CHAPTER 4

Claire closed the good green door. She padded the chamomile-riddled path down to the sidewalk with mounting excitement on soft Pakistani slippers. She used to wear them all the time, and so they were as comfortable as fancy shoes could be. Only recently, as more and more people would stop her to ask where she’d bought them, had it occurred to her to conserve them. She would never find their like again, that was for sure. How often did one get to the Khyber Pass, after all?

It would do her good to be out and about. Johnny and she had fought before, during, and after supper. A hurling of words and recriminations, then again some just-thought-of slight seeing its opportunity now and grabbing it. It had all started when Claire noticed the pile of bills, stamped and completed, still sitting in their pile in the hallway.

“Yeah, so?” he had said.

“And what does that mean, ‘yeah, so’? It’s the nineteenth and you still haven’t sent out the bills!”

“I haven’t got any money to cover them.” He’d shrugged.

“Honey, all the money’s in the account. All you have to do is send—Johnny, you don’t mean to tell me you spent—how on earth could you have spent all—”

With that, Johnny had flung his great self onto the sofa and shut his eyes.

“Don’t you pretend to be going to sleep, you big fake!” she’d shouted.

Anthony stood, legs planted far apart, in the nearby room only halfway lit up by the dusk. He’d been through plenty of brawls, had Anthony, was even now gauging how bad it would be from the decibel level. Just when everyone thought, Oh good Lord, that was it and surely one of them would be out the door with a suitcase, they would instead heave and collapse, spent, on opposite easy chairs and Daddy would say, stupidly, “Okay, enough’s enough. Friends again?” And what would Mommy do? She would laugh!

Anthony shivered and went off in search of Michaelaen, who would be one of two places: under the porch or upstairs in the closet. He wasn’t one for the fights. On second thought, he would leave him alone. Michaelaen had called him a pest. Dharma was back in her house. Anthony was glad, because he didn’t really want to listen to her cry anymore. And all the time she was here she would hog Floozie. When she was gone home he got a chance to look over her jewels. He knew where she kept them, har-har-har, inside her little sewing basket. Dharma put a lot of stock in her jewels. She would close the door—what a dope, there was always the keyhole—and then she would touch them and look at them like Daddy would look when he held Mommy’s hair in his hands. Anthony schmoozled his face down into the dog’s fluffy fur. He had his old soft green baby blanket, the one grandma had knit him, cozy around her. He fussed and clucked and tucked her in and whispered secrets to her till both of them were flaccid with love and asleep.

Claire stood at the end of her walk and wondered briefly if she should take the keys with her. Why bother, she decided against it, retracing her steps and putting the lot into the pot of still bright-red geranium. She looked left and right but no one had seen her. There wasn’t a soul on the block but old Mr. Kinkaid coming down from Park Lane South with his mean bag of groceries. She hastened her step so as to be able to greet him. Her motives, unclear to herself, moved quickly, and she realized as she sorted them with her steps that she was only doing this to get him out of her way. If she dealt with him now, she told herself, he would have no excuse to show up tomorrow. But even as he neared, she knew her reasoning to be ridiculously reasonable—and Mr. Kinkaid was not. He was like some cloying twenty-four-hour virus, oozing toward you with a psychic antenna, his power being your politeness, his inevitable stay up to his own languishing whim. Claire strode purposefully up to him, distributing her white light around herself comfortably, then put on a happy face.

“Got yourself all rigged up for somethin’, eh?” he said accusingly. “What’s doin’? Boss ain’t home?” he cackled unpleasantly.

He reminded her of her disparaging Polish great-aunts. Her mother always said they weren’t happy unless they were miserable. She and Claire would lock sparkling, collusive eyes across the room. And that reminded Claire. If Johnny had spent all the money this month already, how would they ever put the required thirty bucks into their piano fund? She better speak to him about that. That was one thing she had to have. A grand piano. There would be no getting around that. Anthony would play, even if she had to go to work in the five-and-ten to pay for his lessons. He would play if for no other reason than to show up those Polish aunts now making life miserable for the dead souls over in hell, for that was no doubt where they were.

Mr. Kinkaid hadn’t shaved for a couple of days, Claire noticed. How men hated to shave! Once they did it, they felt so happy, but they always needed a reason, or a wife, to get in there and make them do it. “… And,” Kinkaid sucked an incisor for emphasis, “didn’t I tell you to watch out for those Murdochs?”

“Murdochs?”

“Those Murdochs in the yellow house down the block there. Down there.”

“Oh … What about them?”

“Well, you can see for yourself. They put that ‘For Sale’ sign out there for the whole world to see. Not nice and confidential like I did. Putting it in the Tablet for my own kind. These type of people, they’ll just sell to anyone, anyone walks in off the street. Blacks. Injuns. Sheeks. They don’t give a damn.” He noticed Claire made no rejoinder. She was remembering earlier on in the week when indeed she’d seen a family of Punjabis streaming from the Murdoch house. If only there hadn’t been so many of them, perhaps the residents up and down the block wouldn’t have been so frightened. But they were frightened. You could tell, the way they came out with red little eyes and arms folded across their chests, scowling frantically at the likes of the strangers. They didn’t see the graceful beauty of the ladies’ saris floating in the end-of-summer wind; they smelled the threat of curry and a town that was no longer Mayberry. You couldn’t console them with the news that most of these people moving in around here were socially upscale of them, teachers and doctors and lawyers in their own countries, because this would surely complicate their rage. “That, that,” they would sputter, “… is because our hard-earned tax dollars get sent over there and they got nothin’ better to do than go to them lousy schools we paid for.”

“What the hell,” Mr. Kinkaid said, “it’s not my problem anymore. You’re the ones got to deal with them good-for-nothin’s. You mark my words, you won’t recognize this street one year from today. This whole block will be in shreds.”

“Surely not in shreds, Mr. Kinkaid.” Claire smiled.

“Graffiti all over your fresh-painted garage there. You’ll see what I mean. You’ll lose that holier-than-thou attitude real quick when it starts costin’ you in your pretty little pocketbook.”

“Good thing you’ll be leaving town soon, then.”

“What’s that?”

“Just kidding. A touch of levity.”

Kinkaid ignored her. “And you heard what they did now? They discontinued the Q-ten!”

“What’s that, the Q-ten?”

“The bus line that goes up and down Lefferts Boulevard to Union Turnpike.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, they’re getting rid of the buses and putting on a couple of elephants instead.”

“Good night, Mr. Kinkaid.”

“Just a joke. You remember jokes?”

