-drawered apothecary’s chest. She touched the smooth, reddish wood, feeling the tug of material desire, and pulled out one of the drawers. It was empty. She pushed it shut and tried another. Empty, too. Then a third. In its depths, something rattled.

Reaching inside, her fingers closed on something small and round. A wooden box, no more than an inch in diameter. As she admired it, the top came off in her hand. Inside was lined with black satin, and within that dark nest something gleamed. A jewel? With forefinger and thumb she plucked it out and held it aloft. It glowed dark red in the light, like a ruby or a garnet, but it was warm and soft, lacking the hardness of stone. Without thinking, Jill popped it into her mouth, and it had slipped down her throat before she could decide otherwise. Harriet was coming down the hall, saying something. Hot and confused, heart pounding hard enough to choke her, Jill dropped the little box into the drawer and closed it. ***

In the pub on the corner, Simon suddenly lost all appetite for his pint. He felt quite queasy, in fact. Inexplicably nervous. He wondered if Harriet had come and gone yet. Maybe he should have acted on his first impulse, to stay in and talk to her, to try to rescue their relationship. When he had thought, a few days ago, that he would never see Harriet again he had felt so miserable that he’d known it was love. This morning, though, the thought of what he would have to do to win her back—the apologies, the explanations, the evasions, the effort—had filled him with such paralyzing, suffocating boredom that he simply had to escape. He reminded himself that just because the sex was good, and she was smart and pretty, that didn’t mean he had to tie himself down to her for the rest of his life. Which was what she wanted. Of course he wanted to settle down eventually, but meanwhile what he wanted was . . . freedom. Freedom to take chances, to follow his heart, to act on his desires instead of hers. Freedom to go out when he chose, where he chose, with whom he chose. Freedom to sit right here and finish his drink, instead of rushing back to her. He picked up the drink he no longer wanted, and raised it to his lips. ***

That night Jill dreamed. This was no ordinary dream; it felt more like waking. And she was not alone. There was someone very close to her, so close she could feel the breath moving his lungs, could feel the rhythm of his heart and blood, different and somehow more real than her own. He was closer than if he was in her bed; closer than any lover had ever been. It was as if she was inside him, her own body miraculously slimmed and stretched to mere filaments of being, around which his bone and flesh and blood and skin wrapped like layers of clothing. She was still conscious, still herself, but not separate from him. When he breathed, so did she; what she felt, he did. Perfect harmony; perfect happiness. Then she woke to the electronic beeping of her alarm, to the gray light and emptiness of morning, and she was alone. And aware of her solitary state—although she had lived by herself fairly contentedly for almost eight years—in a new and painful way. It was a bereavement, and a fiercely physical one. Going out into the crowded street was worse; there, her senses were constantly assaulted by the world, abraded by the incomprehensible otherness of other people. Everything was at the same time remote and unbearably close. She would go mad or die, she thought, but of course she did not. As the unbearable day wore on, she learned to bear it; gradually she built up defenses until sensation dulled to the level she recognized as “normal.” The pain she felt ceased to be agony. It was merely discomfort; merely life. But she had lost something, and she knew it, even if it was only her innocence. She knew now what she had never fully realized before, that she was alone. The knowledge had made her lonely. But life didn’t have to be like this. She knew, from her dream, that something else was possible. ***

Jill was traveling on the Piccadilly Line to Finsbury Park again. She hadn’t thought about why. Even when she found herself outside Simon’s door, pressing the buzzer, she didn’t know what she would say. Maybe she wouldn’t have to say anything, she thought. Maybe he would simply look at her, and he

would know, and they would be together. But he wasn’t in. At least, he didn’t answer his bell. She tried pressing the other two in turn, but there was no response. She had to go on standing on the doorstep, exposed to what was turning into a chilly drizzle. It couldn’t be long; surely it wouldn’t be long before he came home. She wondered what he looked like, and tried without success to imagine his face. She couldn’t even remember what color Harriet had said his eyes were. Finally—it was really raining now—she retreated to the pub on the corner. If she stood near the door and kept an eye on the street, she would be sure to see him when he passed. That she had never seen Simon before did not worry her. She would know him. ***

There was a drunken woman on his doorstep. “Simon? Simon, I’m Jill. A friend of Harriet’s? She must have mentioned me. . . . Anyway, I came with her yesterday. When you weren’t here. Look, could I come inside? I could explain it to you. I’m not drunk, not actually, I just had a few drinks while I was waiting—you were ever such a long time coming!—well, maybe I am a bit pissed. Coffee would . . . Would you make me a cup of coffee? And then we can talk.” He didn’t want to let her in. Harriet’s friend! Harriet wasn’t the sort to send her friends around to plead her case. . . . Besides, he had never sent Harriet away; it had been her decision to leave him. “What do you want?” “I can explain, if you’ll let me in.” She was so close that, short of physically pushing her away, he would hardly be able to keep her out once he opened the door. He did not want to let her in, but could see no real alternative. Under the bright kitchen light she was not unattractive. She might, under other circumstances, have been someone he fancied—but the way she stared at him! As if she would eat him up with her eyes. He felt uneasy turning his back on her to plug in the kettle, and was glad the knives were in the drawer he blocked with his body. “It’ll have to be instant, I’m afraid. And I don’t mean to be inhospitable, but I am quite tired, and it is quite late. . . .” Looking up, he caught her hungry gaze straight on, like a blow. “What is this?” She had seemed about to smile, but now her expression flickered uncertainly. “I’m sorry. . . . I . . . don’t quite know how to explain. . . . I had hoped you would know.” “Know? Know what? I never even heard of you until a few minutes ago.” “I thought . . . Harriet might have said something.” “Harriet and I are finished. If you’re her friend, you should know that.” “Yes, I was here, with her, yesterday. That’s when I . . . lost something. At least, I think I did.” “What sort of something?” She was lying, he was sure of it. But why? What was she hiding? “A little . . . a ring. My grandmother’s ring. I mean it’s mine, she gave it to me, but I’ve lost it. I thought I might have dropped it. . . . I might have left it here.” “I haven’t seen anything like that.” He remembered coming home from the pub, how empty his flat had felt. As if something vital had been taken away. Harriet, of course. Not her things—they’d been few

enough—but her presence, even her anticipated presence, and even, somehow, the memories of her presence in the past. Simon wasn’t one for irrational feelings or metaphysical speculation, but there was a quality to his solitude he’d never felt before. It was almost as if by going, Harriet had taken away something more than herself—something he couldn’t name, but could ill afford to lose. He almost phoned her, to call her back, but he had stopped with his hand on the telephone, knowing that she wouldn’t be home yet. She was out there somewhere, crossing London, unreachable. And then the moment had passed. “I didn’t see a ring, nothing new. Things were missing, that’s all,” he said. “Missing?” She looked at him. It made his skin crawl, the way she looked at him. He didn’t lack self-confidence; strangers had found him attractive before now—but why her? Why like this? Her interest seemed a threat. “Here’s your coffee,” he said. “We’ll take it through to the sitting room, and you can look for your ring.” Still she stared at him. “What did you mean when you said things were missing?” “Harriet’s things were gone. Nothing of mine.” Briefly, he wondered if she had lifted something, maybe a record or a videotape, something he wouldn’t notice right away. He wasn’t going to ask. He didn’t want her confession. If she was a kleptomaniac, he didn’t want to know. Let her keep it, whatever it was. “The sitting room is just through here.” “And there’s the chest,” she said. “It’s a beautiful piece. I was admiring it, and . . . I’m afraid I took the liberty of opening a few drawers. . . . I didn’t mean to pry, you know, I wasn’t thinking what I was doing, just pulling out a few drawers. . . .” She gave him a look heavy with meaning. “That’s all right,” he said. “I don’t keep anything in it, as I’m sure you found out.” “Yes, you did.” She spoke so certainly he could hardly contradict her. Besides, he wasn’t sure. Maybe he had dropped something in there once, a spare set of keys or something small, unimportant, quickly forgotten. “Well, nothing valuable.” “You don’t mind if I . . .” “Have another look? No, by all means. Go ahead. Pull out every drawer. See what you can find.” A yawn racked him, and he sank down on the couch. She was clumsy, fumbling with the tiny knobs, first too rough and then too gentle, plunging a hand into each empty drawer in turn, as if she couldn’t believe the evidence of her eyes. And when she had been through them all and found nothing, she turned on him, looking so despairing that, even though he neither knew nor trusted her, he pitied her. “There was something,” she said. “There was something in one of the drawers. . . . Where is it? What was it?” “I don’t know. You tell me.” “It was a little, round, wooden box, very carefully made and lined with black satin. And there was something in it. I never saw it very well. It looked like a ruby—it gleamed red—but when I felt it, it was more rubbery, something like a wine-gum or a cough-sweet.”

He laughed. “You know what I’m talking about! It was yours!” He swore. “You’re drunk. Or crazy. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” “Youdo . You must.” He struggled for calm, but that was no longer possible. She made him angry. “So what if I do? That chest is mine, and whatever’s in it is mine, and it has nothing to do with you. If I want to keep cough-sweets in my apothecary’s chest, I don’t have to tell you. It’s not your business.” “But it is. It is now. Because I swallowed it, you see. I didn’t mean to. I don’t know why—I was just going to feel it with my lips, it looked so smooth, and then it was in my mouth and I was swallowing before I’d had time to think. If I’d thought about it, I wouldn’t have. But I couldn’t help myself.” There were tears in her eyes, and he felt sorry for her again. “It’s all right,” he said wearily. He traced a cross in the air. “I forgive you, God forgives you. Bless you, my child. Now, go, and steal no more wine-gums.” “It wasn’t a wine-gum!” “Cough-sweets, then. Look—” “No, you look! I’ve told you the truth. I don’t know what it means, but it’s real, it’s important. I dreamed about you last night. I’d never met you before, but I knew you, as soon as you came near. You know what I’m talking about. You must feel it too. I didn’t ask for it any more than you did. All right, I know it was my fault, but . . . I didn’t mean it; I didn’t know what I was doing. And now it’s done. You can’t deny it. It affects both of us.” How easy it would be, he thought, to let it happen. To let go, and let her entangle him in her madness. All he had to do was open his arms. All he had to do was take her to bed. That was what she wanted. . . . Why shouldn’t he want what she wanted, just for once? Except that it wouldn’t be for once. It would go on and on, and she’d want more and more. He remembered the way she had looked at him in the kitchen. She wanted to consume him utterly; she wouldn’t be satisfied with anything less. Fear turned to anger, and he held it like a shield. “What do you want from me?” His tone said that whatever it was, he would not give it to her. The slump of her shoulders said she understood. “Please . . . let me stay.” “No.” “Please. Just for tonight . . . it’s late; the tube’s closed now.” “I’ll call a minicab for you.” He got up and went to the phone. He felt, as he moved and spoke, that he was playing a part, echoing something done by an earlier self. He remembered a quarrel with Harriet. “Hello. Could you send a car . . .” Behind him, motion, displacement of air. He heard his door open and shut, and then the muffled slam of the street door. “Oh, never mind, cancel that order. I’m sorry to have troubled you.” His heart raced. As he hung up, his body tensed, ready to run. Not to run away, he realized, but to run after her. But why? He’d made his

decision. He knew what he wanted—or, at least, he knew what he didn’t want. Only, the flat seemed so empty now. He looked at the apothecary’s chest. He had grown up with it. His grandmother had made hats, and had used the little drawers to hold her trimmings. The chest was so familiar, he’d almost stopped seeing it. His mother had made him a gift of it when he bought this flat and, although he was very fond of it, he’d never actually found a use for it. And yet, from time to time, hadn’t he deposited odds and ends in the little drawers? The image of something red and gleaming like a gem teased his memory. Had he hidden something away for safekeeping only to forget all about it? He stopped himself, hand outstretched. No. There was nothing. She hadn’t stolen anything from him. He hadn’t lost anything. How could he lose something he’d never had? She was crazy, that woman, but it was nothing to do with him. Nothing at all. He sat down again, feeling hollow and so light the merest breeze could have blown him away. ***

Once I thought desire had an object; thought that I wanted someone or something that was missing from my life, whether it was a pair of lapis lazuli earrings or my own baby; I thought I wanted back something that had been lost, whether my yellow plastic cup or a man who had left me. But desire is not so simple as a wish. Desireis . It possesses you, or it does not. It’s a feeling, a force, a natural disaster like an earthquake or gravity, and there’s no denying it. There’s no satisfying it, either.I want is a sentence which can never be finished. ***

Jill was in despair. She’d blown it. She had frightened him, and ruined everything. Her best chance. But she must have another. She could try again. After much thought, and agonizing over the choice of both words and picture (Gwen John’s “The Convalescent” was surely sufficiently cool and unthreatening?) she sent him a postcard apologizing for her behavior while “under the influence” suggesting he could show his forgiveness by letting her take him to dinner. But, although she gave him her address and her work as well as home telephone number, Simon did not get in touch with her. She couldn’t understand it. Why didn’t he feel as drawn to her as she was to him? She had his heart, after all: she could feel it beating slowly and steady between the beats of her own. For most of the time she was not consciously aware of it any more than she had ever been aware of her own, but late at night, lying awake in the quiet dark of her lonely bed, she felt the two hearts beating together, and the tears ran down her face as the pain of his absence became almost more than she could bear. She wanted to go to him, to cast herself, body and soul, at his feet. But she didn’t dare. She remembered too well how he had looked at her, and drawn back. If he looked at her like that again, she thought, she would die. Better that he should not see her at all. But she had to see him. She could hardly think of anything else. Work, and even the most ordinary business of day-to-day existence, became steadily more difficult. She found herself going to Finsbury Park at all hours—she would start off intending to go to work, or to lunch, or to do some shopping, and she would find herself, once again on the Piccadilly Line going north. With no idea of whether or not he was in it, she would watch his house like a faithful hound, bargaining with herself each time for the right to stay just a little longer . . . until, finally, one day she was rewarded by the sight of him coming out of the house. He didn’t notice her, and she did not draw attention to herself. She kept a safe distance as she followed him down the street to the underground station, and she was careful to enter a different carriage. She went with him all the way to Leicester Square, and watched him go into a pub. She waited on the street for a few minutes, plotting a “chance” meeting. He would be wary at first, of course, not pleased to meet her again, but she would be as light and charming as she knew how to be, and he would gradually relax, suggest they continue this enjoyable conversation over dinner. . . .

But when she entered the pub she saw him at once, and knew her plan was doomed. For he was sitting at a table near the far wall, already in conversation—light and charming—with an attractive young woman. Her heart thudded so hard she thought he should feel it, and she ran out into the street, cursing her, cursing him, cursing the passion that had driven her mad. She knew it was madness, but the next evening found her again in front of his house. Following him became her routine. It was more than just a habit: it was her life. She found out where he worked, and she saw him shopping. She knew what he ate and where he drank. She saw the women he met from time to time, and they meant no more, or less, to her than they did to him; no less, or more, than anything else that impinged upon his life, the life she longed to share. She memorized the way he moved, his own particular walk, his small gestures when talking, the width of his back, and the way his hair grew. In her dreams she was with him, so close no one could see her, and in her waking hours she got as close to him as she dared. Until, one day, she went too close, and he turned at the sound of her breath at his back, and she saw him see her, saw him see the unspeakable, unacceptable hunger in her eyes. And, in his eyes, that look that she had never wanted to see again; the fear she had never meant to inspire. In that moment of mutual shock and recognition she saw herself through his eyes: saw herself and was repelled. Jill turned and ran as if she could outrun her own madness. ***

How did desire ever come to be confused with love? It has nothing to do with the human connections and needs and emotions that lead to marriages, families, children. . . . Desire is an affliction. Madness. No, not madness. Because whatever else it is and does, it isreal . ***

Jill went to stay with relatives in Yorkshire. Things had gone too far, and she understood that if she did not make some radical change in her life things would go farther still. Where the end might be she could not, would not, let herself imagine. Staying in London was obviously not on, when from one day to the next she couldn’t control her own movements. Maybe, if she took herself far enough away from him, she would no longer feel the pull. At any rate, situating herself miles from the nearest railway station would at the very least slow her down. She no longer had a job to quit, so there was no problem about that. All her relatives needed or wanted to know was that she’d been disappointed in love; a man had let her down. When she was with them, she talked and thought as they did, about normal, ordinary things: dinner, the weather, and the people and the world as seen on television. She ate large meals, slept long hours, watched television, helped about the house, went for walks. This was her convalescence, and also her cure. Always, of course, her thoughts were drawn to Simon: distance made no difference. But, just as she would not allow herself to see him, so she tried to forbid the very thought of him. She cut off all fantasies and reminiscences sharply, as soon as they began. She used relaxation techniques and methods of behavior modification learned from books. She had decided to treat her feelings about Simon as she would any addiction. Habits can be changed, even habits of thought. But she could not control the dreams she had while sleeping. And awake, while thinking of something utterly removed from Simon—advising a friend of her aunt’s on a new wallpaper pattern, or playing bridge—she would suddenly realize that she had, quite unconsciously, made one of Simon’s gestures, or

felt his slightly lopsided smile on her lips. Walking to the shops she sometimes stopped dead, sensing that her stride was absurdly masculine for someone wearing a skirt but unable to remember how she usually walked. She heard his laugh coming from her mouth, and when she swore, it was with his scowl and tightened shoulders. And regardless of whether she allowed herself to think about it, his heart went on beating inside her breast. Desire must eventually wither away for lack of nourishment, Jill thought. She concentrated on other things: becoming a better cook, sewing, building her physical endurance with long, hard walks, and reading a great many books. As the days and the weeks passed she felt better and stronger, and she knew she was healing. Perhaps she dreamed of Simon, but she woke from her dreams without anguish. She had not forgotten him—she knew now that she never would—but she no longer felt that horrible empty aching loneliness that meant she needed him. She didn’t need him to make her whole; shewas whole. It was time to go back to London and take up her life again. ***

Simon shrank back against the doors of the train.Christ! There she was, that woman, Harriet’s friend! Months without a sight of her, and now—was it starting up again? Then he realized that she couldn’t have been following him. She was already in the carriage, already seated, when he got on. So it had to be coincidence. He eyed her cautiously. Absorbed in her book, she didn’t seem to have noticed him. Even so, he thought he’d better get off at the next stop, move to another car. He was afraid of attracting her attention, but he could not stop staring at her with hungry, curious eyes. Since she had run away from him, Jill’s absence had haunted Simon far more than her unsuspected presence ever had. That last time, when he had seen her on the street, he knew at once that this was no coincidence; that she must have been trailing him for days. But it had taken a very long time for him to believe that his discovery of her had really frightened her off for good. For weeks he had been on edge, sleeping badly, checking the locks on his door obsessively—he even had them changed, just in case—jumping at unexpected sounds, glimpsing her in every crowd. Finally, he had decided to confront her. He was glad, then, that he had never thrown away the postcard she had sent him (in fact, he had tucked it away in one of the drawers of the apothecary’s chest). But when he called her office they told him she had left the company, and no matter when or how often he tried her home number there was never a reply. He had been forced to accept that she had left his life just as abruptly and inexplicably as she had entered it. He had thought about her from time to time, wondering if he would ever see her again. And now, here she was. He could confront her, if he wanted to. He had looked away from her for a moment, to collect his thoughts, not wanting to be caught staring until he knew what he meant to do—whether or not to show he recognized her. Now, looking back, he thought he was ready for anything. But he was not ready for what he saw. She was gone, and in her place—in the same seat, reading the same book—was a man. Except that she hadn’t gone; she was still there, somehow within the man—it could have been done on film, a simple overlay of images, a double-exposure—inside the man like his living soul. And the man was himself. Simon’s hands were like ice, and his muscles had seized up. He couldn’t move, not even his eyes. He had to go on looking at this impossible sight, terrified that he/she would look up and see him, and yet wanting it. Whether or not he’d ever heard the legend that to meet your double is to meet your death, he sensed danger. Surely, once their eyes met, something would end? How could they both continue to exist?

The train was pulling into a station. Passengers were standing up and moving toward the doors. The figure that was Jill/Simon shimmered. Boundaries flowed and lost definition, then the body redefined itself, closing the book it held, and standing up. When Jill got off the train she was herself again.

