in a voice that rises to passion, or its convincing simulacrum. "The Gyrfalcon"-"The Dying Jaguar"-"The Old Man of the Bog"-"Young Lust"-"Festering Wounds"-"The Feathered Serpent"-"The Bullfight." There's a collective, delicious shudder through the ballroom. What will the genteel women of Salthill-on-Hudson tell their husbands that evening, of the Irish-American poet Donegal Croom's reading? How can they convey the frisson of illicit, brutal pleasure provoked by the man's sensuous words, the subtly erotic forward-thrusting of his pelvis as he drives his lines home? How to speak of the "anarchic-Dionysian" joy in pain; the "rough divination" that touches them at the core of their being, with an adulterous thrill? If the women's sharp eyes have observed that the Donegal Croom who stands before them is a battered-looking wreck in his fifties who bears only a fleeting resemblance to his handsome publicity photos, they are too tactful to acknowledge it; these are women accustomed to not-seeing imperfections in men, though anxiously aware of the smallest imperfections in themselves. Perhaps it gratifies some of the Salthill women to realize that Croom is no more manly or attractive than their own husbands, though assuredly he's a great poet. Hasn't he been awarded a Pulitzer Prize, and numerous other prizes besides? What wonderful poetry. So inspiring. I bought all of his books! The Festival is such a worthy cause.

As Donegal Croom reads his perversely sensuous, incantatory poems, Abigail half-shuts her eyes to summon back the Donegal Croom of her youth. A man with whom she'd fallen in love, if at a distance. A gyrfalcon of a man, exuding tenderness, strength, sexual confidence; hinting at mysterious wounds, failures, "losses of the race, and of the soul." In *8, Croom had recited poems instead of merely reading them, with an air of excitement and discovery. Abigail tries too to summon back her nineteen-year-old self, the naively idealistic virgin with hippie-style hair, who believed she "wanted more than anything in the world" to be a dancer, in the style of the great Balanchine. Of course, by the age of nineteen Abigail Des Pres was already much too old. And she'd lacked, fatally, whatever it is that true dancers possess, that unnameable blend of talent, determination, and audacity. "No. I was a coward. I'm so ashamed!" It's to Adam Berendt she makes this confession, for she understands that, in her moments of most extreme folly, Adam watches over her.

With gusto Donegal Croom launches into what he describes as his most controversial, and most personal poem, "The Dark Muse: A

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Sestina." There's an apprehensive air in the ballroom as Croom recites in a hushed, incantatory voice what seems to be homage to, or repugnance for, the "female mouth lacking teeth only/ as Death lacks teeth." Abigail feels her face burn. Is she the only woman who knows what Croom is speaking of? The others are smiling vaguely, encouragingly. Abigail is grateful for a noisy clicking-on of the air-conditioning unit, which muffles Croom's words. Her attention is drawn to uniformed waiters moving with gigantic trays through the flower-festooned ballroom, expressionless and mechanical as robots. Mostly young males, of varying skin tones. Caucasian, Asian, black. There's a thin dark-haired boy who resembles Jared except his face is more mature and he carries himself with more manly dignity than Jared could in such circumstances. Abigail can sense the contempt these waiters feel, forced by economics to serve the Salthill women; she notes how pointedly they ignore the ranting poetry of Donegal Croom, as if it were of no more consequence than the vibrating hum of the air conditioner. Don't judge us harshly! We were once your age.

Croom cuts off his reading abruptly as if he's tired, or bored; or maybe his audience has annoyed him, listening in primly shocked silence to what was intended to be, Abigail guesses, a "savagely funny" poem. Croom has read less than a half-hour (though he'd contracted for forty minutes, for a $5,000 fee and all expenses) and now declines, with a dismissive wave of his hand, to "take questions" from the audience. Just as well, Abigail thinks. Abigail is on her feet, resplendent in her Hermes suit and black straw hat, leading the applause. Smiling her happiest smile. Her Salthill friends and neighbors applaud generously, for these are generous women, and the strained interlude comes to an end.

