Yes, a hangover! Why not think of grief that way.

A dog was barking somewhere close by. In the churchyard?

Apollo?

Adam had brought the dog to visit with Marina numerous times, could Apollo have found his way to her?

But when Marina hurried from the house calling, "Apollo? Apollo?"

the barking had ceased.

She drove to Roger Cavanagh's office on Shaker Square. And there was Roger waiting for her, on the front steps, smoking a cigarette. That air of barely restrained impatience. It was late morning, Sunday: Fourth of July weekend. The Square was empty. Roger's firm, Abercrombie, Cavanagh, Kruller & Hook owned one of the eighteenth-century brownstones, prime real estate at the heart of the "historic" village. Roger was known to be a reputable Salthill lawyer, capable, trustworthy, conservative.

Marina had never stepped inside one of the Shaker Square brownstones, which mostly housed lawyers; expensive lawyers; when she couldn't avoid hiring a lawyer, she chose one with an office in an outlying district, or in a mall. As Marina approached, Roger frowned in greeting, glancing up and down the street as if in worry they might be observed, and urging her inside. "Please. Come in." As soon as Marina did, Roger shut the door and locked it.

J C O*

The suite of offices was deserted, of course. Marina felt uneasy, alone here with Roger. And how unlike himself he looked: he'd shaved carelessly, leaving stubble, and a thinly bleeding scratch on his jaw; his dark hair that was usually impeccably styled and combed was disheveled, as if he'd been running his fingers through it. And his eyes were shadowed, more recessed than Marina recalled. "Terrible news," Roger murmured.

"Unbelievable." Yet he spoke curtly as if not wanting to waste breath. Or emotion. Where usually this man exuded an astringent-masculine scent of cologne, he smelled now frankly of his body. And he wore sports clothes, rumpled clothes. He, too, has had a bad night, Marina thought; feeling, for a moment, for this calculating man, a stab of tenderness.

"Adam, of all people. Who'd been so-" But Roger was only just talking, in that obligatory social way of people with something else, something far more crucial, on their minds, and scarcely knew what he said.

"-filled with life. Of all of us. Terrible news!" He was leading Marina briskly, with no ceremony, through the lavish suite, to his own large office at the rear; though it was a sunny midsummer morning, the plate glass windows' thin-slatted blinds were tightly shut. On Roger's desk, amid piles of documents, a plastic cup, very likely hot coffee; an ashtray and cigarette butts. Out of deference to Marina, who'd drawn back from his cigarette, Roger stubbed it out in the ashtray. He sniffed, made a snorting sound as if clearing his sinuses; shifted his shoulders inside his sports shirt; and asked Marina please to take a seat. Marina wondered what was so crucial, why she'd been called. Her eye moved restlessly about the office, which was furnished in expensive teak, black leather, chrome. There was a decorative paneling of glass brick setting off what Marina supposed was a private lavatory at the rear of the office; and this paneling reminded her of the Jones Point Medical Center morgue and what she'd seen there . . .

Marina murmured, "Yes. Terrible."

Roger Cavanagh's stylishly decorated office was a showcase to be admired, but damned if Marina would say the expected thing, the Salthill-social thing, nor would she embarrass Roger with an outburst of sorrow, grief, tears. She saw, on a teakwood cabinet, a sculpted brass figure about the size of a violin, with a smooth raised oval surface that suggested a human face in which dim protoplasmic features were only just crystallizing.

This was an old work of Adam Berendt's from a series Marina thought beautiful though Adam had long since repudiated it, and had no pieces from that era in his studio or house. Too arty and self-conscious-too Middle Age: A Romance

Brancusi, Adam had dismissed the brass pieces. Roger said, "He gave me that. He wouldn't let me pay him for it even in trade." There was an air of shame and frustration in this admission, though Marina didn't know why.

