"Not again!" I almost raised my hands in an instinctive defense reaction, but I needed at least one of them to hold onto the receiver. I tried to reason with her again. "You know that's not possible."

"No, no," she contradicted. "This time, I won't be put off. Either you're on my doormat by four o'clock, or I'm at your office." She sounded absolutely determined.

"Here in my office on the doormat?" I couldn't help imagining that and teasing her with it. "That would be a new one."

She laughed. "Now you're starting the phone s.e.x."

I admitted it. "I'll come earlier," I promised. "But I don't know if I'll make it by four o'clock."

"Don't come too late," she whispered sensuously. "I'll be waiting for you."

"My G.o.d," I sighed. "I wish I were there already."

"So do I." I could feel her impatience pressing through the receiver. "Until then. I'll water the roses in the meantime." She paused. "I'm thinking of you." She hung up.

I kissed the telephone receiver and said," I'm thinking of you, too." Then I put it back in its cradle. I seemed pitiful to myself as I stared at the plastic handle.

I held out until five. When I entered her apartment, she greeted me with a long kiss. My knees went weak. Astonishingly, however, she let me go. She pushed me away from her. "Sit down." It wasn't a request - more like an order given in a polite tone. "I'll make you some coffee."

She seemed decidedly housewife-ish. "Have you got a pair of felt slippers for me as well?" I asked, irritated.

She looked back over her shoulder. "Not yet," she said. "But I can get you some, if you'd like." She appeared to mean it seriously.

"For heaven's sake!" I was stunned. This reception didn't quite match my expectations. "What's up with you?"

She switched on the espresso machine and came back to me. I was still standing there in a daze. She poked me in the nose with her finger. "I like it when you come home from work tired and I can take care of you. I've never had the chance to do that," she explained in answer to my question.

She pushed me onto the couch. I let myself fall. "Just don't let this become a habit," I objected. "I'm so lazy, we'll end up spending our evenings cosily in front of the TV if they start off this way."

She leaned across me and caressed my cheek sensually with her lips. Then she sought out my mouth and kissed me anew. "I know how to prevent that," she said, laughing softly. She stood up. "Besides, I don't have a television, and neither do you as far as I know."

"Yes I do. In the bas.e.m.e.nt," I contradicted.

"And there it shall stay." She laughed again. "At least as long as I'm making the program." She was definitely doing that. I had no idea what this was all supposed to mean.

She went back into the kitchen and brought me my coffee. She sat next to me on the sofa, like the first time I came to her. She crossed her legs exactly as she had back then. Only today, she was dressed. Independent of that, I felt my desire for her. I took the coffee cup and drank. Across the rim, I watched her. Her arms lay casually on the back of the sofa. She looked back at me and caught my eye.

"Should I change clothes?" she asked. She laughed when she saw my dismayed expression. "I mean so you can enjoy the situation as much as you did then." She knew exactly what she was doing!

"Stop that," I pleaded uneasily. "You know I don't like that."

"But you remembered it." In contrast to me, she obviously felt comfortable enough to be amused by this.

"You were unbearably sweet." She positively reveled in the memory. "I knew right away that you were in love with me."

"I must've stared at you like an idiot." I was still deeply embarra.s.sed by the memory.

"Stared, yes. Like an idiot, no," she corrected.

She controlled the situation sovereignly. I almost felt like I had then. "I didn't like it very much, by the way."

The thought of it alone drove me to react with a measure of annoyance. "It was terrible."

"Being my client?" She was serious now.

Where was she going with this? She never brought up this topic herself.

She bent over and took a rose from the vase, which she'd placed on the coffee table. She smelled it. "I didn't have these then." She looked at me. "I've hardly ever gotten red roses before." She laughed, overwhelmed. "And never this many!"

I couldn't possibly imagine that. During the course of her adult life, there must have been ma.s.ses of people who fell in love with her, men as well as women!

"The first time I got red roses, I was seventeen," she explained unexpectedly, her attention still absorbed in the flower in her hand. "From a man." She laughed contemptuously. "And of course he wanted something in return!"

She didn't say if she'd given him what he wanted. I really didn't want to know, either.

She looked at me again. "Then I didn't get any for a very long time. Until a couple of years ago." This time, she didn't say from whom. She continued, "And now from you."

That was really very little for a woman like her!

She stretched out her arm and tickled my cheek with the rose petals. She caressed me up to my ear and then back down to my lips. She caressed them as well. The scent of the rose under my nose was intoxicating, although the whole room was filled with it. The rose petals were soft and satiny on my lips. I plucked one with my lips and held it tight. She kept the rose in her hand, leaned over, and laid her arm across my shoulders. She tickled the nape of my neck with the rose. She leaned into me. She put her lips on the opposite side of the rose petal. Our lips touched very lightly. Barely a whisper. I moaned nonetheless. She pulled the petal and, at the same time, my mouth in with her lips until she could kiss me. Our tongues played with the petal. She pushed it into my mouth and I pa.s.sed it back until I could no longer bear the stimulation. It appeared to go the same way for her. She pushed me back onto the sofa and lay down on top of me. She set the rose down next to us and removed the petal from my mouth. "We won't be needing that anymore," she breathed, soft and erotic.