As the luncheon breaks up, there comes bronze-highlighted Beatrice Archer to hug Abigail and kiss her warmly on the cheek, smearing lipstick. Beatrice's eyes are damp, dilated. "You were wonderful, Abigail!

We're all so proud of you."

A reason to live? Why not?

D * D C'* ambiguous performance, a respectable number of his books are purchased, profits going to the Salthill Medical Center, and after a laconic book-signing session Croom insists that Abigail accompany him to his room. He's scheduled to spend the night in Salthill-"Recovering and recrudescing." He tells Abigail that Middle Age: A Romance

he's "feeling shaky"-"on the brink of depressed"-which often happens when he reads his work before audiences "hostile to poetry." Abigail protests, "Oh, Mr. Croom! That audience wasn't hostile to poetry, they adored you." Croom laughs in a wistful-angry-adolescent way that reminds Abigail of Jared, and she feels a tug of sympathy for the man.

Croom looks genuinely disappointed. Though he's signed a fair number of books, it isn't enough; no amount of books sold and signed in Croom's sweeping, florid hand will ever be enough. Abigail perceives that Croom is one of those men-invariably, such individuals have been men, in her experience-who take for granted the adulation of others, and are crestfallen when the adulation isn't so lavish as they expect. Her ex-husband Harrison Tierney was one of these men. Though despising others, he wanted their admiration; he'd been infuriated when it was withheld.

Only Adam Berendt was different. So different! Adam was always surprised when anyone liked him.

Abigail accompanies Donegal Croom to his hotel room, in a state of nervous exhilaration. She has been chosen by the famous poet to "be with"

him and who knows what this intimacy might lead to? He seems truly to be attracted to me. An almost mystical rapport. Maybe Croom remembers Abigail from Bennington, in *8; maybe she made an impression upon him, indelible through the years. Not very likely, but this is something to cling to! Abigail knows that Croom has had love affairs with several prominent women poets; he has lived with an acclaimed artist; he's been married three times, but has never had any children. ("By my own choice. One insatiable infantile ego in a family is quite enough." So Donegal Croom stated in an interview in the New York Times, posted on the Web.) Abigail knows this man is no one to be trusted, yes he'll break her heart, yet here she is helping him into his room, allowing him to lean heavily on her as he sidles toward the bed. He says, sighing, "Oh, God. Where are we. Salthill? Hill-of- Salt? Suburban-American paradise. The warm bath that leaves you waterlogged and dopey and uncertain-uncaring!-if alive, or dead." Even as he exaggerates his tiredness, Croom seems to be genuinely tired. His breath is short, labored. Possibly he's drunk: during the signing he'd somehow managed to get hold of several more glasses of chardonnay.

So romantic! We'd first met years ago, I was just a girl, an undergraduate at Bennington, then we met again in Salthill, and the old rapport was there, again it was instantaneous, who can explain such things? One must succumb to the demon within, and have faith!

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Croom uses the bathroom noisily, leaving the door partly open, there's a long interlude of faucets and coughing-hacking and at last the poet reappears, hair dampened and slicked back, careening in Abigail's direction as she stands, innocently it seems, reading in a copy of Croom's most recent book of poems The Flayed Heart. He takes her hand, smiles at her enigmatically, and falls back onto the four-postered bed with a sound as of bones creaking. For a moment his flushed cobweb-face, male beauty in ruins, is contorted in pain. Though Croom seems to have freshened up in the bathroom, yet there's a residue of something sour and unwashed; Abigail's fastidious nostils pinch against it. "Alone! You've saved my life." Abigail feels both a touch of pride and a touch of apprehension. Yet she obeys when Croom instructs her to untie and remove his shoes, and to loosen his belt, and to turn up the air-conditioning in the room. She obeys when he commands her to sit close beside him on the bed. "My Helen!

