Later, though, he laughed.

"Toronto," he said, and hugged me. We stood in the waiting area of our tiny island airport; his return flight was already boarding. "So, Tom, what do you think? Maybe the priesthood? Or maybe one of those long-legged ice skaters? Which will it be?"

"Maybe both," said I.

When it occurs to me, which is primarily near the nocturnal hour of retirement, I have taken to addressing my bewitching companion by her Christian, semi-Moorish name. The word Donna remains unwieldy on my tongue, like a donkey's awkward load, but given that next June we will become man and wife, and given the conventions of our modern epoch, I often relent under threat of withheld physical favors. She is insistent on this point. "Mrs. Robert Kooshof" will no longer do. (Decorum is out, familiarity is in, but my secret plan, if I can summon the stamina, is to Donna her to death. Sentence after sentence, phrase after windy phrase, I will simply hammer the wayward woman-Donna, pass the salt, Donna, have a heart-until that glorious day when civility returns to fashion.) Meanwhile, we make wedding plans.

June, as I say. Garden ceremony. Pastel garb. Steel band. Herbie has agreed to serve as best man.

I look forward, as one can imagine, to dispatching a special invitation to Lorna Sue, who for an instant may contemplate her loss. Even more than that, however, I anticipate with a nostalgic tremble the arrival of old acquaintances from such remote locales as Naples and New York.

It will be a joyous day.

I am at work amending the standard vows.

A step forward, a half step back. An appropriate pace in this sun-drenched zone.

As promised, I see a psychiatrist. I am diligent. I write no phony checks. Each Thursday, at 2:00 P.M. sharp, I plod into the ramshackle office of our island's single shrink, a jolly young lady of African descent and considerable insight. We sit out back sometimes, where chickens peck at the dust, and together, in calypso cadences, explore the intricate curlicues of my psyche. The gal speaks little English; I command the island patois not at all. "Turtle," I may intone, shaping the creature with my hands, even sketching an example in the dust, which will cause my sleek soul-guide to squeal with unabashed delight.

"Like you, mon!" she will exclaim. "Big shell! Very slow! But live long forever!"

(She cannot contain the feminine flash in her eyes.) She gives me a small, noxious pouch to wear near my heart, walks me to the road, judiciously banks my check the same afternoon.

Live long forever.

I hope so. But I am being chased, as you are, toward some dim day of judgment.

On the beach this morning I spotted Death Chant.

Tonight I will braid Mrs. Robert Kooshof's hair. Confess all. Begin again.

And you.

It has been years now.

He is in Fiji, with another woman, and will not soon be returning.

But believe this: He loved you. He still does. He knows his transgression and feels it like a loosened tooth in his mouth on the morning of your anniversary, and on your autumn birthday, and when the snow does not come to Fiji on Christmas Eve. Believe too, that in those soft Pacific breezes, late at night, he wakes to think of you, hoping you are well, and that the image with which he finally finds reprieve is of someday returning to your door and knocking on it and begging admittance. A matter of faith. And if you can believe this, which is not beyond believing, imagine how your beauty would fill that doorway. Imagine staring that powerful new stare of yours, the one you have been practicing in your dreams. Imagine how you might chuckle, or shake your head, or just quietly say goodbye and close the door. And imagine, finally, how he would then comprehend-feel as you have felt, know as you have known-the meaning of the word Fiji.

Take heart.

Fiji, my lost princess, is but a state of mind. Embolden yourself. Brave the belief.

Bless you.

Tim O'Brien won the National Book Award in Fiction for Going After Cacciato. His novel The Things They Carried received France's prestigious Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize; it was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. His most recent novel, In the Lake of the Woods, was a national bestseller, received the James Fenimore Cooper Prize from the Society of American Historians, and was selected as the best novel of 1994 by Time magazine.

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