Formori, Greece

At night here I often dream of my parents. They are good dreams and I wake happy and refreshed, although nothing very important happens in them. We will be sitting on the porch in summer, drinking iced tea and watching our scottie dog, Jordan, lope across the front yard. Although we talk, the words are pale and dreamy, unimportant. It makes no difference — we are all very glad to be there, even my brother, Ross.

Now and then Mother laughs or throws her arms out in those great swoops and arcs when she talks — her most familiar gesture. My father smokes a cigarette, inhaling so deeply that I once asked him when I was young if the smoke went down into his legs.

As is true with so many couples, my parents' temperaments were diametrically opposed. Mother ate life as fast as she could get her hands on it. Dad, on the other hand, was clear and predictable and forever the straight man to her passion and shenanigans. I think the only great sadness in their relationship for him was knowing that although she loved him in a warm, companionable way, she went all-out in adoring her two sons. Originally she had wanted to have five children, but both my brother and I had such difficult births the doctor told her having another child would be a deadly risk. She compensated in the end by pouring the love for those five kids into the two of us.

Dad was a veterinarian; still is a veterinarian. He'd had a successful practice in Manhattan when they were first married, but gave it up to move to the country right after his first son was born. He wanted his children to have a yard to play in and the safety to come and go as they pleased any time of the day.

As with everything else in her life, my mother pounced on the new house and tore it limb from limb. New paint inside and out, new wallpaper, floors stripped and sealed, leaks stopped. . When she was done she had created a solid, amiable place with more than enough room, light, warmth, and security to assure each of us this was a home as well as a house.

All that and two little boys to raise. Later she said those first two years in the house were her happiest. Everywhere she went, either someone or something needed her, and that is what she thrived on. With one boy in her arms and another clinging to her skirt, she telephoned, cooked, and hammered the house and our new life there into submission. It took a few years, but when she was done, things both worked and gleamed. Ross was starting school, she'd taught me how to read, and every meal she put on the table was tasty and different.

When she felt we were all taken care of, she went out and bought the dog for us.

My brother, Ross, quickly turned into an eager, curious kid who, at five years old, was already supremely naughty. The kind who does ghastly things but is constantly being forgiven because people think the act was either accidental or cute.

When he was a toddler he used to scour the house looking for new things to poke into or take apart. Over the years he moved through Tinkertoys, Silly Putty, and Erector Sets like an express train. Much against my dad's wishes, Mother bought him a wood-burning kit for his sixth birthday. He used it properly for a couple of weeks, spelling his name on any piece of scrap wood he could find. Then he spelled ROSS LENNOX on an oak armchair. Mother spanked him and threw the burner away. She was like that — very determined, and sure that the only way to raise children was to love them all the time, notwithstanding the necessary smack now and then when they deserved it. No excuses, no apologies — if you did it, you got hit. Five minutes later she was hugging you again and would do anything in the world for you. I must have understood her way very early in life, because I was rarely hit. But not Ross; God, not Ross. The reason I'm mentioning the episode is that it was the first time the two of them really knocked heads over something. Ross burned the chair, Mother spanked him and threw the thing in the garbage. When she was gone he took it out of the garbage and carefully burned holes in the bottoms of her expensive new leather boots.

She discovered them an hour later and, to my horror, asked me if I'd done it. Me! I was the dullard who watched these titans with awe and trembling. No, I hadn't done it. Of course she knew that, but needed to hear it from me before she took action. Marching into Ross's room, she found him sitting calmly on the bed reading a comic book. Just as calmly, she went over to his dresser and picked up his favorite model airplane. Lifting the burner out of her apron pocket, she plugged it into the wall and, in front of his astonished eyes, burned holes through the middle of both wings. He wailed, the room stank horribly, and those black. wispy threads of singed plastic floated everywhere. When she was done she put the plane back on the dresser and walked out of the room, winner and still champion.

She won that time, but as he grew older, Ross became increasingly more clever and wily; their duel continued, but on an equal level.

What happened was, my brother had inherited her vitality and appetite for life, but rather than desiring everything, as she did, he preferred specific courses in huge servings. If life was a massive feast, he only wanted the pвtй, but he wanted all of it.

And manipulate? There was no one who could do it better. I was the world's biggest pushover and no challenge at all, but in the short span of three months one summer he got me to: break the window in my father's study, throw a rock point-blank at a beehive (while he stood inside the house watching), give him my allowance so he'd protect me from God, who, he said, was always on the brink of throwing me into hell for my evil six-year-old behavior. My father had an old copy of The Inferno with Dorй's illustrations, and Ross showed it to me one afternoon to let me know what I was in for if I didn't continue to pay him protection money. The pictures were both so horrific and so engrossing that I needed no prompting after that (and for the next few weeks, until the spell wore off) to take the book down on my own and marvel at what I'd just barely avoided with my brother's help.

I was certainly his prime chump, but he could throw his lasso around most people. He knew how to work my mother so she'd let him stay home from school, my father so he'd take us to a Yankee game or a drive-in movie. Naturally he got caught once in a while and was hit or punished, but his record (what he called his «won-lost record») was astounding compared to most other kids'.

In comparison, I was the archangel Gabriel. I think I made my bed from the day I could toddle, and in my endless prayers at night I asked God to bless everyone I could think of, including the Barnum & Bailey circus.

I had a hamster in a silver-colored cage, a Lone Ranger rug, and college pennants on my walls. I kept all my pencils sharpened and my Hardy Boys books in strict alphabetical order. In answer to this, one of the many things Ross liked to do was come into my room and dive-bomb my bed. He'd spread his arms out as far as they would go and hit it at top speed. Often one of the wooden support slats groaned or even broke, and the pillow would fly up in the air from shock. I'd whine, and he'd hee-hee with delight. But having him in there was a great treat, so I never complained too loudly. He once put half a dead cat on my pillow with a little baseball cap on its head, and I never told a soul. I tried to pretend it was a special secret we had between us.

His room was the opposite of mine, but ten times more wonderful, always. I admit it. Everything was in an uproar, from sneakers on the desk to a radio under his mattress. He and my mother had world wars about his room, but it stayed his way three quarters of the time, regardless of her hair-pulling or threats. The most amazing thing about it was the variety of stuff he'd accumulated.

None of those college pennants for him. He'd gotten hold of an immense movie poster advertising Godzilla. That covered one wall in flames, blood, and lightning. On another was a tattered Albanian flag my father'd brought back from the war. On the bookshelves were a complete collection of Famous Monsters magazine, a leprous-looking stuffed skunk, all of the Oz books, and several of those old cartoon-like cast-iron banks that are so popular in antique shops these days.

He loved to go to the town dump and spend hours with a long metal pole, rummaging through piles, flipping aside things that he wanted to take home. He'd found a porcelain snuff box there, a railroad clock with no hands, a book on paper dolls that had been published in 1873.

I remember all this because some time ago I woke up in the middle of the night after having had one of those remarkably clear dreams; the kind where everything you experience is in such cold, clear light that you feel out of place in the real world once you wake up. Anyway, my dream took place in his old room, and when I came awake, I grabbed a pencil and paper and wrote down a list of all the things I'd seen.

If a boy's room is an out-of-focus picture of what he'll later turn out to be in life, Ross would have been. . an antique dealer? An eccentric? Something unforeseeable but very special, I think. What I remember best was lying on his bed (whenever he'd permit me in the room — I had to knock before I entered) and letting my eyes run over his shelves and walls and things. Feeling as if I were in some land or on a planet that was impossibly far from our house, from my life. And when I'd seen everything for the hundredth time, I would look at Ross and be delighted that however foreign or strange or cruel, he was my brother and we shared a house, a name, our blood.

His taste changed as he got older, but that only meant things became more wacky. For a while he was obsessed with old typewriters. At any one time he would have three or four of them lying around in a thousand pieces on his desk. He joined a club for antique typewriter collectors and for months wrote and received hundreds of letters. Swapping parts, getting and giving repair tips. . Once in a while a strange, mossy voice from Perry, Oklahoma, or Hickory, North Carolina, would call and ask for him. Ross talked to these other fanatics with the poise and assurance of a forty-year-old master repairman.

From typewriters he moved on to antique kites, then Shar-Pei dogs, followed closely by Edgar Cayce and the Rosicrucians.

