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  She instantly guessed his game and refused on principle to participate when he asked her first if she were a secretary and, second, if into fashion. Jeanne, who had chosen to look at his lap instead of his face, was watching the play of his long fingered hands over his leather satchel when she started as if betrayed and eyed him accusingly. "You're wearing a watch after all."

  "I just wanted to check it," he countered. "It's been giving me trouble."

  "Yeah, yeah."

  "Look," he said anxiously, "I change trains at Fourteenth Street. Where do you get off?"

  "After you," she evaded, and as an afterthought added rudely, "I don't care for your questions."

  He squinched his elbows into his chest; his body withdrew as if to say he had meant no harm.

  She did not have to trust in him for her fear of his aggression to relent; it let up when his body let hers be. After Grand Central, the car had grown emptier and she breathed easier. If he could catch it, forgiveness was implicit in her subsequent statement that it felt good to be sitting down.

  "Because the car is air-conditioned," he insisted.

  She found herself smiling at his smooth yet angular face as he watched her, eyes wide and blue, and she felt as if a door had just blown open. In letting him attract her, she had changed one of her cardinal rules of behavior, but it didn't matter because, she figured, he would be getting off in three stops.

  Was it merely the dependable brevity of their encounter that suddenly made him more amusing in her eyes? He had obeyed her wish and no longer crowded her. This time she made the small talk; she asked him about his watch, a Swatch that showed its inner workings, and told him about hers: the first in her possession, she'd received it from her parents for her ninth birthday, and it still ran beautifully, unchanged except for its band, now one of inlaid Hopi silver in a native sign signifying a prayer feather attached to a row of thunderclouds for rain. "But you have to wind it," she added.

  "How many years have you had it now?" he asked.

  She wondered if this were a roundabout way of extracting more personal information. "We've shared a subway ride, but we don't have to share our ages," she reprimanded.

  "I won't guess," he promised. "My stop's next," and he rose to his feet so fluidly it seemed to her he must have swung himself up, but he held his satchel in his fist. A moment later, he'd switched it to under his arm. His hand reached to take hers, and she gave it to him.

  "Nice meeting you."

  "For doubtless we won't meet again," he dared to add, and she agreed with him. The train was approaching Union Square. He bent his lips to the back of her hand. "Farewell." It was a flourish.

  The car screeched to a stop. One door of the two slid open; people began to file out. "I'm off," he said.

  "I'm right after you." She told him after all.

  "Astor Place, aha!" He was half out of the door when he said it. He grinned and waved, and she turned her face in the dirty window to watch him leave. When the train staggered forward, she had the whole seat to herself for a single stop.

  * * *

  Coming out to the blue sky of an August six o'clock was a momentary shock but also a little boost for the evening ahead toward which she propelled her mind as she walked rapidly west: shopping at the greengrocer's, the deli, and the health food store, picking up clothes at the dry cleaners, and what else? She couldn't remember. While the evenings were still long, she had them free, for in August the repertory company was not in residence. So, after shopping she sat for awhile on a bench in an out-of-the-way square, her feet half out of her low-heeled shoes, both arms cradled around brown paper bags, her pocketbook wedged into her waist.

  At home Jeanne put her purchases away. Then she poured herself a glass of white wine, sat down, and flicked on her phone's answering machine. The first call was from her mother who'd come to the city to shop for the day but who hadn't been able to reach Jeanne at her office, the next from a retired director she'd once worked with. Then came on a man's voice she didn't recognize, somewhat high in timbre. The speaker identified himself as Paul, Althea's friend, to whom she'd given this number in case he wanted to leave her a message and couldn't reach her.

  Jeanne decided to relay Paul's request in a letter instead of by long-distance phone, being influenced by a tradition of writing to Althea going back to when they attended separate schools. After confirming her day of arrival, she added the following note:

  A new man named Paul who presumes himself your friend appeared on my answering machine last Friday the 15th with a desire to let you know he'd called off his dinner party, for his friend Bryce was unexpectedly summoned to his Mississippi hometown.

