"Kaia""

"Larissa." He was immovable. He would not be cajoled.

"If I tell you I cannot do what you ask of me," she said in a breaking whisper, "you wouldn't stay then? You'd let me go?" She said it like she couldn't believe it.

"No! If you cannot do what I ask of you," Kai replied in his own breaking voice, "you will let me go." He stood against the wall, silent for a few moments. "In the beginning, I was out of my depth. I was an outsider. I'd never felt about anyone the way I feel about you. I knew it wasn't going to be easy." He took a breath. "But the longer we stayed together, the easier the dream became. Maybe for you it became harder, but for me, everything was so clear! It was as if there was suddenly daylight! I could see; how could you not?"

"I have more at stake than you."

"Oh, you think so? Hitching my star to a married woman twice my age, with three kids to boot, you think I've got nothing at stake?"

"Kai, come on, you're not being fair. I said not as much as me."

"What is this, a compet.i.tion for who's got the greater price to pay?"

"Do you have a price to pay?" she snapped. Why was she being cruel to him whom she loved?

"I pay it every day, Larissa," he retorted, growing ever colder, "when I allow you to come here for one hour, feeling about you as I do, and then let you go, knowing you're going to sleep with another man. I know you think I'm okay with it, but for the record, I'm not okay with it, and I'm never going to be okay with it. But is this what we're all about? Pride?"

"There's nothing to be proud of here," Larissa said.

"Oh, wonderful!" he yelled. "You think this is degrading? You think it's cheap? You're ashamed of me? But it's my whole life! Just think about that for a second; for a second think about somebody else's pain but your own! Your abas.e.m.e.nt is my entire existence!"

"I'm sorry, KaiaI didn't mean ita"

"I'm tired of feeling like an outsider in my own life, which is how you make me feel when you tell me every single f.u.c.king day that you've got something more important than me. One of us is living a sham, and one a delusion. You don't see a problem with this? That the most meaningful part of my life is the least meaningful of yours?" He ran his desperate hands through his hair, trying to understand, find a way out for himself. "Oh, my G.o.d," he said. "Which one of us is really the fool here?" He laughed mirthlessly. "Sometimes when we're together I think we're the center of the universe, and I believe for a few stolen minutes that I'm the center of yours. And then you look at your watch, and it's like a balloon of joy bursting. I've been watching you do this and slowly realizing how much I f.u.c.king hate it, because it's not joy that's whistling out of those pop-up balloons in spasms, it's poison! Every time I see you glance at the timea"like you're doing now!a"you tell me I'm least important to you. I'm the outsider."

"You're not the outsider! Don't you know how I love youa?"

"I don't care! I don't care what you feel. I care what you do." Kai stepped away from his wall, took a stride across the entryway, where her back was up. "I don't want you to go back to him, Larissa," he said.

"Please don't ask me to choosea" She started to cry. "You know it's not between him and you, you know that."

"I have to be worth something, too."

"You are."

"Then why are you still toying with me after all this time?" he said. "I want you to imagine what Jared might say if you told him this is what you've been doing with your afternoons. How would he react? Well, I know what you've been doing with your afternoons. And with your nights. I know everything. I'm always behind the door. You want to imagine how Jared might feel? Imagine how I do feel! Imagine how anyone might feel except yourself. Anyone else, Larissa!"

And Larissa saw by the menace in his body, by the panting mouth, by the fire in his eyes that Kavanagh was right. She heard her gravelly voice in her head. I don't know what took him so long, Larissa, Kavanagh kept saying. No one else could have waited this long.

But he's not like everyone else. He is like no one else. He gazes on blue and walks in waltz-time. He listens for Tai Chi, and stays warm. He brings nothing but calm and music to my life. Still his stance, his expression scared her. For a second, it felt like Tijuana at night, like the next thing could be blood in the streets. He could suffocate her. He could beat her. He could kill her. He could throw her down the stairs. He could drown her in the river. He could keep her and not let her go. As he was dying, she was living, and without her, he too had nothing. What if it was Kai, not Jared, who could not bear to part with her? Did he have a Howitzer to balance these scales?

