“So you wouldn’t have wanted the blow job anyway, is that what you’re saying?”

“I’ll take a rain check. You didn’t really tell them you were my sister, did you?”

“It was the only way I could get them to let me in. You’re tired, I’ve stayed longer than I should have. Franny?” She leaned over, kissed him. “Feel better,” she said. “What’s so funny?”

“I figured we’d get around to kissing,” he said. “I didn’t realize what it would take.”

S H E T O O K A C A B from the hospital, showered at her apartment, changed into jeans and a blouse and flats, and walked down to the Village in time to meet John at the Waverly Inn, just down the street from his apartment. They ate in the garden, then sat over coffee and watched the sky darken. They took the long way home, walking all the way down to Bleecker and returning via Perry Street and Greenwich Avenue.

“I think he’ll be all right,” she said, “but I don’t think he’ll be the same.”

“None of us will.”

She thought about that, nodded. No one was ever the same, she thought. Every day changed you. Some days changed you a little, some days changed you a lot, but each increment of change was essentially irreversible.

A little later he said, “I don’t suppose the Carpenter told him anything about a woman he ran into on Charles Street.”

“I didn’t ask.”

“I somehow doubt it came up while they were blasting away at each other and waiting for the boat to blow up. And now we’ll never know.”

“One thing we know is that you’re innocent.”

“We know there are no charges against me, and won’t be. So we know I’m not guilty. But we don’t know I didn’t do it.”

“How much does it bother you?”

“I’m not sure it does. I know I think about it. I sort of wish I knew.”

“Sort of?”

“Well, I tell myself I wish I knew one way or the other. But what I wish I knew is that I didn’t kill the woman. If I killed her, then I’d just as soon not know. And don’t tell me that doesn’t make sense, because I’m well aware of that.”

“It makes sense to me.”

“And that,” he said, drawing her into his arms, “is why you’re the girl for me.”

And a little later she said, “Am I?”

“Huh?”

“The girl for you.”

“Damn right.”

“Good,” she said.

A N D I N B E D , A F T E R they had made love, slowly, lazily, and with a sweet urgency at the end, after he’d smiled at the reflexive urge for a cigarette, less frequent now, less intense, but still there, after all of that he said, “There’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you.”

“I know.”

“You know?”

“That night, whenever it was. You’ve wanted ever since to ask why I put your hands on my throat.”

“You’ve known.”

“Yes.”

“And just went on waiting for me to say something.”

“And wished you would and hoped you wouldn’t,” she said.

“John, I love you.”

“But?”

“No, it doesn’t come with a but. When I first became obsessed with you—and yes, that’s the right word, it was an obsession—”

“If you say so.”

“You spoke to me right away, through your books. But I was ready for your books to speak to me. From the very beginning, I wanted something from you. I didn’t know it, not consciously.

John, do you know what I wanted?”

“I think so.”

“But you don’t want to say it. Well, in that case you know. I wanted you to kill me.”

“You didn’t know it consciously. When did you find out?”

“When it stopped being true.”

“And when was that?”

“When I put your hands on my throat. When I asked you to do it.”

“‘Please.’ ”

“Yes. That’s what I was asking for. And you wouldn’t, of course, and I suddenly realized that was what I was begging for, and realized, too, that it was no longer something I wanted. That I had probably stopped wanting it our first night together. Or even earlier, when I went to Medea.”

“The piercing lady.”

“Yes.”

“Shave and a haircut, two tits.”

“When I started expressing myself sexually,” she said, “and making art out of my madness. When I started to discover that I could be me and still be alive. But there was a part of me that never woke up and caught on, and that part didn’t stop wanting you to kill me.”

“Until I didn’t.”

“Until you didn’t.”

“Maybe it really doesn’t matter what happened on Charles Street.”

“Duh,” she said. “Haven’t I been saying that all along?”

“YOU KNOW , ” HE SAID , “all things considered, there’s really only one thing that makes me think I might have done it.”

“The rabbit.”

“The rabbit. It’s not like me to take something. I must have been in a bad way to do it, and if I was that far gone . . .” She got up, brought the little rabbit back to the bed with her.

“It’s adorable,” she said, “but I can’t believe you took it intentionally. I think it was inadvertent. I think you were looking at it, holding it in your hand, and then she called for you to come into the bedroom, or whatever, and halfway there you noticed you still had the rabbit in your hand. And you didn’t want to go all the way back to where you found it, and you didn’t know where else to put it, so you stuck it in your pocket for the time being.”

“Intending to put it back later.”