It sounds as if he was a burgeoning wunderkind, and to a degree he was, but away from his obsessions Ross was sullen and sly as a splinter. He constantly locked the door to his room and was consequently suspected by my parents of doing all kinds of «things» in there. I kept telling them he did it to get their goat, but they didn't listen to me.

For any number of reasons, he would have a battle royal with my mother two or three times a week. With her hair-trigger temper, he knew how easy it was to make her mad (chew with his mouth open, not wipe his feet. .), but that didn't satisfy him. When he was in the mood, he wanted her tied in fiery knots, raging, stumbling from a fury so blind she actually bumped into things.

I gather it's not uncommon for families to be at one another's throats during the kids' so-called formative years, but what happened in our family was that as Mother lost more and more ground to Ross, it made her increasingly wary of both of us. I was a coward and took to the hills whenever I felt her temperature rising, but I couldn't always escape. The fallout from her flashes of anger often hurt me, and I couldn't believe the unfairness of the world. I knew I was a happy, normal little boy. I knew, too, that my brother was everything but. I knew he drove my mother nuts, and I readily understood why she blew her top at him. But what never made sense to me was how I got dragged into their often brutal melees and ended up being slapped or screamed at or punished for no reason at all.

Did that scar me for life and make me hate all mothers I've met since? Not at all. It scared and awed me to see Ross act that way, but I was also the most captive member of his audience. Even including the occasional whack, I wouldn't have traded living on the outskirts of hurricane country for anything in the world.

Soon he was stealing whatever he could lay his hands on. He was a premier thief, due in large part to chutzpah. He was constantly stopped in stores and asked where he was going with that watch (book, lighter. .). With a guileless, uncomprehending look, he would say he was just bringing it over there to his mother. After being stared down by Ross, the salesperson would apologize for being so gruff with him. Five minutes later Ross would have the thing in his pocket and be out on the street.

Once, he had a fight with my mother the day after Christmas and told her he'd stolen every one of the presents he'd given us. She erupted, but my calm father — saddened but used to it by then — just asked which store they'd come from. Ross wouldn't say, and we were off on the carousel again.

Five days later my parents went out to a New Year's Eve party and made Ross babysit for me. Ten minutes after they were out the door, he dared me to slide down the banister with my eyes closed. I'd gone a couple of feet before I felt something hideous and burning on the back of my hand. I threw both arms up, knocking away the cigarette he'd been singeing me with. Losing my balance, I fell over the side and landed on my arm, which instantly snapped in two places. All I remember besides the pain is Ross's face right up next to mine, telling me again and again I'd better keeping my fucking little mouth shut about this.

Was I a fool? Yes. Should I have screamed bloody murder? Yes. Did I want my brother to love me just a little? Yes.

When he was fifteen Ross changed his image and became a tough guy. Leather jacket with a thousand zippers and chrome studs, a bone-handled switchblade knife from Italy, a tube of Brylcreem hair goop on the shelf in the bathroom.

He hung around with a bunch of dimwits who, instead of talking, smoked Marlboros and spat on the ground. The leader of this pack was named Bobby Hanley, who, although short and skinny as a car antenna, had a nasty reputation. It was assumed that anyone who messed with him was out of his mind.

The first time I ever saw Bobby was at a high school basketball game. I was eleven, and because I was still in elementary school, I didn't know who he was. I'd come to the game with Ross (who'd been forced into taking me by my parents), but he ditched me seconds after we got there. I'd looked around frantically for someone to sit with, but it seemed as if everyone was a stranger. I ended up standing by the main door. A few minutes into the game an old janitor who I knew was named Vince came in and stood next to me. He had one of those long wooden brooms in his hand; every time our side scored he'd stamp it on the ground. We started talking, and I felt more comfortable. It was very pleasant, and I started thinking about how great it would be when I was in high school and could come to these games all the time with my friends.

A few minutes before the end of the first quarter the door whacked open and a bunch of tough guys sashayed in. Vince muttered something about «little turds,» and since I didn't know anything, I nodded.

They walked right up to the out-of-bounds line and stood there, checking out the crowd, ignoring the game completely. Then one of them took out a pack of cigarettes and lit up. He threw the match on the floor. Vince walked up and told him there was no smoking in the gym. Bobby Hanley didn't even look his way. Instead, he took a long, slow drag and said, «Blow it out your ass, Pop.»

I couldn't believe it! The even more astonishing thing was, Vince mumbled something, but walked back to the door.

A few of Hanley's crew snickered, but none of them had the nerve to light up too. Standing next to me, Vince cursed and kept moving his hands around on the top of the broom. I didn't know what to do. How could this kid get away with that? What kind of crazy power did he have?

The quarter ended as Bobby smoked his cigarette down to the brown filter. When he was done he dropped it on the hardwood floor and ground it out with his boot heel. I watched his foot move back and forth. Much too loudly I said, «What a big jerk.»

«Hey, Bobby, numb-nuts over there called you a jerk.»

I froze.

«Who did?»

«The little fuck over there by the door. The orange sweater.»

«A jerk, huh?»

I wouldn't look up. I wanted to close my eyes, but I didn't. I saw the lower half of Hanley push through his entourage and walk toward me. He grabbed my ear and pulled it up next to his mouth.

«You called me a jerk?»

«Leave the kid alone, Hanley.»

Still holding me tight, Bobby told the janitor to fuck off.

«I asked you a question, scumbag. I'm a jerk?»

«You're not supposed to smoke in the gym. Ow!»

«Says who, scumbag? Who's going to stop me?»

Silence. People moved around us. I was so scared and ashamed. I had no guts. Everyone in the world was looking at me. No one knew who I was, but that made no difference. Whoever I was, I was a chickenshit. Hanley was slowly tearing my ear off. I was sure I could hear little things coming apart in there: muscles from bone, soft little membranes and hairs like the thinnest spiderwebs. . His friends stood around us in a semicircle, delighted to be part of the scene.

«Listen to me, scumbag.» He stepped forward and planted his heel on top of my sneaker. He shoved down on it; I yelped as the pain soared up through my body. I started to cry. «Scumbag's crying now. Why're you crying?»

Where was Vince? Where was my father? My brother? My brother — ha! Even then, in the midst of that scene, I knew if Ross had been around he would've laughed himself sick.

«Hey, Bobby, Madeleine's waiting for you.»

I looked directly at him for the first time. He was much shorter than I'd thought. Who was Madeleine? Was he going to go away now?

«Look, scummy, don't you ever let me see you around here again, understand? 'Cause if I do, I'm going to cut your fuckin' eyes out with this.» He pulled a beer opener out of his pocket and pressed it hard against my nose. I remember how warm it was. I nodded as best I could, and he shoved me away. I cracked my head on a bleacher and went down like a stone in water. When I looked up again the whole gang of them was gone.

For months afterward I skulked around school like a haunted shadow. When I crept into the building in the morning, I checked every corridor, every classroom, every bathroom before I went in or out, just in case he was there. I knew the chances of his ever being in the elementary school were remote, but I wasn't about to tempt fate.

I told no one about it, especially not Ross. At night I sometimes dreamed I was running as fast as I could on a soft rubber road chased by a gigantic dancing beer opener.

Nothing ever happened, so by the time Ross and Bobby teamed up a year later, I felt only a sharp cut of fear when I saw them together for the first time.

The final indignity was that when Bobby came over to our house for the first time he didn't even recognize me. When Ross said by way of introduction, «That's my shitty little brother,» Bobby only smiled and said, «How're you doin', man?»

How was I doing? I wanted to tell him. . No, I wanted to demand that he recognize me. Me, scumbag, the one he'd scared so badly for huge months of my life.

But I didn't. Later I got up the guts to remind him of that first meeting. He snapped his fingers as if he'd forgotten to buy shoelaces. «Yeah, sure, I thought I knew your face.» And that was all.

Naturally the longer he hung around with Ross, the more I liked him. He was very funny and had a kind of sensitivity that enabled him, like my brother, to see right through to a person's strengths and weaknesses. He used this ability to his own benefit about ninety percent of the time, but once in a while he did something so extraordinarily nice you were knocked for a loop.