  And by the way, though I took the trouble to tell you this, dear friend in your enchanted isle, I may be your means of transportation but I'm not yet your concierge.

  Love and kisses,

  Jeanne

  * * *

  That's like Jeanne: to use a French term for what never existed in America, was Althea's second thought as she stood reading Jeanne's letter on the sidewalk outside the post office. The joyous burst of a hitherto denied possibility had curved her lips in a secret smile. Paul was alone in New York. Would she act on an expectation impossibly entwined with conjecture and seize the opportunity to invite Paul to visit while Bryce was away? Then, at the thought of such a stringent test of Paul's attraction to her, she felt a terrible trepidation. What if he were to come only for her to wish him gone, to find in the uncluttered seashore air that what she had dreamt of was a mistake and she was stuck there with it? There was also the question of all of her time. To put it succinctly, would she paint with Paul there?

  The day was picture-perfect, the noon light was blue without being blinding, and so nearly was the air cleared of wind that the planted border of geraniums in front of the post office bent but faintly. Cabbage whites and monarch butterflies dipped to the grass in narrowing spirals. How would she communicate with him? Althea, who didn't want to wait, received more letters than she wrote, yet she hesitated to put it to him over the phone. A terse telegram was her alternative: "Received message via J. If you're free for a short visit, I'm here till Sept. 1. Althea." A phone number followed.

  That was the wire delivered into Paul's outstretched palm later that very afternoon in New York by a messenger in bleached blue jeans and a Shakespeare festival tee-shirt with an encircled portrait of the Bard on its wearer's left breast. The messenger was antsy because Paul hadn't answered the entrance buzzer, and he had had to wait in the lobby until the porter—there was no doorman—let him in after a long look at his outfit and a couple of sharp questions. Paul had been dancing in his studio and hadn't heard the buzzer. But the second buzzer outside the private door that led to the roof was much louder. Ringing in the penthouse, it broke into the dance music like an alarm. In the midst of a leap, Paul was startled, and he came down hard on his ankle. He was swearing under his breath when he limped across the roof to open the private door on the building's top landing.

  Almost injured, he was impatient before he opened the door and astonished afterwards. He thought that telegrams were obsolete, but there was his name, Paul Carmichael, computer-typed on white paper under the envelope's transparent window. He offered a tip and dismissed the messenger. After today's date, August 22, 1980, he read the message, but didn't at once identify the sender. Then, looking at the letters of her name, he pictured the honey-colored hair of Althea sifted with light on a New York street. It was true he was due for a change of scene, but where was her "here"? Was it like this woman he didn't know well, but had, admittedly, imagined touching, to neglect such pertinent information?

  He remembered when he had first met Althea in the spring. In his mind he watched her again as she turned a corner, embattled head down, into the March wind, her hands stuck in her trenchcoat pockets. What would she be like, sunburnt in August? Right there, illuminated by a shaft of afternoon sunlight, he read the telegram twice and called her back.

  Althea had
spent a long time on the beach and then gone shopping, stowing her bag of groceries in a plastic milk crate which she'd strapped to the rack above the rear wheel of her bike. Valiantly, she pedalled back. Just as she rode in a low gear track across the lawn, she heard from inside the house the island phone exchange's rasping buzz. The screen door banged shut behind her, and she picked up the receiver on the sixth ring.

  "I called to say I got your telegram and that you forgot to say from where you sent it," Paul said in Manhattan. But when Althea told him, it appeared he didn't know where Block Island was. Breathless from her bike ride, she elaborated and he listened. It was settled that he would arrive by train and little prop plane on Tuesday (a whole four days, she privately reckoned, before Jeanne came on Saturday).

  After Paul hung up the phone, he basked in a sense of pleasure and possibility. Just when he'd been feeling sorry for himself for having been abandoned by Bryce, an attractive woman had offered him a seashore vacation. It stunned him—how eagerly he had accepted Althea's generous invitation, and how easily they had made plans. He was welcome to stay all week if he liked, Althea had said.

