Very quickly it would come to seem to Lionel Hoffmann that the remainder of his life, all that was not Siri, was of little more substance than those hypnagogic images that flash against our eyelids when, in a state of exhaustion, we begin to sink into sleep.

Y L , and didn't inquire of Siri until the end of his third week of therapy, when things were going very well for him, whether he might "see" her sometime; and Siri declined at once, though with downcast, embarrassed eyes; and that air of apology and regret that suggested (unless Lionel imagined it?) how much she regretted being in a position obliging her to decline Lionel's offer, and to disappoint him. Lionel saw in the mysteriously silent, darkly beautiful girl a sensitivity to another's feelings that could only have been foreign, for it was certainly not American. "If I weren't your patient, Siri? Would that make a difference?" Lionel asked, and Siri turned away, stricken with a deeper embarrassment, forced to murmur, "Mr. Hoffmann, how can I say!"

Which left the issue, Lionel thought, ambiguous and open to interpretation.

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B * he knew her name: Siri Joio. Frequently he spoke it aloud when there was no one to overhear. He knew from the few remarks he'd been able to draw out of her that she lived in Manhattan, in the East Village; it seemed likely that she lived alone; she had few relatives; always she'd wanted to be a physical therapist, and to devote herself to helping "alleviate pain" in others. Lionel was deeply touched by the girl's idealism, which reminded him of his own idealism, years ago; before he'd gone into the Hoffmann family business. Lionel assured Siri that she was certainly helping him, and he was very grateful. Except-"When I'm well, will that mean we'll never see each other? That doesn't seem fair."

Siri's only response was to laugh nervously.

O * * were engorged with her. His neck, shoulders, upper back, and spine were erogenous zones. The blood of lost youth pumped into his groin, waking him on the brink of orgasm. During the day, at Hoffmann Publishing, Inc., in meetings and at luncheons and on the phone, Lionel was seized with irrational surges of happiness, and hope. You won't abandon me, Siri! I know it. At other times, when the pain returned to his neck and spine, a dull sullen throbbing, he was overcome with a sense of desolation, self-disgust, hopelessness. Of course I'm too old for you. And you've seen my weaknesses, exposed. It had been years since Lionel had felt so irresolute. His emotions so mercurial. Years since he'd understood that love brings fear: our worry that we won't be loved in return, that our emotion will be flung back into our faces.

He could not recall having loved Camille like this.

He could not recall having loved anyone like this.

He'd told Camille only that he was having minor neck and back problems, and seeing an orthopedist in the city. Preoccupied with her own problems, and the intensity of Salthill social life which resembled a high-speed roller coaster from which one might never alight during one's lifetime, Camille was sympathetic, but not very involved. "So long as you've had X rays, darling? And there was nothing-serious?"

Lionel reassured Camille, there was nothing "serious."

Liking it that he felt so little unease, in her presence. And when he was away from her he scarcely thought of her at all. Siri, you have taken over my life. Siri, have mercy!

Middle Age: A Romance

O , in their fifth week of therapy, when Lionel lay grimacing and panting in pain after an arduous exercise in neck "flexion," Siri gently continued to massage his neck; and paused, and stroked his forehead, which was damp with perspiration. Lionel's eyelids opened at once. He saw Siri's dark, tender gaze fixed upon his. He gripped her hand and held it for a long, tense moment.

Walking wounded. He saw them everywhere, now. He pitied them, and felt contempt for them, and looked quickly away when their eyes that shimmered with pain sought his.

Head retraction in sitting. Neck extension in sitting. Head retraction in lying.

Neck extension in lying. Sidebending of the neck. Neck rotation. Neck flexion in sitting. Each of these exercises was to be repeated ten times. Each complete set to be performed twice daily in Lionel's bedroom, or more often, as Siri said, depending upon need.

"But I need my pain, too! My pain is my bond with you."