Roger was leafing through documents on his desk, breathing harshly. Marina pretended to be interested in, and then became genuinely interested in, several framed photographs displayed on Roger's big glass-topped desk. As if Roger Cavanagh meant to say, You see? I'm a normal man. This is what truly matters to me. One of the photos was of a child of about eleven, evidently Roger's daughter, an unsmiling little girl squinting in sunshine, oddly posed so that Marina surmised that another person, the ex-wife probably, had been scissored out of the scene; in another photograph, the girl was older, square-jawed and plain, with Roger's small squinting eyes and thick coarse dark hair, now smiling tentatively; in the third and largest, the one that exuded the most hope, Roger and the girl, both in tennis whites, gripping racquets, were posed side by side squinting and smiling in front of a tennis net; the girl now looked to be about fourteen, almost as tall as her father. Marina said, "Your daughter?" and Roger said, without glancing at the photographs, "Yes." He spread a bulky document of about twenty pages in front of Marina. Last Will and Testament of Adam Berendt. The date was April of that year. Roger said, "Possibly you know, Adam has left most of his estate to charitable organizations. His house and land to the Rockland Historic Trust, and enough of an endowment to establish and maintain it as an arts center. Other endowments to environmental organizations, the ACLU and related liberal causes, the Rockland County Homeless Animal Shelter, and so forth, exactly what you'd expect of Adam. Apart from the property on the river, which might be worth a couple of million dollars, I doubt that Adam has much of an estate, but I could be surprised. Lawyers, like priests, are often surprised. Death brings out not usually the worst in us, nor even the best, but the muted, the secret; you get used to surprises, which aren't invariably unpleasant. But you'll be relieved to learn, Marina," Roger said, glancing sidelong at her, with such a look of strain that Marina couldn't comprehend how this could be relief, "that Adam didn't leave sums of money or significant gifts to any individuals, including his closest friends, or any of his possessions except 'random works of art' as he calls them, to be disposed of as his 'personal executor'-you-sees fit. I'm Adam's estate executor, as you know."

Marina said, uneasily, "He didn't designate any heirs?-relatives?" "He did not." "But we have a moral obligation to locate them, don't we? I mean,

J C O*

Adam's relatives? To notify them of the-funeral." "We can try to locate them. We'll drive over to his house this morning, and see what we can find, if you're comfortable with going through his papers so soon after, well, what happened yesterday, but Adam himself never supplied me with the names of any relatives, and you can be assured that I asked him, I asked him more than once, so I doubt very much that we'll find what we're looking for." Marina objected, not liking Roger's preemptory, lawyerly tone, "But we have to make the attempt. It's our moral obligation. Even if Adam wanted to cut himself off from his past, his relatives have a right to be informed of his death, don't they? He was only in his early fifties, at least one of his parents might be still living. From remarks Adam would sometimes make, without knowing what he said, when we were hiking especially, I have the idea he spent his childhood in a western state like Montana or Wyoming." Marina considered, but decided against, telling Roger about the gift; she felt uneasy, guilty over it, and the secrecy of the transaction; the moral thing might be to return the property to Adam's estate, somehow-but was it possible to give something to a dead man?

Roger was saying, "This is more important, Marina. Adam's will."

Roger had opened the document to its final pages where Adam's characteristic scrawl Adam Berendt had been signed above testator. But other spaces, above witness and notary public, were blank. Marina said, "Adam has signed the will, but no one else? Why?" Roger said, "There were circumstances." Marina said, "Why didn't you get witnesses to his signature, at the time?" "Because, as I said, Marina, there were circumstances." Marina blinked, not understanding. The night before had been such a misery, she'd returned home from her futile search for Apollo to fall onto her bed exhausted, too demoralized to remove most of her clothing and her brain racing on the edge of madness; no wonder now she was having difficulty understanding simple things. There were Roger's evasive eyes, and Roger's small bruised-looking mouth, a curious mouth for a predator, what was he saying? Something about the will being "not quite complete"-"not quite fully executed."

"Marina? Look here."

Roger was sounding annoyed. He explained to Marina that though this was the will Adam had wanted, in every detail, yet Adam had postponed having Roger draw it up for years; after Roger prepared it in April, Adam had postponed coming in to sign for weeks, and then months, until it was too late. "But isn't this Adam's signature?" Marina asked naively. A moment later realizing He has forged this signature. That's it! Roger was say-Middle Age: A Romance

ing, with the air of a man arguing a case, "It was the damndest thing.

Adam would make an appointment, then fail to come in. We'd have used, of course, witnesses from this office. For an intelligent man he could behave very stupidly. Stubbornly. Well, you know Adam."

