 
### THE ABSCONDER

Kenneth C. Crowe

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2011 Kenneth C. Crowe

Books by Kenneth C. Crowe

AMERICA FOR SALE

COLLISION

THE JYNX

THE DREAM DANCER

THE HERO

THE ABSCONDER

This book is dedicated to

my wife, Rae Lord Crowe

and to

Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld

founders of the Innocence Project

CHAPTER ONE

OCTOBER 10, 1990

He went up the escalator rising past two flights of unrelieved crème-colored walls. After walking by the Quing Dynasty vases and bottles, he turned left through the hallway lined with prints then paused to look down on the sculpture gallery, a favorite place where he often sat on a bench to rest and watch the women. He savored the lovely ones. The East Side women, slender and well dressed, tasting culture before lunch. The French tourists. The ripe young college students with sketchbooks. The suburbanites in expensive cotton sweaters; the weather was still too warm for cashmere.

Just past the sign: Nineteenth Century European Painting and Sculpture, he turned right. He barely glanced at Rodin's Pygmalion and Galatea, the perfect woman in marble. He went the length of the gallery crowded with quick scanners and serious art lovers to Salome. He walked around a woman working a pencil in a sketchbook; he had seen her here last Wednesday. Same woman, same spot. In her 50s, like him. A hard-faced woman, the corners of her mouth turned down, in a white turtle neck and denim casual shirt worn like a jacket over faded jeans. Her brown hair was pulled back, tied with a red ribbon, giving her an artificially high forehead. She walked with a limp. Her reappearance made him uncomfortable. He knew he was too insignificant a fish to rate an elaborate trap in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The cops would be more likely to try to pick him off the street or grab him in his bed in the middle of the night with as little fuss as possible. He scanned the gallery. No one suspicious. No fearful vibes passed through him.

He stepped to the woman's left, positioning himself near the doorway just in case. He took out his small leather-bound notebook, a birthday gift last March from Phil, to record his impressions of the painting. Salome, her lips set somewhere between a near smile and a smirk, is seated on a folded oriental rug atop a green trunk inscribed with gold atop a leopard skin. She is draped in a golden diaphanous skirt and blouse, her left breast with a well-defined pink nipple and her heavy thighs showing through. These clothes, held in place by a golden clasp, could fall easily away leaving her dressed only in the snake bracelet on her upper right arm. Her right hand is on her hip. Her golden blouse is pink on the left side.

He wrote, "Why? A reflection of the setting sun or the blood from John the Baptist's severed head?"

On her lap is a large golden bowl. Her left hand rests on an ivory-handled knife in an elaborately-decorated scabbard lying in the bowl. He was pleased with himself. The knife in the bowl hadn't registered on him when he began studying the painting last week. He looked for more details. Her heels are raised high above her toes, which are lodged in slippers, black outside, red inside. Her cheeks are rosy.

"Rouged or flushed with the excitement of the dance and the deed?" He scribbled the question in his notebook.

The painting is signed HRegnault Rome 1870.

The woman with the sketchbook glanced at him catching the shift in his eyes from deep concentration to pleasure. A thrill passed through her. He had the most expressive eyes that she had ever seen. She had spotted him last week as she was leaving the museum and he was climbing the broad concrete steps, weaving through the tourists sitting and standing in conversational lumps. He wore a blondish handlebar mustache and long hair gone to gray, pulled back in a pony tail. On an impulse, she turned and followed him back into the museum, to a ticket booth, up the grand staircase to the second floor and to Regnault's Salome. She studied him that day, wanting to approach him, but unable to step across the precipice of first contact with a stranger. She decided to let fate decide for her. Seven days later at approximately the same time, she had returned to the museum, and here he was. She turned on a smile, stepped towards him. With a noticeably deep breath, she offered him her gambit: "Has anyone ever told you that you have wonderfully interesting eyes?"

He looked at her, a quick examination. What did this dame want? Nothing of the cop about her, but he was poised to react.

"They just went from happy fascination to deep suspicion."

"Yeah."

She laughed extending her hand, "I'm Mary Hudson."

"Chris." He shook her hand.

"I saw you here last week and I said to myself, 'Mary, this could be the right face. The mustache, the long hair, but most of all those expressive eyes.' I came back again to be certain. I decided if you were here, we were destined to meet."

"And here we are." He nodded at her sketchbook. "You an aspiring artist?"

"No. I am an artist. Are you an art student?"

He chuckled holding up his notebook. "I'm a perennial student." He snatched her sketchbook away from her. "Could I see your work?" A way of checking on her. He had his back against the wall. His eyes roamed across the throng of people. Some of them noticing him and the woman with a flicker of curiosity. No sign of danger. No tension anywhere but in Mary Hudson, who obviously didn't enjoy having him grab her sketchbook.

Her words were laced with a controlled anger. "I would rather you saw the end product rather than the process."

"You want to take me some place private to see your sketchings?" he said. There was amusement in his eyes now.

"In a way, this place is my place. I have a painting right here in the museum."

"Yeah." A word spoken with contemptuous disbelief. He paged through the pad. Several rough outlines of his face and eyes. He looked at her, anger in his eyes. "No one gave you permission to draw me."

She tried to smile, suppressing the temptation to say, 'Do you realize who I am?' This clod would have no idea. "You're interested in art. Let me show you my painting."

"You really have a painting in the Metropolitan Museum of Art?"

She smiled. She took her sketchbook back. "Come on." She led him past the collections of European paintings to a crowded gallery in the American Wing. The poster advertised: New York Nudes of the Twentieth Century. They threaded through the crowd to the very end of the exhibit. They looked over the heads and shoulders of several people at a large painting, entitled Self Portrait, of a woman with a broad, soft body, a thicket of pubic hair, flabby breasts, and the remains of a waist. She holds a paintbrush in her left hand, a pallet smeared with a kaleidoscope of colors in her right hand. They waited until they could move close to the painting. She pointed to the signature on the painting. "Mary Hudson. Me."

"You in the painting?"

"Me in the painting. Me the artist. One leg shorter than the other. Big nipples. On a high wooden table behind me within easy reach an open bottle of single malt Scotch, the cap lying beside it along with a low-ball glass containing a tiny pool of the golden liquid. American realism in action. Mary Hudson unveiled."

Chris went through his process of examining the painting. First a fleeting look, then a search for details, considering the colors, the light, the expression on the artist's face. He was about to say, You're looking into a big mirror aren't you, when he turned to see a grinning Martin Zelotovich coming towards him. He flinched. She had led him into a room that was a box. Trapped if Zelotovich had backups covering the one way in and the one way out of the room. The vein in his left temple throbbed. Sweat oozed from his palms.

"Mary Hudson," Zelotovich said theatrically. He turned to the dozen people behind him, mostly middle-aged and elderly women. "Ladies and gentlemen, you're lucky today. Right next to her own portrait is Mary Hudson, one of America's greatest living artists."

Chris stepped behind Mary and moved through the gathering of smiling faces out the door. Zelotovich obviously hadn't recognized him. The 60's hair style and the mustache gave him a different look, besides years had gone by. He weaved between clumps of museum visitors, husbands and wives, mothers and children, Japanese tourists with multilingual guides, into the lobby and out of the building.

Mary caught up to him as he was hurrying down the broad gray museum steps. "Chris," she called, and he turned. She was breathing hard from the effort of chasing him. "You see, I'm not only an artist, I have a fan club."

"Who was that guy?"

"A docent. Told him he had caught me at a bad moment. And I ran right after you. You're a fast-moving man. I hope I didn't embarrass him in front of his tour. But then, I hate wasting my time on people who know nothing about art and for the most part really care nothing about it."

"Then who do you paint for?"

"The select few like you." She put on a phony smile, an effort at appearing pleasant, a cover for the pain in her leg. "Let's have lunch, shall we? I have a proposition for you."

Mary said she had access to the Directors' Dining Room, but neither of them would pass the dress code.

He wanted to get away from the museum and Zelotovich. "I know a place on Madison," Chris said. They crossed Fifth Avenue under the warm October sun and passed into the shade of 81st Street.

"You live on the East Side?" she asked.

"No."

"Where do you live?"

He stopped, considered her for a moment, and said: "Wherever I am."

"Oh, a philosopher." She continued walking with her mixed hobble and step.

He led her to into the Madison Bar & Grill set in the basement of a walkup. There was an old man, bald and skinny, reading the Daily Keys at a table in the back of the narrow wood-paneled room whose walls were lined with signed photos of baseball players and boxers from the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. Four men in suits were laughing and talking on barstools at the old wooden bar. While they were taking off their coats, they told the bartender that Mary wanted a scotch, straight up, with a hamburger, and Chris an Irish whiskey on the rocks, a hamburger and steak fries. "Coming right up folks. I'll put the order right in."

"Let me ask you something," Chris said when they settled at a small table, waiting for their drinks and food.

"Oh," she said widening her eyes. "I hope my answers are more forthcoming than yours."

"What's it all about? Art? You're a woman who should know."

"I could give you an easy answer and say art's a three-letter word."

"Some beatnik said that."

"I'm very, very impressed. There's more to you than your eyes."

The bartender put their drinks in front of them. "Couple of minutes for the burgers."

"Here's to you," Chris said, touching her glass with his.

"And to you." She sipped her drink. "What is a work of art? It is something unique. For a painter, a vision transferred from her eyes through her brain through her brush onto a surface. Could be canvas or paper or wallboard. And that work changes you when you study it whether you know it or not. The impact I'm describing isn't delivered to tourists walking through museums at ten miles an hour, then giving their focused attentions to the trinkets and reproductions in the gift shops."

"I have the same notion. That's why I decided to study Salome. I wanted to see what I could get out of a painting if I really put myself into it. Took notes. Thought about it."

"Think of an onion when you look at a painting. The obvious meaning is the sweet, pretty lady, dressed in gold. Then start peeling away the layers and get into what the artist was thinking and what she did that was beyond her intent straight out of her subconscious. I'll give you a layer of Salome to think about: Don't judge a woman's potential for danger by her looks." She winked at Chris. "There is a passive innocence to her face; a pleasant set to her lips; her eyes are almost hidden by those waves of thick black hair you can almost feel. She makes me think of Keats' La Belle Dame Sans Merci."

She had moved into Chris' arena. He recited: "I met a lady in the meads, full beautiful. A fairy's child. Her hair was long, her foot was light. And her eyes were wild."

She reached across the small scarred oak table to place her hand on his. "You are marvelous. There are so many layers to you. I've just got to have you." She paused. "As a model of course." She laughed and the bartender, with a bottle of ketchup tucked under his arm, put their hamburgers on the table. "Do you have any mustard?" she asked.

"Coming right up." He fetched a jar of mustard from a sideboard. "Enjoy," he said to her.

"Give us another round," Chris said. He waited until the bartender had departed. Was this a con? he wondered. No. He saw her self portrait in the museum. His immediate reaction of suspicion was replaced by the pleasure of the chosen.

"This will be an adventure for you. I'm going to take you to places you've never been." She bit into her hamburger.

"You're going to take me traveling?"

She laughed. "I meant psychologically. Spiritually. You'll have fun doing it." She took one of his steak fries, dipping it in his ketchup. Enjoying the Scotch, enjoying the hamburger slathered with mustard and ketchup. The narrow room was warm and friendly. The men at the bar were laughing. "I'm having a really good time," she said, pausing then saying emphatically, "For the first time since Monday."

"What happened Monday?"

"My fifty-fifth birthday. I realized that John Keats was 26 when he died, and Henri Regnault was 28. Each of them produced masterpieces in their short lives. I've lived longer than the two of them put together, and while I've done some pretty good work, I have yet to paint the best I can."

"I'm 56. I'm a year older than you and I haven't produced a goddamn thing."

"Why you interest me Chris is because for the longest time I've wanted to do a pair of paintings, maybe the work should be called a duad or a dichotomy certainly too big for a diptych, centered on radically different facets of the same face. A work of art is a journey, Chris, and a masterpiece is an epic journey. When you begin you never know what your final destination will be. In a quagmire. Or on top of the mountain. This is Everest I'm talking about."

"And all I have to do is stand there while you're climbing the mountain to glory?"

"You want to understand art. Model for me and you'll see the process from the inside. Besides, I'll pay you. I'm not asking you to give me your time free."

He looked into his glass. Only the remembrance of the whiskey on the ice and in the melted water. He was enjoying the life he lived, not wanting to change anything at the moment. "I have a motto. Carpe Occasionem. Seize the moment. When I'm ready for the moment that you're offering me, I'll give you a call."

She fished into the big bag holding her sketchbook, coming up with a small silver case decorated with a butterfly. "Do you have a business card?" she asked.

He smiled at that. He shook his head, no.

She slipped two cards from the silver case. "One is for you. Write your name and phone number on the back of the other." She gave him a pen.

He hesitated, then wrote his number at the Bog. He slid the card across the table. "Thanks for lunch." He left her sitting in the booth, with the check.

CHAPTER TWO

Mrs. Baltic was sitting at her table under the discretely-lit oil portrait of Daniel O'Rorke, the founding father of Burty's Bit o' Green. Her two dogs, a Japanese Chin and a Shishatsu, were lying at her feet. She was passing time bent over the New York Post, her scalp showing through her thinning, wiry, red hair. Chris spotted her as he walked through the front door. She was early; usually the car service dropped her and the dogs around 8, a few minutes after he arrived for work. He went right behind the bar, snatched her favorite bourbon off the shelf, scooped ice into a shaker, poured in the Gentleman Jack, a little sweet vermouth and just a touch of bitters. Swirled the contents with a glass wand then dropped three maraschino cherries into one of Mrs. Baltic's personal crystal glasses. He put the shaker and the glass on a small tray.

"Take off your jacket at least," Burty the Third said to him. He was fuming, hating the presence of the dogs in the dining room, fear boiling in his gut that a city health department inspector would appear. That would cost him a $20 bill.

Chris said, "Don't come down on me because you're unhappy. Tell Mrs. Baltic to keep her dogs home." He slipped off his bulky LL Bean parka then picked up the tray. He knew why Burty wouldn't say anything to her. Mrs. Baltic had been coming to the Bog, as the regulars called Burty's Bit o' Green, twice a week for at least 50 years and when Burty the Third's father, Burty the Second, ran into trouble with a loan shark sometime in the 1930s, the Baltics, Dr. and Mrs. Baltic, bailed him out with a no-interest loan. Those roots gave her privileges that couldn't be denied, including her favorite table and the dogs. When Dr. Baltic was alive that was their table for a cocktail as a prelude to dinner at a nice restaurant or a Broadway show. Since he passed on in 1985, she came alone or with her dogs every Monday and Thursday for two hours, arriving around 8 and leaving around 10. She insisted that Chris prepare her two bourbon Manhattans, one when she arrived and the other halfway through her stay.

Burty's lips tightened into a thin line. "Give your girlfriend her drink and get back here so I can go home."

He smirked at Burty. His girlfriend! She was a lonely old lady with all of the afflictions of the old: slightly stooped from osteoporosis, hard of hearing, tending to drift into sleep--even in public--forgetful, a thickened body, wrinkles. They had become friends. She enjoyed his banter, and often told him that she wished her divorced daughter in Vermont could find a man like him. A real man.

Mrs. Baltic folded the newspaper as he approached. "Are you okay, hon?"

He smiled erasing the bleak expression of his leftover anger at Burty. He leaned close to Mrs. Baltic: "Love has gone and left me. And the days are all alike."

"Her name is on the tip of my tongue. The candle burns at both ends poet."

"Very good, Mrs. Baltic. Edna St. Vincent Millay."

"She raised her Manhattan to him: 'But, ah, my foes, and oh, my friends. It gives a lovely light.' Dr. Baltic loved her. He used to recite that all the time."

"Gotta get going," Chris said.

She knew from the rough edge to his voice and his crude language that he had missed the polish of college despite his repertoire of poems and impressive skills in reciting them. He reminded her of a young Irish thug she met in Greenwich Village when she first came to New York from Vermont with her dream of being a Broadway musical star. She could close her eyes and see him laughing standing naked over her or fully clothed in a pin-striped suit and spats at the bar of the speakeasy where they ate and drank on almost every night of their month-long courtship that ended when he left and never came back. She sipped her Manhattan. "You've got a great presence, Chris. I could imagine you whispering romantic lines to a mature, beautiful woman in a play or a film. Why are you still a bartender?" A question that she repeated to him periodically forgetting that she had asked it until he responded with his usual answer.

"I've ended up where my life has carried me, Mrs. Baltic."

She overcame the surge of embarrassment at her faulty memory to say, "I see so much potential in you and I know what I'm talking about Chris." Mrs. Baltic was fizzy with good cheer. Chris was glad for that. He dreaded the occasions when she ruminated about her stage career, an early start and an early retirement. She was on the stage at 17 in the "Greenwich Village Follies of 1921" snared Dr. Baltic's heart when he saw her in "Artists and Models" in 1925, and was married to him within a year. Retired from show business at age 22. The doctor arranged for private tutors to get her a high school diploma then sent her to NYU for a degree. She later got a masters. Her life was spiced with theatre-going, museums, lectures, reading, and good restaurants. When the children came, she had help to ease the burdens of motherhood and domesticity. Yet sometimes she spoke with regret over failing to take Ginger Rogers' path from New York musicals to Hollywood.

"Gotta get going," Chris said. "I'll be back to talk to you later."

He worked pouring drinks, mostly whiskey on the rocks or pints of beer with occasional martinis and Margaritas, for the waitress covering the small dining room and for the customers at the bar, a mix of men and women, half of them regulars, filling every stool, leaving some standing. At 9 o'clock, after making sure everyone at the bar had a drink, he brought Mrs. Baltic her second shaker of Gentleman Jack Manhattan with three maraschino cherries and a fresh glass to her table.

"Thank you, dear. This will help me sleep tonight," she said. He sat for a while to tell her about his second trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art the day before. Mrs. Baltic had taken Chris to an off-off Broadway production in the East Village of Oscar Wilde's Salome. The teenage Salome on the stage of the tiny theater, danced with her sweet young breasts, nipples erect, tantalizingly exposed and hidden by turns under whirling translucent purple veils. Temptation personified. Mrs. Baltic had been aroused by the dance of this wonderfully-talented nymphet, whose image replayed over and over in the air around her, on the street and in her bedroom. She would have been splendid in that role when she was a slender girl with a narrow waist and flawless skin. She regretted that Chris hadn't seen her then. That thought prompted her to buy him a membership in the museum and to suggest that he use it to study Regnault's Salome for insights into two very different artists dealing with the same subject.

Chris talked of his first impression of the painting, seeing a pretty innocent girl with a fulsome head of thick black hair, who looked like a gypsy in her loose, transparent skirt and blouse. Then he became aware of the knife and the bowl for transporting John the Baptist's head and he understood the title, Salome. He told her that he had met an artist who had a painting in the museum, a nude of herself, and seemed as fascinated by Salome as he. Seeing a flicker of jealousy pass across Mrs. Baltic's face, Chris said the artist was thick bodied and austere. No lipstick or makeup. A washerwoman hairdo. No great beauty. A fresh customer strolled into the bar giving Chris the excuse to break away from her.

At 10 o'clock Chris walked Mrs. Baltic to the waiting car, giving her a kiss on the cheek as she slipped him her usual $10 tip.

Back inside the Bog, one couple lingered at a table in the dining room and the bar was down to half a dozen men. The writers from the New York Daily Keys would begin filtering in about half an hour to bring the Bog back to life with laughter and stories about the stories they had written.

CHAPTER THREE

Chris woke from his doze, warm and comfortable in his bed, to the sound of rain beating on the window. He heard the door open and close, then Phil's theatrically loud squeal of delight in finding the gifts. A bouquet of red roses on top of two packages, wrapped in lavender with white satin bows. He picked up the remote on the night table to turn on the stereo. A Phil Coulter tape. Minutes dragged by. He was tempted to get up, but wanted her to come to him.

Phil danced through the bedroom doorway, swirling the sheer golden silk scarf around her naked body, waving the flowers gracefully, high above her head. She was wearing the cultured pearl necklace. The scent of her perfume filled the room. And just as he had imagined, Phil was using his three gifts to bring him pleasure. The flowers and the necklace were suggestions from Trish Cavallo, the Daily Keys columnist. They were easy. He went to Macy's for the pearls. They were on sale. He went out this morning to a florist on 31st Street under the el for the roses. He searched for the scarf through Macy's and Bloomingdale's and half a dozen small shops until he found the perfect golden cloth at a surprisingly low price in a store on Second Avenue selling imports from India. Salome had inspired that gift.

"Happy birthday," he said, throwing back the covers.

"Oh, is that for me too?"

He laughed. She knew exactly what to say, what to do. He had a desire, Phil anticipated it and satisfied it. Trish had asked him whether the gifts were for a woman he was just screwing or a woman he was making love with. He hesitated, never before considering the difference. "I'm asking do you love her?"

"Yes I sure do," he said after another long pause.

Trish laughed and knocked back her scotch. "Whether you love a woman or not, the answer would be the same. Pearls and flowers are always a sure bet. You'll get an extra good bang out of your woman every time with flowers or pearls. But put them together and what do you get? Wow!"

Phil was skinny, with small, nice breasts, bony hip bones and a slight belly. She had bleached blonde hair, dark skin, and light brown pubic hair. Her backside was her best feature, in and out of clothes. Without make up, and she rarely wore any coming to his bed, there was a mannish toughness about her, a product of what she thought had been a hard life. Widowhood at 36, working as a waitress to support her two children in her father-in-law's Greek restaurant on Steinway Street. This morning, her hair was done. She was in makeup, her eyes darkened, rouge over a base, lipstick. Her nipples painted red. She was beautiful.

After making love, just before drifting into sleep, Chris whispered to Phil, "I love you."

"Another birthday gift," she said, nuzzling against his neck, "and I love you and always will."

She was 38 today. He was 56 last March. An age span of 18 years, which they never discussed and didn't seem important in the context of their love making.

***

Chris fell almost immediately into a familiar dream: He is dancing down a cell-lined hall singing, "I'm off to see the Wizard." Hughie Monaghan and Butch O'Brien, dressed in black, heads shaved, lips pressed tightly together, are walking side by side towards the room with the electric chair. Chris stops, turns. He yells after them. "They're killing me too. A little at a time." They ignore him. The executioner has stepped out of the little room, arms crossed, waiting. He can barely make out the man's features. Is that Red Kearney? Chris continues down the hallway, no longer singing, no longer dancing, head bowed, sobbing.

***

He awoke, still sobbing.

"Are you alright, honey?"

"Yeah," he said embarrassed by his display of weakness.

"I suppose you're not going to tell me about the dream?"

"No." He lit two cigarets.

"Maybe I could help you, you know, if you told me about it? Maybe you should see a shrink? They specialize in what haunts people."

"I know what the dream's all about. Regret for something that ate up a big piece of my life." He thought about Hughie and Butch while he smoked. He had never forgotten the newspaper accounts of their last meals: pork chops, French fries, salad, apple pie a la mode and coffee for lunch. Their last suppers: Steak, baked potato, peas, chocolate cake, and tea. Could they sit in their cells and enjoy eating meals like that with death waiting down the hall? Maybe you don't believe they're really going to put you in the chair until they do. Butch said at the end, "God knows I'm innocent." That bothered Chris. Why would he say that?

"My mystery man," Phil said. "You know, we talk all the time, but you never told me where you got that." She ran a finger along the ragged white scar on his left side. "Or this." She stroked the tattoo in faded black lines of the Peregrine falcon talons on the attack with a stream of blobs representing blood and the pieces of a snake flying behind. She touched his left shoulder. Another tattoo: the I Ching hexagram for Strategic Withdrawal.

He swung his legs onto the floor, sitting with his back to her, not answering. The tattoo on his chest recounted a moment in his years locked in Auburn State Prison. He was the falcon. The snake was Les Owens, the black jocker, who made the fatal mistake of trying to turn Chris into a queen just to show how bad a dude he was. Chris and his mentor, Lew Tieh, were walking together when Owens moved into his attack. Tieh sensed the danger and turned with a defensive maneuver that deflected the thrust of the shiv. The homemade weapon gouged a piece of flesh out of Chris' side. In a fury of combat, Chris grasped Owens by the throat in a grip that lasted only seconds, cutting off the flow of blood to his brain and life from his body.

The screws found Owens dead where he fell and Chris standing in his cell, soaked with his own blood. He said he didn't see who stabbed him. The shiv Owens had used was gone, disappeared into the prison. They questioned Tieh, knowing that he and Chris were seldom apart. He didn't see anything either. The prison doctor sewed up the wound and in the morning, Chris was transferred to Attica and Tieh to Dannemora. Had Owens been a white man the screws might have made an effort to pin the killing on Chris. He saw a balance. Sometimes they framed you, sometimes they let you go. Whatever was convenient. He was left with a lingering sense of the loss of Tieh and the shame of snuffing out another man's life. The memory of killing Owens had clung to him, a ghostly elemental that whispered in his ear from time to time, asleep or awake, "murderer."

CHAPTER FOUR

Rag's all-night restaurant, breakfast 24 hours a day, had a lonely feeling at a quarter to five in the morning. The street outside, under the el, was dark, lit only by the restaurant's neon and the pale yellow light of a tired streetlamp. Chris parked right outside the front door. That didn't happen very often, but he was earlier than usual. He had found a parking place next to the Bog when he went to work that evening, and the traffic over the 59th Street Bridge coming back into Queens was sparse. The only customers in the restaurant were a pair of Daily Keys delivery drivers, who were regulars, sitting at the counter chatting.

Chris stopped at Rag's two or three times a week on the way home from work. The coffee was good. He always ate breakfast at the restaurant on Tuesday and Friday mornings so the kitchen wouldn't be a mess when Phil came upstairs. She liked a clean house, and could get nasty if the stove had grease spots or the kitchen floor was speckled with crumbs. He took a small table towards the back of the restaurant away from the door and the cold that other customers would bring with them.

"Coffee, hon?" the waitress asked. She was a puffy woman with bags under her eyes in a pale pink dress with a full white apron and a matching lacey cap. She carried a Pyrex pot of black coffee and a long, laminated menu. She had been taking his breakfast orders for months, but still went through the routine of asking if he wanted coffee and offering him a menu.

"I need coffee, but I don't need a menu. Let me have the French toast and sausage links. With maple syrup. Please." Sometimes he ordered eggs over light with home fries and sausage; once in a while a cheese and onion omelet.

She wrote the order on a green pad. "No orange juice this morning?"

"No thanks." He never ordered the orange juice.

He enjoyed sitting alone at this old Formica table sipping the hot coffee that radiated through his body. He studied the signs over the counter: The Big Man/four eggs lottsa bacon/toast/all the coffee you can drink/$2.09. The pancake special with sausage and bacon/$2.09. New York Strip steak—best in Queens--with French fries and Greek salad/$14.75. A cop came in for a container of coffee and a Blueberry Danish to take out to his patrol car. A big grey garbage truck, headlights bouncing, rumbled by outside on 31st Street. Going too fast.

The waitress brought his order along with the coffee pot to refill his cup.

"Not much action," Chris said.

"Wait till 6 o'clock. They come in droves. All at once."

"That's what you want." Chris poured the faux maple syrup on his French toast, taking care to avoid the three sausage links placed in an arc at 12 o'clock on the heavy diner China plate. The food made the coffee taste even better.

A little after 6, Chris was in the heavy green easy chair in his living room reading B. Traven's The Treasure of Sierra Madre for the third time. He had seen the movie when he was a kid, and read the book twice, in Auburn and in Attica. Still dark outside. The sky was clear. Traven was a mystery man on the run from something. He got beyond the reach of whatever was after him in Mexico. Chris doubted if anyone were chasing him, but his quandary was he could never get into trouble with the law or his mask would be stripped away. That's how absconders like him got caught. They weren't run to earth; they stumbled back into the maws of the law. He was never going back to prison again. That was the one certainty of his life.

He changed into his exercise clothes: sweatpants, a t-shirt, windbreaker, white socks and running shoes. The sun was shining, promising a beautiful October morning. He walked on the sidewalk to 20th Avenue, then stepped past a parked car to jog in the road, running in place twice as cars pulled out of side streets, he moved past the Con Ed power plant, waving to the rent-a-cops on the gate, to Shore Boulevard into Ralph DeMarco Park, a narrow strip of lawn, trees, a few decorative lampposts and curving concrete paths on the east shore of the East River. He ran into the park onto the path closest to the dark, fast-moving river. He looked towards the New York skyline, the Empire State Building, Citibank's triangle and an irregular ridge of nondescript high rises, a view intersected by the arch of the Hell's Gate railroad bridge and beyond by the long span of the Triboro Bridge. When he reached the end of the small park, he turned back, walking to his favorite spot, a small flat patch of lawn within an open triangle of trees. He stood, feet spread to shoulder width, hands at his side. He faced north, took five deep breaths and moved into the tai chi chuan forms, performing them slowly with a detached grace.

He walked back to the house on the sidewalk, past several blocks of shoulder to shoulder one-car garages with large brown doors set in cream-painted columns and yellow brick walls. He waved to the UPS man who plied the neighborhood in his boxy brown truck, to the letter delivery lady in her grey uniform, a young mother with two children in a stroller. He seemed to float in an ecstasy of happiness. Life had become very good. Phil. The Bog. The joy of sunny days, rainy days, occasional snow, biting winds, hot mornings, cold mornings in the park and on the street.

Phil was waiting in his bed when he got back to the house. He bent over her, kissing her left breast. "It must be Friday," he said, shucking his sweats and underclothes.

"Take your shower."

He showered and perfumed himself. He slipped under the covers to the warmth of her body.

Afterwards when they smoked their usual post-coital cigarets, she asked him, "Chris, what does a man want in a woman?"

"What you are is what I want."

"I don't mean you. I know what you want. A good lay."

"That's not true. You're much more than that to me. I told you I love you."

"And what do we do together, other than go to bed?"

"I want to do more. You're the one who wants us to be a secret." He wondered what this was about? Phil could shift so quickly from being wildly alive to glum. Usually because of some dumb remark of his.

"My father-in-law would kill you, kill me, if he ever found out about us. You don't understand about how the Greeks feel about their women."

"I know I'm a lot older."

She cut him off. "I don't want to be cruel Chris, but what have you got, another four or five good years left in you, you say so yourself, then you're into your 60s and I'd be your nurse. You're not going anywhere Chris. You've got no money. I've got years ahead of me. I've got two kids. I've got to think of them." She was crying. "I really wanted to ask you, but I didn't know how, whether you think a successful, educated man would want me? I've got two kids. I never graduated from college. Not many more years and I'll be sagging."

"Did you meet someone else? Is that what this is all about?"

"Two weeks ago, I went to that party at my sister's house out in Plainview. There was this lawyer there. His sister lives next door to my sister. He's a widower with a little kid. He's a great dancer. He took me out on my birthday, Tuesday night."

"We made love Tuesday."

"That's the trouble. I went to bed with him Tuesday night too. It wasn't very good, not like with us."

He felt a searing pain in his stomach. "Maybe he'll get better with practice."

She put her arms around him, kissing his lips and eyes, her tears wetting his cheek.

He started to take her arms away, then stopped. If he did that, she could be gone forever. "I don't want to lose you," he said hugging her, kissing her.

"I felt like I was cheating on you, Tuesday night."

"Maybe that's why you didn't enjoy it."

"Maybe," she said.

She got dressed in silence. He lay there without speaking, lost in sadness.

CHAPTER FIVE

Trish Cavallo, the Daily Keys columnist, came in a little after 11 with Tom Manion, her boyfriend, a bearded, roundish, public relations man with wiry brown hair who organized the annual Media Versus The Moguls softball game in Central Park on the third Sunday of September. He used invitations to play to leverage his connections to clients and the city's journalists. In addition, the very favored were invited to his place in the Hamptons for a weekend or given use of his house in the far reaches of Ireland's Donegal. Manion slapped the bar: "Barkeep! Two double scotches with just a scent of water for two thirsties."

"Got something for you," Trish said holding up a brochure.

"Right." Chris turned to the top shelf for the Dewar's. He poured the whiskey into two crystal lowball glasses from a set of eight kept for Manion and his guests in a red velvet-lined box with the Manion coat of arms on its cover. He measured a teaspoon of spring water for each glass. He put them on the bar in front of Trish and Manion, then fetched two stirrers and a small bowl of ice. Manion was a regular held in high regard by Burty the Third. He brought celebrities for drinks and parties. Burty often said, "Manion's a man who makes the cash register ring." Chris didn't like Manion, and was disappointed that Trish did.

"To the best woman a man ever met," Manion said touching her glass with the slightest clink.

"To a connoisseur," she said, and laughed. Trish sparkled when she laughed.

Chris stood behind the bar listening to their familiar exchange. Trish was slender in an athletic way, a brunette with no gray despite being in her early 50s; she had a youngish face with high cheekbones and olive skin. A Mediterranean cast like Phil's. She was nearer his age, but out of his reach. He had tried. But he was on the wrong side of the bar, and without an expense account.

"You're looking gloomy tonight," Trish said to Chris. She felt uncomfortable with his hovering. Usually Chris moved down the bar giving Manion and her space and privacy.

"You said you brought me something."

"Oh yes." She held up the brochure with a photo of a long white yacht set against an azure sea, a sky with puffy white clouds, and a huge ghostly figure of an ancient bearded warrior in Greek armor shielding his eyes from the sun. In the wake of Aeneas was printed in large red letters across the lower part of the brochure. She unfolded it on the bar to display a long map with a dotted line connecting the site of ancient Troy on the coast of Turkey across the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas to Carthage near Tunis in North Africa. "I was doing a column on a travel agent who specializes in yacht vacations, and I got this for you."

He glanced at the brochure, scanning the map finding Sicily, and recited: "They were all under sail in open water; With Sicily just out of sight astern, Lighthearted as they plowed the white-capped sea."

She clapped. "Isn't he just marvelous."

"Amazing. I salute you," Manion said raising his glass to Chris.

"Someday I'm going to write a column about this astounding bartender who comes up with just the right lines every time."

"Please don't."

"What's that from the Iliad or the Aeneid?"

"From the loser's perspective, Virgil's Aeneid, or I should say, Robert Fitzgerald's translation of The Aeneid."

"How could you possibly memorize all the poems you know?"

"Some men spend their time handicapping horses, I focus on poetry." The convict in Jack London's The Star Rover was his model. That poor lonely son of a bitch, wrapped in a straitjacket in the hole, escaped madness by projecting his soul across time into his previous lives. The Aeneid was Chris' wormhole to another existence. He escaped madness and dullness by memorizing the entire epic, twelve books, in Latin. He started in the punishment box in Elmira Reformatory where he was stashed for fighting off a ferocious beast who wanted to turn him into a sissy. He fought him with an insane fury, smashing his nose with an elbow, poking out his right eye, and slamming his head against the floor cracking his skull. Chris came out of it with broken teeth that bothered him for years and a torn lip that healed with a small reminiscent lump. There wasn't much light in the box. Just barely enough to see a line at a time. He rested his eyes as he memorized. In later trips to the hole, in Auburn and in Attica, he sang the lines aloud. He sounded like a mumbler to the guards on his journey to the stars. Spouting Virgil's Latin was too pretentious so he fell back on favorite lines from Fitzgerald's fluid translation to entertain the Bog's customers.

Manion tapped the map with his left forefinger. "What a great adventure this would be. We could do a foursome. Trish and me and you and your wife or girlfriend or significant other. She tells me you're always talking about retracing Aeneas' steps."

"One of my dreams."

"Here it is buddy. Only $7,500 a head to live a dream." He turned the brochure over. "They only need 14 passengers and off they go. Gourmet meals, wine, champagne. Swimming in the blue, blue sea. Sunbathing on secluded little beaches for consenting adults." He winked at Chris, a sordid signal that promised Trish and other naked women on warm brown sands.

"I could go for a bit of that," Trish said.

So could Chris. He had never seriously considered visiting Troy and Carthage, walking in the footsteps of Aeneas. He identified with the aspect of the Trojan hero forced to flee from defeat, to track across hostile and unfamiliar terrain. He had almost $6,000 stashed in cash to finance another strategic withdrawal if he ever had to go that route again. Phil would love a trip like that if he could afford to take her, which he couldn't. And, there was the fear and loathing factor. She would be afraid of her father-in-law's reaction, and embarrassed to be with so old a man. Chris broke away from Trish and Manion moving down the bar to refill a customer's glass with beer from the tap. He kept busy mixing drinks, doing paperwork, talking to other regulars until they finished lingering over their scotches and waved good night.

Trish left the brochure on the bar, next to Manion's $2 tip.

CHAPTER SIX

Chris unlocked his front door, and immediately knew someone was in the apartment. His heart fluttered. He took five deep breaths. Stood very still, listening. Someone was in the bedroom. He closed and latched the front door. That would slow down anyone behind him. His escape route was through the bedroom window onto the tin roof over the back porch and up onto the roof of the house, and a straight run across the roofs of the connected houses to 21st Avenue. Whoever was in the house was between him and that window. He was confident he could take down a burglar, especially a kid. If it were the cops, he was in trouble. They would be there in force. At least two in the bedroom, others coming out of hiding in the hallway on the other side of that locked door. He would confront the problem, and deal with it. He slipped into the bedroom, poised for combat.

In the yellow glow from the streetlight, he could see her outline, the blonde hair on the pillow, the covers wrapped around her shoulders. Phil. He looked down at her. This was the first time that he ever come home from work to find her in his bed. This would be what marriage was like, or at least living together. He quietly stripped off his clothes. He bent over her, kissing her gently on the mouth. She opened her eyes. She smiled. "That was nice. I must have fallen off. I wanted to surprise you."

"You did." He slipped under the covers, taking her in his arms, kissing her on the lips and neck, feeling the inviting warm of her body.

She shivered. "Oh, you are so cold."

He slipped down between her legs redolent with the scent of her perfume. She moaned, whispering, "You're driving me crazy. I can't move too much, the kids are downstairs." He continued, flickering his tongue then driving it deep inside of her. She sobbed with pleasure, staying rigidly still. Just as he was ready to move up to enter her, she said, "Make love to me. Please. Now! I can't wait." The bed squeaked under them and as she reached her peak, she jack hammered her hips lifting him up and down, too excited to be concerned about quiet. When she was finished, he rolled off her onto his back. He was panting from the effort, laughing with pleasure.

She turned to him. "I love you."

He drew her to him; "I love you too," he said.

"I had to tell you I loved you. I couldn't eat supper, I couldn't study, I couldn't even watch TV. I was awake all night thinking about you, how much I hurt you, afraid I wouldn't see you again." She squeezed him in her arms. "I love you. Never doubt that. I thought I loved Al until I met you. Last night, just the thought of losing you made me realize what real love was all about." She had married Al right after high school, both were 17 about to be 18, and she was pregnant. By the time he got himself killed by a tractor-trailer speeding through a red light on Ditmars Boulevard on the night of the drunken celebration of his 36th birthday, Al regularly seethed with an anger that lasted for days at a time over the entrapment of marriage; their sexual encounters had become perfunctory. He left her with two almost grown children, a son and a daughter, the house paid up because of the wisdom of mortgage insurance, in-laws who disliked her, and the prospect of a juicy settlement someday from the trucker's insurance company. Within a year of the funeral, Phil, who continued to wait tables in Al's family's restaurant, was registered at Hunter College, where her daughter was matriculating, taking two classes a week towards a degree in Communications, and she was experiencing an unanticipated sexual adventure with Chris, the tenant from upstairs.

Chris fell into a deep sleep, not even stirring when Phil got dressed and left for the bakery to buy fresh rolls and a pecan raisin coffee cake for her children's breakfast.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Chris looked across Federal Plaza in downtown New York, just north of City Hall and opposite the Manhattan and U.S. District Court Houses, searching for Lew Tieh in the large flat space on which more than 100 men and women, most Chinese, some Caucasians, moved through the graceful tai chi chuan forms in silence, each performing the ritual as though alone. Chris walked the perimeter of the plaza then across it at a 45-degree angle examining the devotees.

Almost two years ago, Chris had been strolling past Federal Plaza, en route for dim sum in Chinatown with a recent divorcee after an exhilarating night together when he glimpsed a little old man presiding over four students, three Chinese youths and an American woman. He left his companion on the edge of the plaza, hurrying forward. "Tieh," he called.

The master and his students ignored him, continuing through the ancient patterns with Chris standing disappointed for a moment before returning to his puzzled companion. "What was that all about?" she asked.

"I thought I saw an old friend."

She was irritated. "You just walked away from me like I didn't matter. Don't ever do that to me again."

"Sorry. I was so surprised at seeing him, I just forgot everything else. He must be 90 now. I just never expected to see him again." He knew instantaneously that he had offered the wrong answer. She was a self-centered woman, who in the thrall of sex had opened herself to him, weeping with joy, telling him her ex-husband and other lovers paled in comparison to his performance.

She had begun coming to the Bog on a nightly basis for the past month, joking with him, enjoying his poetry. Last night, she stayed until closing, and invited him to her place in Brooklyn Heights. He had napped for a few hours after they fucked, then showered, and accepted her suggestion of a romantic walk across the Brooklyn Bridge on a lonely Sunday morning to breakfast in Chinatown.

She wasn't willing to put his innocent distraction behind her. She stood with her fists on her hips, confronting him, "I told you, I've had it up to here with men who use me. I thought you were different. Never again is my motto."

He had enjoyed her so much, her screams of pleasure, that he anticipated a return to her bed after the dim sum and then sleep until he had to go back to work. He didn't want to lose her this morning over a misunderstanding. "I'm sorry. Take me to your dim sum place and let's enjoy the rest of the morning together."

She stood with her head bowed, deciding. "Okay," she said after a while.

They went, side by side without speaking or touching, to a walkup restaurant on Mulberry Street. They ate in silence. The magic gone. She fumed over his insult. Chris remained distracted, his mind on Tieh. He hadn't seen him for 27 years since the day they transferred him to Attica and Tieh to Dannemora. Feb. 2, 1963, the day after he crushed Les Owens' throat. Tieh was the master who put him on the path of tai chi chuan. That journey started the day Tieh sat down beside him in the mess hall in Auburn to whisper, "I have a Chinese antidote to fear and boredom and loneliness." Chris listened because this was an old con with a reputation. This skinny little Chink, in for murder, seemed to have eyes in the back of his head. The story was that when a crazy went after him, he easily eluded every frantic slash of the shiv until the man dropped to the floor in exhaustion. When a gang encircled the Chink in the showers to punish him for some imagined slight, he pummeled and bloodied six muscular cons, fracturing one's skull against a grey tiled wall, without losing his breath. Then he finished his interrupted weekly shower and went quietly to the hole for 90 days. Tieh taught him the 120 forms that brought inner peace, calm and elusiveness in response to attack, and patience.

She signaled the waiter for the tab. He watched as she produced a Gold American Express card. She stared into his eyes, deep breaths flaring her nose. The waiter returned with the charge form. She signed it. Held up the receipt. "You were worth it. No need to see me home."

No encore, he thought. He took the subway to Brooklyn to fetch his car near her apartment.

The following Sunday, and many a Sunday morning since, skipping the rainy, snowy, bitter cold, or extraordinarily hot days that New York weather delivers, Chris returned to Federal Plaza executing what had become a ritual of encircling the space, walking across it, and then floating through the tai chi chuan forms with a dreamy grace, performing the dance as a tribute to his ancient master, hoping that Tieh would come forward to embrace him.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Mrs. Baltic and two women, one younger than the other, came into the Bog just before 11 into the midst of an impromptu going away party for a minor Daily Keys editor who was jumping to New York Newsday for more money and to escape the stress of the ugly atmosphere in the newsroom on 57th Street. Four dozen reporters, editors, and photographers from the Daily Keys, along with a few others from the New York Post, Newsday, and the New York Times and a half dozen off-duty cops, each with a beer or whiskey were crowded along the bar with some in a lump around Mrs. Baltic's favorite table listening with guffaws and wisecracks to Tom Manion singing Danny Boy.

Chris shrugged his shoulders in apology. No way he could chase the partiers away from Mrs. Baltic's special spot. Instead, he moved drinks and people around to open three bar stools for Mrs. Baltic and the others whom he recognized from the framed family pictures on the grand piano in her apartment. Photos of the women at various stages of their lives alone and with one another, with friends and family, some with Mrs. Baltic, some with the late Dr. Baltic

"Missed you last night, Mrs. Baltic." He spoke with an effort, feeling an uncomfortable pressure on his brow. He had made a conscious effort through the evening to restrain his temper at the little irritations that arose in dealing with people ordering drinks.

"Chris, I want you to meet my daughter Cheri and my granddaughter, Penny. The girls got in last night from Vermont. Penny brought her daughter, Cassy, with her. Two years old and bright as a new penny. I couldn't get away. Not even to be with you." She laughed.

Cheri studied him. Her lips tight. Serious.

"So you're Nanny's bartender. The poet. We've heard all about you," Penny said.

"I wish I was a poet. I'm a reciter, not a writer. I just like to drop a line here and there. Impresses the customers." Penny was a younger, tighter-skinned, voluptuous and very pleasant version of her mother, Cheri, who had big eyes and a wide mouth; blonde hair, cut in a bob that hung straight almost to her shoulders. Cheri offered Chris a challenging look bordering on the contemptuous, obviously registering him as an inferior; she was a little too thin, with deep lines defining her mouth and crow's feet spreading from her eyes. She had bags under those eyes. She looked tired. "What will it be ladies? The usual Mrs. Baltic?" She nodded. Cheri took a Jack Daniels with water and Penny a glass of Merlot. He fetched their drinks, then was off along the bar getting beers, Scotch, Irish whiskey, ginger ale, Coke, and sparkling water for waves of partygoers. Manion came down off the table, moving to the bar with Trish Cavallo at his side. He greeted Penny with a kiss on either cheek. "Trish, let me introduce you to Penelope Chisholm. You might have seen her in Herve Goldmont's Lilies for Mr. Macaw. She was wonderful. You know Mrs. Baltic, of course, and you, I take it, are the Mom?" Trish shook their hands.

Manion signaled another round for himself and the four women. When Chris delivered the drinks, Manion shouted over the laughter of partiers and the pounding music from the jukebox: "Are you going to recite something special for us on this fine night, Chris?"

"I'm not in the mood." He had no intention of competing with the noise of the crowded bar.

"Inspiration blocked by malaise. You look like you could use a rest, my boy." His voice cutting through the noise.

"I know all about creative block," Penny said. "My husband, Herve, is walking the woods of Vermont right now trying to break out of his malaise, to get his muse talking to him again."

"There's a column for you Trish. Herve Goldmont stomping around the woods of Vermont while his sweet young wife, Penelope Chisholm, recreates at a ribald party in the Bog."

"Actually, that's not a bad idea," Trish said.

"I wish you wouldn't. Herve would be furious if he knew I was blabbing about his writer's block."

"Trish, I haven't seen Penelope or Herve, for what say, three years? I arranged some interviews for them at the networks and papers. You took some time off to have a baby?"

"She's two now," Penny said.

Mrs. Baltic was beaming. Proud that her granddaughter was so readily recognized. "We were out on the town tonight. Had an early dinner at Provence and then we went to an Off Off Broadway musical at this little theater on Thirteenth Street so Cheri could do some talent scouting. She's interested in the director. Cheri runs the Pure Maple and Cheddar Cheese Players."

"Is that a New York company?" Trish asked.

Cheri overcame a surge of pique to smile. "We're a resident theater associated with Douglas College in Vermont. I came down to see Mark Pilcheski's work. One of our board members saw his production of Voice of the Turtle and has been urging me to invite him up as a guest director for the summer season."

"You're a summer theater?"

"No. Year-round. We do seven plays during the academic year with students and local residents. Then our summer theater takes over with professional actors and directors imported from the big city. And unlike my reluctant daughter and sensitive son-in-law, I would love to have you write a column about our theater."

"I'll keep you in mind, in case I ever do a column on summer stock."

A brush off, thought Chris, who saw a similar reaction flicker across Cheri's face. He was drying glasses just across the bar, positioned to listen to them talk, necessarily loud to compete with the partygoers.

Manion seized the moment to steer the conversation in another direction by saying, "Come on Chris, regale us with some poetry."

"I said, I'm not in the mood."

Mrs. Baltic beamed, enticed by Manion's suggestion. "That's a pregnant idea. Oh come on Chris, let it be born. Make believe Cheri's auditioning you."

Manion chimed in, "Give us a stanza of the Aeneid. First the Latin, then the English translation. Impress our young film star and her mother, the artistic director. She might find a place for you alongside Mr. Pilcheski this summer."

Manion's condescending tone pierced Chris' torpor. Three lines from Robert Fitzgerald's translation popped into his mind. "I won't bore you with the Latin. But I can offer you what Aeneas said to his companions when Troy was burning around them and the Greeks were overwhelming them: Come, let us die/We'll make a rush into the thick of it./The conquered have one safety: hope for none."

They applauded.

"You should be hiking through the woods with my husband. He's an Aeneid aficionado," Penny said.

"That makes two of us. The Aeneid has all of the elements of a good story: religious fanatics, bloodshed, love lost and found, a sea journey, and a fabulous achievement. The founding of Rome. Kirk Douglas did Ulysses. Maybe Herve Goldmont could cast Michael Douglas in a film as Aeneas."

She smiled. "Herve isn't into Gods and Goddesses and monsters. But next time we're in New York, I'll bring him around for a meeting, Chris." Everyone laughed.

CHAPTER NINE

Tom Manion was sitting at the bar when Chris arrived for work. Several stools away were Noel Stone, a copy editor from the Daily Keys, and his sidekick Tim Sapienza, one of the newspaper's film critics. He said, "How's it going?" to each as he passed.

"Up the revolution," Stone shouted, clenching his fist.

"I heard on the radio you voted to strike," Chris said patting him on the back. His expression reflecting a gloom that Stone assumed was an empathy for the predicament of the strikers.

Stone said, trying to appear brave, "It's going to give me a chance to finish my novel. Every cloud has a silver lining." Stone had come to the big city from Lubbock, Texas 30 years ago to write his novel. He was a fellow alum of the University of Texas at Austin, class of '56, with Willie Morris, a connection he used for invitations to literati luncheons and parties in Greenwich Village. His unfulfilled fantasy was to co-host with Willie an intimate dinner, French rather than barbeque, to honor the playwright Horton Foote with luminaries of the arts and media from Texas, perhaps Larry McMurty, Bill Moyers, Dan Rather, and a few others, much as Ezra Pound and William Butler Yeats held a dinner for the distinguished poet and horse breeder Wilfrid Scawen Blunt on a nasty winter's day in the English countryside in 1914. Each participant would offer Horton a sample of his work, which would be collected in an appropriate carrier as a memento. He envisioned reading a chapter of his novel, in process, and discussing it with them at length while they sipped good bourbon. He had continued to dream of that dinner and that novel while producing four children and going through two wives and two divorces and at least three live-in girlfriends and reading copy on the rims of the Journal-American, the World-Telegram, the Herald Tribune, the New York Times, Newsday, the New York Post, and lately at the Daily Keys. When the city's first great newspaper strike of modern times began a few weeks before Christmas in 1962, Stone began the novel, sitting down with a yellow pad in his Village walkup, and by the time the strike ended three and a half months later had filled 37 yellow legal pads with his crimped script despite the endless wailing of his baby daughter and the complaints of his cranky wife whose trust fund paid for the rent, food and bills. He hated what he wrote, telling bartenders, Texans, and copy editors around him, his eyes misting, that he had produced a barrel of shit. But he acknowledged that he had to get that out of his system in the process of producing something fine, something lasting, a literary masterpiece.