Lizard Lust Under the bridge the young men would gather and wait. Maybe they were junkies; maybe criminals; maybe they only wanted a place to smoke forbidden cigarettes and tell lies about sex to their friends. Occasional glimpses showed they were just boys, really, and I was old enough to be their mother. But I wasn’t their mother; I wasn’t anybody’s mother. Afraid I’d be prey, I tried to avoid them. The most direct route between my home and work was by a footpath which passed under the railway bridge. Mornings, that was the way I almost invariably took, despite the people huddled in the shadows beneath the bridge. But there was nothing threatening about them; theirs were the sad, battered shapes of the homeless. They made me uneasy, but not like a gang of young men. I felt sorry for these people sleeping on cardboard under bridges or in doorways, rooting through rubbish bins, and sometimes I gave them money, knowing it could never be enough, but I didn’t like it when they came into my library. But of course it wasn’t mine; the library belonged to the people, and they were people, too. They had a right to come in to escape the cold or the rain, to fall asleep in the chairs, so much more comfortable than a cardboard box on the pavement. But their indifference to the books around them offended me, as did the rank smell of them, and the personal oddness which, I knew, must be driving away other, legitimate library users, the pensioners and housewives and students who once had come in greater numbers. I couldn’t send them away, knowing they had nowhere else to go. I didn’t want them, but neither did anyone else. I let them stay. I got on with my work among the books during the day, and in the evenings I went home, not usually by the footpath. More often I took the longer journey by the main road, crossing over the bridge rather than under it. Sometimes I took the bus. Sometimes there was shopping to do, or I would meet a friend for a drink or a meal before I went back to the small flat where I lived quite happily alone. It is not uncommon for a woman in London to live alone. I lived alone, and I worked in a library, and I loved to read. I loved my life. I can’t believe it’s lost forever. ***

A stolen pencil. Bits and pieces of paper scavenged here and there. A loose floorboard provides the hiding place. This is all that is mine. I have to steal moments in which to write, and there is nothing but this, my own words, to read. Of all the losses, all the cruelties I have suffered, that may be the one I mind the most. My books. There are some books here, I’ve seen them, but— “Women can’t read,” says Gart. I was stupid enough to want to prove I could, as if that would make any difference. There were some books in the workroom, where I’m not supposed to go, and I went and got one—I opened it at random and looked at black shapes scrawled on white. I thought at first it was another alphabet and language, something like Bengali or Gujarati, but when I looked more closely I decided it was not real writing but gibberish, like something a child scribbles, pretending to write. I spent far too long trying to make some sense of it, and I was caught. My last contact with a book: Gart hit me in the face with it. “Women can’t read,” says Gart, and it’s true. For us, instead of books, there are picture-boxes, series of

illuminated, richly detailed unmoving images, mostly of lizards. ***

I was a librarian in London. Words from another world; words from a dream. They have no meaning here. London. Librarian. Walking to work in the mornings I saw the homeless huddled beneath the bridge. Later they turned up in the library. They didn’t always come, seldom more than two at a time, and I thought I’d made my peace with them. But I didn’t like it when their numbers increased. The day I saw the newcomer, I tensed with immediate dislike and worry. He might be the one to finally, fatally shift the balance from public library to seedy waiting room. I watched him vanish amid the shelves and then emerge with a stack of books and sit down at a table to read. Had I mistaken a normally poor, badly dressed person for a down-and-out? I went for a closer look. He was dirty, not simply shabby, and, the hallmark of the homeless, he wore layer upon layer of ancient clothing. A filthy knitted cap had been jammed onto his head, from which a few curls of greasy hair escaped. Beneath a summer-weight khaki raincoat was a heavy, mustard-brown wool jacket, beneath that a brown, V-necked jumper, beneath that a grayish shirt, beneath that—something about the size of a big, fat cigar bulged beneath shirt and wool, near the base of the V-neck. Just as my puzzled gaze fell on it, he looked up from his book. His eyes were blue and bloodshot. His face was round, hairless, and young. Then he smiled, revealing stained, crooked teeth and a glimpse of wet tongue, and looked much older. My eyes returned to the bulge beneath his shirt. It moved. He grinned as if we shared a dirty secret. “You want to see him,” he said in a low, soft voice. “What?” I wanted to look away but I didn’t. Why? After all that has happened, I find it hard to remember my innocence and lack of fear. Surely I felt the menace rippling from him like heat. I must have known I was in danger, even if that wasn’t a weapon beneath his shirt. Yet I wasn’t frightened. I felt safe in my own library. Safe enough to be curious. “He’s very big,” the dirty man went on in his soft, insinuating voice. “He’s very big and fierce and it’s all I can do to control him. I don’t know what he might not do if he gets a sight of you, I really don’t. . . .” He was crazy, I thought, but what was it that lived under his clothes? Suddenly, something brilliantly grass-green poked out above the V of the sweater, between two buttons on the shirt. It was a small, flat, triangular head with liquid black eyes. Not a snake, but something a little larger and more squat. A lizard. As soon as I’d seen it, he shoved it back beneath the layers of cloth. ***

One of the children has been ill, so I’ve had no time to myself, no hope of writing, for the past week. Maggs, she’s called. My favorite. I didn’t begrudge the time spent looking after her; I’m relieved she’s better now, and wouldn’t have objected if she’d wanted a few more days recovering at home. Maybe I should have insisted. There’s more to it than recovering physically, after all, as it wasn’t a normal illness. She’d been assaulted.

It happened under the bridge, of course. That’s where the young, single men go with their lizards, to take them out in the shadows and stroke them, boast to each other, and wait for the women to come. They say their creatures are dangerous, fierce, violent, maddened by the sight of a woman. They give their pets the names of weapons: Blade, Pistol, Slasher, Destroyer, Womansplitter. They say a woman and a master and a lizard together is the meaning of life, but a woman with a lizard alone is dead meat. That’s what they say; this is what I know: the lizards are from two to six inches long. They have four little legs and a body a couple of inches wide, at most. They have no teeth. They have no claws. On Maggs’s body, as on my own, are scratches, bruises left by boots and fists, and the marks of human teeth. ***

He grinned and lurched to his feet, and with the movement came the stench of him, like a blow, making me flinch. It was the rank, sour smell of unwashed flesh swaddled too long in filthy clothes, but it was the wrong smell. It was the smell not of a man, but of a dirty woman. Now I saw that although dressed like a man, she was, of course, a woman. I couldn’t understand how I had been so mistaken. How had I missed the meaning of the beardless face, the voice, the way she walked? I looked at her chest and she hunched slightly, holding both hands up protectively. “You don’t want him getting excited,” she said. “He sees you looking and he’ll want to take a bite out of your pretty face. I’d try to hold him back, honest I would, but sometimes he’s just too strong for me.” She was a woman of about my own age, maybe younger, probably still in her thirties. I wondered what had gone wrong in her life. I felt the most profound sense of pity, of connection, imagining myself in her place. She obviously needed help; maybe mine? That was how I got involved. That was why I didn’t throw her out, then and there. It was pity for her, or, rather, who I thought she might be. It wasn’t the lizard; it was nothing to do with the lizard. ***

Maggs has picture cubes. She stares at them in a kind of trance while listening to stories on the radio, or to her records. A lot of women use them in this way. Much of what I understand I have learned from Maggs. The oldest of the children, she’s no longer a child. She talks to me and isn’t impatient with my boundless ignorance. We like each other. She’s my only friend. The stories she likes best on the radio, and her favorite records, are a kind of pornography, I suppose, although she thinks of them as romance. They don’t work as either of those things for me, because they’re about lizards. About women and lizards. My own fantasies have nothing to do with lizards. Nor do they have anything to do with sex, or other people. All my yearnings now, both willed and unwilled daydreams, are for my lost solitude and the ordinary realities of my former life. I imagine myself cleaning my flat, dusting the books, sitting behind my desk in the rich silence of the library, dealing with routine filing and overdue notices. The things I once took for granted or found tedious are the pleasures I long for now. To be able to sit alone and read a book and fear nothing. If I could have my old life back, I’d never again wish for a man to rescue me from it; I’d never even think about getting a pet for company. In my sweet dreams I’m back in the library, working. I look up and see someone come in, and I go over to speak to her. At that point, the dream becomes a nightmare. Why did I have to speak to her? Why did I let her show me her lizard? ***

“I’m afraid you can’t have an animal in here. . . . This is a public library, you know, and other people . . .”

“Go away,” she said, seating herself again and turning her attention to her books. “I’ll let you see him later.” The books were human biology texts. She was looking at them upside down. If she was mad, as she must be, it might not be safe to anger her. I decided to leave her alone. After all, she wasn’t bothering anyone, and it was only a lizard, not anything dangerous. They say that the sight of a lizard drives a woman wild with desire. Any woman, any lizard, the merest glimpse. Once she’s seen a lizard, a woman can’t rest content until she can put her hands on one. Until she can feel it moving against her flesh, tiny feet scampering over her skin, its coolness nestling in her warmth. She wants one for her own. But lizards belong to men; they’re death to women. A woman can know a lizard only through a man’s intercession. So she gives herself to a man, becomes his slave and does whatever he asks in exchange for a few precious moments at night, in the dark, when she can feel the lizard, set free, moving or resting on her bare flesh, and she can pretend, she may even believe, that it is her own. A woman will do anything, sell herself to a man she despises, just to be close to a lizard. That’s what the men say. No. The truth is, I don’t know what “the men” say, and I don’t believe in “the men.” I certainly haven’t seen any. All I know is what Gart and Maggs have told me, and what I’ve guessed from things overheard, from the picture-boxes, from my own experience. I feel nothing when I look at a lizard. I have never felt anything except a mild curiosity and now, increasingly, fear and revulsion, not for the harmless creature itself, but for what it represents. I am immune to whatever strange powers they possess. I am not like other women. Of course I’m not. This isn’t my world. I don’t belong here. Gart smiles cynically. “Then why did you come? Why do you stay?” ***

This is what it’s like for me with the lizard: I’m alone in the bedroom with Gart who turns out the light. I undress as quickly as I can, my nervousness making me clumsy. I won’t be as nervous once I’m in bed, but until then I feel like prey. Anything might happen. Although he usually punishes me with the light on, sometimes he’ll attack me in the dark, without warning or provocation. Once I’m actually in the bed, though naked, I feel more safe. Gart seldom hurts me in bed; never badly. There is a kind of truce in effect while we’re in bed together which allows me to relax. Sometimes we talk. I talk about my world, or ask questions about this one, and Gart responds in a way very different from his sneering, domineering daylight manner. We talk as if I’m not his captive and he’s not my master. Sometimes we make love. That’s something I feel guilty about. I’m ashamed of myself for allowing it to go on and for enjoying it so much. Gart is my enemy, and nothing that has happened between us in the dark has ever altered his violent cruelty to me later. How can I love such a man? The answer is, I don’t love the man. I love the woman he is at night, the woman who comes out when the man takes off his clothes. I am not homosexual. I have never felt any inclination in that direction. When I was younger I had a satisfying, fairly active sex life, but for various reasons (a dislike of casual sex, a determination not to get involved with married men) once I was past thirty, love affairs were few and far between. At the time Gart shambled into my library I hadn’t had a boyfriend for two years. Yes, I did regret it; yes, I did feel

frustrated at times, but I never thought of having an affair with another woman. My women friends were myfriends , and one of the important things about friendship, I think, is that it isn’t sexual. Gart has never been my friend. At first when we made love I would try to pretend Gart was a man. I remembered past lovers and I fantasized, ignoring the reality as best I could. But after a short while I stopped that. I knew I didn’t want to make love to the man Gart pretended all day to be, but the woman who came out in the dark was someone else. She was my lover. Whether we talk or make love, always, at some point, Gart asks if I want to have the lizard. When I agree (I always agree: once from fear of angering him, now from the wish to please her) Gart puts the small creature into my receptive hands, or somewhere on my naked body. I don’t find it erotic or arousing at all, but the feel of a lizard on my naked flesh is, although not actively pleasant, not unpleasant, either. It’s easy to tolerate; it’s not something I would miss if it stopped. I think of it as something Gart wants to do, which I don’t mind. Other women must feel something I don’t. Is it possible the lizard exudes some sort of chemical to which they are sensitive and to which they become addicted? That seems likely; certainly it is preferable to the other thought that haunts me, that the women here are no different, physically, from me; that what they feel for the lizard is a fantasy, a cultural neurosis, a gigantic, psychological con. ***

It was as I was reshelving books, sometime late in the afternoon, that I noticed she was gone. I’m sure I was more relieved than disappointed. Of course I thought of the lizard. Something like that was too unusual to forget. But thinking about something, wondering about it, remembering its dazzling green and the lithe curve of its neck, is not the same as needing something, or even wanting it. I took the footpath home from work. I didn’t need to go shopping or out to dinner. The bus was slow and often crowded. Walking was more pleasant, and it was early summer, so I wouldn’t be walking in the dark. I had no reason to be afraid. “You were looking for me,” says Gart. “You thought you might find me under the bridge—there was nowhere else, and you had to look, didn’t you? You had to see my lizard again.” After so long here I have come to doubt my own perceptions. Maybe my memory is wrong. Maybe, subconsciously, I was being drawn. . . . Yet I remember no compulsion, no sense of need or even strong desire. I was just walking home, not searching, when I found her, loitering on the footpath, not quite under the bridge but not quite clear of it. When I came near she looked at me as if she’d been expecting me, and said, “I’ll let you touch him, but it’ll have to be in the dark, so he can’t see what you are. Otherwise, he might kill you, and I wouldn’t want that.” He says, “You could have run away. You could have said No.” She put her hand on my arm. The smell of her made me want to throw up. She said, “Come with me under the bridge.” ***

Although it was horrible, and I felt almost a mother’s agony when Maggs came home bruised and bleeding from her encounter under the bridge, I also felt a kind of relief because this surely meant she was a woman. Had she not been hurt she would have gone back to try her luck again, and eventually she might get her own lizard. That’s what makes a man, according to Gart. Those who have lizards are men. Gart says she is a man. But I know that’s not true. Her body, like mine, is a woman’s. It is possible to be confused about many things in the dark, but of this

I am certain. Gart does not have a penis. Is Gart an exception, a freak, or are all the men in this place like her? Can it be that they areall women? That they all look like women to me doesn’t mean they are. That I’ve only ever seen girl children doesn’t mean there aren’t boys somewhere, perhaps being raised separately, or in secret. They say that all children are girls, but then sometime in adolescence they begin to change. They say the lizards can tell the difference . . . or maybe the lizards make the difference. Girls become men or women depending on what happens to them during the crisis of adolescence, the drama which takes place beneath the bridge. Gart says that men get lizards and women get babies. But if they are all female, where do the babies come from? “A man and a woman and a lizard,” says Gart, impatiently. She thinks I’m an idiot, not because I ask questions about such basic things, but because I keep asking the same questions again and again and don’t—won’t—can’t—believe the answers. But neither does she believe in my reality, where sex is established long before birth. And I won’t believe the most important human distinction can be made on the basis of keeping, or not keeping, a pet. To these people, so like me they could pass in my world, the lizard is the source of all power, the lizard makes everything possible, even travel to other worlds. After the mother of her children died, Gart didn’t like being alone, but was afraid to go under the bridge again. She might get a new woman there, but because she was older, not as quick or as desirable as the others, it was also possible that some particularly strong or ruthless child might steal her lizard, unmanning her. “Dagger wouldn’t let me risk it,” said Gart. Her hand was inside the voluminous pullover she liked to wear at home and she was stroking the lizard nestled between her small breasts. “Dagger didn’t want to be parted from me, so when this kid came at me, and looked like hurting me, under the bridge, Dagger took us out of there, both of us wentthrough —into your world, as it turned out.” “How?” “Everybody knows that lizards can travel to different dimensions, and sometimes they take their friends.” “How? What makes it happen? What were you doing just before?” Gart’s smile became unpleasant. “It won’t do you any good to know. If you ever tried to steal Dagger he’d rip you to pieces. You’d be dead meat before you could even leave the house. Even if you thought to kill me first—” “I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t!” “—he’d tear you into bloody chunks and then he’d disappear. So what are you asking questions for, if you’re not plotting against me?” “I’m just curious,” I said, pleadingly. “I just wondered what it felt like to travel from one world to another.” “You ought to know that.” And then, even though there were children in the room with us, Gart reached over and took hold of a handful of my hair near the scalp, and tugged hard. “Don’t you remember how it felt?” Yes. I was beaten and kicked and dragged through. It felt like dying.

***

Although Gart says that the children’s mother died of an illness, what Maggs has told me makes me believe that Gart killed her. And if I stay here long enough I have no doubt he’ll kill me, too. ***

“Come under the bridge and I’ll let you see him.” She tugged at my arm. I felt safe because she was a woman. So I went under the bridge with her. It seemed easier not to fight. I didn’t know enough to be afraid. “You say you’re different. You pretend you don’t care about my lizard. Do you think I’m stupid? Do you think I can’t tell how much you want it? You’d do anything for me, just for the chance to be near him. Why did you come under the bridge with me if you didn’t care?” Gart pulled me by my hair, off my chair, and flung me to the floor. “Why did you come with me?” “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” I didn’t then, but I know now to be afraid. Under the bridge, the woman unbuttoned her shirt and pulled at the V of her jumper until I saw the slight swell of her breasts and, nestling between them, something green. I leaned closer to see, and then a pain in my stomach made me double over and I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t understand what was happening until she hit me in the face with her fist, breaking my nose. She kicked me in the side of the head when I was down, and then, when I tried to protect my head, she kicked me in the ribs and kidneys. The pain was horrific and incomprehensible. There was no chance for me to fight back, even if I had known how. I choked on my own attempts to scream. “Why do you stay, if not for Dagger?” he shouts, drawing his foot back for a kick. Now, I start screaming before I feel the pain, in the vain hope that it will make him stop sooner. I’m aware of the children’s fear as they huddle in the corner, watching. Well, let them be afraid, let them see what he does to me, let it warn them what it is to be a woman in this world. ***

Maggs didn’t come home after school yesterday. Then it was dark and she still hadn’t come home. The wounds from the last attack had scarcely healed; it had not occurred to me that she might rush back for more punishment. I had thought her safe for just a little while longer. I dared Gart’s anger to insist he go out and look for her. He claims to care about the children, but I don’t think he can love Maggs as I do. She is my only friend; her existence is all that makes my life here bearable. Gart brought her home. He found her lying in a shallow culvert not far from the bridge, badly battered but alive. One of her legs was broken in several places. We had to get the doctor in to set it. Afterward, I could hear Gart and the doctor drinking and laughing together in the parlor, man to man. I sat at her bedside and held her hand. “Why?” I whispered, staring down at her poor, swollen face. “I have to. What else can I do? You know. It’s why you went with father.” “No. That’s not true. He tricked me. I didn’t know. I thought he was a woman. If I’d had any idea what would happen, that he would beat me up and kidnap me, I’d have run so fast in the other direction. . . . It was nothing to do with the lizard; I certainly didn’t want it, I didn’t need it. . . . Things are different in my world, I’ve told you.” “Then why don’t you go back there?” The way she echoed her father’s cruel questions, yet innocent of malice, made me shiver, and I suddenly wondered if she had ever believed my stories of another reality, where women and men were equals,

friends who treated one another kindly, where lizards had no power. I wondered if I believed it myself. “I don’t know how to go back. If I knew how, I would, I promise you, and I’d take you with me.” “A lizard would take you back, if you had one.” “Well, that’s a useful thing to know.” “Worth risking a beating? Wouldn’t you try to get one if you knew it could give you what you want?” “But lizards won’t stay with women—” “You don’t believethat ?” Her voice got louder in scorn. “Do you think it was a lizard who broke my leg and punched me in the face, and—if lizards couldn’t be stolen, men wouldn’t be so afraid. They wouldn’t have to keep beating us up, to keep us afraid. They’d just laugh, let us try, watch us fail, and laugh again.” The laughter of the men came to us from the other room. “All that stuff about two sexes is ridiculous,” she went on, more quietly. Her voice was hoarse, raw from screaming. “We’re all the same, my sisters and me and all the kids at school. Some are stronger or meaner or luckier than others, and they’ll find lizards, or take them. They’re called men after they have lizards, not before, and it’s not the lizard who decides. You and father have the same sex—or haven’t you noticed, in the dark?” “Yes, I had noticed, but I thought . . . I thought Gart must be an exception, there must be real men somewhere.” “You thought Gart was a woman and the lizard made an exception for her? They’re all exceptions.” “But if there aren’t any men, where do babies come from?” She made a sound of weariness and pain. “I don’t know. I expect I’ll find out soon. They say it’s the lizards, and maybe . . .” “Oh, Maggs, what happened?” “I don’t know,” she said again. “It was dark . . . there were a lot of them, holding me down, and I wasn’t conscious all the time. If I find out I’m pregnant . . . well, I used to be friends with a girl at school. She’s a man now, she’s got a lizard but no woman, and I think she’d probably set up house with me if I asked. We always liked each other.” I tried to protest but she wouldn’t listen, she knew better. Nominally I was her stepmother, and older, but she had more experience of life. “I have to. I’ve tried to get my own lizard and I failed. I keep trying, and eventually they’ll kill me. The smart thing is to admit I can’t have my own and settle for sharing someone else’s. If it’s someone I like, he might not feel so threatened by me. Not all men are brutal to their women.” “But why—oh, Maggs, why not forget the lizards, why not imagine a life without one?” “Imagine? I know what it would be like, and it’s no life. Don’t you know how they treat free women? Have you ever met one? Nobody will give work to someone without a lizard—not decent work. They’re always suspicious of someone like that. I could be locked up for treatment. Gart certainly wouldn’t stop them, and nobody would listen to you. And then there’s the single men, the ones who can’t get women of

their own free will . . . sooner or later one of them would decide to take me and I wouldn’t be able to stop him . . . certainly not if I was pregnant. I’d rather choose the man I have to live with, thank you.” Her hopelessness brought tears to my eyes. I wish I could save her. ***

