as swaths and clumps fell from her bowed head. The scissors' skilled cutting, snipping. She'd come to intensely dislike the heavy wavy dark-red hair that turned greasy within a day or two of being shampooed, gathering heat at the nape of her neck; getting into her mouth as she slept, falling into her face as she worked. It was associated in her memory with night: with Night: the heavy furry creature climbing onto her chest, straddling her in her sleep. No more. She wore her hair trimmed short now as a boy's. It was feathery-light, and exposed her face. A stylish bobbed cut that skimmed her cheekbones and the tips of her earlobes and would provoke her Salthill friends, when they saw her, and they hadn't yet seen her, to cry, Marina! We hardly know you, why did you do such a thing, your beautiful hair . . . But how lovely you look, Marina. Really.

No one would now mistake Marina Troy for the young, white-skinned Elizabeth I.

I * to Marina, how beautiful Salthill seemed to her after her year away. She had wanted to loathe it, and she had ended missing it.

"Why do affluence, beauty, 'order' seem to us more superficial than poverty, ugliness, disorder; why does the human spirit seem dulled by the one, and enhanced by the other? Surely this is illogical? A delusion?"

Adam Berendt had chosen to live in Salthill, after all.

(But had Marina known Adam, really? Maybe he'd been her supreme delusion.) In the Jeep, returning home, Marina drove along the River Road preparing herself for the sight of Adam's house, its roof only just visible through a stand of trees, but somehow in her anxiety she failed even to see his driveway, and was past his property line without realizing. In the whitish sun of early autumn the Hudson River was wider than Marina recalled, glittering like the broad, restless back of a gigantic snake.

T who'd leased Marina's old Colonial house on North Pearl Street moved out on Labor Day, and on the following day Marina Troy moved in. She entered the house fearful of what she might Middle Age: A Romance

find and found instead solace. She was home! The young couple had left the house in excellent condition. She'd liked them, and had trusted them, and hadn't charged them nearly so much rent as the real estate agent had wanted, and her trust had not been misplaced. The carpets were worn but freshly vacuumed, the furniture was Marina's familiar old furniture but the cushions had been plumped up and the wood gleamed with polish. Windows had been washed, at least on the inside. That tarry odor and taste Thwaite Thwaite had been banished, as with a powerful rug cleaner. On the dining room table was a vase and in it, a handful of blowsy but still gorgeous roses. Seeing these, Marina hid her face. She was terrified of breaking down, even with no one to see.

"I'm happy. I'm alive. I'm home."

S ' to drive the Jeep into the village. She'd bicycled instead. On Pedlar's Lane quickly entering the bookstore, hoping that no one would recognize her. She wore khaki shorts, a green T-shirt, canvas shoes. On her head a white cotton cap. Her legs were long and tanned, her hair unnervingly short. The bell above the door tinkled and there was Molly Ivers in a denim jumper and new stylishly tinted glasses, shelving books in the nearly empty store, staring at her. "Mar ina? " The women embraced self-consciously. Never had Marina Troy and Molly Ivers embraced until this moment. Molly had known that Marina was returning to Salthill, but would have assumed that Marina would call before coming into the store. Yet Marina hadn't; Marina hadn't called anyone yet. Molly said, more in surprise than in reproach, "Marina, your hair. You look- younger." Marina laughed. "Younger than what, Molly?" Molly was embarrassed, her cheeks reddening. "Than you used to be."