Chris walked to the far end of the bar, where Burty the Third was awaiting his arrival. He gave Chris a brown business envelope filled with bills and change, his week's pay. Chris went back to the office where he shucked his coat and slipped into his new green, full-body apron with Burty's Bit o'Green in block gold letters pouring downward into a golden pot. He returned to the bar. "Watch that one," Burty said, his eyes indicating Stone. "Cut him off if he gets rambunctious."

"He's nothing to worry about."

"He's got a foul mouth on him."

"He's just a talker," Chris said.

"And no credit to any of them, especially him." Burty didn't like unions. Back in the 1950s the bartenders' union put a picket line in front the Bog, cutting off the flow of Daily Keys writers, who were a cornerstone of the business, for two nights, until a cousin of Burty the Second's, a florid-faced, burly police captain from the local precinct, told the union business agent, "Listen you little prick, I'll put my foot up your ass if you don't pull down this line right now." That informal intervention by the New York City Police Department cost Burty the Second a bottle of Jameson. The incident was recounted periodically at the supper table and at family picnics to raucous laughter whenever the cousin was present.

Chris bought Stone and Sapienza a round on the house hardly a minute after Burty the Third went through the door. "Good luck to you, and to better days, gentlemen," he said, putting two George Dickles on the rocks in front of them.

Sapienza, skinny and narrow-shouldered, with thick glasses and a wispy mustache, said, raising his glass, "Jim Barger is out to break the union. And God is my witness, we haven't got the chance of a fiddler in hell."

Stone said, "Chris here's to you and here's to Timmy, a real man who gonna stand with the union like Davey Crockett at the Alamo or the Marines on Wake Island."

Stone and Sapienza touched glasses and knocked back their drinks. Chris tapped the bar with his right forefinger in response. He didn't drink on the job. Burty the Third had a rule against it. Despite that pseudo-restriction, Chris' own sense of discipline and fear of becoming a lush kept him dry when he was behind the bar in the Bog.

Stone said, "Chrissie gives us a few lines from Billy Yeats or some such bard to inspire us."

Chris leaned on the bar, suspecting that Stone wanted Easter 1916 or Sailing to Byzantium. He wasn't in a mood for somber or mystical Yeats. He waited, seemingly a long time, for the words appropriate to a death-struggle strike to flow. And they did. He raised his fist: "Then out spoke brave Horatius, the captain of the gate: To every man upon this earth death cometh soon or late. And how can man die better than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers and the temples of his gods."

The customers at the bar and near enough in the dining room to hear applauded and whistled.

Sapienza said, "What I like about that poem is it's about an Italian like me, and he wins in the end. We had a nun, Sister Augusta, who used to act out Horatio at the Bridge. I can still see her in the classroom; she was a Dominican in the black habit with the big white dimple or wimple or whatever they called it. She'd make out she had a sword. I can hear her yelling: "The men in the back yelled forward and the men in the front yelled back."

Chris smiled. That was one of his favorite parts. Those words came easily. He recited in a loud voice: "Was none who would be foremost to lead such dire attack. Those behind cried, Forward! And those before cried, Back! And backward now and forward wavers the deep array. And on the tossing sea of steel, to and fro, the standards reel. And the victorious trumpet peal dies fitfully away."

The patrons along the bar applauded again.

Chris bowed. Enjoying his little performance even more since he saw Trish Cavallo had joined Manion. She waved, smiling. He took a deep pleasure in dipping into his deep trove of poetry. As he turned to move towards Trish, he said: "The name of the work is The Lays of Ancient Rome by Lord Macaulay, not Horatio at the Bridge by Sister Augusta."

Sapienza and Stone laughed, and beat their palms on the bar.

Within a moment, the bleakness passed that had soured Chris since this morning when Phil didn't appear in his apartment for her Friday delight. He hadn't seen her since Tuesday. Not even to wave hello. This morning, he heard her leaving the house with her kids; she hadn't returned through the day.

Trish looked at him, seeing the anguish in his eyes. She smiled at him. "Dewar's on the rocks."

"Make hers a double, and hit me again oh troubadour of First Avenue."

"I'm not a poet. I don't recite my own stuff"

"Let's make do with troubadour until something better comes to mind."

"You want a double, Trish?"

She nodded.

"Get Stone and Tim a drink on me," Manion said.

Chris went back to the counter where he picked the George Dickle and Dewar's bottles from the base of the pyramid of liquors. He dipped two fresh two crystal lowball glasses from Manion's private supply into the ice and poured the Dewar's first, then the George Dickle into two more of the Bog's low ball glasses. He walked down the bar to Manion and Trish. He stepped back to the remaining two drinks and spun around to place them in front of Stone and Sapienza. "On Tom Manion," he said.

Stone's smile fell into a sneer of anger. "What kind of shit is this?"

He has a mouth like a sewer, Chris thought, a surge of anger rising in him in reaction.

Stone swung off his stool holding the new glass of Dickle, ignoring Sapienza's plea of "just don't drink it." With four long steps, Stone was in front of Manion and Trish, who had turned to greet him. "I don't want your shitty drink." He shoved the drink at arm's length almost touching Manion's nose.

Manion tipped back just a little, to put some space between him and the glass of Tennessee sour mash. He took his cigar out of his mouth. "What's this outburst all about?"

Stone turned to Trish. "I don't see how you can hang out with this asshole. He's siding with Jim Barger against us."

She shook her head, opened her mouth, but didn't speak. After meeting and becoming enthralled with Trish at one of his softball games in the Hamptons, Manion had lobbied Barger, the publisher of the New York Daily Keys and his other high-ranking friends in the newspaper's editorial department to import Trish from Chicago as a fresh voice, a woman columnist who veered unexpectedly between the sweet and the gritty. Everyone knew that. Page Six of the Post told the world that story.

Manion smiled. He sat back, both elbows on the bar, exposing himself to an easy attack. Arrogantly assuming Stone was a foul-mouthed man of words not punches. "If you could afford to hire me, I'd side with you. I like Jim Barger, and he's the publisher of a big newspaper with a big budget. I like you too, but..."

Stone shouted, "You selfish piece of shit. You'll do anything for money."

"Not anything. Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't you striking for selfish reasons. To hold onto your job. To get more money. We both have our selfish interests at heart."

Stone raged: "Shove your drink up your ass. You asshole." He stepped back, spilling whiskey onto Manion's lap and across the back of his own head as he raised the glass high, and fired it on the floor. The glass shattered. And he stalked back to his place.

Chris watched impassively. Pleased that the encounter ended in ugly words, not a fistfight.

Manion stood. Put the cigar back in his mouth. Brushed at the wetness on his pants. He smiled. A decision made. He raised the cigar high above his head and sang loud enough to drown out the sound of the juke box playing a Tony Bennett ballad: "Arise ye workers from slumbers. Arise ye prisoners of want. For reason in revolt now thunders. Tadah da dah da dah, da dah. So comrades, come let us rally. And the last fight let us face. The Internationalee unites the human race." He turned, raised his glass to Chris indicating he wanted a refill. Then continued the chorus: "So comrades, come let us rally. And the last fight let us face. The Internationalee unites the human race."

"Okay," Chris said. "That's enough."

CHAPTER TEN

Chris sat in his living room on his green easy chair, looking out the window at the street, listening to Burl Ives sing A Little Bitty Tear Let Me Down on the stereo, his coffee going cold on the end table. He couldn't eat breakfast this morning; he didn't exercise. His right temple throbbed in a headache. He heard the doors open and close as Phil's kids went off to school. A man can endure anything. His time inside taught him that. He knew this longing would subside, although now he was being tortured by the uncertainty. Tuesday had passed this way, and now another Friday. The rule they followed was that he could not go to her, only she to him. His whole being strained to violate that agreement, but he wouldn't. He was too controlled. Chun-tzu. The Superior Man. The same discipline kept him from smashing the furniture, from finding someone to beat. He breathed away the rage that crossed his mind. Ten breaths each time. He hungered for her; prayed to the Blessed Virgin and to God directly that she would come, overcoming the inconsistency of asking God and his Mother Mary to condone the sin that would flow from his answered prayer.

Her hallway door slammed downstairs. A wooden ringing sound. Footsteps coming up the stairs. He got up, went through the middle room, his weight room/library, into the narrow foyer to his front door. He opened it as she arrived on the landing.

"Phil," he said, the announcement of her name rang with the joy he felt. Drawing her to him, he said, "I love you."

She came into his arms. "I love you too."

"I got to shave and take a shower. There's coffee in the kitchen."

She nodded. Not happy. That was easy to see. But she had offered the magic. "I love you too." He went into the bathroom off the foyer. Closed the door behind. Stripped off his clothes. Shaved. Showered with the perfumed soap she had given him for his birthday. He went into the bedroom to his dresser. The soundtrack from "Dr. Zhivago" was playing. She was lying naked, one knee raised, slouched against two pillows. Still with that unhappy look. She was smoking. Usually she waited until after making love to light up. He poured Chanel Pour Homme, another gift from her, into the palm of his hand, rubbing across his balls and along his backside, chest and armpits.

"You smell good," he said.

"So do you." She put out her cigaret.

He kissed her mouth, her breasts. He looked into her eyes. "I love you," he said, hoping to draw a similar response.

"I love you," she said.

They made a long lingering love. Exploding in mutual heart-pounding orgasms. Got up. Took a shower together, then made love again with her screaming in ecstasy. When it was over, she put her head back in the tangle of sheets and pillows and sobbed.

"What's the matter?"

"It was so wonderful. You know, you were so wonderful."

He turned to the bedside table. Lit two cigarets. She got out of the bed. "We have to talk. Let's get dressed and have some coffee. Then, you know, I've got to go."

She dressed without touching the cigaret he offered or without washing the scent of sex from her body.

He poured two cups of coffee, and fetched milk from the refrigerator for her. He drank his black. "How can someone who just made mad, passionate, incredible love look so sad?" he asked when he took his seat opposite her at the tiny wooden table squeezed into the galley-style kitchen.

She seemed on the verge of tears. "I hope you understand what I'm about to say. You know, I hope you don't go haywire on me."

He stiffened. Ready for bad news. Pregnant? Things would be tough if he had to run again. He was not going back no matter what. VD? God, he hoped not. "I'm listening." The words came out sounding harsh.

"I love you, Chris. I was a long time in saying that to you, you know, because I didn't want to get your hopes up. You're 20 years older than me, you know. You got a job that's going nowhere. I know you don't have any money."

"I've got $6,000." A thousand dollars in his bank account. The rest stashed in cash in case he had to run.

She did a hiccup laugh. "That's nice. That's not real money, you know. I got two kids. The girl's in college now. A city college and I can't even afford that. And, you know, Stevie is really smart. He's graduating this year, and he wants to go to NYU or Columbia, some really good school. And that's out of my picture, the way things stand now. I've lived in this dump since I got married. It was okay when the kids were little. They shared the bedroom. You know we made the dining room into our master bedroom. And when Stevie got to be 14, we had to buy a convertible couch and move him into the living room. Al and me, just like you and me, we couldn't have sex when we were in the mood. Even if we were quiet, you know. Stevie was right in the next room. We had to wait till the kids were out of the house. And we were working most of the time the kids were out of the house. That's what killed what me and Al had at the beginning, you know. I'm not going through another marriage like that."

He closed his mouth. He realized it had dropped open.

She stood up. "If you could, and I'm not rushing you, you know. I'd like you out by the end of the month. That's almost 30 days. You can't do it until after the holidays. I understand." He started to speak. She interjected, "Let me finish. You're a good man, Chris. I know that. I wished things could be different, but I'm marrying someone else."

"What?"

She rushed on: "What kind of a life could we have. You got no family. You got no friends. You know, I'm not a moron. Tell me those tattoos of yours aren't jailhouse tattoos? You never take me out. Our relationship is confined to this bed. We don't even talk."

As she blazed on, he searched his mind for friends. Mrs. Baltic and Trish. They were friends. Or were they acquaintances? Or just customers?

"You're standing there like a dummy, because you know everything is true." She struggled, but failed to hold back her tears. "I told you I met a lawyer at my sister's house. He lives in Woodbury. He's got this beautiful four-bedroom house. His wife died of breast cancer almost on the same day Al died. You know, it's like we were destined to marry someone else, lose them and then meet each other. He's only got one kid. Billy. He's only six. So my kids could have their own rooms. He lives the life we dream about. Takes the Long Island Rail Road to the city. Eats in good restaurants. He's got a wine cellar."

Why would he want you? Chris thought, but didn't say.

"You said either of us could call it off whenever we wanted to. No questions asked, you know."

"He's no good in bed. You told me so yourself." What a dopey thing to say. He was sorry he let the words flow out of his mouth.

She bent over crying loudly. "Yes. He's nothing like you. I'm hoping he'll get better. We done it three times, and he's just no good. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but I'm going to marry him."

Chris' ego perked up. He felt a bitter pity for the lawyer. Phil wouldn't be happy with a man who didn't satisfy her. "What's his name?"

"Andy Klein. Really Andre. French."

"A Jew? What's your father-in-law going to say?"

The softness left her face. So did the tears. "You know, Andy doesn't care if I'm Greek Orthodox. I don't care if he's a Jew. He's a good man who can take care of me and my kids. Al Silimpas doesn't own me. I'm not gonna be a waitress from the day I become Mrs. Klein."

He nodded. What was there to say? He didn't feel an inner fury, so to rampage would be artificial. His insides seemed broken. As though he couldn't stand up straight. His mouth was open again. He didn't close it. He let it hang. Entombed in gloom. The uncertainty was over. Now he knew, and it was awful.

"Promise me you won't hurt Andy." She reached out and touched the bare skin of his arm. Warmth pulsed between them.

"Don't worry. I don't want to hurt him or anyone else in this world." He thought, I've had more than enough of that. Of squeezing the life out of another man's body.

"It's not anyone's fault, you know." She was back to crying. Her voice was soft unto a whisper. "We needed each other, you and I. Now that has to be over. Andy and I are right for each other. We got things to offer each other. He's two years older than me. That's the right spread for a man and woman, you know." Her face was twisted in distress. "Say it's okay. I know you won't mean it, but say it."

"It's okay." His voice was a whisper too.

Her lips trembled. "I have to go. I'll always love you for as long as I live. I have to go. And we can't see each other again."

She turned and ran through the foyer, leaving the front door open behind her. Her steps sounded on the stairs. Her door downstairs opened and closed with a wooden ring.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Chris went to work early that evening in response to a call from Johnny, the day bartender, that Burty the Third wanted to see him in his office at five o'clock. The bar was lined with white collar workers in suits and skirts, stopping in for a drink and a chat before heading home along with a few of the Daily Keys strikers thirsty from their hours on the picket line. The television was on mute, a contestant on a game show going silently through the antics of trying to win something. Big numbers on the screen being changed by a pretty, slender young woman. The game show host in a cream-colored suit moving his mouth and grinning. Chris waved to Johnny, who was off duty, sitting on the customer's side of the bar, and to Gene, the mid-shift man, who was tending bar. Gene offered him a dour expression. As he walked deeper into the Bog, Chris saw Burty the Third in his regular seat in the dark corner at the far end of the bar where he could survey the flow of customers through the front door and the restaurant area, empty now except for a young waitress leaning against the jukebox waiting for early diners. As he approached, Burty did a reverse nod indicating he wanted Chris to follow him into the office, an oppressive, claustrophobic, windowless room with an old wooden teacher's school desk that almost filled the little space. On the wall facing the door was the O'Rorke family coat of arms flanked by Burty the Third's framed degree from the Fordham University Business School and a picture of Burty as a skinny young sergeant exhausted, unshaven, a cigaret dangling from the corner of his mouth and an M1 in his arms, in front of a big hedge somewhere in France during World War II. The current in the flesh version of Burty with his flaccid belly and red face, made redder by his mane of white hair, was standing behind the desk when Chris reached the office.

"Close the door and sit down," Burty said. An order, not a request. Burty was not a personality kid.

Chris was on neutral anticipating something nasty from Burty. It was in the air. He had to step near to the desk to allow the door to swing shut. He turned, still standing.

"Sit down, I said."

Chris sat in the lone fragile, cane-seated chair on the visitor's side of the desk. He looked at Burty in silence. He had learned inside and from tai chi to wait until the other man spoke or moved.

Burty asked: "Gene talk to you?"

Chris shook his head no.

"I treat you decently don't I?"

Chris nodded.

"And I don't ask much of you, other than to do your job?"

Chris didn't respond. He watched Burty's eyes, which narrowed a little before he continued.

"Some bastard from up the street torched a candy store in Queens last night. Could have burned the whole building down, mothers and kids sleeping upstairs. As if they gave a damn."

Chris looked at him. And? he was tempted to say, but didn't.

"Will you do me a favor, Chris?" Another order, not a request.

There was a long pause. Chris wouldn't fill the gap.

"Will you do me a favor, Chris?" he asked again. The words came out harsh.

"Depends."

"No depends. That's the same answer Gene gave me and you say you didn't talk to him?"

"I told you I didn't talk to Gene. Now what's this favor?"

Burty raised his right forefinger, waving it as he spoke: "I want you to keep your ears open. You hear anything about that arson last night, about breaking windows or breaking up newsstands, they're doing all that, you let me know. All on the QT. Don't you worry about it. You tell me what you hear and I'll deal with it."

He was asking him to be a rat. He had spent 28 years of not being a rat, and they worked on you full time inside with their punishments and promises of favors. He did his time without going over to them. Never trading his manhood for an easier time, taking the licks that went with being a convict not an inmate. He said to Burty, "The guys who come in here from the Keys are reporters and editors. Most of them are pretty smart. They're gonna let the drivers and maybe the pressmen do the strong-arm stuff. That's not their style."

"You listen to me, Chris. I want what you hear, not your analysis, not what you think."

Chris stood. "You called me in three hours early for this? You paying me overtime or should I go home early tonight?"

"Overtime? You're lucky you got a job in times like this. I could fill your spot in half an hour. Now tell me. Are you with me or against me in this?"

"I just want a straight answer. Should I close the place at one o'clock tonight?"

"Jesus Christ," Burty said, barely able to contain himself from reaching across the desk to grab Chris. "You work your regular shift, and you better not close this place before closing time. Now tell me are you with me or against me?"

Chris remained cool despite the provocation of Burty's flush of anger and his near move into violence. After staring at Burty for a while, he said: "I'll tell you what, I'll be back at 8. I'll close at the usual time. What I hear out there in the bar goes in one ear and stays in my head. It doesn't go out my mouth. I'm not a rat, Burty." He turned, stepping around the door and closed it behind him. He went out to the restaurant side of the Bog and sat at Mrs. Baltic's favorite table under the portrait of the founding father, Daniel O'Rorke. Sally, the waitress, came over. "You eating?" she asked.

"Give me an open steak sandwich, medium, with French fries, Sally. And a Harp's. And get me a pencil and paper if you don't mind."

She brought the beer along with a sheet of stationary and pencil.

While waiting for the steak, Chris figured out how much he would get for three hours overtime. He would collect that sum from the cash paid for single drinks with no paper tab involved. The exchange in Burty's office popped into his consciousness—and he breathed it away. He didn't want to be upset, to ruin his supper.

At 6 o'clock, Burty came out of his office wearing his overcoat. He stopped at the table. "What went on inside is between you and me. No one else."

"Sure."

"Do I have to come by tonight, or do I have your word, it's the usual closing time? No games."

"Right."

Chris didn't enjoy his meal. His stomach was churning. First Phil and now Burty. What was next? Things, good or bad, usually came in threes. He stopped eating.

Customers were filling the tables. Sally was moving between the restaurant area, taking orders, and the bar, fetching drinks, and the kitchen, putting in the orders. Chris got up. This table meant money for her. He cleared the silverware, plates, beer bottle, and glass from the table. He intercepted Sally hurrying from the bar to slip a $5 tip into her apron pocket. "Thanks," he said.

"Any time cowboy."

He took a seat next to Johnny. Gene came over. "Bushmill on the rocks," he said to Gene.

Gene didn't budge. "What did he say to you in there?"

"You should know. He said to me what he said to you, and probably to Johnny here too."

"Are you going along with the program?"

"Feodor, throughout the ages you are always there/an ant against man/but a numbered hair/whose acts are scratches/on Caesar's marble."

"Come on Chris," Johnny said. "Give us a straight answer."

"I did. You do your time. I'll do mine. That's my answer." He swung off the stool and walked out the door. Now that was a dumb thing to say, he thought.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Chris walked north on First Avenue in the piercing cold of the early November evening passing under the Queensboro Bridge continuing past the bars and dry cleaners, restaurants and fruit stands, until he reached 72nd Street. He turned west to Third Avenue and returned downtown along sidewalks crowded with shoppers, office workers, homeless people sitting in doorways; cars and taxis flowing in an unbroken stream north in the roadway. As he turned the corner onto broad 57th Street, lined with hovering grey high rises, he heard the pickets in front of the towering Daily Keys Building singing to the rhythm of a guitar: "We're gonna roll, we're gonna roll, we gonna roll the union on. We're gonna roll, we're gonna roll the union on. If Jim Barger gets in the way, we're gonna roll right over him, we're gonna roll right over him, we're gonna roll the union on." The song ended with a bear of a man in a cowboy hat standing on a plywood platform atop the cab of a pickup truck strumming the guitar, which sounded along the street over a huge loudspeaker in the bed of the truck. "How long we gonna stay out here?" the man in the cowboy hat shouted.

"One day longer," the pickets shouted back.

Cars, taxis and trucks going by on 57th Street tooted their horns. The pickets cheered again. A line of cops with a high-ranking boss whose white shirt showed between the lapels of his blue jacket was planted, feet spread wide, between the strikers behind blue wooden barriers and the huge ornate art deco doorway leading into the Keys Building. Chris stood at the edge of the crowd of 200 or so picketing newspaper workers and supporters from other unions, waving hello to regulars from the copy desk who came into the Bog around 1 AM almost every night. He saw Trish Cavallo standing in the midst of the gathering with Noel Stone and Tim Sapienza.

A wide banner strung on poles in the back of the truck said:

LASHO LARRY WORKERS TROUBADOUR

AIN'T NO MUSIC IN CORPORATE AMERICA

DID YOU EVER HEAR THE BOSSES SING?

Larry, deep lines in face, long grey hair hanging from under the cowboy hat, and a solid body with weightlifter muscles showing from the cutoff sleeves of a blue work shirt, strummed his guitar again. "Hey 1989 was a big year for us. We took on Boeing and Pittston Coal, bastards wanted to take away insurance from the men who gave their lungs in the company mines. I sang for the miners. And Moe Foner had me up to sing for the hospital workers. Dennis Rivera showed those bastards running the hospitals a thing or two. Hospitals don't work without workers." He strummed the guitar holding it high over his head. "I was down on Wall Street with the C-W-A. Marched between Jesse Jackson, there's a man, and Jan Pierce. He's here tonight. There's a labor leader. And we showed NYNEX the union boys and girls still got muscle. The moneymen in Houston at the mighty National Keys Newspapers Corporation are gonna find out that the drivers and the pressmen and the reporters and the editors got muscle too, and plenty of it. Maybe they forgot this ain't Houston. New York's still a union town." He strummed again and sang: "Oh you ain't just a cost unit/ to your fam-ily/Your work means something/to you and to me/Sweep the greed heads out/Sweep the greed heads out/We're staying on the line to vict-ory."

"Sweep the greed heads out. Sweep the greed heads out," the crowd chanted.

"One more thing. My assistant will be passing a bucket. A little collection to keep Larry the workers' troubadour in grits and beans and gasoline and if there's anything leftover, a little whiskey. Hey. I don't want any strikers throwing anything into the bucket. Keep your money to keep the struggle going. Just civilians. Just people still working who can afford a buck or two or 50 cents if that's all you got."

Noel Stone, grinning raised a white plastic bucket as high as he could reach. He turned to move through the throng pushing the bucket at any non-Newspaper Guild people he found. A dozen business agents and activists from other unions with banners from IBEW Local 3, Hospital Workers 1199, and ILGWU were laced among the strikers. A pair of men in suits threw in fives. Chris tossed a five in. "Thank you Brother Chris," Stone said.

The troubadour strummed again. "Come on up here Trish," he yelled. Trish stepped up a small wooden ladder with Larry grasping her hand to guide her onto the hood of the truck and up to the platform. "Wow! It's high up here," she said, her voice coming over the loud speaker, as Larry steadied her.

"You all know Trish Cavallo," Larry shouted to cheers.

She raised her left hand in a clenched-fist salute. "I'm up here tonight to tell you which side I'm on. First I want to thank Larry Lasho for bringing his guitar and spirit to us." Cheers. "Then to give credit to Noel Stone for inviting Larry to sing for us." She applauded, and the crowd applauded with her. Stone waved an acknowledgement. "I'm up here tonight, quite literally," Trish said laughing. "To tell you I'm sticking with you." Cheers again. "I'm not going to tell you his name, but the company sent someone close to me around to ask me to go with the company instead of my fellow workers. I'll call him what he is. The fink asked me to scab." Boos. "I've been to a war or two so I know what it's like to win or lose a battle. And let me tell you war is never fun. And let me tell you it's better to win then to lose. So what are we going to do?"

"Win!" the crowd shouted.

Chris laughed happily with everyone else. He had a sudden craving for Trish. She looked so powerful, so bursting with energy up there. So beautiful. She had always registered on him as a good-looking woman who projected self-confidence, self-importance; Tom Manion's trophy date. He didn't like Manion, but he could see the mutual attraction. Manion had his power and she had her's in her beauty, in her talent and in her crotch. The hunger for her that gripped him was accompanied by the realization that it was a desire beyond fulfillment. She was a newspaper columnist, she covered wars, and wrote books. He was a bartender with no education, no money, with 28 years in prison behind him and facing more time if he ever stumbled into the quagmire of the law again. So, he realized, this was the third affliction of the day: Phil, Burty the Third, and finally Trish.

Chris' legs were tired and the chill was seeping from the sidewalk through his thin-soled shoes and up his legs. He walked away. As he turned onto First Avenue, a long city block away, he still could hear Larry Lasho singing: "I dreamt I saw Joe Hill last night/Alive as you and me."

The Bog was packed. Conversations and rock and roll from the jukebox roared at Chris as he came through the front door. The TV was on mute. No one watching. Every table was filled; there was a crowd of bodies in suits, shirtsleeves and dresses along the bar. Sally and an unfamiliar Friday night suppertime waitress were hustling trays of food and drinks through the narrow spaces between the customers seated at the tables. "Chris! You coming on early tonight," Gene, the midday bartender, yelled over the heads of the men and women at the bar.

"I'm on at 8 o'clock."

"Righto partner."

"Burty still here?"

"Gone home to the wife and kids."

"Good. Knock on the door if you don't see me at 8." Chris went to Burty's office in the rear of the Bog. He could smell the hamburgers and French fries and steaks even with the door closed. He sat in Burty's chair with his feet propped on the wooden school desk, his jacket serving as a blanket. He closed his eyes and fell into the pit of sleep. And was in the dream again. He is dancing down a cell-lined hall singing, "I'm off to see the Wizard." Hughie Monaghan and Butch O'Brien, dressed in black, heads shaved, lips pressed tightly together, are walking side by side towards the room with the electric chair. Chris stops, turns. He yells after them: "They're killing me too. A little at a time." They ignore him. The executioner has stepped out of the little room, arms crossed, waiting. He can barely make out the man's features. Is that Red Kearney? Chris continues down the hallway, no longer singing, no longer dancing, head bowed, sobbing.

He came awake, startled, as Gene opened the office door.

"Time," Gene said. "I'd let you sleep but I got to run home as soon as I can tonight. There's a movie on HBO at 9 I don't want to miss."

"Go home. I'll handle it."

"You're a good buddy. Burty's right we are a family."

That turd. Gene was with the program. The dream always put Chris in a melancholy mood. He had liked Gene until this moment when he assumed he was a rat. He walked past the kitchen to the men's room. A little room with a grey stall and a white urinal. A strip of toilet paper on the floor stretching from the stall. A paper towel jammed into the sink drain, a pseudo plug. Chris pulled it out gingerly, dropping it in the wastebasket. Motherfucker, he said in anger. He splashed cold water on his face, drying himself with a wad of paper towels. He went back out, hung his jacket on one of the pegs at the end of the bar, and took a fresh apron from a drawer under the counter. Gene slipped past him, shucking his apron, and taking his Navy pea coat from a peg. It was 8:15.

"I'll make the movie thanks to you, buddy."

I'm not your buddy any more, Chris thought. He drew a short beer from the Harp's tap. He swished the tangy liquid around his mouth erasing the foul taste of his sleep. He swallowed. Drank the remainders in the glass, and went to work.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Chris had just donned his Bog apron when Gene signaled from the other end of the crowded bar that the phone was for him.

"Chris. It's Mary Hudson. Haven't forgotten me I hope?"

"How could I ever forget you? The first artist in my life." The noise of drinkers and the jukebox almost drowned the sound of her voice.

"It's been a month and I haven't heard from you. I'm going to be straight with you Chris, because that's how I deal the deck. I need you."

"I've always wanted a woman to say that to me."

She laughed. A loud laugh. "Then I'll take our relationship a little further. I'll be frank, I need your face and your body. I want to make it mine like no other woman has."

"But you don't mean that the way most women would," he said, enjoying the exchange.

"I mean I want to use you to make me, really both of us, immortal. I want to paint you Chris. I told you I saw something special in your face. I'll be frank, I want you to spend some time with me, talking to me, having a glass of wine with me, posing for me in different settings so that I can be sure yours is the face I want. I need."

"Mary, I'll be frank, $13 an hour isn't my idea of big money."

"I understand. So I'm upping the ante to $15 an hour, guaranteeing you $60 a day, a $1,000 bonus if you are the one. I'll be frank, I believe with all my heart yours is the right face. I just want to make sure."

He didn't answer for a few moments. She amused him, but standing or sitting still for three or four hours a day for at least a month didn't appeal to him. Certainly not for $15 an hour. "How much will you get for the painting? If you give me a piece of the action, and the price is right, I'll consider it." he said, knowing that was a deal killer.

"That's really none of your business. The price has to do with the market for my paintings, not the model."

"Then there's nothing more to say, so I'm going to say goodbye."

"Please Chris."

"I have to go Mary. You caught me at work on a very busy night. So long." He hung up.

His ego stroked by the artist who wanted him so much as a model, Chris filled Sally's drinks orders and distributed Martinis, whiskeys, and beer along the bar with a smile and joviality for the patrons. He spouted a few poems for regulars. "Chapman's Homer," one said.

"Much have I traveled in the realms of gold/And many goodly states and kingdoms seen. That's from Keats' 'On first looking into Chapman's Homer.' And his first name was George."

"Absolutely wrong. John Keats so help me God."

"Right at one level. Wrong at another. George Chapman was the name of the translator. So another round?"

***

Chris caught Trish Cavallo watching him. He waved to her. She was sitting at a table having dinner with Lasho Larry, Noel Stone, and Tom Sapienza. She turned away in an exaggerated movement dismissing his moment of friendship. He reddened as if she had slapped him. He slipped into a dismal mood, ignoring customers calling for refills, irritated to near fury by a pair of men who left a paltry tip, snapping after them: "Thanks big spender." One of them, young with muscles reaching to his neck, turned back to him, ready to fight. "That's all you're worth," the man said. Chris arrested his temper, taking a deep breath. The pulse in his forehead throbbed. "Sorry. I shouldn't have said that." The man strutted out of the Bog, muttering "asshole." Embarrassed, Chris put his head down, arranging glasses, not looking at those on the other side of the bar, keeping his eyes averted when Sally filled her orders at the waitress station in the center of the bar.

Tom Manion came in just before 11. The crowd had thinned to a few people at the bar. Just a few tables on the restaurant side were occupied. Trish and her three companions were still there, talking loud and laughing. Stone said something to Lasho Larry, who responded by taking his guitar from beneath the table. He strummed. "Bartender. Turn that jukebox off." Elvis was in the midst of a love song. Chris turned off the machine. Lasho Larry led the others across the room to stand behind Manion, who could see them in the mirror behind the bar, but didn't turn. Lasho strummed the guitar. He sang in voice that filled the Bog: "There once was a union maid. She never was afraid/Of goons and ginks and company finks/And the deputy sheriff who made the raid." He motioned like a director to his companions, who joined in the chorus with some of the Daily Keys strikers along the bar joining them: "Oh you can't scare me, I'm sticking to the union. I'm sticking to the union till the day I die

Manion swung around on the stool. He clapped slowly. "I know which side I'm on. The side that butters my bread. You fellows have your reasons to be where you are. Trish is another story. I think her emotions have confused her loyalties."

"We don't want you in here, Manion," Stone said.

Manion reached behind him for his scotch. He took a sip.

Stone punched him, sending the glass and the whiskey flying, knocking Manion off the stool. Trish screamed. "No." Chris climbed over the bar, seizing Stone by the back of his sweater and the belt at the back of his pants. He lifted him into a nut-cruncher hold, drawing a startled howl of pain as the crotch of Stone's pants mashed his testicles. Chris took three steps, Stone still in his grip, and shoved him towards the door. Stone stumbled slamming his forearms into the closed door to prevent himself from crashing head first into it. He turned to rush Chris, whose body faded before the charging man, letting him slide past, and propelling him faster with the slightest push. Stone went almost the length of the bar, tripping as he tried to catch himself, sliding painfully across the floor.

"You filthy bastard," Trish shouted at Chris, whose head moved in an arc to keep his eyes on Lasho Larry, who impressed him as an experienced barroom brawler, and Stone in case he was still on fire.

"It's not his fault, Trish," Sapienza said.

Trish pushed past Chris. She hurried to help Stone to his feet. Chris asked Manion, who was back on his feet, brushing off his jacket sleeves and pants. "You okay?"

"You're finished at the Daily Keys, you bum, you thug," Manion yelled at Stone. He carefully felt his swollen lip. "And you, Trish. What I did for you, and you throw it away."

"You did nothing for me."

Manion picked up his stool, ignoring her. "Get me another double scotch Chris."

Trish screamed, "I got that column because of what I had to offer."

Manion touched his swollen lip again. "I could never deny that. You had a lot to offer to me, and I guess similar gestures of gratitude to every other man who helped your career along."

"You unbelievable dirtbag," she said. She punched his back. Manion turned laughing and stepped along the bar away from her, holding his arms in front of him to deflect any further blows.

Stone started forward, but Chris could see hesitation, the hope Trish would say no, or someone else would intervene. "You stay right where you are," Chris said to Stone. "And Mr. Manion, I think we've had enough from you tonight. Why don't you leave before we have more trouble?"

"Get me that double scotch Chris and then call Burty. Ask him who he wants to stay and who he wants to leave."

Chris took him by his jacket's sleeve. "Just leave."

"Don't touch me. One call to Burty and you'll be looking for another job."

A shiver went through Chris. He knew he was so insignificant that this wheeler-dealer could have him thrown out on the street.

"Let go of me. This is your last chance," Manion said.

Chris rushed him out the door. He threw him against the brick wall of the building. His stomach was burning, his heart going so fast, he wondered if the words would come out. "Don't come back tonight or tomorrow or ever. No more drinks for you at any bar I'm running."

Manion looked past him. "How about if I ask that police officer to join us."

Chris stepped back so he could glance in the direction of the curb. A police car. The cop inside was watching them. The door opened. The cop took his nightstick from a holder on the door. "Everything okay, Chris?" The cop knew him. A payday regular.

"Fine Marty. I was just saying goodbye to Mr. Manion."

"I'm going to talk to Burty about you," Manion said in parting.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

"Chris!" The faintest echo of a brogue and the harsh tone pulled Chris from the pitch of sleep. Burty the Third. He looked at his bedside digital clock: 12:03 PM. "Yeah," Chris managed to say, his mind foggy, not fully functioning; his mouth foul. He suddenly was bursting to take a leak. "What's up?" Chris said.

"I wanted to get you before you got ready for work."

"Jesus. Calling on a Sunday morning."

"No, afternoon. It's after noon."

"I'm not even out of bed yet."

"Well, I wanted to catch ya. I'm sorry; I'm letting you go Chris. No hard feelings, but you didn't work out."

That sent a surge of adrenalin through him. "After two years I didn't work out? What the hell is going on?"

"I never liked your mouth Chris. And I don't like you talking to me like that." He sounded like the film version of an indignant school master.

"If you're giving me two weeks notice, why didn't you just wait until I got to the Bog instead waking me up, ruining my night's sleep?"

His voice became harsh. "You just got your notice. You don't work here any more as of this moment. Come in tomorrow for your pay." He hung up.

Chris dialed the bar. Johnny answered the phone. He said Burty wasn't there, probably was at home unless he was going to a late Mass. Johnny complained about having to work Chris' shift on top of his own tonight. Burty's orders.

Chris dialed Burty's home phone.

"I'll see if he's in," Mrs. O'Rorke said, uncertainty coming through. Burty must have told her. Her accent was from working class Queens. Bryant High School or Grover Cleveland. Dances at St. Joan of Arc in Jackson Heights on Sunday nights. The voice of the type of girl he might have married if his life hadn't been interrupted by 28 years in prison. The body surrounding that voice had grown thicker and pastier with age. Three good meals a day every day, with second servings at every supper washed down with whiskey, beer or Coca Cola. Too much roast beef or baked ham on Sundays with heaps of buttery mashed potatoes and peas or carrots, sometimes a mix of peas and carrots. No scrimping on the sweets. Every evening meal followed by tea and a dessert: pie, ice cream, chocolate layer cake, cookies.

"I don't like to be called at home on Sunday. You know that."

"I don't like to be fired on Sunday especially for no reason."

"Don't give me the Mr. Innocent song and dance. You push a man like Tom Manion around what do you expect? You let those hooligans go after Mr. Manion then you treat him like he's the one in the wrong."

"You didn't even think to ask for my side of the story?"

"You'd be wasting your breath Sonny Boy."

Chris felt the helplessness of Burty's indifference to his fate. He had worked for the man for two years and he was just a replaceable part, not worthy of concern. He held all the cards. Sadness descended. "Okay. I'll be by tomorrow to pick up my money," he said.

"You do that," Burty said, and hung up.

Chris put down the phone and lit a cigaret. He put a second pillow behind his back so he could sit under the covers in some comfort while mulling his options. The last time he was fired, an event that transformed his life, was eight years ago, from a pitilessly boring job as a word processor for an insurance company.

***

He had been on parole for about a year and a half, still using his birth name, Gerry Reilly, when he arrived home at his apartment in the Mets on 46th Street in Woodside early on a Friday evening to a message on his answering machine telling him that his cousin, Chris Dunne had died of a heart attack. Chris and Gerry had grown up together, the sons of two sisters, Alice and Hannah, living a few blocks apart. The Reillys lived in a crowded third floor apartment in the Mets on 47th Street; the Dunnes had their own two-family house on 48th Street on the other side of Laurel Hill. They were always at one another's place, the boys playing Monopoly or war in a bedroom, their mothers having tea and pound cake in the kitchen. Gerry Reilly hurried to his Aunt Hannah's house to see what he could do. He helped her arrange for Patty Hughes, the undertaker, to get the body from Elmhurst General. Together they picked out a coffin and agreed on the hours for the wake that Saturday and Sunday at the Hughes Brothers Funeral Home, with a death notice in the Daily Keys. The funeral Mass was set for 9 on Monday morning in St. Malachy's with burial in First Calvary in the same grave as Chris Dunne's father. There would be room in the grave for one more, Aunt Hannah when her turn came. Alice Reilly and her husband John were just a few graves away, a stone angel perched atop their tombstone.

Gerry Reilly took his aunt and cousin Chris' personal telephone books to call relatives, friends, neighbors, and acquaintances. Most had moved to Long Island and the farther reaches of Queens. Some in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Only a few old folks and leftovers like himself remained in St. Malachy's parish. Latinos, Chinese and Indians had filled the houses and apartments vacated by the emigrants to the suburbs. He called his sister, Margie in Seaford. Her husband, Don, who worked for Grumman Aerospace, answered the phone. Margie was at the library, but they would be there. Almost 10 o'clock, he started to dial a number in Huntington for Greg Kearney, but caught himself. Greg. He had always called him Red. Since he got out of prison, his greatest concern, he didn't want to say fear, was that Red Kearney would show up looking for revenge, figuring that Gerry Reilly must have turned state's evidence to escape the chair. Gerry assumed that Red, who had a vile temper, undoubtedly was the triggerman in the killing of Lance DeMille. He wasn't calling Red. He hoped no one else would either.

On Sunday afternoon, an elaborate wreath from Red and Julianne Kearney was delivered to the funeral home. Some of the stalwarts from of St. Malachy's Altar & Rosary Society cooed over the elaborate flowers on the Kearney family's wreath and what a marvelous job Patty Hughes had done on Chris Dunne, so handsome in his new suit looking peaceful, almost just sleeping on the satin bed of the coffin with his blond handlebar mustache and long hair, spread out round his head instead of pulled back in his usual ponytail. Chris Dunne had been the best of sons, still living at home, good job loading trucks with the Teamsters in Glendale, although he did drink a little too much. Some had memories of the heartache Greg Kearney caused his mother when he was sent to reform school as a boy. Now look at him. A successful businessman on Long Island. How life turns out.

Red showed up at 8 o'clock with three daughters, and wife, a woman moving to middle-aged chunkiness with a still pretty face. He walked past Gerry Reilly in the back of the room without noticing him, so busy greeting friends from the neighborhood he hadn't seen in years. Gerry looked past the circle of men around him to watch Red and his wife kneel at the coffin, while their girls waited respectfully behind them, then took their turns for a quick prayer at the side of the remains of Chris Dunne. Red turned to Aunt Hannah, sitting in a big comfortable chair in the first row with an elderly cousin on either side, to express his sorrow and introduce his wife and daughters. Aunt Hannah held both his hands in hers, chatting, bringing smiles and laughter to Red and his wife, while the girls stood silent, anxious to leave. Gerry was relieved when they did.

In the morning, just after nine o'clock, before he set out for the funeral Mass, Gerry Reilly called his supervisor, Gwen Apfelbaumer, a skinny woman with horn-rimmed glasses and styleless dyed black hair, a sharp nose and a pointy chin, no breasts, originally from Minneapolis, where the winter cold had seeped into her soul. People in the office said she hadn't been a bad boss until she went through her divorce, dropping her married name Kelly, coming out of the experience bitter and with no use for hell-raising Irishmen. "Ms. Apfelbaumer, this is Gerry Reilly. Sorry to call at the last minute like this, but I got a funeral this morning, I've got to go to," he said with an eerie sense of nervousness flowing up and down under his breastbone.

"Someone in the family die?"

"Yes. My cousin. We were very close."

There was a pause. "I don't like to say this, but not close enough. Have you read your employee handbook? Bereavement leave for husband or wife, for siblings, for mother, for father. And that benefit comes after six months with the company. You've been here four months."

He flushed. "Look. I can't make it. My Aunt Hannah really needs me. This was her only son."

"You live in Woodside. You be here in 30 minutes or don't bother coming in tomorrow. What I'm saying is I'm giving you half an hour to get here or you don't work here any more."

Gerry Reilly slammed down the phone. He didn't like the job anyhow. It was forced on him by his parole officer. Not hard to find something better. When Gerry got out of Attica, he went to work in a diner owned by a Pointster with the promise he would be moved up to management when he learned the business from mopping floors to working the grill. That didn't happen in the year he worked at the diner.

His chance for promotion got killed when his past popped up. Martin Zelotovich, his probation officer, had knocked on Gerry's door at 2 o'clock one morning. Stepped past him into the tiny apartment, walked into the bedroom, and said, "Who's this?"

The woman, slack-mouthed, still groggy from the deep sleep of post fabulous sex, pulled the sheet up to her neck. She stared in disbelief.

"A friend from work," Gerry said. He was still trying to build a career at the diner at the time. She was a waitress with a crude and brazen mouth, a fleshy body.

"You didn't tell me about her did you," Zelotovich said staring at her.

"No sir," Gerry said softly.

Zelotovich turned to him. "I'm not going to embarrass this lady with questions. I'm telling you though, I believe in giving everyone one chance. This is yours." He left Gerry to explain himself to his companion, the second woman he had gone to bed with since getting out of Attica, in fact the second woman he had gone to bed with in his life. This little bit of erotic heaven had lasted through six months of weekly encounters. He didn't know if she were married, divorced, a long-time bachelorette. Just that she had a pussy and came onto him. His first woman had been a prostitute.

One night a wiseguy he knew him from Auburn State Prison came into the diner to meet someone. The wiseguy said, "What's this? You can do better than this. Give me a call." He gave him his card, and said, "We'll see what we can do for you. Always like to help out a stand up guy." He quit the diner when the wiseguy got him a job as a Working Teamster Foreman for Local 282, essentially being his own boss and making big money, anywhere from $1,500 to $3,000 a week, checking the union cards of drivers delivering concrete to a construction site in Lower Manhattan. The easy part of the quid pro quo was to let the nonunion truckers from New Jersey onto the project on the wiseguy's say-so, and to kickback 10 percent of his salary. He knew from talking to other Working Teamster Foremen that when called either by the union or the wiseguy he would be expected to put on a show of muscle, and use it if necessary. He lasted only three months, till December when Zelotovich forced him to quit. Zelotovich said Gerry was making too much money and he didn't like what he heard about Local 282. Zelotovich got him the word processor's job for $8.25 an hour at the insurance company. The what for which here was to take the job or go back to prison. Zelotovich was a real hard nose.

***

At the cemetery, with the Kosciusko Bridge looming behind them and a misty April rain soaking them, standing next to Aunt Hannah beneath a big black umbrella held by an assistant to Patty Hughes, Gerry Reilly's thoughts were dominated by the conversation to come with his parole officer. He would call as soon they got back to the house for the post funeral lunch. Some ladies from the Rosary Society were back at the house laying out plates of deli cold cuts, baked ham, boiled ham, honey maple turkey, American cheese, provolone, with loaves of sliced bakery rye and stacks of fresh rolls, with bowls of mayonnaise, mustard, potato salad, macaroni salad, cole slaw, with coffee and tea ready to be made, several coffee cakes, a homemade chocolate layer cake, a case of beer, and bottles of Scotch and Irish whiskey in the Dunne house on 48th Street as Aunt Hannah stepped forward to toss a bit of dirt into the grave onto the coffin holding the shell of her son, Chris. The moment the symbolic damp, heavy dirt left her hand, Gerry raised his eyes to discover Red Kearney staring at him across the narrow opening in the earth. Gerry snapped into the moment, his heart pounding with fear. 'What are you doing to me God?' he asked silently. 'First Chris dies, then I lose my job, and now Red is back.' Over the 30 years since the killing, Red had broadened from a tall slender kid with black curly hair with an expression of constant sarcasm and a promise of violence into a burley man with thinning gray hair. He looked strong and capable. Unless the years had softened him, he had a gun or a knife somewhere on him.

Back at his aunt's house, Gerry went right to the phone to call Martin Zelotovich, the parole officer before the mourners arrived to eat and talk. Cars were parking outside as he dialed.

"This is Gerry Reilly, Mr. Zelotovich."

"Glad you called. Where are you?"

"I'm at my Aunt Hannah's house. Hannah Dunne. She's listed in my file."

"You weren't at work today," Zelotovich responded.

Apfelbaumer must have called him. "I had to go to a funeral."

"A sibling or a parent?"

"No." He was even using her terminology.

"Then you should have gone to work. You have the rest of the day to wrap up your affairs. Be standing outside my office at 8 AM tomorrow morning."

"Yessir," Gerry said. He suppressed a sob. "Does that mean you're putting me back inside?"

"Only you can put yourself back inside. We'll go over your performance tomorrow." He hung up the phone.

The door had opened and people were flowing in, filling his aunt's rooms, going into the dining room for the food, out to the kitchen for the beer and whiskey. Talking and laughing. Kissing Aunt Hannah. Expressing their sorrow once again.

He was so distracted that he wasn't aware of Red standing before him until he spoke and held out his hand to be shaken. "I didn't see you last night. I wanted to talk to you," Red said.

He had lost his edge in his year and half of walking through the fields of wheat, prison slang for being on the street. Red could have stuck a knife in his belly and ripped the life out of him. But he wouldn't do that here in a crowded room in front of witnesses. He studied Red. Not speaking.

Red filled the silence: "Let's get a drink."

They went to the kitchen. Gerry poured Irish whiskey into two low-ball glasses. No ice. He led Red into Chris' bedroom with a big framed Giants poster on one wall, a crucifix over the bed, a twin bed next to a window looking out on the alley lined with one and two car garages, on another wall, a caricature of Chris with an enlarged head, a shamrock and a bottle of whiskey. Red closed the door behind him. Gerry twirled facing him, setting himself for the two step dance--a cross block then a deadly grip on his throat--should Red make a move to pull a weapon,.

Red pressed his back against the door. With a grimace, he raised his glass: "I don't know what to say. All the toasts I can think of are wrong for saying I'm sorry. I've waited a long time to say this to someone, but I'm sorry Butch and Hughie had to die for something they didn't do. I'm sorry you went to prison for so long for something you didn't do."

"What do you mean they didn't do it? Weren't they with you? Didn't you pull the trigger?"

Red's voice dropped to a whisper. "At the same time Lance DeMille was being shot dead on Queens Boulevard by the cemetery, Butch and Hughie were with me in the city that night. We were doing this townhouse, figuring no one was home and this old lady comes out of her bedroom. I punched her right in the mouth because she was screaming. Shut her up, and we got out of there with nothing. I felt so ashamed of myself for hitting an old lady, I just wanted to put the day behind me. I went home to bed and they went to Bickford's. You know the rest of the story."

Butch's last words from the newspaper account of his execution sounded in Gerry's mind: "God knows I'm innocent."

Red continued. "I heard they picked up Hughie, and I ran. I figured they were after us for the burglaries. We did a whole string, and some stick ups too, but no killings. I ended up in Chicago. This is funny. I went out west and became a smoke jumper. Then I worked for a gardener in Savannah. I joined the Marines. I was in boot camp when I had to write home. They make you do that, and that's when I found out Butch and Hughie got the chair and you went to prison, three years after it all went down. My sister wrote me about it. Catching me up on the neighborhood. Put in six years in the Marines. I figured the statute of limitations had run on the burglaries so I came home, met this beautiful girl whose family had a potato farm on Long Island. We got married, her father set me up in a nursery business. And here I am today."

"Why didn't you come forward. Do something for me?"

"I tell you I didn't even know what happened till long after it happened. Besides, who was gonna believe me? Any way, who are you to talk? Didn't you sink them to get out of the chair?"

"No. They had all three of us with the same make-believe evidence. What I had going for me was College Point Jesuit, my high school. The priest who was the headmaster visited me every year in June, and one time he told me that a Pointster who was sitting on that jury told him he convinced everyone to vote to recommend leniency for me. You know why? Because I was a Pointster too."

"What more can I say, I'm sorry."

The toughness had gone out of Red. Mass every Sunday. A wife who was a real woman. Three beautiful daughters. The good life. Gerry knew he no longer had to be concerned about Red sticking a knife into his back. A worry gone. But he was seized with despondency. "I'm going back inside tomorrow."

"What do you mean? Aren't you on parole?"

"Yeah. I'm a dog on a leash. My keeper is sending me back inside tomorrow."