You're the only one of those bitches who has an ear. They invited me to read to them purposely to insult me." Abigail quickly protests that no one has insulted him, on the contrary the audience adored him, the poem "The Bullfight" in particular, such a powerful controversial poem, yes and the audience was deeply engaged by the dark muse-"Of course, the sestina form isn't very familiar to them, Donegal. But they understood subliminally. Your poetry is deep-rooted in the sublime. It appeals to, it profoundly touches, even those unfamiliar with poetic 'form.' " This breathless proclamation, an inspired amalgam of reviewers' quotes, causes the poet, propped up on pillows, to open his broken-egg eyes and peer intently at Abigail. "Really? You think so? Those women understood?"

"In their way, yes." Croom smiles slyly. "Poetry is fucking, dear. Subliminally. Did you know?" Abigail is startled by this revelation, but willing to concede Croom's point, for he's the poet after all. He says, "What the poet does, what I attempted, is fucking the audience, collectively; making them feel something, making them come, even against their will. All poets are male, all audiences female. Poetry is the triumph of the superior will, and I don't mean that I, Donegal Croom, am 'superior,' except in the service of poetry, the higher transcendental divination we call poetry, which is both mystical and erotic, Eros as the highest mystery." Croom speaks passionately, yet with an air of vexation. "Do you think this came through to the audience, today? The damned air-conditioning didn't interfere?" Abigail says, "Donegal, yes! Your reading was powerful, and profound, and erotic, and we will all remember it in Salthill for a long, long time."

Middle Age: A Romance

Croom says, almost humbly, "I don't suppose many poets come to Salthill to read?"

"Not poets of your caliber, Mr. Croom."

Croom fumbles for Abigail's hand, and brings it to his lips. A soft fleshy kiss like a slug's caress. "My dear. My Helen. You are my muse. My lovely Hill-of-Salt muse in her ridiculous straw hat. We are strangers yet soul mates. In this hellish place. 'What hours, O what black hours we have spent!' You won't leave me, will you, dear? Until-" Abigail understands that Croom means until I send you away but she acquiesces with a smile, removing her ridiculous straw hat and setting it on the bedside table.

Croom murmurs endearments, and kisses the soft inside of Abigail's wrist; with her free, slightly shaking hand she strokes his flushed face warm and soft as bread dough. She has become used to the sour-mashy odor of his clothing and feels a stab of tenderness, the poor man is so tired. A major poet, his work honored in all the anthologies of twentieth-century poetry, and so tired. And only fifty-four! Abigail says suddenly, shyly, fearing a rebuff from Croom, "I-I had a friend, the closest friend of my life, and he's gone from me now, and there's an emptiness in my heart that will never be filled, and-this friend so admired your poetry, Mr. Croom! He taught an art class here in Salthill and he read your poetry to us, to inspire us. Almost as beautifully as you yourself read your poetry, Adam read it." (Is Abigail lying? It's the poetry of Walt Whitman and Gerard Manley Hopkins of which she's thinking, not Donegal Croom's, yet Croom has clearly been influenced by both poets, so there's an unmistakable kinship.) "Really? My poetry? Which poems?" Croom grips Abigail's hand more tightly, speaking with boyish eagerness.

Abigail says, " 'SeaChange,' and 'The Feathered Serpent,' and 'The Bullfight' of course, and-'The Flayed Heart.' And many others." Abigail speaks softly, seductively, with widened sincere eyes. Like most women she discovers, in such impromptu, intimate moments, her true talent, and what ease in the talent: tumescing the male ego. As Abigail spins her tale, frothy and effortless as a spider spinning her web, Donegal Croom listens ardently, and inspires her, as if their situations are reversed, and Croom is Abigail's muse. "Who was this friend of yours?" Croom asks, and Abigail says, "A sculptor. I miss him." With surprising sympathy Croom studies Abigail, as if seeing her for the first time. "Someone you loved? Who meant a lot to you?" Abigail nods, yes. Her radiant-jonquil look. Almost, she can see herself. Croom asks, "He died, did he? How?" Abigail speaks

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carefully, not wanting to become emotional. "He drowned. In the Hudson River. Trying to save a child." Croom says, "Drowned! Like Shelley. But it was a hero's death, eh? Good for him, he had the guts. How old was he?"