Not in Salthill but in the apartment on East 6*st Street, Lionel slept, or tried to sleep, with a rather hard tubular cushion called a "cervical roll"

between his pillow and pillowcase. He'd purchased it at the clinic, as Siri recommended. Sometimes he dreamt that Siri of the smoldering-dark eyes and warm nutmeg scent was pushing a bar against the tender nape of his neck. Her throaty almost inaudible voice. Mr. Hoffmann! Relax, please.

Sometimes he dreamt he was naked, in a public place, awkwardly kneeling, his neck throbbing with pain outstretched above a bucket as, above his head, a guillotine blade was being raised, preparatory to slicing his head from his body.

H , he knew! One day soon she would consent to see him.

(But would she? This is ridiculous, I'm too old. Adam would laugh at me.) Yes but Siri was so kind. He'd overheard her speaking with other patients, before and after Lionel Hoffmann entered her cubicle. He'd overheard her speaking on the telephone. And her strong deft capable fingers were so kind. It was her task to alleviate pain. She was an angel of mercy

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clad in crisp white nylon. A smock, trousers. The smock was loose-fitting so one could not make out the shape of her breasts except to know that they were not small, though obviously not large, crudely mammalian. Siri was of an entirely different physical type from Camille: slender, boyishly lean, with perfectly proportioned thighs, hips, torso, shoulders, and arms, subtly muscled, not an ounce of fat. Poor Camille: with her fleshy hips and breasts, her pink-skinned round face so eager to please, she was one whom evolution had bypassed; young women no longer died in childbirth because their pelvises were too narrow, they no longer required hefty milk-bags for breasts. The thought of Siri's flat smooth belly made Lionel sweat. This is ridiculous! Help me.

Still, he seemed to know she would consent to see him. One day soon.

S'* * the Park Avenue Neck and Back Clinic ended at six .. Lionel arranged to be awaiting her at the curb, on Park, in a hired town car. She was startled to see him, she was disapproving, yes, but surely she was flattered, "Siri, I must talk with you. In private." "Mr. Hoffmann!

This isn't allowed." " 'Talk' isn't allowed? That can't be!" Lionel laughed.

An unexpectedly lighthearted lover he was, like Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly of yesteryear. Except for his problematic spine he might have broken into dance right there on the sidewalk. How boyishly eager he was, how seductive his smile. Gaily improvising as he'd never have done in mummy-Salthill-"Under the U.S. Constitution, Siri, we're guaranteed freedom of speech. You are a U.S. citizen, dear, aren't you?" This was teasing but pointed. Jocular but urgent. Siri laughed uneasily. Cutting her softly dark exotic eyes at him. Shaking her head in a way he couldn't interpret. Maybe yes, maybe no. Today Siri wore her lustrous dark hair parted neatly in the center of her head and brushed back in a way that put Lionel in mind of ancient Egyptian female figures, in profile. How beautiful she was! "We can talk in the car. On your way home. You won't have to take the subway." "Mr. Hoffmann. If my supervisor should see . . ." "We can have dinner. Drinks and dinner. Then I'll take you home. We must talk, Siri. You know that." "But Mr. Hoffmann . . ." The girl appeared genuinely concerned. But who was watching them? Lionel saw no one. He dared to take Siri's arm, and led her to the waiting car, and she didn't resist, though seeming not to acquiesce, either; and then they were together, alone together, in the back of the car, and the driver was easing into traffic, and Middle Age: A Romance

dark-tinted glass protected them from prying eyes. Now they were free of the scrutiny of the clinic, and they were free of the protocol of the clinic.

What relief! In the town car in intimate quarters, both rather breathless, but Lionel was in authority. Lionel was the one to assert authority by touching: closing his fingers around Siri's fingers. Laughing at his own boldness. Siri tried to smile, looking frightened, demurring, "Mr. Hoffmann-" and Lionel simply tightened his grip.

They were moving in a procession of glittering vehicles. Midtown traffic. Lionel Hoffmann was a Salthill citizen and he owned property in Manhattan and he was worth many millions of dollars and Siri Joio, who was no fool, nor perhaps so naive as she appeared, could not help but know.

