The New Yorker Stories Part 38

"Right," Byron said. "Should I scream, too?"

Tom s.h.i.+vered. The image of Byron screaming frightened him, and for a few seconds he let himself believe that he should call the police. But if he called, what would he say-that someone had asked if his house was for sale and later asked Byron if he'd play with his son?

Tom pulled out a cigarette and lit it. He'd drive across town to see the farmer who'd owned the land, he decided, and find out what he knew about Rickman. He didn't remember exactly how to get to the farmer's house, and he couldn't remember his name. The real-estate agent had pointed out the place, at the top of a hill, the summer he showed Tom the property, so he could call him and find out. But first he was going to make sure that Jo got home safely from the grocery store.

The phone rang, and Byron turned to pick it up.

"h.e.l.lo?" Byron said. Byron frowned. He avoided Tom's eyes. Then, just when Tom felt sure that it was Rickman, Byron said, "Nothing much." A long pause. "Yeah, sure," he said. "I'm thinking about ornithology."

It was Byron's mother.

The real-estate agent remembered him. Tom told him about Rickman. "De de de de, De de de de," "De de de de, De de de de," the agent sang-the notes of the theme music from the agent sang-the notes of the theme music from The Twilight Zone The Twilight Zone. The agent laughed. He told him the farmer whose land he had bought was named Albright. He didn't have the man's telephone number, but was sure it was in the directory. It was.

Tom got in the car and drove to the farm. A young woman working in a flower garden stood up and held her trowel up like a torch when his car pulled into the drive. Then she looked surprised that he was a stranger. He introduced himself. She said her name. It turned out she was Mr. Albright's niece, who had come with her family to watch the place while her aunt and uncle were in New Zealand. She didn't know anything about the sale of the land; no, n.o.body else had come around asking. Tom described Rickman anyway. No, she said, she hadn't seen anyone who looked like that. Over on a side lawn, two Irish setters were barking madly at them. A man-he must have been the woman's husband-was holding them by their collars. The dogs were going wild, and the young woman obviously wanted to end the conversation. Tom didn't think about leaving her his telephone number until it was too late, when he was driving away.

That night, he went to another auction, and when he came back to the car one of the back tires was flat. He opened the trunk to get the spare, glad that he had gone to the auction alone, glad that the field was lit up and people were walking around. A little girl about his son's age came by with her parents. She held a one-armed doll over her head and skipped forward. "I don't feel cheated. Why should you feel cheated? I bought the whole box for two dollars and I got two metal sieves out of it," the woman said to the man. He had on a baseball cap and a black tank top and cutoffs, and sandals with soles that curved at the heel and toe like a canoe. He stalked ahead of the woman, box under one arm, and grabbed his dancing daughter by the elbow. "Watch my dolly!" she screamed, as he pulled her along. "That doll's not worth five cents," the man said. Tom averted his eyes. He was sweating more than he should, going through the easy maneuvers of changing a tire. There was even a breeze.

They floated the tire in a pan of water at the gas station the next morning, looking for the puncture. Nothing was embedded in the tire; whatever had made the hole wasn't there. As one big bubble after another rose to the surface, Tom felt a clutch in his throat, as if he himself might be drowning.

He could think of no good reason to tell the officer at the police barracks why Ed Rickman would have singled him out. Maybe Rickman had had wanted to build a house on that particular site. The policeman made a fist and rested his mouth against it, his lips in the gully between thumb and finger. Until Tom said that, the policeman had seemed concerned-even a little interested. Then his expression changed. Tom hurried to say that of course he didn't believe that explanation, because something funny was going on. The cop shook his head. Did that mean no, of course not, or no, he did believe it? wanted to build a house on that particular site. The policeman made a fist and rested his mouth against it, his lips in the gully between thumb and finger. Until Tom said that, the policeman had seemed concerned-even a little interested. Then his expression changed. Tom hurried to say that of course he didn't believe that explanation, because something funny was going on. The cop shook his head. Did that mean no, of course not, or no, he did believe it?