We’re alone in the house, Maggs and I. It doesn’t matter if she sees me writing because she won’t betray me. I’m going to teach her to read and write. We’ll have time, while she’s laid up with her broken leg, and although literacy is a skill useless in this world, we’re not going to stay here forever. We’re going to get out. All we need is a lizard. They can travel, and they can take us away from here. Maggs says she knows how. ***

She is perceptibly better every day. Young bones do knit fast. We have grown closer, too, spending so much time together, refining our plan. It’s going to work, I’m sure. Together we can get a lizard, and the lizard will get us out. It’s going to have to be Gart’s, although I resisted the idea at first. Under the bridge is the traditional place, and there are so many lizards there. No one would expect two women to be working together, so we’d have the benefit of surprise. But there are only two of us, as Maggs has pointed out, and under the bridge if there is one man there will be several. Unless we managed to incapacitate our chosen victim very quickly and quietly, the others would come to his aid, and we might not be able to escape in time. Now I know what other women feel. I hesitate to ask for the lizard in bed, afraid that Gart will be suspicious, that he will react with violence. I find it harder and harder to give the lizard back. I struggle to stay awake, hoping he will fall asleep before me; wondering, if he does, if I would have the courage to take it and run. I no longer think of sneaking out of bed and running away in the middle of the night. I no longer find it hard to think of hurting him. I no longer think of him as “her.” Gart gave me the most vicious beating of my life, more damaging even than the first one. He attacked me for no reason just at the time when Maggs was starting to be able to walk again. Does he suspect that we’ve united against him? Is that why he wants to keep me helpless? I must get well quickly. Maggs is restless: she’s not pregnant, thank heavens, but next time—there must not be a next time. I see the cultural and biological imperatives working in her, and know she can’t wait forever. We must take our first chance and act together, swiftly, ruthlessly. ***

Gart is dead. The children are staying with friends. And Maggs and I are waiting for the night. This will be the last time I write here, the last piece of paper I fill with words no one but me can read. I’m going home. It will, it must, be true. I feel very odd. Dazed by it all, and hurt: the wounds he inflicted throb and flare with pain. Maggs was less battered and also she’s stronger, which probably accounts for her manner: the high spirits of youth and a natural impatience with my slowness. I’ve been so downtrodden by Gart that I couldn’t think what to do after we’d killed him. I stood there like an idiot, tears in my eyes and my gorge rising, unable to act. Maggs scooped up the lizard and dropped it down the front of her shirt where it nestled as if she were its natural owner. Then she set about cleaning the room, eliminating all signs of struggle, and giving me the

firm, clear orders I needed to help her. Somehow I hadn’t thought of all the sordid details of afterward, of cleaning the body and getting it into the bathroom to make it appear Gart died of a fall; it never would have occurred to me to arrange for the children to stay the night with school friends. But then I had imagined we’d leave this world for mine just as soon as we got our hands on the lizard. It’s not quite that simple, says Maggs. We have to be in the right place for it to work, and the right place is under a bridge. Bridges are transitional places, where crossings are possible. I should have guessed, of course, for didn’t Gart take me under the bridge? I should have known. She says we’ll wait until dark, when there will be fewer people around, and it will be safe. I’m scared. I didn’t think it would be like this. I had imagined triumph, and a quick getaway. Not all this waiting, this fear and pain and the need to go under the bridge again. Somehow, when Maggs says that everything is going according to plan, I am not reassured. If there is anyone else under the bridge when we go, if even one man should decide to attack me, I’m too weak to fight, he’d finish me off. Maggs tells me not to be stupid. Maggs says she’ll protect me. She seems different, as if already possession of the lizard has changed her. But I can’t bear to think that. She’s still Maggs, my almost-stepdaughter, my ally, my only friend. I have to believe that. I have to trust her. There’s nothing else to do. I must go under the bridge with her.

Bits and Pieces On the morning after Ralph left her Fay found a foot in her bed. It was Ralph’s foot, but how could he have left it behind? What did it mean? She sat on the edge of the bed holding it in her hand, examining it. It was a long, pale, narrow, rather elegant foot. At the top, where you would expect it to grow into an ankle, the foot ended in a slight, skin-covered concavity. There was no sign of blood or severed flesh or bone or scar tissue, nor were there any corns or bunions, over-long nails or dirt. Ralph was a man who looked after his feet. Lying there in her hand it felt as alive as a motionless foot ever feels; impossible as it seemed, she believed it was real. Ralph wasn’t a practical joker, and yet—a foot wasn’t something you left behind without noticing. She wondered how he was managing to get around on just one foot. Was it a message? Some obscure consolation for her feeling that, losing him, she had lost a piece of herself? He had made it clear he no longer wanted to be involved with her. His goodbye had sounded final. But maybe he would get in touch when he realized she still had something of his. Although she knew she ought to be trying to forget him, she felt oddly grateful for this unexpected gift. She wrapped the foot in a silk scarf and put it in the dresser’s bottom drawer, to keep for him. Two days later, tidying the bedroom, she found his other foot under the bed. She had to check the drawer to make sure it wasn’t the same one, gone wandering. But it was still there, one right foot, and she was holding the left one. She wrapped the two of them together in the white silk scarf and put them away. Time passed and Ralph did not get in touch. Fay knew from friends that he was still around, and as she never heard any suggestion that he was now crippled, she began to wonder if the feet had been some sort of hallucination. She kept meaning to look in the bottom drawer, but somehow she kept forgetting. The relationship with Ralph, while it lasted, had been a serious, deeply meaningful one for them both, she thought; she knew from the start there was no hope of that with Freddy. Fay was a responsible person

who believed the act of sex should be accompanied by love and a certain degree of commitment; she detested the very idea of “casual sex”—but she’d been six months without a man in her bed, and Freddy was irresistible. He was warm and cuddly and friendly, the perfect teddy bear. Within minutes of meeting him she was thinking about sleeping with him—although it was the comfort and coziness of bed he brought to mind rather than passion. As passive as a teddy bear, he would let himself be pursued. She met him with friends in a pub, and he offered to walk her home. Outside her door he hugged her. There was no kissing or groping; he just wrapped her in a warm, friendly embrace, where she clung to him longer and tighter than friendship required. “Mmmm,” he said, appreciatively, smiling down at her, his eyes button-bright, “I could do this all night.” “What a good idea,” she said. After they had made love she decided he was less a teddy bear than a cat. Like a cat in the sensual way he moved and rubbed his body against hers and responded to her touch: she could almost hear him purr. Other cat-like qualities, apparent after she had known him a little longer, were less appealing. Like a cat he was self-centered, basically lazy, and although she continued to enjoy him in bed, she did wish sometimes he would pay more attention to her pleasure instead of assuming that his was enough for them both. He seemed to expect her to be pleased no matter what time he turned up for dinner, even if he fell asleep in front of the fire immediately after. And, like many cats, he had more than one home. Finding out about his other home—hearing that other woman’s tear-clogged voice down the phone—decided her to end it. It wasn’t—or so she told him—that she wanted to have him all to herself. But she wouldn’t be responsible for another woman’s sorrow. He understood her feelings. He was wrong, and she was right. He was remorseful, apologetic, and quite incapable of changing. But he would miss her very much. He gave her a friendly hug before they parted, but once they started hugging it was hard to stop, and they tumbled into bed again. That had to be the last time. She knew she could be firmer with him on the phone than in person, so she told him he was not to visit unless she first invited him. Sadly, he agreed. And that was that. Going back into the bedroom she saw the duvet rucked up as if there was someone still in the bed. It made her shiver. If she hadn’t just seen him out the door, and closed it behind him she might have thought . . . Determined to put an end to such mournful nonsense she flung the duvet aside, and there he was. Well, part of him. Lying on the bed was a headless, neckless, armless, legless torso. Or at least the back side of one. As with Ralph’s feet there was nothing unpleasant about it, no blood or gaping wounds. If you could ignore the sheer impossibility of it, there was nothing wrong with Freddy’s back at all. It looked just like the body she had been embracing a few minutes before, and felt . . . Tentatively, she reached out and touched it. It was warm and smooth, with the firm, elastic give of live flesh. She could not resist stroking it the way she knew he liked, teasing with her nails to make the skin prickle into goose bumps, running her fingers all the way from the top of the spine to the base, and over the curve of the buttocks where the body ended. She drew her hand back, shocked. What was this? It seemed so much like Freddy, but how could it be when she had seen him, minutes before, walking out the door, fully equipped with all his body parts?

Was it possible that there was nothing, now, but air filling out his jumper and jeans? She sat down, took hold of the torso where the shoulders ended in smooth, fleshy hollows, and heaved it over. The chest was as she remembered, babyishly pink nipples peeking out of a scumble of ginger hair, but below the flat stomach only more flatness. His genitals were missing, as utterly and completely gone as if they had never been thought of. Her stomach twisted with shock and horror although, a moment later, she had to ask herself why that particular lack should matter so much more than the absence of his head—which she had accepted remarkably calmly. After all, this wasn’t the real Freddy, only some sort of partial memory of his body inexplicably made flesh. She went over to the dresser and crouched before the bottom drawer. Yes, they were still there. They didn’t appear to have decayed or faded or changed in any way. Letting the silk scarf fall away she gazed at the naked feet and realized that she felt differently about Ralph. She had been unhappy when he left, but she had also been, without admitting it even to herself, furiously angry with him. And the anger had passed. The bitterness was gone, and she felt only affection now as she caressed his feet and remembered the good times. Eventually, with a sigh that mingled fondness and regret, she wrapped them up and put them away. Then she returned to her current problem: what to do with the part Freddy had left behind. For a moment she thought of leaving it in the bed. He’d always beenso nice to sleep with. . . . But no. She had to finish what she had begun; she couldn’t continue sleeping with part of Freddy all the time when all of Freddy part of the time had not been enough for her. She would never be able to get on with her life, she would never dare bring anyone new home with her. It would have to go in the wardrobe. The only other option was the hall closet which was cold and smelled slightly of damp. So, wrapping it in her best silken dressing gown, securing it with a tie around the waist, she stored Freddy’s torso in the wardrobe behind her clothes. Freddy phoned the next week. He didn’t mention missing anything but her, and she almost told him about finding his torso in her bed. But how could she? If she told him, he’d insist on coming over to see it, and if he came over she’d be back to having an affair with him. That wasn’t what she was after, was it? She hesitated, and then asked if he was still living with Matilda. “Oh, more or less,” he said. “Yes.” So she didn’t tell him. She tried to forget him, and hoped to meet someone else, someone who would occupy the man-sized empty space in her life. Meanwhile, Freddy continued to phone her once a week—friendly calls, because he wanted to stay friends. After a while she realized, from comments he let drop, that he was seeing another woman; that once again he had two homes. As always, she resisted the temptation she felt to invite him over, but she felt wretchedly lonely that evening. For the first time since she had stored it away, she took out his body. Trembling a little, ashamed of herself, she took it to bed. She so wanted someone to hold. The body felt just like Freddy, warm and solid and smooth in the same way; it even smelled like him, although now with a faint overlay of her own perfume from her clothes. She held it for a while, but the lack of arms and head was too peculiar. She found that if she lay with her back against his and tucked her legs up so she couldn’t feel his missing legs, it was almost like being in bed with Freddy. She slept well that night, better than she had for weeks. “My teddy bear,” she murmured as she packed him away again in the morning. It was like having a secret weapon. The comfort of a warm body in bed with her at night relaxed her, and made her more self-confident. She no longer felt any need to invite

Freddy over, and when he called it was easy to talk to him without getting more involved, as if they’d always been just friends. And now that she wasn’t looking, there seemed to be more men around. One of them, Paul, who worked for the same company in a different department, asked her out. Lately she had kept running into him, and he seemed to have a lot of business which took him to her part of the building, but it didn’t register on her that this was no coincidence until he asked if she was doing anything that Saturday night. After that, his interest in her seemed so obvious that she couldn’t imagine why she hadn’t noticed earlier. The most likely reason she hadn’t noticed was that she didn’t care. She felt instinctively that he wasn’t her type; they had little in common. But his unexpected interest flattered her, and made him seem more attractive, and so she agreed to go out with him. It was a mistake, she thought, uneasily, when Saturday night came around and Paul took her to a very expensive restaurant. He was not unintelligent, certainly not bad-looking, but there was something a little too glossy and humorless about him. He was interested in money, and cars, and computers—and her. He dressed well, and he knew the right things to say, but she imagined he had learned them out of a book. He was awfully single-minded, and seemed intent on seduction, which made her nervous, and she spent too much of the evening trying to think of some way of getting out of inviting him in for coffee when he took her home. It was no good; when the time came, he invited himself in. She knew it wasn’t fair to make comparisons, but Paul was the complete opposite of Freddy. Where Freddy sat back and waited calmly to be stroked, Paul kept edging closer, trying to crawl into her lap. And his hands were everywhere. From the very start of the evening he had stood and walked too close to her, and she didn’t like the way he had of touching her, as if casually making a point, staking a physical claim to her. For the next hour she fended him off. It was a wordless battle which neither of them would admit to. When he left, she lacked the energy to refuse a return match, the following weekend. They went to the theater, and afterward to his place—he said he wanted to show her his computer. She expected another battle, but he was a perfect gentleman. Feeling safer, she agreed to a third date, and then drank too much; the drink loosened her inhibitions, she was too tired to resist his persistent pressure, and finally took him into her bed. The sex was not entirely a success—for her, anyway—but it would doubtless get better as they got to know each other, she thought, and she was just allowing herself a few modest fantasies about the future, concentrating on the things she thought she liked about him, when he said he had to go. The man who had been hotly all over her was suddenly distant and cool, almost rude in his haste to leave. She tried to find excuses for him, but when he had gone, and she discovered his hands were still in her bed, she knew he did not mean to return. The hands were nestling beneath a pillow like a couple of soft-shelled crabs. She shuddered at the sight of them; shouted and threw her shoes at them. The left hand twitched when struck, but otherwise they didn’t move. How dare he leave his hands! She didn’t want anything to remember him by! She certainly hadn’t been in love with him. Fay looked around for something else to throw, and then felt ashamed of herself. Paul was a creep, but it wasn’t fair to take it out on his hands. They hadn’t hurt her; they had done their best to give her pleasure—they might have succeeded if she’d liked their owner more.

But she didn’t like their owner—she had to admit she wasn’t really sorry he wouldn’t be back—so why was she stuck with his hands? She could hardly give them back. She could already guess how he would avoid her at work, and she wasn’t about to add to his inflated ego by pursuing him. But it didn’t seem possible to throw them out, either. She found a shoebox to put them in—she didn’t bother about wrapping them—and then put the box away out of sight on the highest shelf of the kitchen cupboard, among the cracked plates, odd saucers, and empty jars which she’d kept because they might someday be useful. The hands made her think a little differently about what had happened. She had been in love with Ralph and also, for all her attempts to rationalize her feelings, with Freddy—she hadn’t wanted either of them to go. It made a kind of sense for her to fantasize that they’d left bits of themselves behind, but that didn’t apply to her feelings for Paul. She absolutely refused to believe that her subconscious was responsible for the hands in the kitchen cupboard. So if not her subconscious, then what? Was it the bed? She stood in the bedroom and looked at it, trying to perceive some sorcery in the brand-name mattress or the pine frame. She had bought the bed for Ralph, really; he had complained so about the futon she had when they met, declaring that it was not only too short, but also bad for his back. He had told her that pine beds were good and also cheap, and although she didn’t agree with his assessment of the price, she had bought one. It was the most expensive thing she owned. Was it also haunted? She could test it; invite friends to stay . . . Would any man who made love in this bed leave a part of himself behind, or only those who made love to her? Only for the last time? But how did it know? How could it, before she herself knew a relationship was over? What if she lured Paul back—would some other body part appear when he left? Or would the hands disappear? Once she had thought of this, she knew she had to find out. She tried to forget the idea but could not. Days passed, and Paul did not get in touch—he avoided her at work, as she had guessed he would—and she told herself to let him go. Good riddance. To pursue him would be humiliating. It wasn’t even as if she were in love with him, after all. She told herself not to be a fool, but chance and business kept taking her to his part of the building. When forced to acknowledge her his voice was polite and he did not stand too close; he spoke as if they’d never met outside working hours; as if he’d never really noticed her as a woman. She saw him, an hour later, leaning confidentially over one of the newer secretaries, his hand touching her hip. She felt a stab of jealous frustration. No wonder she couldn’t attract his attention; he had already moved on to fresh prey. Another week went by, but she would not accept defeat. She phoned him up and invited him to dinner. He said his weekends were awfully busy just now. She suggested a weeknight. He hesitated—surprised by her persistence? Contemptuous? Flattered?—and then said he was involved with someone, actually. Despising herself, Fay said lightly that of course she understood. She said that in fact, she herself was involved in a long-standing relationship, but her fellow had been abroad for the past few months, and she got bored and lonely in the evenings. She’d enjoyed herself so much with Paul that she had hoped they’d be able to get together again sometime; that was all. That changed the temperature. He said he was afraid he couldn’t manage dinner, but if she liked, he could drop by later one evening—maybe tomorrow, around ten? He was on her as soon as he was through the door. She tried to fend him off with offers of drink, but he didn’t seem to hear. His hands were everywhere, grabbing, fondling, probing, as undeniably real as

they’d ever been. “Wait, wait,” she said, laughing but not amused. “Can’t we . . . talk?” He paused, holding her around the waist, and looked down at her. He was bigger than she remembered. “We could have talked on the phone.” “I know, but . . .” “Is there something we need to talk about?” “Well, no, nothing specific, but . . .” “Did you invite me over here to talk? Did I misunderstand?” “No.” “All right.” His mouth came down, wet and devouring, on hers, and she gave in. But not on the couch, she thought, a few minutes later. “Bed,” she gasped, breaking away. “In the bedroom.” “Good idea.” But it no longer seemed like a good idea to her. As she watched him strip off his clothes she thought this was probably the worst idea she’d ever had. She didn’t want him in her bed again; she didn’t want sex with him. How could she have thought, for even a minute, that she could have sex for such a cold-blooded, ulterior motive? “I thought you were in a hurry,” he said. “Get your clothes off.” Naked, he reached for her. She backed away. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have called you, I’m sorry—” “Don’t apologize. It’s very sexy when a woman knows what she wants and asks for it.” He’d unbuttoned her blouse and unhooked her bra earlier, and now tried to remove them. She tried to stop him, and he pinioned her wrists. “This is a mistake, I don’t want this, you have to go.” “Like hell.” “I’m sorry, Paul, but I mean it.” He smiled humorlessly. “You mean you want me to force you.” “No!” He pushed her down on the bed, got her skirt off despite her struggles, then ripped her tights. “Stop it!” “I wouldn’t have thought you liked this sort of thing,” he mused. “I don’t, I’m telling the truth, I don’t want to have sex, I want you to leave.” Her voice wobbled all over the place. “Look, I’m sorry, I’m really sorry, but I can’t, not now.” Tears leaked out of her eyes. “Please. You don’t understand. This isn’t a game.” She was completely naked now and he was naked on

top of her. “Thisis a game,” he said calmly. “And I do understand. You’ve been chasing me for weeks. I know what you want. A minute ago, you were begging me to take you to bed. Now you’re embarrassed. You want me to force you. I don’t want to force you, but if I have to, I will.” “No.” “It’s up to you,” he said. “You can give, or I can take. That simple.” She had never thought rape could be that simple. She bit one of the arms that held her down. He slapped her hard. “I told you,” he said. “You can give, or I can take. It’s that simple. It’s your choice.” Frightened by his strength, seeing no choice at all, she gave in. Afterward, she was not surprised when she discovered what he had left in her bed. What else should it be? It was just what she deserved. It was ugly, yet there was something oddly appealing in the sight of it nestling in a fold of the duvet; she was reminded of her teenage passion for collecting bean-bag creatures. She used to line them up across her bed. This could have been one of them: maybe a squashy elephant’s head with a fat nose. She went on staring at it for a long time, lying on her side on the bed, emotionally numbed and physically exhausted, unable either to get up or to go to sleep. She told herself she should get rid of it, that she could take her aggressions out on it, cut it up, at least throw it, and the pair of hands, out with the rest of her unwanted garbage. But it was hard to connect this bean-bag creature with Paul and what he had done to her. She realized she had scarcely more than glimpsed his genitals; no wonder she couldn’t believe this floppy creature could have had anything to do with her rape. The longer she looked at it, the less she could believe it was that horrible man’s. It, too, had been abused by him. And it wasn’t his now, it was hers. OK, Paul had been the catalyst, somehow, but this set of genitalia had been born from the bed and her own desire; it was an entirely new thing. Eventually she fell asleep, still gazing at it. When she opened her eyes in the morning it was like seeing an old friend. She wouldn’t get rid of it. She put it in a pillowcase and stashed the parcel among the scarves, shawls and sweaters on the shelf at the top of the wardrobe. She decided to put the past behind her. She didn’t think about Paul or Ralph or even Freddy. Although most nights she slept with Freddy’s body, that was a decision made on the same basis, and with no more emotion, as whether she slept with the duvet or the electric blanket. Freddy’s body wasn’t Freddy’s anymore; it was hers. The only men in her life now were friends. She wasn’t looking for romance, and she seldom thought about sex. If she wanted male companionship there was Christopher, a platonic friend from school, or Marcus, her next-door neighbor, or Freddy. They still talked on the phone frequently, and very occasionally met in town for a drink or a meal, but she had never invited him over since their break-up, so it was a shock one evening to answer the door and discover him standing outside. He looked sheepish. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I know I should have called first, but I couldn’t find a working phone, and . . . I hope you don’t mind. I need somebody to talk to. Matilda’s thrown me out.” And not only Matilda, but also the latest other woman. He poured out his woes, and she made dinner, and they drank wine and talked for hours.

