"I consider, Gina, that a woman has a right in her own bedroom... it's for a woman herself_ to decide who comes in. I made it explicit what the household rules were. I would have vouched for you, and you must vouch for your friend."

Gina was shaken. Both women trembled. After all, thought Clara, a human being can be sketched in three or four lines, but then when the sockets are empty, no amount of ingenuity can refill them. Not her brown, not my blue.

"I understand you," said Gina with an air of being humiliated by a woman whose kindness she counted on. "Are you sure the ring isn't misplaced again?"

"Are you_ sure...?" Clara answered. "And try to think of my side of it. That was an engagement ring from a man who loved me. It's not just an object worth x_ dollars. It's also a life support, my dear." She was about to say that it was involved with her very grip on existence, but she didn't want any kind of cry to come out or to betray a fear of total slippage. She said instead, "The ring was here yesterday. And a person I don't know wandering around the house and-why not?-coming into my room..."

"Why don't you say it?" said Gina.

"I'd have to be a fool not to. To be too nice for such things, I'd have to be a moron. Frederic was here all afternoon. Has he got a job somewhere?"

The girl had no answer to this.

"You can't say. But you don't believe he's a thief. You don't think he'd put you in this position. And don't try to tell me he's being accused because of his color."

"I didn't try. People are_ nasty about the Haitians."

"You'd better go and talk to him. If he's got the ring, tell him he has to return it. I want you to produce it tomorrow. Marta Elvia can sit with the girls if you have to go out tonight. Where does he live?"

"One hundred twenty-eighth Street."

"And a telephone? You can't go up there alone after dark. Not even by day. Not alone. And where does he hang out? I can ask Antonia's husband to take you by cab.... Now Wilder's coming down the corridor, and I've got to go."

"I'll wait here for the concierge."

"For Marta Elvia. I'll talk to her on the way out. You_ wouldn't steal, Gina. And Mrs. Peralta has been here eight years without a coffee spoon missing."

Later Clara took it out on herself: What did I do to that girl, like ordering her to go to Harlem, where she could be raped or killed, because of my G.o.dd.a.m.n ring, the rottenest part of town in the rotten middle of the night, frantic mad and (what it comes down to) over Ithiel, who balked at marrying me twenty years ago! A real person understands how to cut losses, not let her whole life be wound around to the end by a single desire, because under it all is the uglitude of this one hang-up. Four husbands and three kids haven't cured me of Ithiel. And finally this love-toy emerald, personal sentimentality, makes me turn like a maniac on this Austrian kid. She may think I grudge her the excitement of her romance with that disgusting girl-f.u.c.ker who used her as his cover to get into the house and now sticks her with this theft.

Nevertheless Clara had fixed convictions about domestic and maternal responsibilities. She had already gone too far in letting Gina bring Frederic into the apartment and infect the whole place, spraying it with s.e.xual excitement. And, as it now turned out, even become involved in crime. A fling in the U. S. A. was all very well for a young lady from bourgeois Vienna-like the poor Russian hippie, that diplomat's son who fell in love with Mick Jagger. "Tell Mick Jagger good-bye," he said, boarding the plane. This city had become the center, the symbol of worldwide adolescent revolt.

In the middle of the corporate evening Clara was attacked by one of her fierce migraines, and a head as conspicuous as hers, dominating a dinner table, affected everybody when it began to ache, so that the whole party stood up when she rose and hurried out. The Veldes went straight home. Swallowing a handful of white pills from the medicine chest, Clara went immediately to Gina's room. To her relief, the girl was there, in bed. The reading lamp was on, but she wasn't reading, only sitting up, her hands thoughtfully folded.

"I'm glad you didn't go to Harlem!" I reached Frederic on the phone. He was with some of our UN friends."

"And you'll see him tomorrow...?"

"I didn't mention the ring. But I am prepared to move out. You told me I had to bring it back or leave."

