He saw that he had a new message waiting for him.

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Mr. C.! Call me. I'm back.

N.V.

A* R , as if it were a continuation of his dream.

Hurrying to the street corner where the car is parked. Beneath a street light.

She's sitting on the passenger's side, the door open. The car belongs to a stranger, there's a woman behind the wheel but it's Naomi Volpe at whom Roger stares, she's sitting sideways in the passenger's seat with her trousered legs out, crossed.

In her lap, a squirming white-bundled shape.

Lightly mocking, laughter in her voice she says, "Look who's here, Buzz. It's Dad- dy."

N S was talking of Roger Cavanagh.

"Roger? A father? Of a newborn baby? And he has the baby? "

"But-what of the mother? Who is the mother? "

There was a collective sense of panic, anxiety. That Roger Cavanagh, one of their own, had gone outside the tribe to take for himself what seemed, to all who knew him, his greatest happiness.

For here was Roger, who'd rarely confided in others, now answering friends' questions with startling candor. In the recklessness of new fatherhood he seemed hardly to care for privacy. Making the rounds of Salthill houses to show off the infant-"Adam"-and you were invited to drop by his town house for drinks in the early evening, and all day Sunday: there was the smiling Guatemalan nanny in the background, and Roger lifting his baby tenderly in his arms, proud, exhilarated, in a bliss of fatherhood.

Yes, Roger changed diapers: sometimes. Yes, Roger helped with feedings and baths: sometimes. He never missed putting the baby to bed. This was a sacred ritual. He hadn't much participated in his daughter's childhood, he acknowledged, he'd been too damned busy with his career, too young, ambitious, callow. "This time, I mean to do things right."

His "lost life" had been restored to him, he said.

To his male friends he confided, "My life was shit. A backed-up toilet.

This has changed everything."

Middle Age: A Romance *

It was noted that Roger Cavanagh looked "years younger."

It was noted that Roger spoke with a new, entertaining levity, reminiscent of the late Adam Berendt. He made his friends laugh even as he mildly scandalized them. He was unsparing on himself, describing his "clinical relationship" with the baby's mother, the elusive paralegal whom no one in Salthill had met. How, when she'd handed over the baby to him, she'd said, "Mr. C., here he is. Where's my check?"

This feckless young woman had relocated to San Jose where she would be managing an office of the National Project to Free the Innocent. Roger had recommended her highly for the position, and Roger had paid her moving expenses. She'd granted him full custody of the baby. On the birth certificate Roger Cavanagh was designated as father. He'd examined this document a dozen times. Naomi Volpe, Roger Cavanagh. Out of this mat-ing of strangers had come Adam Cavanagh.

Roger had every reason to be confident he'd never see Volpe again.

When Beatrice Archer first saw the infant Adam, and was allowed to hold him in her arms, she burst into tears. Never would she have a baby of her own, again! And this baby was remarkably curious, alive, obviously male, a husky-kicky little boy with blue eyes and something of Adam Berendt's squareness in his jaw-"Though of course little Adam isn't Adam's son. We know this." Beatrice was a woman who thrilled to the happiness of friends as sometimes she thrilled to their disasters; she was a woman who loved a story, an unexpected turn of fortune. She telephoned friends who were away for the summer, some of them as distant as Europe, to tell them of Roger Cavanagh's astonishing news.

Inevitably the question was asked, who's the mother? Beatrice explained, "No one we know."

A , "How strange to call him 'Adam.' Why did you do that, Roger?"

Roger shrugged. "Why not?"

The two were drifting off from Abigail's guests gathered on the fieldstone terrace at the rear of her large house. It was Labor Day weekend.

Abigail and Gerhardt had just returned from several weeks on Nantucket and were giving a dinner party to announce their upcoming wedding.

("Abigail, at last remarried!" her friends marveled. "It's the end of an era.")

J C O*

Happy as he was with his son, now seven weeks old, Roger wasn't altogether happy to learn that Abigail was going to marry a Salthill architect of whom no one in their circle knew much-Gerhardt Ault.

The man was wholly unprepossessing. You wouldn't give him a second glance. Roger had made inquiries, and learned that Ault was a highly respected architect, so possibly he had money, and would be making money, but Abigail Des Pres didn't need money, she needed-what? Not this boyish-gawky-homely character with a thin beaky face and receding chin, cavernous nostrils, a nervous pumping handshake, and an inclination to stammer. Ault was hardly Abigail's height and he gazed at her in awe, clearly in love; clearly devoted; yet, how was it possible, Abigail loved him?