The women had much to discuss. They would require hours, several days of talking, considering. Marina had been thinking (she confessed) of selling the store; but after stepping inside, seeing it again, she felt the old tug of affection; an almost familial affection as if here, too, in this quaint little crooked-floored shop, she was coming home. For what were books but Marina's earliest friends. Children's picture books, and in time adult books, which were (you might argue, in Adam's Socratic manner) artful variants of children's books in which fantasy has become reconstituted as "realism." Marina did love books, she loved the smell and feel of books, new hardcovers in their glossy jackets, quality paperbacks festooned with

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enthusiastic snippets of praise like the tiny shouted voices of friends, almost inaudible. Now Marina was an "artist" but-how realistic was it to suppose that she could support herself, or even wish to support herself, on her art; how realistic was it to suppose that she could endure long periods of isolation another time . . . "If I had the money, know what I'd like to do? Buy the place next door. Break through the wall. Expand the store, add a cafe, like everyone else. Display more books. Children's books. A children's nook. More art books. Display art. Sell art. Bring more people in!" Marina had taken Molly out to dinner in a restaurant a safe distance from Salthill, the women were sharing a bottle of wine and laughing a good deal and discovering to their mutual surprise that they quite liked each other, though, strictly speaking, Marina was Molly's employer.

Boldly Molly said, "Marina, you have lots of rich friends. Maybe one of them would like to invest?"

The women laughed together like schoolgirls.

A M on "completing" Adam's sculptures, her life began to change. She'd failed, but there was a surprising relief in failure. Such relief! Marina had not known. Her own work came now spontaneous and uncalculated, fueled by this relief; at times it seemed to spring directly from her fingertips.

The first of her visions was Night. The predator lynx. The creature of the woods, and of her bed. In a rush of emotion Marina created Night in repose, standing, seated, ready to pounce, creeping low against the ground, devouring prey. Night's eyes were widened in cruelty, half-shut in ecstasy.

Marina made no effort to suggest Night's thick, beautiful pelt, but composed Night of shiny things, as if perversely. Screws and bolts, nails, keys, metal buttons and zippers; bits of steel wool and glass. In one of the pieces, Night's eyes were two slightly mismatched watch faces, stopped at different times. Like a predator Marina tore apart dolls purchased at yard sales and used hair, glass eyes, face fragments, tiny fingers and toes. She used feathers, bones, the shellacked carcasses of large moths with black markings on their wings. She used Polaroid images of rabbit carcasses, part-devoured, and strips of shellacked newspaper pages smeared with rabbit blood. She used strands of her own winey-red hair. She used mummified mouse remains. These many objects were ingeniously glued upon a wire mesh outline of Night. There was an air of innocence, even cockiness, Middle Age: A Romance

about Night. Even when holding his mangled prey aloft in his jaws, in triumph. For Night was he who is. Comprised of objets trouves, he was the stylized shape of a creature. You stared at Night and smiled. The cruel tearing jaws were but the jaws of romance, made up of screws, nails, bolts, zippers. The mad-glaring eyes were but clock-eyes. You could touch this creature, even pet him, and laugh at the intricacy of his construction.

Erect tufted ears fashioned of-mummified mouse hide? A jewel-glisten on-a crimson felt tongue? "This guy, you call 'Night,' is my favorite of all the pieces," the owner of the Open Eye would say, touching the head of the sphinx-lynx, as if familiarly. "There's a lot to this concept, but don't ask me what."

Those winter mornings in the Poconos, Marina worked on Night, and her mounting excitement and pleasure in the curious, unexpected shapes forming beneath her fingers came to obliterate her fear of the nocturnal creature itself. By degrees, Night ceased to crouch on her chest. Night ceased to suck at her mouth. And after Night she created an even larger figure, and a more congenial one: an obediently seated German shepherd, "Apollo," composed of dark shiny things, or shiny things darkened with stain, with flashbulb eyes and a pink plastic tongue lolling from his jaws.

She made big roosters of actual fowl feathers, painted extravagant rooster-colors, glued to wire mesh frames. Their eyes were mismatched dolls' eyes, their feet were razors and spikes. She made deer, fawns, bear cubs, twin raccoons, a coyote and cub. In all, she worked on more than thirty Dream Creatures, and of these she was satisfied with twenty-two.

She asked the owner of the Open Eye if he truly thought these things might sell.

"Yes. I do."

"Because they aren't 'art'-exactly?"

"They're 'art.' Don't worry about that."

"But," Marina was thinking rapidly, "do you think-Adam would have liked them?"

