"Well, it was nice of Mr. Jukas to do it."

"Your father had a hard life." She looked straight down at him. Thanks to you, she didn't have to add.

"I know. I know he did."

Her dark eyes went to his arms.

He nodded. "Well. I guess I better go. The thorns," he said, and tried to smile. "They certainly did a job on me. Next time I'll know enough to wear gloves. And long sleeves."

She didn't say anything. She didn't have to. She'd seen him last, being led, pushed from his house with b.l.o.o.d.y gashes down both arms. She watched him squeeze between the bushes into his own yard.

There had always been a constant glare in the cells from the corridor lights. He sat on the sofa, enjoying the darkness, though he still wasn't used to sleeping in it. Or in silence. In the beginning he'd had a succession of cellmates, most older than he was. He had managed to bunk alone these last few years by taking the smallest cell. His cot had been the length of the wall, with no room to stretch his feet over the end. For that modic.u.m of privacy he had slept for years in a cramped coil.

A truck rumbled down the street, and he looked out the window. The sound of pa.s.sing cars continued to be a strange sensation. Most of the tenement windows across the street were lit. Julia Kirbowitz had lived in the first-floor apartment. They used to walk to school together until sixth grade, when her family moved to a new house in Dearborn. The front door opened now, and a short, bearded man came onto the porch. He hurried down the steps and got into the old car parked below. As he drove off, someone rose up from the porch shadows. It was the same frizzy-haired girl. She ran to the window, looked inside, then ducked back. The door opened and another man emerged, then headed down the street, tugging his jeans over his hips as he went. The girl ran inside, wiggling as if she had to go to the bathroom. A light flashed on in the window, then quickly went off again.

A white car came down the street. It pulled up in front of Gordon's house. He watched from the side of the window as a stocky woman in a big purple shirt got out. Delores Dufault opened her back door and removed a large white basket. With the doorbell's sharp ring, his hair stood on end. Go away. Please, just go away. Go away. Please, just go away. He didn't want her here. Didn't want to see her. Not yet. Not tonight. No. Not ever. This wild panic was completely illogical, yet so sharp in his chest that he could barely breathe. On visiting day he'd always come down to see her, even when he didn't want her there. But for this there were no rules, no a.s.signed seats, no regulated time. He wasn't prepared. What would he say? Where would he sit? What would she expect? What did she want? After a few minutes, the treads creaked under her footsteps. Her car door closed. He sighed with relief as she drove away. He sat back down on the couch, then waited a long time before he opened the door. On the threshold was a large basket of cookies, brownies, and still-warm banana-nut bread. She had written a note on the back of a checking deposit slip: He didn't want her here. Didn't want to see her. Not yet. Not tonight. No. Not ever. This wild panic was completely illogical, yet so sharp in his chest that he could barely breathe. On visiting day he'd always come down to see her, even when he didn't want her there. But for this there were no rules, no a.s.signed seats, no regulated time. He wasn't prepared. What would he say? Where would he sit? What would she expect? What did she want? After a few minutes, the treads creaked under her footsteps. Her car door closed. He sighed with relief as she drove away. He sat back down on the couch, then waited a long time before he opened the door. On the threshold was a large basket of cookies, brownies, and still-warm banana-nut bread. She had written a note on the back of a checking deposit slip: "Welcome home, Gordon! Sorry I missed you. Call when you get a chance. Delores."

The telephone rang and he jumped. He groped along the coffee table for the portable phone, then pushed a b.u.t.ton and said h.e.l.lo, baffled when the television came on and the phone kept ringing. He hurried into the kitchen.

"h.e.l.lo?" he shouted into the wall phone. "h.e.l.lo?"

"Gordon! You're home? Where were you?" It was Dennis.

"I couldn't find the phone!"

"Couldn't find it? What do you mean, you couldn't find it?"

"It's too dark. I couldn't find it at first!"

"Dark! Why's it dark?"