"Going where...!" Clara was taken by surprise. Next she was aware of the girl's brown gaze, the exceptional fixity of it. Unshed tears were killing her. "But if Frederic gives back the ring, you'll stay." While she was speaking, Clara with some shame recognized how dumb she sounded. It was the hereditary peasant in her saying this. The guy would deny the theft, and if eventually he admitted it, he still would not return the ring. This very moment he might be taking a thousand bucks for it. These people came up from the tropical slums to outsmart New York, and with all the rules crumbling here as elsewhere, so that n.o.body could any longer be clear in his mind about anything, they could do it.

Left standing were only property rights. With murder in second place. A stolen ring. A corpse to account for. Such were the only universals recognized, and very few others could be acknowledged. So where did love fit in? Love was down in the catacombs, those catacombs being the personal neuroses of women like herself.

She said to Gina, as one crypto lover to another, "What will you do?"

Gina said, but without resentment, not a hint of accusation in her voice, "That I can't say. I've only had a couple of hours to think. There are places."

She'd move in with her Haitian, Clara guessed, plausibly enough. But this was not sayable. Clara was learning to refrain. You didn't say_ everything. "Discover silence," she instructed herself.

Next day she rushed home from work in a cab and found Marta Elvia babysitting. Clara had already been in touch with an agency, and there was a new girl coming tomorrow. Best she could do on short notice. Lucy was upset, predictably, and Clara had to take her aside for special explanations. She said, "Gina suddenly had to go. It was an emergency. She didn't want_ to. When she can, she'll come back. It's not your_ fault." There was no guessing just how rattled Lucy was. She was silent, stoical.

Clara had rehea.r.s.ed this on the telephone with the psychiatrist, Dr. Gladstone.

"With working parents," she said to Lucy, "such problems do come up."

"But Daddy isn't working now."

You're telling me!_ thought Clara. He was doping out the upcoming primaries in New Hampshire.

As soon as possible, she went to see Dr. Gladstone. He was about to take one of his holidays and would be away three weeks. They had discussed this absence in the last session. In the waiting room, she studied the notes she had prepared: Where is Gina? How can I find out, keep track? Protect?

She acknowledged to Dr. Gladstone that she was in a near-hysterical state over the second disappearance, the theft. She was discovering that she had come to base her stability entirely on the ring. Such dependency was fearful. He asked how she saw this, and how Ithiel figured in it. She said, "The men I meet don't seem to be real persons. n.o.body really is anybody. There may be more somebodies than I've been able to see. I don't want to write off about one half of our species. And concentrated desire for so many years may have affected my judgment. Anyway, for me, what a man is seems to be defined by Ithiel. Also, I am his_ truest friend, and he understands that and responds emotionally."

Involuntarily Clara fell into Dr. Gladstone's way of talking. To herself, she would never say "responds emotionally." As the sessions were short, she adopted his lingo to save time, notwithstanding the danger of false statements. Hope brought her here, every effort must be made, but when she looked, looked with all her might at Dr. Gladstone, she could not justify the trust she was asked to place in that samurai beard, the bared teeth it framed, the big fashionable specs, his often baseless confidence in his science. However, it would take the better part of a year to acquaint a new doctor with the fundamentals of her case. She was stuck with this one.

"And I'm very worried about Gina. How do I find out what's happening to her? Should I hire a private investigator? A girl like that survive in Spanish Harlem? No way."

"An expensive proposition," said Dr. Gladstone. "Any alternatives in mind?"

"Wilder does nothing. He_ could get on the case. Like shadow her, make practical use of the thrillers he's read. But he's negotiating with some hopeless wimp who wants to go for the White House."

"Let's get back to the theft, if it is_ a theft."

"It has_ to be. I didn't misplace it again."

"However, it gave you daily anxiety. Why did it occupy so big a place in you?"

"What did I come up with last time we discussed it? I cheated the insurance company and had the ring and_ the money. You could call that white-collar crime. It all added to the importance of my emerald, but I would never have guessed that it would be so shattering to lose it."

"I can suggest a coincidence," said the doctor. "At this bad moment for you I am going on a holiday. My support is removed. And my name is Gladstone._ Is that why you take the loss so hard?"

Astonished, she gave him a real stare, not a fitting or becoming one. She said, You may be a stone, but you're not a gem."

When she returned to her office she telephoned Ithiel, her only dependable adviser, to discuss matters.

'I wish you were coming up to New York," she said. "I used to call on Steinsalz when things were urgent."