Tom described Rickman, mentioning the discolored tooth. The cop wrote this information down on a small white pad. He drew crosshatches on a corner. The cop did not seem quite as certain as Tom that no one could have a grudge against him or anyone in his family. He asked where they lived in New York, where they worked.

When Tom walked out into the sunlight, he felt a little faint. Of course he had understood, even before the cop said it, that there was nothing the police could do at this point. "Frankly," the cop had said, "it's not likely that we're going to be able to keep a good eye out, in that you're on a dead-end road. Not a route route," the cop said. "Not a major thoroughfare major thoroughfare." It seemed to be some joke the cop was having with himself.

Driving home, Tom realized that he could give anyone who asked a detailed description of the cop. He had studied every mark on the cop's face-the little scar (chicken pox?) over one eyebrow, the aquiline nose that narrowed at the tip almost to the shape of a tack. He did not intend to alarm Jo or Byron by telling them where he had been.

Byron had gone fis.h.i.+ng again. Jo wanted to make love while Byron was out. Tom knew he couldn't.

A week pa.s.sed. Almost two weeks. He and Jo and Byron sat in lawn chairs watching the lightning bugs blink. Byron said he had his eye on one in particular, and he went "Beep-beep, beep-beep" "Beep-beep, beep-beep" as it blinked. They ate raw peas Jo had gathered in a bowl. He and Jo had a gla.s.s of wine. The neighbors' M.G. pa.s.sed by. This summer, the neighbors sometimes tapped the horn as they pa.s.sed. A bird swooped low across the lawn-perhaps a female cardinal. It was a surprise seeing a bird in the twilight like that. It dove into the gra.s.s, more like a seagull than a cardinal. It rose up, fluttering, with something in its beak. Jo put her gla.s.s on the little table, smiled, and clapped softly. as it blinked. They ate raw peas Jo had gathered in a bowl. He and Jo had a gla.s.s of wine. The neighbors' M.G. pa.s.sed by. This summer, the neighbors sometimes tapped the horn as they pa.s.sed. A bird swooped low across the lawn-perhaps a female cardinal. It was a surprise seeing a bird in the twilight like that. It dove into the gra.s.s, more like a seagull than a cardinal. It rose up, fluttering, with something in its beak. Jo put her gla.s.s on the little table, smiled, and clapped softly.

The bird Byron found dead in the morning was a grackle, not a cardinal. It was lying about ten feet from the picture window, but until Tom examined the bird's body carefully, he did not decide that probably it had just smacked into the gla.s.s by accident.

At Rusty's, at the end of summer, Tom ran into the cop again. They were both carrying white paper bags with straws sticking out of them. Grease was starting to seep through the bags. Rickman had never reappeared, and Tom felt some embarra.s.sment about having gone to see the cop. He tried not to focus on the tip of the cop's nose.

"Running into a nut like that, I guess it makes getting back to the city look good," the cop said.

He's thinking summer people summer people, Tom decided.

"You have a nice year, now," the cop said. "Tell your wife I sure do envy her her retirement."

"Her retirement?" Tom said.

The cop looked at the blacktop. "I admit, the way you described that guy I thought he might be sent by somebody who had a grudge against you or your wife," he said. "Then at the fire-department picnic I got to talking to your neighbor-that Mrs. Hewett-and I asked her if she'd seen anybody strange poking around before you got there. Hadn't. We got to talking. She said you were in the advertising business, and there was no way of knowing what gripes some lunatic might have with that, if he happened to know. Maybe you walked on somebody's territory, so to speak, and he wanted to get even. And your wife being a schoolteacher, you can't realize how upset some parents get when Johnny doesn't bring home the A's. You never can tell. Mrs. Hewett said she'd been a schoolteacher for a few months herself, before she got married, and she never regretted the day she quit. Said your wife was real happy about her own decision, too." The cop nodded in agreement with this.

Tom tried to hide his surprise. Somehow, the fact that he didn't know that Jo had ever exchanged a word with a neighbor, Karen Hewett, privately made the rest of the story believable. They hardly knew the woman. But why would Jo quit? His credibility with the cop must have been good after all. He could tell from the way the cop studied his face that he realized he had been telling Tom something he didn't know.

