Kristin frowned for a moment and then glowed with a smile. "Let's not tell him you were caught! That would solve everybody's problem. That is, yours and his. I don't really have a role in this situation. I didn't hate that machine, as he seems to think. I just thought seven hundred dollars was an awful lot to pay for the use we'd get out of it." Her fine nostrils flared and then contracted. "You know how he is, once the novelty has worn off?...But you've been burdened enough and shouldn't have to hear about our budgetary squabbles."

He could not have explained why he impulsively sold Sam out at this point. "I seriously doubt the Stecchino costs as little as seven hundred bucks."

Kristin closed her eyes and shook her lowered head. She was within an inch or so of his own height, and he had never before seen her fair crown, which for an instant seemed exquisitely vulnerable.

"Don't tell me."

"I shouldn't have said that." His regret was sincere.

"How much more?"

He chewed his lower lip. "I don't know for sure."

She recovered her aplomb with an attack on him. "Then you shouldn't have said it."

In a way he was flattered that she had turned personal, but he was also annoyed with what could be taken as an invidious response to his confession of error. "All right," he said defiantly, "I'll find out and get back to you."

She took a cell phone from her purse and, telling Roy, "I know the number by heart," she punched it in. She had the consideration to walk to and lean on her own car and not the Alvis while the call was in progress.

Roy sulkily strolled in the opposite direction. At the far end of the curving driveway could be found a garage that, like the pool house, was screened by trees. In this case it was a longish walk, but the man who had built the house liked to get automobiles out of the way when they were not in active use. Sam never garaged his Town Car, but the reason why Roy had not noticed Kristin's Corolla before must have been because she routinely put it away. On the other hand, she apparently was not quick to have it washed. The weather had been dry for a week. Noticing peculiarities about her made him uncomfortable, however. She was no business of his.

As he turned and trudged back, she was folding the telephone. When he was near enough, she said, in a dispa.s.sionate tone, "Fourteen hundred sixty-five dollars. Part of that is tax, of course."

It was probably odd that Roy did not feel vindicated. "I'm sorry I brought it up. I hope he wasn't too upset."

She winced at him. "I didn't call Sam. I called American Express."

Roy brought out his checkbook and probed himself further for a pen. Antic.i.p.ating an objection from her, he hastened to explain. "It's a present for my brother-in-law. He's having tax trouble and could use some cheering up."

"That's, uh, Robin's husband?"

"Yeah, Ross Gilpin."

Kristin remained silent as he put a handkerchief on the Alvis's bonnet, then the checkbook on the handkerchief, and scribbled the check.

She thanked him, folded it without examination, and tucked it into her purse. "I wanted to ask," in his opinion smiling too warmly to be derisive, "why you drive that car everywhere if you have to be so careful with it?"

"Good question. A car is kept in better condition with a little use than always sitting cold. I don't drive it much. In the last twenty-four hours I've been here twice and once to the hospital-"

Kristin gasped. "I have to get going! I dropped by to get some stuff Sam wanted and run it over there." Without another word she trotted to the back door, opened it with a key, and vanished within.

Reasonable as the explanation of her behavior was, Roy still felt hurt by the abruptness of her leave-taking-unless she expected to see him again on her reappearance with the things for Sam. But she would be in no less a hurry then than now. He decided to make the prompt departure he had been denied twenty minutes earlier.

He had had an unsatisfactory experience in every way, courtesy of his best friend, and not for the first time in his life. When they were teenagers, Sam delighted in doing such mischief as squeezing a girl's behind in a movie lobby. When she angrily whirled around, she would blame Roy, who looked her in the face while Sam stared in another direction. Sam was also then a head taller than his best friend.

3.

Roy was telling Sam that he had not been in love with Francine Holbrook for some weeks and had been trying to find a way to bring their intimacy to a close without destroying their friendship. Why this was so difficult to manage had to do with his conviction that Francine had never, at any time, been in love with him.

Sam looked none the worse for his ordeal in complexion or mood, but naturally he looked forward to leaving the hospital, where the doctors wanted to keep him one more day for observation. He said now, "You're going to have to explain that."

Roy had remained standing by preference-putting his weight on hospital furniture made him uneasy. "n.o.body likes to be told they can't have something even when they don't want it."

Sam's head looked larger on the pillow than when he was standing. "You're saying that suppose I didn't like something-" his eyes abstractedly surveyed the ceiling. "What? I don't know, a striped shirt or whatever, but was told I wasn't allowed to buy it, your contention is it would drive me wild until I got hold of it?"