Abigail hesitates, assessing her options: to say that Adam was Donegal's age at the time of his death might arouse anxiety in the poet, and defeat the erotic urgency of this exchange; to say that Adam was older would be to suggest that Abigail herself is older; yet to pretend that Adam was younger than his age is somehow repellent. "Adam was-no age I knew.

Ageless. We were lovers who touched each other rarely, yet so deeply, I don't think we ever knew, or cared in the slightest, about mere facts. The outsides of things." Croom is in agreement. He's been stroking Abigail's arm, her shoulder, her gleaming hair. He says, "It's strange, isn't it, profound and banal simultaneously, how we can 'love' only a few individuals of the thousands we meet in a lifetime. We try, sometimes-but it comes too late."

Defiantly Abigail says, "No. It can never come too late. Love can be- reborn."

Croom laughs sadly. He's been tugging at the crotch of his rumpled jeans. He says, in a lowered voice, "My dear Helen! In 'The Dying Jaguar'

I touch upon a personal, private matter, I've told virtually no one, I suppose, yes, I am ashamed, I am deeply mortified, my male vanity has been wounded, but I must tell you: I've had prostate cancer, and my prostate has been 'removed,' as they so delicately say. The cancer was stopped in time, evidently. But I haven't much control over my bladder. I wear a diaper, dear. Continuously. I've grown accustomed to it, as I suppose women grow accustomed to menstruating, wearing sanitary pads, tampons, soaking up blood, and worrying that others might detect the odor. My predicament is worse, of course: my body is pissing all the time, like a leaking faucet."

Abigail stares at Donegal Croom, too astonished to react.

"Oh, yes: I'm impotent, too. That goes without saying, eh?"

Croom chuckles. Still he's stroking Abigail's hair, with an expression of tenderness. His breathing has steadied, he seems less distressed. Though very tired. His eyelids are beginning to droop. It would seem a very late hour, and not mid-afternoon of a sunny May day. It would seem a remote, secret place, a kind of cave, and not a handsome if rather overfurnished room in the "historic" Salthill Inn. Croom is rapidly sinking into sleep, and Abigail remains close beside him, reluctant to leave just yet; not certain if she has been dismissed. "I could love you anyway, Donegal. I love Middle Age: A Romance *

your poetry!" Abigail whispers. But Croom's bluish eyelids have shut as decisively as if invisible thumbs have shut them. His mouth droops slackly, his lips are moist, flaccid. Croom begins to snore wetly, and in his sleep he twitches, like a large dog trying without success to shake himself. And then he stumbles, as if tripping over a curb. Abigail strokes the man's face, his coarse hair, feeling a strange sort of contentment. Is this it? It is! She senses Adam Berendt watching. Adam has, Adam will, watch over her.

She has no reason to live except Adam would wish her to live. And this encounter with Donegal Croom, she'll remember as poignant, spiritual.

Shimmering lines of poetry come to her, soft and fleeting as petals, or butterflies' wings. A dancing flame, so lovely. Abigail's eyes flood with tears of gratitude. She reaches out to touch the flame-and it has vanished.

W A s, exhausted, to the mausoleum-house on Wheatsheaf Drive, one of her phone messages is a faltering, stammering voice she vaguely recognizes, with a stab of guilt. And annoyance. "Abigail Des Pres? H-Hello! This is Gerhardt? Ault? You remember me, I hope- we met at-" Abigail Des Pres, la belle dame sans merci, fast-forwards the tape, "-was wondering if, one of these evenings, if you were free, and if "-(why are some phone messages so long, virtually sagas, by their conclusions you've forgotten their beginnings but aren't likely to replay them)-"and w-w-would you consider, I know this is abrupt, and unconventional, and it may offend you, Abigail, but w-would you consider, I mean purely as an abstract proposition, m-marrying? Me? "

Abigail is too exhausted to be shocked. Even incredulous. Nor is she certain she has heard this message correctly. She punches "" to erase, without replaying.