The two were lovers? Roger felt a stab of sexual jealousy, almost anger.

He might have married Abigail Des Pres.

Everywhere Roger was invited that fall in Salthill and environs he'd bring the husky infant Adam, and the capable Guatemalan nanny, and after guests cooed over the infant for a respectable amount of time little Adam was dispatched back to the nursery at Belle Meade Place with Herlinda. Abigail, lifting the baby to embrace him in her bare, slender arms, bringing her lips against the baby's warm brow, burst into tears gratifying to the father. Abigail murmured, "I'm so happy for you, Roger. This is- quite a surprise." Roger said, "I'm so happy for you, Abigail. Of course,"

with as much conviction as if he meant it.

With Gerhardt Ault, Roger was civil, polite. He foresaw having to see a good deal of Ault, socially. He'd work out his attitude toward Ault, in time, as you'd work out a settlement for your client, demanding as much as you dared, giving up as little as you could get away with.

Ault was only a few feet away looking on with his shy, hopeful smile, but Abigail and Roger seemed not to notice him. After the baby was sent home with Herlinda, Abigail downed a class of champagne and slipped her hand boldly into Roger's. "Come talk to me, Roger! We have so much to catch up on." Abigail asked Roger about his voluntary legal work, and appeared to listen intently (as many of his Salthill friends did not) when he told her; impulsively, Abigail spoke of donating money to the commit-tee-"It was one of Adam's things, I guess?" Roger said. "Yes. One of Adam's things." From this thing, Volpe. From Volpe, the baby. Yet he drew back from speaking of the connection so rawly, even to Abigail Des Pres.

Now it was Abigail's turn to talk, warmly, with a tremor in her voice, of her new life, not much about Gerhardt Ault but about his thirteen-year-old adopted daughter Tamar, Chinese-born, and very shy. The girl had Middle Age: A Romance

been adopted as a year-old by Ault and his wife who'd died of cancer when Tamar was a small child. "She was devastated by losing her mother. She doesn't trust anyone, and I don't blame her. I want to love her as a mother, I only need to learn how. The girl is like a newly blossomed flower. The petals have opened, a little-but if the sun is too strong they'll shut again."

Abigail astonished Roger by speaking with such passion of how she makes herself "very still, like Zen" around the girl; never enters her room, for instance, unless she's been invited; never speaks to Tamar unless she can sense that Tamar wants her to. "I don't 'waylay' her, I don't 'ambush' her, as Jared was always accusing me of doing, with him. The worst thing you can do is impose your emotions upon a child-I've learned! I take Tamar into the city to the ballet, to museums and shows. She's a promising cellist, and I've become her principal listener. I say little, I restrain my praise. Mostly I just listen. That's how we commune. That's how I will be Tamar's mother.

Oh, Roger, do you think it will work? I want so badly for it to work.

Tamar loves her father but can't talk to him, nor can Gerhardt talk very easily to her . . ." Abigail's voice quavered with a strange ecstatic emotion.

Roger was touched that Abigail was confiding in him, this was an act of true intimacy between them, at last; yet he rather resented Abigail's new, obviously thrilling connection with the Aults, strangers to him. Innocently he said, "And what does Jared think about this, his mother remarrying?"

Abigail stiffened, and looked away, with the dignity of one whose heart has been broken, and has been mended, or nearly. She said, "Harry complains that Jared is becoming more difficult-'more adolescent'-all the time. He quarrels with his father and with his stepmother. I never hear from him any longer. And I keep my distance. I have my new life, Roger, just like you."

As inconspicuously as he could manage, Roger had been leading Abigail around the corner of the house, out of sight of the terrace. And Abigail went willingly. Roger knew that Gerhardt Ault would never dare follow them. Nor any of their Salthill friends. In the Salthill imagination, Roger and Abigail were a "romantic couple"-of some undefined sort.

Abigail had slipped her hand out of Roger's warm hand but he regained it, gripping the fingers. He said, meanly, "Abigail, you don't really love this 'Gerhardt Ault,' do you? Is there an emotional, sexual rapport between the two of you, really?" Roger spoke in the reproving tone of an elder brother.

Abigail said, "I respect and admire Gerhardt, I could only love you." She laughed, a sound like rippling water.

