"Sound and fury?"

"You bet," I said.

A strange, tense time, I told him.

Late at night, invisible Phantoms and B-52s pounded the mountains to the west. One evening, jolted from sleep, I found Thuy Ninh crying in the dark. The girl pushed up against me, clamped her hands to her ears. "Bad," she whimpered. "Shitty bad war." There was nothing I could say. I held her until she fell asleep, then went to the window. Down below, on the veranda, my six comrades sat huddled around a large map, their faces lighted by a pair of candles. Their voices were indistinct, but after a moment I heard the squawk of a military radio-a buzzing sound, a pilot's voice-and then it hit me that my six pals were busy orchestrating this whole nighttime extravaganza. Wildfire relayed grid coordinates over the radio; the others scanned the mountains through field glasses.

There was no mystery now about their mission: search and scald.

And they enjoyed it.

Three or four of them had painted up their faces and torsos-bright colors, weird designs, like savages around a campfire. As I backed away from the window, Death Chant looked up and raised a hand to me.

"Love bombs!" he cried. "Try a little tenderness!"

These men, I realized, were beyond gone. They were lost the way lunatics are lost.

For another hour I lay listening to mayhem-the thunderous bombing, the howls outside my window-and then I dozed off. When I awakened, Thuy Ninh was gone.

Immediately, I got dressed, went downstairs, and slipped out a side door.

The whole countryside was burning-everything-rocks and trees and earth. To the northwest, a mile-long silhouette of stone flared up in brilliant reds and violets. The sky was on fire, and the moon, too, and the nighttime clouds. A powdery white ash fluttered down like snow.

I moved along the side of the villa, edged up close to the veranda, stopped there and stood watching as Spider and Wildfire coordinated another air strike over their radio. In the dark, at the far end of the veranda, the others seemed to be performing a dance of some sort. I could not make out much, just wriggling shapes here and there, the phosphorescent paint on their bodies.

At one point an invisible jet passed low overhead-a shrill whining sound; a metallic hiss; a sequence of tremors rolling upward from the center of the earth; a brilliant orange flash to the east and then the faint, fleshy stench of napalm.

How long I stood there I am not sure. At least a full minute.

The night had gone to bedlam.

"Love bombs!" someone squealed, and someone else screamed, "Love, love, love!"

There was a rushing noise, another jet, another orange flash, and in the flowery glow I spotted Thuy Ninh at the end of the veranda.

I took a single step forward. I took no more.

It was not the act of sex-not yet, not quite. Thuy Ninh stood swaying in the night, rapt and lovely, unclothed, painted up in blues and greens, presenting herself like a peacock to my dancing comrades. Instantly, I understood the source of her expertise in the art of love. She was slick with treason.

I am not an incapable man. (My IQ has tested out at well over 175.) But I am also human. I have psychological limits: That balcony sensation. That clock-stopped silence in my soul.

At first light I packed my rucksack.

I went out to the veranda, unfolded the map, switched on the radio, quietly called in my coordinates. I requested the whole tasty menu. Yes, I did-high explosives, napalm-and then I walked across the lawn and out into the rain forest.

And I felt not the slightest guilt.

Anything for love.

I did not wait to measure the results. There was no need. I could see it in my head. The object, of course, was not to kill, merely to terrify, and to this end I took satisfaction in the vision of my six betraying comrades cringing under a rain of Chippering wrath.*

So, yes, I simply walked away. East through the mountains. Across two muddy rivers.

By nightfall I was back at the firebase, at my desk in the adjutant's office, where I popped open a Coca-Cola, smiled to myself, flexed my new moral muscle, rolled the appropriate form into my typewriter, and awarded myself the Silver Star for valor.

"I'm a war hero," I told Delbert.

I am Fury.

Do not fuck with me.

* Where in my affections, one might reasonably ask, was my beloved Lorna Sue during all this? The short answer: She was in Minneapolis. It is true, I suppose, that in this one instance I was unfaithful to her. Yet no marital vows had been uttered, no promises made. It was wartime, et cetera. Moreover, consider this: What if the girl of your dreams-your one and only, the woman you were meant for-happens to be on permanent holiday in La-La Land?

* Even at the time, I realized full well that there would be a penalty to pay. They would be displeased. They would come looking for me. Still, for once in my life, I felt the sweet glow of vindication.

I was in sad shape when Delbert escorted me to my room that afternoon.

Agitated and weepy, confused as to my emotional whereabouts, I allowed the old janitor to tuck me in and draw the shades and leave me to a well-earned rest.