"The lights aren't on!"

"So turn them on, and why are you yelling like that?"

"I don't know," he answered sheepishly. At Fortley he'd had to shout into the phone to be heard over the din.

"Delores called. She said she was just there, but she didn't think you were home."

"I must have been sleeping."

"Yeah, that's what I told her." Dennis sounded skeptical. "She said she brought you some things. You better get them in before somebody takes them. They're out on the porch."

"Yes. Yes, I will."

"Oh, and Lisa says not to forget about Friday." Dennis paused. "So are you going to call Delores?"

"Well, not tonight."

"Look, just call her, will you? Thank her for coming over. Is that such a big deal?" Dennis sounded irritated.

Gordon said he would call, but not right now. He was too tired. He wanted to go to bed.

"So then they say, 'Fine, Doe. Put in the extra time if you want, but we're not. We've got lives to attend to.' "

With every chuckle her ruddy face glowed more. Delores Dufault was an incessant talker, yet after she left, Gordon could hardly remember anything she had said. Their visits always began the same way, with his squirming irritation as she told him how glad she was to see him again and how much his friendship meant. The garish colors and wild patterns she wore made him feel dizzy. Her shirt collar glittered with jet beads. Her long, squared fingernails were purple with yellow stripes painted through them. Everything glistened-her hair, face, teeth-but with a jangly sparkle that made her seem silly and oddly sad.

No sooner had he hung up the phone with Dennis than she was ringing the doorbell again. He was tiptoeing up the stairs when he thought of the long drive to Fortley. It was especially hard in winter along winding, mountain roads, as Dennis had told him often enough, though Delores had never complained. Once Dennis and Lisa had children, they couldn't come as often. Before Delores's first visit alone, he had written countless letters telling her not to come, that it was a difficult ride to an ugly, depressing place. Actually, he found any visits strained and unsettling. Small talk had never come easy, especially an hour of it with a woman he barely knew. Not wanting to hurt her feelings, he kept composing more letters, none of which he mailed. The few he ever did send were brief responses to questions asked in her letters. Silly rhetorical questions, like "What did you think of the bombing in Iraq last night?" As if his opinion mattered or made the slightest difference to anyone. And then one day, there she was in the visitors' room, in a ruffled powder-blue dress with a bright floral scarf on her broad shoulders. He asked if she'd come from church. Oh, no, she said in her effusive honesty that always made him cringe with embarra.s.sment for both of them. People didn't get all dressed up for church anymore, she told him. It was a brand-new outfit she'd bought just for the visit. She'd wanted to look especially nice for him.

Not knowing how to respond, he had said nothing. Just as he was doing now in his living room, bright with every lamp on. These lapses were easy with Delores, who could leave no silence unfilled.

"So that way I figured I'd get the work done, then stop by here on my way home. I hope you don't mind, Gordon. I know you're trying to get reacclimated. Dennis said how he took you out to Corcopax. And like I told him-any time you need a ride there, or anywhere, for that matter, you should just call me. I'd love to bring you around and show you all the old places."

He looked away, embarra.s.sed, as she readjusted her bra strap.

"Even though most of the changes are all for the worst. I think, anyway. Which reminds me-I ran into Susan Karp the other day. Remember her?"

He didn't.

"See!" Delores grinned, unpeeling a stick of gum. "Told you I'd quit." Her last letter had announced that once he got out she would not smoke another cigarette. He didn't say anything. She balled up the paper and put it on the coffee table. "Anyway, Susan and her sister were in our cla.s.s. Annette, she started out a year ahead, but then she had some kind of, as they say, trouble trouble"-she winked-"if you get my drift. Anyway, she stayed back. She was a really good basketball player."

"Oh." He had no idea who she meant. He put the wrapper into his pocket. At least her voice was pleasant, warm, with a kind of smile in it as if always on the verge of laughter.