Roger turned aside, smiling angrily. Bitch!

J C O*

But he'd let Abigail Des Pres have the final word on their romance, he was a gentleman.

F , later that evening, he returned home to the town house on Belle Meade Place, there was his baby son-Roger's son! -in the nursery beside his bedroom.

"Adam Cavanagh" at the center of the life of Roger Cavanagh who'd had no center to his life, previously.

There was Herlinda who reported to the doting father every minute wondrous transaction between her and little Adam since Roger had seen them last (feeding, "burping," diaper change, bath, pacifier, kicking-thrashing in his bassinet, blanket on, blanket off, squealing, crying, gooing-gurgling, eye-rolling, "listening," and "smiling") to which Roger listened as attentively as if his life depended upon it. Long after Herlinda had gone to bed, and little Adam was sunk in the deepest of sleeps, Roger hung over the white wicker crib, lost in awe. So happy, he was beginning to forget to be afraid.

T M**

A *,in late June,the call came.

The call Owen Cutler had been anticipating with dread since Augusta had vanished from his life eight months before.

"Mr. Cutler? You're sitting down, I hope? Please sit."

It was Elias West, the private investigator Owen had hired to find Augusta. He was in Florida. Here, it seemed, the nude, headless corpse of a middle-aged Caucasian female of about fifty had been found by hikers in Hendry County, north of the Everglades. The unidentified woman had been "sexually assaulted" and her pelvic region "mutilated" and her fingertips "crudely chopped off," in an obvious attempt to thwart police identification. Fortunately the corpse had been found less than forty-eight hours after it was dumped, so decomposition, which ordinarily would have been rapid and devastating in that climate, was minimal.

A missing persons alert had gone out nationally. Elias West believed they should confer, since one of the places West had tracked Augusta to was Florida. (A Gucci handbag containing Augusta Cutler's identification had been found discarded in Miami Beach, in April.) West put the question frankly to his employer: Did Mr. Cutler think he could make the trip to Florida and bear to view a body in such a condition? Did he think he might be able to identify his wife by bodily markings like moles, freckles, scars, etc. in such-circumstances?

Owen Cutler, who'd answered the phone on the first ring, hesitated

J C O*

but a moment before saying yes. And yes, he was seated. His voice was faint, but calm. Owen dealt with loneliness-and the particular shame of this loneliness-by working in his greenhouse in cool weather, and in his newly established, lavish gardens in warm weather; he was still a partner in the ownership of a number of medical facilities in Rockland County, but no longer an active partner; on this sunny June morning he was seated at a crude worktable in his backyard, beneath a canopy of red climber roses, scanning his usual dozen daily newspapers (among them the Miami Herald and USA Today) in his ceaseless search for "leads" into Augusta's disappearance.

"If that woman is Augusta, I must claim her. We've been too long apart."

W the discovery of Augusta Culter's handbag, discarded in a construction site in Miami Beach, mean?

Elias West could offer only the theory that, it seemed, Augusta had been in Miami Beach, and yes of course her handbag had been taken from her, forcibly; but it had possibly been only stolen, and Augusta herself hadn't been injured . . . "It might be construed as a sign that my wife is alive, then?" Owen Cutler asked anxiously. West had brought the handbag to Salthill for Owen to identify. Owen pressed its scratched and soiled leather against his face, inhaling what he wished might be Augusta's fragrance, but there was no perfume scent, only a scent of . . . rot. And, to be honest, Owen wasn't certain he could have identified the handbag as a possession of his wife's for Augusta owned so many handbags . . .

"Absolutely yes, Mr. Cutler," Elias West said emphatically, "you can infer that interpretation from the evidence, if you wish."

T West's call, Owen flew to Naples, Florida, where he was met at the small airport by the private investigator and two deeply tanned Hendry County sheriff 's deputies who drove him to the Hendry County morgue in Cropsey. It was a blinding-glaring-hot day in the hell of the Florida interior but Owen had no awareness of his surroundings. He was treated by his companions as if he were an invalid, and indeed he'd walked unsteadily, and had needed assistance getting into the unmarked police vehicle. His eyes had an unnatural hopeful glisten.

Middle Age: A Romance

The mood in the vehicle speeding along heat-quivering asphalt highways between acres of empty marshland was subdued, somber. The elder of the deputies informed Owen that a search team hadn't yet located "the missing portion of the deceased's anatomy," and that it might never be located.