I slept for eighteen hours. Alone, as usual. Where, in time of distress, were Peg and Patty? Where was Toni? Where was my beloved Mrs. Robert Kooshof? Even in deep slumber I missed her. Once, in the middle of the night, I jerked awake and dialed her number in Owago, with no results, and then for a long while afterward I lay paralyzed by the suspicion that my tempestuous companion was no longer fully committed to our relationship. (Commitment-surely among the most suspect words in our language. After an act of betrayal, can one truthfully say, in the past tense, "Well, I was committed," and if so, what fuzzy function does the word serve in our intricate, ongoing web of promises and expectations? If commitment comes undone, was such commitment ever commitment? By what slippery standard? What small print? What fickle sliding scale? The betrayal of love, in other words, seems also to entail a fundamental betrayal of language and logic and human reason, a subversion of meaning, a practical joke directed against the very meaning of meaning.*

My mood, in any case, was far from peppy. The next morning, even after the refreshment of sleep, it was all I could do to lumber through the motions of shaving and showering and getting on with the chores at hand. My heart was not fully engaged. It was a labor, as they say, without love, but at this point there was no going back.

I spent a final day in Tampa, wrapping things up, spreading a last coat of icing on my poisonous cake. By telephone, I sent flowers to various parties, under various names, with various messages. In late morning, after a cocktail or two, I visited a travel agent near the hotel, spent a studious half hour browsing through several colorful brochures, then booked Lorna Sue and Herbie on a seven-night honeymooners' cruise through the Gulf of Mexico. (At no additional charge, the travel agent very graciously agreed to hand-deliver the tickets to a certain real-estate office in downtown Tampa.) Outside, buoyed by accomplishment, I strolled across the street to do some honeymoon shopping. The perky young salesgirls in Victoria's Secret were more than helpful as I picked out a new wardrobe for Lorna Sue-peekaboo bras, panties, negligees, camisoles, garters, chaps, teddies, pigskin leggings-all of which the gals enthusiastically packed up for me and dispatched by courier to the tycoon's downtown real-estate office, along with an accompanying note signed "Herbie." (The salesgirls, in ascending order of mystery, were Katrina, Caroline, Deb, and Tulsa. "Why Tulsa?" I inquired, which caused the lanky lass to lick her lips and whisper, "Oil rigs, darling." I asked no more.) My fortunes, in any case, appeared to be picking up. A sense of progress; modest new control over my life.

I had a late lunch with the gals, collected four emergency phone numbers, then returned to the hotel and again tried calling Mrs. Robert Kooshof. (There is little on this earth more dispiriting than the repetitive, one-note drone of an unanswered telephone.) Over the next hour, I called twelve more times, still without response, then I packed my bags and prepared to check out. I was only moments from departure, in fact, when there came a sharp rapping at my door.

Instantly, in my bones, I knew it had to be Mrs. Robert Kooshof, an estimate that was at least partially confirmed when I opened the door. What I could not have predicted was that a smirking Herbie would amble in behind her.

Uninvited, this unlikely duo strode into the room and took seats upon my bed.

In Mrs. Kooshof's lap, I could not help but notice, was my old leather-bound love ledger.

"What a scuz," she said.

In my experience, it is a commonplace but still remarkable truth that the raw materials of one's life-objects, people, places, words-have a way of converging in time and space, coalescing like the elements of a dream, drawn together by a powerful but altogether mysterious force of nature.

Here again, I realized, was fate's cunning hand at work.

How did I respond?

Alarm, of course.

Who, after all, would not be discomposed by the sight of one's archenemy sitting so casually at the side of a beloved consort? Dressed in crisp chinos and a blue polo shirt, the complacent prick radiated a prosperous, upscale masculinity. Physically, as always, he was in superb condition: narrow waist, impressive chest and biceps. His dark hair was slicked straight back in what I believe is called the "Vet look"; his smile was glossy white, his aftershave pungent. This was no longer the snot-nosed delinquent of childhood. A total makeover-a latter-day smoothie.

Herbie's presence, I confess, was sufficiently unnerving in its own right. Yet even more so was the leather-bound ledger in Mrs. Kooshof's lap: an embarrassing and easily misunderstood document. So embarrassing, in fact, that I may have thus far failed to underscore its altogether critical role in the collapse of my marriage. (Self-criticism is not my strong suit; I have avoided the confessional for two guiltless decades.) But, yes, the ledger was without doubt a volatile artifact, one that I had last seen on the night Herbie reached under my marital mattress and proceeded to ruin my life forever.

I looked at Mrs. Kooshof, then at Herbie, and said, "Fancy this," somewhat nervously, with the knowledge that several jigs were on the rise.

Another moment elapsed before I was able to add, "Burn down any churches lately?"

