"Apollo! Mind your manners." Camille laughed excited as a girl, awkwardly balanced on her heels; sometimes she toppled over onto the floor; the dogs kissed and licked her face leaving swaths of acidic wet on her skin that, drying, felt like fleeting, fading sunshine.

" M, serious? Tell me you're joking! "

Camille winced. How little her daughter Marcy knew her, to imagine Camille could joke of such a thing.

"Daddy has moved out? Out of our house? To New York? What in God's name is going on? Mot her! "

What to tell the children! What words, discreet yet matter-of-fact and unhysterical, to carefully compose, to tell Marcy and Kevin? The private hurt and social shame of being a left- behind wife were perhaps exceeded by a mother's sense of having failed to keep her family together. And the responsibility of explaining to Marcy and Kevin fell to Camille, of course.

It was cruel and inaccurate of Lionel to say that their daughter and son, though well into their twenties, were adults. As if "adults" were invulnerable to hurt and disappointment. Camille understood how attached both the children were to the house on Old Mill Way, how they'd revised, in memory, their somewhat disputatious adolescences, recalling idyllic years where in fact they'd professed to hate Salthill at the time, and to be utterly bored, like all of their friends, with "Caucasian-affluent suburbia."

They'd come of age in the most competitive, materialist epoch in American history, excepting perhaps the last decade of the nineteenth century, and were of that generation of young Americans who were made to realize that they probably could not, by their own efforts, achieve the degree of success and prosperity their parents had had. Though Marcy had a liberal arts degree from New York University, she was working in Seattle for the online magazine Slate in a capacity so undefined, her parents understood it was hardly more than clerical. Kevin, with degrees from Harvard College Middle Age: A Romance

and Harvard Business School, had yet failed to distinguish himself amid his brilliant rivals; he too had a vaguely defined job in cyberspace, logging in a frantic sixty-hour week in Boston for TechInvest.com; already he was beginning to lose his hair and suffered from spastic colon as a consequence of stress; as Lionel had done at his age, he was resisting joining the family business out of a hope, or a delusion, that he might make a career for himself independently. (Lionel's strategy was not to press his son.

"When Kevin is ready to work with me, he will know it, and I will know it." Long familiar with her husband's tactics of gentlemanly evasion and duplicity, Camille took this to mean that Lionel secretly distrusted their son's business ability and didn't want him to join Hoffmann Publishing, Inc.) Distraught and deeply ashamed, Camille had postponed calling Marcy and Kevin for weeks. Ten days before Thanksgiving she realized she must call, for Marcy and Kevin would naturally assume there would be a lavish family Thanksgiving as usual, prepared by Camille; a table of at least twenty-five guests, relatives from both sides of the family and a few local friends like Adam Berendt. (Camille couldn't bear to think that Adam would never again be a guest at her table, perhaps the wisest solution was simply to never again give a dinner party?) Neither Marcy nor Kevin ever expressed much enthusiasm about coming home for Thanksgiving, but usually they came, out of a sense of duty, or lacking other invitations; but when Camille apologetically informed them that there would be no Thanksgiving this year, both were shocked and distressed, and Marcy reacted with anger. Camille hadn't any choice but to stammer out the confession that she and Lionel seemed to be having "marital difficulties"- Lionel had "moved away to New York, temporarily." With Marcy, the conversation quickly took a downward turn. Marcy said cuttingly, "He's found another woman, hasn't he? I knew it. Mot her! You've drifted along in a dream, you've let yourself go for years. Daddy is a handsome man, and Daddy is not exactly an impoverished man, couldn't you see? " As her out-raged daughter scolded her from across the continent, Camille began to feel faint. One of the dogs nudged her knees with his big head, and licked encouragingly at her hands: Apollo. The smaller, more wiry Shadow approached her from the side, whimpering almost inaudibly and pressing his warm furry weight against her, to comfort her. "Marcy, it isn't personal.