"Some of these sick individuals would save a head for their own purposes.

Or they would take care to thoroughly destroy it to avoid identification."

Elias West, who was sitting in the rear of the vehicle with his employer, corroborated these remarks, saying, "A body not identified, Mr. Cutler, is almost impossible to trace to any perpetrator." Owen shifted in his seat as if his clothes were too tight. He murmured, "Yes. I can understand that.

I'm sorry."

Owen was informed that the victim he would be viewing had been killed not by stab wounds, nor even the decapitation, but by garroting.

"Meaning the victim was dead before the head was severed from the body." (Yes, but what did this mean? The anxious husband wondered.) There were "deep, bloody welts" on both her wrists and ankles, meaning she'd been bound, by wire, but the wire had been removed when the body had been dumped, or before, and was nowhere in the vicinity of the body.

There were indications that the victim had been wearing several rings, but no jewelry was found on the body, as all clothing was missing. It was repeated that the victim was about fifty years old and in "good, ample physical condition" prior to the trauma; she'd had a baby, or babies . . . Though Owen was listening intently, he'd become physically anxious, and at last asked if they might please stop at the next gas station or rest area where he might use a lavatory. When he reappeared, his face was clammy-pale and there was a smell about him of panic, vomit. The Hendry County deputies and Elias West, who'd been talking quietly together in the vehicle while Owen was absent, fell silent as soon as he returned.

Owen was carrying with him a briefcase filled with personal items, including photographs of Augusta should these be requested, and a paperback anthology titled The Ethical Life. Owen had not been a friend of Adam Berendt's (he would admit) and he'd rejoiced (to his shame!) when first he'd heard of Adam's death, but during the months of Augusta's disappearance he'd become interested in philosophy, remembering Berendt's interest, and was particularly drawn to the ancient Greek teachings of Epicurus ("the removal of all pain is the limit of pleasure's magnitude"- "cultivate your garden!") and the Stoics ("nothing that falls outside the human mind is 'good' or bad' "). He believed that he was leading, at last, a

J C O*

philosophical life; a rational life; Gussie would admire him, now; all of Salthill would admire him, if they could but know. Now, he would overcome the terrible weakness that suffused his body by asking the deputies intelligent questions about their work, and by evincing sympathy for their lives which he tried, so far as he was capable, to imagine. "What horror you must see! Most people couldn't bear it." The deputies, for whom such lurid adventures as the headless female corpse, possibly the remains of the wife of a rich businessman from suburban New York City, were welcome diversions from the tedium of routine policework, accepted Owen's praise with murmured thanks.

"Just doin our job, Mr. Cutler. We'll see how this turns out."

The vehicle sped onward into blinding sunshine. Augusta's accusing voice was never far from Owen's thoughts. How she'd mocked him, uttering unforgettable-unforgivable!-words. Lost all mystery for each other.

Corpses embalmed together. Had he struck her, silenced her, then? Had he strangled her? (But how had he transported her body to Hendry County, Florida? His brain collapsed, confronted with such a puzzle.) "They say, in such cases, a disappeared wife, a possibly dead wife, the husband is always the prime suspect," Owen meekly offered, "but I would guess, in this case, you're probably looking-elsewhere?"

The driver of the vehicle regarded Owen in his rearview mirror, and the deputy beside him turned to Owen, with a look of some surprise. Elias West said quickly, "These officers aren't investigating Augusta's disappearance, Mr. Cutler. That's an entirely different case. I should have explained more carefully, I guess. This case, it's an unidentified body, and missing persons fitting the description are being investigated, but not necessarily your wife, Mr. Cutler, d'you see?" West, a former U.S. marshal who'd been urged to take a premature retirement in his late forties, was a lanky slope-shouldered man now in his late fifties with thick grizzled hair around a bald pate, the hair long and curly as in a caricature of a Western lawman.

He was humble, and vain; conspicuously well-mannered, and deeply cynical; he wore good white shirts with string ties, vests, and black coats; his belts were studded with metal and rode low on his hips. His face was dark clay brick and his eyes were pale and jumpy. He gave the impression of being "armed"-and willing to use his weapon. He was costing Owen Cutler a small fortune and this fact Owen Cutler supposed to be a sign of the private investigator's expertise. It was clear that West and the Hendry County deputies understood one another; they were of the same species.

Middle Age: A Romance