Claire made a face not unlike Kali, the Indian goddess whose tongue sticks out all of the way and reaches right down to her horrible chin. She boggled her eyes and rattled them round in their sockets. She was quite good at this.

Mr. Kinkaid ducked appreciatively away, shielding his rear end with one plastic bag of white bread and a Budweiser beer.

Claire breathed in the cool, now familiar, Richmond Hill night air and continued on her way. She passed Iris von Lillienfeld’s, a gracious lady in a gracious old house. She must go visit her this week. They had been through quite a bit together some years ago, when Claire had first returned to America. Iris had known her when she was a wee girl, one of a pair of rambunctious, then-redheaded twins. She even still called Claire “Red.” She was, Claire fingered her long dark hair reminiscently, the only one who did. Claire couldn’t help remembering four years ago, give or take a month, when she’d been up this same hill with both sisters, Carmela and Zinnie dressed up and in tow, only it was she who had had her eye on Stefan—and her sisters were along for the ride. Interesting the way things turn out when you stick around long enough to find out, Claire mulled. Stefan and Carmela’s house stood finally, majestically, there, with its parapets and whatnots, its roof of slates and its oval-topped windows all set for Rapunzel. A calliope of Bavarian blue-and-white awning tents were on the lawns, gazebos of charm (and just in case of rain) for the evening. A stately if not homey place.

Zinnie, the youngest, the undercover, the spunky blond, had met a guy here last time, a handsome doctor at that, but it hadn’t worked out. Zinnie wasn’t one to stay home and play do-as-you’re-told. “He wanted,” you would often overhear Zinnie say, “a floor monitor, not a partner.” For someone as independent and “in charge” as Zinnie was, this was not the right man. She was so used to calling the shots that once, when Zinnie had heard him say, “Hon, would you take off work this Thursday? That’s the only day they can deliver my couch,” she had looked at him for a moment with her mouth open, decided not to take offense, and had nicely explained to him that she would probably have a collar on Wednesday and have to be in court all day Thursday.

“Yes, but I still don’t see why you can’t take off Thursday,” he’d persisted.

“But I just explained to you—” Zinnie started to say, until he interrupted her.

“Zin, sweetheart, the court system in New York is so backed up as it is, one day more or less isn’t going to make a hell of a whole lot of difference.”

“It’s not, heh?” Zinnie shot back. “What about the perp sittin’ in the can waiting to go up? I mean, he or she might not be a person to you, but to her kids holding up day after day in a foster center, or his wife—or the other arresting officers’ families who have better things to do, it is their time—what I mean is, a whole lot of people are involved in any bust. You don’t just put their lives on hold because some department store finds it more convenient to deliver from nine to five, Monday to Friday.”

“But I want this couch!” he’d almost shouted. “Stop being such an idiot!” People at the surrounding tables stopped talking and looked at each other with eyebrows up.

“Hey.” Zinnie remained deliberately calm, the way she always would do with psychos and irate personalities. “All I’m asking you to do is rethink your request. There is no reason I can see for getting insulting. Maybe you could take off, yourself.”

“That’s a little ridiculous, don’t you think?”

“What is?”

“I mean, I’m a professional.”

“Yeah? So what, nonprofessionals don’t have rights? And by the way,” she’d added. “I consider myself a professional.”

He’d burst out laughing.

“That’s it.” Zinnie put down the fork she’d been twirling round and round her pink spaghetti. She stood up slowly, her eyes always on his, watching them change from annoyance that she was off to the ladies’ room when she still hadn’t committed to Thursday, to bewilderment when she laid out a trio of tens on the table, to real shock when she turned and left them looking at her back and the beautiful head of flotsam, thick blond curls he’d never get his effing fingers through again. For Zinnie it was that simple. She might spend weeks sitting around her apartment wrapped up in a horse blanket, snivelling into aloe-laden tissues, but he’d never know. And it’s better than spending the rest of your life apologizing to yourself for giving up your dignity for a permanent toss in the hay and a hand to hold onto, she would later say, detoxed of this guy. Cured. “So I guess I really didn’t love him, anyway. Just the idea that he was the perfect catch. So I’m no better than he is, right? Go figure.”

Claire huffed and puffed up the hill. She made sure she walked across the road from the woods, not just in it. There were so many loose dogs around lately. Big fellas too. They gave you the creeps. What were people doing—sending their dogs out on their own because they didn’t want to be bothered carrying around pooper-scooper bags? Here she was at the private hedge border of the other happy couple, Carmela and Stefan. At least they’d stuck it out, got to know each other and still they stayed together. So something worked.

Now what the heck? Someone was checking her out from across the street? Don’t be silly, she scoffed. Some weirdo jumping back behind a tree was as normal as apple pie in this park. Probably just another yanker. Most of them were harmless, she knew, but shivered all the same. Ominous feelings were not foreign to her, and she’d learned they were, some of them, false. She was glad she hadn’t brought the car. The guy could well be a car thief. This was grandstand auto-thief country here. That is, if you could find a parking spot anywhere. With all Stefan’s money, he’d never be able to buy spaces up here. Even his enormous driveway out back would be filled by now. No, Claire’s good old car was snug in its own handy spot right in front of the house. The sound of tinkling piano drifted across the lawn. French doors opened and Nick and Nora Charles flitted across the patio.

I am dressed, she instantly knew, completely wrong. She had half a mind to turn around and hightail home, but just then Carmela spotted her, looked her condescendingly up and down, then rushed with open arms to enfold (cover?) her.

“Carmela. I just saw you this afternoon.”

“Ah-ha-ha-ha.” Carmela’s was a belly laugh. “Everyone!” she called out. “Everyone! This is my dear little sister, Claire. Come! Come and meet Claire. Richard! Oliver! Darlings! Come meet my famous-photographer, world-traveler, guru-groupie, deluded and now retired-and-living-as-a-recluse in Richmond Hill North, sister, Claire Breslinsky.”

“Benedetto,” Claire corrected, sore. She used her maiden name herself but she didn’t like anyone else to do it for her. From Carmela especially, it smacked of disrespect to Johnny.

“Why so frosty?” Carmela smiled into her ear.

“Guru-groupie?” muttered Claire.

“Now, now,” Carmela laughed at the room, then snarled into Claire’s ear, “This is your coming-out party, doll. Let’s not be unappreciative.”

“Remember who you are,” Claire heard dear Swamiji’s caring words caress her through the moment. So she wasn’t good at parties. So what? She could leave whenever she chose. What was that, French-aproned help? And each carrying glittering round trays of what was surely white and costly Californian. One thing about these two, they knew their wine.