"Please call me Lionel, Siri. You must know by now that's my name."

Now it begins. Now, nothing will stop me! In the town car he kissed her lightly, in an East Side restaurant they sat at a corner table by candlelight, Lionel's handsome graying head inclined toward Siri's as he talked. Siri was very quiet through the meal, and Lionel talked. He hadn't known he was so aggrieved, and so eloquent. A sexually aroused male yet a gentleman. He would see to it that Siri knew: he was a gentleman. Telling her of his life.

Never had he considered his life a story until, that evening, he began to tell it to a beautiful young woman who gazed at him avidly, now and then, always rather shyly, stroking his hand. If Siri had heard the life stories of numerous men of affluent middle age, her clients at the clinic, she certainly gave no sign. If Siri's mind wandered during Lionel's quietly impassioned monologues, she certainly gave no sign. She appeared fascinated by Lionel Hoffmann's life which had been, as he expressed it, a life of deprivation and stoicism and duty-"The Protestant ethic. The theology of quiet desperation. You have been spared, Siri, I hope!" It began to seem to Lionel as he told his story that every action of his dating back to his boyhood had been in compliance with others' wishes; his only private, secret act had happened by accident, the terrifying discovery of the dead hippie couple by the lake in Broom Hills, when he'd been a child. "It was like finding treasure. An appalling treasure. Except I had no idea what it meant." What could Siri possibly make of this amazing statement? Yet she listened attentively. Her eyes were fixed on his. That glisten to her eyes. Her hypnotic eyes. The scent of nutmeg, of heated skin. Heavy hair at the nape of her neck Lionel was mad

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to unplait, he was mad to press his face against her neck, to bury himself in her. Waiter, another bottle of wine! (Though Siri was drinking only mineral water.) He was compelled to tell her of his life. His life until he'd met her. "Thank God for the pain. The pain that brought me to you. I see now, the purpose. There are no coincidences in the universe, Siri." As he spoke she murmured Yes and Oh yes? and showed by the warm intensity of her gaze and a frequent baring of her teeth in a smile how impressed she was with him, and how erotically attracted; how she admired him, yet was rather intimidated by him; for he was telling her in some detail of Hoffmann Publishing, Inc., the preeminent publisher of medical texts in the United States; he was telling her of his family's pride in his accomplish-ments, and of his own resentment that he'd bartered so much of his life in exchange for "success." And he'd married too young; he'd married primarily to please his parents; he'd married a sweet girl whom he hadn't truly loved, but one of whom his parents had approved. "My wife. My children. My life until meeting you. These belong to the past, Siri. I feel as if I'm drowning in happiness. Yet-what a riddle it is!"

After the restaurant. In the apartment on East *st. Entering, gripping Siri's hand, Lionel felt a thrill of panic: what if to surprise him in her blundering way, as once she'd surprised her reticent and easily embarrassed husband with a fortieth birthday party, Camille had come into the city that day, and was waiting for Lionel . . . Thank God, the apartment was empty.

Lionel laughed aloud at the look of childlike awe on Siri's face. "Yes. I live here. Four nights a week. It is attractive, isn't it?" The apartment, which the Hoffmanns had owned since *, was elegantly if unimaginatively furnished; there were six rooms, with high ceilings, antiquated light fixtures, silk brocade curtains, and thick-piled Oriental rugs. Lionel, who'd scarcely glanced at the apartment in years, took pleasure in seeing it now through this girl's widened eyes. How he adored her, and desired her! There was something powerfully erotic about a girl-therapist who, removed from the setting of her own authority, must submit to the authority of another. In a hesitant voice she was saying, "Mr. Hoffmann. I shouldn't be here. I should leave," and Lionel made no response except to kiss her. She said, breathless, trying to pull away from him, "Mr. Hoffmann! You're married, this is wrong. You know this is wrong. Oh!" She broke away from him, and ran into another room. He followed, trapping her. Lionel felt tall, looming, threatening, potent. For Siri wasn't wearing her trademark white nylon, Siri wasn't his therapist now, Siri was wholly in his power as his children Middle Age: A Romance

had been, years ago. "Don't be afraid, dear. I won't hurt you,'' Lionel said.