A ** for romance!

Abigail would think no more of her shy stammering architect-suitor Gerhardt Ault (though she continues to hear encouraging things about him in Salthill: he's a "good" "kind" "decent" "very successful" widower) except, the following Monday, there she is driving into Salthill on another of her trivial but lifesaving suburban missions, and by chance she sees Gerhardt Ault and the petite Chinese girl in the red beret, hand in hand, crossing a wedge of lawn near the arts council. The two appear to be

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companionable, if not talking at the moment. Gerhardt is carrying the girl's cello case.

Abigail stares, astonished. "His daughter!"

Managing to drive past without being seen. Her heart beating in helpless, fainting love.

DEARDEADDAD.

A *,on Roger Cavanagh's computer screen,the message from his daughter, Robin, glimmered like a small gem of a poem.

DEARDEADDAD.

i doubt you are my true father there is NOTHING of you in me & I prefer it that way please NEVER contact me again to tell me the lie you "love" me (r)

" Y *, '* * to all our lives. But Robin is adamant, and maybe it's for the best."

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. . . long fascinated minutes. Staring at the swiftly changing numerals of the digital clock, set in crystal, on his office desk. As a woman's voice penetrated his brain. As he pressed the telephone receiver against his numbed ear. How hypnotic, the flashing seconds! Heartbeats. The digital clock on Roger's desk was absurdly expensive, you could "tell" time as accurately with a drugstore clock, but such cheap practical merchandise wasn't for Roger Cavanagh of Abercrombie, Cavanagh, Kruller & Hook of 8 Shaker Square, Salthill-on-Hudson. ("Who the fuck am I?- 'Cavanagh.' ") There he sat at his desk, in his glossily furnished office, listening to a woman said to be his ex-wife speaking into his ear with maddening equanimity.

Once, he'd loved Lee Ann. He knew. As he knew random facts about his old, lost life, at a distance, with faint disbelief.

In this office, the previous July, he'd fallen in love with-who was it?- the red-haired woman, the difficult woman, the woman-who-owned-the-bookstore, the woman-who'd-left-him. Marina Troy. He'd fallen in love with Marina Troy when she signed her name as witness to Adam Berendt's forged signature. When he'd succeeded in inveigling her into committing an illegal act, compromising her integrity for Adam. And for him.

Now Marina was vanished from his life. Now Robin was vanished from his life.

The red-haired woman, he'd had to let go. He couldn't stalk her, for Christ's sake. Yes, I could. But I will not. The daughter, how could he let go?

She was his daughter, his only child. Though she'd banished Deardeaddad. Though she was, as Lee Ann was saying with grim satisfaction, "dead serious."

After the unfortunate visit with Robin in Maryland, it seemed that Roger and Robin were as estranged as Roger and Lee Ann had been years before. The e-mail message was a shocker, yet not a surprise. Roger had tried to please the girl yet she hadn't been pleased. He had tried to demonstrate his love for her yet she hadn't wanted his love. Now she'd announced to her mother that she wouldn't be returning to the Ryecroft School for the second semester, the very school grounds were "tainted"

for her since Daddy's visit. She was insisting upon transferring to a smaller school in Brunswick, Maine. Maine! "What's this, the fourth school in three years, or the fifth? And all to put distance between herself and her father." Roger tried to speak calmly, as if to a client. With clients, you were always calm. Lee Ann agreed yes, it was disruptive but "maybe Middle Age: A Romance

for the best." Roger was baffled by his ex-wife's acquiescence. Lee Ann was a woman of good, stubborn sense: he'd expected her to refuse to give in to another of their daughter's whimsical demands. But Lee Ann was saying thoughtfully, "Better for Robin to make this break with you, Roger, than to love you too much." "Love me too much!" Roger laughed incredulously. "Robin hates my guts. She hates my profession. She hates my cock, and my soul." Lee Ann said primly, "Don't talk dirty, Roger.