I reached my hands down to her waist and began to undress her. When I felt her bare skin, I pushed my fingers around to the front and unb.u.t.toned her pants. She moaned deeply. I stroked her belly between us. "Wait," she commanded. I didn't move. She straddled my thigh and rubbed against me. She came fast and furious.

I hugged her when she collapsed back on top of me. "I'm sorry," she remarked after taking a moment to catch her breath. "That wasn't what I wanted to do."

"Was it good for you?" I asked tenderly.

"Yes." As usual, she admitted it only reluctantly. "But..."

"Then everything is fine." I squeezed her tighter. "Everything is fine," I repeated soothingly.

"You're going to make me cry." She had her head next to me on the couch cushion so I couldn't see her face.

I rubbed her back. "Then do it. It won't hurt anything."

"Yes it will!" she argued with unexpected violence. She leapt up sharply, stuffed her shirt back in her pants, and pulled up the zipper. "And nothing is fine!" She was having a hard time with the b.u.t.ton. She let her hands drop and looked at me in utter desperation. "I can't even get my pants on right!" She was ever so close to tears, but her pants were definitely not the reason.

I sat up. "Come here," I told her. She came over, and I fastened the b.u.t.ton. I pulled her down onto my lap. "So what's the matter?"

"I can't do my job anymore," she explained. I had thought this might have something to do with that. "At least temporarily," she qualified immediately.

I would have to see if this was temporary!

She turned slightly in my lap and looked at me. "You're happy about that, of course," she threw at me angrily.

I could hardly contest that. "Yes, on the one hand," I answered truthfully. "But on the other hand, I'm sad because you're sad."

"I'm not sad!" She almost jumped out of my lap in protest. "I'm not sad at all. But in the foreseeable future, I don't know how I'm going to make a living!"

I had a brainstorm. "You could marry me," I joked.

"Oh, yeah!" Now she was really mad. "And buy you felt slippers!"

"I didn't mean it quite that literally." I tried helplessly to calm her down a little. I still felt like this was a piece in which I had a role to play but didn't know script.

"What?" She reacted even more angrily than before. "You don't really want to marry me at all? Why did you propose, then?"

Now I was completely baffled. "No," I contradicted, absolutely confused. "I would marry you right away if I could and if you wanted. But until the activists and lawyers battle that one out, I'm afraid we'll just have to live in sin."

She calmed down a little. "I see," she said. She must really be turned inside out!

"But I earn enough money for two." If she wanted to discuss this topic, we could certainly list off the alternatives. Why not? I looked around. "Although I couldn't offer such luxury."

"You don't need to." She seemed absent. "I'll sell the apartment." She got up from my lap and paced across the room with long steps, back and forth, back and forth. "Or I could always sell the apartment in Paris," she thought out loud. "I could certainly live off that for awhile."

She owned two apartments and she was worried about her future? "I think I should quit work and marry you instead." I was dazed enough to do it.

She looked at me, deep in thought. "This apartment won't fetch much." She spoke like a bookkeeper. "It's not even all the way paid for."

It pained me already to think that she might have to give up the Parisian apartment, but I asked anyway. "But the apartment in Paris must be worth a fortune."

"Yes, probably," she remarked without paying much attention to me. "I don't know exactly."

"You don't know? But didn't you buy it?" I was more than astonished.

"No," she answered absently, as though she were somewhere else in her thoughts and didn't wish to stop concentrating on it. "I inherited it."

"Inherited?" Was her brilliant French, then, perhaps her mother tongue? "Are you French?"

"No." She looked at me more clearly now and stopped her pacing. "No, unfortunately not. A client left it to me." She set off again, more slowly this time.

"A client?" Perhaps I'd chosen the wrong career after all! "What... how...?" I didn't know how to ask.

She understood right away what I meant. "She died two years ago and left it to me."

Just like that? Any old client? A luxury apartment in Paris? I couldn't imagine that. Then something else occurred to me. "Two year ago," I mused thoughtfully.

She stopped abruptly. "You notice everything, don't you." That didn't sound especially flattering. "Yes, you're right. She was the last woman before you with whom I..." She broke off, as though she'd already said too much. She turned away from me and stood there. She propped one arm up with the other and held her forehead in her hand. Something about that bothered her dreadfully.

Just a client? I knew that couldn't be true. With a client, she never would have let herself fall that far. "You were a couple," I concluded suddenly.

"No!" She raged. Love seemed to be just about the worst thing one could accuse her of. "She was only a client." I could see that she was fighting hard for control.

"She must have been more to you than that," I argued, convinced. "If she left you an apartment."

"She paid me. So she was a client." She was obstinate.