"Mr. Hoffmann. Please, no, " Siri whispered. They were in Lionel's study.

On his gleaming mahogany desk were framed photographs of the Hoffmann family. As in a Hollywood film, light seemed to play about these photographs, even to emanate from their miniature smiling faces. Lionel and his pretty young wife, Camille, Marcy and Kevin as smiling young-sters, what an attractive family, what an American family, these figures at whom Lionel hadn't so much as glanced in memory, that would have been obscured by dust if a cleaning woman didn't come in to the apartment, and into this room, once a week. "Mr. Hoffmann! This is your-wife? These are your-children?" How sorrowful Siri seemed, in that instant. How vulnerable. Lionel loved her all the more, and desired her. He closed his arms around her, pressed his warm face against the nape of her neck and inhaled the spicy scent, that aroused him almost beyond endurance. "Mr. Hoffmann. This is wrong. I must leave. Oh, please!" She pushed away from him, but Lionel held her; he kissed her, moving his mouth hard against hers, and parting her lips that resisted him initially, then gave in. They staggered together. In a swoon together. Lionel could feel her heart beating against his chest. He could feel her pulses, her panicked rushing thoughts. He'd unloosed her hair, that fell in a cascade of glossy rippling strands. They stumbled against a satin-covered love seat. Lionel began to pull impatiently at Siri's clothing. As, for weeks, he'd longed to pull at her white nylon smock and trousers. He'd been mad to pull at her white nylon smock and trousers and only his extreme self-restraint had prevented him.

Now Siri laughed, startled. Her laughter was rather wild. Lionel, grunting, was pressing his body against hers. Letting her feel his massive erection. In this place Camille had furnished and decorated, at the bidding of an over-priced interior decorator, that Lionel had never much liked. Where I've been so physically lonely, and so bored. "Mr. Hoffmann. This is wrong! Oh-you know this is wrong-" Siri murmured; and Lionel grunted in reply, unable for the moment to speak. It had been years since he'd so much as fantasized holding a woman as he was holding Siri. You didn't seize your wife in such an embrace, the thought was absurd. Frenzied sexual passion was not an experience between husband and wife but an aberration. Angrily he demanded, "How is it 'wrong'? How is what we do 'wrong'? Anything we can possibly do, 'wrong'? I don't feel desire for my wife. I will never feel desire for my wife. Am I never to feel desire for the remainder of my life? Am I trapped, am I to die, a captive of my marriage? How can I endure such a

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fate? Why should I?" In his passion Lionel had grown grandiloquent, Siri shrank before him as if abashed. A strange knowledge of him, a dark glistening in her eyes, revealed itself to him. They were in the bedroom now.

Tall narrow windows, filmy white curtains. Cream-colored silk wallpaper with delicate green stripes. Everything was so tasteful, here! Except Lionel's lurid dreams. Lionel's male body. Alone in that bed, too many nights. It was a ludicrous king-sized bed with a green satin cover and an ornate mahogany headboard. God knows where Camille and her decorator acquaintance had found such a piece of furniture. The "cervical roll" had been inserted into the pillow on the right, which was the side of the bed Lionel slept on; he felt a stab of masculine embarrassment that the girl he'd brought here should discover it, yet reasoned of course Siri knew of the therapeutic cushion, it was Siri herself who'd urged Lionel to buy it. "Mr.

