The Burden of Proof - читать онлайн бесплатно полную версию книги . Страница 5

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told her no to that, too."

"But you had?"

"Shore."

What made him think he was wily when he had neglected the obvious?

Naturally, she talked to Dixon about this. Who else would know where the records had gone? In all probability he had ventured a few suggestions concerning what she ought to say to the government-and to Stern. In truth, he had no desire to learn exactly what Dixon had told her.

It was sure to enrage him-and at any rate, the conflict of interests which the U.S. Attorney had so gratuitously predicted had now come to pass. Margy's lying, from a coarse perspective, almost certainly advanced Dixon's cause; Stern could no longer counsel both clients. He knew he had himself to blame for the predicament. In thirty years, his personal relationships had never interfered with his professional obligations, but one way or another, his widower's priapism had brought him here-if nowhere else, to the point that Margy was furious enough with him to admit what she had done. For the present, however, his humiliation was subordinate to his duties, which were clear.

"Margy, I would like to introduce you to another lawyer, who, I believe, will counsel you to return to the grand jury at once and recant."

"'Recant'?"

"Correct the record. If it is done immediately, no harm will come to you."

"I've been there and I'm gone." She had a terrible sour expression and got to her feet. Anger increased her substance-her hair, her frills, her bright nails, high heels, her smoothly glinting hosiery. Margy was a person of many pieces carefully assembled, but right now every layer was galvanized by her temper. "You don't have any goddamn idea what's goin on here, do you?" The way her eyes fixed on him, as she looked down, was frightening-not just the harshness, but the disrespect. She had made, apparently, certain assumptions that to her chagrin she now recognized were incorrect.

"I should like to know," he said hollowly. At the moment, he found himself gripped strongly by fear-for MargY'S predicament, and more, by the way she took him to task for his ignorance. So much was swimming beyond his knowledge' or control. John. Dixon. Margy herself. They were like bits of matter drifting off into space.

"Nab," she said. She shook her head, its many curls. "Not from here, Jackson. You know who you gotta talk to. I got a plane to catch." She hitched her bag to her shoulder and picked up her purse and her briefcase. "This here thing is a fool contest: who's the biggest fool.

You remember you got told that by Margaret Jane Allison of Polk's Cowl, Oklahoma." With bags in both hands, she. used a foot to prop open the door, and without a backward glance went through it.

SOME defense lawyers said the worst moments came after indictment, when you saw the evidence assembled by the state-the mountain you could never climb. But Stern always welcomed that challenge; once you knew the prosecutors' direction, every other angle became a line of escape.

It was the times in the midst of an investigation that could be the most unbearable for him. Usually, there were people to interview, records to look at, motions to make. But, on occasion, he was frozen by realization: the government knew something and he knew nothing at all.

Lawyer's terror, he called itand at the moment it was as bad as it had ever been. Blind and ignorant, you fear that any move will be wrong, the one to send you tumbling from the cliff. And so woeful, beleaguered-the right word, in all respects, was defenseless-you hang there, immobile, in darkness, awaiting the storm, hearing the winds build, feeling the air growing chill. He sat in the witness room, slumped, weary, aware of his weight, his age. He was'terrified for Dixon.

When he looked up, Klonsky was posed in the doorframe, leaning upon it and taking him im "Sonia."

"Sonny to my friends." She smiled; he must have looked pitiable to have softened her so quickly. But he welcomed her kindness. Sonny, then.

She sat down in the card chair where Margy had been. "Start wanted me to see if I could find you?"

"And you succeeded." He smiled cordially. "We may speak lawyer to lawyer, Sonny?"

"Of course."

"I was as dismayed as you to learn that those documents were not where they were expected to be."

"I assumed as much, Sandy. But it's a very serious situation for your client."

He smiled gently, in order to indicate that he did not need the pointer.

"That's what I was talking to Stan about," she said. "Ah, yes," said Stern. "The mighty United States Attorney." Just now, in his present mood, he found his feelings much harder to suppress: the thought of Sennett, tight-fisted, rancorous, was the flint against his stone. He cantioned himself to assume a more amiable tone in speaking of her boss.."What does he tell us?"

"He tells us," said Sonny, "that he believes you can find the documents."

"Does he?" said Stern. "Imagine having fifty-four Assistants to supervise and still taking the time to do my job as well."

She smiled in spite of herself. "He says he has a message."

"Very well."

"Find the safe."

Nothing moved; not a twitch was allowed; perhaps, for some infinitesimal time, the blood did not flow. This was the training of the courtroom:

Betray nothing.

"Do you understand this remark?" he asked her finally.

"Do I?" asked Sonny. "Do you think I should answer that?"

She did not have to; it was clear. Sennett was using her as no more than the messenger. Stern knew what that spelled. iAy, carajo! old words, a curse from childhood. Mr. Sennett and his informant. They seemed to know everything. Perhaps it was not an informant at all? Rather a wiretap. A mike in the wall. A hidden camera. Stern drew a breath. If anything, his fears for Dixon were greater. In company he smiled, a primitive reflex.

"What's funny?" she asked.

"Oh," he said, "I do not believe that I have handled a matter for some time that has frightened me more."

"Frightened?"

"The correct word." He nodded. "I have never been in an investigation where I have received less information."

"From the government?"

"Certainly from the government. You have never even formally confirmed who is being investigated or for what crime."

"Sandy, there's no "Rules are not the point. I speak of fairness. Of what is commonplace." Having given himself berth to speak, he could not contain his indignation. "Do you not believe that some basic accounting of the govemment's suspicions is.appropriate by now? Rather than engnging in these highly selective and minimal disclosures in the hope I can be sent scurrying in one direction, then another? Do you think I cannot recognize that these subpoenas are composed with the obvious intention of hiding any scrap of information about the prosecution's knowledge and interests?"

"Sandy-look, you know Fm not in charge."

"You sit here now. You have been an Assistant long enough to know what is customary-and what is not. Give me just a word or two."

"Sandy, Sennett is really hinky on this thing."

"'Please, I do not ask you to breach any rule of secrecy or standard of propriety. I shall settle for whatever information you can comfortably provide. If you would prefer, I shall tell you what I suspect about your investigation, and you need only state whether I am right or I am wrong. No more. There is no special harm in that, no confidences breached. You may do that, no?"

Could she? The uncertainty swam across her face. Sonny's strength would never lie in hiding her feelings.

"Sonny, please. You are a warm individual and I sense a friendship between us. Ido not mean to overreach that. But I have no idea any longer where to turn."

"Sandy, maybe I know less than you think."

"Certainly it is more than I."

They considered one another across the table.

"I have a million things to do," she said at last. "I'll think about what you've said."

"I would need ten minutes. Fifteen at the most."

"Look, Sandy, to tell yo.u the truth, I don't have a second to breathe.

I've got four cases going to trial in the next two months. Plus this thing. We've had plans since March to take Charlie's son up to his family's place in Dulin and stay there over the Fourth to pick strawberries. Now I have to come back here on Monday, and I had to move heaven and earth just to get the weekend free. So you'll have to forgive me if I tell you that I'm a little bit pressed."

"I see," said Stern, "you have no time to be fair?"

"Oh, come on, Sandy." She was frustrated by him, exasperated. He was plucking every chord. "If it's so important to you to spend fifteen minutes asking me a bunch of questions I'll never answer, you can drive a hundred miles up to Dulin on Saturday. That'i the best I can do."

When he asked her for the directions, she laughed out loud.

"You're.really going to come?"

"At this point, I must pursue any avenue. Saturday afternoon?"

"God," Sonny said. It was on County D, six miles north of Route 60.

Brace's Cabin. She described it as a glamorized shack.

As he jotted this down, she pointed at him.

"Sandy, I'm not kidding. Maybe I don't agree with everything Stan's done, but it's his show. Don't think I'll get out in the sunshine and do something I wouldn,t do "Of course not. I shall speak. You need only listen. If you wish, you may take notes and repeat every word I say to Sennett."

"It's a long trip for nothing."

"Perhaps not." Most unexpectedly, he had found again a trace of whimsy.

He spoke in the greedy whisper of a child.

He was, he said, so very fond of strawberries.

On the phone, Stern could hear Silvia's voice resounding down the long, stone corridors of Dixon's home as she went to summon her husband.

Lately, whenever he spoke to his sister, he detected a note of apprehension. But by their long understanding, she would never discuss Dixon's business with Stern. And Silvia, if the truth were told, was one of those women, come of age in a bygone era, who would never willingly set foot in the sphere they saw reserved to men.

"What's up?" Dixon was not reluctant to be brusque. "I'm on the social fast track. Your sister's got us entertaining half the Museum Board in fifteen minutes." Silvia, her mother's daughter, never tired of the involvements of a high-toned social life: women's auxiliaries, charity committees, the Country club. Dixon mocked her rather than admit out loud that he loved doing what he imagined rich people did, but their nights were absorbed with charity balls and fund-raising occasions, gallery openings, exclusive parties. Stern often caught their picture in the papers, a remarkably handsome couple, looking smooth, stately, carefree. Silvia over the years had become preoccupied- as Dixon wished her to he-with acting her part, adjourning by limousine to the city for a luncheon, a trunk show at a tony ladies' shop, the typical fleshtouching exercises with the wives of other very wealthy men who had welcomed the Harmells into ointed at him.

"It's a long trip for nothing."

"Perhaps not." Most unexpectedly, he had found again a trace of whimsy.

He spoke in the greedy whisper of a child.

He was, he said, so very fond of strawberries.

On the phone, Stern could hear Silvia's voice resounding down the long, stone corridors of Dixon's home as she went to summon her husband.

Were it someone else, Stern would have been inclined to disparage the frivolity of this life-style, but there was no flaw in his sister which he had not wholeheartedly forgiven. In some ways, Silvia reminded him of Kate, with whom, in fact, she was uncommonly close-she had allowed beauty to be her fate. She had been treated to a privileged education and it had led her to Dixon. End of story. Even in the years when Dixon was out tromping in the cornfields to establish his clientele, he had commanded her not to work, and Silvia, with no apparent misgivings, complied.

Yet Silvia was graced-redeemed--by kindness. She remained an extraordinary person whose generosity far outran the customary or typical. Clara, who had little use for empty vessels, loved and valued Silvia. They talked two or three times a week, met for lunch, lectures at the County Art Museum, theater matinees. For decades, they had attended the symphony's Wednesday afternoon performances together.

And whatever motivated others, Stern could voice no complaints. Silvia, as no one else in the world, adored her brother. In certain moods, she sent him brief notes, bought him gifts. She called every day and he continued to speak to her in a way he shared with no others. Difficult to define, but there was a pitch to their exchanges as easy as humming.

He remained the moon to her, the stars-galaxies, a universe. How was Stern to describe as deficient a life in which he still played such a stellar part?

"We need to see one another," said Stern to Silvia's husband now. "The sooner, the better."

"Problems?"

"Many."

"Give me a hint."

"I would rather do this in person, Dixon. We have a great deal to discuss."

"I'm on my way to New York on the 5:45 tomorrow morning.

