"Really?" The word came out scared.

He put his hand on my cheek. "Really."

We walked out of the park as fast as we'd walked in. I would have given a month of my life to know what he was really thinking. He took my hand again and we kept squeezing back and forth as if to say, I'm here, I'm still with you. No matter how this day ended up, I knew I'd be running the replay in my brain for a long time.

I didn't need new pants. The only reason I'd even said it was because a few minutes before I'd seen an ad for the Gap on the side of a crosstown bus.

"Here we are."

I'd been thinking so hard about what was happening that I didn't realize we had arrived at the door of a Gap store.

"You get your khakis and I'll buy a cap. It'll remind me of today. You'll have your first stick and I'll have a baseball cap."

"Are you angry, Hugh? Tell the truth."

"I'm excited." Without another word, he pushed the door open and gestured for me to go in.

"In what way?"

"I'll tell you later." We walked in. He moved away from me and picked up a green sweatshirt.

Nothing else to do but find the d.a.m.ned pants. When a saleswoman came up and sweetly asked if she could help, I snarled out, "Khakis! I'm looking for khakis, okay?" As she backed off, her face was one big "Uh-oh."

I didn't care. I was in a d.a.m.ned Gap store, shopping, instead of having devil-may-care s.e.x with a fascinating man. Why was I a coward with him? I'd done it before in a blink. That time outside the China Moon Restaurant in San Francisco? Or with the model in Hamburg on the bed with the broken spring? I hopped into bed with other men and things had worked out fine. The memories were happy and guilt-free.

I looked around the store and saw Hugh trying on baseball caps in front of a mirror. A nice-looking man in his forties in a dark suit, pushing boys' hats around on his big head. Why not with him?

Because I could love him.

It began in his office when he said, "It's only because I care." As honest and simple as a piece of white paper with those words printed large and black on it. His candor disturbed me because I loved it. It seemed everything he said was either honest or interesting, usually both. He knew so much, and even if a subject had never mattered to me before once he began speaking I was hooked. Like the words he'd learned in Khalkha when he was in Mongolia researching Genghis Khan, or James Agee versus Graham Greene as a film reviewer, or the plumbing system Thomas Jefferson invented for Monticello...

His face was all animation, all angles and eyes. His chin was square, his teeth were smoker's yellow. There were deep wrinkles down either side of his mouth. When he smiled they almost disappeared. His eyelashes were long and thick. I didn't want to kiss him yet, but wouldn't say no if he tried to kiss me. When he asked me to lunch I said yes. When we walked out of his office and his colleagues stared I didn't care. When we stood on the street and Hugh said he wanted me, I said okay without hesitating.

In the store I walked up behind him and talked to his reflection in the mirror. He was wearing a green baseball cap tipped slightly to the right. "Will you come with me and see how these look?" I held up the pants. I had no idea what size they were. I had picked up the first pair I'd seen on the shelf.

"Sure. Did you know Babe Ruth had a small head for a man his size? Seven and three-eighths." His expression didn't change. I asked a pa.s.sing saleswoman where the changing rooms were. When she pointed them out, I took his hand and pulled him behind me.

Another saleswoman stood outside the dressing rooms, but she didn't seem surprised when we entered together. It was very narrow inside. I whipped the curtain across, dropped the pants on the floor, and turned to him. A foot apart, I could smell him for the first time. We had never been this close. Orange-and-cinnamon cologne, tobacco, a slight sourness that was already delicious.

Reaching up, I slid his cap off and kissed him. His lips were softer than I had imagined. They gave nothing yet because it was up to me now and we both knew that was necessary. I slid my arms up his back but didn't pull him close.

He reached up and stroked the back of my head. We stared.

"Will we be friends too?" I slid a finger down one of the wrinkles alongside his mouth. It was so deep.

"It can only work that way." He took my finger and kissed it.

"I want to lick your spine."

Nothing else happened. We made out for a steaming minute or two, then left the dressing room smiling like lottery winners. Hugh insisted on buying the cap as a souvenir. He wore it the rest of the day as we walked around the city and deeper into each other's lives.