When the cop left, Tom sat on the hot front hood of his car, took the hamburgers out of the bag, and ate them. He pulled the straw out of the big container of c.o.ke and took off the plastic top. He drank from the cup, and when the c.o.ke was gone he continued to sit there, sucking ice. Back during the winter, Jo had several times brought up the idea of having a baby, but she hadn't mentioned it for weeks now. He wondered if she had decided to get pregnant in spite of his objections. But even if she had, why would she quit her job before she was sure there was a reason for it?

A teenage girl with short hair and triangle-shaped earrings walked by, averting her eyes as if she knew he'd stare after her. He didn't; only the earrings that caught the light like mirrors interested him. In a convertible facing him, across the lot, a boy and girl were eating their sandwiches in the front seat while a golden retriever in the back moved his head between theirs, looking from left to right and right to left with the regularity of a dummy talking to a ventriloquist. A man holding his toddler's hand walked by and smiled. Another car pulled in, with Hall and Oates going on the radio. The driver turned off the ignition, cutting off the music, and got out. A woman got out the other side. As they walked past, the woman said to the man, "I don't see why we've got to eat exactly at nine, twelve, and six." "Hey, it's twelve-fifteen," the man said. Tom dropped his cup into the paper bag, along with his hamburger wrappers and the napkins he hadn't used. He carried the soggy bag over to the trash can. A few bees lifted slightly higher as he stuffed his trash in. Walking back to the car, he realized that he had absolutely no idea what to do. At some point he would have to ask Jo what was going on.

When he pulled up, Byron was sitting on the front step, cleaning fish over a newspaper. Four trout, one of them very large. Byron had had a good day.

Tom walked through the house but couldn't find Jo. He held his breath when he opened the closet door; it was unlikely that she would be in there, naked, two days in a row. She liked to play tricks on him.

He came back downstairs, and saw, through the kitchen window, that Jo was sitting outside. A woman was with her. He walked out. Paper plates and beer bottles were on the gra.s.s beside their chairs.

"Hi, honey," she said.

"Hi," the woman said. It was Karen Hewett.

"Hi," he said to both of them. He had never seen Karen Hewett up close. She was tanner than he realized. The biggest difference, though, was her hair. When he had seen her, it had always been long and windblown, but today she had it pulled back in a clip.

"Get all your errands done?" Jo said.

It couldn't have been a more ordinary conversation. It couldn't have been a more ordinary summer day.

The night before they closed up the house, Tom and Jo lay stretched out on the bed. Jo was finis.h.i.+ng Tom Jones Tom Jones. Tom was enjoying the cool breeze coming through the window, thinking that when he was in New York he forgot the Vermont house; at least, he forgot it except for the times he looked up from the street he was on and saw the sky, and its emptiness made him remember stars. It was the sky he loved in the country-the sky more than the house. If he hadn't thought it would seem dramatic, he would have gotten out of bed now and stood at the window for a long time. Earlier in the evening, Jo had asked why he was so moody. He had told her that he didn't feel like leaving. "Then let's stay," she said. It was his opening to say something about her job in the fall. He had hoped she would say something, but he hesitated, and she had only put her arms around him and rubbed her cheek against his chest. All summer, she had seduced him-sometimes with pa.s.sion, sometimes so subtly he didn't realize what was happening until she put her hand up under his T-s.h.i.+rt or kissed him on the lips.

Now it was the end of August. Jo's sister in Connecticut was graduating from nursing school in Hartford, and Jo had asked Tom to stop there so they could do something with her sister to celebrate. Her sister lived in a one-bedroom apartment, but it would be easy to find a motel. The following day, they would take Byron home to Philadelphia and then backtrack to New York.

In the car the next morning, Tom felt Byron's gaze on his back and wondered if he had overheard their lovemaking the night before. It was very hot by noontime. There was so much haze on the mountains that their peaks were invisible. The mountains gradually sloped until suddenly, before Tom realized it, they were driving on flat highway. Late that afternoon they found a motel. He and Byron swam in the pool, and Jo, although she was just about to see her, talked to her sister for half an hour on the phone.