I'll be there the rest of the week." Dixon, again, was hoping for a breakthrough on the Consumer Price Index future, going to meetings in New York or Washington twice each week. "Then Silvia and I are going to the island over the Fourth." He was referring to another of their homes, one in the Caribbean, a serene /tffside refuge on a taxhaven island; the IRS, during its investigation a few years ago, had been driven to a frenzy by the inability to tmee so much as a penny going down there.

Stern, in his office behind his glass desk, drummed his fingers. Dixon, apparently, did not have time to be in trouble.

"I spent the day with Margy and Ms. Klonsky."

"I heard that was happening."

"Yes," said Stern. Of course, Dixon had heard. That was the point.

Stern felt at a terrible disadvantage over the phone."There were a number of disturbing developments."

"Such as?"

"The prosecutors seem to know about your safe, for one. I believe they will be looking for it shortly, if they are not right now."

On the other end of the line, Dixon did not stir. "Where the fuck do they find out about that?"

Where, indeed? Stern had not needed Dixon for that question. There was a certain obvious, if disquieting logic: Margy goes into the grand jury and the records are missing; Margy comes out and the government mentions the safe. In her anger, Margy could have disclosed anything.

Perhaps Dixon had been prudent enough never to mention the safe or its movements to her, but that was doubtful. In his present mood of dark suspicion it had even struck Stern that Margy might have been the govemment's source of information all along. A ridiculous thought, really, but one that continued to teemerge. In that scenario, everything today and for many -days-and nights-before had been no more than wellacted melodrama. Highly unlikely, of course. But such chacades had occurred in the past. There were cases where the government had indicted their informants to maintain their cover. Stern at this point ruled out nothing.

"I was hoping, Dixon, you could shed some light."

"Hardly," said Dixon. "Would John-"

"John? John's still lookin for the men's room, Stern. Come on."

Both men breathed into the phone.

"There are also some records, Dixon, that seem to have disappeared."

"Records?" asked Dixon, far less impulsively.

"Concerning the Wunderkind account. Are you aware of that?" 'SAware of what?"

"The account. The documents. Their disappearance?"

"I'm not sure I'm following you. We'll have to talk about this next week."

"Dixon, it is quite clearly the disappearafice of these records that is inspffing the government's interest in the safe."

"So?"

"If the records could be located-"

"No chance," Dixon said harshly. For an instant again, both men were silent, equally set back, it seemed, by the many implications of this remark and its tone. Theft Dixon went on, making a token effort to be more ambiguous. "I don't think there's much hope that'll happen."

"Dixon, this will go very badly for you. Very badly. I have told you before, it is the absolute zenith of stupidity."

With Dixon's lapse, Stern found himself able to be more direct; he imagined a certain air of affront on the other end, but he continued.

"In the current atmosphere, Dixon, if this safe is accurately traced, it will provoke many difficulties. Not to mention that it would be sorely embarrassing to me."

"Embarrassing?"

"Damaging to my Credibility. You understand. And the blame will be laid to you, nevertheless. The prosecutors will know the safe did not fall to its present location from the sky." On the phone, Sterh felt obliged to exercise some circumspection. Even with a wiretap, the government was prohibited from overhearing this kind of conversation between an attorney and his client. But you could never tell, particularly in a house as large as Dixon's, who might inadvertenfly pick up an extension.

"You mean, after telling me to hand the thing over, you want to give it back?"

"Not at ail. I am telling you that you are exercising poor judgment and creating a perilous circumstance."

"I'll take it. Send it back."

"Dixon,."

"Listen, I have to put on my flicking tuxedo. I'll be back on the sixth,"

"Dixon, this is not an opportune time for a vacation. I must ask you to return as soon as your business is concluded in New York."

"Come on. To me it sounds like a great time to get away.

It's a few days. This'll hold. Law things always do."

"Dixon, I have many questions and I expect plain an-swers.

' ' "Sure," said Dixon. "Right. Coming," he yelled, as if Silvia was calling, though Stern heard not the faintest echo of his sister's voice.

ARRIVING home late Friday night, Stern stood in the foyer of his empty home. Helen was' out of town, i. jetted off to someplace in Texas to inspect a con,a,.I, vention site; she would not be back until Sunday.

With a certain resolve, Stern prepared to undergo the weekend by himself. While a leftover chop warmed, he wandered about the house, read the mail, and hung in the eddies of various dissatisfactions. A trying week.

Before the huge windows of the solarium, he paused. By grace of prior work and fortuitous rain, Clara's garden had flourished. The bulbs that had gone into the ground last fall now rose in glorymround peonies, lilies expressly6 as hands. Stern, utterly oblivious all these months, was suddenly struck by the perfect rows and stepped out into the mild evening air. Then in the fading light and rainsweet breeze, he froze, lurching a bit as he came to a complete halt. Across the hedgerow, he caught sight of Fiona Cawley stooping in her yard.

To say that he had avoided Fiona was not correct. He had hidden from her; he sneaked in and out of his own home like a commando. To his present mind, that incident had absolutely not occurred. Only with the prospect of confrontafion did it recur to him with a harrowing pang.

What had he done? What grand figure of macho revenge had he thought to imitate? Now, a week later, he was unwilling to accept the image of Alejandro Stern as a reprobate, a bounder making unwelcome passes at the neighborhood wives.

Other men might have been more casual with their honor, but since a few hoUrs afterwards, everything surrounding the episode seemed to have been smashed into storage. He had never phoned Cal. He had stopped searching for Nate, and even felt somewhat relieved of his urge, so great a week ago, to grind Dr. Cawley like pumice. No doubt, he'd have it out with Nate sooner or later. But only when Stern had accepted his own conduct, when he was ready to chat, one cad to another; only, frankly, when he had a better grip on himself and the mysterious world of his intentions.

Now he stood stock-still, like some creature in the wild, but something, the scent of fear perhaps, gave him away.

Fiona reared her head, saw him, and with the creel curl of a powerful unpleasant expression advanced on the horny row of privet that marked the property line between the Cawleys' and the Sterns'. She had huge rusty garden shears in hand and was dressed in what she took to be gardening clothes, a monochrome outfit that was the green of an avocado, slacks and a clingy top. Her hair, usually smooth as a helmet, was windblown and hung in clumps, holding a few small brown leaves and twigs. She leaned across the privet, gesturing, hissing actually: Come here.

"Sandy, I need to talk to you." She advanced along the row.

"I don't want you avoiding me."

Stern at last stood his ground. He had no idea who he was, but the person inhabiting the skin of Sandy Stern was going to get it. His smile was appeasing. Fiona, in. the meantime, seemed wordstruck. She had him where she wanted, and now had no idea what to say "I need to talk to you," she repeated.

Determined to make it easy for her, Stern said, "Of course."

At that moment, behind her, Stern caught sight of Nate. He appeared to have just arrived home; his tie was wrung down from his collar and he was still carrying his case. He peeked about the shingled corner of his house and stared with a wide look on his pale narrow face. Fiona, following Stern's eye, turned. As soon as she recognized her husband, her face shot about again with a grieving, stricken expression.

"Oh God." She put both hands on her cheeks in a childish way.

Stern waited to see who would speak. He had once again the sensation of something momentous. And then, through the mild night, he heard the pealing of his telephone, clearly audible to all of them as it carried from the open French door of the solarlure. Stern begged off without words; he threw up his hands futilely-Marcel Marceau could not have done better-and trotted a bit as he went toward the house, delighted, actually thrilled, to have escaped. But some intimation of the likely outcome of the scene he had left behind slowed his pace and eventually the thought came to form: Fiona would tell him. If She had not already.

Think of the advantage she'd gain. With her tale of refusal, she could lord a superior moral character, while still punishing Nate by hinting that she, too, was not beyond temptation. With his growing sense of the Cawley marriage-nasty, com-perifive, and pained-Stern knew Fiona could never keep this episode to herself. In the darkness of the house, he stood still while the phone went on ringing, and his spirit gathered blackly about a hard seed of apprehension and shame.

Oh, he.thought, this was preposterous. What had he to fear from Nate Cawley? What apology could Nate demand from Stern, of all people--Nate, who had $htupped his wife and stripped her fortune? He withered in anxiety at the prospect, nonetheless. He saw suddenly that he would look across whatever space he shared with Nate CawIcy and confront the very figure of all the failures in his own marriage. He was not sure he was ready for that, even now.

The machine had answered the phone. Through the light-less house Stern heard the amplified voice, made deliberately husky and sinister: "'I want your blood." It was Peter.

Stern picked up the extension.

"So you are there," his son said. They waited the usual agitated instant before either spoke again. "Well, are we going to do this or what?"

Stern, who had begun to think the test was unnecessary, found that he did not have the strength to argue.

"I am at your convenience."

"I've got my average exciting Friday night going, dictat'rag charts. You can come over right now, if you've got the time. Or are you seeing Helen?"

Peter liked Helen. On the few recent occasions when they had all been together, Peter seemed to have imposed some self-conscious restraint on his usual inappropriate or acerbic remarks. Stern explained that she was gone until Sunday and said he would come ahead now. Closing the sunroom door, he paused. The Cawleys were together in their yard, standing close, arguing. When Fiona's hand swept up in the direction of the Sterns' house, he jumped away from the door and waited, pressed against the wall, while he quietly lowered.the blind.

Perhaps it was the effect of Peter's joke on the phone, but there were few places as eerie as a darkened office building on a weekend evening.

Stern found both sets of plate-glass doors at the front still open, but inside, he was at once drilled to the core by the sensation of being alone; the large, darkened building hulked about him. The pharmacy on the first floor was black-grated and closed.

He rode the elevator up and, disembarking, found the long, tiled corridor lit in each direction only by a single fluorescent fixture, offering not much more illumination than a child's night-light.

What had Peter said? His average Friday night. As unpredictably as most of his feelings about his son, the stark sadness of this' declaration overcame him. The stylish admiring friends of Peter's college and high-school years seemed to have faded away. There was no one Stern knew of besides Kate who regularly shared Peter's company.

How did he spend his time? Stern had little idea. He had inherited his mother's tastes for music; he cycled; he worked. When he came to visit his parents, as he had done now and then while Clara was living, he liked to go running through the public forests in the Riverside neighborhood.

Afterwards, dripping with sweat, he would sit in the kitchen and read the newspaper aloud to his mother, making various caustic remarks about events. Clara served him soft drinks, puttered with-dinner. Stern witnessed these scenes largely as an outsider, struck by the very oddness of his son. Peter would be affronted to think he had his father's sympathy; his tightly wound personality also reflected a kind of strength. But approaching the office door, Stern felt the blackish wellspring of Peter's sarcasm, aloofness: his pain.

How, Stern thought to himself, how had it become this way?

He had in mind suddenly not merely Peter but the girls as well. Somehow these children had come into be'lng-enaerged with that strange agglomeration of talents and temperament he recognized as being essential to each. By three or four years of age, they had left behind the indefinitehess of infancy and were as fully formed as tulips on a stalk, ready to unfold. As a parent, he seemed so often to be no more than a spectator, applauding the expanding capacities, silently concerned by other developments. When Peter was six, his parents began to notice certain traits. Moodiness.