“And then you went to bed with that poor crazy lady, and when you were done all you wanted to do was get out of there. So you forgot all about the rabbit, and when you came home you thought, oh, hell, I’ll have to give it back, which means I’ll have to see her again.”

“I could have put it in the mail.”

“And would have,” she said, “if you’d seen it first thing the next morning, but you didn’t and by the time you did . . .” He thought about it. “You know,” he said, “that’s perfectly plausible.”

“I know, and it’s a lot more plausible than your taking it on purpose, no matter who killed the woman.” She looked at the rabbit she was holding, then at him. “I mean, it’s not as though a rabbit’s a likely totem animal for you. I see you more as a bear.”

“Yeah, I guess I’m sort of bearish.”

“Ursine,” she said. “And if anyone’s a rabbit, it would probably be me.”

“Well, you sure do fuck like one.”

“It’s settled, then,” she said. “You be the bear. I’ll be the rabbit.” forty-two

ON SEPTEMBER 11, 2002, sunrise came at 6:31 A.M. The forecast called for partly cloudy skies, with a forty percent chance of showers in the late afternoon.

J E R R Y P A N K O W , W H O W O R K E D for a catering service and didn’t have to report until nine, had not broken the habit of early rising.

He was up before dawn, took a long hot shower, and thought about the cute guy he’d picked up over the weekend. Really sweet, in and out of bed, but he could have been a guest on I’ve Got a Secret, because he sure did. Wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, but was wearing the mark the ring had left, and kept touching the spot nervously. Married, clearly, and new to the sin that dared not speak its name, which in recent years had become the sin that would not shut up. Lou, he’d said his name was, but he’d stuttered a little getting it out, and Jerry’s guess was that his name did in fact start with an L, but that it was anything but Lou. Dressing, he wondered if he’d ever see him again.

A T 7 : 2 4 , A Y O U N G woman in a white uniform attached a fresh bottle to one of Fran Buckram’s IV lines. “Oh, good,” he said.

“Breakfast.” She giggled as if she’d never heard the line before, which struck him as unlikely.

He closed his eyes but couldn’t get back to sleep. He hoped they’d let him out of here soon, and wondered what he would do when they did. Mend, of course, and eat real food again, and do a lot of physical therapy, but what would he do after that?

Not run around the country making speeches. Not run for office. Not hang out a shingle as a private investigator. None of the above, but what?

He’d think of something.

A T 7 : 4 0 , J A Y M C G A N N came back from his morning run and went straight to the shower. He was dressed by eight, and by the time his wife got to the table he had their breakfast ready. He’d be at his desk by nine, as he was every morning. Writing was a business, after all, and if you wanted to get anywhere with it you had to approach it in a businesslike fashion.

He asked his wife how her omelet was, and she said it was fine, and then she asked him if anything was wrong. No, he said, nothing was wrong. Why? Because you seem different, she said.

“Well, now that you mention it,” he said, and he told her he’d been thinking that he ought to get an office. Someplace just for writing, so that he could go there every day and do his work and then come home. John Cheever, he told her, had had an office early in his career in the basement of his apartment building, and every morning he put on a suit and tie and stuck a hat on his head, and he rode the elevator to the basement and went into a room and took off the jacket and the tie and the hat and went to work.

And put them on again at five o’clock, and went home.

She said, Just for work, right? And he said, Sure, what else?

A T 8 : 12 , J I M G A L V I N woke up on the couch of his Alphabet City apartment. He’d taken off his shirt and shoes but was still wearing his pants and socks. There was a bad taste in his mouth, and a pounding in the back of his head.

He drank a glass of water, threw it up, and drank another. When that one stayed down he drank one more glass of water with a couple of aspirin. He showered, and when he went to shave his hand was trembling. He put the safety razor down and went into the other room, and there was still plenty of booze left in the open bottle, and most of the bottles left in the case. He poured himself a drink, just a short one, and when he resumed shaving his hand was rock steady.

M A U R Y W I N T E R S G O T U P four times during the night. Around seven he decided that was as much sleep as he was going to get, and got busy taking the fistful of herbs he took every morning. He wondered if they were doing any good. One was supposed to shrink his prostate, which would be a blessing, but so far he couldn’t see the difference.

He checked to see if they’d delivered the Times yet. They had, and he brought it in and read it. At eight-thirty his wife told him breakfast was ready, and he told her she was an angel. While he was drinking his second cup of coffee, his wife asked him if he’d had a good night.

“Every night above ground’s a good night,” he told her. “Every day being married to you is heaven.” And he got up from the table and went over and gave her a kiss.