"I was thinking in terms of personalities. I was really keen on her for a while."

"Oh, come on," Sam said. "You've seldom mentioned her name."

"I don't take you into my confidence on every matter that concerns me." They had argued in this fashion, if it could be called that, all their lives.

Sam winked at him. "Thank the Lord for small favors. You depress me enough as it is. But I ain't ever-incidentally, Kris hates me to say 'ain't' and 'he don't' and all-I haven't ever been able to picture you telling a woman you love her."

"I didn't say I told her." As to the bad grammar that Sam had wilfully used since their teen days when speaking with Roy, it was presumably intended as a he-man sort of idiom. Whether he noticed it or not, Roy had not joined him in the practice after they reached their twenties. "Is it the word that matters?"

At this moment a nurse entered on fast-moving rubber-soled white shoes. She smirked at each of them in turn, after which she scanned the chart that hung at the foot of the bed, to give her free access to which Roy had moved aside.

"Suzanne Akins, meet the guy I was telling you about," said Sam.

Undoubtedly she was the redhead he had mentioned to Roy, judging from the orange hair under the white cap and, when she glanced Roy's way, the turned-up nose and freckles. He would not have been attracted to her in street clothes; in a hospital uniform, with the power to administer injections and enemas, she impersonally repelled him.

"Hi," said she, returning to the chart. Then she told Sam, "Be a good boy," and with a nod to his friend, made a brisk exit.

Sam sounded his cackling laugh once the door was shut. "She came only to give you the once-over, kid. She didn't have no other business here."

Again he had forgotten his wife's injunction against barbarisms, and Roy had been bored by soph.o.m.oric s.e.xual raillery for twenty years, but as usual he humored his best friend. "I think it's you she's got the hots for. Flat on your back, you're at her mercy."

"I'm not kidding. I told her all about you."

"Thanks, pal." Roy finally drew up the metal chair and sat down at the angle at which Sam could see him best. "But as I'm trying to tell you, I have enough trouble with the women at hand."

"There's more than Francine? I mean, I know there's always more, but I mean more causing trouble?"

"Figure of speech," Roy said. "You know I'm more or less a one-woman guy at any given time."

"Which might mean as little as three dates." Sam referred to Roy's practice of making no s.e.xual advances whatever before the third time he took a woman out-not even when he had good reason to believe she would welcome them. He knew he sometimes risked being thought gay, but it was more important to his sense of propriety, call it old-fashioned, not to be taken for a superficial lecher.

Roy changed the subject. "I decided against my original idea of giving Ross and Robin the coffee machine and instead took it over to my place. I can offer clients a cup."

Sam chuckled. "Nothing like a free cappuccino to get some nut to part with half a mil for an old Bugatti."

"Bugattis only turn up at auctions, and there'd never be a bid that low."

"My plan worked," said Sam. "I knew if I got the Stecchino out of there, Kris would never mention the subject. That's the way she is. Above all, she hates confrontations."

Roy looked carefully for signals of disingenuousness and was not amazed to find none. Sam himself abhorred serious wrangling with others. This had nothing to do with the good-natured needling he and Roy might exchange. "Never noticed it was gone?"

"Not a word. There won't be one, I tell you." Today he was wearing silk pajamas in baby blue, as opposed to the hospital gown of the day before. Obviously Kristin had been there since. "That's how it goes with us."

Roy did not begrudge his smugness about having the perfect marriage, especially in Sam's current condition, yet he could not refrain from asking, "What happens when the credit-card bill arrives?"

Sam's eyebrows rose. "It will be paid without comment."

"Who writes the check?"

Sam reached toward the bedstand. "Kris is the banker in our family."

Roy jumped up. "What do you want?"

"Gla.s.s of water. I'm not disabled."

"I doubt you're supposed to twist that way." Roy filled the tumbler from the carafe atop which it had been upended.

On receiving the gla.s.s, Sam tested the water with the most meager sip, made a face, and returned it to Roy. "It's brackish and warm as p.i.s.s."

Roy lifted a wrist and touched the watch on it. "I've got an appointment."

"You still wearing that supermarket Casio?" Sam asked derisively. "Would it bankrupt you to buy a grownup's watch? At least let me lend you one of my PPs." He owned at least two Patek Philippe's, as well as a five-figure Rolex he called an investment. "Kris is bringing some decent water, in case I don't get out of here tomorrow as early as I'd like. I would love something stronger, but I guess I ought to take a diet seriously.... She's bringing my portable DVD player as well. You might try to find any recent releases I don't have, but better check with me on the t.i.tles. I'm pretty well up to speed on the films I want to see. There's always s.h.i.t I don't want to look at."