A quietude that seemed to border on despair. Peter, who now fashioned himself a renegade, had the unyielding character of a steel soldier. And in time his sisters manifested, each in her way, discontents of their own. Marta, outwardly engaging, was known to become lost-so much like someone elserain impenetrable sulky dreams. Katy, who Clara always privately insisted was the brightest of the three, remained sunny and affable, but almost clino ically indisposed to strive for any form of achievement.

Stern to this day found all this shocking. In his childhood, there had been such remarkable disorder born of his father's fragile condition, and the consistent watchful eye the entire family maintained on free-floating Argentine hostilities. But the home that Clara and he created was peaceful, prosperous-normal insofar as Stern understood the word. The children were cared for-and loved. Loved.

Oh, he may have had failings as a parent-at his best, he was undoubtedly too contained with the kids for American tastes-but even in his dimmest, most distracted state his love for his children was genuine, glinting like some fiery gemstone in his breast. And no person would ever be able to measure the bounds of Clara's dedication..Thus, as a younger man, it had stunned him to learn that every good fortune the world could offer wasn't enough: his children suffered, nevertheless.

Their difficulties became one more thing over the years to note about each and, with whatever halting efforts, to attempt to embrace. Geh Gezunderhayt, as his mother would have put it. Let them go in health, in peace.

Peter showed him inside with little ceremony. With the office closed, he was free to take his father into an examining room, a tiny tiled space with an antiseptic smell and a leather patient's table, test equipment, and instruments.

"Roll up ze sleeve, bitte," said Peter. Tonight it was accents. Stern complied, and his son precisely, instantly inserted the needle. "You okay?"

Stern nodded. "And you, Peter?"

His son, equivocally, opened his palm: Who knew, who could say. They spoke of Marta, expected in town any day. Stern asked about Kate.

"I thought you went to the ball game with her the other night, Looks great, doesn't she?"

"Actually, her looks concerned me," said Stern. "There is a difficult situation at hand. The circumstances are such that I must be somewhat removed, but I fear it is affecting her."

"I've heard about that," said Peter quiefiy. Stern had come with 'no intention of raising the matter of Tooley. What was done was done, and besides, it would be unprofessional for Stern to complain. Yet they proceeded into disagreement as if commanded by nature. It turned out that Iate in her concern for her husband had involved her brother. The thought that the situation had required her to turn to Peter rather than him wounded Stern unexpectedly:

"John wanted a name, I gave him a name," said Peter. He withdrew the needle and flicked the vial with a certain pesky discontent. "Mel's competent, isn't he? What did I do wrong? You already told John you didn't want to get involved."

How typical, Stern thought. His fault, his shortcomings. A quarreling voice, in which Stern would explain the ethical concerns that had led him to treat John as he had, died unuttered. What was the point? He had already come out second best again wth his family.

He had some thought of suggesting dinner, but Peter showed him out directly, taking Stern past the small consultation room, where the medical charts were heaped on his desk, weighed down by the black-corded dictaphone handset.

Outside, in the parking lot, Stern was struck by the sight of Peter's office, now the only bright window in the black solid square of the medical center.

"I thought you went to the ball game with her the other night, Looks great, doesn't she?"

"Actually, her looks concerned me," said Stern. "There is a difficult situation at hand. The circumstances are such that I must be somewhat removed, but I fear it is affecting her."

Outside, in the parking lot, Stern was struck by the sight of Peter's office, now the only bright window in the black solid square of the medical center.

As a child, Peter had had a magnificent singing voice-sweet and pure like some perfect liquid. His vocal range was reduced by adolescence, when his sound became rougher and quavering. But at the age of seven or eight Peter often performed in school plays and community theaters. With his musical talents, he had found one more way to beguile Clara. She became a genuine stage mother who attended each performance in a quiet nervous heat. Stern came along now and then, uncertain about how to behave. From the back of the auditorium, he would watch the small figure onstage. By some vestigial parental instinct, Stern believed that those had been the happiest moments of Peter's life, alone, admired, standing within the sole spot of light in the dark room, and bringing forth that lilting, expressive voice-he controlled every word, every note, filling his song with an emotional range unusual for a child of his age.

That was the past, Peter's past, that time of expression, attention, performance. Through the dark, Stern looked up to the light where his son, hard on the way through his own adulthood, would go on into the night, alone, the only sound his toughened voice mumbling out the details of the medical charts.

BRACE'S cabin was built along a wash. From the roadside, you saw only the roof coated with moss, glowing chartreuse in the brilliant sun, and the tin chimney pipe. Bumping along in his Cadillac in an astonishing fog of dust, Stern would have gone past it, except for the wooden sign knocked at an angle into the yellow ground. He had already been down and up, rapping on the door, nosing to the window, where he saw nothing but darkness. Below, by the house, the over of the trees -oak, pine, cottonwood, birch-was deep, the forest floor dark and moist, barely penetrated by light. As he climbed back up to the road, the sun was intense. I the gravel parking area, Stern searched for other tire tracks. The red flag stood raised on the round aluminum mailbox.

What was he doing here? He had awakened with a hopeful spurt. The thought of driving north through the sloping valleys, beyond the state line and the congested blight of urban life-his urban Ylfe-inspired expansive feelings.

Now in the heat, far more intense here on the plains, he was full of doubts. Had he really driven two hours for a fifteen-minute conversation that in all likelihood would not occur? He would accomplish nothing beyond a moment's discomfort for both of them.

Thinking better of that, Sonny had probably decided not to come. He'sat up on the car trunk with his face to the sun-the first lick of scorching summer heat he had felt-and then, when he grew uncomfortably warm, trudged down again and scouted about the cabin.

It could not have been more than three rooms, perhaps only two. Down in the wash, it was bordered on two sides by a deep veranda in which half the punky boards had been replaced; the roof was supported by greenish treated standards. At the farthest comer, where the wild bushes and other growth of the ravine rose against the house, a round contraption had been carved into the porch. Stern bent to inspect the knobs and rubber hoses; there was a canvas cover across it.

He was there when he heard the gravel spurned above. By the time he walked around, Sonny Klonsky was charging down the stairs from the roadside. Her arms were full, with two grocery bags and half a dozen children's books, and seeing Stern, she bothered with no greeting but threw him, rather, a harried conspiratorial look of complete exasperation. The door to the cabin proved to be unlocked and she ran inside.

The ride apparently had been a long one for a woman midterm.

When Stern turned about, a boy was watching him, five or six years old, wearing a striped T-shirt and blue jeans, a dark-eyed, freckle-faced fellow with a bowl-shaped do of perfect silky haft and a look of cheerless curiosity.

"Sam?" asked Stern. He never had any idea how he remembered these things.

The boy toed the dirt and shied away. Stern climbed the ties braced into the earth, which formed the stairway up, prepared to greet Sam's father. The boy had climbed into the front seat of an old yellow Volkswagen, a convertible, where there was no other passenger. Stern asked about his father and the boy murmured an inaudible response. "Not coming?" asked Stern.

Sam, chin tucked down, waggled his head.

"No." Sonny spoke behind Stern and moved somewhat wearily back into the sun. "The poet's in climacteric, or whatever it is. The grip of inspiration." She pulled Sam by the shoulder from the car and introduced him to Stern, then reached into the back seat. There were two sleeping bags there, more groceries, and a single large piece of softsided luggage. Stern helped her carrad the items down to the cabin. "I hope you did not make this trip simply for me."

"I came for Sam," said Sonny. Entering the stale-smelling dark of the cabin, she faced Stern with a look that did not fully contain the nerve of her lingering anger. "And his father can go fuck himself."

"Oh, dear," said Stern.

"Oh, dear," said Sonny. She threw the packages down on a worn table.

The cabin was a simple affair. The plank floor had been painted; the studs had been paneled over in knotty pine. The central room was occupied by a cable,-spool table and painted chairs, and a double bed with a wrought-iron frame and a clean chenille spread. To the left was a bath and another small room. The old stained toilet with its black seat made a tremendous clatter, recovering from recent use.

In a mewling voice, the boy was pestering her about something.

"Yes, all right." She opened a window, then turned without stopping and went back out the door. Stern heard her moving heavily on the porch, then a deep bowel-like Amble beneath the cabin floor. From the rear window, he could look up to the wooded'crest of the ravine, the bosks cAwned in light.

When the wind blew, there was a wonderful scent.

"Are those raspberries back there?" Stern asked, when she returned.

"Oh, yes. The strawberry field is back that way, too, another hundred yards. Acres of them. They make the air sweet, don't they?"

"The aroma is splendid."

"I hope you don't mind, but I promised Sam I'd take him picking right after lunch. Some of us have had a few disappointments today." Her eyes drifted off to the boy, who must have fussed badly about his father.

"Of course," said Stern.

"You're welcome to come. Or you can look around in town."

He made no response, but he had, he realized, not the slightest inclination to depart. Stern did not have what might be called an outdoor wardrobe. He wore a pair of golf slacks and a cotton placket shirt with some animal embroidered at the breast. Casual attire suited him poorly.

Even in the dark colors recommended to the overweight, he cut a figure of awkward proportions and looked a Fattie like a plum. Nonetheless, he was in the out-of-doors, the wilds to him, and ready for adventure.

Sonny stirred among the bags until she found-a jar of peanut butter and sat down at the table to prepare the boy's sandwich. She offered Stern lunch, but he had eaten on the road. Watching her move about, you could see the toll of multiple responsibilities: lawyer, caretaker, weekend traveler; pregnant person. The fight with her husbandma bloody one, apparently-had left her drained. Her body seemed to have contracted a bit about her abdomen; she stumbled on, solid-looted, without grace. In the heavy summery air, her cheeks were rosy and her full, pretty face almost radiated heat. She wore shorts and a sleeveless blouse. She lifted her dark hair off her neck at moments to air herself.

Sam, called back in to the table, assailed his food with unwashed hands.

He was quiet in a stranger's presence, interrupting his silence only to ask at one point, "Did you?"

"Ye-es," she said, as if she were giving in. Sam was in love With the hot tub, she explained. As the boy ate, Stern asked a bit about the cabin, how often they were here. The property, including the strawberry field, had f6rmerly belonged to Charlie's parents, people of means who used it as a summer retreat. When they moved to Palm Springs, Charlie wanted only this, a shack that had housed migrants before Charlie's father turned it into a refuge for himself.

Charlie, Sonny said, had retained the faith of the sixties and believed that owning things was a pain in the ass.

"There's some kind of covenant. When the Braces sold, everybody agreed their family could always harvest the fields they'd planted for personal consumption. You can be the honorary Charlie for today. I'm sure it will be an improvement," she added, in a heavy sarcastic tone he had not heard from her before. She cleared Sam's plate and brought out a number of plastic buckets from below the sink. Sam grabbed his at once and begged her to hurry, but Sonny paused, tying a bandanna across her forehead. She extended a bucket to Stern, then took a ragged straw hat from a shelf and without ceremony placed it on his head.

