"So you bought her a car, and then took it for yourself?"

Doug demurred. "I just drove it today, to show you."

"Uh-huh."

"And besides, Kate works in the city and takes the train in. Be a shame for a beauty like this to sit in our garage all day, lonely, undriven, in that cold mean dark s.p.a.ce. I can't believe you'd even suggest it."

"You're right, what was I thinking?"

"Do you know it's got an Adaptive Restraint Technology System?" Doug chuckled. "I don't even know what the h.e.l.l that is. Plus, look, a DVD-based navigation system. That cost another three grand. You guys have one?"

Something about that itched Jared in the chest like a sudden irritant. It was those words. Navigation system. Not just by itself, but somehow related to the statements lying on his desk upstairs. What did the navigation system that Larissa bought nearly a year ago and the credit card statements from last month have to do with one another? Both gave him the same bad feeling. "Come on, Douglas. We gotta jet."

Doug locked up and they started walking back.

"Did you go to the Madison Jag?" Jared asked.

"Yeah, of course. That's the one you recommended."

"Did I? I don't think I did. Maybe Larissa did. Who helped you?"

"Um, I can't remember his name. Weird name. He was a good kid, though."

"Kai?"

"Yeah! Your salesman, too?"

"Yeah. I wasn't impressed."

"Oh, no, the wife and I loved him. He knew everything about the car, was patient, let my wife drive for an hour, gave us the history of the vehicle. And he gave us a fantastic deal. I sent him a bottle of Cristal to thank him. And he must be doing something right, because he was wearing an Armani jacket cut like you wouldn't believe. The commissions must be rolling in."

"He talked to you?"

"What do you mean, did he talk to me? He's a salesman!"

Jared shook his head. "Odd. Because I just hated him. He didn't say a word to me. If it weren't for Larissa, I never would've bought it from him. He was like a deaf mute."

Doug laughed. "You must have made him mad. He was nice as apple pie to me and Kate. What did you do to make your salesman all p.i.s.sed off at you?" He pressed the b.u.t.ton for the fourteenth floor in the elevator.

"Nothing," said Jared, already mentally at the board meeting, where he had to present a new proposal for the Financial Services Division to outsource the work because the investment managers could not handle the case load, and to listen to an introduction of innovative methodology for the life a.s.surance funds, and in the recesses of his mind, right before the summary of the new reporting requirements to benefit consumers, Jared realized what it was that was bothering him about the bank statements.

Larissa wasn't shopping.

"Larissa, you haven't been buying anything," Jared said to her that Sat.u.r.day night after tenderloin and before ice cream.

"We haven't been to the mall in ages," Maggie said. "Since before Christmas."

"Before Christmas? That can't be." Larissa shook her head.

"Mags is right, Lar," said Jared. "You know how I know? I see the bills. And there aren't any. You're not buying anything except food at Stop&Shop and shampoo at the drugstore."

Larissa shrugged, a study in casual indifference. "I'm not buying anything because I have everything."

"Since when has that stopped you in the past?" said Ezra. "Maggie over here has more hair products than can fit in one medium-sized house. Does that stop her?"

Larissa smiled. "I don't have curly hair like Maggie. I don't need quite so much."

"But what about shoes, Lar? You don't need new suede boots?"

"Nope. Have a pair from last year. And the year before."

"A new sweater?"

"Have dozens I never wear."

"Makeup?"

"Too much of everything, Jared," said Larissa, smiling benevolently at him from across the table. "What's this? The husband is complaining that the wife doesn't shop enough?"

"Well, your not shopping is new. I'm bound to notice," he said. "And you go to the mall. You're always telling me you're at the mall."

"I like to window shop."

"There's a red Escada jacket in the windows of the Macy's in Newark," said Jared. "It would look smashing on you."

Larissa turned her elongated neck to Jared. "Hon, you want me to go all the way to Newark to buy a jacket?"

"I'm just saying."

She lives in secret, hides between words and minutes, while her soul remains in a 20 by 20 room between the hours of twelve and two.

While waiting at the red light, she thinks, I can't take much more of this.

That lasts eleven minutes, on the way to Lincoln from Albright. Then she picks up her boy and gets home, and then the school bus delivers more (of her) kids. There is subtraction, a Social Studies project on the Badlands, and a twenty-line free-verse poem on a bar of chocolate. There is a phone call from Jared asking what's for dinner, and Larissa saying, "What, if it's something you don't like, you won't be coming home?" and him laughing. "Just tell me what's for dinner and then I'll decide."

There is a basketball game on Friday, a dinner, a movie, a birthday party, and two more, lunch in Connecticut with friends, and then on Monday another week begins, and Larissa is grateful that things remain as they are, just a hazy Summit week, where the mother of three gets up on a Monday, kisses and dresses her children, packs them off to school, kisses her husband, tidies up the kitchen, showers, barely dresses, and then zooms down Main Street in her supercharged Winter Gold rocket with a navigation system, nine minutes if she hurries and makes all the lights, turns into Albright, parks the Jag, sprints up the stairs. He is waiting, open arms, smile on his face, ardent lips, ardent everything. And she thinks: I will take as much of this as I need to.

They showered together, makeup running down her cheeks, they made love in the shower, bubbling up the lava place inside from where she craved him, with which she craved him. And thena"having to go.

"I don't want to go," she said when two o'clock came, 2:15 came.

It was 2:20 and she was still there.