Just before my thirteenth birthday the three of us were in a stationery store and I wistfully mentioned how much I wanted a certain model of the aircraft carrier Forrestal they had on the shelves. When my big day arrived, Bobby came over to the house and handed me the model, gift-wrapped. «Shit, man, did you ever try to steal something that big? It's fucking hard!» I made the model more carefully than any other. I showed it to him only after I'd spent hours painting and sanding it to perfection. He nodded appreciatively and told Ross I knew what I was doing. That year Ross's present to me was a small rubber doll of a woman in a bathing suit whose breasts popped out from behind the suit whenever you squeezed her stomach.

I think Hanley originally liked my brother because Ross was very smart. School was easy for him, and he often ended up doing Bobby's homework for him, although the latter was a grade ahead.

However, I'm not trying to say that was the only reason for their friendship. When he felt like it, my brother not only could charm the birds out of the trees but could make anyone in the world laugh. He wasn't a clown, but among his many gifts was an acute sensitivity to your likes and dislikes, as well as the ability to send you howling. Since Hanley was the undisputed king of the high school, Ross cased the scene before making his move. He decided to become the older boy's court jester. He wasn't tough like the others in the gang, but he was damned shrewd! After only a short time there were a million punks in town who wanted to beat Ross to smithereens, but they left him alone because they all knew he was safely under Bobby's dangerous wing.

In a different environment who knows what might have happened to the two of them. Both Bobby and Ross had an йlan, the magician's touch; that special rare ability to turn cruelty into pink handkerchiefs and kindness into thin air.

The two of them palled around more and more, but my parents didn't mind because Bobby was quiet and courteous when he came over for dinner. Also, he appeared to be having a very good effect. At home, Ross wasn't half as nasty or selfish as he had been. He didn't go out of his way to be friendly or helpful, but there were faint glimmerings that he might have turned a corner and was heading in some kind of right direction.

The night before Ross died, Bobby slept over at our house. Ross was very excited because he had been given a twelve-gauge shotgun for his birthday a few days before. My father loved to shoot trap and skeet and had promised to teach us the sport when we reached sixteen.

Bobby had guns of his own, but this one was a beauty he could appreciate. They allowed me to stay in the room with them that evening, even when Ross pulled out the new dirty magazines he'd stolen from the candy store. They smoked almost a full pack of cigarettes and spent the hours talking about the girls at school, different kinds of cars, what Bobby would do when he graduated.

I slept on a hassock that opened out into a bed. Ross let me do that, too. Hours later, I jerked awake when I felt something thick and warm and gooey on my face. Both of them were standing by my bed, and in the dim light I saw Ross tipping a bottle of something over me. I opened my mouth to protest and tasted the heavy sweetness of maple syrup. By that time it was all over me. There was nothing I could do but get up and bump my way out of the room, followed by their pleased laughter. I washed out my pajama top in the sink as best I could, so that my mother would never know about it. Then I took a long shower in the dark.

When I awoke the next day, I felt feverish and uncomfortable. The strong morning sunlight poured through the windows and over me like an extra, unnecessary blanket.

After I brushed my teeth, I went to Ross's room and knocked on the door. When there was no answer I cautiously pushed it open. There were wooden bunk beds in both our rooms. I saw Ross hanging over the edge of the top one, busily talking to Bobby, who was lying on his back with his hands behind his head.

«What do you want, asshole? More syrup?»

Bobby fanned a fly away from his nose and yawned. Last night's joke was last night, and now it was time for something new.

«You know, Ross, if you could sneak that shotgun out of the house, we could go down to the river and pick off a few seagulls. I hate those fucking birds.»

We lived half a mile from a river. It was a place where you went in the summer when there was nothing else to do, or if you were lucky enough to have convinced a girl to go «swimming» there with you. Since the water was so brown and polluted, you never swam — as soon as you got your towels down on the beach you started necking.

To get to the water you had to cross railroad tracks. You did it carefully and stepped ridiculously high over anything that looked even vaguely suspicious: down there somewhere on the ground was the third rail and you knew that if you ever so much as touched it you would be instantly electrocuted.

Bobby and Ross had been down to the tracks before with guns. In fact, Ross was the only other member of the gang who'd had the «guts» to shoot at passing cattle cars with one of Bobby's many rifles. They were never caught.

My parents went shopping that morning, so there was no problem taking the gun out of the house. Ross slid it back into its cardboard box, and that was that for camouflage. They allowed me to tag along on the threat that if I said anything about it afterward they'd boil me in oil.

When we got down to the tracks Bobby told Ross to get the gun out — he wanted to take a couple of shots. I could see Ross wanted to shoot first; a peeved, mean look swept across his face. But it was gone in an instant. He handed the gun over, along with a bunch of red and brassy-gold shells he had stuffed in his back pocket. The only thing he had left was the empty box; he threw that at me.

The sun was hot, and I peeled off my T-shirt. When it was halfway over my head, I heard the pof of the first shot and an instantaneous crash of glass somewhere.

«Holy shit, Bobby! You think you hit the station?» Ross's voice was high and scared.

«I'll be fucked if I know, man.» He reloaded and shot off in another direction. I put my hands over my ears and looked at the ground. I was already petrified, and things had just begun.

«Ross, baby, this is one honey of a gun. I can tell already. Let's go, man.»

We walked twelve or fifteen feet apart. Bobby, Ross, then me. That's very important, as you'll see in a moment. Bobby held the shotgun down at his side, barrel toward the ground. I saw it out of the corner of my eye. It was dull blue and the railroad tracks under our feet were hot silver as we stepped gingerly over them. The light everywhere burned my eyes and made me squint. I wished to God I was home. What were they going to do now? What would happen if they were in the mood for something unnecessary and vicious, like shooting at cattle as they moved slowly by in those slatted red and brown freight cars, already on their way to the slaughterhouse? I hated the gun, I hated my great fear, I hated my brother and his friend. But they would never, ever know that.

We were moving at the same pace, our legs lifting and falling at the same time. Then Ross stumbled on something and fell straight forward. I heard an angry buzz like an outboard motor, the gravel skittering away from under my brother's sneaker. His shoulder touched the third rail, and his head twisted around on his neck. There was a loud hum, a sharp hiss and snap. His face twisted up and up and up into an impossible, irretrievable smile.

Why am I lying? Why am I already leaving out a part of this story that is so necessary? What difference does it make now? All right. Before I go on, here's a piece of the puzzle I've been hiding behind my back.

Bobby had an older sister named Lee. At eighteen she was the most stunning girl you'd ever want to see. By the time Ross and Bobby became close friends, she had been out of school for a few years, but people still talked about her because she was really incredible.

She'd been captain of the cheerleaders, a member of the Pep Club and the Gourmet Club. I knew all of this by heart because Ross had a high school yearbook from when she graduated, and as is so often the case with the prettiest girl in school, it seemed as if her face was on every other page: cartwheeling, being crowned Prom Queen, smiling magnificently at us from behind an armload of books. How many times had I devoured those pictures? Hundreds? A thousand? A lot.

What I didn't understand until later was that part of her special aura came from pure sensuality. I didn't know if she was «fast,» because my only authority on her was my brother, who contended he'd had her a million times, but even the most innocent of those pictures gave off an aroma of sexiness as strong as the smell of fresh baked bread.

Ross's birthday present when I turned twelve was to teach me how to masturbate. Part of the gift was a three-month-old copy of Gent magazine, but from the first I could only climax if I thought of real women. The zeppelin breasts and sex-crazed expressions of those pinup girls scared me more than turned me on. No, my idea of sexual frenzy was the photograph of Lee Hanley doing a jump cheer at a football game that had somehow caught a delicious smidgen of her underpants while she was in mid-flight.

Let me say, though, that I'd fallen in love with her long before I learned to play with myself, so the first time I used her as my fantasy woman I felt rotten, because I knew I'd somehow let her down, regardless of the fact I'd never said two words to her. But that guilt was short-lived, because my twelve-year-old penis was anxious to get on with business, so I continued to ravish her picture with my hungry eyes and myself with a jumpy hand.

Sometimes I'd get completely carried away, and looking at the ceiling as I felt my body blast off into the stratosphere, I'd start to call her name again and again. Lee Hanley! Oh! Leeee! Although I tried to waltz myself around only when I was sure no one else was home, I made the mistake of not checking one afternoon, and that oversight was disastrous.