“Do you have somewhere to stay?” she asked at last. “I could go to my sister’s. I stay there a lot anyway. She’s got a spare room—I’ve even got my own key. But—” He gave her his old look, desirous but undemanding. “Actually, Fay, I was hoping I could stay with you tonight.” She discovered he was still irresistible. Her last thought before she fell asleep was how strange it was to sleep with someone who had arms and legs. In the morning she woke enough to feel him kiss her, but she didn’t realize it was a kiss goodbye, for she could still feel his legs entwined with her own. But the rest of him was gone, and probably for good this time, she discovered when she woke up completely. For a man with such a smooth-skinned body he had extremely hairy legs, she thought, sitting on the bed and staring at the unattached limbs. And for a woman who had just been used and left again, she felt awfully cheerful. She got Ralph’s feet out of the drawer—thinking how much thinner and more elegant they were than Freddy’s—and, giggling to herself, pressed the right foot to the bottom of the right leg, just to see how it looked. It looked as if it was growing there and always had been. When she tried to pull it away, it wouldn’t come. She couldn’t even see a join. Anyone else might have thought it was perfectly natural; it probably only looked odd to her because she knew it wasn’t. When she did the same thing with the left foot and left leg, the same thing happened. So then, feeling daring, she took Freddy’s torso out of the wardrobe and laid it down on the bed just above the legs. She pushed the legs up close, so they looked as if they were growing out of the torso—and then they were. She sat it up, finding that it was as flexible and responsive as a real, live person, not at all a dead weight, and she sat on the edge of the bed beside it and looked down at its empty lap. “Don’t go away; I have just the thing for Sir,” she said. The genitals were really the wrong size and skin-tone for Freddy’s long, pale body, but they nestled gratefully into his crotch, obviously happy in their new home. The body was happy, too. There was new life in it—not Freddy’s, not Paul’s, not Ralph’s, but a new being created out of their old parts. She wasn’t imagining it. Not propped up, it was sitting beside her, holding itself up, alert and waiting. When she leaned closer she could feel a heart beating within the chest, sending the blood coursing through a network of veins and arteries. She reached out to stroke the little elephant-head slumbering between the legs, and as she touched it, it stirred and sat up. She was sexually excited, too, and, at the same time, horrified. There had to be something wrong with her to want to have sex with this incomplete collection of body parts. All right, it wasn’t dead, so at least what she felt wasn’t necrophilia, but what was it? A man without arms was merely disabled, but was a man without a head a man at all? Whatever had happened to her belief in the importance of relationships? They couldn’t even communicate, except by touch, and then only at her initiative. All he could do was respond to her will. She thought of Paul’s hands, how she had been groped, forced, slapped, and held down by them, and was just as glad they remained unattached, safely removed to the kitchen cupboard. Safe sex, she thought, and giggled. In response to the vibration, the body listed a little in her direction.

She got off the bed and moved away, then stood and watched it swaying indecisively. She felt a little sorry for it, being so utterly dependent on her, and that cooled her ardor. It wasn’t right, she couldn’t use it as a kind of live sex-aid—not as it was. She was going to have to find it a head, or forget about it. She wrapped the body in a sheet to keep the dust off and stored it under the bed. She couldn’t sleep with it anymore. In its headless state it was too disturbing. “Don’t worry,” she said, although it couldn’t hear her. “This isn’t forever.” She started her head-hunt. She knew it might take some time, but she was going to be careful; she didn’t want another bad experience. It wouldn’t be worth it. Something good had come out of the Paul experience, but heads—or faces, anyway—were so much harder to depersonalize. If it looked like Freddy or Paul in the face, she knew she would respond to it as Freddy or Paul, and what was the point of that? She wanted to find someone new, someone she didn’t know, but also someone she liked; someone she could find attractive, go to bed with, and be parted from without the traumas of love or hate. She hoped it wasn’t an impossible paradox. She asked friends for introductions, she signed up for classes, joined clubs, went to parties, talked to men in supermarkets and on buses, answered personal ads. And then Marcus dropped by one evening, and asked if she wanted to go to a movie with him. They had seen a lot of movies and shared a fair number of pizzas over the past two years, but although she liked him, she knew very little about him. She didn’t even know for sure that he was heterosexual. She occasionally saw him with other women, but the relationships seemed to be platonic. Because he was younger than she was, delicate-looking and with a penchant for what she thought of as “arty” clothes, because he didn’t talk about sex and had never touched her, the idea of having sex with him had never crossed her mind. Now, seeing his clean-shaven, rather pretty face as if for the first time, it did. “What a good idea,” she said. After the movie, after the pizza and a lot of wine, after he’d said he probably should be going, Fay put her hand on his leg and suggested he stay. He seemed keen enough—if surprised—but after she got him into bed he quickly lost his erection and nothing either of them did made any difference. “It’s not your fault,” he said anxiously. It had not occurred to her that it could be. “Oh, God, this is awful,” he went on. “If you only knew how I’ve dreamed of this. . . . Only I never thought, never dared to hope, that you could want me too, and now . . . you’re so wonderful, and kind, and beautiful, and you deserve so much, and you must think I’m completely useless.” “I think it’s probably the wine,” she said. “We both had too much to drink. Maybe you should go on home. . . . I think we’d both sleep better in our own beds, alone.” “Oh, God, you don’t hate me, do you? You will give me another chance, won’t you, Fay? Please?” “Don’t worry about it. Yes, Marcus, yes, of course I will. Now, good night.” She found nothing in her bed afterward; she hadn’t expected to. But neither did she expect the flowers that arrived the next day, and the day after that. He took her out to dinner on Friday night—not pizza this time—and afterward, in her house, in her bed, they did what they had come together to do. She fell asleep, supremely satisfied, in his arms. In the morning he was eager to make love again, and Fay might have been interested—he had proved himself

to be a very tender and skilful lover—but she was too impatient. She had only wanted him for one thing, and the sooner he left her, the sooner she would get it. “I think you’d better go, Marcus. Let’s not drag this out,” she said. “What do you mean?” “I mean this was a mistake, we shouldn’t have made love, we’re really just friends who had too much to drink, so . . .” He looked pale, even against the pale linen. “But I love you.” There was a time when such a statement, in such circumstances, would have made her happy, but the Fay who had loved, and expected to be loved in return, by the men she took to bed, seemed like another person now. “But I don’t love you.” “Then why did you—” “Look, I don’t want to argue. I don’t want to say something that might hurt you. I want us to be friends, that’s all, the way we used to be.” She got up, since he still hadn’t moved, and put on her robe. “Are you saying you never want to see me again?” She looked down at him. He really did have a nice face, and the pain that was on it now—that she had put there—made her look away hastily in shame. “Of course I do. You’ve been a good neighbor and a good friend. I hope we can go on being that. Only . . .” She tried to remember what someone had said to her once, was it Ralph? “Only I can’t be what you want me to be. I still care about you, of course. But I don’t love you in that way. So we’d better part. You’ll see it’s for the best, in time. You’ll find someone else.” “You mean you will.” Startled, she looked back at him. Wasn’t that what she had said to Ralph? She couldn’t think how to answer him. But Marcus was out of bed, getting dressed, and didn’t seem to expect an answer. “I’ll go,” he said. “Because you ask me to. But I meant what I said. I love you. You know where I live. If you want me . . . if you change your mind . . .” “Yes, of course. Goodbye, Marcus, I’m sorry.” She walked him to the door, saw him out, and locked the door behind him. Now! She scurried back to the bedroom, but halted in the doorway as she had a sudden, nasty thought. What if it hadn’t worked? What if, instead of a pretty face, she found, say, another pair of feet in her bed? Then I’ll do it again, she decided, and again and again until I get my man. She stepped forward, grasped the edge of the duvet, and threw it aside with a conjurer’s flourish. There was nothing on the bare expanse of pale blue sheet; nothing but a few stray pubic hairs. She picked up the pillows, each in turn, and shook them. She shook out the duvet, unfastening the cover to make sure there was nothing inside. She peered beneath the bed and poked around the sheet-wrapped body, even pulled the bed away from the wall, in case something had caught behind the

headboard. Finally she crawled across the bed on her belly, nose to the sheet, examining every inch. Nothing. He had left nothing. But why? How? They left parts because they weren’t willing to give all. The bed preserved bits and pieces of men who wanted only pieces of her time, pieces of her body, for which they could pay only with pieces of their own. Marcus wanted more than that. He wanted, and offered, everything. But she had refused him, so now she had nothing. No, not nothing. She crouched down and pulled the sheet-wrapped form from beneath the bed, unwrapped it and reassured herself that the headless, armless body was still warm, still alive, still male, still hers. She felt the comforting stir of sexual desire in her own body as she aroused it in his, and she vowed she would not be defeated. It would take thought and careful planning, but surely she could make one more lover leave her? She spent the morning making preparations, and at about lunchtime she phoned Marcus and asked him to come over that evening. “Did you really mean it when you said you loved me?” “Yes.” “Because I want to ask you to do something for me, and I don’t think you will.” “Fay, anything, what is it?” “I’ll have to tell you in person.” “I’ll come over now.” She fell into his arms when he came in, and kissed him passionately. She felt his body respond, and when she looked at his face she saw the hurt had gone and a wondering joy replaced it. “Let’s go in the bedroom,” she said. “I’m going to tell you everything; I’m going to tell you the truth about what I want, and you won’t like it, I know.” “How can you know? How can you possibly know?” He stroked her back, smiling at her. “Because it’s not normal. It’s a sexual thing.” “Try me.” They were in the bedroom now. She drew a deep breath. “Can I tie you to the bed?” “Well.” He laughed a little. “I’ve never done that before, but I don’t see anything wrong with it. If it makes you happy.” “Can I do it?” “Yes, why not.”

“Now, I mean.” Shielding the bedside cabinet with her body, she pulled out the ropes she had put there earlier. “Lie down.” He did as she said. “You don’t want me to undress first?” She shook her head, busily tying him to the bedposts. “And what do I do now?” He strained upwards against the ropes, demonstrating how little he was capable of doing. “Now you give me your head.” “What?” “Other men have given me other parts; I want your head.” It was obvious he didn’t know what she meant. She tried to remember how she had planned to explain; what, exactly, she wanted him to do. Should she show him the body under the bed? Would he understand then? “Your head,” she said again, and then she remembered the words. “It’s simple. You can give it to me, or I can take it. It’s your choice.” He still stared at her as if it wasn’t simple at all. She got the knife out of the bedside cabinet, and held it so he could see. “You give, or I take. It’s your choice.”

Honey, I’m Home! As soon as she got home Gina turned on the television for company. She’d started doing it while living alone in New York, and although she wasn’t as paranoid about living alone in London—that was the idea of the move—the habit persisted. She watched it hardly at all; it was wallpaper. Last week she’d succumbed to a salesman’s spiel and had a satellite receiving dish fixed to the side of her building. The new channels she paid for offered more to choose from, but little of it choice. Much of the “entertainment” was imported from America or Australia and distinctly past its Best By date. Standing in the kitchenette slicing chicken, mushrooms, and zucchini for her dinner, feeling her usual faint regret that there would be no one to share it with her, no lover or husband soon to walk through the door, Gina was aware of the television playing in the living room behind her, and heard it call, in a voice from her childhood: “Honey, I’m home!” Memory tagged it instantly: Hugh Beaumont as Ward Cleaver inLeave It to Beaver . She marveled at time’s magic which turned any boring old sit-com into a cultural classic. Then somebody grabbed her by the waist, and she screamed. At the same time she twisted in his grasp, half-turned and drove her fist straight into his midriff. It was a response drilled into her by years of self-defense classes, but this time, the first time she’d done it for real, in her fist was a long, very sharp kitchen knife, and it went straight into the living body of Ward Cleaver. He let go of her, looking surprised and sorry. Her eyes went from his kindly face, as familiar as a member of her own family, to the black knife handle protruding from his belly, and she couldn’t have said whether guilt or disbelief was the stronger emotion.

“Gosh, honey, what’s wrong? Did I forget our anniversary again?” With a visible wince, he grasped the handle and pulled the knife out. He laid it down on the counter and patted himself gingerly where she had stabbed him. Except she couldn’t have stabbed him really. There was no blood on his white shirt, no rent in the cloth. She looked at the knife and could see no blood on the blade. Maybe her usual sharp chopper had been replaced by a stage prop. When she tried to pick it up to check, he grabbed her hand. “Easy,” he said, half-laughing. “Truce? I’m sorry, whatever I’ve done, I’m sorry.” His hand holding hers was solid and warm and very real. She stared at him, grasped at a mental straw. “Are you fromCandid Camera ?” “Huh?” “Alan Funt? Uh, Jeremy Beadle? Is this a joke?” He shook his head. “Itis our anniversary, isn’t it? Why don’t I take you out to dinner. Wherever you want, price no object. Okay, honey? Waddaya say.” She said yes. She was so befuddled she forgot to turn off the television set when they left, and would have forgotten to lock the door if he hadn’t reminded her. “This is London, you know. Have to be careful. Not like back home.” “It’s worse back home,” she said sharply. “London isn’t full of people carrying guns, or psychos who’d rather kill the people they rob than let them live.” “Whatever you say, dear.” Ward Cleaver’s face, like his voice, was good-humored, handsome, warm, yet somehow blank. She didn’t think there was anybody home behind those eyes. She hoped he wasn’t a psycho. Was he a robot? Were those Disneyland kind of things that good now? But how did it get into her apartment? And why? Her choice for dinner was the Café Pelican in St. Martin’s Lane. It was a place she often went for drinks, particularly in the summer, and there was a good chance she would see someone she knew. London might be a big city, but the world of publishing was more like a small town. Think about changing jobs, or get too interested in a married colleague, and suddenly everybody was talking about it. Although she still traded on the aura of Manhattan sharpness with which she had won her first London job, Gina suspected it was wearing as thin as her accent by now. She didn’t care. This was home. She had never found the husband she had hoped for, and dating wasn’t any easier in London, but she had her own flat, a job she liked, and lots of interesting friends. “If I’m so happy, why am I hallucinating?” “What’s that, dear?” He hadn’t gone away. He was still beside her in a carriage on the Northern Line. She broke into a cold sweat. What if she wasn’t single, didn’t have a career, didn’t live in London. What if this refugee from an imaginary 1950s America was really her husband, and they had two sons, Wallace and Theodore. And she did the housework in high heels and pearls. She moaned softly. It wasn’t possible. Please, let it not be possible. They got off at Charing Cross and walked up past the opera house, toward the café. Her heart lifted. There, sitting at one of the tables on the pavement was someone she knew, an editor at Gollancz in conversation with a rumpled, seedy-looking individual, undoubtedly an author. His name flew away without alighting; Gina’s concentration was fixed on her friend when she introduced Ward.

“Hello, Ward, nice to meet you.” No reaction at all. Gina could not contain herself. With the barest sketch of an apology, she dragged the other woman off to the ladies’ room. “What’s up?” “Doesn’t he remind you of someone? Doesn’t he look a lot like . . . Ward Cleaver?” “I thought you said that was his name.” “But don’t you rememberLeave It to Beaver ? No?” Gina groaned. She’d grown up on the series, but that was in another country, and besides . . . “Just answer this: was there a man in my life the last time I saw you?” “I don’t think so. No, definitely not. You were talking about putting an ad inTime Out . Is that where he came from?” “No. I don’t know. He just turned up and . . . there’s something strange about him. I can’t explain.” “Mmmm. Well, be careful. I’d ask you to join us, but I’m afraid I’m on my last drink. I really have to get home to the boy.” “Oh, I’ll be all right. I’m not afraid of him—he’s just . . . boring.” “They’re the ones you have to look out for. Whatever you do, don’t let him take you home.” “Oh, no!” After dinner, (which was, thanks to Ward’s conversation about the life he presumed they shared, the most surrealistically boring meal of her life) Gina tried to lose him in the crowds at Leicester Square, but he stuck like a limpet. She realized that even if she lost him now he’d turn up at the flat later since he believed it was his home. Anything she said which disagreed with his version of reality he treated either as a joke—chuckling indulgently—or as an understandable expression of womanly pique. “I know you’re mad because I forgot our anniversary, honey, but I’m trying to make up for it.” “It’s not our anniversary!” “Is it your birthday? Come on, honey, give me a break, you know I can’t remember dates.” “It’s nothing! You’re nothing to me. I never met you before today when you turned up in my apartment! Can’t you hear what I’m saying?” “Aw, honey, just tell me what you’re so mad about.” “Stop calling me honey!” When they got home Gina leaped up the stairs like a gazelle and managed to get the door shut and locked with him on the outside. But Ward had his own key and he used it, chuckling indulgently at her cute, wifely tricks. “I give up,” said Gina wearily, sinking down on the sofa. “What do I have to do to get rid of you, put on the ruby slippers and click my heels together and say there’s no place like home?”

Ward stood smiling fondly down at her. “You’re right, honey, there’s no place like home. I’ll sure be glad when we can get out of London and back to the boys and our own house.” Gina shuddered. “I don’t suppose a bucket of water would wash you away?” “Would you like a drink, honey?” “That’s not a bad idea. There’s some Scotch up over the sink. A little water, no ice.” She watched him as he went to fetch it. He had a nice build on him, she had to admit. Maybe he had his uses. When he returned with her drink, she scrutinized his face, remembering that, as a child, she had thought him handsome. There had even been a time—she’d forgotten until this moment—when she’d imagined she would grow up to marry someone just like the Beaver’s father. As the old memories came back she began to thaw, and as she took the first warming swallow of Scotch she turned a genuine smile on the man in front of her. Maybe he really had come in response to an unarticulated wish, to fulfill her subconscious desire. “Sit down, why don’t you. Make yourself comfortable.” He fidgeted and tossed back his drink. “Mmm, strong stuff!” He turned away to set down his glass and then yawned exaggeratedly, balling his fists and stretching his arms out at his sides. “Man, oh, man, am I tired! That city really takes it out of you. Think I might just get ready . . .” His voice trailed off as he went into the bedroom. Gina smiled after him, feeling a definite spark of interest. “Yes, dear, why don’t you get ready for bed, and I’ll join you.” There was a shout and Ward reappeared, glaring. “What did you do with the beds, for Pete’s sake?” “What?” “The beds! There’s only one bed in there!” “One that’s big enough for two.” She smirked. “But we always—you know I can’t—youalways say you can’t sleep with anybody else in the same bed.” “I don’t always say that. Do I always say that? Well, maybe I don’t feel like sleeping tonight.” She was enjoying herself. Ward was definitely sweating. She’d seen that look on his face before, when his high-heeled, aproned, screen wife ran mental circles around him. “I’ve got to get some sleep tonight because . . . because I’ve got a meeting, yes that’s right, a meeting, very important, in the office, first thing tomorrow morning.” Gina shrugged. “Well, I’m sorry. But there’s nothing I can do. I only have one bed, as you can see . . . honey. Unless you want to check into a hotel.” “Oh, no, no, no need for that. . . . I’ll sleep on the couch!” “You can’t sleep on the couch. It’s not even big enough for me to sleep on. You’re way too tall. You’d put your back out even trying.”