Roy clicked his heels, like a n.a.z.i in an old black and white movie. "Jawohl, mein General." He was about to say goodbye when the telephone rang on the little table at the other side of the bed, easily reached by Sam's long right arm.

"Sure.... Well, you know I drink gallons.... Wait a minute. Roy's here. Lemme tell him." He lowered the phone to his thick neck. "She's got a case of Apollinaris. Imagine what it weighs-"

Roy took the phone. "Kristin."

"Hi, Roy."

"If you could bring a bottle or two for him to drink tonight, I'll haul the case over tomorrow, if he still wants it. I've got an appointment right now."

"Thanks, Roy, and good luck. I hope you make a nice profit on the Alvis."

She hung up before he could go into the ticklish matter of how he would collect the case of water: Let himself into the house again? It was of minor importance that she had wrongly a.s.sumed his current business concerned the Alvis.

He returned the phone to its base. "You better give me the inside disarm code for that security system."

Sam displayed the bland expression by which he suggested a query was simpleminded. "Inside you punch in my birthdate in the right order."

"Why didn't you tell me last time?"

"It never occurred to me."

Francine Holbrook had been divorced for a year, but suspecting her ex-husband of stalking her, she insisted on meeting Roy at the bar of a country inn, an hour's drive upstate, so that by using a stretch of back road she could determine whether she was being shadowed.

What had caused Roy to lose his ardor for Francine was her solipsism. She seldom took account of what other people believed or felt, even or perhaps especially when they were her intimates. Either she or everybody else lived in a dream. However, it might have been just this approach to life that had attracted Roy to her in the first place, he who thought of himself as someone restrained by a concern as to how he was regarded by others. Francine habitually parked next to fireplugs and in bus stops, and did not get as many tickets as you might think. She threw any she got into the glove compartment, never paid them, and got away with it while she was married, leaving such matters for her husband to settle, which he uxoriously seemed to do. This was the same man who now supposedly stalked her.

Francine was wont to light cigarettes in no-smoking venues, to take cell-phone calls during movies, and to voice clarion and provocative comments in crowded restaurants ("I don't dare tell her how hot-looking I think she is since the makeover or she'll shove her tongue down my throat!"). She was also s.e.xually rude. On her own volition in the absence of any stimulus of which he was aware, Francine might open Roy's fly and fiddle around with his genitals while speaking of unrelated matters, such as the current feud between her sisters, though he was driving or trying to watch the weather report on television. He had enjoyed this stunt when their connection was new and made the mistake of admitting it. For quite some time now, however, it had seemed an invasion of privacy, but, as with the whole affair of which this was only a minor feature, he had not been able to conceive of a means by which to terminate it kindly.

He had decided to leave the Alvis in the showroom from now on, before the law of averages ordained that its finish got scratched or chipped, and for transportation this evening had chosen the rare example of a fixed-head MGA coupe, oyster-white, which he had recently purchased from an elderly widow whose husband had bought it new in 1958 and maintained it reasonably well over the years, though it had acquired a new exhaust system and a replacement set of tires. Most MGAs had been roadsters, with a folding canvas roof and plastic side-curtains, but this was a hardtop, one of the relatively few exported to America. He had bought it cheap, while still, ethically, paying the woman more than she expected. It was still on his hands only because his client who specialized in the marque did not want another with wire wheels, so at the moment it was listed with the other offerings in his ads in the car magazines and at the Website Incomparable.com.

As he turned the nimble little car into the parking lot of The Hedges after a pleasant drive at an easy cruising speed of eighty-five when the coast was clear-which was within 10 mph of the MGA's maximum-he found himself wishing he was meeting Kristin, at the moment the only person of his social acquaintance, of either s.e.x, who might have been interested in seeing this handsome vehicle. Francine had a total disregard for all machinery. Also, her ego was such that she refused to acknowledge any departure from the mean on the part of anyone but herself. He could have driven a handyman's Chevy pickup or a king's Hispano-Suiza without attracting her notice.