Your father is anxious that we all understand that." "Not 'personal,' what does that mean? I can't believe this conversation!" "Lionel has said it-it's

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like lightning striking, it has nothing to do with-" "Daddy has done the striking, for God's sake, Mot her. Take your head out of the sand. Daddy is the fucking lightning! " "Marcy, please-" "I'm going to call him! I have a thing or two to say to good old Dad." "Oh, Marcy, I wish you wouldn't, dear, please. I'm sure this is just a temporary aberration and Lionel will be back home by Christmas. He has never done anything remotely like this before, and-" "In fact, I did call Dad last week, at the office, and was told 'Mr. Hoffmann isn't available right now.' And he never called me back,"

Marcy said. "He's afraid to speak with me!" "Marcy, I'm sure your father intends to call you very soon. You and-" "Don't tell me Daddy has a girlfriend, at his age. That's it, isn't it?" "Marcy, I-" "This is just the most shitty, shitty news I've had this week, and let me tell you, Mom, it has been a shitty week." Marcy was sobbing with indignation. Camille dreaded her daughter slamming down the receiver, as she'd done on more than one previous occasion, with less provocation; at the same time, Camille rather hoped Marcy would slam down the receiver. Marcy said furiously, "I'll get to the bottom of this! I might have to fly home, Thanksgiving or no Thanksgiving! Everybody's father is getting divorced and marrying girls my age and God damn it isn't going to happen in the Hoffmann family, not without a prenuptial contract Kevin and I see beforehand! Fuck, Mot her! You've put on twenty-five pounds at least, just since I left home."

Camille shut her eyes against these blows. She knew they were deserved, but that didn't lessen the hurt. She was forced to recall how, when Marcy was in seventh grade at the Salthill Country Day School, Marcy had been the plumpest girl in her circle, and had become obsessed with dieting; she'd detested her "boneless" face which so resembled her mother's, and once, when Camille had gently chided her for trying to starve herself, Marcy turned in fury on her, saying these words Camille would never forget, "Leave me alone, Mother! I'd rather die than be fat like you." At the time, Camille had perhaps been eight pounds overweight.

She'd never told Lionel about that scene. She'd started to tell Adam Berendt but stopped, out of a sense that Adam, too, would pity her, and the last thing she wanted from Adam was pity.

As if sensing her mother's distress, Marcy began to relent a little. "Hey, Mom? You still there? Look, I'm sorry. I guess your heart is, like, broken?"

When Camille, wiping at her eyes, didn't trust herself to reply, Marcy asked again if there was another woman, so far as Camille knew; and Camille said, with as much dignity as she could summon, "Marcy, you must ask your father. Only he knows."

Middle Age: A Romance

Exhausted and demoralized by this exchange, Camille would have liked to lie down on the sofa, but she knew she had to call Kevin immediately, before Marcy in her fury contacted him. By a fluke, Kevin was in, and picking up his phone. He, too, was stunned to hear the news. "Dad has moved out? Of our home? Is he crazy? What's going on there, Mom?"

Camille said carefully, "It's only just temporary, Kevin. I called your sister and explained, too. Lionel is-" "Wait. Let's get this straight, Mom. Dad has moved out? To New York? Since when? Why wasn't I told? When did you tell Marcy? Hey, is there-someone else involved? Mom? " Kevin's voice was that of an anguished adolescent, so very different from his usual bemused, mildly cynical drawl. Camille stammered, "I-truly don't know, Kevin. He may have said-he might have mentioned-it was all so confusing to me, I'm not sure I understood." In fact, Camille didn't quite remember. Had Lionel actually uttered the ominous words woman- have become involved- since last November-or had Camille imagined them, as in a cruel self-punishing dream? It seemed to her frankly unlikely that Lionel could have been involved with a woman, whatever exactly that meant, for a full year, and she, his wife, remained ignorant. Kevin who'd always been one to defend Camille, perceiving in his parents' marriage an unjust imbalance of power, and perhaps in Camille his only ally against his powerful father, said incredulously, "There is! God damn. You'd think, Dad's age, over fifty at least, he'd be ashamed." Kevin began to laugh derisively as if the very idea of Lionel Hoffmann committing adultery, a rene-gade lover, was hilarious. Out of nervous sympathy Camille found herself laughing with him. Half-heartedly she pushed the dogs away, in their zeal to comfort their mistress they were licking her hands frantically, and pleading with anxious dog-eyes, she couldn't concentrate, oh! she was tired, since Shadow had come into her life (like grace, unbidden) she'd been so grateful to the Rockland County Homeless Animal Shelter she'd signed up as a volunteer, helping out two afternoons a week. Kevin too was incensed that there'd be "no Thanksgiving" this year and speculated in a young, sullen voice if maybe there'd be "no Christmas either." Camille remained silent. Her head ached. She wondered why, if one might live with dogs, one would have wished to live with children, and a husband?