"Adam would have loved them, you know Adam."

"I'm not sure that I do. That I did."

"Adam would have loved anything you did, Marina. Adam loved you."

M *: the dark-haired man was Roger Cavanagh.

She stared. She'd stopped dead in her tracks. There was Roger

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Cavanagh whom she hadn't seen in a very long time, lifting a baby out of its stroller.

Whose baby? There was no one else around. Yet the baby couldn't be Roger's-could it?

Suddenly Marina recalled: Molly had alluded to a rumor about the man she'd called Cavanagh, the rude, pushy lawyer Cavanagh, a mildly scandalous rumor of Cavanagh having become involved with a much younger woman, and having a baby . . . Hurt, Marina had blocked out the rumor immediately.

Now she stared, and stared. Oblivious of her though she was only across the cobblestoned Quaker Street from him, Roger was painstakingly, just slightly clumsily, removing the baby from its stroller preparatory to placing it, in a baby seat, in the rear of his car. Marina saw Roger Cavanagh as she'd never before seen him. He seemed to her young, invigorated; a figure of mystery. How fey and contrived her Dream Creatures, set beside Roger Cavanagh and his baby. He has a new life, and I have no place in it. Yet, impulsively, not caring that he might rebuff her, or look with distaste at her wispy hacked-off hair, she came forward, smiling happily.

"Roger! Hello."

For a moment Roger Cavanagh squinted at Marina Troy in the bright Salthill sunshine, without seeming to recognize her.

"Marina? You? "

F *, things happened swiftly between them.

O M W: T A I as the most horrific fate suffered by any individual in Salthill-on-Hudson since the infamous tar-and-feathering lynchings of the *s.

And it would happen on historic Old Mill Way, to the rear of the beautifully restored eighteenth-century Colonial property known as the "Macomb House," or, alternatively, the "Wade House."

O before Lionel Hoffmann's fatal accident, Camille overheard her husband speaking on his cell phone in a low, urgent voice.

"Are you certain, Doctor? You're telling me the truth? I can take it." Lionel paused, breathing hoarsely. Over the long, humid Salthill summer his asthma and sinus condition had worsened, despite the numerous medica-tions he was taking. "I'm not-infected? My blood is not-'positive'?"

Another pause, and the harsh angry breathing. "But can I believe you, Doctor? Oh, God. I don't know whether to believe you."

Such anguish in Lionel's voice! Camille was stricken to the heart, hearing. She stood hidden against an exterior wall of the guest house; Lionel stood, leaning on his cane, on the flagstone terrace behind the house, near the pool. Though it was October, the air was warm and sunny; the pool was heated, and Lionel tried to swim in it frequently, for therapeutic reasons. For personal reasons, and to protest the incursion of Camille's

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dogs into the house, Lionel had moved into the guest house at the start of the summer.

Camille hadn't meant to eavesdrop. Lionel would be furious if he discovered her. He would never believe she'd blundered into the situation in all innocence; he suspected her, she knew, of spying on him generally. In his convalescence he'd become despotic and unpredictable. He must have arranged to take a blood test in secret, given by someone other than the Hoffmanns' Salthill physician, who was an acquaintance. Lionel was now mocking the doctor's voice. "Why would you lie? How the hell would I know why you might lie, doctor?" Lionel said coldly. "I'm not a mind-reader. Everybody lies to me. My wife lies to me. My children lie to me, assuring me they love me-they 'forgive' me. As if I wanted their forgive-ness! Doctor, there's a conspiracy here to keep me from knowing the truth, though it's staring me in the face." Lionel threw the phone violently from him to the flagstone terrace, where, judging from the sound Camille heard, it shattered.

Camille stood frozen against the wall of the little house. What had Lionel anticipated? Infected blood, HIV-positive, AIDS?

Camille felt a shiver of revulsion, and of relief. At least, there had never been any danger of her being infected. For the Hoffmanns had long since ceased all "marital relations"-as the awkward phrase has it.