By the time Jo's sister turned up at the motel, Tom had shaved and showered. Byron was watching television. He wanted to stay in the room and watch the movie instead of having dinner with them. He said he wasn't hungry. Tom insisted that he come and eat dinner. "I can get something out of the machine," Byron said.

"You're not going to eat potato chips for dinner," Tom said. "Get off the bed-come on."

Byron gave Tom a look that was quite similar to the look an outlaw in the movie was giving the sheriff who had just kicked his gun out of reach.

"You didn't stay glued to the set in Vermont all summer and miss those glorious days, did you?" Jo's sister said.

"I fished," Byron said.

"He caught four trout one day," Tom said, spreading his arms and looking from the palm of one hand to the palm of the other.

They all had dinner together in the motel restaurant, and later, while they drank their coffee, Byron dropped quarters into the machine in the corridor, playing game after game of s.p.a.ce Invaders.

Jo and her sister went into the bar next to the restaurant for a nightcap. Tom let them go alone, figuring that they probably wanted some private time together. Byron followed him up to the room and turned on the television. An hour later, Jo and her sister were still in the bar. Tom sat on the balcony. Long before his usual bedtime, Byron turned off the television.

"Good night," Tom called into the room, hoping Byron would call him in.

"Night," Byron said.

Tom sat in silence for a minute. He was out of cigarettes and felt like a beer. He went into the room. Byron was lying in his sleeping bag, unzipped, on top of one of the beds.

"I'm going to drive down to that 7-Eleven," Tom said. "Want me to bring you anything?"

"No, thanks," Byron said.

"Want to come along?"

"No," Byron said.

He picked up the keys to the car and the room key and went out. He wasn't sure whether Byron was still sulking because he had made him go to dinner or whether he didn't want to go back to his mother's. Perhaps he was just tired.

Tom bought two Heinekens and a pack of Kools. The cas.h.i.+er was obviously stoned; he had bloodshot eyes and he stuffed a wad of napkins into the bag before he pushed it across the counter to Tom.

Back at the motel, he opened the door quietly. Byron didn't move. Tom put out one of the two lights Byron had left on and slid open the gla.s.s door to the balcony.

Two people kissed on the pathway outside, pa.s.sing the pool on the way to their room. People were talking in the room below-muted, but it sounded like an argument. The lights were suddenly turned off at the pool. Tom pushed his heels against the railing and tipped his chair back. He could hear the cars on the highway. He felt sad about something, and realized that he felt quite alone. He finished a beer and lit a cigarette. Byron hadn't been very communicative. Of course, he couldn't expect a ten-year-old boy to throw his arms around him the way he had when he was a baby. And Jo-in spite of her ardor, his memory of her, all summer, was of her sitting with her nose in some eighteenth-century novel. He thought about all the things they had done in July and August, trying to convince himself that they had done a lot and had fun. Dancing a couple of times, auctions, the day on the borrowed raft, four-no, five-movies, fis.h.i.+ng with Byron, badminton, the fireworks and the sparerib dinner outside the Town Hall on the Fourth.

Maybe what his ex-wife always said was true: he didn't connect with people. Jo never said such a thing, though. And Byron chose to spend the summer with them.

He drank the other beer and felt its effect. It had been a long drive. Byron probably didn't want to go back to Philadelphia. He himself wasn't too eager to begin his new job. He suddenly remembered his secretary when he confided in her that he'd gotten the big offer-her surprise, the way she hid her thumbs-up behind the palm of her other hand, in a mock gesture of secrecy. "Where are you going to go from there?" she had said. He'd miss her. She was funny and pretty and enthusiastic-no slouch herself. He'd miss laughing with her, miss being flattered because she thought that he was such a competent character.

