The showdown was a letdown. The only thing that happened was that now no one was talking to anyone else. They had never before let anything like that happen.

Kristina went upstairs. It was eleven fifteen when she got to her room.

The snow was still falling heavily. Kristina desperately wished she were drunk tonight so she could walk her wall. Frankie Absalom was waiting. With a big sigh, she sat down at her computer, thinking about starting the Review death-penalty story, but wanting to go to bed instead and wishing for her heart to stop squeezing and hurting her.

At eleven forty-five she went to walk Aristotle, coming back a few minutes before midnight.

A knock on the door startled her and made her heart start pounding. What's going on with me? she thought nervously.

The knock was light, not angry; it could only be one of three people, and Kristina hardly wanted to talk to any of them. Kristina didn't go to the door right away. She was waiting to recognize the knock.

The knock came again.

Finally, she opened the door. 'Look, Jim -' she began.

It was Conni. She looked disheveled, and her hair was messy. Her blue eyes were trying to smile, but Kristina could see Conni was battling with herself.

Kristina opened the door wider. 'Come in.'

Conni shook her head. 'No, I gotta get back. Albert's waiting for me. And I need to pack too. We just wanted to bring you this.' Pulling her arm from behind her, she gave Kristina the birthday bottle of Southern Comfort. 'We thought you might want to have it while we're gone. I said I'd bring it to you. I wanted to talk to you, anyway.'

Kristina felt warm relief flowing through her veins. She gladly took the bottle and threw it on the bed. 'I like it very much. Thanks.'

'Listen, I'm sorry about before,' Conni said, not looking at Kristina.

'Come in,' Kristina repeated. Aristotle wagged his tail. Conni didn't move. 'You've got nothing to be sorry for,' said Kristina.

'Well, Albert says I do, and I think he's right.'

'You've got nothing to apologize for,' said Kristina firmly.

'No, I do. I do. I was out of line down there. Nothing was wrong, I don't know what I got so bothered over.'

'Yes, you do,' said Kristina. 'You know why you got bothered. Why are you always pretending that nothing is wrong?'

Kristina saw fear in Conni's eyes, as if this was not the conversation Conni wanted to have the day before she got engaged at Thanksgiving. 'I'm not pretending, okay?'

'Yes, you are,' Kristina said. 'Why?'

'I'm not!' exclaimed Conni, and then, quieter, 'So what do you think I'm pretending about?'

Her body throbbing, Kristina leaned down to Conni and whispered, 'Pretending what's true isn't true, Conni.'

Kristina might as well have slapped Conni, who recoiled and staggered back a foot from the door. She took a few seconds to regain her composure. 'You're lying. I know you are. I don't suspect anything, for one. They're just the normal doubts everyone in a relationship has. I trust him, I have to. Otherwise, how can I stay in a relationship with him? If I don't trust him and still stay with him, then I have no self-esteem and no self-respect. So I have to trust him, do you see?'

Kristina shaking her head, said, 'Yes. I see.'

All of a sudden, Conni slapped Kristina across the face, leaving a bright red mark, and then, before Kristina had a chance to move, slapped her again across the other cheek.

Now it was Kristina's turn to stagger back. 'What are you doing?' she said. 'What do you think you're doing?'

'You deserve worse,' Conni said. 'For trying to break us up. I thought you were my friend.'

'I am your friend,' said Kristina, rubbing her cheek.

'You're not my friend,' Conni went on. 'Otherwise you'd know how much I love Albert.'

'I know how much you love Albert,' Kristina said. 'I also know all the other things you don't know.'

'You don't know anything. Nothing. You're just cruel. You have everything. All I want is Albert. Can't you see he's weak?'

Kristina laughed. 'Weak? Albert? Conni, he's the strongest person you'll ever know.'

'He is weak. He doesn't know his own heart.'

'Better than anybody. Better than you, better than me. Albert is true only to himself. You'll see that.'

Conni lashed out, grabbing Kristina's hair, yanking it hard. But this time Kristina was ready. She had to bring her right arm across her body, and tilt her head, but she grabbed Conni's hair very hard, and pulled. 'Listen, you,' Kristina panted. 'Listen, stop behaving this way, stop it, you're nuts!' But Conni wouldn't let go. Trying to stop Conni, Kristina dug the tips of her nails into the skin under Conni's eye, piercing the cheek and making Conni yelp.