"He was a great loss to me too."

"He took such interest in people. Short of lending them money. He'd treat you to dinner but never lend a cent. He did listen, though."

"It so happens," said Ithiel (when he was being methodical, a sort of broken flatness entered his voice), "that I have a lunch date next Tuesday with a man in New York."

"Let's say half past three, then?"

Their customary meeting place was St. Patrick's cathedral, near Clara's office, a central location and a shelter in bad weather. "Like a drop for secret agents," Ithiel said. They left the cathedral and went directly to the Helmsley Palace. A quiet corner of the bar was still available at that early hour. "This is on my Gold Card," said Clara. "Now let's see how you look-somewhere between a Spanish grandee and a Mennonite."

Then with executive rapidity she set forth the main facts.

"What's your opinion of Frederic-an occasional stealer or a pro?"

"I think he improvises," said Clara. "Dope? Probably."

"You could find out about his police record, if any. Then ask the Austrian consulate about her. Not telephone her folks in Vienna."

"I knew it would be a relief to talk to you. Now tell me... about the ring."

"A loss, I'd guess. Write it off."

"I suppose I'll have to. I indulged myself about it, and look at the trouble it made. There's nothing appropriate. For instance, this luxury bar that fits neither you nor me. In my true feelings you and I are as naked as Adam and Eve. I'm not being suggestive, either. It's not an erotic suggestion, just a simile."

Talk like this, the hint of wildness in it, had the effect of forcing him into earnestness. She could see him applying his good mind to her difficulties, like a person outside pressing his forehead on the windowpane to see what's going on.

As she figured it, he counted on the executive Clara to gain on the subjective Clara. She did_ have the ability to put her house in order. Yet his sympathy for the subjective, personal Clara was very strong. Considering the greater tumult in her, she had done better than he. Even now her life was more coherent than his.

"For a few hundred bucks, I think you can find out where the girl is. Investigators are easy to hire."

"Tell me! I can see why General Haig and such people call on you to a.n.a.lyze the Iranians or the Russians. By the way, Wilder thought you were great on TV with Dobrynin, week before last."

When Ithiel smiled, his teeth were so good you suspected Hollywood dentistry, but they were all his own.

"Dobrynin has some genius, of a low kind. He convinces Americans that Russians are exactly like them. Sometimes he behaves as if he were the senior senator from a fifty-first, ail-Russian state. Just a slight accent, but the guys from the Deep South have one also. He sold Gorbachev on this completely, and Gorbachev is selling the whole U. S. A. Which craves to be sold. Deceived, if you prefer."

"Like me, in a way, about the Human Pair."

"You're close to that girl, I see."

"Very close. It would be easy for you to put her down as a well-brought-up kid with a taste for low s.e.x. Resembling me. You'd be wrong. Too bad you can't see her yourself. Your opinion would interest me."

"So she isn't like you?"

"I sure hope not." Clara made a gesture, as if saying, Wipe out these Helmsley Palace surroundings and listen to me. "Don't forget my two suicide attempts. I have a spoonful of something wild in my mixture, my whole sense of..."

"Of life..."

"Listen to me. You have no idea really how wild and how mixed, or how much territory it takes in. The territory stretches over into death. When I'm drunk with agitation-and it is like being drunk-there's one pulse in me that's a death-beat pulse, and it tempts me to make out with death. It says, Why wait! When I get as intense as that, existence won't hold me. That's the internal horror side of the thing. I'm open to seduction by death. Now you're going to remind me that I'm the mother of three kids."

"Exactly what I was about to do."

"There's no one in the world but you that I'd say this to. You're the one human being I fully confide in. Neither do you have secrets from me. Whatever you didn't admit I saw for myself."

"You certainly did, Clara."

"But we'll never be man and wife. Oh, you don't have to say anything. You love me, but the rest is counterindicated. It's one of those d.a.m.n paradoxes that have to be waited out. There may even be a parallel to it in your field, in politics. We have the power to destroy ourselves, and maybe the desire, and we keep ourselves in permanent suspense-waiting. Isn't that wild, too? You could tell me._ You're the expert. You're going to write the book of books about it."