Dogs don't judge. Dogs love. Kevin was saying petulantly he'd better come home to see "what in hell Dad's up to." He complained to Camille that he'd been sending Lionel e-mail ("on a private, professional subject") but that Lionel hadn't replied. Was he in New York? In the apartment?

Camille murmured she assumed so. She too called Lionel, and he was

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slow to call back. Kevin said despairingly, "Just don't let Dad sell the house, Mom. It's jointly owned, I assume? All your property, investments, savings are jointly owned? Don't let Dad cheat you out of anything. Don't let him sell our home." Camille, stroking the dogs' hard-boned heads, felt a stab of longing for her son; as a child Kevin had been prone to accidents, and tears; stymied by life rather than angered by it, like his sister; if they were together, Camille would have hugged him, and the two might have wept together. But Kevin was far away, and breathing harshly into the receiver. "Oh, no, Kevin! Your father would never be that cruel, to sell this house. In fact, I expect him to be home by-Christmas. When this madness has run its course."

W ** Camille received a postcard from Lionel, from Barbados. He'd taken five days off, he said. He would be contacting her soon about future plans. He suggested she begin to think about legal representation. He apologized for being incommunicado with only the excuse that his life had become mysterious and new again, and glorious beyond belief.

I * *, cautionary tale of a left-behind Salthill wife.

Beatrice Archer, her eyes brimming with tears, would say: "I knew. As soon as I parked in the Hoffmanns' driveway and saw Camille's gorgeous mum plants blown over and some of the clay pots broken, that something was terribly wrong."

That day, in early December, Beatrice boldly came to visit Camille Hoffmann. She hadn't been invited. She'd several times called Camille, and Camille had never returned her calls. "But we can't just abandon Camille, as Lionel has done. The poor woman is in a state of shock."

Beatrice Archer was a handsome woman of youthful middle age, the wife of a prominent Salthill internist, with fair gold-glinting hair that fell in sculpted wings about her perfect face and a forward-thrusting manner like the prow of a ship. She was a woman to care deeply about her friends especially now that her children were grown and gone. She was a woman of strong neo-Christian convictions. She'd urged her husband Avery to contact Lionel Hoffmann in New York and to arrange to see him if possible.

"To talk some sense into that man. Lionel, of all people! He must know this is demeaning." (But Avery complained that Lionel never returned his Middle Age: A Romance

calls. At Hoffmann Publishing, Inc., Lionel's secretary curtly informed him that Mr. Hoffmann was "unavailable at the present time.") Beatrice decided one morning simply to drive over to Old Mill Way, which intersected with Old Dutch Road where the Archers lived in a beautifully restored neo-Georgian house on three prime, wooded acres; it was Beatrice's reasoning that Camille would have no choice but to let her into the house.

"How many times, after all, we'd visited in each other's homes . . ."

But there were the unsightly mum plants, disturbing to a fastidious home owner like Beatrice Archer. And blinds drawn on a number of the windows of the many-windowed Colonial house. And the dogs that unexpectedly rushed out of nowhere to circle Beatrice as she approached the front door, and rang the doorbell with a trembling forefinger. She recognized Apollo, Adam's much-loved dog she hadn't seen since Adam's death.