She saw, across the towering room among well-dressed minor players, the short but perilous Jupiter Dodd, bon vivant, cause of all the commotion and, as usual, enjoying it. Their eyes crossed but did not meet. They would get to each other later, after they’d sorted out what else was going on. They would be each other’s just desserts. Claire snatched a glass of wine from a costumed lizard gliding by. She only took three sips, but that heady glow registered with an almost audible click. Ay-ay-ay-ay, thought Claire, settling into its loveliness. What was that they had on? Some sultry samba thing. Shades of Rio de Janeiro. There was a disc jockey, Claire noticed. He wore the required one earring, one pony tail, one silk T-shirt, and a Mano suit. Last time Stefan had hired a tuxedoed quartet, but this was nice. She perched on something that would in someone else’s home have been a radiator. It was an encasement wrapped around the entire room, latticed and painted white. The whole floor was of varying shades of white. That would change quickly enough if they ever decided to have kids, she thought wryly. It was all certainly opulent. Somber, though. Taking itself pretty seriously, with lilies from Holland in great cut-glass vases. There was, somewhere up there in the sky, a chandelier to warm any Mediterranean’s heart.

Standing elegantly tall alongside the burled-walnut Biedermeier highboy was Freddy, Zinnie’s ex and Michaelaen’s father. Claire didn’t know why she was so surprised to see him here. This was his territory now, wasn’t it? There was no reason for her to dislike Freddy. He was sharp, entertaining, good to his own, talented, and reliable. Still, there was something stilted in their communication. He always made her feel as though she had no sense of humor. You could put him anywhere, sit him down or stand him up or turn him upside down, and you’d still have your full frontal for the men’s fashion section of the Sunday Times. Nothing matched, but everything blended together in muted years-ago Abercrombie and Fitch.

“Hello,” he said, and shook her hand while he kissed her cheek. “I’ve been trying to get hold of you.”

“Really?” She was the least hard-to-reach person she knew.

“I had three of my waiters drop a rug off at your house.”

“Not the famous Dhera Gaz?”

He looked taken aback. “What are you, a witch?”

Oh, how tempting it was to let him think just that. She smiled something inscrutable and said nothing. And, on second thought, even a well-intended admission would let him know she knew how the dog had ruined it for his fastidious specifications and the gift was somehow left-handed, something less than perfect.

“I didn’t want you to feel unrecompensed for housing Zinnie and Michaelaen,” he said.

“Hey. Quit it. They’re my family, too.”

“Dear Claire. You are so good.”

She eyed him suspiciously. “Well, so are you.”

“Michaelaen asleep?”

“In Zinnie’s closet.”

“That’s good. Then he’s asleep by now. So. That means you and Johnny are fighting.”

“That’s true,” Claire admitted. No use denying it. Everyone knew Michaelaen hid from the first barks of hollering. No one knew it better than Fred. And she and Zinnie never fought. Whereas she and Johnny were becoming quite famous.

“Too bad,” Freddy flopped onto the handsome settee. “I was just about to offer my congratulations.”

“Ah,” said Claire, “you’ve got to come over and see it.”

“I hear she’s a beaut.”

Claire warmed. “Oh, Freddy, and just wait till we get the fireplaces opened!”

Freddy looked at her strangely. “Oh. The house. Yes. Yes, I will come. Michaelaen loves it.”

They watched the party, both rocking convivially to the now Trinidadian music.

“You didn’t mean the house, did you?” Claire said finally.

Freddy laughed. “No, I meant the horse. Johnny’s horse. Your horse, for that matter.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Oops.”

“Whose horse?”

“The horse Johnny bought that is now sitting in a stable at Aqueduct. At the track. Claire. The racehorse.”

Claire held the glass till it was upside down, and still she kept it like a hat on her nose. She watched the chandelier through it, dazzled by the kaleidoscope of shimmering crystal and knowing if she ever put the glass down she would have to think about what Freddy had just said. She did.

He said, “I hope I haven’t gone and ruined a perfectly good surprise.”

She smiled at him with her mouth closed. He covered his eyes with his hands and peeked at her through carefully buffed pink fingers.

“Uh oh. Promise me you won’t accuse him till I get there.”

“Nonsense, Freddy.” She followed the lead he’d unknowingly provided. “I wouldn’t breathe a word. I wouldn’t want to ruin his surprise. Not for the world. I think it’s sweet.” There. She’d be damned if Freddy would watch her squirm.

The bastard. The filthy, lying bastard. She would kill him. At very least, she would divorce him. She felt her stomach unclench. Yes, divorce. Anthony looked at her with puzzled, frightened eyes. All right, not divorce. She would kill him. She would take his revolver out and shoot the bloody, slimy, stinking lowlife. She searched the table in front of them for a pack of cigarettes.

Visions of herself haunting one Salvation Army after St. Vincent de Paul after another and back, on the Saturday before the antique and jumble shop owners got there, flew through her mind. She plucked a glass of white wine from one more endearing serf, capsized it neatly, and went on to the next. She hadn’t minded ferreting through other people’s garbage to find stuff renovatable enough for her family. And how many dumpy upholstery shops had she waded through till she came up with the cheapest and the best?

Lord knew, her flag went up and her heart would start pumping at the very hint of a yard sale; any heap of junk on someone’s front lawn would plunge her foot down on the brake. Some of her happiest memories were when she was pregnant and driving around Richmond Hill on a Saturday. As the older residents packed up to move to Florida, frightened by the daunting certainty of other-cultured neighbors moving (oh my God!) right down the block, they grew panicky and careless, letting go of all sorts of unbelievable treasures for a song. Fruitwood chairs hidden under studded patent leather, held sturdy for generations by four-inch European dowels and now sitting under someone’s indifferent Japanese maple with a skeptical sign asking fifty dollars Scotch-taped haphazardly on it. What would they do, take them with them? To the land of chrome and wicker? To whom would they leave them? Sons and daughters crunched into studio apartments in the city? Pay storage?

“You mean fifty dollars for each one or fifty for the set?” Claire had pointedly taken her car keys out.

“Kit and caboodle,” the fellow had said, eyeing her knees.

“I’ll take them,” she’d said, noticing somebody else parking his car and getting out with that money-in-his-pocket jaunt.

Johnny had yelled for three days over those chairs. But she’d stuck to her guns. She knew what was good. And the best part of it was the minute she’d had them at the upholsterer’s and they’d stripped off the patent leather, some woman had come in, taken one look at the first chair, and offered two-sixty for it. “So you can imagine,” she’d chirped triumphantly to Johnny, “what they would go for in the city. And what they’d be worth when I’m finished with them.”

