So what, then . . . read the signs? They were just ambiguous enough to worry him. And getting it wrong meant facing rejection and loss, however polite or gently executed. And that was something Syd categorically refused to risk.

His walls were too hard-won, the peace too fragile. The battle between aloneness and loneliness was being waged on a daily basis.

And he asked himself, how long does it take before the dread spectre of rebound stops rearing its ugly head?

He wondered what Jane would make of all this, if he told her. On the surface, at least, she seemed to be free of this sort of stupidity. Just like she seemed, on the surface, to be interested in him.

But then, of course, she didn't know what he was.

And so around and around he went, making himself insane behind a cool veneer of bartenderly efficiency and calm. It went that way until just around two AM.

And then, once again, the course of his life was dramatically altered forever.

It was one forty-five, and the bar had already thinned out, maybe a half-dozen stragglers nursing their last calls. Trent, being the head bartender, was in charge of closing up; his wife was home in bed, nursing a case of extreme pregnancy.

Then the phone rang. Trent was hauling up a fresh keg from the bas.e.m.e.nt when Syd picked up the line. He stuck his head through the double doors leading to the kitchen, spotted Trent wrestling with the keg as he came up the stairs.

"Trent! It's Leslie!"

Trent groaned, bracing himself; her weird cravings had extended clear into the ninth month, and it was not unusual for her to hit him with last-minute late-night requests for anything from chocolate raisins-and-pork rinds to black licorice-and-pickles. "Tell her I'm already gone for the night," he grumbled.

Syd shook his head. "She says you better be on your way to the hospital, then," he deadpanned. "Her water just broke."

Trent's face went white, then gray, then red. "HOLY s.h.i.t!" he yelped. He dropped the keg and bounded up the cellar steps, grabbed the phone from Syd's outstretched hand. Jane came up, wiping her hands.

"What's going on?" she asked. She took one look at Trent's face.

And thus did Syd graduate to closing up.

At two twenty-five, Syd looked up to see the other waitresses ducking out. He was just finishing closing out the books; they were through with cleanup and the ritual splitting of tips. They each said 'bye and waved on their respective ways out. Jane was still at the bar, lingering behind. Bonnie, the last one to leave, threw him a sly look as she headed through the door.

And then he and Jane were alone.

As Syd totaled the receipts Jane went over to the jukebox, punched up some tunes. The first muted chords of ZZ Top's "La Grange" came on, low and thrumming as Jane sidled up to a stool directly before him, took a load off her feet; as she did she rocked her head back and forth, working the kinks out of her neck.

"G.o.d," she groaned. "I hate Ladies' Night. Why don't they just call it 'Drunken h.e.l.l-s.l.u.ts Night' and get it over with?"

"Guess people are just afraid to say what they really mean," Syd replied, trying not to watch.

"Yeah," Jane said. "Where would we be if we all started telling each other the truth?"

Their eyes made fleeting contact, and then Jane looked away, as if she wanted to say something further, opted not to. She turned her attention to the books.

"All done?" she asked. Syd nodded. "Lemme see."

She scanned the register readouts, cross-referenced them against the night's receipts. After a moment, she nodded. "Looks okay to me," she said. "You sure you didn't go to Famous Bartenders' School?"

"Nope," Syd shrugged. "Just have years of experience," adding, "most of it on the other side of the bar."

"Yeah," she replied. "I noticed."

Syd felt his face go red, hoped it didn't show; Jane cut him a little slack. "Anyway, that was a long time ago," she said. "Just for the record, everybody 'round here thinks you're doing a great job."

"Thanks." Syd stopped, thought about Jules, and the shoes he had to fill. Jane said nothing, started rubbing her neck again. Suddenly she hunched her shoulders. "Ow! s.h.i.t!" She winced.

"What's wrong?"

"My neck," she replied. "Sometimes it gets like this after a shift."

"Hang on."

Syd hustled around the bar, came up behind her, placed his hands on her shoulders, and began gently ma.s.saging the muscles there.

"Oh G.o.d," she murmured, spontaneously melting as the knotted tissue gave way beneath his touch. "Ow . . .!" She flinched, tightened up again.

"Sorry," he said, backing off a bit, as his heart did cartwheels into the stratosphere. She relaxed, leaning back 'till her head just touched his chest. Syd worked his way along her shoulders, around the base of her neck, and up to the apex of her spine. Her skin was warm and soft, the flesh beneath firm and supple. He was certain the pounding of his heart would give her a concussion as it gave away his feelings, revealed the depth of his desire. Any minute she would stand and shake off the contact, redraw the line between them. . . .