Hoffmann-Lionel-this is wrong-oh, please-" But she was resisting Lionel with only a fraction of the strength he knew she possessed. His will was dominating hers utterly. How strange it was, and how arousing to Lionel, that this young woman with the deft, trained hands, a therapist with the magical authority to dispel pain, should weaken before Lionel; her resistance to him was dissolving as if he'd blown out a flame. Yet Lionel's desire for her was whetted by this passivity. For women were hardly passive creatures, any longer. Even Camille, in the earlier, more experimental years of their marriage, inspired by soft-porn articles in women's magazines and sex manuals, had done her best to "initiate" lovemaking with her bemused and embarrassed husband . . . But here was Siri, gorgeous exotic Siri, so much younger than Camille, and far more sexual than Camille had ever been, who seemed truly frightened of Lionel, the maleness in him. Now that their situations were reversed. Now that he was master, and she was submissive to him. Where was the spinal pain that had held him in check for so long? Had Siri's ministrations banished it, had Lionel himself willed it away?-had sexual desire dispelled it? Lionel and Siri stumbled against the bed. Her clothes had been tugged open, Lionel's shirt and trousers were opened, Siri was murmuring his name in a swoon, no longer "Mr.

Hoffmann" but "Lionel"-at last. Her face was very pale, flowerlike. Her eyes were downcast. Lionel might do with her what he wished. He understood that she would not reject him. Never in Lionel's life had his masculine will so exerted itself, a hot fountain within him. His groin, his penis, his very spine: his entire body was suffused with the triumph of desire.

Now the woman was naked beneath his hands, a strand of her long dark Middle Age: A Romance *

loosened hair in his mouth, he knelt above her trembling-his erection was enormous as a club!-and pushed himself into her, he'd ceased thinking, what relief to cease thinking, his brain annihilated as by a searing white light. I will not die, like Adam. I will not die! Moaning softly the woman moved beneath his weight. Her will had been defeated by his, she lay in trancelike obedience to him. There was no female obstinancy here, no withheld acquiescence, that coyness that so infuriated the male. Lionel was pumping his life into this woman. Into that dark unspeakable place between her thighs. Pumping himself joyously into oblivion. He had but a vague awareness of the woman's slender, shapely, hard-muscled and milky-pale arms lifting to encircle his neck, and her final soft triumphant murmur-"Lion-el!" The long dark slightly sticky hair in tendrils on the pillow like a spider's velvety legs, spread out on the dazzling white linen. Her thin-lipped but rather wide, hungry mouth sucked at his. He felt her large, hard teeth. He felt her pelvis, rising to his, bucking and heaving in her own eager rhythm. They were drowning together. In the frenzy of their passion, the hard, tubular cushion inside one of the pillowcases was jarred loose, fell to the floor and rolled for several feet as if desperate to escape. Lionel's heart, so long unused, was pounding violently. An envelope of stinging briny sweat enveloped him. Never in his life had he felt such-power!

Such energy coursing through his body! He panted, "My darling! My-"

In the cataclysm of orgasm he'd forgotten the woman's name.

T * who many times awoke in the morning to realize that her pillow was damp, her face was wet with tears, for she'd been weeping in her sleep.

How many times. Linen pillowcases embossed with satin floral orna-mentation. Dampened, soiled by sorrow. In the late autumn of this year of sorrow. In the late autumn-or was it already early winter?-of Camille Hoffmann's life.

Yes. Already it was December, the darkest month. He'd moved away in October.

My shame. How to bear it. But I love him, I forgive him!

He must know, I forgive him. And I will always love him.

Yet: there was solace. For Apollo and Shadow slept each night on the floor at the foot of their mistress's bed. Apollo to the left, Shadow to the

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right. Like sculpted dogs of Egyptian antiquity guarding the funerary image of their entombed mummy-mistress.

During the night if Camille stirred in distress, moaned or sobbed in her sleep, both dogs awoke at once, rising onto their haunches, alert to danger.

They would never desert her.