"Well, anyway, Susan starts telling me about Annette's second husband, Eric. She said he works for some kind of food wholesaler. Cheeses, fancy jams, caviar, stuff like that. For, you know, delicatessens and all these trendy kinds of food shops that're all over the place now." She took another stick of gum from her purse. "And I'm thinking, Eric. Eric. I used to know an Eric. 'Eric Reese?' I said. 'Yah,' she said. And then we get talking about the past and everything, and she starts telling me how now that you're out of jail, the family's afraid you're going to try and contact them or something. So I said, 'Forget that! That's the last thing Gordon wants to do.'"

He had been staring at her. Eric Reese had been Jerry c.o.x's best friend, but there had been an argument. Jerry had stalked off, then run into Gordon on his way home from work that night, that horrible night when Jerry kept telling him not to let Janine Walters see him. Because Jerry c.o.x had been sixteen at the time, two years younger than Gordon, he had been tried as a juvenile. His sentence for the murder had been five years in juvenile detention. A few months after his release, he hiked into the snowy woods behind his family's house, put a gun in his mouth, and pulled the trigger. Someone told Gordon's father that Jerry had left a suicide note. Convinced the note would exonerate Gordon, he begged the family to let him see it. Alone at home all day, with little more to do than brood, the shy man became obsessed. He called them, wrote letters, even went to their house and begged Mrs. c.o.x to help him help his son. The c.o.x family took out a restraining order against Mr. Loomis. A reporter contacted them. Their long, front-page interview not only denied the existence of a suicide note, but reiterated Jerry's sworn testimony that the break-in had been Gordon Loomis's idea. Jerry had done everything humanly possible to stop him, they said, but had been powerless against gigantic Gordon's rage that night. They blamed their son's death on Gordon. They said poor Jerry never got over the shame and the guilt of being unable to help Mrs. Walters, who had always been so kind to him. To be again condemned and humiliated so publicly devastated Gordon's mother. She took a leave of absence from work and for six months seldom left the house. She stopped writing to Gordon and visited him only once. Soon after came his father's first stroke.

Gordon's hands locked on his knees. Everything in the little room seemed crooked and out of place. Delores's lavender pants were wrinkled. A long thread dangled from her shirt hem. She'd been like this as a girl, too, forever stumbling and ruining things, annoying cla.s.smates as well as teachers with constant talk and easy intimacies.

She winced. "Oh, no. You're upset with me, aren't you."

"I don't talk about that," he said stiffly. He wanted her to leave but couldn't say it.

Her fuchsia-coated lips trembled. "Oh! I'm sorry! I'm so sorry." She put her hand on his arm. "Actually, I thought it was funny. Well, not funny, but . . . but, well, weird that they'd think that. I thought you'd want to know. I thought . . . I mean, now that you're home . . . Oh, I don't know what I thought. I guess I wasn't thinking, that's the problem. I'm sorry," she said, annoying him even more as she berated herself. "See? That's the thing, I talk too much. I just go on and on. That's how I work things out. I, like, talk them to death, and then nothing anyone says after that can bother me. But that's my way. And sometimes I forget other people aren't like that. My sisters, they're always telling me I don't have any respect for other people's boundaries. I'm sorry, Gordon. Really, I am. So let's be friends. Please? Let's just start over, okay? From this moment on it'll be like I never said it! There!" she declared, and slapped her thigh, the fleshy clap alarming him even more. "The most important thing is here and now, right?" She smiled and looked around. "So! Are you really going to stay here, I mean, live in the house?"

Well, she didn't blame him, she continued, not waiting for an answer. In fact, she'd still be in her old house, but after her mother died her sisters just about sold the place out from under her, they were so anxious to collect their share. "This lawyer I know says I should've billed the estate for all those years I took care of Ma, but what kind of person does that? I mean, she was my mother, and I was the only single one all those years, so naturally it was going to be me. But I never minded. I figure my time's coming, you know what I mean?"