But Jane showed no sign of leaving. She stayed put, letting her weight lean into him. When she spoke, her voice was soft, cautious.

"You've really changed. . . ." she began.

Syd kept silent, kept working: feeling her breathe, drinking in her warmth.

"I used to think you were kind of an a.s.shole, sometimes," she continued. It was Syd's turn to flinch. He thought about it, then nodded.

"Me, too," he confessed.

Jane echoed the gesture, her head still against his chest. She relaxed a little more, let her full weight lean into him.

"For the record, I like you better this way."

"Me, too."

There was another long pause, both lost in their own thoughts. Syd kept ma.s.saging her: holding the line, afraid to either break the contact or press forward. Knowing that, either way, the next move was hers.

"That feels great," she said dreamily.

She brought one hand up to join with his; the second their fingers touched it sent a charge directly to the green light in his soul. He felt a warm light glow there, begin spreading through him.

His fingers gently disengaged, traced the back of her hand to the outside of her arm and up to her neck. As they found the line of her jaw, she tilted her head in response, leaning into his hand. His fingertips came up, brushed against her lips.

She kissed them.

It was another few seconds before he could even think. He cleared his throat to say something, changed his mind, simply leaned forward. She turned to meet him halfway. Their lips touched, hovering exquisitely before parting to reveal softly darting tongues. His eyes fluttered closed. Her lips were feather-soft, wonderfully smooth. His hands slipped beneath her hair, cupping her head. She let out a little groan of pleasure and hunger, and her mouth opened wider, drawing him in . . .

. . . and it was as if the entire universe whirled and spun and stopped altogether, obliterated by the ecstatic rush that rose up to envelop them. Syd felt the walls melt between them, the line disappearing completely . . .

. . . and then she was pulling away, grudgingly breaking the contact as Syd opened his eyes, felt the room rematerialize around them. Reeling, Syd looked across the room to the booths, then back to Jane.

Jane met his gaze, her dark eyes smoldering. "Let's get out of here," she said.

29.

The night was alive as they drove, the big k.n.o.bby tires of Jane's Jeep Renegade humming down the road. It was a battered, weather-beaten little vehicle, with a combination tow winch/snowplow attachment mounted on the front b.u.mper. The wind whipped through the open top and windows. Syd looked up and saw stars twinkling through the budding foliage, looked over and watched her long hair flying back, wild and alive as well.

The whole way there they didn't speak, or at least no words were exchanged. But the heat of her hand spoke volumes: the way it drifted from his grasp to the gearshift and back again, continually maintaining the contact. Keeping the excitement level high.

And Syd was excited; of this there was no doubt. There was promise in her touch, in the way she glanced at him as they rolled down the winding mountain road. A steadily mounting buzz had taken hold of his senses, heightening everything, rendering it crystal clear. It was the sweet taste of antic.i.p.ation, the knowledge that something very, very good was happening. It was a feeling he hadn't had in a long, long time.

And it was getting better by the second.

They rounded a curve and Jane's hand slipped from his, grabbed the gearshift. "Hang on," she said, downshifting into the turn and cutting across the road into a black hole in the trees.

"Whoa," Syd cried, reaching up to grab the pa.s.senger side panic bar. The Jeep rumbled and thumped as it left the road, and the next thing he knew they were climbing a rutted, pitch-black private drive. The woods closed in on all sides; Syd glanced back, saw the main road disappear behind them.

A shudder of irrational fear came over him; it had been a long time since he had been in the woods with a woman at night-been in the woods at all, for that matter. The Jeep jerked and b.u.mped, as the drive hooked sharply to the right, angled even more steeply. It was clear that nothing short of four-wheel drive would stand a chance of making this jaunt; even in good weather, his Cougar would have bottomed out a long time ago.

But Jane took it all in stride, tearing up the path at speeds he found genuinely disturbing, rocks and dust billowing up behind them as she navigated the rugged terrain.

They pa.s.sed a rough-hewn sign reading PRIVATE PROPERTY: NO HUNTING! NO TRESPa.s.sING! The path widened, leveled into a clearing. Jane slowed to a more leisurely and altogether quieter speed.

Up ahead, a light appeared through the trees. As they drew closer Syd saw that it was a porch light, softly illuminating the rambling structure that nestled in the clearing.

To call it a log cabin was like calling the America Cup winner a sailboat: it was split-level, rustic and sprawling, all stone and thick-beamed wood, with a gabled roof, a big wraparound porch and lots of windows. There was a neat little gravel parking ap.r.o.n just off to one side. Jane pulled up, crunched to a halt, shut off the engine. Then she turned to him and smiled.