He walked up the lane from the parking lot to the inn, looking for the nearby willow-bordered duck pond, which was too dark to see except as a glimmering reflection in the wan light from the carpark. The Hedges was a fetching place outside and within, warm in winter, refreshing in summertime, with alert but un.o.btrusive servitors and short but well-conceived menus and wine list. It would have been an excellent destination with any woman, or least any Roy was likely to court, but it was perfect for clandestine dates-and a discreet glance around the room most evenings would suggest many of one's fellow diners could qualify for the latter.

Roy had been introduced to the place by its owner, to whom he had sold a cla.s.sic 507 BMW Sports-Tourisme, exported from Munich by a NATO general. Francine was the only woman with whom Roy had yet visited The Hedges. On the threshold now, between the wrought-iron lighting fixtures that bracketed the entrance, he found himself yearning poignantly to do so with someone other than she.

Hand on the thick doork.n.o.b, he heard his name hissed from the darkness behind him. He turned, stepped back, and peered at the thicket near the pond, but could discern nothing through the foliage.

"Is that you?" He received that most annoying answer, palpable silence. "Francine?"

Suddenly there she was, not where he looked but just behind his right shoulder, having stolen out noiselessly from some nearer cover, probably the large shrub to the left of the entrance. But playing such games was not like her. Francine was never kittenish.

"We have to get out of here." Her voice was intense but scarcely louder than a whisper.

"Huh?"

"Get going."

Disinclined to take such direction, Roy did not move. "I want a drink," he said. "And I'm hungry."

She seized his arm at the elbow and tugged with unusual strength in someone so small, who however in any posture other than standing at full height seemed much larger than she was. "Will you get out of here?"

"Jesus, Francine." As so often, it was less fuss to comply with her wishes than to resist, even though he was well aware it was because of just this sort of gutlessness that he had come to the point at which he found her unbearable. And it was more self-respecting to walk as if of one's own volition than to be pulled. His decision was further influenced by the exit of some people from the building behind them and the simultaneous appearance of a party of three at the bottom of the path from the carpark, making for a potential jam in human traffic.

His fear that Francine would want to display her anguish to these strangers proved groundless. She freed him from her grasp and walked decorously beside him. Roy scanned the faces of those in the oncoming group, so as not to cut anyone with whom he had done or might do business, but recognizing n.o.body, he smiled faintly toward all while stepping off the narrow path in deference to the other claimant to the same s.p.a.ce, an adolescent girl who surprised him with her murmured thanks. He quickly discerned that she was not the date but the daughter of the portly middle-aged gentleman in attendance, and her slender and still handsome mother brought up the rear, proving that the clientele of The Hedges was comprised of more than furtive adulterers. He must congratulate his friend Jack Judd, innkeeper and car collector.

In the parking lot Roy stopped, though Francine continued to walk, even now picking up the pace, and he asked, raising his voice, "Wait a minute, will you? My car is over there. Where do you want to go?" Then, because she was still in motion, "Will you stop!"

She did so, her back toward him, and lowered her dark head. Roy had come this far to avoid social embarra.s.sment, but he would go no farther without good reason. However, she looked very small in the light of the nearest ornamental lamppost, and against his better judgment he was moved by what might prove a genuine distress.

She turned toward him as he approached. She had as youthful a figure as the teenager to whom he had surrendered the footpath, though she had borne two children. This little girl and boy, seven and eight, played no part for Roy in his affair with their mother. He had seen them only once, at a distance, and he rarely thought about them, for to do so might lead to a reflection on whether he, after all, shared some moral responsibility for the breakup of their family. Francine claimed he was her one and only lover as wife, parent, and divorcee, even though the court had awarded her husband custody of the children.

Roy suspected that she had always been promiscuous, though he had never caught her at it and never tried to. By the current phase of their a.s.sociation, he wished ardently that she did have other guys on the string and preferred them all to him.

"He's inside," she said now.

Roy made an instant translation. "Your ex? Okay, we'll go...let me think where." He did not mind another trip so soon-he would have had to make the return later on anyway, and driving the little coupe was a treat-but he really was hungry at the end of a long day. But he could understand her wish to leave, and was himself not eager to be seen for the first time by Martin Holbrook though not being at legal or moral odds with the man.

Francine immediately cast victimhood aside, which was her style. Throwing her head back, her eyes in shadow even larger than nature and cosmetic enhancement maintained them, she cried, "Race you back!"

He had no taste for such a foolish contest. He would have to let her win it, in a Lincoln Navigator that was dangerously top-heavy on the twisting secondary roads, in the corners of which the MGA, at speed, was as if in the clutch of G.o.d.