“Um . . . the floor! That would be good for my back, yeah. Perfect. I need something hard—that mattress is much too soft. Right. I’ll sleep on the floor.” “You can sleep in hell for all I care,” Gina said. She was tired of this game. If he was that nervous about sex, where had the two boys come from? She could just imagine June, who had probably never lost her figure, turning up one day with two little bundles.There was a special on at the hospital. Two for the price of one! Back when Gina had watchedLeave It to Beaver for the first time she had believed babies came from hospitals like bread or ice cream, untouched by human hands. She looked at her “husband,” terrified at the prospect of a night in the same bed with his wife, and remembered another childhood fantasy caused by the ambiguity of adult language. In overheard, barely comprehended gossip, as well as in theConfessions magazines read by the babysitter, unmarried women got into trouble—which meant pregnant—by “sleeping with” men. Maybe Ward, too, thought sex was something that happened while you slept. Maybe for him it did. She had to sympathize. The prospect of fathering another Beaver was worth going to any lengths to avoid. She got up and walked away from him to turn off the television. She had just realized it had been left on all evening. “I’m going to bed,” she said, and turned back to face him. “You—” He was gone. “Ward?” She already knew from the way her voice sounded when she called that she was alone in the flat, but she checked out the bedroom and bathroom, just in case. Then she looked at the silenced television set. That simple? She laughed with relief. But old habits die hard, and the very next evening, as soon as she came in, Gina turned the television on before hurrying back to the bathroom for a shower. Ward Cleaver was an imaginary character, better forgotten, and although she was feeling vaguely sexy she certainly wasn’t expecting company when she emerged from the bathroom wearing only a light cotton wrap, her hair turbaned in a fluffy white towel. “Hi, honey,” said the man on the bed. She let out a blood-curdling scream. A few seconds after fear, recognition kicked in. “Ricky?” she said weakly, clutching the robe to her breast. “Sure,” said the man she recognized as Desi Arnaz, a.k.a. Ricky Ricardo, fromI Love Lucy. His face took on a scowl of distrust. “Who else you expecting except your husband? You expecting maybe somebody else? Somebody I don’t know about?” She didn’t think about it, her voice fell into the high-pitched, husband-placating cadences of Ricky’s wife Lucy. “No, of course not, no, how can you say that, Ricky? You just startled me, that’s all. I didn’t hear you come in. I thought I was all alone.” “Yeah? Well, you’re not all alone now. You happy to see me? Come and show me you’re happy to see me,querida .” Ricky, it became clear, was not made nervous by double beds, nor did he think they were only for use by the terminally tired at bedtime. Sex with him was pretty sensational. Gina was very late for work the next day. First she overslept, then Ricky wouldn’t let her out of bed. “Look, I’d love to stay in bed all day, but I can’t,” she said, laughing, gently disentangling herself from him. “I have to work.” “Why? Do it later, do it when I’m at work, tonight. So the place gets a little dustier, so what?”

“I’m not talking about housework—I mean my job.” His face darkened. “Job? Don’t I make good money, my wife has to work?” “It’s nothing to do with you. I mean, it’s my choice, Ilike my job—I had it before I even met you—why shouldn’t I have a job?” To her own amazement she heard herself babbling as if it mattered what he thought, as if she must, at all costs, placate him. “Ricky Ricardo’s wife does not have to work,” he said sternly. Then, more gently, sweetening it with kisses: “I don’t want you to be out there working for strangers, wearing yourself out. I want you here, making a nice home for me.” “But—but I’d get bored here alone all day.” “You don’t have to stay in all the time. I’m here in the mornings. In the afternoons if you don’t want to come along to the club and watch me rehearse you can go shopping, or see the sights. I know how you love to shop! We ain’t gonna stay in London forever, so you might as well make the most of it, not waste your time doin’ some silly leetle job.” “But, Ricky—” “No buts!” He landed a playful slap on her bottom, and she jumped. “Go cook my breakfast,mujer , I’m starving!” She went out as if obediently to the kitchen, but really to turn off the television. She felt guilty doing it, and knew she would miss him, but it meant she was able to get dressed and go out to work without having to cook his breakfast. It wasn’t so easy to cancel out the memory of him. She hadn’t had sex that hot for a very long time, and although her uncharacteristically meek response to his typicalmachismo worried her, she reminded herself how simple it had been to get rid of him. After work she went out for drinks and dinner with a friend, and she deliberately did not turn on the television when she got home. She thought about it, though; she thought a lot about Ricky. The memories were especially poignant when she was alone in bed. It wasn’t fair, dammit. Why shouldn’t she have a little fun? When it was as easy as turning a television on or off—could it really be that easy? She got up and went to find out. There was no sign ofI Love Lucy orThe Lucille Ball Show or any American sitcom from that era on any of the channels. She wondered if that meant she would have to wait until the right program was playing, or make a choice from what was available. One channel had a group of real people sitting in a studio having a serious discussion about modern art. Another was showing a French movie with English subtitles. There was something with sinister music that looked like an American made-for-TV movie, something that was either a soft-core sex film or an ad for chocolate, a shopping channel, boxing, an ad for cat food, a religious program, dancing cows, a very old Western, and championship darts. She wondered if what was on screen was related to the men who turned up in her flat. She hoped not. The French movie seemed her best bet for sex (the chocolate ad didn’t feature any men) but without subtitles, communication would probably break down long before they got to bed. Restless, horny, and bored she prowled her flat, looking in the refrigerator, picking up books and setting them down, deliberately ignoring the TV. “Come on, Ricky,” she muttered, praying that it would be enough to want him to get him. But why had

Ricky turned up in the first place, she wondered. If desire—her desire—was involved it didn’t make sense. She was ready to believe that Ward Cleaver had been summoned by some deeply buried but still potent wish for the loving husband, two kids and house in the suburbs which had signified happiness in her childhood, but—Ricky Ricardo? Come on! She had never found him sexy—she would not believe she found him sexy now except for the memories of her body. But, subconsciously, if Ward represented the safe, non-sexual side of marriage, then Ricky, a musician and a foreigner with a mercurial temper, might stand for the more exotic and sexual possibilities in a marriage. Wasn’t it, after all, an interest in the artistic and exotic which had drawn her to publishing, and to London? Maybe the start of her whole career could be located in those childhood hours spent watching, through a haze of boredom, the endlessly repeated episodes ofI Love Lucy. What else would she learn about her own desires? Who would be the next character to appear—Fred Flintstone? The thought made her shudder, and she cast about for some other televisual memories. She had been an ardent fan of the oldDick Van Dyke Show; Rob Petrie might have been a bit of a bumbler at times, but she’d had a crush on him, and measured herself sadly against his wife, the cute, pert Laura. She tried to revive her old enthusiasm for Rob, but then she wondered if the Petries were not, like the Cleavers, a twin-bedded couple, and gave up. It was no good. Perverse her desire might be, but she wanted Ricky and nobody else. She went to bed, leaving the TV on. She was barely asleep when Ricky woke her with a kiss and the welcome warmth of his body. She had meant to avoid a replay of their first argument by getting rid of him first thing in the morning, but he woke before she did. Then he insisted on taking her out to breakfast at the Ritz. At least there she was able to pay a visit to the ladies’ room and secretly call the office. She claimed an attack of the flu and said she hoped to be in on Monday, or Tuesday at the latest. After a long weekend of playing Lucy she thought she’d be eager to return to real life, but she hadn’t realized how much, when she was with Ricky, his reality became hers. She couldn’t bring herself to turn off the television. On Tuesday, she lied about a doctor’s appointment and managed to get to work on time. On Wednesday another lie got her out the door only an hour late, Thursday the same, and by Friday, at work right on time, she was congratulating herself on how easy it was to keep Ricky in the dark. She’d been in her office less than an hour when she got a phone call from Jill in reception saying, mysteriously, that there was someone waiting downstairs to see her. “Well,” she said, puzzled. “Send him up. Who is it?” “Hesays he’s yourhusband .” Jill knew perfectly well Gina wasn’t married. “Oh. It’s all right. I know who—I’ll come down and see him, Jill. Thanks.” She knew it was going to be trouble; she didn’t realize quite what kind. “I can explain,” she said, and then Ricky grabbed her and—to her complete and helpless disbelief—turned her over his knee and spanked her. With a slipper. Shouting triumphantly in Spanish all the while. She wept. Not in pain—although it was surprising how much it did hurt—but rage. He hugged and kissed her then, her tears his proof of victory, and took her home in a cab. She let him, she had to let him, because she couldn’t stop crying, and anyway, she needed time to figure out how the hell she was going to explain this one to Jill. And not just Jill. It would be all over the building in five minutes. How could she go back? How could she ever face anyone at work again?

He had planned it that way, of course. The public humiliation was meant to ensure that she would stay home where he wanted her. He seemed to think it was what she wanted, too. Maybe, if she had been Lucy, he would have been right. But she wasn’t Lucy and didn’t want to be. He was taking his clothes off, as if the spanking had been their customary foreplay, when she turned him off. Gina extinguished Ricky in the white heat of anger, but no regret or calmer reflection would make her summon him back. It was time to be sensible about this. For some reason, or none at all, she’d been given a powerful gift, and it was up to her to use it wisely. She supposed it must have something to do with the satellite receiver dish. In the old days (she reflected) there would have been a fairy or a dusty old shopkeeper to mutter a cryptic warning if not tell you the rules, but these days it was all so impersonal, caveat emptor and no one but yourself to blame when the magic did you in. This time she would wish for a man she wanted now, not just in her childish subconscious. It made perfect sense that the man of her dreams should be found on television. It was television more than anything else, more than movies or rock ’n’ roll, that had shaped her sexuality, had given her the images and the vocabulary of desire. Other people her age talked about movies, but she’d never seen anything but the occasional Walt Disney film until she was old enough to date, and by then the pattern would have been well-established. Popular music had stirred strange longings in her soul, of course, but those longings were directed not at the unimaginably distant musicians, but at actors, the men whose faces she gazed at, intimately close, night after night in the half-dark of the family room. (The Beatles were an exception, but she’d only fallen in love with them after seeing them onThe Ed Sullivan Show .) Gina stretched out on the carpeted floor. The silence was eerie. Silent, it didn’t even feel like her apartment. On a weekday morning, even the usual noises from her upstairs neighbors were missing. Uneasy, she got up and switched on Radio Two. Even real life should have a sound track. Returning to the floor, she closed her eyes and let her mind drift back to the time when she had been madly in love with Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin, unable to decide (just as she had always been unable to choose just one favorite Beatle) which of the men fromThe Man from U.N.C.L.E. she preferred, Napoleon with his suave charm, or Illya with his icy cool. Yet now that she thought of them, neither alternative was very appealing. It was all new and thrilling when she was twelve, but in the years since she’d been out with enough bed-hoppers to have the measure of Solo, and she’d broken her heart against icebergs like Kuryakin enough to resent all that unreciprocated effort. She was no longer a girl, and the world had moved on. Napoleon Solo would seem as ridiculously out of date and sexist now as Ricky Ricardo. The problem with finding a contemporary TV lover was that she never watched TV anymore except for movies and the news—well, and the occasional American sitcom when she was too tired to do anything else. She thought ofFriends and wrinkled her nose. She couldn’t seriously imagine dating any of those boys. Seinfeld was out because he was a real person, and she wasn’t crazy enough to think she had the power to transport real, live men from their homes into hers at the press of a button—even presuming she was interested in such a whiny, self-absorbed New Yorker. She recalled photographs of gorgeous George Clooney, but she’d never tuned in toER and didn’t even know the name of the character he played. She’d given up on cop shows when they turned to dirty realism, and had never liked soap operas. The sexiest men in the soaps were generally villains any sane woman would stay away from. She wondered if that was a contemporary equation—safe and boring, or attractive but dangerous—or if it had been ever thus. It seemed an awfully immature attitude toward sex, but maybe the television idea of

romance was inescapably adolescent. She tried to remember the last time she’d found any character from a television series sexually interesting, let alone compelling. Familiar music impinged upon her consciousness, jarring, percussive, a popular track from some years back, carrying a freight of memory. She sat up and stared at the blank screen while the radio played the theme music fromMiami Vice . It came back in a rush: the curious, guilty pleasure of it, like eating a whole batch of brownies, delicious and comforting and yet sickening. Something she could never talk about. For those few months, one night a week, she had a secret, a pleasure waiting for her, like having someone to go home to. She’d get in from somewhere, maybe a union meeting, maybe a disappointing tryst in a pub. Sometimes she’d be a little drunk, sometimes she would pour herself a glass of white wine, sometimes she’d have a packet of fish and chips, sometimes she would have been crying. She’d turn on the television and curl up in the comfy chair with her wine or her chips and gaze at the screen entranced by the brilliantly colored, designer vision of Florida. She knew Miami wasn’t like that—it wasn’t the Miami her grandparents lived in—and she knew cops didn’t dress like that, but watchingMiami Vice she was as uncritical as any dreamer in her own dreams. What was the name of the character played by Don Johnson? Sonny. Sonny something. King of the wild frontier. Gina smiled, sank back on the carpet and closed her eyes, remembering. Sonny Crockett. How many years ago was it? It was the time she was hung up on Lane, and it must be at least three years since she’d seen him at all. They used to go out for drinks and talk for hours on the phone. Mostly they acted like pals, but sometimes they were like lovers, edgy and flirtatious. He was married, so of course he couldn’t be interested in her, she thought, and so her crush on him grew, unspoken, until he started telling her things about his marriage that she didn’t want to know. As he seemed more interested in her, she began to question her own interest in him; getting to know him better she liked him less while becoming more involved—it was all very emotionally confusing and exhausting. What a relief it had been to go home and forget all that, to feel straightforward, uncomplicated lust for someone she didn’t know and would never meet. Someone who would never burden her with the secrets of his soul, complaints about his wife, the problems of his childhood, his health worries. Someone who was fit and strong and unattached, with a smashing wardrobe and his own boat. For nearly an hour every week she was able to forget Lane, forget work, forget money worries, forget being lonely or being in love and simply be warmed by the sunlight, the jewel colors, and Sonny Crockett’s sexy smile. That was what she wanted. A smart, funny, tough, slightly scruffy fashion plate. A man of the ’80s, he would expect his girlfriend to have her own demanding career rather than wait at home for him all day. He probably wouldn’t be around all that much himself, since he was usually working undercover to bust evil drug barons and mob kingpins. As far as women were concerned he was neither a Don Juan nor emotionally retarded. He lived by himself but sometimes fell in love. Heart pounding hard, Gina got up and turned on the set, then went into the kitchenette, thinking of that bottle of Chardonnay in the fridge. Would it be jumping the gun to open it now? He might not turn up for hours. Or, of course, he might not turn up at all, in which case at least she’d have the wine for comfort. Why not, it was nearly lunchtime. There were eggs and cheese for an omelet, lettuce and tomato for a salad, and the wine to make it special. She got eggs, cheese, and butter from the refrigerator and put them to one side on the counter. She took out two glasses and uncorked the bottle. She had just put

down the corkscrew when she felt a presence behind her. She smiled and leaned back as his arms slipped around her waist, inhaling the scent she already seemed to know. “Perfect timing,” she said as his cheek scraped hers. She’d forgotten the designer stubble. She felt his grin against her mouth as she turned. “You’re perfection,” he said, and then gave her the best kiss she’d ever had. “Can lunch wait?” he asked. “Mmm-hmmm.” “Good, ’cause I can’t.” Having said that, though, he made a detour on the way to the bedroom and spent what seemed an unnecessarily long time going through her CDs in search of the perfect mood music. “Don’t you have any Whitney Houston?” “Afraid not.” “Gloria Estefan? Sheena Easton?” “Suzanne Vega?” She suggested. “You gotta be kiddin’. ” “Carly Simon? Look, does it matter? We don’t need music.” “I think you been sleepin’ alone too long,” he said, very gently, shaking his head at her unsatisfactory recordings. Gina knew a moment of disbelieving despair: this was worse than high school, it was worse thanjunior high school, to be judged and found lacking for her taste in pop stars. She shot a glance at the television set, deciding she would pre-empt him rather than suffer rejection. Then, with a tiny grunt of satisfaction, he found something he liked, slipped it in, and they continued to the bedroom. As his hands, his mouth, his body moved against hers, it was to the rhythms of Tina Turner steaming up the windows. And Gina was in heaven. He was better than her dreams. It was all very much the way she used to imagine sex would be, before she’d learned otherwise. After they’d made love, he cooked a perfect omelet, which they ate from the same plate, sitting cozily together on the floor, not far from the television which flashed unregarded pictures, the sound turned down. “Thanks for takin’ the time off work,” Sonny said. “I wish all my lunchtimes could be like this.” “Why can’t they?” “Only in heaven. Listen, if you don’t hear from me for a while, don’t think it has anything to do with you and me, know what I mean? This case I’m workin’ on is heatin’ up. So you might not see too much of me for the next couple of weeks.” “Well, the door’s always open. . . .” “What did I tell you about that? Keep it closed and locked.” He put his arms around her and grinned. “Anyway, I got my own key. The problem is time. This case . . .” he shook his head, his face briefly grim. “Never mind. When it’s all over maybe you and me could take the boat somewhere, get away from it all.

Could even call it a honeymoon—maybe for real. Think you could go for that?” “I think I could,” she said, managing to keep her tone as casual as his. “Good deal. I gotta move.” He looked at her tenderly, touched her mouth with a finger.“Hasta la vista.” Gina was in a daze of physical happiness, loose and relaxed as she began to clean up the kitchen. She wondered if it would really be a couple of weeks before she saw Sonny again, or if time would be compressed the way it was in an hour-long drama. “The door’s always open,” she murmured, thinking of the television in the room behind her. “I’ll never turn it off again.” She heard the slightest sound, a footfall, from the other room, and looked up in surprise. “Honey, I’m home.” The voice was a stranger’s, yet somehow familiar, falsely falsetto. The adrenaline of fear was shooting through her veins as she turned and saw them. One was short, white, with thinning hair and a lived-in, almost ravaged face. She had seen him somewhere before—maybe she had known him when he was younger?—but she couldn’t quite place him. He was wearing a nasty-looking suit and a skinny tie. The other, in an understated tracksuit of the most pristine white, was young, black and quite startlingly beautiful. She had seen that face before, on posters, on album covers. Everybody had. “What areyou doing here?” she asked. Her fear vanished in astonishment. The beautiful one smiled like an angel. It was the other one who spoke. “I think you know that, my lovely.” The London vowels teased at her memory. He must be an actor, she thought. Confused, she shook her head. “But—I didn’t wantyou. There must have been a mistake.” The man in the nasty suit nodded. “And you’re the one who made it.” The beautiful one laughed. It was an utterly mad laugh. A little over the top, thought Gina, as objectively as if she was watching this on television. Real villains aren’t like this, and it’s impossible to take rock stars seriously when they try to act. Then she felt herself freeze as she understood. These weren’t actors, these weren’t people, they were characters who had come from the same place as Sonny. And she knew very well why they had come. “Your boyfriend hurt a friend of ours, rather badly,” said the white guy. A part of her mind was still scrabbling to come up with his name. He’d played drums once, hadn’t he? “And I’m afraid that, in return, we’ll have to hurt a friend ofhis. Tit for tat, you know.” “Tit for tat,” said beauty, and shrieked. If this was a movie, Sonny could return unexpectedly, in the nick of time, to save her. But this wasn’t a movie, this was series television, and everybody knew the fate of the hero’s girlfriend in a TV series. The hero had to be available, free to begin again with each new episode. She should have been smart and stuck with a sitcom husband. They might be dumb, but they were safe. The price of loving a hero was

death. Unless she could get to the television and turn this episode off. The white guy took a step toward her. “Nothing personal, lovey,” he said in a world-weary voice. Instinctively, she moved away. Two steps backed her into a corner. It was, however, the corner where she kept the knives. She remembered the knife’s lack of effect on Ward Cleaver, but he was a character from an old-fashioned sitcom for whom death by stabbing was unimaginable. These men obeyed an altogether different set of rules. So she snatched up a carving knife. But they had been waiting for it, and now acted in concert, far swifter and more brutal than she could ever be, and had the knife away from her before she could even scream. “Little girls shouldn’t play with knives,” whispered the mad one into her face. “They could hurt themselves. They could even kill themselves.” Desperately, staring at those too-familiar faces as if hypnotized, she told herself that this was not happening. They were not real. If they were not real, they couldn’t hurt her, not really. But even if she had been right—and if right, what about Ricky’s spanking?—the knife that one of them now held was as real as her own agonized body. She might try to deny it, but she knew what was going to happen before it did.