Fortunately, Apollo seemed to recognize her. "Apollo? You know me: Adam's friend Beatrice. Apollo, good dog!" The mixed-breed German shepherd wagged his tail as he barked, though not so briskly as Beatrice would have wished. More worrisome was the smaller, more antic dog, a disfigured black mongrel-Labrador with three legs and watery eyes, that Beatrice had never seen before. Did these dogs both live with Camille? Or was the black dog a stray? Its bark was like fingernails drawn across a blackboard, and it was behaving belligerently. "I was terrified the creature would bite me, or tear my clothes, before Camille opened the door. Its hackles were raised, and it was growling. And so misshapen! An ugly little demon of a dog." By the time Camille came breathless to open the door, in a soiled coverall, her unkempt graying hair brushed back severely from her face, both dogs were poking their noses against Beatrice, and rudely sniffing. Camille called them off apologetically and explained that the dogs weren't used to visitors. "Not that they're dangerous, of course. Apollo and Shadow are both very gentle dogs."

Beatrice, mindful that she hadn't been invited, and that her friend Camille was clearly not herself, warmly embraced Camille and kissed her cheek. Tears of genuine compassion gathered in her meticulously made-up, large and luminous eyes. "Camille, it's such a relief to see you! We've all been terribly worried about you, not returning our calls, missing the Planned Parenthood fund-raiser, living out here alone. You've hurt your friends' feelings, Camille, and why?" It was like Beatrice Archer to express compassion in the form of reproach. Blushing fiercely, Camille could think of no reply and invited Beatrice inside, again apologizing, as the

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dogs trotted with them, continuing to nudge and sniff at Beatrice's legs.

Beatrice would afterward recount how distressed she'd been, such an odor of dogs in that beautiful house; and stacks of unopened mail on a cherry-wood table in the foyer. "As if the owners of the house had died and someone was doing the bare minimum, bringing the mail inside but not opening it."

The awkward visit lasted less than an hour. The women sat in Camille's spacious but badly cluttered country kitchen, which was flooded with winter light. On the windowsills were wilting African violets, on the floor in a corner were dogs' red and yellow plastic bowls, set on stained newspaper. Beatrice had the impression that much of the house had been shut off, to prevent dog-damage probably. She had the impression that an air of emergency prevailed, as if Camille were expecting something to happen; or something had already happened, and this was the aftermath.

She would report that Camille hadn't been rude to her exactly, for poor Camille was incapable of rudeness. "She offered me coffee but never gave me any. She simply forgot, I guess!" Beatrice was disturbed and intrigued by her friend's altered appearance. It was less than two months since Lionel's departure but already Camille was letting her fine wavy fair-brown hair grow in gray. She wasn't wearing makeup and her skin looked ruddy and rather coarse as if she'd been outside in a cold wind. She was smiling nervously. Her lashless eyes blinked. She seemed to be staring at Beatrice as if trying to follow a conversation in another language, in which, in a strange halting way, she was participating. Beatrice noted the denim coverall that fitted Camille's wide soft hips snugly, dirtied at the thighs as if by dogs' muddy paws. She noted Camille's broken, dirt-edged fingernails.

What a sign of female defeat, such fingernails! Almost, Beatrice would have liked to manicure Camille's nails for her. "But I didn't want to upset Camille, of course. I didn't want to seem to be intruding. I wanted her to realize that her Salthill friends care about her. I told her that Abigail Des Pres wanted badly to see her, to offer Camille 'spiritual commiseration'

and 'good practical legal advice,' for Abigail of course had had something of the same problem a few years before, with Harry-but Camille interrupted me, and said, in this almost-angry stammering voice, 'That isn't necessary. I won't be needing a lawyer. You can thank Abigail, but our situations aren't at all similar. My husband will probably return by Christmas. We speak often on the phone. He loves me very much. He loves his children, and this house. We are both very attached to this house. We Middle Age: A Romance *

would never sell this house.' It was a sudden rush of words! Camille's cheeks were flaming. I thought we might cry together, it was such a- moment! I held her hands that were icy-cold and trembling and I told her of course that was so, that Avery had said, when he first heard the news, 'Lionel will be back.' And Camille said, brightening, 'Avery said that, Beatrice, really? Lionel will be back? '"

Following this, Camille began to speak more openly, if disjointedly.