She smiled wryly. That made her life so much less emotional, and painful, at least.

Camille went away shaken. She'd hurried to the guest house to share with Lionel some extraordinary good news she'd just received, that would surely improve their strained relationship, but-"Now isn't the time. Obviously." One of the dogs, three-legged Shadow, who must have followed after her, limped beside her, eagerly licking her hands. Out of nowhere charged the two most recent dogs, the thick-bodied mastiffs Soot and Hungry, panting, not barking, for they'd been conditioned by a cruel master never to bark under pain of being kicked, tails quivering with unspeakable excitement. "Good dogs! But you must be quiet," Camille warned in a whisper. "This isn't a time for-mirth."

S happened, Camille had no idea how, there were now seven dogs under her protection. Seven! These were Apollo, Thor, Shadow, Fancy, Belle, and the two brother mastiffs Soot and Hungry. She Middle Age: A Romance *

tried to love the dogs equally, for they were anxiously aware of their mistress's every nuance of emotion and mood, and inclined to be jealous of one another except that overt jealousy displeased her; they feared and disliked Lionel, who so clearly loathed them, and slunk away when he approached. Apollo remained Camille's favorite, of course. (There were odd, eerie moments when the handsome husky-shepherd mix seemed to em-body the spirit of Camille's lost friend Adam. Or maybe it was the case that Apollo bore her unspoken thoughts, her deepest wishes, to Adam, wherever he was. "Apollo! Tell your master for me that I miss him terribly.

But I have my new life now, and Adam will always be part of it." At such times Apollo quivered with emotion, licking Camille's hands and face, and fixing her a look that seemed almost human.) Still, Camille loved Thor nearly as much as Apollo, for the Doberman pinscher was clearly devoted to her. And Camille's heart was bound up with Shadow, for she'd single-handedly saved the misshapen little black dog's life. And there was Fancy, Mrs. Florence Ferris's curly-haired white poodle, the shrewdest of the dogs and yet the most childish and demanding. (Camille laughed, Fancy was so like her own children when they'd been small: "Always needing to be the center of attention, and never satisfied." Though Fancy had long been housebroken you would never have guessed it from the way, out of spite, she sometimes piddled urine on the kitchen floor that Camille was desperate to quickly mop up, before her housekeeper, or worse yet her husband, discovered it.) Occupying a special place in Camille's heart was the husky, mud-colored Belle, a mongrel mix of bulldog and retriever, the most severely scarred of the dogs; Belle quaked and whimpered if she believed Camille was upset (on the telephone, for instance) or if she believed something had happened to Camille (if Camille was away from the house more than an hour). The thick-bodied, deep-chested oily-black mastiffs Soot and Hungry (as their name tags identified them) were mistreated, abandoned dogs condemned to be put down at the animal shelter because of their nervousness and unpredictable behavior, for no one would ever adopt them, and the attendants were afraid of them. (Yet Soot and Hungry touched Camille's heart, too. She knew to speak very softly to them and to stroke their hard-boned heads at exactly the same time, murmuring identical words to each; she knew to feed them separately from the other dogs, always first, and very generously. "I realize I really have no room at home for two more dogs," Camille said apologetically, "but I can't bear to allow these innocent creatures to be executed. Mastiffs don't choose their

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nature. None of us chooses his nature. God can't wish to punish us for being what we are.") Camille promised Lionel she would find "decent, deserving homes" for most of her dogs. In the fall, she was to be involved in an ambitious fund-raising campaign to raise money for a new branch of the Rockland County Homeless Animal Shelter-"There'll be kennels for sixty more dogs, we've been assured!" It was Camille's intention that the dogs be confined to a part of the lawn and the garage, bounded by a new, ugly chain-link fence, and if Camille allowed them into the house they were to be confined absolutely to a small part of the downstairs, yet somehow-who knew how?-one or another of the dogs was always slipping free of these constraints, and a number of the expensive antique furnishings had been damaged. Lionel complained with extravagant bitterness, "The air is rife with dog hairs and the lawn is rich with dog dung. I wake in the middle of the night and know from the smell that I'm in Hades, though still alive, and the three-legged Cerberus is guarding my door to keep me captive.

