She gave him a pasty smile, clutching her bag to her knees. "I'm going to go use the restroom," she said, struggling up from the chaise, "but start thinking where you'd like to go for dinner. I heard that Creek 28 at the Indian Creek Hotel serves one of the best skirt steaks in Miami."

"Sounds good. Do they take children?"

"Yes. And credit cards." She smiled, standing in front of him appraising her in her bathing suit. "I'll be right back." And as soon as she walked inside the ladies room, with shaking hands she fished out the phone from her purse, turned it off and threw it in the garbage. How many narrow escapes like that would she have, how many freebies before the entire jig was up? How dumb of her. Did she want to get caught? Try explaining to a happy husband on vacation with his wife and family in Miami, why his perspiring and panting wife, while lying by the pool almost nude, keeps a prepaid phone turned on by her side, vibrating messages into her trembling legs as she tans with her eyes closed and her parched mouth slightly parted.

7.

Dracula

They returned to Summit Labor Day weekend. The children were about to start another year of school, Michelangelo second grade, Asher eighth, and Emily ninth at the high school. Kai might have been off Mondays but Labor Day Monday, as always, the Starks had a big bash at their house. Fifty people came. Caterers. Booze. Clear and jazzy music, Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald, and Ben E. King crooning over the gra.s.s to Larissa, that he who had nothing loved and adored her and wanted her so.

The pool lights were on, guests in bathing suits, colored floods on the trees at night, intoxicated animated adults dancing, laughing, and Larissa getting compliments left and right.

"G.o.d, Larissa, look at you, you've never looked better."

"Jared, look at your wife! She is stunning."

"Lar, what have you done with yourself?"

"Lar, did you drink from the fountain of youth?"

Even Ezra noticed. "Larissa, they're right, you're glowing from within. You look twenty."

"Twenty years younger or twenty?" countered Larissa, and Maggie, standing close, pinched Larissa's brown tricep and cooed, "What's the difference?"

Monday, Monday, Monday. She hadn't spoken to him in over two weeks, not since she blew him off and never called him. What must he think?

Soon this will be over, Larissa thought, smiling for her guests, carrying the drinks and the strawberries, dancing with Evelyn, with Jared. Tuesday will be here, the children will be on the bus, gone, Jared will be in the car, gone, and I, too, will be gone.

On Tuesday morning, after she got all the children successfully off to school and was getting herself ready, Ernestina came too early with her crew. Larissa's antic.i.p.ated first morning alone in months turned into ducking four non-English-speaking girls. She closed her bedroom door to shine herself up like a slick apple in the produce aisle, and then had to walk past Ernestina with her vacuum cleaner.

"Oh, Miss Larissa, you look so beautiful. Where you going?"

"Nowhere, just shopping."

"Oh, no, you look too beautiful for shopping!" The girls giggled. "Maybe Miss Larissa has a hot date."

She stormed out of her house without looking back. She must do something about their banter.

She called Kai on his cell from a phone booth near the Summit train station, hoping no one who knew her would see her standing in the middle of town at a phone booth. What good reason did Larissa have to use a public telephone?

"Hey, It's me."

"Ah. It's you," he said. His voice was cold.

"Kaiaoh d.a.m.n." She was lost for words. "Did you get the picture I sent?"

"Picture? Of yourself having a blast in Miami? Yeah, I got that."

"Why didn't you text back?"

"Didn't see the point. Why didn't you text me back after I sent you twenty messages in Lillypond?"

He was upset.

"I'm sorry about Monday."

"Which Monday would this be?"

"Kaia"

"What happened to your phone?"

"I had to throw it out," she said. "Jared nearly found it in Miami. It was a miracle he didn't."

"Yes, uh-huh, a miracle."

"What could I do? Don't worry, I'll buy another one."

"Oh, I'm not worried. And what makes you think he won't find the next one?"

"I'm not going to be with him twenty-four hours a day, am I?"

"I don't know. Aren't you?"

"Kaiawhen are you getting off?"

"One, probably. I'm at a job now. I have to work Jag at two."

"I know."

"I was off yesterday," he said pointedly.

"I know. But we had a party."

"How nice for you."

"Listena" she lowered her voice, so it wouldn't break, "I'll come and see you at one, okay?"

"I don't know, will you? You said you were going to come and see me two weeks ago, and yet I don't recall running into you. So I'm not optimistic."

Cold and damp inside, Larissa hung up and drove to Pingry for her eleven o'clock with Ezra and the Gang of Six Naysayers, the play committee. Denise, as it turned out, was not coming back. She was staying home with her baby. Larissa remained the director. The eight of them suffered over what play to put on for the fall.

"I suppose I can't talk you into G.o.dot?" Leroy asked.