"You'll need this for the sun."

"Shall I look in a mirror?"

"It'S magnificent," she said. "Trust me." She reached up again to angle the brim and gave him a merry look. For a second she seemed, despite her heavy form, winsome as a cheerleader, the kind of girl who would be grabbed and whirled about by some fellow, even though there was probably not a moment in her life when she'd been that sort of woman, and Lord knew, he had never been that kind of man.

Then he followed Sonny and the boy from the dank cabin, and entered blinking into the potent daylight, his heart flopping about with a kind of febrile stirring.

Pregnant, Sonny nonetheless remained far more agile than he; the boy, of course, climbed like a mountain goat. They plunged briefly into the woods and up a steep trail in the ravine. Stern, straining, puffing a bit, followed them back into the sunlight. After a few hundred feet of deep 'weeds, burned yellow already, they came to another graveled road.

It curved, dry and white, beside the Ylmitless acres of the farm, the low plants rising out of their hummocks in perfect ranks, the berries hanging red and luminous, bright as jewels. Sam reached to Sonny and then, by force of habit, extended the other hand, small and grimy, to Stern, who took it as well. So, he thought, st'dl dazzled by the. light and the overpowering heat. He had no sense of direction. The cabin was somewhere behind them, but he had no inclination to look back.

Holding Sam's hand, he crossed the road and began walking with them into the strawberry field.

"When I was twenty," Sonny said, "I wanted to meet somebody who was perfect. Now that I'm past forty, I just wonder if anyone is normal."

As they walked into the field, she went on unburdening herself, her gestures emphatic, speaking in her unguarded way about her husband. She seemed to be at one of those impasses in her marriage where she suddenly viewed her husband as she might a neighbor observed from an undisclosed vantage, say a window or a terrace, seeing him only as a peculiar unfathomable individual who lived nearby.

"His passion for what is actually happening is only to the extent he can reduce it to expression. You know?" She looked back to Stern, wearing .her bandanna, squinting in the sun. Down the rows of the strawberry field, Sam ran in gym shoes and jeans, his feet kicking out, the yellow bucket bouncing at his side. His thin voice carded back to them in a swell of wind. "And the point of expression is so that he has things in control. I'm sure that's why he's not here."

"What's that?" Stern was losing her, much as he tried. She was speaking for the most part to herself.

"Pure jealousy. Can you believe it?" Trudging along, she laughed: the notion was ridiculous. Briefly, Stern felt an tinidentifiable twinge.

"I think the idea of meeting you was more than he could stand. You know, my adversary-it sounds so professional. He can't conceive of me with a life apart from him, paying attention to anyone but him. I don't know how he'll live with a baby."

"I apologize. This is certainly my fault for being so insistent," said Stern.

"Oh, it's my fault," she said. "It's mine. Believe me. I was up all night, realizing that for the one billionth time. I think. my mother made me feel obliged to put up with temperamental people."

Listening to Sonny, who was twisted about by impulse and emotion-beseeching, beleaguered, ironic, angry-it struck Stern that Clara and he had-had the benefit of certain good fortune. In his time, the definitions were clearer. Men and women of middle-class upbringing anywhere in the Western world desired to marry, to bear and rear children. Et cetera. Everyone traveled along the same ruts in the road.

But for Sonny, marrying late in life, in the New Era, everything was a matter of choice. She got up in the morning and started from scratch, wondering about relationships, marriage, men, the erratic fellow she'd chosen-who, from her description, still seemed to be half a boy. He was reminded of Marta, who often said she would find a male companion just as soon as she figured out what she needed one for.

"How long is it you two have known each other, you and your husband?"

Stern asked. He was a few feet away from her, kneeling awkwardly to look at the plants.

She gave him instructions on how to harvest the.fruit. The overripe berries, dark as blood, looked wonderful but would not hold. "And you may as well roll your pant legs up.

There's no pride out here and a lot of dust and mud. What did you ask me?"

He repeated the question.

"We've only been married a few years, ff that's what you meant, but I've known him forever. It was a doomed relationship right from the start. I was his T.A. in Freshman English. The people in the EngYsh Department were scandalized when I started going out with him. Well, not scandalized. That department wasn't scandalized by anything, but they thought it was pretty odd."

"He was a freshman?"

"An older freshman, in my defense. He'd been in the service. But he was irresistible. He's very dark, very big, very quiet. It was like someone put a mountain down in my classroom." Sonny in the great heat shook her head, apparently overcome by the memory. "Talk about romantic. How could I resist a man who came back from Vietnam with poems hidden in the pockets of his camouflage outfits? I wanted to believe that poetry could transform the world, but Charlie really did.

Have you ever known anyone like that?"

"My brother, I would say. He was a poet," said Stern, who had just finished rolling his trousers, exposing a row of pale flesh over his black nylon hose. He must have looked worse than a scarecrow. The straw hat she'd given him was too large and rcsted unevenly on his ears.

"Honestly?"

"Oh yes, a young one. He wrote romantic verse in a number of languages. ! believe he was quite gifted. My sister still has Jacobo's poems somewhere. I would like to read them again someday, but just now it would be a melancholy experience." He took on momentarily the stung look he could not avoid from time to time, a close expression of admittexi pain.

"He passed away?"

"Long ago. I seldom speak of him, actually. But he was an extraordinary figuestined for greatness. He was the most remarkable young man. Handsome, bright. He wrote poems. He declaimed in public.

He was a prize scholar. And he was also quite a rogue. That was an important aspect of his character. Always in the midst of one misadventure or another. Filching fruit from a stand. For a period when he was sixteen, he would sneak out at night to keep company with the mother of one of his friends."

Sonny. made a lascivious sound: Oo la la. "He sounds as if he was something."

"That he was," said Stern, and repeated the phrase. "He was the child the world adored. I felt this, of course, as a terrible weight, being the younger brother." In his parents' home, his brother as the first-born and a son had assumed a natural centrality, a regal primogeniture.

Handsome, outgoing, willful, Jacobo had in one fashion or another overpowered everyone. Their mother lived under his spell basking in each achievement, and their father was no more capable of confronting Jacobo than anyone else. Even as a child, Jacobo had more or less run the household, his moods and passions governing them all like the tolling grandfather clock in the front hall. At the age of fiftysix Stern Could still recall his jealousy. There was probably no fury in his life like the rush of emotion Jacobo had inspired. Stern, too, was dominated by him, awestruck but also wildly resentful. Jacobo was often cruel. He relished Alejandro's admiration, but he would not allow any equal in his domain. How many times did they enact the same scene, where Alejandro wept in humiliation and.rage, and Jacobo laughed a bit before yielding to comfort him? Che, pibe. "The entire life of my household-my mother's especially-was at an end after he died." ' He stood straight and rubbed his knees. In the heat and wind, he felt a dreamy vagueness. The field of fruit, the irrigated furrows and the plants rising from the hills of straw, stretched in all directions into the dusty haze.

There was not another soul around, not another voice, except for Sam's, and the birds', and the drone of planes approaching a country airfield ten or twenty miles away.

Argentina, he thought suddenly. Its cruel history, its fateful cycles of hope and repression, pained him like a crushing hold applied to a vital place; it was always that way. He seldom thought of any of this, and when he did, the memories filled him with an ardor, fresh as any lover's, for the United States.

There were cousins left down there who prospered generally, but had also suffered terribly; they wrote once a year, sending money, which Stern invested for them in bank accounts here.

"How old was he then?" Sonny asked of Jacobo. "'Seventeen years four months."

"How horrible. What happened?"

"One of those terrible tales of impulsive youth. He fell in with a Zionist crowd. Wealthy young Jewish people. My mother was thrilled at first by such impressive comradeship. When she' eventually realized how strong Jacobo's attachments were, it was too late to retrieve him.

This was in the midst of World War II. Argentina was supposedly neutral, but tilted toward the Axis, and these were politically dangerous views to hold. Jacobo decided that he would go to Palestine fight with Haganah. He could not be dissuaded. He knew, like everyone else, that he was dstined to be a hero. There were thirty of them. We went down to s them off and the boat truly looked as if it would sink before it left the harbor. My mother wept; she knew she would never see him again. And she did not. The Germans said the Allies had sunk the boat; the Allies blamed the Germans. Perhaps it was a storm. We never knew."

Here amid the acres, thinking of all of this, spewing of what was lost and so momentous, he saw his present life as vulnerable as a paper construction. In Sonny's company, there was, for whatever reason, less sadness. But it was like letting your finertips drift along the raised features of a relief-he could feel the textures and recognized again his deepest secret, that without Clara, with the children grown, he had been left with no fundamental alliance. He could sense the desperate struggle every day had been, doing what had been done before with a determined effort to give it no reflection. Far from the city and those routines, he was strongly under the influence of this heartyStates.

There were cousins left down there who prospered generally, but had also suffered terribly; they wrote once a year, sending money, which Stern invested for them in bank accounts here.

"How old was he then?" Sonny asked of Jacobo. "'Seventeen years four months."

"How horrible. What happened?"

"Charlie's not that kind of magnetic personality. He believes in the lives of the poets. A higher essence. He doesn't want to live like everybody else. He's grim and silent and -if you ask his wife-deliberately difficult."

Stern, straddling the row, reared his head to smile at her.

He had moved on quite a distance from their starting point, stirring under the leaves and pulling, and Sonny just now was following him along, eating idly from her bucket. The fruit, baked by the sun, was-wild with fragrance and incredibly sweet, gliding and soft on the tongue.

"It's not all that funny. We tried to live together for ten years and it never worked. Somebody was always moving out."

"There was a change eventually, I take it."

"When I got sick. Charlie showed up at the hospital with a bunch of posies and begged me to marry him. Begged-and I hardly needed to be begged at that point." She had a few berries in her hand and she stepped over a row to drop them in Stern's bucket. She made a remark: the stooping killed her back. Across her forehead, the bandanna had been darkened by' sweat. Sam appeared at just that moment, as he had from time to time, holding aloft a huge berry. Both Stern and she took an instant to extol the prize. "He was very convincing. And you know how it is-it's a crisis, you think you're looking right to the center of things. I figured I loved Charlie, he loved me. The rest of it was detalia." She shook her head. "Nobody promises us we'll be happy, do they?"

"No," said Stern.

"No," she said. "Anyway, it was very complicated by then."

"I imagine," said Stern quietly. He saw that this Charlie was due some commendation, hav/lng the heart to beg for the hand of a woman whose life hung in the balance.

"Oh, it wasn't what you'd think." She seemed to be smiling.

"He was married," Sonny said. "I told you: there were details."

"Hmm." Stern took an instant, adjusting. "Sam's mother?"

"That's right. He married her after one of our breakups.

As I said, it's been an up-and-down relationship."

"Well you know the sayings," said Stern. "Which ones?"

"Many. 'True love never did mn smooth'?" Sonny shrugged.

The thought was not consoling, "How did you meet your wife?"