There had to be something to my claim. Otherwise, she wouldn't have felt such a strong need to deny it. "How long were you together?" I asked, undiscouraged.

"We weren't together!" Now she finally exploded. "I always had my own apartment."

With that, she involuntarily confirmed my original a.s.sumption. The more vehemently she denied it, the more I was convinced it was so. "She must have loved you very much."

"Yes, yes!" Her unwilling protest became more and more strongly defensive. "She probably thought it was love."

"And you didn't love her?" In any case, she certainly wouldn't have told her, the way I knew her.

A long silence indicated that she still wasn't sure about it, or didn't want to be. "No," she said finally.

"What happened?" The silence continued for awhile. I could do nothing but wait until she told the story.

"She was older than I was - much older. She went and fell in love with me." That was easy! She turned halfway toward me and folded her arms across her chest.

"She couldn't stand it anymore than you can for me to do my job. But I didn't want to be dependent on her. She begged me, pleaded with me, more than once. To live with her. She had enough money, she said, to last more than one lifetime." She shook her head. "But it wasn't enough for her life. All the money in the world couldn't stop the disease in her body." That was the cause of many of her reactions! She was completely buried in her own mind, as she had been once before.

"I didn't know anything about that. She kept it a secret from me." She turned more toward the wall and stared at a picture. "By the end, she'd convinced me not to see any other women. She gave me money - more than enough to make up for my *lost wages.' Just so I wouldn't sleep with other women. She was my only client for two years. And I thought, if she didn't have a better use for her money, why shouldn't I take it?"

She threw her hands in front of her face. "And then she went away. To a spa, she said. She was supposed to return in two weeks. She didn't tell me where it was." She let her hands fall slowly. "I didn't hear anything from her the whole time. After two weeks, she didn't come back. I waited a few days. I thought she'd left me. I was angry and hurt. I slept with the very first woman who was ready to pay. I resumed the life I'd led before."

Slowly, she crossed the room, stopped in front of the kitchen counter, and sought consolation in the espresso machine. She spoke again. "Then - after six weeks - a letter came from an attorney in France. She had died in a special hospital in Switzerland. She'd left me the apartment in Paris." That must have been a horrible shock for her. She was still shaken by it.

She sighed in resignation. Her voice sounded almost uninterested as she continued. "I said I was her daughter and spoke with the doctor who'd treated her at the end. He said if she'd come sooner, he might have been able to do something for her. With long-term, intensive treatments and stays in a nursing home. But she had always refused that. There was a person whom she couldn't or wouldn't leave alone. She'd hinted at something like that."

Her head sank lower and lower toward her chest as she spoke. Now, she turned toward me and looked up with tearless, empty eyes. "She refused treatment because of me." She made the statement even harsher. "She died because of me."

I wanted to comfort her, but I knew she wouldn't allow that now. In a certain way, she was right, and she had to get rid of her guilt somehow. But on one issue, she was definitely wrong. "And although you believe that - which I do not - you still call her a client?"

"She paid me. She even set up a bank account for me. And it was always well-filled." She just didn't want to accept the truth!

"Yes, of course. Because she didn't want to lose you." I could easily understand that!

That word finally brought her to a boil. "Lose? Didn't want to lose me?" She looked at me with extreme aggression. "Do you all believe you can own me?" She turned away from me again with a jerk. "You pay me, and for that, you think you can treat me like an object. Buy and use. Own and lose." She laughed contemptuously.

I could not and would not allow myself to be drawn into that discussion. I knew that much of this could be attributed to pure anger. I stayed calm. "Who is *you'?" I asked.

She turned around so quickly, she almost tripped. "Well, you," she shouted. "My -" she stopped as quickly as she had begun.

"I'm not a client," I said. I tried to answer calmly. "I don't pay you, and I don't want to own you either. I love you." It was very hard for me to say that so calmly. I felt the fear climbing up my throat. She seemed to have lost all connection to and all feeling for me. Could I get through to her at all? She was still standing there, mute.

I had to say something, or else I would break into tears in desperation. "I'm convinced that she felt the same way." She didn't appear to hear me, or at least didn't comprehend what I was saying. "And I feel exactly as she did. I don't want to lose you." I didn't know how much of that was getting through to her. I hoped she would answer.

She didn't react right away. It seemed to me like an eternity before she spoke again, very quietly. "I don't want to lose you, either."

For the first moment, I felt like I'd been struck by lightning. I hadn't expected that. What was going on inside her? Was this just a temporary glitch, or did she really mean what she said? Did she even realize that this was the first time she had confessed her true feelings to me since we had met?

I went slowly to her and stood before her. I didn't touch her. She stood there, unmoving, staring blankly past me. She obviously no longer saw me or anything else that existed in the present. The images that played before her ghostly eyes had long since been burned into her consciousness. I waited.

"She was so good to me. And I needed her so much." If any voice could be called toneless, it was hers. "And then she left me."