M * the final pages of the will, seeing how the scrawl Adam Berendt on page twenty-one closely resembled, but wasn't identical with, the scrawl Adam Berendt on page twenty-two. The signature was skillfully executed but hadn't been traced. For some time she contemplated the signatures, and the blanks above witness, not knowing, yet certainly knowing, what was expected of her. Why Roger Cavanagh had so urgently called her in. Roger said, "Legally speaking, Adam has died intestate. This will isn't binding. It would be sent to probate court to languish for years.

Much of the estate would go to death taxes, and since Adam's next of kin may never be located, the bulk of it would go to the State of New York.

Adam's special wishes would be completely thwarted, do you see? Marina?

For Adam's sake, not for our own, we have to help him."

"Isn't this-illegal? Criminal?"

The question hovered in the air unanswered. Roger sighed, and smiled his quick mirthless smile.

"But you've done it, the signature, for him. For Adam."

"Someone has done it."

"Am I to be a witness, then? And who will be the notary public?"

Roger said, "I'm a notary public."

"And the date today is-?"

"June twenty-second, a Wednesday. The date of Adam's most recent appointment, which is in the firm's computer."

"Roger, this is-a criminal act?"

"We have no choice, Marina. You know that Adam would be desperate for us to do it."

"What would happen if you, a lawyer, were-"

Roger said sharply, "Marina? Will you sign?"

"Yes."

Marina took up the pen Roger was offering her, and signed.

How Death enters your life. And all is altered hereafter. In separate cars they drove to Adam Berendt's house on the river, a mile and a half from Shaker

J C O*

Square. Marina's new mood was elation, hope; floating upon the older mood of despair and desolation. For now she was a criminal, for her dead lover's sake.

Impossible not to imagine the dead observing us. Our love for them a soft shimmering gossamer trailing behind us.

When Marina turned up the long rutted gravel driveway between stands of slatternly trees, she felt her old quickening of excitement, coming to Adam's house, though telling herself No! not now. Yet she watched anxiously for the silver-haired dog to come bounding out to greet her, as Adam's dog would have done under normal circumstances if Adam were home, but no dog appeared, and she swallowed hard, and when she came into view of the house above the river, screened by evergreens Adam hadn't gotten around to trimming after last January's ice storm, the house that had always seemed so romantic to her, the weathered old burgundy-gray stone, the steep slate roofs and tall chimneys, looked to her now melancholy and abandoned. Beside the house was a field of overgrown grasses and wildflowers, predominantly chicory, not a tended lawn; Adam had laughed at, scorned, such suburban lawns; he never troubled to clear away fallen leaves, year after year. His garden grew among weeds, a lush hive of green. Moss grew on the roof of the old garage, formerly a carriage house. Parked at the rear of the house was Roger Cavanagh's new-model American car, the wrong car. Marina would have to arrange to bring Adam's car back from that place of death. She saw for the second time that morning Roger Cavanagh awaiting her in an opened doorway, except he was now looking at her in a way that quickened her pulse, and her unease.

My co-conspirator. For Adam's sake.

Her new mood! Marina smiled to assure Roger that she wasn't upset, she was fine. That grimace of the mouth in smiling so closely akin to the grimace of the mouth in anguish. In sexual yearning.

When Marina stumbled on the front steps, Roger took her arm, and the sensation of his touch, his quick firm grip, stabbed through her.

"This is a strange thing we're doing. But it has to be done."

In silence they entered the stone house which was cool on even a warm midsummer morning. Marina was beginning to tremble. Wanting desperately to call out Adam? Adam! Still she was waiting for the noisy, excitable Apollo to appear, barking at them, and thumping his tail. But there was only silence. They stood in the vestibule in splotched sunshine and Middle Age: A Romance