A * and astonishing departure from the house on Old Mill Way, and his removal to the apartment on East *st Street in Manhattan, Lionel Hoffmann had made some attempt to "keep in contact" with Camille; he meant to behave "fairly, and justly"; through mid-November they spoke daily on the phone. Then, for some reason unknown to Camille, her husband began to be "unavailable" when she called his office; when she called the apartment, no one ever picked up the receiver, when she left a message Lionel often failed to return her calls. And when he did, he spoke in a vague distracted manner as if (but this couldn't be possible, could it!) he was having difficulty remembering who she was.

Once, during one of these awkward exchanges, Camille believed she could hear whispering at the other end of the line. And muffled giggling.

And Lionel muttering, or groaning.

These distractions Camille courteously ignored.

Repeatedly in the weeks following their separation, like a soldier making a vow, Lionel had assured Camille, yes, he loved her, and respected her; he would always love her, as he loved Marcy and Kevin. But he was not, it seemed, at the present time, in love with her.

There was that crucial distinction. Those whom we love, we are rarely in love with.

Quickly Camille said, "Oh yes. I see, Lionel. I . . . understand."

"It isn't personal, Camille. You must understand."

"Oh, I can understand!"

"When lightning strikes, it is never personal."

"Not at all."

Do you know, darling, how I forgive you? Always, I will love you. And the house we've been so happy in, awaits you.

"Camille? I must hang up now."

"Oh, yes! Thank you for calling, Lionel."

"Camille, you called me."

Middle Age: A Romance

"Well! Thank you for-"

"Good-bye!"

Though they had many things to discuss. Their jointly owned properties, investments, finances; the future of their marriage. (The ugly word "divorce" had not yet been uttered.) Their children's reactions to this wholly unexpected, jarring news. ("But surely Marcy and Kevin are not 'children' any longer, Camille, are they?" Lionel rather coolly said.) Never did they speak of the woman, no doubt a very beautiful younger woman, with whom, it seemed, Lionel had fallen in love, though Camille was eager and open and even, to a degree, sympathetic.

Once, at the conclusion of a brief, extremely disjointed telephone conversation, Lionel murmured, as if in pain, that he would never, never wish to hurt her, deliberately.

"How kind of you, Lionel! How thoughtful."

After she hung up, Camille laughed. With the palms of both hands rubbing her raw, reddened eyes. Her laughter was high-pitched, and brief.

Apollo and Shadow came running.

H* - A, dwelling in the house on Old Mill Way in Adam's absence. Apollo, a noble mixture of German shepherd and husky, fiercely loyal, intelligent, whom Adam had entrusted to Camille, his closest woman friend. Apollo who was perhaps six years old, in his late-middle years, with soulful excitable eyes, silver-tipped fur grown thick and sleek with the vitamin-enriched dog food Camille bought, and her careful grooming, and unstinting love. And the smaller, less distinctive Shadow, a mongrel-Labrador, with melancholy rheumy eyes and a narrow fox face, battered ears, coarse dull-black wavy fur, discolored teeth; an oldish-young dog, in some ways still a puppy, immature and (fortunately, Lionel wasn't here to know!) insufficiently housetrained, in other ways aged, badly crippled with a twisted spine and a partly amputated left hind leg; poor Shadow who quivered at the slightest noise outside, or the telephone ringing; who had to be disciplined repeatedly not to bark inside the house; but who was insatiably loving, devoted to his new mistress. When Camille glimpsed in Shadow's watery eyes a veiled memory of terror, in the midst of whatever she was doing she immediately squatted to embrace and console him. "Shadow! Good dog! You're safe now, with me. Forever."

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Shadow had a naughty habit of leaping at Camille, whimpering, barking, licking and kissing her, shimmying his twisted buttocks and his stump of a tail; sometimes, in his excitement, he nipped at her, even bit her, with surprisingly sharp teeth; broke her skin, and caused bleeding. "No, no.

Shadow, that's bad." At such times Apollo came running, jealous, or eager to be included in the hugging; he rushed at Camille and Shadow, circled them, nudging and whining and covering Camille's face with lavish kisses.