Bermuda shorts down at my knees, the school yearbook Propped comfortably on my chest, I had started singing my Lee song when the door suddenly flew open and Ross appeared.

«I caught you! Lee Hanley, huh? You're jerking off to Lee Hanley? Boy, wait'll Bobby hears this! He's going to chop you into hamburger. Hey, what've you got there? That's my yearbook! Gimme that!» He snatched it out of my hand and looked at the picture. «Jeez, wait'll I tell Bobby, man. Shit, I'd hate to be you.» His face was pure triumph.

From that moment on, the taunts and torture began and didn't end for more than a year. That night I pulled down the bedspread and found a photograph taped to my pillow: a mutilated body on a battlefield with a soldier looking at it indifferently. In blood-red ink the soldier was labeled Bobby, and I was the corpse.

A lot of that sort of thing went on, but the most frightening moments were when Ross would casually say to Bobby, «Want to know what my brother does, Bobby? Wait'll you hear this one, the little pig!» Looking straight at me, a gleam smeared across his face, he'd pause for millenniums, making me wish I was either in Sumatra or dead, or both. Inevitably he'd finish by saying, «He picks his nose,» or something equally mean and true, but nothing compared to «it,» and I could breathe easily again.

It ran in cycles; at times I was hopeful he'd forgotten. But like a bat flying through the window, it would suddenly be there again, right on you, days or weeks later, and he'd have me squirming and twisting at the drop of his hat. When we were alone he would tell me what a sludge I was to jerk off to a friend's sister. He was as convincing as any angry, unforgiving priest.

Probably because the torment increased, the image of Lee Hanley's underpants became the sexiest thing in the world, and they became my one and only fantasy. I masturbated at all times of the day; my high point was probably the time I came while sitting perfectly still at a junior high school assembly where a Cherokee Indian demonstrated tribal war dances.

I was a fool. I gave Ross my allowance, did his chores for him, brought him snacks at the snap of his fingers. Once, I even realized that what I'd been doing was a kind of compliment to Lee, but when I tried explaining that to Ross, he closed his eyes and flicked his wrist at me as if I were a fly on his hand.

What really happened the day he died was this: as we were crossing the railroad tracks together, Ross's anger flared at Bobby for having taken his shotgun away. Halfway to the other platform, he casually asked his friend how many times a week he beat off.

«I don't know. Every day, I guess. That is, if I'm not gettin' any from some chick. Why? How 'bout you?»

My brother's voice went up a notch. «About the same. Do you ever think of anyone when you do it?»

My face tightened, and I almost stopped moving.

«Sure, what do you think I do, count to a hundred? What's with you, Ross? You gone pervert or something?»

«Naah, I was just thinking. Do you know who Joe thinks about when he does it?»

«Joey? You beating your meat already, boy? Shame! You know how old I was when I first started doing it? About three!» He laughed.

I could only look at my feet. I knew it was coming; Ross was about to open the door on my blackest secret and there was nothing I could do about it.

«Okay, so spill it. Who do you think about, Joe? Suzanne Pleshette?»

Before Ross could answer, a high train whistle hooted frighteningly down the track. At that moment I did something I'd never done before. Shouting «No!» I shoved Ross as hard as I could. So help me God, I was so afraid of what he was going to say I'd totally forgotten where we were.

«Holy shit, Ross, a train's coming!» Without looking our way, Bobby charged ahead toward the other side of the tracks. My brother fell. I stood still and watched. Yes.

I was so shocked by what had happened I couldn't say anything. A few days later I was too afraid to speak.

Conveniently, as far as people were concerned (including Bobby, who testified that the sound of the train whistle must have scared Ross into stumbling), it was simply a tragic accident.

My mother went mad. A week after the funeral she stood at the bottom of the staircase and started screaming incoherently to my dead brother to get up and go to school. She had to be institutionalized. I began shaking and was put on heavy doses of tranquilizer, which made me feel as if I were floating in blue space.

When they decided to keep my mother in the hospital, my father took me to dinner. Neither of us ate anything. Halfway through the meal he pushed the plates aside and took hold of both my hands.

«Joe, son, it's going to be just you and me for a while now, and we've got some tough times ahead of us.»

I nodded and was for the first time on the brink of telling him everything, every bit of it. Then he looked at me, and I saw big clear tears on his face.

«I'm crying, Joe, because of your brother, and because I already miss your mama very much. It makes me feel as if parts of my body had been ripped off. I'm telling you that because I think you can understand and because I'm going to need you to help me be strong. I'll help you and you'll help me, okay? You're the best boy a man could have, and we're not going to let anything get us or pull us down from now on. Not anything! Right?»

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

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

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

«Nunnally Johnson.»

«Paul —»

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Recognized for the first time in my life!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"India, how come you never speak German?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I smiled and asked what he was talking about.

"You are Mr. Lennox?"

"Yes."

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

"Who, uh, who sent you?"

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

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

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

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

"Evening? You mean formal? A tuxedo?"

"Yes, sir."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Like what?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What was your brother like? Like you?"

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

"No, we were incredibly different."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What do you mean?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Hey, vuoi un pugno?"

"What?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Of what? You want to talk?"

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

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

"The beans are burning."

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

"You wanna go out for hamburgers?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"That beer looks good."

"Beer? You don't drink beer."

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

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

"I'll eat lots of bread."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Sssh! I hate anchovies."

"Why didn't you say so?"

"Sssh, India!"

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

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

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

A trumpet fanfare and a blasting drum roll followed.

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

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

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

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

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

India began clapping furiously. I joined right in.

"Bravo, Boy!"

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

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

"Do your mind reading, Boy!"

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

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

"No, come on, Paul —"

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

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

"Jesus Christ! Amazing!"

"Yay, Little Boy!"

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

"Paul, stop!"

"My name is Little Boy!"

"Paul, for godsake!"

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

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

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

I realized after some seconds that India was clapping.

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

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

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

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

"India? Hi."

"Joe, Paul's dead."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Joe, is that you?"

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

"No, come up."

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

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

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

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

"Yes, that'd be great."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She nodded. "Little Boy?"

"Yes."

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

"I don't know, India."

"Me neither, Joe."

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

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

"What are you laughing at?"

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

"What? This stuff is dangerous as hell!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

Still smiling, she stretched luxuriously and yawned.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What happened?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Joey, I got it figured out."

"What?"

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

"Do you love me, Joey?"

"What?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Paul asked you if I was good?"

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

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

"Shut up, Joe."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Part of that is true, India."

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

"Yes, but what's the point?"

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

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

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

"What isn't true?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The flight from Vienna to New York takes nine hours. As the plane took off I felt a profound rush of relief. I was free! Paul and India and death and anxiety — I was leaving it all behind.

That relief lasted all of about five minutes. What followed was guilt and a paralyzing disappointment with myself. What the hell was I doing running away? How could I leave India alone in the darkness? I knew then how great a coward I really was, because I didn't want to stay. If anything, I wanted to be in New York in an hour. A hundred thousand miles away from Vienna and the Tates. I knew it and hated myself for the joy that had slyly bloomed inside me when I knew I'd made it — I had escaped.

I watched the movie, ate all the meals and snacks; twenty minutes before we landed, I went to the toilet and threw up.

I called India from the airport, but there was no answer. I called again from the city bus terminal; the connection was so clear it sounded as if she were in the next room.

"India? It's Joe. Listen, I'm going to come back."

"Joe? Where are you?"

"New York."

"Don't be goofy. I'm fine, so don't worry. I've got the phone number there, and I'll call you if I need you."

"Yes, but will you?"

"Yes, Mr. Jet Lag, I will."

"You won't, India, I know you."

"Joe, please don't be a horse's ass. This call is costing you a fortune and it's not necessary. It's adorable you called and are concerned, but I'm fine. Okay? I'll write, and I'll really call if I need you. Be good and eat some cheesecake for me. Ciao, pulcino." She hung up.

I smiled at her orneriness and her guts and my freedom. I couldn't help it. She'd ordered me to stay.

India hung on to a co-op studio apartment in the city on Seventy-second Street that had belonged to her mother. She had given me the key to it before I left. I went over and dropped off my bags. It was musty and dirty; but tired as I was, I gave the place a good scrubdown. It was night before I'd finished, and I barely had enough energy to stagger to the corner restaurant for a sandwich and a cup of coffee.