On my own property!" Living now in the guest house, about thirty feet to the rear of the main house, Lionel spent much of his time alone, brooding.

Camille was often away at the Rockland County Homeless Animal Shelter, doing volunteer work, and rarely prepared meals; had she prepared them, Lionel might not have wished to dine with her; he was permanently furious with her, and deeply hurt by what he believed to be, fairly or unfairly, her preference for her "dog-disciples" over him. "Is it revenge? Because I'd been unfaithful? Or-would it have happened anyway?" He detested all the dogs but harbored a passionate dislike for Apollo, the dog that had "started it all"-"Adam Berendt's damned dog"-and had come to think, in his misery, that his friend Adam had somehow betrayed him, advising him to emerge from his cave-existence into the light. But where was the light?

Lionel's physical therapist A. D. Jones, a six-feet-four Haitian-born young man with rippling muscles and a quick, warm, placating smile, came to work with Lionel several times a week, at considerable expense, but Lionel's progress was slow; he'd come to believe he would never walk normally again. This, A. D. Jones rejected as "negative, pessimist" thinking. (When Jones seized and massaged Lionel's slack white flesh with his supple fingers, how desperately Lionel willed himself not to think of her.

Never, in his waking hours, did he allow himself to weaken, and think of her.) For a few weeks in the early summer, Lionel spent hours each day at Middle Age: A Romance

his new computer, trading stocks, but he had no luck, and grew discouraged after losing $*, in a single nightmare week-"It's a young person's world in the machine. Nasty, brutish, and short." He walked cautiously, with his cane. His recovery from surgery was slow, and now his right knee was giving him pain. There were often shooting pains in his neck. If the air smelled even faintly of dog, Lionel coughed, wheezed, sneezed. He blew his nose until his nostrils flamed. He was insomniac by night, and by day groggy and lethargic. Though he refused telephone calls from the Hoffmann family, and never spoke of Hoffmann Publishing, Inc., he seemed to miss the mechanical routine of commuting into the city and to his office. There was a mysterious emptiness, like a cave, at the core of Lionel's existence. "What was the point of my life?" He was sincerely perplexed, like a man slapping his pockets for something he has mislaid, but damned if he can remember what.

C her troubled husband with a confused, tender love, like a mother regarding a handicapped, difficult child. She knew it was shameful that Lionel Hoffmann should be living in the guest house (though, in fact, the guest house was a handsomely modernized two-bedroom suite overlooking the pool and hillsides) and that all of Salthill was talking of this new, so very perverse "separation" of the Hoffmanns.

Camille's women friends strongly advised her to get rid of her dogs, have the house thoroughly cleaned, and invite Lionel back-"Surely you don't want to drive him away a second time, do you?" Marcy was even more adamant-"Mo ther. Next time Daddy will get a divorce, and the new wife will take over everything. And you and your precious dogs will wind up somewhere in a kennel." Camille agreed, guiltily; of course she didn't want to drive Lionel away a second time, especially when he was unwell and needed her-"But my dogs need me, too. My dogs love me."

How plaintive the claim. My dogs love me.

Camille wondered: had the predatory young woman with whom Lionel had been involved contacted him, since he'd returned to Salthill a broken, defeated man? So far as Camille knew, she had not. Lionel had never spoken of her by name; he'd confessed only that he'd made a "hideous, humiliating mistake"; he hoped Camille would "forgive" him.