She opened her shaking frightened hands to him. "Please let's not fight." Her voice trembled like her body. "We have behaved badly. This hasn't been beautiful, this has been brutally wrong."

"I'm glad you think so," Kai said through his clenched teeth. "Because it's been the only thing in my life. Happy to know it was all in grave error."

"I'm not the ditzy receptionist who answers your calls, Kai! I'm somebody else's wife!"

"Oh, do I not know this! Will there ever be a minute that goes by that you don't inform me of this one way or another?" Kai took another stride to her. He was so upset. "But guess what? I don't want you to be someone else's wife." He grabbed her with angry hands. "I don't want anyone else sharing you with me anymore. Can't you understand that? I can't believe I have to even say it! How come I'm a generation younger, yet so much smarter? How come I see this, and you don't? How dense you are, how hopeless, how full of only yourself!"

She wanted to pull away, but couldn't. She wanted to leave, but couldn't. She wanted not to moan, not to cry out for him, not to cry for him, but couldn't. And he so shamelessly abused his ruthless power over her, he discarded her clothes and took her body for himself, he took off her watch! And turned all the clocks with their faces to the wall, he turned her face down on the bed, and he whispered hot things in her ear, while she was splayed, body and soul in the glare of her abandon for him. Just so you understand, Larissa, Kai whispered as he took the thing from her he could take, the thing that looked like love and was love, and yet wasn't; it was like a sonnet to a wh.o.r.e. I am leaving next weekend. I've paid up my rent till the end of May, I've given my notice at work, and now I'm giving you notice. I think I may have misunderstood you. What you really have been hoping for, praying for in your own little secular prayerful way, was not that Jared would kick you out, but that I would. You've come to resent me because I'm not doing the thing the biker stud is supposed to do. I'm not becoming imaginary soon enough. It took me a while to figure this out. I've been such an idiot. You've been waiting for a deus ex machina exit from me! Well, in exactly one week, you're going to get it.

It was high tide. It was deluge. And afterward, as Larissa rummaged on the floor to find her clothes, pick up the b.u.t.tons torn off her shirt, find the belt that had fallen, the watch he flung across the room (it was 2:50!), she said to him, "But Michelangelo is not Jared. He is not me. He is not you. When you make me this late, he suffers."

"When you leave me, you make me suffer," Kai said. "And I want to make you suffer."

"You think I don't suffer?"

"I don't think you suffer enough." His back was to her. He didn't turn to watch her go.

Dear Larissa, Lorenzo has cooked up a plan. He says I need to leave our house and go live in sanctuary with Father Emilio and have my baby there, and when we can get him sprung, we'll run, and leave the baby with Father Emilio until we get ourselves settled, and then we will return to get it. He said the nuns would take care of it for a few weeks while we hide out in Mindanao.

I said, Lorenzo, where are we going to get the money for bail?

He asked me to talk to Father Emilio. So I put away my shame, thrust my belly forward, and talked to Father Emilio. He stared at me silently a long time before he answered. He said, Do you want me to trade my good name and the name of this church to vouch for a man who plans to flee as soon as he is out and you, knowing that, are asking me to do this?

I cried. I said I didn't know what else to do.

He told me he would take care of me, the mission would take care of me and the baby, but his conscience would not allow him to lie for Lorenzo, and his parish did not have two and a half million pesos to lose to post bail for a man who would flee. He said the church would defrock him. He couldn't do it. His word in the neighborhood was law. Do you want me to ruin my reputation and the reputation of our San Agustin so that the man who will not marry you can persuade you to leave behind your desperately wanted child and run into the mountains with him?

I could barely get myself to walk upright out of the rectory.