I sat at the counter and listened to the people speak English. I was so used to hearing German this language sounded bright and crisp as a new dollar bill.

I knew I should call my father and tell him I was in town, but I put it off so I could be by myself for a few days. I went to the bookstores and ate pastrami sandwiches and took in a few movies. I walked the streets like some rube from Patricia, Texas, gaping at the people and colors and life that floated in the air like an invasion of kites. Because I hadn't been there for so long I couldn't get enough of it. The weather was sour and cold, but that didn't stop me one bit. At times my head was so full of New York I actually forgot Vienna for a while, but then a sound or the way a woman touched her hair reminded me of India or Paul or something I knew back there.

I bought her a number of presents, but the one I liked best was an antique rosewood box. When I brought it home I put it on the dresser and wondered if I would ever give it to her.

I got in touch with my father, and we set up a lunch date. He wanted me to come up to the country to see their new apartment, but I wiggled out of it by saying I'd come to the States to camp out in the New York Public Library and had to work my schedule around their hours. I could say that sort of thing to him and get away with it because he loved the fact I was a writer; anything having to do with "the trade" was okay by him.

The real reason for my avoiding the visit was that I disliked his new wife, who was irritatingly garrulous and suspicious of me. My father thought she was great, and they seemed to have created a really happy life together, but whenever I had appeared on the scene in the past, it had thrown things out of kilter for all of us.

He liked pubs, so we met in front of O'Neal's on Seventy-second Street and Columbus. He caught me by surprise because he was dressed very nattily in an English raincoat that made him look like an old James Bond. He had also grown a whopping gray mustache that only added to his flash. I loved him for this new image; when we greeted each other with a bear hug, he was the one who let go first.

He was beaming and full of pep and said his new life was going great guns. He's such an honest person that I knew none of it was pretense or showing off. Good things were happening to this man who for so long had his share of the bad. What I adored about him was how he kept shaking his head at all his new good fortune. If ever there was a person who counted his blessings, it was my father.

We sat in a corner and ate jumbo hamburgers. He asked me about Vienna and my work. I told him a few lies that made it sound as if I had the world on a string. By the time coffee was served, he'd brought out a bunch of recent photographs of his family and, handing them to me one by one, made little comments on each.

His wife's two children by a previous marriage had grown and were both on the brink of adolescence. My stepmother had begun to lose the nice figure she'd brought to their marriage, but at the same time, she looked both more relaxed and more sure of herself than when I'd last seen her.

There were pictures in front of their new apartment building, in the jazzy new living room, of a trip they'd all taken together to New York. In that one they stood in front of Radio City Music Hall looking shy and secretly frightened of what they'd gotten themselves into by coming.

My father handed them to me gently, almost as if the pictures were the actual people. When he spoke his voice was amused, but love had hollowed out a corner in it; it was plain he cared very much for these people.

I smiled at each and tried to listen carefully to his explanations, but after I've seen ten or fifteen of them, snapshots of people I am not intimately involved with make my eyes swim.

"This one, Joe, is of that birthday party we had back in October. Remember, I was telling you about it?"

I glanced at the picture and reared away from it as if it were on fire.

"What is this? Where'd you get it?"

"What, son? What's the matter?"

"This picture — what's going on in it?"

"It's Beverly's birthday. I told you."

Three people stood holding hands, facing the camera. They wore normal clothes, but each wore a black top hat — just like Paul Tate's.

"Jesus Christ, get it away from me! Take it away!"

People were staring, but none of them as intently as my father, the poor guy. I hadn't seen him for many months, and then this had to happen. I couldn't help it. I'd thought Vienna was behind me and that for the time being I was safe. But what is safety? Physical? Mental?

When we were out on the street again, I tried feebly to make up a story about working too hard and needing a rest, but he didn't swallow it. He wanted me to come home with him, but I wouldn't.

"Then what can I do for you, Joe?"

"Nothing, Pop. Don't worry about me."

"Joe, you promised me when Ross died that you'd come to me if you were ever in bad shape and needed help. I think you're breaking your promise."

"Look, Pop, I'll call you, okay?" I touched his arm and started to move away. I knew I was going to start crying and I'd be damned if I'd let him see it.

"When? When will you call? Joe?"

"Soon, Pop! In a few days!" I hurried to the corner of Seventy-second Street. Once there, I turned back toward him and, sticking my arm up as high as it would go, waved. As if one of us were on a ship, sailing away from the other forever.

The next morning I got a letter from India. At first I looked at it as if it were a key or paper I'd lost long ago and, now that I'd found it, didn't know what to do with.

Dear Joe,

I know I've been rotten about writing, but please assume things have happened that kept me from it. There's been no real sign from Paul, although twice he's done little bad things to remind me he's still here. Since I know you'll worry if I don't tell you what I mean, the other morning I went to the kitchen and found a Little Boy glove on the table where he used to sit. As I said, small things, but I got scared enough and reacted like a maniac, so I guess he was satisfied.

I've made an appointment to see a famous medium here in town, and although I've never had much faith in those table thumpers, an awful lot of what I used to believe has been washed right down the drain in the last few months. I'll tell you if it turns up anything.

Now, don't take it the wrong way, but I'm enjoying living by myself. There are so many more things you're responsible for — the things your other half used to take care of without your even knowing it. But the compensation is, you're free as a bird and answerable to none. God knows, I liked living with Paul, and maybe someday I'll like living with you, but for now I like having the double bed to myself and all options open.

How are you, slugger? Don't you dare misinterpret anything I've said here, or else.

Little hugs, India

I wore my cowboy boots the day I flew back. I felt funny in them, the way they canted my whole body this way and that like a drunken ride at an amusement park. But I'd be damned if I'd take them off. I'd packed my bag the night before; it was much fuller than when I'd arrived. My life was fuller than when I'd arrived. But there was India and her agony in Vienna, and a part of me, a new and, I hoped, good part, said notwithstanding the near-happiness I'd recently found, my duty now was to return and do whatever I could to help her, no matter how useless it seemed or how much I wanted to stay with Karen in New York. Even watching Karen that night, so small and defeated on the couch, I knew that for once I had to sacrifice what I wanted for someone else's well-being. Despite my pain at having to leave America, the act itself might end up being the only thing in my life that would make me feel a little better about myself. What Karen had said was true — it wasn't right, but it was necessary. Our parting was bad and tearful. At the last moment we almost succumbed to it by sleeping together for the first and only time. Luckily we had enough strength of heart to avoid the mess that would have created.

People think of Austria as a snowy, Winter Wonderland sort of country; it is, except for Vienna, which rarely has much snow in the winter. Yet the day I flew in, there was such a bad blizzard that we were diverted to Linz and had to take a train the rest of the way. It was snowing in Linz, too, when we arrived, but it was a crisp, light snow and the flakes came down lazily, at their leisure. Vienna was under attack. Winds made traffic lights jerk and twist on their cables. There were long lines of taxis at the train station, all of them wearing chains and covered with snow. My cabdriver couldn't get over the storm and spent the ride telling me about some poor man who'd been found frozen to death in his house, and how a roof collapsed at a movie theater under the weight of the snow. . It all reminded me of one of my father's letters.

I was expecting a cold, dead apartment, but the instant I opened the door, the smells of spicy roast chicken and radiator heat surprised me completely.

"Hail the returning hero!"

India looked as if she'd come back from a month in Mauritius.

"You're so tan!"

"Yeah, I've discovered tanning studios. How do I look? Are you going to put your bags down or are you waiting for a tip?"

I put them down, and she came over and hugged me for dear life. I hugged back, but unlike the time with my father, I let go first.

"Let me look at you. Did you get mugged in New York? Talk to me! I've been waiting to hear your voice for two months —"

"India —"

"I was so afraid the snow was going to keep you away. I called the airport so many times they finally got me a private answering service. Say something, Joey. Did you have a million adventures? I want to hear about all of them right now." Everything came out in a machine-gun stutter. She'd barely catch her breath before the next sentence flashed out of her as if it were afraid it wouldn't get its chance before the next one came trampling through.

"— I decided to come over here and cook because —"

"India?"

"— and I knew. . What, Joey? Is the Great Silent One going to say something?"

I put a hand on each of her shoulders and held her tight. "India, I'm back. I'm here. Take it easy, pal."