Johnny wouldn’t let on that they were a success. Oh, God forbid. But whenever any of his friends came over they never failed to mention the chairs. “Whoa!” They’d back up appreciatively. “Must be those antique chairs Johnny found!”

Claire would let them go on thinking Johnny had found them. What did she care? It only meant Johnny would love her that much more. What a gal! he must think. She had thought. But you see, now, he hadn’t. All he thought was that she’d keep on saving him money and he could go on happy, lucky to spend it. She could feel her blood boil. A racehorse! She wondered, suddenly, if she couldn’t drop dead right there from a quick cerebral hemorrhage? No, there was Anthony. She couldn’t. There was Anthony. There was no piano. And there was Freddy, still beside her, pleased to watch her expression harden like loose sand from mud to cement. And he was enjoying this, wasn’t he? All at once, it came to her. He disliked her, she realized, surprised. It weighed her down and she was transported right back to sobriety. Across the room, Portia McTavish danced. She was very pretty, Claire admitted to herself grudgingly, what with her high color and enthusiastic gracefulness. Claire watched her stupidly, entranced with the vivacious energy Portia poured out of her dress and into the room. She was quite glad that Johnny had not come. She might hate him, but at moments like these it was clear to her just how much she loved him.

Suddenly, near the wall alongside Portia McTavish’s gyrations, Claire recognized Andrew Dover. It couldn’t be. How could he be here with his wife just dead? But he was here, drowning himself in a glass of Stefan’s good Glenfiddich from the look of him. She was not shocked, she was stunned. How could a man lose his wife, the mother of his only child, and act like this? And where was Dharma? She’d practically pushed the kid home so she’d spend some time with her father, and now he was here. Claire put her glass down on the white thing, the whatever-it-was. The paint, she noticed absently, was beginning to peel. She crossed the crowded room.

“Andrew.” She had to raise her voice to be heard. “Are you all right?”

“I am,” he enunciated carefully, “getting there.”

She tried to laugh.

He leered at the dancing form of Portia McTavish.

“How’s Dharma?” Claire said to him.

Andrew’s head shook up and down wildly. “Much better,” he finally shouted back at her.

“Who’s with her?” she wanted to know.

“She’s fine,” he said.

“Andrew. Excuse me, Andrew!” she had to tug on his sleeve. “Does that mean she’s alone?”

“Mrs. Rieve next door keeps looking in on her.” He closed his eyes. “Dharma won’t let her stay. Says Mrs. Rieve’s a witch.”

“Look, Andrew. I’m going to call my sister, who is staying at my house. I could ask her to run over and take a look at how Dharma’s doing if she has a chance.”

“No, thanks.” He grinned. “Can’t dance.”

Claire thought he was overdoing the drunken slur bit.

She was angry at him for not showing more compassion toward his daughter, and angry at herself for not showing enough compassion toward a man who’d just lost his wife. She turned her back on him and left the room for the relative calm of the cool, dark hallway. There was no telephone. She climbed the impressive staircase and imagined what happy compensation it must be each morning for Carmela as she regally descended it. Compensation for what, Claire was not exactly sure. The master bedroom was the first door on the left. Claire couldn’t help remembering the time she had considered spending half her life there herself. She knocked and went cautiously in. Wow. Nice. Like the digs in an English castle. Or at least a Hollywood version of an English castle. The phone was on the nightstand and Claire perched herself carefully on the bed’s maroon silk coverlet. She dialed with the careful deliberation of someone who had one too many under her belt. It rang a couple of times. Claire could imagine Zinnie, frowning, turning down the volume on her earphones, tripping lightly to the kitchen phone. At last she answered. Her mouth was full.

“Hi, it’s me, Claire.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Everything all right home?”

“Fine. All asleep. Right after you left. Oh. And Freddy’s thugs dropped off a rug. It’s rolled up in the foyer. The dog ate the whole box of Chips Ahoy, though.”

“Uh oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Keep her in the kitchen, then.”

“She’s sleeping on Anthony’s head.”

“Tch.”

“I put them both on Anthony’s bed.”

“Look. There’s something else. Dharma’s father, this Andrew Dover fellow, they live across the street in the house with the brown porch—”

“I know Andrew.”

“You do?”

“Of course.”

“Oh. Well, he’s here, can you believe it? And he’s drunk.”

“Poor guy.”

“Poor guy?! He could get drunk at home, couldn’t he? I think he left Dharma all alone. And he’s drooling all over Portia McTavish.”

“What else is new?”

“Really? Since when?”

“Claire, they all go for Portia. She’s prime rib. Or hadn’t you noticed.”

“I think she’s a skunk. But yes, I had noticed.”

“And?”

“And I thought maybe you could cross over and peek in on her. Like, don’t scare her or anything, just ring the bell and drag her out by the hair and make her stay at my place for the night. And leave a note indicating where she is.”

“Suppose she won’t come?”

Claire chewed her jagged thumbnail. “Then let her be, I guess. I don’t know what to do. Call child welfare? What?”

“Gee, I don’t know about that, Claire. I mean, the kid’s mother just died. You really think it’s a good idea to get her involved with a whole new set of strangers? Some of these foster-care places can be pretty scary to a kid. At least here, she’s familiar with the place. She’s got you across the street if she needs someone.”

“Go over and get her, would you, Zinnie? I’m so worried about her. I’ll call you back in half an hour.”

“How’s the party?”

“Oh, very grand, you know. Spectacular booze. I’ll call you back.”

She hung up the phone, used Carmela’s pretty bathroom and noticed, on her way past the inlaid rosewood rubbish bin, a heap of Q-Tips, stained black. Poor Carmela, she thought, standing there at the mirror, touching up her jet-black hair at the roots. She bet that parted-down-the-middle hairstyle would have to go. And soon. She went back in and dunked her face into a cold handful of water. Really, she didn’t look too bad, she admired. Nothing perked you up more than a well-lit reflection of yourself, and Carmela’s mirror was so generous. It would be, though, wouldn’t it? Everything was, in the end, how you looked at it, and reassurances like this might be fleeting, but they did do you good.