"No way out?"

"Yeah, if I run."

"How long can they keep you in prison?"

"Maybe two years. Maybe the rest of my life. I've got this parole officer who gets off on sending you back inside to show you who's boss."

"If there's anything I can do, let me know."

"Yeah." A meaningless offer.

"I've got to go."

"Yeah." They shook hands. Red was relieved. He said he was sorry. Like going to confession. Three Hail Marys and he could forget it. Gerry sat down on Chris' bed with a bowed head. He stayed that way, no thoughts in his mind, until there was a tap on the door. "Yes."

Aunt Hannah came into the room. She saw the sadness on his face and assumed he was suffering the loss of Chris as deeply as she was. She crossed the room, embracing him. "I know. I miss him so much too. You two boys were like twins when you were growing up. Like brothers." She squeezed him. "I have to get back outside. I wanted to make sure you were okay."

"Thank you Aunt Hannah."

"Your mother would be so happy just to see you where you are today."

"I know Aunt Hannah."

She paused at the door. "Gerry. I want you to know that if there's anything of Chris' you want, just take it. He'd want you to have everything. I know you don't have very much. Take his clothes, take his socks, whatever you want. You have a wallet? Chris' wallet and watch are in the top drawer. Take them please. I'll be happy knowing you're using them."

After a while, Gerry went to the dresser. He checked Chris' wallet. Thirty-two dollars, his social security card, his driver's license. The registration for his car parked down the street. A picture of his parents. Some receipts. A photo ID from the trucking company where he worked. His Teamsters' union card. Gerry put the wallet in his pocket and the watch on his left wrist, and decided to run.

***

Chris finished his cigaret, suddenly aching for something sweet, remembering the big yellow, lemon cookies in the clear-glassed jar on the counter of Peter's Bakery on Greenpoint Avenue. When he was growing up, Sunday dinner was always at 2 o'clock, not long after the last Mass, then in the evening, his mother would send him to the bakery for rolls and pastries. Every Sunday night, sitting around the kitchen table, his mother, his father, his sister and him with the radio playing Fibber McGee and Molly while they drank hot tea with strawberry Jell-O, rolls and the pastries. In the joint, remembering those Sundays brought him a searing sadness, so he pushed those scenes out of his mind. He was restless. His mind churning. He had to get out of the apartment. Do something. He got up, put on chinos, a heavy shirt, and a black windbreaker. Going down the stairs, he said hello to Phil's daughter who was just coming in with a white bag from a bakery. "What a coincidence, I was just thinking about going to the bakery when I was a kid."

"Really," she said moving past him.

"Smells good," he said after her, watching the swing of her behind until she disappeared into Phil's first floor apartment.

He lit another cigaret on the sidewalk outside the house. The walk to the bakery on 31st Street was a mixture of pleasant warmth and a sudden dark, threatening cold as black clouds blocked the sun. Thirty-First Street under the el was alive with shoppers carting home bags of groceries, Chinese food, flat square boxes of pizza, soft white boxes of pastry. Every parking space was filled; cars double-parked outside bars and flower shops and grocery stores. Chris waved at the cashier looking out of the breakfast-round-the-clock restaurant. He turned into the cream-tiled bakery, whose glass showcases were still stocked, even after the Sunday morning rush, with cheesecakes, strawberry shortcakes, cream puffs, piles of honey-covered Greek pastries, cinnamon coffee cakes, almond and raisin coffee rings, powdered cheese Danish, jelly donuts, a few glazed donuts, and one French cruller. On the back counter, the breadbaskets were almost empty. Some Kaiser rolls, onion rolls, long Italian breads, and two seeded ryes remained. No lemon cookies. A half dozen women were ahead of him. He watched the French cruller with white icing and crisp brown wrinkled base disappear from the case into a white paper bag along with three powdered jelly donuts and two powdered cheese Danish. Cream puffs, cheesecakes and strawberry shortcake went into white boxes tied with red and white cotton string from a giant spool before the tired-looking woman behind the counter reached him. All of the Danish and coffee rings were sold before it was his turn.

"Give me three glazed donuts and three cream puffs," Chris said. He left with his sweets in a box. He stopped at a newsstand to buy the Sunday editions of New York Newsday and the New York Times for the help wanted ads. A crudely lettered sign read: No Daily Keys. New York was a union town, and Astoria was a working-class neighborhood, but Chris wondered whether smashed plate glass windows and stacks of Daily Keys torched or tumbled onto sidewalks helped the Indian storekeepers decide that the few dollars a day profit from Daily Keys sales weren't worth the hostility of pro-union customers as well as the risk of violence.

When he turned off 31st Street, the sidewalks were empty. Few cars were on the roads. He walked back to the house, head bowed under an icy drizzle. He unlocked the outside door, hoping to see Phil in the hallway. In the apartment, he put the newspapers on a chair, intending to look at the classified ads after he made coffee and ate the donuts. The creampuffs he would save for tea later in the evening, after supper.

He sat under a tartan quilt, cozy in his easy chair, paging through the sections of the newspapers, finding little that interested him, dozing, awaking to look out on the grey day, the rain falling harder. He checked the movie calendar in Newsday. None of the films were appealing enough to go out in this dismal weather. Masterpiece Theater on Channel 13 looked good at 9 o'clock. He would watch that. He liked the sound of the rain on the roof. He closed his eyes listening to it.

At 5 o'clock, he awoke, hungry. In the kitchen, he put his large iron skillet on a medium high heat; opened a can of Bush's Original Baked Beans put them in a sauce pan over a low flame; he got out the Virginia baked ham from the deli, sliced some cheese from a block of Vermont extra-sharp cheddar and put both on four slices of Levy's Jewish Rye. Chris put a chunk of butter in the skillet and laid the ham and cheese rye sandwiches on the sizzling surface a minute later. He turned up the heat under the beans; fetched a bottle of beer from the refrigerator; and set the table. A blue and white placemat decorated with an ancient sailboat in the center and a Greek statue at each corner. On the placemat a dinner plate, knife, fork. A pilsner glass for his beer. He drank beer as he turned the grilling sandwiches. He got deli potato salad from the refrigerator, and shortly sat down to his dinner of grilled ham and cheese sandwiches, beans, and potato salad. The first meal he ate in the lockup in Queens, a couple of days after he was arrested was a cold, limp grilled cheese sandwich. A single slice of cheese on fried white bread. And black coffee, not very good. Over the years inside, he had eaten a lot of grilled cheese sandwiches. Some awful. None very good. He savored the flavor of the meal he made this evening. He had a second beer, drinking the cold tangy liquid with pleasure. He made Irish breakfast tea to go with the three creampuffs for dessert.

He sat in the dark in the living room thinking about the job hunt to come. Maybe he should go back to San Francisco? A few days before Christmas, in 1987, Barry Stewart, who grew up with on 47th Street in Woodside had walked into Delores' Bar in San Francisco with a fleshy woman, who must have been his wife. Barry's face was lined from smiling and frowning, the aging process. Heavier, of course, his hair thinner. His eyes the same. Chris served them their drinks. If the wife was from Woodside, he didn't recognize her. Barry and the woman sat at the bar all evening, talking, drinking, laughing. He heard her call him Barry, and that was the convincer. Chris wanted to ask Barry what he was doing in San Francisco? What kind of a job did he have? Did he go to Fordham or Seton Hall or St. John's, maybe Manhattan College after he got out of the Army? Did he remember him? Not as Chris Dunne, the bartender with the blond mustache and long, soft blond hair, filling their glasses, but as Gerry Reilly. Everybody on 47th Street had to remember Gerry Reilly, who went to prison for 20 years to life, while Hughie Monahan and Butch O'Brien went to the chair. He had played baseball with Barry on Sandy Field. Shot marbles with him in Crowe's Alley. And Barry didn't recognize him.

When Delores turned on him, reminding him of a viperish snake, during an argument over nothing a few weeks later, saying she needed some distance from him for a while to assess her life with him, Chris grabbed the opportunity to leave. Barry's failure to realize Gerry Reilly was the man behind the bar and the mustache made Chris so secure in his new identity that he decided he could risk going back to the city he ached for, where he was born and grew up.

This was another change point in his life. He had to decide: return to San Francisco; find another bar to stand behind in Manhattan or maybe in the neighborhood, Astoria; think of something else to do. He liked watching the customers in the Bog. He wanted to be around people. He didn't like waiting on them. What else could he do? He didn't know. Nine o'clock was approaching. He would watch the show on Channel 13 and think about his next move tomorrow.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

NOVEMBER 5, 1990

Chris walked into the Bog at 11 AM. Just two customers were sitting at the bar on separate stools, far apart, one reading New York Newsday, the other hunched like a predator over his pint of beer. Johnny, who was working the morning shift, nodded, signaling to Burty the Third, sitting at a table in the dining room, the remains of a plate of bacon and eggs in front of him, that Chris had arrived. Burty rose, coming directly to Chris. He gave him a white envelope. "This brings us even. I'm paying you through the 15th and for a week's vacation."

Chris tore open the sealed envelope. He took out the thin packet of $20 bills along with a ten and four ones. He riffled the money with is right thumb. "Thanks for this," he said to Burty. "So long Johnny. It's been good to know ya," he said to the bartender who had withdrawn as far away as he could go and still be on his station. He folded the money, put it in his pocket, turned and left. No good bye. On the street corner, he threw the crumpled envelope into a wire trash receptacle. He walked north to 59th Street, then west to the Lexington Avenue subway line. He took an uptown express, standing against the inner door of the rocking train, glancing across the mixture of passengers: fat black women in long clothe coats, a bony thin black man in a crash helmet and blue striped tights with a large canvass messenger's wallet slung from his shoulder who was leaning on a 10-speed bicycle in the center of the car where double doors made his entry and exit easier; a pair of nuns in the medieval habits of the Dominican order; two white businessmen with leather brief cases; a Latino mother with straggly hair, an Amerindian face, two boxes from the Bargain Basement on 14th Street and her chubby little boy pressed against her.

At 86th Street, Chris got off in a stream of men and women, who climbed multiple flights of stone stairs to the grey, wide street filled with cars, pedestrians, movie theaters, shops. Chris strode the familiar street heading towards the Metropolitan Museum of Art for another look at Regnault's Salome and the nude self-portrait of Mary Hudson. Maybe he would run into her. He decided that if he did, he would pose for her. Maybe make enough money to add to his payoff from the Bog to carry him through the holidays without having to work on Christmas Day. Always the possibility that Zelotovich could be there. He would take that chance.

The sun shone on the huge banners advertising exhibits of African art from the sub-Sahara and nineteenth century funerary sculptures in the American Wing. The Met stood in massive silence. Traffic flowed hurriedly south on the avenue, but aside from a few dog walkers and women dressed in tights and sweats for winter jogging, the sidewalk was empty of the usual pack of tourists. The only occupants of the ordinarily thronged steps was a young couple sitting midway up facing Fifth Avenue. "Jesus Christ, it's closed," Chris said aloud. He went up the steps to a decorative sign on a stanchion listing the hours. Closed on Mondays, January 1, Thanksgiving Day, and December 25. He looked at his watch. A quarter to 12.

At the Madison Bar & Grill, the waiter was the gaunt little man in shirt sleeves with wide deep eyes whom he usually saw sitting at a back table with a cup of coffee reading the Daily Keys or the Post. "What'll you have?" the waiter asked. Chris ordered a hamburger, medium rare, steak fries, and a Brooklyn Beer. He sat in the narrow, rigid-seated, wooden booth enjoying the half light of the place, the quiet talk of the regulars. No television.

The waiter fetched his Brooklyn Beer from the bar, dropping it off at the booth before going into the kitchen with Chris' lunch order. By the time the hamburger and fries arrived with a bottle of Heinz ketchup, Chris was ready for another bottle of beer. He put the raw onion, tomato and lettuce that came on a brown dish decorated with Gaelic symbols on the hamburger and poured ketchup on top. Chris took a bite, then waited for the second bottle of beer to arrive before continuing to eat. He felt warm and content, a little sleepy by the end of the meal. Not wanting to leave, he ordered a third beer, lingering over it until the place began to fill around one o'clock.

Chris walked into Central Park at 79th Street, along a path spotted with line skaters and joggers. He stopped to watch sleek, high-masted, molded sailboats guided by electronic controls moving and looping before the stiff November wind. A man in waders with a long pole sloshed into the shallow waters of the sailboat pond to rescue a toppled boat. He had come here, perhaps 50 years ago, with the gang from 47th Street to watch the rich kids and their fathers send their teak and cherry wood yachts with flying colors across these waters. Little had changed except for electronic gadgets that gave the rich, the sons or grandsons of those whom he had watched as a boy, more control over their boats. He walked round the pond to the Hans Christen Anderson statue. That wasn't there those many years ago. He crossed the lawn and the road to Rowboat Lake. A few geese, a pair of swans. No one rowboating today. He continued to the West Side finding a pastry shop on Columbus Avenue, where he sat for half an hour nibbling little forkfuls of tiramisu and sipping black coffee watching the women, beautiful mothers in fur-trimmed short jackets and tight jeans pushing strollers, grey-haired square bodies with wire shopping carts, nubile teenagers who should have been in school. He paid and continued his trek, going south to 50th Street, turning west to 12th Avenue and the waterfront. He kept going, the breeze picking up, chilling him under a cloudy and suddenly darkened sky. Just past the Javits Center, he found the building, Far West Fine Arts Cooperative Living Centre, a four-story, startlingly white old waterfront warehouse, converted into apartments and artists' lofts.

Chris pulled open the towering front door, glass framed in shining stainless steel to form the outline of the Chrysler Building. A rent-a-cop wearing a peaked cap sat behind a huge, glistening steel desk against a background of bright yellow, red, orange and blue swirls interconnecting, rising in waves to the ceiling. An enormous black and white alley cat was dozing on the desktop.

He put down his magazine. "Can I help you, sir?"

"I came to see Mary Hudson."

"Your name?"

"Just tell her Chris."

The guard wrote that down. He punched a keyboard. "Ms. Hudson, I've got a Chris down here to see you." He nodded, listening. "Okay," he said to Chris. "You know the way?"

"Never been here before."

He pointed his left thumb over his shoulder. "Go around the partition. Take the north elevator. The one on the left. Go to the fourth floor. She's Studio NW."

Chris started towards the elevator.

"Hey buddy, could you take Sam upstairs with you. He's Ms. Hudson's cat." He extended the passive cat to Chris. "Don't worry he loves people."

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Chris stepped out of the elevator into a foyer with a large round marble tablet containing four blue arrows pointing to gold-lettered Penthouse NE, Penthouse SE, Penthouse SW and Studio NW. Above Mary Hudson's studio door was a painting of a gigantic Monarch Butterfly in yellow, orange and black. Over the bell button was a square printed card: "Do NOT touch this bell before 4 o'clock." He checked his watch ten after four. He pushed the button. Mary opened the door, the corners of her mouth lifting from her habitual grim into a smile. The cat jumped from his arms and disappeared into the studio "Thanks for bringing Sam up and welcome to my cocoon, Mr. Chris. To be frank, you are a pleasant surprise. I doubted that I'd ever see you again." She held a goblet of red wine in her left hand. "You arrived just in time for a glass of wine. Please come in."

"Your cocoon? And a butterfly over the door?"

"Butterflies are my thing at the moment."

She closed the door. "Thanks so much for coming," she said, her continued smile clashing with the deep furrow in her brow.

The hallway leading into the interior of the studio was a long wide gallery, lined on the right side from floor to ceiling in three uneven tiers of unframed paintings, oils and pastels, and pencil drawings, nudes, still lifes of fruits and flowers, pastoral and city landscapes. Two huge blank linen canvasses, each fourteen feet long and six feet wide, sized and ready to be filled, leaned against the left wall of the gallery below three huge oils in black frames: the face of a bald-headed Mary Hudson with a long, thick white beard, the dour set of the lips showing through along with the deep furrow on her brow, and the tip of a paint brush in one corner, held by the bearded woman; a full-length portrait of a brown-haired female baboon's head atop the body of a woman with a scarred left leg, a thick waist, a heavy left breast with a big nipple, a tuft of brownish pubic hair showing past a border of white thigh, a paint brush in her left hand and a palette smeared with whites, blacks, greens, reds, yellows and oranges in her right, painting an ibis; and a studio scene with Mary Hudson, dressed as she was dressed this afternoon in an oversize blue workshirt, worn over paint-stained baggy blue jeans, standing at an easel painting a monarch butterfly in flight. In the base of the frames of each painting was a plate: "Self Portrait." A fading, winter light came through a circle of glass opening through the roof above.

"You live in a museum," Chris said.

"No. A studio. They come in all shapes and sizes. This is mine. I paint here. I teach here."

He stopped in front of a large oil of a curly-haired, blond man with a small smile, a flat belly, bulging muscles and an erection.

"That catches everyone's eye. Our bit of pornography. A favorite of mine and the students working that day. The model was very pleased with himself. The painter caught his expression perfectly."

"Wow. This is something nice." Chris pointed to a line drawing of a nude woman on a chaise, an arm extended inviting the viewer to join her. The piece was signed Arnold.

"That's by Arnold Brohman. Arnold is my Egon Schiele—the Schiele of line drawings. To be frank, he thinks he is Schiele reincarnated."

"Arnold Brohman, the real estate guy?"

"That's our Arnold. Some people find it painful that a man so rich is so artistically talented. Most visitors are amused by the model with the erection. And man or woman finds Arnold's Invitation to the Chase provocative. Sensual at the very least." She sipped her wine. "Come work with me and in your free time you can study the Invitation."

"Oh boy, another bonus on top of $15 an hour."

She laughed. "Touché. The money's not large but the opportunity is."

"And what's the story behind this?" He waved at with wall with the three self-portraits.

"Mary Hudson as St. Luke, the patron saint of artists; Mary Hudson as Isis painting an ibis, another patron of the arts; Mary Hudson as Mary the Painter painting a sacred figure, the butterfly."

"Why butterflies?"

"The story of life. Beautiful and transitory." She waited a reaction, a comment. When none was forthcoming, she said. "Come on let's get you a glass of wine. He followed her limping in favor of her damaged left leg, across the planked floor, still polished at the edges and worn dark and down to the exposed wood on the walkway, past a dining area of table and chairs into the arena of her studio with wide tall windows and two round skylights. Paintings were stacked four and five deep facing the wall. A pile of as yet unused canvas with stretching tools and wood for frames filled a corner. The larger of the studio's skylights was above a section bordered by a waist-high supply cabinet, whose top was filled with jars and tubes and containers of brushes, beyond which were five easels, now empty, for students in a semi-circle flanking a small raised stage. A sixth easel, Mary Hudson's, covered by a white veil, was set between the little stage and a window bringing the north light onto the painter's working surface.

She led him under an array of colorful butterflies hung from the ceiling on lines of differing lengths to a blue couch, long enough for five, and two red plaid easy chairs set around a make-shift coffee table that once was a fancy front door with raised gargoyles in two corners. On the table a bottle of Cornarea in a raised gold holder with a plate of goat cheese and wheat crackers stood next to a crystal goblet and four oversized books: North American Butterflies, Beauty on Wing the World Over, The Monarch of the Americas, and La Belle Dame Sans Merci/The poetry of John Keats (1795 to 1821) edited by Mary Hudson.

"Wow." He picked up the heavy book examining the cover with the title printed over a reproduction of Regnault's Salome. He looked over the book at her. He recited: "I met a lady in the meads. Full beautiful, a fairy's child. Her hair was long, her foot was light, and her eyes were wild."

"That was wonderful. You can see we both feel something special about Salome. When I followed you into the museum that first day and you went right to Salome, I said to myself there is a spiritual tie between that man and me. Turn the book over."

He did. On the back cover was the reproduction of another painting, a slender nude with long black hair, a wedge of black pubic hair, twirling, toes extended like a ballerina, supporting two long, strong, ivory legs, the diaphanous cloth costume of Regnault's Salome flying from her right hand held high over her head. Behind her Herod on his throne, leered hungrily, courtiers, men and women in the dress of Romans and Palestinians stared, transfixed. He couldn't read the signature. He opened the back cover. The printed credit on the bottom said The Dance, A Self Portrait by Mary Hudson.

She poured red wine into the goblet set beside the bottle.

He held up the book, the back cover towards her.

"That was me before. Before. In happier days. Before the loss of innocence. Before I grew old. Before this," she said indicating her crippled leg. She spread the soft goat cheese on a wheat cracker for him. And made one for herself.

He bit into the snack and sipped the wine. "Sometimes we get dealt a shitty hand, but you seem to have made out okay. A ruined hand would be worse than a gimpy leg for an artist."

"I loved dancing."

"Oh, were you a dancer on the stage, in shows."

"In life. It's easy for someone whose life hasn't been changed radically by a shitty hand, as you put it, to be philosophical about someone else's hurt. Mine ran deep for a number of reasons." Her attempt at a pleasant expression was gone, replaced by a welling anger. "When I was twenty-six, Chris, I went on a painting, walking holiday in Provence with a man who swore he loved me as no else ever could. We were on a country road lined with towering elms. I'll never forget those trees. My lover was carrying my easel and my box of paints and brushes. He stopped to pick a blue wild flower for me. For my hair. I was laughing and I stepped back on the road. Just a step. An Englishman racing along in an open roadster right out of a 1930s movie hit me and threw me off the road over the head of my lover into one of those beautiful, towering elms. I didn't feel a thing until the next day when I woke up hurting all over. My face was a mess. I broke some ribs and my wrist and my leg. The Englishman said I stepped in front of him, and maybe I did, but he was flying and of course he was driving on the wrong side of the road, and he wasn't expecting some giddy woman to step into the road laughing. So to that extent it was my fault. My lover hung around for a few days comforting me, but he said he had to get back to New York. He left me in the hospital in France and we never got back together after the accident. They were able to put most of me back together as good as new except for the leg. This leg hurts me like hell from time to time. To be frank, whenever it zings me it reminds me of what selfish pricks men can be."

"Not all men."

"I'm speaking from experience Chris. As a woman. I know you can see the pain in my face. Now I've explained the limp and my face. Tell me where you got those eyes? I saw them move from sweet and inquisitive to bleak and murderous at the museum. So, what's your story Chris?"

"I don't have one."

"Lucky man." She paused for answer that didn't come. "To be frank, I don't believe you. There's too much emotion packed in those eyes." She poured more Cornarea into her glass. She was afraid of losing him. She reached across, pouring the balance of the wine into his glass. She put down the bottle. "To be frank Chris, I need to reach inside of you for these paintings. Here's the game we'll play. Whenever you pose, I'll give you an assignment, say, who was the most important man in your life? Recall a moment from your life in which he changed your life. Do it in detail to jog your memory. You don't tell me anything. You keep your images inside your head. Your eyes will give me what I need."

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The light on the answering machine was blinking when Chris got home. He pressed the message button. Mrs. Baltic's voice. "Lord have mercy, I heard last night you're no longer working at the Bog. What am I going to do? I don't know. No one can take your place. You know where the Helen Hayes is, on 44th Street? I have tickets for 8 o'clock tomorrow night. Call me and say it's a date." Her words came in a barrage. He had to replay the message three times to understand her.

He called her apartment. "Tell Mrs. Baltic it's a date. I'll meet her in the lobby tomorrow night," he told the woman who answered.

Chris took the subway to Times Square emerging onto a cold, murky 42nd Street filled with neon signs, people, cars and taxis. Two teenage black predators with hairbrush mustaches and slicked backed hair looking for a score examined him and turned away. No easy mark. He walked the few steps to Seventh Avenue, his head bowed against a piercing November wind whipping aloft grit and newspapers. A fire truck, clanging and howling, pushed through the jam of southbound traffic. Horns from impatient drivers in taxis and cars blasted. He glanced at the news zipper under the New York Newsday sign, and turned north joining the swollen river of tourists from the city, from the boroughs, from Jersey, Long Island, Asia, Africa and Europe that flowed in both directions past the garish hotels, movie theaters and restaurants. He walked west on 44th Street, crowded with taxis and stretch limos in the road and theatergoers on the sidewalk. The marquee told him the play he would be seeing: Prelude to a Kiss. He squeezed into the crowded lobby of the Helen Hayes Theatre, around the customers picking up tickets or trying to buy them from the women behind the grilled windows of the box office. He moved through the mass of bodies, threading past tight groups in conversation, men and women in business suits or sweaters over casual blouses and shirts, all holding leather jackets or overcoats; two ladies in mink coats. He couldn't find Mrs. Baltic. At 7:30, ushers threw open the doors easing the crush in the lobby. Chris went outside to wait for Mrs. Baltic. The cold became too much and he stepped back inside, standing near the box office, watching happy-faced men and women crossing the lobby to the innards of the theatre. He checked his watch. Five to eight. Outside a worn black Lincoln stopped in midroad. He went back out. He waved to the driver, and opened the door for Mrs. Baltic.

They had just settled into the seats in the center of the third row when the curtain rose to an almost bare set dominated by a picture window. The voice of Ella Fitzgerald sang "My love is a prelude that never dies, my prelude to a kiss." The play unfolded with an attractive couple falling in love and getting married in New Jersey. The seemingly simple story took a surreal twist when a white-haired old man found his way into the wedding party and kissed the pretty bride. Through this weirdly transforming kiss the soul of the old man was plunged into the bride's body, and hers into his aging corpus.

A man with an inner woman churned Chris' mind to the years inside when he saw boys and boyish men turned into women with lipstick and swinging asses, with eye makeup and an interest in the style of their hair, in need of a man to protect them. No one can protect you, but yourself, his father had told him. He listened to his father and took the hard way, the brutal fights, the knifings, time in the hole, scars on his body, killing, and he came out of those long dismal years a con not a punk. He had endured the evil spell cast on him, an innocent switched for a killer, putting his body and soul in a cage with vicious, violent, insane, uncaring, burned out men, guards as well as prisoners. As he anticipated, Prelude to a Kiss ended happily, the young lovers reunited having earned a little wisdom from their startling experience. Mrs. Baltic and the audience around him laughed and applauded when all was right and the souls of the old man and the young woman were returned to their original husks. The actors joined hands, smiling, bowing low for the audience standing, applauding. Chris rose too, clapping, but welling with bitterness.

Mrs. Baltic had took his arm when the repeated curtain calls ended. "Are you alright, Chris?"

"Of course."

"You have such a lost expression on your face."

"The play struck an unhappy chord."

"Isn't that what theater is all about? To see ourselves in a character. To learn more about ourselves. We'll have a late dinner and you can tell me all about it."

He smirked. I don't think so, he said to himself.

The car took them round the corner to 43rd Street and over to Le Madeleine just past Ninth Avenue. They were led to a table in the restaurant's garden, a narrow room of exposed brick walls with flowers and tall green plants hovering round the diners. Mrs. Baltic ordered a glass of Burgundy. Chris had a Bushmill on the rocks. "To the playwright and the actors and let's not forget the director of Prelude to a Kiss," Mrs. Baltic said touching her goblet of wine to his glass of whiskey. "Was it a transforming experience tonight? Is that why you were so serious, Chris?"

"I don't know why, but that play set me to remembering things I've seen in my life that I don't want to remember."

"You are a man of such depth Chris. You're at a turning point in your life. You've lost your job and must be looking for something to do. I don't want to sound like some interfering old biddy, but now is your chance to grab for something important in life. I don't know why you're a bartender Chris. When I first met you I was convinced that you were an actor or a poet tending bar to continue living your dream."

He almost said, no he was a failed man, but caught himself. He hadn't tried anything to have failed. "I find pleasure in just living the way I do, Mrs. Baltic."

"If you weren't at this turning point, Chris, I wouldn't say this, but I can see so much more in you than a life behind a bar pouring drinks for drunks and yuppies, kowtowing to little old ladies like me. I hear you deliver lines of poetry in a wonderful voice, poetry to fit the moment. You have two tools essential to the actor: the ability to memorize lines and a voice. You need some training of course. You need to take the risk of going on stage, and that's not easy, let me tell you. But most of all you need to start."

"Just what are you talking about, Mrs. Baltic?"

"You should be an actor, Chris."

"I must be at a turning point. Another woman offered me a job as a model. All I would have to do is sit there quietly. No lines to memorize, no need to be nervous, don't have to strain my voice."

"I hope you're trying to tease me, Chris. I would be happy for you if that's what you want. There can be good money in modeling."

"Not that kind. Not in a magazine for a photographer. I had a lady offer me $60 a day to pose for a painting. So there's not good money at all in the kind of modeling I qualify for."

"You're not going to do it, are you?"

"I start tomorrow."

"For $60 a day! How can you live on that?"

"My needs and wants are a little more modest than yours Mrs. Baltic. I'm going to do it for a few weeks, then move on. I'm thinking of getting out of New York."

"I'm going to call my daughter, Cheri. You know my bohemian. She's director of the theater department up at Douglas College in Vermont. Maybe she can arrange something for you. A scholarship. Maybe something in her summer playhouse. She has a wonderful summer program."

The waitress came. "Decided? Or do you need a little more time?"

"Chris, they make a marvelous steak au poivre here. I recommend it." She turned her attention to the waitress, "Dear, I'll start with the warm goat cheese salad and I'll take the steak avec frites. Medium. And another glass of wine. This is a big night."

Chris, who never had had goat cheese or steak au poivre, ordered the same, and another Irish whiskey."

"Let's talk about the play, not me," he said.

"Okay. Not another word. But don't be surprised to hear from Cheri."

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

"Good morning. Good morning. Top o' the morning. I'm Arnold whooo are youuuu?" Arnold Brohman sang when he opened the door. He looked like his pictures in the newspapers. Grey hair, thin, rodent face, wire glasses. Always in a sports jacket with a colorful handkerchief in his breast pocket.

Chris took his extended hand. Arnold shook it while drawing him through the door. Closing it behind them.

"You're Chris, aren't you?" he continued singing.

"Yeah."

Arnold's voice dropped to a stage whisper. "Oops. I shouldn't be singing or exuding energy this morning. She's down. Really down. One of those dismal days she has from time to time. Headache. Full of pain in her left wrist from painting. Give her some room this morning Chris. Take a seat quietly. Watch and listen. I know she's crazy about you. You are her dream come true. The eyes and the head she has been looking for. Please bear with her this morning." He put a finger to his mouth. Silence. Crooked a waving finger. Come follow me.

A fortyish woman, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, barefoot in a terry cloth bathrobe, came out of the studio bathroom. She waved to Arnold, and smiled. He smiled back. "Irene," he said in his whisper. She crossed the room, passing four women at easels, in smocks and jeans fiddling with their painting tools. Mary sat away from the others in front of a large window opening the north light onto her easel. Arnold led Chris to an easy chair that had been moved from the sitting area to a spot near a window, where he would be facing the painters, Mary and the four women. Arnold stepped back to his own easel, taking off his jacket and tie, laying them across the back of a wooden folding chair. He slipped into a smock.

Mary nodded at Chris, and he nodded back. "Okay. Let us begin," she said stepping around her easel. "Irene will stand for us this morning just she did in our last session. Her left hand on her hip. Her right hand just touching the lobe of her right ear. Bending slightly forward. Irene."

Irene dropped her robe across a small table, and stepped onto the circular stage. She assumed the pose, which dropped her breasts into a slight dangle, the nipples erect. She had a bulge to her belly, an elongated boulder of flesh over tightly-curled dark pubic hair, a slender woman, not in perfect shape.

"That's fine, Irene." Mary limped from her easel to the small stage. She slipped a key into a control panel, and turned the stage 45 degrees so that Irene's right side faced the four women and Arnold. Chris studied Irene's rump, two swollen arcs of flesh over dimpling, thick thighs. "This is a human body you are painting. Beautiful in its individual way, containing a human being with a personality, a mind, a past, and a presence. Capture Irene not just two nipple tips and hair in the usual places. Two eyes, lips, a nose. Hands, legs, etcetera. Capture the essence of this woman. What she is thinking. What she remembers. Put a piece of your soul in your work. Of course you can't help but do that because you are artists. We are not amateur photographers using a brush and paint and canvass instead of a camera. We are artists. We are creators. Use your eyes, your minds, your imaginations."

Mary took the few steps to Chris. As he shifted to rise from the grip of the easy chair, she said, "Stay there." She went around the back of the chair. She hovered over him, speaking softly into his right ear, the irritation she felt spicing her words with an undertone of anger. "Not such an easy way to make money, standing up there. Naked. Maybe feeling like a side of beef."

He turned to her, reacting with his anger to her's "I thought you wanted to paint my eyes."

Her expression was severe; she seemed barely able to contain a fury. "Your eyes are part of a larger whole. I can't take them out of context and understand you at your most beautiful and most vulnerable, in the nude, stripped of the pretensions of clothing." She moved from behind his chair with an exaggerated limp to look over Arnold's shoulder, whispering angry words to him, then on to each of the other students, taking the brushes from them to daub each painting with a mark of her own. She came back to Chris, resuming her position behind him. "To be frank, I have to ask you whether you have the nerve to expose yourself as a model? Whether you can overcome your blue collar prudery?"

"I don't need this," he said, and got up to leave. The experience seemed ridiculous. This woman was acting as if she were someone to be kowtowed before. She didn't mean anything to him.

Arnold caught up to him at the elevator. "Chris. Hold on. Could you please come back inside. She's not usually like this. She told me she woke up this morning with a headache that was like a storm at sea. Please. Bear with her. I beg you. Do me this favor. Give her another chance. We all deserve a second chance."

Arnold Brohman, master of New York real estate deals, instinctively had found the soft spot in Chris' ruffled ego. A second chance. "Did she ask you to come after me?"

"No. But I know how important you are to her. We talk, and she called me up after you agreed to pose for her and she was enthusiastic for the first time in I don't know how long. Chris, she is not just an artist, she is a great artist. She sees something in you that she must paint. She's out of sorts today. She didn't sleep well last night. She woke up with the headache. So she's nasty. Do yourself a favor. Go along with her. Ignore her outbursts and you could very well be an important part of a great work of art."

CHAPTER NINETEEN

"Ladies and Arnold, I have a treat for you this morning, a virgin. Chris has never taken his clothes off in front of more than one woman before. Am I right Chris? Don't be timid now. Unveil the subject for us."

Chris was conscious of his cock, a shrunken stub in the chill of the studio, as he untied the terry cloth robe, the same one the model wore yesterday, and let it slip from his torso. He looked down to hide the blush of unexpected shame he experienced. He had awakened excited in the anticipation of displaying himself before five women, four of them young and inviting students. He had waxed his handlebar mustache this morning and surveyed his naked figure, his penis hanging long and suggestively in his reflection in the mirror, fresh out of bed after his morning hard-on. In the studio, his small audience, Mary, Arnold, and the four female artists looking round their easels, pencils ready, stared at him, their eyes caught first by the center of his embarrassment showing amidst his curled pubic hairs on his long, still lean body. Above his right breast was the crude blue-line tattoo of the fierce peregrine falcon and the snake torn to pieces, a lasting remembrance of the predator con he killed in Auburn. Then their eyes went to the thick, white scar just above his left hip, his battle wound from the same happening in Auburn.

Mary turned the stage. They glanced along the length of his muscular legs and strong thighs across his solid haunches at the scar continuing around the left side of his body. On his left shoulder was another jailhouse tattoo, the Chinese calligraphy for Strategic Withdrawal, I Ching hexagram 33. Slowly she revolved the stage until he came full circle.

"Now this is a fascinating body. No one in this class is to ask Chris where he got these scars and tattoos. I want you to use your eyes, your minds, your imaginations. No prompting from the subject," she said, almost happily. She hadn't expected his body to be as interesting as his eyes.

Chris smirked. If the students pried open his mouth, they would see the bridge replacing his right canine and the tooth behind it, broken in a fight at Elmira to stave off a rape. Under his long blond hair above his left ear was another knife wound scar from his first days in Auburn from another dangerous rapist, whose calling in life was to turn cons into pussies. Chris had driven the palm of his hand into his nose and jammed his attacker's knife into his left ear, damaging him forever. They both went into the hole for 30 days.

"The eyes are what interest me. Draw your impressions, what strikes you about our model." Mary said to the class. She looked up to him. "Break the tension with a poem, Chris."

That surprised him. She was right. His body was tight in the stress of being exposed and remembering. He relaxed: "Put away the car. When life fails, what's the good of going to Wales." The lines had popped off his tongue without forethought. The students, the women and Arnold, smiled.

"And the author?" Mary asked, lightness in her voice.

"W.H. Auden."

"Fine. Our literary dalliance is at an end. Let's get to work. Chris I like that pose. Fluid. Graceful. Try to hold it for the next 30 minutes. Then we'll take a break. You'll need one."

Put away the car. When life fails. Or is frozen. Locked inside. Posing for half an hour is a speck of a moment against 28 years of boredom interrupted only by anger, anguish, moments of fear, terror, hours of bitterness, days of self-pity. Contempt for the population of slow-witted, dangerous guards and inmates, overflowing with resentment and distilled evil. Puzzled by God. Why would God let this happen to me? I prayed, maybe more to Mary than to God himself; I went to confession; I touched Annie and myself, but I confessed and said my penance, mostly Hail Marys; I never missed Mass on Sunday and holy days of obligation until they put me inside; I never really hurt anyone until I had to; I never hurt anyone until they put me inside, then I had to protect myself.

The Rev. Matthew James SJ, nicknamed The All-Matty as in God Almighty, visited Chris, he was still called Gerry Reilly in those days, on Saturday, June 13, 1953, his 25th day in solitary confinement in Elmira Reformatory for the bloody battle in which his right canine and the tooth behind it were shattered into stumps and the would-be rapist lost an eye, suffered a fractured skull, a broken nose, along with lumps, bruises, and a torn lip. The attacker was half blind and in convulsions on the floor from his head injury when the guards finally intervened. Chris had prepared himself to be vicious in defending himself from the moment a few days after his arrest when his teary-eyed father, John Reilly, a wire lather by trade, who had spent time inside for a teenage burglary, warned him of what lay ahead. He had to choose between being tough unto death or ending up a punk, somebody's wife inside. Father and son had never discussed the taboo subject of sex before, but this was an emergency. The father had been where the son was going, and he knew.

No one, unless they died on the floor of their dark, hot and cold, depending on the time of day, dirty, cage in the basement, got out of solitary before their date certain, so the All-Matty's appearance that day, five days early, was welded in Chris' memory.

No one, not even a member of the family, The All-Matty was told by the warden, no one could see an inmate under punishment. The All-Matty asked to use the phone on the warden's desk, which he picked up with the determination of a Jesuit who had become accustomed to deference in his four years as headmaster of the College Point Jesuit High School. He called the home of a Republican political boss, an alumnus of The Point and a major contributor to the school that shaped his life. He was on a golf course. The All-Matty consulted his little black phone book and called Tammany Hall boss Carmine DeSapio at home. No answer. He called his political club. The boss came on the phone. The All-Matty passed quickly through the amenities with DeSapio to ask his favor. An hour later, Governor Dewey's office called ordering the warden to produce the prisoner for The All-Matty. The flustered warden ordered Chris, unwashed for 25 days and odorous, brought to his office.

"Well I hope you're pleased with yourself, Mister," The All-Matty, leaning back in a maroon, high-backed chair in front of the warden's desk, said to him.

"Father James" was all Gerry could say, his stomach dropping.

"Thank you, warden. Mr. Reilly and I need a few moments alone."

"I was going to offer you lunch, Father."

"That won't be necessary. I'll let you know when we are finished."

Gerry remained standing, head bowed.

The All-Matty said: "Two weeks ago, on graduation day, I was standing in front of the assemblage and your face ten feet high and five feet wide came flying across the heads of the audience right at me, and you have constantly been in my thoughts since. A day when Pointers, who were just undergraduate puppies, become Pointsters, having come through four purposely hard years of spiritual, physical and intellectual preparation for life. A day when the Pointsters are facing college and the years beyond with the hopes of the Jesuit fathers and their families urging them towards meaningful lives. I'm sure other Pointsters have faced futures as hopeless as yours, but I don't know of any specific ones."

Gerry stiffened as he would in the expectation of being punished with JUG for being a minute late to class or walking on the grass or laughing inappropriately or being caught smoking outside the senior lounge. JUG, Justice Under God, once seemed to him as a cruelly dreary way to spend 45 minutes under a hot sun or in a cold wind walking round and round the quadrangle on the hill outside The Point's main building with alternating views of the Whitestone Bridge to the east and the New York City skyline to the west.

The All-Matty shook his head, pursed his lips and stared into Gerry's eyes.

Gerry looked down. To speak would have been to cry.

The All-Matty spat out in anger: "Tell me for God's sake why you did what you did? Tell me do you pray to the Lord God Almighty for His forgiveness and for the forgiveness of the family of the man you killed? Tell me have you despaired of having any meaning in your life? Are you going to be just another piece of scum inside these walls for the rest of your life?" The All-Matty said with a sneer, "When was the last time you went to confession, Mister?"

"The week before my arrest."

"Come over here and kneel down. Let's begin."

Gerry paused, embarrassed to be retailing his sins to a priest he knew and who could see him without the comforting barrier of a darkened box with a screen and drapes. He forced himself to proceed: "Bless me Father for I have sinned. It's been 11 months and two weeks since my last confession. I committed the sin of self abuse." He hesitated estimating the times, then settling on twice a week. "About 104 times. I had dirty thoughts maybe 200 times. I had impure actions with a girl three times."

"What kind of impure actions?"

"I French kissed her twice. I touched her between the legs once."

"Go on."

I missed Mass every Sunday and Holy Day since last July. What's that say, 55 or 56 times."

"Even Christmas?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

A priest had never asked him why in his usual litany of sins that grew from fights with his sister to the code words for masturbation. He couldn't bring himself to say he questioned the decency of God, which must be a serious sin, in the presence of The All-Matty. "I wasn't interested any more," he said wondering if that were a lie or did his anger over what God had visited on him cover disinterest. "Why should I?" he said reaching a conclusion of defiance.

"So your soul doesn't burn in hell for all eternity, you've got a lot more to tell me, Mister. Murder is a mortal sin."

"I didn't commit murder, Father."

"What did you do?"

"My sin is for being tricked into putting myself where I am and maybe helping to send Butch and Hughie to the chair."

"What?"

"I didn't kill anyone. I wasn't with them. The cops questioned me until I couldn't even think. They made me say things and put it down on paper and made me sign it."

The All-Matty closed his eyes, spending some time absorbing what was said. "To lie in confession is one of the worst sins."

"I'm not lying."

"You committed perjury? You took an oath to tell the truth, then you committed perjury? Did your lies send two innocent boys to the electric chair?"

"Oh, they did it."

"What makes you so sure? You say you weren't there."

"They were arrested for the murder. They signed confessions."

"You were arrested for the murder. You signed a confession. Worse you told the police that those two boys committed the murder with you."

Gerry said, "I, I." And couldn't speak. He had read in the papers that Butch was on probation for carrying a loaded pistol when they arrested him. They picked up Hughie then next day. He knew Hughie had been in Elmira for a year for burglary, a hobby store on Queens Boulevard. He assumed they threw him into the pot to cover up for Red Kearney, who was hard as nails. Red was sent away to Hampton Farms Reformatory for a year for assault and robbery when he was still in high school. Everyone was afraid of Red including Butch and Hughie and him. Red was fearless and mean. Gerry assumed he was the actual murderer. "I testified in court that I didn't do it."

"Why should the police want to send you to prison for a crime you didn't commit?"

Gerry was shaking. He couldn't speak or he would cry, and he wouldn't do that.

"Are the confessions the others made lies too? They said you were with them when that poor man was murdered in cold blood."

The All Matty rose from his chair. He said aloud, "Oh God in heaven, what to do? I had planned to drive onto Buffalo this afternoon to visit my brother at Canisius. He's expecting me." The All Matty paused, realizing he had never heard a confession that confused him as much as this boy's. His own father had been a policeman and he went to Mass every morning and to Communion too. His father would never frame an innocent man. Why would the detectives do so in this case? Could he forgive someone for his sins if he didn't believe him? He needed guidance on this, but he couldn't talk to his brother or anyone else. The law of the Church bound him to treat everything he heard in the confessional as a secret he must keep, faced even with torture or death. He exhaled the breath he had been holding through his nostrils with the sound of a sigh. He said, "I'm not going to give you absolution now. I'm going to find a church, somewhere nearby, and I'm going to pray to St. Ignatius and God to give me guidance. I'll be back tomorrow."

When a correction officer arrived to take Gerry back to solitary, the All-Matty said, "Wait a moment." He took a small, worn, hard-covered copy of the Aeneid from the inner pocket of his jacket. "Use this to keep your mind alive," he said to Gerry.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Gerry Reilly lay on the two thin pieces of canvas they called a mattress in the hole and thought back to how he got himself where he was. "I'll see you in August," Annie said when she kissed him goodbye in Pittsburgh. He took the bus back to New York crossing the length of Pennsylvania and the width of New Jersey, staring into the darkness, sleeping, thinking of her, the house she lived in with her parents and brother, their drooling Irish setter, the picnics along the river and the polka music in the park. At last the bus passed through the Holland Tunnel into Manhattan. He took the subway, the Flushing Line, into Queens. When he reached Bliss Street at one o'clock, he walked along the deserted 47th Street, past the school yard and the Green Castle. He looked in the window. None of his friends were at the bar. He continued to the third court of the Mets, walked upstairs to his family's apartment, and let himself in. His parents and sister didn't even stir from sleep.

If only he had gone to bed. But he was wide awake and this was Saturday night. He went back to the Green Castle. Another look in the window. Still no one there.

Some of the gang probably had gone to Gildea's in Rockaway, but certainly not everyone. He assumed the ones left behind were barhopping along 48th Avenue, one of their favorite pastimes on Saturday nights. He checked the bars, five of them, ending up opening the door to the Airport Inn, where airline stewardesses who lived four or five to an apartment in the Celtics hung out between flights. No one he knew at the bar. His last hope was Bickford's on Queens Boulevard, where they went to sit around for the ceremonial end to Saturday night with coffees and pancakes or eggs with home fries and English muffins. He checked his watch: 1:30. Too early for the guys to end the night, but he would take a look, besides he was hungry.

If only he had stayed home. If only someone was at the bar in the Green Castle. If only he hadn't gone to Bickford's. If only one of the gang were sitting at a table in Bickford's. When he walked in, all of the tables were taken by twosomes and foursomes and sixsomes, and a lone man here or there reading the Sunday morning papers, but none of his friends. He saw Hughie Monaghan and Butch O'Brien at a table, smoking cigarets over the remains of their meal. He was surprised Red Kearney wasn't with them. Red was a nasty SOB, who didn't like Gerry for no other reason than not liking him. Gerry went to the glass counter and ordered pancakes, sausages, and coffee. He waited at the end of the counter with a brown tray, silverware, and a napkin for his order, hoping by the time it arrived a table would be empty or else he would be forced to sit with a stranger.

When he walked across the dining room with his tray towards a table with a man in need of a shave, an empty plate before him and an ashtray filled with butts and ashes, Butch yelled, "Hey Gerry." He stopped. "Sit with us." He didn't want to, but he did.

Two weeks later, tired, hot, thirsty, and looking forward to a shower to wash away the sweat and grime from loading and unloading freight cars in the Sunnyside Rail Yards, a good-paying job arranged by a Colgate alum, Gerry was turning into the brick archway of the Mets building where he lived, when a voice behind said: "Gerry." He turned. Two beefy men in suits stepped up to him. Close. One on either side. Both opened and closed wallets, flashing badges at him. "You're Gerry Reilly," the bigger of the two said. He had an ugly look on his face. "I'm Detective Shea. This is Detective Mann."

"Yeah." A hesitant yeah, wondering what these cops wanted.

Detective Mann said, "We just missed you at work Gerry. Thought we might miss you here and have to embarrass you in front of your mother."

"How'd you get home? You got a car?" Detective Shea asked.

"I walked."

"That's probably why we beat you here," Detective Mann said.

"You know why we're here," Detective Shea said. A statement, not a question.

Gerry was puzzled. "No I don't."

Detective Shea gripped his arm, "We'd like you to come along with us. Answer a few questions."

"Clear things up, Gerry," Detective Mann said politely.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"We think you do," Detective Shea said.

They took him into the precinct house in Long Island City past the high front desk where a sergeant in a blue uniform loomed, up a flight of stairs past two offices with open doors. Butch O'Brien sat in one, his head down, his forehead resting on his left fist, his right hand was manacled to the heavy chair. He looked as though he was weeping. In the other room, Hughie Monaghan, in his pegged chartreuse pants, smoked a cigaret, chained, as was Butch, to the thick arm of the heavy brown chair. His habitual sneer had been replaced by a pensive look. They brought him into a stifling, windowless room with three chairs, a wide table, a single overhead light and a big long horizontal mirror. Gerry knew from the films he had seen that this was an interrogation room and that was a two-way mirror so witnesses and other cops could watch without being seen.

Detective Mann said, "Sit down Gerry. Tell us everything you can about the Fourth of July and what went down with Lance DeMille so we can wrap this up and you can go home to dinner." He had read the stories in the Star-Journal about the killing of Lance DeMille, a banker from Manhattan, on Queens Boulevard by Calvary Cemetery in Woodside. He told them that he didn't know anything about it. "I don't hang out with those guys," he said.

"What guys?"

"Hughie and Butch." He almost added Red, but caught himself.

"Yeah. We got witnesses saying you were hanging out with them on the Fourth of July. Tell us what you did on the Fourth of July."

He told them about his visit to Pittsburgh, the bus trip home, stopping in Bickford's for something to eat, and running into Hughie and Butch there.

Detective Shea said with a barely repressed fury: "Let's cut out the fucking nonsense. You left out part of your day you little prick. The part where you and your two sidekicks killed a war hero for twenty-six bucks."

"I wasn't with them. I swear, I had nothing to do with it."

Shea grabbed him by his ears pulling up out of his seat and slamming him back down.

"Owww," Gerry screamed.

"You lying little prick. Your two buddies say you were the triggerman."

"That's a lie." He felt weak, and frightened.

For the next 48 hours, detectives questioned him in rotating teams of two, giving him nothing to eat and only water to drink, not letting him doze, watching him even in the bathroom. Food and drink and a return to his home would come only after he admitted what he had done. They had witnesses who had seen him with Hughie and Butch. They had signed confessions from the pair swearing he pulled the trigger. He ended up so confused, so desperate to go home, so afraid of Detective Shea who screamed at him and jammed his fist into his face, not punching him but pressing his head back hurting him, cursing him for killing Lance DeMille, a bank vice president, a Naval officer in the South Pacific, decorated for heroism, wounded twice, survivor of a ship blown to pieces in a kamikaze attack, a man with a wife, a son and daughter. He wanted so much to please Detective Mann, who promised him a hamburger, French fries and a coke and to drive him home if only he would tell them the truth. They took his words in bits and pieces: How much did Mr. DeMille have on him? "Sixty bucks, I think." That's what the papers said, Gerry knew. How did you know it was $60, not more or less? He always carried three twenties. Papers said that too. Sure it wasn't $26? "Maybe it was twenty-six." Who took the money? "Not me. Ask Butch or Hughie." Who pulled the trigger? "Hughie and Butch are lying when they say I did it. Maybe you better ask them." Which one? "I don't know. Maybe Butch." He knew it must have been Red Kearney, but didn't say so. Detective Mann put three typed pages in front of him with a bottle of Mission Orange soda. "This is your version of what happened, Gerry. If you sign it, we can get you home. Get this over with." He signed without reading and took the soda, slugging it down greedily. If only he hadn't done that. They brought him a hamburger and another orange soda along with an assistant district attorney to whom he confirmed that was his signature. He just wanted to sleep. He drank the soda, but couldn't eat the hamburger. He was put in a holding cell until pulled from sleep by Detective Shea. "We found the gun," he said.