"Now you're making fun of me."

"Not really, Ithiel. If it is the book of books on the subject, it should be written. You may be the man to write it, and I'm not making fun. For me_ it would be funny. Think of a great odalisque, nude and beautiful. And now think of her in eyegla.s.ses and writing books on a lap board."

Over the table they smiled briefly at each other.

'But I want to get back to Gina," said Clara. "You're going to find me a dependable investigator to check out Frederic, and the rest of it. I doubt that she is like me, except in taking chances. But when I told her that the ring was given by a man who loved me, the fact registered completely. What I didn't add was that I bullied you into giving it to me. Don't deny it. I twisted your arm. Then I sentimentalized it. Then I figured out that you continued to love me because_ we didn't marry. And now the ring... The girl understands about the ring. The love part of it."

Teddy was stirred, and looked aside. He wasn't ready, and perhaps never would be ready, to go further. No, they never would be man and wife. When they stood up to go, they kissed like friends.

"You'll get me an investigator with a little cla.s.s... the minimum sleaze?"

"I'll tell the man to go to your office, so you can look him over."

"A few things have to be done for you too," said Clara. "That Francine left you in bad shape. You have that somber look that you get when you're up against it."

"Is that what you mean by the Mennonite?"

"There were plenty of Mennonites in Indiana-I can tell that you didn't have any business in New York today except me."

Within ten days she had Gina's address-a fourth-floor walk-up on East 128th Street, care of F. Vigneron. She had a phone number as well. Call? No, she wouldn't speak to her yet. She brought her executive judgment to bear on this, and the advice from this source was to send a note. In her note, she wrote that the children asked for Gina often. Lucy missed her. Even so, she had done Lucy good. You could see the improvements. There was a lot of woman in that small girl, already visible. Then, speaking for herself, she said that she was sorry to have come down so hard on a matter that needn't be spelled out now. She had left Gina few options. She had had no choice but to go. The mystery was why she had gone "uptown" when other choices were possible. However, Gina owed her no explanations. And Clara hoped that she would not feel that she had to turn away from her forever or decide that she, Clara, was an enemy. Anything but a hostile judge, Clara respected her sense of honor.

Asked for a reference on her unlisted mental line, Clara, when reached, would have said about Gina: soft face, soft bust, brown bourgeois-maiden gaze, but firm at decision time. Absolutely ten on a scale often.

But in the note she sent to Gina she went on, ladylike, matronly and fair-minded, to wish her well, and concluded, "You should have had some notice, and I believe it only fair that the month should have been rounded out, so since I am not absolutely certain of the correct address, I will leave an envelope with Marta Elvia. Two hundred dollars in cash."

Frederic Vigneron would send her for the money, if he got wind of it.

Gottschalk, the private eye, did his job responsibly; that was about the best that could be said of him. Perhaps half an eye. And not much more ear. Still, he did obtain the facts she asked for. He said of the building in East Harlem, "Of course the city can't run around and condemn every joint it should, or there'd be lots more street people sleeping in the West Side Terminal. But I wouldn't want any nieces of mine living there."

Having done what you could, you went ahead with your life: showered and powdered with talc.u.m in the morning, put on underthings and stockings, chose a skirt and blouse for the day, made up your face for the office, took in the paper, and, if Wilder was sleeping in (he did often), ground your coffee and as the water dripped turned the pages of the Times_ professionally. For a group of magazines owned by a publishing corporation, she was the lady overseeing women's matters. Almost too influential to have a personal life, as she sometimes observed to Ms. Wong. High enough in the power structure, you can be excused from having one, "an option lots of people are glad to exercise."

n.o.body called for the money envelope. Marta Elvia's instructions were to give it to Gina only. After a period of keen interest, Clara stopped asking about it. Gottschalk, doing little, sent an occasional memo: "Status quo unchanged." To go with his Latin, Clara figured that Gina had found a modus vivendi with her young Haitian. The weeks, week after week, subdued Clara. You can say that you're waiting only if there is something definite to wait for. During this time it often seemed there wasn't anything. And, "I never feel so bad as when the life I lead stops being characteristic-when it could be anybody else's life," she told Laura Wong.