Herbie grinned. "Have a seat," he said, "and forget the bullshit. You're in no position."

I glanced again at my ledger, hesitated, then selected an upholstered armchair situated a safe six feet from Mrs. Kooshof.

My consort sat turning pages. "Sleaze," she muttered. "Scum."

Herbie laughed at this.

There was considerable electricity in the room, considerable ill will, enough of both to suggest that our very universe had been organized around the single teleological principle of heaping upon me piles of grief and anguish.

"Stinking liar too," said Mrs. Kooshof. Her voice was listless. She did not so much as look up at me. "All that crap about checks under a mattress. You don't know what truth is."

"Nor do the philosophers," said I. "Nor do you."

"Lies."

I wagged my head. "Not at all. I happen to be a half-truth teller. Fluent, as a matter of fact."

"Liar," she said. "Nothing else."

Again, Herbie laughed. He crossed his legs and appraised me with a small, composed smile. Very silky, very self-satisfied. Months earlier, I had done some rudimentary detective work, turning up the essential facts of his life in Tampa: he ran a successful import firm specializing in electronic toys from the Orient; he traveled extensively and dated even more extensively-no commitments, no entanglements; he lived alone; he paid his taxes in quarterly installments; he attended Mass at Our Lady of the Sacred Heart; he dined out five nights a week; he was in love with my former wife, his own sister, once the girl of my dreams.

Forewarned is forearmed.

I did not blink. (Remember: a war hero.) For the present, however, the more problematic issue was Mrs. Robert Kooshof, who turned the pages of my ledger with quiet fury.

There was little to be lost by flashing her a sexy smile. "So, then, here we are," I said gaily. "And may I ask how this cozy rendezvous came about?"

She made an apathetic motion with her shoulders. "I needed to find things out for myself. Showed up on Herbie's doorstep."

"So you've been staying-"

"Right here," she said. "In the hotel. Under your nose, as usual."

"You might've let me know."

"I might've."

Even then, she refused to look up at me. Grimly, without pity, she kept flipping through the ledger, scanning my neat rows and columns.

Herbie watched with obvious amusement. "Fascinating two days, Tommy. Comparing notes and so on. Very informative."

"An education," said Mrs. Kooshof.

I eyed my ledger.*

"Whatever's happening here," I said severely, "you should understand that you're in possession of stolen property. Herbie burgled my bedroom-he has no right to it."

"A matter of opinion," Herbie said.

"It's mine. It's private."

Mrs. Kooshof snorted and turned a page. "Private's not the word. I mean, listen to this. 'Hand-holdings: 421. Nuzzlings: 233. Valentines: 98. Marriages: 1. Meaningful gazes: 1,788. Home runs: 4. Near misses: 128.' " She gave a little toss to her hair. "The whole thing, Thomas, it's revolting. All these ridiculous subcategories. Telephone numbers. Body types. Hair color. Names and dates. It doesn't stop."

"Well," I admitted, "I do think of myself as meticulous."

Herbie beamed.

"Sick," Mrs. Kooshof muttered. "It's like you're-I don't know-some perverted public accountant. Inflow, outflow. Assets and debits. Except you're counting up human beings." She paused, squinted at the ledger, then held it up toward me. "What's this mean?"

"Where?"

"Right here."

I leaned forward. "That would be the young lady's state of origin. I believe I'm missing Delaware."

For a few moments we sat in silence, then Mrs. Robert Kooshof closed the ledger and looked directly at me for the first time.

"The thing is," she said, "I can't pretend to be shocked. Not even surprised. That story about the checks-so weird, so convoluted-but the whole time it was the most common thing on earth. A little black book."

"Not so 'little,' " I sniffed, "and far from 'common.' "

"No wonder she left you."

I stiffened. "Rubbish."

"Lists of women? Under the mattress?"

"But I didn't do anything."

Mrs. Kooshof laughed without mirth. "How noble. You didn't sleep with them-so what? Keeping these ridiculous statistics. It's obsessive and demeaning and ... You can't file people away like a bunch of index cards."

"They liked me," I said. "They paid attention."

"Liked you?"

"Well, yes. It matters."

Tiny wrinkles formed across her forehead. She hesitated. "So where would you file me? Under 'Dutch'? Under 'doormat'?"

I stayed silent. (There was little to be gained by informing her that I had recently inaugurated a new and much improved ledger.) After a second Herbie chuckled.

"Honest Abe," he sighed. "Compulsive liar. Compulsive ladies' man."

"But not a pyromaniac," I said tartly. "I don't burn down churches."

"You, then? You sicced the cops on me?"