With his wrists handcuffed behind him and his body and head aching from the ordeal of the past two days, Gerry was led back to the interrogation room. Butch and Hughie, staring down, were sitting at the table opposite Detective Mann. "Get a good sleep, Gerry?" Detective Mann asked. He turned to his partner, "The door's locked. We're inside a station house. These guys aren't going to try anything or go anywhere. And they've done their best to cooperate. What say, Mike, let's take the cuffs off them, have a cup of coffee, and ask our final question. Then everyone can go home."

Detective Shea, with fury, said, "These fuckers don't deserve any kind of a break Georgie. You act like a wild dog; we should treat you like a wild dog." He paused. Breathing hard. And after another twenty seconds or so said, "I'll take the cuffs off because I respect you Georgie, not because these turds deserve to be comfortable."

"Take it easy Mike. The case is in the hands of the DA now and then the judge and jury. You might not like it, but no matter what these guys told us, they're still considered innocent." Detective Mann got out of his chair and went around behind them, unlocking the cuffs one after the other. "Bet that feels better boys." He went back to the interrogators' side of the table, sat down next to his fuming partner, and opened the desk drawer to put away the cuffs.

Detective Shea picked a squat pistol with a black grip and silver barrel from the drawer, using a pencil thrust in the barrel to hold it towards Gerry. "Take it," he commanded.

Gerry took the gun by the grip. "Is it loaded?"

"Gonna use it on me too, gunsel? Make out you're blowing Mr. DeMille away again? No. Just tell me where you got the gun?"

"It's not my gun," Gerry said.

"You know Hitler used a 7.65 mm Walther just like that to commit suicide," Detective Mann said softly.

Detective Shea, steaming, said, "What's your story Butch. That your gun? You buy the gun? Look it over. Jog your memory."

Butch took the weapon by the barrel and laid it in his right hand. "Never saw it before." He passed it to Hughie.

"Me neither," Hughie said, taking it by the grip, slipping his right index finger onto the trigger. He pointed it at Detective Shea.

"Maybe you're lying and Big Gerry's telling the truth. Did you pull the trigger?" Detective Shea asked.

"Put the gun down on the table, Hughie," Detective Mann said. "Now we just want to clear this up. You two say Gerry pulled the trigger. And he says maybe you did. What's the truth? That's all we want."

"He's a liar. We weren't with him."

"Then how do you know he did it then?" Mann asked.

"We were together that night. We know we didn't shoot anyone."

"When we were in Bickford's, he told us he did the job."

Detective Shea slipped the pencil into the barrel of the pistol again and lifted it into the desk drawer, which he closed. He smiled for the first time. "Oh you guys are just three little innocent boy scouts. What about the gas station on Grand Central Parkway in Jamaica; the gas station on Woodhaven Boulevard; the bar in Whitestone; the elevator operator in the Pershing Square Hotel. You got three bucks from him. Regular Jesse Jameses. And you punched the poor bastard around. Any one of those would get you 30 years, and we got witnesses, you bet your ass, but we're not gonna waste energy on ditsy stuff. The way we got this case wrapped up, you three are gonna fry. We got your confessions and your prints are all over the murder weapon."

Butch looked terrified. Hughie seemed to be looking inside of himself. "I wasn't with these guys. I didn't kill anyone," Gerry said.

***

In the morning, Gerry was taken to the showers, where he was given a fresh bar of Ivory soap to wash away the accumulated filth of almost four weeks in the hole. He immediately washed the crucial areas, between the cheeks of his behind, his private parts, under his arms, his hair, than soaped his chest and head, rinsing them quickly. After another five minutes of ecstasy under the gentle massage of fresh warm water, the screw told him he was cutting the water off. The screw gave him a cloth bag containing the shirt, pants, socks and shoes, that they had taken from him the day he was locked into the punishment cells.

"You don't know how to say, Thank you sir?"

"Thank you, sir," he said slowly.

The screw stared at him, clenching his teeth as though containing a fury. "You got an attitude, punk."

Gerry looked at him. In his year in Elmira, he had learned the truth of what his father had warned, that times would come when it was better to stand up, to fight, to take the shiv or the punishment cell than allow disrespect, the prelude of pussyhood and a life of sucking cocks and putting your shit on someone else's shaft. "Call me by my name, my number or call me a con, but I'm not a punk sir."

"You wise-assing me? I'll call you a pussy if I want to."

Gerry didn't respond. His face burned. He was on the edge of plunging into this asshole, but he held back recognizing the guard was a provocateur getting off on violence, a break from boredom, yet he couldn't allow him to brand him as a pussy. The rest of his life was at stake. He chose the Gandhi way, passive resistance.

"Come on pussy. Let's go." He pushed Gerry, a signal to walk ahead of him. "We're going to the chaplain's office."

Gerry shook his head. The guard shoved him. He fell to the floor, dropping with the practiced skill of a football player hitting the ground. He lay there, eyes closed in a fetal position. The guard nudged him. "Get up." No pussy this time. Gerry got up. "Let's go." No pussy again. Gerry walked ahead of him.

The All-Matty was waiting in the chaplain's office behind the chaplain's big wooden schoolteacher's desk. "Thank you, officer," the priest said dismissing the screw. When he was gone, the priest turned to Gerry, who stood facing him across the desk. The All-Matty stood up. He walked to a corner of the room under a crucifix nailed to the wall behind a pair of heavy wooden chairs with thick gray cushions. The All-Matty sat in one, signaling with a nod for Gerry to join him. "Sit down, Mister."

Gerry sat back in the chair, waiting, the habitual stance of the convict institutionalized to patience

The All-Matty leaned forward, reciting: "Two men looked out from prison bars. One saw mud. The other stars." The solution had come to The All-Matty walking early that morning to the cemetery above Elmira. He studied the gravestone he had come to see: Samuel Langhorne Clemens/Mark Twain/Nov. 30, 1835-April 21, 1910, and the thought rushed through his mind that any talent that young Gerald C. Reilly had would be buried as deeply in the New York penal system as Mark Twain's was in this grave. The analogy tortured the Jesuit. Twain was buried dead. Reilly was buried alive. His ethos was shaped by an acceptance of eternal damnation for mortal sin, and so he accepted without empathy the punishment the court had visited on Reilly. Twenty years in prison. Perhaps life. He could die of a broken spirit before becoming eligible for parole in 20 years. He continued to be tortured by his unresolved doubt: Reilly's claim to innocence. A lie? Or a hideous truth? He looked at Reilly's face in the prison chaplain's office, the openness, the innocence of youth had been replaced by a hardness. A shine to his skin. From the absence of fresh air and sun? He motioned Reilly closer. "For your penance, you will spend your time in prison in daily prayer, begging God's forgiveness, asking Him to fill the hearts of the poor murder victim's family with love leaving no room for hate. You can view this place and this system as a cage or you can choose to experience it as a test from God. Live and pray as though you were in a monastery. Accept the bad food without complaint as part of your penance, the prison uniform as the sackcloth of the penitent, the loneliness of your life as an opportunity to bring yourself closer to God."

Gerry, whose head had been bowed in the pose of reverence, sat back, turning to look at The All-Matty. The biggest penance he had ever received in a lifetime of Saturday confessions with little to admit other than he had a fight with his sister or once stole a comic book from Woolworth's on Greenpoint Avenue, and for his unending sin of self abuse was an order from an angry priest he considered out of control to say the Rosary every day for a week and to make the stations of the Cross every Sunday for a month, and then to return to him to affirm he had done the penance and reformed, meaning that he had gone all that time without pulling his pecker. Gerry stepped from the confession box to the mortifying sight of his Aunt Hannah waiting on the line for that priest. He immediately walked to the next parish, went to confession again, and after a recitation of the same sins, he got the usual three Hail Marys. "Do you mean, I'm supposed to spend the rest of today making believe this place," he almost said hell hole, "is a monastery?"

"Were you listening, Mister? What I told you is to apply to every day you are in prison. Every day. It might be 10 years or 20 years."

"Or life, Father."

"Or for the rest of your life. You committed the ultimate sins. Murder and lying under oath. Lying to me in the confessional."

"I told you the truth, Father."

"The penance still applies. It will lead you in a meaningful way through your time behind bars. Maybe prayer will help you to remember additional sins you might have confessed to me today, like fracturing another boy's skull and blinding him." The warden had told the All Mighty how difficult a prisoner Reilly was.

"Fuck you," Gerry shouted, surprising himself that he would dare say that to the All-Matty. This priest didn't have a clue about what he was enduring. "I was doing what I had to do. That was no sin."

The All-Matty's heart was pounding. No one had spoken to him with words so foul since grade school when the thugs in his class in St. Margaret's taunted him for no discernible reasons. He realized he had no right to question the truth of this boy's confession, but the evidence of his lies was there. He was wrong in reaching outside the confines of the confessional to impose his knowledge on this penitent. He wouldn't rest easy until he went to confession himself. He wished he could talk to his brother, Martin, about the turmoil tearing through him. He used his two hands raised in supplication, urging with them and his voice: "Forgive me, Mr. Reilly. Please sit down. I should never have said what I said."

Gerry took his seat. "Yeah."

"I prayed to God and St. Ignatius last night and this morning it came to me that you were in need of guidance far beyond the usual few prayers at the altar rail in satisfaction for your sins. Please accept this penance, and I will do what I can to help you on your journey in the years ahead."

"My journey?"

"Yes. I gave you the choice of how you might endure the days ahead. Two men looked out from prison bars. One saw mud. The other stars. Will you accept the penance? Will you ask Jesus Christ's forgiveness for whatever sins you have committed and forgive me for my sins against you today?"

The All Matty didn't believe him. He felt so lonely. He wanted his mother. His father. He wanted to be able to walk down 47th Street again. To kiss Annie. He didn't respond to the All Matty.

The priest mumbled a series of prayers. "Ego te absolvo," he said making the sign of the cross. "Go and sin no more."

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

"Time for a break, Chris," Mary said bringing him out of his memory of the All Matty's first visit to him in Elmira Reformatory. She offered him his robe. "Let's let Chris use the bathroom first. Then we'll have coffee, Danish, and show and tell."

They sat in a circle with their coffees and pastries around the sketches laid out on the big wooden coffee table. Mary picked up Sam, who had leapt onto the table landing in a ballet of grace on a narrow space between two cups of coffee without disturbing either, before the cat could sniff and savor the plate of sweets. Each student had done at least two drawings of the nude model. Hurried works, but every one of the students had captured the transformation of Chris's expression from an embarrassed nude man to a fierce anger. "You tapped into something when you were standing there naked and vulnerable. Do you want to tell us about it?" Mary said.

No. Chris didn't want to tell this gathering of strangers about that day or himself. "I thought you were paying me to paint my body not my mind."

"They're inseparable," a student said.

"Chris, you were marvelous up there. You didn't move a muscle for half an hour. The change in your face turned this from a routine session into a real challenge. I'm proud that everyone in this room seized the opportunity and delivered." Mary picked up the drawings, sending them from student to student around the circle.

Chris stroked Sam who had squeezed onto his lap, while examining the images, annoyed by one that distorted his body. Fascinated by the before and after of his countenance, the movement from bland to contained fury.

Mary, sitting in one of the big easy chairs, studied Arnold's two drawings longer than any of the others before she passed them on, her eyes shifting between the work and the model. "As much as each of us got out of this session, can you imagine what might have been captured had the model not been wearing a mask?"

"Mask?" Chris said.

"The mustache. Have you ever thought of shaving it off?"

"Have you ever thought of shaving your head?"

Everyone laughed.

Back on the stage, Chris set his memory to the summer of his sixteenth year, to one of the Sundays when he took the bus with Roger and Artie and Marty and Mick from under the Woodside el station to Rockaway Beach. They followed the same routine moving from food stand to food stand. A slice of pizza, a hot dog, a hamburger and lastly a chow mein sandwich. The entire neighborhood was collected on the sand at the end of Beach 116th Street. They walked carefully along the narrow alleys of sand between the towels laid out to define the territories of those who had arrived earlier. They stepped over legs and feet to find an island of emptiness just large enough to put their five towels together. That's all they carried. A towel apiece. They stripped to their bathing suits, taking off their shirts and pants, sneakers and socks then rushed gingerly across the burning hot sand through more narrow openings between the towels onto the cold hard packed surface at the water's edge and waded howling at the chill and laughing into the breaking waves. Afterwards they lay under the hot August sun alternating between dozing, watching the pretty girls from the neighborhood and swimming in the dark, salty water. Towards late afternoon, they left the beach moving from food stand to food stand. First a chow mein sandwich followed by a hamburger, a hot dog and a slice of pizza before walking back to the bus stop, sunburned and tired.

"You're thinking happy thoughts Chris," Mary said pulling him out of his reverie.

By one o'clock the students were gone. An exhausted Chris sat at the oval dining table. Arnold was in the kitchen putting together a lunch. Mary picked a bottle from a wine cooler sunken in the wall.

She showed Chris the bottle. "A Sicilian red. This should go nicely with lunch. We're having Italian sausage and peppers, salad and bread. I'm always ravenous after a morning workout like this."

"I'm just tired."

She laughed. "Takes stamina to be a model. You were great up there. I love your eyes, Chris. I love your body. I love the way your face changes with your thoughts. We're going to have to experiment, asking you to think happy thoughts, weird thoughts, sensual thoughts to see what surfaces on that face."

"I was really afraid I wouldn't be able to last for four hours of posing on that stage."

"It really comes to three hours, because of the breaks," she said.

"Even still I wondered if I could bear being up there for all that time. I hate being bored. Suddenly all these memories popped up and the time flew."

Mary uncorked the wine. She poured a little in a crystal goblet, swirled it, sniffed and tasted. "Mmmhh. You'll like this." She filled the three glasses on the table as Arnold emerged from the kitchen with a tray of pasta plates, silverware, flowered napkins, a round loaf of stone-hearth bread and bowls of sausage and salad.

"This is really good," Chris said to Arnold.

Mary said, "Arnold is not only good at everything he does, he's a good man."

"And we're so hard to find," Arnold said.

"Those are interesting tattoos you have. Difficult for an artist to capture, because they're really crude black lines, somewhat dulled by time."

He nodded, concentrating on his food. She was fishing, Chris knew, wanting him to answer the unspoken question.

She put what he was thinking into words: "Those are jailhouse tattoos, aren't they?"

He looked across the table at her, wondering whether she was afraid of him because the tattoos implied prison time or was she just nosy?

"How long were you in prison?"

"I'll just say I was a kid when I went away to the monastery. It ruined my life and it's a subject I don't discuss. So let's leave it at that or I'll have to leave."

"I'm sure Mary doesn't mean to pry Chris. She is asking questions centering on a legitimate concern."

Chris rose. "No need to be concerned. I didn't ask to come here. Mary wanted me to pose. I had some free time so I agreed. I'll eliminate Mary's concerns by finding something else to do."

Pain surged through Mary's head. For a moment her eyes went dead, frightening her. She listed a little, imbalanced for a moment. Both Arnold and Chris moved to steady her. She came back to full control of her body and voice, although the pain hammered the inside of her skull. She said to Chris, "Just a high stress moment over fear of losing you. Please stay! I need you. Arnold's wrong. I don't have the slightest inkling of a concern over you. I was playing the detective and showing off. I wanted you to see what a woman of the world I was by telling I knew they were jailhouse tattoos and at the same time, I want to know all about you, but if you want to play the mystery man, fine, so be it. Just let me paint you."

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

Arnold, as usual, met him at the door with his parody of a song: "Our model Chris is as bare as a model can be." He stepped back, holding the door wide open, bowing at the waist inviting Chris to enter.

"Carousel," Chris said playing Arnold's game. He dropped Sam inside the door. The cat rubbed against his leg for a moment before hurrying into the studio.

"Very good." Arnold said. He whispered, "Another dismal morning. She woke up with a murderous headache. Got sick to her stomach." Arnold looked at him expectantly for words of sympathy."

"Maybe she should take a sick day."

"I'm trying to get her to take a doctor's day. She just won't go to the doctor."

"Chris! Are you here? Come on. Let's get to work," Mary called from the innards of the studio. She came into the hallway with a 35-mm camera slung around her neck. She kissed Chris on the cheek. "Good morning, love. We're going to do some dancing this morning so get your clothes off; the camera is waiting anxiously to record your performance." No sign of sickness.

"The elixir of Chris has transformed the ailing artist," Arnold said. He put on his grin, the disarming air he used to hide his distaste, distrust or anger. Chris evoked all of these on a daily basis, and jealousy too, which Arnold realized was ridiculous. The man was crude and uneducated, a bartender from Queens. He was an ex-con, pretending he was an ex-monk, willing to work for a miserable $60 a day. Mary was transfixed by this thug, decorated like a savage with jailhouse tattoos, convinced that the frightening fierceness she saw in his eyes could be translated onto a canvas into an awesome work of art. Arnold had assumed the role of protector, determined to be in the studio whenever Chris was posing. He didn't know how long he could keep spending his time here. He had cleared his morning and afternoon schedules of all business and social engagements, but the holidays were approaching. He would have to drive down to Maryland on Wednesday. The gathering of the Brohman clan, his children and grandchildren, his widowed sisters in law, nieces and nephews with their children, for dinner on Thanksgiving had become a family tradition. December brought the usual series of dinners and parties he couldn't avoid, and he enjoyed them. Especially his immediate family gathering in his townhouse on East 75th Street for Christmas Eve.

Chris went into the bathroom, where he stripped off his street clothes and underwear. He carried the terrycloth robe into the open space of the studio, dropping it over the back of a student's folding chair. Mary and Arnold sat in the kitchen sipping coffee while he went through the fluid movements of his tai chi chuan routine in the nude. He passed the next half hour breathing in a rhythm set by the shifting weight of his body on slightly-bent legs and the graceful flow of his hands. When he completed the cycle, he called into the kitchen that he was ready to begin posing. The irritation that Mary and Arnold brought with them was almost startlingly defiling, clawing the aura of peace the tai chi had instilled in Chris.

Mary's face showed the impatience she felt. "I really expect to go to work by 8:15 at the latest and here it is almost 9 o'clock. Can't you do your exercises on your own time, before or after our session?"

"I find it hard to get up early enough in the morning to get here at 8 o'clock. I would rather do my tai chi in the morning when I'm fresh. I've found out that sitting or standing still for four hours, even with breaks, is pretty tiring. Then I'm not in the mood for exercise."

Arnold put on his negotiating smile. "I think you both have reasonable positions. Why don't we compromise? Chris gets here at 7:30. Does his thing, and by 8:15, we're ready to fly?"

"You call me getting here a half an hour earlier a compromise?"

"Perhaps you don't understand Chris that Mary usually requires students and models to be at the studio door by 7:30, and allowed you some flexibility because of your scheduling problems," he said still offering his negotiating smile. He shook his head, another negotiating gesture intended to impress the target that Arnold was ready to give even more, a prelude to suggesting a tidbit in return for his compromise. The idea flashed into his mind of offering Chris a trip to Maryland to share the family's traditional Thanksgiving dinner, a way of assuring that he would be out of New York, away from Mary. But that twisted notion was balanced by his refusal to expose his family to a low-life like Chris. "Perhaps a little extra compensation for your time is in order, Chris. Let's see, Mary is paying you $60 a day, $15 an hour. Let's say a $10 bonus for every morning you show up at 7:30 and an extra $15 if you appear on time every day. So you stand to earn up $75 extra a week. That's a 25 percent bonus for making Mary happy and you still get to do your exercise in the morning. Shall we shake on it?"

"Arnold, I'll be frank, I just can't afford $75 more a week for Chris. I've already agreed to pay him $1,000 bonus for staying through completion of the project."

Arnold turned his power smile on Mary, a smile that filled his face. "No need to worry about the money. I suggested the bonus. I'll pay the bonus." He decided to change the subject, immediately regretting the words that flowed out of his mouth before he could stop them: "So what are you doing for Thanksgiving Chris?" Oh God, suppose he said, I'm sitting alone in my miserable little apartment in Queens.

"I'm going to a friend's house for dinner. You probably know something about wine Arnold, what kind would you suggest I bring?"

A genuine smile of relief appeared. "Chardonnay. You need a wine that is dry and has the body to stand up to turkey. Chardonnay by all means."

"Do you recommend any particular brand?"

"I'd suggest a French burgundy, but California chardonnays can be just as good. Go to any decent liquor store in Manhattan, ask the clerk to point you in the right direction. The only question he'll have is how much you want to spend. Say $500 for a fabulous vintage." He laughed. "Bet you can get a very nice chardonnay for $20. The highest I would go would be $50. The bonus I'm paying you for one week would take care of an outstanding $50 bottle of wine. They'd charge you $100 to $150 for the same bottle in a restaurant."

"Or I could go for the very best at $500. What do you think? How many weeks of getting here a half an hour earlier and every day at that would it take to come up with $500?" Chris asked with a grin.

Arnold didn't like being teased. He looked at this naked man with his long trim body, still young enough to be solid from his daily exercise, his cock hanging a lot longer than on his first embarrassing day of modeling, laughing at him. The calculation took a moment longer than it should have because of his pique. "Rounding it out, seven weeks."

"Will I be here another seven weeks?" Chris asked Mary.

"Another seven months at the rate we're going. Arnold turn on the CD would you please?" She took the camera hanging around her neck. The sound of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel Waltz filled the room. "Chris, I'd like you to get into the beat of the music then twirl, leap across the room. Like a modern dancer. Don't be self-conscious. Have fun. I want to record your body in motion. Let's go."

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

A black woman in the uniform of a maid, white lace cap and apron over a black dress, came into the living room to announce dinner was ready. They carried their half-filled wine glasses into the dining room with its big windows offering views south down Park Avenue to the bulging Pan Am Building and west to a narrow slice of Central Park. Mrs. Baltic with Chris holding the chair for her took the seat at the head of the table dominated by a crisply brown roasted turkey, several covered bowls of vegetables, open bowls of dressing, oven-crusted mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes, long serving dishes with celery, olives, sliced tomatoes, and pickles, and boats of cranberry sauce and gravy. A freshly uncorked bottle of chardonnay half buried in the ice of a silver bucket on a stand was set beside Mrs. Baltic's chair. She directed Chris to take the seat to her right with Cheri opposite him. She took his hand, her daughter's hand, and bowed her head. "Lord, bless this feast, and let no one be hungry in the world today."

The maid reached past Cheri to take the heavy platter holding the turkey. She placed it further down the table on a large carving board. She picked up a razor-sharp knife and long fork, and glanced at Mrs. Baltic.

"Go ahead, Merle. I hate to see that picture perfect turkey destroyed, but we do have to eat."

Merle plied the knife with the skill of a master under the eyes of the three diners, who sipped wine while she worked. She severed the bird's two legs, placing them on an oval platter set beside the board. She cut into a breast levering white slices of meat onto the platter. The dark meat was next. At last she looked up. "You wanna a leg?" she asked Chris.

"I'll have just white meat please."

"Then you and Miss Cheri win the lottery, Mrs. Baltic."

"We're leg gnawers," Cheri said.

Merle surrounded the legs on two plates with alternating slices of white and dark meat. She placed the white meat in the shape of a star on Chris' plate. She carried the first plate to Mrs. Baltic, the next to Cheri, and the third to Chris.

"Please take a glass of wine with us Merle," Mrs. Baltic said. She took the bottle from the bucket to fill a waiting crystal wine glass beside her plate. She added wine to Cheri's glass; filled Chris' now empty glass; and topped off the wine in her own glass. Merle took her wine, holding it, awaiting the toast. "Happy Thanksgiving Merle, Cheri and Chris," Mrs. Baltic said, touching her glass to Merle's, then her daughter's and Chris'. The maid sipped the wine, remaining where she stood until Mrs. Baltic tasted the turkey. "Wonderful, Merle. Why don't you go home to your family and we'll take care of dessert and cleaning up."

"I appreciate that Mrs. Baltic." The maid raised her glass to her employer, smiled and left the diners to consume the dinner she had prepared.

Mrs. Baltic turned to Chris, assuming that with his well of poetry she wouldn't be placing him in an embarrassing bind. "Before we dig in, Chris, could you offer another grace. I know my feminist daughter doesn't appreciate me saying it, but I have a sentimental vision of the Thanksgiving feast being unveiled by some words spoken by a man."

Cheri, who had been peeved since Chris arrived, said with a snide tang to her words, "The man with the poem for every occasion."

Mrs. Baltic was stung by her daughter's nastiness. Chris took Mrs. Baltic's hand as she had done when she offered grace. He looked across the table at Cheri, who stared back, refusing to join her hand to her mother's. Chris bowed his head and made the sign of the Cross: "Lord teach us to be generous, teach us to serve you as you deserve, to give and not to count the cost, to fight and not to heed the wounds; to toil and not to seek for rest; to labor and not to ask for reward save that of knowing that we do your will."

"That thounds very Don Quixote." Cheri said, her lisp slipping into her loud squeaky voice. She blushed. Hearing the th sound for s warned her that her irritation at mother and her bartender was a flying flag.

Chris looked into Cheri's eyes. Crabby Appleton, crabby as can be, he thought. "Try St. Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits about 400 years ago."

"Let's have a nice holiday, enjoy our dinner," Mrs. Baltic said. She was on the edge of tears.

Calm again, Cheri raised her glass to him smiling, "Did you prepare before you came, or did those holy phrases flow from the whim of memory."

"I came prepared to perform." He almost added to sing for my dinner, but that phrase caught in his throat. "A form of thanking my good friend, Mrs. Baltic, for so generously inviting me here."

"Why Loyola," Cheri said, not letting him go, the wine she had been drinking through the afternoon intensifying her antagonism for this bartender.

"I was educated by the Jesuits."

"I didn't realize you went to college," Mrs. Baltic said.

"I didn't. I went to a Jesuit high school." He paused, regretting that he couldn't say The Point. "Out in San Francisco. Unfortunately, I didn't make it to a Jesuit college. I went into a monastery instead."

Cheri brightened. "A fallen priest turned bartender?"

"No. Just an ordinary monk. I don't want to be rude, but that life is behind me. I don't want to talk about it." He started to eat. "The turkey is great, Mrs. Baltic." Mrs. Baltic and Cheri began eating too. The meal proceeded in a silence brought on by Cheri's testiness. "Have you been to any plays lately, Mrs. Baltic?"

"No, not since Prelude to a Kiss. I told Cheri all about our evening out over breakfast. I'm pressing her to pick up Prelude for her next season."

"Perhaps we could cast Chris as the old man," Cheri said. She meant it as a zing.

Mrs. Baltic laughed. "You'd have to use a lot of makeup and padding to turn Chris into an old man. Dye his mustache and hair white too."

"That's easy. What isn't is acting. Have you ever acted, Chris?"

"I was Muzzawawa in sophomore year."

"Muzzawawa?"

"Muzzawawa mean big bear with little tail," Chris said holding his palms wide apart and then drawing them close together."

"That's marvelous," Mrs. Baltic said, laughing.

"Pure Maple is one of the best little theaters in the country. We have an impressive pool of talent so the competition for parts is intense. If you took mother up on her offer, it might be several years before you were ready for anything more than a walk on." The tone of her voice reflected the contempt she felt for Chris.

"What offer?"

"Cheri, now you've ruined my surprise."

"I apologize, mother," Cheri said softly.

Mrs. Baltic overcame her annoyance to say: "Chris, I was in show business and I've been going to the theater all my life and have never hesitated to spend money on this passion of mine, as Cheri of all people could tell you. I see in you Chris a raw, natural talent. You have a theater voice and a presence. God only knows what a little training would do for you, what a future it might give you."

"My mother the talent scout."

"Why don't you be quiet," Mrs. Baltic said, a mother disciplining a rude child.

"Because neither you or I know anything about this man except he makes a nice Manhattan, says he once was a monk, and knows how to cozy up to a rich old lady. And you want to make him my problem."

That irritated Chris. "As I said, I don't know what you are talking about and I don't know why you are so antagonistic to me. Your mother and I are friends. We went out a couple of times. She took me to a couple of plays. I'll be honest, I probably never would have gone to a play in my life without her. There was no romance, no sex, no con job, no looking for money. I'm going to be gone in a few weeks, I'm moving back to the West Coast, so you won't have to worry about me stealing your mother's money or whatever you're afraid of."

"We still don't know anything about you?"

"And I don't know anything about you. I'm not applying for a loan or a job, so you have no reason to be nosy about me. I'm leaving now." He pushed his chair back.

Cheri flushed, realizing she had gone too far, so far that she had stirred her mother to a deep anger. "Wait. Let me explain something. I've been after mother for years to have the Douglas Foundation, which mother controls, agree to underwrite a non-matriculating year at Douglas, focused on theater for a promising talent. And, an internship in the Pure Maple and Cheddar Cheese Players summer theater program. Residence in the cottage, board, meaning meals at the college cafeteria, a small stipend. She has chosen you as the first Penelope Douglas Baltic Theatre Arts Fellow. Quite an honor. And since yours is a special case, Mother's offer covers fours years, not the one year I envisioned."

Mrs. Baltic squeezed his forearm. She said, "Chris you could be an actor. One of life's higher callings. You've already performed before audiences at the Bog and anywhere else you've recited your poetry. You've proven you can memorize lines time and again."

"I have to make a living Mrs. Baltic. I have very little money behind me." College after all these years. When he was 17, a Colgate alum had come to The Point with the offer of a four-year scholarship, including room and board in return for playing football. "I was once offered a football scholarship. That was the trade. Football for room, board and tuition. What's the trade here?"

"You hurt my feelings saying something like that Chris. The trade is the pleasure I get out of giving you an opportunity."

"What about my age? I'll be 57 in March, Mrs. Baltic. How would an 18-year-old like rooming with me?"

"Mother has thought of everything. If you're willing to interrupt your career as a bartender, that is. I have a house down the road from the campus with a guesthouse behind it. Overlooking Lake Champlain. That could be your home for the next four years. We, mother and I, have enough pull to arrange this opportunity for you despite your age. You won't even have to take the SATs. Mother is going to provide a modest stipend for spending money. I'll arrange a job for you at the Pure Maple so you can pick up a little more money. A menial job of course nothing as prestigious as bartending. You won't even need a car. You can walk to the campus from my place. Douglas College is on land that used to be one of our family farms. Mother's dad donated the farm, except the old family homestead which I have, to get Douglas started. And he put up some money too. Mother and I both sit on the board so you're not going to have too much trouble being accepted by the administration."

That was a revelation. Chris had assumed Mrs. Baltic's money came from her late husband, Dr. Baltic.

Mrs. Baltic said, "Chris, please take this risk. The campus is beautiful. Lake Champlain is fabulous. There are people your age associated with the theater. And on the faculty. You'll find friends. And the educational opportunity is wonderful. If things don't work out, you can always leave Douglas. Don't come to a decision tonight. Think about it. Please."

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

Chris awoke at 4 o'clock in total darkness with two lines of Oscar Wilde's The Ballad of Reading Gaol spinning through his mind: "And the iron gin that waits for sin/Had caught us in its snare." He walked naked through the ice-cold apartment to the bathroom, the lines repeating in his mind like a snatch of song that won't be quieted. He returned to the warm bed a few minutes later and lay listening to the words, expecting to be lulled to sleep. He wasn't.

He checked the clock. Five o'clock. He tried deep breathing, focusing his attention on the cadence of drawing air in through his nostrils and out through his mouth, purposely not counting, hoping again to drift away. He dropped the focus several times and in each instance Wilde's painful words returned. He checked the clock. Five-thirty.

Chris got out of bed unable to lie there any longer waiting for the sleep that didn't come. He went back to the bathroom in the chill, urinating again, shaving, taking a hot shower, which was delightfully warming. He dressed quickly. The closing of the apartment door behind him sounded like an explosion. Conscious now of violating the silence of the pre-dawn hour, he tried to descend the stairs quietly, but the hallway echoed the squeak of each step. The front door, in pulling it closed behind him, seemed to roar as loudly as his apartment door.

The air on the street was cold; his uncovered ears ached. He sunk deep into his jacket. The fall had given way to winter. He needed to get his hat and gloves out of the bedroom closet. He walked to Rag's under the el on 31st Street. A cop with his heavy blue coat unbuttoned showing a thick blue cardigan was at the counter on a stool usually occupied by one of the Daily Keys drivers. They were probably home in bed. No need to smash windows. The newsstand operators had gotten the message. Hard to find a Daily Keys being sold anywhere in the city. There was an old lady hunched over a cup, her head, her dirty grey hair, her maroon scarf, her faded red-checkered coat, her aged body, her being dripping down towards the floor. Chris' favorite table was unoccupied. As soon he sat down, the waitress was hovering over him with her Pyrex pot. "Coffee hon?"

"Yeah."

She poured. "Back on nights?"

Chris brightened. "I didn't expect to be missed. Got a new job. Just got up a little early today."

"You ready to order? Or do you need a menu today?"

"Eggs over light. Sausage patties, home fries, and rye toast."

"You got it hon." She turned towards the window into the kitchen. "Number 27 over light with rye."

He walked into the foyer of the Far West Fine Arts Cooperative Living Centre at 7:20 AM, plenty of time to reach the fourth floor studio without Mary having a fit. He picked up a purring Sam from the floor and waved good morning to the rent-a-cop at the lobby desk and went directly to the elevator. He stood outside the studio door, ringing the bell with growing irritation. Pounding on the door. Pressing his ear to the door, hearing nothing. He sat down with his back against the wall for a while, stroking Sam, then tried again. No response. He left the cat behind and took the elevator back down. "Miss Hudson doesn't answer the door. Can you ring her for me?"

The rent-a-cop checked a clipboard, then punched in a series of numbers on a keyboard. "No answer," he said.

"Has Mr. Brohman been in this morning?"

"Haven't seen him."

"Can I use your phone? A local call."

"I can't help you there."

Chris took out his wallet. He found Arnold's card. He held it up to the rent-a-cop. "I want to call Mr. Brohman."

"Not from this phone, buddy. There's a public phone around the block over on 11th Avenue."

Chris walked the long block from the waterfront to 11th Avenue. He called Arnold's office to be told that Mr. Brohman wasn't available. "Tell him Chris Dunne is calling." The woman on the other end repeated that Mr. Brohman wasn't available. She suggested Chris try tomorrow. "Oh, he's not in the office." "Please call tomorrow. I have to take another call," she said. He took the subway back to Astoria.

In the hallway of the two-family in Astoria, a lanky, slouch-shouldered man in a white dress shirt open at the neck jumped, startled by Chris opening the street door. He smiled. "I was putting this in your mailbox." He waved a business envelope. "Went upstairs, but you weren't in."

"Who are you?"

He smiled again. "Andy Klein. Phil and I..."

Chris cut him off. "I know."

"Oh, you do. This is just a note reminding you that you've agreed to vacate the apartment by midnight November 30."

Chris looked at Klein not liking him, knowing he was a man accustomed to screwing people with a smile, politeness spilling from a well-modulated mouth. "You don't know what you are talking about, Andy." He said the name with as much contempt as he could pack into a sound. "Phil told me I didn't have to leave until I was ready to."

The smile was replaced with the stern expression Klein used in confrontations. "My understanding is that you agreed to notify her if you planned to stay through the holidays. Now Mrs. Silimpas is amenable to you staying through the first of the year and perhaps a little longer, but she wants a signed agreement on a date of departure certain."

"What are you doing here so early in the morning without your uniform?"

"Uniform?"

"Pin-striped suit."

"You're a very witty man, Mr. Dunne. Now let's get down to business. You give me a date certain and I'll discuss it with my client. If she's happy, then you can be happy with the date you picked."

"I'll add that to my thinking about it list. When I get to it, I'll talk to Phil."

"No I'd like you to talk to me from now on." He took a small leather card carrier from his pocket. "Here's my office number. Call, tell my secretary what it's about and I'll get back to you."

"Why is Phil so hot to get me out of the house? I'm a good tenant; I pay my rent; I don't bother anyone."

"The racket you made up there this morning was pretty bothersome, Mister. You woke everyone in the house."

"Including you?"

Klein smirked. "You can draw any conclusion you want, Mr. Dunne, as long as you give us that date certain."

"I'll think about nothing else for the next 24 hours, or maybe 24 days, or maybe a date uncertain beyond that." Chris started up the stairs.

"You're very witty now, Mr. Dunne, but you won't be if we have to go to court."

Chris didn't respond. He thought, Andy Klein was like a woman who just had to have the last word. He let himself into the apartment. One message on the answering machine. He pressed play: "Good morning Chris. This is Arnold. Mary had a medical emergency last night so she won't be needing you today. Sorry about this last minute call, but this has been a stressful morning. I'm sure you understand. Stay in touch." The answering machine's robotic voice announced that the message had come in at 7:30 AM on Monday, Nov. 26. He had to breath away the notion that Arnold had purposely left the message at the moment when Chris was supposed to be starting his day in the studio. That suspicion kept popping into his mind, and he kept breathing it away, as he made a fresh pot of coffee and found The Ballad of Reading Gaol on a bookshelf in the living room. He studied the cover looking at the dark, wrinkled, hard faces of two cons, lifers he assumed, behind the black prison bars until the coffee was ready. He turned to section V, reading: I know not whether laws be right/Or whether Laws be wrong;/All that we know who lie in gaol/Is that the wall is strong;/And that each day is like, /A year whose days are long. He looked up from the book, repeating from memory: "Each day is like a year whose days are long." Wilde understood, he mused, sipping his coffee, staring out the window past the gray, bare branches of the wind-stripped trees and the freedom of the street below.

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

The morning was cold, the temperature somewhere in the 20s with a glaze of frost covering the grassland of the park. Chris ran round the perimeter four times, his footprints imprinted in the sheet of white covering the grass. He walked another lap under a milky sky, a veil of high thin clouds, with long rays of the soft November sun showing through holes here and there. He walked a fifth lap, then did his tai chi exercises, facing north, towards the Bronx with the Triboro Bridge and the Manhattan skyline behind him and East Harlem to his left across the river.

He came into the apartment with breakfast on his mind, planning to have fried eggs with home fries and last night's leftover beans. He checked the answering machine. Two messages. "Chris, could you be here for lunch, say one o'clock. Call if you can't make it, otherwise I'll expect you at one." Mary's voice, weary and bleak. He pressed the button again. Cheri Chisholm's squeaky voice came on lisping the mister in Mr. Dunne, telling him that she wanted to know whether he was accepting her mother's offer of the scholarship to Douglas College and the use of her guesthouse. She needed his decision by Friday, Nov. 30, giving him three days to make up his mind. The spring semester begins Jan. 21 she said, leaving him her office and home telephone numbers.

Chris took a leftover baked potato from the refrigerator. He turned on the flame under a frying pan. He sliced the potato into irregular pieces and chopped up half an onion, put butter and olive oil in the frying pan. He waited for the butter and oil to heat then poured the potato and onion into the sizzling mix. He heated the beans in a small sauce pan. Put an English muffin in the toaster and fried two eggs in butter in another frying pan. He poured a large glass of orange juice from a container in the refrigerator and filled a cup with coffee from his six-cup electric percolator.

He ate with a near ecstatic pleasure. The orange juice was cold, tasting sweet and orangey; the coffee, he drank black, was rich and warm. He cut into the eggs mixing pieces of white and running yolk with beans and potato on his fork. What is heaven? Chris asked himself. Heaven is in a good breakfast where the taste lingers on your tongue and sates your appetite, heaven is in a glass of clear cold water, in a sunset, in a good roll in bed, in a look between a man and a woman, in a good book, in walking free through fields of wheat, in a work of art that reaches inside you. I haven't seen many of those. Heaven is in a moment. Hell is a longer process: boredom, hatred, lingering fear, hunger for food, for sex, for freedom. Hell is eternity in a prison cell. I've been to hell; I'm never going back. That was one of the few certainties Chris harbored. Did the 28 years in the pen redeem him for signing away his freedom in a confession he didn't read? In which he swore Butch did the killing. Is that what God demanded? Was that punishment enough? He didn't consider taking down Les Owens in Auburn a sin. Soldiers kill. Cops kill. Convicts kill when they have to. I was once a football player; then a pseudo-rat; then a con. Now I'm an ex-con, a fugitive and a bartender, maybe an ex-bartender. I almost forgot, I'm a model. And a reciter of poetry. Other people's poetry. I'm beginning to sound like Walt Whitman.

Within two months, he could be what he once assumed he was destined to be, a college student. Not a football-playing college student, running on the field dressed for combat. Football had been the sauce of his life, and now he thought the game was silly brutality. A spectacle of giants and super athletes in a violent ballet for the amusement and fascination of lesser men and their dates. Colgate wanted him for his football skills, part of the Saturday afternoon pageants in the picturesque orange, brown and yellow of the upstate foliage. Mrs. Baltic was offering him another chance to be a college student. Room, tuition, and board in exchange for performing. He had thought about their acquaintanceship that turned into friendship and was unable to figure out her ulterior motive. She treated him like a fond aunt, no sexual overtones or undertones, although her daughter, Cheri, implied he was her mother's acquired boy. Maybe Mrs. Baltic was simply being swept along by the inevitable, forced to underwrite a second chance for Chris. He was nervous. Would this be like taking a candy bar from a wolf in prison? A sweet in exchange for manhood? That question had tortured Chris for the past five days, since Thanksgiving Dinner at Mrs. Baltic's apartment. Her explanation for her offer was innocent generosity. Twenty-eight years in prison had hardened Chris against believing anything is given for nothing. He needed a place to go and a way of making a living. He decided to leap off the precipice.

Chris reached Cheri at her office on the Douglas College campus. She was curt and precise. She wanted to see him in her office at 11 o'clock on Jan. 18, the Friday before classes began. She needed a copy of his high school transcript and three letters of recommendation. "From who?" he asked. Preferably people in the theater or the arts or academia, she said.

"I thought this was a special nonmatriculating program?"

"It is. We both know that."

"Then why do I need the letters?"

"Because you do. No letters no education. You're going to get a lot out of this, so you should be willing to put a little effort into it."

He could ask Mary Hudson and Trish for letters of recommendation, but no way could he get his high school grades from The Point. "If I have to come up with letters I will, but the high school transcript's a problem."

"Didn't graduate?"

"Yes I did, but my high school closed down." He lied so easily.

"Well, the records are somewhere. Find out where and get that transcript."

"That's going to be a real problem."

"No transcript, no Douglas College."

"You don't want me at Douglas College do you?"

"You are my mother's idea, not mine." Her tone was spiteful.

"Why is she doing this? What's in it for her?"

"God, I would expect questions like that from someone like you. My mother told you why she was giving you the world and you don't have the taste to believe what she says."

He slammed down the phone. There goes my grand opportunity, he said to himself. No need to worry about the price of Mrs. Baltic's candy bar.

Chris shaved and showered, moving in the slow motion of the glum. Sorry that he hadn't tried to figure a way around the transcript. Maybe get ahold of a real one and cook it to fit his needs. Too late now. He was tying his shoes when the phone rang. He went into the living room and picked it up.

"Thith is Dr. Chisholm," Cheri said. "I've dethided that since you're going to be a special student and nonmatriculating that the department can waive the usual requirements. You won't need the letters and the transcript. But I'll require an apology for the way you ended our conversation and a promise that you'll be more thivil in the future to me and to everyone on this camputh, faculty and students." She was furious as she lisped through her monologue.

Chris brightened. A third chance. He wondered why she had backed down, but wasn't going to risk getting her back up again. He had learned to eat crow in prison and in bartending, to fade before the aggressor. "Thank you Dr. Chisholm. I apologize and you have my promise I'll be civil to everyone in sight."

"Good. I'll be very frank. This isn't a change of heart on my part. Mother in one of her strange fits of generosity wants you to have this chance. I'd rather give it to someone with proven talent and young with a whole life ahead of them. From the moment I hung up, I was haunted by the unhappiness I would cause my mother, and I've caused her so much in my life. She never says anything but I know she hasn't approved of my choices. Yet she has never attempted to interfere in my life. Why shouldn't I be as understanding as she? I'll see you in my offith on Jan. 19," she said and hung up.

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

Arnold met Chris at the door with a whisper. "This is a very hard time for her. Please, please give her your support."

"What happened?"

"She'll tell you. I don't want to go against her wishes. Especially now." Arnold led the way, a step ahead of Chris, into the studio. He was humming Sigmund Romberg's One Alone as they approached Mary sitting in her favorite easy chair by the coffee table. "He's here, a little late as usual," he said with a salesman's false enthusiasm.

"Arnold's serving grilled cheese," she said to Chris. She looked haggard; she had aged since he last saw her just a week ago.

"Fine."

"Beer, wine, sparkling water, potato chips?" Arnold asked.

"Beer and potato chips," Mary said. She was trying to contain the irritation rising poisonously from the depths of her mind. Sam lay wedged between her hip and the arm of the chair. She petted and scratched him.

"Make that two."

"I'll make it three," Arnold said with an overt cheeriness. He went into the kitchen.

"How are you feeling," Chris asked.

She was sullen. "I told him not to tell you anything."

"Don't get overwrought, he didn't tell me anything, other than you were not feeling well."

Mary, looking for a way to express her anger, picked up the cat and dropped him onto the floor. Sam, unhappy at the sudden shift from the coziness of her warm thigh into the cold, looked back at her questioningly then slipped away. "Goddamn it, don't ever tell me not to be overwrought. I'm just 55, and I'm going to die. I finally really know what I'm doing, I've mastered my art and I'm going to die. God's little joke on me."

Arnold overheard Mary's remarks as he came from the kitchen carrying a tray with the beer, three glasses and a bowl of potato chips. He was weeping. "Don't say that."

"What a dirty deal I've been dealt. I was crippled so needlessly. I had a baby, and she died. I've lived with pain all my life. Nagging pain. Sharp pain. Soul-draining pain. Now I'm going to die in pain. Why is God doing this to me? Now?"

Why not? Look at what he did to me, Chris thought.

Arnold knelt by her chair.

"Please don't let the grilled cheese burn, Arnold. You don't have to listen to this again." She waited until he moved back to the kitchen. "If I had a wife, I wouldn't have to put up with him."

Chris smiled with some effort, knowing that was the expected response.

She continued, "I had a dream last night in which we made love, you and I, and you were two different men at once. Mr. Sinister with a shaven head, a hard face, and Mr. Saint with your lovely mustache and long hair. We were surrounded by butterflies, and my right leg was perfectly shaped, the damage from the accident gone."

"Sounds like a very nice dream. But what's going in a real world? Why are you talking about dying?"

"I had a headache Sunday morning that knocked me off my feet literally. I couldn't walk straight; I couldn't think. I barely managed to call Arnold in Maryland. He sent a doctor, and this young doctor took me to New York Hospital in his own car. They called in a specialist, did x-rays and cat-scans and all kinds of tests. And yesterday with Arnold at my side, the doctor told me I have brain cancer."

"That's not good news. What can they do for you?"

"Nothing. The doctor said I have three or four months left unless I opt for surgery; they cut off the top of my skull and to dig out a piece of my brain, maybe the part I paint with or speak with or think with, and then they put me through chemotherapy or radiation or some such dreadful treatment that would keep me sick and debilitated for the rest of my miserable life. In exchange for all of that suffering, I could live maybe a year, maybe two years, maybe three years if I'm among the lucky 10 percent. With no treatment, I'll get sicker, more wretched, and die. With treatment, I'll be sick all the time and wish I were dead."

"So what are you going to do?" Chris felt sorry for her, but he had no emotional attachment to Mary. She had provided him an interesting excursion into an art studio, to stand naked in front of five women and a billionaire, an amusing adventure he had never anticipated.

Arnold returned with the sandwiches on grilled seeded rye, five of them, with sliced dill pickles. "The specialty of the house. Trio-cheese delights. Cheddar, Irish, and Swiss." He reminded Chris of a well broken-in punk inside with a rat face and bowing and scraping feet. Mary didn't take a sandwich. Neither did Arnold. Chris took two. He was hungry.

"Eat up," Arnold said, a pitch at a guilt trip.

"I'm sorry to hear about all of your troubles, Mary." A line he had learned at wakes in the Woodside of his boyhood, where the only ones in the funeral parlor who weren't laughing were the corpse in the coffin and the undertaker. He searched for a word to describe this luncheon of grilled cheese, potato chips and beer with a woman foul-mouthed with death approaching. Prelude. That was it. A form of coming attraction in which the soon-to-be departed was sitting at center stage still alive and groaning, ruining the party, making laughter inappropriate and impolite. He realized there must be a punch line. Why would this self-important, totally focused artist be telling him of her agonies? He was a piece of meat to her. She wanted something.

"In my dream last night, I saw the finished paintings. That's never happened to me before. A painting has always been an adventure, setting out on an unfamiliar trail and finding the end only when I got to it. This was like a message from God." She paused to cough and gag. She struggled to continue speaking, "Sorry. I have this burning in my throat and it runs down to my stomach. Probably psychosomatic, but I have it." She paused. "Arnold could you get me a glass of water."

He popped out of his seat, hurrying into the kitchen.

"Anything I can do?" Chris asked, uncomfortable at her heaving and choking.

She shook her head. When Arnold returned with the water, she sipped the liquid, regaining her composure. "All I have done since the doctor took my hand and told me to prepare myself for the certain end is consider my options. What do I want to do with these last days? One option is to go back to Cleveland to spend my waning hours with my mother and father weeping over the loss of their baby. To be frank, Chris, I'm going to paint like hell before I die. I'm going to go out with a paint brush in my hand. I need you, Chris, for the few productive weeks I've got left to me. Will you stay with me, even if I get mean, nasty, bitchy? Will you understand and ignore it and stick it out?"

"You mean you can be worse than you are today?"

She laughed.

"Give me a minute to think about something." Chris did the math in his head. Say she lived the full three months. Today was Nov. 27. She could last until Feb. 27, maybe even another month beyond to March 27. He couldn't do it and start the drama classes at Douglas College on time. Cheri had given him a third chance at escaping the life of a drone serving drinks or washing dishes; she probably wouldn't give him a fourth. "I'm sorry, but I can only work until Jan. 17."

Arnold leaned forward. "We can work out an arrangement that will make it worth your while, Chris. What is Mary's paying you, what $15 an hour. We'll double that to $30 with a healthy bonus for staying the course. How's that." He stood smiling, ready to seal the deal.

"I wish I could Arnold, but I've got another commitment. I'm leaving New York on Jan. 18. And besides $30 an hour is no great shakes. I make more than that with tips when I'm bartending." He lied so easily.

Arnold resisted a temptation to demean Chris. His skill as a negotiator smothered his anger. "You're a bright, clever fellow, Chris. An aficionado of poetry. And Mary tells me you have an interest in art as well. So I don't have to convince you of the opportunity being offered to you to play a role in the creation of what is certain to be an important work of art." He choked, pausing for a moment to bring his emotions under control. "Mary's work has a considerable value to me and other serious collectors, and I don't mean in monetary terms. How rare is the recognition of a great artist in her lifetime and she is recognized. Her final painting will be of enormous importance to the art world. Stand with this great woman in her hour of need, Chris."

"I'm nothing Arnold, and I'm being offered a chance to be something," Chris said. Arnold relaxed, a happy smile playing across his face. He glanced at Mary. Chris continued: "No matter how important you think Mary is, and no matter how sad her situation is, I'm not missing my chance in life for her."