He missed Jo. It wasn't because she was off at the bar. If she came back this instant, something would still be missing. He couldn't imagine caring for anyone more than he cared for her, but he wasn't sure that he was still in love with her. He was fiddling, there in the dark. He had reached into the paper bag and begun to wrinkle up little bits of napkin, rolling the paper between thumb and finger so that it formed tiny b.a.l.l.s. When he had a palmful, he got up and tossed them over the railing. When he sat down again, he closed his eyes and began what would be months of remembering Vermont: the garden, the neon green of new peas, the lumpy lawn, the pine trees and the smell of them at night-and then suddenly Rickman was there, rumpled and strange, but his presence was only slightly startling. He was just a man who'd dropped in on a summer day. "You'd be crazy not to be happy here," Rickman was saying. All that was quite believable now-the way, when seen in the odd context of a home movie, even the craziest relative can suddenly look amiable.

He wondered if Jo was pregnant. Could that be what she and her sister were talking about all this time in the bar? For a second, he wanted them all to be transformed into characters in one of those novels she had read all summer. That way, the uncertainty would end. Henry Fielding would simply step in and predict the future. The author could tell him what it would be like, what would happen, if he had to try, another time, to love somebody.

The woman who had been arguing with the man was quiet. Crickets chirped, and a television hummed faintly. Below him, near the pool, a man who worked at the motel had rolled a table onto its side. He whistled while he made an adjustment to the white metal pole that would hold an umbrella the next day.

Ja.n.u.s

The bowl was perfect. Perhaps it was not what you'd select if you faced a shelf of bowls, and not the sort of thing that would inevitably attract a lot of attention at a crafts fair, yet it had real presence. It was as predictably admired as a mutt who has no reason to suspect he might be funny. Just such a dog, in fact, was often brought out (and in) along with the bowl.

Andrea was a real-estate agent, and when she thought that some prospective buyers might be dog lovers, she would drop off her dog at the same time she placed the bowl in the house that was up for sale. She would put a dish of water in the kitchen for Mondo, take his squeaking plastic frog out of her purse and drop it on the floor. He would pounce delightedly, just as he did every day at home, batting around his favorite toy. The bowl usually sat on a coffee table, though recently she had displayed it on top of a pine blanket chest and on a lacquered table. It was once placed on a cherry table beneath a Bonnard still life, where it held its own.

Everyone who has purchased a house or who has wanted to sell a house must be familiar with some of the tricks used to convince a buyer that the house is quite special: a fire in the fireplace in early evening; jonquils in a pitcher on the kitchen counter, where no one ordinarily has s.p.a.ce to put flowers; perhaps the slight aroma of spring, made by a single drop of scent vaporizing from a lamp bulb.

The wonderful thing about the bowl, Andrea thought, was that it was both subtle and noticeable-a paradox of a bowl. Its glaze was the color of cream and seemed to glow no matter what light it was placed in. There were a few bits of color in it-tiny geometric flashes-and some of these were tinged with flecks of silver. They were as mysterious as cells seen under a microscope; it was difficult not to study them, because they s.h.i.+mmered, flas.h.i.+ng for a split second, and then resumed their shape. Something about the colors and their random placement suggested motion. People who liked country furniture always commented on the bowl, but then it turned out that people who felt comfortable with Biedermeier loved it just as much. But the bowl was not at all ostentatious, or even so noticeable that anyone would suspect that it had been put in place deliberately. They might notice the height of the ceiling on first entering a room, and only when their eye moved down from that, or away from the refraction of sunlight on a pale wall, would they see the bowl. Then they would go immediately to it and comment. Yet they always faltered when they tried to say something. Perhaps it was because they were in the house for a serious reason, not to notice some object.

Once Andrea got a call from a woman who had not put in an offer on a house she had shown her. That bowl, she said-would it be possible to find out where the owners had bought that beautiful bowl? Andrea pretended that she did not know what the woman was referring to. A bowl, somewhere in the house? Oh, on a table under the window. Yes, she would ask, of course. She let a couple of days pa.s.s, then called back to say that the bowl had been a present and the people did not know where it had been purchased.

When the bowl was not being taken from house to house, it sat on Andrea's coffee table at home. She didn't keep it carefully wrapped (although she transported it that way, in a box); she kept it on the table, because she liked to see it. It was large enough so that it didn't seem fragile or particularly vulnerable if anyone sideswiped the table or Mondo blundered into it at play. She had asked her husband to please not drop his house key in it. It was meant to be empty.