"What do you mean, take it easy?" She stopped with her mouth halfway open. She shivered as if the cold outside had pierced her. The basting brush she'd been holding in her hand fell to the floor. "Oh, Joe, I was so afraid you wouldn't come back."

"I'm here."

"Yes, you really are. Hello, pulcino."

"Hello, India."

We smiled, and she dropped her head to her chest. She shook it from side to side, and I gripped her more tightly.

"I'm home, India." I said it softly, a good night to a child you're tucking in.

"You're a good man, Joey. You didn't have to come back."

"Let's not talk about it. I'm here."

"Okay. How about some chicken?"

"I'm ready."

Our meal went well; by the time we'd finished, both of us were much happier. I told her about New York, but not about Karen. That was for some other time.

"Let me see how you look. Stand up."

She checked me out carefully, reminding me of someone looking over a used car before they bought it.

"You're not any fatter, God knows, but your face looks good. New York did you good, huh? How do I look? Like Judith Anderson with a tan, right?"

I sat down and picked up my wineglass. "You look. . I don't know, India. You look the way I thought you would."

"And how's that?"

"Tired. Scared."

"Bad, huh?"

"Yeah, kind of bad."

"I thought the tan would hide me." She shoved back from the table and put her napkin over her head. It covered her eyes completely.

"India?"

"Don't bother me now. I'm crying."

"India, do you want to tell me about what's been happening or do you want to wait a while?" I pulled the napkin away and saw her eyes were wet.

"Why did I make you come back? What good will it do? I couldn't get Paul; I couldn't talk with him. He came and he came and he came, and each time there was a moment when I actually had the guts to say, 'Wait, Paul. Listen to me!' But it was so stupid. So fucking stupid."

I took her hand, and she squeezed mine in a scared vise.

"Everything is shit, Joe. He won't go away. He's having so goddamned much fun. What can I do? Joey, what am I going to do?"

I spoke as gently as I could. "What have you done so far?"

"Everything. Nothing. Gone to a palmist. A medium. Read books. Prayed." She brushed the air with her hand, dismissing it all with a contemptuous wave. "India Tate, ghost hunter."

"I don't know what to say to you."

"Say, 'India, here I am back with a million answers to every one of your questions.' Say, Til kick out the ghosts and I'll warm up your bed again, and just ask me 'cause I'm your Answer Man.' " She looked at me sadly, knowing my answer even before I gave it.

"The sun is ninety-three million miles from the earth. The pitcher's mound is ninety-feet from home plate. Carol Reed directed The Third Man. How are those for answers?"

She picked up a fork and tapped me on the back of the hand with it. "You're a jerk, Joe, but you're a nice jerk. Can I ask a favor?"

I'm not an intuitive person, but this time I knew what she was going to say before she said it. I was right.

"Can we go to bed?" As if she knew I'd hesitate, she didn't wait for an answer. Getting up from the table, she moved toward the bedroom door without looking at me. "Leave the lights on in here. I don't like to think of the house dark these days."

That last sentence struck me hard, and still not knowing what I'd do when I got there, I followed her.

On the plane I'd resolved not to sleep with India when I returned. A private promise to myself to remain true to Karen, however sophomoric that seemed. I felt that, if I kept that promise, somehow Karen would know or sense it in that profound and mysterious way women are capable of sensing things, and it would reassure her when we got back together again. I didn't know when that reunion would take place, but I was sure it would.

The familiar glow of the familiar lamp in that familiar room. India was taking two small brown combs out of her hair and had already unbuttoned the top brass button of her jeans. I could see the top line of white on her underpants. I stood in the doorway and tried not to watch or respond to the casual sensuality of her actions. For a moment, while her arms were raised high and angled over her head, she stopped and looked at me with a combination of desire and hope that made her look sixteen years old and open to everything in the world. How unfair! It wasn't right for her to show me this side of her when all I wanted to do was help, not love, her. I felt the pulse in my throat and was scared by the extravagance of my heart's response.

"You look as if you swallowed a clam shell. Are you all right?"

"Yes, but I have to go to the bathroom."

"Uh huh." She was already back into the private motions of undressing and seemed to have barely heard me. I was grateful for that, because I needed time to break the uncertain spell she had cast.

I had only just clicked on the light in the toilet when she screamed.

The first thing I saw was her standing by the side of the bed in only her white panties, looking down. Her breasts were so much older than Karen's.

She had pulled the bedspread back. Laid carefully in a row were many centerfolds from Playboy magazine. The vaginas of the women had been cut out, and in their place were faces: old men, children, dogs. . All of them were smiling with the greatest glee. Written somewhere on each picture in big crude letters was WELCOME HOME, JOE! GOOD TO HAVE YOU BACK WITH US!

The Viennese, who are old hands at snow in the Austrian mountains, seemed dismayed that it had come to visit them in town, particularly in such abundance. Children and a few slow-moving cars owned the streets. While looking out the window, I saw both a man and his dog slip and fall down at the same time. Every few hours the snowplows tried to bully the snow out of the way, but it was useless.

India stayed with me that night, but I did no more than hold her in my arms and try to calm her. At her insistence I took the pictures off the bed and burned each to a gray-violet crisp in the sink before washing the ashes down the drain.

The next morning the sun shone weakly for a few hours, but by midmorning the sky had clouded over, and it was snowing hard again by the time we reached the street.

"I want to walk for a while. Can we walk?" She was holding my arm and watching where our feet went. With every step her high rubber boots disappeared up to the calf in the white.

"Sure, but I think it'd be better if we walked in the street."

"I don't know why, but I feel a lot better today. Maybe it's just being outside." She looked at me, and her eyes, straining to be happy and unconcerned, asked that I agree. The complete whiteness of the world did calm some of the violence of the night before. But I had a strong feeling that no matter what we did or where we went, we were being watched.

India reached down and took a handful of snow. She tried to pat it into a ball, but it was too fresh and light to stay together.

"Old snow is best for that."

We were standing in the middle of the street, and I kept looking around for cars. "India, are we going to walk or what?"

"I'm pretending this interests me so I can avoid asking why you didn't make love to me last night."

"Last night? Are you nuts?"

"I wanted you to."

"Even after all that?"

"Because of all that, Joey."

"But, India, he. . he might've been there."

"Too bad. I wanted you."

"Come on. Let's walk."

She dropped the snow and looked at me. "You know what? You held me as if I were dying of the plague."

"Stop it!" My embarrassment turned to anger. The kind of anger that comes when you know you're to blame but don't want to admit it.

"You said he might've been in the room. But you know what, Joe? He's been in the room for months. You know what it's like to have him there for months? It's shit, Joe. And, God, I wanted you back. If you came back, so what if he was there? Months, Joe. Live alone with him for months like this and then ask me why I wanted you last night. He's everywhere now; there's nowhere to hide. So take me and let him see us. I don't care."

What could I say? Better to explain it all, tell her about Karen, so at least she'd have a concrete answer? There are so many different ways to fail a person. Answer this question honestly, thereby hitting her again after she'd already been hit so many times? Keep quiet and add to the confusion, her valid fear that she was almost entirely alone now in the battle against her dead husband? Standing there, helpless, I felt the weight of her need, and I came close to hating her for it.

My heart was beating like an angry dog's, and I was so overdressed against the snow that I felt hot and bound in by all my clothes. If I'd had three wishes, I'd have rolled them into one and asked to be sitting in a Chock Full o'Nuts in New York, drinking coffee and eating doughnuts with Karen. That's what owned my mind then — coffee and doughnuts with Karen.

The year before he died, Ross had a girlfriend named Mary Poe. She was a tough babe who smoked two packs a day and had the longest fingernails I'd ever seen in my life. She'd been Bobby's girl for a while, but it hadn't worked out, and Ross'd inherited her. Between cigarettes, she laughed a lot and hung on Ross like tinsel on a Christmas tree. After they'd gone out for a few months, however, Ross grew tired of her and tried to end the relationship. It turned out to be one of the few times I ever saw my brother completely confused, because no matter what he did, she would not go away. He stopped calling her, wouldn't go near her at school, and for spite started dating her best friend. That didn't stop Mary. The crueler he got, the more she pursued him. She knitted him two sweaters and a pair of gloves (which he ceremoniously burned in front of her at school one day), called at least once a night, and sent him letters so drowned in Canoe cologne that our mailbox began to smell like a whore's handkerchief. At one particularly desperate point, he halfheartedly threatened to kill her, but she shrugged and said she was already dead without him. Luckily, in the end she found someone else, and Ross vowed he would never get involved with girls again.