Already she felt more gently inclined toward Johnny. After all. He couldn’t very well have discussed the idea with her. He’d have known her reply would be no. Was it really so terrible? It wasn’t as though he’d taken a mistress. After all, the money he must have spent was the money he’d earned restoring cars. Everything he made on the job went straight into the mortgage and insurances and food and clothing accounts. Or it usually did. She knew what was up. He’d gambled with his car money, gambled big, and won. There was probably somebody else in on it. There always was. Probably Pokey Ryan, his old partner. No, it wouldn’t be Pokey. Pokey wasn’t quick-witted enough to make any money gambling. Unless Johnny had talked him into investing his savings. She hoped it hadn’t been Pokey. She doubted it was Red Torneo, Johnny’s dinosaur, the cop who’d practically raised Johnny after his mother had died. He was the gnarly old fellow who’d gotten Johnny into fixing stationhouse cars when it looked like the kid was hooking up with the wrong crowd. So Johnny had wound up fixing them instead of stealing them. Johnny had kept his hoodlum friends, but he’d turned his life around and ended up emulating Red Torneo and joining the department.

Not the coldhearted in-laws who’d fed him their leftovers and sent him off to school in hand-me-downs from their well-suited kids, things Johnny’s mother’s inheritance helped to buy. If Johnny considered anyone family, it was Red. She must call Red. They hadn’t seen him all summer anyway, what with the move and all the goings-on. They were due. Red used to have a floating cafe down in Sheepshead Bay. Johnny had taken her there when they’d met. A nice little place he’d retired to over there by the boats, but the zoning laws had been changed or whatever it was and Red had been forced to sell out to the city. All a crock of horseshit, Red said. Anyway, he’d found himself a new little place over in Brighton, on the boardwalk there, on the Russian Riviera. Brooklyn had changed, said Johnny. But Brooklyn had always changed, said Red. That was the point of it.

They must get over there and have a look. And soon. She switched off the light, edged herself out onto the balcony, and stood gently with her cheek against the cool, rich woodwork. The music was more to her taste way up here, where she could hear it, not reverberate in it. The hallway in darkness was cast in blue shadows. It was nice. This suited her. Johnny suited her too, she realized, missing him. She’d done the right thing marrying him. It would be all right. Claire had been through too many unhappy relationships not to appreciate the good in this one. And she was no quitter. Not when she had something real to hang onto.

The sound of rustling interrupted her thoughts. It wouldn’t do to be found lurking about in the dark. So unseemly. Nosy in your sister’s boudoir. She moved forward into the light so that whoever it was would notice her and not be startled. But just as she hesitated, the drape loosened and fell across her shadow and something in a man’s urgent voice beneath her on the stairs stopped her dead. “Yeah, sure, that’s right,” he hissed, “keep it up.”

“Keep what up?” Portia McTavish yanked her arm from Andrew’s grip and faced him, laughing.

“You know what,” he said. He didn’t sound very drunk now. He sounded mean. Claire could see the back of his handsome fair head.

“Come off it.” Portia’s face was green and twisted in the awful light.

She pushed him soundly and tripped back down the stairs. Claire grasped her chest. She dared not move now. Andrew was clearly humiliated by this girl. Claire stood quite still and waited for him to move on. Instead, he stayed there, looking after Portia. His hands were knotted into lifted fists. When would he move? Claire was frightened by his stillness and the dark, unyielding rage that held his purple neck. He said something she couldn’t hear for all the music, then followed Portia back into the glittering havoc.

That was when she began to suspect Tree Dover hadn’t died the way they’d said she had. She had been murdered. And Claire knew then and there who had done it. She felt it as sure as she was standing there. A chill went up her spine. Maybe he’d had help. Maybe he’d done it on his own. But he sure as hell believed he’d gotten away with it. He was on to the next episode in his life. Well, Claire would be gol-darned. The green-and-purple drapes hung heavily and shimmered. She felt, like the moonlit passage just before her, wet and self-occupied, atonement for her grief.

Dharma, so little, sat looking in her mother’s three-way mirror. She was wearing her pretty pajamas and her hair was brushed one hundred strokes into all those ringlets. Dharma hummed, in soft angelic tones, the song her mother was to have sung in Mrs. Stefanovitch’s play. “Que Chelita Manina,” she hummed.

She took the bright-red lipstick from her mother’s golden tube. She held it, her eyes lighting up with an eerie new glow. She put the lipstick on, rolled it on, top and bottom, round and round she went, her eyes holding onto her eyes in the mirror, one small bedraggled phoenix here, taking off within the iris of its own relentless festering. She let the lipstick go at last outside its own prim borders.

Claire stepped, after a while, carefully back into the party herself, feeling as though she’d do well to test the temperature with her toe, which of course she dared not do and so she stayed there on the sidelines of this shimmery pool of mainstreamers, hoping to spot her friendly old drink. It had been duly removed. “Sheesh,” Daddy would say, “Coney Island waiters!” She deliberated whether or not to leave. If she went home now she might be able to run over and assist Zinnie in getting Dharma. Carmela wouldn’t like it if she left, though. She would consider it to be a great breach of contract, that subtle, unspeakable contract between sisters whose terms read according to what each knows the other can and will do. Carmela was not likely to give her an Indian burn or a tickle torture, means once used with great success, but she still knew just how to get you going. She would bide her time and wait for her chance, and nothing would stop her from going through with whatever she’d decided would work. She would accuse Claire of showing off, of playing the prima donna, coming and going like that. Putting in a quick appearance and then rushing off. “So affected,” she would confess to their mother, tattling yet again. And Claire would have to watch their mother’s disappointed, cheerful face drop and wonder why Claire could not give that extra inch; it was little enough to ask after Carmela had gone to such lengths to invite all her friends for Claire’s sake.

She sighed. She gave up. She sank down into the opulent white silk sofa and resigned herself to having to remind herself, on and off, to breathe.

“Hi ya.” Jupiter Dodd tipped at the waist, took hold of her hand, and touched it with a small kiss.

Claire stood happily. “How nice of you to come and say hello!”

“If Mohammed won’t come to the mountain …”

“Oh dear. Am I that perverse?”

“Was Mohammed perverse?”

“Are you that mountainous?”

They looked together at his trim little body. Jupiter Dodd had a nimbus about him. Claire wasn’t sure just what it was. He certainly frightened most people. There was an air of nothing-to-lose about him that scared most people half to death, but also made them worship him—from afar. He wasn’t just honest, but often cruel and at anyone’s expense. So you took your life in your hands.

“You are surrounded, I see,” she said, “by your usual herbaceous aura.”

“Now what do you mean by that?” He put his nose right up to hers.

“Oh, I don’t know. That’s just what comes to mind. Herb as in tart and herbaceous as in perennial. You know, woodsy. Tied to the earth. Both at once. And here we go again.”

He snapped his fingers. “There! I knew I adored you! You always say exactly what you mean, whether people will understand you or not. And, by the way, they most often don’t, you know.”

“But you always do.”

“Ha. I always have to ask.”