"Well, here we are," she said.

"Wow," Syd murmured, looking around. "This is incredible."

"Yeah," she said. "You should see it in the daytime."

There was a pause, in which the stillness of the night enfolded them. No sounds of civilization intruded up here, not even the hum of a distant highway. It was strangely unnerving, like seeing the last glimpse of land slip over the horizon as you set out to sea. Syd found that his excitement had changed to nervousness; as he looked at her he realized that he hadn't the slightest idea of what to do or say next.

Jane, too, seemed to hesitate, like there was something important she wanted to tell him and she didn't know quite how to put it. "I'm not very good at this," she offered at last.

"Me, either," Syd replied. There was another pause. She took a deep breath, then leaned over and kissed him.

Her mouth was hot, incredibly sweet. Her lips moved from his mouth to the hollow of his neck, nuzzling him, and it was as if his head disconnected, became a balloon hovering somewhere above his body, held in place only by a single strand of desire. She leaned up, whispering into his ear.

"Let's go to bed," she said.

If anyone had suggested that Syd would ever find a lover to compare with Nora, he would have laughed out loud. It was a little like losing your life's fortune, only to discover that you'd been using the Hope diamond as a paperweight. Jane was that good.

And not just physically, although Syd was certainly as pleased as he was surprised. Jane unclothed and unbound was a creature roughly a million times more provocative than her work persona ever let on. Her body was wonderfully full and feminine; her skin soft and very pale, almost translucent. It offset her dark hair and even darker pubic thatch, gave her a striking, almost ethereal quality.

And once revealed, Jane's s.e.xuality was stronger than he'd ever imagined. The word grounded came to mind; as she kissed him Syd felt like he had been plugged into a pipeline to the center of the earth. His nagging anxieties melted under her touch; she thoughtfully provided him with a condom and then made him forget he was even wearing one.

And where Nora was a midnight joyride that continually threatened to skid out of control, Jane's lovemaking was marked by an intense serenity, an air of caring that calmed him even as it brought him to the brink, made him feel like he could go on forever.

And indeed, they went round and round for hours; Jane's climax building and peaking repeatedly as they moved into and out of each other, becoming intimate with each other's mechanisms of ecstasy.

And when Syd could go no longer, as he finally shuddered and exploded inside her, Jane took him in her arms and kissed him: accepting his release as she welcomed him home.

And as Syd collapsed in her arms a wave of anguish billowed up in its wake, venting raw emotion like a hurricane slamming a placid sh.o.r.e . . .

. . . and it felt as if everything he had ever done, or tried to do, or would ever try to do was ruined from the start; that no matter how hard he tried or how long he struggled, the end result would always be the same. That Jane was there with him only served to underscore his terror. She didn't know his secret. He didn't know how to tell her. He was putting her at risk by even being here, by letting her get close.

And he feared more than anything that he would lose this, too: that one way or another she would be taken from him. That he would destroy her. That she would desert him.

That he would come to need her, only to lose her in the end.

That it would always be this way . . .

. . . and suddenly she was there, she was there, her hands reaching out to hold him, pull him into her warm embrace. He heard a distant keening noise, realized the sound was coming from him, a wordless lament.

He heard words, too, softly repeating over and over. It was Jane, talking to him; and her voice moved in concert with her hands, her hands that kept moving over his back and shoulders and neck and head.

It's okay, she was saying. Let it out. Let it all out. It's okay. . . .

And the words were an invitation, as Jane held and rocked him. Let it go, she said. Syd curled naked between her legs, fetal and defenseless.

And he began to cry: a heartfelt human sobbing that had nothing whatsoever to do with self-pity and absolutely everything to do with the simple honest expression of sadness. It was the first time in years he had been able to let himself cry without embarra.s.sment or reservation, untainted by bitterness or anger. He cried to say good-bye to Karen, and Nora, and the lives that might have been; he cried to say he was sorry for all the pain with his name on it.

Ultimately he cried simply because it hurt, and tears were the only honest reaction.

And that was the most amazing thing. The pain felt good; not because he enjoyed it, but because it was real, and to not acknowledge it was to cut himself off from a vital side of himself. Syd hugged Jane fiercely, gratefully. It was as though she had taken all of his anguish and transformed it, by nothing more than the force of her caring. Syd buried his face between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s; Jane stroked his hair and kissed the crown of his head, told him to sleep. They stayed like that until the first light of dawn crawled across the sky, until they finally fell asleep, enmeshed in a tired and gentle tangle of limbs.

It was an altogether wonderful feeling, one that he would carry with him always.

Until the day he died.

30.