He had been thinking of his own mother traveling all that way, weekly at first. Every visit had begun with her tight-lipped censure and ended in tears as each tried to tell the other how sorry they were for everything.

"Oh, Gordon." Delores shook her head and sighed. "I'm just boring the h.e.l.l out of you, aren't I, with all my talk." Concern made her look even more unkempt.

"No," he said tentatively, as if it were a question. "I guess I'm just a little tired, that's all."

"Oh, poor Gordon!" She moved next to him and put her arm over his shoulder. "You do. You look so tired."

His thoughts roiled with the nudge of her breast against his arm. It was terrifying to be this inept, to not know what to say or do next. His face felt hot. She smelled like fruit, bruised and overripe.

"How about if I make some coffee? We can have dessert!" She started to get up. "Some nice, warm banana bread?"

"No, I don't want any," he answered too quickly.

She looked at him for a moment. "What'd you do today that made you so tired?"

"I don't know." He shrugged. If he mentioned the Market, she'd never leave.

She began to tell him about her boss's son, who had been terribly depressed since losing his job. "He never goes anywhere. He's always in the house. His mother wants him to see someone, but Albert says what he needs is a good kick in the behind, but it's like I keep telling him, everyone's got their own pace." She gave Gordon a quick look. "I've told you about Albert, right? He's a wonderful man, but he's had to make it the hard way, so he can come off seeming a little gruff sometimes."

Gordon felt he knew everything about Albert Smick. He used to think Delores had to be in love with the man, until he realized she was that effusive about everyone she liked.

After she left, he plumped the flattened sofa pillows. The wrinkled arm cover was on the floor. Leaving ripples in her wake, she disturbed things, left indentations in the rug, the door ajar, his heart beating uneasily. He never dared breathe too deeply when she was near. It wasn't her fault, he knew, but his. Her kindness always frightened him, and now he felt guilty. He hadn't even thanked her for all the pastry. He waited a few minutes, then called.

Breathless, she answered on the first ring. She said she had just gotten the key in the lock when she heard the phone. He hadn't finished thanking her before she was thanking him for being such a good friend all these years; he would never know how much his letters had meant. And as she was driving home just now, it had started to sink in that he was really here. He was home. Her best friend in the whole world was finally home! After an awkward silence, he said good-bye. Wait, she said before he could hang up. Would he like to come to dinner Friday night? She'd bought a prime rib, because she knew that was his favorite meal-he'd told her once, medium rare, right? With baked potatoes and green beans. He didn't remember ever telling her that, but it was true. He said he couldn't. He said he had to go to Dennis's that night.

"Oh!" There was a pause. "Well then, do you need a ride?"

"No. Thanks. I'm taking the bus."

"Don't do that. All those stops, it'll take forever. I can get you there in ten minutes."

"But I want to take the bus!" He paused to quell the panic in his voice. "I don't mind the stops. I was looking forward to it. I haven't been on a bus in such a long time."

"That's right. There must be so much you want to do now," she said slowly. "But if you need something, whatever it is, will you call me? Please?"

CHAPTER 3.

In those first days at the Market, the two women plied Gordon with questions. His reticence intrigued them, his shy discomfort eliciting not just their own secrets, but customers'. The lady over there in the miniskirt, Allie, nice legs, huh? Well, she was really a man. And Leo, the butcher, he had been depressed ever since his wife ran off with the eighteen-year-old girl who used to live downstairs. From Gordon's terse answers they learned that he had grown up in Collerton, then moved to the western part of the state. Hilldale, he said when they asked where.

"Hilldale! I never heard of that," Serena said.

"Yes, you have!" June turned quickly back to him. "The prison's there, right? Fortley. That's where the worst ones go."