She interrupted herself frequently to laugh and to wipe at her eyes. With childlike trust she confided in Beatrice that it was Marcy and Kevin, not her, who'd been most upset by their father's strange behavior-"They so look up to Lionel, you know. He's a model of moral intregrity to them. As he is to me!" She confided in Beatrice a remarkable story of emptying the liquor cabinet of every bottle, whiskey, Scotch, bourbon, gin, that had already been opened, a few days after Lionel had moved out; packing the bottles in boxes and taking them to the county dump so she wouldn't be tempted to drink-"The unopened bottles, and everything in Lionel's wine cellar, I wouldn't know how to open-so I'm safe." She and Beatrice laughed together at this revelation. How prudent of Camille, whom a single glass of white wine made light-headed; how wise. Beatrice, who was susceptible, too, to alcohol, and who avoided drinking except upon social occasions, and then sparingly, would have liked to think she might have equivalent sense if Avery ever left her. (But Beatrice could no more imagine her devoted husband leaving her than she could imagine her own death, except as an intellectual possibility.) Camille showed Beatrice a postcard from Barbados, which it seemed Lionel had recently sent her; the glossy picture was of a resort hotel and a wide white beach-"The Barbados Hilton where Lionel and I have stayed. So it must mean he's thinking of his marriage, yes? Of our happy memories? Otherwise Lionel wouldn't have sent such a card. It would be cruel, and Lionel is not a cruel man."

Camille's voice trembled. Beatrice said quickly, "Certainly not! Lionel is very possibly the most gentlemanly, considerate man in Salthill. Much nicer than Avery." Camille didn't register the little joke, but was staring fixedly at the handwritten message on the postcard. Beatrice had to wonder if Lionel had slipped off to the Caribbean with his reported girlfriend, a gorgeous, exotic, very young physical therapist he'd met at a Manhattan clinic, but she would not have wished to ask.

Camille went on to apologize for having missed meetings of Planned Parenthood, Friends of the Salthill Free Public Library, Friends of the

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Salthill Pro Musica, Friends of the Salthill Arts Council . . . She was limiting her volunteer time to the Rockland County Homeless Animal Shelter where they badly needed help, and donations. She told Beatrice of how, driving on West Axe Boulevard the very morning after Lionel had left, she'd seen a dog hit and left to die at the side of the road; she'd stopped, and brought the dog to the Rockland clinic, where emergency surgery saved his life. Recounting this, Camille became quite moved. "Shadow is one of us who has not been destroyed. I call him Shadow because he came like a shadow out of the sunlight that was blinding, I looked up and suddenly he was there." The misshapen dog's ears pricked up at the sound of his name. His rheumy eyes lightened. Beatrice, who felt a fastidious dislike for deformed or disfigured creatures, had a sudden sense of the dog's inner life, if a dog might be said to have an inner life; she shuddered. "Camille, it's so generous of you to take a strange dog in. An abandoned dog. And now a crippled dog. At such a-difficult time in your life." Camille said reprovingly, "It's the right time. I knew. There are no coincidences." A thought came to Beatrice, suddenly. "Will you be taking in others? Dogs needing a home?" Camille said with an apologetic smile, "Oh, Beatrice, I'm afraid not! I wish I could, this house is absurdly large, but Apollo and Shadow are probably quite enough. Even if they spend most of their time outside, and sleep in the barn, Lionel is allergic to dog hairs, you know."