"Oh, that." Stern lifted a hand, prepared to consign the story to the ineffable, and then thought better of it, that it would be, in a word, unfair. "I worked for Clara's father.

He let me office space. One thing led to another."

"And what was not smooth?"

"Most everything. You can imagine the complications when a penniless immigrant falls in love with the boss's daughter"

"Her parents objected?"

Stern made a sound, still not quite able, even thirty years later, to withstand the recollection of the disruption.

"And they never accepted you?"

"On the contrary. After I married Clara, her father offered to take me into his practice. He was quite prominent. I lived in dread of him but envied his success, and was much too callow to refuse."

"So what happened?"

"We learned a bit about each other. Eventually, we had a serious disagreement."

"Over what? Can I ask?"

"Oh, this is a very embarrassing story," said Stern. He stood up to face her, adjusting the hat on his head. The rim was shot round with straw bands that had come loose and scratched his forehead when he moved. "One day my fatherin-law called me into his office and told me there was a file he wanted me to steal from the county courthouse. A divorce matter for an important client, in which the husband had managed to sue first. This was th'uy years ago, and the request was not quite as unthinkable as it might be today, but it remained a serious matter."

"You're kidding! And your relationship fell apart when you refused?"

"No, our relationship suffered when I did as he asked. We knew much too much about one another then. He knew how craven I was; I knew that he was corrupt. I suppose that having the courage to do that convinced me that I could walk out on Henry, too.." Stern glanced over to Klonsky. He had never told that story to another mortal soul, not even to Clara, whose loyalties, so early in their marriage, he could not fully depend on.

Sonny had now sat down with the bucket between her knees, her face bright with the heat, massaging her 1owe back. It seemed they had passed the point where he could shock her; if he went marauding naked down the rows, she would nod and accept it with the same placid smile as a further exchange of intimacies.

He bent again-the brightest berries were beneath the leaves, resting just above the straw beddings-but he remained under the charm of his own story. For a short time, his image of Henry with his braces and his white widow's peak was as clear as if.he were only a row or two over. He had been as brazen in this request as in so many other things, putting it to Stern right in front of the client, a -1ooking woman in a tight blond hairdo and a dark green suit. Stera had wondered a bit about Henry's relationship with her. It was well known that Henry was not a man of perfect virtue; but that question, like many others, went unanswered. 'Oh, don't look at me that way,' said Henry. 'This stuff is done all the time. I give Griffin McKenna one hundred dollars every Christmas to make sure no one does it on any of the bank's cases, and half the-goddamn files disappear anyway." But you have to sign for the file, Stern noted. 'Are they going to look at your dog tags? Write down a name. Jones.

Jablonsky, for Chrissake. Just make damn certain that you don't write down Mittler-or even Stern, for that matter." For some reason, this recollection seemed to have been edging up on him for days. Then he remembered: John. and Dixon. Amid the present amity, the thought was troubling and he immediately put it aside.

"He sounds like he was a pretty tough customer."

"Oh, he was. No question about that. I have not met many men tougher than Henry. He reminded me of certain policemen. In some ways, he seemed to be made of stone.

Resolute. This was how it was. Punkt."

"Did Clara like him?"

"Ah, well. Now that is another question." For a moment, he turned his attention to the plant; this picking,' hard on the back and thighs, was satisfying work, quickly rewarding, and tempting in its own way. He found a berry large as a small apple and showed it to her. "Clara had strong feelings for him. She sat by his bed weeping when he died.

At many other times, in earlier years, she reviled him, and probably in stronger terms than most children criticize or rebuke their parents."

"That sounds like my mother and me," said Sonny. A wind, most welcome, came up then and raised dust in a revenant form down the road. When he looked back to Sonny, she had her eyes closed and both hands placed over the full shape in her middle. He was afraid that she was in pain, but it became clear quickly that it was, instead, resolve which gripped her.

"God," she said. "God, I am going to do better." She Opened her eyes then and greeted him with a magnificent smile-happy to be here, to have survived it all, to swear her vows and to see him sharing this, their acre of common ground.

LATE in the afternoon, with Stern carrying all the buckets, the three of them returned from the straw, berry field. The wind had turned suddenly, fresh-ened by some northerly impulse. When they reached the cabin, Sonny sat heavily in a chair and laid the backs of her hands across her eyes.

Stern suggested she lie down.

"Would you mind?" she asked. "Just for a few minutes?

Then you can try to have that talk with me."

"Sam and I shall make do."

"You can wash the strawberries," she said. "Sam enjoys that. And Sam-check the hot tub. Make sure everything is okay."

The kitchen sink was joined unceremoniously to the rear wall, without any cabinetry to hide the plumbing. The boy stood on an old bentwood chair and insisted on holding each berry under the running tap.. Laconic when Stern arrived, he now went on with five-year-old officiousness, issuing an unbreaking string of commands.

"Don't take the green thing out till you eat them."

"I see."

"They get rotting.",

"I see."

"Then get them dry but don't squish them."

"Certainly not."

When the berries were bagged and refrigerated, Sam offered to show Stern his cave in the ravine. Stern called twice to Sonny but she did not respond and they. left the cabin quietly.

Sam's cave was in the hollowed trunk of an old oak. The boy had built a nest of sorts out of dried leaves and twigs and in an empty fliptop cigarette box had stored two or three plastic figures with gargoyle faces and muscular bodies of a resilient resin. Sam told Stern their names-each apparently was an important cartoon star-and spent quite some time heavily engaged in the staging of various interplanetary wars, which Stern observed from the safety of a resting place in the crotch of a birch tree about thirty feet away. Cowboys and Indians, the pastime of his children's early years, was now banned on political grounds.

Villains these days were alien species, and, rather than six-guns, firearms were lazer-mazers that evaporated all objects with a bright red beam. The game ended abruptly when the boy turned from his pieces.

"I'm hungry," he said.

"After all those strawberries?"

Sam tossed up his hands and repeated that he was hungry.

"I am sure Sonny will make you some dinner. Shall we see if she is awake?"

Inside the cabin, however, no one was stirring. Stern called to her softly and Sam added his voice at more telling volume. Stern hushed him and, after holding the boy back, crept alone to the small rear room where she lay uncovered on a narrow folding cot, still rosy with the heat but solidly asleep. Her hair was dark against her skin and one leg of her shorts had crept far up her thigh, showing some of the soft weight of pregnancy. Sonia Klonsky, his energetic antagonist, slept with the adorable soft innocence of a child, her pink mouth tenderly parted.

Briefly, Stern, without reflection, raised the back of his hand gently to her cheek.

When he turned, Sam was watching from the open doorway.

"I want to to be certain she is not sick," Stern whispered. at once.

But he felt his heart knocking and he heard an urgent note in his voice.

The boy, however, required no explanation.

"I'm hungry," he said again, somewhat pathetically. Stern raised a finger to his4ips and ushered Sam out, "Do you know how to make dinner?"

"What is it you wish, Sam?"

"Hot dog and potato chips."

"That may be within my range."

They ate two hot dogs apiece. Sam was a garrulous, free-flow talker except when he ate, an activity he undertook briefly but with great concentration. When he was done, he resumed conversation, relating, in response to questions, that he was five and a half, went to all-day kindergarten at the Brementon School, and could read, a/though he was not supposed to He was a remarkable child, full of a warm, seeking intelligence. That brightness lit him up like a candle and gave him a physical radiance which, in a person so young, amounted to beauty.

He considered Stern through a single squinted eye.

"What's your name again?"

"Sandy."

"Sandy, can I go in the hot tub after dinner?" 'J'You must ask Sonny, after she is up."

"I always go."

"Sam, not so loud. You will wake her."

As the light dwindled, Stern and Sam played Battleship.

Sam, most impressively, understood all the rules, although he treated them with occasional indifference. At one point, as Stern marked out the location of one of the boy's destroyers, he erased furiously on his page.

"Sam, I believe your ships must remain where you placed them."

"See, I was really going to put it somewhere else." He pointed to the page.

"I see," said Stern.

"I really was."

"Very well." Peter, Stern recalled, had refused to obey the rules of any game until he was past ten. He cheated with' alarming guile and cried furiously whenever he lost, particularly to his father. After Sam's triumph in Battleship, they played a number of hands of Go Fish. Sam was a canny player, but was interested only in making books of picture cards. He did not care to hold ace through ten.

"I wanna go in the hot tub," he told Stern.

"When Sonny wakes up." Stern had checked on her again from the doorway only a few minutes before.

"I'll have to go to bed then."

"I see. What is it you do in the hot tub, Sam?" 'Look at the stars."

"Perhaps we can look at the stars, nonetheless."

"All right." He climbed down from his chair at once, ignoring the hand in play.

On the veranda, Stern found two splintered rockers and they sat side by side. The change of wind had pushed off the haze and the country sky was clear and magnificent. The air, after the heat of the day, was almost brisk. Sam had read a number of books about astronomy and at the ae of five spoke about "the heavens." He knew the names of a number of constellations and demanded that Stern orient him to each.

"Where' s Cassiopeia?"

Oh dear, thought Stern. Cassiopeia. He had not spent many evenings in his life studying the night skies. "Over there, I beFeve."

"That one?"

"Yes."

"Sort of blue?"

"Yes."

"That's a planet."

"Ah," said Stern.

The boy accepted this failure without complaint. Stern had forgotten that-that it was not rivalry or a showdown that Sam was after, just information. ff it was unavailable here, there would be better sources soon enough.

"I'm cold."

"Would you like your jacket?"

"Can I sit in your lap?"

"Of course." Stern boosted the boy beneath his arms, and he settled in at once, lolling back against his chest and belly. Dear God, the sensation. He had forgotten. To be able to fold yourself about this life in the making. The small limbs; the waxy odor of;his hair after time in the woods. Stern put both arms about the boy and let Sam nestle against him.

"Is the sun a star?" asked Sam. "So they say."

"Are the stars hot?"

"They must be."

"Could you drive a jet plane through a star if you went real fast?"

"I suspect not, Sam. The stars are hot enough to bum up most anything."

"Anything? Like the whole earth?" Sam now had a troubled look. Stern wondered if he was telling him inore than he should. "What if you poured like jillions and jillions of gallons of water on it?"

"That undoubtedly would work," said Stern.

The boy was still watching him. "Are you joking me?"

"Joking? NO. Is that a joke.9"

"You're joking me," the boy insisted. He pressed his finger in Stern's belly, as often seemingly had been done to him.

"Well, perhaps a little."

Sam turned around and rested again against his chest.

Was it possible? Stern thought in a swift rush of emotion.

Was it truly possible? Could he start again and do it better on this go-through? Oh, but this was mad. With the small boy somehow coursing against him, Stern closed his eyes in the great country darkness and wrestled despair.

How, truly, could this be occurring? He saw more and more clearly how fixed his feelings were, how set he was on a path of absolute lunacy. He could not prevent a brief sound from escaping.

In a moment, Sam turned back.

"Can I go in the hot tub? Please," he said. "Please please please."

"Sam, I know nothing about hot tubs."

"I do. I'll show you. It's easy." He slithered away and ran down the veranda. "It's full and everything."