Camille had said without hesitation yes, of course, she forgave him, she loved him, she was so relieved he'd returned . . . But Lionel's return had

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marked only the end of his adulterous affair in New York City, not the beginning of a new marital romance. Marcy warned her mother that Lionel might be slipping away to see the woman again, or other, even younger women, for "once a man begins, he becomes an addict," but Camille was certain that Lionel's days of slipping away were over. The poor man could scarcely walk! He suffered terribly from asthma and sinus headaches. His head seemed permanently congested, as if with wet cement. Though his pale, handsome face was surprisingly unlined, and his silver-tipped hair hadn't thinned, Lionel had clearly aged. Sometimes without wishing to, Camille caught sight of him grimacing at himself in a mirror: how like a death's-head he'd become! Sometimes he shook his cane at one of the dogs, and it shocked her to see how his shoulder blades protruded through the cloth of his shirt, like malformed wings.

T , the Hoffmanns' physician, a Salthill resident and an old friend, telephoned to speak with Camille about Lionel. Though this doctor apparently knew nothing of Lionel's anxiety about infected blood, he expressed concern for Lionel's mental health, as well as his physical health. He told Camille, "I've been hearing from Lionel's specialists, and they all report the same thing: Lionel calls them frequently, never believes what he's told, expects the worst and thinks we're all lying. Then again, he often doesn't follow instructions. He thinks we're trying to 'dope him up.'

He threw away two prescriptions I gave him. His therapist says that Lionel is either despairing and lethargic, or angry and hyperactive. Lionel was always the most reasonable man of my acquaintance, Camille, and now he's becoming a disturbed man. He is a disturbed man. It might be advisable for him to see a psychiatrist." Quickly Camille said, "Lionel would never see a psychiatrist! I could never bring the subject up, he'd be furious. He's a man of pride, you know." "He's beginning to be a very disturbed man." Camille, stung as if the insult were lodged against her, made no reply.

Though after the accident she would think Why didn't I speak with Lionel, as I'd been advised! His life might have been saved.

T * C had been bringing to Lionel was wholly unexpected: the elderly dowager Florence Ferris had died, and had left $ million as a gift "to my dear friend Camille Hoffmann who has made me so Middle Age: A Romance

happy, providing a loving home for my beloved Fancy." Camille had received a call from Mrs. Ferris's attorney, and sat down, stunned by the news. Her first reaction was to protest, "Oh, but I can't accept Mrs. Ferris's bequest! It's too much money. Her heirs would be furious with me." The attorney assured Camille that this would not be the case, Mrs. Ferris's estate had been divided into numerous bequests many of which might be characterized as eccentric, and the $ million to her, as Fancy's keeper, was typical. "But-I love Fancy for her own sake, not for money. I never expected to be paid." Camille hung up the phone, and sat for some time in a daze, as dogs licked her hands and nudged whimpering against her, sensing the turmoil of her thoughts. "Oh, Shadow! Belle. And Fancy." She stroked the dogs' heads, and allowed the curly-haired white poodle to clamber up into her lap; Fancy was in one of her nervous-quivering moods, hungry for her mistress's assurance she was loved. "You, Fancy, are a very good dog. You've brought us all such a blessing . . ." Now I am free.

If it's freedom I want.

She could leave Lionel this property, and buy another house, in a more rural area of Rockland County, where she could live with her dogs undisturbed. With so much money she could virtually fund a new wing of the Shelter. She could help enormously in the campaign to make cruelty to animals a felony in New Jersey. Elation filled her heart: at last! But she felt guilty, too. Was she, Camille, now becoming the unfaithful spouse? Was she behaving immorally? I must do what is right. What is best for all. But- what?

Camille waited until the following day, when she hoped Lionel might be in a better mood, to tell him the news. But even as she approached the guest house, and the pool in which turquoise water shimmered in autumnal light, she heard Lionel's raised, angry voice.