"Goddamn you!" Arnold exploded.

"Be quiet Arnold," Mary said.

"This vulture is trying to take advantage of a dying woman, and I won't have it. What's your price?"

"Arnold, I said be quiet. I'm a dying woman in a hurry, Chris. The doctor gave me three months; you're giving me what five or six weeks?"

"More like seven."

"So I'll do what I have to in seven weeks instead of three months. Maybe seven weeks won't be enough? Maybe three months wouldn't be enough? Whatever the outcome, we'll start tomorrow."

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

On Wednesday morning, Chris and a maintenance man from the building strung large prints of butterflies on strings from the ceiling behind the stage where the model usually posed for Mary and her classes. Those classes had been cancelled forever. No time or energy left for students. Workers from an art supply company built two frames on rollers, each seven feet wide and fifteen feet long, in the studio, then fitted the two sized linen canvasses onto them. One was left against the entrance gallery wall, the other placed in front of Mary's easel.

After the workers left, Mary laid a large chart atop the supply cabinet. She had blocked out the time for the two paintings, the days and dates in red in boxes. Across the top she had printed workday: from 7:30 AM to 7:30 PM. First painting: photos and sketches from Nov. 29 to Dec. 4; studies from Dec. 5 to Dec. 14; and painting from Dec. 15 to Dec. 24. Second painting: Dec. 25 Chris will shave off his mustache and all the hair on his head, photos and sketches from Dec. 25 to Jan. 3; studies from Jan. 4 to Jan. 13; and painting from Jan. 14 to Jan. 23. Revisions, reworking from Jan. 24 until ?????

"I put that together last night. In case it isn't obvious, I'll tell you there are no days off planned. We're working seven days a week including Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year's Eve, and New Year's Day," Mary said.

Chris studied the chart. "What's this about a 12-hour day and then shaving off my mustache and hair?" He had no great plans for Christmas Day, but he wouldn't come to the studio. He hated being in prison on Christmas, never able to tell himself it was just another day.

"Please don't raise your voice to me. I'm having a very hard time just getting through the day. I don't need any extra stress."

"I'm not working Christmas and I'm not shaving anything off."

"Chris, I'm doing two paintings, and I want them to express the dichotomy present in every man. The good and evil; the sweet and beastly; the gentle and violent and how these traits impact the environment around them. The eco system of the soul, let's call it for want of a better description. I want my audience to think about their personal responsibility to be decent rather than nasty, and not to be surprised by what they sow. I'm anticipating headaches or whatever might interfere some days. That's lost time never to be made up. I'm going to do my best to avoid losing time. That's why I want you here 12 hours a day from 7:30 AM to 7:30 PM so when I can work, you'll be available. When I can't work, you can sit in a corner and read your poetry. But I want you here. And if we get into a situation where I'm in a painting frenzy and 7:30 arrives, I'll want you to stay those nights."

He laughed a dry laugh. "So I'm supposed to shave off my mustache and turn into a skin head."

"Exactly. That's why I selected you. A perfect subject for these dual paintings examining the dichotomy of a human personality."

The fluffy mustache and long soft blondish hair was the disguise presenting him to the world as Chris the poetry-spouting bartender. Without the disguise, someone from the past could more readily recognize him as Gerald Christopher Reilly, pseudo rat, convicted murderer, ex-con, and worse as a parole absconder. He wanted to be immortalized in Mary's paintings, a subject of passing glances by museum tourists, and seriously studied by art critics and students. They would wonder who was this man, and they would think about him, waking in the middle of the night with insights into his character. He wanted to do it. The hair would grow back, so would the mustache. "I'll tell you what I'll do. I want $2,500 to shave the mustache and hair, and if I need a place to stay before I leave on Jan. 17, I want to be able to stay in the studio."

"Not in the bedroom."

"We'll get a cot. Put it on the other side of the studio, nowhere near you."

"Okay. I can do that. I have some unbreakable rules. I go into the bedroom, you never enter. No guests. No visitors. No noise at night."

"Right. But something else. Do you really think you can stick to a schedule like this with no breaks? You're going to burn out, Mary. What did Edna St. Vincent Millay say, My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night." He paused, shaking his head when she started to respond. "But I'll be honest, the rest of the poem says, But ah my foes and oh my friends, it gives a lovely light."

Mary smiled. "That's exactly what I'm trying to do. Now let's get going. Take off your clothes and get up on the stage. I want to take some photos."

"What are the butterflies all about?" he asked pointing to the line of prints hanging from the ceiling.

With a sudden irritation, she said: "Pieces of the paintings. Just like you. No more questions. Time's awasting."

"How much are you paying the butterflies?"

"What is this? Not as much as you."

"I've been thinking about time and money. Your time is draining away, but so is mine. You want me available, then you pay me."

"We have a deal."

"We had a deal. I want $240 a day for an eight-hour day and $45 an hour for every hour over that. And since you want me seven days a week, I want a guarantee of seven days a week. And I want double time for Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. All off the books. No taxes taken out."

"You selfish pig. Arnold is right, you're trying to take advantage of a dying woman."

"You have a disgusting mouth Mary. I may seem like nothing to you, your time is priceless and mine is worth the minimum wage or less. Arnold's got a billion or two, and you've got Arnold. Well I told you how much money I want, and along with the money I want a little respect. No more gutter language or you can shove your painting up your ass for all I care. Before I take off my clothes like the prostitute you think I am, tell me do we have a new deal? My pay in cash every Friday. That's $240 a day plus $45 an hour overtime and double time on the holidays."

"I can't think at the moment," she said in a play for time. Money was never a problem for her. Arnold would give her any amount she wanted within reason, but he would object without bargaining and in reaction to being squeezed. She had her trust fund. She did some quick calculations; what Chris was asking would cost her about $20,000 maybe a little more. She had $200,000 in the trust fund from her parents, and thousands of dollars more, she wasn't certain how much, in her checking account. The last time she glanced her investment accounts, she had $175,000 in the IRA and her mutual funds. She wouldn't know how much she made for the year from sales of her paintings, anywhere from $10,000 to $25,000 each, until the accountant went over the books at the gallery deducting their commissions and expenses. Then there was the income from her classes, less expenses for models, paints, coffee, sweet buns, lunches, whatever. Why was she wasting her time thinking about money? She would be dead in four months at the outside. She stared at Chris confronting her with a decision made. She sensed he would walk out without bargaining. A little man who resented the rich and successful and powerful, and relished outmaneuvering her and perhaps in his twisted thinking, Arnold. "It's not about money, is it Chris? You just want to put it to us."

"Yes it is about money. I've got something you want. You can either pay for it, or I walk."

"What about our original deal? Not a man of your word?"

He thought about that. She was stinging him with her comments about his selfishness, about going back on his word. "I'm not going back on my word. You hired me for $60 a day for four hours. Arnold raised the ante to $30 an hour. I'm asking for just a little more. So what do you want to pay me for 12 hours a day or more?"

"How about $100 a day. You would be making $700 a week."

"How much will you get for the two paintings? Big ones from the size of those canvasses."

"I've told you before that's really none of your business. I can get any number of models for $100 a day."

"Okay. Get one with a mustache that he's willing to shave on Christmas Day." He walked towards the coat rack.

"Stop. You've got a deal." Bile was surging from her stomach and a gnawing ache was moving from the back of her brain along the lining of her skull to her forehead. She closed her eyes against a wooziness that she feared would tumble her to the floor. She steadied herself against the cabinet.

"Are you okay?" He came to her side, taking an elbow, putting his arm around her to support her.

"Just get me a chair then take off your clothes and we're going to get to work."

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

He returned wearing the white terrycloth robe against the cold. Mary had set up a tripod with a large camera and had a .35mm slung around her neck. "Shed the robe and run the length of the studio in front of the butterflies." He ran at a trot. "No, no. I want a sense of speed. I'll tell you what. Run and leap as high as you can." He did that 10 times, pausing sporadically to catch his breath, with Mary clicking away the small camera, snapping him high above the floor legs and arms extended against the array of colorful butterflies: yellow and black Tiger Swallowtails, orange and black and white Monarchs, purple Bog Coppers, reddish orange Mead's Sulphurs, brownish red Northern Checkerspots, black and orange Artic Skippers, bright blue Blue Morphs, orange, brown, black and white Painted Ladies, and green and white Olive Hairstreaks.

He danced and twirled across the floor. He stood on his toes. He bent over exposing his rear end. He knelt. He stood with legs and arms spread wide forming a human X. She used the big camera with him seated on the stage, smiling, frowning, pseudolaughing, snarling, happy, serious. She did close ups of the faded tattoos on his body: the peregrine falcon with the snake torn to pieces on his right breast; the Chinese calligraphy on his upper left arm. The scars, the one above his left ear, the other on his right side. She switched to a pad to sketch the tattoos and his mustache.

Arnold arrived with deli sandwiches for lunch. He let himself in, then went directly into the kitchen to put water on the stove for tea and lay out the roast beef sandwiches on rolls and pickles on plates and the potato salad and cole slaw in small bowls. At the sound of the whistling kettle, Mary told Chris they would break for lunch.

Arnold and Mary sipped their tea, but left their sandwiches untouched. Chris scooped large servings of the salads onto his plate, took two long slices of dill pickle. He fed a strand of the meat to Sam at his feet, and then went into his sandwich with enthusiasm. The tea was delicious. "What kind of tea is this?" The first words spoken since the meal began.

"English Breakfast Tea" Arnold said in a subdued tone. He looked at Mary. "Three months is an average figure. Just a statistic. That could mean two weeks or 10 years. If we went by averages, my income would be about $14,000 a year. That was the per capita income last year."

Mary pointedly ignored him. "Chris, how old are you?"

"Fifty-six."

"I'd have thought younger. You have a very nice body, and you keep it in good shape. Lucky you. I'm 55 and I'll never be 56."

Arnold said, "There have been miraculous cures, self cures by people who take charge of their lives."

"Without cutting off the top of the head; without chemotherapy; without drugs?" she shouted. She slammed her napkin down. Arnold's right cheek flickered. Chris stopped eating. She seethed with anger, saying, "You've convinced me Arnold. I have no time to waste. I'm going to the canvass tomorrow. I'll do as much as I can. I'll pray to God that I can last long enough to finish. If I can't, I'll die with a brush in my hand." She stood up, weeping, "Wouldn't that make a great movie, Arnold?"

Arnold said, "Oh Mary, what can I say, what can I do to make you happy?"

"Go home and leave me alone for the rest of day. Only come back tomorrow if you're ready to leave the gumbo about a wonder-working doctor and a miracle cure outside my door. Finish eating Chris and let's get back to work.

"Mary you're depressed."

"Of course I'm depressed, Arnold, I'm not a fool. I'd ask why me? But who would I ask? God? Does He care about me as an individual? You talk about statistics. Women live into their 80s now. That's an average Arnold. I'm dying at 55 and some cleaning lady is going to live to be 110. We're both equal in the eyes of the Lord. I'm a painter, a fine artist. She's a performance artist, vacuums with élan."

"I'll take care of the dishes and see you tomorrow, Mary." She gave him the film from the morning's photo session with instructions to have the lab develop all the rolls into 8x12 prints.

Chris sat naked on a folding chair on the stage, standing when told, turning to profile, smiling as Mary painted. Several times she came close, examining the tattoos on his chest and upper arm. "You're not empathetic. Are you? You're not like Arnold. You don't feel for me."

"I don't have the same relationship."

"No sympathy for a dying dog?"

"You're not a dog. You're a famous painter."

She laughed. "I didn't mean me. I meant a real dog. Lassie or whatever. Don't feel sorry when you see some poor animal dying."

"Sure."

"To be frank, I don't think so. Why are you so hard Chris? Is that what the monastery did to you?"

"Twenty-eight years. They took away the best years of my life, the momentum for a better life afterwards."

"You got poetry out of it. You were educated in the monastery. Weren't you?"

"You could say that. I studied Latin, I studied poetry. I learned to defend myself."

"That monastery had bars, didn't it Chris?"

"What makes you say that?"

"The tattoos. Jailhouse tattoos. Is there a story behind the tattoos? Why did you choose them?"

In his musing behind prison walls, Chris had conferred a deep meaning on the tattoos and their places on his body. The designs represented who he was when they were made, and he had come to see that their presence illustrated the conflict within Chris of the fierce ready to kill and the wise ready to withdraw. He chose to take the path balanced between his extremes of the falcon and the monk. To Mary, he said, "Maybe the tattoos chose me."

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

Arnold opened the door singing, "Zippity doo dah, zippity ay. My oh my what a wonderful morning." He stepped back ushering Chris into the studio with a bow from the waist and a flourish.

Chris smiled, infected by Arnold's joy. "Good morning. I take it she's in good shape this morning." He held Sam in his arms.

"The bluebird is flying high this morning, my friend. She covered an unbelievable expanse of canvas last night. Fell right to sleep and was up early, back at work. I made her a big breakfast."

"A bluebird flying. I like that Arnold."

"May I call on you for a happy poem as the day moves on Chris?"

"My mind's a blank at the moment, Arnold, but I'll give it some thought while I'm posing."

"Good use of that time. You and Sam have become the greatest of friends haven't you?"

Chris smiled again. "He waits for me every morning downstairs. We're going to miss each other."

"That animal has never warmed to me," Arnold said.

Chris went directly to the dressing room. He stripped off his jacket, sweater, shoes, socks, shirt, slacks and underwear. He put his things in the closet and slipped into the white terrycloth robe and a pair of white socks and sandals. He tidied his mustache and hair with a comb, then returned to the studio. Arnold, who had put on his overcoat, waved goodbye. He walked the length of the gallery to the front door, while Chris crossed the room to the stage. "Morning," he said to Mary. "Where do you want me today?"

After the mandatory good morning, she had Chris take off the robe and seated him on a wooden folding chair in front of the broad window that brought the northern light onto her work. He turned to glance at her progress, green, yellow and orange butterflies in flight amidst splatters of black and purple and unpainted gray on the big canvass. She took his chin turning his face back to her. She sat on a similar folding chair, sketching her images onto a large pad. She focused on the tattoo of the peregrine falcon and the snake torn in half by the fierce predator on his right chest.

"Is that going into the painting?"

"I never know until I'm finished what I'll keep and what I'll discard. She folded a page and did another sketch. At times she pointed the end of the pencil towards a point on the tattoo, paused, stared, and continued drawing.

He looked past her out the window at the Javits Center and a hint of the Hudson River. Instead of the happy poem Arnold requested, over and over his mind recited Robert Louis Stevenson's lines: "Under the wide and starry sky dig the grave and let me lie." This morning with his coffee before he left the house in Astoria, he had read part of Oscar Wilde's De Profundis. Today was the 90th anniversary of Wilde's death. He died an unhappy man, and thinking of Wilde whose taste of the prison life had destroyed him dipped Chris in the blues. He felt more deeply for Wilde who allowed himself to be shattered than for Mary who was so tough a woman that she didn't want sympathy. Just time enough to finish her last two paintings. She was using her final days, carefully spending them on what she considered worthwhile.

She told him to turn his chair to the right so she could concentrate on the tattoo of the I Ching symbol of Strategic Withdrawal. He could see the big canvass studying the penciled profile of his head enlarged, with his mustache and long hair ruffling behind. The mouth was opened wide laughing. No eyes, no teeth, a chin. The outline of a curving, twisting blob hung from the chin. She stopped drawing. "Chris. Most people go to museums as scanners. Their eyes flash across the paintings; perhaps their brains through those eyes record significant information. The question is whether they are capable of recalling it and using it? I'm going to give you a clue, no a key to becoming an appreciator instead of scanner. In the museum, or the gallery, or the studio, you must examine a painting through a semiotic prism: What do the postures tell you? What of the expressions? What of the setting? What of the figures? They tell us of the era, of the mindset of the age and the artist. Go to the Metropolitan as a code breaker and you will appreciate art as never before. So tell me Chris, as the insider and owner of these tattoos that decorate the canvass of your body, what do they symbolize?"

Other women, both Phil and Delores, had asked him that question in simpler terms driven by curiosity; who is this man who is bedding me? He didn't tell them. He shucked them off with lying replies: I was drunk. I should have asked the guy who tattooed me. Neither had asked in Mary's probing, intellectual context. To tell the truth would be to expose himself, yet would be an affirmation that he was striving to be a thinking, spiritual man, a superior man in his version of the Chinese concept of chun tzu. He touched the tattoo on his chest, then reached across to his shoulder. "I am the falcon; I am the monk. I wander between those roles, and I want to stand on the yellow bridge that isn't depicted."

"Wow. And where did you pick up this philosophy of life?"

The All Matty had told Chris on his prison visits that his goal in life should be to be a superior man offering the sufferings of his life to God and being charitable to men on earth. Lew Tieh had added a Confucian tinge to the concept of the superior man—to be calm in the center of the storm, whether in a fight or in moving through every day life. "I spent 28 years living essentially alone in a cell in a monastery. Two very different men, who were my teachers, set me on the path to being a superior man despite the barrenness of my life, no women, no family, inedible food, a numbing, maddening sameness to every day, the total control of my every movement."

"Where was this monastery?"

"In a desert in upstate New York."

"There aren't any deserts in New York."

"I wish that were true."

"But you finally got out."

"That's true. I was thrown into a river, a polluted river—and swept along. I came out the other end and chose freedom and life over whining about those 28 lost years. No they weren't lost. I lived them. Not the way I would have wanted to, but the way I had to.

"And the snake? And the Chinese calligraphy?"

"I'll tell you this, the falcon is fierceness. The calligraphy representing I Ching hexagram 33 for strategic withdrawal or retreat. I'll make it easy for you. The tattoos represent the conflict of the fierce ready to kill and the wise ready to undertake strategic retreat to avoid conflict. And I'm standing on the yellow bridge between those two extremes looking for happiness."

CHAPTER THIRTY

Chris sat at the little bar in Vivolo's on East 74th Street moving his eyes between the mirror behind the tiers of liquor bottles and the door waiting for Mrs. Baltic to appear on the Friday before Christmas. The restaurant, decorated with lights and greenery and Poinsettias, was crowded with chattering, laughing diners. Elderly couples and larger tables of families, teenage grandchildren, middle-aged parents, and grey grandparents. Suits, sports jackets, dresses with corsages of bells, evergreens and red ribbons. Sweaters on some boys and girls. Smiles and happiness throughout the long room. Waiters hurrying from the kitchen with trays of pasta, veal, steak and fish; opening bottles of wine with popping corks for crystal glasses. Chris was dressed in the fanciest clothes of his wardrobe, a blue cashmere sweater and blue slacks with dark casual shoes.

He sipped his Irish whiskey studying a trim, classy woman with long gray hair, around his age, sipping her own glass of white wine, held by a hand decorated with a wedding ring and a large diamond ring, pearls around her neck and right wrist, talking, glowing with energy and self-worth, locked in a conversation marked with bursts of smiles to a good-looking grey-haired man. Their food arrived and a waiter refilled their glasses from a bottle chilling in an ice bucket. While her husband took up his knife and fork with his attention on the plate before him, she turned her head to look across his shoulder catching Chris' eyes with hers for just a moment. He flushed, embarrassed by his voyeurism, and looked once again at the door.

Mrs. Baltic in a long mink coat and scarf entered the restaurant; the maitre d' hurried forward, greeting her with a bow and words of welcome. He turned indicating her guest at the bar. Chris slid off his stool, taking his drink and a small shiny red gift bag with him. In the time he took to walk the few steps to her, the maitre d' had taken Mrs. Baltic's coat and scarf passing them to the cloakroom attendant. Chris kissed her on either cheek.

"Your favorite table is ready, Mrs. Baltic."

They followed him the length of the restaurant to a table set for two, but large enough for four, out of the traffic of servers and passing diners. A plate of butter was placed on the table, followed by a server with a basket of hard rolls, using tongs to put one on each of their bread dishes.

"The usual Manhattan, Mrs. Baltic?" their waiter asked.

"No. Tonight is a Christmas celebration. I think I'll have a kir royale, and of course a bottle of sparkling water."

"I'll have the same." Chris had made a few dozen kir royales in his years behind the bar, but had never drunk one. He preferred beer and Irish whiskey on the rocks.

Chris commented on how well known Mrs. Baltic was at Vivolo's. She had been coming to the restaurant on a regular basis, at least twice a month, since the place opened the late 70s. Another favorite of her husband and hers. Aside from the good food and warm atmosphere, especially cozy in winter, she could walk from her apartment. Tonight as usual, she took a hired car, which would return to take her back to her building.

The drinks appeared. They touched glasses first to a happy Christmas, then to the Winter Solstice. Chris took the gift bag from the floor beside his chair. "Merry Christmas, Mrs. Baltic."

"Oh Chris. How sweet. You shouldn't have." She took the equally shiny package from the gift bag. She tore away the paper. She looked at the small volume reading aloud from the yellow dustcover: "The Ballad of Reading Gaol by C.3.3?"

"I went looking in the Strand for an interesting version of the book, there are so many, and I found this exact reproduction of the first edition of 1898. I love this poem. Everyone knows the line each man kills the thing he loves, but there's so much more in there. Love. Betrayal. Man's inhumanity to man. And prison." Chris ran the side of his right index finger from his left ear lobe across the cheek to his chin. He put on his forced smile, thinking that Mrs. Baltic probably wouldn't grasp how much he was telling her about himself with this gift.

"Why C.3.3?" she asked.

"C.3.3 was Oscar Wilde's cell number. You know the story. He was sent to prison for being a homo and when he got out he wrote the ballad. I've never been sure whether that by-line was just a gimmick or they really were afraid no one would buy the book if his name was on it." He empathized with Wilde, understanding the bitter shame of being a convict subject to the whims of dictatorial screws. He shared Wilde's guilt of having brought his sentence on himself. Chris' sin was a failure of courage, not realizing the consequences of going along with the wiles of ruthless men who plunged him into prison. Wilde got there through hubris, a form of fearlessness, a reckless arrogance that propelled him into a confrontation with the Marquis of Queensberry.

"How thoughtful Chris to give me something you love. Those are always the best gifts. Now me. I love to see a man in an Irish tweed jacket. They last a lifetime that's why college professors wear them." She took an envelope from her purse, "Merry Christmas, Chris."

He opened the envelope taking out a folded sheet of heavy paper. On the letterhead was the name of a clothier on East 35th Street. Typed in the body of the paper was "For Mr. Chris Dunne, a Donegal (Magee's) Irish Tweed sports jacket (camel brown herringbone) and cavalry twill slacks with three shirts and two ties and a brown Coach belt." He didn't own a sports jacket. He hadn't worn one since he graduated from The Point. He smiled in the pleasure of the gift, and in the anticipation of the life to come, where a sports jacket would be an appropriate uniform, a move up from a world of windbreakers and bomber jackets.

"My husband bought his first tweed sports jacket in Donegal in the 1930s just before the war. We were up there salmon fishing. You couldn't believe how primitive it was. But the fish and fishing were marvelous, and the people even better. My son has Donegal tweeds in his wardrobe too. I know you'll need a jacket at Douglas College for dinners and cocktail parties. I'm sure you'll get invited around. And I wanted to give you something I love."

The waiter returned to their table, first rattling off a list of specials, two appetizers, two pastas, and two main courses. "And of course, the kitchen is always ready to prepare any dish you might desire, Mrs. Baltic." She ordered a half serving of pasta as an appetizer and a stuffed veal chop. Chris said the same. They shared a bottle of white Sicilian wine.

"I hope you get to know Cheri very well," Mrs. Baltic said. "She's a lovely woman once you get past her bluster. I'm sure that in no time at all, she'll see just how interesting a man you are."

The quid pro quo. The price. He looked at Mrs. Baltic to be certain she was serious. Why would a successful, rich, highly-educated, sophisticated woman with an overwhelming sense of self importance like Cheri Chisholm be interested in him? He didn't say that aloud. He searched for the appropriate words and as he spoke, he sounded so amusingly square: "Are you suggesting I court your daughter, Mrs. Baltic?"

"If only you would," she said.

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

Mary opened the door; she looked old and unhappy. She was wearing a lemonade-yellow hooded sweatshirt. "Ready for the big event?"

"I've been through it before. A long time ago. I didn't enjoy it then, and I don't expect to enjoy it today." He handed her an oblong box wrapped in white paper decorated with chains of green holly with red berries and held out Sam, who immediately leaped to the floor, heading inside to his bowls of water and food. "Merry day after Christmas."

"Thank you." She kissed him on the cheek, an unexpected gesture that surprised him. "Come on in. We've got a busy day ahead of us, and I'm in a deep funk. I had a headache yesterday that I thought was going to drive me out of my mind. I slept from four o'clock in the afternoon until 6 o'clock this morning, and I could hardly get out of bed."

"A lot of people get the blues at Christmas."

"Especially if they have cancer and know they won't be around next Christmas."

"Life's a bitch."

Anger twisted the features of her face. "That's such an ugly, anti-woman expression. Why not, life's an impotency. You know a limp cock. What's a good tag for a man like that? Say a wimp? No that's gender-free isn't it?" She smirked. "I've arrived at the politically-correct word that can be used. Life's a wimp."

Chris didn't respond. He had learned to be silent in a confrontation, either physical or verbal. A temptation surged across him to avoid the ordeal of shaving his mustache and hair by saying no way to her. But he had made a deal. He would keep his end of it. He was tired of her whining. Of coming here every day to endure her surliness, her self-pity, her anger. In three weeks, their connection would be broken and he could put her behind him. He would do the time.

They walked to the big Christmas tree that Arnold had put up between the dining and sitting areas. A silver star on top, bulbs in the shapes of Santas, giant snow flakes, icicles, wooden soldiers, balls of varying designs filled the tree along with bright-colored green, red, and gold chains twirled through the branches reflecting an abundance of twinkling lights. The tree was dark on this gloomy day after Christmas. Mary put the unopened gift Chris had given her in front of three wrapped packages and white envelope with "Chris" printed in large letters. "We'll open these when we take a break," she said.

Chris, a bath towel wrapped round his neck and chest, sat on a wooden kitchen chair set atop plastic sheeting near the pot-bellied stove that glowed with heat. Mary started into his longish hair with a pair of scissors, purchased for the event, letting the strands of cut hair fall onto his shoulders and lap, and onto the plastic sheeting. She didn't speak as she worked, using an electric clipper and then an electric razor for the final cut. The whole process took less than ten minutes. She took a box she had laid on the model's stage, telling him that it contained a shaving gel, a new razor with triple blades that the manufacturer promised would cut close without nicks or irritation, and a large tube of Elizabeth Arden's Eight Hour Cream. She asked him to shave off his mustache this morning, and then his face and head every morning until he departed for Vermont, telling him that she found the Eight Hour Cream marvelous for soothing skin irritations.

He stripped off his clothes, shaking the hair that had clung to his shirt and jeans onto the plastic covering the floor. He took the shaving materials and the hair-cutting implements into the models' dressing room. He studied his reflection in the mirror. His handlebar mustache and shaved head reminded him of Gurdjieff. He used the scissors to snip off the outer curls of the mustache and heaviest thicket of hair. He followed with the electric razor and the triple-bladed safety razor. The face in the mirror was high-cheeked, gaunt and hard with cross-wrinkled bags under the eyes. Chris felt uncomfortably exposed. He hasn't seen himself this devoid of hair since his earliest prison days. Then he was a young man just out of boyhood. Now his visage was that of a grimly sad man approaching old age. He put on the model's bathrobe and went back out into the studio.

Mary was sitting close to the pot-bellied stove. She smiled broadly, losing her unhappiness in the pleasure of a reassured assumption: "The man unmasked. I was almost certain I would find that face behind that façade." She came to him, taking his chin, turning it this way and that. She undid the robe and slipped it from his shoulders, circling him, studying the model. "Thank God, thank God, thank God. Just what I need, just what I want." She handed him the robe. "Let's have some champagne and coffee and open our gifts.

While he was shaving, Mary had laid out a bottle of Dom Perignon, fluted crystal glasses, a plate of small pastries, and a carafe of coffee on the sitting-area coffee table alongside the presents that had been under the tree. Chris tore open the envelope first. A thick packet of $100 bills, the bonus for shaving his mustache and hair. He held up the money. "Thanks." He ripped the paper from the thin package unveiling a nude sketch of him leaping through the air, seemingly suspended in space, with his mustache and with his longish hair flying behind him. "I never expected this," he said holding the drawing for her to see.

"A memento of our time together.

The other packages held a Spanish beret and a knit hat with a pompom.

"The beret to keep you in style and the other warm in winter. You're going to feel the cold when you go outside. I'm feeling it inside. That's why Arnold gave me this sweatshirt."

"Where is Arnold?"

"Arnold is with his wife and children at their place in the Berkshires. Snow, cold, a fire in the fireplace. The picture perfect family."

"So the billionaire gave you a sweatshirt, nothing else?"

"He gave me what I wanted, what I asked for. Let's see what you gave me." She tore away the paper and opened the box top. "How practical and thoughtful. A bottle of Black Bush. A consumable gift for a perishing woman."

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

Chris double-parked his old Chevy on 31st Street in front of the Golden Harvest. He walked around his car, past the hood of a blue van and across the width of the grey, gritty sidewalk in a blistering cold wind. The innards of the little restaurant, just wide enough for two rows of plastic-topped tables, glowed with warm air scented by the spices of the open kitchen behind the service counter and cash register at the far end of the room. A pile of heavy-brown bags stapled shut with take out menus attached awaited pick up. Chris looked over the colored pictures of the exotic specials—Shrimp Tu in Oyster Sauce, the General Yang chicken, Heaven & Stars Pork Platter, House Special Feast for Eight--hung from the ceiling behind the counter. He took a pencil from a Styrofoam cup and studied the take-out menu of soups, chow mein, chop suey, variations on pork, chicken, beef and seafood, strange noodles-on a long sheet of paper with hot dishes printed in red. He considered the white chicken chow mein. He hadn't had that in a while. A Chinese woman, small and square with thick black hair, came from the back to stand in front of him. "Yes?" He checked the box next to the Number Seven Dinner: egg roll, egg drop soup, shrimp egg fu young with fried rice and crisp noodles for $6.50. She sang out something in Chinese and the cook in the back, who was washing pots, moved into action pouring oil into a round pan, swirling the contents, adding the eggs and shrimp and sprinkling of soy sauce, celery, bean sprouts, and onions. He turned to a small pan to make the brown sauce. He hurried all over the narrow space between the stove and the preparation counter making the Number Seven Dinner.

Chris watched the performance for a few minutes, then sat at the table nearest the counter to wait, looking through the front window to the street where his Chevy was parked, watching for a cop or the driver whose van was trapped by his car.

A teenage girl in a short heavy jacket and ski hat came in to fetch the waiting bags on the counter. "Tea in there? Soy sauce? Sweet sauce? The corn soup? The Hot and Sour soup?" she asked.

"Yes. Yes. Yes. Everything," the Chinese woman said taking her post at the cash register. The teenager paid and left.

Another customer, an old man with a grey bristly beard and brown cloth cap, took a table in the middle of the restaurant. The Chinese woman stepped into the kitchen to fill a small metal pot with black tea. She went to the table to take the man's order. As she returned, the cook tapped a bell. Chris' order was ready. She sang the old man's order into the kitchen and turned to load the aluminum container with Chris' dinner into a brown bag along with packets of soy sauce, duck sauce, a tea bag and two fortune cookies.

He parked directly across the street from the house. Simultaneously, a black BMW sedan stopped in front of the house. Chris looked at the clock on the dashboard, 10 PM. Phil and her lawyer were arriving home, probably from a Saturday night dinner in a nice French restaurant. He hurried across the street to move into the foyer just behind them. The lawyer held the door so Chris could slip inside.

"February First," he said to them.

"About time. We were getting ready to remind you again."

Chris looked at him, puzzled by his tendency to nastiness. He would be somebody's wife inside. In this world, he could stand there with his slouching shoulders and aura of self-importance making provocative remarks with little fear of retaliation.

Phil stared at him, taken aback by absence of his mustache and the toughness of his exposed face.

"When are you getting married?" Chris said to Phil, feeling a wave of regret that he would never screw her again. She was in another world of Saturday night dates and a house on Long Island. No more carrying trays of heavy plates and being stiffed by little tippers. No more Greek father-in-law from the old country watching jealously for fear of her having a good time.

"In June. You know the month of brides," she said, her eyes sparkling, smiling at him, overcoming a temptation to ask what had happened to his mustache?

"Naturally June." He turned to the lawyer. "Well let me congratulate you. You're a lucky man getting Phil. What's your name?"

"Andy Klein," she said.

He took the lawyer's hand. "Congratulations Andy."

"Phil tells me you've been a good tenant, Chris."

"We got along swimmingly well until you came along, Andy."

She glared at him. Clenched her teeth behind Andy's back.

"No hard feelings, I hope, Chris, but since Phil is planning to sell the house, I suggested to her that we get you on your way to moving out. Easier to sell without a tenant planted upstairs."

"And me. No congratulations for me?" she asked.

"Congratulations on fulfilling your dream. I'm assuming Andy's your dream man."

"Oh yes," she said. "And you? Find something in the neighborhood?"

"I'm going up to Vermont. I got a place on Lake Champlain, believe it or not."

"What?" Phil said.

"I'm pursuing a dream of my own, going back to school."

She put her hand on his chest. Desire surged through him like an electric charge. "I'm so happy for you, Chris," she said.

"Tech school or college?" Andy asked.

"Theater Arts at Douglas College. I got a scholarship."

"Oh that's a wonderful program. I've been to their summer theater when we vacationed up in Vermont. We rented a cottage just outside of Geddes."

She kissed him on the cheek. He thought she might burst into tears. "I'm so happy for you Chris," she said.

CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

Chris wrestled with his new necktie trying to get a decent-looking inverted triangle knot. Either too tightly small or too loose. He went through the process of looping the silk material around itself, up and over eight times, clenching his teeth in frustration, murmuring curses before he arrived at an acceptable knot. He hadn't tied a necktie since he left The Point; only the warden and visiting dignitaries wore them in his prison years; in San Francisco he had a snap-on one that didn't require knot-tying skills for his bartender's uniform and wore an open collar or a turtleneck, California casual, when he took Delores to dinner. He put on his new Irish tweed jacket for the first time outside the shop where the tailor had fitted him. He looked in the mirror. He would have preferred to look back at himself with a full head of hair and his familiar mustache instead of facing a shaven head that emphasized his eyes sunken behind high-ridged cheekbones below a knobby forehead. He caught himself in a scowl reflecting his bleak mindset this morning, and tried to look happy, producing only a very small, artificial smile.

He stroked his head, past the slight indentation in the center. No nicks this morning when he shaved it for the last time. Just one more trip into Mary's studio for a good-bye glass of champagne with a good-bye toast, pick up his pay, and his modeling career would be behind him. He put the Spanish beret on his head, tilting it. Another first. The first time he had worn it since Mary gave it to him. Didn't look bad in the mirror. Made him look like an aging soldier. A Ranger. Rangers wore black berets. That thought relaxed him. He put on his heavy jacket with the fur-lined hood, dreading the cold that lay before him. A light snow was falling.

Arnold met him in silence at the door.

"Not good this morning?"

Arnold nodded. "Let's not talk about it," he whispered. He took Chris' winter jacket, expressing surprise to see him in a sports jacket. Chris kept the beret on his head. He carried a bouquet of cut flowers wrapped in butterfly paper. Chris bent over to let Sam slip down. He watched him move swiftly along the wall of the gallery into the guts of the studio. He would miss Sam. He was tempted to ask Mary if he could take the cat along with him. But that would be beyond the pale.

Mary sat entranced facing the two huge canvasses which were set to catch the full northern light through the ceiling to floor windows behind her. But not this morning. No sunlight, just a veil of snow, a wall of grey outside. She was in a gloom, a depression. Unhappy at the outcome of her work, the paintings so much less than she wanted them to be. She knew, from experience, that she would feel this way afterwards, but tore into Arnold when he reminded her of that last night as she declared the second painting finished. Time was running out. Exhaustion, depression, headaches, pains in her wrists, knees, elbows, and back made any work an ordeal. She could feel death clawing at her as she stroked and dabbed the canvas with her brush, hurrying her to the conclusion, of her work, of her life. Painting usually provoked inspirations to startle her out of sleep, in the middle of eating a sandwich, while walking down the street. She had experienced those thunderbolts of vision last year in first conceiving this project of duality, the dismal and the joyous, and the contagion of those moods. In filling the first canvass with beauty, color, happy images, she was driven by a fire of creativity despite the cancer eating at her brain. In the second painting, she fell into a swamp of despair as ugly and draining as her subject.

"Good morning," Chris said startling Mary out of her reverie.

"Goddamn it!" she screamed, raising her fists to the sides of her ears and slamming them down through the unresisting air.

Her rage felt like a body blow to Chris who had anticipated at the very least a kiss on the cheek goodbye and polite wishes for good luck at college. He would be glad to put this woman who treated him like a piece of rented meat behind him. The anger showed.

Arnold took him by the arm. "Try to be more understanding," he said softly, close to Chris' ear.

"Don't you whisper in front of me. I'm not dead yet." She stood and swung around throwing the wooden chair in which she had been sitting to the floor. "I should just rip this piece of shit to pieces."

Arnold ran forward. "No. No. No. Mary. Please." He wrapped his arms round her and she wailed a piercing moan that filled the room, shaking the anger from Chris. He stood, watching Arnold envelope her in his arms, rocking back and forth in search of a way to comfort the distraught woman. After the sobs that wracked her softened and stopped, Arnold, cradling her shoulders, guided her past Chris, through the sitting area into her bedroom. He closed the door behind them.

Calm again, Chris decided to view the paintings despite her. He walked past the pair of canvases, picked up the chair that lay on its side, and turned. He gasped seeing, and at the same time feeling in his gut, the fierce, enveloping, energy-sucking violence of his barren head and angular face surrounded by dying and dead butterflies, Monarchs, Tiger Swallowtails, Wood Nymphs, Wood Satyrs, American Coppers, Eastern-tailed Blues, Great Spangled Fritillaries, Amazon Morphos. The flaring oranges, reds, yellows, blue, greens, purples and defining blacks of the wings losing their color, some falling from burnt bodies, turned to charcoal grays. Parts of his body, fists, long arm muscles, testicles, penis, the shields of his thighs, the falcon above his right nipple, the torn snake, two piercing eyes, flowed in whole and elongated across the long canvas filled with the suffering butterflies against a dark red sky and thunderous clouds. He bowed his head. She had looked inside of him and painted the reflections of his soul. His aloneness. His failure to find a woman to love. A revelation of the sins of murder, of false confession, of indifference, of revenge, of hatred, of searing violence, of his artic coldness.

His eyes swung onto the second canvas to see himself leaping naked away from the ugliness. Twirling, hair flying, arms spread wide like helicopter blades propelling through the air. Mouth wide laughing. Toes pointed down high above the earth. Flowers bursting from the ground. A maze of all the butterflies in full color. All around him. Between his legs, above and below his arms, at the tips of his fingers. The tattoo from his shoulder flowing like a river across the canvass, yet the calligraphy was distinguishable. He smiled. Relieved.

Arnold came out of the bedroom. "I'll get you your money."

"Is Mary in pain?"

"No just her usual post-painting depression. She's burned out and she knows that what she has done is it, the final version. She doesn't have the energy to make any changes. I'll never know where she found the strength to get as far as she did."

"What do you think of them Arnold?"

"I haven't seen them yet. They were supposed to be unveiled to the two of us this morning."

"I just a glanced at them, like a tourist in a museum, and I was overwhelmed. One stung me, pinned me down like a bug. The other made me soar. I'm not an objective observer, but no painting has ever hit me like these two did."

"Tell her. Go ahead in there and tell her."

Chris knocked on her bedroom door. No response. He tentatively opened the door. The room was vast. The largest bedroom he had ever seen. Beyond a stuffed period chair and matching coffee table, he saw a lump beneath the covers of the bed. Mary. Sam lay near her head. The wall behind the bed was filled with four rows of enlarged photos, paintings and posters of butterflies. He stepped into the room. Bordering a 10-foot-wide window overlooking the river and beyond to industrial Jersey was an oversize painting of Mary with a perfect body, young, slender, succulent breasts, long shapely legs, standing in the shallows of a lake against a background of snow-capped mountains, mimicking the pose of September Morn.

She stirred, her head emerging from beneath the covers. "I'm so sorry Chris. I was so unnecessarily cruel to you this morning. I'm so embarrassed."

"I looked at the paintings."

"You shouldn't have," she said anger back in her voice.

"You'll live forever."

Her head disappeared again. He could barely hear her weeping. He went to the bed. "I never imagined how ugly I could be until I saw your painting. It was a relief you saw joy in me too. Why don't you come outside, join Arnold and me, we can have our little party as planned. This is a great moment for me, realizing I'll live forever too."

"Do you really think so? I know I'm my own worst critic."

"I'd give my life to produce those two paintings. You're at the end of your life. I'm not going to try to kid you. The doctors have told you what's what. But you lived a full productive life. What have I done? Sat in a cell and memorized poetry. Served banana daiquiris. Poured beer and bourbon."

"You filled a need I had," she said.

"Then I've been of real service to mankind and the world of art. Come on. Get up and wish me well in the next stage of my life. And I'll do the same for you."

He turned. Two paintings bordered the door. One of a young Mary dancing with a diaphanous silk swirling round her naked body. The other of a nude Mary leaping for joy, much as she depicted him in the happy of the paired paintings. "Self portraits?"

"My fantasies of me."

Arnold sat in the chair that Mary had occupied studying the paintings. He got up when Chris returned from the bedroom. "How is she?"

"Recovered."

Arnold, as usual in his annoying stretch at intimacy, took Chris by the arm. "Don't blame yourself. She gets like this at the end of every major work. I've seen her do it before. She's afraid to admit what she's accomplished is wonderful in case the critics disagree."

"Those paintings are pretty wonderful."

"Yes. I'll get the champagne and fetch her from the bedroom. You have a little something prepared for a toast I hope."

"Always. That's what I do."

They sat in three wooden folding chairs around a little glass table holding coconut cakes the length of a thumb and the opened bottle of champagne. Chris stood. He raised his glass to Mary: "You are invulnerable, you have no Achilles' heel. You will go on, and as you have prevailed, you can say: at this point many a one has failed. But what have I, but what have I, my friend, to give you? What can you receive from me? Only friendship and sympathy."

Mary smiled, a purposely brave smile, asking, "Whose words are those?"

"T.S. Elliot. Portrait of a Lady." He recited some further lines in his mind, not daring to pronounce them aloud: Well? And what if she should die some afternoon, an afternoon grey and smoky.

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

Chris got up early for breakfast at the Jackson Hole Diner. He had always intended to eat there, putting off the experience until he could get Phil to go with him. That never happened. He had knocked on her door last night for a whispered invitation. She said she couldn't. Couldn't take the chance. But he was sweet to ask. She reached to him touching his cheek. A thrill shook his body. "What time are you leaving?" she had asked. "I'm going to get up around five or six, have breakfast, load the car, and drive into the sunset."

"I'll never forget you," she said.

He had a large orange juice, black coffee, three eggs over light, link sausage, home fries and two English muffins with butter and marmalade. He ate looking out onto the bumper-to-bumper traffic flowing along Grand Central Parkway into the city. He felt warm and comfortable, happy that he had fulfilled this minor desire to eat in the Jackson Hole Diner so filled this morning with delicious scents and people enjoying the food and each other.

He double-parked in front the house. He fetched the heavy blue plastic rooftop carrier from the foyer in his apartment. A police car pulled up across the street as he was bolting the sandwich-shaped carrier to his Horizon's rooftop luggage rack. The cop rolled down his window. "I'm moving. I'll be out of here as soon as I get packed," Chris said. The cop waved, rolled up the window, and drove away.

Chris filled the carrier with two pillows, two blankets, two sets of sheets and pillow cases; four bath towels, he had six but two were so shabby he threw them away; three small towels and his two pillows. He was able to fit the box with his dishes and the plastic bags in which he had wrapped his double boiler, teapot, two iron frying pans, an iron pancake griddle, his toaster and his electric coffee pot into the carrier cushioned among the soft goods.

Phil with her son, Augie, a step behind her greeted him in the hallway as he returned for another load. "You're finally leaving us, Mr. Dunne."

"As soon as I get the car packed."

"Augie, give Mr. Dunne a hand."

"I'd appreciate that," Chris said.

The dark-skinned, lanky teenager followed him upstairs. He didn't speak. Chris sensed how little he wanted to help him. "Let's get the boxes down first." Four taped cardboard boxes were filled with his 82 books, mostly poetry, a few novels, some biographies, a Latin/English dictionary, a Barnes & Noble Outline of Latin, his huge Random House Unabridged Dictionary, two books by Barbara Tuchman: A Distant Mirror and The March of Folly from Troy to Vietnam, Troy was what caught his eye, and several travel books covering the route and the countries that took Aeneas from the ruins of Troy across the Aegean Sea to Greece and through the Mediterranean to Carthage before finding his way to Sicily and beyond there to Italy. The kid had skinny arms on a thin body. He struggled under the weight of the books slowly a step at a time down the steep flight of stairs. He panted from the strain and rubbed his forearms where the edges of the box had dug into the flesh through the padding of winter jacket and shirt. Chris opened the hatch back and put the two boxes into the back. They returned to the apartment for the other two boxes and the remains of Chris' possessions in several more trips. The heavy boxes of poetry along with the relatively light box containing his new Irish tweed jacket, the slacks, shirts and ties filled the Horizon's trunk. The wooden shelves and sides of his home-made bookcase fitted into the backseat along with black plastic garbage bags holding his extra pair of running shoes, his dress shoes, white socks, colored socks, underwear, t-shirts, a few casual long sleeve and short sleeve shirts, his second sweater, his second pair of jeans, three pair of khakis, and the two new woolen shirts he bought for the Vermont cold. He put the box with his high school yearbook, the family photo of his mother, father, sister and him, the drawing by Mary Hudson, and the two snapshots of him and the All Matty and him and Lew Tieh in the box on the passenger seat.

Chris gave Augie a $10 bill for his help, thanking him, and telling him that he would take one more look around the apartment before departing. He said he would leave the keys on the kitchen table. He got in the car, did a u-turn and parked legally across the street. He locked the Horizon, then stood on the sidewalk for a minute caught by a bleakness in realizing that he owned so little that the material goods of his life could be packed into a compact car.

He walked up the stairs to the apartment with an ache in his stomach over a reluctance to leave behind this house with Phil downstairs, the neighborhood with the park, the East River, and the fractured view of the Manhattan skyline he enjoyed so every morning, and once again the city where he was born. He knew how fragile all of these ties were. Phil would be marrying someone else; he would find another place to do his tai chi, he was cut off from the city of his boyhood by the circumstance of his life. He knew he should be reveling in the different experiences, places, and people that would be salted into his life in Vermont. The real pain of prison had been the sameness day after interminable day of the bleak institution, the inescapable company of ugly inmates and guards. He went past the folding table and two old wooden chairs in the dining room into the living room, sitting for one last time in the easy chair, which had given him so much pleasure as a place to be in reading and memorizing poetry, looking out on the street's passing cars, the tree across the way, the changing light of dawn, high noon, and twilight.

He turned, hearing Phil come into the apartment, recognizing her cautious tread. He rose from the chair and she came to him, putting her arms around him. She squeezed him tightly for a moment. She stepped back. "I can't kiss you goodbye. I told him about us. I had to be honest. I would have to admit I kissed you if he asked so I can't. "Good bye Chris. I'll always love you." She turned and went down the stairs.

CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE

JANUARY 18, 1991

Chris got out of the car shortly before three o'clock in a space carved into a snow bank in the no-parking zone in front of the student center. He had made it before darkness fell to his relief and just in time to get the key to his room. Several students, male and female, all pink-cheeked and self important, sat gossiping, rolling back in their chairs, laughing behind a long aluminum folding table in the vestibule under a banner suspended from the ceiling: Welcome! An older woman watched Chris from the vantage of a bench behind the students. A large suitcase was set beside her crossed legs and a long, heavy black coat lay folded next to her on the bench. He glanced at her. She was somewhere into her early 50s, in a tan suit, scarf, and eyeglasses. Her hair was gray—shiny and curly at first glance, but when she turned reflexively, embarrassed at being caught in her obvious curiosity, he could see a long braid curled behind her head. She turned back to look at him again with dazzling eyes that traveled up and down his body. She smiled. He nodded back. Judith Elizabeth Spruance Cardinale. He knew her from the photo on the back of her latest collection of poetry, Reincarnation/Resurrection/The Return/The Rebirth. She looked like the photo. Self-consciously, Chris slid the black Spanish beret from a head with only a haze of grey hair showing. He turned his attention to a student sitting behind a white cardboard on which A-D was printed in large purple letters.

"Can I help you sir?"

"Dunne. Christopher Dunne. I was told to get my key from you."

"I'm sorry Mr. Dunne but we can only give the orientation package to a student."

Tired as he was, and conscious of the older woman watching and obviously listening, he laughed. "I am a student. I was told you would have an envelope for me with a key, directions and everything else."

"You're a student?" the girl said, punctuating you're and a student as though they were two distinct sentences.

"Believe it or not."

"I can hardly believe it, but if you say so, Mr. Dunne, what can I say?" She showed her annoyance by pinching her lips together to form an asshole. She shuffled through the pile of large manila envelopes in the box on the table in front of her. "Christopher?"

"That's me."

"Where's your son?" A question designed to entrap him into admitting he wasn't really a student, but was picking up the key for his son.

She had a future as an interrogator. He didn't like her. His growing annoyance sounded in his words: "I wish I had one. Now give me my envelope."

"A touchy one," she said. She opened the envelope, sorted slowly through the contents. This girl must be having her period, Chris thought. He took a deep breath, catching himself being angry, and became calm. She found his laminated student ID card with his photo. Height. Weight. Date of Birth. Class of 1995. She looked at the picture and at him. "Hmmm. Welcome to Douglas College, Christopher. Your student ID serves as your meal card. Show it when you eat in the cafeteria and in the snack bar and in the Wine Bar on the top floor of the Student Center. Have to be 21, of course, to buy or consume any alcoholic beverages there." She giggled. "I don't think they'll be proofing you though." She looked at the sheet headlined, Housing. "Very nice. You'll be staying at The Lake Cottage. Do you know where it is?" He shook his head, no. She tore a map of the campus from a pad. "We are here. You go back out the front gate, turn right onto the County Highway, make your first right at the corner of the campus. Follow that road around the campus to the end. You might see a little sign, saying The Old Douglas Farmhouse and The Lake Cottage, but then again it might be covered by snow. The Old Douglas Farmhouse is the big house. Turn right again into the driveway and when you can't go any further, park there. The Lake Cottage will be to your left."

Lizzy rose from her bench. "You're staying at The Lake Cottage?" She spoke so softly that her words were slow in registering on Chris' mind.

"Yes I am."

"So am I. Would it be too much of an imposition to ask for a ride? I blew my clutch. I had to be towed and had to take a taxi from Vergennes. I've been sitting here for an hour waiting for Dr. Chisholm to get back to her office." She licked her lips as she spoke, her eyes washing across him again.

"Glad to Dr. Cardinale. Your bag's going to be a problem, but we'll manage."

"We've met before?"

"From hell I have risen to ride the whirling earth again."