“And you always say what will cut to the quick.”

“Why is that, do you suppose?”

“Because that’s what people expect of you. I think you feel that you’d be letting them down if you didn’t draw blood at least once in every conversation.”

He grinned wickedly. He lit his entrancing Pall Mall. “You don’t seem intimidated.”

“Because I’m busy being jealous of you, lighting up your cigarette.”

He didn’t, as anyone else would, offer her one and he did it, or didn’t do it, to be cruel. Fortunately, this turned out to be the kindest thing, because the moment passed, the alarm stopped ringing, and by the time he was on to his third puff, the appeal wore off. It was always the chumminess, the camaraderie of the incineration that got her going. After one or two puffs it became apparent that the smoker’s teeth were indeed due for a scraping, his breath dependent upon the equally stale breath of the conversant, and the cigarette itself a shackle rather than an adornment. Claire manifested the freedom she experienced by giving her spine a good, sturdy stretch. Jupiter inspected her from behind his undulating blue veil of smoke. “So the life of housewife suits you,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“A bit thicker around the middle, I see. You’re not, um—”

“No, you worthless bag of bones, I am not.”

“Ah. Good. Because motherhood, though blessed, does tend to use up one’s creative energies, don’t you think?”

“Yes, I do. That’s the point.”

“Oh, please don’t take offense. You are the most splendid woman here, if you want my opinion. I don’t go for the scrawny type.”

“Jupiter, you don’t go for any type in the female category.”

“True, but you don’t have to jump off the bridge to know you’ll be dead. And as Irwin Shaw said, after a woman passes thirty, she is forced to make the choice between face and fanny. And present company, he was glad to see, had successfully vied for the face.”

“I think it was Somerset Maugham said it first.”

“There. You see? You just can’t keep a good line down. I might add that you are the best-dressed woman here. Oh, you know, they’ve all clearly been to Paris, but you, my dear, have obviously lived there.”

“Thank you.” Claire smoothed her starry lap with pleasure. “Only why do I get the feeling I’m being fattened for the kill?”

“Because you must be that way yourself. If you want something, you no doubt first pave your way with compliments. It truly does take one to know one, you know.”

Justly mollified, Claire admitted to herself the succession of elaborate meals she’d concocted for Johnny before making any sizable request. “Touché,” she said and laughed.

“That’s better. Shall we sit down?”

“Thank you.”

“It’s for me. I’ve just been through a bout with phlebitis and I can’t stand for very long.”

“Uh oh.”

“No, I’m fine. I can walk all day long. As a matter of fact it’s the best thing for me. I just can’t stand.”

They settled into the comfy sofa and looked about, like any old couple getting ready to watch the tube at night. Both held captive by the visual, they made a happy pair, dishing all present, making each other laugh.

“So what’s all this about a play?” he asked.

“Haven’t you spoken with Carmela?”

“Carmela. She knows the best way to get my interest up is to remain tight-lipped. She pretends it’s all top secret.”

“It’s worked, hasn’t it? You’re here.”

“I’m here because of you. As you well know.”

Claire started to cry. She did not sob, but great, glycerine-like globes fell down her cheeks in a rush. It was his being nice that did it. She was doing fine, on her guard to his barbs, and she just wasn’t prepared for kindness.

“If you don’t stop this instant,” Jupiter said, squashing his cigarette out in the stately crystal aschenbecker, “I shall get up and walk out and I shall never bother with you again. I promise.”

Claire laughed. She blew her nose with the white linen handkerchief he offered with a backward hand. It trembled, his hand. So opposed he was to any form of intrusive intimacy, despite all this tough talk.

“I’ll be good,” she said finally, meekly.

“Oh, look. Jumbo shrimp. I wonder who Stefan is trying to impress? It can’t be me. He knows me. Just throw a little lumpfish caviar into a jelly dish and I’m his. It must be that appalling huddle of Boise, Idahoan, businessmen.”

Claire closed her eyes. Little Dharma. Andrew. Portia. A racehorse. Her own fat stomach. It was all too much.

“Claire. Perhaps you ought to go back to work.”

“I thought I was working. I’ve never worked so hard in all my life, really. The laundry is the part I can’t quite figure out. The more you do, the more there is. You ought to see my laundry room. I always thought if I would have a laundry room it would be all blue and white and with towels neatly folded on a papered shelf and the smell of clean lavender would waft from hanging ribboned bunches. Like the rooms I used to shoot. My laundry room has towels dragging around the cement floor in damp trails, and the basket overflows and has never been empty, so I bought an enormous one to hold it all and now that’s overflowing as well. There is a scum in my fabric-softener compartment and the whole place reeks of moist, soiled sock of man.”

“Tomorrow you shall regret having told me all this.”

“May I tell you something else? I think my neighbor might have killed his wife and gotten away with it.”

Jupiter snatched a shrimp from a passing tray and popped it into his mouth. “Needs horseradish,” he said.

“Did you hear what I said?”

“Well, yes. I’m just waiting for you to tell me how.”

“I don’t know how.”

“If you don’t know how, you can’t do anything about it and if you can’t do anything about it, you might as well shut up and not talk about it. Slander, you know.”

“You’re a fine one to mention slander as an encumbrance to revelation.”

“Encumbrance to revelation! Honestly, Claire. People just don’t talk that way anymore. If,” he muttered, “they ever did.”

“So swell. So I should forget about it. That’s what you’re saying?”

“What I’m saying is this. There are toxic dumps appearing all over Queens, all over the city, all over the state, and they will lead to the deaths of many more people inevitably than one cozy little unprovable murder. You might put your energies into catching those hooligans, the people responsible for that stuff. It would certainly do more good.”

“And I’m telling you that a man might have gotten away with killing his wife. It happens. Autopsy experts have a lot to do, too, you know. They can slip up. Well, they can. What? You don’t think real evil exists? That there are people out there planning devious atrocities, I mean knowingly being evil? And getting away with it?”

“I think there are some really sick people out there, sure.”

“Yes, but I mean evil.”

“I think you spent too many years in Catholic schools. And I am advising you not to talk about it to anyone else. For now. Are you with me?”

“I’m always with you, you old fox.”

“Then why don’t you come work in my office? She She needs a good staff photographer.”

For several terrific moments, Claire imagined herself arriving in the city each morning, dressed however she pleased, drinking Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee out of endless paper cups, shooting fashion layouts at the Cloisters and Broadway stars for the columns up at the Carlyle at night, chatting over after-midnight suppers at Elaine’s with lonely-for-their-therapists, bright TV people in from the coast for three days at a clip. She saw herself standing at the pay phone by the door, stuffing quarters into it, trying to reach her son. “Mommy?” he would say, rubbing sleepy eyes. “Mommy who?”