Beatrice said helpfully, "How convenient for you, when the children were growing up. We had no such excuse, they nagged us constantly." Camille said, as if unhearing, "Of course, Apollo isn't with us permanently, you know." Beatrice murmured, "Isn't he!" Camille said, "Adam is traveling in Egypt now, I think." Her eyelids fluttered shut as if to spare her seeing Beatrice's embarrassment. "I'm not sure when he's returning. After the New Year, I suppose." Beatrice fumbled to open her purse to search for a tissue, suddenly preoccupied. Camille said, smiling, "I've been having such vivid dreams lately, Beatrice! I can recognize the Mediterranean, I think- Lionel and I took a Greek cruise there, ten years ago. But also desert, pyr-amids, and this strange luminous river that must be the Nile, it's so very old a river, its roots are in the beginning of Time. These sights Adam is seeing. I assume." She laughed girlishly. "Isn't it like Adam, not to send any of us postcards!"

Beatrice heard herself say haltingly, "Yes, it's-not like Adam, to forget his friends. I mean-well, yes, I guess it is."

At the name "Adam," Apollo stirred uneasily. Both dogs had been Middle Age: A Romance

lying on the kitchen floor, close behind Camille, as if guarding her.

Apollo's ears pricked forward, his silvery club of a tail thumped a few times. But, Beatrice could see, Adam's dog had not the faith in Adam's existence that poor Camille had. The melancholy moment passed.

Soon after this exchange Beatrice kissed her friend good-bye and left the house on Old Mill Way. What a relief! The doggy depressing smell, and the somehow too intense atmosphere, as if everything uttered had a double meaning; one in which the dogs somehow shared. On the whole, however, Beatrice was pleased with the visit, and she believed that Camille was grateful for it. She'd extracted from Camille a wan promise to come to dinner that weekend at the Archers', and to have lunch with her and Abigail Des Pres in the new Thai restaurant in Salthill the following week.

The first principle of human sanity is to maintain the challenging external life that's called social. What the second principle is, Beatrice wasn't so certain.

Camille will take in Thor. Of course! This all makes sense.

Through the remainder of the day Beatrice would telephone a succession of women friends to recount for them the fascinating story of her visit to the Hoffmanns' house. Everyone agreed that Camille was in a state of shock and that they must all be very kind to her. Beatrice was viewed as an angel of mercy. One day perhaps Camille would tell the story of how Beatrice Archer had saved her life . . . That night Avery returned home late from a medical conference in New York. Or had it been Boston, or Chicago? As he undressed silently in the dimly lighted master bedroom Beatrice recounted for him the story of her visit to the house on Old Mill Way. "That poor woman is in a state of shock, Avery. She hadn't begun to recover from Adam's death, and now Lionel has left her, damn him. He never returned your calls? He snubbed you? He's ashamed, I suppose. He should be. Lionel Hoffmann, leaving Camille at such a time!"

Said Avery, "Maybe Lionel wants to save his own life, darling."

For this I would kill. There is nothing else.

Waking in a state of excited bliss, a woman's plaited hair flung across his mouth. Deeply he breathed in the musky female smell, mixed with the smell of his own body. They were naked. Swimmers who have drowned together and whose limbs have become entwined. His groin was suffused

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with blood, again he was a young man in the prime of his life. Desire slammed through him like a mallet crushing his bones. He had no resistance, he groaned in acquiescence.

Nothing! Nothing else.

"C? Yes, I will be calling soon. I have time for only this quick message but I'm thinking of you. I know this has been difficult. It's a difficult time for me, too. But I want you to know that-"

Slyly her hands moved over him. From behind. Stroking, caressing, gently squeezing. Not-so-gently squeezing. She was his monkey-girl sometimes, smelling of musk. Whispering Mr. Hoffmann. Be very quiet.

No one must know!

A groan broke from him, a strangled sob. The telephone receiver dangled at the end of its curly cord.

I B*. How grateful like a greedy little girl she was, in the luxurious resort hotel, in a suite overlooking palm trees, the wide white beach, the dreamy aqua sea. Maybe you do love me. Mr. Hoffmann. Making love with him in bright sunshine Siri emitted cries like a child in pain.