She flashed a grin showing a large mouth with big teeth, all even and white. "You certainly know the way to a poet's heart. You have me at a disadvantage. I don't know your name?"

"Chris Dunne," he said. "I bought myself a copy of Reincarnation/Resurrection/The Return/The Rebirth for Christmas." The students staffing the table had turned to listen. "Let's get going. I'm parked right out front." He picked up her suitcase.

He managed to wedge both her suitcase and the box of his few pieces of memorabilia that had occupied the passenger's seat on top of the bags with his clothes on the rear seats. "Looks like snow," he said.

"It always looks like snow in Vermont at this time of year." They got into the car. She turned to him displaying her irritation in the slight downturn of the corners of her mouth and the wrinkling of expanse of the brow between her eyes. "I was under the impression that I was going into a small guest cottage. I assumed it would be a single occupancy. As you might imagine, a poet needs space and quiet, needs to be left alone, or at least I do, to do my work."

Chris said, "I had the same impression as you. I assume we'll have separate bedrooms."

She laughed and sat back in the passenger seat. "Are you here to study poetry Mr. Dunne?"

"Just your class Dr. Cardinale. I'm here for the theater program. Non-matriculating. But Dr. Chisholm suggested your poetry workshop or American history or political science to round me out."

"Mmmm."

Turning off county highway, they drove across an inch-deep layer of this morning's undisturbed snow between shoulder-high banks, the plowed leftovers of serious storms. The narrow road followed the perimeter of the Douglas College campus with decorative high brick columns and a curving cast iron fence visible at times through the leafless branches of sugar maples. Chris was wondering whether they would reach the cottage before nightfall when a rise in the road brought into view an expanse of half-frozen Lake Champlain against a backdrop of the gray, lumpy forms of the Adirondacks. Just beyond the signs for The Old Douglas Farmhouse and The Lake Cottage were the driveways for the two buildings. Chris turned right, stopping at the end of the driveway. A path, apparently shoveled before the morning's snow, led from the driveway to a wide curving stone stairway that rose through towering trees to a wide covered porch.

Chris opened the locked front door, flicking on the light switch. They stepped into a large living room with a polished hardwood floor, oriental rugs, lined with waist-high empty bookcases and on the walls framed posters advertising past performances of the Pure Maple and Cheddar Cheese Players. Three large easy chairs with tall reading lamps behind each formed a conversation area around a large wooden coffee table piled high with past copies of Shenandoahs, Partisan Reviews and New York Review of Books. A long couch faced a brick fireplace with a granite lintel and an iron swing crane with a black covered kettle. Kindling and logs waited in the mouth of the fireplace to bring the room alive with warmth on this icy evening.

"A very nice cottage indeed," she said.

CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

Chris had just lit two crumpled pages of the Burlington Free Press under a teepee of pine and maple branches when Cheri knocked on the front door. Lizzy let her in, the two women air kissing one another on either cheek. She whispered to Lizzy, "I've got your orientation package here. I'm so, so sorry I missed you this afternoon. I had to pick up Diane at the airport. She was on location in the Canadian Rockies for almost two months and she's exhausted." She switched to a louder voice for Chris' benefit, "I'm going to let you two get settled, then you're invited to the big house for dinner at seven. Informal, come as you are." She stayed near the front door, standing close to Lizzy. "That okay with you Chris?" she asked across the room.

"Sounds great," Chris said.

"I put a few things in the frig for you. Some milk, eggs, Canadian bacon. Sandwich meats. A pound of butter. There's flour in the pantry for hot cakes or biscuits. And maple syrup too. And Quaker Oat and Cheerios. A five-pound bag of sugar. Just to get the two of you started. Breakfast stuff. Oh, there's some English muffins in there and a loaf of whole wheat in the breadbox. I don't know about you Chris, but I'm sure Lizzy isn't a white bread eater. You'll be eating lunch and dinner at the school cafeteria Chris. Lizzy will have access to the faculty dining room, of course. Hey, if either of you wants to dine at home, the cottage has a modern kitchen and all the pots and pans and utensils to go with it."

Lizzy asked in a near whisper, "How many of us will be using the cottage?"

"There's three bedrooms upstairs. The big one overlooking the lake is yours Lizzy. Chris can have either of the backrooms. We expected to have Vincent Klay staying in the third bedroom. He was supposed to be our winter term playwright, but backed out on us at the last minute. We're going to have to cancel the course, and I can't tell you how disappointed the kids will be. Klay's a great playwright, but an awful person."

"Just the two of us then?"

"Do you mind?"

"As long as he's quiet and cleans up after himself. And of course leaves me alone, I don't mind at all. I need space and quiet. You promised me that."

Cheri whispered back to Lizzy: "Any problem at all and he's out of here one, two, three. I'll find another place for him somewhere. My mother is the one who invited him to use the cottage. I couldn't embarrass her by saying no." Cheri didn't mention that Mrs. Baltic owned the cottage and the big house, that she didn't dare say no to her mother who behind her façade of the sweet old lady could be confrontational and dictatorial. She went on in a whisper: "There's a couple of cases of wine for you in the kitchen by the porch door. A dozen whites and a dozen reds. My little welcoming gift."

Chris put on the new hiking boots he bought for the snows of Vermont, and waited on the couch in front of the dying fire for Lizzy, a bottle of Bushmill between his legs. Lizzy came down from her room in sturdy boots too for the walk through the snow to the big house. She carried a bottle of French Chablis in a shiny blue gift bag. "Coal for New Castle," she said.

"Food for the soul," he said holding up his unwrapped bottle of Irish whiskey, half the supply he had brought with him from Astoria. He hadn't expected to be invited for dinner and had no other appropriate gift to offer.

They walked with heads bowed against a searing wind, their boots punching ragged holes in the fresh fall of six inches of crystal snow. They waded through a drift shaped into a wave above their knees to reach the stairs to The Old Douglas Farmhouse. Cheri, laughing, welcomed them into the house. She took the bottles from them, exclaiming her delight. She kissed Lizzy on the cheek and nodded to Chris. A big yellow lab intrusively sniffed Chris and Lizzy as they shed their coats. "Down Artie," Cheri said.

Chris, tentatively reaching towards the dog's big head, asked, "Is he friendly?"

"You can pet Artie all you want. He's a big marshmallow."

After their coats were put away and the snow stamped from their boots, Cheri led them into a huge living room, floors covered with oriental rugs, paintings by Vermont artists on the walls, two big couches planted in intimate conversational settings with three stuffed chairs each, a long black walnut table under a vast picture window was filled with photos of Cheri with family members, friends, students, actors and directors, smaller tables with lamps and ash trays flanked the seating areas. Three people rose from a long couch in front of a blazing fire. Cheri introduced them: Hazy Cledensky, a visiting director, and his wife Venus de Cle, a romance novel writer, and Diane Arbor, who sat with a cat on her lap. Chris immediately recognized Arbor, a comedic actress with saucer eyes, a big smile and a booming voice. She had a starring role in The Caterpillar Lover, in which she played a research scientist whose life is absolutely consumed by research on the sex lives of caterpillars until her love is won by a New York City policeman who dresses up as a furry caterpillar in the hilarious ending of the film.

"I've became somewhat of a cat lover myself," Chris said, nodding to the cat.

"Then we'll get along marvelously. This is Frenchie, my Chartreaux. I've also got Jackie. He's a Maine Coon. And Sylvie. She's a Persian."

"Just before I came up here, I posed for Mary Hudson, the artist. She had an alley cat named Sam and we became the best of friends."

Cheri interrupted their exchange, saying, "What are you drinking tonight? We're having roast leg of lamb with Chateauneuf du Pape so if wine is your choice, you might want to stick to that. We have scotch, Saratoga Spring Water, beer. Hazy is said to mix up a mean martini, if you're in the mood."

Lizzy and Chris took the Chateauneuf du Pape.

Cheri raised her glass: "To poets and students, directors and writers, and not the least to actors and theatrical department chairs." They touched glasses all around and sipped the wine.

"To our gracious hostess," Hazy said.

Venus said, "I'm so glad you got here before I started my tale. I love to bounce ideas for my books off live audiences. Now as I was about to tell Di and Cheri, picture a very handsome man named Guy arriving alone at La Auberge du Rivage Lac Champlain, which is where we are actually staying. It's late at night. It's snowing. A typical night in Vermont. But this time it is snowing like hell. It's a miracle Roland made it through the storm to this cozy inn on the shore of Lake Champlain. The Inn keeper's wife says, 'It's a miracle you got through this storm sir. My husband called from Burlington and he said he didn't dare drive another foot. He would stay the night there. She shows Roland the inn's two rooms. Each has a fireplace. The second room has a huge bed. Roland says, 'Madame this will do so well. Please wait a moment to see whether what I am permitted to do what I want to do?' He lays his suit case on the bed. Fetches from it a bottle of wine and a small basket of grapes. Let's say a Chateauneuf du Pape. He lays the fire, he lays the blanket and pillow from the bed before the fire, he uncorks the bottle, pours the wine; lays the wine and grapes before the woman. He looks into her eyes. Strips away his clothing. She is paralyzed with excitement. He undresses her. And lays her on the blanket and pillow. This magic moment is broken by the screech of the smoke alarm. Roland, while good at laying some things, could use some help in laying a smokeless fire. In a moment, the naked pair hears the pounding of feet on the stairs. The burly innkeeper who is supposed to be snowbound in Burlington bursts through the unlocked door into the room." She stopped speaking, looking from face to face with a smile.

"And then?" Chris asked.

Venus grinned, her eyes crinkling in happiness. "For more you'll have to read my next novel, La Auberge du Rivage Nord based on a true experience at La Auberge du Rivage Lac Champlain last night. You should have seen Hazy trying to get his pants on before the innkeeper's wife, not the innkeeper reached our door. She was yelling Monsieur Cledensky are you safe? Wasn't worried about me."

"Chris, you're just what my sweet Venus dreams of, an audience asking for more. Now it's your turn."

"My turn?"

Cheri said, "I didn't think to warn Lizzy and Chris that the price of dinner at The Old Douglas Farmhouse is an original performance, not to exceed five minutes. Di gave us a scene from her latest film. Venus was about to perform when you walked in. So you're next Chris. I should tell everyone first that Chris is at Douglas on a theater fellowship. Chris is mother's favorite bartender. My mother loves the way he recites poetry and thus assumes he's got a future in the theater."

Chris' first impulse was to recite one of the poems from Lizzy's latest collection. He started on the first syllable of The Intimates then caught himself. She might want to say her own words. He put his goblet on the table beside his chair. His mind went blank, nothing flowed, then into his head popped his probation officer, Martin Zelotovich. He took a breath and looked towards the portrait above the fireplace of Cheri Chisholm as a young mother in long blonde hair hanging straight to her shoulders with her arm around Penny, then a little girl with eyes and hair mirroring her mother's. He said without much feeling, "Like one, that on a lonesome road doth walk in fear and dread, and having once turned round, walks on, and turns no more his head; because he knows, a frightful fiend doth close behind him tread."

Lizzy clapped. "Wonderful. From the "Rime of the Ancient Mariner?"

"Yes." He smiled in the pleasure of her praise.

Hazy stood. "Now my turn. Let's do it again. This time, put some fear on your face. No. I should tell you, feel it from the inside. Not just on your face. Prepare yourself for a moment. Think of some horrible fiend from your own life who is ready to grab you by the shoulder. Turn your head. Look over your shoulder. See him or her or the big or whatever. You pick it from your life experience. Maybe the bully in the schoolyard? See whoever it is, and I mean really see him. Turn to the audience with fear in your eyes, but determination at the same time. Now let's take it from the top."

Chris looked at him. He had been afraid, many times, for a moment. Then caught himself, hardening to the reality of the moment: the beating, the slash of the knife, the dark of solitary, the cop looking at him with the fish eye of instinctive suspicion. Zelotovich as the docent in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He imagined he was almost in the grip of a man who could plunge him, helpless, back into the abyss of Attica. He took a breath.

"Louder this time, Chris. Project the words from your belly. Be the narrator."

Chris wet his lips, looked down, and said in a harsh voice, his eyes blank: "Like one, that on a lonesome road." He paused. "Doth walk in fear and dread." He dipped into his real horror of being hauled back to Attica. "And having once turned round." He twisted round, not just his head, but his upper body. He turned back, put his head down. "Walks on." His voice dropped an octave. "And turns no more his head; because he knows, a frightful fiend doth close behind him tread."

Hazy clapped. "Very good for a first-time performer."

"Chris is a man of experience. He played a giant beaver or something in high school," Cheri said from the couch where she sat, thigh touching thigh, next to Diane Arbor.

"Muzzawawa. A big bear with a little tail."

Hazy raised his glass to him. "If I were grading you Chris, I would say, takes direction well."

"Maybe mother has a better eye for talent than I imagined," Cheri said raising her glass, joining Hazy's toast.

CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

Chris climbed the semi-circular flight of stairs at the rear of the Penelope Baltic Theater. He looked across a narrow balcony onto the stage, where a crew of students and professional carpenters was setting up scenery amidst the sounds of hammers, wood scraping the floor, and laughter. He could see the bare-skinned top of Hazy Cledensky's head in the fourth row with Venus on his left and another bald-headed grey-fringed man on his right. They were hunched over a large sketchboard lit by a snap-on lamp. At the head of the stairs was a solid oak door with a large gold plate on which Office of the Artistic Director was printed in large red type under a studio portrait of Cheri Chisholm, smiling in a black sweater and multi-colored scarf. A black cardboard arrow pointed to a brass ship's bell set against a placard reading "To Dr. Cheri Chisholm. From the grateful crew of the HMS Pinafore. Pure Maple and Cheddar Cheese Players. Class '86." Chris pulled the braided rope hanging from the bell back and forth filling the space with a loud clang.

Cheri opened the door. "Come on in Chris. Welcome to my tower." She walked to a polished walnut desk across the circular room fitted with four large windows, the wall space between was hung with colorful posters from plays performed by the Pure Maple and Cheddar Cheese Players. His eye caught the names of some significant actors, including Diane Arbor, among the players listed on the posters.

"How were your classes this morning?" She picked up a sheet of paper from her desk as she sat down. "You had two, I see, In Character and America: Revolution or Evolution without End? How were they?"

"I was surprised at how small the classes were. I thought I'd be sitting in the back of a room with 60 students so I could hide out. Like at St. Malachy's."

"Is that where you went to high school?"

He smiled. "Grammar school. High school was small, 20 to 25 at most."

"Where was that?"

"A Jesuit school out in San Francisco."

"I don't see why you can't produce your high school records." She stared at him. The silence lingered between them. Chris caught his own face hardening, and smiled, a phony smile, he knew, but it would erase the challenge from the conversation, making it easier to lead her away from the details of his life. "Sit down," she said at last, nodding to a leather chair facing her's across the desk. "What happened in class this morning?"

"You mean how did my classmates react to an old man? There were six of us in In Character. Professor Buckley began by having everyone describe who they were. I made the mistake of saying I was in a monastery for 28 years, and this snippy girl who gave me a hard time yesterday, kept calling me Monk."

"Yes. That reminds me. Names. I would ask her to show a little respect to a classmate by not using a name he doesn't like. May I ask you what you called Dr. Cardinale when you saw her this morning?"

"No pejorative nickname certainly. I called her Lizzy like you do. Like we did last night."

"Could I ask you to do me the favor of calling her Dr. Cardinale at the house, unless she invites you to call her Lizzy, and certainly in the classroom and on the campus and in the community, please call her Dr. Cardinale. You'll notice, we are small on classes but big on decorum at Douglas College. I can't impress on you enough that you must consider yourself just a student. Your age is going to give you some trouble. Your classmates are going to range from 17 to 21 for the most part, maybe a 25-year-old here or there. You are going to be older than most of your instructors and professors, but you are not to assume you can be familiar with the faculty."

"Sure." Last night instead of playing the role Cheri tried to foist on him, the odd man out in an alien company of theater people, a writer, and a poet, he had enjoyed himself. No awkwardness. No distance. Just a good time.

"I can't tell you what an impression you made on Hazy. He found it hard to believe that you didn't have any formal training or exposure to the theater."

"I've been to a number of shows. I saw the Unknown Soldier and His Wife when I was in San Francisco."

She took a deep breath, controlling herself, uncertain whether he was teasing her. She asked, "Why do you want to be an actor?"

"Because your mother suggested it."

"You must be joking. That is really your reason?"

"I always wanted to go to college. Twenty-eight years of my life were wasted sitting in a cell. In a monastery. Where I didn't want to be. I didn't get the education I intended to. I didn't get a wife and a family. And when I got out of the monastery, things didn't fall in place. I couldn't go to school. Money and other reasons. I banged around at nothing jobs and ended up behind a bar. That's where I met your mother."

"And she saw something special in you."

"I guess she did. She liked the way I make Manhattans and my way with poetry." To himself, he said, And she has the delusion that I might be good for you.

"And why do you go to so much effort to memorize and recite poetry for people like my mother, for people as in the audience in my livingroom last night?"

"I never wondered why? Maybe a chance to show off? Maybe to prove that I'm not just a slug?"

"Maybe it's because you like to perform? That's a quality of an actor. Maybe you do have something to offer the world? Even at this late stage in your life. Obviously poetry has been your vehicle. It has taught you the actor's tool of memory. You illustrated last night that you are capable of learning how to be another person. I can look at you and see you are not a man given to fear, even on a lonely road, but you projected an intensity and fear last night that would have made a critic's heart sing. And more importantly, it impressed Mr. Cledensky." She stood. "Now, let's really go to work in this school year and see if we can live up to my mother's expectations. High expectations."

He remained seated, purposely ignoring her unspoken declaration that the meeting was over. He turned to look out a window, seeing across the tops of the trees an expanse of Lake Champlain. He spoke to the lake in the distance. "I would like to give acting a try. I can always go back to bartending."

"That's a good skill to keep in your back pocket if you do aspire to a professional career in theater. You might have to support yourself tending bar while looking for roles. But I must tell you, to be an actor is a state of mind. If you don't have that, you might find a role in a production here or there, but you won't really be an actor."

His life was a lie, taking on the name of another man, lying to defuse queries into his early life. Untruths sent him to prison. Attachment to the truth kept him there, and a lie, when he expressed remorse over the killing of Lance DeMille, helped set him free. Parole boards took a refusal to admit guilt as a form of arrogance. So he lied to get out of prison. Now he was embarking on a career where he would assume the names and lives of other men. He wasn't the natural performer Hazy assumed. He had had decades behind him of performing for others. Was he extending his lifetime of lying into a career as a liar? He put the question on his mind to Cheri: "Tell me do you consider being an actor living a lie?"

"That's an ugly way to put it."

He pressed her, wanting a direct answer, his words came out in an argumentative tone: "You are being someone else. Someone you are not. Isn't that living a lie?"

His question annoyed Cheri, a pique reflected in her response, "You become the character on stage, and when you wipe off the make up, you are back to your mundane life."

"Perhaps it isn't mundane."

"Your life whatever it is. Bartender, student, reciter of poetry, delivery boy, father, mother, whatever. The essence at the core of the chameleon."

"So I've come here to learn to be a chameleon?"

"You've come here to be educated and to be trained to become an actor if you have the willingness and soul for the calling."

CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

"Welcome to Lizzy's oval," Lizzy said. She smiled at the eleven young men and women and Chris seated around the table in the center of the classroom whose walls were covered with slabs of cork. "That is what my students at other colleges call this arrangement. You could say space is at a premium, but I prefer to describe our circumstances as intimate, like a large family in a small house, pressed together by circumstance."

She patted a huge dictionary set on wooden table on rollers to her left. "I have a number of idiosyncrasies. The Random House Unabridged Dictionary is one. Its definition of a word will be the one we use in this class. On occasion, I will ask the meaning of a word. I beg you don't be embarrassed not to know, but if you don't or you are misinterpreting the word, I will ask you to visit the dictionary. I use my Random House all the time. Most writers and poets do along with Roget's Thesaurus and any number of reference books put together especially for poets." She patted the table. "And this oval table is another. For those who haven't read my bio, I will explain. I became a vagabond poet in 1981 bouncing from campus to campus. I was at UCLA for a year then at the University of the South for another year and so on. There was something missing from my life. I couldn't quite place it at first, then a therapist suggested I needed a rock on which I could rest my migratory life. Something to cling to, something to center me. I believe she was suggesting a soul mate. But I looked for a solution in a different direction. I realized I hated the regimented classroom with chairs lined up eight across, eight deep or whatever. With a picture of George Washington at the back of the classroom. The American flag hanging over teacher's desk. You get the idea. I hit upon my oval table first. I got that from a professor who sidelined as a carpenter at Indiana University. That was eight years ago. And within the year, I added cork boards on the walls, so I and my students could hang our poems and pictures of adored poets around the room as we progressed through our semester together. I've always had an unabridged dictionary at hand. From my college days to now. But I had this rolling podium built so I could slide in and of the space available in the classes. So when you write home to your parents or talk to them on the phone, you can tell them that your poetry workshop professor, Judith Elizabeth Spruance Cardinale, known to her friends as Lizzy and I hope everyone in this class will be a friend, is indeed eccentric, weird, whimsical, and as Time magazine said, fey. I love that word; there are so many levels of meaning to fey. I'm assuming the Time correspondent was using it in the sense of being unreal or enchanted or other worldly." She laughed and so did everyone else.

Chris enjoyed the laughter that shook him. What she said wasn't particularly funny, but she passed on a feeling of shared amusement that was contagious. In his encounters with her, first on Friday afternoon, then at dinner at Cheri's house, he found Lizzy almost oppressive in her tactics of domination, the leaning so close to him that she invaded his personal space; a voice so soft that he had to concentrate on her words to hear them. This afternoon in center stage as the unquestioned authority in the classroom, she glowed with presence and power.

"Now to some mechanical details. We'll meet every Monday and Thursday throughout this semester from 3 until 4:30. No breaks for cigarets or nature so fill your lungs with corruption before you come into the class and empty your bodily wastes too. At 3 o'clock my door is closed so don't even dream of entering the classroom, or you'll be asked to leave creating ill feelings between me and you." She held up two books. "John Hollander is one of my poet heroes. He's a formalist, as I assume most of you know. I guess I could be called a neo-formalist. Go immediately to the bookstore this evening or tomorrow morning and buy Hollander's Rhyme's Reason. She held up the book. "And The Complete Poems 1927 to 1979 of Elizabeth Bishop. I have a passion for Elizabeth Bishop. I call her a poet who sees. Read The Fish; you'll find it in The Complete Poems. We'll discuss and critique The Fish on Thursday. We'll follow that with our first writing assignment, a villanelle in answer to The Fish."

"A villanelle?" Chris asked as the question, which popped out of the mouths of several others a moment behind him.

"Chris, you could probably recite Dylan Thomas' Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night. My point is that that is an example of a villanelle. Could somebody in the class give us the rhythm of a villanelle?"

The shrew who had given Chris a difficult time on Friday chimed up from her place near the base of the oval: tah-dah-tah, tah-dah-tah, tah-dah-tah, tah-dah-tah, tah-dah-tah; tah-dah-tah-tah!"

Lizzy laughed. "Very good Stacy. Another way of putting it Chris is that a villanelle consists of a combination of five tercets and a quatrain. The first and third lines of the tercets end with matching rhymes as does the first, third and fourth lines of the quatrain. And, the first line of the poem is repeated as the final lines of the second and fourth stanzas and the third line of the sixth stanza. And wait, there is another nice touch: the third line of the first stanza is repeated as the third line of the third, fifth and sixth stanzas of the poem. And even more, the second line rhymes throughout the villanelle. Technically, it sounds exhausting like a tongue twisting exercise. It isn't. If you can find a copy of Dylan Thomas' Do Not Go Gentle, wait. I have a better idea. In the Bishop collection, you'll find One Art, a wonderful villanelle and fun to read. Thomas' is a little more somber. But seeing a villanelle on the page will show you how easy it is to make a pattern of the rhymes and rhythms."

"Can you suggest a collection of Dylan Thomas that has the villanelle?"

"I can, but I don't want to load you up with collections. I'll bring copies of the poem to Thursday's workshop. Notice I said workshop not class. We are going to write poetry and analyze our poetry, the poetry each of us writes and our fellow students write. Some of us will be embarrassed, but we're all going to learn. Each of you has written one or more poems."

"I haven't," Chris said.

"I accept your role as a, not a troubadour, certainly a reciter of poems as a substitute for writing poetry." All eyes were on Chris. Stacy smirking. "Language is failing me. Does anyone in the class have a term that covers someone with a wonderful storehouse of poetry that he can recall for any occasion?"

"A parrot," Stacy said, drawing laughter from everyone but Chris.

Lizzy smothered her laugh. "Mull it over. Come up with an image and a word to describe it. That's what we poets do. You may not realize it, Stacy, ladies and gentlemen, but Chris' skills as a poetry performer won him a fellowship covering four years of study at Douglas College. Congratulations, Chris."

CHAPTER THIRTY NINE

The iron cold of a gloomy Vermont winter day, nearing a sunset that they couldn't see behind the black, threatening clouds, accompanied them along the path linking the campus to the cottage. They fell in with one another after the class walking silently between high banks of snow, tracking the outlines of their boots in the inch of fine snow on the ground. Lizzy was talked out, and Chris' mind was overladen with the introduction to developing a character as an actor, the roots of the continuing American Revolution in Tom Paine, and the cryptographic structure of the villanelle.

Lizzy turned up the thermostat the moment they entered the cottage. "You going back to campus or are you eating here?" she asked.

"I've got two cans of Dinty Moore's Beef Stew that I can heat up in a couple of minutes if you're interested," he said.

"Do me a favor. You go down the basement. In that gated area, there's a wine rack. Get a bottle of red. A Rioja, the Spanish wine. That goes very nicely with stew. There's a corkscrew in the top silverware drawer; get a couple of glasses, and meet me in the livingroom. I'll put together a fire."

Chris brought a plate of cheddar cheese and crisp wheat crackers along with the wine and glasses. Lizzy had the fire underway and the long couch pushed closer to the fireplace, her boots off and her feet in socks extended towards the flames. He set his burden on an end table, and pulled the cork with a pop. He poured a little into one of the goblets. He handed it to Lizzy, who swirled and sniffed the wine, took a taste, rolling the wine over her tongue. "Mmmmh. Cherry and oak and apple trees. Wonderful." She raised her glass to Chris so he could pour a full serving.

"You really taste all of that in there?"

"No, but it sounds good. I either like a wine or I don't, and I like most, especially this Muga."

Chris put the cheese and crackers on the couch between them, shed his boots, and copied her pose of toes extended towards the fire. They sipped wine and watched the growing flames.

"This is a nice wine," Chris said, rising to refill their glasses.

"Tell me what's the longest poem you've memorized?" she asked, speaking in her soft voice.

"The Aeneid. In Latin."

"That's impossible. Hundreds of pages. Thousands of lines."

"Not when you have the time and the determination." He had years of mind-numbing emptiness to fill in the pen. He used the Aeneid as a sleeping potion on the many nights when he didn't fall into sleep, and he repeated entire books aloud in his times in solitary passing the long hours in refining his recall of the poem. He impressed even the All-Matty with this gargantuan feat of memory, his ability to recall any of the 12 books of the Aeneid after the Jesuit would read aloud the first one or two lines.

"I'll have to test you some time."

"When I was up on it, I was tested by a master. But I wouldn't score high on a test today. I've lost most of it. I still can do the first, sixth and twelfth books. And I get a flash in of stanza here and there from the other books. I even memorized Dryden's translation of the first, sixth, and final books in English."

"Why did you put so much effort into rote? Did the order require it?"

"A tool to survive the worst of the monastery."

"Why did you leave that life? Did you get too intensely horny? No longer a believer?"

"I had a chance to break free and I grabbed it. Simple as that. I never wanted to be in that place. I never should have been there."

"Do you miss it? The chanting. That can be beautiful. The stress-free existence, knowing you'll be fed and clothed. No fears of unemployment or jealousy or competition."

"I don't know where you get those ideas. The monastery they stored me in was hot in the summer, cold in the winter; the clothing was dreadful, the food inedible, and the noise almost unbearable."

"I had a vision of a monastery as a quiet place where prayer and meditation and the love of God was the center of a monk's life."

"Let's not talk about it any more. I don't know anything about writing poetry, and you don't know anything about the monastery I was in." He pulled back from her. His words were angry.

They sat for a while before she raised her glass, signaling more. As he poured, she leaned towards him again, speaking in her soft voice: "You're in for a very hard time in my workshop Chris. That room is swelling with creative egos. They may be little more than children, but they consider themselves little gods making something out of nothing, alchemists shaping gold from clay, turning ordinary words into immortal poems that will ring in their minds for the rest of their lives."

"I didn't ask to be in your class Dr. Cardinale. It's a required course for me."

She reached across the narrow divide of the couch, touching Chris's arm. "You're a master of memorized poems. My course will teach you to go beyond rote into meaning, into the imagination of the poet. Can I give you some advice? Take Bishop's One Art, take each of her words and substitute a word of your own. Try. Copy its form, its meter, its underlying theme into a poem of your own. You might discover in the process that you should be a poet rather than an actor, or perhaps a poet as well as an actor."

CHAPTER FORTY

The stairs from the porch to the walkway had disappeared under a round dome of wind-swept snow. Chris stepped warily into the whiteness that reached up cold above his thick wool socks to chill his legs. "God dammit," he said aloud. He pulled the door closed behind him and stepped forward. His boots slid down the stairs and he stumbled trying to gain balance and fell onto his knees. He stood, gathered his books and waded forwarded into the shallower foot-deep snow on the path that led in an arc past Cheri's house. Near the house, the depth of the snow, cleared sometime earlier in the morning, dropped to an inch or two.

A pair of men in matching green jackets with Douglas College seals on their chests and long shovels working at the mouth of the path leading towards the campus paused as Chris approached. They watched him come closer.

"Morning," Chris and the men said almost simultaneously.

"You the fella staying in the cottage with the poet?" the shorter and rounder of the two asked.

"That's me."

"You should have waited a few minutes, Father. We clear the snow from the cottage, but we gotta do Dr. Chisholm first."

"Can't do it all at once," the rounder one said.

"What's this Father stuff? I'm not a priest. Never was."

"Heard you was a monk."

"Word gets around, doesn't it. Well, I'm not any more." He stepped past them onto the brick walk, covered with a layer of thickening snow. He felt warmer as he turned away from the searing wind. He walked in a pleasurable quiet, reciting Elizabeth Bishop's The Fish to himself. Suddenly, with an involuntary yelp of surprise, his right knee went from under him, tumbling him across Artie, Cheri's yellow lab into a soft snow bank thrown up by the blower that the two workers had used to clear the path earlier in the morning. The dog skidded and turned, barking, dancing around the man he had dumped into the snow.

Cheri came running. "Oh God. Are you okay Chrith? I'm tho sorry. Artie, I feel like beating you." Her words came as a lisping squeal.

The moment of confusion past, Chris laughed. He grabbed the dog's head and playfully roughed him. Artie, the muscles rippling on his chest, shook free of Chris' grip, turned and raced along the path in the direction of the campus.

Cheri hovered around him, holding him by the elbow as he got up. "He'th really such a good dog. I let him get a little too far ahead of me this morning, and this is what happens."

"Forget it. He was just having a good time. No harm done."

"Really, he's a well disciplined dog. If I had reacted in time, he wouldn't have piled into you."

She fell in beside him. The snow was pushed back just far enough to allow two people to move comfortably along the walk. "Off to a late start," she said pushing her lips into a flat line approaching but not fully achieving a smile.

"Thursday's my late day. My classes start at 9 the rest of the week."

"What class do you have this morning?"

"I have Theatre History, from Ancient Athens to Modern Broadway."

"That's a wonderful course. Dr. Kaplan is a marvelous lecturer. We are so lucky to have her. She can be so funny. She does stand up comedy at clubs in Burlington, Boston, Albany."

"Does she teach comedy?"

"Not yet. I know she would like to, but we have to avoid the temptation to go off in every direction or suddenly we'll find the Theatre Arts is a mile wide and an eighth of an inch deep."

"When am I going to get you as a teacher?"

"You stick it out until senior year and you'll get me in The Play. That's a course in which your acting skills are fine tuned and we stage a full-fledged production, usually a drama. Everyone gets a major part. We limit the class to 12 students, so if there are three major parts in the play, we stage it for eight days. That way each student gets two days in the limelight."

"Even a special case like me?"

"The only thing special about you Chris is that you're non-matriculating and a lot older than the typical student. You'll end up with the same quality education as everyone else at Douglas."

Artie came trotting towards them, his muzzle dripping snow. "Sit!" Lizzy commanded. The Lab sat down. She pointed in the direction of her house; she said: "Home! Now!" The dog looked at her with a touch of resentment in his eyes, then rose and moved along the path as ordered.

Stacy, the third student to take the hot seat at the foot of the oval table, described her vision of the fish as a veteran poet pursuing the life of the imagination despite the pitfalls and scarring setbacks.

"What about victory filling up the boat, the rented boat at that?" Lizzy asked from her perch at the head of the end of the table.

"Victory, the prizes won. Rented boat, this life, this transitory life. Bishop is tired of the whole thing, the writing and meaningless prizes, then she throws the fish back in. She decides to keep going. There is something worthwhile about poetry and life. Could I add something?"

"We're waiting breathlessly."

"I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings by saying this, but Vinnie raised the question of whether Bishop was looking at her lesbian relationship with Lota de Macedo Soares and her sad end as suicide in The Fish with the dying fish a metaphor for Soares and the rainbow, rainbow, rainbow a bridge to her happy new life with another woman. I just wanted to say that The Fish was written in 1939 or 1940 about ten years before Bishop met Soares." Vinnie flushed as almost the entire table burst into a jeering laughter. Chris running his own interpretation of the poem through his mind, hoping that Lizzy wouldn't call him into the hot seat missed the point of her jibe.

Lizzy stared at Stacy, who continued to smile at her riposte even after the laughter died. "Stacy you are correct historically, but you must realize that there are so many layers of meaning in a work of art that any serious interpretation is worthy of our attention and consideration. Now, where are you with your villanelle?"

"I have it right here. Copies for everyone," Stacy said. She took a packet of folded sheets of paper from just inside the front of The Complete Poems 1927-1979. "Pass these around, would you please," she said to Chris who was sitting next to her.

"Time is consuming the class. We can all read Stacy's answer to The Fish at our leisure. Chris shift into the hot seat and give us your thoughts on The Fish."

Chris pushed his chair back, stepping out of the way to allow Stacy to move into his place, and he took hers. "I decided the poem was an ego trip full of I's. The opening line is 'I caught a tremendous fish.' And the closing line is 'And I let the fish go.' Maybe I'm wrong, but I decided to look past the writer to the fish. That fish is an old warrior who has been through the wringer so many times he was finally wrung out. The fisherlady lands him when he had decided what's the use of going on."

"That's not in the poem," Al, another student said.

"It sure is. Remember the lines, He didn't fight. He hadn't fought at all. What's the big victory in grabbing a tired old man, I mean fish, who says fu... I mean I'm no big game victory; I'm not fighting any more. Al, I got that out of the poem, and the fisherlady decided to throw him back, give him a break. Maybe giving the fish a chance scored some good karma for her. I mean the rainbow appears in that oily boat to celebrate her decision."

Lizzy applauded. "Very interesting, Chris, and are you anywhere on your villanelle."

He responded: "The first three lines so far: All that I was and would be. Were left beyond the wall. As lost dream and memory."

CHAPTER FORTY ONE

The green and white Ford Crown Victoria with City of Bishop Police on the doors and chief of police printed in large scrolled letters over a badge on the hood was parked next to Lizzy's BMW in one of the freshly-cleared parking spaces beside the old Douglas Farmhouse. Chris tensed when he saw the chief's car. His imagination spun a foreboding scene through his mind. The chief had come to arrest him on an absconder's warrant greeting him with the question: Are you familiar with the name Gerald Christopher Reilly, Mr. Dunne?

"Something the matter, Chris?" Lizzy asked. She was walking with him, her arm slipped into the crook of his left arm, to the Farmhouse for dinner. Each carried a bottle of wine. He had decided within moments of receiving the invitation from Cheri that he would recite his villanelle as his required performance in payment for the dinner. Lizzy had praised his poem as a surprisingly accomplished first effort after questioning whether he really never had written or tried writing poetry before.

"Just wondering why the chief of police is here?"

"He's a friend of Cheri and Di, and an aspiring actor. Cheri lets him monitor theater courses. Always smart to have the cops on your side. Never know when you need one. He's a very nice guy. I met him at one of her Sunday afternoon salons."

Scrambled eggs, sausage, orange juice, champagne, hot rolls, coffee, and lots of theater talk were on Cheri's menu every Sunday with at least a dozen guests. Students, faculty, and one or two local residents, often the mayor or city council members, perhaps the city librarian, or the publisher of the weekly Douglas Clarion. Chris had yet to be invited although Lizzy had a standing invitation, which she exercised, to the Friday night dinners and Sunday brunch salons.

Di opened the door, booming, "Welcome, welcome." She was wearing a strange outfit of heavy chinos, a plaid shirt, a fishing vest with bulging pockets, a pocket knife and three lures dangling from clips, and a jungle hat with a fishing license pinned to the upturned brim. She took the bottles from them, kissing each on a cheek. She led the way into the livingroom, holding the wine aloft, shouting, "No fear of running out of booze." Hazy and Venus Cledensky were standing by the fireplace, drinks in hand, talking to a narrow-bodied Irishman in police uniform blue pants and shirt with a silver badge that had chief imprinted within a circle of letters saying City of Bishop Police Department. Di shifted the bottles to a girl in a maid's uniform. "Take these honey," she said to her, and took Chris by the arm to guide him to the trio by the fireplace. Lizzy took a seat next to Cheri and Stacy, who waved hello to Chris.

Di put her arm around Chris' shoulder. She said, "Chief Jack Devaney, I want you to meet Chris Dunne, one of Cheri's aspiring actors."

Devaney extended his hand, his eyes studying Chris. "The Monk?" he said, disbelief sounding in his voice. Chris hoped his face didn't betray the fear he felt that Devaney instinctively sensed that he was an ex-con. Chris looked right back into the eyes of this untrusting, taciturn cop and shook his hand.

Venus stepped forward to kiss Chris on the cheek breaking his tense connection to the chief.

Hazy said, "We've got a special treat tonight, Chris. Chief Devaney and Di have agreed to read the parts of two of my three characters in a new piece I've written called The Big Catch. I want you to read for the third character. Since the night I met you, I've had you on my mind, thinking if this isn't serendipity then it doesn't exist. It's a wonderful part."

"I don't have any experience outside a few weeks in my classes."

The three of them laughed knowingly. Hazy said, "Have a drink. Have a couple of drinks. Instead of everyone performing for their supper tonight, Cheri has agreed to a reading of the first scene of The Big Catch. It'll be a lot of fun. I'll just be listening tonight, but I really am looking forward to directing you in this play. Keep in mind that you'll be working with an important comic actress. A great opportunity."

They carried their unfinished glasses of wine, pinot noir or Chablis, from the supper table into the livingroom. Chris and the chief under Hazy's direction rearranged the big couch and two easy chairs into a single row flanking the fireplace to seat the small audience of Lizzy, Stacy, Venus and Cheri. Hazy distributed copies of the play to each member of the audience and the three actors, Di, the chief, and Chris. He placed a padded chair about eight feet from the four spectators. He asked the three players to stand behind the couch, and to take their places at his direction.

Cheri told the maid, "Nancy, wait until the reading of the play is finished, then you can serve the coffee and dessert. We'll have it here in the livingroom."

After Nancy left, Hazy walked to the switches by the door turning out the lights and went through the room turning off the lamps. "Di. Please take your place."

Di used a small flashlight to find her way with Chris around the couch and to seat herself in the chair sideways to the audience. He lay down on the floor behind the chair.

"Act one, the only act. The stage is dark. Imagine the sound of water lapping against a small boat. A breeze is blowing cold across stage. A startled loon yodels in the distance: awlit! quail, quail, awliiit!"

The small audience interrupted Hazy's introduction with applause. "Bravo," Lizzy yelled.

"The sun is coming up." He turned on a lamp covered with a small towel. "Stephanie is seated in a high-sided boat, half cut away, so the audience can see right into the bowels of the boat. There is a red gasoline can, various pieces of fishing equipment, a basket of food, a large silver thermos, a pair of oars lying in the bottom, and a motor on the end of the boat. As the sun comes up, Stephanie takes one last sip of coffee from a silver cup, the top of the thermos."

"Thhhhhp," Di sounded, slurping from an imaginary cup. She raised and cast the line from an imaginary rod.

"Daylight." Hazy switched on the chandelier, slowly increasing the light from dim to full brightness.

Di read a comic monologue from the script about the significance of fishing to the feminist movement, the need for women to grasp nature by the balls to show men how capable a modern, stand-alone woman is. Her tone changed and she was bemoaning her lonely unfulfilled womanhood when suddenly, she stands holding the imaginary rod high above her, then planting a foot on the side of the boat and jerking.

Hazy stepped beside her. "Imagine the head of a screaming, howling man breaking the surface on the other side of the boat. Stephanie drops the rod, reaches over the side, and hauls in her catch, a naked man named Bill. He is in agony. The hook has caught him in the most delicate of places."

"Ooooooh," the women in the audience moaned, laughing.

Chris paused reading the script.

"Just do what I say, Chris. The naked fellow writhes in the bottom of the boat, bent over holding himself.

Di looked down. "Oh," she said suggestively. Then more sympathetically, "you poor dear." She went through the motions of freeing him from the barbed hook, cutting it from the line.

Hazy steps forward: "Some context. Stephanie is a woman desperate for the comforts only a man can bring a woman. She has found success in her life, but not solace. She has a thriving business, a PhD, a big house, lots of money and is mayor of a mythical Vermont town, Raleigh. She's got it all, but would like some of IT."

The audience laughed happily.

The chief's character shows up at this point in another imaginary boat proclaiming, "I got you" as he grabs Chris by the hair.

Di shouts, "He's mine."

The chief responds, "He's a fugitive flasher and I've caught him."

Chris read his few lines from the script with an awkward self-consciousness in the presence of so-skilled an actor as Di.The chief was impressive too, playing the straight man to Di as his character and hers came into an amusing conflict over who had a right to keep the catch, the woman who snared him or the lawman who sought him. After a series of rapid-fire exchanges in which the comic conflict between them moves from who owns the naked man fished from water to the realization that they have something in common: both are lonely predators, meant for one another. They settle their dispute by throwing Chris back in the water and returning together to Vermont.

Over coffee and cake, Hazy explained to Chris that taking this role would be an immediate test of his commitment to the theater since it required almost 30 minutes of nudity before a live audience of mostly, and perhaps, giddy young people as part of Bishop College's annual One Act Weekend as a prelude to the countdown to the end of the school year. "We have almost nine weeks to prepare. Di and Jack had the advantage over you of having been given the script and their parts several weeks ago. I wanted to see how well you would react to the unfamiliar, and you weren't bad at all. In fact, I'm giving you the part."

"I thought I was terrible."

"A good sign. That means you'll be open to working hard to pull yourself into this role. Put yourself in this mindset: You were skinny dipping alone at a beach early in the morning. A troop of girl scouts has gotten up very early to see Venus, the morning star, and who do they see coming out of the water: you. Naked. They all scream. You plunge back in. The policeman who has rushed to the beach in response to the girls' screams sets out in pursuit of you. So that is the role you have to get into: an essentially innocent man being pursued by a furious cop and caught painfully by a hungry woman. An innocent fugitive."

"I think I could play that role with some feeling," Chris said sarcastically.

"In the nude, now."

"That I'll have to think about. Why couldn't I wear underpants."

Cheri said, "Chris, this is a grand opportunity. Grab it. Nudity before a live audience is difficult, but so is life, so is acting, and so is getting a chance to act with an accomplished performer like Di."

"Oh do it, Chris. I'm dying to see how a monk looks in the raw," Stacy said.

CHAPTER FORTY TWO

The dinner guests came out onto the porch to a fresh coating of two more inches of snow. There was shaking of hands and kissing of cheeks in the ritual of parting for home. Jack Devaney was driving Stacy to her dorm, then Hazy and Venus to the inn. Chris and Lizzy walked arm in arm the short distance to the cottage. She was in a giddy mood in the afterglow of an evening of wine and laughter. She stopped and pressed close to Chris, "I love what Hazy is doing to you. Putting you to the test. Making you show the world at this early age, not in years but experience, whether you've got the balls to be an actor."

Chris flinched. The educated woman being purposely crude to put herself on a par with men. He had made a super effort to get the fucks and shit implanted in prison out of his vocabulary. "I said I had to think about it."

"Little Stacy would have stripped in the livingroom for a part in a Hazy Cledensky play. And I'd bet she'd do a lot more than that."

"I'll have to write a play."

She swung around punching him lightly in the stomach, although he doubled over in surprise. "You men are all alike." She went into a body shaking laughter. "Hazy has made me conscious of the subtle differences in our art forms. In poetry one bears her soul; in the theater one bares his ass." She went into a merry convulsion that bent her over.

"Then maybe it's better to be an actor than a poet." Her long poem The Confession jumped out of his mouth. "He gave me his fallacity; I gave him my prim. Never to know the deep of my lust or mouth."

She suddenly became sullen. "Touché," she said recalling her ex-husband who was the inspiration for The Confession.

Chris regretted regurgitating those lines, prompting the shift in her mood. They walked up the steps into the cottage. "I'm sorry I stirred up an unhappy memory," Chris said.

She smiled at him, slipping from her coat. "A poet is always appreciative of being remembered." She kissed him lightly on the lips. That surprised him. "I think you're something special," she said. "Make a fire, and we'll have some brandy, if that's okay with you." As he set about making the fire, Lizzy shuffled through her compact discs. "I think you'll like this one. The dulcimer is the central instrument. Sensual New Age. You'll like it." She switched off the lights. "I'll be right back." She trotted upstairs to her room.

The fire was underway with Chris, his back propped against the big Ottoman, stretching his feet towards the flickering flames, when she returned. Dressed in a long robe, she danced across the darkened room, twirling and dipping her body to the haunting rhythm of the New Age music which sounded like shallow waves rolling onto a beach. She fetched the bottle of Courvoisier and two leaded crystal brandy glasses from the cabinet near the front window. She flowed, still dipping and twirling to Chris. She poured the drinks; they touched glasses and sipped the brandy.

"This is Xanadu. "I am Kubla Khan. This is my pleasure dome," she said, grinning while unfurling her robe to let it slip to the floor. "As nature made me." She stood naked with heavy breasts, a thick black bush and a bulging belly. She turned displaying a soft fattening bottom and swayed to the beat of the music through the length of the song then lightly tugged him to his feet. She helped him slip from his sweater; unbuckling his belt and loosening his trousers as he unbuttoned his shirt. He stood close to her, sliding his hands across her back, hips and buttocks, eased by the scented oil on her body. They moved together in a dance in place until she pushed away to run her fingertips over his body, a teasing sensation that was intoxicatingly exciting. She kissed his lips and brushed his testicles with the fingers of her left hand. Kneeling, she took him into her mouth, until he pushed her away whispering that otherwise he would come. She touched his shoulders guiding him back to the floor. She straddled him. She poised herself just above him and slowly said: "In Xanadu did Kubla Kahn, a stately pleasure dome decree, where Alph, the sacred river, ran through caverns measureless to man, down to a sunless sea." And slid him into her.

CHAPTER FORTY THREE

Chris and Lizzy lay naked in the after glow of sex and the warmth of the fire wrapped in a blanket. "I really needed that," she said.

"Are you in the mood to hear me recite my villanelle?"

"That would be nice."

He looked into the fire and delivered the five tercets and the concluding quatrain that told the story of the loss of 28 years behind walls that locked out the sun, the stars, fresh air, love, pleasure, and freedom.

She kissed him on his left shoulder and ran her tongue across the falcon tattoo. "Technically, you have a villanelle, and I'm proud to say that you almost have a real poem. Keep at it. I've spent years on a piece. Not eight hours a day, of course, but getting flashes of inspiration to change a word here, a vision there. Those flashes came because I worked for them. I picked up the poem and wondered how could this be better, what does it need to be a work of art?"

He lay back considering what she said about writing poetry and what she didn't say about the tattoos and scars on his body. She was too sharp a woman not to wonder what those man-made markings meant, but too couth to ask under the circumstances: a first and perhaps only coupling.

"Tell me what do you think about Di?" she asked.

"When I saw her in The Alley Cat, I fell in love with her."

"All the 12-year-old boys fell in love with her. So you were just experiencing what every boy on the edge of horniness felt."

She was off by 11 years. He wasn't 12, he was 23, and in Auburn State Penitentiary. He floated back to his cell that night in the ecstasy of escaping into a movie and finding a luscious, ripe girl with a soft voice and wide eyes, with long black hair and the most beautiful female he had ever seen. He lay on his bunk with his eyes closed and could see her smiling, full of excitement and love. "I was a lot older than 12. I saw her while I was in the monastery," he said.

"Ooooooh," she said, "I'll bet she really turned you on. Young girls and boys are a priestly weakness, aren't they?"

"I was a monk not a priest. Now, you turn me on." He licked the nipple of her right breast. Inside, where the pinups were perfect slender women with flat bellies and high succulent breasts or huge boobs, Lizzy would have been called a dog if her naked photo were displayed with her soft belly and backside moving to flaccidness.

"I guess in your wildest dreams you never imagined you'd be naked in front of her. Think just being near her will give you a hard-on on stage?"

"That could be embarrassing."

"No need to worry unless bull dykes stir your ashes."

He stopped fondling her. "Really?"

"She's the reason Cheri and her husband split those many years ago. It's a story so old no one bothers telling it any more. Di dumped her husband, Rob Mangan. Remember him? The fitness guru. The tabloids had a great time. They ran Cheri's picture in a bathing suit they got from somewhere, probably her husband, you know with middle-aged fat bulging all over the place. And right next to it, Rob Mangan in a thong, bronzed, solid as a Greek statue. And a head shot of Di inside a heart between fat Cheri and beautiful Rob Mangan. And a headline with a big question mark: Guess who got the Hollywood princess?"

The pressure was off. No way could Mrs. Baltic's dream come true, even if Cheri didn't have such a great distaste for him. "And what's your story?" he asked Lizzy.

"We all have stories, don't we. Mine is simple. Joseph Cardinale, the man I married till death due us part fell out of love with me. I was too much of a prude. I didn't think nice girls sucked cocks. He would force my head down, and I would push it up. He wanted sex on demand and I wanted an idyllic setting. Poetry, champagne, soft music. He got so somber and so angry over little things that I thought he was depressed. Then I realized how smiling and bright and talkative he could be whenever we went to dinner with friends or to faculty cocktail parties. He was an English professor. Just when I thought things were getting better and he was pulling out of his perpetual funk, he announced that he wanted joy in his life, not me. I didn't realize at first that he meant Joy with a capital J. That was her name."

"He should have stuck around. I wouldn't call your performance tonight a prude in action."

"That's the doing of my therapist. She convinced me that Joey was just another victim of the mania men go through when they hit middle age. They all want to follow the Playboy model of diddling 19-year-old airbrushed women who want nothing from them but service. He was 52, and I was 46 when our marriage collapsed in `79. I certainly didn't have a perfect body, but I was still in pretty good shape. Anyway, she got me to overcome my Puritanism and my reluctance to experiment in bed."

"I'll have to send her a thank you note."