Why I bring all this up is that I remember the scared, trapped look he used to get whenever the phone rang at night during that time. As India and I trudged down the silent, abandoned street that morning, I felt the same "no exit" way, only a hundred times worse because of Paul's immanence.

"Let's go in here for a coffee, Joe. My toes just went into shock."

It was midmorning, but because of the snow, the cafй was almost empty. A tired-looking old man sat with a glass of white wine in a corner, a chow dog asleep at his feet under the table.

We ordered, and the waiter, happy to have something to do, rushed behind the counter to get it.

Things were uncomfortably silent; I got so desperate for some kind of noise I was about to tell India a dumb joke, when the door opened and a big fat man came in with a dachshund right behind him. The chow took one look at them and leapt to attention, barking. The dachshund marched right over to the chow and nipped him on the leg. India gasped, but the big dog loved it. He jumped back and started hopping around, barking all the time. The dachshund took two steps forward and nipped him again. The two owners watched it all with big smiles on their faces.

India crossed her arms and shook her head. "What is this, the zoo?"

"I just noticed the dachshund's a girl."

India laughed. "That's the answer. Maybe if I bite Paul, he'll go away."

"Or at least he'll baric at you."

"Yeah." She stretched both arms over her head and, smiling, looked at me. "Joe, I'm being really stupid. I apologize. Maybe it's my way of paying you a compliment."

"How so?"

"Maybe I had so much faith in you I thought once you returned, everything would immediately be all right again, like I said last night, you know? Did you ever get that feeling about a person? That they can fix anything as soon as they get their hands on it? Yeah, that's what it was. I thought your return would send those bogeymen way the hell away."

"Bogeyman."

"Yeah, singular. One at a time, huh? Let's go. This place is beginning to sound like Born Free."

The rest of the day went well as we roamed around town, relishing the feeling that the whole place belonged entirely to us and the snow. We went shopping in the First District, and she bought me a crazy-looking T-shirt at the Fiorucci store.

"When am I supposed to wear it?"

"Not when, Joe, where? It's the ugliest shirt I've seen since Paul's Hawaiian disaster." She said it as if he were only a step away, and I recalled for an instant all the good times we'd had together in the fall.

As time went on, I noticed how often both of us spoke of him in loving and nostalgic ways. India didn't want to talk about what he'd done to her while I was away in New York, but the days of Paul alive were always fresh and near to her, and I truly liked being swept back to the days of our joint happiness.

The snow held on for a few more days, and then one of those weird, spectacularly warm and sunny spells came and erased most traces of winter. I'm probably one of the few people who don't like that kind of weather. It's false; you walk around looking suspiciously at the sky, sure that any minute now all snowy hell will break loose. But people started wearing light coats and sat with their faces to the sun in parks on the still-damp benches. Horse-drawn carriages were full of smiling tourists, and I knew when they got home they'd rave about Vienna and its marvelous winter weather.

The one thing I did like about it was the change it brought in India. She was suddenly gay and full of life again. Although my longing for Karen deepened by the day, being around India again reminded me why I had been so attracted to her from the beginning. At her best, she radiated a supremely clever and interesting life-view that made you want to know her opinion on everything. Whether it was a painting by Schiele or the difference between Austrian and American cigarettes, what she had to say made you either sit up and take notice or else hate yourself for never having had the intelligence or imagination to see it that way yourself. So many times I wondered what would have happened to us if I hadn't met Karen. But I had, and she now monopolized my capacity to love.

I thought about her constantly and, mustering my courage one Saturday night, called her in New York. While the phone rang, I moved through her apartment in my mind, an affectionate camera stopping here and there to focus in on things I liked or felt particularly nostalgic about. She wasn't in. I feverishly figured out the time difference and felt a little better when I realized I'd miscalculated — it was only a little after one in the afternoon there. I tried again later, but still no answer. It made me groan with doubt and jealousy; I knew if I called again and she wasn't there, my heart would break. I called India instead and asked in a sad voice if she wanted to go to the movies.

When we got to the theater we discovered the film didn't start for fifteen minutes; I was all for taking a slow walk around the block to kill time. When I moved to go, India took my arm and held me there.

"What's up?"

"I don't want to go tonight."

"What? Why?"

"Don't ask why, I just don't want to go, okay? I changed my mind."

"India —"

"Because this theater reminds me of Paul, all right? It reminds me of the night we all met here. It reminds me of —" She whirled around and walked away. She stumbled once and then strode forward, widening the gap between us with every step.

"India, wait! What are you doing?"

She kept moving. Trying to catch up with her, I noticed out of the corner of my eye an ad in a travel agency window for a trip to New York.

"India, for godsake, will you stop!"

She did, and I almost bumped smack into her. When she turned, the tears on her face shone, reflecting the white lights from a store window. I realized I didn't want to know why she was crying. I didn't want to know what new thing I had done wrong, or in what new way I had failed her.

"Can't you see he's everywhere in this town? Everywhere I turn, everything I see. . Even you remind me of him."

She was off again, with me trailing after her like a bodyguard.

She crossed a couple of streets and entered a small park. It was dimly lit; a bronze statue in the middle was our only companion. She stopped, and I stood facing her back a few feet away. Neither of us moved for some time. Then I saw the dog.

It was a white boxer. I remember someone once telling me that breeders often kill white boxers when they're born because they're freaks, mistakes of nature. I sort of liked them and enjoyed seeing such funny yet brutal faces the color of clouds.

The dog came from nowhere and gleamed, a moving patch of snow in the night. It was alone and had no collar or muzzle on. India hadn't moved. I watched it sniff its way over to us. When it was only a few feet away, it stopped and looked directly at us.

"Matty!" She sucked in breath and grabbed my arm. "It's Matty!"

"Who? What are you talking about?" The tone of her voice made me scared, but I had to know what she was saying.

"It's Matty. Matterhorn! Paul's dog in London. We gave him away when we moved here. We had to because — Matty! Matty, come here!"

He started moving again: in the bushes, on the walk, across the flower bed. In the dark he glowed and moved busily, doing dog's business. He was huge. He must have weighed over eighty pounds.

"Matty! Come!" She bent down. He came right toward her, wiggling and whimpering like a puppy.

"India, be careful. You don't know —"

"Shut up. So what?" She looked at me with eyes as mad as fire.

The dog heard the change in her tone of voice and stopped dead, two feet away. It looked at India and then at me.

"Matty!"

It lowered its head and growled.

"Go away, Joe, you're scaring it."

It growled again; only this time the sound was longer and deeper, far more feral and threatening. The lips curled back, and it began to wag its stump of tail too fast.

"Oh, God. Joe?"

"Move back."

"Joe —"

I spoke in a quiet monotone. "If you go too fast, it'll come. Go slow. No, slower."

She was in a squat, and it was almost impossible for her to move backward. For an instant I looked around for a branch or a stone I might use to hit it with, but there was nothing. If it came, I would have only my hands and feet; stupid, impossible weapons against the giant boxer.

India managed to move two or three feet. With all the courage I'd ever had in my life, I slowly slid over so that I was standing between India and the dog. It was growling continually now; I wondered if it was rabid. I didn't know what to do. How long would it stand there? How long would it wait? What did it want? The growl turned into a kind of snapping snarl, and it sounded as if something were hurting the dog from inside its body. It turned its head left and right, then widened and narrowed its eyes. If it was rabid and bit me. .

I realized for the first time I was chanting, "Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ. ." under my breath. I didn't dare move. My hands were splayed flat against the sides of my legs. My fear had turned into a thick, evil taste in the back of my mouth.

Someone whistled, and the dog snapped at me in a madness of fast little bites at thin air, but it stayed where it was and moved only when the whistle came a second time.

"Very good, Joey! You passed the Matty test! He passed, India!"

Paul stood at one edge of the park. He was wearing the Little Boy top hat, white gloves, and the most beautiful black overcoat I had ever seen.

The dog bounded up to him and jumped high at a hand Paul had raised in the air over his head. The two of them disappeared into the dark.

"Joseph?"

"Karen!"

"Hello, love. Is it okay to talk?"