Whatever bad thoughts came to my mind-his nice wife, his children-had almost no gravity. The good thoughts, the hopes, the thrilling possibilities had the weight of mountains. I knew this was the beginning of something bad for all concerned, no matter how cleverly it could be justified. I had never been with a married man although there had been ample opportunities. I believed what goes around comes around. If I did the snug dance with someone's husband, surely the G.o.ds would find an appalling form of payback.

We stood outside a subway entrance. Our day was over. He was going back to his other life where his family waited for him and suspected nothing. We looked at each other with the increased hunger separation always brings.

"Are you going to get your dog?"

"Yup. Then I'll walk her home and think about you."

"I'm thinking about your family."

He shook his head. "That does no good."

"But I'm new to this. Sooner or later it's going to come out."

"Miranda, sooner or later we're going to die. I used to think a lot about sooner or later, but you know what? Sooner suddenly became later and I realized I'd wasted too much time worrying about it, rather than living it."

"A friend of mine asked if I would rather love or be loved. I'd rather love."

He nodded. "Then that's your answer. I have to go."

We kissed; he touched my throat, then moved toward the subway steps. Halfway down them, he turned and his face lit up in the greatest smile. "Where have you been? Where have you been all this time?"

I didn't hear from him for two days. Imagine how loud that silence was. On the third, worried and resentful, I stopped at the mailbox on my way to the store. Inside were the usual bills and advertis.e.m.e.nts, but the last envelope in the bunch was the jackpot. My name and address were written in Hugh's handwriting. My heart started galloping.

There was a postcard inside.

A Walker Evans photograph of a tired room with only a bed and a side table with a water pitcher on top of it. The wallpaper had long since died and been consumed by the water stains everywhere. Over the bed, the slanting ceiling indicated the room probably sat right under a roof. Without the bed, it was a wh.o.r.e's room in Tropic of Cancer, or one from an early Hemingway short story about living poor in Paris.

But like alchemy, the improbable whiteness of the sheets and pillow transformed it into a s.p.a.ce of s.e.x and infinity. A room you would go to with someone you wanted to f.u.c.k again and again. Then the two of you would fall asleep wrapped round each other. There was nothing special about the room except how carefully the bed had been made with ironed, brilliantly white sheets and cases. In those dismal surroundings, the two plumped pillows stood out like crisp clouds. The bedspread was a patchwork quilt. I could smell the staleness of the room, feel its temperature on my skin, and then the touch of whoever would take me there. Nothing was written on the postcard itself, but on a separate sheet of paper, this: This is all I want with you now: a simple room, one light in the middle of the ceiling hanging on a long line, the kind you see in cheap apartments or hotel rooms no one ever remembers staying in. At night the sad weak light never reaches the far corners. It droops over a room full of shadows. It doesn't care.

But for us, light doesn't matter here. The room is clean and bright in the day. Maybe there's a good view out the window. It is the room I want, a bed wide enough for us to lie in comfortably. Faces close enough to feel each other's breath.

Your skin is flushed. With my finger, I trace a line from the ledge of your chin down the neck, your shoulder, arm. It makes you smile and shiver. How can you shiver when it's so warm in here?

I want this room. I want this room with you in it, naked beside me. I don't know where we are. Maybe by the sea. Or in the middle of a city where the noise through the window is as busy as we are.

The afternoon is ours. The evening and the night too. We'll be tired by then but we'll still go out and eat a huge meal. Your body will be wonderfully sore and raw. It will make you smile when we walk to the restaurant. I'll look at you and ask if anything is wrong. You'll say no and squeeze my arm. We'll need this time out in the world to remind ourselves there is something else besides us today, that room, our bodies.

In a noisy restaurant we'll talk quietly. Voices and faces smoothed by all those hours in bed. Anyone watching us will know we have been f.u.c.king. It is so obvious.

Later again in the room when nothing is needed, I want to sleep a few hours, and then wake with you pressed against my side. Maybe I'll reach for you. Maybe I will only touch your wrist and feel your sleeping, secret pulse. The rest can wait. There's time now.

Keep this picture with you. Put it on a table, a desk, wherever you are. If someone asks why you have it, say it's a place where you'd be happy. Look at it and know I am waiting. Look at it again.