That's one of your less endearing traits. Robin has said you do it to 'assert masculine authority'-it's an act of 'sexual terrorism.' " "Robin says? That bullshit sounds like one of her teachers." "Roger, good-bye. I'm hanging up." But Roger slammed the receiver down first. He couldn't bear it, this was madness.

The personal life! He wanted no more of it. He would immerse himself in the impersonality of work, and it would be work that would save him.

Yet staring at the flashing numerals of a digital clock. Is this all there is, finally? A mad rushing forward. Seconds, hours. Days. Years. Through a lighted tunnel for a while, and then- oblivion.

Only the other day he'd had another birthday. He was forty-eight years old! No one loved him! Self-pity convulsed him like a belly of squirming eels. Didn't know if he was sick with despair, or with rage. Or shame.

He'd wanted to ask Lee Ann, almost he'd wanted to beg Lee Ann, what had he done to so offend their daughter?

Or was it something Roger Cavanagh was?

Nothing you do is a matter of life and death. You defend white- collar criminals, what's to be proud of?

O : not to allude to any personal weakness, and never to his predicament as a divorced, scorned father, in the company of anyone at Abercrombie, Cavanagh, Kruller & Hook. His reputation in the firm was: efficient, informed, methodical, and unsentimental as a guillotine. Roger was a skilled litigator who made money for his clients, and for himself.

What's a litigator but a money-making machine.

What's to be proud of? Robin had sneered, crinkling her nose against a bad odor.

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Hell, Roger wasn't proud. Pride is a young man's prerogative. But Roger was functioning, and would function.

Above all he'd learned never to speak of personal matters to his Salthill friends. The men (with whom he played tennis, squash, sometimes golf ) shrank from such revelations as one might shrink from a carrier of plague.

The women were eager to invite him to dinner (especially during the week, when their husbands were in the city) and suck what remained of his life's blood from him in the name of delicious shuddering empathy.

And there was Abigail Des Pres. The woman infuriated him, he refused to think of her.

Yet, working with new associates whom he knew slightly (Roger had recently become involved with a local branch of the National Project to Free the Innocent), Roger sometimes spoke impulsively, unguardedly. "My fifteen-year-old daughter has cast me out of her life like an old shoe."

"And why not? Your daughter has the right."

This was a young woman named Naomi Volpe speaking. A paralegal assigned to assist Roger in the Elroy Jackson, Jr., case.

"She has the right? My daughter? " Roger was incensed.

Naomi Volpe said, "To herself she isn't 'your' daughter. Believe me. To herself, she's herself."

Exactly, Roger thought. That was the trouble.

It was the first time that Roger Cavanagh and Naomi Volpe were alone together, outside the Project's offices in lower Manhattan. They were driving in Roger's car to Hunterdon County, New Jersey to meet with Elroy Jackson's public defender for his disastrous *8 trial. It was an overcast day in late October not long after the shock of the Deardeaddad e-message. Roger, driving, was stung by the young female paralegal's tone.

He wasn't accustomed to subordinates, especially females, confronting him so bluntly; but there was Naomi Volpe fixing her ferret-eyes upon him, as if Roger Cavanagh and his reputation as a litigator didn't much impress her. She said, "A man sees his daughter as a possession, an appendage, but the daughter has a totally different perspective. And remember: a fifteen-year-old today knows more than an eighteen-year-old did just ten years ago. American kids grow up fast." Naomi spoke with maddening certainty. No possibility she might be wrong. This was one of the woman's telephone voices that Roger had overheard since joining the staff as a volunteer and it made him itch to grab hold of the nape of Volpe's neck and give her a good hard shake. Instead he said: Middle Age: A Romance

"It isn't just Robin's only fifteen. She's a very immature fifteen."