  He hadn't paused a second to wonder whether or not he ought to visit her, and, once he had decided to do it, he didn't mar his decision with regret. It wasn't hard for him to convince himself that he deserved a change of scene. If Bryce objected, Paul thought, it was his fault for having left me to my own devices in the first place.

  In the stream of his thoughts that followed, Paul blamed Bryce. During the year and a half that they had lived together, he had never known Bryce to go anywhere without him. No, he had been the one to go away—on obligatory visits to his family during the holidays, on tours with the companies he danced with- and he'd always felt secure in the knowledge that Bryce was at home waiting for him.

  He realized that it was unfair of him to resent Bryce for having left this time, but he couldn't help it. He minded Bryce's secrecy about his trip as much as the trip itself. After all, he lived with Bryce and shared his moods, even the gloomy ones, which at first Bryce had felt obliged to conceal. He thought of how he had encouraged Bryce to open up. As a consequence, he had often been witness to Bryce's helpless anger at having to live with the incurable disease of multiple sclerosis, and he believed he had tried as well as he could to soothe Bryce and ease his intermittent bouts of despair. He recalled the countless nights when he had held Bryce in his arms and wished that he could give him some of his own health and strength.

  Over the months, he had grown as familiar with Bryce's opinions as with his own. He remembered how Bryce had liked to say that he was born in a poisoned place. Yet now, after years of exile, he had returned to his native Meridian. Paul didn't know why Bryce had gone back to visit a family he'd claimed he tried to forget because he couldn't bear their disappointment in him and their pity of him. Bryce had not divulged the content of the letter he had received ten days ago, which had caused him to phone his parents, purchase an airplane ticket, and leave precipitously for Mississippi.

  "It's a family matter," was all he'd say. "I may be gone a few weeks, perhaps a month." Paul had taken Bryce's reticence as a sign that Bryce distrusted him, and he was so stung that he didn't know what to say. All he could think of was to bring up the end-of-summer dinner party they'd been planning for the Saturday following Labor Day. They had a guest list of fourteen people. "Is the party still on?" Paul asked.

  "I don't know, I can't tell you. Maybe you'd better go ahead and cancel it, because I can't make any promises."

  Annoyed by Bryce's answer, Paul had grown stonily silent. But for the first time in Paul's memory, Bryce had seemed too preoccupied to notice him. What was going on? he wondered. Bryce's secrecy had infuriated him, but once refused, he was too proud to beg for information. Before Bryce left, Paul had withdrawn from him.

  He expected Bryce would phone from Mississippi. After a few days went by without a call, Paul's resentment grew. If he was being unfair to Bryce, he told himself he no longer cared.

  Yet as the days passed, his anger was infiltrated by tenderer feelings. Though it hurt him to admit it, he missed Bryce. He thought of calling him, but he didn't know what to say. Still, he didn't sit at home feeling sorry for himself.

  Going around town, having to answer to no one, he realized that he had missed his freedom. He considered that perhaps he wasn't meant to live the rest of his life as one half of a couple.

  The appeal of Althea's invitation was irresistible. At that moment his wish for revenge was stronger than his desire for a reconciliation with Bryce. He remembered the time last May when he'd introduced Althea to Bryce. He'd known Althea then for about two months—actually, he didn't really know her. He'd met her a few times casually walking along the tree-lined upper promenade of Riverside Park, and twice they'd had a long conversation. They'd learned that they lived on the same block, and that they were both artists, whose arts opposed and complemented one another, she being a painter—a plastic artist—and he being a dancer—a performer.