I walked out of my building on legs made of wet spaghetti. Out on the street, the world was the same as yesterday but it took two or three blocks to regain my bearings and recognize I was still on planet earth. When I came to, I realized I had been walking with the letter clutched tightly in both hands behind my back. To hold the joy as long as I could, I stopped where I was, closed my eyes and said aloud, "I must remember this. I must remember it as long as I live."

Opening my eyes again, the first thing I saw was James Stillman.

My heart recognized him before any other part did. And it was calm. It said, "There he is. James is across the street." He looked the way he had when I'd known him fifteen years before. He was unmistakable, even in the rush of people surrounding him.

He wore a suit and tie. I stood frozen in place. We stared at each other until he lifted an arm and waved to me, slowly, from side to side. The kind of exaggerated wave you give someone who is driving off in a car and you want to be sure they see you until the very last second.

Without thinking, I started out into traffic and was met by screeching brakes and angry horns. When I was halfway across, he began to walk away. By the time I reached the other side he was already far ahead. I began running, but somehow he stayed way in front of me. He went around a corner. When I got there and made the turn, he was twice as far as before. There was no way I could catch up. When I stopped he did too. He turned and did something that was pure James Stillman: He put his open hand against his forehead, then moved it down to his mouth and blew me a big kiss. Whenever we parted he would do that. He'd seen it in an old Arabian Nights film and thought it the coolest gesture-hand to the forehead, to the lips, big kiss. My Arabian Knight, back from the dead.

"I saw a ghost and I'm in love with a married man."

"Welcome to the club."

"Zoe, I'm serious."

"Married men are always more delicious than single, Miranda. That's where the challenge is. And I've believed in ghosts all my life. But tell me about Mr. Married first because I'm the expert on that subject."

We were having lunch. She had come into town for the day. Married boyfriend Hector had ended their relationship and she was at the end of her period of mourning. For weeks I'd suggested a day in the city doing girl things together to take her mind off him and finally she said yes. Now I was doubly glad to meet so I could get her input on my new twilight zones.

"The ghost was James Stillman."

"Great! Where?"

"On the street near my apartment. He waved to me in that old way, remember?" I did the gesture and she smiled.

"A very romantic fellow, no doubt about it."

"But Zoe, I saw him. He looked exactly like he did in high school."

She folded her napkin a few times and put it on the table. "Remember when we used to do the Ouija board and contacted all those old spirits, or whatever they were? My mother believed when some people die, their souls get tossed into a limbo between life and death. That's why you can talk to them on a Ouija board or in a seance-they're half here and half there."

"Do you believe that?"

"Why else would you want to hang around life if it's over for you?"

"He was so real. Solid. No ectoplasm or Caspar the Friendly Ghost, hovering a foot above the ground in a white sheet. It was James. Completely real."

"Maybe it was. You'd have to ask an expert. Why would he come back now? Why not before?"

We didn't talk about it much beyond that. Neither of us knew what it meant, so further discussion was pointless.

"Tell me about your new man. The alive one."

I told her in great detail, and along the way we kept having more drinks to help us a.n.a.lyze my new situation.

"You know what just hit me? What if James came back as a sign to tell me not to do this?"

Zoe threw up her hands in exasperation. "Oh, for G.o.d's sake! If you're going to feel guilty, don't blame ghosts. I'm sure they've got better things to do than keep tabs on your s.e.xual behaviour."

"But I haven't slept with him yet!"

"Miranda?"

Hearing my name spoken in a familiar voice, I turned and saw Doug Auerbach. He was staring at Zoe.

"Dog! What are you doing here? Why didn't you call?"

"I didn't know I was coming till yesterday. I was going to call later. I'm supposed to have lunch here with a client."

I introduced him to Zoe and he sat down. Soon it was clear he was interested only in my oldest friend. At first she smiled and laughed politely at his jokes. When his interest hit her, she transformed into a s.e.xy fox. I had never seen her like that. It was fascinating how deftly she handled both Doug and her new role.

Naturally I was disconcerted. Part of me was jealous, possessive. How dare they! The rest remembered Doug's small place in my life, and Zoe's goodness. At the appropriate moment, I "suddenly remembered" I had another appointment-and would they mind if I left?