When her husband first noticed the bowl, he had peered into it and smiled briefly. He always urged her to buy things she liked. In recent years, both of them had acquired many things to make up for all the lean years when they were graduate students, but now that they had been comfortable for quite a while, the pleasure of new possessions dwindled. Her husband had p.r.o.nounced the bowl "pretty," and he had turned away without picking it up to examine it. He had no more interest in the bowl than she had in his new Leica.

She was sure that the bowl brought her luck. Bids were often put in on houses where she had displayed the bowl. Sometimes the owners, who were always asked to be away or to step outside when the house was being shown, didn't even know that the bowl had been in their house. Once-she could not imagine how-she left it behind, and then she was so afraid that something might have happened to it that she rushed back to the house and sighed with relief when the woman owner opened the door. The bowl, Andrea explained-she had purchased a bowl and set it on the chest for safekeeping while she toured the house with the prospective buyers, and she... She felt like rus.h.i.+ng past the frowning woman and seizing her bowl. The owner stepped aside, and it was only when Andrea ran to the chest that the lady glanced at her a little strangely. In the few seconds before Andrea picked up the bowl, she realized that the owner must have just seen that it had been perfectly placed, that the sunlight struck the bluer part of it. Her pitcher had been moved to the far side of the chest, and the bowl predominated. All the way home, Andrea wondered how she could have left the bowl behind. It was like leaving a friend at an outing-just walking off. Sometimes there were stories in the paper about families forgetting a child somewhere and driving to the next city. Andrea had only gone a mile down the road before she remembered.

In time, she dreamed of the bowl. Twice, in a waking dream-early in the morning, between sleep and a last nap before rising-she had a clear vision of it. It came into sharp focus and startled her for a moment-the same bowl she looked at every day.

She had a very profitable year selling real estate. Word spread, and she had more clients than she felt comfortable with. She had the foolish thought that if only the bowl were an animate object she could thank it. There were times when she wanted to talk to her husband about the bowl. He was a stockbroker, and sometimes told people that he was fortunate to be married to a woman who had such a fine aesthetic sense and yet could also function in the real world. They were a lot alike, really-they had agreed on that. They were both quiet people-reflective, slow to make value judgments, but almost intractable once they had come to a conclusion. They both liked details, but while ironies attracted her, he was more impatient and dismissive when matters became many-sided or unclear. They both knew this, and it was the kind of thing they could talk about when they were alone in the car together, coming home from a party or after a weekend with friends. But she never talked to him about the bowl. When they were at dinner, exchanging their news of the day, or while they lay in bed at night listening to the stereo and murmuring sleepy disconnections, she was often tempted to come right out and say that she thought that the bowl in the living room, the cream-colored bowl, was responsible for her success. But she didn't say it. She couldn't begin to explain it. Sometimes in the morning, she would look at him and feel guilty that she had such a constant secret.

Could it be that she had some deeper connection with the bowl-a relations.h.i.+p of some kind? She corrected her thinking: how could she imagine such a thing, when she was a human being and it was a bowl? It was ridiculous. Just think of how people lived together and loved each other... But was that always so clear, always a relations.h.i.+p? She was confused by these thoughts, but they remained in her mind. There was something within her now, something real, that she never talked about.

The bowl was a mystery, even to her. It was frustrating, because her involvement with the bowl contained a steady sense of unrequited good fortune; it would have been easier to respond if some sort of demand were made in return. But that only happened in fairy tales. The bowl was just a bowl. She did not believe that for one second. What she believed was that it was something she loved.

In the past, she had sometimes talked to her husband about a new property she was about to buy or sell-confiding some clever strategy she had devised to persuade owners who seemed ready to sell. Now she stopped doing that, for all her strategies involved the bowl. She became more deliberate with the bowl, and more possessive. She put it in houses only when no one was there, and removed it when she left the house. Instead of just moving a pitcher or a dish, she would remove all the other objects from a table. She had to force herself to handle them carefully, because she didn't really care about them. She just wanted them out of sight.