But coming home one afternoon after a session with Dr. Gladstone (things were so bad that she was seeing him regularly again), she entered her bedroom for an hour's rest before the kids returned from ballet cla.s.s. She had dropped her shoes and was crawling toward the pillows, her mouth open in the blindness of fatigue, surrendering to the worst of feelings, when she saw that her ring had been placed on the night table. It had been set on a handkerchief, a new object from a good shop. She slipped on her ring and lunged for the phone across the bed, rapidly punching out Marta Elvia's number.

"Marta Elvia," she said, "has anybody been here today? Did anybody come to leave an article for me?" Fifteen years in the U. S. and the woman still spoke incomplete English. "Listen," said Clara. "Did Gina come here today? Did you or anybody let Gina into the apartment?... No? Somebody did come in, and Gina gave up her house keys when she left.... Sure she could have made a duplicate-she or her boyfriend.... Of course I should have changed the lock.... No, nothing was taken. On the contrary, the person gave back something. I'm glad I didn't change the lock."

Now Marta Elvia was upset that an outside somebody had got in. Security in this building was one hundred percent. She was sending her husband up to make sure the door hadn't been jimmied open.

"No, no!" said Clara. "There hasn't been illegal entry. What a wild idea!"

Her own ideas at this moment were not less wild. She rang Gina's number in East Harlem. What she got was an answering machine, from which came Frederic's voice, whose Frenchy slickness was offensive. (Clara disliked those telephone devices anyway, and her prejudice extended to the sound of the signal-in this instance a pig squeal.) "This is Mrs. Wilder Velde calling Miss Wegman." Inasmuch as Gina might have prevailed by reasonable means over him, Clara was ready to revise her opinion of Frederic too. (On her scale often, she could upgrade him from less than zero to one.) Next Clara phoned Gottschalk and entered on his tape her request that he call back. She then tried Laura Wong, and finally Wilder in New Hampshire. It was primary time up there; his candidate lagged far behind the field, and you couldn't expect Wilder to be in his hotel room. Ithiel was in Central America. There was no one to share the recovery of the ring with. The strongest lights in the house were in the bathroom, and she turned them on, pressing against the sink to examine the stone and the setting, making sure that the small diamonds were all there. Since Mrs. Peralta had been in that day, she tried her number-she had a crying need to talk with somebody-and this time actually succeeded. "Did anybody come into the house today?"

"Only deliveries, by the service elevator."

During this unsatisfactory conversation Clara had a view of herself in the hall mirror-a bony woman, not young, blond but not fair, gaunt, a long face, a hollow cheek, not rejoicing, and pressing the ringed hand under the arm that held the phone. The big eyes ached, and looked it. Feeling so high, why did she appear so low? But did she think that recovering the ring would make her young?

What she believed-and it was more than a belief; there was triumph in it-was that Gina Wegman had come into the bedroom and placed the ring on the nightstand.

And how had Gina obtained the ring, what had she had to promise, or sacrifice, or pay? Maybe her parents had wired money from Vienna. Suppose that her only purpose during four months had been nothing but rest.i.tution, and that the girl had done her time in East Harlem for no other reason? It struck Clara that if Gina had stolen the emerald back from Frederic and run away, then leaving a message on his machine had been a bad mistake. He might put it all together and come after Gina with a gun. There was even a private eye in this quickly fermenting plot. Except that Gottschalk was no Philip Marlowe in a Raymond Chandler story. Nevertheless he was a detective of some kind. He must be licensed to carry a gun. And everybody's mind ran in these psychopathic-melodrama channels streaming with blood, or children's fingerpaints, or blood that nave people took for fingerpaint. The fancy (or hope) that Gottschalk would kill Frederic in a shoot-out was so preposterous that it helped Clara to calm herself.

When she received Gottschalk in her office next day, she was wearing the ring and showed it to him. He said, "That's a high-value object. I hope you don't take public transportation to work." She looked disdainful. There was a livery service. He didn't seem to realize how high her executive bracket was. But he said, "There are people in top positions who insist on using the subway. I could name you a Wall Street woman who goes to work disguised as a bag lady so it isn't worthwhile to ha.s.sle her."