In Translation Jake Bourne was twenty-two, happily married, and working as a clerk for the Texas Department of Public Safety when the aliens came. Overnight, everything changed. He was still married, he had the same job, life went on and the bills had to be paid, but none of it seemed important. For the first time in his life, Jake was driven by a pure and unwavering desire: to see the aliens, to meet them, know them. But the aliens were a very long way from Austin, Texas. They were in Severnaya Zemlya, Pulau-Pulau Banggai, the Gobi Desert. They might as well have been on another planet, Jake thought. He wrote letters to Washington, offering his services, in any capacity, on any project connected with the aliens. He saved his money. He joined one of the local groups devoted to studying the aliens. As time passed, more aliens arrived, in more places. They visited Managua, Khartoum, Vancouver, Helsinki, Miami. . . . Who knew but that they might not one day come to Austin? Jake dared to hope. Then they began to settle, always in distant, inhospitable landscapes—Siberia, Baffin Island, the Great Sandy Desert—but right from the start each settlement had its quota of human inhabitants. Visitors were sometimes allowed. Jake made calculations, and planned a trip to Australia. And then one evening he saw on the news that a group of aliens had arrived in New Mexico. According to their translators, they intended to establish another settlement there in the desert. New Mexico! A long day’s hard driving, and he could be there. Jake stared at the televised aliens as their images flickered and shattered into amorphous shapes of swirling colors and incomprehensible shadow. Soon, he thought, he would be able to see for himself what they looked like; he would no longer be dependent on the distortions of film and tape, on the descriptions of others. Long after the news had ended, Jake went on staring at the television screen, seeing his own pictures as his dinner cooled unnoticed beside him. Eventually, he looked around for his wife, wanting to share his excitement, but she had gone out, or maybe she hadn’t come home. He couldn’t remember. When she did come in, near midnight, Jake was

pacing the floor impatiently, his suitcase packed and waiting near the door. He was tensed for an argument, but she surprised him. “I thought you would have left already,” she said. “I thought it as soon as I heard them say ‘New Mexico’ on the radio. I’m surprised you waited.” “Where were you? Of course I wouldn’t go without telling you,” he said. “I’ll be back next week. Could you phone the office in the morning. . . .” “Why come back next week? Why not stay? You could probably get a job there. It wouldn’t matter much what it was: you’d have your aliens nearby to keep you going. That’s what you want, isn’t it? That’s what you really care about. Why should you come back here?” “For one thing,” he said, “there’s you.” He embraced her, but she was as unyielding as a wall. “Hey, come on, honey. I’m not talking about leaving you, you know. You know how I feel about the aliens—but it doesn’t have anything to do withus . Look, why don’t you come with me? It could be a vacation for both of us. I’d like that.” Although it was difficult, having keyed himself up to leave, he made the concession: “We could wait until the weekend.” “I don’t want to go to New Mexico. What kind of vacation would that be? I don’t want to go to the desert and hang around hoping to see the aliens. I don’tlike the aliens. I think they’re creepy. I don’t want to know anything more about them. You do, OK, fine, go to them, but don’t you try to come back to me afterward, because I’m not going to be waiting.” “What do you mean, what are you talking about? You’re talking like I’m going to see another woman.” “Oh, no. I could cope with that. This is worse. You’re obsessed with those creatures. They’re more important to you than anything . . . and you can’t even see how strange that is. . . . I’d rather you were in love with another woman than with them.” He stared at her. “You’re crazy. This is probably the most significant event in the whole history of the human race. Contact with another species! Of course I’m interested—I’m fascinated!—anyone with any intelligence would be! But not you. I can’t believe it. You think there’s some comparison. . . . There is more to the world than us, you know; more things besides our relationship.” “I don’t care what you say. If you go now, don’t bother to come back. That’s all.” She walked past him, into the kitchen. He could hear her getting something out of the refrigerator. Briefly, Jake was caught by the feeling that he should defend himself, and by the belief that, given a few hours, he could convince his wife that she was wrong and he was right. And yet, as he thought about it, he wondered why he should bother. Their values and interests were completely at odds. They hadn’t really been a couple for a long time. How could he, why should he, go on living with a woman who found the aliens fearful rather than fascinating? She was wrong to compare his relationship with her to his curiosity about the aliens, and yet it was true, after all, they had become the most important thing in his life . . . far more important to him than she was. ***

Others made the pilgrimage to the New Mexican desert, so many others that Jake had no difficulty in finding the alien settlement. The heavy traffic carried him along relentlessly in the right direction, until he could go no farther, and had to park his car among all the other cars, trucks, campers, trailers, and tents. It was a huge, makeshift camping ground, which reminded Jake vaguely of a music festival—one of Willie Nelson’s picnics—or maybe a religious revival. Biblical, he thought, that was what it was; all the strangers gathered in the desert to receive the tablets of the Law, or to find God in a burning bush.

As for the aliens, Jake could see no sign of them, no proof that this was an alien, and not purely human, settlement. But there were the rumors which kept rippling through the crowd, keeping them all in a state of barely suppressed excitement, of incipient celebration. Rumors that an alien had been sighted, that someone had touched or been touched by one. Individuals would begin, suddenly, to vocalize, making incoherent, yet sometimes weirdly beautiful noises: “sounding” it was called, and it was the mark of a translator. Some people had an innate talent for communicating with the aliens, it seemed. The ability could not be taught or understood, and as yet no one—no group, individual, or computer—had managed to generate any other means of understanding or communicating with the aliens. Jake had dreamed of becoming a translator, although he wasn’t entirely sure if this was a fate he longed for, or feared. Where were they? Jake kept staring around until his eyes were cloudy and his head ached with the sheer effort of looking. He walked restlessly, avoided other people, and tried not to hear their comments: “Like looking in a mirror that keeps moving and fragmenting.” “Just like a person, really, that’s all . . . only, you know .” “Just a feeling, kind of like a smell in the air, like before a storm.” “Like a person . . . a human, you know, but much bigger, and theangles are all wrong . . . and the colors . . . I can’t explain it.” He didn’t want his experience second-hand. When he saw his first alien Jake wanted really to see it, for himself, through his own eyes, undistorted by imagination or expectation or the experience of others. There was someone—a really big man—just in front of him—and Jake had to walk around him, glancing sidelong—he was really huge!—as he passed. Huge—Jake stopped. The air was shimmering around the . . . giant? Like a person, yet not a person. The air sparkled and fragmented into flares of swirling color, the way it sometimes did on television, and then the colors reformed into a not-quite-solid, larger-than-life-sized, almost-human figure. Jake stared and stared. Sometimes he thought he saw it, and sometimes not, but he never could quite get a fix on it, on its boundaries, or how big it was. But it was there. It undoubtedly was there. And then it was gone. Jake heard a small sound of loss. He thought it might be his own voice, until he turned his head and saw a girl with hair as yellow and soft as an Easter chick and a tanned, skinny, nearly naked body. She had seen the alien, too. They had both seen it. It was real. Their eyes met, and suddenly Jake felt happier than he had in a long time. Three weeks later Daphne and Jake were sharing their new life in a one-room apartment in Albuquerque. They both wanted to work for the Alien Relations Agency, but didn’t even make it to the interview stage. Both tested as translators—this meant another close encounter with an alien—but neither of them manifested the talent. Daphne got a job as a receptionist/typist for a real estate agency. Jake couldn’t do any better than the Burger King, despite his age and experience. Albuquerque, less than three hours’ drive from the alien settlement, was flooded with people looking for work and a place to live. Daphne was sunny and accepting, and more easily satisfied than he. She was given to counting their blessings. “We’ve got work, so we’ve got money, and we’ve got an OK place to live, and we’ve got each other, and we’ve got your car, so every weekend we can go out to the desert, and sometimes we’ll see the aliens!” Jake did not miss his wife, his job, or his life in Austin at all, but he was bitterly aware of how far he still was from what he wanted. He’d failed to get a job that would bring him in contact with the aliens, and he lacked the talent to be a translator. He made the obvious suggestion. “Let’s apply to go in anyway. As their guests.” She gave him a look. It was a look that reminded him of his wife. “Well? We’ve tried everything else. Why not?”

“You know why not.” “If I did, I wouldn’t ask.” “Jake, you can’t be serious.” “I left my wife for the aliens, I quit my job, I moved here. . . . Why stop now? I thought they meant as much to you as they do to me.” “They do! Of course they do! But I have my self-respect. I won’t go and whore for them.” Anger flared up in him. She was as blind and as wrong as everyone else. “Why do you say that? Why do you call it that? You don’t know.” “Everyone says it. . . .” She couldn’t meet his eyes. “Oh, everyone! And what does everyone know? How can anyone know, who hasn’t gone inside? Who says they’re whores? Who says what they do in there is sexual? What a stupid thing.” He had heard the same rumors. Somehow everyone “knew” that there were only two types of people who went inside and stayed: there were the translators, and there were the whores. “It’s stupid,” Jake persisted. “How can you have sex with something that isn’t a person . . . something that isn’t even male or female? People who say that are just scared, and jealous of the people who aren’t scared to go inside. So they try to make it into something contemptible. ‘Whores’ they say. They’re not. They’re the aliens’ guests.” “And why do the aliens have guests? What do they want with them?” “I don’t know. Nobody knows. You can’t know unless you take a chance. . . .” “And once you find out, you’re inside, and it’s too late.” Jake looked into her eyes and saw the fear, the fear he felt himself. He loved the aliens for their strangeness, and feared them for the same reason. He wanted to know them, but maybe they were unknowable. He was teetering on the brink, wanting to jump but afraid to let go. He put his arms around her. “OK,” he said. “We won’t go. Maybe something will happen.” “We can still go out to the desert every weekend. You never know what might happen. Things might change.” But things did not change, and the longer he relied on luck and fate, the less satisfied Jake felt with his life. He had to get closer to the aliens. He had to know more about them. If that meant leaving Daphne behind, if that meant becoming a whore . . . Was it sexual, his feeling for the aliens? That seemed too small, too narrow a definition for the most overwhelming thing in his life. What he felt for the aliens was not anything he’d ever felt for another human being. It was like love, and like religion, and curiosity, and need, and obsession—maybe sex was part of it, although no one knew what sex meant to the aliens. One day, without telling Daphne, he took the bus out to the alien settlement, and applied for admission. If he was refused, she need not know about it. If they accepted him, he’d send her a postcard before he went inside. It needn’t say much; he already knew what she would think of him for taking this final, desperate step. But he was desperate.

The bus took him far into the desert, a long, silent journey. There were others on the bus, but no one spoke. Some of them might have been translators, returning from a brief leave period; but most of them must have been like himself, driven to offer themselves for some unknown fate, not knowing even if their offer would be accepted. The only sound inside the jolting, air-conditioned vehicle was the muffled thump, boom, and blare seeping out of half a dozen personal sound systems. Jake stared out at the dust and the sunlight, lacking even the cushion of music to protect him from the unknown. In the distance the huge concrete block, “the human compound,” glimmered palely, like a mirage. It looked more like a prison than a whorehouse. It didn’t look like anywhere he wanted to live. Enter of your own free will, he thought. He was trembling. Men in uniforms showed him the way to go. No eye contact. The examination was all by machine and remote control. He was interviewed via computer, tapping in his answers to questions as they appeared on a screen. A disembodied voice gave him instructions: “Remove your clothing. Walk across the room. Lie down on the table. Put your head in the helmet and remain as still as you can for thirty seconds. Stand on the scale. Look at the screen. Say the names of the colors you see there.” Were aliens watching? Or was he being judged by humans, or machines? It lasted for several hours. Finally, he was told to dress himself and go to Reception. “Am I in?” he asked. “Have I been accepted?” The room was silent. The voice had nothing more to say. ***

Instead of the uniformed guard he had expected, there was a woman waiting for him in Reception: an attractive young woman with pale, freckled skin and copper-colored hair, her body a mystery enveloped in a long, loose gray robe. Her wide, light-colored eyes met his, and she said, “Welcome, Jake Bourne. I’m Nadia Pecek. I’ll be your translator during your visit here.” No, he thought. “That’s the way it’s done,” she said gently. “Surely you didn’t think you could talk to them directly.” “I didn’t really think about talking,” he said. “There are other ways of communicating.” “Of course. But if youcould communicate with them, you’d be a translator yourself. You wouldn’t have had to come here like this.” He hated her for having succeeded where he had failed, and for knowing he had failed. “Look,” she said. “It’s not a contest. It’s not a matter of training, or will, or intelligence. I don’t know how I do it: I’m near them, and I say what comes into my head. Isound or I talk. When I sound, I don’t know what it means; when I talk, I don’t know where the words come from. I don’t know if I’m really translating, orwhat I’m translating. I’m not sure they know, either, or if it matters to them. Maybe it doesn’t have anything todo with communication or understanding. Maybe it’s an art form. Maybe it’s a game. Maybe it’s a meaningless physical response. The worst thing—fortunately it doesn’t happen often—is two translators with one alien at the same time, both of us responding andsaying different things . And we don’t know, we never do know, which of us was right, or if either of us was, or if they know, or if they care.” She stopped. She was panting slightly, a light sheen of perspiration on her pale face, looking at him with entreaty in her eyes. She had been nakedly and unnecessarily honest with him, forcing an intimacy he didn’t want.

Deliberately, he looked away. After a silence she said, “You can ask me any questions. You’ll have a room of your own—I’ll show you there now—and you can come and go as you like. But once you leave the compound—as I’m sure you’ve been informed—you can’t come back, without applying for re-admission and being interviewed and examined all over again. And just because they let you in once, there’s no guarantee they’ll do it again. You’re not a prisoner—you can always leave. You’re a guest—and they might not have you back. There are food-slots in all the rooms, and a computer terminal. You can ask for anything you need—books, tapes, clothes, toiletries. Most requests are granted, although there are limits, some of which may seem—maybe arbitrary. It’s a little likeBeauty and the Beast , you know, the invisible hands laying the table . . . ?” She paused. He remained silent. She sighed. “It’s better if we can be friends. If you want to change your mind later, I won’t hold today against you. I understand how it is.” “You don’t.” “Of course I do. That’s why you hate me.” She shrugged. “Come on. Let me show you to your room. You can do it your own way. Ask me questions if you like—that’s what I’m here for—but if you don’t, I won’t force anything on you.” She left him at the door of his room. Unattractively institutional as it was outside, the rooms were surprisingly pleasant. Jake had expected something like a dormitory room or prison cell, but although his room was simple and barely furnished, it was unexpectedly large, and the colors, the proportions, and the light made it beautiful. He felt his heart lift as he stepped through the door, and he realized that, besides his excitement about being here, he was also, quite simply, pleased by his new home. But although he was glad to be alone, here at last, he was also nervous. He almost wished he had asked Nadia how long it would be before he saw an alien, but he’d felt it was important to establish his distance from her right from the start. He spent the afternoon and the night and the whole of the following morning in his room, getting coffee and juice and sandwiches from the food terminal, playing around with the computer, napping, too restless to concentrate or stay still for long, yet afraid of leaving in case he was wanted. Late in the afternoon, Nadia and an alien arrived. Nadia and a shadow, he thought. A tall shape, darker than darkness, yet occasionally lit up so that he could see familiar shapes: the curve of a bare shoulder, a protrusion that was a knee. . . . He had the sense of something female, and there was a faint smell, as of leaf mold, with something slightly citrus. He saw eyes—dark, gentle eyes looking at him. In the alien presence Nadia seemed very small, almost invisible in her gray robe, and she kept her gaze downcast. Jake looked and looked. He felt almost dizzy with anticipation.Now, now it would happen. Jake waited. His eyes and head ached with the effort of trying to see in something more continuous than those lightning-brief flashes. He tried to catch and hold the gaze of the other but could never be certain of success. Were those great, round eyes looking at him or through him . . . looking with curiosity, with desire, with disgust . . . ? He was in agony. He couldn’t wait any longer. He had to know. He appealed to the translator. “What should I do?”

Nadia’s eyes closed. After a long moment, she threw her head back and began to utter sounds. It was not quite singing, but it couldn’t be recognized as anything else—certainly not speech. Although he had witnessed this phenomenon often enough on television, and a few times in person, this was the first time his own words had ever been offered in translation, and the strangeness and the importance of it—he was speaking to an alien, at last!—made him shiver. Then it was over. Nadia opened her eyes. The alien did not move or make a sound that Jake could hear, but Nadia said, “She asks you to take your clothes off.” Fear and desire shot through him, too closely interwoven to separate. “She?” Nadia did not respond, and Jake suddenly understood that, in some sense, Nadia was not really there: she was not there for herself, she was not there for him; she existed, for the moment, only as an extension of the alien, a living mode of communication. Jake took off his clothes, fumbling, almost falling over as he climbed out of his jeans. He felt more naked, more exposed and vulnerable, than ever before in his life. Despite his fear, he had an erection. And what did the alien make of that? Whatwould the alien make of that? He wondered about its sexual organs. Nadia had said “she.” He was glad of that. He waited. The waiting went on and on. No one moved. He began to feel cold, although the room’s warm temperature had not changed. He lost his erection. “What . . . what does she want me to do? Can you ask her that? What am I supposed to do now?” Nadia closed her eyes and produced a short burst of sound. Then, eyes open, said, “You may do as you wish. She is glad to see you. She hopes you will be happy here.” “Is that all?” “She is going now. She has enjoyed this time spent in your presence, and hopes that the enjoyment was mutual.” “Wait— Can’t we talk, or—” But the alien was already gone. The room chimed like a bell with emptiness. Without a backward glance, Nadia walked out. Jake watched the door close, and then he put his clothes back on. He was trembling with frustration. He had been ready for almost anything, he thought, but not for nothing. ***

The next day he kept to his room, and the next, feeling bored. He grew tired of playing computer games, reading, and listening to music; he felt bloated with egg rolls, potato chips, and beer. Nothing happened to interrupt his solitude. “You may do as you wish,” he muttered to himself, and so, on the following morning, he went exploring. He was hoping to see some more aliens, but if there were any currently visiting the human compound they were hidden behind the doors of the private rooms, inaccessible to him, or invisible. There were none to be seen in any of the public areas—the library, the gym, the restaurant, the bars, the galleries and meeting rooms all were occupied, although sparsely, by humans. Jake ignored them all. He had no wish, now, for any of the complicated business of friendship. And yet, when he caught sight of Nadia reclining in a large chair and leafing through a glossy magazine in one of the common rooms, his heart lifted, and he made straight for her, as if it were she he had been looking for all along. “Hello.”