Conni let go. Kristina didn't.

'Listen, I'm going to tell you something,' Kristina said, standing very close, looking down at Conni. 'I know you always manage to get mad at just me, but I'm telling you, I'm not the one you should be mad at.'

'Oh! Let go of me,' Conni whispered vehemently. 'Let go!'

Kristina let go. Bloody scratches marked Conni's left cheek.

Conni touched her wounded face. Kristina receded into her room.

Panting, trying to get her breath back, Conni said, quietly, malevolently, 'Now I'm going to tell you something. I asked Albert about you and him, and you know what he said?'

'Of course I do,' said Kristina.

'He denied everything.'

'Of course he did.'

'Well, now I have a choice - either I believe my boyfriend, who I love and who I'm going to marry, or you, just a friend. And I have decided for better or worse to believe Albert, because it's what I can live with, okay? And I never want to talk about it again.'

'Okay,' said Kristina. Inside, she was sick. Sick for Conni, sick for herself, and furious at Albert.

Still holding her cheek, Conni backed away, and then turned around and ran down the hall and through the fire doors.

Kristina wanted to say to Conni, okay, so you think you figured him out. You alternate between going off the deep end and swimming in denial. And when you snap, you never snap at him, only at me.

Kristina sat on her bed and thought about Conni.

Then she looked at the clock.

Twelve thirty.

Kristina slowly took her clothes off. The feeling in her chest was so strong and so despondent that she slumped onto the bed. She grabbed Conni's bottle, held it between her bare legs, and unscrewed the cap. She was going to take a slug, but the open bottle disgusted her. Opening her legs slightly, she let the bottle fall to the floor. She didn't want that foul drink, not even for a walk on the bridge, not even to ease her heart.

Kristina turned off the lights and went to the window. The soft, untouched snow was beautiful. The first snow of the year. Ordinarily, many students would be out, but tonight they had all gone home or were asleep. The Feldberg Library across from Hinman was still lighted. Kristina wondered if Frankie was really waiting for her to walk the wall.

She was going to do it. There was something about walking that wall in the snow while drunk that rid her of all the bad inside her. She felt like a flightless bird, ready for takeoff, one with nature, her footsteps softened by the snow. The alcohol in her blood steadied her step so that if at any moment she was to meet her maker, she'd be ready.

After yesterday, Kristina had realized she wasn't ready at all.

And today she was scared. 'Forgive me,' she whispered. 'Forgive me for living, for not wanting to see You yet, for wanting to live. Dear God. I want to live well. I just don't know how.' She bowed her head. 'Please show me how.'

Yesterday she had been given another chance at life, and she was going to take it. She had been given a chance to do right, to live right. But how?

Give up Albert, she thought. Give him up. Let Conni have him, let her have him and get on with your life. Without him.

The yellow streetlights cast a lonely hue on the blue-white snow.

Usually, she walked the bridge without shoes, but that was before she had the black boots. She finally had something decent to wear. Her ribs and shoulder hurt and the boots were a bitch to put on with only one arm working, but she slowly managed.

She had laced one boot when there was a knock on the door.

Her heart started racing. She was panting even before the second knock.

Kristina didn't want to open the door. But Aristotle's tail wagged as it wagged for only one person, and Kristina wanted to say have a happy holiday to him. Have a great wonderful holiday at Cold Spring Harbor.

Outside her door stood Albert.

'Come in,' she said to him, moving her naked, one-booted body to face him, desperately wanting to touch him.

'Came to see how you're doing.'

'I'm doing great,' she said, moving back inside the room and sitting down on the bed near her other boot.

'I thought you'd be walking your wall,' he said. 'You never could resist a dare.' He carelessly plopped himself down in the lounge chair and looked around the room. His eyes stopped at the bottle of Southern Comfort, which had leaked into the carpet.

Kristina said quietly, 'Where are we going, Albert?'

'Going nowhere, Rocky. You know that.' He looked out the window, then reached over and closed it. 'It's cold,' he said.

'Leave it open,' Kristina told him. 'I get so hot at night.'

He got up. 'Listen, if I don't see you tomorrow, have a great Thanksgiving.'

'Yeah,' answered Kristina, looking away from him, ready to cry. 'Thanks. You, too. You have a good one.'

'You sure you don't want to come with us?'

Now she looked up. 'Yeah, I'm sure, Albert. Sure.'