Do you know, Larissa, sometimes, to my great discredita"G.o.d will never forgive me, though I pray He is merciful and doesa"but sometimes I wish Lorenzo had died in that clash with the cops. Because then I could grieve, and it would be horrible but it wouldn't be intolerable, like now. I wouldn't have to make an impossible choice between my baby and my Lorenzo! Because I don't want to abandon my baby to run to Mindanao. I'm terrified we won't be able to find our way back.

On your end of the world, do you even hear me?

This isn't the beginning of sorrowa"this is simply the worst thing that's ever happened to me. I cannot bear to make this choice.

Painting her nails with Fran Finklestein on Friday morning, the shattered edges of Larissa's gla.s.sy numbness couldn't help but skid over into the cla.s.sical hums of a peaceful manicure.

"You're so agitated," Fran said, her long-fingered hands stretched out for Sherry. "I haven't seen you in months. Why are you like this?"

"I am agitated," concurred Larissa, her long-fingered hands stretched out for Jessica. She clenched to get herself together. "I've been going to this psychologist anda""

Fran chuckled. "What do you have to go to a shrink for? You don't have any problems."

"No? Jessica, no, I do want the cuticles done today. Look at them. Thanks. Oh, I got some stuff. Nothing is perfect, Finklestein."

"So what's he doing for you?"

"She. Just making me agitated, that's what. I'd fire her, but then I'd have no one to talk to." And other things, too, she wouldn't be able to do at night with guitars on beds and short tumblers of raw poetry. Memorial Day was next weekend. One week. Seven days.

"Talk to me," Fran grinned. She was bubbly and gum-chewy. She was twenty-four. She could afford to be bubbly and gum-chewy. Larissa too had been bubbly and gum-chewy at twenty-four. "I know stuff," Fran said. "I'm people-smart. And I won't charge you a penny."

Larissa steadied her gaze on the beautifully unclumpy black lashes framing Fran's dancing brown eyes. She was delightful. Why hadn't Larissa spent more time with her? They could've been friends. They could have gone shopping, had lunch. Fran had been unconnected to any other part of her life. It had never occurred to Larissa that she could've talked to Fran. Once Fran had seemed too young to be friends with!

The wood life was chipping, and Larissa was sliding in p.r.i.c.kles of pain in the splinters of it. How could Fran have noticed her suffering before Jared?

Yetathe girl seemed so happening and with it. She hadn't been around the world three times, like Kavanagh's weathered face suggested she had been. Fran liked Larissa. Maybea "Wanna go have lunch after?" Fran asked.

"I'd love to, doll. But I can't. I've gota"

"Things?"

"Yeah." I've got Albright Circles and ukuleles and promises of scars and fresh wounds.

"Okay," said Fran. "How about a hypothetical right now?"

"Well, the point of talking, Finklestein," said Larissa, "isn't a question and answer session. We're not engaging in the Socratic method."

"The what?"

"The point is to converse freely about topics of great interest."

"Check! I'm greatly interested. Oh, yes, Sherry, please, this Ballerina Pink for the nails." Fran winked at Larissa. "They'll go with my black boots and gray striped leggings."

Fran looked great. She always looked good. She put herself together just for the manicure. She seemed so accessible. Larissa chewed her lip. "Okay," she began. "A hypothetical."

Jessica and Sherry leaned forward. Larissa found this fascinating, considering their English was usually impaired by near-total lack of comprehension. Yet here they were: Larissa said hypothetical, and the foreign non-English speaking girls leaned forward!

Their curiosity duly noted, her own hands still outstretched, Larissa clammed up, and the girls started talking in Korean, and then she unclammed, but still, was having difficulty getting even the hypothetical words out.

"Finklestein," she said, "do you know the story of Scylla and Charybdis?"

"What did you just say?"

The Korean girls continued talking, while buffing the bare nails before applying the polish. Larissa had five minutes tops, and then some time under the drier.

"Scylla," said Larissa, "was a six-headed dog with twelve feet who lived in a rock and ate men who sailed by her through the Strait of Messina. Charybdis guarded the other narrow opening of the pa.s.sage, a sea monster with a gaping mouth into which it sucked huge amounts of water and created whirlpools that sank men's ships."