Stern drifted over. The tub protruded about a foot above the level of the porch. Sam had already eased off the canvas cover. The water temperature was moderate, apparently for Sam's benefit. What, after all, was the harm?

Sam hugged him the instant he agreed and immediately shed his clothes. Fully naked, he dipped in a toe. "Come on," he said.

"Pardon me?"

"Come on. Get your clothes off."

"Thank you, Sam. I do not care to get into the hot tub."

The boy gaped. "You have to. Sonny says I can't go in without a grownup. I'm only five years old, you know."

"Yes," said Stern. He stood a moment and stared at the moon, just rising and visible through the fingerlet branches of the trees of the ravine. He had lost control over most everything sometime ago. In the dark, he kicked off his shoes and loosened his belt.

As life had repeatedly shown him, there was usually something to other people's pleasures. However suspect it seemed, the hot tub was enchanting. Little foggy wisps rose in the moonlight and the ihin evening air was genre as a breath. His large body felt lighter, submerged in the dark.

Stern sat on a bench inside the tub and Sam crouched beside him to keep his chin above the water's level.

"When is Sonny gonna get up?"

"Soon, Sam. She must have been very tired."

"She's going to have a baby," said Sam. It was the first mention he had made of the subject. "So I understand," said Stern. "Is she sick?"

"No," said Stern.

"You said she was sick."

"No, I said I Wanted to be-sure she was not sick." What would he tell his father of what he observed? Or Sonny, for that matter? For the moment, that concern, like many others, seemed capable' of passing. "Do you go to Sonny's,work?"

"In a fashion."

"Sometimes, if someone does something bad, the good people have to tell them they did something bad."

Stern thought of adding a defense perspective but answered finally,

"Yes."

Sam suddenly stood straight up, shining like a fish in the moon's light. He hung his head over the edge of the tub.

"Uh-oh," Sam said.

"What?", Stern feared that the tub might be leaking. "No towels."

Together they groaned in the dark.

It was Stern who, after a brief disagreement was appointed to return to the cabin. Wearing only his boxer shorts, he saw in the mirror on the back of the bathroom door that his seat was sopping. He could hear Sonny a few feet away, grumbling a bit in her sleep.

Sam was wrapped and dried and placed in his pajamas. Before going to sleep, he demanded a story. In his backpack was a comic book depicting a protracted battle between two television characters, a blond hulk and a hooded creature who resembled a skeleton. They were dressed in medieval costumes but were located in outer space in the distant future and traded threats. The blond triumphed; that much had not changed.

The boy lay down, then drew himself up again, full of the familiar curiosity of bedtime.

"Sandy," he said, "does good always win?"

"Excuse me."

"Does good always win?" the boy repeated.

Stern was not certain if this was apropos of the story or their conversation before. He nearly asked what Sam was referring to but restrained himself with the thought that it was unseemly to be evasive with a five-year-old. Marta used to venture questions like this. Peter did as well, probably, but in his case they were put.solely to his mother. "No," Stern said finally. "Not always."

"It does on TV," the boy said. This was offered in part as refutation.

"Well, it should win," said Stern. "That is what the television is showing you."

"Why doesn't it win?"

"It does not always lose. It wins often. But it does not win evehe good people have to tell them they did something bad."

Stern thought of adding a defense perspective but answered finally,

"Yes."

Sam suddenly stood straight up, shining like a fish in the moon's light. He hung his head over the edge of the tub.

"Uh-oh," Sam said.

"What?", Stern feared that the tub might be leaking. "No towels."

Together they groaned in the dark.

The boy lay down, then drew himself up again, full of the familiar curiosity of bedtime.

"Sandy," he said, "does good always win?"

"Excuse me."

"Does good always win?" the boy repeated.

"It does on TV," the boy said. This was offered in part as refutation.

"Well, it should win," said Stern. "That is what the television is showing you."

"Why doesn't it win?"

"It does not always lose. It wins often. But it does not win every time."

"Why not?"

"Sometimes the other side is stronger. Sometimes both sides are good in part." Sometimes neither, Stern thought. In the midst of this, he could not keep himself from thinking of Dixon. He looked at the boy. "Sam, who talks to you about this, about good winning?"

"It's on TV," said Sam innocently. He had no notion that he had engaged in an abstraction. "How much does good win?" he asked. "A lot?"

"A lot," said Stern. He had meant to answer, As often as it loses. But he felt this was inappropriate and perhaps not even correct. There was no place for brutal honesty with a child. Everyone felt that. It was taken in the Western countries as a rule of nature. So we raise our children with love and comfort for a future they can only find disappointing. He told Sam it was time to sleep.

"Thank you for keeping me company, Sam."

"Sure." He lay down and popped up again. "Wait a second."

He clambered from the bed, searched his bag, and came back with a small stuffed bear and a yellow piece of blanket.

Passing by, he kissed Stern as naturally as if he had been doing it forever, and then right before Stern's eyes laid himself down and was instantly asleep.

A child asleep, a woman asleep, and Mr. Alejandro Stern in sole waking possession of a still home. It had been many years since he had felt this particular'pleasure. He sat at the cable-spool table and ate a bowl of strawberries, listening to Sam's husky breath and, now and then as a distant counterpoint, a sighing sob from SonnY. Oh, he was pretending. He knew that. Nothing was truly hidden from himself. But he was enjoying it far to much to depart. He again wandered outside to the veranda. His wet underwear had begun to chafe, and after some reflection, he retrieved his towel inside, undressed once more, and hung his shorts on the branch of a tree, hoping the breeze would dry them before the long ride home. Then he resumed his place in the hot tub.

The moon had risen fully and loomed over the ravine, full of tricks and magic. All his troubles waited for him in the city, in the daylight.

For just this instant, watching the wisps wraith off the water, he was free.

It was only a few minutes before he heard the screen door bang.

"There you are." Her voice in the dark came from somewhere behind him.

He turned in one direction, then the other, and still did not see her.

"I thought you'd left until

I saw the car. How long was I asleep?"

About five hours, he told her.

"Oh God." Sonny was at the corner of the porch, keeping her distance in an effort to be discreet. "I'm so sorry. What did you do with Sam all that time? Did you feed him?"

Stern described their activities. "He is a splendid young fellow.

Bright as a firecracker."

"His father's son."

"No doubt."

"I don't think much of'Rebecca, his mother. But she's done great things with Sam. I don't quite understand it. It seems like you can't predict who the good parents will be: It frightens me."

"You will fare well, Sonny. I am sure of it." Gradually, she had approached. She was now a few feet from the tub and took the last few steps at once. She stooped a bit and her hand lingered in the dark water.

"God, it's nice. Sam helped you figure it out?"

"He was quite insistent on getting in here,"

"We do everything to encourage him. He doesn't seem to recognize yet that it's the same water that's in the bathtub."

"It was only after I had finally agreed to let him do this that he informed me that I was required to join him. But I must say, it is most pleasant. After he was in bed, I could not let the opportunity pass.

Here I am on a Saturday night in the woods. The sky is clear, the moon is full. The solitude is magnificent."

She inclined her head to look, as Stern'had, at the stars.

She was quiet a second.

"Will you die if I come in there?"

The shock of cold emotion, terror really, went through him like a bolt of iron. He shook his head before he spoke.

"No, no," he said.

"Because, look. I mean, people have different attitudes.

You can just say it's too embarrassing."

"No, no," Stern said again. He was not sure he was capable of more.

When she began to slide off her shirt, Stern looked away, studying the tremorous movement of certain dark branches in the wind. But even this effort at discretion was not a full success. In the extended half of the cabin's casement window, he noticed a clear reflection and, turning back, caught, even against his will, just the slightest glimpse of her form, licked in the moon's bluish cast. It was no more than her upper torso as she eased into the bath, the smooth swell of the other life, and the lopsided proportions of her chest, where the fine blue light clung to the smoothness of her scarred left side, the visible ribs looking a bit like piano keys; like all things human, the sight was far more' bearable than he had imagined. She settled in the bath and shook her hair free.

"Ah, this is great."

"I feared you had heat stroke."

"Just tired."

She reached over and laid her hand very briefly on his forearm. "It was nice out there."

"Yes."

"I'm glad we've become friends."

"As well."

These things came out of Sonny trippingly; she spoke from the heart as a regular matter. For him, it was all a muddle. He felt, as so often in his life, the importam moment, the one of high emotion, deep feeling, sliding beyond him, not merely beyond control but wholly out of reach.

He would never stop being himself.

"Can I tell you a story that will embarrass you?" she asked.

"If you believe I can stand it."

"I think you can." She looked off in the darkness. "When I was in law school, I went down to watch you in court. When you were defending Judge sabich. I was there every day. It was like close-up magic. You know-how it doesn't really matter whether the balls are disappearing, because it truly is magic that human skill can make it look that way?

That's how I felt. I didn't care whether he was guilty or innocent. I just wanted to be able to do what you did. What do you think of that?"

"I think you are most kind to tell me." She peered over; he could see she did not understand, and he inched somewhat lower in the tub. "I find it difficult, of late, to think of my professional life as an example to anyone. Given its costs. ' ' "Are you talking about your wife?"

He made a sound.

"Huh," Sonny said. She was quiet. "Is there something you could have done?"

"Paid greater attention."

She did not seem inclined to respond, and he was quickly seized by a fear that she found this morose or, worse, self-pitying. For a second she disappeared, plunging beneath the surface of the water and came up glistening, shedding water and light, bubbling her lips and smoothing her hair. "You know what I think?" she asked.. "What is that?"

"I think you can only be yourself." She wrong out her hair.

Was this the thought for the night? Stern wondered. "I tell myself that a thousand times a day. Everybody's screwed up.

And things happen that screw you up worse. You get cancer.

Or somebody dies. But you do your best. I would give anything to be a lawyer as good as you are, to think I did something important that well.

I mean, look at what you've done."

"I look," he said, "and feel that I could have done better."

"Then do better next time."

"With the next life?"

"With the next part of this one."

That was, he realized, the only answer, the sole sane response. This, too, seemed to be a repetitive theme.

"And remember," she said, "that you're an example to people like me."

"You flatter me."

"I mean it."

He looked over to Sonny. She had laid her arm on the back of the tub and he touched her most briefly, as she had touched him. Then he went on.

"Apparently, I was not example enough, in as much as you chose the wrong side."

She drew back, as he expected. "Is this humor?"

"Of course."

"Oh." She smiled, shirking off the sense of injury. "I always thought I'd become a defense lawyer. But prosecutors have so much power. To do good things, you know-not just bad"

"Of course," he said again. "I admire the rectitude for which prosecutors stand."

"But you wouldn't think-of doing it?"

"I have thoughts. But my view-purely an idiosyncratic one, I stress-is that I would only be doing further damage to what is already smashed and broken. Understand, I truly believe yours is a job that must be done-but better not by me."

"Is the story true, then?"

"What story is that?"

"That you turned down the offer to be U.S. Attorney before they gave the job to Stan?"

He waited, reflecting. "Is that worn-oUt rumor circulating again?"