She wondered how the situation would end. As with a lover, there was no exact scenario of how matters would come to a close. Anxiety became the operative force. It would be irrelevant if the lover rushed into someone else's arms, or wrote her a note and departed to another city. The horror was the possibility of the disappearance. That was what mattered.

She would get up at night and look at the bowl. It never occurred to her that she might break it. She washed and dried it without anxiety, and she moved it often, from coffee table to mahogany corner table or wherever, without fearing an accident. It was clear that she would not be the one who would do anything to the bowl. The bowl was only handled by her, set safely on one surface or another; it was not very likely that anyone would break it. A bowl was a poor conductor of electricity: it would not be hit by lightning. Yet the idea of damage persisted. She did not think beyond that-to what her life would be without the bowl. She only continued to fear that some accident would happen. Why not, in a world where people set plants where they did not belong, so that visitors touring a house would be fooled into thinking that dark corners got sunlight-a world full of tricks?

She had first seen the bowl several years earlier, at a crafts fair she had visited half in secret, with her lover. He had urged her to buy the bowl. She didn't need need any more things, she told him. But she had been drawn to the bowl, and they had lingered near it. Then she went on to the next booth, and he came up behind her, tapping the rim against her shoulder as she ran her fingers over a wood carving. "You're still insisting that I buy that?" she said. "No," he said. "I bought it for you." He had bought her other things before this-things she liked more, at first-the child's ebony-and-turquoise ring that fitted her little finger; the wooden box, long and thin, beautifully dovetailed, that she used to hold paper clips; the soft gray sweater with a pouch pocket. It was his idea that when he could not be there to hold her hand she could hold her own-clasp her hands inside the lone pocket that stretched across the front. But in time she became more attached to the bowl than to any of his other presents. She tried to talk herself out of it. She owned other things that were more striking or valuable. It wasn't an object whose beauty jumped out at you; a lot of people must have pa.s.sed it by before the two of them saw it that day. any more things, she told him. But she had been drawn to the bowl, and they had lingered near it. Then she went on to the next booth, and he came up behind her, tapping the rim against her shoulder as she ran her fingers over a wood carving. "You're still insisting that I buy that?" she said. "No," he said. "I bought it for you." He had bought her other things before this-things she liked more, at first-the child's ebony-and-turquoise ring that fitted her little finger; the wooden box, long and thin, beautifully dovetailed, that she used to hold paper clips; the soft gray sweater with a pouch pocket. It was his idea that when he could not be there to hold her hand she could hold her own-clasp her hands inside the lone pocket that stretched across the front. But in time she became more attached to the bowl than to any of his other presents. She tried to talk herself out of it. She owned other things that were more striking or valuable. It wasn't an object whose beauty jumped out at you; a lot of people must have pa.s.sed it by before the two of them saw it that day.

Her lover had said that she was always too slow to know what she really loved. Why continue with her life the way it was? Why be two-faced, he asked her. He had made the first move toward her. When she would not decide in his favor, would not change her life and come to him, he asked her what made her think she could have it both ways. And then he made the last move and left. It was a decision meant to break her will, to shatter her intransigent ideas about honoring previous commitments.

Time pa.s.sed. Alone in the living room at night, she often looked at the bowl sitting on the table, still and safe, unilluminated. In its way, it was perfect: the world cut in half, deep and smoothly empty. Near the rim, even in dim light, the eye moved toward one small flash of blue, a vanis.h.i.+ng point on the horizon.

Skeletons

Usually she was the artist. Today she was the model. She had on sweatpants-both she and Garrett wore medium, although his sweatpants fit her better than they did him, because she did not have his long legs-and a Chinese jacket, plum-colored, patterned with blue octagons, edged in silver thread, that seemed to float among the lavender flowers that were as big as the palm of a hand raised for the high-five. A frog frog, Nancy thought; that was what the piece was called-the near-knot she fingered, the little fastener she never closed.