Out on the street again looking for a cab, I felt like Charlotte Oakley, the unwanted third. I shuddered and started walking as fast as I could.

One afternoon when his family was away for the weekend, Hugh invited me to their apartment. Easy the bullterrier followed me from room to room. I had on tennis shoes, so the only noise was the tick-tick of Easy's long toenails on the wooden floors.

This is where he lives. Where she lives. Each object had its own importance and memories. I kept looking at things and asking myself why the Oakleys had them or what they meant. It was a strange archaeology of the living. The man who could decipher it all for me sat in another room, reading the newspaper, but I wasn't about to ask any questions. Pictures of his children, Charlotte, the family together. On a yellow sailboat, skiing, sitting beneath a large Christmas tree. This was his home, his family, his life. Why was I here? Why put faces to his stories, or see gifts brought back from trips for these people he loved? On the piano was a crystal box full of cigarettes. I picked it up and read the name Waterford on the underside. A large red-and-white stone ball stood beside it. Crystal and stone. I stroked the cold ball and kept moving.

When I'd asked to see his home, Hugh had not hesitated a moment. They owned a house in East Hampton. The family usually went there on weekends in summer. The first time they went without Hugh, he called and told me the coast was clear. And it was a coast of sorts; they lived on the east, I lived on the west. If I had been his wife, I would have been enraged to know another woman was in my home, looking at my life, touching it.

So why was I here? If I was going to be with Hugh, why didn't I work to keep his two worlds separate and be satisfied with what I had? Because I was greedy. I wanted to know as much about him as I could. That included how he lived when I wasn't around. By seeing his apartment, I figured, I would be less afraid of what went on there.

I was right: walking through the rooms, I felt calmer seeing that only people lived here, no master race or G.o.ds, all impossibly better, stronger, and more heroic than I could ever hope to be.

As a girl, I read every fairy tale and folktale I could find. A story that began, "In an ancient time, when animals spoke the speech of men and even the trees talked together..." was my chocolate pudding. More than anything, I wished my own small world contained such magic. But growing up means learning the world has little magic, animals talk only to each other, and our years go over the tops of the mountains without many marvels ever happening.

What carried over from my childhood was the secret hope that wonders lived somewhere nearby. Dragons and pixies, Difs, Cu Chulainn, Iron Henry, and Mamadreqja, grandmother of witches... I wanted them to be and was still mesmerized by TV shows about angels, yetis, and miracles. I s.n.a.t.c.hed up any copy of the National Enquirer that headlined sheep born with Elvis's face, or sightings of the Virgin at a souvlaki stand in Oregon. On the surface I was a briefcase and a business suit, but my heart was always looking for wings.

They were in his study waiting for me, but I wouldn't know that until many years later. The room was large and bare except for a pine table Hugh used as a desk. It was piled with papers, books, and a computer. On the wall facing the desk were four small paintings of the same woman.

"What do you think?"

I was so involved in looking at them that I hadn't heard him come in. "I don't know. I don't know if they're fascinating or they scare me."

"Scare you? Why?" There was no amus.e.m.e.nt in his voice.

"Who is she?"

He put his hands on my shoulders. "I don't know. Around the time we met, a man came into the office and asked if I wanted to buy them. He didn't know anything about them. He'd just bought a house in Mississippi and they were in the attic with a bunch of other stuff. I didn't even haggle about the price."

"Why do I feel like I know her?"

"Me too! There's something very familiar about her. None of them are signed or dated. I have no idea who the artist was. I spent a good deal of time researching. It makes them even more mysterious."

She was young-in her twenties-and wore her hair down, but not in any special fashion that gave you an idea of the time period. She was attractive but not so much so that it would stop you for a second look.

In one picture she sat on a couch staring straight ahead. In another she was sitting in a garden looking slightly off to the right. The painter was excellent and had genuinely caught her spirit. So often I looked at paintings, even famous ones, and felt a kind of lifelessness in the work, as if beyond a certain invisible point the subject died and became a painting. Not so here.

"Hugh, do you realize that since we met, I got beat up, saw a ghost, made out in a Gap store, and now am looking at pictures of someone I've never seen but know I know."

"It's the story of Zitterbart. Do you know it?"