"Let me tell you. Joey turned out to be a liar, not for cheating on me, but for trying to break my spirit by telling me I was a prude. I found out the truth from other people that he resented my success. He never forgave me for winning the Sognatore Prize with my first collection, Heaven on a Hill. I was just 24, fresh out of grad school. What hurt him even more was that I wasn't just a flash in the pan. I got three more books of poetry published, and then I won the Torringer Prize for Incarnation & Reincarnations. He was living in my shadow."

"So the story had an unhappy ending, for you."

"I would be lying if I said I didn't want to find the right man. Someone who can accept who I am. After my divorce, I spent two years in mourning and therapy, and then went on the road in 1981 as an itinerant poet, teaching workshops for a year here, a semester there. A vagabond life, but not a bad one. I usually find a man to love wherever I'm teaching."

"But you haven't found Mr. Right."

"I've given up the quest. Let's do it again. I don't mind telling you that every time I lay another man with gusto I feel like I'm overshadowing Joey in yet another forum.

"Now I understand the source of The Confession: I gave him prim, he gave me empty. From hell I have risen to ride the whirling earth again."

"Let's see if you can inspire me tonight," she said fondling him again.

CHAPTER FORTY FOUR

"Dr. Cardinale, may I ask you a personal question that might reflect on your poetry?" Stacy asked.

Lizzy licked her lips, studying Stacy and realizing the self-satisfied young woman's smirk was a signal of her determination to raise an unpleasant issue in the form of a query. Lizzy's eyes moved across the faces of the other students, a search for co-conspirators. Al, shifting around in his chair, had a dirty little smile, lips pressed almost together, the corners of his mouth twitching, suppressing what could become a broad grin. Her voice softened, speaking as though to herself, she said, "Dr. Cardinale instead of Lizzy, that sounds a little frightening. I thought we had all achieved intimacy enough to use first names. I will preface my response by stating my long-held position that all true poetry is personal and since this is a poetry workshop, I must respond by saying, ask ahead."

"Two parts to the inquiry. Why in the world do you continue to use the name Cardinale the residual symbol of a dissolved marriage? And, in the latest issue of Acuity, there's an essay by Oliver Velma criticizing your approach to poetry as male dominated, falling under the paternalistic school."

"Inertia is the answer to first question," Lizzy said standing, firing the words at the student. "Have you read my epic poem, Stacy, The Planets Perceived?"

"The planets are nine versions of the male circling the Sun Goddess."

"Very good. I can hardly believe that Oliver Velma, whom I would never accuse of writing meaningful poetry, understood The Planets Perceived. Although I will tell the class that I sent Dr. Velma a signed copy when it was published with the inscription: to my Plutonic Oliver, who needs practice in the art of losing. That is Plutonic as in the planet Pluto. We met at Ol' Miss when I did a stint there three years ago. I believe too strongly in the First Amendment to say that Dr. Velma should have been prohibited from writing about me because our brief acquaintanceship ended on a negative note. But Dr. Velma aside, I will tell you that more objective critics have described me as a dissident, as a member of the revolutionary movement, the New Formalists. I am very much the liberated woman. I proclaim to you quite frankly, I am in favor of wine and song, the intoxicating fruits of meter. I broke the chains of free verse a good number of years ago. I climbed out of that dungeon to song. To the women in the class I say, formalism is not daddyism, it is not the putting of the female in her so-called place."

"Was he one of the nine?" Stacy asked.

"Ask her if she's going to write a sequel," Al said to Stacy.

"That's enough. You're starting to wander into the land of the rude. I understand temptation. I gave you a taste of my life. Don't be gluttonous. Now we're going to move onto my agenda, the purpose of this class." She asked Al to recite his latest poem, followed by a round robin of interpretation and criticism, stingingly embarrassing as she knew it would be, from the students seated at the table.

The class ended with an invitation: "I have a lovely little cottage right on the lake with a fireplace and a kitchen. Tomorrow night, Friday night, all are invited to my half-way through the term soiree. If you are 21 or older you can share my wine. I have plenty. And, I have cheese and crackers, Vermont cheese. If you're under 21, you can have apple cider or grape juice, pretend you're drinking wine. And of course you can consume cheese and crackers, and oh yes apples along with the wine. Most important of all, you can read your poems aloud, and you can listen to the Monk recite mine aloud. He has so much better a delivery than I. As a special treat, you'll hear my latest work in progress, Pleasure. I'll tempt you with the opening: Tea/Hot Chocolate/Wine/Vermont cheese/my own gingerbread. I love it with a cup of tea."

Chris awoke alone in the bed to the scent of burning pine and the crackling of the fire. The sound of the water beating into the big old tub came from the bathroom. Lizzy was taking a bath washing away what she called the lovely fish odor of sex, or the sexy fish odor of love. Oliver Velma came back into his mind. When he got back to the cottage after his last class, he told Lizzy that like Stacy, he wanted to put two questions to her: What happened between her and Oliver Velma that made the man so bitter that he attacked her in an essay? And, would she celebrate him, Chris, as the tenth planet in her ever expanding solar system?

Her lips stretched into a smile, then she opened her mouth roaring with laughter. "Good Monk Chris, did the little nymph Stacy put you up to those questions? There is so much to teach you about poetry and life, good Monk Chris. Come." She led him upstairs to her bedroom, where the fire was burning. When he tried to speak, she shook her head, no, to silence him. And they made love as they had every morning and evening, and sometimes in the middle of the night for the past 28 days with the exception of one weekend when Lizzy had to fly to New York for a reading at the 92nd Street Y. They managed to make love that Friday morning before her flight, missed Saturday when she was away, and came together again on the Sunday evening of her return.

She came back into the bedroom in her red bathrobe with the crest of University of Paris embroidered over the left breast. She slipped out of the robe under the covers to huddle with him.

"How does the leftover pasta with Chianti sound? There's a couple of semolina rolls too."

"Oh my darling lover, what a happy woman you make me. Not only do you fook, you cook. What can I do to make you happy?"

"You can answer my two questions."

She moved close to him, darting her tongue in and out of his ear. "Oliver has a problem of self love that could never forgive a woman who left him before he was ready to dump her. Especially one who then turned the experience into poetry."

"And am I to be celebrated as the tenth planet."

"Don't worry. I don't write sequels. My poem in praise of the Monk will be an epic of your heroic lady-pleasing stamina, something eye-catching like a quadruple sonnet, alternating the Italian and English styles."

"I haven't provided you much material for a poem."

"That is what my imagination is for. Besides, we have a way to go, and who knows what you'll do or what I'll learn about you that I can pour into my creative stew."

"I knew I had a purpose in life, but I didn't realize it was to be the subject of works of art."

"I've only decided on one poem at this point. A love poem of course. So students like Stacy can read it and dream of having so wonderful a lover. She'll probably turn out to be too cautious to take on a man like you."

"Tell me about me?"

She kissed scar above his left ear. "A sweet man with a dangerous edge. The tattoos, the scars. What do they represent? Are they from Korea or Vietnam, some war you don't want to talk about? Did you become addicted to tai chi on some Asian peninsula? If only this body would talk," she said touching the falcon tattoo and the thick, white scar on his left side from the shiv cut of the man he killed in Auburn State Penitentiary.

"What kind of love are you talking about for the poem? Infatuation? Sexual love? Friendship? You know we'll always be friends type of friendship? Or real love? I ask because I've fallen in love with you."

She kissed him. "I love you too," she said. "Certainly, I've experienced infatuation with you, and obviously sexual love. We're friends at the moment. Real love? That is always the question. You don't know whether you have real love until the relationship is tested and the love continues. We're still on the honeymoon. When we have to deal with some real hazard, whether it's taking one another for granted, or cheating, or the passage of time, then we'll know how serious our love is."

CHAPTER FORTY FIVE

He came out of the men's dressing room prepared for the act of nudity in an easily discarded outfit: a white Douglas College sweatshirt emblazoned with a depiction of Champ, the school mascot as a green laughing scaly dinosaur-like Lake Champlain monster, green sweatpants with the name Douglas College imprinted in white down the left leg, sandals without socks, and Jockey shorts. He walked, his mouth set, to the edge of the wing off stage right, paused, and closed his eyes to use the technique, suggested by his acting-basics professor, to prepare himself to strip naked by dipping into a memory. The veil of shame he walked through in posing for Mary Hudson and her art students seemed like a venial sin committed in private alongside the act of nakedness he was about to undertake tonight on a stage for the world to see the body that contained him. He realized his nudity in front of a voyeuristic, but civilized audience in Vermont would be a mild undertaking in the context of the indignities of the many strip searches he endured over his 28 years in prison with screws looking on and up his asshole. Looking onto the screen of his memory behind his closed eyelids, a moan of fear surged from his lips: the unexpected vision was of a rainy morning lying in the mud of D Yard in Attica under a blanket to shield his lungs and eyes from the stinging tear gas, and then firecracker pops and the storm of bullets that splintered a wooden bench beside him and plowed the earth around him. Denny, a con, who had been standing beside him watching the two helicopters swoop from the sky, yelped and died on the ground next to him. He lay unmoving after the firing subsided, waiting. The blanket was torn away. "Get the fuck up." He started to rise, on one knee, pushing off the ground when a state trooper slammed a fist into his face, knocking him on his back. His right cheek swelled painlessly above his eye blinding him. The trooper ordered, "Get up motherfucker." Dazed he got up, and another trooper smashed a rifle butt into his forehead, raising a lump, a peninsula of flesh, three inches long. They waited until he found the strength to get on his hands and knees and was kicked painfully in the behind. "Hands behind your head." He did as he was told, his body shaking uncontrollably, joining a line of prisoners, pushed and pummeled from D Yard to A Yard. "Take it off," a screw shouted again and again. He stripped away his stained, slate-colored sweatshirt, grey prison shirt, black pants, underwear, shoes and socks. And stood naked in a long queue of naked men, white and black, to wait the next indignity from the screws and troopers carrying shotguns and long clubs.

"Now's the moment," Hazy said pulling Chris out of his tormented memory.

He slipped out of his clothes, knelt and crept across the chilly open stage in view of the audience of three dozen college students and faculty members, including his acting-basics professor, Lizzy, Cheri, and Hazy. Di sat holding an imaginary fishing pole on a folding chair at the center of the stage. As he neared, she stirred as though getting a bite on a line. Chris turned and twisted on the floor, tangling himself in her imaginary fishing line as she stood struggling with a bending pole in a rocking boat, trying to haul in her catch.

Chris knelt putting his arm over the side of the imaginary boat. "Oh my God, I hooked a man!" Di shouted.

"You didn't hook me you tangled me." He rolled over into the bottom of the boat.

"What a big one," she in astonishment.

"Thank you," Chris said to roars of laughter and applause from the audience. He had to suppress a grin.

"Are you okay?" she asked stroking his body. She stood her eyes and arms raised to heaven. "Thank you Lord." She turned to Chris, who was kneeling watching her. "I prayed to the Lord to give me a little happiness today, and He sent me you."

"I was praying too. I guess He answered my prayer for a port in the storm."

"Ohhhhh. I think we're thinking along the same lines," Di said with delight, bringing another roar of laughter from the audience.

Hazy stood. "Di that was wonderful as usual." The audience applauded. "I think Chris deserves a special round of applause for the always difficult act of nudity on stage before a live audience, not of strangers, but his peers, his classmates." He clapped, and with Stacy leading the way, the audience gave Chris a standing ovation.

Hazy's assistant brought Chris his clothes. He dressed quickly.

Hazy said, "Obviously, this was not a dress rehearsal. There's a third character in this play, who isn't with us today and wasn't needed for our purposes. While you saw the naked man crawl across the stage today, when you see The Big Catch in all its glory during One Act Weekend, a barrier of stormy water will hide the actor from the audience, other than his head appearing just above the waves. He is swimming the width of Lake Champlain with the sheriff in pursuit behind him. After a little more sexual banter and innuendo between the fisherwoman and her naked catch, the sheriff will appear in his boat and we'll get into the meat of this little comedy. Whoa, I didn't mean that double entendre," he said to more laughter. "But the unintended ones are always the best, aren't they. If you enjoyed what you've seen so far, you'll love the rest of this piece. I like it so much I'm considering second and third acts. Certainly, an Off-Broadway company would book it. If the great Diane Arbor stayed with this work, I have no doubts that The Big Catch could make it to the bright lights of Broadway itself."

Di blew him a kiss.

Chris stared at Hazy, hoping he would include him in the fantasy of taking this one-act play from a college campus to Broadway. His part was tiny in comparison to Di and Jack Devaney, who had revealed himself as an accomplished comedic performer from the first round of reading their parts. Di and Jack encouraged him, passing on little tricks. His acting professor was helpful too, coming to several earlier rehearsals to critique his work and offer precise suggestions for improvement. He told Hazy he could handle the nudity, but didn't understand the necessity. He could be wearing his underwear when hauled out of the water.

"Do you want this play to be a success? There are so many explanations for being buck naked on stage. Feeding the voyeurs; fulfilling the vision of the playwright; taking people out of their ordinary lives; being true; I can go on and on. Actors have been exposing themselves on stage with and without clothes for 10,000 years or maybe a million years. On the New York stage since the 1950s. This monologue leads to a simple question: Can you do it?" Chris nodded yes. Hazy hugged him. "This will be a defining role for you. No matter where your career takes you, you'll remember what you learned in these rehearsals and the marvelous freedom of shedding your clothes before a live audience."

Stacy intercepted Chris en route to the dressing room. "Interesting body, Monk. You're in good shape for an old man. Where did you get all those scars?"

"They pile up with age. You'll find out."

She touched his right chest sending a flutter through his body that aroused him. "I'd love to get a closer look at that tattoo."

"Chris, you were wonderful," Lizzy said, coming up to them with Di on her arm. "Di sees a lot of potential in you."

"So do I," Stacy said. "See you Monk, Dr. Cardinale, Miss Arbor." She walked past the two women. Behind their backs, she waved at Chris, pursing her lips into an exaggerated kiss.

Lizzy turned on the radio in the kitchen listening to a long feature on NPR about the end of the five-month strike against New York Daily Keys while she chopped the lettuce, peppers, celery, onions and kirbys for the salad to go with the potato frites and steak au pouvoir she was making for their dinner. Chris opened a bottle of Burgundy, interrupting her work on the cutting board long enough to touch glasses and to toast the end of the strike. He was about to tell her about the Daily Keys characters who hung out at Burty's Bit o'Green when the NPR host launched into a report of the death of American realist painter Mary Hudson. Chris fell silent while he listened to the brief account of Mary's career. The piece ended with Arnold Brohman, the executor of Mary's estate and the foremost collector of her work, describing his plans for a memorial service in her studio for her friends in the art world to show her final works and the studies involved in producing them. "She was a realist, but she stepped into another realm at the end of her life to paint dual, associated abstracts, which I am certain will be considered masterpieces by the critics," Arnold said.

"I posed for those masterpieces. In my wildest dream, I never imagined I would be part of a masterpiece, or I should say two masterpieces."

"You're a publicist's dream. Monk. Bartender. College student in your 50s. Actor baring all. And on top of it, the model for the final works of art of a noted painter. And, I'll be adding to the myth. You'll certainly be the subject of at least one, and who knows how many more poems by me, and if you read my vita, you'll see I'm no slouch as a creative artist myself."

CHAPTER FORTY SIX

The snow began drifting out of a threatening sky as Lizzy and Chris stocked up on frills and necessities at a supermarket off Route 7 in Vergennes. They bought a baguette, a bag of crispy rolls, a loaf of raisin bread, eggs, a quart of milk, butter, grapes, a bag of salad greens, sausages, hot dogs, maple syrup, a big chunk of cheddar cheese, a bag of flour, a box of pancake mix, four containers of Lemon and Strawberry yogurt, The New York Times, three boxes of cookies, Thousand Island dressing, Italian dressing, two rolls of toilet paper, three boxes of Kleenex, and half a dozen long candles. They put the perishables into a big cooler with the steaks, pork roast, bacon, and hamburgers brought from the cottage in the trunk of Lizzy's Volvo Bertone. The rest of the groceries they fitted into the available space around a box filled with cans of peas, beans and sauerkraut and ketchup, mustard, boxes of salt and pepper and a variety of other items including six bottles of wine and a bottle of Irish whiskey to make a week in a lakeside cabin in the Adirondacks at least endurable and more likely fun. The back seat of the red coupe was filled with two suitcases, blankets, sheets, bath towels, pillows, and a long bent-handled shovel.

The snow was piling up as they turned onto Route 17 driving towards the Lake Champlain Bridge. "The shortest way is up Route 9N to Elizabethtown and then Route 73 all the way to Saranac Lake. I've done it before, but not in this kind of snow. This could turn out to be an adventure," Lizzy said. They crawled north, slowed by a string of struggling cars in front of them and barely able to see the road in the whiteouts of wind-driven snow. At Westport, they turned alone towards Elizabethtown onto a freshly-plowed road. "Thank God," Lizzy said as they came upon the big yellow truck that was clearing the road. "Let's pray he stays in front of us all the way. We've got 20 miles of hard-driving in front of us unless the snow stops."

"There's a poem in this," Chris said.

"There's a poem in everything. The journey, the snow, the lovers traveling to a romantic cabin to make love for a week."

"We missed this morning."

"Thank God. This is a day not to waste energy on anything but getting us through the storm." Lizzy was driving the whole distance because Chris had no experience in maneuvering along country roads in this kind of weather.

"I would think a poet could come up with a better word than the waste of energy when it comes to sex."

"How about expend, use, exchange, offer. Now that's a good one. I offered my fuel of life on the altar of his body." When he didn't respond, Lizzy reached over caressing his thigh. "I'll make it up to you tonight."

The plow turned onto a side road a few miles from Elizabethtown. They got into the little village around noon, taking three hours to cover a distance they had expected to do in two at the most. They had skidded several times, drawn by unseen forces towards a shoulder of the road, sliding back in the other direction and finally pulling straight. The muscles in Lizzy's shoulders were bunched with fatigue and stress by the time she turned the car into the unplowed parking area next to a pick up truck in front of a little restaurant just off the road. They stepped through the door into a dim setting with no customers and feeling of chilly dampness. The only occupants were the waitress in jeans, a plaid shirt and sweater, and the owner, both sitting on high stools behind the counter.

"Welcome folks. Anywhere is fine," the waitress said waving at the empty tables. "Coffee?"

"I could use a scotch," Lizzy said.

"Couldn't we all, but we can only accommodate you with a nice cold beer or hot tea or hot coffee or hot chocolate, maybe a Royal Crown Cola."

They picked a table far from the drafty door near the big old fashioned juke box and slung their parkas over two unoccupied chairs. Chris studied the menu. Soup of the day, hamburgers, eggs with bacon, ham or sausages, grilled cheese sandwiches, roast beef au jus and potatoes, tuna salad, and kielbasa. A list of specials, meaning the hamburger or grilled cheese was served with tomatoes, lettuce and French fries. The waitress came with pencil poised above a green and white order pad.

"I'll have the cheeseburger special, medium, and black coffee."

"Make it two."

"You get a cup of soup with that. Pea soup today. Jimmy makes a mean pot of pea soup with homemade croutons. I recommend it."

"I love pea soup. Give me a bowl with my special."

"That's a dollar extra."

"What good is money if you don't spend it on what you love?" Chris said.

"Man after my own heart."

The pea soup came with saltines, two to a package. Lizzy got one package with her cup; Chris got two. The soup was thick with chunks of ham and a minipyramid of croutons in the center. "A glass of white wine would be great with this," Chris said.

"What else is on your wish list?" Lizzy asked spooning the soup into her mouth.

"To keep what we have going for as long as you can endure me."

"Does that work both ways? Mutual endurance?"

"I'm in love with you."

"That's a phrase that rolls off a man's lips so easily when he's going to bed with a woman. I don't believe you can mean you love someone until you've been with them long enough to be tested by their anger and crankiness and idiosyncrasies. Their depressions, their relatives. The way they handle money. Their aches and pains." She put down her spoon. Glancing towards the waitress and the owner to be certain they were out of hearing, Lizzy said quietly, "When we are in the midst of coupling and the world is pink and rosy and life is worth living for that moment, it is so easy to say, I love you, but at the same time, I recognize that's a cotton candy response."

"Sweet and empty?"

Lizzy responded to his reaction with tears welling into her eyes. "I want to be honest with you, and for you to be honest with me. Maybe I have more experience than you, but I've been through this before. I've made no secret of my life before Chris. I've advertised it in my poetry. You've read The Planets Perceived? I'm crazy about you, Chris, I'll use the love word to make you happy just as long as you realize that no matter how sweet it sounds, it's just fluff until it's really tested."

The cheeseburgers were consumed in an unhappy silence broken twice by Lizzy attempting to restart a conversation with remarks about the drive and the little restaurant. Chris responded with grunts. Back in the car, Lizzy kissed him, sitting back with pursed lips when he didn't respond. Anger surged through her. "I'm sorry I hurt your feelings, but I'm not sorry I was honest. I'll tell you now. Always be honest with me."

He turned to look at her, at her furrowed brow, the down turned corners of her mouth. Honesty was easy when you had no serious reason to lie. Total honesty would be too expensive a commodity for him. He could be selectively honest. He did love her. He said what he felt. She was applying standards to the phrase 'I love you' that he hadn't even considered. Her anger turned his feeling of despair into his own anger distancing him from her. They were stuck together for today and maybe tomorrow. If this emptiness between them continued, they could go back to Douglas tomorrow. He had no intention of spending his Spring Break sitting in sourness with a woman he didn't want to touch, and who didn't want to touch him. Maybe he should tell her to turn around right now?

They joined a convoy of four cars, all held to a torturously slow pace by the lead vehicle. The weather eased as they passed through Keene losing the other cars.

Lizzy said, "Another 30 miles or so and we'll be home."

"Home?"

"You know what I mean. Everything I say irritates you doesn't it?"

"Our perfect relationship is finally flawed."

"Well if this is as bad as it gets we're doing okay. You must have a poem lurking in that interesting brain to cover this situation."

He didn't answer, instead he watched the passing scenery, mostly trees weighted down by thick dollops of snow, gray mountains in the distance. Suddenly, the lines came. He smiled, turning to her: "Had we but world enough and time, this coyness lady were no crime."

She laughed. "You're marvelous. I'll offer you a double entendre courtesy of Andy Marvell: Two hundred years to adore each breast, but thirty thousand for the rest."

"I think I could get my tongue around that."

She bent over the wheel in laughter. "Stop or you'll get us killed. A trooper will charge me with laughing while driving."

He felt hungry for her again. "Let's laugh all week."

"That's what the Eskimos call it."

"I know," Chris said.

CHAPTER FORTY SEVEN

"Thank God," Lizzy said as they turned into a narrow waist-high trench in the snow off the unpaved road linking Route 3 to the cabin on the lake. It was 3:30, six and a half hours after setting out from Douglas College. The trench dead-ended about 30 feet from the front door, which was half-covered by a drift. "Now you know why I brought the shovel."

"We're gonna have to dig all the way into the house?"

"No. We don't have to dig a path all the way tonight, but we do have to get the snow away from the front door or we won't be able to get inside. And we've got to unload the car right away. Can't leave anything out overnight up here unless you want it to freeze."

Chris waded a few steps, sinking up to his knees. He turned back to Lizzy. "We're gonna have to dig a path. Carrying the stuff through this could give one of us a heart attack."

"Get me in the front door. I'll get the heat going and I'll have a hot toddy ready when you are."

"I'm ready now." He struggled the rest of the way, up the stairs hidden under the snow to the porch.

Lizzy fetched the Irish whiskey from the trunk of the car and stepped in Chris' footsteps to reach the house. He cleared enough snow to open the door, and then began the tedious job of shoveling a narrow path back to the car.

To ward off the chill, until the oil heating system warmed the house, Lizzy and Chris huddled together sipping the whiskey mixed with hot tea, lemon and honey under a blanket in front of the crackling fire in the living room's fieldstone fireplace. While Chris, exhausted by the trip and the shoveling, drifted off to sleep, Lizzy made potatoes, beans and broiled steaks. She opened a bottle of wine before waking him to eat.

At the supper table, she said, "My goal for this week is to make love all through the night some night when the wind is howling outside and the snow is even deeper than it is tonight."

"Anytime, but tonight."

"What would bring you happiness, Chris? I don't mean just for this week. In life? What are your dreams, your desires, your wish list?"

"I'm living in heaven on earth right now."

"Aren't you drifting into hyperbole?"

"I've been in hell so I know what heaven is like."

"What's it like?"

"It's being with you. Breathing free air. It's my scholarship to Douglas. It's being the subject of a pair of great paintings. Material for a poet. Eating a meal like tonight."

"So you didn't find the gate to paradise behind the monastery walls."

Chris smirked. "No. But I did find a path to Shangri-la between your legs."

Now was the time to tell him, while he was riding high. "Enjoy it now, because it won't be available after the last final exam. I'm going to Paris in the middle of May for a week and then down to Provence, to Avignon actually, to stay with some friends for a couple of weeks. If you didn't have a commitment to Douglas' summer stock program, I'd invite you along. I'll be back here in July and August, writing. I usually don't welcome guests, but you're an exception. If you could break away for a week, say, and promise to leave me alone during my writing hours, I'd love to have you come."

"Paradise Lost."

She laughed. Quickly catching herself and swallowing her amusement at his readiness to throw out a poetic reference in any situation. "Please don't look so sad. I would take you with me to France and bring you up here for the whole summer, but you have another commitment, an important one. I would say come follow me in my wanderings from campus to campus, if you were available. I don't want to lose you. I love you, there I said it, I love you too much to ask you to give up the potential that has blossomed in your life. You have three more years of study at Douglas. You have to grab your opportunity while you can. I wouldn't love you very much if I asked you to give up your future to become my camp follower."

"I'll give you my wish list right now. Two items: "I'd like to follow Aeneas' route by sail from Troy to Italy and to spend the rest of my life with you."

She came round the table to sit on his lap. "We could be together for holidays, school breaks, and some parts of the summers until you get out of school. A series of honeymoons."

"That sounds grand. What would you think about marrying me?"

"I've tried that. I'd rather make it a lingering date with options to go in any direction we want. Could last a year or a lifetime. No taking each other for granted."

"I can't argue with that."

They went upstairs without clearing the table to bed. Afterwards they slept for an hour. Together they stirred awake. "I don't ever remember feeling this happy," she said, kissing him.

CHAPTER FORTY EIGHT

In the morning, Chris lay awake for half an hour enjoying the luxurious glow of Lizzy's naked body, her left leg flung across him before managing to slide from under the blankets into the icy cold of the bedroom. He slipped into his underwear and sweats, pulled on a pair of white cotton socks then another pair of red and gray wool socks and his heavy hiking boots. He turned up the thermostat, put on the coffee, and was almost through his tai chi regimen in the narrow confines of the living room when Lizzy emerged in a heavy robe and slippers. "Coffee," she said.

He interrupted his exercise to kiss her on a mouth still heavy from sleep. "Coming right up," he said.

She was curled under a blanket on the couch when he returned with the coffee. "I'm making pancakes and sausage."

"Good. A fire would be wonderful too."

He raked out the remnants of last night's fire, set some new kindling and a blaze underway before he returned to the kitchen.

At the breakfast table, Lizzy said that today she just wanted to laze around, read, maybe do some writing. Chris said he could use the time to read Tom Paine's Common Sense for his America: Revolution or Evolution without End? class. They spent the rest of the morning and afternoon reading and dozing in front of the fire. Every once in a while, Lizzy would scribble an inspiration into a notebook. After dinner, they played chess, danced and made love.

On Monday, they went snowshoeing in the sub-zero temperatures under a brilliant sun. Chris came out of the morning, exhausted, his legs aching, but exhilarated. On Tuesday, ice skating. Growing up Chris had skated on the flooded wading pool at the 43rd Street Park in Sunnyside and as a teenager twice at the Wollman Memorial Rink in Central Park. Afterwards, Lizzy and Chris had hot chocolate and donuts in a café in Saranac Lake. She spent the rest of the day scribbling more notes and lines into her notebook. On Wednesday, George, the handyman who plowed the road and checked the cabin in the long stretches when Lizzy wasn't there, took them ice fishing. It was a day Chris thought would never end. The boredom. Chris went through the long afternoon in the ice shanty without a strike, George caught two perch and Lizzy one. Each fish was celebrated with a shot of Apple Jack that sent surges of welcome warmth through Chris' body. George came back to the cabin, staying just long enough to gut Lizzy's fish and write out his recipe for oven-frying the perch.

While Chris cooked dinner, Lizzy sipped white wine and hunched over a writing tablet pouring out the first draft of a poem about the joy of initiation, centering on Chris with allusions to snow, ice fishing, the Adirondack landscape and the fragility of pleasure. "Life is wonderful," she said gaily, kissing Chris before settling into the fish and more wine.

For their remaining two days in the cabin, Lizzy devoted the entire mornings and afternoons to writing poetry. Chris quickly learned to leave her alone when she snarled at him for breaking her focus by speaking to her when she was writing. "Don't interrupt me," she said, her words delivered with the inflection of a snapped bullwhip. He worked at the kitchen table on his Thomas Paine essay, while she occupied the living room. In bed, she asked him, "Can you endure me when I'm working?"

"As long as you don't work all night," he said taking her laughing into his arms.

The drive back to Douglas across roads cleared down to the pavement was easy and pleasant. Lizzy told Chris he had passed a big test that week, the ability to accept her work habits. "You're a dream man: good in conversation, good in silence, good in bed, and good in the kitchen. What more could a woman ask for?" She told him that she definitely wanted him to visit her at the cabin any time he was free from the summer theater in June, July, and August. She would be in California for the fall semester, but he could spend the Christmas break with her at her Greenwich Village apartment on Perry Street. "I love Christmastime in New York. Parties, great restaurants, terrific theater, jazz, you name it. We'll have a wonderful time. Have you ever seen Washington Square Park in the snow?

Chris realized as Lizzy chattered that this was a woman with money. The cabin in the Adirondacks, an apartment in Greenwich Village, trips to Europe. People like that handyman ready to wait on her. "Where are you going to be next winter? Which school?"

"Fortunately, I have no commitments for that semester. Normally, I would stay in New York, but now there's you. So maybe I'll share your bedroom at the cottage, if you don't mind."

Chris beamed. He felt his being dazzle. "What is the appropriate response to an offer from a goddess? That would be splendid?"

"Heavenly?"

"An oasis in winter?"

"Ah, I like that."

Among the three pieces of mail awaiting Chris in his box at the Douglas College campus post office was an envelope with Arnold Brohman's return address. He pulled the glued flap open, extracting an invitation to the memorial service for Mary Hudson at her studio on April 27. The words were printed across a reproduction from a section of one of Mary's two last paintings showing the mask melting from Chris' happy face. That surprised him. He studied it with curiosity, liking the sparkle she had instilled in his eyes. So many exciting things were happening in his life. Arnold had written in black ink, just above the RSVP, "Please do come, Chris. Give me a call." Chris realized immediately that he couldn't make it. April 27 was the Saturday in the middle of the One Act Weekend. No way could he get from Douglas to Manhattan and back again in time for the play.

Stacy approached him. "You look so happy, Chris. What did you do on your spring vacation?" She asked it with a leer.

CHAPTER FORTY NINE

The One Act Weekend audience, Douglas College students, alumni, and local folks from Douglas, Burlington, Shelburne, and Vergennes, roared with laughter and stood to applaud as the curtain came down on The Big Catch, a comic triangle with Jack Devaney and Chris playing straight men to the slashing wit and double entendres delivered by Di, portraying a woman desperate for romance as if no one but God were watching them in the boat in the middle of Lake Champlain. Chris, whose character dove into the lake to escape, leaving Di and Jack kissing and clutching, laughed off stage as hard as anyone in the audience, as the pair delivered final lines of sexual anticipation.

Chris, grinning, his insides soaring with joy, trotted onto the stage behind the curtain to stand beside Di. The curtain rose to a cheer from the full house, still standing, applauding. Di stepped forward and curtsied. She turned to Jack Devaney, extending her left hand; he took it stepped forward and bowed to the steady beat of the applause. Both turned to Chris, who took Di's right hand and curtsied lifting a corner of his heavy bathrobe, flashing his nakedness underneath to a roar of happy laughter from the crowd. Three coeds came out of the audience with bouquets of flowers for the three actors to more laughter and applause.

Cheri Chisholm walked from Stage Right. She wore a smile as big as Chris'. She raised her hands to the audience. "Thank you, thank you. Thank you for coming tonight. Thank you to three fine artists who brought Hazy Cledensky's The Big Catch alive on this stage for the past three nights in what has become a tradition called The One Act Weekend at the Douglas Theatre on the campus of Douglas College. Thith ith our 25th performance, believe it or not," she said and was drowned out by another standing ovation. "A few very technical points I have to clear up, as I do every year. I wear two hats as most of my old friends know. One, which I left upstairs in my office tonight, as chair of the theater department of Douglas College. And the other." She pantomimed tipping a phantom hat on her head. "As the artistic director and founder of the Pure Maple and Cheddar Cheese Players. Our theatre group puts on seven plays a season from Aug. 31 through June 30 every year giving qualified students interested in a career in the theater an opportunity to act and to support our projects with all the technical skills required to make a professional company, such as ours, a success. And of course, we turn into a summer theater when the ice breaks on Lake Champlain and the tourists and the summer residents fill the shoreline and the Vermont hills. All of thith ith said in the course of leading up to a disclaimer for Douglas College. The nudity on stage this weekend in the finest tradition of the American theater was done under the authpices of the Pure Maple and Cheddar Cheese Players." The audience laughed and applauded again. She said: "Just two more items on the agenda, then go party in the best tradition of Douglas College students and Vermonters finally breaking out of winter: My gratitude, and I hope yours, to two wonderful theater people, Hazy Cledensky, the writer and director of The Big Catch, and Mrs. Penelope Douglas Baltic, president of the Douglas Family Foundation, which so generously supports this theater. Please rise and be recognized Hazy and Mother."

Lizzy stood with Chris in the glow of a bevy of congratulations and kisses on the cheek from classmates and faculty members, an inundation of praise and witty references to his elderly, but well-made naked body. After the final congratulation had been delivered they hurried back to the cottage, took a shower together, and made love for the first time in four days, a fabulous, but necessarily quick tumble. Hazy had called the cast together after the final rehearsal on Thursday evening to deliver instructions to his three cast members to abstain from sex, singularly or in pairs for the run of the show, a sacrifice he promised that would make their performances more intense. "Like football players for the big game?" Di asked. "Exactly," Hazy replied to everyone's laughter. Chris dozed while Lizzy showered again and dried her hair. He forced himself from under the warm covers to wash away the scent of sex. Hand in hand, they walked the short distance to the Old Douglas Farmhouse for the party, hosted by Cheri for the cast and crew, the Theatre Department faculty, Mrs. Baltic, who had come up from New York, and Penny Chisholm and her husband, Herve Goldmont.

"Mother has been waiting anxiously for you," Cheri told Chris as he gave his coat to a student attendant.

He led Lizzy to the couch in the big living room where Mrs. Baltic was flanked by her granddaughter and Herve. Chris kissed her on the cheek then introduced Lizzy. Mrs. Baltic handed her glass of wine to Herve, took both of Chris' hands in hers and proclaimed, "You were wonderful. What potential you showed us tonight. Tell him Herve."

"When everyone else was standing and applauding, I was taking notes. I've been running dry for a long time, and then I saw you up there. I had heard about you from Penny and Nanny, about how poetry pops out of your mouth for every occasion, how you spent 28 years in a monastery, and how a man with a brilliant mind wound up as a bartender. Seeing you on stage tonight, suddenly I was alive with ideas. Anyone who writes or spins ideas for films or whatever knows the feeling of the dam exploding. The aha! The gem of a story playing out in your mind. I want a few minutes alone with you. We'll get together, you and I, in some little corner before this evening is over and we'll talk, go over my epiphany. See what you think."

Chris was thrilled. Before he could say, Let's find a corner right now, Mrs. Baltic pulled him towards her.

"Sit down beside me. I've missed our little theater trips, Chris. Everyone at the Bog misses you," Mrs. Baltic said. Herve and Penny got up to make room for Chris and Lizzy, who squeezed onto the couch on the other side of him.

"Later," Herve said pointing his right index finger at Chris, who nodded, feeling trapped by Mrs. Baltic whose generosity opened this new window in his life.

"You two are a couple?" Mrs. Baltic asked.

"Yes. A potent twosome. Chris is quite a find," Lizzy said.

"You're a lucky girl. I was hoping my Cheri would have the sense to grab him."

That was the price of this ticket, he realized, that he couldn't deliver: To wean Cheri off women. Cheri didn't particularly like him and he didn't like her. But what a compliment, that Mrs. Baltic thought him so attractive to women that he could transform Cheri from what she was into something else. "Can I get you something to eat?" Chris asked.

"Food doesn't interest me. But a Manhattan would."

"I'll make it myself," Chris said.

"Make it two," Lizzy said.

"I'll make it three." He went to the bar set up in the dining room, slipped the bartender a ten. He looked at the array of bottles and found the bottle of Gentleman Jack. He poured six shots into a shaker filled with ice, added the vermouth and bitters, put three cherries in each glass, poured the drinks. He called over a student server, put the glasses and shaker still half full on her tray. "Come follow me," he said. The student served the drinks to each of them and put the shaker on a table beside the couch.

Mrs. Baltic raised her glass to him, "Love has gone and left me. And the days are all alike."

He raised his glass in return, "And life goes on forever like the gnawing of a mouse."

"I sincerely hope that's not true," Lizzy said.

"Not when I'm with you and Mrs. Baltic," Chris said. The two women smiled and sipped. Chris followed suite.

"What was the name of that poem, Chris?" Mrs. Baltic asked.

"The Ashes of Life by Edna St. Vincent Millay."

"It isn't a happy poem, is it. I must read the whole thing. I don't remember the line you recited."

"It's in there. St. Vincent Millay knew what she was talking about. When life isn't sparkling, it can be brutally gray."

Herve took Chris upstairs to a small sitting room on the third floor with a fireplace, a comfortable stuffed couch, two easy chairs, a liquor cabinet, lamps and a writing table. Windows on either side of the fireplace overlooked Lake Champlain. Herve and Penny occupied one of the three bedrooms opening off the sitting room. The other two were empty. "What are you drinking?" Herve asked.

"They have Irish whiskey?"

"Scotch, Chives Regal that is, Jack Daniels, rye. No Irish."

"Chives Regal's a good substitute. On the rocks if you've got ice."

After giving Chris his drink with ice, he flopped onto one of the easy chairs, his left leg slung over the arm.

Chris sat upright in other chair, anxious to hear Herve's pitch. He sipped the scotch, waiting.

"I heard about you from Penny. She told me that the first time she met you she was blown away when you recited Aeneas' challenge to his comrades in arms as Troy was burning. 'Come let us die. We'll make a rush into the thick of it.' Just so happens those are my favorite lines. Can you really recall every line of the Aeneid? I just find that so hard to believe."

"There was a time when I could. I needed it. I hope I never need it again."

"I get a sense of the mysterious from you Chris. Those worn out tattoos. Twenty-eight years in the monastery. Really? The guts to perform naked in your very first role. Exhibitionist?" Herve rose from his awkward position in the chair. "A test. Something easy. The final lines of the Aeneid."

"Dryden or Fitzgerald's?"

Herve roared with laughter, slapping his knee in his glee. "Touché'. I only know Fitzgerald. So I'll offer the opening: 'I sing of warfare and a man at war. From sea-coast of Troy in early days, he came to Italy by destiny, to our Lavinian western shore, a fugitive.' Now you."

Chris knocked back the scotch. He stood and swung an imaginary short sword into Herve's gut: "He sank his blade in fury in Turnus' chest. Then all the body slackened in death's chill. And with a groan for that indignity, his spirit fled into the gloom below." He pulled his arm back as though extracting the blade.

"Oh my God, we were meant to be. Some supernatural force put Penny and me together just so we could meet on this April night in the far reaches of Vermont. Now let me get into my vision. I see you tending bar in some ratty little place in downtown Manhattan. Raining outside of course. A customer, a geeky-looking creature with horn-rimmed glasses and a crew cut in a pin-striped suit, comes in and sits as far away from the front door as he can. 'I need a drink. A double scotch,' he says. He takes it and knocks it back. 'Gimme another.' The only two other patrons at the bar get up and leave. 'So long Monk' they say in unison. You pour the geek his second double scotch and the door opens. And the geek's eyes assume a startled look of fear. You turn around to look. A beautiful woman, played by Penny, walks in. She gives you that languid look of hers and says, 'Hey sport do you know how to make an Ernest Hemingway daiquiri?' 'No. We don't get much call for daiquiris, frozen, fresh or Ernest Hemingway's. I can whip you up a boilermaker.' She laughs and opens her purse. 'They say the only things we take into the afterworld is the love and knowledge we've accumulated in this world. I'm going to tell you how to make a Hemingway daiquiri: two ounces of good white rum, an ounce of fresh lime juice, squeeze the juice of half a grapefruit into the mix, pour a little Maraschino liqueur on top, say a quarter of an ounce, and serve over finely crushed ice.' You laugh, and she pulls a 9 mm. automatic out of her purse. And in a reflex, you punch her. Knocking her right off the stool. The geek yells, 'Is there a back way out of this dump? She's not alone and we're both dead if they catch us.' She gets up, face covered with blood, and pegs a shot at you, not very accurate because of the blood in her eyes. The front door starts to open. You turn and run. The geek is in front of you. Through the kitchen into an alley and over a fence. We're off on a fantasy that is going to take the geek and the bartender on a convoluted journey through every borough in New York City to Kennedy Airport in Queens, to Yankee Stadium to the garbage dump on Staten Island and finally to the basement of the Brooklyn Museum in search of that short sword that Aeneas stuck in Turnus' belly."

"All of this came to you in a flash during the play?"

"The bartender piece. The rest has been jelling for two years. It started with the recipe for the Hemingway daiquiri. I've thought about having her say, 'Do you believe in bad luck, being in the wrong place at the wrong time?'"

"I've been there."

"That's what I mean. The way you say that in such an ominous undertone. I'm going to work that in somehow. But the more pressing issue. I want you for the bartender."

Something twitched in Chris' stomach. His body warning him to be cautious. He was hungry for the opportunity. A path to a real career, maybe big money, self esteem. Fame. What he always wanted and could no longer afford, fame.

Herve filled the silence of Chris' preoccupation: "The bartender turns out to be a bank robber on run who assumes the girl has come to hit him. I see him as a character who violates all the rules of civilized behavior in his desperation to survive. An underlying theme of the bartender's character will be that there is more to life than just surviving. He realizes that he is no one, and the geek is a significant man. There's a young Aussie, Russell Crowe, I've seen, who would be perfect for the geek. You strip away the horn-rimmed glasses and break the eggshell of his fear, and you have a real man in there, who believes in what he does and what he stands for. He's willing to give his life for a piece of history. The bartender is willing to kill just to stay alive and for easy money."

"And you see me as the bartender," Chris said, the chagrin he felt at being so demeaned showing on his face.

"I see you as an actor capable of putting on that mask, becoming that ruthless, empty bank robber bartender for my film and for the audience."

As he considered a response, Chris ran the side of his right index finger from his left ear lobe to his chin with a forced smile, but with his eyes squinting signaling to Herve the distrust and fierceness bubbling through his innards. At last he said, unable to think of anything else, "I'm not shaving my mustache."

"No problem. I want you as you are. The scars, the faded tattoos. Eyes that can sparkle and burn through you. The mustache. You are my vision come to life."

Chris knew there was a risk to being in a film that millions of people might see in theaters, on videos, on TV, but the temptation to be someone significant clawed at him. He decided to be reckless. He said, "To every man upon this earth, death cometh soon or late. And how can man die better than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his gods."

"I take it that the poetic bartender is saying yes."

CHAPTER FIFTY

Penny startled him. He was in the midst of making coffee when she tapped on the French sliding doors leading onto the deck overlooking Lake Champlain. She stood outside with a big smile, a coffee cake held high above her head and clutching her little girl, Cassy, with her right hand. He let them in. Penny spoke with a rapid fire delivery: "I waited until you finished your tai chi before popping over. I'm so excited I can barely hold still. Cassy and I made an apple coffee cake for you to celebrate." She put the cake on the kitchen table and kissed him on the lips. "Herve is working on the script at this very moment. I have to leave him alone when he's writing." She leapt across the room to snare Cassy who was reaching for the dangling wire on the electric coffee pot.

"Now that's what I call a celebration for getting the chance of a lifetime: Being kissed by a beautiful woman, who just baked me an apple coffee cake."

She laughed with him. "I can't tell you how happy you've made me today. Herve's been driving me nuts for a year. He had my character and the Russell Crowe character. He needed another point in the triangle. You did it for him last night. And you've made my mother happy. We had planned to fly back to California tomorrow. Now we'll be in Vermont for a week or a month, however long it takes Herve to turn out the first draft of the script."

"He could be finished that quickly?" Chris said, elated at the prospect of shooting the film almost immediately.

She picked up her child. "I shouldn't get so carried away and then pull you along in the landslide. I'm talking about a first draft. The rewrites could take a year. You can't imagine how much work goes into a serious film. Then he's got to go out to line up investors and distributors in the U.S. and overseas. There's millions of dollars involved."

"Anticipation is the best part of life." Like foreplay, he thought.

"Doing it is pretty good too," she responded as though reading his mind. "The letdown comes afterwards. Herve goes through a period of depression whenever he finishes a film. He puts so much of himself into the work that he feels emptied out. He has to go through a period of recovery before he can work again."

"Good morning. Is the coffee ready?" Lizzy asked from the kitchen doorway. She oozed crankiness. "It's going to rain. My sinuses are killing me." Without makeup, with her brow furrowed, the corners of her mouth downturned, her gray hair in morning's disarray, fuming over the unplugged coffee pot, the unmade coffee, and haphazardly enfolded in a baggy robe, Lizzy appeared to be very much a dog in comparison to Penny, her beautiful face carefully made up, her buttocks filling her jeans to bursting.

"Good morning Dr. Cardinale," Penny said with intended cheeriness. "Cassy and I just stopped by for a minute. I couldn't help myself I had to come over and share my excitement with Chris. This film is going to be a dream come true for me. I've always wanted to play a femme fatale."

"Who falls in love with an older man," Lizzy said bitterly.

Penny laughed. "I guess that's the fate of women in movies."

"I thought Herve Goldmont was a little more substantial than that."

That wiped away Penny's amusement. "Herve is a serious filmmaker. One of the best. The story, not pop ideology, drives him."

"Whatever," Lizzy said. "Is this ready to go?"

"Yeah," Chris said, not liking her at the moment.

She plugged the extension cord into an outlet. "Call me when the coffee's ready."

Penny started towards the sliding doors. Chris was tempted to say, you're so beautiful. He held back those words. "She's a witch on wheels this morning. And we made her feel worse by being so happy." They laughed together. He stepped onto the porch to enjoy her swinging backside as long as he could, watching her walking down the wooden steps to the fieldstone path across the beach to the Old Bishop Farmhouse. "Thanks for the coffee cake," he called.

The phone rang. "Mr. Dunne please." A woman's voice.

"This is Chris Dunne."

"Please hold for Mr. Brohman."

"Chris! This is Arnold. Thank you so much for taking my call."

What baloney that was. "What's up Arnold?" His voice assumed the deadness he felt inside when dealing with an enemy. He wondered if there were some legalism that required a release from him before Mary's two paintings could be sold. He would enjoy squeezing a few more bucks from this cheapskate who had a billion dollars in the bank.

"I had hoped to see you at Mary's memorial service."

"I was in a play here Saturday. Friday, Saturday and Sunday in fact. I couldn't let the director and the rest of the cast down."

"No understudy."

There was no understudy. "No one who could have played the role like me. Looks like I had an impact. I've been offered a role in Herve Goldmont's new film."

"I've met him. Tom Manion introduced us."

Manion was everywhere. He waited, enjoying the silence. Arnold called. Let him say why.

"Congratulations. You're blossoming. I'm impressed. You're a shooting star, Chris. Congratulations again."

"Thank you Arnold."

"I called because Mary thought of you in her will."

"You're kidding?"

"Don't get your hopes up too high. It's more of an assignment with a little financial incentive. Mary was very concerned about Sam. Her last wish was that you adopt Sam. She instructed me to set up a trust and to send you $1,000 every year on the anniversary of her death for cat food and other such essentials for Sam."

"I don't want the cat." He didn't want to do anything to make Arnold's easy life easier.

"You must realize this was on her mind at the end. This was her last wish. I don't see how you could ignore that." He paused. "I understand $1,000 a year isn't much. I'll tell you what. Sam is say 15 years old. I'd say he'll live to be 20. I'll provide you with a lump sum of $5,000 in advance for those five years. So the day you take possession of Sam, you get a $5,000 lump sum in cash. I know you'd prefer cash." He had to get that dig in, Chris thought.

"Suppose the cat lives longer than five years. Suppose I'm stuck with this old cat for 10 years."

"Hmmmm. If Sam is still around in five years, I'll make arrangements to send you the $1,000 stipend on each anniversary of Mary's death."

"Suppose the cat costs more than $1,000 to take care of in a year. He gets sick or something."

"Suppose Sam gets hit by a car the day after you abide by Mary's wishes and take him in, Chris. Then no questions asked, you can keep the entire $5,000. You take the cat and I don't expect to hear from you again unless he somehow lives more than five years."

"How about throwing in a little extra."

"There's no bargaining here Chris. I'm the executor of Mary's estate. That was her wish. I'm abiding by it."

"Who gets the rest of her money? You?"

"Now that's none of your business. So can we clear this up? Vermont isn't very far from New York. Why don't you drive down tomorrow? Come right up to my office. I'll have Sam and the $5,000, in cash, waiting. What time is good for you?"

"No time this week or next week. I have end terms coming up and a couple of papers due." He looked at the wall calendar. Lizzy was leaving for Paris from JFK on May 22. "I'm checking my calendar. I think I could pick up Sam and the money on Thursday, the 23rd of May. What time?"

"I'll give you a call back."

"Fine."

Chris cut the apple coffee cake, shoving the first piece in his mouth. Good. Really good. He cut two more pieces, poured the coffee, got two forks, not that they were needed, and fetched a couple of napkins. He took the coffee and cake on a tray into the living room, where Lizzy sat bundled under a comforter on the couch in front of the cold fireplace. "No coffee. No fire," she said. He put the tray on the end table. Served her the coffee and cake. She sipped the coffee. Used a fork to lift the apple coffee cake to her mouth. "I can't even taste it," she said.

"It's delicious," Chris said. If he weren't facing final exams and didn't have to finish his term papers on the First Amendment and the bridge between tragedy and comedy, he would have gone down to New York this afternoon just to be away from her.

The phone rang.

Arnold Brohman was on the line again. "Serendipity Chris. I've got an associate traveling up to Vermont on a special project. Would it be convenient for him to drop the cat and money off tomorrow afternoon?"

"Sure." Chris gave him directions to the cottage.

CHAPTER FIFTY ONE

Chris saw the New York plates on the beat up old Ford Taurus with a rusting, dented passenger side door and a worn blue finish parked outside the cottage alongside his and Lizzy's cars. He figured Arnold Brohman had hired a messenger to deliver Sam. No Brohman associate would drive a wreck like that. He better have the money. Chris caught himself being enflamed by the notion that Arnold might try to shortchange him. With all of his wealth, he was so goddamned stingy.