“Oh, hello.” She sat up straight and put the magazine face-down in her lap. “How are you? Are you all settled in?” “This is the first time I’ve come out of my room. I was waiting—I don’t know what to do, you see. I don’t know what Ishould do. If I knew when the alien was likely to come back—if I knew what to expect—it would be easier. Maybe you could tell me what usually happens?” “If you have to know what to expect, it’ll never be easier. Things don’t work like that here. Look, why don’t we go have a drink? We can talk in the bar; I’ll tell you what I know.” “It’s not even ten o’clock. . . .” He saw her grin. “Oh, I see. That doesn’t matter—time works differently here, too.” She nodded. “People fall into the rhythms that suit them. There’s no consistent outside demands. It’s best to be adaptable, to take what comes. Time works differently for the aliens, that’s obvious. But I haven’t been able to figure outhow . If there’s a pattern, I can’t see it. And believe me, I’ve looked.” She took him to a small, dimly lit room furnished with a bar, small tables, and rather uncomfortable chairs. There was no one there. Nadia went behind the bar, opened a bottle of red wine and, without asking him what he wanted, poured some into two glasses. The idea of wine in the morning did not appeal to Jake, but he sipped to keep her company. “How long have you been a translator?” “Nearly two years. Baffin Island, before here.” “Always with the same—” “No. Various lengths of time with various aliens, sometimes back to one I’ve been with before, sometimes several different ones in a row, none of whom I ever see again. . . . If there’s a reason for the changes, or a pattern to them, I haven’t been able to see it. Maybe because it’s on a time scale too big for me to comprehend yet. The way it happens is . . . well, that’s different, too. Sometimes one of them comes to me, in my room, and I follow him—or her.” “How can you tell if they’re male or female?” She exhaled sharply, irritated. “I can’t. Nobody can.” “But the one the other day, in my room—you said ‘she.’ ” “I said whatever I said because of the alien. I wasn’t thinking about it; I wasn’t talking for myself. I wasn’t talking at all; I was translating. I thought you understood that much, at least.” “I’m sorry. Go on.” “Well.” She poured more wine, sipped it thoughtfully. “What was I saying?” “Sometimes they come to you.” “Yes, and sometimes I go to them.” She was wearing a fine gold chain around her neck, and she pulled it out now to show him what was on it: egg-shaped, no bigger than a fingernail, made of something like smooth, cloudy glass. “It gets warm, it kind of vibrates. . . . When that happens, I start walking. It guides me somehow, I don’t know. . . . It goes dead again when I get to wherever I’m wanted. Sometimes it stops as soon as I set eyes on a particular alien; sometimes it stops when I get to a particular place. Then

I wait in that place until one of them comes for me. It could be two minutes; it could be an hour. Once, I waited nearly eight hours. I never did know why. Maybe there was some reason that made sense to them, or maybe it was just a malfunction.” “Couldn’t you ask?” “I can’t ask them anything. Not for myself. I can only ask questions for other people. I’m a translator. They don’t talk to me—they talkthrough me. Don’t you like the wine?” “It’s fine.” “It’s better than fine. It’s a very good wine, indeed. I know something about wine. I used to be a restaurant critic forNew West Magazine . And I did an in-depth piece on the vineyards of California. I was going to expand it into a book. And then . . .” She looked melancholy. She was still holding the little egg-shaped thing between thumb and forefinger, sliding it back and forth on the chain. “I was engaged to be married. Well, sort of engaged. People don’t get engaged anymore, do they? Not grown-ups, anyway. I guess we said ‘engaged’ mostly for our parents. He didn’t actually give me a ring or anything like that, but he really meant it. He wanted to marry me. And I meant to marry him. I really loved him.” She let go of the necklace, picked up her glass and drained it. There was no need to ask what had happened, Jake thought. She had become a translator. “Did he—your fiancé—was he interested in the aliens?” “He wasn’t obsessed. Neither was I, although I was flirting with it. We talked about them a lot, read about them, bought videos. . . . I guess like a lot of people. Well, how could you not be interested? But it wasn’t the main thing in our lives. We certainly wouldn’t have packed up and moved, changed our lives just to be near a settlement.” “How did it happen?” “By chance. I was out shopping. In a mall. I’d bought some makeup and stuff for my skin, and I was going to the record store when I saw . . . it was crazy; I thought I saw my grandmother. I loved her better than anyone in the world, but she’d been dead for five years. Yet there she was, by the fountain, looking at me and smiling a little bit, the way she did, and—I was going to say her name. I opened my mouth, and then . . . I felt as if something had been poured down my throat, something thick and warm and sweet . . . and like I was being stroked . . . and I dropped whatever I was holding. I felt sunlight on my face. I realized at the same time that it wasn’t my grandmother. That it wasn’t a human being at all. And that didn’t matter. I could hear myself making noises.” She compressed her lips, and then let out her breath in a long sigh. She was looking at nothing. “I don’t remember what happened next. Except that I must have followed the alien out of the mall. And the next thing I knew, there I was in one of those embassies, with a lot of professionallycaring people asking me what I wanted to do. . . . And, well, it was like I’d had some kind of fit, or passed out and just woke up. . . . I was horrified. No, of course I didn’t want to go to the translators’ school and be trained to work with the aliens; I wanted to go home, back to my real life. They were surprised and disappointed—I guess that’s not the usual response—but what could they do? They called my fiancé and he came and got me. He treated me—well, we both did—as if I’d been sick and was convalescing but as if what I’d had was a little embarrassing, so we wouldn’t talk about it. I didn’t want to talk about it. I just wanted to forget it as soon as I could.” She poured the last of the wine into her glass and stared as if hypnotized at the red liquid. “Except I couldn’t. Everything had changed, and it couldn’t ever be the same again. So finally, even though it wasn’t what I wanted to do, I realized it was what Ihad to do. What I was meant for.” “You hate the aliens.”

Startled, she met his eyes. “No. No I don’t. That would be pointless. Silly. Like hating the world. Hating myself. Hating reality.” “Plenty of people do.” “Not me.” She smiled. “I had to change. I’ve accepted this life. I make the most of it. There are pleasures here, too.” She looked at the empty bottle and then at him again. “Would you like to go back to your room?” He stood up, the suddenness of his movement rocking the small table. “By myself,” he said, and left without waiting to see how she took the rejection. ***

It was two days later when he saw her again, in his room, with another alien. At least, he had a feeling that it was a different alien, although he couldn’t be sure. He wondered resentfully ifshe knew, if she could recognize them as individuals. As before, they entered and said nothing. Jake remembered Nadia had said that time worked differently for the aliens, and although he wished he’d not had to hear this fromher , he decided to make use of that insight, to try to adapt, to try to experience things on alien terms, rather than pushing it with his human questions, forcing it into translation and altering its reality, making it seem more like his, and false. So Jake stood there and said nothing, as the alien said nothing, and as the alien looked at him, Jake looked at the alien. He tried to look without effort and without expectation, seeing sometimes eyes, sometimes skin, sometimes a sharp, bony ridge or a face like a carved mask. He tried not to worry about what he really saw and what he only imagined. He tried to keep his mind still, until the air of the room buzzed around him, and his own body seemed to recede, as if he were observing from a position about six inches above his own head. As he thought this, he suddenly wondered how his body was still managing to stand, and then he felt himself wobble, and before he fell over he had to back up and sit down rather heavily on the bed. There was a shimmering of the air, and then the alien was gone. Nadia turned to go. “No, wait! Don’t go! Ask it—ask it if—” But of course it was too late, and he was left alone again behind a closed door, tears of frustration burning unshed in his eyes. ***

The next time—how many days? Jake tried not to know. If he could have stopped counting, he would, but he was trapped in his obsession. There was nothing else to think about, nothing else he cared about for distraction. All he could do was to try to think about the aliens in different ways. The next time, when Nadia and the alien entered, Jake smelled again leaf mold and citrus, and his heart beat double-time. He felt certain that this was the first alien returning, and both the return, and the fact that he had recognized it, seemed deeply significant. He felt light-headed, almost drunk with excitement. “I want to know you,” Jake said. “Please, I want to touch you. I want you to touch me. Let me know you. In any way that I can. I’ll do whatever you say. Please give me a chance.” Nadia made her chilling, beautiful, eerie noises, and then she said, “He says, you may do as you wish.” “He! I thought this one—last time—why did you say ‘he’ when it was ‘she’ before? What does that mean? Nadia?”

But Nadia wasn’t there, it seemed. She gazed serenely ahead as if she had not heard him. It had to be a con, he thought. She was pretending. Deliberately ignoring him. Probably mad at him. “Can I ask him questions?” Then, impatient: “All right, ask him; ask him if I can ask him questions, dammit!” “You may ask him questions.” “Is that you talking? I didn’t hear you ask him.” “You may do as you wish.” He could do as he wished, and here he was, wasting his wish, like the fool in a fairy tale. “Are you . . . have we met before? Are you the same one who came to see me before?” This time, Nadia sounded. Then she replied: “He says, this is his first visit to you. The other time, another visited, one who is like him, yet is not him.” Jake stared, trying to match reality to memory, trying to see, now, not likenesses, but differences. But there was nothing to see. A shimmering, like a mirror. Light flashing out of darkness. A pair of eyes that might have been his own, might have been Nadia’s, might have been only a memory, or a fantasy. And yet there was something in that darkness. Something solid, something real, if only he could reach it. “May I touch you?” He closed his eyes while Nadia translated his words. He tried to imagine what it would feel like to have those words coming out of him, out of his control. “Put out your hand,” said Nadia, Into the fire, thought Jake. He opened his eyes and stretched out his hand toward the alien. He felt something beneath his fingers, something smooth, hairless, and warm. Gently, holding his breath with excitement, Jake stroked it. Perhaps human skin would have felt the same beneath his fingers; Jake wasn’t sure. “Would you like to touch me?” Jake asked. “Would you touch me now? Should I take off my clothes?” Nadia said nothing. Jake was about to repeat his question when he realized there was no need. He already had permission. Now he was naked before the alien. He looked at Nadia, the conduit between them, and her body was hidden, enveloped in that shapeless gray robe she always wore. It wasn’t a uniform; other translators dressed differently; she must have wanted for some reason to look like a nun. “I’d like the translator to take her clothes off, too,” he said. Her gray eyes met his gaze; disconcerting after the previous careful avoidance. Then she reached up and began to undo a set of buttons along her shoulder-line. “Wait a minute—aren’t you going to tell him what I said?” She didn’t reply, not even by a nod or a headshake. Because she couldn’t? Or because she thought the answer was obvious? Maybe the alien had told her what to do. Or maybe the rules were she had to do what he said—or whateither of them said. Or maybe she just wanted to take her clothes off. He remembered how she had looked at him just before he left her in the bar. She had a good body: stomach a little flabby, but such lovely curves. He would have thought it impossible to be more aroused than he was already, and yet the sight of her breasts, and the pale slope

of her naked hip, kicked him into a higher gear. His longing for the alien became even more confused and inextricable from a hard, hot, immediate sexual need. Without losing its urgency his desire embraced her and blurred, spilling across boundaries, as if she and the alien were somehow the same. Did he want them both in different ways? How could he want them both at once? Yet his need seemed indivisible. Maybe shewas the alien in human form, at least in a sense, if they spoke inside her head, spoke through her, could he not perhaps know the alien through her human body? Nadia’s face took on a distant, listening look, and when she spoke, she was translating. “You may mate.” The shock of it, expected though it was, went right through him, and he tried to make light of it, sneering, “Mate? I’ve never mated in my life. Is he going to expect offspring in nine months?” He had not expected a reply, and did not get one. He looked at Nadia, who was still waiting, as if listening for further instructions. “Will he stay?” he asked. “Ask him, will he stay—will he watch?” She looked at him, and she was with him here and now, no longer listening to the alien—if she ever had been, if that had ever been more than a con, he thought. “They always do,” she said. “If you want them to. And of course you do. Otherwise, what’s the point? You wanthim , not me. You’re not interested in me at all, are you? You won’t let yourself be.” “Look, don’t take it personally, but I didn’t come here for that. I have a girlfriend, you know. I didn’t come here to find another one. I came here for something else.” “So did I. We’re not so different, you know. We both want the same thing. We want something impossible. So why not . . .” she made a helpless little gesture with her hands, “comfort each other? Maybe we can’t have exactly what we want, but . . .” There was something very appealing about her, and because he wanted her sexually he was inclined to be generous, to give her what she wanted, if only in words he would later deny, but he suddenly thought of her saying, “They always do,” and instead of anything kind, he said, coldly, “You’ve done this a lot. How many men?” “That doesn’t matter. Yes, a lot! It comes down to this so often: sex with me as second best, as a last-ditch effort to make contact, through me, with one ofthem . But it doesn’t work, Jake, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. It just doesn’t. It never has, it never will. You’re smart enough to know I’m not lying. You don’t have to be like all the others. It could be different with you and me. I felt that, as soon as I saw you. Tell him to go away now, and I’ll stay with you.” Jake could not bear to look directly at the alien, as if, like the sun, it might burn his eyes. “I don’t want him to leave. That’s the last thing I want. It’s all right for you, you with that thing around your neck. They’ll call you back, they’ll find you again—they’ve got a use for you. But not for me. I don’t know what they want with me at all. I just have to keep hoping I’ll find some way of connecting. I’m not interested in you. They’re all I care about.” He saw the hope die in her eyes. “OK, fine. But I want to tell you, you can’t get to them through me. Making love to me won’t make any difference. You won’t know any more about them, or be any closer to them. And it won’t actually make any difference tohim whether you mate with me or tell me to put my clothes back on. So why don’t you just ask him some more questions?” “You’re not here to tell me what to do,” he said. “You’re the translator.” It occurred to him that if he was unkind to her maybe she would not stay with him; maybe her mind would move to that place where she was in touch with the alien, and somehow, through her . . . “Are you going to get on the bed, or shall we

do it on the floor?” She moved reluctantly toward the bed. He pushed her down on her back, felt between her legs, laughed, because she was as ready as he was, and then thrust roughly inside her. She caught her breath and put her arms around him, pulling her legs up higher. “Oh, Jake.” “No! Don’t talk to me, talk tohim . Ask him—ask him how his people mate. Ask himwhy they do it. Ask him, ask him is it only to reproduce, or do they spin fantasies about it, do they expect more, do they imagine it’s one of life’s great experiences—ask him, ask him!” He gasped, his mind spinning, but the words gave him some sort of control. “I can’t.” “You’re lying.” “I can’t.” There were tears at the corners of her eyes. “Why can’t you? I don’t believe you. It’s what they all want, isn’t it? Go on, ask him! Talk to him, damn you, it’s what you’refor !” “I can’t,” she whispered again, but weakly, and she closed her eyes. He knew she had given in; he felt the change in her even before she began to sound. And as the noises came swirling and spiraling out of her, he came inside her, fiercely, helplessly, unable any longer to resist the demands of his body. Afterward, he hated himself. He knew he had failed, somehow, and he felt the most terrible fear. “What does he say? What’s the answer?” he demanded of Nadia. She made a sound. For a moment he did not understand; then he did. He raised himself up enough to look around. The alien was gone. They were alone in the room, and the woman beneath him was weeping, giving voice to his sorrow.

Replacements Walking through gray north London to the tube station, feeling guilty that he hadn’t let Jenny drive him to work and yet relieved to have escaped another pointless argument, Stuart Holder glanced down at a pavement covered in a leaf-fall of fast-food cartons and white paper bags and saw, amid the dog turds, beer cans, and dead cigarettes, something horrible. It was about the size of a cat, naked-looking, with leathery, hairless skin and thin, spiky limbs that seemed too frail to support the bulbous, ill-proportioned body. The face, with tiny bright eyes and a wet slit of a mouth, was like an evil monkey’s. It saw him and moved in a crippled, spasmodic way. Reaching up, it made a clotted, strangled noise. The sound touched a nerve, like metal between the teeth, and the sight of it, mewling and choking and scrabbling, scaly claws flexing and wriggling, made him feel sick and terrified. He had no phobias, he found insects fascinating, not frightening, and regularly removed, unharmed, the spiders, wasps, and mayflies which made Jenny squeal or shudder helplessly. But this was different. This wasn’t some rare species of wingless bat escaped from a zoo, it wasn’t something he would find pictured in any reference book. It was something that should not exist, a mistake, something alien. It did not belong in his world. A little snarl escaped him and he took a step forward and brought his foot down hard.

The small, shrill scream lanced through him as he crushed it beneath his shoe and ground it into the road. Afterward, as he scraped the sole of his shoe against the curb to clean it, nausea overwhelmed him. He leaned over and vomited helplessly into a red-and-white-striped box of chicken bones and crumpled paper. He straightened up, shaking, and wiped his mouth again and again with his pocket handkerchief. He wondered if anyone had seen, and had a furtive look around. Cars passed at a steady crawl. Across the road a cluster of schoolgirls dawdled near a man smoking in front of a newsagent’s, but on this side of the road the fried chicken franchise and bathroom suppliers had yet to open for the day and the nearest pedestrians were more than a hundred yards away. Until that moment, Stuart had never killed anything in his life. Mosquitoes and flies of course, other insects probably, a nest of hornets once, that was all. He had never liked the idea of hunting, never lived in the country. He remembered his father putting out poisoned bait for rats, and he remembered shying bricks at those same vermin on a bit of waste ground where he had played as a boy. But rats weren’t like other animals; they elicited no sympathy. Some things had to be killed if they would not be driven away. He made himself look to make sure the thing was not still alive. Nothing should be left to suffer. But his heel had crushed the thing’s face out of recognition, and it was unmistakably dead. He felt a cool tide of relief and satisfaction, followed at once, as he walked away, by a nagging uncertainty, the imminence of guilt. Was he right to have killed it, to have acted on violent, irrational impulse? He didn’t even know what it was. It might have been somebody’s pet. He went hot and cold with shame and self-disgust. At the corner he stopped with five or six others waiting to cross the road and because he didn’t want to look at them he looked down. And there it was, alive again. He stifled a scream. No, of course it was not the same one, but another. His leg twitched; he felt frantic with the desire to kill it, and the terror of his desire. The thin wet mouth was moving as if it wanted to speak. As the crossing-signal began its nagging blare he tore his eyes away from the creature squirming at his feet. Everyone else had started to cross the street, their eyes, like their thoughts, directed ahead. All except one. A woman in a smart business suit was standing still on the pavement, looking down, a sick fascination on her face. As he looked at her looking at it, the idea crossed his mind that he should kill it for her, as a chivalric, protective act. But she wouldn’t see it that way. She would be repulsed by his violence. He didn’t want her to think he was a monster. He didn’t want to be the monster who had exulted in the crunch of fragile bones, the flesh and viscera merging pulpily beneath his shoe. He forced himself to look away, to cross the road, to spare the alien life. But he wondered, as he did so, if he had been right to spare it. Stuart Holder worked as an editor for a publishing company with offices an easy walk from St. Paul’s. Jenny had worked there, too, as a secretary, when they met five years ago. Now, though, she had quite a senior position with another publishing house, south of the river, and recently they had given her a car. He had been supportive of her ambitions, supportive of her learning to drive, and proud of her on all fronts when she succeeded, yet he was aware, although he never spoke of it, that something about her success made him uneasy. One small, niggling, insecure part of himself was afraid that one day she would realize she didn’t need him anymore. That was why he picked at her, and second-guessed her decisions when

she was behind the wheel and he was in the passenger seat. He recognized this as he walked briskly through more crowded streets toward his office, and he told himself he would do better. He would have to. If anything drove them apart it was more likely to be his behavior than her career. He wished he had accepted her offer of a ride today. Better any amount of petty irritation between husband and wife than to be haunted by the memory of that tiny face, distorted in the death he had inflicted. Entering the building, he surreptitiously scraped the sole of his shoe against the carpet. Upstairs two editors and one of the publicity girls were in a huddle around his secretary’s desk; they turned on him the guilty-defensive faces of women who have been discussing secrets men aren’t supposed to know. He felt his own defensiveness rising to meet theirs as he smiled. “Can I get any of you chaps a cup of coffee?” “I’m sorry, Stuart, did you want . . . ?” As the others faded away, his secretary removed a stiff white paper bag with the NEXT logo, printed on it from her desktop. “Joke, Frankie, joke.” He always got his own coffee because he liked the excuse to wander, and he was always having to reassure her that she was not failing in her secretarial duties. He wondered if Next sold sexy underwear, decided it would be unkind to tease her further. He felt a strong urge to call Jenny and tell her what had happened, although he knew he wouldn’t be able to explain, especially not over the phone. Just hearing her voice, the sound of sanity, would be a comfort, but he restrained himself until just after noon, when he made the call he made every day. Her secretary told him she was in a meeting. “Tell her Stuart rang,” he said, knowing she would call him back as always. But that day she didn’t. Finally, at five minutes to five, Stuart rang his wife’s office and was told she had left for the day. It was unthinkable for Jenny to leave work early, as unthinkable as for her not to return his call. He wondered if she was ill. Although he usually stayed in the office until well after six, now he shoved a manuscript in his briefcase and went out to brave the rush hour. He wondered if she was mad at him. But Jenny didn’t sulk. If she was angry she said so. They didn’t lie or play those sorts of games with each other, pretending not to be in, “forgetting” to return calls. As he emerged from his local underground station Stuart felt apprehensive. His eyes scanned the pavement and the gutters, and once or twice the flutter of paper made him jump, but of the creatures he had seen that morning there were no signs. The body of the one he had killed was gone, perhaps eaten by a passing dog, perhaps returned to whatever strange dimension had spawned it. He noticed, before he turned off the high street, that other pedestrians were also taking a keener than usual interest in the pavement and the edge of the road, and that made him feel vindicated somehow. London traffic being what it was, he was home before Jenny. While he waited for the sound of her key in the lock he made himself a cup of tea, cursed, poured it down the sink, and had a stiff whiskey instead. He had just finished it and was feeling much better when he heard the street door open. “Oh!” The look on her face reminded him unpleasantly of those women in the office this morning, making him feel like an intruder in his own place. Now Jenny smiled, but it was too late. “I didn’t expect you to be here so early.”