Larissa was hardly listening. To conduct her outer life when her inner life was screaming took all the resources she had; the power of speech fell by the wayside. She let them bicker and discuss for a while, but when she noticed Ezra's curious, slightly puzzled eyes on her, she blinked and came to it.

"Okay, this is how it is," Larissa said. "It's fall. We need a big production, lots of pizzazz. I'll give you a choice. You can have Dracula, or you can have The Wizard of Oz. What will it be?"

"Why does it have to be those two?" said Leroy.

"Yeah," said Fred. "Maybe it's a false choice."

Here it starts again. "No," Larissa said slowly. "It's not a false choice. You know how you know? Because it's the choice you've been given. I know you might like a different choice, but that's not one of the choices. Out of these two no good, awful choices, pick the one that's least objectionable."

"But why does it have to be one of these two?"

"Because I said so." They were like children.

This time it was Ezra who put his foot down. "Let's do Dracula," he said. "The kids will love it. It's a real crowd-pleaser."

The rest of the table grudgingly agreed.

"Great," Larissa said. "Leroy, immediately put out a casting call for twenty parts, fourteen girls, six guys. I want Lucy to be played by someone dark and small, mention that in the notice. Van Helsing by someone tall. The guy who played Bened.i.c.k last year, Trevor, he was excellent. Much Ado was a big success because of him. I hope he auditions. Sheila, please order at least thirty-five copies of the script. Last time we ordered twenty-seven and it wasn't enough. Order them today, though. We need to get started. We're putting it on right before Thanksgivinga"plenty of time to do it right. Fred, you're very good with words, would you like to write the casting call?"

Br.i.m.m.i.n.g with pride, Fred nodded.

"Excellent. Vincent we'll need to start sketching Dracula's Castle for Act I as soon as possible. That has to be done just right. Ask Dara, who runs the art department, to come and see me at ten tomorrow. I want to use some of her students to help us. This is a big project. They should all be involved. Sheila, better order forty copies of the script. I have a feeling we're going to need them." Larissa stood up from the table. Everything had to look and function as normal, more than normal. It had to buzz with efficiency and sameness, temperature 72degF at all times, oven 350degF, burners on medium, nothing singed, burned, left unattended, nothing out of place, nothing, nothing, nothing.

8.

Love

She was against the wall, suffocating under his hands, she was on the wood floor, suffocating under his body, she was being ravaged with his starving lips, his bare and starved body. "Larissa," he kept whispering. "Larissaa"

She was a song without words. He didn't even admire her outfit, her tanned legs, her tie-up wedge sandals. He admired nothing. She was certain he hadn't looked at her before he took her, groping for her in darkness, though the September day was hot, was blazing glory sunshine. And she was moaning and crying and crying and coming. Not long ago, I lay in a chair under the sky and imagined this. Why is reality so much more bitter? "I missed you," she whispered into his neck, her arms, her legs around him, his sweat dripping on her. I love you.

"Really?" He was panting, his eyes closed.

"I can't take it anymoreaplease."

"Please what?"

She didn't reply.

"Please what? Please more, or please stop?"

She was crying.

"You have never been f.u.c.ked like this," he whispered. "And you never will be again."

Larissa didn't want it to be true. But she feared it was.

He didn't leave her. He remained in the s.p.a.ce that contained them both, until he was ready for her again. Afterward she washed herself with cold water, no soap or shampoo, just water, to erase the smell of him, to soothe the swelling sting of her bare flesh, to calm herself.

She sat naked on the unmade bed. She was about to get dressed, leave, but she didn't want to. She had to. She had no choice. This was not a false choice. She had no say in the matter. Whatever she wanted to do, the New Jersey Central School District didn't care, it let the kids out every afternoon at 2:40 p.m. with absolutely no thought to what the mothers were doing, whether it be feeding the homeless or sitting here in a bright room, not feeding but falling.

Exceptait was good. It was beautiful.

It was everything else that was the not-beautiful.

Kai sat up; Larissa quivered. To look at him, to see his hands stretching out for her, to swallow her. One day she was going to simply forget it was 2:40. Conveniently forget. She would live a life in which 2:40 no longer existed, it would be just like 1:40, or 5:45. Just another meaningless number, just one among three hundred and fifty-nine others. The way Che lived, the way Bo lived. And in those three hundred and fifty-nine other minutes, his hands would remain outstretched to her, and she would not get off his bed.

"Oh, Kai," she said, an elocution for the lost, a declamation for the longing.

"I can't live without you," he said, watching her.

"Please don't say that."

"It's true. I can't live without you," Kai repeated. "And yet I watch you after not being with you the whole summer walk out of my bathroom, washing my love off your body. Washing me off your body. You say you love me, yet this is what you do."

"Did I?" Larissa said, sinking down, defeated, hanging her head. "Did I say that?"

"Yes. In your most fragile moment, you did. You say you love me. Yet, this is what you do."

PART II.