"Sure, just let me sit down."

Karen. Karen was on the other end of the line, and Karen was the heaven that made everything right again.

"Okay, so tell me what's up? Tell me everything. I tried to call you."

"Hey, Joseph, are you okay? You sound as if you just got your teeth pulled."

"It's the connection. How are you?"

"I'm. . I'm okay."

"What does that mean, okay? Now you sound as if all your teeth were pulled."

She laughed; I wanted the sound to go on forever.

"No, Joseph, I'm really fine. What's goin' on there? What's happenin' with that Miss India and you?"

"Nothing. I mean, nothing's going on. She's all right."

"And you?"

Oh, did I want to tell her. Oh, did I want her there with me. Oh, did I want this all to be over.

"Karen, I love you. I don't love India, I love you. I want to come back. I want you."

"Uh huh."

I closed my eyes and knew something awful was about to come. "What's with Miles, Karen?"

"You want the truth?"

"Yes." My heart raced to match the beat of the heart of a man about to be hanged.

"I've been stayin' with him. He's asked me to marry him."

"Oh, God."

"I know."

"And?" Don't say yes. God in heaven, don't say you said yes.

"And I told him I wanted to talk to you."

"He knows about me?"

"Yes."

"Do you want to marry him?"

"The truth?"

"Yes, goddamn it, tell me the truth!"

Her voice went cold, and I hated myself for snapping at her. "Sometimes I think I do, Joseph. Sometimes I do. What about you?"

Shifting in my seat, I banged my calf on the leg of the chair and nearly fainted from the pain. It clouded my mind badly, and I groped for something clear and right to say to stop the best thing in my life from going down the drain.

"Karen, can you wait before you tell him anything? Can you wait a little while longer?"

A silence followed that lasted a hundred years.

"I don't know, Joseph."

"Do you love me, Karen?"

"Yes, Joseph, but I might love Miles more. I swear to God, I'm not trying to be coy, either. I don't know."

One of the famous Lennox family stories goes like this: Right after my father's mother died, my mother made us all go on a picnic to Bear Mountain. She wanted to keep my father as busy as possible, and picnics were a favorite of his. Ross didn't want to go at the last minute, but after a slap and some whispered oaths from the boss, he behaved himself and ended up eating more fried chicken and potato salad than anyone else. When we were done, my father and I went for a walk. I was terribly worried about him and kept thinking of the right thing to say to ease his pain. I was five and there weren't many things I knew how to say, much less well, so when it came I was excited and proud that I had thought it up all by myself.

We sat down on a couple of tree stumps, and I took his hand in mine. Did I have something to tell him!

"Daddy? You know you shouldn't be so sad that Grandma's dead. You know why? Because she's with our Big Father now, the one who takes care of evvveryone. You know who that is, Daddy? He lives up in the sky and his name is D-O-G."

In the days that followed our meeting with Paul, I wondered where he was. If he'd told the truth, where did people go after they died? I now knew one thing for sure — there were choices on that other side of life; things were far more complex there than anyone could imagine. Never once when he was sitting with us had I thought to ask him about it, but afterward I realized he probably wouldn't have said anyway. I was sure of that. It was Paul's way.

D-O-G. I was sorry I'd never had the chance to tell him that story.

"Where's Paul's pen?"

She stood in the door of my apartment in a purple rage.

"Do you want to come in?"

"You took it, didn't you?"

"Yes."

"I knew it, you little thief. Where is it?"

"It's on my desk."

"Well, go get it."

"All right, India. Take it easy."

"I don't want to take it easy. I want that pen."

She followed me in. I felt stupid and guilty. Ten-year-old guilt. My head bulged with conflicting ideas and emotions. Paul was gone, but exactly what did that mean? I could go now; I had done my duty to India. When was anything ever that simple? I hadn't answered her question about whether or not she had a "chance" against Karen. If Paul had remained a factor in our lives, I wouldn't have had to answer that question for a long time. Now I did.

"Give me that! Why'd you steal it, anyway?" She shoved it into her pocket and patted it a couple of times to make sure it was there.

"I guess because it was Paul's. I took it right after he died, before anything started to happen, if it makes any difference."

"You could have asked, you know."

"You're right — I could have asked. Do you want to sit down or anything?"

"I don't know. I don't think I like you very much today. What are you planning to do now? What's on your agenda? You could have called me, you know."

"India, back off, huh. Slow down."

Karen in New York; a fifty-fifty chance I could win her back if I left immediately. India in Vienna; free, alone, angry. Angry because she had betrayed the true love of her life for me. Angry because she thought I had come back to her for all the best reasons in the world, only to find at the worst possible time I'd done it out of ninety percent duty and only ten percent love. Angry because her betrayal had caused death and pain and fear and finally, in the end, a future that promised little more than permanent guilt and self-hatred.

Looking at her, I knew all of that and, in an incredible instant of clarity, decided that no matter what happened I would stay with India as long as she needed me. A montage of Karen in bed, at the altar, raising and loving his children, laughing forever at his jokes, came and went, and I told myself I had to believe it didn't matter anymore. India needed me, and the rest of my life would be utterly false and selfish — inexcusable — if I failed her now.

It wasn't martyrdom or altruism or anything as lovely as all that. I would simply be doing what was right for the third or fourth time in my life, and that was good. I realized how naive and unrealistic people are to think you can be both right and happy.

If it happens that way, you are truly one of the blessed. Right, however, should win if you have to choose. A great deal has happened since those thoughts paraded grandly through my head, but I still believe that's true. It is one of the few things I still believe at all.

"Joe, since you'll probably be leaving soon, I want to tell you something. I've been wanting to tell you for a long time, but I haven't. I think you should know, though, because it's important, and no matter what happens with us, I still love you enough to want to help."

"India, can I say something first? I think it might have some bearing —"

"No, not until I've finished. You know me. Whatever you say may take the wind out of my sails, and I'm mad enough at you to let it rip, so just let me, okay?"

"Okay." I tried to smile, but she frowned and shook her head. No smiles allowed. I sat back to let her blow her top, knowing I had the ace up my sleeve the whole time. Was she going to be surprised!

"This pen is part of it. I know why you wanted it. Because it was Paul's, and you wanted it to remind you of Paul's magic. Right? I understand. You're like that, Joe. You want part of everyone's magic, but you're too damned wimpy at heart to reach it the hard way, so you snitch Paul's pen, make love to me —"

"India, for godsake!"

"Shut up. You make love to me. . You even steal your brother's life, put it down on paper, and make it into a million-dollar story. Okay, not a million dollars, but enough to keep you sitting pretty for the rest of your life. True? You're talented, Joe, no one is arguing that, but have you ever thought maybe your greatest talent is stealing other people's magic and using it for yourself? Here, I want to read you something."

I couldn't believe what she was saying. Stunned and hurt more than I'd ever been in my life, I watched as she pulled a slip of paper out of her back pocket.

"It's from the novelist Evan Connell. You know him? Listen a minute. 'Originals attract us for another reason, which goes all the way back to prehistoric belief in magical properties. If we own something original, whether it's a skull or a lock of hair or an autograph or a drawing, we think maybe we acquire a little of the strength or substance of whoever it belonged to or whoever made it.' "

She threw the paper on the coffee table and pointed a finger at me. "It's you in a nutshell, Joe, and you know it down deep inside. I've been trying like hell to figure it out. The only word I can think of is parasite. Not a bad parasite, but one just the same. The two people you've truly loved and admired in your life — Ross and Paul — so overwhelmed you with whatever kind of magic they had that you knew you had to have some of it. So you stole your brother's story after he was dead, and it worked! When Paul arrived, you stole his wife, you stole his pen. . Do you get what I mean, Joseph? Jesus, why am I calling you Joseph? You know the only reason why you'll stay with me? Because I might still have some of his magic left, and you can't bear to be alone in the world without any. Or maybe you'll leave because your Karen has a fresh supply and she'll keep your tank filled. It's a bad way to put it, Joe, but you get exactly what I mean. I'm sorry to stab you with all this at one time, but it's the truth. That's all. I've had my say. Do you want to talk now?"

"No. I think you had better go."

"All right. Think about it. Think about it a lot. Before you come and punch me in the nose, tear it apart and put it back together again. I'll be at home."

She got up and left without another word.