Lizzy met him at the door. "There's a strange man inside waiting for you, and Chief Devaney called. He said to call him the moment you got in. And you got two calls from New York. A Trish Cavallo who says she's a columnist at the Daily Keys. She wants to interview you. And a man named Tom Manion who says he's doing PR for Arnold Brohman on Mary Hudson's paintings. He wants to set up some TV interviews for you." She had written the names and numbers on a sheet torn from a note pad.

Chris looked at the paper. Tom Manion and Trish Cavallo. "I knew both of them from that bar I worked at, the Bog. Manion must be hyping the paintings for Arnie. Build up the price for the paintings. That's what Trish is probably calling about too. God, I must say I don't want to get involved." He never imagined anyone but a few aficionados would see the paintings. Certainly not the people who knew him. "Does that strange man have the cat with him?"

She whispered, "No. I asked him if he were from Arnold Brohman. He said, 'In a way.' I asked him if he had the cat. He said, 'I am the cat.'"

"What the hell." Chris stepped past her into the living room and to the sitting area by the fireplace. The man turned his head. Martin Zelotovich, the parole officer. Older and fatter. A flush burned across Chris' face. He could barely breathe. Arnold Brohman had set him up and worse tried to lure him to New York where Zelotovich could have had him arrested on the spot as a parole violator.

"Surprised, Gerry?" The voice was the same. Gentle.

"I think you've got the wrong guy." The wrong words the moment they left his lips. Life had been so easy, so good, he had lost the tension that kept him alert and safe. He tried to recover. "My name is Chris Dunne. Arnold Brohman send you?" He forced himself to walk forward, reaching out his hand as though greeting a stranger for the first time. That was a wrong move too. He should have said, who are you and what do you want?

Lizzy stood beside him. She could see Chris' fear and the triumphant amusement of Zelotovich. "What's going on?" she asked Chris.

"Do you know who this man really is?" Zelotovich asked her in that same softly-toned voice. He turned to her, ignoring Chris.

"Chris Dunne."

"No. That's what he calls himself now. His real name is Gerald Christopher Reilly, smalltime thief, convicted murderer." His point delivered he assumed his mirthless smile.

Chris centered himself. Back in control. "I think you must be smoking something mister, or is this Arnold Brohman's idea of some kind of a sick joke?" He realized he was speaking too loudly.

"Don't ever talk to me like that Reilly," Zelotovich said with anger in his voice. Now his words were delivered firmly, talking to an inferior. "I told you on the day you walked into my office, when was it, at 8:30 AM on Sept. 9, 1980, that I demanded respect. Or else. Get over here. Stand in front of me."

Lizzy had taken his arm and felt him tremble. "You must be kidding," Chris said.

Back to his provocatively soft voice: "Did he tell you, lady, that Gerald Christopher Reilly spent 28 years in prison for one murder. Shot Lance DeMille dead for a couple of dollars. Twenty-six dollars, I believe. And when he was in prison, he killed another man. Got away with that one. He's a sweetie our Gerald Christopher Reilly."

Chris considered the options. To grab Zelotovich by the collar and throw him out the door. No. That would put him in the soup on an assault charge. He was wanted in New York not Vermont. If Zelotovich had a legitimate warrant he would have come with the local cops or the state police to arrest him. No time wasted talking. He instinctively stuck to a principal learned at the expense of 28 years in prison. His experience with the detectives in the 104th Precinct had taught him never to admit anything to any adversary probing for a weakness.

"Just why are you here?" Lizzy asked in a barely audible voice.

"He's a wanted man, lady. He ran out on his parole in April of 1982. I'm here to bring him back to New York."

Chris stepped towards Zelotovich to be within striking distance if the parole officer pulled a gun or a blackjack. He could tell from Zelotovich's self-satisfied glow that he thought Chris was obeying his order to stand in front of him.

"Chris, is what he is saying true?"

"Of course not. Do you have a warrant for the arrest of Christopher Dunne, mister?"

"I saw you in the paintings. I saw the tattoos. I saw those eyes. I saw your face. Mary Hudson's work has given me so much pleasure through the years. I never thought her paintings would lead me to the one absconder I've never forgotten. Lance DeMille was as fine a man as you are a piece of scum. You not only took his life. You ruined the lives of his entire family, his wife, his son and his daughter. I swore to young Lance DeMille I would make sure his father's murderer was brought back to justice. And here I am."

"I never murdered anyone," Chris said. He knew the son, Lance E. DeMille Jr. He showed up regularly at his parole hearings to give the same speech on how his mother had shriveled up in despair, on how he had turned to alcohol almost destroying his own life. Lance, the son, had helped keep him in Attica for eight years beyond his minimum. "Where's the cat, and where's my $5,000?"

"As I told this lady, I'm the cat and you're the mouse. Maybe I should say the rat." He raised himself from the chair. Standing just two feet from Chris.

Chris said, "Lizzy, call Chief Devaney. Tell him, I think we've got a crazy man here, who has cooked up a cock-and-bull story about me being a murderer. Tell Jack I want this man arrested."

"He's not going to arrest me. He knows I'm here. Do you think I'd put myself at risk without backup?" A nervous tic flickered his right eye.

"Where's the backup. Where's the Douglas Police or the State Police?"

"I've handled punks like you all my life. I don't need anybody else. You are Gerald Christopher Reilly." He called to Lizzy, who had picked up the phone, "May I speak to the chief after you?"

Lizzy dialed 911, while Chris and Zelotovich stood glowering at one another a few feet away. She told the operator that it wasn't an emergency, but she needed to speak to Chief Devaney. She told him that a man that she and Chris were told would be delivering a cat turned out to be off the wall and refused to leave their house. "He wants to speak to you and then Chris," she said to Zelotovich.

Zelotovich looked grim as he listened to Jack Devaney tell him to get out of the house and out of his jurisdiction until the New York State Police responded to his query about Chris Dunne or else he would take him into custody. "Put Mr. Dunne on the phone and leave without another word or you'll spend the night behind bars," the police chief said. A subdued Zelotovich did as instructed.

Devaney told Chris that Zelotovich had arrived in his office just before lunch, telling him that in 1982 Gerald Christopher Reilly, a convicted murderer, had absconded. He said that Chris Dunne was an assumed name, that he was a convicted murderer.

"When he told me he was a retired parole officer, that he retired in 1982 a few months after this Reilly went on the run, I told him to stay away from you until I checked him out and whether there was an active warrant for this Reilly."

"This guy is a crazy." Chris said. He hoped the chief could not sense the quivering in his body.

"I called you to hear your story before I started ringing alarm bells," the chief said.

"I didn't get the message you called until I walked in the door and this guy Zelotovich was all over me. I had to admit I thought you were calling me about the play or to come over to your house or whatever."

"Chris, you tell everyone that you spent 28 years in a monastery. Zelotovich says you were in prison for murder for those 28 years."

"I never murdered anyone," Chris said, swallowing the temptation to say he was framed in the killing of Lance Douglas and the prison incident was self defense, which didn't stop him from sporadically waking in the middle of the night drenched in remorse.

"This Reilly has all the same tattoos and scars that you do, according to Zelotovich. I'm sure that after nine years on the run, Chris, that unless this Reilly committed another crime where his fingerprints or whatever was checked out, he would never be caught. Unfortunately for this Reilly, he has Zelotovich playing Inspector Javert."

"So what are you going to do about it?"

"My duty Chris. Now that I have spoken to you, I'll proceed. I've got a lot of things on the agenda for the rest of the afternoon. The mayor wants to see me about a budget problem for one thing. The first thing tomorrow morning, I'm going to contact New York about this Reilly. After all he's wanted as a parole violator not for murder so there's no reason for me to sound alarms."

"Thanks."

"No thanks involved Chris. I'm a cop and I enforce the law."

"Keep up the good work. So long Jack."

"I'm warning you not to run Chris."

"Okay." He hung up. Not all cops were scumbags.

CHAPTER FIFTY TWO

Chris stood with his ear frozen to the phone locked in a reverie on how good his life had become at Douglas College. He had finally achieved a sense of future with Lizzy, the theater, and the prospect of a film career. For a moment, he was consumed by a desire for revenge: to drive to the city to squeeze the life out of Arnold Brohman first and then Tom Manion, to put an end to their comfortable lives. He hoped that Trish Cavallo wasn't part of the scheme to entice him back to the city so Zelotovich could grab him.

"You are Gerald Reilly aren't you?" Lizzy said.

He looked at her licking her lips feeling overwhelmingly in love with her. If he ran he would never feel the delightful warmth of her skin next to his in bed again. He knew he couldn't avoid answering, and he discovered he couldn't bring himself to lie to her. "No. I was Gerry Reilly. Now I'm Chris Dunne. And they're going to put me back in prison for a murder Gerry Reilly didn't commit."

"This is so confusing. You're supposed to be a murderer, but you say you aren't. And everything you've told me about yourself is a lie."

"Everything important between us has been true. My love for you is so true you could use it as the test of truth." He walked past her and sat down in the chair that Zelotovich had occupied. He bowed his head, his mind blank, not wanting to think for a few minutes, not wanting to confront his options. He was only guessing that Brohman and Manion had told Zelotovich where to find him. He was being driven by paranoia. Killing them wouldn't save him from prison, from a lifetime of deprivation and boredom.

"What's going to happen now?" she asked from where she stood next to the phone, seven or eight feet from him. On the verge of stepping back, enlarging the gap to an uncrossable chasm.

"They'll resurrect the warrant for Gerry Reilly tomorrow afternoon at the earliest."

"They'll arrest you then?"

"Not necessarily. If I insist I never was Gerry, maybe get a lawyer, I can delay the process for a week or a month. I'm not wanted for murder. I'm wanted for walking away from parole. For absconding. And I've stayed out of trouble for the last nine years. If they had let me alone a little longer, I might have become a movie star." He smiled at that.

She was wracked with concern. "Why were you convicted, if you are innocent?"

"The cops framed us. Don't ask me why? I don't know. They were probably under pressure to close the case, and they figured Butch and Hughie were no good anyhow. I got caught in the undertow."

"That man said you killed someone else in prison?"

"Self defense. Not that that made any difference. The con I killed was black so he didn't count to the red-neck guards. I was never charged."

"Why did you run away from your parole?"

She was cross-examining him. He looked at her, beginning not to like her. His words reflected the anger he felt: "Because I couldn't stand being on a leash any more. Zelotovich is such a hypocrite. He loves to control people. He was in one of those jobs made for people like him. He could say to himself and everyone else he was doing such good working with the scum of the earth. Like a dog trainer. Making us grovel. Walk around with our tails between our legs. You did his dance or you went back inside. He was going to put me back inside, so I ran."

"How long could they send you away for?"

"Anywhere from two years to the rest of my life."

"Well we have to fight it. There's no other solution. Two years wouldn't be bad. It might take that long for Herve to get the movie together. I'll be standing outside the gates when they open them for you."

"There something you don't grasp, Lizzy. I endured 28 full years including seven leap years inside. Do you understand how long that is? No you couldn't. Inside, you get glimpses of the sun and the moon and the stars on rare occasion. You don't see trees and grass or the ocean or running water in a stream or a river. The noise drives you nuts. A shower is a luxury. And maybe some nutcase takes a dislike to you so he wants to cut you or stick his dick up your ass to show you're nothing. The food is dreadful. Some people say a year in prison is like four boring years on the outside when you live with a woman you don't love and work in a job you hate. They're wrong. A year inside is forever; a day is a lifetime; a minute never passes. Can you imagine 28 years behind bars including seven extra days for the leap years. That's hundreds of thousands of hours and millions of those minutes that never pass. I'm not serving another hour or minute or second." He looked at her with the sudden realization that his karma was to reap the whirlwind at the edge of paradise. He was 17 and wildly in love and going to fulfill his fantasy of being a college football star, and he had to walk into Bickford's that night. He was going through it again. He was crazy about Lizzy and the theater was open to him. He could feel it. He knew football was the path as a kid. The stage was the path today. And he had to pose for Mary Hudson. He had been to hell. Purgatory was better. He would be back to washing dishes or being a fry cook. No more bartending. Some bright cop might decide to check out newly-hired bartenders and hit on him through sheer luck. No. He could no longer be Chris Dunne. Another name. Another social security card. He would get them. Change his style too. Shave the mustache, go with a crew cut, dress like a would-be English professor. Mrs. Baltic gave him the means, the jacket and the slacks. No more spouting poetry aloud. Just inside his head. Maybe he could get a job in a bookstore. Poetry kept him alive inside and led him to Lizzy. There was poetry he wanted to write. For himself. If no one else.

She stepped across the gap dividing them, hugging him. "I love you," she said. She kissed him. "Don't run again. Stay and face this, Chris. You have me behind you, and I have a lot of friends. We'll keep you out of prison somehow. Get you a pardon. I'll bet we can."

"Maybe you're right. What are we having for dinner?''

"Pork chops," she said, puzzled for a split second by the sudden change in direction of their conversation. He was going to run. She could tell.

"Great. Call me when dinner is ready. I've got some things to do." He turned away from her, a decision made. He went out to his car. Got his road maps of Vermont and New York State, which extended into New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Up in his bedroom, he spread out the maps and planned his route. By tomorrow afternoon he would be out of Vermont across New York and into the far reaches of Pennsylvania before they even thought about looking for him. He climbed into the attic, found the three pencil cases thick with twenties and fifties adding up to $15,000. He put $500 in his pocket and stashed the rest in his suitcase. He would take only what would fit in the trunk and on the floor of the backseat. He selected a pillow, his two blankets, the best two of the bath towels. He had been planning to buy more, and now was glad he hadn't. Couldn't take any dishes or pots and pans. He hated to leave the pancake griddle. He wouldn't. That was heavy, but thin. He would fetch it from the kitchen at the last minute. The books would be the hard part. Hard to leave behind. He would take ten. Certainly his Latin/English dictionary. Fitzgerald's translation of the Aeneid. The autographed copy of Lizzy's Incarnation & Reincarnations. His favorite travel book tracking Aeneas across the Aegean Sea and the Mediterranean. He thought about his Random House Unabridged Dictionary. Much too big. But he couldn't do without it. He would take it. He carried the suit case down to the first floor, leaving it by the front door. He went into the kitchen. Found the box of big black trash bags in a pantry cupboard.

"What do you need those for?" Lizzy asked, knowing why.

"I want to put some things in them." He went back upstairs to fill two of the bags with socks, t-shirts and others items that wouldn't fit in his suitcase. He made two trips, bringing his belongings down to the first floor.

Lizzy called him to dinner. She had opened a bottle of white wine when he came into the kitchen carrying Mary Hudson's sketch of him, nude, leaping through the air, seemingly suspended in space. "This is for you."

"You're going aren't you?" she said in a voice so soft he barely heard her.

"I don't want to. I'll never find another woman like you. I don't expect to have things go so right in my life ever again."

"Then don't go." She looked at the sketch. "A remembrance of things past?"

"Something like that. The most valuable thing I own in the world." He sat down to the pork chops, baked potatoes and peas. She had placed small dishes of applesauce next to each plate. He found he couldn't eat. Neither could Lizzy. "I'm going to pack the car," he said.

"Okay."

When he was ready to go, she embraced him. "If you love me, you'll stay." She clung to him. "Don't. Please. I'll never find anyone else like you again."

"Maybe some day in a couple of years, you'll be giving a reading and you'll see me in the back of the room."

"Where can I look for you?"

"Chicago maybe. I don't know. Somewhere far from New York."

She wept and suddenly angry punched him on the chest. "You bastard. You're throwing away our lives. I love you too much for you to leave."

"I'm not going back to prison. I told you that. I'm willing to give up a chance to be with you so that should tell you how much I want to be free."

"Wouldn't that be the test of true love? Whether you would endure hell for two years so we can be together?" She put her arms around his neck. "I'm not letting you go."

He grasped her wrists and pulled her arms down to her side. He kissed her, and whispered in her ear: "I'll say good bye with the old cliché': I'll always love you."

CHAPTER FIFTY THREE

APRIL 27, 2001

He sat on the little wooden stage in the v-shaped room of Rhymes & Otherwise, A Marketplace of Poetry, waiting, his stomach churning with butterflies like the moment before a kickoff, while Philly Berke, co-owner with his mate Madeleine of Rhymes & Otherwise, dazzled the audience with poetic witticisms in the process of introducing him. The room was filled to capacity, 75 poetry lovers and friends occupying every seat of the two big couches, the pair of worn overstuffed chairs, several backless wooden benches, and the folding chairs in every available space. Five more spectators stood in front of the floor to ceiling bookcases filled with the works of known and obscure poets. Dead in the center of each bookcase, that formed the legs of the inverted V that opened onto the stage were large portraits of Philly's two favorites: Anne Sexton and Anne Carson. In black block letters under Sexton was the line from Saul Bellow: "Live or die, but don't poison everything" from which she extracted the title of her Pulitzer Prize winning collection "Live or Die" and the title of the book's final poem, "Live." In gold script underneath Carson's picture was "Anne Carson Lives in Canada."

Jerry fidgeted a little when Philly reached the anecdote of their first meeting on a typically dreary and rainy Seattle evening ten years ago. "Sitting over there on that couch; we had it even then, was Allie Pulcino having a cup of coffee and reading some poetry. I brought Jerry O'Reilly through the magic door back there into the Reading Arena and I said to Allie, 'This is a man you've got to meet. He's a walking encyclopedia of poetry and he needs a job.' Allie was an entrepreneurial dynamo even then, and needless to say, she had an opening for a good man." The crowd laughed and Allie who was sitting in a folding chair just below the podium shook her fist in mock anger at Philly. "Oops didn't mean it that way," he said.

The door at the tip of the V opened with a creak that stopped Philly in mid-sentence. Madeleine, who was stationed just inside the door to guide any newcomer as quietly as possible to a place in the room, smiled and whispered a greeting to the man and woman entering.

"Standing room only," Philly shouted with an edge to his voice, prompting most of the audience to turn to look at what was arousing his ire. The veterans knew that Philly despised latecomers whose opening and closing of the old wooden door might break the rhythm of a poet in mid-recital.

Jerry watched as Madeleine led them along the side aisle almost to the front of the room, where she signaled two of the store's clerks to give up their prime seats to the new arrivals. He recognized the man, Bo Daniel, an English professor at Washington University and a successful writer of literary thrillers based on a UN investigator of human right violations. Bo was a regular at Gelato Chic, one of Allie's enterprises that Jerry nominally managed, an excuse to provide him with a weekly income. She could afford it. Jerry realized with a shock that the woman shifting into the just emptied seats with Bo was Stacy Bloch. Ten years older, attractively filled out, but still slender. Hair cut stylishly. No glasses. Must be wearing contacts. Stacy, smiling, looked at him across the short span of three rows separating her from the podium. Their eyes touched. She studied him. There something familiar about him. Only a decade separated them from the classrooms and stage of Douglas College. His mustache was gone, his hair was longer, but Mary's paintings showed him with and without the mustache. His eyes that could become so fierce in stress, like the stress he was experiencing now. The painting caught those. Chris! She was sure. Stacy remembered the impact of Chris' eyes during his performances on the stage and in the classroom at Douglas.

Allie saw the grief on his face, and turned to look at the cause. "Who is she? What's the matter?" she asked without speaking aloud, her lips shaping the simple phrases.

The matter was that he was caught again like the victim of a natural disaster, an earthquake, a flood, a volcano bursting, lightning striking.

For years, he had overcome, time and again, a continuing temptation to risk exposing himself by amusing others with his talent to spin the appropriate line of a poem into any conversation. Allie was the only one who heard him recite, and that was in bed or when just the two of them were dining. Her tales of his prowess as a speaker and singer of poetry led Philly and Madeleine to pester him until he agreed to perform for the appreciative audiences that filled the Reading Arena every Friday night, and afterwards talked poetry with wine and cheese.

And he wrote. His 28 poems, one for each year in the pen, were collected into a book: In Profundis, which his publisher, Jeffrey Saratoga & Sons of Boston and Paris, had entered, without his knowledge, in the competition for the Druid Palmer Poetry Award for a first published collection of poetry. Jerry loved his own poetry, rolling the phrases and the lines over and over in his head, entertaining Allie with them in their foreplay of lovemaking. He was happily surprised when his editor, Emily Saratoga, called, her voice filled with excitement, to tell him that In Profundis had emerged from the vast array of submittals as one of the three finalists for the Druid Palmer. Jerry fell silent when Emily read him the names of the other finalists, whom she described as two of brightest, most promising poets, not only in the United States, but in the world. The first name didn't matter. The second was Stacy Bloch. "She's married to Giorgio Trieste, the Italian composer. I think they're out on the West Coast where you are."

"In Seattle?"

"No. Los Angeles. Her bio says she teaches at UCLA. I know Giorgio Trieste has been working on a big movie project. I read that in the Globe." He didn't reply. And she reacted. "Aren't you happy? Isn't this amazing. Tell me you're feeling as wildly excited as I am at this moment."

"I'm very happy," he said in a voice that didn't reflect it. "I'm just overwhelmed."

"You've got it nailed Jerry. The Druid Palmer is worth $50,000, and it's all yours. We don't get a piece of that, but we're hoping you remember who published you when you were an unknown."

"Don't worry about that." I don't want to be known, he said to himself.

He had refused to have his picture taken for the book. The back cover of In Profundis was a shot from behind of him walking through a field of bluebunch wheatgrass on a farm in eastern Washington State. Emily Saratoga and her father, Jeffrey Saratoga III accepted the award for him, a plaque and a check for $50,000 at a dinner for the three finalists at the National Arts Club in New York. Reading the guest list, he found Judith Elizabeth Spruance Cardinale's name. He thought about Lizzy for days thereafter. He refused interviews with all of the academic poetry magazines, National Public Radio, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Seattle Weekly. They didn't pursue him. Poets weren't important enough. Emily and her father were furious, and told him so.

Jerry, who was called Chris Dunne and before that Gerry Reilly, looked lost as he mulled the happy comfortable life of sex, dining, dancing, walking and conversation with Allie, reading and writing poetry, and tai chi that he would be leaving behind if he went back to prison or he ran again. Madeleine came onto the small stage to whisper in Philly's ear.

Philly was beaming. "People of Seattle, I have a great treat for you this evening. The lady that just arrived with Seattle's own noted author Bo Daniels is none other than Stacy Bloch, a newly-sighted comet in the world of poetry. Ms. Bloch was one of the two runners up in the Druid Palmer poetry competition to our own Jerry Reilly, whom we are honoring tonight. A round of applause, please for Ms. Bloch who has agreed to join us as an impromptu honoree on the stage." The audience, smiling and whispering, stood to applaud Stacy as she moved from her seat and walked to the stage. "Would you be kind enough to recite for us?" Philly asked.

"I'd love to, but only with Mr. O'Reilly's permission." Jerry stood as she stepped around Philly to kiss him on the cheek. "Been a long time, Chris," she whispered.

Allie watched with a stony expression. She was extraordinarily jealous, suspecting any woman who lingered in conversation with Jerry or scanned him too hungrily. She sensed a history between Jerry and this very attractive young poet.

Stacy turned from Jerry to the audience. She smiled, then recited in a crystal clear voice, "Infatuation is thrilling as we all know, fills us with fire and desire," the opening lines of Losing My Composure, the poem she wrote about falling madly in love with her husband, Giorgio Trieste, on her first trip to Rome. She recited the poem with a well-practiced delivery.

"That was wonderful. I don't see how Jerry beat you out," Philly said as the applause died down.

"Because they heard his voice in his words," Stacy said.

"Now's our turn to hear that voice, the voice of a great Seattle poet, someone I'm proud to call a friend, our own Jerry O'Reilly," Philly said, clapping, bringing the audience to its feel applauding. Someone whistled.

"Philly always manages to sound like he is introducing a fighter not a poet," Jerry said to laughter. He looked at Allie intending his words for her. "Many years ago, when Stacy was still a teenager, I think, I attended a poetry workshop with her back East. I was the old man of the class. That was what ten years ago. I was 57 and there I was with all those kids. I had to show them something, so I performed. Recited a lot of poems. Reciting great poets led me into writing my own poems. Let me tell you, how lucky I have been to be both the reciter and writer. I had intended to offer you The Serenity of Forgetfulness, the twentieth of the twenty-eight poems in my collection."

Philly bounced out of his chair interrupting him, "Thank God, I was afraid you were to give us poem three, A Christian Gentleman Would Never Fuck Another Man. And then we'd have the church banning us and the far right crazies demonstrating outside our front door." Some in the crowd tittered.

Annoyance welled up in Jerry. That poem dealt with the killing of Les Owens, who had targeted Gerry Reilly, as Jerry was known in his prison days, to become his sex slave. Jerry told himself through the years that Owens had gotten what he deserved, but he still had random dreams of crushing the man's throat. How that would be greeted in the afterlife by God sitting in judgment haunted him through each day after the night he dreamt that dream.

"If you're finished Philly, I'm going to read a few lines from Journey's End, the last poem in my book," Jerry said. He could see a penitent look that told him Philly was sorry for being light when Jerry obviously was in a surprisingly somber mood.

Jerry looked over the audience towards the door at the point of the V, but he didn't see wood and bookcases. He envisioned himself strapped into his kayak, paddling into the dark waters of Puget Sound until God or nature overturned his fragile craft and he slipped into the deep:

"Journey's End

"I took the pen she gave me

"to write without looking back;

"become the writer, not the reciter.

"I stand on the shore of the Styx

"to paddle without looking back;

"become the ferryman and the ferried.

"I weigh the balance of unworthy debt,

"no obolus beneath my tongue;

"become the creator of my Golden Bough."

As they applauded, Jerry knew that he could appear before God and say despite the burdens of unspeakable injustice, I passed through life uncrushed; like you, I became a creator. That was an arrogant assessment, he thought.

"Ode to Jack London," someone called out, interrupting his drift into introspection. "The Butterfly Dream", "Eyes on the Orbs", "An Ephemeral Woman", others shouted.

"What wonder is this Oh Lord, you've brought together a gathering of people who actually have read my poetry," Jerry said, not smiling, not having spoken to amuse, but reflecting his thoughts on God and the artist as a creator. He looked at Allie, still beautiful at 65, sitting almost within touch in black slacks and short jacket with a rainbow silk scarf and her startling, carefully coiffed, white hair, and recited An Ephemeral Woman, a poem he often whispered to her in the aftermath of love, not telling her the underlying inspiration, his fantasies in prison of so many other beautiful women beyond touch. More applause and cheers. He turned to Philly. "No more," he said shaking his head.

"Jug wine and cheese time, and all the Washington State apples you can eat," Philly said coming to his side. "And Jerry will be signing his books for those considerate enough to buy them, or who have bought them, from the bookstore with the greatest collection of poetry in America, maybe the world, Rhymes and Otherwise."

Madeleine stepped onto the stage. "I'm sure Stacy Bloch will be happy to sign hers too. I've dispatched Max to the front of the store to bring back whatever copies we have of hers."

CHAPTER FIFTY FOUR

Jerry tried to smile at the poetry lovers and buyers whose books he autographed, but he was numb inside, and couldn't keep his heavy heartedness from his face."

"Buck up you did a great job up there. I know how you feel because I hate to speak too," one friend said. And the woman with him, chimed in: "You were marvelous."

With the signings behind him, Jerry wove through the clumps of men and women drinking the cheap wine from clear plastic cups. He saw her, Stacy, chatting and laughing with Bo and Madeleine; Allie with an artificial smile on her face, studying Stacy, wondering at Jerry's reaction to her, knowing that she was somehow a threat to him. As he approached, Allie stepped from the group to kiss him possessively on the lips. "You were marvelous," she said. She slipped her arm round his shoulders, something she had never done before, a signal of her support no matter what, or her possession. He suspected jealousy was burning her innards.

"We've got to talk," he said to Stacy, ignoring Allie and the others. He took Stacy by the arm, and she went with him unresisting.

"We do have to talk," she said in parting from the others, her words divided into three sentences: We do. Have. To talk.

He led her into the front section of the bookstore to Philly and Madeleine's office. He closed the door behind him.

"You're hurting my arm Jerry with a J, or is it Chris with a C, or Gerry with a G?"

He released his grip.

She lit a cigaret. "Mind if I smoke? I've been bursting with excitement from the moment I realized you were Chris Dunne. I can hardly wait to tell Lizzy."

"What brought you here?" He was subdued, studying her, seeing in her the hubris of a talented woman hurtling through a life of accomplishments that began in pre-school, continuing in grade school, high school, college, grad school, marriage, motherhood, and poetry. The girl he abhorred at Douglas College had become the competitor he defeated who could destroy his current life with a phone call. If she hadn't led so protected and innocent a life, she might realize she was standing in a small room with a man who was capable of killing her.

She blew a cloud of smoke to her right. "Curiosity of course. I had a drink with Lizzy after the Druid Palmer dinner in New York. We talked about two men, and although we didn't realize it, they were both you. She's still hot for Chris Dunne after all these years. I hope you've read her collection, Someone Special. Lizzy loves phallic allusions." She smiled, and picked a bit of tobacco from her tongue. "But the main focus of our discussion was this Jerry O'Reilly character with his one line bio on the back of the book, 'Jerry O'Reilly lives in Seattle.' And the picture of his back to the camera in a field instead of the usual head and shoulders shot. When Anne Carson used 'Anne Carson lives in Canada,' we accepted it a bit of poetic minimalism. I had to find out if you were such a careerist that you were mimicking Carson or if indeed you were someone special like your poetry."

"And what did you find?" His words delivered with sarcastic harshness.

"Oh you're special indeed. Older of course, but still special." She smiled again as she spoke, purposely using the word special over and over, as Lizzy did in her poem, Someone Special, about her sojourn in Adirondacks with Chris. The title of Lizzy's book was drawn from that poem.

Jerry had Lizzy's book, and reread Someone Special from time to time. That was another life. "Chris Dunne is dead. Couldn't you let him rest in peace?" He tried to say it in an even voice without sounding like the plea that it was.

Stacy smiled. She had replaced the usual smirk of her college days with a smile that spoke of an inner laughter. "You must you remember the night of the dress rehearsal when you were naked on stage and I ran after you? I was about to say, please take me somewhere and make love to me, but Lizzy came along and took you away instead."

"I never presumed that a pretty young girl who had everything would be vaguely interested in someone old enough to be her father."

"I was an adventurous young woman, and I had never met anyone so surreal, so weird and wild as Chris Dunne. All those scars and tattoos. When I saw Mary Hudson's paintings of you and I read the piece in Vanity Fair about the life you led in prison and killing people with your bare hands, I can't tell you how much I regretted missing the opportunity to have experienced you at every level for artistic purposes alone. Look at what you did for Lizzy's poetry."

He flushed with anger. "Just tell me what are you going to do? Who are you going to tell about finding me?"

"Everyone." She smiled her nasty smile. "I'm going to write a book about you. Morph. That's what I'll call it."

Fury rose from somewhere in the pit of his being, the same rage that drove him to squeeze the life out of Les Owens. He breathed deeply, closing his eyes, tightly pinching his lids together, wanting to restrain a temptation to lash out in violence. She reached for the door, the knob rattling as she turned it. His left hand sliced through the air gripping her throat with a momentary squeeze that turned her impulse to scream into a gurgle. He shoved her back into the room.

She clutched her throat. Her eyes were wide with fear. She opened her mouth, but no sound came out.

"You scream you little bitch and you're dead," he said with the hatred he felt sounding in his words.

"Please." A fear-filled plea for mercy.

He realized that if he let her out of the room, she would run in panic for Bo and the police. He calmed himself, breathing deeply. "Don't speak, don't make a sound. Give me a minute to think."

She pleaded, "I haven't told anyone about you. I promise you I won't say a word to anyone. I have two little girls. Please." She was trembling, barely able to speak. "I'll get on a plane in the morning. You won't see or hear from me again."

He pulled open the door, and she ran through it.

CHAPTER FIFTY FIVE

His life was shattered again. He dreaded going out to Allie and those who lingered among the book shelves. Curiosities would be aroused: what had gone on behind the closed door that ended with a young woman running away in tears? He knew he would think of lines appropriate to the scene, sooner or later. And write them down, and review them, and perfect them.

Allie came into the office. "What the hell did you do to that girl? She's an absolute wreck."

"Let's go home," he said, not responding to her question.

"I want an explanation."

"Allie, leave me alone."

"Goddamn it I want an explanation."

He felt so tired. He was so stupid to grab Stacy by the throat. "Did she say anything about calling the police?"

"Police? No. She just asked Bo to get her out of here."

"I have to get out of here too." He walked out of the office, through the store, sweeping past Philly and Madeleine who stared after him. Everyone stared after him. Their eyes stabbed him in the back. Allie caught up to him as he was getting into the car. They drove home in silence. She stared stonily ahead. He considered his options. He was never in a better position to run. He had two credit cards, $50,000 in the bank, another $4,000 in cash stashed in the house and a passport, which he had never used.

Inside the house, Allie slammed her pocketbook onto the hall table and turned to him: "I'm giving you one last chance. Tell me what this is all about?" She was a harshly decisive woman in both her business and personal worlds. She had told him many stories about her refusal to back away from a decision once made. When Brian, her first husband, her college sweetheart, confessed that he had cheated on her in a moment of drunken temptation, she decided on the spot their marriage had to end. His pleas for reconciliation touched her; she knew she would never find another man as good in conversation or bed as he was; she realized he was her true love, so her love for him would endure forever. But he had broken the marriage contract. And worse, he had embarrassed her by going to bed with another woman, even if knowledge of the event was limited to her, Brian, and that floozy. Her second husband had had a prolonged affair, which he told her about when he announced he was leaving her. She had married him for his money, and took as much of it as she could in their divorce settlement.

Jerry said, "Allie, I might be in trouble. I'm not sure yet. I can't tell you what's going on for the time being, and maybe forever."

"This is my house and you work for me. You're going to be giving up a lot if I decide I can't endure being shut out by you. What's your relationship to that girl?" She was crying in rage, not sorrow.

His life was at stake, and she was playing at jealously. At the moment, he didn't like her. "I'm going to bed."

"Wait," she said, staring hard with the furrowed brow she assumed as a prelude to dropping the hammer on a recalcitrant employee or a business associate who crossed her. "Are you fucking her?"

He laughed. He wanted to say, I'm afraid of her fucking me. He knew she would misinterpret his wit for an imagined desire by Stacy for his elderly body.

"Goddamn it. Don't laugh at me."

"I have never gone to bed with nor do I want to go to bed with Stacy Bloch Trieste. Now stop cross-examining me. I'm not answering any more questions. You want me to leave now, I will, but in the morning."

"Sleep in the guest room. I'm trying with all my might not to hate you," she said.

He lay awake through the long night his thoughts wandering over his life, his options, and his fear of a knock on the door, a policeman with a warrant for his arrest for assaulting Stacy. Grabbing her by the throat was such a dumb thing to have done. He should have played the puzzled innocent, saying I don't what you're talking about Mrs. Trieste. She might have gone away doubting her own senses. Even if she had told everyone who she thought he was, he could have said, this woman is crazy. Maybe she would have just gone back to LA and written her book. That would have given him six months to two years leeway. One positive by-product of this would be Lizzy's awareness of his accomplishments as a poet. He lingered on that thought for a long time until he decided to get up and go. "The moving target pauses, and having paused, moves on," he said planting his feet on the floor. He went into the bedroom, still dark in the deep of night, finding his way into the bathroom. He brushed his teeth and combed his hair, deciding against shaving and showering, not wanting to waste any more time. He packed his leather travel kit with his razor, shaving cream, a bar of soap, hairbrush and comb. He turned off the light and went back into the bedroom.

"I'm awake," she said.

"Sorry to bother you. I couldn't sleep. I just wanted to get some clothes." She turned on the light. He quickly slipped into fresh underwear, a pair of khakis, and a new blue shirt, a gift, like all of his good shirts, from Allie.

"What kept you awake? What were you thinking about?" she asked.

He heard regret in her voice. "Us," he said to mollify her. "And the past and the future," he said to be truthful.

"We don't have a future any more do we?"

"I'll be right back," he said. He fetched a suitcase from the attic storeroom, returning to the bedroom to fill it with underwear, shirts, two pair of slacks, socks, a sweater, and his shaving gear. He took the two books of poetry from his bedside table, his book and Lizzy Cardinale's "Someone Special."

She sat in bed watching him. "You bastard. You'll find another woman easy. But what about me?"

"You'll get another man. You're educated, you're successful. Beautiful. Got lots of money. Good in bed."

"You never loved me. You just used me. I was a meal ticket and someone to go to bed with."

"Come with me," he said, feeling himself tense in the fear that she would slip out of character to say yes. He hadn't realized how fragile his love for her was until last night. Broken into unglueable pieces.

"Go. Good riddance."

He put the suitcase by the door, crossing the room intending to kiss her goodbye. She turned away from him. "Go. Just go."

CHAPTER FIFTY SIX

FEBRUARY, 2002

The waiter, who spoke tourist English, led Gerry across the glassed terrace to a table overlooking the royal blue waters of the Gulf of Edremet. The woman sitting alone at the next table reminded him of an Italian actress he had seen in a film with Burt Lancaster so many years ago that he couldn't remember the title. The remnants of her mostly uneaten lunch on three plates had been pushed aside; she was sipping a red wine looking across the water, lying on the table before her was a slender red book, the title in white on the spine: Someone Special. He carried the same book. She glanced at him as he settled into his seat, and he held up his copy of Someone Special. She smiled and he smiled back. He had seen her in the square in Canakkale a few days ago as he dismounted from the ferry that carried him from the battlefield of Gallipoli and again on Sunday as his guide led him through the remains of Troy. He looked at the menu, and she turned her gaze back to an island sitting in the distance across the gulf.

The dishes listed on the slightly-soiled menu didn't register because she had distracted him. He was considering a word that would describe her: earthy, maybe carnal. Certainly not coarse. She was too well dressed for coarse. Her clothes outweighed her face. Sensual that was the word. He took the small leather-bound notebook that fitted neatly into the breast pocket of his shirt and made a few notes: 'Sensual. Heavy-breasted, thick-bodied older woman with olive skin and jet black hair. Dyed. Full cheeks, bags under her eyes, a small sharp nose. Sensual. This woman sipping wine, reading poetry by the sea in this sleepy, touristy Turkish town might find her way into one of my poems.'

The waiter came back with his order pad.

Gerry was ready without need of the menu. He chose a bottle of Akmina, the Turkish sparkling water, pide bread with dips as an appetizer, Adana kebab and a bottle of Beaujolais. He was surprised to hear the woman speak fluent Turkish to the waiter, who laughed and nodded. He cleared the used dishes and crumbs from her table, leaving her half-filled bottle of red wine. Gerry had assumed she was Italian or possibly an American until she spoke.

She held up her book of Lizzy's poetry, nodding towards his. "I told Kemal that his restaurant had become a magnet for aficionados of poetry and wine." Her English had an overlay of accents, Italian and British.

Gerry rose from his seat. "We obviously share an affection for the same poet. I'm reading Lizzy's latest collection too."

"Lizzy?" She checked the cover of her book: Judith Elizabeth Spruance Cardinale was the name over the title: Someone Special.

"That's her nickname. I knew her many years ago at Douglas College in Vermont."

"Oh, you went to school with her."

"No I was a student of hers, at a poetry workshop. In fact, Lizzy got me writing poetry."

"Wonderful. Have you been published?

He smiled. "Yes."

She looked up at him, pushing her chair back a bit. "Am I in the presence of a famous poet? Should I know your name?"

"Hardly famous, but I did win the Druid Palmer award last year."

"I'm impressed," she said.

He extended his hand. "My name is Gerry Reilly; Gerry with a G," he said reverting with relief to his real name for the first time in 20 years. Enjoying how easily Gerry Reilly rolled off his tongue. His passport, carried in a hidden pocket of his slacks, still said Jerome O'Reilly.

She shook his hand. "I am Ruby. Actually, Isabella Rubino, but my friends call me Ruby."

The woman had aroused him with just a touch of her flesh. She wore a wedding ring. He decided to probe: "Are you and your husband touring?"

"No. He died just about a year ago."

"Oh, I'm sorry" he said.

"Not as much as I. Cardinale's poetry tells you all about a woman's need for a man." She offered that playing with him, an unspoken reference to the phallic symbols throughout the poetry of Someone Special. She continued, "Why don't you join me. Tell me about your poetry and hers." The waiter returned with his sparkling water and wine. Ruby, speaking Turkish again, directed him to serve Gerry at her table, and to bring her an order of pide with kasarli, tomatoes and green peppers. She had picked at her lunch, leaving most of it, but suddenly felt ravenous.

The waiter poured Gerry's water and opened the wine, filling his glass after he tasted and nodded approval. He filled Ruby's glass from her bottle.

"To Lizzy, who brought us together today," Gerry said in a toast touching her glass with his. He sipped and said, "You're fluent in Turkish?"

"I speak it. Languages come easy to me. I have a passing command of Greek, French, Spanish and German, and of course English and Italian, which we spoke at home. My husband was Roland Marquand. While he did his work, I put my time into studying languages and reading poetry."

"Roland Marquand, the archeologist and historian?" She nodded, pleased at Gerry's awareness of her husband careers. "I read his 'Retreat from Troy,'" he said.

"That by far is my favorite. We spent a lot of time in this area because of Rollie's research on the Battle of Gallipoli and Troy and his work with people from the University of Cincinnati on the Temple of Athena, and we fell in love with Assos just like Aristotle did. There's a magic about the area that attracts artists and writers."

"That might explain why I was drawn here. I was using Canakkale as a base to spend some time examining Troy, maybe to find some inspiration for a poem or two, and my guide told me about Assos and Behramkale."

"Rollie did all of his writing here. He always said Assos was a fountain of epiphanies. We have a little house near the Temple of Athena, way up high. The sunrise is breathtaking."

"So you're an early riser."

She laughed. "We have this wonderful terrace that is very private." She put her hand on his, a sparkling sexual touch. "Should I say this to a new acquaintance, or am I being too shocking. This terrace is superbly designed for the magnificence of the view and the absoluteness of privacy, so one could make love through the night and be awakened by the first light of dawn with the conviction that there is heaven, or moments of heaven here on earth."

She was coming on fast to him, he thought. "I had those kinds of experiences with Lizzy," he said matching her offering of provocative intimacy with his own.

"Really."

"I am that someone special in the title. There's a book being written even as we speak about me and my poetry and my connection to Lizzy. I called her up a few months ago for the first time in years, and she told me the book was being written by someone we both knew at Douglas, a woman I beat out for the Druid Palmer award."

"So you're a literary figure with a great love story behind you?"

"Behind is the operative word. That was another life. I have lived my life in compartments. Some of those compartments are filled with tragedy and sadness, and others with pleasure and love and accomplishment. I decided after talking to Lizzy that I might not have much time left. You get to our age and you realize you are facing the end of life. I might have a day or another five years. Knowing that woman was writing a book that could turn my world upside down made me restless so I did what so many American writers have done, I escaped into exile hoping that a strange environment might give peace and inspiration." He swallowed the temptation to tell her that living abroad, wondering every day whether the police would show up at his door, had put him in another form of penitentiary.

As he ate, she read aloud several of Lizzy's poems she had found the most appealing. "If you're really the subject of her poetry, you're an enchanting, dangerous man indeed." She didn't raise the unpleasant references in the introduction to the book that told of his years in prison, softened by Lizzy's acceptance of his story that he was innocent boy railroaded by ruthless cops. She asked, "Why isn't Lizzy Cardinale at your side now?"

"I caught up to her just before Christmas in Sante Fe. She had already made arrangements to travel to Europe with a colleague from the college where she was teaching. I had been led to believe by the woman writing the book that Lizzy still longed for me. She didn't. She had moved on. So here I am alone and lonely." He smiled, suggesting that she might appreciate a poem of his still in progress. He recited it for her, a poem about an aging traveler crossing the Aegean longing for a woman he had yet to meet.

They finished their wine, and had baklava and Turkish coffee, talking frankly about their lives and loves, the importance of passion, their hunger for the warmth of an affectionate human body on waking in their mornings, and reciting poetry to one another all the while. Gerry ordered a bottle of champagne. They lingered for hours more on the terrace, enjoying the conversation, each other's presence, not wanting the afternoon to end.

The bills having long been paid, and the waiter gone leaving them alone, Ruby said, "I'd love to have you up to the house to see the sunset from the terrace."

"What a wonderful way to end our first day together," Gerry said, feeling tipsy and excited.

CHAPTER FIFTY SEVEN

Somewhere in the middle of the night after having made love for the third time, Ruby turned on a light and asked Gerry to stand before her so she could carefully examine the treasure providence had bestowed on her in the loneliest time of her life. She asked him to parade across the room, to turn slowly in a circle." For some strange reason, I get pleasure out of seeing a man doing that," she said.

"Enjoy yourself," he said performing a slow pirouette. Facing her, he said, "Come dance with me."

She slipped from the covers to wrap her arms around him. "Feeling you is even better than seeing you." She kissed him, pressing her lips on the tattoo of four solid bars over two split bars on his left arm just below the shoulder, she said, "I know this is an I Ching hexagram. Which one?"

"Hexagram 33 for strategic withdrawal."

"And what does that mean in your case?"

He touched the tattoo on his shoulder: "I prefer to fade from aggressors." And then the one on his chest: "But I can defend myself if necessary."

"Oh how you excite me." She had never imagined she would make love to a convicted murderer. There was a toughness and gentleness about him that aroused her like Rollie never had. "Would you mind coming back to bed? I haven't made love like this since my honeymoon. Aside from Roland, you're the only other man I've ever gone to bed with." She lied. She had had multiple affairs through her long marriage while Rollie was engrossed in his research. She enjoyed the role she had taken for the benefit of this fellow: of the innocent, sex-starved widow.

He found her readiness to talk about her sexual past remarkable. He wondered why she was so frank, was she thinking aloud, examining the inhibitions that had restricted her. He asked, "Are you now regretting your fidelity?"

"No. I'm overjoyed in finding you. Your body is so beautiful that I'm ashamed at my flabbiness."

"The image I have of you, and the one that will be in my poem is the older woman who appeared to be a sensuous pussy at first encounter, who was transformed into a wildcat in bed."

She laughed. "I can hardly wait to read it. I never imagined I would be immortalized by a famous poet."

"That might take patience. Some poems come quickly, others take me a while to write and then rewrite and rewrite until I get what I want."

"You're what I want." She had selected those words carefully. From the moment she saw him seated with Cardinale's book of poetry, she had decided she would go to bed with him. That's what she wanted, now having done it, she wanted more.

"I'm all yours for as long as long as the bliss continues."

"Maybe it will continue a long time. Assos is one of those magical places where men find love and inspiration. Aristotle did. This is where he found his great love, Pythias, and where he began his book, Politics."

"I'm impressed. So you think I might find love and inspiration here too."

"Time will tell." She drew him under the covers to skillfully arouse him and to connect again with shrieks and moans, and the laughter of delight.

At first light, Gerry was wrenched from sleep by the nightmare of three policemen wrestling him to the ground to lace him into a heavy canvass strait jacket. He realized he was in a dream and struggled to tear himself from sleep. He lay awake panting, reliving the nightmare, knowing that it could happen.

He slipped from the warmth of Ruby's body and the bed to stand naked in the chilly morning air to look across the narrow, blue Mytilini Strait to the Island of Lesbos. He often asked himself in his prison years why God had done this to him. He had endured the endless days and longer nights as a caged animal, but he had no doubt that he would kill to avoid going back into that lingering hell. More likely, if the police found him or he was stopped for a passport check crossing a border, he would be captured, overpowered, chained and hustled into a cage. He smirked at the thought that he could escape that fate by walking down to the shoreline to plunge into the water for a swim into oblivion.

She came up behind him, wrapping her arms around him, her warm fleshy body pressing onto his. "Oh amante," she said. "That's Italian for lover, that's what I'll call you from now on." She was getting repetitious as she grew older. That was a line she had used with an American tourist in Rome.

He turned, kissing her on the lips and each of her breasts. "And I'll call you Isabella. That is so beautiful a name. Ruby is static in my ears."

"Roland called me Ruby because he said I was his jewel. Did you know that Isabella means God's promise?"

"I've been thinking a lot about God lately. Does he exist? If he exists what does he have planned for me?"

"So call me Isabella and assume that God in Heaven sent me to satisfy and inspire you."

He gave her a long, lingering kiss. "So you're the messenger and the message. If things work out, I'll dedicate my next book of poetry to you."

"What an erotically stimulating proposition," she said drawing him back onto the bed.

***

On St. Patrick's Day, Gerry kissed Isabella good bye at 4 o'clock in the morning as car waited that would take her to the airport in Canakkale for the morning flight to Istanbul and from there to Rome. It was a perfunctory kiss; he didn't expect to see her again or to miss her. The passion of their first coupling dimmed with each criticism from her about his manners, his clothes, the way he wielded his knife and fork at table until their startling ardor had stalled into polite indifference. She had told him that her children and other relatives were expecting her home for Easter; she didn't know when she would return to Assos, perhaps next October.

Gerry had American coffee, yogurt, and toasted Turkish bread spread with honey for breakfast. He sat at the kitchen table to reread the poems he had written in exile before putting them in a large envelope with a letter to Philly and Madeleine Berke at Rhymes & Otherwise in Seattle along with a check for $20,000. He asked them in the letter to have a reading of his works in exile along with his poem Journey's End at one of the Friday night readings at their bookstore. He asked them to buy some very good wine and cheese for the event, deducting the cost from the $20,000 and to spend the balance on themselves. He ended the letter with "You won't be hearing from me again, I'll be wading into the Aegean or perhaps I should say the Styx this morning."

He spent the next two hours writing a detailed account of his travels after running from Seattle, which he slipped into the envelope. He wrote a note asking Philly and Madeleine to send copies this final document along with his new poems to Stacy Bloch at UCLA for the book she was writing about him.

He left the envelope on the kitchen table with 4,000 Turkish lira and a note to Defne, Isabella's housekeeper, to pay for the postage, telling her to keep the balance as a gratuity.

At daylight, as Gerry walked to the beach he mulled what he was about to do, his reluctance, his dread of the unknown. He was tempted to turn back; he still could. He stood briefly on the shore, experiencing a deep fear as he realized that shortly he would be finding the answer to the two part question on every human being's mind: Is there a life hereafter and what is it like? He hoped he wasn't going into an eternal hell; the end of awareness would be preferable. He stripped, plunged into the cold water and swam towards whatever God, if he was on the other side, had in store for him.

The End

About the author

Kenneth C. Crowe was a journalist for 40 years including 36 at Newsday. From 1976 to 1999, he covered labor for Newsday and New York Newsday.

His novels include THE JYNX, THE DREAM DANCER, OOOEELIE, THE HERO, THE TRUCKERS, and THE ABSCONDER.

In addition, he is the author of two nonfiction books: COLLISION/How the Rank and File Took Back the Teamsters and AMERICA FOR SALE/An alarming look at how foreign money is buying our country.

Crowe won an Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellowship in 1974 to study foreign investment in the United States. He was a member of the Newsday investigative team whose work won the 1970 Pulitzer Prize Gold Medal.

Website: www.kennethccrowe.com

Blog: www.kennethcrowe.blogspot.com

If you enjoyed THE ABSCONDER, I would appreciate you writing a brief review and rating it on the website from which you ordered it. And, please encourage your friends and relatives to read it too.