She knew she was being put off.

"I'm not asking so I can tell someone else." With all her terrible pride, she was, he saw, somewhat offended. "I have a reason for wanting to know."

He described his meeting with the senator's aide in a few sentences. "I was never told that I was the first choice. I have no idea who would have been selected, even had I been disposed."

"You know it would have been you," she said, "and so does Stun.! think that bothers him. A lot," she added.

Stern privately had long harbored the same view. She was pensive, and then dipped again beneath the water.

"I'm getting out," she said when she emerged. "The o.b. doesn't like me in here for more than ten minutes."

Stern turned away to stare at the moon and the darkness.

"When you're ready," she said behind him, "we can have that talk." He heard her pad off and, after telling himself not to, turned to watch her go, with her bundled clothes clutched to her chest, her hair dripping, the broadened lower proportions of her form still a becoming sight, wet and shining, as she retreated.

In a minute, he rose. He was on the edge of the tub, in his full naked glory, when Sonny leaned out the window with another towel. "You should see the look on your face," she said, and hung the towel on the window frame. He could hear her laughing inside as she walked away.

When he came in, she was in a white terry-cloth robe, combing out her hair at the cable-spool table. Un-made-up, undone, she remained herself, strong and. pretty, confident of her own appeal. She went to the bed to move Sam to the smaller room, but Stern insisted on carrying him and, with Sonny directing, bore the warm, small form to the cot in the adjacent room. Sam remained miles off in the profound grasp of a child's sleep.

"Strawberries? Cottage cheese?" Sonny was eating and the food was on the table. Stern declined. "So how do we do this? You're going to tell me what you know and I'm going to tell you if you're wrong. Is that the deal?"

"Sonny, I was perhaps too insistent.

"No," she said, seizing a strawberry. "Sennett is screw ing you around.

I was never sure why before. Your client do" deserves better treatment. But there's only so much I can.

"I understand."

"All right," she said. "Shoot."

This was a boundary, a line he preferred not to cross.

He went on, merely because he remained grateful for her company, their conversation, for any reason not to depart.

He started with the basics, the large orders, the two ex, changes, the error trades, When he mentioned the use of the house error account, she drew back with a marveling smile.

"Now, how did you figure that out? Sennett is sure you'll never get it." When he hesitated, she turned the back of her hand. It did not matter. "Go on."

"Can the government show, by the way, that market prices were affected by any of these trades, or that someone.was otherwise harmed?" He had been thinking about this point for some time. After indictment, a motion to dismiss on these grounds would be called for, claiming the prosecution could not prove a crime.

"We've looked at the cases," Sonny said. "There's an offense here. If you profit off the customers' information, you're taking something from them, one way or the other.

What do you think the customers would say?"

Stern lifted his hands noncommittally. In the abstract, he probably agreed with her. 'He was more certain a judge would.

"Go on," she told him again.

He described how the accumulating profits, after further/ manipulations, were invested in the Wunderkind account-where over time they were lost, all of them, not to mention a good deal more.

"And you suspect Dixon of controlling this account."

"Go on," she' said yet again. She had offered no other comment when he told her what evidence he thought they might have.

"I am certain the government can explain," said Stern dryly, "why someone would steal $600,000 in order. to lose "That's not an element of the offense." She meant that the government could prove the crime without solving that riddle. The fact that the money was lost might not even come into evidence,

"Nonetheless," said Stern.

"Go on," said Sonny. She had become grave and composed and clearly had no interest in debates.

"Right now, you seem to be energetically seeking the documents which show who established the Wunderkind account. Without.that, of course, you will have no way to tie Dixon to the account, to the profits, and to the trading ahead."

For the first time, she was completely quiet. Stern waited until he realized that he was being informed he had missed a step.

"Is that where John comes in?"

"I don't know where he fits, Sandy. Honestly."

That matched what TooIcy had told him; Mel was dealing strictly with Sennett. Stern wondered if that meant that John was being extraordinarily cooperative or more difficult than expected-or simply that Sennett, as usual, was being high-handed and secretive, even with his own staff. Yet even if John had a perfect recollection of Dixon calling in every dishonest trade, the government would want proof that Dixon controlled the Wunderkind account, where the profits briefly rested. Without that, the prosecutors tould have difficulty establishing that Dixon was not acting innocently or at the behest of someone else. Stern repeated this thought aloud.

"But you still require the signature forms in order to establish Dixon's relationship to the Wunderkind account."

Again, she made no answer. "I am wrong?" asked Stern.

Sonny reached to the bowl and ate another strawberry, while he tried to concentrate. This was ordinarily his strength, picking out the nuances of the evidence. But he had missed something of consequence. He remained quiet.

"Last year," said Sonny, after a bit, "starting out in the office, I prosecuted a lot of dope cases."

"Yes?" He had no idea where she was leading.

"You know how those cases go. DEA sees suspicious activity.

There's an informant. They get a warrant, knock down the door of a stash house, find ten keys of cocaine and no one inside it. Then they come to the poor Assistant to issue grand jury subpoenas so they can figure out who owns the house-and the dope."

"Yes," he said again.

"When you get the title to the property, or the lease to the apartment, whatever, it's point]ess. It's always some little.Old lady from the North End with whiskers and a bunch of cats. But we prove it's their house, anyway."

Stern nodded. He was familiar with the government's techniques. They went to the gas company, electric, telephone, and found out who was paying the bills. In one case that Jamie Kemp had handled before moving to New York, the government proved control of the house by showing that their client had purchased the-garbage cans in the alley.

He took it that Klonsky had issued a broad hint but for a moment it was lost on him.

"The deficit," said Stern suddenly.

She smiled.

"Dixon paid for the quarter-million-dollar debit balance left in the Wunderkind account," he told her.

"Go on."

"That is why you subpoenaed his bank records. To find the check he wrote to cover that debit. You were never tracing the funds he'd deposited."

"Go on," said Sonny.

"And you have the check?"

"Go on," said Sonny again.

He waited. Dixon, too, had apparently missed the point of the inquiries at the bank. Protecting its informant, the government with its various subpoenas had made a convincing show of being more interested in the money Dikon received than what he'd paid out.

"So why, then, are you so concerned about the accountopening documents?"

Of course, she would not answer. Stern subsided again to silence. What if Dixon had filched those papers? Why would the government initiate such hot pursuit of what was beside the point?

Unless the prosecutors knew in advance that Dixon had made off with the records. Of course. Their informant had once more led them to the right spot. The prosecutors-Sennett, at least-never expected the Wunderkind records to turn up in Margy's hands. That was why Sonny had recovered her good humor after she had gone to speak with him. She had learned what Sennett had counted on all along, that the prosecution would end up with the best of both worlds: evidence that Dixon controlled the account and proof he was trying to conceal that fact.

With that kind of showing-state-of-mind evidence, as it was called-the government could cut off any clever conjectural defenses that might be ventured at trial to suggest a half-sane or innocent motive for Dixon's conduct. Once the prosecution was able to establish that Dixon was covering his tracks, there could be little argument about what he thought of his own activities. John, at this point, remained Dixon's sole hope, and a faint one at that. If John's memory failed in some critical regard about who had instructed him to place the error orders, there might be a minute space in which to turn a sly pirouette. Yet that was not likely. The prosecutors had the critical proof in hand now. The walls were closing in on Dixon, as on some Poe character; the light was growing weak. Here, supercharged by the presence of this young woman, the weight of these developments did not really seem to settle upon Stern fully.

"You really like him, don't you?" Sonny asked, after watching him a moment.

"I care greatly about my sister. Perhaps my feelings for Dixon are merely force of habit. But I am very sad to hear this."

"This is just between us," Sonny said. "Stan would hang me."

"You have told me nothing." He crossed his heart, a schoolboy habit from Argentina, from a time when Gentile friends demanded the gesture, never understanding his reluctance. "There will be no communication. To anyone. No hint. My promise."

He looked at her across the table. He had exhausted the excuse that brought him here. He rose, slapping his sides.

Sonny yawned.

"Believe it or not," she said, "I think I'm going to sleep.

' '

She insisted he take an enormous bag of berries. As they approached the door, he made her promise to say goodbye for him to Sam. Then she grabbed him, applying a quick comradely hug, coming close enough to bump her firm belly against him and sweep her wet hair across his cheek. His arms came together slowly and never reached her before she was gone again. / brief ache of some kind, of deprivation, rose up and subsided.

"You were most kind to have me," he said from the other side of the screen.:

"We'll do it again," she'said. As he trudged up the stairs, her voice, full of her own ironic laughter, reached him in the dark. She'd had. an afterthought remained Dixon's sole hope, and a faint one at that. If John's memory failed in some critical regard about who had instructed him to place the error orders, there might be a minute space in which to turn a sly pirouette. Yet that was not likely. The prosecutors had the critical proof in hand now. The walls were closing in on Dixon, as on some Poe character; the light was growing weak. Here, supercharged by the presence of this young woman, the weight of these developments did not really seem to settle upon Stern fully.

"You really like him, don't you?" Sonny asked, after watching him a moment.

"I care greatly about my sister. Perhaps my feelings for Dixon are merely force of habit. But I am very sad to hear this."

"This is just between us," Sonny said. "Stan would hang me."

He looked at her across the table. He had exhausted the excuse that brought him here. He rose, slapping his sides.

Sonny yawned.

"Believe it or not," she said, "I think I'm going to sleep.

' '

"You were most kind to have me," he said from the other side of the screen.:

"We'll do it again," she'said. As he trudged up the stairs, her voice, full of her own ironic laughter, reached him in the dark. She'd had. an afterthought.

"If I'm still married to Charlie."

HE arrived home near one, after traveling down the dark country roads and then the highway, tugged through the night by the beam of his headlights, and the heavy currents of his own thoughts. He had tuned the radio to the mumble of a Trappers game, but after a time snapped it off and drove enftrely in silence, dominated by sensation-the heat and scent of the strawberry field, the reverberating charge when she had slid so quietly into the water. At moments, of course, he pondered about Dixon. Soon they would have to seriously consider the alternatives. For a few minutes Stern worked at it all in his mind, probing, tangling and untangling, but he saw no avenues of quick escape.

He thought, naturally, of his sister then. Silvia would suffer. Full of high emotion in the dark, he endured that pain anew.

Inside the door of his home, Stern plunged his heavybottomed body down on the antique milking chair in the front foyer, his thick legs poked out before him. The bag of strawberries, moistened now by their own juice, lay in his lap. Across the hail, he caught a piece of his reflection in the wig-stand mirror and saw how ridiculous he looked; he had been in that tub more than an hour and never let a drop of water touch his head. The little pouches of haft on either side, brittle with the sun, were lifted out like chemb's wings, and two or three dirty streaks of dried sweat ran from his crown to his cheeks.

Licking his lips, he could still taste the dried salt gathered in the hollow beneath his nose.

He was exhausted. But there was no resisting in the safety of his home the measure of his own excitement. Here in this known space, close and his alone, something finally gave way, and riding up in him he felt at last the full expression of what had waited throughout the day. He made a sound'out loud as the longing radiated through him and he sat riveted by passion..This was remarkable. His blood carried an electric charge.