He came over to her, but Kristina backed away from his hand. She looked up at him with a mixture of anger, regret, and love, all doing battle on the frontline of her soul.

Albert reached out to touch her, but she backed away farther and he stopped. 'Let me help you with your boot,' he said gently.

Kristina let him. He knelt down in front of her, and she gave him her foot. She was naked and she saw him looking at her with longing, his lips slightly parted.

'Do you want me to lace it up?'

'Yeah, sure,' she said, and Albert did, kneeling in front of her for a few extra moments. His hand reached out to caress her thighs, but she closed her legs and tried to move away. He lifted his hand and touched her face.

'What happened to your cheeks? They're all red.'

'You, Albert. You happened to my cheeks,' said Kristina.

He didn't ask, and she didn't offer. Getting up off the floor, he moved to go. 'I'll see you, Rocky.'

'Yeah, sure,' Kristina said, turning her face away from him. 'See you.'

She felt him watching her for a couple of seconds and then he left.

With her boots on, she fell back on the bed as the ceiling swam in front of her eyes. Please don't cry, she said to herself. Stop feeling this way. Cheer up, you're going out in subfreezing temperatures. If that doesn't brighten your spirits, nothing will.

In a few minutes Kristina got up, prodding Aristotle with her foot on the way out, and headed down the stairs.

She walked out the side entrance. The cold and blowing snow hit her. She hastily wrapped one arm around her breasts. I'd better do this quickly, she thought. But she knew she couldn't do it quickly. She must watch every move and walk as if she were in slow motion. She had spent the day delirious with pain, rambling and tossing with bad feelings. She wanted the cold to numb her, to make her feel better.

Kristina looked up at Feldberg Library, trying to see Frankie by one of the windows. He was her nightwatchman, but Frankie hadn't said he'd be waiting for her all night. Kristina smiled to ward off the spirits and crossed herself as she came to stand by the head of the bridge.

Up you go, Kristina, up you go. The stone ledge was three feet high and nearly two feet wide. She slowly climbed on top of it, favoring her right knee, and stood up. She tried to extend both her arms at her sides before she took a step. Only the right arm obeyed her.

With the left arm at her side, Kristina extended her right arm, and, trembling, took two, then three, then four tentative steps, whispering, Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear the very stones prate of my whereabout. At this end, if she fell, it wouldn't be bad. It was only three feet down to the bridge on the right of her and about the same down to the snow-covered ground on the left of her. Then the embankment on the left got much steeper, eventually stopping at the utility driveway. Kristina moved along the ledge, suspended seventy-five feet in the air. She was a naked bird with her one wing outstretched, her long legs stepping carefully, her black boots making slow and deliberate marks on the snow-covered wall, her black eyes fixed ahead, whispering haltingly, And take the present horror from the time, which now suits with it.

The black boots were helping her gain traction, but fear raged in her heart. Whiles I threat, he lives. Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives. She shivered and shifted to one side, her right arm insufficient to keep her balance. Against all reason, she tried to lift her left arm, and the sudden and sharp pain made her jerk involuntarily, and when she jerked she slipped on the snow and fell.

She slipped sideways and backward, hitting her right leg on the sharp side of the stone. She thought her heart would explode. For a moment she just sat on the ledge in an awkward position, too terrified to move, and then she inched her way down onto the bridge.

Oh, God, oh God, oh, God, she kept stuttering. Her heart would not calm down. God, that was close; God, that was close.

Kristina had never been this scared, not even during the crash.

Well, this is no fun, she thought. Losing to Frankie in poker is more fun. Thank God I'm all right. Amid the superficial relief, black fear beat her from the inside out.

She walked unsteadily to the end of the bridge, whispering inaudibly, 'I go, and it is done: the bell invites me. Hear it not, Kristina; for it is a knell that summons thee to heaven or to hell.'

A little path wound behind Feldberg Library at the edge of the pine woods. One yellow bulb lighted a service door to the building.

I'm crazy, Kristina thought. Crazy. Never again. Never, ever again. Spencer Patrick O'Malley, I promise, I will live long enough to have dinner with you.

Brushing the snow off her chest, Kristina Kim crossed herself and thanked God. As she began to walk back to Hinman, she thought she heard a voice calling her. 'Kristina... Kristina...' She looked around but couldn't see from where the voice was coming. I must be imagining things, Kristina thought, peering into the darkness, her heart slipping into the abyss.