"I don't want you to go," Kai said. They had bagels by the bed, coffee. The music had stopped. No sounds at all, except them, in bed, pressed together, laughing when they weren't coming.

At 2:25 she threw her clothes on, anointed with s.e.x, sweat, moisture, anointed with Kai on her bones, in her pores, like sacramental sacrilegious perfume.

She gazed at him, longingly, regretfully, lying naked on top of the bed, stretched out, absent-mindedly caressing himself, looking at her. Her whole body ached as she put her shoes on. Nothing was right on Monday afternoons. It was like cramps, like labor. I must go. I haven't worked it out any other way. There is no other way. I must go.

"Larissa," he said, "imagine a world in which you wouldn't have to leave me. Can you imagine such a world?"

Too well, she wanted to say.

Not at all, she wanted to say.

She was late: 2:35 and she was twelve minutes away from the school. When she got there, with Michelangelo waiting with Mrs. Brown inside the doors because it was so cold, she smiled apologetically.

"It's fine, Mrs. Stark," Mrs. Brown said, "but I have been noticing that every Monday for the last several months now you've been coming late to pick him up. Could you leave ten minutes earlier? Because I've got teacher a.s.sessments to do on Mondays and I'm always here waiting with your son."

That evening Michelangelo said over baked ziti, "Mommy was late picking me up again."

Jared looked up from his garlic bread. "Again?"

"She's late all the time, Dad."

"Michelangelo! I pick you up five days a week. I am not late all the time."

"The teacher yelled at her today."

"Really, yelled?" Jared glanced at her with amus.e.m.e.nt. "What was Mommy doing that she was late?"

"Getting stuck in traffic in Chatham, that's what," said Mommy. "There was an accident."

"Yes, but what about all the other times, oh late Mother?" said Michelangelo.

Larissa rolled her eyes. But after that, she tried very hard not to be late. The following Monday she was only five minutes late. Mrs. Brown raised her eyebrows.

In the evening Michelangelo said, "Mommy was late again."

Jared raised his eyebrows. "Accident in Chatham?"

"No, a horrible woman at Neiman's was paying in cash and they didn't have any change. Can you imagine, a cash register not having any change! The salesgirl had to go across the entire floor to get change."

"Ah. Nice to see you finally shopping," said Jared. "I hope whatever you got was worth it."

"Well, I didn't get it, did I? I couldn't wait anymore. I dropped everything and ran."

"What was it?"

"A trench coat."

Two days later Larissa came back with a Gucci trench coat to show Jared. And the following Monday she tried very hard not to be late.

Kai, lying on top of his sheets naked, perspired, icy wind through the curtains, frosty daylight outside, the wood floor shiny, the sheets white, the male bed full of Kai, his twinkling eyes, his bare chest, his long legs splayed out, his lovely wet mouth whispering, "Don't go, Larissa." Singing in a whisper, "Beautiful girl, stay with mea"

She couldn't imagine where this was headed, and she couldn't imagine where she was headed, except down Main Street to Albright Circle.

Chapter Two.

1.

Paolo and Francesca

Larissa and Maggie met at last at Summit station to take the train to New York to have lunch with Bo. Maggie wore loose, dark, non-descript clothes, while Larissa was decked out in a fitted short blood-red Escada jacket and boot-cut white jeans.

"It's winter white," she said to Maggie, who stared inquisitively.

"Ah." Her curls stifled in a severe bun, Maggie turned her head to the window. The train pa.s.sed the monastery of the Dominican Nuns of Summit in the distance. "Do you know," Maggie said, "that I've taken to going there and sitting in the chapel? They make the most beautiful music during lauds."

"Lauds?" Larissa repeated as if she'd never heard the word before. "What time is that?"

"At 5:55," Maggie replied in a voice that sounded like it was still at the chapel. "On Sundays it starts ten minutes later, at 6:05."

"Ten whole minutes later? And how would you know?"

"Because," said Maggie, "I go there on Sundays, too."

Larissa studied her friend's hair, half turned gray. Maggie stopped coloring it long ago, and her pale face was devoid of makeup. Something stirred inside Larissa, like something she was supposed to do, or talk to Maggie about, but for the life of her she couldn't remember what it was.

Larissa wanted to ask why Maggie started going to lauds at the monastery, but what she asked instead was, "I didn't know their chapel was open to the public."

"Of course," Maggie said, turning her face away from Larissa. "It's a church."

"No, I know, but isn't a monastery supposed to be a cloistered affair? Like aren't the nuns supposed to be hidden or something? Because they're Dominican, right? I read something about that. They, like, mainly pray for the salvation of souls but lead a hidden life."

"It's a church," Maggie repeated. "Their mission is one of intercession. How hidden could they be if their mission is intercession?"

"No. Right. But it's confusing, don't you think? The word cloister means something with walls around it, presumably to keep others out, unless of course, it's used primarily as a prison, to keep you in. But I don't think the nuns mean it in that sense, right? They can leave if they want to, no? I'm just saying. Cloister, and then intercessionayou can see why a layperson like me might get confused. So!" Larissa continued, in a segue from the nuns to Bo, "Have you heard from her? I hope she's okay. I fear we may be too late. We were supposed to go talk her down before Christmas, and now look it's January, and I haven't heard from her."

"I talked to her," said Maggie. "She can still use our help."

"Almost like we're interceding." Larissa chuckled.