“Nor me. I tried to call you, but they said you’d left already. I wondered if you were feeling all right.” “I’m fine!” “You look fine.” The familiar sight of her melted away his irritation. He loved the way she looked: her slender, boyish figure, her close-cropped, curly hair, her pale complexion and bright blue eyes. Her cheeks now had a slight hectic flush. She caught her bottom lip between her teeth and gave him an assessing look before coming straight out with it. “How would you feel about keeping a pet?” Stuart felt a horrible conviction that she was not talking about a dog or a cat. He wondered if it was the whiskey on an empty stomach which made him feel dizzy. “It was under my car. If I hadn’t happened to notice something moving down there I could have run over it.” She lifted her shoulders in a delicate shudder. “Oh, God, Jenny, you haven’t brought it home!” She looked indignant. “Well, of course I did! I couldn’t just leave it in the street—somebody else might have run it over.” Or stepped on it, he thought, realizing now that he could never tell Jenny what he had done. That made him feel even worse, but maybe he was wrong. Maybe it was just a cat she’d rescued. “What is it?” She gave a strange, excited laugh. “I don’t know. Something very rare, I think. Here, look.” She slipped the large, woven bag off her shoulder, opening it, holding it out to him. “Look. Isn’t it the sweetest thing?” How could two people who were so close, so alike in so many ways, see something so differently? He only wanted to kill it, even now, while she had obviously fallen in love. He kept his face carefully neutral although he couldn’t help flinching from her description.“Sweet?” It gave him a pang to see how she pulled back, holding the bag protectively close as she said, “Well, I know it’s not pretty, but so what? I thought it was horrible, too, at first sight. . . .” Her face clouded, as if she found her first impression difficult to remember, or to credit, and her voice faltered a little. “But then, then I realized howhelpless it was. It needed me. It can’t help how it looks. Anyway, doesn’t it kind of remind you of the Psammead?” “The what?” “Psammead. You know,The Five Children and It ?” He recognized the title but her passion for old-fashioned children’s books was something he didn’t share. He shook his head impatiently. “That thing didn’t come out of a book, Jen. You found it in the street and you don’t know what it is or where it came from. It could be dangerous, it could be diseased.” “Dangerous,” she said in a withering tone. “You don’t know.” “I’ve been with him all day and he hasn’t hurt me, or anybody else at the office, he’s perfectly happy being held, and he likes being scratched behind the ears.” He did not miss the pronoun shift. “It might have rabies.” “Don’t be silly.”

“Don’tyou be silly; it’s not exactly native, is it? It might be carrying all sorts of foul parasites from South America or Africa or wherever.” “Now you’re being racist. I’m not going to listen to you.And you’ve been drinking.” She flounced out of the room. If he’d been holding his glass still he might have thrown it. He closed his eyes and concentrated on breathing in and out slowly. This was worse than any argument they’d ever had, the only crucial disagreement of their marriage. Jenny had stronger views about many things than he did, so her wishes usually prevailed. He didn’t mind that. But this was different. He wasn’t having that creature in his home. He had to make her agree. Necessity cooled his blood. He had his temper under control when his wife returned. “I’m sorry,” he said, although she was the one who should have apologized. Still looking prickly, she shrugged and would not meet his eyes. “Want to go out to dinner tonight?” She shook her head. “I’d rather not. I’ve got some work to do.” “Can I get you something to drink? I’m only one whiskey ahead of you, honest.” Her shoulders relaxed. “I’m sorry. Low blow. Yeah, pour me one. And one for yourself.” She sat down on the couch, her bag by her feet. Leaning over, reaching inside, she cooed, “Who’s my little sweetheart, then?” Normally he would have taken a seat beside her. Now, though, he eyed the pale, misshapen bundle on her lap and, after handing her a glass, retreated across the room. “Don’t get mad, but isn’t having a pet one of those things we discuss and agree on beforehand?” He saw the tension come back into her shoulders, but she went on stroking the thing, keeping herself calm. “Normally, yes. But this is special. I didn’t plan it. It happened, and now I’ve got a responsibility to him. Or her.” She giggled. “We don’t even know what sex you are, do we, my precious?” He said carefully, “I can see that you had to do something when you found it, but keeping it might not be the best thing.” “I’m not going to put it out in the street.” “No, no, but . . . don’t you think it would make sense to let a professional have a look at it? Take it to a vet, get it checked out . . . maybe it needs shots or something.” She gave him a withering look and for a moment he faltered, but then he rallied. “Come on, Jenny, be reasonable! You can’t just drag some strange animal in off the street and keep it, just like that. You don’t even know what it eats.” “I gave it some fruit at lunch. It ate that. Well, it sucked out the juice. I don’t think it can chew.” “But you don’t know, do you? Maybe the fruit juice was just an aperitif, maybe it needs half its weight in live insects every day, or a couple of small, live mammals. Do you really think you could cope with feeding it mice or rabbits fresh from the pet shop every week?” “Oh, Stuart.” “Well? Will you just take it to a vet? Make sure it’s healthy? Will you do that much?”

“And then I can keep it? If the vet says there’s nothing wrong with it, and it doesn’t need to eat anything too impossible?” “Then we can talk about it. Hey, don’t pout at me; I’m not your father, I’m not telling you what to do. We’re partners, and partners don’t make unilateral decisions about things that affect them both; partners discuss things and reach compromises and . . .” “There can’t be any compromise about this.” He felt as if she’d doused him with ice water. “What?” “Either I win and I keep him or you win and I give him up. Where’s the compromise?” This was why wars were fought, thought Stuart, but he didn’t say it. He was the picture of sweet reason, explaining as if he meant it, “The compromise is that we each try to see the other person’s point. You get the animal checked out, make sure it’s healthy and I, I’ll keep an open mind about having a pet, and see if I might start liking . . . him. Does he have a name yet?” Her eyes flickered. “No . . . we can choose one later, together. If we keep him.” He still felt cold and, although he could think of no reason for it, he was certain she was lying to him. ***

In bed that night as he groped for sleep Stuart kept seeing the tiny, hideous face of the thing screaming as his foot came down on it. That moment of blind, killing rage was not like him. He couldn’t deny he had done it, or how he had felt, but now, as Jenny slept innocently beside him, as the creature she had rescued, a twin to his victim, crouched alive in the bathroom, he tried to remember it differently. In fantasy, he stopped his foot, he controlled his rage and, staring at the memory of the alien animal, he struggled to see past his anger and his fear, to see through those fiercer masculine emotions and find his way to Jenny’s feminine pity. Maybe his intuition had been wrong and hers was right. Maybe, if he had waited a little longer, instead of lashing out, he would have seen how unnecessary his fear was. Poor little thing, poor little thing. It’s helpless, it needs me, it’s harmless so I won’t harm it. Slowly, in imagination, he worked toward that feeling,her feeling, and then, suddenly, he was there, through the anger, through the fear, through the hate to . . . not love, he couldn’t say that, but compassion. Glowing and warm, compassion filled his heart and flooded his veins, melting the ice there and washing him out into the sea of sleep, and dreams where Jenny smiled and loved him and there was no space between them for misunderstanding. He woke in the middle of the night with a desperate urge to pee. He was out of bed in the dark hallway when he remembered what was waiting in the bathroom. He couldn’t go back to bed with the need unsatisfied, but he stood outside the bathroom door, hand hovering over the light switch on this side, afraid to turn it on, open the door, go in. It wasn’t, he realized, that he was afraid of a creature no bigger than a football and less likely to hurt him; rather, he was afraid that he might hurt it. It was a stronger variant of that reckless vertigo he had felt sometimes in high places, the fear, not of falling, but of throwing oneself off, of losing control and giving in to self-destructive urges. He didn’twant to kill the thing—had his own feelings not undergone a sea change, Jenny’s love for it would have been enough to stop him—but something, some dark urge stronger than himself, might make him. Finally he went down to the end of the hall and outside to the weedy, muddy little area which passed for

the communal front garden and in which the rubbish bins, of necessity, were kept, and, shivering in his thin cotton pajamas in the damp, chilly air, he watered the sickly forsythia, or whatever it was, that Jenny had planted so optimistically last winter. When he went back inside, more uncomfortable than when he had gone out, he saw the light was on in the bathroom, and as he approached the half-open door, he heard Jenny’s voice, low and soothing. “There, there. Nobody’s going to hurt you, I promise. You’re safe here. Go to sleep now. Go to sleep.” He went past without pausing, knowing he would be viewed as an intruder, and got back into bed. He fell asleep, lulled by the meaningless murmur of her voice, still waiting for her to join him. ***

Stuart was not used to doubting Jenny, but when she told him she had visited a veterinarian who had given her new pet a clean bill of health, he did not believe her. In a neutral tone he asked, “Did he say what kind of animal it was?” “He didn’t know.” “He didn’t know what it was, but he was sure it was perfectly healthy.” “God, Stuart, what do you want? It’s obvious to everybody but you that my little friend is healthy and happy. What do you want, a birth certificate?” He looked at her “friend,” held close against her side, looking squashed and miserable. “What do you mean, ‘everybody’?” She shrugged. “Everybody at work. They’re all jealous as anything.” She planted a kiss on the thing’s pointy head. Then she looked at him, and he realized that she had not kissed him, as she usually did, when he came in. She’d been clutching that thing the whole time. “I’m going to keep him,” she said quietly. “If you don’t like it, then . . .” Her pause seemed to pile up in solid, transparent blocks between them. “Then, I’m sorry, but that’s how it is.” So much for an equal relationship, he thought. So much for sharing. Mortally wounded, he decided to pretend it hadn’t happened. “Want to go out for Indian tonight?” She shook her head, turning away. “I want to stay in. There’s something on telly. You go on. You could bring me something back, if you wouldn’t mind. A spinach bahjee and a couple of nans would do me.” “And what about . . . something for your little friend?” She smiled a private smile. “He’s all right. I’ve fed him already.” Then she raised her eyes to his and acknowledged his effort. “Thanks.” He went out and got take-away for them both, and stopped at the off-license for the Mexican beer Jenny favored. A radio in the off-license was playing a sentimental song about love that Stuart remembered from his earliest childhood: his mother used to sing it. He was shocked to realize he had tears in his eyes. That night Jenny made up the sofa bed in the spare room, explaining, “He can’t stay in the bathroom; it’s just not satisfactory, you know it’s not.” “He needs the bed?”

“I do. He’s confused, everything is new and different, I’m the one thing he can count on. I have to stay with him. He needs me.” “He needs you? What about me?” “Oh, Stuart,” she said impatiently. “You’re a grown man. You can sleep by yourself for a night or two.” “And that thing can’t?” “Don’t call him a thing.” “What am I supposed to call it? Look, you’re not its mother—it doesn’t need you as much as you’d like to think. It was perfectly all right in the bathroom last night—it’ll be fine in here on its own.” “Oh? And what do you know about it? You’d like to kill him, wouldn’t you? Admit it.” “No,” he said, terrified that she had guessed the truth. If she knew how he had killed one of those things she would never forgive him. “It’s not true, I don’t—I couldn’t hurt it any more than I could hurt you.” Her face softened. She believed him. It didn’t matter how he felt about the creature. Hurting it, knowing how she felt, would be like committing an act of violence against her, and they both knew he wouldn’t do that. “Just for a few nights, Stuart. Just until he settles in.” He had to accept that. All he could do was hang on, hope that she still loved him and that this wouldn’t be forever. ***

The days passed. Jenny no longer offered to drive him to work. When he asked her, she said it was out of her way and with traffic so bad a detour would make her late. She said it was silly to take him the short distance to the station, especially as there was nowhere she could safely stop to let him out, and anyway, the walk would do him good. They were all good reasons, which he had used in the old days himself, but her excuses struck him painfully when he remembered how eager she had once been for his company, how ready to make any detour for his sake. Her new pet accompanied her everywhere, even to work, snug in the little nest she had made for it in a woven carrier bag. “Of course things are different now. But I haven’t stopped loving you,” she said when he tried to talk to her about the breakdown of their marriage. “It’s not like I’ve found another man. This is something completely different. It doesn’t threaten you; you’re still my husband.” But it was obvious to him that a husband was no longer something she particularly valued. He began to have fantasies about killing it. Not, this time, in a blind rage, but as part of a carefully thought-out plan. He might poison it, or spirit it away somehow and pretend it had run away. Once it was gone he hoped Jenny would forget it and be his again. But he never had a chance. Jenny was quite obsessive about the thing, as if it were too valuable to be left unguarded for a single minute. Even when she took a bath, or went to the toilet, the creature was with her, behind the locked door of the bathroom. When he offered to look after it for her for a few minutes she just smiled, as if the idea was manifestly ridiculous, and he didn’t dare insist. So he went to work, and went out for drinks with colleagues, and spent what time he could with Jenny, although they were never alone. He didn’t argue with her, although he wasn’t above trying to move her to pity if he could. He made seemingly casual comments designed to convince her of his change of heart so that eventually, weeks or months from now, she would trust him and leave the creature with him—and then, later, perhaps, they could put their marriage back together.

One afternoon, after an extended lunch break, Stuart returned to the office to find one of the senior editors crouched on the floor beside his secretary’s empty desk, whispering and chuckling to herself. He cleared his throat nervously. “Linda?” She lurched back on her heels and got up awkwardly. She blushed and ducked her head as she turned, looking very unlike her usual high-powered self. “Oh, uh, Stuart, I was just—” Frankie came in with a pile of photocopying. “Uh-huh,” she said loudly. Linda’s face got even redder. “Just going,” she mumbled, and fled. Before he could ask, Stuart saw the creature, another crippled bat-without-wings, on the floor beside the open bottom drawer of Frankie’s desk. It looked up at him, opened its slit of a mouth and gave a sad little hiss. Around one matchstick-thin leg it wore a fine golden chain which was fastened at the other end to the drawer. “Some people would steal anything that’s not chained down,” said Frankie darkly. “People you wouldn’t suspect.” He stared at her, letting her see his disapproval, his annoyance, disgust, even. “Animals in the office aren’t part of the contract, Frankie.” “It’s not an animal.” “What is it, then?” “I don’t know. You tell me.” “It doesn’t matter what it is, you can’t have it here.” “I can’t leave it at home.” “Why not?” She turned away from him, busying herself with her stacks of paper. “I can’t leave it alone. It might get hurt. It might escape.” “Chance would be a fine thing.” She shot him a look, and he was certain she knew he wasn’t talking abouther pet. He said, “What does your boyfriend think about it?” “I don’t have a boyfriend.” She sounded angry but then, abruptly, the anger dissipated, and she smirked. “I don’t have to have one, do I?” “You can’t have that animal here. Whatever it is. You’ll have to take it home.” She raised her fuzzy eyebrows. “Right now?” He was tempted to say yes, but thought of the manuscripts that wouldn’t be sent out, the letters that wouldn’t be typed, the delays and confusions, and he sighed. “Just don’t bring it back again. All right?” “Yowza.” He felt very tired. He could tell her what to do but she would no more obey than would his wife. She

would bring it back the next day and keep bringing it back, maybe keeping it hidden, maybe not, until he either gave in or was forced into firing her. He went into his office, closed the door, and put his head down on his desk. That evening he walked in on his wife feeding the creature with her blood. It was immediately obvious that it was that way ’round. The creature might be a vampire—it obviously was—but his wife was no helpless victim. She was wide-awake and in control, holding the creature firmly, letting it feed from a vein in her arm. She flinched as if anticipating a shout, but he couldn’t speak. He watched what was happening without attempting to interfere and gradually she relaxed again, as if he wasn’t there. When the creature, sated, fell off, she kept it cradled on her lap and reached with her other hand for the surgical spirit and cotton wool on the table, moistened a piece of cotton wool and tamped it to the tiny wound. Then, finally, she met her husband’s eyes. “He has to eat,” she said reasonably. “He can’t chew. He needs blood. Not very much, but . . .” “And he needs it from you? You can’t . . . ?” “I can’t hold down some poor scared rabbit or dog for him, no.” She made a shuddering face. “Well, really, think about it. You know how squeamish I am. This is so much easier. It doesn’t hurt.” It hurts me, he thought, but couldn’t say it. “Jenny . . .” “Oh, don’t start,” she said crossly. “I’m not going to get any disease from it, and he doesn’t take enough to make any difference. Actually, I like it. We both do.” “Jenny, please don’t. Please. For me. Give it up.” “No.” She held the scraggy, ugly thing close and gazed at Stuart like a dispassionate executioner. “I’m sorry, Stuart, I really am, but this is nonnegotiable. If you can’t accept that you’d better leave.” This was the showdown he had been avoiding, the end of it all. He tried to rally his arguments and then he realized he had none. She had said it. She had made her choice, and it was nonnegotiable. And he realized, looking at her now, that although she reminded him of the woman he loved, he didn’t want to live with what she had become. He could have refused to leave. After all, he had done nothing wrong. Why should he give up his home, this flat which was half his? But he could not force Jenny out onto the streets with nowhere to go; he still felt responsible for her. “I’ll pack a bag, and make a few phone calls,” he said quietly. He knew someone from work who was looking for a lodger, and if all else failed, his brother had a spare room. Already, in his thoughts, he had left. ***

He ended up, once they’d sorted out their finances and formally separated, in a flat just off the Holloway Road, near Archway. It was not too far to walk if Jenny cared to visit, which she never did. Sometimes he called on her, but it was painful to feel himself an unwelcome visitor in the home they once had shared. He never had to fire Frankie; she handed in her notice a week later, telling him she’d been offered an editorial job at The Women’s Press. He wondered if pets in the office were part of the contract over there.

He never learned if the creatures had names. He never knew where they had come from, or how many there were. Had they fallen only in Islington? (Frankie had a flat somewhere off Upper Street.) He never saw anything on the news about them, or read any official confirmation of their existence, but he was aware of occasional oblique references to them in other contexts, occasional glimpses. One evening, coming home on the tube, he found himself looking at the woman sitting opposite. She was about his own age, probably in her early thirties, with strawberry-blond hair, greenish eyes, and an almost translucent complexion. She was strikingly dressed in high, soft-leather boots, a long black woolen skirt, and an enveloping cashmere cloak of cranberry red. High on the cloak, below and to the right of the fastening at the neck, was a simple, gold circle brooch. Attached to it he noticed a very fine golden chain which vanished inside the cloak, like the end of a watch fob. He looked at it idly, certain he had seen something like it before, on other women, knowing it reminded him of something. The train arrived at Archway, and as he rose to leave the train, so did the attractive woman. Her stride matched his. They might well leave the station together. He tried to think of something to say to her, some pretext for striking up a conversation. He was, after all, a single man again now, and she might be a single woman. He had forgotten how single people in London contrived to meet. He looked at her again, sidelong, hoping she would turn her head and look at him. With one slender hand she toyed with her gold chain. Her cloak fell open slightly as she walked, and he caught a glimpse of the creature she carried beneath it, close to her body, attached by a slender golden chain. He stopped walking and let her get away from him. He had to rest for a little while before he felt able to climb the stairs to the street. By then he was wondering if he had really seen what he thought he had seen. The glimpse had been so brief. But he had been deeply shaken by what he saw or imagined, and he turned the wrong way outside the station. When he finally realized, he was at the corner of Jenny’s road, which had once also been his. Rather than retrace his steps, he decided to take the turning and walk past her house. Lights were on in the front room, the curtains drawn against the early winter dark. His footsteps slowed as he drew nearer. He felt such a longing to be inside, back home, belonging. He wondered if she would be pleased at all to see him. He wondered if she ever felt lonely, as he did. Then he saw the tiny, dark figure between the curtains and the window. It was spread-eagled against the glass, scrabbling uselessly; inside, longing to be out. As he stared, feeling its pain as his own, the curtains swayed and opened slightly as a human figure moved between them. He saw the woman reach out and pull the creature away from the glass, back into the warm, lighted room with her, and the curtains fell again, shutting him out. Other eBooks from ElectricStory Terry Bisson Numbers Don’t Lie John Crowley Ægypt Suzy McKee Charnas The Vampire Tapestry Barry Malzberg

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