His heart and male organs were affected by an aura of desire which was not just that deep body-wanting thing, that longing like a stifled moan, but something else, something needier, softer, and more yearning. He wanted, simply, this young woman. To be with her.

To hold her and be held. My God! It passed over him in waves as he marveled at the overpowering, transforming feeling of it all. The rest of life did not exist, not simply the boundary lines of circumstance, but the hobbling limits of personality. Here, for a moment, all limitations could be exceeded. He would croon beneath her window or, more simply, confess to this wild yearning. He had half a mind to go directly to the phone, until he recalled that he had seen none in the cabin. This was what drove grown men to shirk their families and young men to foolish daredevil acts. He sat gripping the arms of his chaff.

Oh, it made no sense, but that was hardly the point. The empire of dreams, the region where images preceded words and sensation was supreme, had given up this fixation and there was no logical quarreling with it. How much, really, did we ever understand about this? He'd had prescriptions from everyone, advice from every soul on earth about how to run the remainder of his life. But this was what he had been awaiting-to find what was beyond humdrum propriety or custom and to learn his own true ambition. And it was this young woman, troubled but straggling each instant, no matter how else she faltered, to be the real thing, her best and most authentic self.

But, of course, nothing would happen.

The thought swung through him like the closing of a heavy door. Not a thing would actually occur. He had proved that convincingly when he sat inches from her, naked as Adam and Eve, and had been powerless, inert.

Her troubled talk of leaving her husband was just that-angry idle talk.

She was merely becoming accustomed to the fact that the pathways in her life were, finally, marked out, established. At the age of fifty-six, he had now managed to lead the emotional life of a seventeen-year-old, full of moonstruck fantasies that would never be fulfilled. The anguish sang through him for a short time with the perfect reverberations of a high note rung from crystal.

And somehow, then, he thought of Clara. The association was not direct, for his thoughts were actually bittersweet, some admiration of the pure sentience of his present state.

He had been immobile throughout, but now a new shock passed through him, for he recognized, with a precision that passed beyond the realm of any allowable doubt, what it was that Clara had been seeking when she turned away from him.

Just this: the mercy of passion. And here in his chair he was equally certain-sure, if he had learned a thing about her in the decades-sure not merely that she had never found that grace but that she had discovered that for her-in her -it would never be attainable. Never.

In this instant, there was not a grain of ill feeling, only comprehension, definite-complete. Eyes wide, he sat, somehow rebuked by the enormous silence of the large home and the harshness of these judgments which he made about himself and his entire life. His blood was coursing; the image of that young woman a hundred miles away still seemed so near, so compelling, that he remained half inclined to lift his hand in greeting. And yet he held that thought of Clara at her ultimate moment, grappling with desperation, as the biblical figures were portrayed in lush oil paintings wrestling God's winged angels of death. Never, she had thought. Never, he thought now. Never.

"I was engaged," said Clara that night as they sat in the dark car over the river, with 'the sweet julep smell of the liquor around them. "We broke it off a year ago last June."

It was nearly December now. The street lamps and scattered light from the sky, vaguely refracted, cast deep shadows; he could see only the movement of her eyes as she looked ahead through the car window. Some spirit of bravery gripped her, though. There was a finer, noble look to her as she spoke; Stern Was impressed, as he had been often lately, by her beauty. "His name was Hamilton Kreitzer. Do you remember him? From law school?"

The name meant nothing to Stern. He had the vaguest image of a fellow with a callow, luminescent smile and half head of wiry blondish hair.

"He's older. Than we are. Than I am. He had left Easton before 1 started. But, well, he was glamorous. You know, he came driving out on the weekends. He had that little English car, whatever it's called. The roadster. He,d come flying onto campus with the topdown in the middle of the winter and his scarf blowing behind him. He went out for some time with Betty Tabourney' s sister. He had a terrible reputation. But girls don't ever know what they really like, do they? He's very handsome. You have to give him that. He's got a tiny little mustache like Errol Flynn.

And, of course, he's quite well-to-do. His father is one of Daddy's clients. They make candy. You see it in all the five-and-dimes.

Packaged stuff. It's been stale whenever I've bought it. At any rate."

She stopped to adjust herself in the seat. She was probably not accustomed to speaking at such length. For a moment, even in the dark, Stern could discern some tentative reflex: she was not certain that she wanted to go on. Then she straightened somewhat and continued, looking again through the front window, raising that fine profile. "They call him Ham. Nice name for a Jewish boy." She laughed. "Of course, my parents liked that. You know how they are. They don't like anything to be 'too Jewish,' which means Jewish at all."

Stern made a sound of acknowledgment, assent. He knew what she was saying.

"At any rate, I saw him one night at a dance, the Grover Hospital Cotillion. He was just Out of the service, going to law school. I was with another boy, but we spoke, you know how that is, flirted, and he called me up the next week and asked me to be his date at another of these dances. I knew half a dozen girls who had gone out with him, and not one of them with a decent thing to say, but I was so thrilled. Oh."

She closed her eyes, she shook her head, overwhelmed. "I was so delighted to have all my friends, everyone I knew, see me with Ham Kreitzer."

She found her drink in her hands-she seemed to have forgotten it-and nipped at it briefly. He could see it was not much to her taste.

"I was quite surprised when he called after that. But he honestly seemed to enjoy my company. He told me how I'd blossomed since college." She threw a hand in the air for expression, then regained herself and made a sound that led Stern to believe that in the dark she might have blushed.

"Well, I had grown up a good deal. I suppose he was attracted to 'the side of me that didn't think he was all that important. Which was there, even though you wouldn't know it to listen to me now. He enjoyed the challenge of winning me over. And, of course, I listened to him. He liked to talk about himself. So many men do."

Across the seat from her, Stern smiled, but she was too caught up to find any special meaning in her remark.

"But when you got to know him, he was like everybody else.

He had so many schemes. He hates his father, despises the poor man, and naturally, after he was dismissed from law school, he felt he had no other choice, and so he has to work beside his father every day. He wants to break away so desperately and of course he never will." She turned to Stern. "I felt something for him. And I believe it was mutual. But he was also at the age at which it was expected that he would get married. He'd had his flings or wiM oats, or whatever you call it. And I'm socially acceptable. My parents are, that is. So we were engaged. I loved to sit and hold his hand, just watch him. He is such a handsome man. I couldn't believe he wasTnine. It all seemed so magnificent.

My," she said. For the first time in the dark, she touched her eyes, but she drew herself together. She had her own momentum now.

"Of course, that's: not the end of the.story. We were engaged for fourteen months. I had to have a June wedding.

Two weeks before the 'ceremony, I got a phone call. I could tell he was far away. 'Darling,' he said, I'm afraid I can't go through with it." I wasn't surprised. I'd realized by then that he was really quite a little boy. I knew he would be terrified. He didn't say where he was.

It turned out that he was on Catalina Island. And that one of the girls had disappeared from the packaging line-I'm sure she was on Catalina Island, too. I didn't care about that. It was me he didn't want.

Whether he preferred someone else was beside the point. And then, of course, there was one more problem." Across the seat, she turned in Stern' s direction, while the heat purred, pouring up thickly from beneath the dash.

"I was pregnant," she said.

He realized she was watching him to see if she could catch some flicker of his reaction in the dark. And she had judged him correctly. Her news instilled not merely shock but something close to panic. But as a child in a home rife with torment he had learned to save all expression and he showed nothing now; not a ripple to the surface.

"Are you shocked?" she asked.

He drew his breath and reflected.

"Yes," he said at last. There was no avenue for diplomacy.

"I was, too. Not at how it had happened, naturally. And I don't want you to think that I was taken advantage of, or that I was left behind like some dirty conquest. We had carried on that way for many months. I think, frankly, that I liked the idea of it better than anything else.

The secret. The romance. Wasn't this what the world was supposed to be about?" She stopped. "Well, listen to me."." She seemed to consider looking over once more, but even she was not that courageous. Stern fought back the same cold panic. He regretted suddenly that she was telling him all this; but that, he realized, was the point. Somewhere down.the bank, voices, a man's and a woman's, were raised, then passed.

"Naturally, I couldn' t believe I was in that state. It was only a month. I hoped for a while that something would happen. But it didn't.

Then I thought about killing myself.

And I very nearly did. I actually got hold of some sleeping pills. I fell asleep one night holding the bottle in my hands, and I remember'

'-she laughed and tossed her head-' 'that after an hour or two I jolted awake and I thought I had done it, and I actually accepted it, the whole idea, for just that one second, and then was glad I had the chance to think better of it. I was sure that telling my parents would be the worst thing I'd ever done, but it was even more difficult than I'd imagined. Lord," she said suddenly, I never want to do anything like that again."

Again she touched her eyes. "My father was monstrously angry.

Monstrously. And of course they wanted me to marry Ham, which was out of the question. We quarreled about that for another week. But finally my father took me to Mexico City. The flight was eleven hours each way.

We had to fly through Chicago. And I was so sick coming back, I thought I would die. But it was taken care of.

"And I really have very little now. I know how silly that sounds. I have so much compared to most people. And even compared to what I had before, there's no real difference.

But I feel as if the whole world's changed. I gave up my job before the wedding. Because Ham wanted me to. That's what brings me around the office. And naturally I'm ashamed I really don't know who's heard about this. I imagine everyone. I go into a movie theater or a store or the concert hall and I assume that every person knows. That they're whispering. You know how unkind people are.

"So," she said. "That's the story. It's terrible, don't you think?"

"Painful," said Stern.

A breath, almost a sob, rattled through her, and she nodded.

"Do you know what humiliates me most? That I didn't realize what I wanted. That I was almost twenty-five years old and had no idea. I should have known better than to care for the likes of Ham Kreitzer. I did know better. And I Couldn't help myself." She lifted her arm in the dark to see her watch.

They drove largely in silence. At her home, he began to get out of the car to open her door, then stopped.

"This was a very fine evening."

"Oh, certainly." She laughed. "You'll be indentured to George Murray for the rest of your life and your date turns out to wear a scarlet letter."

Stern looked at her directly.

"I heard the most wonderful 'music played on the piano. ' '

She reverted to the gestures of the rich, and kissed him, French style, on each cheek. Then she left the car by herself and ran up the concrete stoop of her parents' Georgian home. She waved to him from the doorway.

Driving away, he still felt the liquor. But he knew he would never sleep. There was a briefcase full of WOrk at home. And the problem of the car to be fully contemplated, waiting like some vexing puzzle he knew it was his responsibility to solve. But he could not make his mind work over those things. Even a few blocks away, he recognized his emotions. He was thrilled. Thrilled. The cool racing beat of high excitement was in his blood. He was thrilled-by her trust, her depth.

There was wild, exciting news in her confession of a carnal side. But what thrilled him most, Mr. Alejandro Stern, immigrant American, refined rascal, placid scheming soul-what thrilled him most was that he knew now she was truly available to him,