“I’ll have to give it a few more years, Jupiter Dodd. But thanks for the offer. You are so very good to me.”

“What is it exactly that you want to do? Shoot weddings on weekends? Because that is what it will come to. Police families are notoriously poor. They all buy houses in washed-up neighborhoods because those are the only mortgages they can afford. And even those drive them slowly to the poorhouse. Oh, I’ve seen these police families at Christmas fundraiser parties at the precinct. All the children dressed carefully in brand-new polyester outfits. The women done up in last year’s clearance from Penney’s and the men, oh, the men, the cops themselves, waiting stolidly for Santa in their prerequisite walrus moustaches. So depressing.”

“Why, you lowlife piece of shit! Those are the families of the guys that risk and give their lives for the sake of good. But I suppose you are too fancy a person to care about real stuff like that. Like plain old on-sale, bargain-basement, polyester decency. Your sphere is style, not content, isn’t it? There’s no black and white revolving around your system, is there? It’s all an up-to-the-minute, hundred-percent-cotton shade of bloody gray.”

“Ouch.”

“Ouch this!” she said, thrusting an obscene arm into the air the way Johnny would do. She tingled with emotion. This was the end of Jupiter Dodd, but she didn’t care. She just didn’t care anymore. She was sick to death of an entire phony-liberal population who supported the rights of the slimiest criminal and allowed their law enforcers to be scorned and spat upon. It stank. Her breath went in and out, in and out. Slowly she came back to where she was, heard the music, saw the people at the party around her, felt Jupiter Dodd still sitting there.

“Well, why don’t you leave?”

“Because if I get up, I’ve got to find someone else to talk to and I shall get bored. Also, my feet hurt and I am quite comfortable. I only wonder what could have happened to your formerly perfectly good sense of humor.”

“Still perfectly good. Just more highly evolved than resorting to taking easy digs at the good guys.”

Jupiter didn’t say anything. Someone had put on an Aaron Neville tape while the deejay had his break. Claire was tired. She was tired of being defensive. She relaxed. They accepted bright new glasses of wine and sipped them appreciatively. The party had changed gears and was now at a carnal peak. “What would you shoot,” Jupiter finally asked, “if you had all the money in the world?”

“I’d shoot the grand old houses of Richmond Hill,” Claire replied without hesitation, surprising herself.

“So good. So shoot them. If that’s what you want to do, that’s what you’ll do best. I’ll pay you. We’ll run them in She She. Before you know it, we’ll have the gay community buying up the local real estate. Can’t you just see it? They’d be holding open-air concerts on Sunday at the bandshell.” Jupiter threw back his head and howled with laughter at the idea, his idea. The power, really, was what tickled his funny bone. Oh, it did him good to come to Queens.

“Johnny bought a racehorse,” Claire said then.

“Johnny, as in your husband Johnny?”

“Yes.”

“Didn’t I just get finished sitting through a fervent speech for the oppressed, honest cop?”

“I’m sure he didn’t use his salary.”

“Ha. Certainly not.”

“There wouldn’t be enough of it for that. That goes for the bills. He’s got this fancy-car renovating thing going on the side.”

“And when does he sleep?”

“On the job, probably. He’s hardly ever home.”

“He’s having an affair.”

“No. No, I don’t think so. I mean, one never knows. But I think we’re all right in that department. It’s the only department we do do well in.”

“Hmm. Yes. You can tell you like each other.”

“I think he won big at the track and went in on it with someone else.”

“Yes, but still. How could—”

“I think he bought it up at Saratoga. He went up last week with some of his shady friends. They have this race, the first race, where first-time owners can buy horses. A claiming race. Someone probably ran one, snuck one in, just to see how she would do, and Johnny picked her up.”

“Why, that’s wonderful!”

“What’s wonderful? He didn’t pay the bills off yet this month. He’s never done that before.”

“Well, that’s to his credit. Claire. You know how it is with race horses. There’s always some new expense. Shoes. Bridles. Vets. Trainers.”

“Jesus.”

“Yes indeed. Look, Claire. If you’re that upset, why don’t you put your foot down?”

“I don’t want to. I don’t want to take away his dream and have him tell me for the rest of our lives what he might have had if I’d let him see it through. I want it to come from him.”

“He’ll probably lose the first time out, and that will be the end of it.”

“Yes.”

“What’s the horse’s name?”

Claire noticed Jupiter’s bright-eyed interest. There really was something about a racehorse. Perhaps she ought to loosen up, enjoy the fun that was to be had here. Johnny wasn’t stupid. “I don’t know. Johnny hasn’t even told me about it. He’s kept it from me. Which is why I’m upset, if you want to know the truth.”

“Ah.”

“And that bit about putting my foot down. That foot hasn’t got a leg to stand on. I mean, what am I going to do, leave him? I’ve just moved into my dream house. He knows I’m not going anywhere. He knows I’d never break up the family over a … a pet.”

“Well, let me know, when you find out.” He adjusted his tie. “I have been known to place a bet. Now and then. On a good hot tip.”

“Jupiter Dodd?”

“Yes, Claire Breslinsky?”

“I’ll start shooting houses in the morning.”

“There’s a good girl. Uh oh. Looks like Stefan and Carmela are headed our way.”

Claire looked over Jupiter’s shoulder and indeed beheld the strangely amiable approaching duo. They were linked arm in arm, for one thing, and they both wore charming, pleasant smiles, things they did not normally bother with for someone as uninfluential as Claire.

“Hello,” they said, the hostess and the host full steam, one handsome couple. They gushed over Jupiter for a good long while. Freddy poked his head in for a moment and Claire noticed Jupiter sucking in the proverbial gut, standing just that much straighter. Freddy wanted to know, “Look here, what have they done with the Pernod,” and off he went then without so much as a nod or a how-do-you-do. Jupiter returned to his more characteristic slouch, and Carmela began to praise Claire to Jupiter—unnecessarily, thought Claire, since it was she who had found Jupiter first, at an art exhibition Stefan had brought her to, and it was Jupiter who had found work for Claire shooting a series of women’s sculptures when she’d first returned to New York, then handled a critically successful show of her work in Soho. But facts had never stopped Carmela; most of the time people forgot the correct order of events anyway, if you let them, if you went about it right.

Stefan made sure they both had lots to eat. He could be very solicitous when he felt like it, and he felt like it now, arranging elaborate platesful before them, salmon bits and crab and even herring in cream on posh crackers and then they were gone, job done, the perfect dignified and vanished couple.