"This is your hypothetical? A dog and a sea monster?"

"Yes."

Fran laughed.

"Finklesteina"

Jessica applied the last coat of red on Larissa's nails. Sherry was quicker. Fran was already done.

"Is that your choice, Larissa? Between a six-headed mutt and a sea monster?"

"I'm saying, you're pa.s.sing through the strait. You can go one way or the other. You're impaled on the stake of your own indecision. Your choice either way is unacceptable." Intolerable.

"I would turn around and go back," Fran flatly stated, her wet pink nails moving sideways under the fan of the drier. "Can you go back?"

"No," Larissa said. "There is no going back. It's either Scylla or Charybdis, Finklestein. Which one shall it be?"

Fran got up, all long skinny legs in high-heeled patent-leather boots, her lips shining, her eyes blazing, her hip flirtatiously bowed out, dancing hip-hop, fashion-plate, young, careless, and said, "I would go back if I could. But if I can't, you know what they say." She blew and burst a large pink bubble.

"No, Fran. What do they say?" Larissa was so tired of her wet nails, of other things, gray horses galloping, chariot races into the watery abyss.

"If you ride the tiger, you gotta reap the whirlwind, baby," Fran said, blowing her a kiss and twirling out. "Reap that whirlwind."

Larissa received yet another letter from Che barely three days after the last, the frequency of the letters underscoring Larissa's own increasing despair. She opened it.

Dear Larissa, I'm out of options. I'm so sorry, I can't believe I'm asking you for this. Please. Please, I beg you. Could you Larissa stopped reading and slowly put the letter back in the envelope. She was sorry, she really was, but she just could not read another syllable of Che's frantic missives. She simply couldn't read about someone else's troubles, her dirty plate so overstuffed with her sordid own. Odysseus chose Scylla, because he said he would rather lose a few of his men to a beast than the entire ship to a whirlwind. I'm sorry, Che, she thought, pushing the letter away into the depths of her dresser along with the others. But the love of Larissa has waxed cold.

4.

Fever Swamps

She came to Kavanagh Tuesday evening, sat down on the leather sofa, her hands in her lap. Watchfully she sat. Silently. It had been getting darker later and later, and tonight at seven, the last light of the sun streaked auburn through the windows, almost as if it were autumn, not the end of spring. There were no lamps on in the office. The paneled walls, the books, the wood desk behind the doctor, the notepad in the hands in which Kavanagh never seemed to write down anything, yet always remembered things Larissa had told her, Kavanagh and Larissa all steeped in lengthening shadows like curling smoke through a burning house. Tonight Larissa didn't fidget, didn't fret or fuss with her purse. Her jeans, her spring-green blazer, her cream tank top were pristine. Her light makeup hadn't run from morning. She made figures out of clay with Michelangelo after school, fed her family burritos and fajitas, and home-made flan for dessert that took all day to make, and cups of fresh fruit. She had driven steadily with both hands on the wheel and now sat with both hands on her lap. She didn't speak. And the doctor didn't speak, waiting for Larissa to begin.

Larissa said nothing.

"Do you have plans for Memorial Day weekend?"

"Not really."

In this manner they sat for forty-five of their fifty minutes together.

"I really should be getting back," Larissa finally said, getting up. "My daughter has a concert on Thursday night and I promised I would listen to her practice before she went to bed."

"Of course," said Kavanagh, getting up. "Are youaall right?"

"I'm fine." Larissa smiled and then, on impulse, extended her hand. "Thank you."

Dr. Kavanagh shook it in confusion. "I'll see you next Tuesday."

Larissa rolled her eyes. "Actually, my son managed to get into the Junior League baseball playoffs and they have a five o'clock game next Tuesday. I don't know when it will end. Can we reschedule?"

"Of course. Do you want to come next Thursday?"