He'd found dog excrement in the pool. He shouted at Camille, waving his cane, "God damn it, Camille! I've had enough. I want those repulsive beasts gone." Camille too was shocked at excrement in the exquisite turquoise water, though there wasn't much of it, a smallish sort of dog turd, clearly not the work of one of the larger dogs; murmuring apologies, Camille awkwardly took up the pool net, and tried to fish out the excrement, while Lionel followed after her limping and cursing. He continued to shout, "Camille, God damn it! God damn those dogs, and God damn you." His face was contorted and not so handsome now. His eyes were a madman's eyes. He lifted the cane, he brought it down on Camille's

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shoulder, causing her to scream in pain. Camille would afterward claim that Lionel hadn't meant to hit her, he wasn't the sort of man to hit a woman, he'd merely meant to warn her, but in his disturbed state of mind he'd misjudged, and struck her, and she'd overreacted perhaps, by crying out; and there came, snarling and barking, as if he'd been guarding his mistress at a distance and awaiting just such an emergency, Apollo; and close behind Apollo came Thor, barking furiously; and there was Shadow charging on three legs, teeth bared; and there came Belle, wheezing and snarling; and Fancy in a savage mood, teeth bared and slobbering saliva; and, in deadly silence, charging like twin missiles, the thick-bodied deep-chested mastiffs Soot and Hungry. Camille cried for the dogs to stop, but Lionel was shouting and swiping at them with his cane, like a scythe, which provoked them past restraint. "Beasts! Filthy things! Get away! I'll have you put to death!" Thor leapt for Lionel's throat, and Lionel managed to shove him aside, but there was Shadow sinking her teeth into his leg, and there was Apollo leaping in a frenzy, and Thor quickly leapt again, and Lionel slipped to one knee, screaming in pain, and there was Belle with bulldog tenacity sinking her teeth into Lionel's ankle, and the excitable mastiffs Soot and Hungry were crazed, though still silent, tearing at their prey with powerful teeth and jaws . . .

For years to come the Hoffmanns' neighbors on Old Mill Way would tell of hearing human screams on that idyllic October morning in the country, and the frenzied barking and snarling of the dogs, for many minutes- "The most grisly, blood-chilling sound you can imagine. But you would not want to imagine!"

O C H'* seven dogs, she would insist that only three were "actively" involved in the attack. These were the mastiffs, covered in blood when rescue workers arrived, and the mixed-breed bulldog, which seemed to have gone mad in the attack, her muzzle and chest also covered in blood. Though Camille was in a state of shock, and would be in a state of shock for some time, she was adamant in speaking with authorities. The other four dogs were shut up in the garage, wetted down, still excited, but (as Camille insisted) remorseful. Knowing Mrs. Hoffmann's involvement in the Rockland County Homeless Animal Shelter, authorities decided to take her word, and only three dogs were taken from her and, in the somber parlance of the trade, put down.

T B T his gift,this beauty.For you.

On the Sunday following Lionel Hoffmann's tragic accident, as the incident will come to be called, Abigail Des Press takes Gerhardt Ault's thirteen-year-old daughter Tamar into the city for a mati-nee performance by the New York City Ballet. Abigail has gone to some trouble to secure excellent seats, in the eighth row, center of the theater; how tense Abigail is, and how hopeful, that this New York outing will go well. She's pleased to see that Tamar is deeply absorbed in the first dance, in the way that Abigail herself would have been thirty years before.

There's a new young ballerina dancing, a serenely beautiful girl with long straight dark hair, flamelike, fascinating to watch. The troupe of gifted young dancers, female and male, are all Caucasian with the exception of a young black man and an Asian-American girl of astonishing suppleness and grace. The ballet, revived from the eighties, is lushly romantic, with dissonant "post-modernist" interludes, a jazzy-sexy beat, but at the end romantic again, and resolved. No ambiguity here: this is the triumph of wish-fulfillment.

The night before, Abigail had prepared dinner for Gerhardt and Tamar at Gerhardt's house, as she has several times done, and Tamar helped in the kitchen. Tamar is a vegetarian, and Abigail has recently become a vegetarian, or almost; she no longer eats "red meat," and imagines that Tamar approves of this decision, though Tamar, characteristically, has said nothing. The dinner was vegetarian for Tamar and Abigail, and Abigail prepared a grilled steak for Gerhardt.