It was late Sat.u.r.day afternoon, and, as usual, Nancy Niles was spending the day with Garrett. She had met him in a drawing cla.s.s she took at night. During the week, he worked in an artists' supply store, but he had the weekends off. Until recently, when the weather turned cold, they had often taken long walks on Sat.u.r.day or Sunday, and sometimes Kyle Brown-an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania, who was the other tenant in the rooming house Garrett lived in, in a run-down neighborhood twenty minutes from the campus-had walked with them. It was Kyle who had told Garrett about the empty room in the house. His first week in Philadelphia, Garrett had been in line to pay his check at a coffee shop when the cas.h.i.+er asked Kyle for a penny, which he didn't have. Then she looked behind Kyle to Garrett and said, "Well, would you you have a penny?" Leaving, Kyle and Garrett struck up the conversation that had led to Garrett's moving into the house. And now the cas.h.i.+er's question had become a running joke. Just that morning, Garrett was outside the bathroom, and when Kyle came out, wrapped in his towel, he asked, "Well, got a penny have a penny?" Leaving, Kyle and Garrett struck up the conversation that had led to Garrett's moving into the house. And now the cas.h.i.+er's question had become a running joke. Just that morning, Garrett was outside the bathroom, and when Kyle came out, wrapped in his towel, he asked, "Well, got a penny now now?"

It was easy to amuse Kyle, and he had a lovely smile, Nancy thought. He once told her that he was the first member of his family to leave Utah to go to college. It had strained relations with his parents, but they couldn't argue with Kyle's insistence that the English department at Penn was excellent. The landlady's married daughter had gone to Penn, and Kyle felt sure that had been the deciding factor in his getting the room. That and the fact that when the landlady told him where the nearest Episcopal church was, he told her that he was a Mormon. "At least you have some some religion," she said. When she interviewed Garrett and described the neighborhood and told him where the Episcopal church was, Kyle had already tipped him; Garrett flipped open a notebook and wrote down the address. religion," she said. When she interviewed Garrett and described the neighborhood and told him where the Episcopal church was, Kyle had already tipped him; Garrett flipped open a notebook and wrote down the address.

Now, as Garrett and Nancy sat talking as he sketched (Garrett cared so much about drawing that Nancy was sure that he was happy that the weather had turned, so he had an excuse to stay indoors), Kyle was frying chicken downstairs. A few minutes earlier, he had looked in on them and stayed to talk. He complained that he was tired of being known as "the Mormon" to the landlady. Not condescendingly, that he could see-she just said it the way a person might use the Latin name for a plant instead of its common one. He showed them a telephone message from his father she had written down, with "MORMON" printed at the top.

Kyle Brown lived on hydroponic tomatoes, Shake 'n Bake chicken, and Pepperidge Farm rolls. On Sat.u.r.days, Garrett and Nancy ate with him. They contributed apple cider-smoky, with a smell you could taste; the last pressing of the season-and sometimes turnovers from the corner bakery. Above the sputtering chicken Nancy could hear Kyle singing now, in his strong baritone: "The truth is, I nev nev-er left you..."

"Sit still," Garrett said, looking up from his sketchbook. "Don't you know your role in life?"

Nancy cupped her hands below her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, turned her head to the side, and pursed her lips.

"Don't do that," he said, throwing the crayon stub. "Don't put yourself down, even as a joke."

"Oh, don't a.n.a.lyze everything so seriously," she said, hopping off the window seat and picking up the conte crayon. She threw it back to him. He caught it one-handed. He was the second person she had ever slept with. The other one, much to her embarra.s.sment now, had been a deliberate experiment.

"Tell your shrink that your actions don't mean anything," he said.

"You hate it that I go to a shrink," she said, watching him bend over the sketchbook again. "Half the world sees a shrink. What are you worried about-that somebody might know something about me you don't know?"

He raised his eyebrows, as he often did when he was concentrating on something in a drawing. "I know a few things he doesn't know," he said.

"It's not a compet.i.tion," she said.

"Everything is a compet.i.tion. At some very serious, very deep level, every single thing-" is a compet.i.tion. At some very serious, very deep level, every single thing-"

"You already made that joke," she said, sighing.