shadow. A fiercer sunshine spilled into the large, cluttered living room, where you'd expect Adam Berendt to be greeting his visitors, since he hadn't been at the front door to greet them; but the sunshine was blank and soulless. Marina moved slowly, staring at familiar sights with altered eyes. Adam's battered leather sofa with mismatched cushions; the Shaker-style chairs he'd built carefully by hand, which matched the six chairs he'd built for Marina's dining room; tables piled with books, magazines, newspapers, CDs; on the lofty fireplace mantel, the pair of antique pewter candlestick holders Marina had given Adam for one of his mysterious birthdays. (Mysterious because Adam never provided an exact date, only an approximate; and never specified his age.) Against the farther wall was a six-foot metallic and ceramic grandfather clock Adam had fashioned out of various idiosyncratic materials. Everyone who visited Adam admired this object, which had a working pendulum but no chimes, and no hands on the shiny ceramic clock face; Adam shrugged off the piece as "too lik-able, in the Rauschenberg mode"; he didn't want to sell it. Marina saw with childlike relief that the pendulum was still moving. Its tinny heartbeat filled the room.

Marina said uneasily, "It's wrong of us to be here. Adam wasn't expecting visitors."

Roger said, "There's no Adam now. Adam is beyond all expectations."

They moved through the house. Like phantoms, Marina thought.

As if they, not Adam Berendt, were dead.

They passed by the kitchen without entering, only glancing inside.

Tears started in Marina's eyes: Adam's kitchen! Except for his studio, this was his favorite room. When he invited guests for dinner, which he did rarely, everyone would gather in the kitchen and help Adam prepare the food; if Marina visited Adam, by day, it was usually the kitchen in which they sat. His windows looking out upon the river. A vista that shifted constantly. He'd spoken to Marina of a strange absence of all desire, a profound peacefulness, in winter especially, as he leaned on his elbows on the counter, gazing out. "Not that I'm a happy man, nor even an unhappy man,'' he'd told her. "But happiness, unhappiness, are too trivial to matter.

In such a place you become your own imagining. You feel nothing, or everything. You melt out into the sky."

Marina said, trying for a brisk practical tone, "The refrigerator. I'll come empty it, and the cupboards, some other time. Not now."

Roger was walking swiftly ahead. But Marina, seeing a stack of books

J C O*

on the floor, beside a closet, its door partly ajar, paused to inspect them, and this was the first of her shocks: these books in their bright, glossy covers, newly purchased, were from the Salthill Bookstore. Marina swung open the closet door to see more books, a hundred books perhaps, stacked sideways on the shelves. Poetry, fiction, art, history. She stared at first without comprehension. Then the realization came to her, like a blow to the chest: Adam had purchased these books himself.

Since Adam's investment in the bookstore and his frequent visits, especially when he took over in Marina's absence, she'd noticed an increase in sales and profits. Some months, the increase was modest; at other times it was-well, heartening, exciting. "Adam, there's good news: we're making money." Marina had attributed this business upsurge to her new partner's simple presence in the store: Adam was a popular Salthill figure whom other men liked to talk with and to whom women were attracted. Individuals who'd never entered the Salthill Bookstore dropped by when Adam was around. It was his idea to buy some rattan chairs, get a coffee machine, encourage customers to sit down in frank imitation of the big chain bookstores; he'd envisioned expanding into the adjacent store, where a picture framing business was on the wane; unlike Marina, he never worried about the future. Because he was subsidizing the business. Our best customer.

Marina recalled with a pang of embarrassment packing a box of unsold books back in January, mostly poetry books from distinguished small presses, and asking her assistant to return them to the distributor, and returning next day to the store to discover that the box was gone. Marina's assistant reported that Adam had "sold" the entire box-to a "collector from New Jersey." Janice hadn't been in the store at the time of the purchase, and hadn't seen this serendipitous customer, who was described as a retired English professor from a women's Catholic college with a special interest in contemporary American poetry, but the sale was in the computer, an astounding $6*8.. How naive Marina had been, how desperately she must have wanted to believe! Seeing some of the titles now on Adam's closet shelves, stuck away unread, Marina recalled how adroitly Adam had deceived her. Though she'd been mildly suspicious, in a teasing sort of way, about Adam's special customers ("Women, obviously") who only appeared when Marina was nowhere near.

When will I meet this customer, Adam?

Marina dear, she's so much older than you are, have pity on her. We all must have our romantic fantasies.

Middle Age: A Romance

"Marina, is something wrong?"