  They'd already established this basis on that afternoon the previous May, when, on an impulse, he had invited her up for tea. He had wanted to show her the roof garden that he and Bryce had built. Actually, he had built it, and Bryce had paid for it, but he hadn't bothered to explain that to Althea. Althea had been graceful and sweet, he recalled. He had enjoyed showing her the garden. Afterwards, when they were having tea, he had thought that Bryce had been brusque with her. Though he couldn't remember what Bryce had said, he could still picture how Althea, sitting straight-backed on a wrought-iron bench with a design of vines and leaves, had responded to Bryce's look by glancing away.

  Now, contemplating his revenge, it pleased Paul to suspect that Bryce was already a little jealous of Althea. When he left for Block Island, he deliberately didn't let Bryce know.

  Chapter 2

  Absorbed in his thoughts about Bryce and the silent war between them, Paul didn't stop to wonder about Althea until Tuesday morning, when he was already ensconced on the Amtrak train that was taking him from Penn Station to Westerly, Rhode Island. He had a seat to himself, facing backward. As the train was propelled forward, it seemed to him that the landscape was fleeing in front of him. While he amused himself by drawing circles with his forefinger in the dusty glass of the window, he began to consider the arrangement he was hurtling into so blindly.

  He had pleasant feelings about Althea, though they didn't go very deep. She seemed sincere, she was beautiful, and he was certain that she was attracted to him. Considering this, he was aroused.

  For all the time that he and Bryce had lived together, he had never ceased to feel attracted to others. It was his nature, he thought, he couldn't help it. He couldn't control his fantasies, but he hadn't been unfaithful to Bryce.

  In Bryce's absence, he had found himself encouraging chance, speaking to strangers he never expected to see again. He believed that Althea's invitation, coming as it did, was Fate's answer to his entreaties.

  From the train station in Westerly, he shared a cab with other travellers to the airport. He purchased a ticket and waited outside. The wind was blowing steadily from the west, and the wind sock next to the runway scarcely waved, so perfectly was it horizontal. A small propeller plane painted green and white, with the name "New England Airlines" displayed on the side, waited to be boarded. Just as his name was read out on the manifest, Paul was struck by the thought that he'd forgotten to bring something with him which he needed, but he couldn't remember what it was. Confused, he wavered briefly on the tarmac, until the red-faced pilot motioned to him to go on. Overcoming his hesitation, he approached the plane, stowed his bag in the luggage compartment, and climbed in, one of eight passengers.

  He had the window over the wing. As the plane accelerated on the runway and took to the air in a cocoon of noise, he felt a thrill through his nerves. His face pressed to the window, he watched as they passed over the water: wrinkled satin, a skin boiled on blue milk, boats trailing the white slits of
their wakes, and then the green island, here long before he'd heard of its existence. The plane flew over the coastline, lapped by gentle waves. He thought the island looked beautiful in the sunlight: rolling green hills dotted with ponds, few trees, and gray arteries of roads with houses planted at uneven intervals alongside them. Steadily the plane descended, and kissed the ground with a single bump. The passengers smiled with relief as the plane sped down the island airport's runway, with the wind streaming past, and came at last to a stop.

  Alighting, Paul called out, "Althea!" just as he glimpsed her waiting next to a wooden dolly packed with the luggage of those who were leaving. She smiled and waved. She was wearing faded jeans stained with paint and a man's checked shirt with the sleeves rolled up, unbuttoned over a tee-shirt. Her hair blew loose, glinting in the sunlight. Her arms and face were tanned. She looked radiant, he thought, in her old clothes.

  He greeted her with a kiss on each cheek, in the continental style, but neglected to set down his canvas bag first, and his embrace was clumsy. "I'm happy to be here," he said, stepping back to study her. Under her smile, he sensed her tension. As a sign of his power, it pleased him.

  "Is this all your luggage?" she asked.

  "Yes. I like to travel light."

  "Oh, I didn't know. I rented a bike for you, but it's back at the house. I thought we'd take a cab from the airport."

  "Fine."

  He saw that she was nervous, and wanted to reassure her, but didn't know what for. He felt a first inkling of doubt: what was he getting himself into? He shrugged off his worries, not wanting to be influenced by hers.