The state prison, where everything was hard-core: the crime, the time, the men. He had few illusions. Exposure was inevitable, but for now he needed the anonymity of those blank s.p.a.ces so that while pretending to be a normal man, he might learn how to be one. What he wanted most was to feel something. Anything but this deadness. For twenty-five years he had allowed himself only the present, this moment, this day. It was all he deserved or dared expect of time. He had not realized how strange freedom would be, how alien he would feel. They knew that he had worked in a library, a hospital, a laundry, a sign factory, that his parents were dead, that he lived alone, that he'd never been married. "No, never come close," he'd answered when Serena asked.

"Really?" June said with an eager smile. She wanted him to meet her sister, who was single-well, divorced. She had four kids, but none of them lived at home now. Yes, Serena confided later, because they were all wards of the state. Not the kind of person he would want to get involved with. Serena was one to talk, Leo said the minute she left. She and her husband smoked pot with their teenage sons and didn't see the least bit of harm in it.

On Friday, Neil Dubbin emerged from his fetid bunker. He spent an hour in the cluttered office, signing checks with a trembling hand between phone calls to his wife. She kept hanging up on him. When he started to cry, she listened long enough for him to apologize and beg her to let him come home again. Mary Dubbin must have said no, Serena reported back, because after Neil hung up he disappeared into his windowless room.

With the store empty, the women stood by the ladder while Gordon razored sc.r.a.ps of brittle tape off the front windows. June kept an eye out for Eddie Chapman, who'd been called back this morning to one of his construction sites.

"Eddie's an a.s.shole, but he means well," Serena said.

The Dubbin family had been deeply disappointed in their daughter Cynthia's choice of a husband, but it was always Eddie in his steel-toed boots and with grimy fingernails who was sent in to hold the place together until Neil sobered up. June said the only reason the Market hadn't been sold long ago was that the family needed a place to stash Neil.

Gordon leaned toward the gla.s.s. The women's voices skirmished for his attention.

"She never comes in here," Serena said of Neil's wife.

"It's the city. She doesn't feel safe safe anymore," June said in a mocking tone. anymore," June said in a mocking tone.

"But the truth is, she just doesn't want to be around Neil."

"Drunk or sober."

"At least when he's drunk she's got some control."

"Yeah. See, the thing is, when he's sober, he can be such a b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Like mean. Like really, really mean."

"Yeah, you never know. You gotta be careful," Serena warned.

"But the thing is, poor Neil, it's like the meaner he gets, the worse e gets down on himself for it," June said.

"Yeah, he's like one of those people, the only time they're happy is when somebody else is miserable."

"So the thing is to just ignore him. That's what we do."

"Most of the time, anyway. Oh, s.h.i.t," Serena groaned. "Hey, Eddie, you're back!"

"Where the h.e.l.l is he?" Eddie stormed down the aisle.

"Up here," Gordon said. The ladder teetered as he hurried down. This was a project he had chosen for himself. "That old tape. I've been trying to get it off. I should've-"

"He said he was gonna work!" Eddie bellowed, looking around.

"He did." Serena explained how upset Neil had been after talking to his wife.

"He called her?" Eddie backhanded the new stack of National Enquirer National Enquirer s, scattering them across the floor. Gordon began to pick them up. "I told him not to call her. Oh, Christ, I'm so sick of this. I don't know how much longer I can do this. I got a business to run. If he's boozing again, that's it!" s, scattering them across the floor. Gordon began to pick them up. "I told him not to call her. Oh, Christ, I'm so sick of this. I don't know how much longer I can do this. I got a business to run. If he's boozing again, that's it!"

No, no. The women didn't think so. Neil hadn't left the store. Not once.

"Go look out back, then," Eddie ordered Gordon. "Tell him I'm here for one minute and I gotta see him."

Leo kept feeding chunks of beef into the grinder. He shook his head; he hadn't seen Neil. Next, Gordon asked the stock boy, Thurman, who was smoking a cigarette outside on the loading platform. "No. But I seen you last night," Thurman said, flicking the cigarette into the dirt. "You live near my aunt."

"I do?" Gordon said uneasily.