Never had Lionel been so stricken with desire. Slyly the woman abased herself before him, the male. Kissing his hands, his chest, his belly. Pressing her face against his groin. If his wife had ever done such a thing-!

The very thought was preposterous, revolting. But Siri claimed him, Siri knew what he wanted even as he weakly protested. Even as he pushed her away she persisted, and his hands grasped her to clutch her tighter, to press her against him. In the night waking him with her mouth. His eyes shot open. Overhead the ceiling floated like gossamer. The balcony doors were open to the lapping sea.

Nothing! There is nothing else.

"S, S * to see where you live. Your true life."

Playfully she spoke of herself in the third person, as a child might. A willful sly-eyed child. Lionel supposed she'd been looking at the framed photos in the apartment. The Hoffmann family, of some years ago. The beautifully restored eighteenth-century house on Old Mill Way, Salthill.

Middle Age: A Romance

"Where your true life exists. And Siri isn't welcome." She was teasing, of course.

Playing monkeys with him, naked and scrambling in the bed, Siri panting, on top, straddling her patient with muscular thighs.

"Mr. Hoffmann. Be good. Try try try to re lax."

G * * informed him. His daughter, his son, yes and another time Mrs. Hoffmann, had all been trying to reach him. For days. "Thanks, Irene! I'll be calling them back soon." He was smiling, he was jaunty. He was in control here. "So if they call again, please tell them."

Still Irene looked doubtful. " 'Tell them,' Mr. Hoffmann?" "That I'll be calling them back soon."

M, the apartment on Thursdays, was hesitant to inform him. Several bars of expensive French soap were missing from the cupboard in the guest bathroom. Mrs. Hoffmann's soaps, and Mrs. Hoffmann's Elizabeth Arden toiletries. Moisturizer, hand cream, bath salts.

And maybe one of the washcloths. Thick white terrycloth with white satin trim. Shy-eyed Maria in her halting English, hopeful her employer will know that she, she was not the one to have taken these things.

I B*, in November, they'd been happy. At least he'd been happy. She'd seemed so. And their long weekend in Santa Monica where he'd gone on business, and taken Siri, in early December. He'd swear. He was in love. Siri was so beautiful! If not beautiful Siri was-Siri. Lionel was crazy about her. He panted, trotting beside her in hard-packed sand beside the Pacific Ocean. How other men, and boys, stared at her. Siri in tank top, bikini bottom, and barefoot. And her wavy-kinky unplaited hair straggling down her back. Admit it: he loved the intensity of their eyes.

Male-predator eyes. As a married man for decades he had not once glimpsed such eyes. He was thrilled! No, he was revulsed. It was low, lewd.

Still it was exciting. The glisten of her skin. A smudged soiled skin it sometimes appeared. And her sly, insolent eyes. Her throaty laughter. She doesn't love you, asshole. She doesn't give a shit about you. She's laughing at you with her young lovers.

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Disgusting! Such thoughts. Lionel was repelled by such thoughts yet even self-disgust excited him, where Siri was concerned. For so long his self-disgust had meant nothing except itself. "Bor-ing!"-as the kids would say. Bor-ing as the insipid feminine wallpaper Camille insisted upon. Bor-ing as the Pro Musica concerts Camille insisted upon where his handsome graying head nodded, brain swooning into the sweetest of oblivions even as Camille's elbow nudged him back to wakefulness. Now, his disgust was very different. His disgust had a sexual wallop. He carried it inside his shirt, against his slimy skin. Inside his shorts, against his swelling groin. It upset him-his upset, his agitation, were disgusting to him-if Siri wasn't available when he wanted her. If Siri had "other plans"

for the evening, or the night. If Siri was "out of town" for the weekend. If another therapist was taking over Siri's shift at the clinic. He knew: Siri had a life of her own. He was a married man, and not once had he spoken of marriage to her. Not once had he spoken of divorcing his sad dull wife.