“I was at the filming of one of those talk shows, the other day,” Jupiter said. “Remember Paul Winchell and Jerry Mahoney?”

“Sure.”

“Well, they were on and boy were they funny. Still. After all these years. They were telling a lot of Polish jokes. You know. The way they will, and all of a sudden, out of the audience, stands this very irate gentleman. ‘I am the Polish ambassador,’ he announces, ‘and I take great offense at what is being said here today.’ Well. You could have heard a pin drop. Paul Winchell stood up and he apologized. You could tell he felt awful. He must have apologized ten times. The ambassador stood there listening to him and then he said, ‘It’s not you who offended me. It’s the little fellow there beside you.’”

Claire and Jupiter laughed like a couple of Irish longshoremen, then wheezed, in fine spirits, to reflection. Really, it was hard not to poke fun at Stefan, there was something so stuffy about him.

“Wonder what they want?” said Jupiter.

“Whatever it is, it must have to come from both of us. My sister apparently thinks you’ll do anything I ask you. I really feel, for the first time, as though I’ve got her over a barrel. Not a pleasant thought, although I’m sure she suspects I’ve spent my entire life trying to put her there.”

“Freud would have a party.”

“Yes.”

“Shall we dance?”

“What, me?”

“Why not?”

“All right.”

Up they stood, he bowed, she curtsied, and off they went, happy as pie in each other’s light arms. It was not an everyday thing to discover someone with whom you could dance well. Even one’s husband or lover does not often match terpsichoreally. You remember high school dances and the unlikely partner with whom you found yourself agitating successfully. In a normal circumstance, one wouldn’t be caught dead with that person. But there one was, one song after the happy next, unable to stop being Ginger to his Fred, Tina to his Ike, Margot to his Rudolf, childishly delighted and unaccustomedly light upon one’s feet. So it was with Claire Breslinsky and Jupiter Dodd. They dipped. They swayed. They did not break at the end of each song, but stood together bright-eyed, shoulders straight, alert for the disc jockey’s next selection. He was, they were quite sure, now playing just for them. They switched, at one point, to drinking Absolut and fresh limes, entitling them to quite a bit of ambitious hootchy-kootchy ’midst the malagueña. No one was paying them any attention, or so they believed, and so they persisted cheerfully into the long bright night.

When it was over, Jupiter Dodd drove her home. Her mother slept peacefully on the sofa. Pretty drunk, Claire went upstairs and found Dharma in bed, safe and warm, between Anthony and Floozie. She staggered down the stairs and flung open the refrigerator. There was an awful lot going on in there. Too much, she knew. These days, she found herself preparing meals for her family that she would hitherto not even have sat down to. Pork chops. Nathan’s vacuum-packaged hot dogs. Anthony loved them. She did, too. She, great former staunch vegetarian. She tried to remember if she’d bought any of those nice Martin’s potato rolls? The whiter the bread, the sooner you’re dead, her inner voice told her while her less-evolved libido licked its lips.

The telephone rang. She picked it up before the first ring left off. Her mother slept on, snoring reassuringly inside on the sofa. She was sure it would be Carmela, wanting to dish her guests.

It was Swamiji, just arrived from Delhi, here now at Kennedy, wasn’t it exciting? “I am on my way to the land of Berkeley at last, at last. Oh yes.” Claire could just see his head wobbling elastically. “I am veddy veddy weary indeed.”

“My God!” she shouted, then whispered, “I can’t believe it! Where are you now? Just stay right there! Don’t move from that spot! I’m coming to pick you up. No, you don’t go anywhere, you don’t check in, you just stay there exactly where you’re standing and I’ll be there in twenty minutes. Ten minutes.”

“Oh, no, I must protest,” came a not-very-convincingly disputing voice, a voice veddy weary indeed.

“This is me, Swamiji,” she informed him, using the sassy Brooklyn out-and-out intimidating tone that Johnny used so successfully on her. “Just hold onto your hat.”

Claire lurched across the room. Good thing her keys were in her hand already or she never would have found them. It was a little bit like going to pick up Gandhi himself. Swamiji even looked like the old boy, wiry and swaddled in homespun. She turned the radio on as she careened along the Van Wyck, then the freshly paved new airport road, empty at this off hour. Claire made for the international arrivals building, drove right up alongside the privileged cavalcade of taxis, put the gear in park and scanned the near deserted walkways. Her heart filled up and choked when she spotted him. She abandoned her treasured, illegally parked car to the gods and leapt screwily over the hood. Claire covered Swamiji’s nut-brown chilly arms with a tarpaulin of imaginary warmth. He was just as she had left him. Her guardianship.

What she was not prepared for was the sight of Narayan as well, literally looming over frail Swamiji, although why she was surprised she couldn’t imagine—the idea of Swamiji traveling alone was incomprehensible, he would give his ticket to the first down-and-out who hit on him—so there then was Narayan, the hope of modern India cast in basic bronze, only this Narayan seemed a different fellow altogether. Gone was the shallow, hopeful, extroverted expression of solicitousness he’d worn when she’d known him, the whimsical, silk-shirted, guitar-strumming, well-born, gangly boy whose despairing family had had no other choice than to send him to Swamiji to try and find the sense in him. (It had been that or let him marry that horrifying Vaisya merchant’s daughter.)

He was a foot taller, for one thing, and broad. That was her first thought. Her second was, where would she find the sheets? Then she remembered. She could put them on the rug. Freddy’s old Dhera Gaz. Floozie wouldn’t mind. And there were plenty of old quilts.

She could tell Swamiji was overwhelmed at the sight of her.

“By golly,” he said, acting big, “there’s a nip to the air.”

“Hop in.” She threw open the door. “Mr. Kinkaid’s gonna really love you.”

When they got back to the house, Zinnie was up, searching the front and back lawns with a flashlight for some sign of Claire’s body. “Oh, hi,” Claire called. “Wait till you see who I’ve brought.”

“Just like that,” Zinnie glared. “You know what time it is? It’s three-a-fucking clock in the morning!”

Claire didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the sight of Zinnie’s snarling, pale white face. What she didn’t see was the way Narayan set mesmerized eyes upon Zinnie. And what would have surprised her even more were the bold, unflinching eyes that Zinnie set right back on him.

Zinnie, without waiting to be introduced, stalked haughtily off.

“Gee,” said Claire in the doorway, waiting for the two of them to take it all in. On the table, there was a letter addressed to her between the stack of bills. She picked it up. It was, she already knew, from Tree.