Roger, who'd gone on ahead, had returned to see why she wasn't following him. Marina lifted angry tear-brimming eyes to his face. "Adam was humoring me. Buying books from the store, all these." Roger frowned and seemed embarrassed. In a clumsy gesture of sympathy he picked up one of the poetry books and leafed through it as if seeking evidence to refute Marina's suspicions. She said, "I wanted so badly to believe that . . .

business was improving." And a good man, a gallant man, had entered her life, to change it forever. "I suppose-everyone in Salthill knew?" Roger said, in his lawyerly, argumentative voice, "Knew what, exactly? There's no proof that these books are from your store." Marina wasn't going to argue.

This man was humoring her, too. She shut the closet door hard and turned away.

In Adam's office at the rear of the house, with its dusty latticed windows and stained flagstone floor that opened into Adam's studio, Marina felt his presence keenly. And the tension between Roger Cavanagh and herself, tense as the electrical charge before a storm. She couldn't bear it that this man might pity her as Adam Berendt had done.

"Where did Adam get his money, Roger, do you know?" Marina meant to sound indifferent, detached; as if money were the crucial issue, and not a man's deception. As if Adam Berendt's worldly identity had nothing to do with her. But the question sounded anxious, pleading.

Roger had approached Adam's desk, a massive old rolltop with numerous crammed pigeonholes and heavy drawers; with a grim expression he was pulling out manila envelopes and files, leafing through them. Going through a dead friend's papers! There was something jackal-like about this, distasteful. "Real estate, I think. Investments. He was mysterious about his background, of course. I never asked him personal questions, I wouldn't have seen that as practical. Some men live by boasting of their successes, but Adam seemed embarrassed by them; you had to infer that he'd had some success in business. At least, he had money. But he seems to have felt he was a man of such purity he shouldn't have had money. He paid my fees in cash." Roger's small wounded mouth contracted further.

Cash! In a prestigious Shaker Square law firm. Marina wanted to laugh at the vision. Like handling shit, is it? Cash. But you took it.

Marina, silent, carried away a vase of limp, browning zinnias from a windowsill. Zinnias from Adam's garden. In which, shortly, his ashes would be scattered, and raked. Such a horror could not be, yet it was. She,

J C O*

Marina Troy, would see that the ceremony was done properly. Everywhere she went in Adam's deathly silent house she expected to see him. His look of astonishment, his slow baffled smile. Marina? What are you doing here?

He would come forward quickly and take her hands, which were trembling. Marina? Why are you crying?

Marina noted that Adam's windowsills were grimy; the windowpanes rain-splotched and stained; yet sunshine blazed through the glass, idiotic and unmournful.

Why then should I mourn? Adam wouldn't want it.

Within the hour, Roger discovered another of Adam's secrets: he had credit and savings accounts under several names in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania banks. He owned $*8, in municipal bonds issued by the City of Philadelphia, $, in municipal bonds issued by the City of New York, $, in bonds issued by the Long Island Power Authority, hundreds of thousands of dollars in miscellaneous securities.

The names were Adam Berendt, Ezra Krane, T. W. Bailey, Samuel Myers.

Perhaps there were others, in other files. Marina tried to study the documents Roger passed to her, but the names and figures blurred in her vision; she felt light-headed, and frightened. She said, "I don't understand, Roger. Why?" Roger said quickly, "There's nothing illegal about having accounts under other names. We mustn't judge Adam without knowing more." Marina said, "But-why? Why would he have used these names?

And where did so much money come from?" Roger said, with maddening evasiveness, "At a point, money begins to yield money." Marina protested, "But Adam was poor! He wasn't rich. He made fun of the rich. He was- you know how Adam was. You were his friend, too." Roger said, shifting his shoulders uncomfortably, "Yes, I was Adam's friend. But no, I don't believe I knew him."

Apart from financial and legal documents, Roger hadn't located any personal papers of Adam's, any letters or documents suggesting that "Adam Berendt" had relatives, a background, a history. In one of the pigeonholes he found a half-dozen vouchers from Las Vegas casinos; in another, a crumpled document he passed over to Marina without comment, a bill of sale from a Manhattan art gallery? a receipt for $,6 for the purchase of a work of art by Raul Farco? This must have been the sculpture donated to the Salthill Arts Council by an "anonymous" donor.